I was reading an article on Popular Mechanics about the top 10 tech concepts you need to know for 2007; i also read the ones they said were top 10 tech concepts for 2006 and uhm, let's say they were half right which isn't that bad [ btw i took the links from a Slashdot post ]. Three of the concepts for 2007 that really caught my attention are: BAN [ Body Area Networks, was also predicted as a concept for 2006 but it's the first time i read it XD ], PRAM [ Phase-Change Random Access Memory ] and specially Data Cloud.
About BANs well, they say i will be able to open my car's door [ if i had one XD ] simply by touching it or log in to my computer by grabbing the mouse, all thanks to a signal that my cellphone will send through my body to those things. I think it opens a lot of possibilities and of course some of them are quite evil, as they say "Technology itself is not good or evil, it depends on who uses it". The first thing anybody can notice is that if somebody steals your cell phone you are doomed! XD, i don't think the technology would be able to recognize that the person touching your car is a thieve and not you by only measuring your body resistance to the electric impulse or something similar, maybe adding some speaker recognition or something more sophisticated would solve this, although i don't know if cellphone technology is good enough right now to be able to hold the required high level operations needed to identify a speaker or doing some other more complicated identification...uhm now that i think of it i think the speaker identification can be done, in fact i feel tempted to try it using J2ME but obviously it would have much better performance if it was designed for the cell phone's specific architecture.
Anyways, i don't know how exactly these networks work [ or will work ] but logic tells me that the devices my cell phone is supposed to be able to interact with must have some kind of ID so that my cell phone knows what kind of information the specific device needs; let's suppose we have reached the point in which you will only need to approach your ATM [ with your cellphone on your pocket ] and say a few words [ for security reasons ] in order for it to log you in and start your bank transactions, well what if i happen to know enough about BANs and the way devices identify themselves and some other stuff to be able to approach you on the street and get you to say a few couple of words and i have a cellphone on my pocket that is using the BAN protocol and identifies itself as your bank's ATM, then i will be able to record your voice and your cell phone will send me all the information i need to then approach the ATM and get a hold of your life's savings XD.
Maybe if you use encrypted packages for the protocol could prevent the "BAN Scammer/Hacker" [ now there's another concept you'll need to know XD ] from stealing your car, making a copy of all your hard disc and leave a zero on your bank's available amount; but then again, i wouldn't trust this type of technology for such purposes as the mentioned above so in conclusion i tend to think BANs should have everyday uses or general purposes like paying for the bus/subway or buying a drink but they shouldn't be used for tasks in which is needed somebody in specific unless they implement a high security. [ then again i don't know if they already have one and all of i've written above was just a waste of time, most probably it was but i had fun doing it haha ].
I will post about PRAMs and Data Clouds [ and GDrive ] later on this afternoon, I hope you enjoyed the reading and at least appreciate the links to the articles that i posted XD.
About BANs well, they say i will be able to open my car's door [ if i had one XD ] simply by touching it or log in to my computer by grabbing the mouse, all thanks to a signal that my cellphone will send through my body to those things. I think it opens a lot of possibilities and of course some of them are quite evil, as they say "Technology itself is not good or evil, it depends on who uses it". The first thing anybody can notice is that if somebody steals your cell phone you are doomed! XD, i don't think the technology would be able to recognize that the person touching your car is a thieve and not you by only measuring your body resistance to the electric impulse or something similar, maybe adding some speaker recognition or something more sophisticated would solve this, although i don't know if cellphone technology is good enough right now to be able to hold the required high level operations needed to identify a speaker or doing some other more complicated identification...uhm now that i think of it i think the speaker identification can be done, in fact i feel tempted to try it using J2ME but obviously it would have much better performance if it was designed for the cell phone's specific architecture.
Anyways, i don't know how exactly these networks work [ or will work ] but logic tells me that the devices my cell phone is supposed to be able to interact with must have some kind of ID so that my cell phone knows what kind of information the specific device needs; let's suppose we have reached the point in which you will only need to approach your ATM [ with your cellphone on your pocket ] and say a few words [ for security reasons ] in order for it to log you in and start your bank transactions, well what if i happen to know enough about BANs and the way devices identify themselves and some other stuff to be able to approach you on the street and get you to say a few couple of words and i have a cellphone on my pocket that is using the BAN protocol and identifies itself as your bank's ATM, then i will be able to record your voice and your cell phone will send me all the information i need to then approach the ATM and get a hold of your life's savings XD.
Maybe if you use encrypted packages for the protocol could prevent the "BAN Scammer/Hacker" [ now there's another concept you'll need to know XD ] from stealing your car, making a copy of all your hard disc and leave a zero on your bank's available amount; but then again, i wouldn't trust this type of technology for such purposes as the mentioned above so in conclusion i tend to think BANs should have everyday uses or general purposes like paying for the bus/subway or buying a drink but they shouldn't be used for tasks in which is needed somebody in specific unless they implement a high security. [ then again i don't know if they already have one and all of i've written above was just a waste of time, most probably it was but i had fun doing it haha ].
I will post about PRAMs and Data Clouds [ and GDrive ] later on this afternoon, I hope you enjoyed the reading and at least appreciate the links to the articles that i posted XD.
