I had a microwave oven that consistently stopped my Netflix videos streaming over WiFi every time someone made a cup of tea. I was able to prove a contributing issue was related to its poor door seal letting microwaves out using the free WiFi tool NetStumbler (Also known as "Network Stumbler").
NetStumbler has can graph the Signal/Noise ratio of a WiFi station over time. If you put a laptop running NetStumber in a microwave (Don't turn on the microwave!) you should see the signal to noise ratio drop 30 dBm as the door shielding attenuates the WiFi signal. If not, you probably have an old oven that has developed a wonky door seal.
In my case, I was able to feel the microwave door close a little more as I pressed the handle. And after alternating pressing and releasing the door without changing my body position, 10 seconds on 10 seconds off, I was able to clearly see a 5 dBm difference in the WiFi signal to noise ratio on my old oven. That didn't happen on my new oven.
I also saw other people comment that if a cell phone rings inside a microwave, then that's a sign the microwave is leaky. I doubt that's reliable, since many cell phones use a different frequency than microwave ovens. And they don't report signal strength accurately.
I note that the press release doesn't match the findings of the also recently published State of the Internet Report that shows a big jump in attack traffic from Japan last quarter.
% of Attack Traffic by Country seen by Akamai _# 2008-Q2 2008-Q1 Country _1 30.07 _3.56 Japan _2 21.52 14.33 United States _3 _8.90 16.77 China _4 _5.56 _1.58 Germany _5 _2.34 _0.41 Ukraine _6 _2.25 _3.43 South Korea _7 _2.21 11.82 Taiwan _8 _1.89 _0.89 France _9 _1.64 _0.93 Russia 10 _1.58 _0.83 Poland -- 22.04 ----- OTHER
Is Saad (Jay) Echouafni the most infamous cyber fugitive who never saw the inside of a jail cell?
He made the FBI's Top 10 most wanted list and is still a
FBI cyber fugitive probably living in his native Morocco now.
Starting in 2003 he paid for DDoS attacks
on his online Satellite TV retailer competition.
These DDoS attacks did collateral damage on the various hosting and CDNs providers that these competitors turned to for support.
The costs were estimated to be as high as $2,000,000 by Attorney General John Ashcroft.
The prosecutor for the case,
assistant U.S. attorney Arif Alikhan, head of the Los Angeles computer crimes section,
said:
"I think it's the first case of its kind involving a DDoS for commercial advantage or for hire,..."
Re:Get a neighbor to help test your connection?
on
Verizon, Fiber Or Die?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
As you know from the fine print, Verizon (or any other ISP) never claims to give you any guaranteed speed.
It's an industry-wide practice and for good reason.
The Internet is a best effort service with many factors beyond Verizon's control.
Their web site says for their "Power Plan" service offering (my emphasis added):
Connection Speeds Up To... 3 Mbps/768 Kbps (53x faster than dial-up*)
*Speed comparison based upon performance with a 56.6 Kbps modem. Actual speed may vary. Actual throughput speed will vary based on network and Internet congestion among other factors. And in their FAQ says:
Technology
What affects my connection speed?
When you connect to the Internet using Verizon High Speed Internet, the speeds that you will experience will vary based on a variety of factors, including the following:
Distance of your telephone line from a Verizon Central Office
Condition of telephone wiring inside and outside your location
Computer configuration
Network or Internet congestion
Server and router speeds of the Web sites you access
Other factors
So you don't really have a good way to test your service.
And if you did and it only showed 56kbps, the Version is still within the range the promised.
There are these problems when testing speeds to your neighbor.
Upload speeds are lower than download. So you can only test upload speeds this way.
Your neighbor needs to be using the same ISP.
Better ways could be to download large files from your ISP.
But you'd have to find a file where a traceroute (tracert cmd from your computer, not from a public server) shows the path to that server is fully with Verizon's control, has single digit milliseconds of latency, no packet loss, and not too many hops away.
Otherwise use a public speed test service.
Maybe one day we'll see a class action lawsuit on various ISPs that claims they intentionally lied about the average speeds customers should see, But I'm not holding my breath.
This doesn't really matter all that much. It means that US banks and credit card companies can't process the transactions. Companies like Firepay are off shore banks that can accept lawful deposits from US banks and then in turn handle gambling related transactions.
The law doesn't impose any penalties to gamblers so there's nothing illegal about taking any winnings by using the offshore banks to funnel those winnings back to a US account.
The enactment of the Act will have a significant negative impact on the business and results of operations of the
Company. The Company's Board is evaluating the situation and will update shareholders when appropriate.
