The magnet: URI scheme is a draft open standard defining a URI scheme for magnet links, which are mainly used to reference resources available for download via peer-to-peer networks. Such a link typically identifies a file not by location or name, but by content; more precisely, by the content’s hash value.
– Wikipedia

ไม่รู้จัก Magnet URI นี่..เดี๋ยวจะเชยตกยุคเอานะเธอว์

ก็ต้องอ้างถึงตามหลัก BitTorrent ศาสตร์ ซึ่งเป็นแขนงหนึ่งใน P2P โซลไซตี้
ถ้าจะพูดว่า BitTorront เป็นรูปแบบ P2P ที่รู้จักมากชนิดหนึ่งคงไม่ผิดนัก

แต่ถ้าผมจะบอกว่า Bittorrent เป็นลักษณะเครือข่ายที่ “บกพร่อง” มากล่ะ…

ก่อนอื่น เผื่อใครไม่เคยใช้ Bittorrent

Bittorrent เนี่ย โดยกำเนิดแล้ว ประกอบด้วย 2 ส่วนใหญ่ๆ คือ

1. Tracker – เป็นแม่ข่ายสำหรับข้อมูลของ Client จำพวกสถิติ, IP บลาๆ แต่ไม่ได้เก็บไฟล์ตัวจริงนะเธอว์ เพราะไม่งั้นจะผิดหลัก P2P กลายเป็น Client-Server ไป
2. Client – ลูกข่ายนั่นเอง

ส่วน Client เนี่ยก็แบ่งได้เป็น 2 ส่วนหลักๆคือ

1. Seeder – คือผู้ที่มีไฟล์ “สมบูรณ์”
2. Leecher – คือผู้ที่มีไฟล์ “ยังไม่สมบูรณ์”

สั่งเกตเห็นอะไรแปลกๆไม๊?

ใช่สิ..นี่มันคล้ายๆกับ Semi-P2P กลายเป็น P2P ผสมกับ Client-Server ซะอย่างนั้น
BitTorrent จะไม่สามารถทำงานได้เลยถ้าไม่มี Traker คอยรวบรวมข้อมูลด้านสถิติการเชื่อมต่อให้!!

แล้วก็มีส่วนแก้ไขข้อบกพร่องนี้ขึ้นมาคือ DHT

Distributed hash tables (DHTs) are a class of decentralized distributed systems that provide a lookup service similar to a hash table: (key, value) pairs are stored in the DHT, and any participating node can efficiently retrieve the value associated with a given key. Responsibility for maintaining the mapping from keys to values is distributed among the nodes, in such a way that a change in the set of participants causes a minimal amount of disruption. This allows DHTs to scale to extremely large numbers of nodes and to handle continual node arrivals, departures, and failures.
– Wikipedia

เอ้อล่ะเหว๋ย!!

DHT เนี่ย..มันก็คือ Tracker เสมือน(มั้ง) ที่คอยเก็บสถิติ
ปรกติไฟล์ Bittorrent มันก็มีนามสกุลคือ “.torrent”

ถ้าสมัยก่อนที่ยังไม่มี DHT (หรือ Tracker ระบบปิด ที่ปิดระบบ DHT ไว้) ก็จะไม่มีข้อมูลพวก Client ที่คอยสูบฉีดไอ้ข้อมูลสำหรับไฟล์ๆนี้อยู่เลย

พอมีระบบนี้ขึ้นมาปุ๊บ ก็หวานหมูสิ!!

ได้ไฟล์ Torrent มาปุ๊บก็จับยัดเข้า Bittorrent Client ถึงไม่มี Tracker หรือถึงจะไม่มีสิทธิ์เข้าใช้ Tracker ก็โหลดได้อยู่ดี!!

แต่ช้าก่อน Magnet URI ดีกว่านั้น

Magnet URI ไม่ต้องการไฟล์ .torrent
Magnet URI ต้องการแค่ “Syntax”

ถ้าคุณเคยใช้ P2P Client จำพวก Kazaa, eMule, UseNext ล่ะก็…จบแค่นี้ มันคือแบบนั้นแหละครับ!!

…ออกจะเชยมาก ถ้าคุณใช้บริการ Open Tracker ต่างประเทศ แล้วไม่เคยใช้ Magnet นี่เลย

ตัวอย่าง Syntax สำหรับ Magnet

magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:YNCKHTQCWBTRNJIV4WNAE52SJUQCZO5C
– Wikipedia

อืมม.. ผมไม่รู้หรอกว่ามันประกอบด้วยอะไรบ้าง (กดอ่านเอาเองนะเธอว์ สู้ๆ!!)

แต่.. มันช่วยให้ชีวิตดีขึ้นอย่างไร

• ไม่ต้องมีไฟล์ Torrent!!

การเกิดของ Magnet URI มันช่วยมาลบปมด้อยของ BitTorrent อย่างดีทีเดียวคือการแชร์ไฟล์เราไม่ต้องมี Tracker ไม่ต้องมีไฟล์ Torrent
ถ้าคุณใช้ uTorrent (อ่านว่า มิว`ทอเรน) ลองคลิกขวาที่ไฟล์ใดก็ได้ จะมีคำสั่ง “Copy Magnet URI”เพียงคลิกขวา ก๊อปปี้…
แล้วไปโยนไว้ในเว็บ ทำเป็นลิงค์ซะ ก็สามารถใช้งานได้เลย!!

คือ.. ไอ้การเกิดของ Torrent และ Tracker เนี่ย.. มันทำให้เกิดนิเวศแบบ Ratio
ผมไม่ได้ยอกว่าระบบนี้ไม่ดี ผมว่ามันก็ดีในแง่ของการบังคับให้ประชากรไม่เป็นผู้ได้อย่างเดียว
แต่ได้เป็นผู้ให้บ้าง (ถึงไม่อัพไฟล์ ก็ช่วยอัพโหลด อะไรประมาณนั้น)บลาๆๆๆๆๆ (ไม่พูดต่อ)

เอาล่ะ… หลายคนพอจะได้ยินข่าวว่า Tracker ชื่อดัง ปิดบริการ Tracker ก็ไม่ต้องตกใจ เพราะเชาหันมาเปิดให้บริการ Magnet แทนนั่นเอง : D

ด้วยประการฉะนี้…
การละเมิดลิขสิทธิ์จึงอยู่คู่กับมนุษยชาติต่อไป (สาธุ) –w-)\

Crédits photo : AFP

Plaque-tournante du téléchargement, ce site de «peer-to-peer» se recentre sur les contenus légaux. Mais la relève est déjà prête.

Les chasseurs de pirates peuvent brandir leur nouveau trophée. Point de ralliement bien connu des amateurs de téléchargement illégal, Mininova a mis fin jeudi à l’essentiel de ses activités. Du jour au lendemain, son catalogue constitué de plus d’1,3 million de CD, de DVD, de séries télé et de livres est tombé à moins de 10.000 références, constitué de contenus légaux, mis en ligne gratuitement par des artistes qui tentaient jusqu’alors de profiter de cette audience phénoménale 47 millions de visiteurs mensuels pour assurer leur promotion. Mais pour l’essentiel, le site a perdu tout son intérêt pour les pirates.

