Google goofed

This morning's Google-wide problem of marking all sites as being harmful to your computer was a human error:

If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message "This site may harm your computer" accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to get our list of URLs. StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list. Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms.

While I accept that errors occur (I make tons of them every day and the Post-Gazette hasn't seen fit to fire me just yet), one of this magnitude must be addressed.  Any system or body out there that can label a web site as being harmful and deny you access (without any sort of due process) is essentially censoring the content.  If the government did this, there would be rioting in the streets.

All of this has me wondering if Google could become SkyNet, the self-aware computer in the Terminator movies.  Let's hope not.

Did the whole world get hacked overnight?

I did a Google search for Windows 7 this morning and every link on the result page says "This site may harm your computer".  If you click a link that says that, you get an interstitial page that says the site could harm your computer but precious little else.

A few minutes later, another Google search for something else said the same thing.  And getting past the error if you want to get to the site is really a pain.

Even scarier to me, a search for "Pittsburgh Post Gazette" says the same thing about our site here, but there's nothing out of kilter with our site that I can find.

This is the danger in a web search monopoly.  Google's obviously got a problem this morning, but the end result is that people's perceptions about those sites could be tarnished.  And for no good reason.

UPDATE: Google has apparently found the problem and fixed it.  Whether they'll own up to it or not is a different story.  We'll wait and see what happens.

In a solid state frame of mind

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you know that I have a special place in my heart for Solid State Disks (SSDs), which will hopefully soon replace the old-fashioned mechanical hard drives that we've had in our PCs for over 20 years.  They're noisy power hogs that are dying from the day they're born, just like you and me.

SSDs, on the other hand, are lightweight, consume less power, and should have a much higher MTBF (mean time between failures) than mechanical drives. However, they've been incredibly expensive since they burst onto the scene, but keep your eyes open and you might see a deal on them, like this 64GB SSD from NewEgg.com.  It's their "Shell Shocker" deal of the day, selling for $120.

Solid state bliss isn't far off, folks.  When they hit this price point consistently, they'll be literally everywhere.

3rd generation Prius' makes slight use of solar energy

The Toyota Prius, widely loved by Greenies worldwide, will sport a roof-mounted solar panel as an option in the car's 3rd generation production run.  This will make all sorts of people happy until they read the smaller print:

(CNN) -- Toyota's third-generation Prius, due at dealerships this spring, will have an optional solar panel on its roof. The panel will power a ventilation system that can cool the car without help from the engine, Toyota says.

And that's it.  That's all it does.  You can activate the fan from a short distance from the car and it will cool the interior until it either reaches a pre-set temperature or the clouds roll in, whichever comes first.

This is the trouble with consumer-level solar panels these days.  They're just not efficient enough to generate enough power to be usable on an automobile.  If you had five times the surface area that the Prius has, maybe you could run something a bit more powerful.  Still, it's a shame that this is as far as we've gotten with solar technology in the automotive industry.

Yes, I've seen the experimental half bicycle/half car solar vehicles that college students have been assembling, but until you can do something really interesting with automotive solar panels (ie., trickle-charge the car's battery), I'll wait to be sufficiently impressed.

Source: CNN

Digital TV switch delayed until June 12

The U.S. Senate on Monday approved a measure to delay the switch to digital TV broadcasts until June 12th.  Without the bill, broadcasters across the U.S. would have ceased their analog transmissions by February 17th.

The original transition to digital TV ran aground earlier this month when the program's funding limit had been reached, forcing the Commerce Department to place people on a waiting list for the $40 converter box vouchers.

The beneficiaries of the move from analog to digital TV - mostly cell carriers like Verizon and AT&T- have said that a delay in the transition is something they can get behind, which makes one wonder if they actually have planned for that swath of the spectrum.

Source: Wall Street Journal, TV Converter Box Coupon Program web site

UPDATE: House vote on the bill failed to get enough votes to pass the measure, so it looks like the delay isn't going to happen after all.

Through the listening glass

When you receive an e-mail from Japan or download a file from a server in Finland, you take international communications for granted. But did you ever think what that message has to go through to get to your computer?

Most likely, it is glass.

By the year 2000, 80 percent of international communications traveled through undersea fiber optic cables. Due to low-cost, high-density glass fibers, advances in technology and the explosion of the Internet, that figure had increased 40 times since 1988.

An average undersea fiber optic cable is about 2.7 inches in diameter and weighs about 7 pounds per foot. From the inside out it might be a bundle of glass fibers in petroleum jelly inside a copper or aluminum tube. The tube is coated in polycarbonate, wrapped in an aluminum water barrier, strengthened with stranded steel wires wrapped in mylar tape, and the whole thing is sheathed by polyethylene.

As of 2003, submarine cables linked all the continents except Antarctica. The northern branch of the Gemini cable, for example, connects Charleston, R.I., with Porthcurno, England. Gemini's southern branch goes from Manasquan, N.J., to Porthcurno. The ARCOS-1 cable connects Miami with 14 countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

One of the busiest communications facilities in the world is a small, nondescript building owned by AT&T in the seaside town of Tuckerton, N.J. It is a hub for undersea cables coming ashore. Myriad phone calls and data flow through that humble structure from Europe, the Caribbean and South America and are distributed to customers in the United States.

