Computers, Viruses, etc.
Future extremely powerful Silicon, Optical, Quantum, DNA Computers, which may have self-replicating, mutating, robotics, and nanotechnolgy.
The year 1999 through 2004

Web technology scientist sees threat to human existence
Computers evolving
Patches would have nipped Internet worm
New attack programs spread across Internet
Bush sign anti-spam legislation
Computer worm spreads fast
Virus to stay until Feb. 12
Mydoom virus floods Web site


• 3/13/2000 - Web technology scientist sees threat to human existence by Joel Garreau, The Washington Post.
      A respected creator of the Information Age has written an extraordinary critique in which he suggest that the new technologies could cause "something like extinction" of humankind with the next two generations.    The alarming prediction is striking because it comes not from a critic of technology but rather from a man who invented much of it: Bill Joy, chief scientist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc., the leading Web technology manufacturer.    Joy was a co-chairman of a presidential commission on the future of information technology.    His warning, he said, is meant to be a reminiscent of Albert Einstein's 1939 letter to president Franklin Delano Roosevelt alerting him to the possibility of an atomic bomb.    Joy believes that advanced technology poses a threat to the human species.    He has now imagined that such a day has come, as he views as a credible prediction that by 2030, computers will be a million times more powerful than they are today.    He respects the possibility that robots may exceed humans in intelligence and be able to replicate themselves.    He points to nanotechnology -- which seeks to create any desired object on an atom-by-atom basis -- and agrees that it has the potential to allow inexpensive production of smart machines so small they could fit inside a blood vessel.    Genetic technology, meanwhile, is inexorably generating the power to create new forms of life that could reproduce.
      What deeply worries him is that these technologies create the ability to unleash self-replicating, mutating, mechanical or biological plagues.
      Therefore we can build them, release them, but can we recall them.
• 7/23/2000 - Computers evolving - Potential unlimited as companies experiment with light, DNA - by John Yaukey, Gannett News Service.
      Traditional computers get faster two ways: shrinking and cramming.    Shrink number-crunching transistors so you can pack more onto a chip, and speed increases.    But there are just so many transistors that can fit on a chip.    With that in mind, scientists are experimenting with new, highly novel approaches to faster computing.
      One uses light instead of electricity, another quantum mechanics, a third uses DNA molecule.   
  • Optical computing - Optical computers, machines that compute with light rather than electricity, are the closest among the new paradigms to become a reality, perhaps just a few years away.    Some of the critical light-carrying technology they depend on has already been developed by the fiber-optic industry.    Optical computers can overcome the drawbacks of standard silicon chip-based sytems, since the electrons that carry signals which have mass cannot attain light speed.    Light has no mass, which would allow an optical computer to shuttle data at light speed with little heat.    The guts of optical computers would consist largerly of lasers (focused light beams), lenses, mirrors, crystals and common fiber optic equipment.    There are still challenges to shrinking complex optical components to chip size, as stated by Mike Foster, a computer scientist at the National Science Foundation.
  • Quantum computing -- Quantum computing doesn't depend on shrinking dimensions, but rather exploits the bizarre properties of atoms.    It's based on quantum mechanics, the theory of physics that explains the erratic world of the atom.    In this Lilliputian realm, fundamental matter behaves nothing like the familiar tangible objects it comprises.    Particles can exist in high- and low-energy states simultaneously, like multiple personalities.    The hope is to focus this on a single computing job, to develop computer processors capable of doing multiple calculations at once instead of just one at a time as the 1s and 0s used now for on and off.
        Scientists recently announced they had created their first working quantum computer, a clump of hydrogen and oxygen atoms that solved a simple problem, according to Liv Grover, researcher in quantum computing at Lucent Technolgies' Bell Labs.
  • DNA computing - The body is equipped with one of the most sophisticated computers around, and it's not the brain.    It's the DNA molecule, the famed double helix that carries genetic traits.    Where silicon computers use those 1s and 0s to represent data, DNA computers use nucleic acids -- the chemical rungs on the twisted DNA ladder.    So by using enzymes to cut and arrange snippets of DNA in sets that describe the problem to be solved, and then another set of DNA snippets is cut to represent potential solutions, and the two batches are mixed.    The answer is determined by the way the problem and solution snippets pair up like complementary sides of a zipper.
        A DNA computing chip the size of a postage stamp potentially could outrun today's best silicon-based supercomputers, and valuable in weather modeling.    It still has considerable technological hurdles to be cleared.
  
