Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Richard M. Smith points out, regarding VeriSign's Site Finder, VeriSign has hired a company called Omniture to snoop on people who make domain name typos. He reports on a Web bug he unearthed on a Site Finder page and notes: The query string of the URL contains the usual things such as the Web page URL, the referring URL, browser type, screen size, etc. This query string is built on the fly by about 50 lines of JavaScript embedded in the Verisign Web page. The Omniture server sets a cookie so that people can be watched over time to see what typos they are making. Here's a bit more about the Omniture snooping service: http://www.omniture.com/announcement.html 5:20:59 PM    comment []

PressThink Basics: The Master Narrative in Journalism, by Jay Rosen. (In case that url breaks in transit, the page also ultimately answers to this name.) 3:20:34 PM    comment []

FINGERTIPS: An intelligent guide to free and legal music on the web 1:20:11 PM    comment []

Chinese Web Activist Said Held on Subversion Charge (Reuters). A Chinese dissident who expressed his views on Internet bulletin boards and chatrooms has been arrested on charges of conspiring to subvert the government, a U.S.-based human rights group said on Wednesday. The case of Li Zhi, a 32-year-old city government official, is the latest in a string of detentions and convictions of dissidents that critics said betray China's stated pledge to promote the rule of law. 12:20:02 PM    comment []

Study: Net Piracy Has Five More Years of Growth, by Bernhard Warner, Reuters. The report by Informa Media said global Internet music sales, which includes sales of CDs from retail Web sites such as Amazon.com and song downloads from services such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes, will reach $3.9 billion by 2008, up from $1.1 billion in 2002. But the value of lost sales due to CD- burning and downloading free songs off so-called peer-to-peer networks such as Grokster and Kazaa will rise to $4.7 billion in the same period from $2.4 billion this year, the British research firm said. . . . The music trade body, the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI), reported in July the sale of pirated compact discs -- a problem that has dogged the industry for the past decade -- has more than doubled in the past three years as costs of CD-burning devices plummet. The IFPI represents scores of independent and major music labels including EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music, Universal Music, and Bertelsmann's BMG. Hey, way to run a lot of different issues together: time- and space-shifting, peer-to-peer sharing, bootlegging, piracy . . . and I'm sure I missed some. 11:20:01 AM    comment []

My copy of Quicksilver has been delivered to campus. Now, the question is, will our mail center folks bring it to me today, or will I have to go get it? 11:19:57 AM    comment []

'Relentless' pace of hack attacks (BBC) The fake websites were made to look like they were operated by European banks. One was protected with a standard firewall but the other was left almost defenceless. Over the eight weeks that the sites were left online, the unprotected website was attacked a total of 19,128 times, roughly once every four minutes. The protected website fared better but was attacked 1,672 times, almost once every hour. More than a third of the attacks on the protected website were so severe that they crashed the site and could have resulted in the loss of data. 11:19:53 AM    comment []

Black = Terrorist = Thug: The New Racial Profile? Three Days in NYC Jails by Bryonn Bain, in The Village Voice. At a poetry reading during my last semester of law school, a Liberian filmmaker who had been a finalist at the Sundance Film Festival the year before asked me to audition for his latest project. I had no prior interest in acting, but read for the role anyway. Several months later, I received a call from the director, Kona Khasu, asking me to play the lead. His movie, Hunting in America, told the story of a young attorney who is racially profiled while driving a black truck, almost exactly as I had been. Khasu knew nothing about my incident with the NYPD. And here I was, in jail again. This was life imitating art imitating life. I wondered if anyone would believe me when they heard I had been wrongfully arrested again. I could hardly believe it myself. Since I was interviewed on 60 Minutes in 2001 about the first incident, I have had more than a dozen cases of identity theft. Funds have been removed from my bank account; credit cards obtained with my Social Security number have been maxed out. . . . I'm sorry, she said. We don't have any more bail receipts. Mr. Bain will not be able to go home with you today. The prison was out of paper. So I spent another night in jail. Day 3 Monday, November 25 Before the sun came up, I was among a dozen or so inmates chained together to board a bus for Rikers Island. An iron-barred door was locked to separate the driver and a correctional officer from the rows of inmates seated in the back of the bus. Just before we pulled off, I overheard a senior officer change our destination to a place he called "The VCBC." We went to a dock at Hunts Point in the Bronx, and drove onto a boat. It was a floating jail. The sign in front of the gates read: "Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center." The irony was overwhelming. This boat shared the name of the family that once owned my ancestors. And here I was, centuries later, being loaded back onto a ship in chains. . . . A well-dressed young attorney, Eric Williams, introduced himself to me. I began to discuss strategy with the namesake of the man who fought to liberate my parents' native Trinidad from colonial rule. This Williams was a former student of one of the leading defense attorneys in the U.S.: Jill Soffiyah Elijah, whom I had called collect from jail the day before. We had met at Harvard's Criminal Justice Institute, where she teaches and represents clients from Dorchester and Roxbury. Williams asked the court for my prints and photos, but his request was denied. He told Judge Robert M. Stolz that this was the seventh case of identity theft I had experienced since I was unjustly arrested two years prior. The assistant district attorney, Justin Herdman, interrupted him. Your honor, began the dark-haired young man in a blue suit, to avoid any potential conflict of interest, I should inform you that I know the defendant. He was in my law school class at Harvard. Whoa. And that isn't the last odd step in the journey described in the story. What would have happened had another ADA drawn duty that day? 10:19:58 AM    comment []

