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David Attenborough: 3D will always be event TV

<img alt="Flying monsters 3d" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/classifications/home-entertainment/home-cinema/images/david-attenborough-flyingmonsters-420-90.jpg" width="420"></IMG> Forget James Cameron, 3D has a new spokesperson and he goes by the name of veteran UK broadcaster David Attenborough. Attenborough is heading up Flying Monsters 3D, the latest documentary from Sky that shows off the epic potential of 3D, mixing Avatar style imagery with superb wildlife photography. Written and narrated by Attenborough, it is the first of a range of shows that have been specially commissioned by Sky for its Sky 3D channel. 3DRadar were lucky enough to attend the premiere of the first episode in London this week, where Attenborough talked about his 3D adventure. Here he speaks about how he thinks 3D is a game changer for TV, just like colour broadcasting in the Sixties. Why was prehistoric flying monsters the subject of the documentary? David Attenborough: It was an obvious subject for 3D as dinosaurs are stuck on the ground, but the Pterosaurs we brought to life fly around it is this sort of imagery that's great for the format. What did 3D bring to the documentary? DA: I hope that 3D really made a difference, that we haven't been too obvious with the technology and that we let 3D do what it does without forcing it. 3D brings a reality to television that 2D just can't bring. What was it like 'acting' with CGI creatures? DA: It was important for the narrator and the CGI to interact. They should be seen together on the screen, so that you believe some of the later CGI without the narrator. The actual filming with 3D cameras was the biggest change. I am used to small teams, but in a 3D production you have 12 people alone just to control the camera. How significant is 3D to television? DA: It's pushing the boundaries - it's like the early days of television. When TV began in the Sixties, people had television sets and thought it was a miracle. 10 years later and colour came about and this was an event but then it became wallpaper. 3D won't become wallpaper, because of the way it is viewed through glasses. It is an experience, it will always be event TV. Is 3D good for all TV? DA: 3D won't be good for trivia; it should be used for programmes that really mean something. Can we expect more 3D programmes from you? DA: We are working on a 3D show about penguins. They are good for 3D shooting as they don't do too much, just sit there. But we will be shooting underwater, which will look mind blowing. It's interesting you are with Sky and not the BBC for Flying Monsters… DA: I'm a BBC man through and through. The BBC has been doing a great deal of technological advances. But the iPlayer and other things cost a lot of money, a lot of taxpayers' money. So the BBC has decided to put its resources in other things and not 3D. This is not to say it isn't filming wonderful things, but it hasn't invested in a channel like Sky. When it comes to Sky, I was glad to be asked. Having been there for colour, I am grateful I am here for 3D too. Flying Monsters 3D makes its debut on Sky 3D on Christmas Day. For more details, go to <a href="http://www.sky.com/shop/tv/3d/">www.sky.com/3d</A>.

David Attenborough: 3D will always be event TV

Forget James Cameron, 3D has a new spokesperson and he goes by the name of veteran UK broadcaster David Attenborough. Attenborough is headin...

In Reality-There Is Always Spyware

I received a spam email the other day and the subject said "Tired of reality shows? Make your own!"Of course I deleted it and proceeded to go about my online chores, but later that email got me thinking, what if there was a 'Online Safety' reality show? Hear me thru ok?There would be contestants.... Say on a sunny south sea island beach, and each contestant has to accomplish a variety of tasks to win. You would get to vote one or more contestants off the show if they were too good or maybe a ringer. The same for the really dumb ones,after all, it would have to be exciting to keep the viewers interested.So the basic task would be to succeed in staying safe online while surfing the web, and completeing various online challenges. For example, they would have to insure the computer given them was secure.... Ya know, updated with the latest from Microsoft, etc. Then they would have to get online and insure their provider was also credible and choose which browser they want to use too.Oh, don't forget their anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall programs, gotta make sure those work.Now they are ready for the competition. They would have to send and receive, and reply to emails.Hopefully they would know how to set up their email program to protect against attachments and pictures infecting them, and if not they would have to learn. Not only that, but in addition they would have to know weather or not to reply to a email, because in today's game it could be a phish or worse, a scam to get them to enter their personal info at a fake bank site.Ok, on to the rest of the challenges, like buying a product and insuring the website used is safe.If the checkout does not have that lil' lock icon at the bottom right, they could be in for trouble. Continuing on, they have to visit a variety of websites to gain knowledge about a given subject, hopefully they wont pick up a 'drive by download', resulting in a keylogger or a bot being installed on the computer used to compete.Another task would be to register at a forum or blog and participate. Some programs that run forums and blogs are susceptible to hacks, hopefully they wont lose their personal info they gave when they registered to nefarious users set to sabotage their computers.Then it gets tough. They have to download and install a program, something like a weather update service or maybe one that tracks favorite sports scores. A lot of these are loaded with spyware, adware or even malware.At this point, some will have failed. They will have forgotten to update their antivirus or said yes to a popup that allowed some evil program to glean their passwords or such. The show will be down to a few who were knowledgeable enough beforehand or will have learned sufficiently while on the show to stay in the running.After the last commercial, its only a half hour show ya know, it all climaxes with them visiting their bank to pay bills and access their account balance. If they can safely do this and not have given up their holy grail of information, the bank account info, they will be the winner.The prize? Vegas of course. After all, not insuring your online security is gambling, and the house always wins. By the way, who do you think they would pick to be the host of the show?Me of course, I wrote the article! My lovely wife would be the Vanna White style woman wearing my "Spywarebiz" t-shirt, and telling the contestants what they have won.	 	 		 			 				 					 						About the Author:Doug Woodall has a website at <a href="http://www.spywarebiz.com" target="_new">http://www.spywarebiz.com</a> There he provides free information and recommended products to combat Spyware, Viruses and other Online Nasties.

