Grumpy Editor

Internet, cell phones attract more usage by seniors

Older Americans are taking to the Internet and cell phones more, after several years of little growth, notes Grumpy Editor. 

Information from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds 53 percent of adults 65 and older now use the Internet or email. 

It marks the first time that more than half of the gray-hair crowd is going online.

This means more time online takes away from reading daily newspapers. 

On a typical day, 86 percent of Internet users in the 65-plus bracket use email for communications, according to the survey. 

Findings are based on March-April telephone interviews by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. 

While online, seniors are busy in other areas, too. 

About one third (34 percent) focus on social networking sites such as Facebook, with 18 percent doing so on a typical day. 

Seniors also are taking to cell phones more. 

The survey uncovers 69 percent of the 65-plus group say they have a mobile phone.  That’s up from 57 percent two years ago.

 

‘Sensitive’ voting machines being eyed today in Nevada

With Nevada’s primary election today, some voters will be keeping sharp eyes on electronic voting machines that were a source of questionable vote tallies in the 2010 election that resulted in a close victory for Democrat Harry Reid, Senate majority leader, notes Grumpy Editor. 

In a tight race with Republican Sharron Angle at that time (she was ahead in polls right up until the election) some early voters --- in a state that allows early voting in such places as supermarkets, shopping malls and trailers --- found Reid’s name already checked on ballot pages of electronic units. 

The happening received scant national media attention at that time. 

Clark County registrar of voters in 2010, without conducting an intensive investigation, declared there was no voter fraud but blamed the checkmarks alongside Reid’s name on sensitive screens. 

Larry Lomax at that time also blamed the faulty voting action on seniors, mentioning elderly citizens have difficulty in casting their ballots. 

Following that weak explanation, former House majority leader Dick Armey, now Freedom Works chairman, said with early voting there “is less security” that creates a “great opportunity” for voter fraud, especially in major urban areas. 

This year’s early voting in Nevada ran from May 26 to June 8. 

Top race in Nevada’s current voting is for the U.S. Senate, pitting Democrat Shelley Berkley against Republican Dean Heller. 

Nevada requires no photo identification or verification of identity for people who vote.

 

View how spam pages are overwhelming the Internet

Imagine, every hour one million spam pages are created.

That’s the finding on the Security Alert page in this month’s PCWorld magazine, notes Grumpy Editor.

Writer John P. Mello Jr. says analysts estimate 90 percent of email traffic is spam.

A clock at www.spamclock.com counts the number of spam pages created on the Internet every second.

Since Jan. I this year, the figure this morning passed the 2 billion mark.

Behind that site is search engine newcomer Blekko, points out Mello.

Based in Redwood City, Calif., Rich Skrenta, its founder, tells Mello that, “As the online economy continues to grow at double digits compared to stalled growth for the offline economy, the incentives for spammers get even more lucrative.”

 

2-year study predicts 'catastrophic storm' for California

As media, and others, relish socking it to California --- keeping residents and public officials on edge --- with periodic predictions of earthquakes and droughts, now comes a study (two years in the making) that the Golden State faces a catastrophic storm that could last for more than 40 days and dump 10 feet of water on the state, notes Grumpy Editor.

Forty days and 120 inches of rain? 

That certainly would curb the continuous talk of extended periods of dry weather.

But don’t be alarmed.  It’s not in the seven-day forecast.

The watery outlook seems to be something right out of a Hollywood horror movie thriller (perhaps in splashy 3-D) rather than from the U.S. Geological Survey which issued the warning after input from scientists who relied on what came out of a computer model.

Climate researchers caution that such a superstorm is hypothetical but not improbable.

Still, while not indicating factors or pinpointing areas (desert, mountain or urban) in the calculations, the report precisely puts damage at $300 billion to $400 billion.

“We think this event happens once every 100 to 200 years or so, which puts it in the same category as our big San Andreas earthquakes,” according to Lucy Jones, USGS scientist.

Others label it as a "500-year storm.”

California now “has the potential for the biggest rainfall events in the country,” mentions Jones.

Hundreds of local and national news stories in recent months have focused on drought conditions in California --- low reservoirs, vegetables drying up in the fields after lack of water to irrigate them, lower river levels, a curb on backyard watering, and such.

However, just last month a series of storms broke records in California, dumping up to 17 inches of rain over three days in one section of Los Angeles County.

Perhaps emergency planners, with the USGS report in hand, will call for more reservoirs, levees, bridges and flood control construction in the financially-smacked state that already is deeply in the red.

 

Tip on how to set secure password(s) to thwart hacker

In these days of shifty-eyed characters prowling the Web, if you ever wonder how secure your password is, Grumpy Editor has the answer --- after noting a password calculation site in a column by Edward Albro, editor, PCWorld magazine.

Enter your password(s) at howsecureismypassword.net and get a quick response on the difficulty a shady, yet talented, hacker might have accessing a site.

For example, enter 123harry and the site’s instant calculation shows it would take about three days for a desktop PC to crack that password.

But make it 123harryx7 and a potential hacker would be more than a decade older --- about 11 years --- by the time the password is deciphered.

If top security is required, use something such as GiSoy752Hc842x.  That would take 39 billion years to decode.

Adding a 7 after the x would extend that to a mighty 2 trillion years.

A hacker, and his kin --- and other hacking relatives through the centuries --- would be long, very long, gone in attempting to capture those passwords.

Of course, if a hacker has access to the recently-revealed Chinese supercomputer Tianhe-1A, named the world's fastest, solving the password would come much faster.

The Tianhe-1A, built mostly with chips designed by U.S. companies, achieves a computing speed of 2,570 trillion calculations per second. 

 

China grabs fastest supercomputer crown from U.S

With a heavy news week, the few newspapers running a piece on a Chinese supercomputer --- named the world’s fastest --- may have missed an important element in the story, notes Grumpy Editor.

Namely, the Chinese supercomputer, named Tianhe-1A and installed at China’s National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, uses mostly chips designed by U.S. companies.

As reported by AFP, the supercomputer achieved a computing speed of 2,570 trillion calculations per second. 

That put it in the number one spot in the Top 500 Supercomputer Sites survey of the mammoth machines composed of room-size collections of processing units.

It took over the top spot held by a supercomputer at a U.S. government facility in Tennessee.  That system ranked second with a speed of 1,750 trillion calculations per second.

The Chinese also have the world’s third fastest supercomputer, the survey found.

While the U.S. still dominated with more than half of the entries in the Top 500 list, China --- with 42 systems in the rankings --- moved ahead of Japan, France, Germany and Great Britain.

Supercomputers on the Top 500 list, which is produced twice a year, were rated based on speed of performance in a benchmark test by experts from the U.S. and Germany.