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Host: Now there is a new report to suggest that mobile phones can cause headaches?

Jonar Nader: Yes, you know, notice the operative word, the ‘a former chief’ not the ‘current chief’ I think he got sacked the moment he said it, he was a medical officer for Telstra and a medical consultant, his field is electro-magnetic fields, and he is saying, that mobile handsets do emit very low levels of radiation, that at first were thought to be safe, but on some people there is a biological effect that it may break that thresh-hold and may cause people to have headaches which may later cause other problems in the brain. Now tho, what he is saying is he needs more research. So on one hand I believe him and on the other I am unhappy because I am sure he is going to go to the government and say give me some money so I can be employed and I can research. And I can tell you that I hate these researchers who just take money.

Host: So we don’t know over how longer period at the moment?

Jonar Nader: No, we will need to research it. But he is saying, from his experience, that the electro magnetic waves do interfere. I mean we see it that basically we will have static electricity when you comb your hair and you put a comb near your hair again you see your hair move. Well there is something happening in mid air and why isn’t it happening right through your skin, and right through your brain? And that is quite possible.

Host: And this is even with the aerial up?

Jonar Nader: You still have this thing about the aerial. What, do you think that somehow this 10cms is going to deflect like superwoman?

Host: I have no idea. That’s what I was told. And do you think that now the phone companies are going to have shares in headache tablet companies as well and everyone is sort of going to be in on it?

Jonar Nader: Well isn’t that a good idea. See you’re starting to think like me.

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Host: The Japanese have unveiled the first ever electronic pet. I think they are sort of motorised dogs or something. I suppose the good thing about these is that when you go on holidays you can just unplug them or turn them off?

Jonar Nader: Well there is build in intelligence into those so that if you do that you will come back with a dead pet. You see, it is called the Tamagotchi. Now the Tamagotchi must be treated like a real think and you must put it to bed at a certain time and you must feed it by playing with it and if you over feed it, it will get fat. It’s a small toy but it is the beginning of ‘hey child, you can’t have a dog because a dog is too messy and Japan hasn’t got the real estate to have dogs in the back yard, so you are going to have a Tamagotchi.’ These things will be the start. And for example what happens after that? What happens if you had a Vant?

Host: What’s a Vant?

Jonar Nader: A virtual ant, you will get the hang of this, watch this. What’s a Vish?

Host: A virtual fish

Jonar Nader: And a Vog and a Vat and a Vird and a Vouse and a Veg. I tell you, a Vum could be a virtual mum and a Vad, a virtual dad.

Host: And hence, the vet will do well, won’t they?

Jonar Nader: Yes, let em leave you with this quote. Ada Augusta Byron, who was the daughter of English poet Lord Byron, she was born in 1816 and when she was 27 she worked with Charles Babbage, whom we now as the father of the modern computer. She herself was dubbed as the world’s first programmer. She said “Computers can’t originate anything. They can only do what we order then to perform. Since computers cant create, they cant think.” And that’s what Ada Augusta Byron had to say on the matter.

Host: Well I am starting to have my doubts. Thanks for coming in. Jonar Nader, who joins us every Sunday night for a look inside the world of information technology.

Below is a transcript of the audio file.

Jonar Nader: What’s happening now is that pagers are having a whole new use like, cop this, you were talking before about a cleaner coming to your house and cleaning your home for you. We can rig it now so that your pager will alarm if your office door at home is opened, or if the garage door is opened. So much so that you can have your pager buzz if someone goes into your bank account and makes a withdrawal or if someone accesses your phone card, or your security numbers. So that a pager can help you become your very own big brother, so you can monitor your own assets and movements and things like that, and that’s where now there is a new birth. And offcourse DNA used to mean something else in Biology and Science now it means Digital Network Alert, which is an alert system for you and further more that’s you receiving. Pagers can also give out signals so that if you are being attacked you can press a button and the local police can find out where you are and where you are being mugged or whatever.

Host: That’s very handy. I look forward to using that.

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Jonar Nader: Now remember last week you were telling me about the Japanese chap who found the hacker?

Host: Yes.

Jonar Nader: And the hacker went to jail.

Host: Yes.

Jonar Nader: Well, by law, people in jail are allowed phone calls. However, the judge had to make a special ruling in this instance and they had to limit the length of calls allowed to this hacker, because they feared that he would go in through the phone and destroy data and evidence. Now that is interesting isn’t it?

Host: Wow, now that was Sutomo somebody or other and he was chasing down this other chap. Quite a mean looking face in the papers.

Jonar Nader: Well wouldn’t you be if you had been arrested?

