Posted by bordalix
Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:48:00 GMT
So, Sony installs a
rootkit in your PC when you buy a CD from them, in order to implement his
DRM. This was
discovered by
Mark Russinovich in October (highly technical post). In my personal opinion, this an unacceptable behavior, and I'm not alone:
Frederico Oliveira wrote what I consider to be the first
anti-Sony manifesto, which I totally subscribe.
Tags drm, sony | no comments
Posted by bordalix
Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:47:00 GMT
One year later, Firefox turns into a baby with
11.51% market share.
Update: these
guys are serious about changing from IE to Firefox
Tags firefox | no comments
Posted by bordalix
Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:45:00 GMT
The
discussion continues, and it reached the
Committee on Energy and Commerce in the US. I'm really interested in this issue, since I work in an ISP, being a free Internet advocate, so you can imagine the duality I'm feeling these days.
Shaw Cable, a Canadian company, is limiting P2P bandwidth using technology from
Ellacoya, so we can now say it already started. The technology is out there, and telcos are ready to start using it in large scale. This is a very important question, that goes from freedom to innovation, trough economics and technology.
I understand the economics of launching a broadband network, but I also understand (and agree) with
Vint Cerf words. I'm waiting, and listening to the
live hearing webcast.
Update: this issue has been
digged
Tags neutrality | no comments
Posted by bordalix
Tue, 08 Nov 2005 14:44:00 GMT
8 years ago I gave my first presentation on network security. It's a hard topic, and the worst parts were explaining how cryptography works, and explaining software bugs as the buffer overflow or a race condition. Meanwhile, Wired as made an amazing job explaining the formers with an
animation. You don't get the cryptography how to (guess prime numbers theory is really hard to draw) but instead you can have a glance at some moments of really
bad software.
Update:NSA's site for
CryptoKids.
Tags security | no comments
Posted by bordalix
Tue, 08 Nov 2005 14:43:00 GMT
Due to the lack of time, today's menu is about grilled feeds:
- Microsoft keeps surprising, and is offering Visual Studio and SQL Server. It's free, even for comercial usage, but it's only a Express Edition;
- An excelent how-to implement your own helpdesk company, using UltraVNC and some webservices. Requires heavy geekary;
- Joined the Morfik Pioneers program. A very interesting application that will allow building web applications (AJAX) with a graphical user interface;
- Finnaly, follow-me phoning, or how to implement bluetooth proximity detection with Asterisk.
Tags asterisk, microsoft | no comments
Posted by bordalix
Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:41:00 GMT
Three news worth notice:
- The newest player to arrive at the webOS arena is Microsoft. The old giant unveiled is web strategy, launching is Live program: a personalizable website, with a lot of Ajax and a cool concept, Windows Gadgets; a new webmail application, which mimics Outlook in a browser (have to see this working); a new messenger, with VoIP integrated and ability to call for any fixed line in world; and Office Live, which is not an online version of Office, but a set of free, ad supported, productivity business tools;
- Sun announces services to convert Microsoft Office docs to Open Office compatible format. There is nothing special with this announcement, Sun is following the OpenOffice path. The thing is, this is a service to be offer by Sun Grid Utility, which is Sun's vision of the future, "the network is the computer". Or in other words, applications will be web based, all you need on your side is a browser and a web server running in our PC for local access to information, as stated by Jason Kottke;
- Google has filed a patent to serve search results based on user profiles. That means that Google will start to work on all the information they have about us, like what are we searching for, what are the websites we visit most, and what are our social networks. It's a good idea to have Google showing me the links I care most, but this arise a lot of privacy concerns. For a peek on where this could lead us, watch epic.
Tags ajax, google, microsoft, office, sun, voip | no comments
Posted by bordalix
Wed, 02 Nov 2005 14:39:00 GMT
Tuesday, I read on
ArsTechnica about SBC's CEO Edward Withacre interview on BusinessWeek, where he declares, and I quote:
How concerned are you about Internet upstarts like Google (GOOG ), MSN, Vonage, and others?
How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?
The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! (YHOO ) or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!
This is happening because ISP made huge investments in developing broadband networks, betting in the access business, and now are realizing that the real money is some layers above: companies like
Google and
Yahoo, are making huge profits, in advertising;
Skype has a huge hype value, 'selling' free voice instant messaging, disguissed; and
World of Warcraft(
?), with millions of players, each paying an average of 10 euros a month, must be a case study. So, ISPs want a piece of the cake.
And the thing is, in some places, ISPs have monopolies, so they can, for instance, block all your VoIP traffic, and make you use their own product. You, as a customer, having no other broadband operator in your area, have no choice. And companies like
Narus, are already making money with this: Narus product, not only allows ISPs to block almost any kind of traffic, as ISPs can decide to jitter the traffic, in order to avoid any legal constraints. From
another article from ArsTechnica, the words of Jay Thomas, Nerus marketing president:
"But there's nothing that keeps a carrier in the United States from introducing jitter, so the quality of the conversation isn't good," Thomas says. "So the user will either pay for the carrier's voice-over-Internet application, which brings revenue to the carrier, or pay the carrier for a premium service that allows Skype use to continue. You can deteriorate the service, introduce latency [audible delays in hearing the other end of the line], and also offer a premium to improve it."
Can ISPs do this? Or should they be network neutral? This issue is being debated in several places, like
ArsTechnica and
LessigBlog, and there is a very interesting
paper by Barbara van Schewick, which gives us an excellent economic framework for discussing the need for regulation on this matter.
It is an important matter for managers, regulators, and people concerned with the right to free information. In my humble opinion, this issue must be regulated: the temptation to do this kind of blocking and filtering, either in a monopoly, either in a cartel, is too strong. And with no regulation, we can be going to an ISP dictatorship.
Tags neutrality | no comments
Posted by bordalix
Mon, 31 Oct 2005 14:37:00 GMT
In 10 years, you will be able to be understood by anyone in the world. Talk to anyone in your preferred language (say English), they will listen to you in whatever language they want to (Spanish? Portuguese?), all this in real time, thanks to this
translation goggles. A step back for the
Esperanto community, a huge step forward for
globalization.
no comments
Posted by bordalix
Fri, 28 Oct 2005 13:36:00 GMT
My iMac is having video problems: my screen is scrambled. After some goggling, I found out that my iMac serial number is in the range for the
Apple repair extension program, so it has to be repaired. Meanwhile, back to Windows. But I surelly lack Exposé, and meanwhile, I found
Deskloops, and my first impression is that, maybe, there are some ideas that can be taken to the next Exposé version. Apple dudes should take a look at this.
no comments
Posted by bordalix
Thu, 27 Oct 2005 13:34:00 GMT
The world is evolving, and so are human relations. Media formats will be purely digital, and distribution will be in a peer-to-peer model. Search engines will understand what I want, in plain english. But should I say 'will' or 'are'? Is the future nearer then we think?
- NTT is experimenting with human remote controlling. The idea is "to perhaps make video games more realistic", which can be very exciting, but having low voltage currents through my brain isn't my preferred definition of fun.
- Videoegg claim is "internet video publishing as simple as it ought to be like posting a photo or frying an egg". Well, I don't know, don't have the time to try it, but it seems people from Six Apart really like this service: the partner each other, and now you can now post video in your typepad blog, as simple as frying an egg.
- How will be TV in 10 years? Well, I don't know, but BrightCove as a really strong idea, and it makes sense. Just add mass adoption of broadband, dropping costs in video production, new reach media formats and home networks, and you have a all new economy model.
- From the web2explorer blog, I found this "more-than-a-search-engine" technology, ePrecis. Read the post, and then try and throw some sentences to the text box
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