Rock on. Build your own Macintosh. This is cool, but I really want a laptop.

MacOpz: Build Your Own G4

"Films such as "Harry Potter" can be downloaded for a fee of $3.99 for 24-hour viewing. Older films from the Warner Bros. home video library can be downloaded for $2.99 for the same period."

These guys don't get that if I'm going to spend 2 or more hours downloading a low quality encoded movie that I can only watch for 24 hours I'm not going to pay full rental price. If it were seriously difficult for me to get to a rental store this service might be attractive at this price. Of course, if its seriously difficult for me to get to a rental store, its probably totally impossible for me to get broadband.

You can't offer a lower quality product at the same price and then claim people aren't adopting it because they either aren't interested in the general idea or they are involved in priacy, but I suspect thats exactly what will happen here.

If these folks had a wide array of independent films they might do alright, as such films are difficult to obtain unless you live in a major metropolitain area or you are willing to buy them on DVD.

AP Wire | 09/09/2002 | Warner Bros. offers films online

"Our products just aren't engineered for security," admitted Valentine, who since 1998 has headed Microsoft's Windows division."

Ouch... there is going to be some back-pedalling here.

MS admits it doesn't 'do' security!

Register for Phreanknic 6.0!

Now the south's oldest conference for techno culture enthusiasts.

PhreakNIC 6.0 Information

"Anyone who designs a new enhancement for the Internet should analyze the tussles that it will trigger, and the tussles in the surrounding context, and consider how they can be managed to ensure that the enhancement succeeds. As noted above, a powerful force is the tussle of competition. Protocol design, by creating opportunities for competition, can impose a direction on evolution."

Well, duh... The IETF has been "engineering" social directions for decades. Today it is almost entirely under the control of the equipment vendors, and the protocols produced (which get worse every year) are mostly designed to protect vendor interests (this is at the expense of working properly). Its nice to have a paper to reference, though. There are some people in the IETF who still think they are doing academic work which exists in a social vacuum and this is something you can hit them over the head with.

IP protocols should be designed with social and economic conflicts in mind

"All of the violations cited by ICANN were Whois infractions. Although registrars are not obligated to verify the accuracy of the information in their Whois databases, under their contracts with ICANN they must remedy any incorrect entries brought to their attention. "

The government wants accurate names and addresses associated with all domain registrations and available without a supeona.

ICANN pressures Verisign to clean up whois database

While I categorically deny these allegations, the code i used to do it will be up here in a day or so..."

The PPT on this page was one of the better talks from DefCon. How to DOS a wireless LAN, how to MITM an ISAKMP key exchange occuring over a wireless LAN...

802.11ninja.net

The idea hinges on carefully mimicking background lighting conditions to help render an object invisible, similar to how a chameleon blends in with its surroundings. The rear and front surfaces of an object are covered with a material containing an array of photodetectors and light emitters respectively.
The photodetectors on the rear surface are used to record the intensity and color of a source of illumination behind the object. The light emitters on the front surface then generate light beams that exactly mimic the same measured intensity, color and trajectory. The result is that an observer looking at the front of the object appears to see straight through it."

From the 'I wonder how well this works.' department...

"Here are three tools for detecting wireless LAN access points (AP) that haven't been secured by the IT department: "

Waveland IDS... Let the arms race begin...

Tools for detecting rogue wireless LAN users - Computerworld

The Bush administration has plans to create a centralized facility for collecting and examining security-related e-mail and data traffic and will push private network operators to expand their data-gathering initiatives, according to an unreleased draft of the plan.

...

Howard Schmidt, vice chairman of the CIPB, said the center would consolidate threat data from the country's collection end points, such as the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center, the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, the Department of Energy and commercial networks.

Private companies would also be encouraged to increase the amount of data collected and share it with the government. "Major companies generally report this information internally," Schmidt told eWeek. "We're looking for that to come back to a central location."

...

Riiight...

Bush to Call for Fed NOC