Wikileaks fights to stay online after US company withdraws domain name

In today's Guardian, it was reported that the California-based Internet hosting provider, Everydns, dropped Wikileaks at 3am GMT on Friday (10pm EST Thursday).  It says it did so to prevent its other 500,000 customers of being affected by the intense cyber attacks targeted at WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks and the cache of secret diplomatic documents that have proved to be a scourge for governments around the world were only accessible through a string of digits known as a DNS address. The site later re-emerged with a Swiss domain, WikiLeaks.ch.

 

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to give '60 Minutes' interview about 'Social Network'

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will appear on "60 Minutes" in his first television interview since the Hollywood film "The Social Network" debuted in October.

The interview with "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl will air Sunday night, 12/5. In it, Zuckerberg talks about the film (and presumably the unflattering portrait it painted of him), as well as his company’s direction and his rising profile as its CEO.

More Net Neutrality News...

According to Digital Society's George Ou, OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch is misleading the public about Verizon Wireless supposedly blocking OpenDNS servers.  

I went to a Verizon Wireless store and tested a netbook with built-in Verizon 3G access.  I successfully queried an OpenDNS server using the “nslookup” command proving that Verizon Wireless was not blocking access to OpenDNS.   I also bought a 2-year contract with free MiFi device and tested it on my own computer from home and OpenDNS still works perfectly fine.

So what is Ulevitch complaining about?  According to Ou, the bigger threat and alternative to OpenDNS is Google DNS which is a faster DNS service.  "So it’s Google that Mr. Ulevitch should be concerned about and not some imaginary blocking at Verizon Wireless."


Moral of the story:  Never assume that one perspective reveals the truth.  
Who is telling the truth here?  Is there a way to test the assumption behind OpenDNS claims without going to Verizon and seeing if you can log on to OpenDNS?  In other words, why believe George Ou and Digital Society?


In other net neutrality news, Level 3 Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: LVLT) announced on Nov. 11 that "it has been selected to serve as a primary content delivery network (CDN) provider for Netflix, Inc. to support the company’s streaming functionality and to support storage for the entire Netflix library of content."  Then, a week later, Comcast informed Level 3 that it would, for the first time, charge Level 3 a fee to reach Comcast’s customers who had requested any content carried by Level 3.  Read on...

OpenDNS: We're being blocked, FCC should act on net neutrality

As the Federal Communications Commission grapples with the timing of a net neutrality vote and Republican lawmakers demand the agency drop it, companies like OpenDNS fear the issue is getting mired in politics.

And that could crush startups like them, says OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch. He says the San Francisco domain name service is already being blocked by Verizon Wireless. He fears other Internet service providers trying to compete with it could do the same. update: A Verizon Wireless spokeswoman said Monday its network engineers "see no issue from our end."

Since it launched with a couple million dollars in angel investment four years ago, OpenDNS has attracted 20 million customers – consumers and businesses such as Staples, Century 21 and Fuji Film – who prefer the service’s domain name look-up service to that of their Internet service provider. Why? Ulevitch says the company is able to more quickly translate Web page addresses like www.washingtonpost.com to The Post’s IP address to serve up the site to users. Its fail rate is zero, compared with ISPs, he says. Check out a review of OpenDNS by the New York Times’ David Pogue for more details on how the service works.

Turns out, Ulevitch said in a recent phone interview, that carriers such as Verizon Wireless, Comcast and Time Warner cable have caught on to the value of their service. Open DNS is able to collect a lot of data about users and their Web surfing habits to serve up targeted ads for users who volunteer to have that information tracked.

The FCC won’t say what its plans are for net neutrality. Many analysts and experts outside the agency are betting on a vote in December. Even if FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski puts the proposed regulation on its agenda for vote in December, the agency has to grapple with its questionable authority over broadband providers.

“There are some cable and phone companies out there that want to decide which apps you should get on your phone, which Internet sites you should look at, and what online videos you can download," a FCC official said in a statement after Republican House members criticized a proposal by Genachowski. "That’s regulating the Internet and that’s what the FCC is trying to stop.”

Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction

In today's Sunday New York Times, the front page article continues the discussion about how brains are affected by young people who are constantly distracted by computers and cellphones, and the  constant stream of stimuli they offer.

There are two concerns or tensions mentioned in the article.  One is that students' brains are still developing and can become more easily habituated to constantly switching tasks.  This makes it harder for them to be less able to sustain attention.  The result is that it may be harder to focus and thereby affect learning.

“Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing,” said Michael Rich, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston. And the effects could linger: “The worry is we’re raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently.”

Another side of the debate is that educators and parents are intensifying efforts to use technology in the classroom, seeing it as a way to connect with students and give them essential skills. "Across the country, schools are equipping themselves with computers, Internet access and mobile devices so they can teach on the students’ technological territory."

 Woodside High School is one example.  The principal, David Reilly, 37, is determined to engage these 21st-century students. He has asked teachers to build Web sites to communicate with students, introduced popular classes on using digital tools to record music, secured funding for iPads to teach Mandarin and obtained $3 million in grants for a multimedia center.

“The technology amplifies whoever you are,” Mr. Reilly says, creating a new set of social types — not the thespian and the jock but the texter and gamer, Facebook addict and YouTube potato.

The article then goes on to showcase a number of these social types.

• Allison Miller, 14, sends and receives 27,000 texts in a month, her fingers clicking at a blistering pace as she carries on as many as seven text conversations at a time. She is getting 3 Bs on her progress report, which she blames on her texting and then forgetting to do her homework.
• Ramon Ochoa-Lopez, 14, an introvert, plays six hours of video games on weekdays and more on weekends, leaving homework to be done in the bathroom before school.

“Downtime is to the brain what sleep is to the body,” said Dr. Rich of Harvard Medical School. “But kids are in a constant mode of stimulation.”  Read on... (but it's a long article, so show the researchers they are wrong about the ability to focus - consider it our own little experiment).

How China swallowed 15% of 'Net traffic for 18 minutes

A number of sources, including this report in Ars Technica on 11/18/10, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission released a 300+ page report (PDF) today and provided the US Congress with a detailed overview of what's been happening in China—including a curious incident in which 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic suddenly passed through Chinese servers on the way to its destination.

Here's how the Commission describes the incident, which took place earlier this year:

For about 18 minutes on April 8, 2010, China Telecom advertised erroneous network traffic routes that instructed US and other foreign Internet traffic to travel through Chinese servers. Other servers around the world quickly adopted these paths, routing all traffic to about 15 percent of the Internet’s destinations through servers located in China. This incident affected traffic to and from US government (‘‘.gov’’) and military (‘‘.mil’’) sites, including those for the Senate, the army, the navy, the marine corps, the air force, the office of secretary of Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Commerce, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and many others. Certain commercial websites were also affected, such as those for Dell, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and IBM.

The culprit here was "IP hijacking," a well-known routing problem in a worldwide system based largely on trust. Routers rely on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to puzzle out the best route between two IP addresses; when one party advertises incorrect routing information, routers across the globe can be convinced to send traffic on geographically absurd paths.

Here's a transcript and audio from NPR, which shows the real security dangers of this hijacking, that China telecom denies.  Briefly, Dmitri Alperovitch, the vice president of threat research for the cyber security firm McAfee, points out that, the security risk is quite significant. Certainly all this data could've been eavesdropped on and wire-tapped. It could've been also modified in flight and the recipient of that data could've been presented with something totally different. Also, a lot of the - what are known as VPNs, virtual private networks, traverse the Internet and are encrypted with these mechanisms that can be broken. You can indeed gain access to private networks of organizations through this hijacking method.

Nice, right?  There is more, read on...

Pirate-slaying censorship bill gets unanimous support

As of about 12 hours ago, ArsTechnica reported that Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.  COICA allows the US Attorney General to target "Internet sites dedicated to infringing activities" both inside and outside the country, obtaining a court-ordered injunction against them if they have "no demonstrable, commercially significant purpose or use other than" sharing copyrighted files without authorization.  Such schemes usually run up against the distributed anarchy of the Internet, but COICA will try to hammer sites located in other countries by leaning on key supporting players that are based in the US. Should a judge agree that a website is "dedicated to infringing activities," that site will face a host of tough penalties that go beyond mere site censorship:

The US government can (1) blacklist a pirate website from the Domain Name System, (2) ban credit card companies from processing US payments to the site, and (3) forbid online ad networks from working with the site.

And who do you think would be thrilled with this ruling?

Immediately following the ruling, Public Knowledge Proposes Changes To ‘Misleading and Abusive’ Copyright Practices

For Immediate Release: 

November 18, 2010

Copyright owners are engaging in ‘misleading and abusive’ practices that are unfair to consumers, Public Knowledge said today in the third part of its Copyright Reform Act (CRA) project. The project was established to analyze problems with, and suggest solutions to, copyright law.

