C64 emulator for iPhone:

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Odds and ends, Apple, iPhone

Posted by mikki at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

iPhone as Tricorder:

Filed under: Humor, iPhone

Posted by mikki at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Significant Chunk of IP Address Space Hijacked by Notorious Mass Emailing Company:


nternet address space long ago issued to San Francisco Bay Packet Radio, an organization that was involved way back in the 1970s in testing ARPANET, a predecessor to the global commercial Internet that we all use today. That organization was given the rights to do whatever it wanted with 134.17.0.0/16 address block.

That entire swath of Internet space is now registered to an entity in Westminster, Colo., called SF Bay Packet Radio LLC, but except for a similar name, this company has no relation to San Francisco Bay Packet Radio… ? A review of records posted by both Spamhaus.org and e-mail provider Outblaze.com shows that a large number of Internet addresses on the company’s Internet space have been blacklisted for sending junk e-mail… Spamhaus spokesperson said that JKS Media/Media Breakaway had indeed hijacked the IP space from its previous owner, and that the IP space should be revoked under the rules set out by ARIN.

Posted by mikki at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Full story

The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB "thumb drive" that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described its use to the 350 law-enforcement experts attending a company conference Monday.

The device contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer's Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer.

It also eliminates the need to seize a computer itself, which typically involves disconnecting from a network, turning off the power and potentially losing data. Instead, the investigator can scan for evidence on site.

More than 2,000 officers in 15 countries, including Poland, the Philippines, Germany, New Zealand and the United States, are using the device, which Microsoft provides free.

Posted by mikki at 08:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Availability Is Not Security If an Abandoned Sea Anchor Cut the Cable?:
I see in some fora people are still arguing that security involves countering malicious actors, and availability alone is not security, even if people are depending on availabity.

Were all those recent cable cuts in the Med. and the Persian Gulf not security issues, even though some of the affected companies are now planning to spend $300-400m on physical security to fix the problem?

If the culprit had been a Russian mobster or Al Qaeda or the CIA rather than (in one case) an abandoned ship anchor, then it would have been security, but now it's not?

-jsq

Posted by mikki at 08:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Comments on an IP Address Trading Market:
With IPv4 addresses becoming scarcer, there has been talk that a trading market will develop. The idea is that those holding addresses they do not really need will sell them for a profit. More alarming is that there have been a few articles about how the Regional Internet Registries (RIR) are contemplating creating such a market so that they can regulate it, conceding that it will happen anyway and taking the "if you can't be 'em, join 'em" attitude. This is all a bit disturbing. Maybe I'm naïve, but it's a little unclear to me how an unsanctioned trading market could really operate without the RIRs at least being aware... More...

Posted by mikki at 07:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another thought provoking piece from John Quarterman

Egerstad Arrested: Uses Tor to Snoop Snoopers; Is This a Crime?:


So this fellow was just arrested and some of his computers confiscated:

Dan Egerstad, a security consultant, intercepted data carried over
a global communications network used by embassies around the world in
August and gained access to 1000 sensitive email accounts. They contained
confidential diplomatic memos and other sensitive government emails.

After informing the governments involved of their security failings and
receiving no response, Egerstad published 100 of the email accounts,
including login details and passwords, on his website for anyone curious
enough to have a look. The site, derangedsecurity.com, has since been
taken offline.

—
Swedish Police Swoop on Dan Egerstad - UPDATE
by Fergie,
Fergie's Tech Blog,
14 Nov 2007

So Egerstad gets arrested, yet
this man, who says "Privacy no longer can mean anonymity" walks around free.

-jsq

Posted by mikki at 02:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stephen Hawking writes a kids' sf trilogy:


Stephen Hawking has written a kids' science fiction trilogy called George's Secret Key to the Universe, the first volume of which is to be published in 29 countries this year, with subsequent volumes coming once a year. His goal is to create a rigorously scientific work of sf that turns kids onto sf -- that's my kind of book! Hawking's co-writers are his daughter (who came up with the idea) and the French physicist Christophe Galfard, whose thesis was based on Hawking's work.

The trio wanted to "provide a modern vision of cosmology from the Big Bang to the present day," without presenting it as magic, Galfard said. "All of what we see (in the universe) corresponds exactly to what has happened already," he added.

The sole element of fiction in the book involves supercomputer that opens a door allowing George and his friends to travel into space aboard an asteroid.

"I don't know of any other book quite like George's Secret Key to the Universe," Hawking, 65, said. "I think we may be unique."

Link to George's Secret Key to the Universe,

Link to Cosmos article

(via Futurismic)

Posted by mikki at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Boffins bend space and time to measure neutron star:

Einstein shouts 'told you so' though tear in space-time

Astronomers have caught three neutron stars in the act of distorting space-time, just as Einstein predicted. Bendy space-time has been seen around black holes before, but this is the first time astronomers have seen it around any other body.…

Posted by mikki at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FCC Must Protect Innovation, Privacy in e911 Rulemaking:


CDT, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Sun Microsystems this week urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to be cautious in considering an "automatic" location requirement for VoIP providers for use during e911 emergency calls. In comments filed today with the FCC, the groups noted that while the e911 system is a vital part of our public safety net, VoIP services are unable to provide "automatic" location information (without user input), and a requirement that they do so would harm innovation and competition. The comments also cautioned that some proposed solutions to address the VoIP location requirement would destroy users' privacy.

Posted by mikki at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Woz Admits To Speeding Ticket For 104 MPH In Prius - TechNow News Story - KNTV | San Francisco:


Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak admits that he was speeding in his Prius-hybrid.

Wozniak said he got a ticket for going 104 miles per hour on Interstate 5 earlier this year, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
A judge did not buy his excuse that he was used to the kilometer speeds used overseas, and fined him about $700.

Wozniak said he was surprised by how smooth the car sailed at high speeds.

He does he not recommend those speeds -- his 55 miles per gallon dropped to between 31 and 37 miles per gallon at 104 miles per hour.

Posted by mikki at 05:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google disables own blog as spam | Tech news blog - CNET News.com:


Google may be getting a little overly zealous in its antispam efforts. The company says it accidentally disabled one of its own corporate blogs after mistaking it for spam.

