The Great Geek Manual News

The blogosphere is abuzz over an Associated Press investigative article this past Friday on the subject of Comcast’s BitTorrent filtering. Briefly, there were a number of articles in early September which alleged that Comcast was using some fairly sneaky techniques to throttle BitTorrent traffic on its network. Comcast, of course, denied any such behavior. It took a month and a half, but both a mainstream media news organization as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have tested and confirmed the previously reported claims. It turns out that Comcast is not only throttling BitTorrent, but Gnutella and, strangely, Lotus Notes are also suffering.

Comcast’s PR people gave me the following statement on Monday: “Comcast does not block access to any Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent…We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience and we use the latest technologies to manage our network so that they can continue to enjoy these applications.” I was also able to interview a Comcast Internet executive who would only speak on background. He bobbed and weaved, sticking to his talking points, yet a few things were clear: he would not deny that the company was sending out TCP RST packets, but stated that if it were being done, it was at a “low level” where average users would not see it.

A Comcast engineer who spoke to the Tech Liberation Front’s Tim Lee confirmed this, stating that “most users wouldn’t even be able to detect the traffic-shaping activities they use without special equipment and training.” On the subject of why the filtering is done networkwide and not just to individual bandwidth hogs: “Comcast (doesn’t) throttle on a user-by-user basis rather than a protocol-by-protocol basis, (as the company is) concerned with the privacy implications of that approach.” Thats right folks, Comcast will sell network wiretaps to the feds for $1,000 a pop, but won’t calculate a user’s total bandwidth per month for “privacy reasons.”

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Source: CNet

While a class action lawsuit is definitely one way to get Comcast to behave, another perhaps more productive way to do so is to have politicians step in and regulate.

On Tuesday, I discussed the issue of Comcast’s anti-BitTorrent “network management” with Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who is a strong supporter of consumer rights and has led the battle to undo the damage caused by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.

He was named Politician of the Year for 2006 by Library Journal, largely due to his efforts to protect the fair-use doctrine and expand Internet technologies to rural areas.

“Comcast has made a major mistake in attempting to hinder peer-to-peer file sharing as an aspect of its network management,” Boucher said. “The inability of customers to (share files) significantly diminishes their ability to utilize the Internet for one of its most important applications, which is user-to-user content.” He also noted that “file sharing is already being used for a wide variety of perfectly lawful and appropriate applications.”

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Source: CNet

In August, we reported on a University of Tennessee student targeted by the RIAA for file-sharing who had attempted to quash a subpoena by arguing that the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) prevented the release of his name, addresses, and phone numbers. The identity of Doe 28 in Virgin v. Does 1-33 will soon be known to the RIAA, as a judge denied the student’s motion to quash the subpoena.

Doe 28 had argued that the RIAA’s request was “unreasonable on its face” and that it should be denied because he had also not waived his right to privacy under FERPA. The privacy law bars the release of educational records without the consent of the students or parents, but “directory information,” such as the student’s name, address, phone number, and e-mail address can be released without permission.

Most of the information sought by the RIAA “falls within the category of Directory Information under FERPA, which according to the university’s policy, does not require defendant’s consent to provide to a third party,” wrote Magistrate Judge H. Bruce Guyton in his opinion.

Judge Guyton also ruled that the school must provide the RIAA with Doe 28’s MAC address, which, as the Jammie Thomas trial demonstrated, will be used by the RIAA to tie specific computers to file-sharing activity. A computer’s MAC address doesn’t qualify as an “educational record” under FERPA, according to the judge, and is therefore not protected.

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Source: Ars Technica

Four people have been sentenced to jail time and tens of millions of dollars in fines for buying discounted Microsoft software and then illegally reselling it at a profit.

Mirza Ali, 60, and Sameena Ali, 53, the husband-and-wife owners of Samtech Research, were sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison and ordered to pay more than $25 million in fines to Microsoft for their role in a software reselling scheme run between 1997 and 2001.

The Alis and their associates purchased more than $29 million worth of software at Microsoft’s academic-discount rates and then resold it to nonacademic entities, making more than $5 million in profits. The two were convicted on Nov. 28, 2006, and had been awaiting sentencing.

Previous to this, the Alis had already been kicked out of Microsoft’s AER (Authorized Education Reseller) program, but they “formed new corporations … to disguise their identity from Microsoft and re-enter the AER program,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement, released Thursday.

They laundered their profits by purchasing real estate in their son’s name and by wiring more than $300,000 to Pakistan, the DOJ said.

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Source: InfoWorld via Yahoo! News

Rather than looking for their perfect match, one in four Americans say the Internet can serve as a substitute for a significant other, according to a poll released on Wednesday.

