What's in a name? On the net, who knows | Bangkok Post: tech

COMPUTER Currents

How much can you trust an Internet Domain? When you go to, say, http://www.reliableshopping. com, how much can you find out about it? Theoretically when a domain is registered it should have information on who did so. You can use tools like http://www.whois.net to do a quick check. In the case of the site above, I found it is owned by godaddy.com. Trying http://www.internic.net to look it up found even less info, but I did ascertain that the domain will expire soon.

A recently study by ICAAN found that 77 percent of domains - a staggering 90 million Internet addresses - are registered with false, incomplete or unverifiable information. Less than 23 percent are registered with correct names and physical addresses and just under 30 percent used obviously false or suspicious registration info. The rest fell into the grey area where people did not want to provide their name or other details.

The problems are caused by the registrars themselves who do not take the time or require full details. Some online registration forms do not even perform basic checks like postcode validity, even in places like the USA. At the very least, the credit card should be checked against the registered address and a flag raised if it doesn't match.

Assumptions by ICANN is that about 95 of the information was accurate, something now changed by the latest survey. There are no mandated standards for data collection. Then in some countries there are the privacy laws that seem to focus on protecting the criminals.

Some of the issues are easily fixable by the ICANN community by implementing rules and regulations. ICANN can then provide registrar ratings based on performance and compliance.

The problem is that this will require an internal ICANN policy change - something the registrars will need to agree to. At the very least, there should be some improvement in the Whois system and this will require higher costs when buying or leasing domains.

Then there are the groups that want to keep domain registration a loose process for a variety of reasons. These groups are actively involved in blocking any changes to the current Whois system. Hopefully this latest report will put pressure on the relevant agencies to make some changes. Until then, you cannot be sure of the domain you are accessing is a good one.

Industry news

Samsung's latest phone, the Wave, comes with Bluetooth 3.0 support. It also sports an 80x400 OLED touchscreen. A 1 GHZ processor ensures rapid processing plays video up to 720p. As you might expect, the marketing pictures look very nice, but Samsung said that it may go the Apple Store route to provide applications. They will be available from April.

Before the iPad, there were devices from Motion Computing. Based in Texas, this company has been making tablet PCs, without keyboards, for a range of vertical markets like construction sites and hospitals.

On the plus side the Apple launch will highlight the use of a table PC once again but Motion Computing isn't worried. For a start, some of its devices must be disinfectant-proof. They also need to be quite robust. More telling is the requirements that the devices run the customer's software. Compare this to Apple, which says you can only run its own software and no other.

Somewhat ironically, Windows is the open environment here. In many instances, customers want to use a stylus rather than their fingers. Then there is the issue of peripherals and support for a wide range of them. The iPad is essentially a tablet PC for your handbag. No docking station, no stand, keyboard or mouse support. So. a niche market, not for the wider audience.

If you remember some time ago I was bemoaning the fact that the upgrade option from XP to Windows 7 was not an easy one. One alert reader pointed me to http://www.zinstall.com and the product Zinstall XP7, which they had used with great success.

The product allows you to go from XP to Windows 7 and essentially transfer your entire system along with Applications, files, background settings and many of your preferred options. It takes a single click. I have not tried it so I can't directly endorse it but it may be worth looking at for some people.

What do you get when you take one hardware hacker and a problem? In this case a crack for the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) from Infineon, aka the SLE 66PE. It started out by trying to find a way to crack the Xbox 360 and the peripherals you can connect to. What he ended up with was access to sensitive data and algorithms locked away in the chip's digital vault and a way to make clones that can fool a range of devices.

Microsoft has put the security chips in the wired and wireless controls so they could control the market. He bought a number of the microcontrollers from Hong Kong. Then he used an electron microscope to mess with the individual wires. Six months later Tarnovsky had mastered the technique to break the chips.

While it is unlikely that many others will have the time or the equipment necessary to duplicate the efforts, it once again highlights the fact that just about any security system can be hacked or broken, coming as it does on the back of recent news about cordless phones and smartcard hacks. Infineon have announced an upgrade to the 66PE that will stop such attacks, for the short term at least.

Also available in April will be a 600GB 2.5-inch two-platter disk drive that will operate at 10,023 RPM with a 16GB cache. The units come with a self-encrypting option and the drive is the first of its kind with capacities of 300 and 450 will also be available. Of course, as always, Seagate and Western Digital are working on similar drive,s so Toshiba will not hold the lead for long.

NEC has figured out how to make USB 3.0 three times faster and provide 16Gb/s transfer speeds. The process uses feedback loops, adaptive equalisation and signal-splitting. The result is faster transfer speeds and a solution to the signal distortion found in longer cables. The physics and maths get a little complicated but that is what engineers are for and the process works. All NEC needs now if for the bodies overseeing the standards to approve the technique.

Finally for this week, by the time you read this the Large Hadron Collider, barring any further problems, will have fired up. If you are reading this, then they didn't crack a hole into another dimension or create a black hole that destroyed the Earth. It will be a few more weeks before they run at full power, though. Alarmist end-of-world predictions aside, hopefully they will be able to probe even more deeply into matter, find the God Particle and solve a few more of the mysteries that make up our Universe.