Friday, December 16, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Fight for the Future
The fight against Stopping Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261 a.k.a. SOPA) is not over yet. And there is so much to go over now. Protect IP (S.968 a.k.a. PIPA) is often put forward as a compromise to SOPA but both bills are not acceptable to a free internet and are not needed in a competitive business market.
This situation is developing so fast that I can't keep up with it. All I can do is direct readers to one of my favorite sites on the internet, Techdirt. Floor64, the consulting company which hosts Techdirt, is biased strongly in favor of internet freedom.
Some of the recent developments include many Senators distancing themselves from this bill, at least until after their re-election is secured. Supporters of these bills have offered to not enforce the DNS blocking until after the technical issues are sorted out. As an aside, these DNS provisions are not viable in conjunction with a secure name resolution system. DNSSEC rejects the various versions of DNS modification proposed by these bills' supporters. Additionally, a domain name system that can lie on government orders can lie on anyone's orders.
Another major development in the news is that many sites including this one are voluntarily blacking out tomorrow, January 18, 2012, as a preview of what the internet could look like when it's censored by hostile business interests.
Many interested parties in both the House and Senate will ask for these bills to be tabled until "the issues can be studied". Meaning in this case after the election cycle is complete and representatives are secure in their jobs. This requires a renewed call to action from all interested parties. Push for these bills to be defeated on the floor of both the House and Senate. And hold their remaining supporters accountable.
This situation is developing so fast that I can't keep up with it. All I can do is direct readers to one of my favorite sites on the internet, Techdirt. Floor64, the consulting company which hosts Techdirt, is biased strongly in favor of internet freedom.
Some of the recent developments include many Senators distancing themselves from this bill, at least until after their re-election is secured. Supporters of these bills have offered to not enforce the DNS blocking until after the technical issues are sorted out. As an aside, these DNS provisions are not viable in conjunction with a secure name resolution system. DNSSEC rejects the various versions of DNS modification proposed by these bills' supporters. Additionally, a domain name system that can lie on government orders can lie on anyone's orders.
Another major development in the news is that many sites including this one are voluntarily blacking out tomorrow, January 18, 2012, as a preview of what the internet could look like when it's censored by hostile business interests.
Many interested parties in both the House and Senate will ask for these bills to be tabled until "the issues can be studied". Meaning in this case after the election cycle is complete and representatives are secure in their jobs. This requires a renewed call to action from all interested parties. Push for these bills to be defeated on the floor of both the House and Senate. And hold their remaining supporters accountable.
Merlin
In my next life, I want to live it backwards. Hear me out, it would be a great way to live.
You start out dead to get that out of the way right off the bat. Then, you wake up in a nursing home feeling better every day. When you are kicked out of the home for being too healthy, you spend several years enjoying your retirement and collecting benefit checks.
When you start work, you get a nice gold watch on your first day. You work 40 years or so, getting younger every day, until you're too young to work. Then you go to school, date, drink, and party.
As you get even younger you become a kid again. You go to elementary school, play, and have no responsibilities. In a few years, you become a baby and everyone runs themselves ragged keeping you happy.
You spend your last nine months floating peacefully in luxurious spa-like conditions, central heating, room service on tap, the works.
Until finally, you end your life as an orgasm.
I rest my case.
You start out dead to get that out of the way right off the bat. Then, you wake up in a nursing home feeling better every day. When you are kicked out of the home for being too healthy, you spend several years enjoying your retirement and collecting benefit checks.
When you start work, you get a nice gold watch on your first day. You work 40 years or so, getting younger every day, until you're too young to work. Then you go to school, date, drink, and party.
As you get even younger you become a kid again. You go to elementary school, play, and have no responsibilities. In a few years, you become a baby and everyone runs themselves ragged keeping you happy.
You spend your last nine months floating peacefully in luxurious spa-like conditions, central heating, room service on tap, the works.
Until finally, you end your life as an orgasm.
I rest my case.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
American Censorship Day
Today, the House of Representatives is debating HR 3261, Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA. This debate is attended by representatives of the content and entertainment lobbies. There are no representatives from technology companies in attendance. This is a concern because SOPA is a bill to add third-party liability on internet services like payment processors and DNS providers for content online as if they were hosting it themselves. It also directly eliminates the safe-harbors provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which would otherwise force the content industry to apply liability for infringement to the actual infringer.
The first part of this bill tasks the Attorney General with the requirement to censor foreign websites on the accusations of the content industry. The procedures that the Attorney General would be required to initiate do not involve contacted the accused infringer directly. Instead, the payment processors, search engines, ad networks, and domain name service providers across the internet with knowledge of or business relationships with the accused foreign website will be forced to cease operations with the accused. Search engines will have to remove the accused from their results, ad networks will not be allowed to disburse revenue to sites accused of infringing, and DNS providers will be prohibited from resolving domain names to IP addresses for accused sites. The second title of HR 3261 increases penalties for web site operators accused of copyright infringement.
