Byte by Bite

Wait ‘til the gamers see this

by Marv Dealy

Thanks to sensors on your body, high-speed infrared cameras, a moving platform that reacts to your movements and a life-sized 3-D projection screen, the system will fully immerse you in a virtual and physical environment that reacts to your movements.

Strapped into this baby – only a dozen or so of which exist presently for use in rehabilitation – you can drive a car, take a walk, or hike a mountain, all the while learning to stay balanced and prepare yourself for stuff that happen every day.

Next generation models are being worked on that will have the “player” moving through the aisles of a supermarket, picking out items and taking them to a cashier, training to help recover from brain injuries.

Tragically, these incredible video game machines were invented largely to help patients with missing or paralyzed limbs or other injuries brought about by the nonstop fighting in places such as Israel.

The virtual reality enables the patient to forget about the pain for a bit while they are involved in the game, all the while helping to strengthen muscles, assisting with healing.

Next generation machines are scheduled to be installed in two military hospitals in the U.S. as there is now a growing market for amputee care and prosthetics in this country thanks to the war in Iraq. Read more at http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20061217/D8M2TB8O2.html

I don’t see any plans announced but you gamers out there need to push to have this baby brought to a video arcade near you.

Digital Bombs – I don’t suppose many of you faithful 26 readers worry about the integrity of the database at the companies from whom you buy insurance, or at the banks you deal with or other large companies that keep information about you in their databases. We’ve all learned to be aware of identify theft because people do steal laptops and confidential stuff is inevitably on them, sometimes parts of a database of which you’re a member.

There are other threats to a database that can come without anyone ever hacking into the system or without a single computer being stolen or lost. These threats occur when someone with access to the database and some smarts either creates a way to avenge themselves when they are no longer with the company who owns the database or to in theory give themselves job security by never writing down the necessary documentation for someone to understand their custom programming at a later date.

We’ve found ourselves in one of the later situations, helping a local company deal with the fact that their former custom database programmer left nary a scrap of information about all the thousands of lines of code he wrote that makes this company’s database do what it’s supposed to do – keep track of members and other stuff that databases are good at.

We’ll be able to reverse engineer what the former fellow did, unfortunately at considerable expense to the customer. This raises the opportunity for a word to the wise – if you have some custom programming going on in your company, you’d better be sure you’re getting lots of very good documentation at the same time.

That said, the other kind of digital revenge is less something to worry about but something to at least think about – a digital bomb left behind.

A case in point is a computer administrator who used to work for a large prescription drug management company who planted a logic bomb because he was upset over possibly losing his job in a corporate restructure.

According to an AP story by Wayne Parry, the computer administrator didn’t get downsized but kept the logic bomb code in place, and even tinkered with it to see if he could set it off. Fortunately, it was discovered and disabled before it could cause any harm, which could have included widespread financial damage to the company as well as possible harm to the patients.

Parry quotes a U.S. Attorney involved in the case as saying “a malicious program like this can bring a company’s operations to a grinding halt and cause millions of dollars in damages from lost data, system downtime, recovery and repair.” (http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20061219/D8M47G500.html)

That said, the local company fortunately hasn’t had to cope with any malicious pranks like the logic bomb in this story, but they will still end up spending thousands of dollars in fees to help straighten out the mess as well as more time and money on their staff’s part in the interim. This should be a wake up call to anyone out there that has someone working away in a backroom on a computer on your company’s stuff – do you really know what they’re doing?

Digital Yule Log – While many folks hereabouts have fireplaces that actually work, or stoves, or some such thing that routinely and often exclusively is used to heat the house, the underprivileged in Fifth Avenue apartments in New York don’t have such amenities, so they resort to watching a fire on the TV screen with a soundtrack of Christmas carols.

First filmed in 1970 by New York’s television station WPIX and replayed every year since, the virtual Yule log become a sentimental favorite and now is available in most places in the country. A fun story by David Bauder tells how the fire was filmed at Gracie Mansion – home to the mayors of New York – and involved burning a hole in a valuable oriental carpet. The original film only lasted four years and what you’ll see this year was redone in Palo Alto. It’s a seven minute loop, you’ll be happy to know, so you don’t have to time it yourself.

The Palo Alto version of the Yule log ran in New York until 1989 when it was cancelled, as are all TV shows eventually, only to be brought back in 2001. Luckily, the video was found, albeit misfiled as a Honeymooners episode called “It’s a Dog’s Life.”

Superstation WGN will air the log this Christmas, as will all ten stations owned by Tribune Broadcasting. Or, get on over to www.TheYuleLog.com for a Friday freebie – make sure you click on the “skip intro” link in the lower right of the screen or the dang thing may never load. And don’t try this on a dial-up connection or you’ll break something banging on the computer screen. Once the page does load, scroll down and you’ll find a graphic representation of an old time “nothing’s on TV right now screen” from the early 1950s. Hopefully that’s where you’ll see the Yule log come Christmas. Note the “remote control” below the TV; move your mouse over the buttons to get different information about the site. Mouseovers run amuck.

High def TV viewers who can get the INHD network can watch a high definition fire for 25 hours straight starting at 7 am EST Christmas morning. Its maker says it’s much better than the 30 year old picture of a fire the other guys show. Think about that while you stir your real fire. Read Bauder’s whole story at http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20061217/D8M2OF781.html

Merry Christmas, by the way. Now go eat some cookies – you know they’re empty calories since they’re Christmas cookies.