FireOne's a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange and it dropped 66% on this news. So I'm thinking that the US laws do have a significant impact them getting US customers. If you think otherwise, take a gamble and buy their shares cheap. At least its not a negative sum game like online gambling.
I'm a web master for an on-line literature magazine. The works on that site and other web sites are copyright protected. Search engines already show snippets of this on-line content and there was no uproar.
How much of someone else's work can I use without getting permission?
Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances. See FL 102, Fair Use, and Circular 21, Reproductions of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians.
From this I can see many places were Google is going to have a tough time are arguing that their use is fair. I suspect that they'll fall back to just doing books they get permission for. I expect that many publishers will flock to send them lists of works to add to their indexes.
While I accept that Google doesn't show much of the copyrighted work on one page, they are really publishing much of the work within the Google site. I can imagine a program being written to query google over and over again to reverse engineer a full work.
But does anyone know what the attack was really comprized of and how Akamai fended it off? I'd like this information to defend my network too.
Now if the attack is a new type with no easy fix I don't neccessarily want them to publish it far and wide, but I'd at least like to know who are the relevant authorities Akamai says they've given the details to. Is there an FBI agent or case number I can make enquires to? Akamai is not very forthcoming.
Personally I think this attack was just a known exploit or a huge volume of spoofed DNS traffic and Akamai is hiding behind a veil here to protect its image.
elchulopadre says I'd look something up, and, in the process of finding the right page, some other entry would catch my eye and I'd read up on something (usually completely unrelated) after finding what I'd originally gone looking for.
But that's the same argument I could use for the web. There's even more spurious distractors when looking for information on the web.
First of all, since all software--including M$--costs a buck a CD, it's pretty much impossible to convince anyone that they should pay thousands of dollars for systems.
And later in question 5
Iraq has very well-educated computer science population. Technocrats at the ministries and university professors and students. There are tons of people who know C++ and other languages. But they've been hampered by the lack of new information during sanctions and by the fact that Iraq had no software industry. There are plenty of people who designed computer control systems for power plants or databases and maintained servers. They're smart and experienced, but they have 13 years or so of catching up to do.
It's a bit hard to establish a software industry when you don't pay the programmers. But I guess now they're hoping to sell the software to nations that do respect intellectual property?
BTW, I'm not accusing individual Iraqis of doing anything that I wouldn't do in their situation.
This is just an observation.
Its not the inability of the patent examiners to look for prior art.
Just using Google and NEC CitetSeer
would help them. It's that they aren't even enouraged to look.
It's in the Patent Office interest to grant patents - the more patents
they grant the more revenue they get.
There are many more problems too.
A good article on the problems with patents, the unworkable solutions
and possible solutions can be found in Jeffrey D. Ullman's article
Ordinary Skill in the Art
Seems like the Authetidate technogoly is applicable to many document types. Their FAQ says:
What does the system consider a document?
A document is any file in any folder. AuthentiDate isn't restricted to working with a limited number of document extensions. Even documents without extensions can be AuthentiDated.
But it does seems like the USPS's implementation that has only allows Microsoft Work Docs. Only for now I hope.
The article says "The Ablaze(TM) is the Spatial Light Modulator (SLM) in the optical core of the EnLight256(TM)".
Going by the graphic in the Inquirer article, they shine a row of blinking lights through a LCD-like device (and some lenses and mirrors I assume) and collect the results in a column of light sensors on the other end.
Each pattern of on/off elements on the LCD-like device gives them a different transformation running at however fast you could emit and sense the light. I doubt they mechanically move the optical arrangment so that would seem to limit the number of transformations. Some of the LCD patterns might give useful transformations.
A vector multiply, a Fast Fourier Transform (maybe) or a sort (I doubt it)?
If the numbers are an analog light intensity level the precision would depend on how precise the light emitters and sensors you have are.
Packaging the mirrors and lenses small enough is a neat trick. Having a problem that fits the available transformations and can supply data in and out fast enougth is another. I wonder anything useful can be done by quickly switching LCD matrix pattern, or directly feeding outputs back as inputs?
What gets taxed depends upon what the taxpayers have been led to expect will be taxed and not on too much else.
Stability in a marketplace is good for market confidence. Rapidly changing tax laws would not be a popular idea and they would disrupt many careers and businesses. That being said, technology is rapidly changing and affecting many careers and business for the worse. It's the classic conflict of change being painful in the short-term and inovation being good in the long term.