Google Blogoscoped first reported the problem with Google's Custom Search blog. Apparently, the blog had an odd message full of misspellings and incorrect grammar that said:

"Google Custom Search, is the wonderful product from Google which many webmasters have been looking and dream for. It allows webmasters to create their own custom search engines to search only the sites he/she wants. ? I?ll cover up more on this powerful tool very soon in my next blog." It was signed "Srikanth."

The blog is now back to normal, with no new posts since July 17. Here is the explanation from a Google spokesman as to what happened:

"Blogger's spam classifier misidentified the Custom Search Blog as spam. If a spammer gets caught by our automated classifier, the blog owner will receive notification of this identification. At the owner's request, the Blogger team will review the blog to verify that the blog in question isn't spam. In this case, the Custom Search Blog bloggers overlooked their notification, and after a period of time passed, the blog was disabled. The content wasn't deleted, but it was removed from the URL.

After the blog was disabled, the URL went back into rotation. A subsequent person came in, claimed the URL, and posted the new content about Google Custom Search, which was not an official post. So, it was a case of 'URL squatting' and not a security issue or any kind of hack.

Even after blogs are disabled as spam, the owner can write in requesting a review for her or his blog to be restored. If the review proves that the owner's content was not in fact spam, the blog will be restored with all content. So, when we saw what happened on Tuesday--and were well aware that our content wasn't spam--we restored the official Google Custom Search Blog. The individual who had claimed the URL and published the blog post in reference still has his content; it's just hosted at a new URL."

Posted by mikki at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TheStar.com - entertainment - 50 glorious years of 'kill da wabbit':


At any other time, the film would not have been made. Imagine the pitch: "Let's steal time and funding from our other projects so we can go way over budget making a cartoon with no jokes, and no real gags. The score will be a German opera. Kids won't get it. Most adults won't get it, but I don't care because I think it's funny."

Fortunately, the time was 1956, the director was Chuck Jones, and the place was the Warners Bros. backlot animation studio dubbed "Termite Terrace." The result – released 50 years ago this week – was "What's Opera, Doc?," voted by animators in the 1994 book The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals to be the greatest cartoon of all time.

It is the antithesis of the routine cartoon. In place of snappy one-liners we see Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny singing their parts with complete sincerity and commitment. The backgrounds are beautifully textured paintings. The score is powerful and moving. Bugs cuts a striking figure in a metallic brassiere before Madonna was even born. It's audacious and decadent and beautiful and bold and everything the vast majority of cartoons would never dare to be.

Years later, it was my immense pleasure to meet Chuck and spend several hours with him. Never before, and never since, have I encountered someone as smart, funny, passionate and wry, all rolled into one delightful and charming package. I can only imagine the magic at work as he and fellow geniuses Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, Mike Maltese, Maurice Noble, Mel Blanc, Carl Stalling and a host of others created thousands (yes, thousands) of cartoons featuring history's greatest ensemble cast.

Chuck told me he and his team of writers and animators never saw themselves as making cartoons for anyone but themselves. Months, and sometimes years, passed before their work ended up in theatres, and by then they had made so many new cartoons public reaction just wasn't on their radar. It was because they made cartoons to humour themselves, and because studio executives didn't much care what they did so long as they stayed on time and on budget, that "What's Opera, Doc?" was possible.

The key was placing it between two Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons in the production schedule. Formulaic by design, those ones could be done fast and cheap. Knock off the Coyote films ahead of schedule and under budget, reallocate the time and money to "What's Opera, Doc?" so the overall budgets remained intact, and voila! A masterpiece created right under the noses of studio executives who would have vetoed the idea long before Elmer Fudd could have raised his spear and donned his magic helmet.

A few years ago, when I staged a tribute to Chuck and his incredible body of work, showing 15 of his greatest cartoons on the big screen as they were originally meant to be seen, it wasn't "What's Opera, Doc?" that got the biggest reaction, initially. The nearly 500 people in attendance gave their most enthusiastic reaction to the opening credits of "One Froggy Evening" featuring Michigan J. Frog, and "Rabbit of Seville," the famous Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd barbershop ditty. Both great cartoons, to be sure, and both on any animation historian's top 10. The interesting thing was that for weeks afterward, people told me how moved they were by "What's Opera, Doc?" Some had never seen it before. Others had seen it on TV, but absent the big screen and big sound, they had failed to fall under its spell. Seeing it that day, the way audiences first saw it in 1957, they were enthralled.

That's what makes "What's Opera, Doc?" the greatest cartoon ever, and that is why a piece of such grandeur will never be repeated.

That's not to say good work hasn't been done in recent years. The laughs are plentiful with The Simpsons in its heyday, Family Guy most of the time, and South Park when they find that sweet spot between satire and absurdity. On the big screen, Pixar tells stories as captivating as the greatest Disney epics of the past, and pulls the viewer into spectacular and compelling worlds.

They are all great in their own way, but they are to be expected. Animated sitcoms are supposed to be funny and irreverent and mildly scandalous. Feature films are supposed to have rich character development, radio-worthy songs, and captivating storylines. Bugs Bunny cartoons are not supposed to feature a lisping Viking rabbit hunter enthusiastically professing his operatic love for a bunny in drag.

These days, cartoons are made for the small screen, for syndication, for licensing, for Happy Meal toys and theme park rides. Gone are the days when someone like Chuck could trick the system and go on a flight of fancy to animation immortality with such a hugely impractical and absolutely beautiful film.

No one who knows and loves "What's Opera, Doc?" will ever hear Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" without hearing, in their own minds, "Kill da wabbit . . . kill da wabbit." While classical music aficionados may be offended by that fact, I'm okay with it. More than okay with it.

 

Steve Watt owns AnimationConnection.com, Canada's only studio-authorized animation art gallery. He is also the proud owner of a rare original production drawing of Elmer Fudd from "What's Opera, Doc?," a piece of art he will never sell.

Posted by mikki at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ah, the fun of having such a cool toy. My short time playing with the iPhone has been enlightening. I have noticed the following really important attributes, pro and con.

Pro:
Deters zombies. I have not seen ONE zombie since getting the iphone
Makes me a better dancer. Yes, the iPhone is definitely improving my rock steps.
Repels technophobes. The mere sight of the iPhone causes them to run.
Gives me better gas mileage. Yep, the iPhone adds at least 1/2 a mile per gallon.
Coolness factor approaching 11.
Great video renditions so I can watch fight practice and do the inside rather than outside blocks :-)
Good sound quality as an iPod. Yay.