In Reality-There Is Always Spyware

I received a spam email the other day and the subject said "Tired of reality shows? Make your own!" Of course I deleted it and ...

Scammers Don't Always Want Your Money - At First!

Sometimes scammers, clever and scheming vultures they are, may not immediately prey on you for your financial contribution. They may have something more deadly in mind - deadly to you, your computer, and the computers of all your friends. Once the scammers establishes a relationship with you, he/she knows that your email address is a "live" address (one that will give him and others he will sell your address to) so he can secretly then move on to phase two - flooding you and all the other "live" addresses he obtained with hoaxes and chain letters.And, sadly, these emails and chain letter emails carry hidden spyware (pieces of coding that will allow the originator to take control of all the computers it touches). The code is so written that even if the email is deleted, it will still work effectively from the Recycle Bin. That's the work of scammer who are also hackers.What Are Internet Hoaxes and Chain Letters? Internet hoaxes and chain letters are e-mail messages written with one purpose; to be sent to everyone you know. The messages they contain are usually untrue. A few of the sympathy messages do describe a real situation but that situation was resolved years ago so the message is not valid and has not been valid for many years. Hoax messages try to get you to pass them on to everyone you know using several different methods of social engineering. Most of the hoax messages play on your need to help other people.Who wouldn't want to warn their friends about some terrible virus that is destroying people's systems? Or, how could you not want to help this poor little girl who is about to die from cancer? It is hard to say no to these messages when you first see them, though after a few thousand have passed through your mail box, you (hopefully) delete them without even looking.Chain letters are lumped in with the hoax messages because they have the same purpose as the hoax messages but use a slightly different method of coercing you into passing them on to everyone you know. Chain letters, like their printed ancestors, generally offer luck or money if you send them on. They play on your fear of bad luck and the realization that it is almost trivial for you to send them on. The chain letters that deal in money play on people's greed and are illegal no matter what they say in the letter.The Risk and Cost of Hoaxes: The cost and risk associated with hoaxes may not seem to be that high, and isn't when you consider the cost of handling one hoax on one machine. However, if you consider everyone that receives a hoax, that small cost gets multiplied into some pretty significant costs. For example, if everyone on the Internet were to receive one hoax message and spend one minute reading and discarding it, the cost would be something like: 50,000,000 people times 1/60 hour times $50/hour = $41.7 millionMost people have seen far more than one hoax message and many people cost a business far more than $50 per hour when you add in benefits and overhead. The result is not a small number.Probably the biggest risk for hoax messages is their ability to multiply. Most people send on the hoax messages to everyone in their address books but consider if they only sent them on to 10 people. The first person (the first generation) sends it to 10, each member of that group of 10 (the second generation) sends it to 10 others or 100 messages and so on.Generations and (Number of Messages): 1st (10); 2nd (100); 3rd (1,000); 4th (10,000); 5th (100,000); and 6th (1,000,000)As you can see, by the sixth generation there are a million e-mail messages being processed by mail servers. The capacity to handle these messages must be paid for by the users or, if it is not paid for, the mail servers slow down to a crawl or crash. Note that this example only forwards the message to 10 people at each generation while people who forward real hoax messages often send them to many times that number.Recently, we have been hearing of spammers (bulk mailers of unsolicited mail) harvesting e-mail addresses from hoaxes and chain letters. After a few generations, many of these letters contain hundreds of good addresses, which is just what the spammers want. We have also heard rumors that spammers are deliberately starting hoaxes and chain letters to gather e-mail addresses (of course, that could be a hoax). So now, all those nice people who were so worried about the poor little girl dying of cancer find themselves not only laughed at for passing on a hoax but also the recipients of tons of spam mail.How to Recognize a Hoax: Probably the first thing you should notice about a warning is the request to "send this to everyone you know" or some variant of that statement. This should raise a red flag that the warning is probably a hoax. No real warning message