Category: Internet

Imagine that you went back in time to the invention of the printing press, which revolutionised human communicative efficacy, only to discover the Kings and Queens of the realm trying to install unwieldy automated mechanical filters on every typesetter. That’s how truly bizarre it seems to me to watch a human government attempting to stifle P2P applications like BitTorrent: technologies which have hit upon, by amazing groundswell, the most robust communication protocols yet known. [Submitted by The Laroquod Experiment.]

Here’s a scrolldown link to my comment on Google’s Public Policy Blog post on Net neutrality and the benefits of caching, where I pointed out that although Google’s “offer to ‘colocate’ caching servers within broadband providers’ own facilities” is probably a good thing for the internet and should be supported for the time being, it is obviously not “net neutral” nor is it “edge caching”, as Google wishes to pretend. [Submitted by The Laroquod Experiment.]

From Pure Pwnage It is with great sadness that we bring you this news. Troy Dixon lost his life in a car accident on Saturday night. He will be remembered for his warmth and kindness, and for the laughter he was able to bring to this world. Whether he was on the stage of a comedy club or in front of a camera, Troy was truly in his element as an entertainer. He will be missed dearly by his friends, family, and all of us at Pure Pwnage. We’re grateful…

The new Oxford Junior Dictionary, which caps itself at 10,000 words, has excised a huge swath of words to make room for definitions of “mp3 player”, “broadband”, “celebrity” and “blog”. Some of the words being cut out include “nun”, “devil”, “bishop”, “almond”, “beaver” and “lobster”, amongst about 150 other words. Oxford University Press, which publishes the edition, said the book can only be so big, because it has to fit in the hands of a seven-year-old and be accessible to new readers. When words are added, others must be removed….

If you’ve been to YouTube since yesterday, you’ll have noticed a change to the window in which you waste some time watching Dramatic Chpmunk, Baby Panda or the Numa Numa guy: They’re all now being presented in widescreen. The YouTube Blog explains the reason for the change: We’re expanding the width of the page to 960 pixels to better reflect the quality of the videos you create and the screens that you use to watch them. This new, wider player is in a widescreen aspect ratio which we hope will…

The CRTC today announced its oft-delayed ruling in the CAIP application to put an end to Bell’s internet throttling practices. From the horse’s mouth: “The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today announced that it has denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers’ (CAIP) request that Bell Canada cease the traffic-shaping practices it has adopted for its wholesale Gateway Access Service…” “Based on the evidence before us, we found that the measures employed by Bell Canada to manage its network were not discriminatory,” said CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein in…

It’s been a long time coming, but the CRTC is only days away from ruling on the 3rd party ISP throttling issue. At the heart of the matter is whether Bell, the nation’s largest DSL provider should be able to throttle the traffic of wholesale 3rd party ISPs. There has been much evidence presented in the past that Bell has misrepresented the extent of P2P (bit torrent) traffic on said networks, and despite claims to be targeting said traffic, slowed down traffic across the board. With the delays in the…

The world’s junk mail folders are breathing a sigh of relief today: The servers are operated by McColo Corp., which these experts say has emerged as a major U.S. hosting service for international firms and syndicates that are involved in everything from the remote management of millions of compromised computers to the sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals and designer goods, fake security products and child pornography via email. But the company’s web site was not accessible today, when two Internet providers cut off MoColo’s connectivity to the Internet, security experts said….

If you use WPA to secure your WiFi router (What? You’re using WEP? What’s the matter with you?), it’s time to switch to WPA2. That’s because Erik Tews who is best known for cracking WEP in under a minute has cracked WPA. The scary part is that he can do this in 15 minutes because of a “mathematical breakthrough” that he made: The attack, described as the first practical attack on WPA, will be discussed at the PacSec conference in Tokyo next week. There, researcher Erik Tews will show how…