In the report, “Copyright Abuse and Notice,” PK said “Misleading copyright warning notices are so pervasive today that the average consumer is likely to take them for granted.” Those range from notices on works which have been part of the public domain for years, including by William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, to today’s warnings issued by the National Football League which “completely disregards copyright law.”

Some Criminals Just Aren't Smart

I found these news articles amusing, and just had to share them. The first news story is about an 18 year old who broke into a home, and later was caught because on one of the computers inside the home he had logged into, and never logged out of, MySpace. I wonder if a Facebook user would be so forgetful? Though perhaps he didn't remember to log out because he was a little high on drugs--the police did find marijuana on a table inside the home.

The second news story is about another burglar who got caught because he dropped his cell phone in the house he was burglarizing. What I found funny is that this guy realized his mistake, and tried to cover it up by texting his own phone (which by the time he texted it, was in police posession). I guess he thought he could fool the police by texting the phone and demanding its return, as though someone had stolen it. Why was he using the phone inside the home at all? Well, apparently he didn't have a flashlight, and so he was using the phone's display to illuminate the interior of the home.

In Efforts to End Bullying, Some See Agenda

Last month, the federal Department of Education told schools they were obligated, under civil rights laws, to try to prevent harassment, including that based on sexual orientation and gender identity. But the agency did not address the controversy over more explicit classroom materials in grade schools.

But efforts to teach acceptance of homosexuality, which have gained urgency after several well-publicized suicides by gay teenagers, are provoking new culture wars in some communities.   Some districts, especially in larger cities, have adopted tolerance lessons with minimal dissent. But in suburban districts in California, Illinois and Minnesota, as well as here in Helena, the programs have unleashed fierce opposition.

“Of course we’re all against bullying,” Mr. DeMato, one of numerous pastors who opposed the plan, said in an interview. “But the Bible says very clearly that homosexuality is wrong, and Christians don’t want the schools to teach subjects that are repulsive to their values.”

Is it any wonder, then, that with parents and clergy making such fierce claims against teaching about diverse family structures, there isn't constant bullying by their kids?


Comments?

Dirty Touchscreens

I read from a recent AOL news article that many of the digital touchscreen products that are now out are can be unhealthy if they are not cleaned. However, touchscreen products are not only affected, even regular dial pads on cell phones are racking up germs and bacteria which could cause the user of the product to obtain a virus. In the article, it referred to British researchers saying that, "the average cell phone is home to 18-times as much bacteria as the handle of a men's toilet room." I found this to be a lot worse than I originally envisioned when I first read the title of the article. However, I can definitely believe this research to be true, because I know personally that I do not take the time to clean my cell phone on a regular basis. Instead, when it smears, like the article states, I usually try to rub it off on my shirt. This only rids of the smudge, but underneath that, there is a ton of bacteria and from that could cause me or anybody else who regular uses a cell phone, or anything that involves regular interaction with your fingers, to become sick.

The article also states that with the viruses being smeared on a touchscreen, that "30-percent of it will find its way to your fingers" and on to other parts of your body, including your eyes and mouth. But it doesn't just end with touchscreens and dial pads. This can include various things that we use on a somewhat regular basis but maybe do not think about. One of these things is an ATM, which I can see how this could be affected by many people with how often I see lines at them. Personally after I use an ATM, I do not usually think, "Hey! Let me whip out my hand sanitizer." Another area where bacteria seems to spread rapidly is at the movies, especially those with 3D and the use of recycled 3-D glasses. So with all this technology that we like to enjoy and can actually interact with using our hands, we need to make sure that we are trying to properly clean them or at least our hands after using them.

On a quick side note, would you pay $8 million dollars for an I-phone for it to be completely dirty?

Texting While Driving Remains A Danger To Teens

A recent study from Nielson has shown that teenagers send and receive 3,339 texts per month. Two years ago, Nielson reported the main reason why teenagers had a phone was for safety. Now, 43% of teens say that the number one reason for having a cell phone is for texting.Virginia Tech Transportation Institute did a study in 2009, which reported that the risk of a crash or near-crash event was 23 times higher when the driver was texting. It’s incredible how fast society changes as new digital technology becomes a social norm. One moment, cell phones were a way of keeping people safe, always having a way to call for help. The next, the use of cell phones has become a hazard to our safety on the road. The number of car accidents that involve text messaging has greatly increased; unfortunately a majority of these accidents involve teenagers. A survey at South Lyon East High School 10 out of 12 students questioned admit that they do text message and drive.

