Internet commentary
Keywords: Internet, Computer software, Medical equipment
You'll remember that in the last issue I commented on Mozilla Firefox, as a first class browser with many distinct advantages over Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Today, I'll chat with you about another new Mozilla product,Thunderbird. This is their latest e-mail client, which has equally distinct advantages over Outlook and Outlook Express. What is perhaps not very well known is that Microsoft has not been devoting much energy to the development of improvements to these softwares for several years, perhaps a little cosmetic touch here and there. This is probably one of the reasons why these e-mail clients are not very good in terms of internet security. Thunderbird is a horse of a different colour!
Let me be very frank from the start; Thunderbird is not perfect, but what software is? Whatever, it is a whole host better than anything else I have tried and the cost is attractive – free-of- charge, because it is an open source software, costing only the time to download it. If you wish to do so, it can be found at http://www.mozilla.org.
If we have a look at Figure 1, we can see that the Window has three boxes, by default (other configurations are possible). The left-hand one gives a folder tree. In this case, I have mailboxes at different levels, all of which are filled automatically by my POPFile automatic classification system. In this example, I have one new message in the IPC TechNet mailbox and 26 spam messages that have gone into the Trash box (these can be viewed for checking before mass-deleting them).
Figure 1Typical Mozilla Thunderbird layout, as an e-mail client reader. To send e-mails, the left-hand box displays the address book, the top-right one handles the addressing and the bottom one is the space for typing the message
The top right-hand box shows the listing of messages in the selected mailbox. This may be organised in several different ways; here I have chosen to show it by thread. Underneath this, is the box displaying a selected message. So far,there is nothing outstanding in this. The only thing that can be seen which is perhaps not visible in most other clients is the icon entitled Junk in the toolbar. Thunderbird has its own spam filter, working on the Bayesian principle. I don't use this feature, preferring POPFile to do my filtering. However, it is probably very useful for those who wish a simple Go/No Go classification of spam. If you highlight every message that is spam, and press the Junk icon, the system will learn and subsequently automatically classify the spam which you receive. This can be automatically filtered into the Trash box. If you wish an independent review of my set-up, please visit the web site http://channels.lockergnome.com/it/archives/20050315_bayesian_filtering_at_its_best.phtml.
Where Thunderbird excels is more behind the scenes. In particular, the authors have taken extreme measures to ensure maximum security. For example, it would be very difficult for anybody to hack into the application. Above all, the Address Book is encrypted to prevent illicit use of the contents, to propagate viruses for example.
From the Options menu, there are several tens of ways you can configure Thunderbird to your liking. For example, the Message Filter system is probably the most powerful that I've come across and is even customisable so that you can filter from header lines and automatically give colour-coded priorities to e-mails from your boss or wife. You can also automatically set-up filters from an incoming message. All the features are far too numerous to catalogue here, though. However, that is not all, there are script files that the knowledgeable user may modify, with hundreds of parameters, to change how Thunderbird reacts to specific situations.
One negative point I found is that, although it is blindingly fast when you start with it, if your mailbox contains many thousands of messages, it does begin to slow down. It is easy to mitigate this problem by moving the old messages to be archived to a different ad hoc mailbox. I use a different profile for this.
Now, is it easy to move to Thunderbird from other e-mail clients? The answer is yes. It can be done in two phases: moving existing messages and address lists and going along the learning curve. I have a friend who is totally computer-illiterate and she asked my advice about some e-mail security problems she was having. With some trepidation, I moved her from Outlook Express to Thunderbird (amongst some other things). I was very surprised to find that her learning curve lasted only a couple of hours, to the extent that she expressed the view that the new client was much superior and more “user- friendly”compared to her old one, just the following day. With this in mind, I recommend Mozilla Thunderbird very strongly, no matter which e-mail client you are used to.