They do have a Business Plan to pay for the site and I quote from
the introduction below:
Operations Funding Model MIT Libraries plan to transition DSpace from its reliance on outside funding to a more sustainable funding model. Consistent with the Libraries mission, Core Services will be offered free of charge to all registered members of the MIT community. In keeping with MIT s mission, content will be offered as freely as possible via the Web to the public. This service strategy precludes seeking user or subscription fees for means to support the ongoing operations of DSpace. The proposed funding model will rely upon a number of potential resources including, but not necessarily limited to, support from the Institute, revenue from Premium Services, and support from corporate and federation partners. Support may take the form of financial support or in-kind assistance. Collectively, these contributions will cover the operational costs of DSpace, as well as some future development needs.
Let me get this straight: your opinion is that, essentially, companies should not be allowed to use data and tools that they develop for their own products until 6 MONTHS has passed by?
I'm only suggesting this radical idea for OS companies that have been found guilty of operating an illegal monopoly and claim that it is too hard to break up the OS and application side of the business.
BTW,
the "extra data and tools" added to the monopoply OS presumably are useful features and so will have value and thus generate more rewards for the producers of these features.
Companies should not expect to use their monopoly power to gain an advantage into other areas.
Merely hiding IE and Windows Media isn't enough.
That doesn't allow a 3rd party vendor the same advantage as Microsoft for getting their product accepted. 3rd parties should get:
Equal access to distribution.
When MS ships new applications on by default with the OS that gives them a huge advantage.
Equal access to the OS. My proposal is
that if the comapny ins't broken up into an
OS and an application company, then
new MS applications must only use OS APIs that
have been published for 6 months.
Equal access to getting included by default.
Microsoft's Windows Media Player and IE can start quickly because parts of it has been built into
the OS. Sure WMP and IE starts fast, but that's because the OS starts slower (whether or not you use WMP, IE or the other tools).
To get the Real Player to start as fast as Microsoft Windows Media Player when the users click a link, Real Networks had to resort to installing a "StartCenter" application. StartCenter is a process that is autostarted on boot up (slowing down boot up)
and just waits around in case the Real Player is started. Now I can remove startcenter, but not the builtin WMP start up equivalent.
What I've wondered, is what stops a competitor of yours finding your google (or any one else's) click-thru ad and repeated hitting it with an automated program till your budget is gone?
According to press release, they have partnered with Real Networks as well. I assume all this means is that they will install a real player by default on the Moxi device as well. No great surprise since the only other popluar choice, Microsoft Windows Media players aren't ported to anything except a Microsoft OSes.
The company says it will offer the technology to cable operators at $425 US for a single-TV household, adding $250 to equip a second TV.
And today's to an article in today's San Jose Mercury News:
The MC will cost about $350 to $450 to manufacture, according to Perlman, while the MCx will run about $50 -- the same or less than advanced digital cable boxes just now coming on the market. Consumers would likely pay much less, or could even get the hardware for free from cable- and satellite-TV providers in exchange for higher monthly fees.
I'm not sure if that includes the complete wireless link. It would make sense to me for the standard Moxi to come with a slot that can accept a $75 standard 803.11b Wireless PC Card for those that would need this, but not add the cost into the base unit.
It is closer to a barebones computer with large hard drive in price - because that what it's components are from. Hopefully they have removed some of the standard PC problems though.
E.g., boot faster, tolerant of power-offs and less power hungry.
Be sure to read the last paragraph from the SJ Mercury News article:
The loudest voice is Microsoft, Perlman's former employer -- he worked at the company for two years after the WebTV acquisition, leaving in frustration with Microsoft's slow pace and insistence on cramming a version of its Windows computer software into TV-based devices. Moxi uses the Linux operating system and Macromedia Flash animation software.
``We couldn't do the things we are doing with Windows XP,'' Perlman said, referring to the most recent version of Microsoft's flagship operating system. ``The best broadband (home) networks out there will be the ones that don't use Microsoft technology.''
The Perl Cookbook published by O'Reilly was my most referenced book last year.
Very common questions and all the right answers
(there is often more than one right way.)
I guess O'Reilly doesn't have rights to the "Cookbook" brand. No big deal, but I hope this book follows the same high standard.
PS:The "Programming Perl" was my previous favourite reference book, but the online "perldoc" documentation replaces that now.
I also switched from dialup modem to Pacbell DSL about 6 months ago. Most of all I am very disappointed with normal web browsing.
There seems to be too much latency (e.g., DNS lookup times, round trip times),
non-last-mile bandwidth bottlenecks and slow web sites. Stuart Cheshire's "
It's the Latency, Stupid"
article gives a good explantion of why more bandwidth isn't the
only thing the industry should quote when selling access.
Another disappointment was the instant availability benefit, which I was foolish to expect in the first place,
of DSL and cable modems because
At home I turn off my computer off when not in use for long periods.
