Crazy Guide to the Internet

Over the weekend, Paul brought to our attention BitTorrent’s commitment to circumventing the promise by Comcast to continue to place limitations on the P2P’s file-sharing capabilities as it sees fit. This act by Comcast was emphasized by the fact that it has filed a statement in defense of the case brought against it by the FCC a few months back. And in doing so, Comcast did something that could make the company appear even less qualified to make such executive decisions in the regulation of broadband dispersement.

As the P2P blog picked up via Ed Felten’s Freedom to Tinker blog, the definition of a BitTorrent as presented by Comcast is in fact one that was used in a speech by a member of Congress. Now, considering the potentially grave outcome of Comcast as a result of the case brought against it by the FCC, and the rather “official” nature of such a case, I can’t be entirely surprised that Comcast is looking to Congress for a “respected” definition of what BitTorrent actually does.

This aside, the biggest problem with Comcast’s use of a Congressman’s speech quote being used as definitive in regards to BitTorrent is the fact that it’s down right incorrect. This leaves room for a lot of holes to be poked in Comcast’s argument, but its really a matter of the FCC being able to poke them.

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Google has made some bad decisions in the past, and doesn’t always handle its customers with white gloves. When the company launched Street Views maps without blurring out personally identifying information like faces and license plate numbers, I scratched my head. And when Google decided to get rid of its premium video services without letting its customers keep the videos they’d paid for, I felt the customers’ pain.

So in another questionable move by Google, it’s somewhat slighted its web publisher clientèle by getting rid of ‘All Time” stats for FeedBurner data. That’s not to say that there’s no data left at all–daily, weekly and monthly numbers are still available for your use. But as Louis Gray noted, Google liberated FeedBurner’s premium services by making them free, so is this a sad result of getting what you pay for?

The effect that this change could have is rather far reaching. Several blogs and other web publications rely on FeedBurner stats to postion themselves in regards to other sites, and for comparison purposes of their own progress. For any publications out there that look to such data as a marker on their growth and current valuation, it looks like they’ll need to begin compiling their own data. Perhaps they can start by using mashup tools like Strata, which are also free.

In regards to those services out there, like RatingBurner, that look to comprise FeedBurner’s data in order to conclude some comprehensive data for more far-reaching purposes, the loss of such data from FeedBurner could essentially kill their business.

Knowing Google, it’s rather unlikely that the “All Time” stats will be gone forever. Whether it returns as a premium service or is merely offered in a different capacity, I imagine there’s a possibility that we’ll be seeing the option return in one way or another, somewhere down the line.

[image credit: Louis Gray]

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This story is so infuriating that I received several tips in the mashable tips email box as well as one in the tips email box for my personal domain (which has been offline for the last several months). You can find the story, as I did, at the BBC page, though the Wikipedia Blog has a few more salient details.

Here’s the run-down, though.

In January of last year, Wikileaks launched to a torrent of traffic, thanks to a warm welcome to the web from Slashdot. Shortly thereafter, it recieved widespread coverage in TechDirt, Newsreal, and a host of mainstream media sites.

In September of last year, Wikileaks finally hit paydirt in terms of a big story, when they broke a $3 billion corruption story in which the ex-president Moi of Kenya looted public coffers and possibly altered the outcome of a then impending national election.

After that, several major leaks were made through the site, including most notably a sensitive Guantanamo Bay manual, that afforded a “rare inside glimpse into the institution where the United States has imprisoned hundreds of suspected terrorists since 2002.”

In fact, the controversy over the Gitmo manuals lasted on into January of this year, when reports of a Bavarian ‘trojan in the middle’ emerged “activities of the Bavarian police, Ministry of Justice and the Prosecution office in intercepting encrypted data submitted via SSL or Skype via the internet.”

Other notable scoops by Wikileaks included suppresed video of a Japanese reactor sodium leak and documentation of the German government’s struggles to tap encrypted Skype calls.