from a credible source will tell you to send this to everyone you know.Next, look at what makes a successful hoax. There are two known factors that make a successful hoax, they are: (1) technical sounding language. and (2) credibility by association.If the warning uses the proper technical jargon, most individuals, including technologically savvy individuals, tend to believe the warning is real. For example, the Good Times hoax says that "...if the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in an nth-complexity infinite binary loop which can severely damage the processor...". The first time you read this, it sounds like it might be something real. With a little research, you find that there is no such thing as an nth-complexity infinite binary loop and that processors are designed to run loops for weeks at a time without damage.When we say credibility by association we are referring to who sent the warning. If the janitor at a large technological organization sends a warning to someone outside of that organization, people on the outside tend to believe the warning because the company should know about those things. Even though the person sending the warning may not have a clue what he is talking about, the prestige of the company backs the warning, making it appear real. If a manager at the company sends the warning, the message is doubly backed by the company's and the manager's reputations.Both of these items make it very difficult to claim a warning is a hoax so you must do your homework to see if the claims are real and if the person sending out the warning is a real person and is someone who would know what they are talking about. You do need to be a little careful verifying the person as the apparent author may be a real person who has nothing to do with the hoax. If thousands of people start sending them mail asking if the message is real, that essentially constitutes an unintentional denial of service attack on that person. Check the person's web site or the person's company web site to see if the hoax has been responded to there. Check these pages or the pages of other hoax sites to see if we have already declared the warning a hoax. Hoax messages also follow the same pattern as a chain letter. Chain letters and most hoax messages all have a similar pattern. From the older printed letters to the newer electronic kind, they all have three recognizable parts: (1) A hook. (2) A threat. and (3) A request.The Hook: First, there is a hook, to catch your interest and get you to read the rest of the letter. Hooks used to be "Make Money Fast" or "Get Rich" or similar statements related to making money for little or no work. Electronic chain letters also use the "free money" type of hooks, but have added hooks like "Danger!" and "Virus Alert" or "A Little Girl Is Dying". These tie into our fear for the survival of our computers or into our sympathy for some poor unfortunate person.The Threat: When you are hooked, you read on to the threat. Most threats used to warn you about the terrible things that will happen if you do not maintain the chain. However, others play on greed or sympathy to get you to pass the letter on. The threat often contains official or technical sounding language to get you to believe it is real.The Request: Finally, the request. Some older chain letters ask you to mail a dollar to the top ten names on the letter and then pass it on. The electronic ones simply admonish you to "Distribute this letter to as many people as possible." They never mention clogging the Internet or the fact that the message is a fake, they only want you to pass it on to others.Because cybercriminals are becoming smarter and more sophisticated in their operations, they are real threats to your personal security and privacy. Your money, your computer, your family, and your business are all at risk. These cybercriminals leave you with three choices:1. Do nothing and hope their attacks, risks, and threats don't occur on your computer.2. Do research and get training to protect yourself, your family, and your business.3. Get professional help to lockdown your system from all their attacks, risks, and threats.Remember: When you say "No!" to hackers and spyware, everyone wins! When you don't, we all lose! Resource Box:	 	 		 			 				 					 						Related story: Index of Hoaxes [http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBHoaxIndex.html]Etienne A. Gibbs, Independent Internet Security Advocate, consults with individuals, small business owners, and home-business entrepreneurs regarding online protection against spyware, viruses, malware, hackers, and other cybercrimes and pc-disabling issues. For more information, visit <a href="http://www.SayNotoHackersandSpyware.com" target="_new">http://www.SayNotoHackersandSpyware.com/</a>.

Scammers Don't Always Want Your Money - At First!

Sometimes scammers, clever and scheming vultures they are, may not immediately prey on you for your financial contribution. They may have...