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What's in store for VoIP?

p2p news view / p2pnet: Last month the mobile phone industry held a major conference and exhibition in Barcelona.

Handset manufacturer Nokia used the opportunity to launch the 6136, a mobile that switches seamlessly between GSM and wi-fi networks and lets you swap between your mobile operator and voice over the internet as you talk.

Around the same time Ofcom, the UK communications industries regulator, published a consultation document on Regulation of Voip Services.

This gave us until May to comment on proposals that would bring network telephony operators under the regulatory umbrella instead of treating Voip as a fledgling service that needs freedom to innovate.

It has been clear for some time that voice calls over the public internet will change the way that the telephone industry works, and these two announcements show that this awareness has filtered through to the highest levels of the industry and of government.

A few years ago it would have been unthinkable for a handset company to offer a new phone that let users make free calls without using their network provider.

Vodafone, T-Mobile and the other networks would have let them know that such a phone was not what they wanted, and the idea would have been quietly dropped.

Now there seems to be a widespread realisation that lots of voice minutes are going to be moving online anyway, so it makes sense for a network provider to keep their customers happy, take what revenue they can get from the calls made over their network and look for other revenue-generating services to offer.

The Ofcom consultation highlights the growing use of Voip in the UK, and suggests that Voip providers who want to be serious providers of publicly available telephone services should have to accept the regulatory framework that applies elsewhere.

Since every incumbent telephone service provider sees Voip as part of its offering, this creates a problem for pure internet players like Skype and Vonage.

One issue that is particularly important to Ofcom is access to emergency services through a 999 number, something that is technically tricky for Voip providers who are not also conventional phone companies.

Back in May 2005 Skype cut its links to the Norwegian telephone network for a time after the regulator there insisted that Voip providers should offer standard emergency calls. Instead of complying, Skype now accepts that it is not a telephony replacement service and hopes to escape regulation for a while.

However, Skype faces a much bigger issue than how it deals with requests for a 999 service. It may well have proven that the market is ready for internet calling but its architecture and the way it integrates with other Voip services mean that it is likely to be bypassed when network telephony goes mainstream.

Skype is a peer-to-peer network, with no centralised server to run or pay for. Even its directory is distributed over the network.

It manages this through a technical architecture and set of protocols that it has developed itself, outside the standards bodies which have been working on voice over internet for many years.

The dominant standards in this area are SIP, or the session initiation protocol, and H.323, originally developed for doing multimedia over local area networks. Both are widely used by voice providers, but not by Skype, which instead has its own proprietary standards for its peer-to-peer offering.

Skype certainly works, providing a service that is generally reliable, offers good voice quality and seems scalable to millions of users. But that may not be enough.

There is a lot more to voice than just making phone calls, and at the moment Skype is at the bottom end of the curve for these advanced uses.

A lot of work is going on to create network-based analogues of switchboards which closely integrate voice services will all the other ways we like to use our computers, and attention has focused on the open source Asterisk project.

As Cambridge computing entrepreneur Quentin Stafford-Fraser points out on his weblog, one such service, an open source application called Gizmo, lets him "have UK phone numbers which will forward to my Gizmo session here in California. For free. I can use Gizmo to call up my Asterisk server and listen to MP3 files and podcasts stored on my hard disk. For free. I can connect directly to Google Talk, or to dedicated Voip phones."

Closed services that are just replacements for conventional phones, whether they are provided by Skype or by the existing telephone companies, don't do this.

Yet instead of enhanced telephony Skype is focusing on enhancements like video calling which just make it more of a competitor to Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger, all of which offer voice chat as part of their portfolio.

That is not telephony and it is not a way to make money: there is a reason why Google, AOL and Microsoft appear so prominently in the names of their services and it is not that IM generates lots of cash.

And although Skype gets revenue from SkypeIn and SkypeOut, offering links to the phone network, it will be harder to persuade users to install a completely separate client and pay yet another intermediary for phone calls once these networks offer enhanced, standards-based voice services of their own.

Last September eBay paid $2.6bn for Skype in a move that many found hard to understand and which it may already be regretting.

Given the speed with which the existing phone companies have moved in on the Voip market there would seem to be two options for the new owners.

The first is to rebrand it as eBay Messaging, a voice-based instant messenger service with added phone integration.

The second would be to list this well-loved but proprietary Voip service on the world's biggest second-hand marketplace.

I am sure someone at eBay knows how to do that.

Bill Thompson - thebillblog.com
[Thompson is a UK-based writer and broadcaster.]

(Sunday 12th March 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/8164

 

Womens' rights in India,

p2p news / p2pnet: "I'm several days late getting to this one, but better late than never," says Violet Blue in a BoingBoing post, going on:

"The Blank Noise Project is a blog-a-thon that Indian women did on March 7 to raise awareness about "eve teasing." This extreme form of public sexual harassment happens to women in India all the time - from horrifically early ages, onward.

"Women and young girls are threatened for wearing jeans and t-shirts, their tits are grabbed and pinched by any man who wants to, and more.

"The list of female Indian bloggers is really amazing to look at and their blogs are fascinating, from their excellence in English to the frightening stories of harassment they tell, and the other details of their lives, like trying to decide daily fact from fiction with bird flu hysteria."

Check out the really huge list of blogs.

Also See:
BoingBoing - Indian women bloggers protest "eve teasing" online, March 11, 2006
list of blogs - BLANK NOISE PROJECT: bangalore mumbai delhi, March 6, 2006

(Sunday 12th March 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/8163

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

“ You are not looking decent, I mean you are looking fat, you are not looking very nice, I think you should change."

“ It does not suit you, this dress does not suit you.”

“ Wear what you want! You just want to be leched at right?”

“ Gosh! Look at her, she’s so cheap, why does she bother wearing anything, she would rather be naked.”

“ Dressed like a slut man! Total slut!”

“ Lipstick? I think it’s too much. People will think you’re a slut!”

“ But I was wearing something completely normal and it had frills on the top.”

“ Tie your hair. You must look neat.”

“ Please wear a slip over the bra. Your school uniform is transparent. It does not look nice.”

“ The skirt is too short. You can wear shorts if you like, but not a skirt.”

“ How come you wear only salwar kameez these days?”

“ I was in school, I remember my green pt uniform and the stranger in the bus put his dirty hands in my clothes.”

“ I started dressing more androgynous. People didn’t know whether I was man or woman.”

“ I wear what I want, nothing happens to me, I don’t know why you make such an issue out of this, I mean , why do you want to travel by bus anyways?”

“ This girl is crazy! She is screaming!”

“ Don’t talk back! Don’t you dare answer back!”

“ It was just an accident.”

“ “ What law can stop a man from talking to a woman? Take me to the police station, let me see what anyone can do. I just asked you out for coffee”

“ I think you are beautiful. I have two eyes. I will stare at you.”

“ Why do you look at them in the eyes. Best is to look down and walk. Avoid it.”

“ I carry a safety pin.”

“ I put my huge knapsack in front of me and walk in peace.”

“ But it was only a crush. I was staring at you because it was a crush.”

“ Please don’t do this to me, I am a father of two children. I am sorry I wont do it again.”

“ I am allergic to women in pants. It is against our culture.”

“I have a dupatta?”
I ask for it because I have a body with breasts that I should feel ashamed of? I ask for it because you think there are good girls and bad girls, decent girls and indecent girls? I ask for it because you think I am attractive?

Eve teasing it is, a joke, a prank that designs, shapes, structures our daily lives:
Who we are, where we go, what we wear, how we sit, stand, talk, walk in our very own cities. When we demand the need to make our cities non threatening , I don’t expect anyone to think of me as their sister or mother, but to really look at women as citizens who have every right to be out on the streets, without any explanation. Sometimes we just love to walk, stand around, hang around, without looking ‘avaliable.’

Blank Noise Blog-a-thon participants 2006

GO HERE TO READ THE BLOGS
http://www.blanknoiseproject.blogspot.com/

 

US cinema suffers from falling attendance & revenue in 2005


Posted by Seán Byrne on 12 March 2006 - 02:09 - Source: BBC News - Entertainment

As consumers fork out on larger TV sets, surround sound systems and more DVD rentals, some are becoming more happy to stay in to watch a movie than to go out to the cinema. According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the US box office revenue takings fell by 6% throughout 2005 compared with the previous year, with the attendance falling by 9% to 1.4 billion consumers.

