TinyXP is XP with all of the wasteful crap stripped out.

For details, see this blog post.

To download, go here or here, depending on what you want.

I just wanted to take a moment to make three quick points:

1) The Internet is not going to stop working when we run out of IP addresses. In fact, that whole idea is incomprehensibly dumb.

2) There are PLENTY of IP addresses!!

Okay, get this… There are fewer than 300 million internet users in the world. There are over 4 BILLION IPv4 addresses.

Get it? There are plenty of addresses. The problem is not the number of addresses. The problem is that the crackheads assigning them don’t care whether or not they end up being utilized. What an incredible (and expensive) waste.

3) There is a very simple solution to this that doesn’t involve spending billions of dollars on forcing the world to move to IPv6 before it’s ready:

ARIN should just start reclaiming unused IP blocks.

It’s that simple. It really is.

Ping each IP address, and if there’s no response, check a few ports.

Use that data to create a utilization metric for each IP block.

If the IP block is underutilized, or not used at all, simply recover part or all of the IP block for someone else to use.

That’s it. That’s all that has to be done.

People are idiots.

Panasonic VIERA Skype

UPDATE: Be sure to read the Amazon reviews before you decide to buy this thing.

(03:28:00 AM) Andrew Hayes: hello
(03:28:12 AM) Andrew Hayes: how are you doing?
(03:28:57 AM) Chris Brunner: a little tired, you?
(03:29:13 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am not good at the moment
i am in a deep mess and i need your help
(03:30:34 AM) Chris Brunner: What can I do?
(03:31:42 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am stuck in London Got mugged at gunpoint
(03:32:15 AM) Chris Brunner: That’s horrible
(03:33:06 AM) Chris Brunner: I’m sorry to hear that
(03:33:33 AM) Andrew Hayes: all cash on me was stolen including cell phone and credit card
(03:33:50 AM) Andrew Hayes: i was injured…little bruises on my neck
(03:34:10 AM) Chris Brunner: is this a joke?
(03:34:50 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am really serious
(03:35:00 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am just freaked out
(03:35:19 AM) Chris Brunner: how are you using a computer?
(03:35:38 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am presently in a loocal library
(03:35:48 AM) Chris Brunner: which one?
(03:35:53 AM) Andrew Hayes: i have limited time here!!
(03:36:05 AM) Andrew Hayes: here in London
(03:36:18 AM) Andrew Hayes: i need your help urgently
(03:36:22 AM) Chris Brunner: …
(03:36:57 AM) Chris Brunner: what is it that you’re asking me to do?
(03:37:46 AM) Andrew Hayes: my return flight leaves in few hours time
(03:38:28 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am having problems settling the hotel i checked into and getting a cab to the airport
(03:38:54 AM) Chris Brunner: what can I do?
(03:40:17 AM) Andrew Hayes: i need you to loan me some money to sort my hotel bills and get a cab to the airport
(03:41:41 AM) Chris Brunner: sure, no problem. just get any of our mutual friends to vouch for your character and I will happily loan you cash via western union or moneygram
(03:42:26 AM) Andrew Hayes: you are all i got at the moment
(03:42:46 AM) Andrew Hayes: to help me out
(03:43:14 AM) Chris Brunner: of our mutual friends, whose phone number do you need? I will wake them up.
(03:43:28 AM) Chris Brunner: I know most of them personally
(03:43:35 AM) Andrew Hayes: i don’t have access to phone
(03:43:46 AM) Chris Brunner: surely someone in the library has a cell phone
(03:43:58 AM) Andrew Hayes: the muggers stole away my phone like i told u ealier
(03:44:05 AM) Chris Brunner: I will call you on that phone, and conference in a mutual friend who can vouch for you
(03:45:19 AM) Andrew Hayes: there is no phone in the library
(03:45:19 AM) Andrew Hayes: there is no phone in the library
(03:45:35 AM) Andrew Hayes: besides it is a local one!!
(03:45:50 AM) Chris Brunner: so? I will pay the international toll. it’s an emergency, right?
(03:46:42 AM) Andrew Hayes: yeah
(03:47:02 AM) Chris Brunner: okay, then give me the number to any phone in london where I can call you, and conference in a mutual friend.
(03:47:09 AM) Andrew Hayes: yeah
(03:48:06 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you there??
(03:48:13 AM) Chris Brunner: yes, of course
(03:48:53 AM) Andrew Hayes: i really need your help
(03:49:04 AM) Chris Brunner: I understand that. That’s why I’m trying to help you.
(03:49:46 AM) Andrew Hayes: i have limited time here
(03:50:17 AM) Andrew Hayes: as their computer is even faulty
(03:50:56 AM) Andrew Hayes: all i need from you is a loan of 600$
(03:51:04 AM) Andrew Hayes: to get on my flight
(03:51:09 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you there??
(03:51:13 AM) Chris Brunner: okay, how should I send it?
(03:51:37 AM) Andrew Hayes: all you need is my name and address
(03:51:43 AM) Chris Brunner: okay
(03:52:04 AM) Andrew Hayes: do you know any western union outlet near you?
(03:52:08 AM) Chris Brunner: yes
(03:52:31 AM) Andrew Hayes: how long will it take you to get there?
(03:52:39 AM) Chris Brunner: about ten minutes
(03:52:40 AM) Andrew Hayes: as i have limited time here
(03:52:43 AM) Chris Brunner: but I will try to be fast
(03:53:21 AM) Andrew Hayes: should i give you the info
(03:53:34 AM) Andrew Hayes: you will need in sending the money?
(03:53:38 AM) Chris Brunner: yes. I will write it down
(03:53:53 AM) Andrew Hayes: Name:Andrew Hayes
(03:55:13 AM) Chris Brunner: okay
(03:55:23 AM) Chris Brunner: don’t I need the address?
(03:55:48 AM) Andrew Hayes: Location: 30 Leicester Square. City, London. Country, United Kingdom
(03:55:53 AM) Andrew Hayes: got it?
(03:56:01 AM) Chris Brunner: got it.
(03:56:09 AM) Andrew Hayes: ok
(03:56:23 AM) Andrew Hayes: can you please leave now?
(03:56:57 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??
(03:57:03 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??
(03:57:41 AM) Chris Brunner: yes, I’m leaving now
(03:57:51 AM) Andrew Hayes: ok
(03:58:31 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you there?
(03:58:41 AM) Andrew Hayes: i will be online waiting
(03:58:55 AM) Chris Brunner: wait, is it 600 USD or 600 pounds?
(03:59:26 AM) Andrew Hayes: pounds
(03:59:35 AM) Chris Brunner: okay
(04:01:15 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you still there?
(04:06:04 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you there??
(04:10:04 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??
(04:10:40 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??
(04:15:48 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??