A survey on the role the Internet plays in people’s lives by Zogby International and communications consultancy, 463 Communications, found that 24 percent of Americans said the Internet could replace a partner for some period of time.

The percentage was highest among singles of whom 31 percent said the Internet could be a substitute — with no difference among males and females.

The researchers said the online survey of 9,743 adults conducted between October 4-8 showed that some younger people viewed the Internet as their new best friend.

For while more than one in four Americans has a social networking profile such as MySpace or Facebook, among 18-24 year-olds this is almost mandatory with 78 percent of them having a social networking profile.

Breaking it down by political beliefs, the study found more Democrats have a social networking presence than Republicans — at 32 percent to 22 percent.

But although American may love the Internet, most are not prepared to implant it into their brain — even if it was safe, the researchers said.

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Source: Software

Intel will start production this week at a new $3 billion factory in Arizona that is its first to mass-produce microchips with circuits almost a third smaller than before, the company said on Wednesday.

The new facility, called Fab 32, will start production on Thursday of a chip design known as Penryn that has circuits just 45 nanometers wide, compared to the 65 nanometers that is used now. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.

Smaller circuits usually translate into higher computing speeds and lower energy consumption. Chipmakers also see improved productivity because they can squeeze more circuits onto a given area of silicon.

Penryn chips will be used in desktops, laptops and server computers that run networks. The processors are scheduled to hit the market on November 12, Intel said.

The design uses a transistor that Intel unveiled last year, an advance

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Source: Soft32

From the outside looking in, it might appear that Microsoft overpaid for its meager stake in Facebook, but according to Greg Sterling, analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, Microsoft had to keep Google out of Facebook. He pointed out that Microsoft’s Live Search could become the Web search partner on Facebook as Google is on MySpace.

Google beat out its competitors on the DoubleClick acquisition, but Microsoft Relevant Products/Services has an investment of its own to brag about this week: a 1.6 percent equity stake in Facebook valued at $240 million.

On Wednesday, the veteran software Relevant Products/Services giant and the Web 2.0 darling expanded their advertising partnership in a deal that marked Facebook’s valuation at $15 billion. Microsoft’s investment makes it Facebook’s exclusive third-party advertising partner Relevant Products/Services. Microsoft will sell advertising for Facebook internationally, as well as in the U.S.

According to Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms and Services Division at Microsoft, making the Facebook investment and expanding the partnership will position both companies for new advertising opportunities around the world. He called it a “great win” for both companies and their users.

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Source: News Factor

With the OLPC facing production delays and implementing new donation plans, the OLPC is “waking up to the realization” that Nicholas Negroponte’s original idea of selling millions of laptops to developing governments has failed, said Wayan Vota, editor of OLPC News. “They really need to start at the grass roots and work up,” he added.

The One Laptop Per Child project was supposed to start production in October, but due to “last-minute bugs,” the bulk of production has been delayed until November 12. That means the project will have trouble delivering laptops to children in Uruguay and Peru, the only countries that have ordered the machines so far, in time for kids to use them over their summer vacation.

And while OLPC still plans to offer the laptops for sale November 12 to 26 to individuals in the U.S. and Canada under its Give One, Get One sales effort, it’s now quite uncertain when those machines will be delivered. Under that program, Westerners would buy two machines — one for a child in the developing world and one to keep. If consumers don’t know when they’ll receive laptops, they might be less interested in participating.

Wayan Vota, editor of OLPC News, said that people should still participate in the program. “What I really hope is that they will be able to deliver laptops to Uruguay and Peru,” he said in a telephone interview. Those countries have already ordered the laptops. “They need them. I would be happy to get mine in February or March if the ‘give-one’ laptop goes to kids today.”

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Source: News Factor

Japan’s NEC Corp has announced the launch of what it called the world’s most powerful supercomputer on the market, meant for advanced use in the sciences.

Since the 1970s, major computer makers such as NEC, Fujitsu and Hitachi in Japan and IBM, Intel and Cray in the United States have been vying to build the most powerful computer, measured in terms of gigaflops and teraflops.

NEC said its latest supercomputer, called SX-9, was capable of calculating 839 teraflops. Each teraflop is a trillion calculations per second.

The IBM BlueGene/L at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is now No. 1 in the latest list of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers with performance measured at 280.6 teraflops.

The top 500 list is published every six months by researchers at the University of Tennessee, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Germany’s University of Mannheim.

