And 15 years later, this bug is rearing it’s head again. In Pennsylvania, over 14,000 men received notices claiming they must register for selective service, a potential military draft. These men were born in the 1890s, and all are deceased, so their families are the ones who got the notices. But even if some were alive, they would be in their 110s, obviously way too old to participate in any military service. The mistake was on the part of Pennsylvania’s Department of Public Transportation and Selective Service. Those notices were to go to young men born between 1993 and 1997. But because someone chose the wrong century, they went to the deceased men. Selective Service, who issued the notices, didn’t catch the mistake immediately because of the two digit code to indicate the year of birth (for example, someone born 2/1/95 meant someone born in 1995, not 1895).
I’m glad the mistake was caught and quickly corrected. But that’s exactly what people were afraid of back in 1999. When the century changed, documents dating, say, 3/1/00 were going be interpreted by computers as 3/1/1900 instead of 3/1/2000. Ever wonder what life would be like if Y2K really did run rampant as it was feared to?
Ever hear the phrase, “Anything you can do I can do better”? Google is taking that to the clouds.
On Wednesday, July 9, 2014, Google revealed a deal offering customers two terabytes of free cloud storage for up to a year. To get this free Google Cloud Platform storage, customers need to install cloud software from Panzura. Never heard of Panzura? They’re one of Google’s partners that specializes in cloud gateway software. Until yesterday, they charged for this service, but under these circumstances, they’re offering it for free.
If you need help setting up Panzura and want to give it a try, Computer Geeks can help you set everything up right in the comfort of your home!
This is a direct and blatant challenge to rivals like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. They both also offer free and generous file storage to their customers. There’s one more catch to this Google free cloud storage: you can only access it from one location. If you need a second or third or other locations, and in this busy world who doesn’t, it will cost you. This is just the latest push of free cloud and storage services between these mega-conglomerates some are calling ‘cloud wars’. Google already gives free 15GB of free storage to drive customers, while Microsoft increased it’s storage limit to 1TB for Office 365. Think of what this will do for Panzura, a relatively unknown company new in the technological spotlight. How will Amazon and Microsoft respond? Will they even respond?? Of these three online conglomerates, who will win the cloud wars?
This is what I and many people were afraid of. Okay, so it caught some terrorists, and we should all be glad for that part. But it seems like for every one or two terrorists caught, hundreds of innocent people’s privacy are being tampered with. What do someone deep relationship have to do with catching people who want to harm us? Meanwhile, the real psychopaths continue to plot our harm. So is this surveillance program even worth it at all?
Are you traveling through Newark’s International Airport soon? If you’re flying through Terminal B, then look up. Smile at the lights; they might be taking pictures of you.
I’m not crazy, and this is no Hollywood script. Newark, New Jersey’s Liberty International Airport has installed 171 LED ‘smart lights’ in Terminal B. These lights are supposed to last longer and save energy, but that’s just the beginning. Each and every LED light contains a security camera. This was the idea of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Starting last year, they started testing cameras intertwined with LED lights. The footage collected by these lights/cameras are expected to be used for security purposes, monitoring foot traffic, the ticketing area, other activities, and eventually, catching unattended baggage.
Now on the surface, it’s meant to keep us safe. Bur keep in mind, smart lights can literally track your every move within their reach. That’s why privacy rights groups and civil libertarians are already crying ‘big brother’. In this case, at least we know what to expect when we step into Newark Airport’s Terminal B. Think of all the times our privacy was compromised and we weren’t told a thing until after the fact. No matter what side you’re on, you must admit this isn’t the world people my age grew up in. Even ten years ago, I never thought an LED/security camera combo was even possible. But here we are. I just hope they’re not installed in bathrooms. Please give us some dignity with this. But they’re already talking about moving these smart lights from parking lots even to schools. So I don’t see this trend shutting down anytime soon. Will smart lights be coming literally near you? And isn’t there a better way to keep us safe?
If you don’t know what Nest is, they make smoke detectors and thermostats. Now Nest, who just purchased Dropcam, is being acquired by Google for 3.2 billion dollars. Got that? According to Nest co-founder Matt Rodgers, Dropcam will be moving it’s headquarters from San Francisco to Palo Alto, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley. Dropcam’s home security cameras will run you little money a pop, but that’s just part of this story. Dropcam once tried to use existing cameras to support video achieves. But since most of the market wasn’t buying it, they made their own.
I’m pretty concerned about these acquisitions. It’s not just because one corporation will have so much power and dominance, leaving little if any room for competition. So Google wants to control the home thermostat and smoke detector market now?? But privacy issues come to mind. With Google and Nest owning Dropcam, can’t that give them a license to look into our homes and businesses, even during our most private moments? Nest insists we shouldn’t worry. They claim, “Dropcam will come under Nest?s privacy policy, which explains that data won?t be shared with anyone (including Google) without a customer?s permission.” I’ll believe it when I see it. Am I being too skeptical here?
Today, the early morning hours of June 19, 2014, is a day social media giant Facebook wants to forget.
This is the day Facebook suffered a major outage. This outage was felt worldwide, from the United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, France, India other parts of Asia and much of Africa. This includes Facebook mobile as well as the Web. Fortunately, the outage didn’t last long, and the site was back up within a few minutes. In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said ‘an issue’ caused to go offline, and apologized for any inconvenience the glitch caused. The ‘issue’ was never specified, either because they don’t know or aren’t telling us. Facebook experienced a glitch down last month.
The good news is the shut down could have lasted a lot longer. The other good news, at least for us in the United States, is that the glitch took place overnight. Can you imagine if it took place later in the day? I’ve read reports of people switching to Twitter while Facebook was down. Some say Twitter is more popular anyway and some say Facebook’s glory days are about over. If you said that, then you probably learned a lesson from all this. Facebook, like all social media, is still a very popular social media entity, especially among older people. If it goes down, even if it’s but a few minutes, it will be sorely missed. Ever hear of the saying, “Don’t know what you got until it’s gone?” Well, that’s what happened here. I think the consumers directly affected get that. Do Facebook employees and advertisers get that?