Even though the average cost of making a film has fallen, the average cost of promoting new releases has risen by around 5% and up to a third for budget films. According to an MPAA survey of 3,000 consumers who go out to watch movies, about 70% prefer the full cinema experience watching an average of 8 movies per year, while about a third say that they have the ultimate movie-watching experience right at their home. heystoopid used our news submit to let us know about the following news:

Box office takings in the US slid by 6% in 2005, final figures have revealed.

Cinema ticket revenues amounted to $9bn (£5.2bn), while total attendance fell by 9% to 1.4bn people.

Some 240m fewer tickets were sold in 2005 compared with the previous year, according to data from The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The average cost of making a film in Hollywood dropped by $2.5m (£1.44m), but the budget for marketing new releases rose by 5%.

So far, one of the main issues the movie industry has often put the blame on is camcorder piracy in the cinema, however what he movie industry aims to do to tackle the online piracy of camcorder recordings from the cinema is potentially going to really hurt cinema sales. At the moment, when a movie is released in a cinema before it is available on DVD, then no matter how sophisticated one’s home cinema system may be, they still have to go to the cinema if they don’t want to wait until it is released on DVD. Also, a pirated camcorder copy does not really do justice either on a home cinema system.

However, if the movie industry decides to release DVDs during the time the movie is out in the cinema, then consumers will have the choice of staying at home in their ‘private cinema’ to watch their movie, not to mention the cost saving, since they are not forking out on individual tickets, not to mention the high cost of drinks, popcorn and snacks at the cinema.

When consumers are effectively forced into buying new TV sets to watch HD content, particularly when the next generation of DVDs and players become affordable, this will likely have a further negative effect on cinema attendance, since consumers will have a picture quality and potentially a sound system rivaling that of at the cinema. Then again, no matter how sophisticated one's home cinema may be, for some consumers nothing beats the actual experience of joining friends or going out with their parter to the movies.

heystoopid added: A short article, from the beeb, but since more than 68% of the MPAA, members annual income is derived from the total sales of all DVD’s sold through out the world, together with the strong push for all home residents to create their own home theatre environment (no annoying obnoxious Texan females chatting in the row in front of you, that swear and carry on when told to be quiet!) This means that even box office bombs, can actually recoup more than a fair amount of their costs, and are available to an even wider audience, than that available at the local picture theatre! So whilst the industry, is more than amply awarded, they are seeking ways, to repeat the income bonanza that the RIAA members had when they reissued vinyl to cd. Except this time around, if all speculation is correct, the want to own the end-user body and soul in the new format wars! So given the drop in bodies in seats at the theatre, one can expect an RIAA campaign against piracy storm on steroids coming from the MPAA members, in the lead up to the new super controlled format release! Ah choices, you’ve got to love ‘em!
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13177

 

Aleratec launches LightScribe publishing tower


Posted by Herbert on 12 March 2006 - 08:42 - Source: Aleratec

The following text is a complete press release, unmodified by CD Freaks. If you don't want to view these kind of news posting you can disable them in your preferences page once logged in. Please send your press releases to news@cdfreaks.com

The First Ever LightScribe Publishing Tower Just Got Better

Robust New Droppix Software Features Offer Wider Range of LightScribe Labeling Options

CHATSWORTH, Calif., March 13, 2006 -- Aleratec, developer and manufacturer of advanced USB, DVD/CD duplicating, recording, and digital imaging solutions announced today the addition of powerful new features for the 1:4 DVD/CD Tower Publisher LS. Aleratec is offering a very significant upgrade to Droppix Label Maker including the ability to insert fields in any text area, the ability to automatically retrieve information (artist, track names, etc.) from audio CD and album art from the internet. The Publishing Tower supports up to 4 simultaneous DVD/CD Copies, Recordings, or produces up to 4 Silk Screen Quality LightScribe labeled discs. The 1:4 DVD/CD Tower Publisher LS is a DVD/CD duplicator with LightScribe technology that simultaneously Laser burns custom labels directly on DVD/CD discs making it the first LightScribe desktop production disc publishing system. You can create your own custom labels, with text and graphics, using the unique Aleratec Disc Publishing Software Suite, powered by Droppix, included FREE! with purchase.

"Offering this significant Droppix Label Maker upgrade enhances the utility of LightScribe direct to disc labeling technology and gives our Prosumer users more of what they have been asking for and there will be no increase in price. Also, there is a free download of the upgrade for customers that have already purchased their 1:4 DVD/CD Tower Publisher LS," stated Perry Solomon, President and CEO. "The 1:4 DVD/CD Tower Publisher LS with the new Droppix Label Maker upgrade provides exciting new features like the ability to retrieve album art directly from the internet. It has more label templates, the ability to create and store custom templates, improved personalization and serialization features and much more and it's only from Aleratec."

The new Droppix Label Maker upgrade puts a professional CD and DVD personalization solution at the Prosumer users' fingertips. With its powerful graphics module any user can create professional quality labels quickly and easily. Droppix Label Maker includes an expanded selection of label templates and background images, logos, and fonts that for use in projects in addition to the users' own images and photos. Now Droppix Label Maker can easily print labels in a series, each with a unique serial number, and can be configured to automatically import information from any audio CD, play list or database. The new Droppix Label Maker more fully utilizes the advantages of LightScribe technology in a disc publishing application.

The Droppix powered Aleratec Disc Publishing Software Suite, includes the exclusive Aleratec Droppix Label Maker only from Aleratec, that produces up to 4 simultaneous LightScribe Direct to Disc Labels, right from your desktop, no printer required, Droppix Recorder for Towers, that produces up to 4 simultaneous disc copies, recordings or creations and Droppix Management Console, that monitors your publishing process.

LightScribe technology is an integrated system that combines LightScribe enabled DVD/CD recorders with specially coated media and the powerful Aleratec Disc Publishing Software Suite powered by Droppix, to produce precise, laser-etched, silkscreen quality labels with superior sharpness and clarity.

The 1:4 DVD/CD Tower Publisher LS (Aleratec Part # 260150, Ingram Micro SKU # H71760), is the only LightScribe DVD/CD Production Publisher and it is powered by Droppix. The 1:4 DVD/CD Tower Publisher LS is a remarkable value with a low Estimated Street Price of $999. The low ESP of $999 makes the 1:4 DVD/CD Tower Publisher LS the lowest total cost of ownership of the disc publishing systems making it ideal for Prosumer, Corporate, Government and Education applications.

Until now the equipment available to copy discs and label them required making a substantial investment in a machine that is only by a stretch of the imagination "desktop". More than one person is required to move some of these machines, so to get copies you have to go to the machine rather than having the machine at your desk where the work is. The 1:4 DVD/CD Tower Publisher LS is a package that is truly desktop with only a 7 x 15 inch footprint and weighing about 20 pounds.

The full line of Aleratec DVD and CD recording solutions, duplication solutions, and accessories is featured at 4SURE.com, AAFES, Adorama, Amazon.com, B&H Photo Video, Best Buy, Buy.com, CDW, Circuit City, CompUSA, Hewlett Packard, Insight, J & R, Mac Connection, MacMall, Micro Center, Office Depot, PC Connection, PC Mall, PC Nation, ProVantage, Quill, Ritz Camera, Sears, Target, and Tech Depot in addition to other leading retailers. Government and Education customers may purchase from Government and Education Specialists including AAFES, CDW-G, CompuCom, Daly Computer, EnPointe, Fed Tek, GCI, GE IT Solutions, GovConnection, GOVPLACE, Green Pages, GTSI, Horizon, Insight Gov, Manchester, Northern NEF, PC Mall Gov, Pomeroy, Sarcom, Shi.com, Softchoice, TIG and Unisys. All products are available to resellers through Bell Microproducts, DBL Distributing, Ingram Micro, and Ingram Micro Canada. Complete information available at http://www.aleratec.com

About Aleratec

Aleratec is a leading developer and manufacturer of "Prosumers' Choice" solutions for the USB, DVD/CD duplicating, DVD/CD publishing,, and digital imaging markets. Exciting new Aleratec USB, DVD/CD duplicating, DVD/CD publishing, and digital imaging solutions are establishing a higher standard in the industry with professional strength solutions at consumer prices that are exceptionally easy to use and understand, creating the ultimate "out of box" product experience. Alera Technologies is headquartered at 9140 Jordan Avenue, Chatsworth, CA 91311. For more information visit http://www.aleratec.com. E-mail sales@aleratec.com. Toll Free Phone: (866) 77-ALERA, Phone: (818) 678-6900, or FAX: (818) 475-5200.

