Are you tired of slow networks? Well Fujitsu thinks that they have the answer!

Many network protocols run over Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), basically a set of rules for network communication. TCP is an essential part of the greater Internet Protocol (IP), which is more of the same. Thus you’ll often see them referred together as TCP/IP, as they’re almost always joined at the hip. This is basically the heart of what makes Ye Olde Internet work, and what allows programs running on computers (and other gadgets and gizmos) to communicate with one another and the world at large.

What TCP/IP does is break down what you want to communicate (be it an email, the contents of a file, or what have you) into tiny chunks called packets. It then sends these packets through the many varied paths through a network from point A (you) to point B (the recipient). If you were to send the whole shebang in one chunk, chances are that big piece would get damaged or stuck along the way, and then you’d have to resend it. Quite possibly again and again and again. Which would be slow and unwieldy. Because in today’s world networks are thousands upon thousands of computers shaking hands, routing information down this way or that depending on which looks to be less utilized, et cetera ad nauseam. Back in the good old days when the internet was shiny and new, this wasn’t such a challenge. Today though it’s like tightrope walking across a congested superhighway of tightropes over a minefield while carrying a cup of water and hoping to not spill a single drop along the way. By breaking your message into lots of tiny packets carried by multiple tightrope walkers and reassembling them at the end it allows to send packets down multiple paths and to request only to resend the damaged or lost ones, making communication from one end of the Earth to the other possible amidst the chaos.

The thing is, you see, TCP/IP is basically as old as the internet itself, more or less. And while it works, there’s always room for improvement.

An muck less often used alternative to TCP is the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), which was tailored specifically for streaming media, such as a movie. It’s designed for minimal delays and getting things from point A to point B a lot faster, but a lot less safely. The constant handshaking and quality checking of TCP is virtually non-existent in UDP, by design. Instead UDP just machineguns data as rapidly as possible. It makes it a lot faster, but a lot more dangerous for really important things.

That’s why most things still use TCP/IP. It’s safe. It’s reliable.

But it’s also slow.

That’s where Fujitsu comes into our picture. They reckon that they have a solution that’s the bee’s knees to TCP/IP. Because of the minimal overhead involved in UDP they built their new network protocol around that. But instead of using unprotected UDP directly, they made themselves a man in the middle. To computers it looks like a TCP/IP connection. To the networks that shuffle the data around it uses a UDP port. But thanks to their man in the middle, it’s kind of both, basically.

The advantage that Fujitsu brings is that they’re intelligently hybridizing TCP with UDP and adding in some of their own special sauce to fix flaws in both in the process. For example, UDP often sends too much data through, congesting the bandwith and clogging up attempts to communicate. Whereas Fujitsu’s approach tries to intelligently limit how much data to throw down the pipe at one time, allowing more information to pass through by not hogging all of the bandwidth. And more importantly, Fujitsu has designed a way to tell the difference between packets that have been lost, and packets that have been dropped, an important distinction that can prevent unnecessary requests for retransmitting a packet. The less duplicate and useless retransmissions of data is the less bandwidth wasted in the process of getting everything from point A to point B.

All-in-all, data transmission tests Fujitsu has run from Japan to the United States using their new technology have seen thirty times more speed and a latency just one-sixth of the time you get with TCP/IP.  That’s pretty impressive, and if everyone started using that, we’d see a whole new internet.

To that end, they hope this will make their new network protocol become a key player in today’s data-choked world now that our mini-devices do everything. Look to see Fujitsu start commercializing their product sometime this year.

So the super-secret Skunkworks Facebook project has finally been revealed in all of its glory … or lack thereof. No, it’s not a FacePhone. Or a PhoneBook. (Snicker.) Or any new gadget. It’s a search engine. Oh. Sorry, Zuckerberg. I mean it’s a “Graph Search”. The Mighty Zuck was clear to differentiate the Facebook Graph Search from any old search engine by pointing out that it doesn’t just search Ye Olde Interwebs, it searches Facebook.

Ooooooh.

Um … yeah. Whatever.

The point of Graph Search is that the results of your searches are tailored to your Facebook account. So if you search for vacation photos of Fiji, the photos taken by your friends and family are at the top, unlike any old internet search which relies upon the kindness of strangers. If you search for the best plumber, it knows where you live, and it goes by the recommendations of the people you Like over more generic information from world + dog. Allegedly making your search results that much more tailored to your needs, likes, etc.

Basically, like everything else in Facebook, it revolves around that creepy stalker feel to work its magic.  In fact you can even use Graph Search to find “friends of your friends who are single”.  No creepy vibes there!

