But while Comcast's seat-warmers slept, a collection of Cambridge scholars, Internet advocates, industry leaders, engineers and policymakers nearly all agreed that Internet blocking has serious consequences for each and every one of us.

I say "nearly" because Comcast remains defiant; its executive vice president, David Cohen, continues to insist that "Comcast does not block any Web site, application or Web protocol including peer-to-peer services."

Cohen sets a high bar with that denial, especially since extensive testing has shown exactly the opposite to be true.

"There a single fact here that [Comcast] cannot deny," explained Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu during Monday's hearing. "Users of the Internet sought to use an application in a certain way, and they were blocked."

This view was supported by David Reed of MIT's Media Lab, who had also experimented with popular file-sharing applications and found that Comcast was duping users with forged network transmissions that cut off their connections. "Comcast's secretive attempt to apply non-standard management practices creates serious problems," he said before the FCC.

In Boston: A Shot Heard 'Round the Internet....

Net neutrality rules for broadband providers would protect bandwidth hogs at the expense of other customers and civic organizations, said the coalition, which includes the National Black Chamber of Commerce, Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association, League of Rural Voters, and National Council of Women's Organizations.

The coalition filed comments with the FCC Thursday in the agency's inquiry into Comcast's slowing of some P-to-P (peer-to-peer) traffic. "Regulations prohibiting network management risk undermining free speech on the Internet by allowing P2P traffic to overwhelm the network and prevent non-P2P traffic from reaching its destination," the coalition said in its filing. "The effective prioritization of P2P traffic would represent an altogether new type of 'back of the bus' second-class status for our speech on broadband networks -- and ought to be resoundingly rejected

: FCC should allow network management?

Softsqueeze is a music player for your PC that works with the Slimserver software. It complements the Squeezebox2, Squeezebox and Slimp3 hardware music players developed by Slim Devices. Softsqueeze supports synchronization with hardware players and remote streaming over the Internet using ssh tunneling. It has been developed in Java, allowing this useful application to work with Windows PCs, OS X and Linux systems.

Softsqueeze 2.0

If you want some more in-depth reading jump on over here...

MD5 To Be Considered Harmful Someday:
From Dan Kaminsky, a senior Senior Security Consultant for Avaya, and a part of the DoxPara Research team...

http://www.doxpara.com/md5_someday.pdf
http://www.doxpara.com/research/md5/...ful-slides.pdf
http://www.doxpara.com/research/md5/confoo.pl

Stach & Liu have some well document information on MD4/5 Collisions...
http://www.stachliu.com.nyud.net:809...ollisions.html

We live in a world that has to much "security via obscurity" or a "don't ask don't" tell policy on security problems...

Even back in 2005 MS and Big Bill's Boys banned the use of DES/MD4/MD5 on their projects, but even SHA1 and other systems they have chosen are still looking to be prone to attack.

I dug up a little info for this reply to someone... Can anyone provide some more input on the problems with MD5

Just how secure is MD5?

Database management systems (DBMS) are 20 years out of date and should be completely rewritten to reflect modern use of computers.

That's according to a group of academics including DBMS pioneer Mike Stonebraker (http://s2k-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu:8000/nasa_e2e/mike.html), Ingres founder and a Postgres architect taking his second controversial outing so far this year. Stonebraker upset many last month for his criticism (http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/01/24/stonebraker_dewitt_mapreduce/) of Google's MapReduce.

In a paper (http://www.vldb.org/conf/2007/papers/industrial/p1150-stonebraker.pdf) entitled The end of an architectural era (It's time for a complete rewrite), the group - drawn from DBMS specialists at MIT and in industry - have said that modern use of computers renders many features of mainstream DBMS obsolete.

They have argued that DBMS designs such as Oracle and SQL Server come from an age when online transaction processing (OLTP) dominated and required techniques such as multi threading and transaction locking. They said that modern transactions - entered via web pages - do not need these expensive processing overheads and DBMS should, therefore, be re-designed without them. Persistent storage such as disks are also seen as unnecessary and could be replaced by geographically dispersed RAM storage.

