Will Ultra HD, sometimes called 4K, technology take off? As someone who likes new technology that provides a sharper picture, I hope so, but the industry pundits are lukewarm on the subject for the simple reason that there are very few ways to get any content with movie studios and TV producers slow out of the gate.
It is predicted that content providers like Netflix may be the only way to get anything to watch for the next year or two, but at around 50GB per movie you need very nice connectivity for streaming and patience for downloading. There are very few places that provide the speeds and delivery for the average punter. The alternative in the short term is for decent up-scaling technology in the TV or by the media provider.
On the subject of Netflix, the service fell over recently and given it has 50 million subscribers globally this is not something you want to happen as a service provider. The service went down for all browsers and devices right across the globe for about an hour. It came back on of course but, and as of writing, Netflix had not reported the cause.
In no surprise to anyone, torrent search site The Pirate Bay is now fully back online after being shut down by a police raid a while back. The site now sports a picture of a phoenix as a mocking tribute to the police in Sweden. As reported a while back, the site was back up in the form of "mirrors" within days, but this is the home site that is now back online.
In a world where tablet sales are shrinking, an unlikely contender from Washington State in the US is posting improvement in sales. Yes Microsoft is claiming that their tablet sales are on the rise with the Surface Pro 3 doing well since it was released. Admittedly total market share is still under 3% but in the current environment any rise is worth reporting. In the same space iPad sales are down 18% and Android devices dropped by nearly 16% overall. Samsung is still the leader followed by Amazon, Lenovo and Asus. So as I predicted a while back, the tablet market is somewhat saturated and the rise of the tablet is now over.
According to some commentators, Adobe products leak as much as a flyscreen on a submarine. OK, they don't really say that but the implications are certainly there. If you recently patched the Flash plug-in you may not be safe. If you just patched it again as you read this then you might be safe, for a while. As of writing, zero-day exploits have already occurred.
The term zero-day exploit, or vulnerability, refers to a hole in software that is unknown to the vendor of that software. This security hole is then exploited by hackers before the vendor becomes aware of it and hopefully rushes to fix it. The exploitation of such an exploit is called a zero-day attack. In some cases vendors really do rush to fix it but in others they are somewhat slower and a lot of damage can occur between the first attach and the eventual patch.
Adobe Flash is one of the most exploited pieces of software over its 20-year history and many argue that it is time for it to go. Adobe in general has been criticised for poor security in their products and while others have been actively working on hardening their systems, some Adobe products have lagged in this effort and have been used as the way to penetrate newly-hardened systems. HTML5 has been used by some to replace what Flash provided but it is still available as a plug-in and still exploited.
As an exercise I recommend that readers uninstall the Flash plug-in and see how it affects your browsing experience. For the most part you may not even notice that it is no longer installed. Worst case, if you really need it you can install the browser plug-in again. If you want to try this go into your browser settings and make it a click to play app by following the examples below.
For Chrome users, go to Settings, click on the Advanced Settings link, click on Content Settings under Privacy, scroll down to Plugins, select "Click to play" and save. In Safari, open Preferences, go to the Security tab, click on Website settings alongside Internet Plugins, select Adobe Flash, and alongside "When visiting other websites", select "Ask" or "Block". You can whitelist certain sites in the box above. In Firefox, browse to about:config and click on the "I'll be careful" button, and search for plugins.click_to_play. If it says "false" in the Value column, double click on it to change it to "true". Then restart Firefox. For other browsers do a search on how to do it. Good luck.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years’ standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com