Con:
AT&T/Cingular - still sucks.
No bluetooth file exchange. Major league piss me off factor
No user definable ringtones (yet)
No chat client (yet)
No ability to add 3rd party applications (yet)
Edge

I STILL think this is the best phone on the planet, and I am really enjoying it. I am hoping that our wonderful community of cool people will find some way to load a nice application on there to open up bluetooth file exchange in future, and Apple will get going with the rest of the stuff the phone needs soon.

Posted by mikki at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to the small child for standing in line at the AT&T store (yeah, she got paid). Thanks to her we were #9 in line. There were about 70 people in line when we finally got in. They made a huge deal out of telling us that we were not allowed to open the boxes in the store, then let people in 3 or 4 at a time. They would ask how many you wanted, what size, what accessories, then attempt to check you out. That's where things got sticky.

The AT&T servers started having serious difficulties almost immediately. At our particular terminal, it took 40 minutes to check out. Yep, that's right... 40 minutes. Things kept "breaking" and otherwise not working properly. We FINALLY got out of there with our sealed bag (yep, the bags were self sealing so you couldn't open them in the store).

As we were leaving, the announcement was made that they were now sold out of 8 gig models.

So, getting home, I plugged in the iPhone to my powerbook, it opened iTunes, it synced everything including my email accounts, found my home network and connected to it, and uses the same type interface as the iPod and AppleTV in iTunes to sync music, videos and photos.

I do NOT like the keyboard yet. It's going to take some time to get used to since I type with my thumbs when I am using teeny tiny keyboards like this. This one won't really let you. It wants your index finger. Feh. Perhaps they will fix that in the future.

Course, since I don't have SERVICE in my HOUSE, I can't say how the actual PHONE part works yet. Heh heh. Ironic, no?

Update: The phone part works well when there is signal. Problem is, it's AT&T so the signal totally SUCKS. They don't drop calls because you can't PLACE them. *bah*

Posted by mikki at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm still laughing :-)

Beware the Magical IPhone:


Beware the Magical IPhone
06.27.07 | 2:00 AM
There's been a lot of media attention directed at the iPhone recently. Some of it has been positive, some negative, but none have come forth to acknowledge the obvious, sinister context of Apple's latest toy. This device, portrayed as a harmless product of science, is obviously designed to introduce our children to witchcraft and sorcery.
The central pentagram in Apple's vile altar of temptation takes the form of "gestures," hand movements used to control the device. Wiggle your fingers at the iPhone and it does your bidding. Does that not sound familiar? Is that not one of the main ingredients in the blasphemous bisque of sorcery?
Keep in mind as you consider this dire news that Apple is also one of the main proponents of so-called "voice recognition" technology. Every Macintosh computer they ship includes this "feature," allowing you to command your computer using the power of your voice, much as Harry Potter commands demons to do Satan's work.
Another feature provided by the iPhone is the ability to play videos from anywhere in the world. Think of your child gazing into this device, viewing events taking place elsewhere on the planet and even looking back through time. The device itself has a "friendly" rounded look to it. Is this Apple's way of introducing children to the concept of a crystal ball? Will the next iPhone be a perfect transparent sphere? Very likely.
In addition, the iPhone has the ability to sense the environment around it. For instance, it can tell when you've turned it on its side. No doubt you're thinking, "You move it? Like a magic wand?"
It's worse than that, much worse. Certainly there is a similarity to that obscenely phallic symbol of a sorcerer's Satan-fueled power, but it goes much further. The iPhone's ability to sense motion, proximity and light is clearly designed to make it seem less like an object and more like a "familiar spirit," a sort of witch's helper explicitly banned by Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
Not convinced? The iPhone also includes a built-in web browser, one that has no limitations on the sort of filth it can access. The internet is well known for being willing to answer any question posed to it, at least from an atheist perspective. Right-thinking people realize that knowledge should be limited to that which is healthy for the mind and soul, but the internet does not agree.
And finally, what do iPhone users and witches have in common? Contracts. The iPhone requires a two-year contract with a cellular-phone company, while witchcraft requires an eternal contract with the Devil, but the parallels are clear.
Now consider the implications of all this. A child growing up in this secular age is introduced to a little technological "friend" that it can control with gestures and words, one that lets it look at other places and times, one that is happy to answer any question, especially if the "correct" answer denies God and the Bible. Shortly thereafter the child -- your child -- is approached by a witch or wizard with similar "devices" like magic wands and crystal balls, which require nothing more than the signing of a contract. Is there any reason the child would resist these overtures?
This is no coincidence! Apple is not working alone under some sort of cloak of secrecy. This has been planned for decades, if not centuries! Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, a noted secular humanist, gloated over this sort of "innovation" when he revealed that future advanced technologies would make people unable to distinguish them from magic.
The media are not the watchdogs of these evil devices that are being shoved down our throats and the throats of our children, they are Satan's salesmen!
Avoid the iPhone! Avoid all of Apple's products, and Microsoft's as well! If you're reading this online, it may already be too late.

Posted by mikki at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, when I broke my iPod, I figured that I'd just wait a week and get the iPhone. After all, that's what Apple is advertising you can do.... saying the iPhone is their best iPod to date. Sounds great, eh? Cept for one thing... the biggest iPhone you can get is 8 gigs. The biggest iPod is 80 gigs. My music collection (and I'm not nearly finished digitizing it all) is about 20 gigs. That's not a terribly happy thing.

So off to the Apple store yesterday at Tyson's Corner. The place was packed! Not only the Apple store, but the whole damn mall. It was a gorgeous day yesterday and all these people were inside shopping! UGH! We noticed that all of the employees were wearing T shirts with the date 6/29 on them, heralding the upcoming iPhone release, so I asked what the plans were for it. They said they knew nothing whatsoever about the release itself, and they were pretty annoyed that Apple was keeping them in the dark. They said that all they know is that something happens at 6pm 6/29. Mumble.

So, I figure that with a bit of duct tape, I can put the iPhone and iPod together and make a phone with enough storage to make me happy :-).

