Artist brings out the beauty behind viruses
Cyber threats such as NetSky, Mydoom and Parite are the bane of IT departments around the globe, but artist Alex Dragulescu has found subtle beauty deep within the dangerous computer code that can bring down networks and bombard e-mail inboxes with murderous spam.
Dragulescu has peeled back the code behind the world’s worst tech bugs and rendered stunning images from it. The Romanian-born MIT researcher and artist was commissioned to do fashion the artwork by MessageLabs, a computer security company that sought to put a face — or at least a shape — on computer viruses.
Dragulescu found interesting, recurring patterns. He used the data to coax pointy green tentacles from the dreaded Mydoom e-mail worm and grew pretty peach petals from the epicenter of the Degreediploma5 spam file.
“I think there is beauty in their complexity,” Dragulescu said at a gallery debut of his work in San Francisco. “These types of threats are very smart. Very intelligent in design. Digital organisms, really, that adapt themselves and replicate. We wanted to capture some of that complexity and uniqueness.”
The process of creating the art was like none other. MessageLabs carefully sent Dragulescu the once-harmful files after modifying them so his computers would not contract the viruses.
Dragulescu looked for the frequency of certain occurrences in a virus, such as particular network sockets that it was designed to compromise. He fed the resulting data into a program he created with an algorithm to grow the viruses and Trojans visually.
Embarq hopes new phone will stem exodus: Traditional wireline provider Embarq Corp. is offering a new cordless home phone that includes Internet-powered features it hopes will help it hold on to customers.
The company, which lost 6.3 percent of its access lines in 2007 — ending the fiscal year with 6.47 million — expects to continue losing them at that rate or faster in 2008.
Embarq began losing customers well before Sprint Nextel Corp. spun it off the local-phone division in 2006, but it remains the nation’s fourth-largest traditional telephone provider.
The Embarq eGo, which the company began selling Tuesday, works like a regular landline phone but has a video screen and can hook into the customers’ high-speed Internet connection.
Customers can use it to check weather and sports and general news culled from Internet sites, access an online local business directory and scroll visually through voice mail and lists of frequently called numbers.
“We are attacking why would you ever want to use your wireless phone in your home,” said Dennis Huber, Embarq’s senior vice president of corporate strategy and development.
Customers must have high-speed Internet to use eGo. The handset and a base station that connects to the Internet router cost $130. Extra handsets — the system can support up to five per household — are $50 each. Discounts will be available on eGo in Embarq’s retail stores.
Overland Park-based Embarq hopes eGo will keep customers from abandoning their home phones in favor of cell phones or Internet-based telephone service.
Huber said the eGo is aimed at providing customers some of the same content they can receive through their personal computers or cell phones — just quicker and cheaper.
Philips will team with Funai in Japan for its television work: Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics NV plans to transfer its consumer television activities in the U.S. and Canada to Japan-based Funai Electric Co.
Philips will receive royalty payments in exchange for Funai’s right to use the Philips and Magnavox brand names for its consumer television offerings in North America.
North American television sales brought Philips about $1.57 billion in 2007, the company said.
In an announcement Tuesday, Philips also said the move is among steps it is taking to make its global supply base more efficient and to focus its TV business on the strongest markets, especially in Europe and some developing countries.
“The agreement with Funai and the other measures to improve profitability we are planning follow our commitment that we would take decisive steps in addressing the unacceptable profitability levels in our TV business in 2008,” said Philips President and Chief Executive Gerard Kleisterlee.
Whiz-bang innovations vie for award: Four widely divergent scientific innovations are finalists in the international $1.8 million Millennium Technology Prize from the Technology Academy of Finland.
The inventions — DNA fingerprinting, biomaterials for human tissue regeneration, key elements in mobile communication and fiber optic networks — were created by six scientists, the academy said Tuesday.
The winning innovation, to be announced on June 11, will receive $1.2 million, and the three runners up $180,000 each.
Sir Alec Jeffreys, a professor in the genetics department at the University Leicester in Britain, is nominated for the invention of DNA fingerprinting.
“No other development in modern genetics has had such a profound impact worldwide on the lives of many millions of people,” the academy said.
Finalist Robert Langer — a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who works with the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, a collaborative of the two universities — was cited for “development of innovative biomaterials for controlled drug release and tissue regeneration.” The academy said his technology has “saved and improved the lives of millions of people.”
Andrew Viterbi, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, was chosen for the invention of the Viterbi algorithm, “the key building element in modern wireless and digital communications systems.”
And three scientists were cited for the fourth innovation, the erbium-doped fiber amplifier, which made possible high-capacity optical fiber networks: Emmanuel Desurvire, with Thales Corporate Research &Technology in France; Randy Giles, with Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J.; and David N. Payne, from a professor at the University of Southampton in Britain.
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