The Alera Technologies logo is available at: http://media.primezone.com/prs/single/?pkgid=352

About Droppix

Droppix SARL, the new gold standard in digital media technology, is a Paris-based company that designs, publishes and markets powerful and intuitive CD and DVD production software packages for individuals and businesses. Droppix Recorder(tm), is a next-generation CD and DVD creation software package that provides the advanced features and functions required by professional users as well as an easy-to-use user interface that even novice users find intuitive. Droppix Recorder lets users create CDs and DVDs with data, music, photos and videos and includes support for professional disc labeling with LightScribe(r) for Direct Disc Labeling technology from Hewlett Packard. Droppix distributes its software globally though the Company's web site as well as via internet-based software download partners such as CNet's Download.com. For more information, visit www.Droppix.com.

About LightScribe

LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling offers consumers and businesses a simple, no-hassle way to burn professional-looking, silkscreen-quality labels on their CDs and DVDs. LightScribe extends optical media, recorders and software through an integrated system of media with special laser-sensitive coating, laser control and imaging drive modifications, and labeling software enhancements. LightScribe uses the same laser that burns data in the disc drive to create precise, iridescent labels. LightScribe technology was developed and patented by HP. A business unit of HP, LightScribe licenses its technology to optical industry leaders in drive and media manufacturing and to hardware, media and software brands. Additional information about LightScribe is available at www.lightscribe.com
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13178

 

Hassle-Free PC: Clean House on a Junk-Filled System Tray
Boost your computer's performance by clearing the tray of useless icons.

Steve Bass
From the April 2006 issue of PC World magazine
Posted Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Want to see the winner of the most bloated system tray award? It weighs in with 30 icons and counting. This month I'll tell you how to shake the system tray free of worthless items while retaining the essential ones.

The Hassle: Every time I boot up my Windows XP Home system (which takes forever), heaps of icons appear in my system tray. I checked my Startup folder and, except for two items, it's empty. Where are these programs coming from, and do I need to keep them all?


Advertisement




The Fix: Your computer's definitely stressed. There are two issues. First, every time you boot, Windows has to load the programs or processes represented by some of those icons. Second, and more significantly, they're gobbling up resources and CPU cycles, slowing down your system. It's a safe bet (I'll even give you odds) that plenty of the items are useless, can be dumped, and won't be missed.

Removing the junk from your system tray can be an exciting adventure. (Stop laughing. It's better than emptying the dishwasher, right?) Determining what applications are loading behind the scenes is the easy part; figuring out which ones you can safely remove is harder.

My cohort, Woody Leonhard, scratched the surface of the system tray in January's "Gunk Busters" feature. I've got more to say, and it's summed up in two words: WinPatrol Pro. The latest version, 9.8, is a must-have tool.

WinPatrol works in two ways. First, when you install a program and it tries to add an icon to the tray at boot-up, you'll get a WinPatrol warning--and a way to nip it in the bud (or kill and remove it afterward). That's important for programs such as AOL, Apple's QuickTime, and RealPlayer, all notorious for adding junk icons. WinPatrol also enables you to stop programs such as Adobe Acrobat that insist on running useless, daily version-update checks; and it prevents programs from changing file extensions willy-nilly.

Second, WinPatrol gives you an easy way to comb through existing background-loading programs; its 'info' button provides basic details, including the company name, version, and startup location--enough to help you figure out which entries are removable. The free version is good, but I strongly urge you to spend $25 for the Pro version. Its comprehensive database gives you more details and specific recommendations for which programs to keep and which to remove. I promise you'll get that money back by eliminating your system tray headaches.

Quick tip: Rather than remove an entry, I use WinPatrol's Disable feature until I am sure the entry is unnecessary.

WinPatrol also removes tracking cookies, monitors services, watches Internet Explorer helpers, and blocks Sony's annoying rootkit-like DRM scheme.

By the way, if you want lots of programs running from the system tray, don't mind the clutter, and are willing to spend some bucks, you can improve your PC's startup speed simply by adding more RAM. I maxed out my computer with 2GB and rarely experience resource issues.

Tool of the Month: Unclutter Your Desktop

I preach neatness, but my notebook's desktop is an unholy mess, with icons everywhere. That's fine with me--until I have to do a presentation and everyone gets a look at my disorderly desktop. My trick is to use an obscure feature built right into Windows to temporarily hide my desktop icons. Right-click your desktop and uncheck Show Desktop Icons under Arrange Icons By. This tactic is also ideal when I need to capture a screen shot of a dialog box and want a blank background.

Contributing Editor Steve Bass writes the Bass Blog, and is the author of PC Annoyances, published by O'Reilly. Contact him at hasslefreepc@pcworld.com. To read Steve's previous columns and newsletters, click here.
http://pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,124577,00.asp

WinPatrol v9.8.1.0

Don't you hate it when you press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and find a dozen mystery programs running you didn't even know were running? WinPatrol gives you greater control over what can run on your machine. You can set it to display additional information about--and approve of--startup programs. You'll also be alerted when something tries to load an IE plug-in or set a cookie. And to get rid of a particularly nasty piece of spyware, you can use the "Delete File on Reboot" feature, so Windows will get rid of it before any other program can protect it or relaunch it. Scotty the Windows Watchdog barks if he spots trouble. Good boy!

If you'd like to try a more full-featured version of this program, consider WinPatrol Plus. It uses an online database to give you more information about what programs are running on your computer. It costs $24.95.

If you'd like to download the regular, free version, click the following link. Download WinPatrol v9.8.1.0

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22728,00.asp

 

Test shows how vulnerable unpatched Windows is

botnet A test has revealed that a Linux server is far less likely to be compromised. In fact, unpatched Red Hat and SuSE servers were not breached at all during a six-week trial, while the equivalent Windows systems were compromised within hours.

An unpatched Windows 2000 Server was the quickest to be compromised, at an hour and 17 minutes, while unpatched Windows Server 2003 lasted slightly longer. Windows XP Professional, unpatched, lasted one hour and 12 seconds. Meanwhile, Unpatched Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and SuSE Linux 9 Desktop weren't compromised during the month and a half it was exposed to the Internet.

However, patching does make a difference. Patched versions of Windows fared far better, remaining untouched throughout the test, as did the Red Hat and Suse deployments. Techworld.com - Test shows how vulnerable unpatched Windows is

Test shows how vulnerable unpatched Windows is

By Matthew Broersma, Techworld

A test has revealed that a Linux server is far less likely to be compromised. In fact, unpatched Red Hat and SuSE servers were not breached at all during a six-week trial, while the equivalent Windows systems were compromised within hours.

An unpatched Windows 2000 Server was the quickest to be compromised, at an hour and 17 minutes, while unpatched Windows Server 2003 lasted slightly longer. Windows XP Professional, unpatched, lasted one hour and 12 seconds. Meanwhile, Unpatched Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and SuSE Linux 9 Desktop weren't compromised during the month and a half it was exposed to the Internet.

However, patching does make a difference. Patched versions of Windows fared far better, remaining untouched throughout the test, as did the Red Hat and Suse deployments.

The results of the test were confirmed by Symantec's other finding, Companies were at risk from unpatched software bugs for an average of 42 days per bug during the second half of last year, according to the company's latest semi-annual Internet Security Threat Report, released this week.

The report also found that the Firefox browser had fewer vulnerabilities than Microsoft Internet Explorer, due to a revision in the way Symantec counts bugs; and that unpatched versions of Windows last just over an hour on the Internet before being compromised, among other findings.

The report highlights the fact that even quick patching isn't enough to keep software secure, since exploit code began to circulate an average of 6.8 days after the disclosure of a vulnerability, while a vendor-supplied patch wasn't available until an average of 49 days after disclosure, Symantec said.

Symantec's figures deal with averages, and thus overlook the fact that vendors usually patch the most serious bugs more quickly than less dangerous flaws, minimising risk somewhat. Still, so-called "zero day" flaws are becoming more common, even in high-profile applications such as Internet Explorer. In August, for example, a researcher warned of an unpatched hole affecting IE 6 on a fully-patched Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP with Service Pack 2.

The report now features two different ways of counting browser bugs: one that finds that Internet Explorer has the most vulnerabilities, and a second that reveals Firefox as the bug leader.

