30.9.02
New Net project aims to avoid hacking: The Internet project, dubbed Infrastructure for Resilient Internet Systems (IRIS), will attempt to solve two of the biggest problems faced by Web users: sites being down when too many people try to access a single server and hackers attacking the servers on which information is stored.
26.9.02
A Bounty on Spammers By Lawrence Lessig
But at least with the spam problem, there is a much simpler solution that, so far, Congress has failed to see. Imagine a law that had two parts—a labeling part and a bounty part. Part A says that any unsolicited commercial e-mail must include in its subject line the tag [ADV:]. Part B says that the first person to track down a spammer violating the labeling requirement will, upon providing proof to the Federal Trade Commission, be entitled to $10,000 to be paid by the spammer.
The aim of Part A is to enable simple filtering. If all spam were tagged, then it would be extremely easy to choose whether to receive it or not. Spammers say there are lots of people out there who love to receive spam. Good for them. They can tell their Internet service provider or e-mail client to deliver all e-mail, regardless of the subject line. But those of us who actually work for a living can choose to ignore this class of junk on the Internet by filtering all e-mail with the subject line [ADV:].
The aim of Part B is to make Part A effective. The vast majority of proposals before lawmakers to regulate spam has made enforcement depend either upon an action by the state or by lawsuits filed by ISPs. This is not an accident; it is a product of effective lobbying by direct marketers and other commercial spammers. These people know that attorneys general and ISPs have better things to do than track them down. By making them the only enforcers, spammers know that any law aimed at stopping them will likely not be enforced.
But if the vigilantes who are working so hard to keep lists of offending e-mail servers were to turn their energy to identifying and tracking down spammers, then this passion to rid the world of spam might actually begin to pay off—both for the public and for the bounty hunters. If we deputized the tens of thousands of qualified people out there who are able to hunt offenders, then a large number of offenders would be identified and caught. Pretty soon the message to spammers will be delivered quite effectively: Label or pay.
Profits from piracy: Evidence is mounting that cracking down on software copyright infringement may not be good for business. Case study: Microsoft in China.
25.9.02
Expert warns of 'Cyberterror': At least 100 nation-states are investigating waging war by computer - so-called "cyberterrorism", the United States believes.
New chip will bring GPS to all: Motorola is unveiling a global positioning system chip it says is the first GPS satellite sensor small enough and hence cheap enough for practical use in consumer-electronics devices such as cell phones and notebook computers.
24.9.02
Frente común de la UE contra hackers: La Unión Europea se ha dado un plazo de seis meses para desarrollar un sistema de notificación e intercambio de información sobre ataques cibernéticos y sabotaje informático.
U.S. puts money on World Bank "hacktivists": The U.S. government is advising system administrators to monitor their systems for computer attacks planned this week, ahead of the Washington, D.C., meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
A New Breed of Wired Warriors: The Pentagon is racing to ready broadband communications systems for combat. They may prove to be the most potent weapons of all
More-Engaging Online Content Urged: A White House panel studying ways to boost demand for high-speed Internet access is expected next week to encourage Hollywood and others to offer more online content. The report also will recommend that more workers use high-speed lines to telecommute from home.
Genealogy's Lucrative Online NicheHere's a little Internet trivia: What category of consumer Web sites started charging for online information and nonpornographic images back in the late 1990's, and has since amassed more than a million paid subscriptions and annual revenue approaching the $100 million level?
Just How Popular is PlayStation 2?: Sony has shipped 40 million game consoles, but it isn't the only company marking a milestone.
Pesquisa Google: "go to hell" [dica: Gildot]
Google search leads to Gates of 'hell'
Google Time Bomb
[03.10.02] Microsoft Escapes From Google 'Hell': Microsoft is no longer considered to be hell, according to the Google search engine.
Last week, Computerworld reported that if someone typed the phrase "go to hell" (with quotes) into Google's search engine, the No.1 ranked search result was Microsoft's home page. AOL.com ranked a close third behind the site Hell.com, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill came in sixth.
Just two days later, however, Hell.com topped the list of search results for "go to hell," and Microsoft, AOL, and UNC were nowhere to be found--at least not in the top 30 diabolical search results.
So, what happened?
Microsoft changes Xbox configuration: Microsoft has changed the internal configuration of its Xbox game console, a move intended to thwart hackers and lower manufacturing costs.
The thin gray line: Kevin Finisterre admits that he likes to hew close to the ethical line separating the "white hat" hackers from the bad guys, but little did he know that his company's actions would draw threats of a lawsuit from Hewlett-Packard.
This summer, the consultant with security firm Secure Network Operations had let HP know of nearly 20 holes in its Tru64 operating system. But in late July, when HP was finishing work to patch the flaws, another employee of Finisterre's company publicly disclosed one of the vulnerabilities and showed how to exploit it--prompting the technology giant to threaten litigation under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Free Software, at Least to a Certain Point: [T]he benefit dinner for the Free Software Foundation in Manhattan finally came down to business last Thursday.
It seems the foundation, whose purpose is to persuade people to donate their software code to the greater good, needs money. The paradox was not lost on some diners, who questioned what "free" actually meant in such contexts.
"Shouldn't you change the name?" one diner asked Eben Moglen, a Columbia Law School professor and the foundation's lawyer. "It's so confusing."
Mr. Moglen said he did not think a name change was necessary. As Richard M. Stallman, the foundation's founder, likes to say: Free software is "free as in freedom, not as in beer."
23.9.02
Nuevo virus se actualiza a sí mismo: Sin embargo, hasta ahora no se tenía noticia de un virus que se actualiza a sí mismo estableciendo contacto con un servidor al momento de ejecutarse.
Web Surfing at Work? Just the News, Honest! 24 percent said they considered online shopping to be the most addictive Web content, while 23 percent said news, including financial and sports news.
