"I don't think the report is true, but these crises work for those who want to make fights between people." Kulam Dastagir, 28, a bird seller in Afghanistan
Google Ads
Topic: MemeStreams
11:49 am EDT, Mar 12, 2007
We are doing a test of Google Ads on the site. These are only going to stick around if they generate enough revenue to be worth it.
slight paranoia: How The RIAA and MPAA Unknowingly Assist Child Pornographers
Topic: Internet Civil Liberties
11:39 am EDT, Mar 12, 2007
P2P enforcement forced anonymity and evasion technologies to evolve far faster than they ever would have if the FBI had been the only 'threat' to privacy online.
I agree with this conclusion. You don't really want mostly innocent people resorting to these technologies. Pressures such as RIAA enforcement have helped create these networks, and ISP Data Retention as well as laptop border searches will push it further along. If you are creating a policy situation where most people fear monitoring and prosecution you've done something wrong.
We've made an update to MemeStreams that hopefully improves the look of the site. There are also some security fixes in here, as well as some new features which should help us fight spam more effectively going forward. In addition, Acidus contributed some improvements to the MemeBox to make it easier to sort and keep track of new messages. We'd also like to thank Eric White for some HTML input that helped us improve the look of the site and Terratogen for some graphics work.
As always, let us know if you discover anything that isn't working right...
(Safari users may find some color misalignment. We're going to address that in a future update. We wanted this out and we decided to optomize for FF and IE for the time being. Safair literally displays some colors differently in some contexts.)
Yes, we know the Inbox isn't lighting up when you have new memes. We should have that fixed up soon. Fixed!
When I woke up this morning none of my domains were resolving. My websites, including MemeStreams, and email, were down. Ironically, GoDaddy told IDG on Friday that they don't need to apply DST patches to their machines because they are located in Arizona. I'm not sure why lack of DST patches would cause such a total outage. Its possible that there is another explanation, but regardless, this outage adds to other concerns about the reliability of GoDaddy has an operator of critical infrastructure.
The time is now 1:16 PM Eastern Daylight Savings Time (newly adjusted), on Sunday, March 11, 2007 - and it appears to me that none of my dozens of domain names registered and/or served at GoDaddy.com are working.I strongly suspect the problem is related to today's change to Daylight Savings Time. A recent story in PCWorld described some concerns that had been raised about GoDaddy.com's readiness for the time switch.
My mailbox is being filled with IETF announcements for the upcoming meeting in Prague. I see internet draft after internet draft making proposals that are going to cause implementation errors, security holes, and ultimately service outages.
Take for example the prime candidate protocol for VOIP - SIP... SIP is far too complex.
Consider how long it has taken to deploy IPv6 - a technology that celebrated its 10th anniversary a few years ago. And IPv6 has the luxury of being an alternative to IPv4 rather than a transparently compatible upgrade. Consider how much longer it will take to deploy VOIP protocol redesigns when the old protocol is embedded in telephones around the world?
I have great concern that our approach to the internet resembles a high pillar of round stones piled on top of other round stones - we should not be surprised when it begins to wobble and then falls to the ground.
If I'm going to encourage people to post videos to MemeStreams I might as well just cut to the chase. You ever seen these guys on MTV?! I know I could have made a better video for this song, but I couldn't have made a better song.
Hacker builds tracking system to nab Tor pedophiles | Zero Day | ZDNet.com
Topic: Computer Security
1:32 am EST, Mar 9, 2007
Amidst concerns that pedophiles are using public Tor (the Onion Router) servers to trade in child pornography, �ber-hacker HD Moore is building a tracking system capable of pinpointing specific workstations that searched for and downloaded sexual images and videos of kids.
He is embedding a web bug in certain tor requests that implements a javascript based check for local IP address and a udp query to get an external IP. This raises some interesting questions:
1. People running anti-tor servers can undermine the anonymity provided by tor unless users are serious enough not to have their DNS going out in the clear, and serious enough to have browser extensions disabled. None of these ideas are new.
2. This seems to suggest the idea that someone would go to the trouble of running a tor server because they want to protect anonymity but decide to run this because they are uncomfortable with some of the uses of that anonymity.
3. In this case the anonymity they are providing is undermined based on a keyword match which is unreliable at best.
4. H.D. Moore is pro full disclosure of exploit code but against anonymous web browsing?
5. Why go to a lot of trouble undermining your anonymity system in order to target people downloading child porn through your proxy when you can use the same filter script to identify the server if you are running an exit node? Servers are worse than users, targetting them doesn't undermine the purpose of the service you are running, and you don't need any javascript tricks to target them.
Bottom line: The goal here is to educate tor users, not to track them.
