With researchers at Yale University and a group of companies that make file-sharing software, Verizon collaborated to enable faster downloads for consumers and lower costs for participating ISPs.

In a traditional P2P network, if a Verizon customer downloads a file, only 6.3 percent of the data will come from another Verizon customer in the same city, said Doug Pasko, senior technologist at the company. In the "P4P" trial, 58 percent of the data came from nearby Verizon users, vastly reducing the company's cost of carrying the traffic.

Levitan said the technology might be ready for use by next month, when NBC makes available free downloads of its TV shows using Pando's software. The shows will be financed by advertising, and P2P technology will be an essential way for NBC to cut costs. Distributing an hourlong TV show in high definition using traditional delivery systems would cost the network about $1. With P2P technology, that cost can be cut by 75 to 90 percent.

Around 2000-2002 I was talking a fair amount about creating a protocol for ordering lists of IPs by network location. My idea was fairly simple.. Create server software that would hold a full BGP route table in memory and respond to requests (over UDP based protocol probably) to score a list of IP addresses. The software would return the list of IPs with scores based on how close they were to you based on AS paths. P2P clients could then decide what peers they connect to based on the scores the server handed back. The end result would be that clients could be coded to prefer connections to clients closest to them.

These servers could live anywhere on the Internet, and could be run by anyone who is in a position to receive full BGP routes.

I mentioned this idea to Bram Cohen at a BSD users group meeting in San Francisco, and he seemed to think it was a lousy idea.. Around that time, I stopped caring..

Cable companies have been the toughest on P2P file-sharing. Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable company, is being investigated by the Federal Communications Commission for secretly placing temporary roadblocks in the way of file-sharing traffic. Other cable companies admit to using less drastic methods to slow file-sharing and keep it from drowning out other forms of traffic.

AT&T Inc., the country's largest phone company, is a member of the P4P Working Group and has participated in a simulation similar to Verizon's test. But it has also has said it is looking at ways to filter out pirated content from its lines, which presumably would mean blocking some P2P traffic. Verizon rejects that approach.

"Verizon does not accept the role of network police agency," the company said.

Hopefully a more ISPs follow Verizon's lead. (I never though I'd see myself type that sentence...)

Verizon Gets Cozy With P2P File-Sharers: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

“It was a total waste of time,” Jerrold Nadler , D-N.Y., said of the secret session. “Frankly, we think the whole thing was a bluff. But we called it. They thought, ‘We’ll call a secret session and the Democrats will reject it, then we can say they didn’t want to hear all the information.’ ”

...

A dispute broke out when an unnamed Republican started to talk about a topic that Democrats considered off limits under the ground rules for the session, since it was at a higher security clearance level than the discussion up to that point. But one Republican lawmaker said the discussion was in bounds. “We tried to give them the information, but they didn’t want to hear it,” the lawmaker said.

Ding!

Tom Price , R-Ga., said he was disappointed by the partisanship on the floor during the closed session. “There were two different camps in the approach. One camp was interested in talking about issues. The other camp was talking about . . . politics,” Price said.

Will someone please tell me where Republicans have discussed the issues? Have they explained why President Bush thinks the Electronic Frontier Foundation sees "a financial gravy train" in these lawsuits? Is there a place where they describe just exactly how the system they have established prevents their domestic surveillance apparatus from being abused for domestic political purposes? Have they explained why amnesty will not create perverse incentives for telecoms to comply with unwarranted surveillance in the future?

CQ Politics | Secret Session Brings House Members No Closer Together on Surveillance

The dollar fell below parity with the Swiss franc for the first time on Friday as fears about more credit turmoil and a U.S. recession sparked broad selling of the U.S. currency.

The dollar fell to an all-time low of 0.9987 Swiss francs , according to electronic trading platform EBS. It last traded at 1.0026 francs.

First the Canadian dollar, now the franc.

This is bad folks.. America is slipping..

Dollar falls below parity vs Swiss franc

"Did Charles Taylor order you to eat people?" Griffith asked.

"Yes, to set an example for the people to be afraid," Marzah replied.

He appeared unfazed by Griffith's blunt queries, and responded in matter-of-fact tones to such questions as "How do you prepare a human being for the pot?"

Marzah then described the splitting, cleaning, decapitating and cooking of the corpse with salt and pepper. "We throw your head away," he said.

He said the victims were usually from the ethnic Krahn, the tribe of former Liberian President Samuel Doe whom Taylor set out to topple in 1989. But they also included peacekeepers from the Nigerian-led ECOMOG, the African peacekeeping force sent to the area in 1990, and some U.N. people, he said.

