Tag Archives: hardware

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Royal Navy gets PWNZ0R3D by virus

HMAS Adelaide auxiliary warshipRemember when I mentioned that the UK’s Royal Navy has been installing a Windows derivative on its warship and submarine control computers? [image by Serendigity]

Well, it’s a different set of hardware, but apparently a bunch of RN computers have been knocked out of action my an email-borne virus in recent weeks. There’s got to be a great opening for an open-source contractor with a clean security history over there right now… [via SlashDot]

More seriously, though, this highlights a very real risk to ‘traditional’ military forces. After all, if small territorial conflicts like the Gaza situation can go worldwide on the web, that suggests that any opponent worth deploying your navy against is at least going to try futzing with your computer systems… and if the combination of your installed operating systems and a lack of basic email security savvy means you can have warship systems out of action for a few days, there’s some opportunities for a really nasty David and Goliath scenario somewhere down the line.

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Pan Macmillan caters for the iPhone alpha geeks

iPhoneHey, you – yeah, you with the iPhone. Wanna do something more interesting than pretend to check your mail while you’re on the bus? Genre publishers Pan Macmillan obviously think you do, and have taken the remarkably forward-looking choice of making some of their science fiction and fantasy ebook selection available for the Stanza reader software. [image by William Hook]

At the moment you still have to download the original ebook to your Stanza desktop app and transfer it across, and you can only get an excerpt rather than the whole thing, but apparently the ability to buy direct from your iPhone is in the pipeline. I’ve been waiting to see how the big houses would respond to Oprah’s backing of the Kindle – maybe we’re seeing the first shot in a hardware war yet to come?

Future Imperfect

Toys of the Trade

Sven Johnson returns to Futurismic for another instalment of Future Imperfect.

Future Imperfect - Sven Johnson

Cyberpunk literature mirrored its era by speaking of the the fetishism of hardware; Sven takes a look at the state of play today, where what were once tools are now toys, and where complex design modeling software is available at the click of a mouse to anyone who wants it … as part of a video game. Continue reading Toys of the Trade →

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Military hardware on eBay – the black market is only a click away

Chain gunUnited States Defense Department investigators have discovered that it’s surprisingly easy to purchase restricted or classified items of military hardware; all you need to do is have a scout on eBay or Craigslist. [via SlashDot][image by swotai]

” Among the items purchased include two components from F-14 fighter jets …”

The article mentions the risk of items being reverse-engineered or countermeasured by enemies of the United States … though I’d hazard to suggest any enemy worth being worried about has probably decided that it’s best to continue letting bureaucracy and internal discontent do all the hard work of wearing their opponents down.

I think the thing that astonishes me most, though, is the fact that I’ve had eBay auctions delisted for tiny marginal breaches of the site’s code of conduct, yet their eagle-eyed monitoring teams don’t notice or investigate people selling chunks of fighter jets. It’s a weird world, and no mistake.

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The rise of the subnotebook computer … and the fall of the computing economy

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Asus-Eee-subnotebook-computer Slashdot notes a story that quotes a big wheel at Sony as being worried about the potential mainstream appeal of the Asus Eee and its ilk:

“”If (the Eee PC from) Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That’s just a race to the bottom,” said Mike Abary.”

The Slashdot poster observes:

“Presumably by ‘we’ he means all the hardware manufacturers who sell over-priced, full-fat laptops. […] Looks like what’s bad for Sony may be good for the consumer.”

In the short run, certainly, he may be right – but what about the long game? A drop in hardware prices for us consumers would be nice, sure, but there’s bound to be more consequences than that. [image by Scrambled Egg]

This is an issue that Charles Stross broached late last year (right after purchasing his own Eee, naturally). You should read all of Charlie’s thoughts about the inevitable (and long-overdue) commoditization of computing technology, because they add weight to his final blow:

“… how deep will be the recession that follows once the personal computing industry deflates to its natural value (i.e. peanuts)?”

Ouch.