Stonebraker and his group also advocate abandoning SQL because they see no need for a separate data manipulation language. Data manipulation, they said, can be performed with other tasks using languages such as Ruby. They describe a prototype DBMS called H-Store that embodies these ideas.

While there is certainly a point to be made about the way OLTP works in modern computer environments and the group has some persuasive arguments, it seems unlikely that mainstream DBMS builders will move away from tried-and-tested TP technologies in the near future. Banks and financial institutions in particular will want to hang on to the comfort and security provided by DBMS, which fully implement ACID (http://www.linktionary.com/a/acid.html) properties

Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder

A Pennsylvania crusader has slapped Google with a $5bn lawsuit, claiming that the world's largest search engine is endangering his personal safety.

With a suit filed in federal court, Dylan Stephen Jayne insists that the company is guilty of "crimes against humanity" because its name turns up when his social security number is scrambled and turned upside down.

After much study, The Reg can confirm that Jayne's tax payer ID can be juggled to reveal the word Google - if you use your imagination. But we have elected not to publish the number. For obvious reasons.

By calling itself Google, Jayne argues, Google has exposed him to attack by an army of culturally diverse, net-savvy terrorists. "A person regardless of race or religion that wishes to cause acts of terrorism would look for social security numbers that are made readily available on the public use databases," his suit reads.

And he's adamant that if Google claims ignorance, many people could end up dead or buck naked. "The 'I don't know' defense obviously is a waste of money, time, and puts the lives of Americans and illegal aliens at risk of death or serious undress."

Will the suit stand up in court? According to Santa Clara University law professor and tech law blogger Eric Goldman, who first brought the suit to popular attention, the answer is "no."

But Goldman could be wrong. The court could side with Jayne. After all, the US government has made far more ridiculous decisions in the name of anti-terrorism.

Even if Google comes out on top, Goldman told us, the company will have no choice but to spill some dough on its lawyers. And if it loses? Jayne is asking damages of $5bn.

The other question is where the money will come from. At one point in Jayne's suit - which is handwritten - the defendant is listed as the "Google Internet Search Engine." But in other places, he accuses the "Google Internet Search Engine Founders."

So a $5bn bill could land on Google - or it could land on founding fathers Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Of course, that's pocket change to all three.

We're also worried that additional suits are on the way from Dylan Stephen Jayne. According to his Google complaint, the Philadelphia 76ers play a rather important role in the exposure of his social security number, and The Reg can confirm this is indeed the case - if you use your imagination.

And we might see Jayne sue himself. In filing his Google suit, he provided more than just a social security number. Other exhibits include a driver's license, a bank account number, a bank routing number, a monthly bank statement, a social security statement, and a library card. And all this is now available on the web. ®

Google sued for 'crimes against humanity'

Digium once again proves that Asterisk allows customers to address endless VoIP applications. Digium recently demonstrated that VoIP is not limited to traditional desktops and terrestrial connections. At the Digium headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama a team of engineers form GATR technologies recently setup their Inflatable Deployable Satellite Communication System in the Digium parking lot. The AA50 Asterisk Appliance was connected to the Satellite VoIP Service and you can see it here with a Polycom phone used for the demo. The GATR technology allows for quick and mobile communications to be setup virtually anywhere in the world and is delivered in the two cases you see in the picture. With the ability to deploy everything necessary in a large “suitcase”, the GATR system truly redefines mobile worldwide communication system. The GATR technology is being used both in military and civilian applications. With its ability to be completely battery operated it proved to be extremely valuable communications tool during the Katrina recovery.

Check this out...

Wow thats cool... big green blob!

Asterisk is Out of this World!

Asterisk 1.4 introduces a new level of Jabber integration, developed by Matthew O’Gorman at Digium. The Asterisk Open Source PBX integrates with Jabber/XMPP in many ways.