Firefox had the highest number of vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities, with 13 bugs reported during the six months covered by the report, compared with Internet Explorer's 12, said Dave Cole, a director of Symantec Security Response.

However, the latest report also includes a count of bugs found by security researchers that have not been confirmed by Microsoft or the Mozilla Foundation, which owns Mozilla. By that count, Internet Explorer had the most security issues: 24, compared with Firefox's 17.

Symantec decided to begin counting the unconfirmed bugs "partially in response" to feedback from the Mozilla team after publishing its previous report in September 2005. That report counted only confirmed bugs, with 18 for Firefox and 13 for Internet Explorer. "We said, 'OK, for the next report we'll look at them both,'" Cole said. "It's something we might have looked at anyway."

Open-source projects tend to have more vendor-confirmed bugs because of the transparency of the bug-fixing process, according to Symantec.

The report found that attackers are increasingly targeting web applications and are tending to use more modular, easily updated code. The company documented 1,895 new software vulnerabilities, the highest number since 1998, of which 97 percent were moderately to highly severe and 79 percent were easy to exploit.
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?NewsID=5535

 

Microsoft to issue just one critical patch next week

By Stephen Lawson, IDG news service

Microsoft is set to issue just one critical security patch in its forthcoming monthly update. The company will release the critical bulletin about the Office suite and one bulletin on Windows that is rated important.

The company is also set to release an updated version of the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool.

The releases are part of the company's regular batch of updates: consolidated into one monthly release that takes place on the second Tuesday of each month, a date that has come to be known as "patch Tuesday."

The security bulletin for Office will involve updates that may require restarting systems, according to Microsoft. They will be detectable with the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer and the Enterprise Scanning Tool. The updates coming with the bulletin on Windows will not require a restart, according to the advisory. They will be detectable with the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer.

Microsoft will distribute its updated version of the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool via Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows Server Update Services and the Download Center.

There will also be one non-security High-Priority Update on Microsoft Update and Windows Server Update Services. There won't be any non-security High-Priority Updates for Windows coming over Windows Update or Software Update Services.

Information on the patch Tuesday bulletins is subject to change until the release date, Microsoft said. More information on the updates can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/advance.mspx.

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsid=5541&page=1&pagepos=0

 

The USB drive time bomb

Originally published 2005 in Atomic: Maximum Power Computing
Last updated 12/03/06.



Storage, as I've written before, is a problem that bedevils the modern nerd.

We've all got our stories about how we wondered how we'd ever fill that new 8Gb Fireball for our K6 that cost as much as a new set of excellent tyres, or that 1Gb SCSI drive for our Amiga that cost as much as a good used Kingswood, or that five million character 350 Disk File for our IBM 305 that would have cost as much as a Formula One racing team (one of the good ones), were it not for the fact that our only option was to lease the whole rig for an inflation-adjusted $US22,000 per month.

These stories have died away now, though. It would appear that every geek worth his or her salt is now downloading video of one kind or another, and that stuff takes up space.

Especially when you've decided to leapfrog the ghastly organisms at the movie and TV studios and download someone else's HDTV rip of whatever interests you. Oh, those upstanding corporations promise that one day they'll sell it to you in some stupid DRMed format that you may have to buy a whole new computer/TV/set of eyeballs to view, and won't be able to back up.

Or you can get a torrent from a server in some outlaw nation full of cheeky people, download the stuff you want for free today, and be able to make all the backup copies you like.

Hmm. Tough choice.

Hence, arbitrary gigabytes of space eaten up. Oh, sure, maybe some of you are doing digital video or scientific computation or monster database work. Suuuuure. No, really, I believe you. I do.

Anyway, because speed isn't terribly important for domestic drive arrays, you can get away with doing it the super-simple way - USB drive boxes. USB 2.0's got decent bandwidth; if you've got a separate server machine connected to your other boxes by anything slower than PCIe gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0's literally more than fast enough. And drive boxes are cheap and easy to set up, and you can just stack those suckers up pretty much forever.

I wouldn't try pushing anywhere near the 127-device-per-root-port USB limit, but even if you only install a mere 12 devices per controller, you'll be able to set up ludicrous numbers of disks. One built-in controller, a couple more in PCI slots, a mere 300 formatted gigabytes per drive; there's ten and a half terabytes, right there, at a price that'd make a datacentre operator from 1990 clutch his chest and fall over backwards.

But there's a trap here, even if you're a normal person who's only considering one or two external drives.

Consumer hard drives, you see, have short warranties (OK, OK, except Seagates, but they exclude their own external drives from that warranty...). There's a good reason for that.

That reason is not that the drive manufacturers want to reduce the overall cost of the warranty program. Sure, people who buy drives may try to install them while they're sailing on the high seas and covered with a crackling aura of St Elmo's Fire, and hard drive manufacturers certainly are annoyed about drives that've been killed by electrostatic discharge due to improper handling by the user getting returned under warranty. But the overwhelming majority of the world's hard drives are installed by people - or possibly robots - who do it the right way. The unfair warranty returns are actually a drop in the bucket.

The real reason for short warranties is that consumer drives wear out.

In a typical business-computer situation, where the skinflints in the purchasing department have made sure that every PC in the place is short of physical memory and so flogs its drive non-stop for eight hours a day, a substantial fraction of those drives can be expected to last two years or less. Three is definitely pushing it. Support people in such companies are used to doing drive replacements, and would probably have to do significantly fewer if the computers had more RAM.

People with the misfortune to have bought a base-spec Dell desktop are in the same situation, but so are a lot of geeks, who make up for their ample system RAM by spending a lot more time in front of the computer doing stuff that hits the disk. Heck, just downloading all that video will stop the disk receiving it from ever spinning down.

The way you make consumer drives last is by not using them. If they're spun down in standby mode, they're not wearing out. Even if a drive's kept in an anti-static bag in a cupboard, it won't last forever, but it's usually the physical components like the spindle and head assembly bearings that kill a drive after two years. When they ain't movin', they ain't wearin'.

Getting hard drives to spin down on any modern computer is, of course, easy. You can set the spin-down time to a really aggressive laptop-on-batteries five minutes or so, if you like. Consumer drives spin up fast (server drives don't), so there's no huge performance penalty to pay for doing that.

But if you're using USB drive boxes, their own little bridge interface is what decides when the drive spins down. Or, more accurately, if the drive spins down.

A lot of cheap external boxes - practically all of them, I think - never spin the drive down at all. They keep spinning the darn thing all day and all night, and keep spinning their cheap-bearinged cooling fan too, for that matter; that'll probably give out even sooner than the drive does, but is of course easier to replace, or hack around with some unsightly external-fan contraption.

Fancier Network-Attached Storage gadgets spin down their drives, of course. Buffalo Technology's somewhat pricey TeraStation, for instance, apparently has a fixed 30 minute spindown timer - though good luck finding anything about it in the manual. But the only way you can get most USB boxes to spin down is by yanking the power.

Which, of course, you can do. Run all of the drive box plugpacks from a Christmas tree of powerboards hooked to one switched outlet - which is a bad idea for high powered devices, but fine for the modest demands of hard drives - and you can toggle the lot of them on and off at will. USB won't get upset over that, though it is of course less than wise to cut the power in the middle of a write operation.

But if you don't take this sort of precaution, and leave the drives online all the time, don't expect them to last.
http://www.dansdata.com/gz055.htm

 

Researchers develop fingerprint forensics as DRM replaement


Posted by Seán Byrne on 13 March 2006 - 00:23 - Source: SC Magazine

Academics at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering have been working on a digital fingerprinting technology which aims to protect music, video, images and certain documents from piracy by using anti-collusion codes (AAC). When a consumer receives a piece of content protected with AAC, the content is marked with a Digital ID which is unique to the user to allow tracing should it get leaked out or pirated. The AAC technology is designed to be transparent to the user, without affecting the content's quality as well as not requiring any specialised software or hardware, which DRM restricted content mandates. However, the AAC technology is designed to withstand any attempt of removing or 'diluting' it.

The technology is primarily aimed at protecting audio and Video-on-Demand services such as via the Internet or via satellite. The advantage with music/video download services would be doing away with the infamous DRM technology to improve playback compatibility, while at the same time strongly discouraging unauthorised distribution. For example, Sony's use of rootkit technology to help protect their CDs from piracy turned into a real disaster for the company. Other attempts of using DRM such as with iTunes, copy protected audio CDs and other music download services have all resulted in hardware compatibility issues, while having little effect at stopping piracy.

