A ticker tape for the ticker: Some doctors laud as a lifesaver a heart-monitoring device that faxes information directly to a physician’s office from anywhere in the world.
Federal regulators, however, worry the portable messenger could pose a danger to patients. The Federal Communications Commission banned the device earlier this year, fearing it could further clog airwaves already crowded with transmissions from high-tech medical gadgets.
The German-based manufacturer, Biotronik, has appealed the ruling, which allowed the 3,000 patients already outfitted with the device to continue using it.
“This information has potentially lifesaving consequences. Why should we be denied access to this information?” said Dr. Allistar Fyfe, a Dallas cardiologist who has about a dozen patients using the portable messenger.
The portable messenger uses technology similar to a cell phone and works along with a special pacemaker that sends signals to the messenger. The device, worn like a pager on a waistband or belt, then transmits patient information to doctors.
Doctors can program the device to monitor specific heart activity and send reports periodically. Patients can also trigger transmission if they feel something is wrong.
Biotronik said the device costs about $8,000.
On a cloudy day, pilots can see forever: A newly approved flight instrument lets pilots see a picture of the ground through clouds and weather, potentially eliminating the kind of disorientation that may have led to the 1999 crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr.
Designed mainly for private and small commercial aircraft, the $50,000 computer and display system by Boise-based Chelton Flight Systems gives pilots a real-time simulated view of everything needed to fly the plane safely.
That’s important when the view out of the cockpit window turns oatmeal gray, the plane bounces blindly though turbulent air and it’s impossible to tell whether the plane is aimed up or down. Even a quiet but overcast night sky in a remote area can be disorienting.
“Losing track of the airplane is what gets most pilots into trouble,” said Gordon Pratt, Chelton Flight Systems’ president and co-developer of the computer.
Chelton’s FlightLogic system processes all the aircraft’s flight information along with preloaded data about the nearby terrain and pinpoint positioning data from GPS satellites. The system melds it all into one intuitive picture and displays it on a video screen about the size of paperback novel.
North Korea launches e-mail service: North Korea, an isolated country known for totalitarian control, has launched an international e-mail service that “guarantees the privacy of correspondence,” according to a government news report.
The brief dispatch from the official Korean Central News Agency provided few details about the service, including how to subscribe. It is run by Pyongyang’s International Communications Center, according to its official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea keeps a tight lid on its 22 million people to shield them from outside influence. Few ordinary North Koreans are believed to have computer and e-mail access. TV sets and radios come with fixed channels so that people can only watch or listen to government-controlled media.
But in recent years, North Korea has begun opening its electronic borders. In 2001, a China-based Web site opened the first commercial e-mail link to the communist country.
Spammers fights back: A new computer virus targets activists who are dedicated to fighting junk e-mail.
At least three variants of the Mimail virus, the latest of which began circulating this week, are programmed to flood the Web sites of anti-spam organizations with junk traffic in hopes of making them inaccessible to legitimate visitors.
The latest variant also tricks recipients into flooding the organizations with additional e-mail traffic by pretending to be an order for child pornography and requiring a reply for cancellation.
Groups targeted by the so-called distributed denial-of-service attacks are the Spamhaus Project, at spamhaus.org, SpamCop, at spamcop.net, and Spam Prevention Early Warning System, at spews.org.
The three groups provide lists of Internet addresses used by known or suspected spammers. Internet service providers and e-mail operators can use the lists to help filter junk e-mail – although the lists can sometime blocks legitimate e-mail as well.
Spamhaus says it began facing denial-of-service attacks over the summer, shortly after it pointed out a new spamming technique in which viruses help set up e-mail relayers on the machines of unsuspecting users. These relayers, or proxies, help spammers send out junk e-mail more quickly and make them even more difficult to trace or block.
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