Posted by mikki at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Widescreen YouTube on AppleTV!:

Last month Apple anounced YouTube for Apple TV, and it was released on Wednesday. I downloaded the update and played with it a bit and I quickly realized there was a definite lack of quantity of available video. There was some speculation last month that not everything would be playable or converted to H.264 versions required for AppleTV, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason why some videos are available in AppleTV and most aren't.

You can sign in and view your listed of videos marked as favorites, but of the 30 I had previously marked, only 3 were available to play. I went to my computer and marked off another 10, and only 3 more were playable. I did some searches and found usually only 5 or less results for stuff that normally returns 50 or more results.

But the biggest surprise was seeing widescreen video properly handled in the YouTube player on AppleTV. One of my biggest peeves with viewing YouTube on my computer is that anything ripped from a HDTV (16:9 widescreen) source gets smushed into the default player's 4:3 aspect. I was hoping YouTube would someday make their flash player adjust to original source size.

If you do a search for "rodrigo y gabriella" (they're a cool acoustic guitar duo that mix classical and rock techniques) in AppleTV, you only get this one result of the 300+ you get in a computer browser search. But if you play it, it fills the screen of your HDTV with a fairly high quality version of their live set. The odd thing is on your computer, you'll get a vertically compressed version by default and even when shown full-screen.

So it appears the YouTube player for AppleTV only sees a minority of total available YouTube video right now, but of those available, the AppleTV player properly handles aspect ratio accordingly, playing both standard and widescreen aspect ratios. That's something even the browser-based player can't seem to handle.

Posted by mikki at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MIT students demonstrate wireless power transfer:


Mark Frauenfelder:

RayK says

In an experiment, a team from MIT were able to power a 60W light bulb from two meters away. Calling their demonstration 'WiTricity,' the researchers believe that a system is possible that could send electricity to your battery powered devices within a room sized space.

It's a Tesla-dream come true.

WiTricity is based on using coupled resonant objects. Two resonant objects of the same resonant frequency tend to exchange energy efficiently, while interacting weakly with extraneous off-resonant objects. A child on a swing is a good example of this. A swing is a type of mechanical resonance, so only when the child pumps her legs at the natural frequency of the swing is she able to impart substantial energy. Another example involves acoustic resonances: Imagine a room with 100 identical wine glasses, each filled with wine up to a different level, so they all have different resonant frequencies. If an opera singer sings a sufficiently loud single note inside the room, a glass of the corresponding frequency might accumulate sufficient energy to even explode, while not influencing the other glasses. In any system of coupled resonators there often exists a so-called “strongly coupled” regime of operation. If one ensures to operate in that regime in a given system, the energy transfer can be very efficient.

Posted by mikki at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From CircleID:

ARIN Provides Latest Word on Need to Move to IPv6: Will Anyone Heed the Warning? (Does anyone care?):


NetworkWorld is running an article today that talks about the announcement from ARIN (the American Registry for Internet Numbers) of the ARIN Board resolution calling upon ARIN to no longer be "neutral" in the IPv4 vs IPv6 space and instead work to actively encourage migration to IPv6... Until now, ARIN and the other RIRs have generally been fairly neutral in the IPv4 versus IPv6 debate and have not shown a preference in allocation, but this announcement from ARIN shows the first signs of change. More...

Posted by mikki at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got a brandy new LG VX9900 phone from Verizon. My previous car had proprietary hands-free tech that would only pair ONE certain phone to be useful through the center console. That phone was a 2001 vintage Motorola. Now I was free to upgrade my phone! W00t! Given that the Treo isn't very happy with the Prius (which is really something that Palm ought to fix), I got the LG.

Here's where things get stupidly complicated. The Treo allowed me to upload ALL contacts to the phone book stored in the car. This is a good thing, because the LG will not sync with the Mac, thus I can't put all of my contacts onto the LG as yet. This is ridiculously stupid, since the VX9900 is really a cool phone, with a full sized keyboard that you slide the top part of the phone away to use, a REALLY nice screen, and other relatively cool features. It is not as flexible as the Treo, but it's also MUCH less expensive. So why do I have two phones? Good question. I bought the Treo with GSM which only Cingular/AT&T has. BUT, it has really lousy coverage near my house. Verizon has great coverage. Why not dump the Treo and use just the LG? Well, because I want an iPhone which only comes with Cingular (blah). When the iPhone comes out I will sell the Treo on ebay or something, and see if the iPhone will interface with the Prius AND iSync, however the Verizon phone will still be very useful for the many coverage areas in which Cingular no workie.

The upshot of things is that since my contacts are loaded into the car, I can use either the Treo OR the LG in the car by choosing the appropriate little icon on the touch screen. I can then access the phone book that is already loaded into the car, regardless of which phone I use. I can update the phone book in the car through the Treo. Hopefully with Leopard, iSync will suddenly begin to support LG phones (please please please).

In our next installment, I will talk about the world's lamest feature of the Prius - the backup camera. LAME! Also the coolest feature - gas mileage. I'm averaging 43 mpg driving the car like a regular car. That will increase as I drive it like a hybrid. Joy :-)

Posted by mikki at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ICANN Board votes against .xxx:

The application by ICM for the .xxx sTLD has been rejected by the ICANN Board by a 9-5 vote in favor of a resolution to reject the application. Susan Crawford's comments on why she voted against this resolution echo my feelings. I have continued to vote in favor of granting .xxx to ICM and voted against this resolution to reject the application. ICANN is not chartered to be involved in trying to determine whether specific content is appropriate or not. ICANN should not be determining whether top level domains (TLDs) will solve the world's problems or not. We were asked to review an application based on whether the application met the requirements of the Request for Proposal (RFP). My view is that the applicant met the requirements of the RFP and that not granting the applicant their request for the right to run the .xxx TLD is wrong. If the RFP was wrong, this should be taken into consideration when thinking about the next round and not affect our current decision.

On the other hand, as a member of the board, I will respect the majority vote of the board. We have been working on this proposal for years and we have spent a tremendous amount of effort in trying to understanding the arguments and evidence presented to us by a huge number of parties. I urge the public and people who have not been tracking this issue not to over-simplify this issue and read Susan's comments carefully. This is NOT about whether we are for or against pornography. This is about the ICANN process and the role of ICANN.

