---

Technology Category

Microsoft AntiSpy vs Symantec Norton Anti-Virus…

Posted: Friday 10 February 2006 @ 5:35 pm by joecm

I came into work this morning and was greeted by an alert from Microsoft Anti Spyware Beta 1 that I was infected with a Trojan, “PWS.Bancos.A (Password Stealer)”.  MSAS had marked this particular item as severe.  It had found a number of entries in the Registry, but no files.  The entries looked legit, but knowing how trojan writers enjoy trickery, I had MS remove the entries (it was “severe” afterall).  I then re-scanned to make sure it was gone.  The second scan yielded one result, so I clicked remove again. 

At this point, I decided to run Norton (better safe than sorry).  Norton would not start the full scan.  After first considering that I might have a virus on my machine that was blocking Norton, I wondered if MS had detected Norton as this Trojan.   To test this theory, I uninstalled Norton.  I ran the MS scan again and it found no trojan.  Then I installed Norton and sure enough, MS detected the trojan again.

For the Paranoid: I have to admit, this is a great strategy with One Care on the horizon.  Just have AntiSpy disable everyones Anti Virus software and then offer them a discount on One Care.   

Gmail catches a break

Posted: Sunday 5 February 2006 @ 10:40 pm by joecm

Approaching its second birthday, Gmail has caught a break.  On April 1, 2004, GMail burst onto the scene with some cool new features that redefined free online email services.  Its gigabyte storage and Ajax interface gave Gmail an edge on its well established competitors; Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL.  They have all spent the last 2 years furiously working to develop slicker interfaces, matching the storage quotas, and working hard to retain their customer bases.  And in my eyes, they have been effective.

Now, after all that hard work, Yahoo and AOL have announced a plan to charge a fee to ensure email delivery.  I am a longtime Yahoo Mail user.  Actually, I am a Yahoo Mail Plus user, which means that I pay money for my “free” email account.   Yahoo and AOL claim that this plan will help stop SPAM, but in reality it will hit mailing list owners and legitimate ISPs the hardest.  It will also give major corporations a major advantage in communication and the little guy will be silenced.  Oh, and one more consequence, if this plan is successful, I will be heading to GMail. Because even though GMail could not tempt me away from Yahoo, Yahoo certainly has found a way to drive me away.  And I’m pretty sure I won’t be the only one.

Read more about the plan here.

Computers Scanning your License Plate

Posted: Thursday 10 November 2005 @ 11:39 pm by joecm

It seems like something straight out of Enemy of the State, but a British invention designed to fight terrorism has the potential to revolutionize some aspects of law enforcement. Platescan is an Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology that can read in license plate numbers of cars driving up to 110 MPH. It can then run those plates through any number of available databases and flag the operator if something comes up. The speed of the system is also quite impressive. At up to 4 scans per second, the system can process up to 14,400 plates per hour.

The technology is currently in use in California in both Los Angeles and Sacramento. It is mainly being used to catch car thieves, but there are many other possibilities for this system. A network of these cameras could be set up along all the major freeways to help supplement the current Amber Alert System. These same cameras could then also be looking for vehicles involved in crimes and even making sure that insurance and registration are kept up to date.

The system uses a “neural network” technology to recognize the patterns of letters, which the company’s website claims has a distinct advantage over the competition’s OCR solutions. As computer power increases, I wonder if the system might be able to recognize patterns beyond just license plates. It seems far fetched, but it may some day be able to look out for a red Honda Civic with a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker. Now that is scary!

UPDATE: The future is now… See what is going on in the UK right now.

Learn more here: http://www.platescan.com