On The Net - Computing News

with Chris Goh

Past and Future: Part 1 of 2

2003 was a rebound year for IT in many ways. We saw, thanks to Apple, the world's first 64-bit desktop computer and operating system with the G5 and Panther (OS X 10.3). With the 20th Anniversary of the Mac on January 25, there is a feeling that Apple has something up its sleeve again.

We saw digital cameras begin their ascendence over film and DVDs become the consumer product of the year. We saw Internet 2 stifle critics with digital transfer of media being completed to the other side of the planet faster than you could extract files from your local hard drive. This led the Pentagon to announce they would adopt it as their computer backbone in the next three years.

The year was also bittersweet for many reasons, namely the second Gulf War that saw more casualties in post-war operations than during the actual military campaign. The impetus for the attack was a claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (in a country with no mobile phone connections). WMDs were also news on the other side of the world in North Korea.

The Pentagon publicised its intention to create a new market where speculators trade on the future probability of terrorist acts.

Dare we mention a nation who fought for the freedom of speech that now prevents their own emergency services learning about how to fight off chemical weapons because such information is "too sensitive".

Maybe the Imperial power of today feels testy as it is being challenged by China, which after 50 years of various cultural revolutions that led to massacres and starvation, has entered a long period of stability. Only the 3rd country to send a man into space, it has proven it will become a new superpower.

Speaking of space, The University of Queensland has demonstrated that ScramJets are possible, allowing aircraft to go faster and higher into the atmosphere where conventional jets cannot go because of the low oxygen.

There is more than one worm in this year of the viruses. The Slammer, Blaster, Swen and BugBear virus made it a very testy time for PC users. What made the Blaster and Swen virus very different is that it was obvious that they were used for commercial purposes. Blaster collected information on Servers that could be used by Spammers to relay unsolicited mail. SWE, which pretended to be a Microsoft patch, collected user's emails and, according to anti-virus vendors, sold them to businesses. One can only worry what will happen this year.

Spam and more scams. Though the US and the Australian government have passed bills to prevent Spam, there is no doubt that unsolicited email will continue. Major Scams in England, the US, Australia and Nigeria have been broken thanks to law enforcement agencies in these nations now having more computer literate enforcement officers.

All major Australian banks were targeted in fraudulent emails asking online users to give up their passwords. Similar scams have been done around the world. (Doesn't the world seem so small now?)

The Centenary of flight gives us tangible evidence of how quickly technologies have changed. Two bicycle repairmen showed us how to fly. Orville Wright, who died in 1948, saw his invention drop the Atomic Bomb and the first jet engines come off the production line. He must have smirked when the world was told that nuclear weapons would make future wars impossible, especially when he made the same statement about his invention in 1904 (we know now that humans make future wars possible). 12 years later Yuri Gagarin would be the first man in space and 5 years later there was touchdown on tranquillity bay on earth's satellite, the moon.

The top 5 searches for the year past was in order: Britney Spears, Harry Potter, Matrix, Shakira and David Beckham, showing the net is no longer the research tool that it was initially created as, but has become a gossip and entertainment supplier. The interesting thing though is as part of the new agreement between Google and the RIAA, file sharing software did not appear. In the year where the war on pirate music went up a notch to attack children in high school and teenagers in Universities the RIAA has pursued those who share large music collections across the planet. Commercial file sharing however has now proven possible and even profitable with Apple's iTunes showing good revenue earnings from its commercial file sharing program.

The big news that really has knocked about the IT world in the past year is SCO's attack on the Linux camp. SCO believes Linux is taking away its revenue base, claiming (but not yet proving in court) that Linux uses code that SCO holds copyright over.

Unix is making a comeback, showing up in OS X and the next Windows Operating System. SCO knows it and thinks it can stifle the wave, but it has little chance.

HotNews

Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, or more to the point the Hypertext language behind web pages, has been acknowledged with a knighthood via telephone. I suppose if he got it by email, in this day and age, he may have thought it was Spam. Sir Tim, who was banned from Oxford University computers when he and a friend were caught hacking, says he is just an ordinary person. Hopefully they will soon recognise Vint Cerf that built the fundamental internet protocol that allows those pages and your emails to get to your machine.

HotSite

www.trendsmultimedia.com

Just one to start the year off, and this I stumbled across as I tried to find ideas on building my new home. If you're stuck for ideas in how you want to renovate or design a home, this site has thousands of images that may give you that great idea.