Several months ago, I wrote about Twitter spam or a variant of unwanted traffic on Twitter. Since then, it’s still not clear to me what motive these spammers have. Several weeks ago, I posted a link to the NYTimes about swine flu vaccinations. Minutes later, I received Twitter notices that I just garnered four new followers–all of them had an odd username, like a common first name followed by several numbers.

Great. While I’m all for having a large crew of loyal followers, it does no good that my followers are all bots. I actually not sure what purpose these bots serve anyway, because none of their Twitter pages link to any spam websites. As Mashable.com mentioned in their Twitter article, spam on Twitter comes in three flavors: Twittermercials, straight cons, and clueless cons.

While most of the spamming I’ve encountered are Twittermercials, the most recent iteration of spam doesn’t appear to serve much of a purpose other than harvesting data on my activity.

Fortunately, the coders at Twitter monitor these unsolicited activities often, and most of the spam accounts have been deactivated.

computing computing, tech

Several days ago at the Delta terminal of LaGuardia Airport, I heard a familiar whirring of a machine that sounded like a continuous tear of  paper. As I glanced around the waiting area, I caught a glimpse of a cabinet underneath a kiosk where the sound of emanating from.

Indeed, the sound originated from a dot-matrix printer, happily churning out piles of connected paper with terminal-sized font.  I wondered why anyone would still be using technology from the 1970′s, but given that it’s the airline industry (airline tracking radar from 1970′s), I wasn’t too surprised.

But still, why not upgrade? The only other time I’ve seen a dot-matrix printer in operation is in the fire-alarm system of the research building.

I suppose that dot-matrix printing still has its merits. As long as the printer paper doesn’t jam, the system is virtually indestructible. A power source and a serial/parallel connector is all you need to print away. Sure, dot-matrix font is shitty, but the ink ribbon rarely needs to be replaced. Given that the fire alarm printer is locked behind a glass window, I doubt that it ever gets serviced either. Ultimately, I suppose that dot-matrix printers still have a niche: reliability with low maintenance and reliability over quality.

Still, I don’t see myself getting one of these devices anytime soon.

computing travel

I remember when Instant Messaging flooded the workplace computers back in the tech-boom days. My colleagues working at IBM would get company-wide emails stating that IM decreased productivity and was prohibited. When company threats weren’t heeded, port 5190 was blocked on the company firewall.

Now that instant messaging has been superseded by text messaging and MMS, I see my colleagues “texting” away during conferences and lectures. It’s become a nuisance. If you’re simply notifying your spouse that you’ll be late for dinner, that’s one reason to be texting during fluorescein conference. However, checking the stock ticker? Chatting with your medical school classmate? What are you thinking? That is simply abusing technology. Perhaps I say this only because I don’t have a data plan on my phone, but there is a point in which your attention should be directed toward the lecturer and not your iPhone.

Our eye clinic is in the basement, where our cellphones unreachable by the outside world. You’d think that there wouldn’t be any contact with the outside. Wrong. Last week one of the technicians (who are supposed to be obtaining visual acuity for our patients) was logged onto her MySpace page. Another computer was logged onto Facebook.

I wonder how much social networking affects workplace productivity. A quick search online shows that this actually increases productivity. USAToday also states that we work better with social networking… The caveat? None of these companies are involved with healthcare.

computing, medicine rant, tech, work

I ended up installing the Palm Pre SDK to test out the development kit. It includes the Palm Pre emulation engine, which runs from VirtualBox.

Although I’ve never used the physical hardware phone before, the software interface is very slick, similar to that of the iPhone. The snapshot includes the Web browser in action, which supports touch-dragging and zoom.

If I ever find the time, it would be interesting to develop some software for it.

computing computing, tech

Virtualization software like VMware and VirtualBox allows you to run multiple OS’s on a single system without rebooting. This capability is convenient for cross-platform testing of web software without the need for multiple systems. I’ve always used it as a bridge between my linux and windows applications–having a script-ready bash terminal makes batch processing of data a breeze. About a year ago, a friend introduced me to virtualizing with the same operating system. Something like running Windows within Windows.

Why would you ever do this? I wondered the same thing, but it adds a good layer of security to my computer. Since virtual drives are only accessible via specified shared folders, any disaster within the virtual operating system is contained. This is most applicable to my VPN connection into the hospital. My employer uses a Citrix web interface to allow outside connections into the hospital intranet.

For those of you who have used Citrix, it is bloated junkware that pollutes your system files. Moreover, it does not work well with certain software firewalls, like COMODO. After uninstallation, the program litters your folders with nondescript file links and useless files. I found that I can contain the installation through my virtualized OS. Neat huh?

Whenever my hospital junks Citrix or requires another bloated software suite, I can throw it into my virtual OS. If the installation trashes my system, I can just delete my virtual drive and start over. No damage done to the host.

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