Tech World

An interesting article in the Washington Post discusses how law enforcement is now using GPS to track suspects, mostly without any warrant. This really sounds like a gray area in the world of privacy. On one hand, police can "tail" a suspect without a warrant, which this is very similar to, but what if a citizen decided to put a GPS device on another persons vehicle, including police or elected officials? Would this be justified, or would they face possible charges for stalking?

Over all it looks like this won't be answered until it ends up in the courts, whenever that might be. I think the GPS idea is a good idea, but it's another one of those things that can be abused in the wrong hands. And yes - some cops are the "wrong hands".

As we move forward with technology, our sources of warfare also transform. This could be what's happening in Georgia right now:

August 11, 2008 (Computerworld) Hackers, perhaps affiliated with a well-known Russian criminal network, have attacked and hijacked Web sites belonging to Georgia, the former Soviet republic now in the fourth day of war with Russia, a security researcher claimed on Sunday.

Some Georgian government and commercial sites are unavailable, while others may have been hijacked, said Jart Armin, a researcher who tracks the notorious Russian Business Network (RBN), a malware and criminal hosting network.

This is an angle to warfare that is only discussed in theory, and one most think of as the plot from some sci-fi movie. Today it looks more like reality.

Point in case. Dr. Herman I. Libshitz, a retired radiologist and Vietnam veteran gets denied high speed internet by Verizon. The reason? His last name "contains an expletive". This wasn't the decision of a single employee, he got the same response as he went up the chain and even told to change his last name.

Perhaps we should declare Verizon as an expletive. Make it a really bad one too, rating up there with the C word. Then let them go through and change their name.

I can understand why. I managed to get my hands on one a couple of weeks ago and I am in love with it. I'm not a big gamer, I just bought the WII for the WII fit, but this thing is addictive.

Was it hard to get? Hell yeah. I went through a nightmare trying to get one on EBay. I finally won an auction for a WII system that was in Illinois. After a week I didn't receive it and contacted the seller. Turns out he said it was coming from China. CHINA, despite him advertising it as coming from Illinois. So after another few days, I finally got my box and it contained five pairs of shoes - no WII. I filed with PayPal and Ebay and had my money back that night, so no big deal.

Finally I got lucky. I resorted to the Google and found them for sale online through Toys R' Us. This was a bigger package that had the WII sports, plus three games, so it cost about $100 more, but that wasn't a problem (the other games are actually fun also). Now I got my WII and play it every day. It gets me off this damn computer and moving around a little more.

My suggestion if you are looking for one is to just Google. Check a couple of times a day, because they will pop up about as quick as they disappear. I would stay away from EBay on the WII, as most people are trying to oversell. I have seen them offering the WII with 5 games and two controllers for $400+ dollars. The five games are the five included in WII sports and the two controllers are actually the one controller and the nunchuck extension. It's the same system as sells for $250 when you find them in stores. Of course if you really want one and money is no object - go ahead and get it.

The FCC is finally doing something I agree with:

The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday he will recommend that the nation's largest cable company be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet.

The potentially precedent-setting move stems from a complaint against Comcast Corp. that the company had blocked Internet traffic among users of a certain type of "file sharing" software that allows them to exchange large amounts of data.

"The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told The Associated Press late Thursday. "We found that Comcast's actions in this instance violated our principles."

Martin said Comcast has "arbitrarily" blocked Internet access, regardless of the level of traffic, and failed to disclose to consumers that it was doing so.

The traffic that Comcast was blocking was BitTorrent traffic. Sure there is a lot of pirating going on with BitTorrent, but there is also a lot of legitimate transfers, such as downloading different Linux builds. Also Comcast does not have the right to act as judge, jury and executioner in deciding what is legal and not.

This can be viewed as a small victory for net neutrality, but that fight is far from over. In the end we need to see the internet regulated more like a public utility, than a private sector service. The internet has become a too important factor in day to day operations around the world to not be benefited the same protections.

After years of being involved in administering different online communities, as well as developing the software for them, one thing never stops shocking me. When you get a user that crosses the line and you ban them, or take any action so they can no longer contribute to your online community, they start yelling that you are violating their constitutional right to freedom of speech.

The AP takes a good look at this today:

Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.

Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.

When I hear people complain that a site is taking away from someones freedom of speech, I always point to shopping malls. Go into a shopping mall and start saying whatever you feel like. If the management of that mall doesn't like that, they will throw you out. It's private property and they have the right to. The same thing applies to websites. The owners of that website pay for hosting and have to adhere by the terms of a hosting company. That hosting company is also a private business, so in the end it's much like the mall scenario.

So next time you want to go on a rant in the comments section of a blog, just remember that the owner of that blog can stop you from posting, and it's not a "violation of freedom of speech". Instead they are exercising their rights as a business/site owner.

I am amazed this story isn't getting more play in the U.S. For years Sony BMG has gone after music downloaders and now it turns out they are the pirates:

The story centres on French software developer, PointDev, which makes administrative tools for Windows. According to Ars Technica, the company recently received a call from a Sony BMG IT employee asking for support.

Unfortunately for the individual and for Sony BMG the employee supplied PointDev with a pirated licence code. A subsequent raid on Sony BMG's servers by the Business Software Alliance revealed that up to 47 per cent of the company's software was pirated.

So should the new Sony motto be "don't steal from us, but we will steal from you"?. It sure sounds like it. I got a feeling they are working hard to keep this out of the press as much as possible.

Tech burst 2.0 for Yahoo:

Battered by slow revenue growth and the popularity of social networking Web sites, Yahoo Inc. is poised to lay off hundreds of workers, according to published reports.
more stories like this

The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have both reported on the slumping Internet icon's cost-cutting plans, citing people familiar with the matter.