The Clark School's Min Wu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, and K.J. Ray Liu, professor in ECE and the Institute for Systems Research, are developing the new "cyber forensics" to not only protect digital resources, but also trace those who attempt to steal or misuse them.

The technologies aim to counter cyber criminals' use of sophisticated "collusion attacks", which occur when multiple users conspire to electronically steal and distribute copyrighted or classified material, diluting or erasing the original digital ID, or fingerprint, from the stolen multimedia content to avoid detection.

Wu and Liu's new, interdisciplinary digital fingerprinting technology involves anti-collusion codes (ACC). ACC is designed to protect multimedia content without compromising the quality of the multimedia product or inhibiting legitimate uses.

In a way, this technology seems very similar to Fraunhofer’s watermarking technology for MP3, with the exception that this is designed to work over a wide range of media formats. This technology does have one nice feature in that it would do away way with the notorious DRM restrictions and player compatibility issues, by allowing the use of standard media formats.

Unfortunately, as several people have pointed out with Fraunhofer’s watermarking technology, this Digital ID technology does have a serious drawback in that the content is tied to the user. While this may discourage the user from sharing their content online, unfortunately it also means they will need to treat all their AAC protected content as they would with confidential documents! If any content falls into the wrong hands or they give a copy to a not so trustworthy friend, they could face serious problems if it turns up on a file sharing network.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13179



Continued use of DRM kills sales and targets the wrong people

Posted by Seán Byrne on 02 March 2006 - 00:52 - Source: Security Focus

While the entertainment industry happily continues crippling everything they can with DRM, at this point it is getting very clear that DRM has more evil to it than any good it has brought. Just recently, the head of Yahoo Music even suggested that labels should let their music be sold online without DRM and now Security Focus has published an article going deep into the big mistake with DRM.

For example, iTunes, which grabs most of the music download market locks its customers to the iPod. TiVo added DRM support its PVRs to allow broadcasters to control what viewers can do with their recorded content, including remote deletion. It seems to specifically target the wrong people by affecting paying customers, including their Fair Use rights since these are forced to use compliant hardware, obey its restrictions, etc. If they attempt to get around the restrictions, they are in effect breaking the law due to the notorious DMCA, where as those who decide to download 'illegally' are free to do what they want with their downloaded content, rendering DRM useless against these! So while the Entertainment industry claims DRM stops casual piracy, they may not realise that this does not stop them asking help from their friends and before they know it, they will end up using file sharing services or some other means of getting their copy.

When it comes to investment, everything the customer has paid for is worthless, since unlike physical media, consumers cannot sell unwanted purchased downloaded content, as the DRM effectively ties the user and their equipment to the content. Also, what happens with purchased music once a particular online store ceases or if the company decides to change to a new format, dropping support for an earlier format? Finally, no matter how sophisticated DRM may get, it will not stop the real pirates either, since all it takes is one successful copy to be made, even as simple as an analogue re-recording and the system is beaten. In order for DRM to be truly effective, all forms of file sharing, search engines, etc. would need to be closed off or at least restricted in order to make it as difficult as possible to get hold of a non-DRM protected version.

TiVo added DRM allowing TV shows to include a flag that prevents users from storing shows for any length of time. As a TiVo owner who has left some movies on my box for years, waiting for just the right day to watch them, this outrages me. Sure, TiVo said it was a "bug," but that sounds fishy to me, and I don't buy it. Remember: timeshifting is legal. (One solution: get the files off of TiVo, strip the DRM, and save 'em to a hard drive. A better solution: MythTV.)

Apple's successful iTunes Music Store, in addition to forcing users to accept a pretty sonically-limited format with a proprietary DRM scheme called "FairPlay" (using Orwellian language to mask what you're doing is double-plus ungood, Apple). FairPlay limits what you can do with the music you buy, leaving Apple in charge of your music, not you. Want to play a song you purchased from iTMS on a device other than an iPod? Uh-uh. Want to load music onto an iPod using something other than iTunes? Silly boy. Even worse, some universities are now making lectures and classes available using iTMS, a slap in the face to the open nature of learning and education. Sure, you can remove FairPlay's DRM, but you're still left with a music file recorded at a pretty crappy level, and converting it to a more open format only makes it sound worse. The iTunes Music Store isn't the only offender, as a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation made clear. iTunes is just the most popular, by far. (Solution: Music stores that give you real choice, without DRM.)

The British equivalent to the Oscars is the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award. Members of BAFTA are sent "screeners", free DVDs of the movies they're supposed to vote on, so they can view the movies and make judgments. In an effort to prevent the release of those screeners to non-BAFTA members, the DVDs are encrypted to only play on special DVD players that were also sent free to BAFTA members. As you can imagine, this is a royal pain in the posterior for many BAFTA members, who have to hook up special hardware just to watch a few films. In a bit of supreme cosmic irony, the screeners for Steven Spielberg's Munich were encoded for Region One (the US and Canada) instead of Region Two (Europe), so BAFTA members couldn't view the movie to vote on it. Oops.

The full article can be read here.

As the music industry has managed to get file sharing to pretty much flatten out, but not decline, they should really start reconsidering what they are doing to try and get consumers to move to legitimate services. In order for them to compete with file sharing, they really need to offer something that lures in customers and stop with the mess they are at with all their lawsuits. For example, as the head of Yahoo Music mentioned, if they offer content that is better than what file sharing networks have available and make the price more affordable, I can easily see a serious hike in legal download services.

At the moment, the RIAA claims that it is impossible to sell anything that has to compete with an illegal service that offers the ‘same thing’ for free. Well, if they offered a service like AllOfMP3, where consumers can choose their audio codec (to suit any hardware player), charge a reasonable price and do away with DRM restrictions, there is a good chance that consumers will start thinking twice of the hassle of re-downloading songs over & over from free file sharing networks to find a complete clean correct copy, never mind doing this for a full album’s worth of music, particularly compilation albums or with tracks which are more difficult to find.

Feel free to discuss about music download services, Digital Rights Management and file sharing on our forum.

 

Windows XP/Vista/2000/ME/98/NT - Microsoft Building New Free Mail Client
Posted by: Digital Dave on March 12, 2006 11:04 AM
Now this is something I need to look at.

Internet Explorer isn't the only application to enjoy a resurgence in Windows Vista -- Microsoft is readying a new desktop e-mail client that will be integrated into Windows Live and eventually replace Outlook Express. Dubbed Windows Live Mail Desktop, the product is currently in beta testing.

As IE development stagnated following the release of Windows XP, Outlook Express -- Microsoft's free e-mail client -- suffered a similar fate. But the OE team returned to update the product for Vista under the name Windows Mail, and is now expanding that work with a completely separate application.



Microsoft Building New Free Mail Client
By Nate Mook, BetaNews
March 10, 2006, 2:35 PM

Internet Explorer isn't the only application to enjoy a resurgence in Windows Vista -- Microsoft is readying a new desktop e-mail client that will be integrated into Windows Live and eventually replace Outlook Express. Dubbed Windows Live Mail Desktop, the product is currently in beta testing.

As IE development stagnated following the release of Windows XP, Outlook Express -- Microsoft's free e-mail client -- suffered a similar fate. But the OE team returned to update the product for Vista under the name Windows Mail, and is now expanding that work with a completely separate application.

Windows Mail in Vista brings to the table evolutionary improvements to Outlook Express 6, including an integrated spam and phishing filter, community features for Microsoft newsgroups and built-in spell checking. The client has also been linked up with Vista's contact database and search functionality.

However, much has changed in the Internet landscape since OE6 debuted in 2001. RSS and blogging have begun to spread, and users are spending more time utilizing Web based services now that broadband has reached ubiquity. Microsoft unveiled Windows Live last year to help usher in this new era.

Windows Live Mail Desktop will fill the role of connecting the operating system with a number of Live services. The client directly connects with Windows Live Mail without configuration, and integrates Live Messenger contacts directly into the interface.

A "Photo Mail" feature takes pictures from a digital camera and resizes them for e-mails, while uploading a larger version to MSN. For those not using Live Mail, the desktop client supports any POP or IMAP e-mail account, with support for multiple inboxes.