Obviously, this is a scam. I’m guessing Andrew’s Facebook account was hacked. So, I called the London police and told them where the scammer will be trying to pick up the money that I didn’t send.

Facebookers beware.

If this happens to one of your friends, here’s the link to report it.

If so, you may have run into trouble finding the correct URLs for the Google Gears XPI. Let me help:

Linux: http://dl.google.com/gears/current/gears-linux-opt.xpi
Mac: http://dl.google.com/gears/current/gears-osx-opt.xpi

Enjoy.

Sure enough, they do publish the results. Here they are:

The difference between average speeds is marginal, but the lower latency that Sprint offers probably makes a huge difference.

I know people are going to post comments about how skewed these results are for all kinds of reasons, and they’ll be mostly right, but in the grand scheme of things, I’d be willing to bet that these results are more accurate than any one review that only surveys speeds in two or three states at a time.

Feel free to leave comments with your own experiences.

• Al Jazeera English 
• Feed URL
• Nationality: Qatari
• Description: One of the three largest English-language news channels worldwide.  It's a 24-hour English-language news and current affairs TV channel headquartered in Doha, Qatar.
• Russia Today
• Feed URL
• Nationality: Russian
• Description: Also known as RT, is a globally broadcast English-language news channel from Russia, and the first all-digital Russian TV channel.
• Press TV
• Feed URL
• Nationality: Iranian
• Description: An English language international television news channel, based in Tehran.  It has 26 international correspondents and more than 500 staff around the world.

These are just three out of about thirty content sources that I receive video from daily.  If you have one that you feel should be listed here, let me know.  Or, if you want to see my list of Technology or Libertarian content sources, let me know.

For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college—when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.

This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her—but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong—something that only pirates would do.

