As an IT professional, I subscribe to a weekly publication called eWeek. Among its other features, eWeek provides product reviews. The Feb 15, 2010 edition had a review of a pair of USB flash drives built by a company called "IronKey." These USB drives are almost physically indestructible, and the data they hold can be made as secure as the user wants to make it.
The guts of the drive are encased in "military-grade epoxy" - just like the engine computer under the hood in your car, or in a Humvee or Stryker - and then "wrapped in a single-piece aluminum casing." The reviewer who tested them put them through all kinds of agony, and only one of the seven evaluation units died.
Each drive is serialized, with the serial number embedded in the electronics and etched in barcode on the side of the aluminum case. Data security is provided through a Web-based interface that can get to the drive wherever it is in the world, as long as it's attached to a computer connected to the Internet.
One of the coolest features of this device is its "self-destruct" feature. If it gets lost or stolen, the owner can issue a self-destruct command through the Web-based interface. The drive consists of one or more flash memory chips and a CryptoChip (capitalization is by IronKey, not me). (The CryptoChip is what manages the data security.) When the drive is connected to the Internet, it receives the self-destruct command, wipes its flash memory chip clean, and destroys its own CryptoChip. It doesn't blow up, Mission-Impossible style, but the device is essentially bricked.
Yeah, so I don't own one of these myself, but now I want to. To find out more about the IronKey USB flash drive, read the eWeek review at http://tinyurl.com/yjqe73j , or read more about it at https://www.ironkey.com/s200 or https://www.ironkey.com/d200. This is one cool toy.
UPDATE, 13 AUGUST 2019: Those product links don't work anymore, but fear not: IronKey is still around. The company was acquired by Imation, and then by Kingston Technology. Kingston has kept the IronKey product line alive, and greatly expanded it. Go to https://www.kingston.com/us/usb-flash-drives and scroll down, almost to the bottom of the page. The product line has expanded to more than 20 different drives, all of them with the same features as the original S200 and D200.
Showing posts with label toys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label toys. Show all posts
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Sunday, December 13, 2009
A Toy Store Story
The missuz and I went shopping for Christmas gifts for our grandchildren yesterday morning. We have a 5-year-old granddaughter and an almost-one-year-old grandson. (We also have an almost-born granddaughter, but she'll have to wait another year.) Since toys and other things to play with seemed to be at the top of the list, we headed for the toy store.
The toy store is the one that used to advertise with a giraffe, and whose middle initial is Yah. When our own kids were of toy-buying age, this was one of our family's favorite stores. As grandma and I were wandering the aisles yesterday, I made several observations.
1. We have barely set foot in the toy store - in any toy store - for about 8 years. Those 8 years represent the gap between when we stopped needing to buy toys for our own children and when we started needing to buy toys for our grandchildren. Seriously: can you imagine not going to a toy store, especially one of the largest toy-store chains in the nation, for eight years?
2. The classics never die. And I happily blame this on the baby boomers. Seriously, there was a time when I wanted desperately to buy Lincoln Logs for my own kids, and I couldn't find them anywhere. There was a "progressive" faction during the 1980s and 1990s, that insisted that all children's toys had to have one or more of the following characteristics:
The classic plastic ones are still around, like Easy Bake Ovens, Legos, and Frisbees.
3. Some old classics have been improved or redesigned for the new century. That Fisher-Price telephone is now available with a dial or touch-tone buttons. Some Easy Bake Oven alternatives use the family's microwave oven instead.
4. Not everything needs batteries anymore. For a while, it seemed like every toy in the store came with a limited set of features, all of which required batteries to power blinking lights, sounds, or moving parts. It's gratifying to see the toy world going retro. Not relying on electricity or electronics can free a child's imagination.
5. Some of the new toys are stupendous and will join the classics in the hall of fame. The wooden Brio train sets that came over from Europe ten years ago have been imitated over and over, so they're now affordable to everyone. Most of the imitations are compatible with Brio.
6. The Thomas the Tank Engine franchise and the Disney's Cars franchise are merrily going head-to-head. I wish them luck and hope they both win, because that means the children will win, too.
7. There's still a lot of garbage on the toy store shelves. I can't believe some of the junk that toymakers try to shove off on consumers, nor can I (sometimes) believe that people actually buy this junk. Oh well, the marketing department has never overestimated the gullibility of the American (or Canadian, or ...) consumer.
(Well, there have been a few massive failures, such as Baby Uh-Oh and the Stinkor action figure, but only a few.)
8. Red rubber balls will never go out of style.
The toy store is the one that used to advertise with a giraffe, and whose middle initial is Yah. When our own kids were of toy-buying age, this was one of our family's favorite stores. As grandma and I were wandering the aisles yesterday, I made several observations.
1. We have barely set foot in the toy store - in any toy store - for about 8 years. Those 8 years represent the gap between when we stopped needing to buy toys for our own children and when we started needing to buy toys for our grandchildren. Seriously: can you imagine not going to a toy store, especially one of the largest toy-store chains in the nation, for eight years?
2. The classics never die. And I happily blame this on the baby boomers. Seriously, there was a time when I wanted desperately to buy Lincoln Logs for my own kids, and I couldn't find them anywhere. There was a "progressive" faction during the 1980s and 1990s, that insisted that all children's toys had to have one or more of the following characteristics:
- plastic
- educational
- electronic
- covered with stickers, which parents had to apply from a sticker sheet the size of a gas-station road map (and this was scarier than "some assembly required")
- so utterly safe as to suck all the fun out of them
The classic plastic ones are still around, like Easy Bake Ovens, Legos, and Frisbees.
3. Some old classics have been improved or redesigned for the new century. That Fisher-Price telephone is now available with a dial or touch-tone buttons. Some Easy Bake Oven alternatives use the family's microwave oven instead.
4. Not everything needs batteries anymore. For a while, it seemed like every toy in the store came with a limited set of features, all of which required batteries to power blinking lights, sounds, or moving parts. It's gratifying to see the toy world going retro. Not relying on electricity or electronics can free a child's imagination.
5. Some of the new toys are stupendous and will join the classics in the hall of fame. The wooden Brio train sets that came over from Europe ten years ago have been imitated over and over, so they're now affordable to everyone. Most of the imitations are compatible with Brio.
6. The Thomas the Tank Engine franchise and the Disney's Cars franchise are merrily going head-to-head. I wish them luck and hope they both win, because that means the children will win, too.
7. There's still a lot of garbage on the toy store shelves. I can't believe some of the junk that toymakers try to shove off on consumers, nor can I (sometimes) believe that people actually buy this junk. Oh well, the marketing department has never overestimated the gullibility of the American (or Canadian, or ...) consumer.
(Well, there have been a few massive failures, such as Baby Uh-Oh and the Stinkor action figure, but only a few.)
8. Red rubber balls will never go out of style.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