Pour Mininova, devenu la cible d’attaques répétées des producteurs de musiques et de films, la situation était devenue intenable. Fin août, un tribunal hollandais, pays d’origine de ses cinq fondateurs, lui avait ordonné de retirer dans les trois mois tous les liens vers des fichiers protégés par les droits d’auteur, sous peine d’une amende pouvant atteindre 5 millions d’euros. Après avoir expérimenté en vain un système de détection et de filtrage des contenus illégaux, son équipe a jugé que la seule solution pour échapper à l’amende était d’en finir avec le piratage.

Mininova n’a pas encore décidé s’il allait faire appel de cette décision. Mais déjà, les défenseurs des droits d’auteur tiennent une nouvelle victoire de prestige face à un poids lourd du «peer-to-peer». L’association hollandaise avait déjà obtenu d’un juge l’interdiction de The Pirate Bay aux Pays-Bas et l’obligation de retirer tous les liens illégaux. Dans leur pays, les fondateurs du site suédois, concurrent direct de Mininova, ont été condamnés à une lourde amende de 2,7 millions d’euros et à de la prison ferme. Ils ont eux aussi fait le choix d’adopter un modèle légal, signant la mort de leur site.

De nouvelles techniques de piratage

L’histoire a toutefois montré qu’en matière de lutte contre le piratage, les réjouissances étaient de courte durée. Chaque fois qu’un site ferme, il s’en crée de nouveaux. En 2005, Mininova avait pris la succession de Suprnova, populaire site de téléchargement BitTorrent fermé quelques semaines auparavant. Dans son rapport annuel sur la sécurité en ligne, le spécialiste des virus McAfee notait début novembre que le nombre de créations mensuelles de sites de téléchargement de «torrent» était passé en deux mois de 300 à 1400, anticipant les déboires de The Pirate Bay. Une simple recherche sur Google donne des centaines de liens.

Plus inquiétant pour les majors, ce renouvellement des sites de «peer-to-peer» s’accompagne d’évolutions technologiques. De nouveaux protocoles de téléchargement permettent de passer à des systèmes totalement décentralisés et encore plus difficilement attaquables. Les sites cherchent ainsi à limiter leur rôle à celui d’un moteur de recherche de fichiers piratés, n’organisant plus le dialogue entre les téléchargeurs. En parallèle, les internautes se convertissent au streaming et au téléchargement direct, sur des sites tels que Megavideo et Megaupload. Situés à Hong Kong, ils échappent pour l’instant aux attaques des ayants droit

My colleague Alexis Jeffries and I had fun reporting a recent story called “Five Ways To Pump Up Your Income,” which ran in the December 2009 issue of MONEY.  Who couldn’t use some ideas right now on how to make more dough?

As Alexis recently blogged, many of the ideas we came up with didn’t make it into the final piece. But there’s an idea that did make it into the article — lending money to friends, families and strangers through so-called peer-to-peer networks — that had a surprising aspect that we didn’t cover in the piece. What we learned was this: People who lend money directly to others in need feel a sense of satisfaction that goes well beyond the interest they earn — or don’t earn — on the money they lend.

The idea behind sites like Prosper.com, Lending Club and Virgin Money is that peer-to-peer lending can be both financially and socially rewarding. The credit crunch has made it tougher for people to borrow money, and if you’ve got cash, you can lend it out for a higher rate than you’re getting in a bank account earning 0.5% or less today. Loans typically are capped at $25,000 and borrowers must meet certain minimum credit scores.

Now, there are some people who argue that the average returns you get on the money lent out are overstated.  And the SEC cracked down on the lending clubs last year, deeming their offerings investments that must be regulated by the SEC.  Since these sites have only been around a few years, it remains to be seen how the business model will hold up during these economically difficult times. But when I spoke to people who were actually lending money, I was surprised to hear how much satisfaction they got just from making the loans, even if the borrower defaulted on the loan.

One man I interviewed, a Chicago-area tech sales executive named Jack Reidy, lent $10,000 to 100 borrowers with varying credit scores starting in May 2008 (the loans have three-year terms).  Reidy was first attracted to the idea after reading an article in BusinessWeek about Prosper.  Fed up with his savings earning less than 1% at the bank, he decided to give it a whirl. “I like the idea of helping others in need,” he told me. Out of Reidy’s 100 loans, 75 are being repaid on schedule, 16 are paid off and nine are in default. “A lot of the people in the higher risk categories I gave money to are students,” he said. “I thought I’d be upset if someone didn’t pay, but I consider it a gift now.”  And how is he doing on his investment? He had hoped to earn 17% but he’s averaging 8%. “I went into this aiming for a higher return, but I’m averaging 8% on the money I invested,” he said. “That’s a lot better than what I was earning in my bank account, and I’m helping people. So I’m pretty happy.”

Not everyone is going to feel good about losing money, and this should only be done with money that you can afford to lose. But we’ve all lent money to family and friends without expecting to get the money back — and certainly without any interest. Which made me wonder: Just how many people out there who are lending money this way are feeling good about it and earning a good return?

Add More Money to your favorite RSS reader.  Subscribe at http://rss.cnn.com/moneyfeatures.rss.

Funding Source: Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Adminis.
Funding Type: Discretionary, Grant
Total Available: $2.2 Million
Award Ceiling: $350,000
Deadline: 02.10.10
Eligibility: Nonprofits, Local Governments

Description:
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) announces the availability of FY 2010 funds for grants to deliver peer-to-peer recovery support services that help prevent relapse and promote sustained recovery from alcohol and drug use disorders. Successful applicants will provide peer-to-peer recovery support services that are responsive to community needs and strengths, and will carry out a performance assessment of these services. RCSP is intended to support peer leaders from the recovery community in providing recovery support services to people in recovery and their family members, and to foster the growth of communities of recovery that will help individuals and families, achieve and sustain long-term recovery. Recovery Community Services Program (RCSP) grants are authorized under section 509 of the Public Health Service Act, as amended. This announcement addresses Healthy People 2010 focus area 26 (Substance Abuse).

“Creating slideshows can be an excellent way for students to summarize their learning, share their what they’ve learned, and to share their ideas. If you have students that create slideshows that you or they think should be shared with a wider audience than that of their immediate peers in the classroom, the web offers many ways to do that…” Visit the site!
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/11/12…

[The First Part of this series was <<A: Open Source. The second installment of the Stop Usage Based Billing alphabet series was <<B: Packets and the Internet. The third installment was <a href="<<C: Deep Packet Inspection, and the final installment will be E: Open Source Deep Packet Inspection]

What is BitTorrent Anyway??

“BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amounts of data. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and it has been estimated that it accounts for approximately 27-55% of all Internet traffic (depending on geographical location) as of February 2009.”

– Wikipedia on BitTorrent

BitTorrent is an extremely fast and efficient means of uploading and downloading. BitTorrent is an excellent way to distribute large materials to many people via the internet.

Radical Ideas

Like so many of the radical new ways to do things that technology and the internet have made possible, BitTorrent can only work through co-operation. BitTorrent requires a network of “peers”, or other people’s computers who are willing to share the file. This is referred to as “peer to peer” or “p2p.

If I have a large file I want to transfer, the first step is to “seed” the file, transferring portions of the file to multiple members of the p2p network.

Diagram 1: Seeding

It only takes a small fraction of the file to be passed along before the process speeds up enormously.

Diagram 2: Seeding and Sharing

Once I have a small portion, i pass it along at the same time as I’m receiving new bits of the same file, either from the original seed source of another peer.

