Digital Impulses

Ho-Hum Saturday: Configuring Bert's iBoss

Routine Saturday, lazing around the house and then later in the early evening eating dinner at Asela's and then playing Scrabble in Palos Verdes.

Configuring the iBoss for Bert
A good part of the Scrabble time was consumed by configuring Bert's new Internet Security device called the iBoss.  Bert was trying to get it to allow connections to specific pages INSIDE a DOMAIN (such as YouTube) even though the DOMAIN itself is BLOCKED.

I attempted to explain to Bert that this would not work, but he continued on stubbornly, in typical fashion for like an additional 20 minutes, until he too became convinced there was nothing for it and left the configuration as is.

As a result of this, we ended up playing a single game of Scrabble.

Internet Root Servers Attacked

The AP is reporting a story form PC World that details hackers attacking two of the 13 "root" servers that are used to direct traffic on the Internet.

From the story:

"...The attack, which began Tuesday at about 5:30 a.m. Eastern time, was the most significant attack against the root servers since an October 2002 distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack, said Ben Petro, senior vice president of services with Internet service provider Neustar Inc. Root servers manage the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS), used to translate Web addresses such as Amazon.com into the numerical Internet Protocol addresses used by machines..."

Read the full article here.

Canada Fulbright Chair Lecture Series: John Gilmore & John Perry Barlow

USC Annenberg
School for Communication
Center for Public Diplomacy
3502 Watt Way, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Room 207
Google Map

Tuesday, November 14, 2006
1850 Hrs

John Perry Barlow & John Gilmore on the continuing erosion of Civil Liberties

Between them, Gilmore and Barlow co-founded EFF, Greenpeace and Earth First; co-developed the compiler that runs almost all the code you've ever used; wrote the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace; founded the first great dial-up ISP and invented the alt. hierarchy; wrote the Grateful Dead's best lyrics and much more -- Gilmore philanthropic work includes relief for victims of Guantanamo Bay, lawsuits against the Attorney General over the right to fly anonymously, and much more.

1849: Cory Doctorow, John Perry Barlow and John Gilmore just walked into the room.  I am amazed at how completely unassuming these guys are.  They look like anyone else sitting here in this room.

1900: John Perry Barlow has launched into a background talk on the beginings of the EFF.

1940: John Gilmore has just explained how he made a pile of money by creating a set of tools and giving them away, charging large companies on a support package for these tools lik the gnu compiler, etc.  His company was sold to Red Hat in 1999 for 675 millon dollars.

2000: John Gilmore has just stated that all commercial / consumer printers embed a series of dots in any image that is printed by the engine in that printer that can be used to tie that print-out to the  serial # of the printer that printed it.

So, when you buy a printer or copier anywhere they really would prefer that you pay for it with a credit card so that they can trace the sale of the printer or copier to you directly via the CC transaction.

Here are a few images of the event:

John Gilmore on the left and John Perry Barlow on the right:
   

John Perry Barlow & Cory Doctorow:


Cory Doctorow:

This room is PACKED like I have never seen it before.  They are bringing in extra chairs as I type this.  I am very glad I got here 90 minutes early. 

It's a little surreal to be sitting directly across from John Gilmore and John Perry Barlow, true living legends of the computer industry... 

John Perry Barlow is wearing an Osama bin Laden t-shirt that says "He's still free.  How about you?"

I am really enjoying these talks, and seeing as to how Cory is scheduled to be the Fullbright Chair at USC until July of 2007, here's hoping he keeps inviting interesting people from around the Tech industry to come and speak at USC.  I will be at each one, time permitting.

If you are in the Los Angeles area, drop by USC when one of these talks are scheduled. Highly recommended.

Canada Fulbright Chair Speaker Series: Steven Starr

USC
Annenberg School Center for Public Diplomacy
Room 207
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
1837 Hrs

I am sitting at USC in the Annenberg School for Communication waiting for the talk by Steven Starr to begin at 1900 hours. 

Cory Doctorow is holding an animated discussion with two gentlemen on the evils of DRM and what the MPAA and the RIAA in lockstep with the hardware manufacturers are planning to foist on the public in terms of DRM and your ability to do what you want with the media you pay for.

Cory just stated that if you update your Creative MP3 player to get the newest firmware, it surreptitiously disables the ability to record from the built-in FM receiver, all this under the guise of “added functionality”. This is precisely the reason I am here tonight.