Host: Well he was quite renowned for it wasn’t he?

Jonar Nader: Yes.

Host: Now, we were talking about the company that had the bug, the tax department had a bug and now the Commonwealth Bank then suffered a bug, but that wasn’t a bug that the Commonwealth Banks computers had suffered.

Jonar Nader: Well, they don’t believe it was a bug. The Commonwealth Bank suffered a major problem on Friday the 3rd. I think it will be always known as 3 5:15 because it occurred on Friday the 3rd at 5:15 and the operators saw that every single computer at the Commonwealth Bank was offline, the main connection switch was off, as so within a matter of minutes, you had hundreds of phone calls flying around the country and 50 people joined together to bring the system up again.

Host: What does that involve?

Jonar Nader: Well they had to have teams of people working together, so you had to have different scenarios, 10 people in one corner assuming it is a hard disk error, and other people assuming it is telephone lines and another group thinking that perhaps it is the computer itself, the IBM mainframe, and can you imagine the frustration, the excitiement, the tension and the energy inside the computer room in Sydney as they tried to get that system up.

Host: Jonar, in that situation, do you know that at that point it is not a virus, or do you just don’t know what it is, only that something is wrong?

Jonar Nader: Well, you haven’t got time to think, all you know is you have thousands of customers around Australia, 1600 sites, 32 000 computers and terminals and PCs offline, you don’t have time to find out why, all you have to do is worry about how to get it back online. But even today, they have ruled out the virus. Mr. Peter Andrews, the General Manager of information systems is confident that it is not a virus, but you just never know how a hiccup occurs. And I think by this time next week we will know exactly what the problem was, although they suspect it was to do with the hard disk mirroring.

Host: So, at 5:15 there wouldn’t have been people in the branches, but there would have been people wanting to draw money out of ATM’s and stuff like that.

Jonar Nader: Well that is true, ATM’s were down aswell. All electronic systems were down. It hadn’t really happened before on such a mass scale so it is a real lesson for everyone involved.

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Host: In other news, music pirates over the web have been fined $1 000 000 for pirating popular songs. What sort of message is this sending to pirates do you think? Don’t do it?

Jonar Nader: Well as you know, people copy tapes and CD’s and give them to their friends, and that’s only a one on one, but some people do it by the hundreds, and the artists are saying that is not fair. And you can see this with books, sometimes you can see books on shelves where the author doesn’t get anything. And there is this group on the web where they actually used to sell or give away books. There is a new rule now that applies to everybody on the web and is hopefully being adopted worldwide that states even if you are giving something away, it is still the same as selling it, so to avoid the notion of “well I didn’t profit from it” so profit is not necessarily the motive. So the $1 000 000 doesn’t have to be paid because they know this is ludicrous because these people can’t afford it, but they have just done it for the legal precedent or you would pay us if you do this again. So it is hanging over their head, like a bond of some kind, it is a strong signal, because the web does enable people to do so much more, more quickly and on a broader scale.

Below is a transcript of the audio file.

Host: Hello Jonar.

Jonar Nader: Hi Bruce, Hi Phil.

Host: Good evening Jonar. What’s on your mind?

Jonar Nader: Well I thought tonight a quick technology round up, a few things happening. Speaking of technology, you know my nephew goes to a private school and they said no more phones with cameras.

Host: Good, that makes sense.

Jonar Nader: But manufacturers aren’t making them, so they are going on these websites desperately trying to outbid each other to buy these $2 tin pot things and they are going back up in price, because they don’t want them at school, they don’t want them on Bondi Beach and so it goes. But that is interesting because a manufacturer of the stun gun, you know the stun gun that shoots out electricity to apprehend violent people etc?

Host: Yes.

Jonar Nader: Well, there has been such pressure to say that these stun guns could hurt you and the police associations and people like that are saying no and amisty international said that 70 people died in North America in 2001 from such things and then the Canadian Onterio Chief Coroner said “no no no one died” so anyway, point being cameras. So what is happening now with these new stun guns is they are attaching cameras to them and with the new models when you shoot it starts taking videos, so you have evidence to the court as to what happened, why it happened, and when you shot it. And there are many states in the US that can allow you to carry such a personal protection device for under $1 000 and they are quite attractive, they are slightly larger then a mobile phone and are obviously like a gun and there are various types, but I went to the website of one of the companies who is selling them for $999 and down the bottom it says, if you have occasion to use this stun gun, the best advice we can give you is to put the gun down, leave it on so that you can run away from the assailant and if you can furnish us with a police report we will replace it free of charge. What an interesting sales hitch.

Host: A money back guarantee.