Diagram 3: Upload + Download = Speed

With many participants (peers) uploading and downloading at the same time, large files can be distributed very quickly indeed.

Diagram 4: Finish Fast

Bell Canada “Throttles” BitTorrent

Bell Canada

When Bell Canada was first caught “throttling” internet traffic to the Independent ISP customers, Bell Canada’s justification to the CRTC was that the internet was too crowded, and that it was necessary to “manage” the traffic. Bell claimed that they needed to employ Deep Packet Inspection to identify BitTorrent Traffic so that they can “throttle” it.

Mandate:
“The CRTC’s mandate is to ensure that both the broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public. ”

—CRTC Role, CRTC Website

Amazingly, the CRTC had nothing to say about Bell Canada’s plans to discriminate against particular Canadian internet users.

The CRTC has accepted Bell’s unsubstantiated contention that this discrimination was necessary, and in approving it they have allowed Bell Canada to think that this discrimination is acceptable. In no way does this serve the Canadian public.

You might almost think that the CRTC mandate was to suppress Canadian creativity and the creation of Canadian movies and music. The availability of the technologies that exist to make it easy to create our own movies and music should be welcomed as an opportunity to add to and help grow our Canadian Culture.

Why single out BitTorrent traffic for throttling if it is an efficient use of the available bandwidth?

One of Bell Canada’s arguments for implementation of Usage Based Billing is that Canadian internet bandwidth is in short supply, making it necessary for them to “manage” bandwidth by penalizing heavy users.

So how could anything as efficient as BitTorrent possibly be seen as a bad thing if the Internet is so crowded?

It doesn’t make sense to discriminate against BitTorrent use. There is nothing inherently bad about BitTorrent use or BitTorrent internet traffic. But Bell Canada’s contention is that BitTorrent is bad because people use it to download movies and music.

Which begs the question: how does that make BitTorrent bad?

The Copyright Red Herring

The “Copyright Lobby”, which consists of large media producers and distributors (like Disney), and corporations and organizations (like MPAA), who distribute commercial movies and music, want us to believe that this is a bad thing.

This corporate special interest group has spent a great deal of time, energy and cash trying to promote the “pravda” that any digital copying of copyright works is bad. Making no distinction between commercial bootleggers who distribute illegal copies for profit and legal purchasers who seek to make a back-up copy or digital format shift for personal use, the Copyright Lobby has been pressuring governments the world over to criminalize personal use copying.

The problem for ordinary citizens is that these corporate interests have vast quantities of money to spend and a great deal of media power. This makes it incredibly difficult for governments to stand up to their onslaught. In some parts of the world this persistent advocacy has paid off for the Copyright Lobby, as lawmakers knuckle under and legislate to the detriment of their own citizens by making it illegal even to copy or download movies or music for personal use.

Here in Canada the Copyright Lobby is seeking to influence our lawmakers to criminalize personal use copying. They are trying to make Canadians think that people who make copies for personal use are performing criminal acts, and should be penalized the same as a a bootlegger who films the latest theatrical release off a theatre screen and proceeds to sell hundreds of thousands of bootleg DVDs.

Once again, Channel Four’s hilarious I.T. Crowd puts this question in perspective with this send-up of a video piracy commercial I found on YouTube.

Strong and free?

Canadian Law says

RIGHT NOW, in Canada, personal use copying is simply not illegal.

RIGHT NOW, in Canada, use of the BitTorrent file transfer protocol is also perfectly legal.

RIGHT NOW, in Canada, peer to peer (p2p) file sharing is legal; Canadians break no laws simply by joining in a p2p network.

The Copyright Lobby’s smear tactics have gone a long way toward making the world believe that BitTorrent is inherently bad.

Bell Canada has convinced the CRTC that it is acceptable to “throttle” BitTorrent, because of BitTorrent’s reputed connection with possible copyright infringement. So although BitTorrent is perfectly legal, Canadian internet users are paying the price for the success of this Copyright Lobby propaganda.

Myth: All BitTorrent/p2p internet traffic consists of copyright movies and music

The Corporate world doesn’t understand radical ideas like Open Source software and p2p file sharing because these concepts are so different from anything appearing in the old business models. Even more incomprehensible to the outdated business models is the fact that it may or may not generate a direct monetary profit.

The classic example of corporate myopia is:

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. ”

—attributed to Thomas J. Watson, president of International Business Machines, circa 1943

For many years IBM has taken the rap for this quote whether or not Mr. Watson really did say it. (Most likely not.) Maybe proving it wrong is part of why IBM is such a going concern in the 21st Century. Having weathered the storms of fortune today’s IBM is a world leader by continuing to innovate and adapt alongside evolving attitudes and technologies. IBM has been steadily increasing their participation and involvement with Open Source software in this new century.

The reality is that IBM not only understands the importance of open source, the corporation has actively supported and promoted adoption of Linux and Open Office in the corporate world. And naturally BitTorrent is a part of the equation because it is such an efficient means to distribute large files (like for instance, Canonical’s Ubuntu.)

“Think.”

—Thomas J. Watson, president of International Business Machines

Seems IBM actually does heed their most enduring slogan (which definitely was coined by Mr. Watson). Sadly, this type of foresight is uncommon. Because BitTorrent is such a radical idea, most entrenched corporations simply aren’t capable of understanding it.

There are other uses for BitTorrent that are not only legal, but even perfectly acceptable in polite society.

Probably my favorite use of BitTorrent is the amazing Project Gutenberg. This organization has been digitizing books in the public domain and distributing them freely… via BitTorrent, since this is such an efficient method of digital distribution. After all, BitTorrent is used for transferring very large files like music and movies because it is very efficient.

BitTorrent file sharing is not all movies and music. Like IBM, many people actually use p2p to help distribute open source software like OpenOffice via p2p. There is a growing body of open source software available, for instance my favorite web browser is Mozilla’s Firefox.

In fact, there the awesome SourceForge website which provides a place to find all manner of open source software, or where you can release your own.

When a new distribution of Ubuntu is released, people around the world gather together and have Ubuntu Release Parties making more good use of BitTorrent

And of course the Pirate Party of Canada has established Captain: the Canadian Pirate Tracker, their own BitTorrent site where Recording Artists and Filmmakers (and I imagine novelists, and software creators as well would be welcome to utilize this) to freely distribute their work.

Every bit of music and every movie transferred is not a copyright infringement. If I get to the point where my home made movies may prove marketable, I would certainly be looking at BitTorrent Distribution. In fact it would probably be easier to distribute home movies to family via BitTorrent than it would be to try to burn DVDs. (DRM makes the two commercial movie making software packages I’ve purchased almost unusable. Of course it doesn’t slow down the bootleggers.) If YouTube is an indicator, I’m not the only person who wants to transfer music and movies freely … not as copyright infringements. I have paid levies to the music industry for home movies I have made and burrned to CD for distribution to friends and family. If I choose to transfer them via BitTorrent now I can avoid the levy but instead suffer the added expense of Bell Canada’s deliberate throttling inflation?

Another really good legal use of BitTorrents are the actual commercial websites where people can go to to purchase downloads of music. So far no one seems to have found anything wrong with this practice.

But that’s not all. Canada’s own CBC Television Network tried their own experiment by releasing an episode of their program Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister via BitTorrent. Unfortunately the BitTorrent didn’t work so well because of Bell Canada’s CRTC approved BitTorrent “throttling”.

