Ken GPL Computer Blog: October 2011

Monday, October 10, 2011

Who Needs Javascript?

There is a fact that a large number of people disable Javascript. Why? Well, search for the keywords: Javascript Hijacking. 'Nuff said. Well, Google just announced Dart, a new programming language for the web.

In Dart, you can do classes. You can throw error messages. You can do things like make a class implement Comparable. There are HashMaps, Iterators, and StringBuffers. Yes, it's very much like Java. The syntax is very simple, so it should be easy for people to pick up.

For dart code, you embed it in an HTML tag, much like with JavaScript.

<script type='application/dart'>

Here is the mandatory hello world style code that every language has to do for whatever reason.

<html>
<body>
<script type='application/dart'>
void main() {
HTMLElement element = document.getElementById('message');
element.innerHTML = 'Hello from Dart';
}
</script>
<div id='message'></div>
</body>
</html>

This looks for the element (id) called 'message' and puts the string
'Hello from Dart' between the two tags.

You could also import a dart file, like you can import Javascript or php.

<html>
<body>
<script type='application/dart'>
#source(Hello.dart)
void main() {
hello('Hello from Dart');
}
</script>
<div id='message'></div>
</body>
</html>

For more details, see http://www.dartlang.org/

More on Moore

In all likelihood, everyone is familiar with Moore's Law, even if they don't
know it by that name. The number of transistors that can be placed
inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.
Technically, originally it was calculated as "every year" and then refined to
"every two years". The "every 18 months" prediction was actually due to David House, an Intel executive, who predicted that period for a doubling in chip performance. The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who described the trend in his 1965 paper which noted the number of components in integrated circuits had doubled every year from the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 until 1965. He predicted that the trend would continue "for at least tem years".

So, there's a new spin on Moore's Law. In the last edition of the IEEE's Annals of the History of Computing , there is a paper by researcher Jon Koomey that found that there is a rough equivalent to Moore's Law when it comes to energy and computers. In his abstract titled "Implications of Historical Trends in the Electrical Efficiency of Computing" (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing Volume 33, Number 3, July-September 2011), he stated "The electrical efficiency of computation has doubled roughly every year and a half for more than six decades."

Looking as far back as the 1940s, the research found that over time, computers did more work per energy input, with the number of computations per kilowatt-hour doubling about every year and a half. Koomey thinks this trend opens various possibilities. Sensors on a bridge could monitor the structure for potential damage and alert transportation officials when maintenance could be required. Lighting sensors could provide just the right amount of light needed based on occupation levels and daylight levels.

It's worth noting that even with the increase of computing efficiency over time, the total amount of energy used by computers is on the rise. For example, electricity use from data centers grew 36% in the US from 2005 to 2010. Still, with cell phones becoming more and more power hungry (running more apps, doing more things instead of just calls and texting) this news bodes well for cell phone technology and may carry over to electric cars. Time will tell. We'll just have to wait and see if there is Moore energy efficiency advancement in the future.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Keystroke logger hits networks used by pilots who control U.S. Air Force drones

This was reported yesterday in Wired Magazine and I stumbled on it from a website called Ology.com. Apparently Ology is not short for technology since they don't know what a key logger is. Technically a keystroke logger stores every keystroke made . Ology.com thinks that a key logger locks out the keyboard and they are freaking out and saying that you could do things like redirect the drone. Granted, a virus may possibly be able to do this, however by definition this description is not a key logger. A key logger is supposed to be stealthy and try to stay hidden in the background. It's purpose is to try to obtain and transmit information as stealthily as possible. The keystrokes could then be sent somewhere, even in real time. So, you can say, predict where the drone was going and avoid it or intercept it. In all likelihood, it would probably store a batch of data and then somehow transmit it somewhere. "How can you hide transmission?" you ask?

Well, let's say when data is transmitted, there are errors. Technically this is the case in the real world on networking and when this happens data is transmitted again. Now, let's backtrack a bit. Data is made up of bytes which is made up of bits. 8 bits make up a byte and typically computers use 256 bytes for characters (A is ascii code 65 or 41 in hex). You could set one of the bits of a byte every now and then. So, let's say I set the first bit of 8 bytes to something. Then a program looks at those 8 bits and translates it into a byte. In other words, you would see this (O=original bit and H=hacked transmitted bit):
OOOOOOOH OOOOOOOH OOOOOOOH OOOOOOOH OOOOOOOH OOOOOOOH OOOOOOOH OOOOOOOH

Okay, yeah yeah, it looks like a song. But still, 8 bits of 64 are bits I set. I take those H bits and translate it to mean something. Now, we stream a ton of data in a second, so maybe every now and then I do this for 128 bytes, sending 128 bits that gets translated to 25 characters of text. So, I have some data that means something to me. What happens with the program that is actually sending the data? Well, to the receiver, it looks like something got garbled in the transmission and so the program resends the data. So, I could get the retransmission and compare the first send with the second. Why would I care? Well, I don't know when my process is sending a message and when it is not. So, if I check two sets of data and if over 87% of the bytes match, it's probably a resend. So, then I look at the bits I care about and try to figure out if it translates to a message. If it does, I have my stealth message that was sent by my key logger.

Now, what makes this key logger especially troublesome is they wipe it out and it comes back! So, this could be in a bootup rom location or maybe there are a bunch of other programs that recreate the key logger if it can't find it. So, they have to complete wipe out the hard drive. So, they had to use BCWipe, a military grade way to completely and utterly delete a file. (yes, when you "delete" something on the computer, it's not REALLY deleted ... the computer just forgets its there and puts the blocks back into group of the free to use spaces of your hard drive).

In any case, here's the original Wired article.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/

Here's the Ology article. Bear in mind that these guys have absolutely NO clue what the heck a key logger is. And I have no clue what robotic Rockem Sockem robots have anything to do with Preditor Drones or key loggers.
http://ology.com/politics/robot-wars-begin-virus-strikes-us-unmanned-drone-fleet

Monday, October 3, 2011

Kindle Touch 3G (but not really)

The new Amazon Kindle Touch 3G only lets you use the 3G network to connect to the kindle store or Wikipedia. Everything else still has to connect via wi-fi. So, you're better off getting the wi-fi version which is $50 cheaper.

Of course, it's predecessor, while allowing you to surf anywhere on 3G, was black and white and shades of gray and it was clunky. So they went for less clunky and less access on the 3G network and stayed with the b&w screen.