Posted by mikki at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sound is great. Putting photos up for screen savers is great. Playing certain programs and movies is great. BUT....

AppleTV does not play .mov files, which makes no sense to me. The basic premise is that if you can't import the file into an iTunes library, you can't play it on AppleTV. I have many .avi files and .mov files I have collected. Apple CLAIMS to have a conversion for those via Quicktime Pro or, if you can bring them into iTunes at all, you can convert them into a format compatible with iPods and AppleTV should play that. However, each .avi file I've tried, after it takes HOURS to convert 45 minutes worth of program, has excellent audio but a white screen for video. The same thing happened with a .mov file I tried. Attempting to import the .mov file directly into iTunes gives you a black screen. Of course, this is very disappointing. If it's yet another stupid DRM broken feature, I'm going to be unhappy.

Posted by mikki at 08:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh is this ever a wonderful little box. It was a snap to set up, except that it comes with NO VIDEO CABLES! Thanks so much, Apple. Could have at least shipped it with a component video cable. Anyway, the thing has an HDMI port, a component video output, optical and analog audio, a USB port, and an ethernet port. Be aware there is NO S-VIDEO output, so in case you have an older TV this will not function. It supports both 720p and 1080i (doesn't look like it supports 1080p yet...).

Setup is trivial. I plugged it into my Integra processor and turned the thing on. *poof* there it was. I'm currently syncing it to my video libraries. Apparently it makes copies of the video which can be a pain in the butt for large torrent files, but once it's done it should be fine and I'll be able to watch TORCHWOOD the way it should be seen. For music it's much faster. The optical audio input is a BIG win and makes a significant difference to the sound. Hooray.

In an attempt to sync photos, I seem to have crashed the connection between iTunes and the AppleTv box. I attempted to choose Aperture as the photo application which caused my devices list on iTunes to disappear and the picture to be lost for a few seconds. The music, however, continued to be fine. Restarting iTunes brought the devices list back and did not disrupt the music. Second time was the charm here, and Aperture was actually a selection in the dropdown menu. BIG WIN! It is now synching photos as well as everything else. Now I will see how quickly I can actually fill an AppleTV.

Looks like it's going to take a L O N G time to complete all this sync. Such is life :-).

The UI is typical Apple slick, easy for idiots, the manual is easy to understand and gives you a wonderful selection of probable scenarios for setup and use. The TV shows cute little album covers (when available) and length of time left in whatever song and times out to Apple's selection of photos. I have a feeling that will be replaced with my own photos once the sync finishes.

So... This is great! I like it! It's cool! I'm going to be playing with this thing all day long now, much to the dismay of my law partner. Woo hoo!

Posted by mikki at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We had some server issues that caused a temporary non-functionality of this lovely and wonderful site. Not to worry. We're BAAAAACK :-).

Posted by mikki at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A "must have" for those games of office politics. Skiff approved.

Amusing Four words: USB-powered office c...:


Four words: USB-powered office cannon

Posted by mikki at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm one of those very strange people who hates the sound of a ringing telephone (regardless of what ringtone it uses) as it signals an annoying interruption to whatever it was I was doing. I especially hate hate hate telemarketers, "courtesy calls," "you're our customer so let's sell you this other thing" calls, "would you take this survey of your recent experience with us" calls, "confirm your appointment" calls, or most any other ridiculous annoyance calls that are not from people I care about who have something important to say. I much prefer email or IMs most of the time because I can get to that when I feel like it not not be interrupted in my latest brilliant attempt to write something or while cleaning the fish tank or feeding the aminals.

Imagine my glee when I found this little device called the "Interceptor ID" which allows me to block calls before they even ring my telephone! Glee glee glee. After a set up process in which I installed a "white list" of people whose numbers will ring through, all other numbers go to an automated announcement telling the caller to send email. How handy is THAT? Whenever I make an outbound call, it automatically adds it to the "ring through" list (which I can change on the fly if necessary, if I'm calling someone I don't like, etc. etc.).

While not perfect, since calls from Ed McMahon notifying me I've one a million dollars won't come through, I watched with great joy as it blocked 3 calls this morning from people whom I'd previously told to USE EMAIL. Joy! Rapture! Everlasting Geekish Glee! *insert snoopy dance here*

Posted by mikki at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wired AP News:


Hackers Attack Key Net Traffic Computers

By TED BRIDIS
Associated Press Writer

>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hackers briefly overwhelmed at least three of the 13 computers that help manage global computer traffic Tuesday in one of the most significant attacks against the Internet since 2002.

Experts said the unusually powerful attacks lasted for hours but passed largely unnoticed by most computer users, a testament to the resiliency of the Internet. Behind the scenes, computer scientists worldwide raced to cope with enormous volumes of data that threatened to saturate some of the Internet's most vital pipelines.

Experts said the hackers appeared to disguise their origin, but vast amounts of rogue data in the attacks were traced to South Korea.

The attacks appeared to target UltraDNS, the company that operates servers managing traffic for Web sites ending in "org" and some other suffixes, experts said. Company officials did not immediately return telephone calls from The Associated Press.

Among the targeted "root" servers that manage global Internet traffic were ones operated by the Defense Department and the Internet's primary oversight body.

"There was what appears to be some form of attack during the night hours here in California and into the morning," said John Crain, chief technical officer for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. He said the attack was continuing and so was the hunt for its origin.

"I don't think anybody has the full picture," Crain said. "We're looking at the data."

Crain said Tuesday's attack was less serious than attacks against the same 13 "root" servers in October 2002 because technology innovations in recent years have increasingly distributed their workloads to other computers around the globe.

---

Posted by mikki at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ITU Stops Trying to Take over Internet:


For some time there's been a possibility of the functions of ICANN
being subsumed by the ITU, but it appears that's not going to happen:

The Internet should continue to be overseen by major agencies including
ICANN and the ITU, rather than any new "superstructure," the new head of the International Telecommunications Union said on Friday.

Hamadoun Toure, who took up the reins of the
United Nations agency this month, said the ITU would focus on tackling cyber-security and in narrowing the "digital divide" between rich and poor countries.

Internet should be run by key players: new ITU boss
Reuters,
Fri Jan 12, 1:04 PM ET

Given the track record of properly constituted international bodies such
as ITU and networking (I'm thinking of the ISO-OSI protocols),
the current ad hoc and limited nature of ICANN is a good thing.
Sometimes ICANN even remembers that it's not supposed to be doing governance;
it's supposed to be doing technical oversight in a few limited technical areas.