Geist tweets about the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation

Which is not to say it wasn’t a good idea. Not too long ago Michael Geist tweeted about the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s foray into BitTorrent use. All accounts indicate that their experiment was very successful indeed, which is having a big impact in the way they do business.

Ink Poster

The sad tale of a pirated Independent film can be found in this TorrentFreak article Indie Movie Explodes on BitTorrent, Makers Bless Piracy.

I guess it isn’t such a sad story after all.  

Thanks to piracy this Indie film called INK was has been achieving a distribution level that the filmmakers had never dreamed of.  They are of course extraordinarily pleased.

I think what is being called piracy here is BitTorrent p2p personal use sharing. Friends sharing with friends is one of the most effective ways to achieve recognition. They used to call it a “grass roots” movement. This is one of the major issues for the large movie studios. This is the place where they complain of being ripped off. What they don’t seem to realize is that this is a good thing. Exposure garners fans, makes a “name”. Fans buy stuff.

BitTorrent Traffic is not the only thing Bell Canada is Throttling

Rumour has it that there are people who actually work from home.

Time was the government encouraged the idea of people working from home. There are all sorts of advantages to society, like reduced congestion on actual highways, less wear and tear on our roads, a decrease in commuting based pollutants in our environment, a reduction of human depletion of fossil fuels.

But if you work from home, you are probably going to have to transfer files back and forth between your home and workplace. Chances are good that you are going to encrypt this type of traffic for security reasons. Although Bell Canada says they are only “throttling” BitTorrent traffic, in fact there have been instances of Bell throttling encrypted internet traffic on the assumption that if it’s encrypted, it must be BitTorrent traffic.

Bell places the onus on the customer to prove their “innocence” before they will consider stopping throttling.

Since the CRTC gave Bell Canada permission to use Deep Packet Inspection to inspect our packets, the only way to ensure that our private information remains private is through encryption. And in Canada any encrypted internet traffic will most likely to be throttled.

Canadian Copyright Consultation

The Canadian Government is looking at updating Canadian copyright law. They held a copyright consultation process this year, traveling around Canada soliciting opinions of stakeholders. Even better, they set up a website where they accepted submissions from any Canadian who wished to contribute. This website was flooded with thousands of submissions. Some are simply a few lines, some are extensive essays covering all sorts of topics, but all I’ve read are heartfelt. Because of the overwhelming response it took a long time to get all the submissions posted. (My own submission finally made online.)

This process led a lot of Canadians, including me, to believe that the copycon process might actually mean that our elected representatives were listening to us.

Unfortunately there is currently a lot of pressure on our government to make copying movies, software and music for personal use illegal. The secret ACTA meetings have caused a feeling of dread to settle over most Canadians. There has been deprecating talk about weak Canadian copyright law.

Except it isn’t true.

If anything, Canadian copyright law is probably more robust than is good for us.

The essential problem that the copyright lobby is attempting to overcome the problem of suing their own customers for what they imagine are infringements. They have noticed that fighting personal use copying garners bad publicity. This problem can be neatly solved by passing the responsibility for finding and prosecuting copyright infringement to governments. And of course the only was to get government to take ob the responsibility is to convince them that the copyright infringement is a criminal offense.

Regardless, currently copyright law is imprecise as regards personal use copying. So we’ll just have to wait for an actual law to be passed before it becomes illegal. (This pressure is actually largely from foreign owned interests– like Disney. It will be interesting to see if our government caves to this outside pressure.)

mixed messages

The government mandated levy we pay every time we purchase a blank CD is a tacit governmental admission that it is legal to burn CDs of our own music.

In the pre-Tivo era, Canadian cable networks actively encouraged Canadians to videotape the movies that they showed so we could watch them when it was convenient. They called it “time shifting” in their massive advertising campaigns. But no media giants took our cable companies to court back then. For the same reason artists will lend or give away their work for free when they’re starting out (because they need to build and audience– exactly like the INK producers mentioned above), back then even Disney didn’t have a channel in Canada. So Disney didn’t kick up a fuss even though they had to have known this was happening. They let it go because it was in their best interests to allow time shifting (i.e personal use copying). Disney knew this was in their best interests because it would help the Canadian cable companies build their market.

Of course now Disney doesn’t want us to record their movies for personal use. Disney would be happy if our government decided personal use copying was illegal. They would be happier still if our government spent time and energy searching out and charging people who download Disney movies.

Disney would be happy they no longer had to expend time and energy chasing down copyright infringements. They would be ecstatic if our Mounties were to do it for them. Gratis.

But this precedent indicates copying movies for personal use is also legal in Canada

So even though p2p networks or copying movies and music are not actually illegal in Canada, our friends the CRTC gave Bell Canada permission to “throttle” anyone using BitTorrent transfers. Because the assumption is that even if you’re not technically performing criminal acts, per se, anyone who uses BitTorrent can’t be very nice.

The CRTC, the government body that is supposed to safeguard Canadian telecommunication consumers, gave Bell Canada legal permission to mess with BitTorrent traffic. Its discriminatory for one thing. If there are copyright infringements happening, there are laws to handle them. It isn’t any of Bell Canada’s business. Or the CRTC’s.

[More on copyright in my other blog-- in the wind: Personal Use Copying vs. Bootlegging]

Dudley Do-Right?

Eirik Solheim's metaphorical image of the internet is the best I've seen: The internet is a series of tubes

Even if it were true that Canadian consumers were downloading music or movies, and even if it had been made illegal under Canadian Law, it should not make a whit of difference.

Because Internet Service Providers or Internet Carriers are NOT branches of Canadian law enforcement. They have not been deputized to enforce the law by the RCMP. If Bell Canada was in fact a Law Enforcement entity they would not be allowed to peek in any citizen’s packets without first acquiring a search warrant. Corporations don’t exist to uphold laws, they exist to make money.

The internet has been called dumb pipes, or a series of tubes, or a highway. It doesn’t really matter what you call it, what is most important is access for all.  
The people who control the pipes should not be allowed to discriminate against particular users for ANY reason. Net Neutrality is so important: the internet should be accessible to all.

revolutionary ideas

In the United Kingdom The Times Online Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing? article looked at the benefits of personal use copying applied as peer to peer file sharing with some dramatic results.

Canada’s own ThisMagazine presented this thought provoking article Pay indie artists and break the music monopoly — Legalize Music Piracy which advocates making the law serve the artists and consumers rather than just the corporations.

Further rumblings about changing the way we look at this issue were reported recently by the The Globe and Mail blogs article NDP, Billy Bragg make case for free music

STOP Usage Based Billing

http://www.software-p2p.com/descargar

es una pagina con la recopilacion de todos o casi todos los peer-to-peer, programas para el intercambio de material de todo tipo de  archivos. hoy en dia, usuarios de todo el mundo comparten peliculas, videos, musica, imagenes, etc. es recomendable contar con algun tipo de antivirus para evitar que tu ordenador se infecte.

I keep hearing comparisons to theft, but isn’t downloading music more like hopping the fence to Cedar Point and riding the roller coasters without paying than actually stealing something? The “victims” of the “crime” don’t actually lose anything, they just don’t gain anything from other people benefiting from their service.

A short historical account of Peer-To-Peer. And where Free Press has to go.

The Pirate Bay crew just announced today that it has “decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date.”  They have put the “server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well.”

This is something we should celebrate, I think it will pave the way for more to come from us.