Precisely how many of Yahoo's roughly 14,000 employees will lose their jobs hasn't been determined, the newspapers said. A final decision could be announced Jan. 29 when Yahoo executives are scheduled to review the Sunnyvale-based company's fourth-quarter results.

Being in the tech industry I have been amazed at how much Yahoo has gone down hill. It's not so much that they are losing in the product race, but rather the quality of products they have out there. Almost all Yahoo products have flaws to them and they just seem to not care about it.

It looks like Time Warner will be testing a new system for billing their broadband internet subscribers:

Time Warner Cable will try selling consumers broadband service based on how much bandwidth they use, a move that could turn the home broadband pricing model in the U.S. on its head.

In a trial planned for later this year in Beaumont, Texas, the service provider will offer four tiers of service at different prices. Customers who used more bandwidth would pay more.

The details of the tiered pricing plan haven't yet been set, according to Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley. The offer will only go out to new customers, he said.

While I agree there are those that abuse the system, there are also innocent people out there who may go over their limit for a month. Take the month of December when children and a lot of parents are home on vacation. Internet surfing rises. So everyone gets into YouTube during those few weeks and that pushes them over their quota.

One of the hardest parts of setting up your own blog is to find a decent company that will host it. Most of the software is free, but the computers the site is served on isn't. That's where your hosting company comes in. I have been with Lypha for two years now and don't have a single complaint. The couple of times my site has gone down they have been right on it. They give excellent service at an excellent price.

Another thing Lypha doesn't care about is when I use the occasional bad word. They don't censor my content. Now if I turned this into a full blown porn site, they might complain, but that is to be expected. This seems to be a big difference from Blue Host.

Blue Host is one of the recommended hosts for Wordpress, but that might be changing. I was reading a thread on the Wordpress forums today where a person had their site suspended by Blue Host because a commenter used the "f-word". They said it is against their "moral" policy. This is just the latest example of the anal-retentiveness of America today.

I have been loving his coverage of the CES. His latest post shows this new gem coming out:

That is the new RetroDuo that will play all your old NES, SNES and Gensis game cartridges. I'm not a big gamer, mostly in part to the fact I don't like the new games, but I will have to get one of these. I love the older games and they are a great escape from your typical daily stresses.

One thing I try to emphasis to the blogs I handle the tech work on is keeping page sizes low. The reason for this is because there are so many people in this country that are stuck with dial-up internet. As it turns out the United States has taken a big plunge in internet speed and availabilty over the past five years. This graphic gives a good representation of that.

Of course the Bush administration is to blame for a lot of this:

What's less clear is how badly the country that gave birth to the Internet is doing, and whether the government needs to step in and do something about it. The Bush administration has tried to foster broadband adoption with a hands-off approach. If that's seen as a failure by the next administration, the policy may change.

U.S. News released the list of the top 10 internet crimes of 2006. The data is provided by the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a government agency partnered with the FBI.

So look ask yourself which internet crime is the at the top of Bush's agenda, and then look at this chart:

(chart via usnews.com)

Ironic that Bush's number one issue on internet crime happens to be the lowest on the chart. Perhaps we should look at the wider spectrum of internet crime, instead of going the Bush route of focusing on only one segment (which is the most disgusting segment - don't get me wrong on that).

I haven't blogged about old Bill O. in awhile. Recently he has been on the attack against NBC. He keeps his attacks of their "liberal bias" coming almost nightly. Well if NBC is so bad, then why is Bill's employer going into a business venture with them?

News Corp. and NBC have announced a deal to create a new video distribution site, dubbed the "YouTube killer" by many. The companies have also formed partnerships with a number of big players, including Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Time Warner/AOL to supply content and provide distribution channels. The service, which currently does not have a name, will launch this summer with a number of TV shows and movie content.

The full list of TV shows that will be available at launch, according to News Corp., will include Heroes, 24, House, My Name Is Earl, Saturday Night Live, Friday Night Lights, The Riches, 30 Rock, The Simpsons, The Tonight Show, Prison Break, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader, and Top Chef—"plus hits from the studios' vast television libraries." The service will also feature movies, including Borat, Little Miss Sunshine, Devil Wears Prada, The Bourne Identity, and Bourne Supremacy at launch.

Gee Bill - will this make you part of the "liberal media" now? Perhaps the manly thing to do is go on the air tonight and denounce this deal. If your employers continue with it then quit on the air. Sounds like it is time for you to put up or shut up.

Hell he already taps our phones, why not everything else?

The Bush administration has accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate, CNET News.com has learned.

That proposal surfaced Wednesday in a private meeting during which U.S. Department of Justice officials, including Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand, tried to convince industry representatives such as AOL and Comcast that data retention would be valuable in investigating terrorism, child pornography and other crimes. The discussions were described to News.com by several people who attended the meeting.

A second purpose of the meeting in Washington, D.C., according to the sources, was to ask Internet service providers how much it would cost to record details on their subscribers for two years. At the very least, the companies would be required to keep logs for police of which customer is assigned a specific Internet address.

We need Leahy and Conyers on this one. This is another blatant violation of consumer privacy. Knowing how the Bush twins act, I wonder what daddy would think of one of them sent a titty pic to some boyfriend via email and someone keeping it at an isp? There's nothing illegal with that, but it could be very embarrassing to Bush and his family. Conservatives = small government? Bullshit. This is more proof that they want the government to expand beyond belief.

Thanks George for taking away more freedoms and bowing down to Osama!