NIST issues security drafts, by Diane Frank, Federal Computer Week. 10:19:53 AM    comment []

Norton Antivirus product activation cracked, by Jan Libbenga, The Register. When you buy the product on a CD, you have to plug in a software key printed on the CD sleeve. From there, a wizard checks the hardware configuration, including the hard drive serial number and configuration. Based on this information, the software creates an alphanumeric code and transmits this code to Symantec through the internet. Otherwise, the wizard prompts you to call an automated phone service to complete activation. Here is where the activation fails miserably. The key generator will not only provide you with a serial number, but also with a final unlock code. No need to call an automated phone service either. The key generator won't work with the trial versions, only with the full program which we located on a murky Russian website. As is the case with Microsoft's product activation, the technology is based upon a key generation algorithm rather than a fixed database of real CD keys. All the key generator seems to be doing is reproducing this logic. Other more obtrusive product activation techniques may prove unpopular. Earlier this year Intuit dropped its product activation policy after complaints from customers, who had to provide some basic information about their PC before they could use its TurboTax product. 10:19:49 AM    comment []

Recording industry withdraws suit: Mistaken identity raises questions on legal strategy. By Chris Gaither, Boston Globe. Privacy advocates said the suit against Sarah Seabury Ward, a sculptor who said she has never downloaded or digitally shared a song, revealed flaws in the Recording Industry Association of America's legal strategy. Ward was caught up in a flood of 261 lawsuits filed two weeks ago that targeted people who, through software programs like Kazaa, make copyrighted songs available for others to download over the Internet. When the RIAA announced they were going on this litigation crusade, we knew there was going to be someone like Sarah Ward, said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet privacy group in San Francisco that has advised Ward and others sued by the music industry. And we think were will be more. The lawsuit claimed that Ward had illegally shared more than 2,000 songs through Kazaa and threatened to hold her liable for up to $150,000 for each song. The plaintiffs were Sony Music, BMG, Virgin, Interscope, Atlantic, Warner Brothers, and Arista. . . . But Ward, 66, is a ''computer neophyte'' who never installed file-sharing software, let alone downloaded hard-core rap about baggy jeans and gold teeth, according to letters sent to the recording industry's agents by her lawyer, Jeffrey Beeler. . . . Moreover, Ward uses a Macintosh computer at home. Kazaa runs only on Windows-based personal computers. . . . Please note, however, that we will continue our review of the issues you raised and we reserve the right to refile the complaint against Mrs. Ward if and when circumstances warrant, Colin J. Zick, the Foley Hoag lawyer, wrote to Beeler. The trade group released Zick's letter late yesterday and said it would have no other comment. 10:19:44 AM    comment []

Harvard Adds a New Biology Department. Harvard Medical School is setting up a new department, the school's first in two decades, devoted to the emerging field of systems biology. By The New York Times. [New York Times: Education] 7:42:15 AM    comment []

Judge Allows Antitrust Case Against Seed Producers. A federal judge let proceed an antitrust case that accused the Monsanto Company and other big agricultural seed giants of conspiring to control the world's market in genetically modified crops. By David Barboza. [New York Times: Science] 7:41:30 AM    comment []

Going for baroque. Neal Stephenson's new "Quicksilver" takes a fantastical, circuitous tour of the 17th century in search of the roots of science and the nature of the universe. [Salon Headlines] 7:40:05 AM    comment []

Definitions Impede Stem-Cell Work. Researchers thought they found a way around the embryonic stem-cell controversy by using a technique that doesn't use embryos. They thought wrong. By Kristen Philipkoski. [Wired News] 7:39:13 AM    comment []

Andrew notes the Quicksilver Annotation Wiki. Neal Stephenson launches a Wiki to explain his new novel [bOing bOing] The Wiki itself is here. Wikis are publicly edittable pages - basically, a community-build-and-maintained information source. Neal Stephenson has contributed the first couple entries, but anyone can add more. This should be very, very helpful - if there ever was a book in need of annotations, it's Quicksilver. 7:38:17 AM    comment []

The Kicking Ass, on Bush's karma, notes a Dana Milbank report in today's Washington Post on Timken bearings, where Bush spoke not so long ago, cutting 900 jobs. . . . While you're reading that story, also note below it that Milbank cites the contrast between: The law that authorized Bush to take action in Iraq, which gave him authority to use force against, "nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001," and President Bush's recent statement that Saddam Hussein had no involvement in the September 11 attacks. We first saw this contrast from Tom Tomorrow. Nice to see it in the newspapers, too. 7:36:11 AM    comment []

Dave says: I'm trawling for BloggerCon essays. I've already written three and am outlining more. If there's an issue you want to be part of the discussion at the conference, whether or not you will be there in person, now's a good time to start thinking, and in the next few days, writing. Let's add your passion to the agenda at next month's conference. 7:31:23 AM    comment []

I just read this again and wanted to quote it: Our ability to innovate is predicated on our ability to own the platform. --Kirk Koenigsbauer, strategy manager at Microsoft's MSN Internet portal 3:17:48 AM    comment []