No Big Words, Many Small Steps Forward

Solid change, change that lasts and changes the world, builds up from the bottom first. The Peer-To-Peer (P2P) scene was and is a driver of technological change to distribute information (data) in the most reliable, robust, resource efficient and effective way possible. Modern P2P is a system with checks and balances and economic incentive system.

At the beginning, the tracker was needed as limitations in capacity, bandwidth et cetera existed. A checksum, balancing, coordination, peer discovery had to be centralised because of limitations to get it organised. Cumulative Peer capacity couldn’t handle it. After Napster, the first centralised Peer-to-Peer network, was ‘closed’ in July 2001 (and eventually re-opened as pay service in October 2003 and still running), a whole legion of encouraged individuals and groups were formed around the idea of a safer and better Peer-to-Peer protocol to distribute information.

It is safe to say that without the hard rulings and interventions of big corporations against individuals – eDonkey, Gnutella & Gnutella2, now-defunct Kazaa, and finally the great triumph of BitTorrent would have never happened. David won – in a technological sense, and looking at the horizon.

I see Peer-to-Peer, the decentralized distribution of and access to information as stepping-stone in history for Cloud Computing and Services. I work on a server, if I would compare my PC to a 1998 server (IBM AS/400 Series anyone?). Cloud Computing and Services (several server instances running on a physical server connected to another physical server network not at the same location) has the same characteristics as Peer-to-Peer networks.

It shows that a small group of individuals who feel empowered to build something that serves their interest, can serve the greater interest too.

If people just could see the greater purpose of democratizing information distribution, if people and media and professionals cloud let go of the stigma of piracy.

Aristocracy and Plutocracy

Before the Industrial Revolution, someone had power and ruled the Land of God who was of Royal Blood, and lead the armies for the Kings who was the physical strongest and had some smarts. Wars against countries were fought to diminish competing Royal Blood, following a self-interest in fame and fortune, land grabbing, resources and other riches at the time. And crime was rule against the poor, the proletariat, and the middle class.

After the Industrial Revolution, information as currency became more prevalent as form of power over the Land God Blessed then anytime before. Now, power lies to whom who controls information and what is disseminated to the public.

Large media conglomerates (.pdf – visual overview fron 2001) of today include, National Amusements, Viacom, CBS Corporation, (AOL) Time Warner, News Corp, Bertelsmann AG, Sony, General Electric, Vivendi SA, The Walt Disney Company, Hearst Corporation, Organizações Globo and Lagardère Group. Concentration of media ownership is an issue globally, regionally, and also within particular nations.

Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the most influential founding fathers, knew how crucial Free Press is. To uphold the rights citizens fought for, their sovereignty and the ideas of republicanism for America.

Republicanism is the value system of governance that has been a major part of American civic thought since the American Revolution. It stresses liberty and rights as central values, makes the people as a whole sovereign, rejects inherited political power, expects citizens to be independent in their performance of civic duties, and is strongly inclined against corruption. American republicanism was founded and first practiced by the Founding Fathers in the 18th century. This system was based on early Roman and English models and ideas. It formed the basis for the American Revolution and the consequential Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Constitution (1787), as well as the Gettysburg Address. It is not the same as democracy, for republicanism asserts that people have inalienable rights that cannot be voted away by a majority of voters. In a government made up as a constitutional republic, the Rule of Law and clearly defined constitutional principles dictate the actual administration of government.

Thomas Jefferson TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE in 1823.

But the only security of all, is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.

We arc all, for example, in agitation even in our peaceful country. For in peace as well as in war, the mind must be kept in motion.

The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume I, 4th ed.

Excerpt of the Speech delivered at the National Republican Convention held at Worcester (Mass.), on the 12th of October, 1832, preparatory to the Annual Elections.

But there is another attempt to grasp and to wield a power over public opinion, of a still more daring character, and far more dangerous effects.

In all popular governments, a Free Press is the most important of all agents and instruments. It not only expresses public opinion, but, to a very great degree, it contributes to form that opinion. It is an engine for good or for evil, as it may be directed; but an engine of which nothing can resist the force. The conductors of the press, in popular governments, occupy a place, in the social and political system, of the very highest consequence. They wear the character of public instructors. Their daily labors bear directly on the intelligence, the morals, the taste, and the public spirit of the country. Not only are they journalists, recording political occurrences, but they discuss principles, they comment on measures, they canvass characters; they hold a power over the reputation, the feelings, the happiness, of individuals. The public ear is always open to their addresses, the public sympathy easily made responsive to their sentiments. It is indeed, Sir, a distinction of high honor, that theirs is the only profession expressly protected and guarded by constitutional enactments. Their employment soars so high, in its general consequences it is so intimately connected with the public happiness, that its security is provided for by the fundamental law. While it acts in a manner worthy of this distinction, the press is a fountain of light, and a source of gladdening warmth. It instructs the public mind, and animates the spirit of patriotism. Its loud voice suppresses every thing which would raise itself against the public liberty; and its blasting rebuke causes incipient despotism to perish in the bud.

But remember, Sir, that these are the attributes of a Free press only. And is a press that is purchased or pensioned more free than a press that is fettered? Can the people look for truths to partial sources, whether rendered partial through fear or through favor ? Why shall not a manacled press be trusted with the maintenance and defence of popular rights ? Because it is supposed to be under the influence of a power which may prove greater than the love of truth. Such a press may screen abuses in government, or be silent. It may fear to speak. And may it not fear to speak, too, when its conductors, if they speak in any but one way, may lose their means of livelihood ? Is dependence on government for bread no temptation to screen its abuses ? Will the press always speak the truth, when the truth, if spoken, may be the means of silencing it for the future ? Is the truth in no danger, is the watchman under no temptation, when he can neither proclaim the approach of national evils, nor seem to descry them, without the loss of his place ?

Closing Words

It has to be mine, yours and everyone’s task, to continue the fight for information sovereignty in every form possible. Small steps towards success are more worth than big words.  Forming our own declaration of independence. Independence from information conglomerates formed out of capitalistic self interest. Controlled by the few, influences the many. The fight against the formed plutocracy trying to get their hand around The Internets. Plutocracy is shadowing our democracy year over year a little bit more. And we just don’t notice the shades of grey getting darker every year.

Decentralised (Peer-to-Peer) distribution of information can hold the key to renew democracy, renew the republicanism of America. Overcoming our information dependency from conglomerates, and forming our everyday decisions making on our interest from information out of our hands. Not theirs. Putting them, the conglomerates with capitalistic self-interest, in a museum rather sooner than later.

Mr. President, I will quit this topic. There is much in it, in my judgment, affecting, not only the purity and independence of the press, but also the character and honor, the peace and security, of the government. I leave it, in all its bearings, to the consideration o. the people.

————

Sources:

• Thomas Jefferson TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE in 1823. (Google Books)
• The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume I, 4th ed. 1853 (Google Books). Interesting to note, he was for Free Press. But was a lobbyist too.

]]> http://nctutorials.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/peer-to-peer-connection/ Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:18:29 +0000 gascan911 http://nctutorials.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/peer-to-peer-connection/

* There is no dedicated server.
* no hierarchy among computers (all computers are in equal status)
* Each function,as both client ans server.
* usually no seperate administrator.security is provided by the local directory database on each computer.

Client/Server network

- Client (work station)

client computer make request for services or data on the
network from computer referred to other servers.