Aside from e-mail, RSS also plays a major role in Windows Live Mail Desktop. The software can serve as a complete RSS reader, enabling users to organize subscriptions using folders, instantly see unread items, and view items in a built-in preview pane.

Users can also click on an RSS item and immediately blog about it using the new "Blog It!" feature.

"Blogging and RSS looks like they're here to stay and phishing is more dangerous than ever. Now is the time to add life back into my favorite free email client and we're injecting a large dose of adrenaline to kick things back up," says Live Mail Desktop developer Lei Gong.

Other improvements being added to the client according to Gong include a redesigned user interface, emoticon and inline spell checking, and automatic syncing with Hotmail contacts.

Microsoft has not yet said how it plans to position Windows Live Mail Desktop or when the new client will be completed. Windows Mail in Vista will not be replaced before the new operating ships later this year, indicating that Live Mail Desktop will be offered as a free download for users seeking out added functionality.

A beta version of the software will be made available through ideas.live.com in the coming weeks, according to the Live Mail Desktop team.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Building_New_Free_Mail_Client/1142019354

 

Motorola Razr problems

p2p news / p2pnet: Is Motorola's Razr mobile phone terrific, or just junk?

Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile have temporarily stopped selling it because of a defect that causes calls to be disconnected before users have finished, says ZDNet News.

"Motorola and its customers are addressing an issue affecting a very limited number of Razr handsets sold for GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks over the last four weeks," Motorola's Alan Buddendeck is quoted as saying. "Motorola and its customers have taken steps to ensure an easy exchange process for consumers."

But, "In addition to triggering clever headlines like ;Flippin' Phone!; and 'That Razr's not so sharp'," news of the disconnect problem and the subsequent halt in sales, has bloggers, "both defending the popular uber thin device and ripping it as an unreliable 'piece of junk'," says CNET's Blogma.

Motorola said phones that were affected were shipped on February 1 and that new phones without the glitch are now available.

Customers with faulty Razrs should contact their carriers for a swap, says ZDNet, adding:

"The problem affects only GSM phones. GSM is a cellular phone technology standard in Europe that is also used by Cingular and T-Mobile in the United States. Razr phones on the Verizon Wireless network were not affected, because Verizon uses a different technology."

Also See:
ZDNet News - Mobile operators halt sale of Razr phones, March 10, 2006
Blogma - On edge about Razr phones, March 11, 2006

(Monday 13th March 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/8167

 

Sony may have given up on ARccOS protection
Posted by Dan Bell on 13 March 2006 - 07:04 - Source: Forbes

feedback10k used our news submit to tell us about an interesting study that was published in part by Forbes. It seems that Piper analyst, Gene Munster filed a report on Friday, that indicates Sony is contemplating Macrovision RipGuard instead of their own ARccOS protection scheme for DVD. The Macrovision protection is already being used by The Walt Disney Company.

The analyst said he expects Macrovision to have a better RipGuard showing in the first quarter than the last quarter owing to strong releases scheduled for Disney for the rest of the quarter.

In addition, Munster noted that Sony appears to have ceased using its own ARccOS DVD security technology in February.

"We believe this change could be positive or negative for Macrovision," the analyst said. "It could be positive if Sony has made a decision that its ARccOS technology is ineffective and is now looking for a different technology to replace ARccOS. It could be a negative sign, if Sony has decided that anti-ripping technologies, in general, are not worth the cost and effort."

As for the reason behind the decision, it's anyones guess. Perhaps it is as the article states, simply the cost of constantly maintaining and updating such measures that is being considered. Definately, we know that ArccOS has not been completely effective against those determined to duplicate or rip discs to their hard drives. You can find the source article from Forbes in it's entirety by following this link.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13181

the link

Macrovision's RipGuard Shows Consistent Use By Disney
Kate DuBose Tomassi, 03.10.06, 11:57 AM ET

The Walt Disney Company is a regular user of Macrovision's RipGuard anti-copying product, according to a recent Piper Jaffray report.

February checks indicate that one major studio, that of The Walt Disney Company (nyse: DIS - news - people ), is consistently using RipGuard. The other four of the top-five studios are taking a wait-and-see approach, Piper analyst Gene Munster wrote in a Friday report.

These studios are Warner Brothers, Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ), 20th Century Fox and Universal. Warner Bros. is a unit of Time Warner (nyse: TWX - news - people ). 20th Century Fox is a division of News Corp. (nyse: NWS - news - people ) Universal is jointly owned by General Electric (nyse: GE - news - people ) and Vivendi Universal (nyse: V - news - people ).

The analyst said he expects Macrovision (nasdaq: MVSN - news - people ) to have a better RipGuard showing in the first quarter than the last quarter owing to strong releases scheduled for Disney for the rest of the quarter.

In addition, Munster noted that Sony appears to have ceased using its own ARccOS DVD security technology in February.

"We believe this change could be positive or negative for Macrovision," the analyst said. "It could be positive if Sony has made a decision that its ARccOS technology is ineffective and is now looking for a different technology to replace ARccOS. It could be a negative sign, if Sony has decided that anti-ripping technologies, in general, are not worth the cost and effort."

Munster said he thinks Macrovision is well-positioned to grow its TryMedia, RipGuard, Hawkeye and TotalPlay businesses.

The analyst maintained a price target of $19 on shares of Macrovision.
http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/10/macrovision-ripguard-0310markets08.html?partner=yahootix

 

More Big 4 Winny problems

p2p news / p2pnet: The members of the Big Four Organized Music cartel are finding implementation of the Japanese portion of their sue 'em all marketing campaign just a little sticky.

Winny became known to the world in 2003 because the first people EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music and Vivendi Universal (currently in the spotlight for alleged price fixing) had arrested in Japan, "on suspicion of violating copyright laws," were using it.

Today, it's one of, if not the, most popular file sharing applications in Japan and, "The recent spate of both private and government data being uploaded to the Internet through the Winny file-sharing program highlights the difficulty in controlling and potentially banning the software," says the Yomiuri Shimbun.

Why's that?

"It's impossible to restrict file-swapping software because it can also be used legally," according to a government source quoted in the story.

Personal data on Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force members, cipher-related documents, and documents on the planning of combat exercises were recently leaked through Winny p2p and, "The police, who are trying to crack down on Internet-related crimes, also became a target," says the Yomiuri Shimbun, going on:

"Since February, information releases through the Winny program involving such authorities have included data on prison inmates, documents from the Tokyo District Court, information on investigations by the Ehime Prefectural Police Headquarters and information on patients at a Toyama hospital.

"Analysts say the leaks have been rampant because of the number of people who use Winny and because of a virus that infects the peer-to-peer software, which then uploads information on computers to the Internet."

Or were the leaks down to a shared folder(s)? - as a p2pnet reader wondered.

Be that as it may, "According to Trend Micro Inc., an antivirus software developer, 300,000 to 600,000 people are believed to use Winny, and about 300,000 personal computers of Winny users, including those with the virus since removed, have been infected," states the Yomiuri Shimbun.

In December, "the government set up a standard for information management by its organizations. But inadvertent uploads continued despite the measure, says the report, but, "It's rather a matter of individuals' lack of responsibility, than a matter of the government's computer system," it has a senior cabinet official saying.

Meanwhile, the National Police Agency has said it is nearly impossible under current laws to punish those who release information through Winny, adds the story.

Also See:
the world - $100K raised for Winny author, June 3, 2004
Yomiuri Shimbun - Winny woes hard to fix / Punishing users of file-sharing program nearly impossible, March 12, 2006
price fixing - Big Four record labels sued, March 12, 2006
recently leaked - Winny military data leak, February 24, 2006

(Monday 13th March 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/8171

 

iPhox backs China football

p2p news / p2pnet: When Chinese footie fans turn their TVs on to view their favourite sport, millions of them will be watching the iPhox Chinese Super League.

That's because p2p online phone firm iPhox, the latest entry into the VoIP arena, has become the new title sponsor for China's national football league.

The five-year deal also marked the global launch of its internet telephone product, says iPhox International chairman Johan Schotte.

iPhox 1.3 is literal person-to-person communication between PCs and mainstream phone system and, "Where traditional SIP software will fail to connect, iPhox can operate in virtually any network environment," Schotte told p2pnet. "A system of media relays positioned in data centers around the world assures that call traffic that isn't peer to peer retains a high quality by reducing latency."

The p2p phone application is available for Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, and soon for Linux, says iPhox.