And there wasn’t much chance that the SPA—the Software Protection Authority—would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this information to catch reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.) The next time his computer was networked, Central Licensing would find out. He, as computer owner, would receive the harshest punishment—for not taking pains to prevent the crime.

Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She might want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she came from a middle-class family and could hardly afford the tuition, let alone her reading fees. Reading his books might be the only way she could graduate. He understood this situation; he himself had had to borrow to pay for all the research papers he read. (10% of those fees went to the researchers who wrote the papers; since Dan aimed for an academic career, he could hope that his own research papers, if frequently referenced, would bring in enough to repay this loan.)

Later on, Dan would learn there was a time when anyone could go to the library and read journal articles, and even books, without having to pay. There were independent scholars who read thousands of pages without government library grants. But in the 1990s, both commercial and nonprofit journal publishers had begun charging fees for access. By 2047, libraries offering free public access to scholarly literature were a dim memory.

There were ways, of course, to get around the SPA and Central Licensing. They were themselves illegal. Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books. But he had told too many friends about it, and one of them turned him in to the SPA for a reward (students deep in debt were easily tempted into betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.

Dan would later learn that there was a time when anyone could have debugging tools. There were even free debugging tools available on CD or downloadable over the net. But ordinary users started using them to bypass copyright monitors, and eventually a judge ruled that this had become their principal use in actual practice. This meant they were illegal; the debuggers’ developers were sent to prison.

Programmers still needed debugging tools, of course, but debugger vendors in 2047 distributed numbered copies only, and only to officially licensed and bonded programmers. The debugger Dan used in software class was kept behind a special firewall so that it could be used only for class exercises.

It was also possible to bypass the copyright monitors by installing a modified system kernel. Dan would eventually find out about the free kernels, even entire free operating systems, that had existed around the turn of the century. But not only were they illegal, like debuggers—you could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer’s root password. And neither the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you that.

Dan concluded that he couldn’t simply lend Lissa his computer. But he couldn’t refuse to help her, because he loved her. Every chance to speak with her filled him with delight. And that she chose him to ask for help, that could mean she loved him too.

Dan resolved the dilemma by doing something even more unthinkable—he lent her the computer, and told her his password. This way, if Lissa read his books, Central Licensing would think he was reading them. It was still a crime, but the SPA would not automatically find out about it. They would only find out if Lissa reported him.

Of course, if the school ever found out that he had given Lissa his own password, it would be curtains for both of them as students, regardless of what she had used it for. School policy was that any interference with their means of monitoring students’ computer use was grounds for disciplinary action. It didn’t matter whether you did anything harmful—the offense was making it hard for the administrators to check on you. They assumed this meant you were doing something else forbidden, and they did not need to know what it was.

Students were not usually expelled for this—not directly. Instead they were banned from the school computer systems, and would inevitably fail all their classes.

Later, Dan would learn that this kind of university policy started only in the 1980s, when university students in large numbers began using computers. Previously, universities maintained a different approach to student discipline; they punished activities that were harmful, not those that merely raised suspicion.

Lissa did not report Dan to the SPA. His decision to help her led to their marriage, and also led them to question what they had been taught about piracy as children. The couple began reading about the history of copyright, about the Soviet Union and its restrictions on copying, and even the original United States Constitution. They moved to Luna, where they found others who had likewise gravitated away from the long arm of the SPA. When the Tycho Uprising began in 2062, the universal right to read soon became one of its central aims.

Author’s Note

This note was updated in 2007.

The right to read is a battle being fought today. Although it may take 50 years for our present way of life to fade into obscurity, most of the specific laws and practices described above have already been proposed; many have been enacted into law in the US and elsewhere. In the US, the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act established the legal basis to restrict the reading and lending of computerized books (and other works as well). The European Union imposed similar restrictions in a 2001 copyright directive. In France, under the DADVSI law adopted in 2006, mere possession of a copy of DeCSS, the free program to decrypt video on a DVD, is a crime.

In 2001, Disney-funded Senator Hollings proposed a bill called the SSSCA that would require every new computer to have mandatory copy-restriction facilities that the user cannot bypass. Following the Clipper chip and similar US government key-escrow proposals, this shows a long-term trend: computer systems are increasingly set up to give absentees with clout control over the people actually using the computer system. The SSSCA was later renamed to the unpronounceable CBDTPA, which was glossed as the “Consume But Don’t Try Programming Act”.

