On this week’s Quotes of the Week, Ulster Bank has a issue with the Ampersand, Apple Wave catches a lot of people out, Google aim to save the world and a new bug that could cause a lot of problems for the internet.
Ulster Bank Fears the Ampersand
“Ulster Bank is aware of an issue that affected a small number of customers”
Here in Ireland, Ulster Bank had a unexpected error when about 10,000 customers of Aviva Life & Pensions premiums were rejected by Ulster Bank’s software as it did not recognise the & symbol after the software was updated. The glitch comes two years after a serious computer crash locked Ulster Bank customers out of their accounts for up to a month.
The Latest in iPhone Technology
I tried using the new IOS 8 feature WAVE where you can charge your phone with a microwave, does not work @Apple pic.twitter.com/IWsWnVboUl
— nick (@Fallenbot) September 18, 2014
The Apple iPhone 6 was made available last week for purchase and some clever people decided to use this opportunity to prank a few unsuspecting customers. A professional poster suggested that a new app for the phone was the ability to charge your phone through microwaves. The application called “Wave” seemed to have lured many people in through a clever twitter campaign. It was so successful that a number of different media organisations starting writing telling readers that the “Wave” app was a hoax. You can read the full development of the story here.
First the Internet, now the World
“The business was growing super fast, but without his stamp on it”
A participant of Google’s Larry Page new project Google 2.0 in which he plans to tackle the world’s problems and see what the search giant can do. AS well as that he plans to develop replacements for passwords with biometrics and improving location services down to inches. Read more about his plans here.
Shell-shock, the new world menace
“Sometimes there are flaws in that code. And over the years, the flaw becomes part of all sorts of products.”
Nicole Perlroth reports on the latest software bug discovered that could mean a great vulnarability to computer users than the Heartbleed bug that earlier this year. The bug relates to Bash, an acronym for Bourne Again Shell. This is a command-line shell. The shell lets users issue commands to launch programs and features within software by typing in text. It’s typically used by programmers and shouldn’t be open to the wider world, though Shellshock changes that. It was invented by Brian J. Fox by in 1987. The free piece of software is now built into more than 70% of the machines that connect to the Internet. That includes everything from servers, and routers, to items like refrigerators and cameras.
Mr. Fox maintained Bash for five years before handing over the reins to Chet Ramey, a programmer who, for the last 22 years, has maintained the software as an unpaid hobby. The bug was found by a open source enthusiast Stephane Chazelas after existing for 22 years. He contacted Mr. Ramey and the bug was reported without trying to alert hackers. Read more about it here.
If you have any suggestions for quotes of the Week, you can contribute through the discussion on TEST Huddle here.