Although the majority of states have made texting while driving illegal, it considered a commonoccurrence. Even major U.S. automobile manufacturers, including General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and Toyota, support the total ban of using handheld texting devices while drivers are at the wheel. Larry Burns, former head of R&D at General Motors, said that today's younger drivers prefer texting to driving:

“We asked younger people about texting while driving; they told us the driving distracted them from texting.”

What must our society do to eliminate this risk from our teens? Will the law actually prevent people from texting while driving or does the government need to enforce a stricter policy?

Many families have lost their children due to careless decisions on the road. People must realize that texting while driving doesn’t just put that individual in harms way, but also everyone else on the road at that time. It’s time that people make a responsible decision to save the road for driving and texting for free time.

-Kevin Etheridge

Apple To Make Announcement Next Week

Apple is reported to be revealing a new product in the next week and the technology bloggers are going crazy. This time is no different than the past. Bloggers have many ideas as to what they will be previewing but nothing is certain other than a new Mac OS X which was announced by Apple in their invitation. The same invitation also included a picture of a lion which caused many bloggers to believe the new version will be called Lion.

Kit Eaton points out that Apple has filed numerous patents which would suggest that Apple could be unveiling a new touchscreen Mac. This would build on the popularity of the iPad which has been selling remarkably well. Others like Kasper Jade believe the big reveal will be an new version of the MacBook Air. Kasper's source is "a person with a proven track record of pinpoint accuracy."

Also going on in Apple news, for the first time the shares of Apple stock exceeded $300 on Wednesday. It is no surprise to many people that it has reached this milestone and many investors believe it will continue to rise. I don't doubt that at all because with the growing popularity of iPads and the new models of iPods will assure a busy holiday season for Apple. I think Mr. Jobs will be able to buy a couple new turtlenecks come January.

Apple vs. Facebook: Why the fighting?

When apple decided to release iTunes 10 they decided to add some social networking features to it. Steve Jobs demoed iTunes 10 and talked about how great it will be to share your music interests with others and discover new ones.

Finding your friends on Ping should be easy especially since there was supposed to be facebook integration. I signed up for ping immediately when it was released and there was a facebook login. Then soon after I noticed the features weren’t there for integration with facebook. The next day the facebook login was pulled from iTunes.

The big problem was that negotiations between Apple and Facebook were ongoing at the time of iTunes 10’s release. When a third party application wants to access Facebook it can do so without striking a deal with them. The only limitation with this is that there are only 100 million API calls allowed. Apple definitely exceeded this the first night. Facebook and Apple soon after began talks again and the feature is still waiting to be added back to iTunes.

Links:

PC World's Article

All Things Digital Article

Eyetracker news article

This news I found it first at this site

http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Eyetracker_Detects_Sleepy_Drivers_Warns_Them/551-113157-547.html, found a word link to this one http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20019653-1.html, and landed at the original source http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2010/10/eye-tracker-driver-drowsiness.jsp.

Basically, this news is about a new invention for automobiles. It was invented in Germany and is being put on display soon. The invention is cameras made to assess your level of sleepiness. The hope is of course to reduce the amount of collisions. It is called "The Eyetracker". As I searched for a post to talk about, this one was one of the first that showed. I have thoughts for and against this. I agree that people falling asleep while driving occurs often and if it can be stopped, yay. I think I would also tend to agree with those who would think that this would be too much. I posed links to the articles I looked at, I wasn't sure if she wanted us to post the entire thing on the blog, feel free to comment. The picture is also from those websites, that was the only one I saw to use.

Social Search: Facebook and Bing

On October 13, 2010 the Facebook PR team and Bing's development team met in Silicon Valley to discuss the details of a new partnership. Starting today, Microsoft will be analyzing data from Facebook to determine Bing user's search results. Searches have been altered to include data pulled from your personal social network.

Facebook's CTO Bret Taylor stated, "Your friends have liked lots of things all over the web, and now instead of stumbling across a new movie or having to look at a friend's profile to see which restaurants they like, we're bringing everything together in one place."

Even though the public announcement of social search is only a day old, Facebook integration is surprisingly robust on Bing already. When searching for movies, dining locations, and news Bing prioritizes search data with results your friends "publicly liked" appearing first.


Searches for people will now prioritize people that are included in your social network and people your friends have included in their social networks. You can even friend request people on Facebook from Bing's search results.