The power up cycle and PPPoE connection make for roughly the same time the is about the same as
with dial-ups.
The things I did like where: being able to use my phone line while connected,
see high bit-rate video and most of all
downloading new software at 1.2Mbps.
I didn't see any mention of improving latencies so I guess they are helping the multimedia and file sharing internet applications.
Stuart Cheshire's
It's the Latency, Stupid
article gives a good explantion of why more bandwidth isn't the
only thing the industry should quote when selling access.
From 1990 to 1996 I wrote software for a device that can upload logs and reprogram an implanted pacemakers or defibrillator.
All that Maggard describes above was true in 1996, except that we used RS232C, modems and the kermit protocol to upload data to a central database instead of the USB and the internet.
Slashdot Mirror
I had a microwave oven that consistently stopped my Netflix videos streaming over WiFi every time someone made a cup of tea.
I was able to prove a contributing issue was related to its poor door seal letting microwaves out using the free WiFi tool NetStumbler (Also known as "Network Stumbler").
NetStumbler has can graph the Signal/Noise ratio of a WiFi station over time. If you put a laptop running NetStumber in a microwave (Don't turn on the microwave!) you should see the signal to noise ratio drop 30 dBm as the door shielding attenuates the WiFi signal. If not, you probably have an old oven that has developed a wonky door seal.
In my case, I was able to feel the microwave door close a little more as I pressed the handle. And after alternating pressing and releasing the door without changing my body position, 10 seconds on 10 seconds off, I was able to clearly see a 5 dBm difference in the WiFi signal to noise ratio on my old oven. That didn't happen on my new oven.
I also saw other people comment that if a cell phone rings inside a microwave, then that's a sign the microwave is leaky. I doubt that's reliable, since many cell phones use a different frequency than microwave ovens. And they don't report signal strength accurately.
He made the FBI's Top 10 most wanted list and is still a FBI cyber fugitive probably living in his native Morocco now.
Starting in 2003 he paid for DDoS attacks on his online Satellite TV retailer competition. These DDoS attacks did collateral damage on the various hosting and CDNs providers that these competitors turned to for support. The costs were estimated to be as high as $2,000,000 by Attorney General John Ashcroft. The prosecutor for the case, assistant U.S. attorney Arif Alikhan, head of the Los Angeles computer crimes section, said: "I think it's the first case of its kind involving a DDoS for commercial advantage or for hire, ..."
An update to older coverage. In 2005, criminal complaints against those techincally involved were dismissed
*Speed comparison based upon performance with a 56.6 Kbps modem. Actual speed may vary. Actual throughput speed will vary based on network and Internet congestion among other factors. And in their FAQ says: Technology
What affects my connection speed?
When you connect to the Internet using Verizon High Speed Internet, the speeds that you will experience will vary based on a variety of factors, including the following:
- Distance of your telephone line from a Verizon Central Office
- Condition of telephone wiring inside and outside your location
- Computer configuration
- Network or Internet congestion
- Server and router speeds of the Web sites you access
- Other factors
So you don't really have a good way to test your service. And if you did and it only showed 56kbps, the Version is still within the range the promised.There are these problems when testing speeds to your neighbor.
- Upload speeds are lower than download. So you can only test upload speeds this way.
- Your neighbor needs to be using the same ISP.
Better ways could be to download large files from your ISP. But you'd have to find a file where a traceroute (tracert cmd from your computer, not from a public server) shows the path to that server is fully with Verizon's control, has single digit milliseconds of latency, no packet loss, and not too many hops away. Otherwise use a public speed test service.Maybe one day we'll see a class action lawsuit on various ISPs that claims they intentionally lied about the average speeds customers should see, But I'm not holding my breath.
If what's correct, then then why did FireOne (which is FirePay's owner) says in this press release today.
FireOne's a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange and it dropped 66% on this news. So I'm thinking that the US laws do have a significant impact them getting US customers. If you think otherwise, take a gamble and buy their shares cheap. At least its not a negative sum game like online gambling.
IANAL,l #howmuch was probably written by them and it says:
but http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.htm
From this I can see many places were Google is going to have a tough time are arguing that their use is fair. I suspect that they'll fall back to just doing books they get permission for. I expect that many publishers will flock to send them lists of works to add to their indexes.
While I accept that Google doesn't show much of the copyrighted work on one page, they are really publishing much of the work within the Google site. I can imagine a program being written to query google over and over again to reverse engineer a full work.