 Here we go:
 (1903 hrs) 

• Steven Starr is the co-founder of a company called Revver.
• Revver pays MORE the MORE a media file gets played
• He just mentioned the sale of YouTube to Google
• Revver sets up technology to allow the distribution of media files
• They have developed ‘Super Distribution’, where media files fly through the      Internet, reporting back to Revver “Hey, I'm being watched! Send me an Ad!”. So people get paid on those terms.
• Revver splits ad revenue 50-50 with the media creator
• The Mentos and Coke creators got:
  • 5 – 6M views and
  • got $70K in Ad revenue that they split with Revver, thus
  • making 35K on a 2.5 minute video that cost
  • $100-200 to make
• Revver has a set of tools and technologies, with an API that allows you to create      your own site and become an affiliate of Revver that makes money as a      re-distributor who makes 20% of the Ad revenue
• Content creators can opt out of Ad categories that they do not wish to be associated with
• Revver released its BETA 11 months ago
• They do NOT allow copyrighted video
• Revver has been seen as a company that has taken UGC to the forfront of the ‘free media conversation”.
• Revver uses CC licenses. Every piece of video flies out with a 2.5 version CC license.
• Revver is NOT a video portal destination site, per se. They differentiate themselves as a tools and services company

All in all, it was a great talk, where a lot of very good questions and issues were raised on the legalities and dangers of content creation and rights retentions/ownership in the world of UGC or User Generated Content.

Keynote speech at ToorCon 8 by Cory Doctorow

Cory  Doctorow did his usual spectacular job when dekivering a Keynote.  The Keynote in question was delivered at ToorCon 8 the hacking convention in  San Diego, CA.

Click below to watch the video:

At the USC Annenberg School Center for Public Diplomacy

USC
Annenberg School Center for Public Diplomacy
Room 230
Tuesday, October 3, 2006
1900 Hrs

Some images from outside USC







I am in room 230, waiting for Cory Doctorow and Wendy Seltzer to arrive.  There are 11 people here right now, including myself. Mostly student types, with three women and eight men making up the gender breakdown.  Another young lady just arrived, making 12 of us.

19:04:  Cory Doctorow has just arrived accompanied by Wendy Seltzer.  They are busy up at the front, trying to get her communication equipment set up.  Here we go...

Wendy gas started off by giving us a background on the case involving speech suppression and copyright law.  Wendy is a Law Teacher at Brooklyn College and works with the EFF and also founded an organization called the  Chilling Effects Clearinghouse

Wendy is speaking to the following themes:

• Diebold Electronic Voting Machines
• DMCA
• Myth TV
• The transition to Digital Television
• The government is eager to speed up this transition so that they can resell the spectrum that will be freed up as analog broadcasters move over to all digital systems.
• Content creators refuse to create "high value" content until assurances are in place that will protect said content from "indiscriminate Internet-based re-distribution of digital content".\
• The Broadcast Flag

Day Against DRM

Today is "Day Against DRM" day.  Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing! has a post with all of the relevant links. 

For now, right-click on the following images and use them to post on your blog or anywhere else of prominence to do your part in celebrating International Day Against DRM

Red Herring magazine interviews Kevin Mitnick

Red Herring magazine interviews Kevin Mitnick on the HP 'Pretexting' dust-up involving Patricia Dunn, the non-executive Chairwoman of their Board Of Directors using possibly criminal and illegal means to obtain the home phone records of the members of HP's Board of Directors to identify the source of a leak.

Read the full article here

Incoherent: Ted Stevens, Senator from Alaska on Net Neutrality

This is a little bit late, but Net Neutrality ranks as being one of the most important issues facing every day users of the Internet practically since the inception of the Internet itself and its direct descendant, the World Wide Web.

A serach on Google for the term "Net Neutrality" returns the following number of hits:

 

Nearly 30 million hits.

Obviously, this is a subject that has been discussed at great length on the Internet, most recently spotlighted by a rambling, incoherent, clueless screed by Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska, wherein he stood in front of Congress and lobbied against Net Neutrality. 

Here is a link to the audio: Download stevens-on-nn.mp3

To qoute Mr. Stevens:

"...There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service is now going to go through the internet* and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.

We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [¿]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [¿]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.

[¿]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.

It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

That someone like this, who is basically a paid spokesperson for the Telecomm industry, is the point person arguing against Net Neutrality is simply terrifying to me.  It really is. 

And to further complicate things, I suspect that 99% of the people on the street whom you ask about Net Neutrality would just blink at you and say "what the hell are you talking about?"

*Sigh*. 

Anyways, below are a list of sites you can go to to learn more about Net Neutrality:

• Google
• Wikipedia
• Save The Internet

Go there today and educate yourselves and write to your senators.  Get involved before it's too late!