Slaves to Our Machines: Welcome to Your Future as a PC Plug-in
So maybe our old sci-fi dystopias were wrong. Movies like The Terminator and 2001 fret about machines becoming so smart that they get rid of us. It’s unlikely to happen, because in the end, they’ll always need us to do the cleanup. Welcome to your future: as a USB plug-in for your computer. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.
HP, NTT to roll video to cell phones: Hewlett-Packard and Japanese wireless carrier NTT DoCoMo said Sunday that they are developing the world's first wireless telephone network equipment capable of streaming video simultaneously to millions of cell phones.
New Kazaa likely to raise labels' ire: An overhauled version of the popular file-swapping software Kazaa was unleashed Monday on the Internet, with features sure to make record and movie studio executives' blood boil.
Hong Kong (China) and Denmark top ITU Mobile/Internet Index: New Report looks at the prospects for the convergence of mobile and Internet technologies and the take-up of 3G mobile services
Economy: Hong Kong, China
Mobile/Internet score (/100): 65.88
Ranking: 1
Economy: Portugal
Mobile/Internet score (/100): 55.13
Ranking: 19
Who's the most wired nation [for mobile data]? [T]he figures, which put Finland 12th (yes, 12th) and the UK eight, behind the USA in fifth place take account of very subjective, finger in the breeze guesses at future growth. But the 26 other factors that made up the final national score are equally subjective.
US .gov info restricted over attacker fears: VeriSign Inc has stopped providing access to information about the .gov internet domain, which is restricted to US government bodies, over concerns the data could be used in planning internet attacks
Getting broadband off the launch pad: Broadband providers and developers have made substantial strides. This needs to be mirrored across the board, to be able to make broadband useful and relevant to each element of internet use. And in order to achieve that, we are going to need a series of partnerships. [...] The first partnership is that between access providers and content developers. [...] The second partnership is that between access providers and government, which has some of the richest - and most vital - content and services in the country.
Smart Mobs: A Website and Weblog about Topics and Issues discussed in the book Smart Mobs By Howard Rheingold (dica: PontoMedia)
Book Summary [excerpt]: Media cartels and government agencies are seeking to reimpose the regime of the broadcast era in which the customers of technology will be deprived of the power to create and left only with the power to consume. That power struggle is what the battles over file-sharing, copy-protection, regulation of the radio spectrum are about. Are the populations of tomorrow going to be users, like the PC owners and website creators who turned technology to widespread innovation? Or will they be consumers, constrained from innovation and locked into the technology and business models of the most powerful entrenched interests?
'Bad Boy Ballmer': The Life of Microsoft's Monkeyboy
One Microsoft insider described the Ballmer-scripted, $250 million marketing campaign for Windows 95 as ''what God would have done to announce the Ten Commandments, if only he had Bill Gates's money.''
20.9.02
Designing the century's first digital city: Townsend, a research scientist at NYU's Taub Urban Research Center, has received a commission from the South Korean government to turn an undeveloped parcel of land on the outskirts of Seoul into a city whose raison d'etre will be to produce and consume products and services based on new digital technologies.
EU data protection chiefs oppose data retention moves: Europe's Data Protection Commissioners have voiced concern about EU proposals to mandate phone companies and ISPs to retain customer data, questioning the "legitimacy" and cost of the proposals.
Microsoft's Top Execs Get Pay Raise: Microsoft Corp.'s top two executives received 13 percent raises in the past year, with chairman Bill Gates and chief executive Steve Ballmer each earning $753,310 in salary and bonuses, the company disclosed Thursday.
Gates, who owns 11.6 percent of the software giant, and Ballmer each got a base salary of $547,500 and a bonus of $205,810 in fiscal year 2002, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
But the two weren't the highest-paid executives at the company. James Allchin, the platforms group vice president, earned $495,195 in salary and a $400,000 bonus — the most of any executive still working at Microsoft.
Compared to executives at other top companies, Gates and Ballmer receive low salaries, said Robert Fong, managing director with Seattle-based executive search firm Leadership Venture Partners.
Mail toi de ce qui te regarde: La loi sur la sécurité quotidienne, par le biais de son volet informatique et Internet, permet à l'Etat français de contourner le cryptage des courriers électroniques. Deux associations protestent.
Le texte oblige les «fournisseurs de moyens de cryptographie à collaborer avec les services de l'Etat dans les cas où ces derniers jugent nécessaires de récupérer des données cryptées ou d'entreprendre de les déchiffrer».
Almost 20 Percent of Dot-Com Era Start-Ups Failed: Nearly one in five start-ups backed with venture capital at the peak of the Internet boom went out of business before first-stage investors could sell their shares, costing them billions of dollars
Info Industry Debates E-Privacy: "The real issue is not 'privacy versus security, period but privacy versus security, question mark'"
Who says paranoia doesn't pay off?: But any conspiracy theorist will tell you: Linux is looking better all the time.
Slapper worm smarting less: A Linux worm that started spreading a week ago has reached a plateau after infecting about 7,000 servers and turning the hosts into a peer-to-peer network that could be used to attack other computers.
British Police Arrest Alleged Hacker: Police have arrested a 21-year-old man suspected of writing a virus that attacks Linux computer systems
Phone makers hope games lift sales: The mobile-phone industry hopes wireless games will catch on by offering arcade action on handsets, but flaky software means it is unlikely to score big soon.
19.9.02
Wireless hitchhikers branded as thieves: Phone maker Nokia has come down strongly against warchalking. It has condemned as theft the placing of chalk symbols on walls and pavements at places where people can use wireless net access.
PS2 shipments reach 40 million: Sony has shipped 40 million PlayStation 2 game consoles worldwide, after passing the 30 million mark on May 5.