Now that we've outlined what this bill is supposed to do, let's discuss why it won't do any of that and why it is a horrid piece of legislation.
First off, this bill is clearly just fellating the entertainment industry as a reward for their failure to adapt to changing market conditions. Copyright infringement is a result of a poorly implemented business model which does not monetize the audience to the level of the copyright holder's expectations. SOPA has no provision for removing infringing content. It only adds liability, and thus expense, to third-party service providers. These costs will be passed along to customers or used to raise the barriers to entry for innovative new companies entering the market. Nor are there penalties for false accusations or claims against non-infringing content.
Also, foreign governments will find themselves pressured to "meet their international obligations" in expanding protectionist copyright policies. And, as this bill is written to target foreign websites, so will it be used as the basis for laws used against American business interests.
Third, whenever the ability to censor is available there is always a desire to expand this ability and this bill will not stay in scope. SOPA has already been used to legitimize censorship by foreign regimes and the bill hasn't even passed yet.
If you believe your elected Congressperson still represents you, call them and ask them to oppose HR 3261.
The first part of this bill tasks the Attorney General with the requirement to censor foreign websites on the accusations of the content industry. The procedures that the Attorney General would be required to initiate do not involve contacted the accused infringer directly. Instead, the payment processors, search engines, ad networks, and domain name service providers across the internet with knowledge of or business relationships with the accused foreign website will be forced to cease operations with the accused. Search engines will have to remove the accused from their results, ad networks will not be allowed to disburse revenue to sites accused of infringing, and DNS providers will be prohibited from resolving domain names to IP addresses for accused sites. The second title of HR 3261 increases penalties for web site operators accused of copyright infringement.
Now that we've outlined what this bill is supposed to do, let's discuss why it won't do any of that and why it is a horrid piece of legislation.
First off, this bill is clearly just fellating the entertainment industry as a reward for their failure to adapt to changing market conditions. Copyright infringement is a result of a poorly implemented business model which does not monetize the audience to the level of the copyright holder's expectations. SOPA has no provision for removing infringing content. It only adds liability, and thus expense, to third-party service providers. These costs will be passed along to customers or used to raise the barriers to entry for innovative new companies entering the market. Nor are there penalties for false accusations or claims against non-infringing content.
Also, foreign governments will find themselves pressured to "meet their international obligations" in expanding protectionist copyright policies. And, as this bill is written to target foreign websites, so will it be used as the basis for laws used against American business interests.
Third, whenever the ability to censor is available there is always a desire to expand this ability and this bill will not stay in scope. SOPA has already been used to legitimize censorship by foreign regimes and the bill hasn't even passed yet.
If you believe your elected Congressperson still represents you, call them and ask them to oppose HR 3261.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Decade-old memories
I passed up writing about a supposedly important anniversary last week. I didn't write about it because, honestly, it didn't really affect me.
I was in college at the University of Maryland, College Park, in the 2001 Fall semester. Since 11 September, 2001, was a Tuesday morning, I was in an early lab class. After lab I had the whole rest of the day open so I went back to the IEEE lounge in the basement of the engineering building. That's when another student, well known for being a bit of a cut-up, said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.
Of course I said, "That's a really bad joke, James."
But I still walked to the computer lab down the hall to find out the story. I sat down at an open computer and thought about where to find the information I was looking for. You had to do that in those days. Remember that Google was only a few years old and hadn't overthrown the top search engines of the day, Lycos and Alta Vista. As this story was supposedly happening in New York, my first stop was the New York Times, the first New York-based newspaper I could think of. Their site wasn't available that day, my first indication that there might be something to this story. So I tried the Washington Post, our hometown paper there inside the Beltway. Also unavailable that morning. Now I'm thinking I need to try for a server well outside the supposed area. The LA Times was showing news from the night before. They hadn't even woken up yet to update their website. I finally hit upon the Tampa Tribune, who was both awake and online. That's when the towers started falling.
In the following years, many whitepapers would be written about dealing with surge capacity for news websites and many more about continuity of operations. The University's administration was castigated for not evacuating the school to which their response was, "Where are the students supposed to go? All the flights have been grounded and anywhere could have been a target." There was a campus-wide memorial on the 12th and classes were cancelled that day. Looking up and seeing military fighter jets on patrol instead of the normal passenger jet contrails was the eeriest part. We were concerned about reopening the world's oldest continuously operating airport.
I was in college at the University of Maryland, College Park, in the 2001 Fall semester. Since 11 September, 2001, was a Tuesday morning, I was in an early lab class. After lab I had the whole rest of the day open so I went back to the IEEE lounge in the basement of the engineering building. That's when another student, well known for being a bit of a cut-up, said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.
Of course I said, "That's a really bad joke, James."