- Servers

Server :         + administrate the network (security,maintenance,.......etc )
                 + support large number of clients

Back

continue

Questo simpatico cucciolo appartiene alla razza Labrador Retriever. Tale razza di cane è ben nota alle forze dell’ordine da molto tempo per il suo eccezionale fiuto e per la selettività degli odori che riesce a captare. In tale ottica il Labrador è stato utilizzato per scovare esplosivi e sostanze stupefacenti in luoghi pubblici come aeroporti e stazioni e nell’ambito di perquisizioni di abitazioni private.

Cosa c’entra questo con la nostra rubrica informatica?

Ebbene, i tutori dell’ordine hanno deciso che il fiuto straordinario dei Labrador potesse essere istruito e sfruttato per riconoscere l’emamanazione olfattiva del policarbonato che compone il supporto materiale dei nostri CD e DVD.

La finalità è quella di individuare la presenza massiccia di questo  materiale in un edificio per scoprire i centri di duplicazione illegale di CD e DVD.

Vi fornisco questa notizia, miei cari lettori, perché vorrei porre l’attenzione sulle prerogative impareggiabili dell’apparato olfattivo dei cani, benché l’argomento sia un po’ Off Topic, fuori tema diciamo. Addirittura, sembra che in Gran Bretagna alcuni cani particolarmente dotati nel dominio sensoriale, siano in grado di “diagnosticare” patologie tumorali ancor prima di tutti gli strumenti diagnostici tecnologici e informatici.

Saremo in grado noi “demiurghi” dei chip di eguagliare mai artificialmente il naso dei cani?

Al di là di questa domanda, un po’ retorica a dire il vero, vorrei suggerire una piccola riflessione sulla pirateria informatica.

E’ proprio vero che la pirateria informatica danneggi il mercato audio-visivo?

La mia è solo una opinione, non ho dati in mano per accreditare quello che sto per asserire, ma dico fermamente NO! La pirateria informatica non danneggia il mercato degli audiovisivo nè disincentiva la creatività. Perché questa affermazione carica di polemica e di rottura ideologica? Semplice perché la pirateria informatica, che in generale è deplorevole come tutte le forme di furto, ha in realtà e nella fattispecie accresciuto l’interesse nei confronti del cinema e della musica.

Consideriamo che alla radio le HIT del momento le trasmettono in ogni caso, non c’è bisogno di pagarle per sentirle spesso. Questo vuol dire che coloro che non hanno la possibilità di acquistare musica, comunque possono accedervi ugualmente, ascoltando gratis i brani di maggior successo. E’ così ora lo era anche anni fa, prima dell’avvento di internet del Peer ti Peer (P2P) e di Emule o di Torrent.

Un po’ diverso è il discorso dei film. Anche qui, però, c’è da dire che chi vuol vedere un film appena pubblicato in DVD può noleggiarlo per una cifra che oscilla da 50 centesimi a 2 Euro presso i vari Block Buster e VIDEOTECHE varie.

Dove voglio andare a parare? Chi vuole il “feticcio” del CD musicale originale o del DVD video originale, lo acquista lo stesso. Scusate se qualcuno rimarrà offeso dal fatto che io abbia definito FETICCIO un CD originale o un DVD originale, ma la mia motivazione è che chi è veramente interessato al contenuto ed al concept di una opera creativa, rimanendo nella piena legalità, può fruirne con poca spesa. L’acquisto di un’opera nella sua veste più elegante altro non è che collezionismo.

E allora? Ottima idea che i cani scovino i grossi centri di duplicazione di CD e DVD ma non per la tutela degli artisti o delle case discografiche che sono già tutti abbastanza tutelati dall’amore peri feticci che tutti noi umani nutriamo. L’idea è ottima perché un Labrador Retrevier non va a scovare riduzione di profitti per chi già è ricco, ma va ascovare lo sfruttamento di esseri umani che deriva dalla immissione sul mercato di materiale contraffatto.

Ricordiamo, amici, che al centro della informatica c’è e ci deve essere l’uomo con i suoi diritti. E a quanto pare anche il cane con i suoi diritti.

Auguri.

Still looking for options…..

I have found that living in Texas I am not allowed to use Lending Tree.com or most other Micro Lending peer to peer lending programs. The only problem is that I am trying to find a good micro-lending service in which I can be a micro lender, however due to area that is not possible. Well,I shall keep trying and keep all of you up-to-date on it all.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Pirate Bay says tracker tech is so yesterday, man (theregister.co.uk)
• Sophia J. Ismail : Tanzania (kiva.org)
• Finance Friday: A Social Mission with a Bank (digitalphilanthropy.blogspot.com)

El fin de The Pirate Bay se acerca. Para muchos de los fanáticos de BitTorrent esto significa tener que buscar alternativas. Desafortunadamente, reemplazar a The Pirate Bay es más fácil de decir que hacer. El tracker es actualmente responsable de casi la mitad de las transferencias públicas de torrents, lo que representa un porciento elevado del tráfico total de Internet.

Sin embargo, la historia ha demostrado que los usuarios de BitTorrent son una especie con gran capacidad de adaptación…simplemente migran a un nuevo sitio cuando el actual se vuelve inhabitable.

Alternativas completas a The Pirate Bay

Las alternativas completas a The Pirate Bay son sitios que indexan archivos .torrent, son abiertos a todo el mundo y además poseen su propio tracker. Desafortunadamente, solo hay unos pocos sitios en Internet que ofrecen este paquete completo.

• Torrentbox
• 1337x

Indexadores de Torrents

Los indexadores de torrent son sitios que poseen un directorio de archivos .torrent, pero no ofrecen un tracker (público). Dichos directorios ofrecen capacidades de búsqueda.

• isoHunt
• BTjunkie

Meta buscadores de Torrents

Los meta buscadores de BitTorrent son otra variedad de los sitios de torrents. Ellos no tienen un tracker y no almacenan ningún archivo .torrent en sus servidores. En cambio, ellos buscan torrents en terceros sitios y ofrecen los enlaces a los mismos.

• TorrentFly
• P2PFinder

Por último pero no menos importante

Google, el modelo para todos los buscadores tiene un comando de búsqueda que permite buscar archivos .torrent regados por Internet: filetype:torrent. Además, la búsqueda personalizada de Google le permite a cualquiera crear su propio buscador de torrents. No le digas a MPAA ni a RIAA.

• Google.

