The Ghost Net

News is floating around that a network of cyber espionage has compromised computers in 103 countries and mostly in foreighn ministries and embassies. A Canadian think tank has discovered the existence. they are not absolutely sure it has been organized by the Chinese government. Evidence does point to that though. So this too is a tool in the espionage activities.

As in the real world cat and mouse games espionage, counter-espionage activities will keep growing. What botheres me though is whatever infrasructure we have now, the computers, the operating systems in them, the networks;particularly the Internet were never designed against such things. The Internet was designed to be a open forum for collaboration when it started.

I am sure as things eveolve all these will start becoming robust agains such malpractices. The internet probably would take the most time to make it really secure. Hopefully it too will become totally secure someday!

JTAG is Such a Universal Thing!

JTAG staretd as a means of testing complete systems. The standard has gone through some three revisions. And it has kept growing. Today no complex embedded system can do without it. Not only it is needed for getteing the testing to be done right but it is a major tool during development. his is the interface through which you work during development. Do the compiling of your software on a PC and download through the JTAG. Use your debug tools through the JTAG and make sure it is running properly. Typical development, debug scebnario is a PC connected to the target hardware board through the JTAG cable. This used to be far more complex situation with emulators and sophisticated logic analyzers and may be with disassembly of the bus transactions and so on!

Cisco Acquires Pure Digital

Pure Digital is the maker of Flip Video cameras, very affordable video cameras. They have released a new high definition version too. One of the reason for their popularity besides the low price is that you can directly hook up on USB and upload the video to the sharing sites. Cisco has just completed a deal to acquire the company.

Combine it with the announcement that they are moving into the blade server space with their California offerings and it starts to look like these are bets against the recession by diversifying the portfolio. Thy'll have to go head to head against companies like IBM, Sun and so on. So the product they are going to offer better be good. Not only that, to be able to break into existing market they'll have to offer very clear differentiating features on their products. Interestingly IBM seems to be bent on acquiring Sun for a price of somewhere between $6.5 to $8.x billions!

Both are growth areas despite the recession. Particularly the video segment, the video share segment is growing hugely. Servers also should be growing. There's speculation Cisco is interested in personal/home video conferencing. Let's see how all this plays out!

Smart Passports- Do They Invade Privacy!

There was a news release about smart passports to be issued by the Indian Government. It is now possible to record a lot more information that can uniquely identify a person into thse smart chips used in the passports.

There has been a debat that this ammounts to invasion of privacy. On the one hand all the personal information recorded into the passport will also be available on servers somewhere in the government dungeons and it'll be easy to get at that information if security is compromised somehow. Also that anyboy with an appropriate reader possibly could read this information off the passport too.

That definitely is a difficult boundary to establish. Where does the need for unique identification end and where does the invasion of privace begin! In these days of heightened terrorist activities all over the globe the boundary possibly needs to be pushed back. Need to prevent terrorism by identifying terrorists is for the greater good. That should be the criteria to determione where this boundary move to.

Photo Edits Online-Mostly Free!

CNET recently reviewed 15 such sites. With the trend of everything going onto the web, websites getting published every other minute and then this urge to share everything on some social site; you need a handy photo editor. There are several now available that provide this service, they'll even make transporting the photos to social sites easy.

Most of these are free with some charging you a subscription when you use their premium features. According to the survey they cover a fairly wide range of services. Mostly the feel and the comfort you feel and the exact services that you need will decide which one is the best for you.

Following are the sites. Just add a .com to access them except one as indicated in the list.

• Flauntr
• Fotoflexr
• Lunapic
• Phixr
• Phoenix(www. aviary.com)
• Photoshop.com
• Picnik
• Picture2File
• Pixenate
• Pixer.us
• Pixlr
• Snipshot
• Splashup

Give them a try. They are going to be useful sooner or later.