Networking and the Internet

Digg vs Reddit - Vote

davestechshop.net — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:21:50 GMT

Who do I think would kick ass?
"Reddit"

Created by Datepad

Forget your passwords

davestechshop.net — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:39:31 GMT

Sxipper lets you log into any website with a single click. Sxipper saves you time by keeping track of an unlimited number of usernames and passwords and it has a useful feature called personas. Sxipper is different from most password managers or form fillers in its use of artificial intelligence to figure out how to properly fill in web-based forms (with your data) that it hasn't seen before. In other words, when you visit a web page for the first time, Sxipper can often figure out where your data should go.

Here's a nice review of Sxipper:

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/
You can download Sxipper here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4865

I like the fact that it is cross platform - runs on Linux, Max and Windows.

Quote from the review:
Sxipper the dog loves to learn new tricks as he gets older
Malcolm Parry, Vancouver Sun
First Published: Thursday, April 05, 2007

"... includes straightforward stuff like remembering and applying site passwords, automatically filling in forms, and remembering all the sites you've accessed and what you've told them.

"But today's dynamic data is much harder to handle than it was when web pages were static. Sxipper is in his element here, Hardt says, especially when its master's identity data is dynamic and would be hard or impossible to manage.

"He's referring to stuff like disposable e-mail and one-time credit cards."

FCC chief grills Comcast on BitTorrent blocking

davestechshop.net — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:01:47 GMT

Previously I have written about How Comcast Silently Blocks your Internet traffic. Today, Federal Communications Commission chief Kevin Martin questioned Comcast on this issue. Here is on report on it.

Update at 3:10 p.m. PST: CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Federal Communications Commission chief Kevin Martin on Monday targeted Comcast's contention that delaying peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic serves user interests, appearing to sympathize with the cable company's critics.

Through pointed questioning at a public hearing at Harvard Law School here, Martin, a Republican, seemed to be pushing a two-pronged agenda: Internet service providers like Comcast should be as transparent as possible about manipulating network traffic, and consumers should have the freedom to, in effect, get what they pay for.

But at the end of the event, which, all told, lasted nearly six hours, Martin told reporters he still hadn't made up his mind about whether Comcast had done anything more than "reasonable" network management.

The chairman was also unable to predict when the Commission would reach a decision on Comcast's conduct and the broader question of constraints on network operators' traffic shaping practices, except to say, "I think it's important we try to act very quickly."

Read the full story here:
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9878330-7.html?tag=nefd.lede

Maybe we need to write our representatives. I'm also considering, as one option, switching permanently to DSL.

Hiding an SSID will not hide a wireless network

davestechshop.net — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:26:30 GMT

Steve Riley on Security

"Hiding an SSID will not hide a wireless network, so ignore any such advice. By the way, also ignore any advice that says to use MAC address filtering. It's amazingly trivial to spoof the MAC address of an allowed supplicant -- simply sniff the traffic, look at the MAC addresses, and use the neat little SMAC utility to change your MAC to one that's permitted. Nonbroadcasting networks are not secure networks. The right way to secure a wireless network is to use protocols that are designed specifically to address wireless network threats. If you're still using WEP, either static or dynamic, I encourage you to move to WPA2 as soon as possible."

Read the entire article at http://blogs.technet.com/steriley/archive/2007/10/16/myth-vs-reality-wireless-ssids.aspx

How Comcast Silently Blocks your Internet traffic

davestechshop.net — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:56:11 GMT

I am a Comcast subscriber and for much of the time I've had this blog, I have hosted it on my computer connected to the Internet via Comcast. I was shocked to learn about the following Comcast traffic-management scheme thanks to the article at http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/10/19/comcast/.

Bless the Associated Press for unearthing, through careful and diligent investigation, Comcast's shameful, hidden Internet traffic-management scheme.

Comcast, the AP determined, actively manages data on its network by using software to essentially masquerade as its subscribers' machines. When non-Comcast Internet subscribers request files from your Comcast-connected machine -- as happens in peer-to-peer file-sharing applications -- Comcast's technology steps in and tells the non-Comcast subscriber you're not available.

This is a difficult story to explain, but it's quite important. For years, consumer advocates have been demanding that Congress and/or the Federal Communications Commission impose "network neutrality" regulations that would force broadband providers (like Comcast) to treat all data on a network equally. Lawmakers have so far failed to do so.

Broadband providers, meanwhile, insist that they do treat all traffic equally, but they reserve the right to use certain technologies to "manage" data on their network. The Comcast plan suggests that broadband providers mean something very broad by "traffic management" -- including, it appears, purposefully stepping into your network sessions to shut them down.

Read the full story here. It is worth reading.

I also want to share the closing paragraph from the original article here:

OK, so what can we do about this?

It'd be wonderful if the solution was to simply stop subscribing to Comcast. If that would make you feel better, by all means, cancel your subscription.

But know this: Other broadband vendors have not distinguished themselves on the issue of network neutrality. In general, major broadband companies say they should be free to manage traffic on their networks, and it's impossible to tell how expansively they understand that "management" role.

If Comcast is saving money by adopting such methods, you can bet others are already doing so, or soon will. It would be shocking if Comcast were the only one.

But there is an obvious solution. It has been obvious for some time. We need a law!

Providers should be proscribed from interrupting customers' connections or, at the very least, from doing so secretly -- if they're going to disrupt your traffic in any way, they should be forced to tell you how.

Broadband companies have long argued that network neutrality regulations are unnecessary. The Comcast scheme pretty definitively proves otherwise.

CEO of MySQL "Invents" the Semantic Web!

davestechshop.net — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 22:50:30 GMT

Here's an interesting post: CEO of MySQL "Invents" the Semantic Web! at MindingThePlanet

"It would be a terrible waste if MySQL went off on their own to reinvent the wheel (a wheel which has taken hundreds of researchers more than a decade to make) when they could be valuable contributors of an already-existing, large-scale, worldwide community that is very far along in making the vision Mr. Mickos described into a reality. MySQL could indeed play THE leading role in this space. They are perfectly positioned to do it."

What is the definition of a good URI?

davestechshop.net — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:13:12 GMT

This post is not much of an article. In fact, it is only a link to someone else's article. But Mike Amundsen's post about URI's is really worth reading if you are a web developer. I plan to eventually write an article that will add something to Mike's discussion, but for now, all I have to say is, "You will probably enjoy Mike's article if you are a web developer." Cheers.

Firefox vs Internet Explorer - a quick glance

davestechshop.net — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 00:17:06 GMT

A while back I read Andy Hedges' Tech Blog about Firefox possibly overtaking IE by Dec-2007. I'm not sure how the trends will change once IE 7 gets some traction.

However, I did notice that 68.2% of my visitors were using Firefox today and only 19.3% were using IE. One reason I took a look at this in my stats was because I noticed over at BoingBoing that almost 50% of the visitors are on Firefox and only about 25% are using IE.

Stop It With the Astro-Turfing

Dhanur Ved, LLC — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 23:06:23 GMT

Liz Strauss has a post about the astro-turfing going on. We need to be aware of this.

<quote>Common Cause has released a report on the incredible amount of astro-turfing that surrounds telecom reform legislation. Entitled “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing,” the report is a follow-up to an earlier attack on these phoney “public interest” groups, which are, in reality, industry-financed fronts designed to mess with people’s minds.</quote>

Internet’s First Amendment

Dhanur Ved, LLC — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 22:54:31 GMT

A friend of mine wrote this post on the subject of Net Neutrality.

His recommended reading list:
http://handsoff.org/
http://www.savetheinternet.com/
http://www.freepress.net/