Zuck obviously also considered privacy to be a big deal because apparently he wouldn’t shut up about privacy. Which, coming from All Things Facebook, is kind of ironic to say the least. Just because you say that you’re taking privacy seriously doesn’t make it true. And as privacy in Graph Search was explained further, this basically turned out as expected. As described, if it’s public on Facebook, it’s public to Facebook’s Graph Search. That’s it. Nothing particularly special, not even a new privacy feature to be found, and in fact highly confusing to so very many Facebook users who still aren’t always certain if they’ve managed to make something private or not even when they think that they have. Not to mention when policy changes, code changes, or bugs result in things turning up public when by any sane person’s judgment they shouldn’t be.  So take their claims of taking privacy seriously with a whole bag of salt … and then wait for the truck to drop off the rest.

Yes Zuck, we’re all laughing at you.

But, privacy, theoretically, is why Facebook’s Graph Search will be working closely with Microsoft’s Bing instead of Google’s search engine, because allegedly (not that I disbelieve this one) Google wouldn’t commit to removing information at the drop of a hat should something suddenly become private.  Nothing at all to do with Google, you know, that other major search engine, having launched a service that competes with Facebook.  Naw.  Not at all.  I’m sure Google+ had absolutely nothing to do with Facebook’s choice of Microsoft Bing as their search engine partner.

On a similarly dubious note of allegedness, Graph Search will one day be open to all with APIs. Probably. In theory.  So Facebook claims.  So in theory Google could snarf the data anyway. And still refuse to remove it whenever a swallow farts the wrong way.  In theory.

When exactly anyone will see Graph Search (let alone be able to use it) is anyone’s guess though. Facebook is doing a very limited roll-out as Graph Search isn’t even really at the beta testing stage yet. And what features will actually exist in Graph Search are also still rather up in the air. In fact, Facebook’s Graph Search announcement really seemed more vaporware than real software. But at least now we know what matters to Zuck and Co. So we can stop rumor-mongering that Facebook phone already.

And, of course, if you happen to not actually use Facebook, then Graph Search will be pretty meaningless to you. And, at least for now, even if you do happen to use Facebook, then Graph Search is also pretty meaningless to you. It’s still just a twinkle in Zuck’s eye. But maybe, one day, it’ll matter.

Or not.

Because even if you ever find it useful in theory, and actually get to use it one day in practice, there’s still the question of just exactly how relevant your “friends” are to your everyday life, and just how many Likes were actually liked when the analytics meet the fan. In order for Graph Search to deliver meaningful data, Facebook’s data has to actually be meaningful, something which at present is highly debatable. Otherwise Graph Search is all just rubbish in = rubbish out, and you’d actually be better off with results from a generic internet search after all.

But it’s not cool to be realistic, so, “Huzzah for Facebook’s Graph Search, Big Data, Analytics, and all other related buzzwords! Yay for Social Media, saviors of the Informatics world!”

Was that convincing enough?

Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t buy it either.

Or maybe it should have read more like, “Let anyone but you reap the bounty of monetizing all of your data!“  Was that more believable?

In fact, really, the whole Facebook Graph Search thing smells something of red herring, if not rotten fish entirely, as Facebook’s announcement of Graph Search comes awfully coincidentally right on the heels of IBM’s announcement of “Smarter Analytics”, crunching the Big Data of “social media” like … err … Facebook.  Huh.  Imagine that!  So IBM announces that it’s crunching data from Facebook, Twitter, etc. and suddenly Facebook announces a new vaporware alpha-tested (at best) service that is searching their own data … finally.  It’s almost like it was some kind of knee-jerk me-too response, no?

So maybe that FacePhone PhoneBook thing really is still possible after all.

Though I doubt it.

Even Zuck can’t be that dumb.  Who would buy a Facebook phone when every smartphone out there has a Facebook app?  That’d be right daft!

Still, the rumor mongers can rejoice in their theoretical fancies being potentially extended for just a little more time.

And if you happen to be one of the very few Facebook users alleged to have access to Graph Search already, then you too can stalk friends of your friends for a date!  Or ask your friends who they’d recommend as a plumber … without that awful hassle of just asking your friends who they’d recommend as a plumber.  That social media, gotta love it!  Now there’s even less social interaction to be had!  What a great feature Graph Search is.  Or will be.  Or whatever.  Since its really still vaporware at this point.

IBM reckons that they can predict the future. Sort of. Maybe.

Okay, to be fair, not really. What IBM actually says it that they’re experimenting in something new (ish) in the world of data analytics whereby they scan Ye Olde Interwebs (blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) for what people are talking about and from that spider crawl through social media as big data they can create what they call the IBM Social Sentiment Index. Or, in other words, they give a number to the increase in popularity of topics being talked about in an effort to predict what will matter most to us tomorrow.