Most of the real work of coordinating the Internet is actually done by
the root and ccTLD domain registrars and operators, the various regional
address assignment authorities, and numerous other groups, companies,
and individuals who just get on with it.

The Internet has many problems which need addressing, including phishing,
spam, and speed, but more governance in the ITU or UN (or U.S. Dept. of
Commerce) sense seems unlikely to solve any of them.

-jsq

PS: Thanks to

James Seng.

Posted by mikki at 06:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MIT writer says Vista drove her to Mac:

Filed under: Switchers, Education

Technorati Tags: education, switchers

Posted by mikki at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for prohibiting pedophiles from finding children to molest, but this has me a bit worried. Many things could go wrong here. I'm definitely not saying "MySpace" is somehow a constitutional right, but I'm quite concerned that this won't stop here. First off, will convicted sex offenders who have obviously broken the law already, REALLY register every single email address and IM handle they have? Will parents now see places like myspace as "safe" and think they can abrogate their responsibility to check out what their kids are doing online because all the bad guys have been kept out? What about the new ones who haven't been convicted yet?

There are already too many excuses for parents to not supervise their kids' time online. I'm hoping this does not become another one.

Va. A.G. Wants Sex Offenders to Register E-Mail Addresses, IM Names:


RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia is looking to keep kids from chatting online with sexual predators by requiring convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses and Instant Messaging identities with the state's Sex Offender Registry.

Attorney General Bob McDonnell wants the Commonwealth to be the first to team up with MySpace.com. The social networking site is creating a software system that would identify a sex offender should they try to log on to the site.

Posted by mikki at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

25 Years of Internet Mail:

Well, it depends on what you count as the beginning of Internet mail,
but Sendmail, Inc., naturally counts from when Eric Allman wrote
the first version of Sendmail in 1981, and is holding a shindig

tomorrow, 25 October 2006 at the Computer History Museum in Mt. View, California.

Of course, Ray Tomlinson beat that by a decade when he implemented the first known networked mail system in 1971, and Tom Van Vleck implemented mail on CTSS at MIT in 1965, as well as Multics mail, about 1969.

But the Internet didn't exist back then, and at least the experimental Internet did in 1981, so Eric's got a fair claim on the beginning of Internet mail.

-jsq

Posted by mikki at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Slowing the Net:


What does a repressive regime do to avoid free discussion?

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's internet service providers (ISPs) have started
reducing the speed of Internet access to homes and cafes based on new
government-imposed limits, a move critics said appeared to be part of
a clampdown on the media.

An official said last week that ISPs were now "forbidden" by the
Telecommunications Ministry from providing Internet connections faster
than 128 kilobytes per second (KBps), the official IRNA news agency
reported. He did not give a reason.

Internet technicians say speeds of 256 KBps, 512 KBps or higher are
increasingly common internationally. Iranian surfers will now find it
much slower to download music or anything else from the Web. Businesses
have not been affected by the move.

Iran cuts Internet speeds to homes and cafes
Reuters, Wednesday October 18, 03:41 PM

Meanwhile, in no doubt completely unrelated news:

Michael Chertoff, head of US Homeland Security, warned that people
don't need to travel to a country with "-stan" in its name to become
radicalized and commit acts of violence. Instead, they can now turn to
the Internet. "They can train themselves over the Internet. They never
have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else
and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in
things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination," Chertoff said at a
conference of international police chiefs, according to Reuters. "Those
are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies
and satellites."

US: Terrorists telecommuting to work
by Nate Anderson,
10/17/2006 11:22:49 AM

Yesterday, FBI Director Robert Mueller showed up at the same conference
and delivered a similar message. "Terrorists coordinate their plans
cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators
prowling chat rooms," he said, according to CNet.

Mueller took a further step, though, arguing that the US needs stricter
data retention guidelines. "All too often, we find that before we can
catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly
deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders
and protect future victims," Mueller said. The solution? Forcing ISPs
to retain data for set periods of time.

FBI head calls for data retention rules
by Nate Anderson, 10/18/2006 10:29:11 AM

Well, I'd better get back to the no doubt
completely unrelated net neutrality posts.
The U.S. already has Internet connections far faster than those in Iran.
A tenth as fast as those in Korea and Japan.
So this can't be a problem for the U.S., can it?

-jsq

Posted by mikki at 04:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Beyond Whois - Data Mining IANA Protocol Numbers:

We all know about how the "whois" database is being mined by spammers and other scum.

This morning I woke up to find a scam email in my inbox, nothing odd about that.  What was odd, however, was that it was very clear that this email was created by mining the IANA protocol number assignments.

Posted by mikki at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Beyond Whois - Data Mining IANA Protocol Numbers:

We all know about how the "whois" database is being mined by spammers and other scum.

This morning I woke up to find a scam email in my inbox, nothing odd about that.  What was odd, however, was that it was very clear that this email was created by mining the IANA protocol number assignments.

Posted by mikki at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

EFF Sues for Information on Electronic Surveillance Systems:

FBI Withholds Records on Tools to Intercept Personal Communications

Washington, D.C. - The FLAG Project at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed its first lawsuit against the Department of Justice Tuesday after the FBI failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records concerning DCS-3000 and Red Hook -- tools the FBI has spent millions of dollars developing for electronic surveillance.

DCS-3000 is an interception system that apparently evolved out of "Carnivore," a controversial surveillance system the FBI used several years ago to monitor online traffic through Internet service providers. One Department of Justice report said DCS-3000 was developed to "intercept personal communication services delivered via emerging digital technologies" and that it was used "as carriers continue to introduce new features and services." According to the same report, Red Hook is a system to "collect voice and data calls and then process and display the intercepted information."

The FLAG Project first filed its FOIA request for information about the surveillance systems on August 11, 2006. The FBI acknowledged receipt of the request, but the agency has not responded within the time limit required by law.

"Recent allegations of domestic spying by the U.S. government already have both lawmakers and the general public up in arms. Americans have a right to know whether the FBI is using new technology to further violate their privacy," said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "The Department of Justice needs to abide by the law and publicly release information about these surveillance tools."