-- Want a more interesting quick read? VerbSap
Now if the attack is a new type with no easy fix I don't neccessarily want them to publish it far and wide, but I'd at least like to know who are the relevant authorities Akamai says they've given the details to. Is there an FBI agent or case number I can make enquires to? Akamai is not very forthcoming.
Personally I think this attack was just a known exploit or a huge volume of spoofed DNS traffic and Akamai is hiding behind a veil here to protect its image.
But that's the same argument I could use for the web. There's even more spurious distractors when looking for information on the web.
There are many more problems too. A good article on the problems with patents, the unworkable solutions and possible solutions can be found in Jeffrey D. Ullman's article Ordinary Skill in the Art
But it does seems like the USPS's implementation that has only allows Microsoft Work Docs. Only for now I hope.
The article says "The Ablaze(TM) is the Spatial Light Modulator (SLM) in the optical core of the EnLight256(TM)". Going by the graphic in the Inquirer article, they shine a row of blinking lights through a LCD-like device (and some lenses and mirrors I assume) and collect the results in a column of light sensors on the other end.
Each pattern of on/off elements on the LCD-like device gives them a different transformation running at however fast you could emit and sense the light. I doubt they mechanically move the optical arrangment so that would seem to limit the number of transformations. Some of the LCD patterns might give useful transformations. A vector multiply, a Fast Fourier Transform (maybe) or a sort (I doubt it)?
If the numbers are an analog light intensity level the precision would depend on how precise the light emitters and sensors you have are. Packaging the mirrors and lenses small enough is a neat trick. Having a problem that fits the available transformations and can supply data in and out fast enougth is another. I wonder anything useful can be done by quickly switching LCD matrix pattern, or directly feeding outputs back as inputs?
What gets taxed depends upon what the taxpayers have been led to expect will be taxed and not on too much else.
Stability in a marketplace is good for market confidence. Rapidly changing tax laws would not be a popular idea and they would disrupt many careers and businesses.
That being said, technology is rapidly changing and affecting many careers and business for the worse.
It's the classic conflict of change being painful in the short-term and inovation being good in the long term.
They do have a Business Plan to pay for the site and I quote from the introduction below:
You know the kind. When you add in debug they go away.
I'm only suggesting this radical idea for OS companies that have been found guilty of operating an illegal monopoly and claim that it is too hard to break up the OS and application side of the business.
BTW, the "extra data and tools" added to the monopoply OS presumably are useful features and so will have value and thus generate more rewards for the producers of these features. Companies should not expect to use their monopoly power to gain an advantage into other areas.
Microsoft's Windows Media Player and IE can start quickly because parts of it has been built into the OS. Sure WMP and IE starts fast, but that's because the OS starts slower (whether or not you use WMP, IE or the other tools).
To get the Real Player to start as fast as Microsoft Windows Media Player when the users click a link, Real Networks had to resort to installing a "StartCenter" application. StartCenter is a process that is autostarted on boot up (slowing down boot up) and just waits around in case the Real Player is started. Now I can remove startcenter, but not the builtin WMP start up equivalent.
Least that what I rememeber it saying in the TeX manual.
What I've wondered, is what stops a competitor of yours finding your google (or any one else's) click-thru ad and repeated hitting it with an automated program till your budget is gone?
According to press release, they have partnered with Real Networks as well. I assume all this means is that they will install a real player by default on the Moxi device as well. No great surprise since the only other popluar choice, Microsoft Windows Media players aren't ported to anything except a Microsoft OSes.
So it will cost more than an Xbox but not play Xbox games.
It is closer to a barebones computer with large hard drive in price - because that what it's components are from. Hopefully they have removed some of the standard PC problems though. E.g., boot faster, tolerant of power-offs and less power hungry.
Be sure to read the last paragraph from the SJ Mercury News article:
PS:The "Programming Perl" was my previous favourite reference book, but the online "perldoc" documentation replaces that now.
Another disappointment was the instant availability benefit, which I was foolish to expect in the first place, of DSL and cable modems because At home I turn off my computer off when not in use for long periods. The power up cycle and PPPoE connection make for roughly the same time the is about the same as with dial-ups.
The things I did like where: being able to use my phone line while connected, see high bit-rate video and most of all downloading new software at 1.2Mbps.
I didn't see any mention of improving latencies so I guess they are helping the multimedia and file sharing internet applications. Stuart Cheshire's It's the Latency, Stupid article gives a good explantion of why more bandwidth isn't the only thing the industry should quote when selling access.
From 1990 to 1996 I wrote software for a device that can upload logs and reprogram an implanted pacemakers or defibrillator. All that Maggard describes above was true in 1996, except that we used RS232C, modems and the kermit protocol to upload data to a central database instead of the USB and the internet.