The Republicans took control of the US senate shortly thereafter. They are less tied to Hollywood than the Democrats, so they did not press these proposals. Now that the Democrats are back in control, the danger is once again higher.

In 2001 the US began attempting to use the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas treaty to impose the same rules on all the countries in the Western Hemisphere. The FTAA is one of the so-called “free trade” treaties, which are actually designed to give business increased power over democratic governments; imposing laws like the DMCA is typical of this spirit. The FTAA was effectively killed by Lula, President of Brazil, who rejected the DMCA requirement and others.

Since then, the US has imposed similar requirements on countries such as Australia and Mexico through bilateral “free trade” agreements, and on countries such as Costa Rica through CAFTA. Ecuador’s President Correa refused to sign the “free trade” agreement, but Ecuador had adopted something like the DMCA in 2003. Ecuador’s new constitution may provide an opportunity to get rid of it.

One of the ideas in the story was not proposed in reality until 2002. This is the idea that the FBI and Microsoft will keep the root passwords for your personal computers, and not let you have them.

The proponents of this scheme have given it names such as “trusted computing” and “palladium”. We call it “treacherous computing”, because the effect is to make your computer obey companies instead of you. This was implemented in 2007 as part of Windows Vista; we expect Apple to do something similar. In this scheme, it is the manufacturer that keeps the secret code, but the FBI would have little trouble getting it.

What Microsoft keeps is not exactly a password in the traditional sense; no person ever types it on a terminal. Rather, it is a signature and encryption key that corresponds to a second key stored in your computer. This enables Microsoft, and potentially any web sites that cooperate with Microsoft, the ultimate control over what the user can do on his own computer.

Vista also gives Microsoft additional powers; for instance, Microsoft can forcibly install upgrades, and it can order all machines running Vista to refuse to run a certain device driver. The main purpose of Vista’s many restrictions is to make DRM that users can’t overcome.

The SPA, which actually stands for Software Publisher’s Association, has been replaced in this police-like role by the BSA or Business Software Alliance. It is not, today, an official police force; unofficially, it acts like one. Using methods reminiscent of the erstwhile Soviet Union, it invites people to inform on their coworkers and friends. A BSA terror campaign in Argentina in 2001 made slightly-veiled threats that people sharing software would be raped.

When this story was first written, the SPA was threatening small Internet service providers, demanding they permit the SPA to monitor all users. Most ISPs surrendered when threatened, because they cannot afford to fight back in court. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1 Oct 96, D3.) At least one ISP, Community ConneXion in Oakland CA, refused the demand and was actually sued. The SPA later dropped the suit, but obtained the DMCA which gave them the power they sought.

The university security policies described above are not imaginary. For example, a computer at one Chicago-area university prints this message when you log in (quotation marks are in the original):

This system is for the use of authorized users only. Individuals using this computer system without authority or in the excess of their authority are subject to having all their activities on this system monitored and recorded by system personnel. In the course of monitoring individuals improperly using this system or in the course of system maintenance, the activities of authorized user may also be monitored. Anyone using this system expressly consents to such monitoring and is advised that if such monitoring reveals possible evidence of illegal activity or violation of University regulations system personnel may provide the evidence of such monitoring to University authorities and/or law enforcement officials.

This is an interesting approach to the Fourth Amendment: pressure most everyone to agree, in advance, to waive their rights under it.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Click here if you can’t see the video.

Drug-resistant bacteria kills, even in top hospitals. But now tough infections like staph and anthrax may be in for a surprise. Nobel-winning chemist Kary Mullis, who watched a friend die when powerful antibiotics failed, unveils a radical new cure that shows extraordinary promise.

Click here if you can’t see the video.

Right now, NetworkManager just determines whether it has made a physical connection, and if it has, it thinks it’s on the internet, and if it hasn’t it assumes there’s no connection available.

So, there are to problems with this:

* Offline-but-not-really – When I’m in the car, I have two options for connecting to my phone for internet access. I can either turn my phone into a WiFi Ad-Hoc node, and use it as a gateway for my laptop. Or, I can use Bluetooth to create a PAN and do basically the same thing. Either way, I have to set up the connection from the command line on my laptop with one or two commands. Of course, when I do this, NetworkManager has no knowledge of the connection and all of my GNOME apps that rely on it think there is no internet connection. This gets really, really old.