EFF's FLAG Project, launched last month, uses FOIA requests and litigation to expose the government's expanding use of technologies that invade privacy.

"Transparency is critical to the functioning of our democracy, especially when the government seeks to hide activities that affect the rights of citizens," EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel, who directs the FLAG Project. "We have recently seen numerous instances where federal agencies have sought to conceal surveillance activities that raise serious legal issues."

For the full FOIA suit filed against the Department of Justice:
http://www.eff.org/flag/dcs/dcs_complaint.pdf

For more on the FLAG Project:
http://www.eff.org/flag/

Contacts:

Marcia Hofmann
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
marcia@eff.org

David Sobel
Senior Counsel
Electronic Frontier Foundation
sobel@eff.org

Posted by mikki at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

:: Douglas Rushkoff - Weblog :::


I hope people I've inspired with my work would band together to help me out in my later years if I needed it. Which is at least part of the reason why I'm sending what I can to support cosmic thinking patriarch Robert Anton Wilson, whose infirmity and depleted finances have put him in the precarious position of not being able to meet next month's rent.

In case the name doesn't immediately ring a bell, Bob is the guy who wrote Cosmic Trigger - still the best narrative on how to enter and navigate the psycho-spiritual realm, and co-wrote the Illuminatus Trilogy, an epic work that pushes beyond conspiracy theory into conspiracy practice. Robert Anton Wilson will one day be remembered alongside such literary philosophers as Aldous Huxley and James Joyce.

But right now, Bob is a human being in a rather painful fleshsuit, who needs our help. I refuse for the history books to say he died alone and destitute, for I want future generations to know we appreciated Robert Anton Wilson while he was alive.

Let me add, on a personal note, that Bob is the only one of my heroes who I was not disappointed to actually meet in person. He was of tremendous support to me along my road, and I'm honored to have the opportunity to be of some support on his.

Any donations can be made to Bob directly to the Paypal account olgaceline@gmail.com.
You can also send a check payable to Robert Anton Wilson to
Dennis Berry c/o Futique Trust
P.O. Box 3561
Santa Cruz, CA 95063.

Posted by mikki at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Don't want your machine taken over by spam bots to become a zombie, spewing spam from your brandy new DSL line? Buy a Mac :-). Or at least figure out how to button up your current OS to make sure that the bad guys can't use it to mess with the rest of us.

Meantime, I must thank the amazing Gaige for cutting down my personal spam load to perhaps 10% of what I WAS getting. The vast majority of what's left is filtered beautifully by Spam Sieve. Thanks guys!

BBC NEWS | Technology | More than 95% of e-mail is 'junk':


More than 95% of e-mail is junk, be it spam, error messages or viruses, report mail monitoring firms.

Analysis of the contents of millions of e-mails has revealed that less than 4% is legitimate traffic.

Further work has shown that most of this junk mail is originating on hijacked home computers.

E-mail security firm Return Path said 99% of the computers it monitors that send mail have been taken over by spammers or virus writers.

Return Path reached its estimate by calculating a "reputation score" for the 20 million net addresses of those machines.

The score was derived by analyzing the e-mail traffic sent through those addresses, the number of complaints filed about that address, and if the owner of that address responds to complaints.

The vast majority of these net addresses were not good net citizens, said George Bilbrey, spokesman for Return Path.

Only 1% of net addresses could be regarded as legitimate sources of mail.

Posted by mikki at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stolen laptop with veterans' info recovered | News.blog | CNET News.com:


An official announcement was made Thursday that a laptop computer containing the personal information of around 26.5 million veterans and military personnel has been recovered, CNN reports.

The laptop disappeared from a government employee's home in May in what could be one of the biggest thefts of Social Security numbers ever. The employee who took home the laptop, which also included veterans' and their spouses' dates of birth, did so in violation of Department of Veterans' Affairs policy.

Veterans' Affairs secretary Jim Nicholson says there have been no instances of identity theft reported to date.

Posted by mikki at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple v Does - Free Speech Wins/Bloggers are Journalists:


I am extremely happy to tell you that there is a ruling [PDF] in the Apple v. Does litigation from the Appeals Court. As I told you, Groklaw joined in an amicus brief [PDF] on the issue of whether bloggers are journalists. (I naturally cared deeply about being able to protect my sources, one of the issues raised in the case.) The Appeals Court says they are. I'll put the entire ruling up as text as soon as I can, but I just couldn't wait to tell you about this. Lauren Gelman, at the Center for Internet and Society,Stanford Law School, who did the heavy lifting on the amicus brief, says this about the ruling: The Court also held that the website editors were journalists entitled to claim California’s Journalist Shield to prevent them from being held in contempt for not disclosing sources and to claim the First Amendment’s protections for journalists.This is a *huge* win! Now journalists can feel safe knowing that they can protect their sources’ identity no matter in which medium they choose to disseminate news (as we argued in our amicus brief).

Posted by mikki at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is kind of cool. You can share which weblogs you read and are subscribed to by going to this loverly place and setting up a free membership. share.opml.org. Of course, make sure to put up Psycho Sensei's feed at http://www.psychosensei.com/index.rdf so that we get the recognition we totally deserve as being the blog of choice for all Psychos :-).

Posted by mikki at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm starting to get quite worried about RFID applications and the misuse thereof. People don't understand the dangers of these chips, nor do they even have a real choice regarding whether these devices are being used or not. We're not even told most of the time when they're in use. We are required by the government to use them in multiple cases thus far. For example, our passports are going to be chipped. They SAY that you can only read them when you're a few inches away. How many inches? Can you walk by a street cafe and pick up whether the four people at the table in the front happen to be American citizens with RFID passports? Say that cafe is in Baghdad. Then what?

Gone in 60 seconds--the high-tech version | CNET News.com:


Let's say you just bought a Mercedes S550--a state-of-the-art, high-tech vehicle with an antitheft keyless ignition system.

After you pull into a Starbucks to celebrate with a grande latte and a scone, a man in a T-shirt and jeans with a laptop sits next to you and starts up a friendly conversation: "Is that the S550? How do you like it so far?" Eager to share, you converse for a few minutes, then the man thanks you and is gone. A moment later, you look up to discover your new Mercedes is gone as well.