Regular readers are used to my security rants. Please allow me to revisit the problem of “phishing”. The last time I wrote about this, it was still called “fishing” and was in its infancy. Let me remind you what it is. You receive an e-mail purporting to come from your bank or another trusted person, asking for a confirmation of some details through an https page on their web site, with a link to it. This may be relatively banal, such as to obtain details for targeted advertising but, more often than not, it seeks bank account numbers, user IDs, passwords, credit card details and so on. “Phishers”have become very astute at their métier and it may be almost excusable to be tempted to fall into the trap set by these criminals, under some circumstances. They make the “419 Nigerian scammers” look primitive in comparison, and we all know that even they are sometimes successful in extorting money from the gullible. For example, the “phishers”clearly show in their message that the hyperlink to their web site is that of the URL you are familiar with but if you look at the Hyperlink Properties (how many people would?), you will probably see that it goes to an IP number. If you click on this, it is a pixel-by-pixel reproduction of the page you would normally see. However, there is worse to come. The original e-mail message asking you to co-operate will contain a tiny HTML sequence that will contain the QHosts Trojan. If you then type the real URL of, say, your bank, the internal DNS Hosts file in your PC will cause it to be shunted to the “phisher's”site. This is a terrible security flaw in Windows that has not been widely publicised and is certainly valid for all versions of Windows up to XP SP1. I do not know whether it is the case for the relatively recent SP2. To mitigate the danger, many firewalls and anti- malware utilities lock the Hosts file against unauthorised changes so, if you have taken my past advice and installed these,the risk is minimised.
Finally, before we get down to business and look at some web sites, let me mention that the new(ish) SP2 for Windows XP has a “Security Center”that can lull you into a false sense of security. (By the way, in the last issue, I mentioned that Microsoft withdrew their offer of a free CD for SP2; and downloading was the only way to upgrade. No doubt under pressure, it is now possible to order a free CD- ROM again. My apologies if I misled anyone.) Well,this “Security Center” will not show whether some third-party firewalls or anti-virus utilities are up-to- date and working. Worse, this is because the authors of these utilities have disabled the feature inasmuch as it is claimed that it may interfere with how they work. This is not a Microsoft error. Nevertheless, if it is so easy for the utility authors to disable a feature designed to show whether you are at risk or not, how easy would it be for a malware author to design a Trojan Horse to do the same thing – and do something worse to your machine while you believe that you are safe?
Having just made an appointment for my annual pacemaker check-up, I realise that microelectronics and medicine go increasingly hand-in- hand. My dentist no longer uses film for X-rays, but digital radiography, using CMOS sensors of more than 2 megapixels to acquire the images, with better quality at lower radiation levels. There are even devices which smack of science fiction, such as wireless endoscopic “smart pills” that can be used to see the whole of the alimentary canal from the mouth to the anus, as they transit, or “eyes”for the blind (I'm sure that term is not politically correct, but it's easier to understand than optically challenged; a rose is a rose is a rose, is a rose,as Gertrude Stein said). Obviously, all these marvels are possible only with the latest electronics packaging technologies, which is where we come in.
This site is quite relevant to our business, because it describes the use of lasers in the manufacture of various medical devices, although only a small part is consecrated to electronics, the rest to machining and marking objects, such as catheters. Resistor trimming is not specifically mentioned, although the implication is there, because micromachining ceramics and piezoelectric transducers use very much the same technique. It is quite an interesting page.
This page claims that the company is the largest independent manufacturer of hybrid circuits for medical applications. While specialising in implantable devices, they also claim to service ultra-miniature requirements for external ones, such as in-ear-canal hearing aids. This company must be a good one to consult for anyone looking for a contract manufacturer, capable of going through the whole process from initial design to the finished product.
One of the key areas where microelectronics comes into its own is the development of analytical sensors for medical applications. This page catalogues nearly a score of company- developed sensors for live blood analysis. Hunting around the site does not reveal much about how these sensors or their associated electronics are made but, as in the previous example, the company is also a contract manufacturer capable of development to specifications.
We can see here that this company manufactures hybrids for such applications as pacemakers and defibrillators. It's a pity that the photographs of such small devices have been much reduced in size, without the possibility of seeing a 1:1 or larger image by clicking on the thumbnail. The company has three manufacturing plants in California. Some of the pages on this site are a little vague; for example, it is said the firm will assist customers in the design of the end products, but the implication is that they will not do the overall package from start to finish, similarly to the two previous manufacturers,unless I have misread the information. This is not a negative criticism, because to do the whole design and development package will require different specialists and it may be that the company prefers to be top expert in a narrower sphere of activities; it is too easy to be a Jack of all trades.