It uses technology from Michael Robinson's SIPphone to ensure compatibility with the SIP open protocol and the ability to communicate with other networks.

iPhox also means Gizmo and Google Talk users will be able to exchange instant messages and voice calls with each other, says the company.

Calls to regular phones cost one cent, compared to Skype and Yahoo's two-cents and iPhox can instantly communicate with an expanding SIP hardware
product line that allows analog phones, Wi-Fi VoIP SIP phones and Bluetooth headsets to plug right into any network, it says.

Free calls can be placed and received on any PC running iPhox or any other SIP based software, even over dialup network connections and, "Unlike Skype, users' computers and bandwidth are never used to route third party calls, which makes iPhox suitable for corporate, government and university environments," states Schotte.

"Users of iPhox enjoy the largest SIP based network currently in deployment. More than 20 networks and many major universities such as UCSD, UCLA, BYU, UCI, UCSC, University of Indiana, Oklahoma University and MIT are linked to the SIPphone network for free calling."

Download iPhox here.

=====================

If you're Chinese and you're looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.

Download it here and feel free to copy the zip and host it yourself so others can download it.

(Monday 13th March 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/8170

 

The Pirate Bay: $6.3K richer

p2p news / p2pnet: The corporate entertainment cartels are suing their own customers and closing down p2p sites as fast as they can find them as they try to lock the clock back in the 20th century, when they had total control.

Among the web pages still flying the flag is The Pirate Bay whose, "defiant immunity from copyright lawyers is somewhat baffling," says Wired News.

"But in Sweden, the site is more than just an electronic speak-easy: It's the flagship of a national file-sharing movement that's generating an intense national debate, and has even spawned a pro-piracy political party making a credible bid for seats in the Swedish parliament."

In other words, the site has become a symbol of freedom for people in Sweden and as further evidence of this, Petter Nilsson, a contestant in Swedens Toppkandidaterna (The Top Candidates) reality show recently pledged 50,000 kroner to The Pirate Bay if he emerged the winner.

"Politics is not something that happens elsewhere, it happens together with those you turn to," he said. "If I talk about animal rights, it's because I have devoted my own time to get the animals out of the cages. If I talk about homelessness, it's because I myself have been freezing in a squatted house with the homeless of Stockholm. If I say that immigration policies is scandalous it's because I've had my own door kicked in by the immigration police.

"So when I donate my money to Pirate Bay, it's because I also want to be able to download music and movies for myself."

"Well," says The Pirate Bay blog, "the final just ended and guess who won? Yes, you guessed it - Petter!

"So you can expect some enhancements to the site in the next couple of weeks. We will buy a new server for the database and also one for the new search engine we're developing.

"For the geeks out there, here's what we're buying exactly:

"Database server: HP DL145 G2, 4 gig RAM, 2 x Optron DualCore 2.2 GHz

"Search server: HP DL145 G2, 4 gig RAM, 1 x Optron DualCore 2.2 GHz

"Now go celebrate."

(Thanks again, Brid)

Also See:
Wired News - The Pirate Bay: Here to Stay?, March 13, 2006
pledged 50,000 - Pirate Bay's newest supporter, February 20, 2006
blog - Win for Petter and 50 000 SEK to The Pirate Bay, March 13, 2006

(Monday 13th March 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/8169

 

Google vs Bush

p2p news / p2pnet: Google and the US government take their corners, tomorrow, over whether or not the latter can compel the former to turn over data, including about a million web addresses.

"The case is viewed by many experts as a test of how vulnerable the voracious search habits of the nation's Web users might be to the prying eyes of government," says the San Jose Mercury News.

Acting for the Dick Cheney / George W. Bush administration, US attorney general Alberto Gonzales subpoenaed Google to force it to release the web addresses, and at least one week's worth of random search queries. Google refused, as much because of likely negative business repercussions as for genuine concern for user privacy.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) are currently suing Bush and the National Security Agency in a bid to stop them from secretly spying on US citizens.

A recent DoJ document said Google's objections were unwarranted.

Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL have already handed over information.

"The government is seeking the information to buttress its defense of the Child Online Protection Act, a federal law designed to keep children from sexually explicit content on the Internet," says the story.

Gonzales was borrowing a page from the entertainment industry's book which routinely uses the Kiddie Porn ploy to force through legislation.

Google, meanwhile, "backed by privacy advocates, is resisting the subpoena on a variety of grounds, including the argument that it threatens the privacy rights of Web users and exposes the company's trade secrets to public release," says the San Jose Mercury News.

"The company also insists the information is irrelevant to the government's fight to revive the federal child protection law, which was put on hold by the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago."

However, "Despite the fact that the case has raised concerns about government intrusion into Web habits, legal experts say [US district judge James] Ware may steer clear of that issue and decide the case on much narrower grounds, such as whether the government can justify its subpoena," says the story, adding:

"Nevertheless, the case is considered a crucial barometer of how much control a search engine has over its vault of Web traffic and whether the Internet habits of its users are insulated by a 20-year-old electronic privacy law."

"This case comes at a time when people are starting to recognize that the information they put into their computers creates a record,'' the story has Lauren Gelman, associate director of Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society, saying. "In the bigger picture, as people input more information into computers, they are losing control over that. We're leaving a digital footprint with all sorts of information about ourselves.''

Google's Desktop 3 tool, which allows searches across multiple computers and which as part of the process, automatically holds copies of files on Google servers for up to 30 days, has been attacked because of security problems.

The company is also apparently both thinking about organizing its own internet, and accessing literally everything on users' computers by, in effect, becoming their virtual hard-drives.

Also See:
San Jose Mercury News - Google, U.S. to face off in federal court, March 13, 2006
secretly spying - Bush sued by ACLU, CCR, January 18, 2006
unwarranted - DoJ answers Google, February 27, 2006
handed over - Google rejects Bush demand, January 20, 2006
security problems - Google Desktop 3 is unsecure, February 21, 2006
|own internet - Google wants its very own Net, February 3, 2006
virtual hard-drives - Google as your PC, March 7, 2006

(Monday 13th March 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/8168

 

StarForce crashes PC Gamer Editors PC when using audio CDsPosted by Dan Bell on 13 March 2006 - 15:00 - Source: Next Gen Biz

Savannah used our news submit to tell us about this article written by PC Gamer Editor in Chief, Greg Vederman, that tells us of his personal experience with problems caused by StarForce DRM that was installed on his machine through a game using the protection. One day, he prepared to play an audio CD in his PC and was surprised when he got the dreaded Windows "Blue Screen" effect, when he tried using either optical drive.

Like a lot of us, he went online and did a little digging, which turned up a possibility that the condition could be due to StarForce. He then deleted the game from his machine, but to no avail. He then had to find and download a StarForce DRM removal tool to get the job done. We have already read that StarForce does not consider it their problem, that the software designer should be the one to ensure that their DRM is removed along with the program. Even Mr. Vederman agrees, but he thinks that the public should be able to know this prior to installation. Of course, this is neither here nor there to an end user. They just get irritated when they have a legitimate purchase that causes such problems.

Now Mr. Vederman has done some digging into StarForce, of how they feel that their software DRM does not affect honest customers and tells of the challenge posted on the StarForce website that is a bit of a "Red Herring" in his eyes.
Prove It

StarForce Technologies, the company that makes StarForce, seems to think that problems like mine aren’t real — or that, if they are, they’re happening only to pirates. Not too long ago, they even launched a contest on their website (www.star-force.com) called “Prove It!” If you could prove to them that StarForce had physically damaged your optical drive (a long-standing internet rumor), SFT would pay you $10,000. According to them, no one proved it.

The contest was a bit of a red herring, though, because I don’t think StarForce is physically damaging drives. My guess is that the rumor was started by people who were having problems similar to mine, but who were unable to resolve them because they didn’t know how to fully remove StarForce.

And why don’t people know how to do that? I have to lay the blame at the feet of certain game publishers. Companies that use potentially problem-causing anti-piracy software could do a much better job of getting out in front of these sorts of issues and helping customers resolve them. (Including a FAQ sheet in each game box would go a long way.) As it stands, gamers sometimes run into issues, have no idea why, they can’t return the game they just bought because their store doesn’t accept returns (because retailers are also concerned about losing money to piracy), and in the end a lot of people are needlessly left out in the cold.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13182


StarForce facilitates piracy by posting warez link
Posted by Dan Bell on 13 March 2006 - 17:03 - Source: Neowin

Several people, including Savannah, Richteralan and BetrayerX all used our news submit to tell us about another recent development with StarForce. Apparently, one game software manufacturer decided to release their product without any protection other than a serial number. In an apparent attempt to draw attention to the fact and also to show that the game was selling like hotcakes, someone posted a link at the StarForce forums stating this, despite the lack of protection from pirates. The poster was trying to show that not everyone is a pirate and that possibly these measures are not as necessary as some think.