But I still walked to the computer lab down the hall to find out the story. I sat down at an open computer and thought about where to find the information I was looking for. You had to do that in those days. Remember that Google was only a few years old and hadn't overthrown the top search engines of the day, Lycos and Alta Vista. As this story was supposedly happening in New York, my first stop was the New York Times, the first New York-based newspaper I could think of. Their site wasn't available that day, my first indication that there might be something to this story. So I tried the Washington Post, our hometown paper there inside the Beltway. Also unavailable that morning. Now I'm thinking I need to try for a server well outside the supposed area. The LA Times was showing news from the night before. They hadn't even woken up yet to update their website. I finally hit upon the Tampa Tribune, who was both awake and online. That's when the towers started falling.
In the following years, many whitepapers would be written about dealing with surge capacity for news websites and many more about continuity of operations. The University's administration was castigated for not evacuating the school to which their response was, "Where are the students supposed to go? All the flights have been grounded and anywhere could have been a target." There was a campus-wide memorial on the 12th and classes were cancelled that day. Looking up and seeing military fighter jets on patrol instead of the normal passenger jet contrails was the eeriest part. We were concerned about reopening the world's oldest continuously operating airport.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Chromebook 3
It's been a few months so I thought I'd take a moment to circle back to Chromebooks. In my last post, I made much noise about Verizon's 100 MB per month bandwidth cap. It's free connectivity with the purchase of every Chromebook so I can't complain too loudly. But it was still very annoying to burn through my monthly allotment in a matter of days. Each month, the battery nearly outlasted the bandwidth. But by shifting a few priorities around, and ponying up to open wi-fi whenever possible, I've finished this month with a few megabytes on the account. Okay, kilobits. But you get the point. I've actually made it to the end of the month with data to spare.
How did I manage this miraculous feat? Lots of wi-fi. There is no ethernet port on a Chromebook and it won't tether to an Android so unlimited data from other providers is not an option. This month, I stayed off the 3G network as much as possible and never used it for bandwidth intensive activities like streaming media. Even so, moderate web surfing, email, and social networking on the big screen (compared to my Android phone) used up almost the entire quota of data this month.
Because I work where I do, there's no wi-fi here at all. We have our own war-drivers roaming the halls sniffing out rogue access points. Even broadcasting cellphones get hunted down. Not a good place to have a misconfigured radio. I do have my own network(s) at home but the apartment complex nearby makes for very crowded airspace. But then the Elks Lodge where I'm a member has wireless. And no other access points nearby. Since those are the three places I spend all my time, and two of the three have wireless internet, I'm usually near enough to an access point to switch radios.
So that's my secret for making the shallow data pool last the month. Don't actually use it.
How did I manage this miraculous feat? Lots of wi-fi. There is no ethernet port on a Chromebook and it won't tether to an Android so unlimited data from other providers is not an option. This month, I stayed off the 3G network as much as possible and never used it for bandwidth intensive activities like streaming media. Even so, moderate web surfing, email, and social networking on the big screen (compared to my Android phone) used up almost the entire quota of data this month.
Because I work where I do, there's no wi-fi here at all. We have our own war-drivers roaming the halls sniffing out rogue access points. Even broadcasting cellphones get hunted down. Not a good place to have a misconfigured radio. I do have my own network(s) at home but the apartment complex nearby makes for very crowded airspace. But then the Elks Lodge where I'm a member has wireless. And no other access points nearby. Since those are the three places I spend all my time, and two of the three have wireless internet, I'm usually near enough to an access point to switch radios.
So that's my secret for making the shallow data pool last the month. Don't actually use it.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Testy
As an engineer, I require certifications to prove my capabilities. Yes, even the stuff I've been doing since third grade. I still need that little paper which shows I know how to do what I do. But studying for the exam can be hard some times. Mostly, I've forgotten my study skills since I graduated. But sometimes the companies behind these exams make it hard to share information about them.
CompTIA provides certifications for IT professionals, such as A+ and Security+. (ISC)2 offers the CISSP for senior managers in security positions like a CISO. Of course, all the vendors like Microsoft and Cisco also offer certifications for their products. And they all offer all manner of tools to help your earn their certificates. But have you priced out some of these offerings? And that's not for the test to get the certificate, that's for the training to get ready to take the test.
And of course these test providers work hard to make sure their tests don't leak out to the internet. Some test providers are more aggressive than others but they'd all rather you didn't reveal their exams because otherwise what would people pay for. Which I why I won't talk about specific questions. But I will talk about some basic test-taking strategy and some differences I've noticed between vendors.
CompTIA provides certifications for IT professionals, such as A+ and Security+. (ISC)2 offers the CISSP for senior managers in security positions like a CISO. Of course, all the vendors like Microsoft and Cisco also offer certifications for their products. And they all offer all manner of tools to help your earn their certificates. But have you priced out some of these offerings? And that's not for the test to get the certificate, that's for the training to get ready to take the test.
And of course these test providers work hard to make sure their tests don't leak out to the internet. Some test providers are more aggressive than others but they'd all rather you didn't reveal their exams because otherwise what would people pay for. Which I why I won't talk about specific questions. But I will talk about some basic test-taking strategy and some differences I've noticed between vendors.
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