ไว-ไฟ (Wi-Fi) และบลูทูธ (Bluetooth) คือคู่หูเครือข่ายข้อมูลไร้สายที่ได้ชื่อว่ามีความสำคัญเทียบชั้นปัจจัย 4 ของคอมพิวเตอร์พกพา โทรศัพท์มือถือ และอุปกรณ์เชื่อมต่ออินเทอร์เน็ตส่วนใหญ่ในยุคนี้ แต่ล่าสุดมีการวิเคราะห์ว่าไว-ไฟกำลังจะเป็นเพชฌฆาตฆ่าเพื่อนรักอย่างบลูทูธ เพราะการออกมาตรฐานใหม่ที่ทำให้ไว-ไฟสามารถทำงานแทนบลูทูธได้ ทำให้มีความเป็นไปได้สูงที่บลูทูธจะถูกลดบทบาทในวงการ”Gadget”ไอทีลงในอนาคต

มาตรฐานไว-ไฟใหม่ที่เชื่อกันว่าจะทำให้บลูทูธถึงกาลอวสานมีชื่อว่า “ไว-ไฟไดเร็กต์ (Wi-Fi Direct)” ความสามารถพิเศษคือการทำให้อุปกรณ์ไว-ไฟหลายตัวสามารถเชื่อมต่อกันได้แบบไร้ สายโดยไม่ต้องมีจุดเชื่อมต่อสัญญาณทั้งเราท์เตอร์หรือฮ็อตสป็อต ความสามารถนี้ถูกมองว่ามีโอกาสใช้งานในวงกว้างและอาจทำให้ไว-ไฟขโมยซีนบลูทู ธได้สำเร็จ

สมาคม ผู้พัฒนาเทคโนโลยีไว-ไฟ (Wi-Fi Alliance) ซึ่งมีหน้าที่กำหนดมาตรฐานคุณสมบัติเฉพาะของอุปกรณ์เทคโนโลยีไว-ไฟระบุว่า จุดประสงค์ของการพัฒนาไว-ไฟไดเร็กต์คือต้องการทำให้การเชื่อมต่อระหว่าง อุปกรณ์หรือ peer-to-peer เป็นไปได้ง่ายขึ้น มาตรฐานไว-ไฟใหม่จึงเปิดให้อุปกรณ์สามารถค้นหาและเชื่อมต่อระหว่างกันได้บน เครือข่ายไว-ไฟ เพิ่มความสามารถจากไว-ไฟยุคเดิมที่การเชื่อมต่อระหว่างอุปกรณ์นั้นยุ่งยาก มาก

สมาคมระบุว่าจะพร้อมออกใบรับรองไว-ไฟไดเร็กต์อย่างเป็นทางการในกลาง ปี 2010 โดยจะใช้ข้อความ “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Wi-Fi Direct” เป็นจุดการันตี

ได้ประโยชน์ทุกคน

Edgar Figueroa ประธานสมาคม Wi-Fi Alliance ให้สัมภาษณ์ว่าประโยชน์ที่ผู้ใช้อุปกรณ์ไว-ไฟทั่วโลกจะได้รับคือความง่ายและ เร็วจากการรับส่งข้อมูลผ่านโซลูชันเทคโนโลยีเดียว

“ไว-ไฟ ไดเร็กต์แสดงให้เห็นถึงความก้าวหน้าของอุตสาหกรรมไอที ผู้ใช้ไว-ไฟทุกคนทั่วโลกจะได้รับประโยชน์จากการใช้โซลูชันเทคโนโลยีเดียวใน การรับส่งคอนเทนต์ และการแบ่งปันแอปพลิเคชันระหว่างอุปกรณ์อย่างรวดเร็วและง่ายดาย แม้จะไม่มี Wi-Fi access point ก็ตาม” ซึ่งหมายถึงเราท์เตอร์และจุดส่งสัญญาณฮ็อตสป็อตนั่นเอง

ประธาน Wi-Fi Alliance ระบุว่าผลสำคัญที่จะตามมาคือไว-ไฟจะยิ่งแพร่หลายและมีประโยชน์มากขึ้นสำหรับ ทั้งผู้บริโภคทั่วไปและกลุ่มองค์กรธุรกิจ

ขณะนี้ผู้ใช้ไว-ไฟจะสามารถเชื่อมต่อไร้สายกับอุปกรณ์แบบ peer-to-peer ได้ผ่านทางเครือข่ายเราท์เตอร์และฮ็อตสปอตไร้สายเท่านั้น ไว-ไฟเรียกการเชื่อมต่อแบบนี้ว่าเครือข่าย ad hoc อย่างไรก็ตาม ad hoc ไม่ได้รับความนิยมเลยเนื่องจากทำงานช้าและติดตั้งซับซ้อน รายงานระบุว่าไว-ไฟไดเร็กต์สามารถเชื่อมต่อในความเร็วปกติของไว-ไฟที่ 250 เมกะบิตต่อวินาทีขึ้นไป เร็วกว่า 11 เมกะบิตต่อวินาทีของ ad hoc มากนัก

แถมอุปกรณ์ไว-ไฟไดเร็กต์ยังสามารถเชื่อมต่ออุปกรณ์มากกว่า 2 ตัวขึ้นไป โดยที่อุปกรณ์ตัวนั้นไม่จำเป็นต้องมีมาตรฐานไว-ไฟไดเร็กต์ด้วย

บลูทูธเสียอาณาเขต

บลูทูธนั้นมีชื่อเสียงด้านการเป็นเทคโนโลยีเชื่อมต่อไร้สายที่ใช้ใน อุปกรณ์อิเล็กทรอนิกส์แทบทุกชนิด ทั้งชุดหูฟัง เมาส์คอมพิวเตอร์ ชุดลำโพง ฯลฯ ใช้พลังงานน้อย เชื่อมต่อง่ายแต่มีรัศมีทำการสั้นและสามารถโอนถ่ายข้อมูลได้ช้า ความสามารถของไว-ไฟไดเร็กต์ถูกมองว่าจะกินพื้นที่ของบลูทูธเพราะสามารถทำงาน แทนได้เกือบทั้งหมด บนความง่ายไม่ต่างกันแต่รวดเร็วกว่า

อย่างไรก็ตาม ยังมีความกังวลเรื่องความปลอดภัยในเทคโนโลยีไว-ไฟไดเร็กต์ เนื่องจากที่ผ่านมา บลูทูธเองก็ถูกมรสุมกระแสสังคมกล่าวหาว่าเป็นช่องทางชั้นเยี่ยมให้เหล่านัก เจาะระบบทำการได้สำเร็จ มีการตั้งชื่อ Bluejacking เพื่อใช้เรียกภัยแฮกเกอร์ที่พยายามเชื่อมต่อกับอุปกรณ์บลูทูธที่ถูกละเลย เรื่องความปลอดภัยเพื่อขโมยข้อมูลส่วนตัว โดยเฉพาะในกลุ่มผู้ใช้โทรศัพท์มือถือ

จุดนี้สมาคม Wi-Fi Alliance ซึ่งมีสมาชิกเป็นบริษัทไอทีรายใหญ่อย่างซิสโก้ (Cisco) และอินเทล (Intel) นั้นรับรู้ข้อกังวลเรื่องความปลอดภัยดี โดยเฉพาะความกังวลว่าไว-ไฟไดเร็กต์จะทำให้แฮกเกอร์สามารถเข้าถึงเครือข่าย คอมพิวเตอร์ขององค์กรได้อย่างรวดเร็ว จึงพัฒนาให้ไว-ไฟไดเร็กต์ทำงานรองรับเทคโนโลยี WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) และการเข้ารหัสข้อมูล AES ซึ่งจะทำให้ผู้ดูแลระบบสามารถจัดการการเชื่อมต่อและตรวจสอบได้อย่างปลอดภัย และมีประสิทธิภาพยิ่งขึ้น

นอกจากความปลอดภัยที่เพิ่มขึ้น ไว-ไฟไดเร็กต์ยังสามารถเชื่อมต่อระยะสั้นได้ง่ายดายไม่ต่างจากบลูทูธ ที่เหลือก็คือ ต้องรอดูเสียงตอบรับจากเหล่าผู้ผลิตว่าจะเล่นด้วยหรือไม่ และอนาคตของบลูทูธจะมีการพัฒนาอย่างไรเพื่อรักษาอาณาเขตและตำแหน่งของตนไว้ให้ได้

โดย ASTVผู้จัดการออนไลน์

by Zev Lowe, KF8 Indonesia

There’s been a bit of an ongoing debate about whether or not Kiva is what it seems. *cue ominous music* First, a post by David Roodman, followed by a response from Kiva co-founder Matt Flannery. More recently, Stephanie Strom wrote an article in the New York Times, to which Matt Flannery has also penned a response.