It was obviously an attempt to stir up a reaction from StarForce and they took the bait hook, line and sinker! Shortly after, the folks at StarForce came back by posting a link to a BitTorrent site, showing where you could get a warez version of the game. Obviously, they were trying to show what happens when you don't use a DRM scheme, but it is not too swift linking to a warez site when you can just mention that it is being traded around. Neowin interviewed a representative of the game company that created the product being discussed, Galactic Civilization 2, from Brad Wardell, to get his thoughts on the action from StarForce:

We caught up with Brad Wardell of Stardock this weekend for some reaction to this rather humorous turn of events:

"I don't claim to be incredibly informed on warez. I don't pirate stuff so I am not familiar with sites that people go to in order to find, amongst other things, warez. I was not familiar with the site they linked to. I suspect I'm not alone. We cannot understand why they felt the need to provide an actual URL rather than state the obvious -- that like all software, ours is being pirated at some level.

We obviously don't want people to pirate our software. Every time someone pirates it who might have possibly bought it we feel the pinch. We're a small company so every sale counts. We simply think there are other ways to go about it than to inconvenience customers with CD-based copy protection."

Neowin raised a good question: If StarForce is so concerned with piracy, why in the world would they go so far as to provide a link to warez just to prove a point? Seems to be a bit over the top, even childish.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13183

 

Toronto Wi-Fi: access for all

p2p news view / p2pnet: Toronto Hydro's announcement last week of its plans to blanket the City of Toronto with wireless Internet access has sparked an important debate about the appropriate role for governments and public institutions in providing Internet connectivity. Significantly, it comes on the heels of the CRTC's recent decision to distribute $652 million to major telecommunications providers such as Bell and Telus to help defray the costs of implementing high-speed connectivity in rural Canadian communities.

These developments place the spotlight squarely on a critical question for new Conservative Industry Minister Maxime Bernier - what, if anything, should government do about Internet connectivity?

The starting position for a Conservative government might well be to argue that government has a very limited role to play here, concluding that this is strictly a marketplace issue and that the private sector has plenty of incentives to develop networks for consumer use.

The major telecommunications companies can be expected to support that approach, though the CRTC decision illustrated that they typically only want to keep government out when it is a potential competitor. When government is prepared to provide what amounts to massive corporate subsidies, as Canada's telecommunications regulator has decided to do, public involvement becomes far more attractive.

Meanwhile, supporters of public involvement point to compelling evidence that government must increasingly shoulder responsibility to ensure that the market features robust competition and that no Canadian communities are left behind.

Access to the Internet is no longer a luxury - for millions of Canadians it is necessity that serves as a foundation for education and life-long learning initiatives, access to knowledge, health care, government services, financial activity, entertainment, and communication.

Given the Web's importance, government cannot adopt a hands-off approach, though it must recognize that its role differs in the urban and rural markets.

In urban communities, most of which are serviced by a choice of two broadband options (cable or DSL), the focus ought to be on the competitive environment and the assurance that the entire community can afford access.

Recent comments from a senior Canadian cable company executive, who last month informed a group of stock analysts that the Canadian market for broadband services does not face the same competitive pressures as those found in the U.S., foreshadows the prospect of steadily increasing consumer prices for high speed Internet access.

In fact, as leading Canadian ISPs institute new fees for services such as Internet telephony and as they lobby for the power to dispense with traditional network neutrality principles, the lack of competition is clearly having a negative impact on the marketplace that could expand the digital divide within Canada' s major cities.

In light of these developments, last week's Toronto Hydro announcement should be welcomed as an opportunity to inject new competition into the Internet access market. Moreover, much like other municipal wireless initiatives in U.S. cities such as San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Tempe, Arizona, officials should use the connectivity to ensure that there is affordable access for all members of the community.

The governmental role in rural Canada ought to be a different one. In those communities, many of which lie on the outskirts of major cities such as Toronto or Ottawa, the concern revolves around connectivity, not competition, since there is often no broadband option available to local residents.

Ottawa has been struggling with this issue for many years. In 2000, it established the Broadband Task Force, which recommended that the government address fears of a digital divide within the country by providing financial support for network development in rural communities. Those recommendations were never fully implemented as successive industry ministers failed to obtain the necessary support within cabinet.

The CRTC jumped at the opportunity to remedy the situation when it conducted hearings on how to distribute funds it held in trust on behalf of consumers who overpaid for their local phone service. Last month it decided to allocate the funds, which amount to a staggering $652 million, toward rural broadband initiatives. The money will be used to reimburse telecommunications providers for their "non-economic" costs (ie. unprofitable costs) of building rural broadband networks.

While its intent is laudable, the CRTC's approach is an inappropriate way to solve the problem. Since the money comes directly from Canadian consumers, consumer groups rightly argue that it should be returned to those same consumers (each consumer would receive approximately $50).

The Commission's decision has highlighted the need for governmental involvement, however, since the major Canadian ISPs informed the CRTC that without external support, there is no economic case for building high-speed networks in many rural Canadian communities.

The solution therefore lies not in simply handing over $652 million in economic assistance to the telecommunications providers, but rather for government to support local, community-owned networks that operate for the public benefit. While the telecommunications providers might be called upon to establish the services, publicly funded networks would remain in public hands, with the communities retaining the flexibility to offer reduced fees or alternate options.

By openly acknowledging the lack of competitive pressures in urban markets and their unwillingness to invest in rural networks without governmental support, Canada's ISPs have sent a clear message to Minister Bernier. While the market should lead, the government must assume its share of responsibility to eliminate the Canadian digital divide.

Michael Geist
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]

(Monday 13th March 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/8175

 

MPAA vs Kids with Camcorders

p2p news / p2pnet: Having fired another salvo in Japan against kids with camcorders, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America)'s own NATO organization wants to keep it happening.

The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) is among other things highlighting its cinema ushers' bounty hunter program under which sleuths with flashlights who turn in patrons can "earn" up to $500 for, "reporting illegal recording activity".

The news comes in the FightFilmTheft.org, a supposed 'training' body set up by the MPAA's six owners, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney.

"Illegal camcording in movie theaters is the source of over 90% of all illegally copied movies in their initial release form," says NATO.

"The FightFilmTheft.org training program consists of a tutorial and quiz that outline the 'who, what, where' signs of camcording piracy," states the MPAA, boasting that since 2004, US theater workers have, "successfully stopped 69 camcording incidents and the program has paid out rewards to 30 people".

A similar $500 reward program exists for theater employees who take action to stop film theft in Canada, it adds.

Strangely, Sony still hasn't been sued for producing millions of easy-to-hide mini camcorders and associated equipment of the exact type the other five MPAA owners are complaining about.

Also See:
another salvo - Hollywood's Japan anti-p2p bill, March 12, 2006
exact type - Sony's newest camcorder, February 22, 2006

(Monday 13th March 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/

 

Google Brazil controversy

p2p news / p2pnet: Google Brazil unit has been ordered to tell the country's authorities what it's doing to curb crimes allegedly committed through its Orkut chat rooms.

A spokesman, "confirmed that the unit, Google Brasil, had received a summons from the Public Ministry, but he declined to give details," says CNET News, explaining the ministry is similar to a US attorney general's office.

"The summons came after a complaint was filed with the ministry by the nongovernmental organization Safernet, which monitors crime on the Internet," says the story.

"Since June, we have sought out Google to request preventive measures against crimes that are practiced on Orkut, but we never got a response," CNET has Safernet president Thiago Nunes de Oliveira saying.

"We found more than 5,000 profiles of users that were publishing images with scenes of child pornography in photo albums," said Oliveira, who wants Google to remove illegal material and report users that post it, adds the story.

Orkut is also said to have been used to push drugs, mainly ecstasy and marijuana, online.

Also See:
CNET News - Google Brasil summoned on chat room complaint, March 10, 2006
push drugs - Gang pushed drugs online, July 22, 2005

(Monday 13th March 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/8177