Headworx

A week ago I was contemplating whether the shutdown of the Internet would mean the shutdown of the human civilization. And even if not today, we are rapidly approaching the point of no return. Our assets, achievements, wealth, power, love, joy, entertainment - you name it - come in a form of bits, not atoms. A bit is a state of information. It does not exist in a physical world. It has no mass, no energy, no dimensions. It only carries and represents information. We have come to the era where the value of information (bits) is exceeding the combined value of all other physical items (atoms). To me the milestone we have passed in 2010 was the discovery of the Stuxnet virus. The discovery, as the Stuxnet was created much earlier, probably in 2009 or even 2008. The Stuxnet is a weapon. It is the first weapon in the history of mankind that does not have a physical form. The Stuxnet is just an organized group of bits, a piece of information. With immense power to destroy the targets it was...

I am reading the Brian Clegg's Armageddon Science: The Science of Mass Destruction . In chapter seven the author envisions information meltdown as one of possible reasons of mass destruction of human race. At first this idea seems stretched a little too far for me. Is bringing down the Internet really going to wipe our civilization? I have been contemplating a long lasting failure of electric supply grid as a very serious threat. Theoretically there is such danger. A severe solar eruption can induce enough energy in power transmission lines (acting as huge antennas) to burn many transformers simultaneously. Recovery from such accident world wide may last several months. In the meantime nothing would work. It would not be just dark. Everything would stop. Factories. Agriculture. Transport. Communication systems. The loss of power can be devastating. But the Internet? Most of us are on the Internet for fun. At least partially. We could certainly survive without the Facebook. At least...

I am tempted to buy the new MacBook Air. And install Windows 7 on it (of course). But there are two issues that keep me from finalizing the transaction. First - there is no built-in WAN 3G option. Before owning the Nokia Booklet 3G , I had considered the 3G WAN not necessary. But later I started appreciating having the 3G modem built into the computer and being able to connect anytime and anywhere, without the need to plug any external "dongles" or booting up a personal WiFi cloud . It is just so difficult to understand the rationale behind the decision of not including the 3G option in the Air. The iPhone has it. The iPad has it. The Air does not. But in the end I decided I could live with it, returning to regular use of the Huawei 3G/WiFi router. Second - the more important issue - is the lack of any hardware - based security. In the PC/Windows world the TPM or Trusted Platform Module has been available for years, tightening the platform security. I have been using TPM-base...

In the beginning there were NTSC and PAL. Two incompatible TV systems, one originated in the USA, the other in Europe. Handling the differences between the two was not a big problem for consumers, as usually they were physically buying or renting compatible content at physical stores in areas where they intended to consume that content. VCRs were not portable and Amazon did not exist. It seemed things got simplified with the introduction of the unified standard of DVDs but then it occurred the worldwide compatibility of content was a bad thing. So we were immediately back to the complicated state with the introduction of regions and region codes. And again content (a disc) purchased in America could not be played in Europe (and vice versa of course). In today's global village the idea of not compatible content is present even stronger. I have a Kindle. Or two - to be precise. A friend of mine who lives on the other side of the Atlantic recommended me a book. I took my Kindle, ente...

Last week has brought us some positive developments of mobile data roaming prices. From my own backyard. Orange Poland started offering the Travel Data Daily package. It is activated by sending an SMS message AKT TRAVEL to 573 and gives 2MB worth of data in the Eurozone for 8PLN (~2EUR). While 2MB is a ridiculously small package by today standards, the price is an order of magnitude lower compared to standard data roaming. Interestingly, I found 2MB enough for a day with my BlackBerry Torch , having emails, Facebook and moderate Web browsing. Probably the compression BlackBerry servers do helps here. At the same time Vodafone UK announced even better offer . For 2GBP a day they allow to "take the home data plan abroad", which means one could have a couple of gigabytes worth of roaming data. 2EUR or 2GBP a day is an expense most of us smartphone users would afford when traveling. Vodafone has probably figured out smartphone users are smart (surprise!) and turn off data when r...