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I’ve finally managed to post this PPT file that has pictures of computers, hard drives, cables and other items. The examples in the textbook aren’t very good, so I took these pictures last year.

This slide show contains some comments that you can view by revealing the speaker’s notes in PowerPoint. I showed this file in Thursday’s IS 6100 class.

From time to time, people send me URLs for weird USB devices. The interesting thing about USB is that it provides a standard power plug and a small amount of voltage. Some of these devices don’t have any software drivers. They just do something silly, like turn a fan.

Here’s a list of devices. This article doesn’t have pictures, but the links will go to sites with descriptions, pictures and pricing.

One of the devices on this list is absolutely brilliant. They’re rechargable batteries that plug into a USB port. This lets users recharge the battery from a computer or USB hub.

This week, IS 6100 students shoud take a good long look at chapter 6 on telecommunications.

Chapters 3 (hardware) and 4 (software) are helpful, especially for students who are working on the Shavlik case.

There’s a good discussion of the Internet in chapter 6, but sometimes, it’s easier to compare the Internet to a bunch of pipes. Instead of ware, we push data through our Internet pipes, in the form of packets. Think of a packet as a drop of water.

The TCP/IP protocol suite helps computers put data into these pipes, and then reassemble the data at the other end.

Think about the plumbing in your home. Do you really know what happens to the water on its way into your faucet? Or what happens to the water from your shower or tub as it leaves your bathroom?

If you’re like most people, you probably don’t know and you’re glad. With the Internet, it is helpful to know that at some point, your data packets are moving through one or more Internet pipes called the backbone. These connections run at a very high rate of speed that can support thousands of sessions at the same time. There’s a good discussion of how data moves throught eh physical portions of the Internet at http://navigators.com/sessphys.html

A router is a device that directs pakets on a network. There are millions of routers on the Internet. If you have a WiFi or wireless router in your home, you’re using a smaller version of the routers and switches used at your ISP and on the INternet backbone.

At the bottom of the diagram on the page linked above, there’s the message “Information Flows over MANY Paths”. One important feature of the Internet is that the packets in your session can be rerouted if a backbone connection is not available.

From the Honolulu Advertiser, ID Analytics has given Hawaii the 6th worst state for identity theft and fraud. Hawaii’s rate is 1.5 times the national average. The article has the standard list of tips on preventing and recovering from identity theft.

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070215/NEWS06/702150374/1001

From the SANS Institute, here’s an article by Deborah Hale that discusses how the US and Canadian change to an earlier Daylight Savings Time affects various flavors of Microsoft Windows, Linux, and other systems. I mentioned this change last week.

There are patches for Red Hat Linux, one of the most popular flavors of that operating system.

Five weeks to go, and Windows Vista is ready out of the box.

There is a patch available for Windows XP. Service Pack 2 must already be installed, however. Run Windows Update or Microsoft Update for more details about your machine.

Windows 2000 requires a manual process to update the registry, the massive database that Windows uses to store hardware and software information on a computer. Frankly, anyone who’s running Windows 2000 at this point needs to upgrade.

There is no official patch for earlier versions of Windows (ME, 98, 95, 3.x). It really is “time” to upgrade! (rimshot)

Also, users and administrators should check with software vendors to see if applications, utilities, and other software requires a patch. There’s a deeper discussion in this ComputerWorld article, focusing on Java applications as an example. ComputerWorld also offers this list of vendors and the DST patches or solutions that they’ve announced.

What a mess. At least it’s not as bad as Y2K or the introduction of the Euro (€).

At least WorldTimeServer will get the time right.

In last Thursday’s IS 6100 class, I mentioned that some graduate students at the University of Washington who had tested an exploit to track Nike+ devices. Wired mentioned that exploit on November 30. Nike+ devices are small bean sized sensors that can be placed inside or on a shoe. As the wearer walks or runs, the devices relay speed and distance data to a wireless sensor that the user snaps onto an Apple iPod Nano. The students set up a network of wireless receivers that can track and record data from any Nike+ device within range.

The UW hack was easy to implement because Nike+ devices transmit unencrypted data. Several web sites have popped up to discuss how users can hack the data recorded by their Nike+ device, including Runometer, a web mashup site that combines Nike+ and GPS data with Google maps. The site was mentioned by Engadget last month.

The Nike+ device is just an RFID device that uses a wireless connection to relay data from the shoe to an iPod. After the run, the user can upload the data to a slow, Flash-based Nike web site for further analysis. This site is a good example of how customers can extract more value from a product or service.

Kelli Kennedy of the AP reports that a company will market GPS-equipped sneakers. Isaac Daniel developed the shoes after his son was reporting missing for a few hours.

The Compass Global shoe has two buttons - one to activate the GPS transmitter in the sole, and one to cancel. The cancel button is important, as the GPS device is meant for use in an emergency. One the activate button is pressed, the shoe will find its position using up to 4 GPS satellites, and then transmit the location and other data to a monitoring service. The beacon will run about 6 hoursQuantum Satellite Technology charges a US$20 monthly subscription fee for the tracking service. 

Like any GPS device, the shoe requires a clear view of the sky in order to find the GPS satellites. The shoe can tell when a person has entered a building or a tunnel, but won’t know where that person is in that structure.

Men’s and women’s sizes are available. The shoes look like ordinary US$350 shoes. A children’s line is coming this summer, including non-GPS shoes that can communicate with video game consoles. There are military applications, of course, and the company is already putting the devices in military boots for potential sales to Ecuador and Colombia.