That brings us to the present, when around fourteen hours ago, Wikileaks came under fire, according to Slashdot, when the “DNS entry [became] unavailable, reportedly due to a restraining order relating to a series of articles and documents released by WikiLeaks about off-shore trust structures in the Cayman Islands.”

It appears that the DNS records were pulled at the request of Julius Baer Bank and Trust by Judge Jeffery White. The documents describe alleged money laundering and tax evasion activities, according to various reports.

Perhaps I’m a bit cynical in my next statement, but I always figured it was a matter of time before the site got shut down, but I must admit that it getting shut down by this angle is a bit surprising. The court order came as a result of a lawsuit filed by the Swiss banking group, but obviously the Swiss courts have no jurisdiction in America, where the takedown action occurred.

If you are interested in examining the documents on your own, to determine for yourself whether they deserve to be taken down in this way, you can still access the site at its ip address: http://88.80.13.160/ (thanks to Wikipedia’s blog for that).

Did Wikileaks have it coming, or are they deserving of special protection?

• They are a valuable resource - they should be preserved.
• They are compromising national security - they should be taken down.
• They are providing a valuable service - but it was only a matter of time.

View Results

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TubesNow didn’t quite make it, but there’s a new guy on the scene that looks to operate under the same premise (sharing media with friends in a buddy-system environment). There’s one thing that works really well with YouTube content, and that’s its shareability. The ability to share that video content within the YouTube network, amongst friends and across websites is key to YouTube’s success, and has become a standard in its own right (all hail the widget). What YouTube does to enable such shareability is encode the video upon its being uploaded to the site.

Now theoretically, take a system like TubesNow, or more familiarly like AIM, and combine it with the standardizing power of YouTube, and you’ve got DoubleTwist. This new site is offering a downloadable application that looks to quickly convert files to become standard in a way that they can be shared amongst friends, regardless of their device. That means cell phones of all makes and variations, game consoles, set-top boxes, computers, etc. Well, there is one catch: DoubleTwist won’t have support for Macs for another couple of months. But you get the idea.

What’s good about DoubleTwist is that it’s operating from a concept that content should be standardized in a manner that’s device and system agnostic, making content shareable in ways that would otherwise have been more discouraging or down right impossible. It’s a concept that makes perfect sense, and it’s one that’s being slowly integrated on various levels.

In learning about DoubleTwist, I actually thought back to a conversation I had with Anu Kirk over at Rhapsody where he envisioned a world in which your digital music was made available to you from any device: your television, your cell phone, your computer, your mp3 player. That’s quickly becoming a reality, as Rhapsody can now be accessed through your TiVo set-top box, your MOG account, and countless other accounts you have lurking out there. Why not have more syncing options for your personal media files? Why not share content from the web to your PSP?

There’s a good amount of backend development required to halfway achieve such a feat, so in DoubleTwist’s efforts to “standardize and sync” all of your personal media, the project could quickly become massive, and prove an alternative for things like online “desktops.” But it will be its integration and distribution strategies that I will be most interested in witnessing, as making such content available in practical manners, especially for sharing purposes, is further developed.

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While many have pondered over the alternatives for Yahoo’s potential buyer, Valleywag has pointed out that Yahoo Japan has been left out of the mix, citing the possibility of Yahoo Japan taking on Yahoo, and citing 7-11’s business history as a model to Yahoo’s success. There haven’t been any discussions that have been made part of public knowledge concerning this as an actual option for Yahoo, but it’s interesting enough to look at on this fine Presidents Day. Yahoo owns a 40% stake in Yahoo Japan, and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang also sits on the board.

With an estimated value of $29 billion, Yahoo Japan seems to outshine Yahoo’s worth prior to the Microsoft bid. The pivot point here would be Softbank, which owns 41% of Yahoo Japan. Yet with close ties to Bill Gates and Yang, it seems like the conversation would have already com up if this were to be a viable option for Yahoo. It may be interesting to note that Softbank also has a stake in Alibaba, which may also be looking to have some say in the potential merging of Yahoo into the Microsoft camp.