So what does IBM’s “Smarter Analytics” predict will matter most to us soon? Steampunk!

Hey, the internet said so, so it must be true.

After IBM crunched their numbers on the buzz lighting up social media for the last few years, they’ve noticed an ever increasing concern about Steampunk.

Yeah. Sure. If you say so, IBM.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Steampunk. And I guess it has been showing up here and there. But I highly doubt such a niche concept is about to revolutionize the world of fashion or computer gadgetry any time … ever.

It seems to me that if you count what everyone is talking about/doing on the internet in say, politics, for example … and you translate that to how that has actually affected the real world in, say, voting … then it seems to me that the internet is pretty much just full of itself and/or hot air and you couldn’t use it to predict, well … anything.

It further seems to me, from my own anecdotal observations at least, that the internet is basically full of loud-mouthed twits who, generally speaking, hardly ever actually bother to put their money where their mouths are and who basically just like to pontificate upon pointlessness just to fill the internet with useless words.

Present company included, of course.

So whatever latest fad is trending on social media has about as much value to the world at large as the dump I took this morning.

But what do I know? I’m not IBM.

(And for that matter I don’t even use Facebook or Twitter.)

So look for Steampunk to be the new black. Or whatever. IBM said so, and their analytics are certainly “smarter” than mine, so it must be true.

Meanwhile doubters like myself will continue to rate the value of social media somewhere only marginally higher than pocket lint and will at any given opportunity mock those who try to derive some marketable commodity from the verbal diarrhea of the masses. Because that’s what the internet and social media is there for: to deride anything and everything just because we can. That’s what happens when you combine freedom of speech, ease of use, and free services with a dash of theoretical anonymity.

So the year has only just kicked off, and yet we’re already being scared shirtless by vulnerabilities, holes, and hacks in the wild.  Normally I’d have covered all of these in separate blogs, but because I’m playing catch-up after having eye problems, I get to mash them all up into one super-security warning. Let’s get down to utter chip-chilling tales of terror:

Microsoft

When it comes to security, Microsoft is always down in the dumps. This year starts off no differently. Not only has Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday nuked 12 vulns for us, which is quite a lot for a Patch Tuesday these days, but on top of that it doesn’t include one whopper of a security hole found this Holiday season in older versions of Internet Explorer that allows malware to be installed on a PC just by visiting a malicious (or hijacked) website. Microsoft released a temporary workaround for the vulnerability to IE6, IE7, and IE8, but that workaround has already been … worked around.  Oh the irony.  In the wild I might add.  So take it with a grain of useless rocks. Maybe it’ll be fixed next month, but not this one.

nVidia

While it shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone that something as common as a graphics driver used by probably at least half of computers out there is a point of attack, it was something of a shocker to hear that you should immediately update to nVidia GeForce display driver version 310.90 right now to close the mother of all security holes allowing network attacks to gain super-user level access to your PC and to elevate privileges to lower-level access. Why would a graphics driver have that kind of a network bug in it? And why would a graphics driver allow you to elevate your access level? Goodness only knows. But if you’re got nVidia graphics under the hood and you don’t update your graphics drivers this second, you’re sitting on a huge security hole.

EDIT: But be prepared for other problems with this driver update!

Adobe

Of course a lot of people choose not to use Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. Plenty have switched to third-party alternatives, such as Foxit. And now, they’re suddenly wishing that they hadn’t. Why? Well, as if Adobe software wasn’t bad enough when it comes to security, it turns out that Foxit has its own buffer overflow bug worse than anything from Adobe. It can’t handle very long query strings after a filename and can be used to overwrite the program’s memory to execute arbitrary code. Yes, that’s right, just opening a file with a maliciously crafted filename will allow Foxit to execute whatever code a malware author wants to. Oops. This is one time when Foxit is definitely not “better than Adobe.”

But fear not. Firefox is coming to the rescue. Usually when the words “Adobe” and “security” are used in the same sentence, it means trouble, but here’s one time when it doesn’t: Firefox is now including PDF reader straight into their web browser using some fancy HTML 5 footwork. No more plug-in is needed to view a PDF file in Firefox, so you can kiss your Adobe plug-in (or even more dangerous Foxit plugin) goodbye and say hello to improved speed and security. Huzzah! I guess.  If you don’t actually use Firefox, well then, sucks to be you.  :p  Just kidding.  I’m sure everyone will be doing it before too long.  Except, perhaps, for Internet Explorer that is.