Obviously, social search allows Bing to provide more meaningful results to its users. However, it also means Bing can collect more meaningful data to provide to its advertisers. The social search model is part of the Microsoft and Facebook conquest against search engine giant, Google. Right now, Bing only accounts for ~4% of searches on the web. Microsoft hopes that by adding social aspects to its engine, it will be able to siphon off more Google users.

Will you use Bing now that it has social search?

FTC blog rules create big debate

The FTC revised guidelines that govern endorsements and testimonials by online contributors went into effect on 1/1/2010. The new guidelines require that all contributors or endorsers of a particular brand or service must disclose their relationship and any benefits they receive from the brand or service for their endorsements. For example, if you endorse a brand or service on your personal blog, social media accounts, or review sites, and receive any “material connections” this must be disclosed somewhere on the blog. As the FTC explains in a news release published before the new rules went into effect, “The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.”

The new guidelines are to regulate and prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. If you are interested in reading mnore about the new guides check out below!

16 C.F.R. Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising: Notice Announcing Adoption of Revised Guides

• Text of the Federal Register Notice
• Text of the Revised Endorsement and Testimonial Guides

Verizon to Sell the iPad

The big tech buzz is the announcement that Verizon Wireless stores will start to sell the Apple iPad starting as soon as October 28. This is the first time Verizon has ever partnered with Apple and will sell the WI-Fi model of the iPad along with a MiFi wireless modem so customers can still enjoy 3G coverage on their iPad.

Tim Cook, who is Apple’s chief operating officer, said in a press release “We’re thrilled to be working with Verizon Wireless to get iPad into the hands of even more customers this holiday season.” This seems to be a very beneficial maneuver for both parties, and I think it will lead to the incorporation of the iPhone to the Verizon family. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg stated in April that their company has told Apple they wish to carry the iPhone, which seems like a good business offer for Apple seeing as they could place the most popular phone on the nation’s biggest wireless network. One of the biggest reasons why this hasn’t happened yet is because Apple products such as the iPhone and iPad are not compatible with Verizon’s network which is based on CDMA technology.

Rumors have surfaced that Apple is in the process of developing a CDMA iPhone, but there has been no concrete evidence just yet; however, the fact the Verizon is starting to carry the iPad means Verizon and Apple are starting to do business together which bodes very well for all Verizon customers who wish to own the iconic iPhone. My personal prediction is that very soon we will see the iPhone being featured in a Verizon commercial.

*original article

Stronger Security for Facebook in the Month of October

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month and what does social networking giant, Facebook have to reveal to the public? New security tools that might get users excited. In a recent article by CNN, Facebook rolls out new security tools, talks safety, Joe Sullivan, chief security officer of Facebook, discussed their concern and focus on the privacy of their users. On Tuesday (Oct 12) Facebook will now allow their users to log off from all computers and devices from another computer, and also receive a temporary password to use when on public computers. Joe Sullivan says security is "a core part of the ways we innovate as a company," and this is evident in the site's new improvements.

I know that when I go on Facebook from the UA library or some other public computer, I am worried if maybe somebody might be able to retrieve my password. Well worry no more with Facebook's one-time passwords that will be available for people using public computers. These passwords will last for 20 minutes and can be received by texting "otp" to 32665 and Facebook will send the password straight to your cell phone.

Another tool that Facebook has updated to its user's accounts is the ability to see what computer/cell phone you may be still logged into. I think this is the coolest tool Facebook created because I know that many users such as myself have worried if maybe they forgot to log off of a public computer or a friend's computer. Now users can access their account settings and get a list of all computers and devices they are currently logged on to and simply log off.

Finally Sullivan also added how hard Facebook is working to keeping children 12 and younger out of Facebook and how they truly do not want it going on. They hope that parents will be able to monitor their children and help out but I believe that unless parents are watching their children 24/7 kids 12 and younger will manage to get on Facebook. There is just no way to actually end the problem but I like the concern shown by Sullivan.

Security and privacy has been a hot issue with Facebook and in my opinion, I think that the new tools that Facebook has unveiled to the public are excellent and are what set itself from the rest of the social networking sites but one-time passwords that last 20 minutes Facebook? Do you know how long people spend on your site a day? I do not have the actual number but I know that it is certainly longer than 20 minutes. At least Facebook is showing that they care for their users and are trying to make a difference and for that I respect the social networking site. For more information, please read the link in the text (Article from CNN.com).

--- Information on Facebook Security
--- What you need to know about Facebook privacy