Could Yahoo actually keep things in the “family,” and would that benefit Yahoo as opposed to having the brand continue down its downward spiral? I imagine that in keeping things in the “family” would lead to a lower payout for Yahoo. Some may purport that being acquired by Microsoft, or even teaming up with Google, could in fact be better for Yahoo overall, giving it a seemingly “graceful” exit strategy of some sort. While any merger or major partnership would take months, of not years to actually take effect and become fruitful, some may say that such a merger or partnership may be better in the end for Yahoo.

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In an industry first, Firebrand Training has won the Institute of IT Training (IITT) Training Company of the Year award for the third consecutive year.

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If you were to take your computer to a repair shop and they ended up losing it, what would you say is fair compensation? I’d say at least the amount it cost to purchase the laptop in the first place, and then maybe a little extra to cover the hassle and time it took to get it replaced would be fair. One woman, Raelyn Campbell has a completely different idea of what fair compensation should be - $54 million.

Campbell purchased a laptop from Best Buy and bought the extended warranty. A year later, the power button broke off and so she took advantage of the extended warranty and brought the computer in for repairs.  She was told it would be ready in two to six weeks but six weeks came and it wasn’t done yet.  To make a long story short, Best Buy lost the computer and offered her a $900 gift card to compensate even though the computer cost $1100.  Campbell thought about her personal data on the machine and said that the info stored on the computer could lead to an identify theft issue.  Not only that, she said she lost thousands of dollars worth of music and thousands of photos that can’t be replaced.

While Best Buy should have offered her more than $900 given that the computer cost $1100, it seems ridiculous that Campbell is taking Best Buy to court and suing them for $54 million. Her biggest issue was regarding the personal data on the machine and the threat of identify theft. As a consumer, it was her responsibility to make sure she had taken sensitive information off of the computer before sending it in. And when she says she lost thousands of dollars worth of music and photos, it’s hard to feel bad when it was again, her responsibility as a consumer to make sure she had back-ups of those files. She could have easily lost those photos and the music if her hard drive failed.

Of course, this is all just my opinion. So what do you think? Is she right for suing Best Buy? If so, is she right to sue them for $54 million or is that dollar amount a little exaggerated? It wouldn’t be surprising in the least if she got before a judge and he just laughed at her, especially knowing Best Buy is offering her over $4,000 to settle out of court.

Source: MSNBC

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Original post by Sanchit

Now that Vista SP1 has been released there’s no surprise that performance tests and benchmarks are going to start flooding the Internet, and not surprisingly XP takes the crown in most of the cases. ZDNet has gotten the ball rolling (here and here) with their test results:

Looking at the data there’s only one conclusion that can be drawn - Windows XP SP2 is faster than Windows Vista SP1.  End of story.  Out of the fifteen tests carried out, XP SP2 beat Vista SP1 in eleven, Vista SP1 beat XP SP2 in two of the tests, and two of the tests resulted in a draw.

There’s one inherent problem that I’ve seen with several of the tests so far. Testers are putting the two operating systems up against each other using the exact same systems. No harm, right? Well, there’s a natural progression of technology that would obviously make you think that running XP on the same system as Vista will always result in XP being faster.

Obviously as time goes on the operating systems will take advantage of the system resources that are made available, and if they didn’t there would never be any need to upgrade to a new computer. I remember when I was running Windows 98 thinking that in 10 years we’ll be able to hit the power button and the computer’s bootup sequence would take just seconds because processors would be so fricken’ fast. Here we are about 10 years later, and the bootup times are about the same as they always have been simply because the software grows along with the hardware. Otherwise we might see Windows fit on a few floppy disks.

What I would like to see is someone running XP on a system that was released one year after XP was made available, and then comparing it to Vista running on a similarly priced new system. Or maybe running each of them on a computer that only meets the minimum or recommended requirements for each operating system would be even better. Then these tests would mean a little more to me.

To me these comparisons are like looking at the performance of a video game that was released back in 2001 and putting it up against a game that was released in 2007… using the same hardware. You would obviously expect to see the game from 2001 to do a lot better, but the one from 2007 will likely be better in the graphics compartment.

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