* Google Talk channel driver: chan_gtalk. Google Talk is based on Jabber protocols, in the IETF named XMPP. Google extended Jabber with multimedia support and named the new extension Jingle. In the XMPP Foundation standardization process this standard has been developed a bit further, so in a coming release of Asterisk there will be separation between the “old” Google Talk channel driver and a standard-compliant Jingle channel.
* Jabber presence support in the dialplan: By letting your Asterisk connect to a Jabber server by using a Jabber account, you can add buddies to that account and check the buddies presence in the Asterisk dialplan. This way, call routing decisions can be based on the status of Jabber accounts. If Alice sets her presence to Away, Asterisk can send her calls directly to voicemail without ringing her desktop phone.
* Asterisk as a Jabber module: In a more advanced mode, Asterisk can register itself as a module to your Jabber server (as a Jabber component). This mode means better integration to Jabber, but requires more from the Jabber clients.
* Sending text messages: Asterisk supports sending text messages to Jabber clients from the dialplan, maybe alerting about upcoming conference calls, voicemail or missed calls. With Jabber clients making its way to cell phones and all kinds of devices, this means reachability everywhere.

Don’t forget that Jabber is an IETF/XMPP foundation standard that is implemented in both commercial software (like Apple’s iChat) and Open Source. Many libraries exist for Jabber development. There are also gateways to all kinds of presence platforms, including MSN and SIP/Simple. By integrating Asterisk and Jabber, you can now easily build Asterisk solutions with integrated presense and instant messaging support!

Discover Asterisk 1.4 :: Jabber integration!

A few weeks back, I reviewed the ZipIt Z2 Wireless device. It was a neat little gadget, and in the review I stressed how much cooler it would be if it were open for developers to add 3rd party functionality. (Much like jailbreaking an iPhone allows for awesome additions to an otherwise inaccessible device)

Here's the skinny:

* Check out linux.zipitwireless.com.
* Some 3rd party apps are available, but right now they're largely proof of concept. (Doom, mplayer, etc)
* Programs run from the MiniSD card (not included)
* Developers are welcome, encouraged, and thought upon fondly. :)

One of the things I really like about the ZipIt company, is that instead of trying to lock out hackers (which is sorta silly), they are trying to accommodate tinkerers, while maintaining their commercial investment. In my opinion, that's very wise.

I hope that developers do come on board, and extend the usefulness of the Z2. On a larger scale, however, I hope that other companies follow suit. Hackers (not pirates, there is a big difference) are surprisingly respectful people. If you don't try to lock them out, they won't try to break in. It's pretty simple. :)

Well done ZipIt Wireless. Here's hoping other companies follow your example.

The price is a little high but the device is cool... and it does have audio/video hardware support!

ZipIt Wireless -- Keeping Promises, Opening Doors

Del.icio.us was a big discovery for me. The ability to access my bookmarks anywhere, share them with others, and discover my friends’ favorites: Wow!

But I had a moment of truth the day I clicked a months-old bookmark only to discover that one of my favorite pages on Web design had vanished. D’oh! I’d really depended on that material! Suddenly apprehensive, I started going through all of my del.icio.us links one-by-one, discovering that a large percentage had vanished off the face of the Web.

It felt almost like I’d had a hard drive failure. Only then did I realize how much I’d come to depend on Web-based content.

Sure, for finding the odd missing page, there’s always Archive.org, but that saves pages intermittently and it’s a fairly clunky solution for an ongoing problem. What I really needed was a social bookmarking service that cached a full version of each bookmarked page with all the graphics and formatting intact.

Get Digging

Enter Diigo. I’m surprised this excellent social bookmarking service doesn’t have a higher profile online. It’s fast, easy, and it saves a cache of every page by default. I really don’t see how del.icio.us can compete, considering that Diigo looks much nicer and still manages to respond more crisply.

(Yes, there are other social bookmarking sites out there, and were I a true productivity blogger and not a dilettante, I’d give you a point-by-point feature comparison with a nifty chart. In this case, I’m going to fall back on “trust me.” Diigo’s the best I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a bunch.)

But getting the most out of Diigo isn’t as simple as swapping out your del.icio.us quick bookmarks and moving on. Strategy counts.

Hmm interesting idea... It would be cool to see an idea like this be implanted to memestreams

Archive the Web with Diigo