Now, decrypting one 40-bit code sequence can not only disengage the security system and unlock the doors, it can also start the car--making the hack tempting for thieves. The owner of the code is now the true owner of the car. And while high-end, high-tech auto thefts like this are more common in Europe today, they will soon start happening in America. The sad thing is that manufacturers of keyless devices don't seem to care.

Wireless or contactless devices in cars are not new. Remote keyless entry systems--those black fobs we all have dangling next to our car keys--have been around for years. While the owner is still a few feet away from a car, the fobs can disengage the auto alarm and unlock the doors; they can even activate the car's panic alarm in an emergency.

First introduced in the 1980s, modern remote keyless entry systems use a circuit board, a coded radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology chip, a battery and a small antenna. The last two are designed so that the fob can broadcast to a car while it's still several feet away.

Posted by mikki at 07:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So THAT'S where my friend JBVB went to! Cool.

How RFID hackers can steal gas, cars, and office access:


Cory Doctorow: Annalee Newitz has a great feature on RFID hackers in this month's Wired -- she tells the story of various RFID hackers who exploit vulnerabilities in RFID tags to hotwire cars, steal gas, break into your office, and get up to other naughtiness:
James Van Bokkelen is about to be robbed. A wealthy software entrepreneur, Van Bokkelen will be the latest victim of some punk with a laptop. But this won't be an email scam or bank account hack. A skinny 23-year-old named Jonathan Westhues plans to use a cheap, homemade USB device to swipe the office key out of Van Bokkelen's back pocket.
"I just need to bump into James and get my hand within a few inches of him," Westhues says. We're shivering in the early spring air outside the offices of Sandstorm, the Internet security company Van Bokkelen runs north of Boston. As Van Bokkelen approaches from the parking lot, Westhues brushes past him. A coil of copper wire flashes briefly in Westhues' palm, then disappears.

Van Bokkelen enters the building, and Westhues returns to me. "Let's see if I've got his keys," he says, meaning the signal from Van Bokkelen's smartcard badge. The card contains an RFID sensor chip, which emits a short burst of radio waves when activated by the reader next to Sandstorm's door. If the signal translates into an authorized ID number, the door unlocks.

The coil in Westhues' hand is the antenna for the wallet-sized device he calls a cloner, which is currently shoved up his sleeve. The cloner can elicit, record, and mimic signals from smartcard RFID chips. Westhues takes out the device and, using a USB cable, connects it to his laptop and downloads the data from Van Bokkelen's card for processing. Then, satisfied that he has retrieved the code, Westhues switches the cloner from Record mode to Emit. We head to the locked door.

Link

Posted by mikki at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AOL to launch free AIM phone service | CNET News.com:


America Online is planning to launch by the end of the month AIM Phoneline, a free service that will let AOL Instant Messenger users receive incoming calls from any phone, an AOL spokeswoman said Thursday.

Voice over instant messaging is built into AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger, but AIM Phoneline would be the first to offer a free phone number. Those services compete with the popular net telephone provider Skype, which was acquired by eBay last year.

Users will be able to pay $14.95 a month to upgrade to AIM Phoneline Unlimited, which would allow them to make calls to any number in the U.S. and 30 other countries, the spokeswoman said.

AOL, a division of Time Warner, also plans to roll out later this month a blogging service called AIM Pages that will alert people when contacts in their buddy list update their AIM Pages blog, she said.

Posted by mikki at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CDT Report Identifies Large Corporate Adware Funders:


Large well-respected companies are helping to fund the virulent spread of unwanted and potentially harmful "adware" by paying for advertisements generated by those programs, a new report by CDT finds. In "Following the Money: How Advertising Dollars Encourage Nuisance and Harmful Adware and What Can be Done to Reverse the Trend," CDT details how -- through a complicated network of intermediaries -- major advertisers pay to have their products and services advertised though pop-ups and other ads generated by unwanted advertising software or "adware." (Note: After the initial publication of this report, four of the advertisers named in the document -- Waterfront Media, PeoplePC, LetsTalk.com and GreetingCards.com -- contacted CDT to clarify their adware policies and practices. The current version of the report reflects those updates).

Posted by mikki at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Intel Mac tricked into triple-boot config | Reg Hardware:


Intel-based Macs can now play host to three operating systems and boot into any one of them at will. The triple-boot technique has been outlined on the OnMac.net website, home of the first code to allow the new machines to run Windows XP.

The procedure's not trivial, though it makes use of Apple's BootCamp utility to ease you through the installation of Windows XP. After installing XP, the process walks you through adding a Linux distrubution off a live Linux CD to the dynamically re-partitioned Mac hard drive. This Linux uses a swapfile for virtual memory rather than the more commonplace swap-specific partition due to limitations in the permitted partition structure.

Posted by mikki at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nobody seems to understand that this is exactly the same thing as telling the post office to archive every copy of every letter "just in case" or the telephone company to record all telephone conversations and archive them "just in case." This is yet another ridiculous attempt for government to get into our personal lives.

ISP snooping gaining support | CNET News.com:


The explosive idea of forcing Internet providers to record their customers' online activities for future police access is gaining ground in state capitols and in Washington, D.C.

Top Bush administration officials have endorsed the concept, and some members of the U.S. Congress have said federal legislation is needed to aid law enforcement investigations into child pornography. A bill is already pending in the Colorado State Senate.

Mandatory data retention requirements worry privacy advocates because they permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity that normally would have been discarded after a few months. And some proposals would require providers to retain data that ordinarily never would have been kept at all.

Posted by mikki at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Top News Article | Reuters.com:


BERLIN (Reuters) - German police have arrested seven members of an international gang of so-called "phishers", who hacked into computers of internet banking customers and raided their accounts, authorities said on Tuesday.

"The investigation is continuing but what we can say now is they were able to obtain thousands of individual pieces of data," a spokeswoman for the BKA federal crime office said.

Three other members of the ring are still under investigation.

The word "phishing" is said to derive from a combination of two words, which describes the act of hackers "fishing" for "passwords".

A statement posted on the BKA Web site said the shutdown of the phishing ring of Germans and Lithuanians had prevented "millions of euros of losses" that online banking customers would have incurred if the phishers had carried out their plan.

Posted by mikki at 09:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)