If widely applied by other ISPs, the technology Comcast is using would be a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks. While these are mainly known as sources of copyright music, software and movies, BitTorrent in particular is emerging as a legitimate tool for quickly disseminating legal content.

The principle of equal treatment of traffic, called "net neutrality" by proponents, is not enshrined in law but supported by some regulations. Most of the debate around the issue has centered on tentative plans, now postponed, by large Internet carriers to offer preferential treatment of traffic from certain content providers for a fee.

Comcast Hinders Customers' Internet Traffic

PCMAG.com
October 15, 2007
by John C. Dvorak

I mention this only because over the weekend, Uncle Dave posted a rant on my blog by longtime network admin Marc Perkel. He went off on MySQL, Linux, and much of the open-source philosophy. You can read it here. I wasn't surprised that the number of comments immediately rose to over 100. But I was a little surprised at the sheer number of comments that featured that same peculiar whining you'd hear a decade or more ago, when you said something critical about the Amiga.

Among the comments in response to Marc Perkel's rant...

Comment 18.

This is just like arguing over Ford vs Chevy vs Dodge…

the people who are interested in what is going-on under the hood - and like to tinker with the internals - probably love linux & gnu.

the people who just want the damn thing to run - and could give a shit about what is under the hood - are left with the choice of windows or mac.

One side or the other claiming superiority is pointless.

Comment by Mike Voice — 10/14/2007 @ 9:49 am

Comment 20.

Dodge?

Comment by John C Dvorak — 10/14/2007 @ 9:54 am

LOL!

What's Wrong with Open-Source Software?

"My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience.

At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, "but once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it was great!' appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon," Levy said.

"Geeky"? So, if you show up for PhreakNIC 54 with your robotic other, do you have to pay two registration fees?

EDIT: Oops, Shannon had already posted the story, here. -Stef

Forecast: Sex and Marriage With Robots by 2050

Nothing special here... it's just nice to see an article about Open Office posted on a mainstream news website.

Review: OpenOffice.org Is Powerful, Free, and Kind of Dull

"Elk Cloner" — self-replicating like all other viruses — bears little resemblance to the malicious programs of today. Yet in retrospect, it was a harbinger of all the security headaches that would only grow as more people got computers — and connected them with one another over the Internet.

Hacker Marks 25th Anniversary of First Computer Virus

August 31, 2007 (Computerworld) -- The identity thieves who ransacked Monster.com's database also made off with the personal information of 146,000 people who use USAJobs, the federal government's official job search site, federal officials said today.

Monster Worldwide Inc. operates the USAJobs.gov Web site for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the independent agency that manages the federal civil service. Like Monster's commercial sites, USAJobs lets job seekers post resumes and federal agencies post job openings.

Of the 2 million subscribers to the federal job site, about 146,000 were affected by the heist engineered by Infostealer.Monstres, a Trojan horse that used legitimate log-on credentials stolen from recruiters to sift through the Monster database. According to Monster executives, the Trojan absconded with the names, addresses, e-mail addresses and phone numbers of some 1.3 million people. Although stored in the Monster databases, some of those people were USAJobs users. No Social Security numbers were stolen, the OPM stressed in an alert posted to USAJobs.

Personal info on 150,000 job seekers at USAJobs stolen

Aerogel is nicknamed “frozen smoke” and is made by extracting water from a silica gel, then replacing it with gas such as carbon dioxide. The result is a substance that is capable of insulating against extreme temperatures and of absorbing pollutants such as crude oil.

It was invented by an American chemist for a bet in 1931, but early versions were so brittle and costly that it was largely consigned to laboratories. It was not until a decade ago that NASA started taking an interest in the substance and putting it to a more practical use.

I read something about this a few years ago, but it seems to be making headlines again.

Scientists hail ‘frozen smoke’ as material that will change world.

Hoping to break a political impasse, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has submitted a ballot measure asking voters whether they support blanketing the city with a wireless Wi-Fi system that would enable free Web surfing subsidized by ads from Google Inc.

The project, one of hundreds of municipal Wi-Fi systems being built or proposed across the country, has bogged down amid concerns about privacy protection, surfing speeds, and the terms of the proposed contract.

San Francisco Wi-Fi Issue Goes to Ballot

“There really isn’t anything new in security,” said Bill Hoffman, lead researcher at SPI Dynamics. “Anyone who says there is, is lying.”

As always, functionality has outstripped security, but the situation is not hopeless, Hoffman said. As Web applications mature, “we’re starting to see minimum standards for security as vendors start to realize the importance of Web security.”

Not sure whether this has already been posted...

AJAX security: Everything old is new again

The National Security Agency, whose initials once seemed to stand for No Such Agency, is moving from being a proprietary to an open-source organization. Sort of.

When he [Tony Sager] began working at NSA in 1977, "it was a dramatically different security problem," he said. IT security was a government monopoly. "The government owned the problem" and could control the technology. "Those days are over.".

"The government owned the problem." - I love that quote.

NSA: We're from the government. Help us.