In the IT world it is very important to get things exactly right, unless of course you are dealing with fuzzy logic. If your banking system, for example, is out by a decimal place, this can lead to some very unhappy customers or some very happy ones and a less than happy bank. There are many areas where calculations and units of measure are vital, just ask one of the Mars exploration landing teams.
Not so obvious are making sure that things like translation services are accurate, as Microsoft found out recently. The Bing search engine saw some very red-faced Redmondites when Saudi Arabian users found that "Daesh" has been translated as "Saudi Arabia". For those not familiar with the term, Daesh is one name for Isis. This incident also exposes a major problem in taking everything as written, with things like Wikipedia and crowdsourcing.
In this case, Bing has a crowdsourcing function allowing groups of people to suggest a possible answer. In all probability, a large group of probably anti-Saudis made the suggestion that resulted in the wrong answer. Red faces all around. On a lessor scale, allowing the public to edit dictionary entries means that special interest groups can push whatever information their side wants to see, which is why any subject with any political associations should be avoided when using sources such as Wikipedia as a reference.
Communications technologies continue to advance but some governments continue to stick with the older technologies, such as Australia's NBN. Enter MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). They have developed a new Wi-Fi system called MegaMIMO 2.0 (multiple-input and multiple-output). The system uses a varying frequency range where signals do not interfere with each other, allowing maximum throughput. The result is an extended range and over three times the speed. Also great in this instance, MIT has a commercially viable system that could also be implemented in mobile phones.
Apple's latest iOS 9.3.5 upgrade for iEverything was recently released because some spyware was leveraging three vulnerabilities already being used by the Pegasus surveillance kit. This commercially available malware package is currently used by governments to spy on journalists and dissidents. Once infected, the malware reads emails, messages, listens to phone calls, monitors social networks, grabs passwords and other lovely surprises. Customers may include Turkey, Thailand, Israel, Yemen, Hungary, Kenya and others. One known customer is the United Arab Emirates. The agreement for getting the software is that it only be used in a "lawful manner" for "the investigation of crimes". Not sure every country on that list would be bothered to follow the rules.
If you are a Dropbox user who has not changed their password Since June 2012, then you would have received an email to reset your password. Not sure why it took this long but the cause is the Linkedin breach that occurred some time ago. It is being described as a preventative measure only.
If you are one of those people who want to shut down your computer and make sure it shuts down immediately, then Windows updates are your bane. If you are in a hurry and just want it to bypass the updates, then try one of the following. Click on any empty area of the desktop and then Windows Key + D, ALT + F4 and select Shut down from the list. Alternatively, Alt + L to log out or lock the screen then from the Power button at the bottom right select Shut down from the popup. Or from a command prompt use shutdown -s -t 0. Any of these will get you out the door quicker.
If your mobile phone is running slowly, try restating it as applications can stack up in the background. If you have an Android phone, I also find the 360 Security app to be quite good.
I received my Chuwi Hi Pen H1 pen/stylus today and so far, it is looking good. It uses an AAAA battery (I didn't know they existed either) and has a couple of buttons that work like a mouse does or other options depending on the software. It will work with some other tablets, but I haven't tried it out on my Samsung as yet.
More speed! Everyone wants faster memory and the new term to learn is NRAM, a joint Fujitsu and Nantero technology. This memory will be commercially available in 2018 and promises "several thousand times faster rewrites and many thousands of times more rewrite cycles than embedded flash memory". NRAM is a non-volatile RAM with DRAM read and write seeds being the memory you find on your motherboard and in your graphics cards. Fujitsu is planning a 256GB chip by 2018. It's all based on carbon nanotube (CNT) technology and is relatively easy to make. A CNT is about one 50 thousandth as wide as a human hair, half as dense as aluminium and 50 times stronger than steel. Add to that better thermal and electrical conductivity properties than any other material scientists are aware of today and the sky's the limit.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.