"How many ECOMOG soldiers did you eat?" the attorney asked.

"We ate a few but not many. But many were executed, about 68," the witness said, and several U.N. personnel also were captured. The time and location of the incident were unclear.

"Which ones taste best?" Griffith asked.

"There was no alternative but to do it your own way," Marzah replied.

"Thank you, but I prefer it my way."

Top aide testifies Taylor ordered soldiers to eat victims

Communist Cuba has authorized the unrestricted sale of computers and DVD and video players in the first sign that President Raul Castro is moving to improve Cubans' access to consumer goods.

An internal government memo seen by Reuters on Thursday said the appliances long desired by Cubans can go on sale immediately, although air conditioners will not be available until next year and toasters until 2010 due to limited power supplies.

It listed 19-inch (48-cm) and 24-inch (61-cm) television sets, electric pressure cookers and rice cookers, electric bicycles, car alarms and microwaves.

Many Cubans expect the state to soon allow them to buy cellular telephones. While they will now be able to buy computers, access to the Internet remains controlled by the government.

That's a major step forward for Cuba..

Cuba lifts ban on computer and DVD sales | Reuters

Memestreamer Cyan got $7 million in funding for Zivity!

The site allows both amateur and professional models and photographers to show their stuff. Users vote on those that they like, which channel real dollars to the talent. The more votes, the more money. The basic site is free, but users must pay to vote. About 40% of gross revenue is given directly to the talent. With a recent redesign, the site is focused much more on social networking - users and talent have profile pages and can add each other as friends. They’ve even added a news feed feature that shows who is adding who as friends, and which models users have voted for.

Go Cyan!

Zivity Takes $7 Million In Venture Financing

From Decius:

A new web service that lets users rate and comment on the uniformed police officers in their community is scrambling to restore service Tuesday, after hosting company GoDaddy unceremonious pulled-the-plug on the site in the wake of outrage from criticism-leery cops.

Regardless of what you think of sites like "RateMyCop" the bottom line is that it is not appropriate for GoDaddy to pull a domain name without contacting the administrator. This is not a phishing site. Following this and a number of recent takedowns by ENOM; we need new regulation at the ICANN level that prohibits this sort of shoot first and ask questions later behavior. While the fact that GoDaddy personally contacted me in response to my complaints when they shut down seclists, this incident demonstrates that a year later their policies haven't changed. Actions speak louder than words.

This really does bother me. All my domain names are hosted at godaddy.com. As renewals come up, I am seriously going to consider moving to another registrar, even if it is more expensive.

GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com | Threat Level from Wired.com

Today's the day. Daily Buzz Coffee officially opens its doors. I'm eager to see what happens. I hope you'll stop by. We've already met a number of you.

Bill McCauley, a friend to several folks here at MemeStreams, has successfully opened his coffee house in Arizona! March 10th was their first day.

Congratulations Bill!

DailyBuzzCoffee Opens in Queen Creek, Arizona

Seriously, here's the deal. Yes, the origins of Outerz0ne were a bit dubious. I'll be the first to admit it. The second year, we tried to get away from the original idea for OZ1, and I think we did a decent job. This is the third year. We're not competing with any other cons, we're on our own timeframe, and we're not meeting in a hotel room. It's still a small, social type con, but we've grown large enough to have a small ballroom this year.

Why are we doing this? Frankly, because it's a blast. We get a chance to get together with our friends and people we've only talked to online, and hang out, exchange ideas/knowledge, and party a bit. We've got some good talks lined up, some great social activities, and some of the coolest people on the planet attending. YOU. The price is right, and it should be a great time. Come hang out with us and relax for the weekend. Bring the cool toys you've built and show them off.

Several folks from MemeStreams will be present as always is the case. It is sure to be a fun weekend.

Outerz0ne 4 - March 21-23 2008

A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

According to his affidavit, Pasdar tumbled to the surveillance superhighway in September 2003, when he led a "Rapid Deployment" team hired to revamp security on the carrier's internal network. He noticed that the carrier's officials got squirrelly when he asked about a mysterious "Quantico Circuit" -- a 45 megabit/second DS-3 line linking its most sensitive network to an unnamed third party.

Quantico, Virginia, is home to a Marine base. But perhaps more relevantly, it's also the center of the FBI's electronic surveillance operations.

"The circuit was tied to the organization's core network," Pasdar writes in his affidavit. "It had access to the billing system, text messaging, fraud detection, web site, and pretty much all the systems in the data center without apparent restrictions."

Whistle-Blower: Feds Have a High-Speed Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier | Threat Level