  
• 8/15/2003 - Patches would have nipped Internet worm - Computer users ignore warnings, experts say.
      The lightning-quick spread of the Blaster Internet worm dramatically illustrated the maintenance troubles customers bring every day.    Estimated that 60% to 75% of machines have never been patched even once for critical flaws.    Blaster's spread should have been nipped last month when Microsoft issued a security patch that plugs the worm's door to Internet-connected machines.    Had users regularly used the Windows Update feature of the home machines, Blaster wouldn't have stood a chance.    Of course most think that it's just another way for Bill Gates to control their computer.    An estimated 188,000 to 1.4 million unpatched Windows machines with XP and 2000 have been compromised worldwide.    With 48% of them in the United States, experts were confounded at how this could happen in the most sophisticated computing society.    The answer to this is simple.    First only about 10% of the population even have a clue of what they are doing on their computers, so the over kill of patches is confusing.    Secondly with all the lost jobs for IT workers, patching systems is being swept under the carpet.    So lets put the blame where it belongs, arrogant software companies and cost-cutting businesses.
  
• 8/20/2003 - New attack programs spread across Internet Welchia, SoBig show how easily vandals can enter.
      Two more attack programs spread across the Internet one week after Blaster.
      First is Welchia or Nachi, which tries to repair the security flaw that allowed Blaster to infiltrate thousands of machines.    Welchia can bring down corporate computer networks.
      Secondly is the worm, called SoBig.F, which can turn home and business computers into relay points for unwanted Internet e-mail ads, or "spam."    SoBig continues to clog computers with millions of e-mails.    These worms were hitting state computers pretty hard and resulted in affecting services such as Medicaid, food stamp benefits, child support, and motor vehicle registrations, till patches could be installed.    Microsoft has found two new critical security flaws in its Internet Explorer Web-browsing program after last weeks virus attacks.    Windows runs more than 90% of the world's personal computers, and Internet Explorer has more than 95% of the market for software used to view Web pages.    Patches have been released.
      Computer viruses hurt economy, nearly 63,000 have been released and an estimated $65 billion in damages have incurred from the bugs.
  
• 12/13/2003 - Bush sign anti-spam legislation by The New York Times.
      Washington - President Bush signed a highly anticipated law to restrict junk commercial e-mail - so-called spam - which now accounts for more than half of all e-mail traffic.    It goes into effect January 1, 2004, banning the sending of bulk commercial e-mail that uses false identities and misleading subject lines.    In addition, all commercial e-mail must include a valid postal address and an opt out link.    It was estimated that about 200 kingpin spammers were responsible for 90% of all junk e-mail.
  
  
• 1/28/2004 - Computer worm spreads fast - Clever Mydoom poses as simple error message - by Anick Jesdanun, Associated Press.
      New York - The continued spread of a cleverly engineered computer virus exposes a key flaw in the global embrace of technology: Its users are human.    Posing as a legitimate computer error message, the worm successfully tricked e-mail recipients into spreading it to friends, co-workers and business associates.    Virus writers have gotten smarter about fooling them, as one in every 12 messages had the worm, called Mydoom or Novarg.    The rogue program searches through address books and sends itself to e-mail addresses it finds and chooses one as the sender, so recipients may believe the message comes from someone known.    Mydoom surpassed the Sobig.F email virus that struck last August.
• 1/31/2004 - Virus to stay until Feb. 12 by AP.
      Helsinki - The Mydoom computer virus will continue to hit e-mails on computers worldwide until Feb. 12, when it is programmed to stop.    It was programmed to launch a worldwide attack on the Web site of SCO, one of the world's largest Unix vendors.    Microsoft offered $250,000 to anyone who helps find and prosecute the author of the virus.
• 2/3/2004 - Mydoom virus floods Web site by Hiawatha Bray, The Boston Globe.
      Mydoom shutdown the Web site of SCO Group Inc., a Utah software company that has drawn the ire of Linux advocates for its dispute with IBM Corp. over the free operating system.    The strain that shut down SCO's Web site was the Mydoom.A virus, and another strain called Mydoom.B is set to launch an attack today on software giant Microsoft Corp.    The world's top Internet security experts still do not know how to prevent such attacks.    Mydoom has become one of the fastest-spreading worms of all time.    It was programmed to attack the SCO Web site from Feb. 1 through Feb. 12.    Each infected machine sends a stream of data requests to the site.    If enough computers do it at the same time, the SCO site is overwhelmed by the traffic, which eventually occurred.
  

Last updated January 27, 2004, March 15, 2006, and November 15, 2006.