Today in Tech: Monday Malware; TCS & Infosys; and Name Games: Higgs, iPhone

DNSChanger: the malware that threatens to make your Monday messy

There is nothing as exciting as an impending danger, a fact well exploited by filmmakers across the world. So, don’t be surprised if you find everyone discussing ‘Internet Doomsday’ in your office today. It refers to a malware that threatens to ‘blackout’ the infected computers, starting Monday.

The threat is not as widespread as the scare terms suggest, nor is it difficult to fix. About 2.5 lakh computers across the world are estimated to be at risk (It had originally infected 4 million). To find if yours is, go to http://www.dns-ok.us/. To find a fix, click here: DCWG site.

The story of how the virus was unleashed in over 4 million computers in more than 100 countries by a cyber ring using several rogue servers and how FBI busted the ring and arrived at a temporary solution is definitely Hollywood-worthy. You can get more details about that operation here, here  and here.

The key term here, though, is the ‘temporary solution’. FBI found that if it turned off the rogue servers, all the computers infected by DNSChanger virus will go offline. The virus changes your computer’s DNS settings (or Domain Name System that helps convert the url, say, www.google.com that you type in, into its numerical ip address -  http://74.125.236.144). The temporary solution was to replace the rogue servers with clean ones, which could recognize the illicit IP address and direct users to the right websites. On July 9, 2012, these temporary servers will be shut down, and if your computer has the malware, it will, shall we say, get lost.

TCS & Infosys will announce the results on the same day

For the first time, on July 12. (TCS used to announce its results after Infosys)

This is how the two key metrics looked end of March 2012.

The big question is: "Will the gap widen?"

Name games: God Particle, Higgs and iPhone

Here’s my answer to yesterday’s question: The champagne in Higgs’ statement alludes to (I think) ‘the Champagne bottle boson', an alternative name that Guardian newspaper came up with after running a contest.

It started after Guardian's science correspondent asked Prof Higgs what he thought about the name the media used for the Higgs boson. Higgs' answer was: "I really, really don't like it. It sends out all the wrong messages. It overstates the case. It makes us look arrogant. It's rubbish.... If you walked down the corridor here, poked your head into people's offices and asked that question, you would likely be struck by flying books."

So Guardian ran  a contest and suggested an alternative - ‘the Champagne bottle boson' . It chose this name because: "the bottom of a champagne bottle is in the shape of the Higgs potential, and is often used as an illustration in physics lectures. So it's not an embarrassingly grandiose name, it is memorable, and has some physics connection too."

No marks for guessing whose will prevailed.

-- A friend wrote in to say there are a lot of squabbles even over the name Higgs – both in 'Higgs Mechanism' and 'Higgs Boson'. Abdus Salam for example always referred to Higgs Mechanism as “Higgs-Kibble mechanism” to acknowledge another scientist who worked on it. He also sent me a small extract from a book called The Infinity Puzzle by Frank Close, which, he said, has a chapter on how Higgs Boson came to be called Higgs Boson and not by other competing names.

A historian of science might argue, as some have, that misnomers pollute this particular part of the record. The massless boson attributed to Goldstone is perhaps more justly credited to Nambu, and indeed is often referred to as the Nambu-Goldstone Boson. The massive boson, which in particle physics is named for Higgs, may be traced to Goldstone’s original paper. Tom Kibble recalled a suggestion that the Higgs Boson “should be called the Goldstone boson, while the Goldstone boson should be called the Nambu boson—though that would be very confusing!”

 

The words on the tomb of President Kennedy will always be attributed to him, though it was Ted Sorensen who wrote them. Their impact and resonance through the years come from the writer and the orator both. So perhaps will be the legacy with this boson.

 

It will be attributed to Higgs, if only because its discovery will be in a particle-physics experiment and that is the name by which that community knows it.

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It goes without saying that in the world of business too names matter a lot  and companies fight over them – even though the biggest beneficiaries, I suspect, are the lawyers. Some of you might recall how as soon as Apple launched iPhone in 2007, Cisco filed a suit saying that it had registered the name back in 2000 – and that Apple’s use of that name constituted a “willful and malicious” violation of its trademark. The two companies settled the issue outside the court.

Also of interest

• Amazon Said to Plan Smartphone That Would Vie With Apple IPhone : Bloomberg
• Microsoft analyzes over a million PC failures, results shatter enthusiast myths : ExtremeTech
• Judge who shelved Apple trial says patent system out of sync : Reuters

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.