It remains unclear where SX-9 will place in that ranking, if at all, because theoretical peak processing speed isn’t necessarily reflected in actual use. Computers from Cray and Hewlett-Packard Co. are also high on the list of the fastest machines.

Supercomputers are used for massive calculations in areas such as space science, environmental simulations and meteorology. The SX-9 could be useful for figuring out what is happening to our planet’s climate and environment, for example, NEC said.

A shiny black box about the size of an instant passport photo booth, the SX-9 rents for $US26,000 a month.

“The SX-9 has been developed to meet the need for ultra-fast simulations of advanced and complex large-capacity scientific computing,” Yoshikazu Maruyama, senior vice president of NEC Corp, said in a statement today.

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Source: The Age

The Senate on Thursday night approved a seven-year extension of a moratorium on state and local taxes on Internet access.

The Senate voice vote came a little over a week after the House passed a bill calling for a four-year moratorium. The tax ban, first approved in 1998, is set to expire Nov. 1.

Attempts in both the House and Senate to make the ban permanent in recent weeks were unsuccessful despite strong support for the idea.

Sens. Tom Carper, D-Del., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., in a joint statement called the agreement “a commonsense victory both for Internet users and for state and local governments.”

The two chambers will have to reach a compromise on the length of the ban and other differences before the bill can be sent to the White House for President Bush’s signature.

Source: The Associated Press

Author J.K. Rowling’s outing of Harry Potter’s mentor Albus Dumbledore has caused reactions of different kinds around the world.

And a more amusing consequence of the announcement is being experienced by 36-year old Paul Croft, who brandishes a 2-foot tattoo of the newly-exposed wizard on his back.

Circumstances have, however, turned against the well-meaning factory worker father as his co-workers have found it an irresistible urge to make him the butt end of jokes ever since the revelation that Dumbledore was gay, and was in love with a fellow wizard.

“I went into work and everyone was snickering,” recalled Croft. “When I walked in, one of the lads said, ‘Oi, Paul heard about Dumbledore?”

“It’s been terrible,” he added. “I’ve always liked Dumbledore - just not in that way.”

The tattoo, which cost $1200, portrayed Dumbledore holding a scroll which bore the names of Croft’s five children, all of whom are huge Harry Potter fans.

Source: All Headline News

Parents have become more ambivalent about the Internet, with a new study finding fewer of them considering it good for their children.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project said Wednesday that about 59 percent of Americans with children ages 12-17 consider the Internet a positive influence on their kids. That is based on a 2006 survey, the latest available on the topic, and represents a drop from 67 percent in 2004.

Meanwhile, those who do not believe the Internet has had an effect one way or the other increased to 30 percent, from 25 percent.

“The Internet for a lot of parents is now a mature technology,” said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew. “They are not in a honeymoon period with the Internet anymore. They are realizing the Internet is something with good and bad things.”

In both years, only a small percentage consider the Internet bad. Although parents are hearing about sexual predators and other dangers online, Lenhart said, they also see the Internet’s benefits for homework.

“Parents are seeing both sides of the coin,” she said.

The study found parents more concerned about content than time spent online. Sixty-eight percent said they have rules about sites their children can or cannot visit, while only 55 percent control the amount of time they can spend online.

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Source: The Associated Press via Yahoo! News

A United Kingdom-based watchdog on Wednesday said it has enlisted the support of Internet giants such as Tiscali, Yahoo and MSN in the fight against child pornography.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said the three web giants have agreed to publicize the organization’s hotline in order that more Internet users can report child pornography websites to the organization.

IWF’s executive Peter Robbins said, “Our analysts witness the results of terrible sexual abuse being inflicted on very young children around the world and then circulated online. With the help of the online industry, the 28 hotlines we work with around the world and our law enforcement colleagues, the public can help us to remove these websites and end the abuse that is perpetuated every time the images are viewed.”

According to IWF’s research on UK’s Internet users, about 1.5 million adults had accessed child pornography online.

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Source: All Headline News

People who struggle to remember passwords and personal identification numbers will draw pictures on a screen instead, scientists said today.

New software has been developed for the latest mobile phones and handheld computers which uses pictures instead of letters and numbers for security codes.

The idea could be expanded into other areas, as the images will be harder than text passwords to copy by fraudsters, and easier to remember.

Researchers at Newcastle University are also researching if using pictures will also be easier for people with language difficulties such as dyslexia.

The “graphical passwords” are drawn over a background, such as a photo of a flower, a map, a playing card or the night sky.

The computer remembers the number of “pen” strokes used, where the image was started and the order in which they were made.

The system allows users to create passwords which are much more complex than the traditional numeric or alphabetical versions.

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Source: Daily Mail