All my friends have been asking me what I think about this. My inbox is bursting with emails, my Twitter feed is … well, atwitter. Meanwhile, I never knew when I signed up to represent Kiva for 10 weeks in Indonesia that I was also signing myself up for a much longer-term commitment as a Kiva Ambassador. But all jesting aside, as someone who has gone behind the curtain and seen the inner workings of Kiva and one of their MFI field partners, here’s my own personal opinion (not endorsed in any way by Kiva) on whether or not Kiva is actually peer-to-peer microlending.

A Kiva lender and borrower are connected because:
- The lender ties the fate of hir money to the borrower’s ability to repay. In other words, if Wayan Puspa in Bali gets a bad harvest, Bob Smith in Idaho won’t get his $25 back. This is why Bob gets updates on Wayan’s business — because Bob has effectively invested his money in Wayan’s business.

A Kiva lender and borrower may be connected as follows:
- Wayan Puspa may not know about Bob Smith or Kiva being the source of her funds. This largely depends on the MFI Field Partner that’s handling the loan on the ground. I know Kiva Fellows who have gone out into the field with printouts of Wayan’s borrower profile and have shown Wayan the names and faces of all the people who have contributed to her loan, to everybody’s delight. I know that clients have made videos to thank their lenders personally. But there’s no guarantee that this will be the case.

[On a personal note, I wanted very much to do this but I couldn't, because (1) Many Kiva lenders put pictures of their pets on their profiles, and my clients would have been offended by the idea of borrowing money from a dog, and (2) In the religious environment in which I was operating, I did not trust myself to be able to respectfully and sensitively explain to borrowers and MFI staff members that their funds were coming from atheists and LGBT people -- I struggled a lot with this. Despite this, all clients still sign a waiver saying at minimum that they understood that their personal information and images were going to be made public for fundraising purposes, and that they are okay with that.]

A Kiva lender and borrower are not connected in the following way:
- Wayan Puspa usually has already received the loan by the time the fundraising on Kiva happens. Kiva funds will reimburse/guarantee the money that the MFI fronted for Wayan Puspa. If many loans posted on Kiva end up not getting funded, the MFI might not be able to make loans to future clients, but it won’t be able to withdraw a loan that’s already been made.

Overhead You don’t donate through Kiva — you loan. Your entire $25 (or whatever amount) goes to the MFI Field Partner and is earmarked for the borrower. None of this money goes towards operational costs, not for Kiva nor for the MFI Field Partner. Kiva does ask for an optional donation to cover their administrative costs, but this is by no means mandatory. Currently, the suggested donation is 15% of your loan amount, or $3.75 for the usual $25 loan, which most lenders are happy to give.

Transparency The date in which every loan is disbursed is listed on the borrower profile, and you can see that in most cases, the disbursement predates the fundraising on Kiva. Check out this example, in which a profile was posted on Kiva 5 days after the loan was disbursed. The How Kiva Works page has more details.

My take At the end of the day, you’re still investing your money in someone else’s livelihood. I think of it like swiping my credit card to pay for something. I’m still liable to pay for it, even though the details are complex and no money will leave my account for another 30 days. Kiva has channeled $100m in funds to microentrepreneurs in only 4 years. There’s no way that would be possible without working with their MFI field partners, and without operational abstractions that strike a difficult balance between creating a personalized user experience and maximizing efficiency.

Zev Lowe (@zevlowe) recently returned from his Kiva Fellowship in Bali, Indonesia. He is currently researching social innovation at ESADE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. This entry is a repost from his personal blog.

Molto spesso, dopo aver completato il download di un video con eMule (fai click qui per scaricarlo), quando andiamo a riprodurlo sul computer non sempre quello che visualizziamo corrisponde a quanto ci aspettavamo. Spesso infatti si tratta di un file di qualità inferiore rispetto a quanto atteso, op­pure più semplicemente di un fake, ossia di un video con un contenuto diverso da quanto dichiarato nel no­me del file. Per evitare inconvenienti del genere e bloccare in tempo il download di questi file possiamo integrare in eMule VLC Media Player (fai click qui per scaricarlo) ed utilizzarlo per riprodurre e controllare i filmati parzialmente scaricati sul computer. Vediamo come fare:

eMule

1. Dall’interfaccia principale di eMule clicchiamo sul tasto Opzioni in alto e nella finestra che appare scegliamo la scheda File e mettiamo un segno di spunta sulla casella di controllo Prova a scaricare prima le parti necessarie all’anteprima;
2. Andiamo nel riquadro Player per visualizzare le anteprime e premiamo su Sfoglia. Individuiamo la cartella di installazione di VLC (cioè dove si trova l’eseguibile del player) e selezioniamo il file vlc.exe, quindi clicchia­mo su Apri. As­sicuriamoci che non sia selezionato Crea una copia per l’ante­prima e premiamo OK;
3. Clicchiamo sul pulsante Trasferimenti, quindi facciamo click con il tasto destro su un video che stiamo scaricando e scegliamo Anteprima per visualizzarlo. Se la voce non è cliccabile, vuol dire che non sono state ancora scaricate le parti del file indispensabili per la riproduzione del video;
4. A questo punto VLC caricherà automaticamente il file .part di eMule. Quando non è disponibile una parte del video non viene riprodotta, quindi, trasciniamo in avanti il cursore di scorrimento di VLC fino a trovare una parte di video riprodu­cibile.

Solo in questo modo possiamo scoprire prima di scaricare completamente il file video (basta scaricare circa 20 Mb) se è un fake o vederne la qualità.

Buon download e alla prossima, ciao…

Cloud computing can be described as anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet, and it can be compared, to a certain extent, to peer-to-peer file sharing. It can be separated into 3 different catagories:

1. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) – the delivery of computer infrastructure as a service.
2. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) – the delivery of a computing platform and solution stack as a service.
3. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand.

Websites such as FaceBook, Twitter and YouTube are all users of the cloud computing concept. It is based on the idea that there is not 1 computer or server hosting a website, but instead it is being hosted on many smaller computers or servers, located anywhere in the world, therefore giving the cloud-like effect.

Cloud infrastructure is based on a company hiring many small servers around the world to host certain parts of their website. If a company choose not to use a cloud network, they would have to buy a server large enough to host their website, purchase the software they need to run their website, build a server room capable of holding their server at a working temperature, and that enables staff to go in and fix it when necessary. Whereas if a company pay an independent server host to run their website, this eliminates a lot of factors and makes their website significantly cheaper to run and repair.

In America, recently elected president Barack Obama pledged to improve security and performance of Cloud Computing by offering servers managed and operated by the US Government, therefore increasing reliability and guaranteeing almost 100% up time. Because of this government backing, Cloud Computing is expected to grow significantly in size, possibly to double the current capacity, within the next few years.

Sources:

• Search Cloud Computing – http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com
• Wikipedia – http://wikipedia.org
• CloudAve – http://www.cloudave.com
• Lone Wolf Libratian – http://lonewolflibrarian.wordpress.com
• BasicGov – http://www.basicgov.com