Jonar Nader: Yes. Also around the courts, you know spammers, people who send out junk emails all over the place, even now they are saying help the tsunami victims and it is a virus or something, well this chap was caught, 30 years of age in Virginia, they gave him a $1 000 bond or bail which he didn’t put up, but he is worth US$24 000 000 because he has hacked into the micro economy, because he tells people to send me $1 and I will send you a pamphlet on how you can be rich, you know, send me $1 and I can do this or that for you heal your baldness or whatever he is going to do for you. Well he sends out something like 7 500 000 pieces of spam on a good day and in some states they cant apprehend you for that because some states say that well it is legal as long as you don’t send more then 100 000 emails a day or whatever, anyway, point being this guy wasn’t apprehended for sending span, but for changing his name and for misrepresenting himself through the internet and it is amazing how you can always catch somebody through the back door. And another one that would be of interest to people like us on radio, you wouldn’t think at first, Apple, the computer company is suing someone who is putting trade secrets about them on a website, the website is just like any newspaper and apparently the news should not have been leaked. And they are saying we are going to sue you for giving out the trade secrets on your website, and the people are saying n, we are investigative journalists, if we can find the information, it is up to you to stop the leaks from your organisation. Well the thing about radio here is that if in fact Apple wins it means the website will be sued, not the man who leaked the information who was an employee, which means that in the future if I tell you something, and I have that information through a leak, you the station could be sued for broadcasting something that was considered to be trade secret.

Host: It is like industrial espionage.

Jonar Nader: Yes, but you are not to know, and an editor might say, I am not to know how or where this information came from and I go to the CEO and he tells me something. How are you supposed to triple check everything? What about freedom of speech? What about the right to whistle blow?

Host: Exactly. Jonar, thank you for tonight. Jonar is the author of ‘How to lose friends and infuriate people’ and ‘How to lose friends and infuriate your boss’ and he is also on the web at www.losefriends.com.

Below is a transcript of the audio file.

Jonar Nader: Everything is cancerous. Chewing on a lead pencil is cancerous.

Host: And the plastic on a pen probably is too. Now in terms of lasers, that is one aspect of the computer industry that we haven’t looked at. A laser is computerised right?

Jonar Nader: Yes, well we use lasers everyday, even CD-Rom players and compact disks, they are laser driven and our laser printer is as well. Laser stands for Light Amplification by Simulated Emission of Radiation. A lot of words are like that which people do not realise, like scuba and radar, which stands for Radio Detecting And Ranging. In any case, radars are finding their way out of electrical devices and into surgeries for knee reconstructions and heart and all sorts of things. And the latest is the removing of wrinkles. Face lifts have always been a go. The level that is just like a face lift is scrubbing the face or using all sorts of detergents to remove the wrinkles, well now through lasers, wrinkles and other scars and blemishes can be removed. This technique was used in 1992 but is now becoming more popular after 900 people were tested and of those 900, 75% of 90% of patient’s wrinkles were removed. They didn’t disappear but they were etched away in very micro millimetre ways, but that is an interesting new look, you can remove all the crows feet and laugh all you want.

Host: Fabulous, but what do you mean they are etched away?

Jonar Nader: Well the laser actually hits and it removes away a level of skin but you can hardly see the damage.

Host: But the wrinkles that you have are really only one fine layer of skin, and if you get rid of that layer of skin there would be no wrinkles underneath that.

Jonar Nader: Yes, well another thing is that the cologne actually shrinks and tightens as a result of the heat produced.

Host: Oh I see.

Jonar Nader: Well that is one use of lasers.

Host: Removing tattoos?

Jonar Nader: No well you see tattoos are rather deep because the pins go in and actually put the pigment inside by about a millimetre or two, that is too hard, it would require a graft or a transplant. But the other thing lasers can be used for is what we call, gold finger printing. A lot of court cases are about whether this gold came from your country or mine and whether this came from your mantle piece or mine and whether it was melted and made into a ring and whether this ring belonged to Henry the 5th or whatever. By using a laser It can give you about 70 trace elements to give you the pattern of where that gold may have come from. Another thing that lasers are used for now is sealing wetsuits. I don’t know if you surf, but you know how they are supposed to be water proof, water does still come through in certain areas where they are sewn especially and so lasers are used to melt micro dots to stop water coming in. And finally one more thing is that they can penetrate the first layer of a famous painting like the Mona Lisa and see what is behind it, it is a bit like an x-ray of sorts and in that sense you are able to see whether the Mona Lisa had her hand up in the air or under her chin or whether she was smiling or not smiling. And you will often find that the early painters were relatively poor and couldn’t afford fancy canvases, so they used to paint layer upon layer, and you can see how certain things were moved or changed, and in fact, a lot of them reflect culture, you can see that men who had the sword in their right hand, under the laser you can see that they had the sword in their left hand, and you actually question, why was that changed and what would that mean.