Implantable devices need power. Pacemakers, for example, have single- use batteries that generally last for 6-12 years of continuous use. Subsequently,the whole device is surgically replaced. It is not possible to recharge the battery in this application by, for example, an induction loop external to the body, because programming and telemetry are also achieved by induction loops. Other applications, such as muscle nerve stimulators, do not have this limitation and a microminiature rechargeable battery becomes a possibility. This page describes such a power supply, a tiny battery about 2 mm diameter by 10 mm long. Note that this description is more in the style of a press notice and is not from the manufacturer itself; there is a link to the producer, but I could not find any details of this device, so I presumed it may still be experimental. Nevertheless, it is interesting.
This company appears to specialise in custom semiconductors, as well as assembling medical devices. They claim to have the world's smallest pacemaker module. They also make external as well as implantable devices, with traceability to individual semiconductors. As the concern is international with factories in England and Singapore, as well as the USA, this may offer a better attractiveness than some of the others as a contract manufacturer outside North America.
Medtronic is a giant multinational corporation in the field of implantable and external devices and is probably the most important. This URL leads you to the Home Page, from which you can browse in whatever direction takes your fancy. As a supplier of complete equipment, it would possibly not be of much interest to us, were it not for their subsidiary MMC at http://www.medtronic.com/semi/, which makes their own mixed analogue/digital semiconductors in a number of technologies. This offshoot can also custom design and produce semiconductors for third parties and is therefore, a potential contract manufacturer for very high reliability active devices in a variety of housings.
Not surprisingly, the makers of this kind of equipment have a trade association in the USA, the Medical Devices Manufacturers' Association. Equally not surprisingly, the MDMA is in Washington, DC, because one of its activities is lobbying the FDA. On the outside of this select circle, I can hardly imagine how difficult it must be for a company to introduce a new device onto the medical market without testing and approval by the authorities, in any country.
This is an interesting 3-year old magazine article with the title Micro medical devices could transform health care. Although it is irrelevant to the needs of this journal and its readers, it is a guideline to the state-of-the-art in the subject. As such, we can see where we are going.
Oh! How disappointed was I at this URL! It opens a page where it lists components used in all kinds of medical microelectronics, each type with a Go!link. Clicking on any of them takes you to a general engineering portal (always the same one) from which you may, or may not, be able to find your way to somewhere useful. As the Psalmist said, “O deliver me from the deceitful and wicked man!”
The Medical Applications of MEMS is obviously apposite, if only because the manufacture of MEMS (MicroElectricalMechanical Systems) parallels that of microelectronics production. This PDF file appears to be a reproduction of a paper presented at some conference and describes many forms of sensors actually used in modern medicine with some indications of how drawbacks may be overcome.
This is another article on the use of MEMS in biomedical applications and it is quite an eye-opener. It links into http://www.lerner.ccf.org/bme/biomems/,the Lerner Institute that has several fields of research including microelectronics technology. This is clearly a strong contender for research and development in the coming decades and we have probably seen only a tiny part of future medical applications of MEMS.
I cannot resist including this page, which is more medical than technological, as it shows a diagram of a capsule endoscope. Effectively, this is a colour TV camera, lighting, electronics and transmitter all in the size of a capsule that is easily swallowed. As it transits the gastrointestinal tract,it transmits pictures of what it sees to outside the body. This is no longer science fiction, but a fantastic feat of microelectronics. My only hope is that the capsules are not recovered for reuse!
I think that the microelectronics industry can be proud of the contributions it has made to the various fields of medicine. It is certain that millions have been helped with a better quality of life as a result. But this is only in its infancy; what marvels have we yet to see?
Brian EllisCyprusb_ellis@protonique.com
Note1. Oui, cela était autrefois ainsi, mais nous avons changé tout cela, et nous faisons maintenant la médecine d'une méthode toute nouvelle. Molière, Le Médecin malgré lui(1667), Act 2, Sc. 4.