* Online-but-not-really – So the second problem is captive portals. For example, I’m typing this from a Panera Bread. I turned on my laptop, NetworkManager saw the open WiFi connection, and it automatically connected. Great, except NetworkManager now thinks it has a working internet connection… but it doesn’t, because I have to pop open a browser window and hit “Agree” before I actually have internet access.

The solution to this is so fucking easy… just ping! Each second, or every three or five seconds, NetworkManager should just try to ping a host like google.com… if you get a response, you’re online. This way, it doesn’t matter how you’re connected, or whether or not there’s a captive portal in the way… Why is this so hard?

I had to do this recently due to a domain change.  Here's the easy way:

UPDATE tablename SET tablefield = replace(tablefield,"findstring","replacestring");

For example, when the shell service I started moved from silenceisdefeat.com to silenceisdefeat.org, I issued the following command to change all of the links in my blog posts:

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content,"silenceisdefeat.org","silenceisdefeat.com");

You can do this via the command line, or using a tool like PHPMyAdmin by clicking on the SQL tab.  If you're running wp-cache on your WordPress blog, don't forget to clear your cache to see the change take effect.

1. WhatTheFont – This site actually allows you to upload a sample graphic and then tries to do the matching automatically.  Very cool!  The only problem is that the sample needs to be at least 100 pixels in height for it to work with high accuracy.
2. Identifont – This site uses a completely different approach — the process of elimination.  If you don't have a high-resolution sample and don't mind answering a few questions, this is the way to go.

While we're on the subject, FontyPython is a really cool font manager for Linux that allows you to browse through tons of fonts before installing them.  This is really convenient if you happen to be pirating large font packs while looking for one of the fonts you identified using the sites listed above.  If you know of similar programs for Mac or Windows, feel free to leave a comment.

First, some background information… I had an interesting phone conversation with Adam Panagia, the manager of AT&T’s Global Fraud department. From a conference bridge, we placed an outbound call to his cell phone without passing ANI to see how easy it would be for him to trace the call. He immediately answered and knew who was calling, which was pretty impressive. As it turns out, Adam was already listening to the conference call by sitting on the line of one of the parties on the conference. We know this was the case because after Adam hung up his cell phone and kept speaking in the conference, the “Talking” light on the conference web interface for one of the other parties would illuminate. In other words, Adam was speaking through the phone line of someone else who was on the conference call.

Adam, who works for AT&T can intercept and even speak on behalf of practically any long distance phone call with ease. In this case, he was intercepting a call in real-time that was originating from a Verizon land line. So, the carrier matters not. Obviously he’s not the only one who can do this. It goes without saying that there are likely dozens, if not hundreds, of government employees who can do the same thing.

So, if you’re interested maintaining privacy, you only have two options: Bypass the PSTN altogether or use encryption.

Why not do both?

The software released by the Zfone Project, which was founded by the creator of PGP, is of particular interest to me. Two-party phone calls can easily be accomplished by using Zfone on both ends with a VoIP softphone.

But what about conference calls? That’s a little bit more complicated, but it seems that the ZRTP patch for Asterisk could be used to allow each party to place an encrypted call to an Asterisk box, where a conference could be mixed.

But who wants to be limited to softphones? In theory, you don’t have to be. Sure, a company called TiVi makes software for cell phones that allows you to place encrypted VoIP calls over WiFi, but what about the analog phones everyone is already used to? I have an idea as to how to accomplish this: Get a tiny motherboard like a Mini-ITX or Nano-ITX, which can be had for cheap. Get a $10 voice modem. Install Asterisk with the ZRTP patch, and configure it to use the voice modem as an FXO port… and Bingo! You have a cheap homemade ATA with full encryption support.

I was going to go back and add links for all the acronyms, but since this was a very casual note-to-self, and since I have other work I need to be doing, you’ll just have to Google it if you see something you don’t recognize.

If you have less than a year of your contract left, you’ll have to extend it to a full year. Since I just bought a G1, I had over a year left, so this didn’t effect me. Click here for the related HoFo thread.

Also, it’s possible to get 10% off your bill by joining the Freelancers Union, which is free. Click here for the related thread. I haven’t tried this yet, so leave a comment and let me know how it works for you.

You can watch it here: