Future of Technology

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It reports there has been a 50% increase in the number of detected so-called "zombie" computers since 2008.

The true number of newly hijacked PCs is likely to be higher than those detected by McAfee alone.

The figures come as a report from Deloitte said a global approach to cyber-security was needed.

"Doing nothing is not an option," said Deloitte's Greg Pellegrino.

Everything that depended on cyberspace face unprecedented risks, said Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (DTT).

"This issue is moving so quickly, and with so much at stake economically and in terms of safety and security for people, we don't have 100 years to figure this out," explained Mr Pellegrino, who is a global public sector industry leader at DTT.

McAfee also revealed that the United States now hosted the world's largest percentage of infected computers at 18% with China a not too distant second with just over 13%.

"The massive expansion of these botnets provides cyber-criminals with the infrastructure they need to flood the web with malware," said Jeff Green, senior vice-president of McAfee.

"Essentially, this is cyber-crime enablement."

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Daily Living

The DTT findings revealed a growing awareness of the role the internet plays in so many different aspects of our lives from security to commerce and from transportation to communication.

We are seeing this change from protecting the internet to a conversation about how we succeed and prosper in cyberspace," Mr Pellegrino told the BBC.

"Security spending is growing at a rate never seen before while the threat environment is growing at a pace of 40% a year.

"In terms of volume and severity of incidents, the math doesn't work and we have to come up with a different approach that requires public and private sectors working together," Mr Pellegrino said.

"We are talking about daily living," said fellow author Gary McAlum, who is a retired US Air Force colonel and senior manager of security and privacy services at Deloitte.

"There is a lot of discussion about the economy and the military and the public and private sector, but we have now reached a sense of urgency about the interconnectedness of all these areas."

That view was echoed by a member of the US military top brass who just gave evidence to a branch of the House Armed Services Committee.

"Our economy, the nation's critical infrastructure, and many of our military operations depend on unfettered access to cyberspace," said Lt Gen Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency (NSA) who also heads the Pentagon's new Cyber Command.

"Maintaining freedom of action in cyberspace in the 21st Century is as inherent to US interests as freedom of the seas was in the 19th Century, and access to air and space in the 20th Century."

He has called for the creation of a digital warfare force for the future and has stated that the US needs to reorganise its offensive and defensive cyber-operations.

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Boom in GRaphic Cards:

Despite the economic slowdown, the graphics card segment is expected to grow at 30 percent annually with increasing multimedia content and growing customer awareness.
in the gaming population but also in the use of graphics card-intensive programs. This in turn has helped the add-on or discrete graphics card market to thrive.
“The discrete graphics card market has been growing at 30 percent since the past one year,” says Kapal Pansari, Director, Marketing, Rashi Peripherals, who also handles XFX graphics cards. “Last year, we sold an average of 40,000 units of discrete graphics cards per month through the channels, and we expect this demand to gain momentum and grow faster than the PC market.”
In agreement is Rajshekhar Bhatt, National Sales Manager, ATI product line chipset business, AMD. “Over the last couple of years we have seen the graphics card market grow tremendously. The world economy may be at risk, but the graphics chip market is literally on fire with more than one graphics card now being used in over a third of all PCs shipped. A study conducted by Mercury Research revealed that in Q3 2008 a total of 112.4 million graphics cards were shipped, recording an increase of 19.5 percent over Q2 2008. Out of this, over 70 percent of the cards were sold through channels, while the remaining 30 percent went to PC OEMs.”
Along with the demand for graphics cards, the attach ratio of a graphics card to a PC has also witnessed significant growth. According to Daniel Saison, Director, Sales, MEIA, Nvidia, “The current attach ratio of a graphics card with respect to PC sales is over 25 percent. Compared to other countries where the attach ratio is around 50 percent, India has a long way to go, but we are expecting the attach ratio to reach 50 percent in the next two years.”

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The quality of family life has long been tied to technological innovation. The washing machine freed women from the washboard and scrubbing brush, while the fridge, vacuum cleaner and microwave gave a generation of cash-rich, time-poor families more control over their lives.

Family life is undergoing a similar revolution in the digital age, although experts are divided as to the impact television, the internet and social networking are having on society and the family unit.

Some, such as the Children’s Society, have expressed concerns that new technology is leading to greater isolation, with children slipping into a virtual world online, rather than engaging with their parents and peers.

Others have argued that technology has the potential to be a great enabler, fostering closer links between family members and communities in an increasingly fractured and changing society.

The truth is probably somewhere between the two. Harnessed and tamed, technology has the power to provide the glue that binds and connects us with the world and the people around us.

Technology has become an intrinsic part of daily life. A recent poll of 500 families, carried out by ICM, found that 60 per cent believed mobile phones and emails help their families to communicate better, while almost three-quarters of parents said they find technology easy to use.

Whereas families once had 2.4 children, they now have 2.4 televisions and 2.4 games consoles in their house. And, despite these straitened times, those families surveyed said they would rather cut back on school uniforms and holidays than their internet subscription.

An increasing number are using the latest technology to organise their schedules, and that’s largely because we’ve reached a tipping point – gadgets are now more intuitive and easy to use.

Manufacturers are keen to ensure their products remain at the fulcrum of family life, which explains why more and more of these “converged” devices can carry out multiple tasks and boast always-on wireless connectivity.

Many televisions can be hooked up to the internet, allowing users to check emails or news headlines from the comfort of their sofa.

Meanwhile, personal video recorders such as Sky+ mean families don’t have to squabble over what to watch and can “time-shift” their favourite programmes.

Games consoles such as the Nintendo Wii have taken video gaming out of the bedroom and into the living room. Mobile phones mean family members can be contacted at all times, alerted to changes in plans, or simply dropped a quick text message to wish them luck in an exam or ask them to pick up a pint of milk on their way home.

In fact, almost a quarter of those polled for the ICM poll said that technology was bringing the family closer together.

It’s often said that the family that prays together, stays together. Perhaps the same is true for the family that games together, or Twitters together, or chats online together…

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Palm Pre prepares to battle 'iBerry' juggernaut
For the first time in nearly two years, the iPhone faces a showdown with what could be a true iPhone challenger. It's not a BlackBerry. It's not an Android phone. It's a Palm and it's called the Pre.

Since January, when the Pre was announced, Palm has been stoking well-merited interest in the device, although no one yet knows how much it will cost (a guess: around $200 after signing up for a two-year contract with exclusive carrier Sprint), or exactly when it will be available (Palm says before the end of June).

The Pre will have some features that no other smartphones have — including being able to read one e-mail message, set, or flick, it to the side on the screen, and then open another e-mail without having to close the first one. That's pretty nifty. So is the ability to put all your contacts — from Outlook to Facebook — in one place, by a person's name, not affiliation, if you choose. But battling the Apple-Research In Motion "iBerry" juggernaut is going to be tough.

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Star Trek's warp drive: Not impossible

The warp drive, one of Star Trek's hallmark inventions, could someday become science instead of science fiction.

Some physicists say the faster-than-light travel technology may one day enable humans to jet between stars for weekend getaways. Clearly it won't be an easy task. The science is complex, but not strictly impossible, according to some researchers studying how to make it happen.

The trick seems to be to find some other means of propulsion besides rockets, which would never be able to accelerate a ship to velocities faster than that of light, the fundamental speed limit set by Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Luckily for us, this speed limit only applies within space-time (the continuum of three dimensions of space plus one of time that we live in). While any given object can't travel faster than light speed within space-time, theory holds, perhaps space-time itself could travel.

"The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving."

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Future of Technology.......The trick seems to be to find some other means of propulsion besides rockets, which would never be able to accelerate a ship to velocities faster than that of light, the fundamental speed limit set by Einstein's general theory of relativity.