Tech 3 for 5.15.2007

1) Linkin Park's Mysterious Stalker | David Kushner has a riveting story in Wired about a woman who seriously cyberstalked the lead singer of rock band Linkin Park. Turns out the cyberstalker did many of her evil deeds from her workplace, Sandia National Labs, the keeper of the country's nuclear secrets. She was an IT worker with pretty high security clearance. Snippet:

Dimitrelos pulled up the header of each email, which shows the Internet protocol address it was sent from. As he eyeballed several messages, one IP address kept popping up. Dimitrelos ran a program to trace the address. When the results flashed on the screen, his eyes widened. "Sandia?" he said. "This can't be right."

Sandia National Laboratories is one of the Department of Energy's three nuclear weapons research facilities. Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, it was created in 1949 by J. Robert Oppenheimer, former head of the nearby Los Alamos lab, as a center for developing the technology that goes into nuclear bombs. The lab is run by the Sandia Corporation, which is owned by defense contractor Lockheed Martin.

The thought of someone inside a top-secret nuke lab spending their days stalking a rock singer was ludicrous. Dimitrelos figured it must be a hacker who was using a Sandia machine as a proxy to protect their own IP address and identity. This wasn't just about a nu-metal rock star and his family anymore; it was a national security issue. He had to let Sandia know that someone had compromised one of its computers.

(deletia)

Dimitrelos had a hunch. He re-created a timeline of the activity coming from New Mexico, and, sure enough, a pattern emerged: seven hours of messages coming from Sandia during the day, then four or five hours coming from this Albuquerque residence at night. Could they be the same person? Did the stalker work at Sandia?

I'm fixin' to interview author David Kushner for Future Tense. Stay tuned.

2) Treadmill Desk Whittles While You Work | Researchers at the Mayo Clinic rigged a treadmill to a desk, and studied the effects of workers who walked at 1 mph all day. Result? Weight loss. Snippet:

"If obese individuals were to replace time spent sitting at the computer with walking computer time by two to three hours a day, and if other components of energy balance were constant, a weight loss of (44 pounds to 66 pounds) a year could occur," the researchers wrote.

The researchers said their desk costs about $1,600.

As technology advances, we become more sedentary. At home, we spend more time in front of our computers and televisions. In the office, we type e-mails instead of walking down the hall to talk with colleagues.

Thomas Niccum, president of Twin Cities-based Lancet Software, has decided to fight the motionless lifestyle of a modern white collar worker by rigging his office so he can do most of his work while walking on a treadmill.

Niccum's treadmill-equipped office was inspired by the work of the Mayo Clinic's Dr. James Levine, whose research finds that the more people move around during the course of a normal day, the thinner they'll be. He calls it "NEAT" (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis).

Levine says we need to incorporate more motion into every part of our day.

3) Trend Sees Cell Phone Only Use Growing | The only thing keeping me from ditching my landline is a vague fear that cell phones and VoIP phones will mean slower response time in case of an emergency. Snippet:

More than a quarter of young adults have only cell phones, making them the leading edge of a strengthening move away from traditional landline telephones, a federal survey showed Monday.
ADVERTISEMENT

Overall, the portion of adults with only cell phones grew by more than 2 percentage points in the latter half of last year to nearly 12 percent, an expansion rate that began in the first part of 2006 and was double earlier rates of growth.

One in four people aged 18 to 24 had only cell phones, as did 29 percent of those aged 25 to 29, the study showed. The percentages declined with age after that, with 2 percent of those 65 or over having only cell phones.