Host: And so that would be a way of proving fakes and forgeries eventually.

Jonar Nader: Yes.

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Host: A mouse helps you to engage with a computer screen, I am surprised it has been around for 30 years Jonar.

Jonar Nader: Yes, well it was shown 30 years ago at a computer conference, it was then just a box the size of a cigarette packet, and they said “what does that do?” and he said “well it will help us interact with the computer” and then over the years it had many rivals, it had the thing called the track ball, then we had the thing called the light pen and then we had the thing called the tablet which looked like a table that you could plot things with and you know people in the graphics industry and architects and CAD CAM experts were using the tablet and then we now have in notepads the thing called the nipple, which is a tiny little thing imbedded in the key board and you can move it around, and the touch pad, which is a flat glass panel, but despite all that, the mouse is still the most sold and manufactured product, about 90 000 000 are made each year in China and Mexico and there is a whole new industry around them, like mouse pads and you have got rude shaped mice, and mouse shaped mice, and car shaped mice and so forth, so they become a fashion accessory.

Host: Now it has been said to me that left handed people have some trouble with the mouse.

Jonar Nader: Yes, well now there are left handed mice would you believe that you can contour to your hand. There is a problem in health risks, tenanting virus and RSI and there are special health concerns associated physically with the mouse so that is why you will find them of different shapes and sizes and that is why over the years they have contoured them to the hand, it not deffinatel doesn’t work for a left hander, but you can buy them.

Host: 30 years it took us to include left handed people in computer usage, bizarre isn’t it.

Jonar Nader: They are thinking that in the future they won’t use the mouse at all, you can just use you eyes, they will have a laser coming at you from the screen and it can see your eye movement and see where your eye is going, so you can have eyeball controlled computers so we will see if that will take over.

Host: Yes, nothing will amaze me anymore.

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Host: I get the impression, that there is nothing new in any of this, that virtual reality is not a new concept, we are just looking at the technological version of it is that right?

Jonar Nader: There is nothing new in it per say, what we are saying is that it is becoming cheaper, remember we are in the ER era and everything is becoming cheaper, faster, smaller, greater, etc.

Host: What is the ER? A television show?

Jonar Nader: Well you just put ER at the end of everything, suffix, so cheap becomes cheaper so VR has been around for a long time, not to be confused with the other VR which is Voice Recognition which is also getting a resurgence, I mean pilots have been trained on VR for a very long time.

Host: Flight simulators?

Jonar Nader: Yes but they are billions of dollars worth to set up that whole infrastructure, but what we are saying is can we bring VR into the home? Can we bring VR to training? For example, a British petroleum company is saying rather then send people down for the first time ever to fix submarines in the dark and dangerous waters, why don’t we train them before hand? Similarly, if you are and astronaut and want to go out and fix a satellite, why don’t we train these people in a safe environment first, before we send them out on dangerous missions? So VR has had had many years of use. But so many things have been with us for a long time, like Mars, and people hear the end of them and get excited, well with technology they just get the beginning of them and get excited, like the CD player has been around for so many years, but yet only in the last 10 years people have started talking about it. And the fax machine has been around for decades, and people are now saying wow we have them. No, we have had them for 50 years, but it is how quickly you want to invest and how quickly you can afford to invest. And a lot of people’s problems is that they don’t want to believe, see we are going through that stage at the moment.

Host: Something old, something new, that is what information technology is like, Jonar Nader, thanks for coming in.

Jonar Nader: Okay talk to you next week.

Below is a transcript of the audio file.

Jonar Nader: The biggest change, if I had to answer that question, would have to be news and breaking news because the internet did something different. It stole everybody’s thunder, so when people like Matt Drudge and people like that had followed the British nanny saga, when the star reports came out, even when the Olympics and tennis came on, the biggest news came off the internet.

Host: Well the drugs reports, the electronic news and the internet were the ones who broke the Monica Lewinsky story.

Jonar Nader: Yes large news organisations like news week had been sitting on Bill Clinton’s story for a long time and they weren’t sure what to do and there was all sorts of protocol to go through, clearances, checks, and of course the Drudge did stick his neck out and broke it and of course that is what did start the avalanche for people like him, and the internet is available to people like you and anytime you want, rather then turning on the television and waiting for the news.

Host: To come on at 6pm or 7pm or whatever.