Java

Well, next up on the list of lowest common denominators in the security world is … Oracle.  Who doesn’t want some Java lovin’. Or perhaps in this case hatin’. A new Java zero-day exploit can compromise PCs, allowing a hacker to, you guessed it, execute arbitrary code, escalate privileges, etc. Basically any hacker can own your PC just by you visiting any malicious (or hijacked) website. At least assuming that you have Java enabled. It affects the latest and greatest Java 7 update 10 and prior versions and is being used widespread in the wild. Hopefully Oracle will fix that up for us some day. In the meantime, time to turn off Java.  How many times have you heard that?  Why does anyone even have it enabled?

Ruby on Rails

And surprisingly, our last security warning of the New Year isn’t for Adobe Flash. Nope. It’s far worse than that. Ruby on Rails has been derailed! With two critical security vulnerabilities, anyone can perform remote code execution against any Ruby on Rails application that has the XML parser enabled. (Which just so happens to be the default setting, and for good reason as it is heavily used.) Which is bad enough. But these holes also allow hackers to run system commands on the server with the same privilege level as the application. So if you were wondering about how a hacker can hijack someone’s website to serve up all of those malicious web pages that can use those security holes in Java, Internet Explorer, etc. to infect anyone’s PC just by visiting the website, there you go.

Fortunately Ruby on Rails has been patched already and if you update to the latest version, you’re safe once more. But the key there is “if”.

Conclusion

So all in all, this 2013 year has sure started out with a bang! Insecurity: 2013 reminds us once again that security is far from a given. Take it seriously and get updating!

If there’s one place you’ll never find more frivolous gadgetry in than anywhere else in the home, it’s the kitchen. So it really should come as no surprise then that for this year’s CES Panasonic has taken rice cookers to an extreme level of artificial intelligence.

It shouldn’t.

…But it does.

In what I can hope is aimed at just the Japanese market only, the Panasonic SR-SX2 combines your everyday rice cooker with Android and “The Cloud”. It’s like a worst-case scenario mash-up of buzzwords designed to entice instead of make any sense whatsoever. From scouring Ye Olde Interwebs for more information, it’s also unclear whether the rice cooker actually has Android inside, or whether it’s just compatible with Android phones. Which is an amazingly glaring omission of information if you ask me.

Regardless, however, the Panasonic SR-SX2 is a rice cooker whereby you can use your phone to sync recipes to the rice cooker. Be they from general internet searches or from Panasonic’s recipe-sharing cloud service, your rice cooker can cook them all.

At least, once you’ve downloaded the right app to your smartphone that is. Your Android phone. It seems odd, but there’s no mention of iOS compatibility anywhere, so Apple fanbois may just have to settle for being jealous.

Actually, there will probably be an awful lot of Android fanbois jealous as well. Why? Because instead of using Bluetooth or even NFC to bonk recipes into your rice cooker, Panasonic instead chose FeliCa (short for Felicity Card), an RFID smart card system popular in Japan where it’s primarily used for electronic money cards. So if your phone doesn’t support FeliCa, then you’re SoL. It’s quite an odd choice if you ask me, but then I’m not the dingleberry who made an AI ricecooker, so what do I know of sanity?

If you’re wondering about the price point of said Panasonic SR-SX2, a quick hobble over to Amazon showed it ranging in price from $600 to over $1200. Which further raises questions of sanity.

But the big bug up my asterisk is … just what recipes are there for a rice cooker? You add rice. You add salt. You add water. And then you turn the bugger on and it clicks off when it’s done. Short of the toaster, it’s the simplest darned kitchen appliance the world has ever seen! Just how many “recipes” can there possibly be that you need a darned cloud server to store and search? That you need to computer-control your rice cooker to accomplish? It’s insanity if you ask me, plain and simple. Even for good coffee this is an extreme, but for rice? I don’t even remotely understand. And I like rice. And I don’t mean that crap you typically get in America. I mean better quality rice like Calrose. Sushi-quality rice. With sea salt and filtered water.

Anyway, so if you happen to have a FeliCa-enabled Android phone, and if you happen to love rice so very much that you absolutely need to download recipes from The Cloud straight to your rice cooker … for some unknown reason … then I’m sure hundreds of dollars to over a grand just for an Android-friendly (not sure if it’s actually Android-enabled) Panasonic SR-SX2 is right up your alley.

Let’s just hope that no virus writers try to target this device though. I mean we know security on Android is crap. It’s why I won’t buy an Android phone. And we know that sometimes malware authors tend to Think Evil. And here we have an Android-friendly gadget with a heating element. So I sure hope someone put in some simple safety measures to prevent a meltdown, intentional or not.

And with a NFC-like process to sync up with your Panasonic SR-SX2, I also hope that no one takes “bonking their rice cooker” the wrong way. That could leave a mark.