National
John Hofilena on May 17 2013
Japan’s National Police Agency (
NPA) – the national umbrella organization of Japan’s prefectural and local police forces – announced on Thursday that they have started a new cyber-defense center. This new unit is composed of 20 officers solely concentrated on efforts to fight internet-related attacks. The center’s prime responsibilities will be to gather information and analyze data as needed to help in official investigations by the police related to cyber-attacks. A cybersecurity officer, the new post created with the center, will head the unit.
In what is projected as a logical step on the pathway towards non-tangible computer interfaces – the trend started in movies by Tom Cruise’s
Minority Report and totally made famous in Robert Downey Jr.’s
Iron Man series of blockbusters – a Tokyo research and
computer design team have put forward one of the first nominees towards this path, a system that projects a keyboard or smartphone interfaces onto surfaces like a person's moving palm or a sheet of paper.
Japan’s Ministry of Science and Technology is planning to start the development of a supercomputer able to take 100 times the processing capacity of Japan’s current fastest machine,
Fujitsu’s K computer. The working group of technological experts has finished drafting the midterm draft of the development plan, and the project is expected to be finished by 2020.
In the wake of recent statements made by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and United States Secretary of State John Kerry about the importance of cybersecurity – the protection of secure computer systems and networks from malicious and intentional attacks – Japan and the
United States started the first bilateral talks on issues relating to cyberspace on Thursday. Both countries have agreed on the notion that cyberattacks pose a real threat to national security, and look to discuss countermeasures and international rule-making regarding the realm of the
Internet.
Ever been caught in a commute needing a certain file from your home desktop computer? Or forgetting your laptop at home when you have important work files stored there? Don’t worry, everybody has been there at some point in time, and the usual solution would either be to make the long trip back home or just make do without them. That’s the logic behind remote access programs and apps like Citrix’s
GoToMyPC, which is being launched by the globally-renowned networking company in Japan with partners
KDDI and Ascentech K.K.
As prostitution and human trafficking become more advanced and high-tech, it becomes cheaper and cheaper to set up a "business" that never goes off season. The recent arrest of three men in
Tokyo for running an illegal live chat room that promoted child prostitution and illegal imagery gave insights on how they prey on young girls and how little they had to spend to set it up.
A Japanese prefectural government has come up with a novel – if not old-fashioned – way of resolving the problem of migrating desktop
computers which still run on the aging Windows XP operating system, of which over 30 percent of all computers in Japan still run on. The solution – keep the venerable OS running, but disconnect it from the Internet.
A decommissioned
Japanese Coast Guard vessel was recently sold to a demolition company whose owner is a regional member of a Pyongyang-friendly organization, without confirmation that the information in its navigation systems have ben wiped clean. With tensions escalating in the region as
North Korea continues with its bellicose attitude, any military information left out in the open is a security breach, especially as the vessel has now been totally scrapped by the demolition company.
Starting next week, Toys R Us Japan will start distributing a tablet device specifically targeted for kids. The global toy store chain hopes that the Meep
tablet, meeting moderate success in the United States and European children’s market, will also be a hit in Japan. Aimed at children ages 6 years old and above, the tablet computer will be released next Friday,
priced at ¥14,999 (approx. $150).
The computers are one step closer to world domination. Well, at least when it comes to the game of
shogi, or Japanese chess. The GPSShogi program stunned five professional shogi players in the Shogi Master Versus Machine Match series. The humans lost three matches, drew one and won at least one in the tournament.