It has been suggested that these communications hubs make a juicy target for terrorists. In fact in the fictional thriller "Breaking Point" by Richard A. Clarke, the former Clinton administration anti-terror czar, an attack on the United States begins with destruction of such communications nodes in an attempt to bring down the Internet.

But I digress.

Fiber optic cables can be made of plastic, glass or a combination of the two, but glass is usually preferred for long-distance communications. Glass has less attenuation, a fancy word for loss of a signal as it flows through the fiber. All fiber optic cables have much less attenuation than copper wire.

Signals inside a fiber optic cable are carried by light. The light stays in the fibers because the glass is coated with a plastic that makes the walls act like mirrors that reflect light back into the center. Over long stretches, amplifiers pick up the light pulses and "push" them along.

Signals are sent into the fiber by lasers at one end flashing on and off, producing the 1s and 0s of digital communications. The lasers can turn on and off several billion times a second.

Of course, the system isn't foolproof. Undersea cables can be broken by fishing trawlers, anchors, undersea avalanches and even shark bites.

In December three cables on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea were broken and international phone and Internet service in parts of the Mideast and southern Asia were disrupted. The villain was thought to be an anchor. A break like this one can take about 10 days to fix.

So the next time you get an e-mail from a friend in South America and it seems to get to you in a flash, that is exactly how it got there -- in a bunch of laser flashes.

I robot

An excellent presentation on software bots by Daniel Suarez.

Another big credit card breach

 A report of another big credit card breach.

Trouble with McAfee Total Protection

 A good friend sent me this about her experience trying to upgrade her security software. Bwe interested to hear if anyone else had the same problems.

"Thought you might be interested to know that McAfee is having some problems with some of its downloadable programs. I upgraded by virus protection Monday morning from VirusScanPlus to Total Protection and downloaded it from the mcafee page per their instructions.

Have been trying to install it now since about 3 p.m. Monday, including spending almost 1 hour on hold waiting for tech support. Called back again and must have sounded really upset because I finally got a special tech support number and PIN good for 48 hours, through which I get right on to someone each time I call.

After removing, at their instruction, all my spyware etc, including the old Mcafee program, the thing still won’t install. So they sent me a Stinger link, and I scanned my system twice, and tried to install again. No dice. Finally gave up about 1 a.m.!!! Tried the install again today.. same results, so I called them back, and they NOW tell me there’s a problem with the program, which they should have fixed in two or three hours. I’m to try again then. The tech I spoke to said they’ve had tons of calls about it.  

I don’t know if you have a way of contacting them without having to go through India, but it sounds like a pretty big glitch. Of course, what do I know, maybe all new programs have such glitches – I don’t often try to install such things. 

If it doesn’t work this time, I’m going to forget about the upgrade and try to do a system restore."

Making the transition from analog music to digital doesn't have to be painful

The TechMen routinely get questions from readers about how to transfer LPs and cassettes to their computers.  We've answered this on several TechTalk podcast episodes and so I felt that maybe that needed to be backed up with some solid details.

Converting your old analog music to digital isn't terribly complicated but the nature of the analog recordings will make it a tedious and time-consuming process.  First, you'll need to connect your turntable or cassette deck to your PC with a sub-$5 audio cable from a place like Radio Shack (be sure you know what kind of jacks you have on the back of the turntable; the PC will most likely have a standard 3.5mm or 1/8" stereo headphone jack).  Then download a copy of the free Audacity recording software and get it installed on your computer.  Practice making recordings with it a few times to get it right, and then just start your cassette deck and hit "Record" on the screen and walk away.

Yes, this means that if you're transferring a full LP or cassette to your computer, you'll need to play the whole thing, so make sure you've carved out an hour of your time to get this done.  And if you want the tracks as individual songs, you'll either need to stop and start the process to create the files separately, or you'll need to come back through and edit the long recording to make many smaller ones.  If you have irreplaceable recordings of your grandfather singing "O Holy Night" at church on Christmas Eve, this method should work fine, but if you have an LP or cassette library that would make Bob FM jealous, I'd recommend reading on.

A company called Ion makes a turntable and a cassette deck that will connect to your computer via USB to make these recordings.  This method has several advantages.  First, the audio cable you bought from Radio Shack in the cheap method makes a perfect antenna for external RF interference.  You can actually introduce noise into your recordings this way.  The Ion products perform the analog-to-digital conversion internally so there's less chance that this will occur.

Second, these devices come with their own specialized recording software, which will make carving an album into tracks a whole lot easier.  Plus the software will look up the album and track titles over the Internet and label your MP3s appropriately.  When you are putting these into your iPod, this is a nice extra feature to have.

The Ion USB turntable will cost you about $200 and the cassette deck (pictured here) will run you $150.  If you're doing these recordings on a large scale, the cost probably makes more sense.

The TechMen would love to hear from you if you've tried either of these methods.  Send us a sample MP3 to techman@post-gazette.com so we can hear the results, and of course your feedback is always welcome. 

Except when it's in the recording.