Excuse me, my teeth are ringing

Reuters is reporting on British engineers who have have invented a revolutionary tooth implant that works like a mobile phone. The 'tooth phone', designed by James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau, consists of a tiny vibrator and a radio wave receiver implanted into a tooth during routine dental surgery. Even more bizarre, this comes at the same time that Reuters is reporting studies that show that mobile phone radiation can cause changes in human cells that might affect the brain.

8:45:35 PM    Google It!    

The Myth of End-to-End Myths

From the myth-bashing department: Reason has an interview with Larry Lessig. In this interview, he repeats his arguments from his book, The Future of Ideas, concerning his views on the importance of the "end-to-end design principle", repeating a common mantra of Internet techies, who argue that the Internet is obviously a superior design to the telephone network because "the intelligence is at the end nodes and not inside the network". These theories are blindly parroted and even applied to cyber-political theory, typically as variations of David S. Isenberg's stupid network theme. Showing that the populist view often does not bear scrutiny, in this posting back in March 2000 on the Cybertelecom-L mailing list (no archives), Fred Goldstein takes the opposite view and argues convincingly, that on the contrary, "The telephone network has even more content-neutrality than the Internet, because as a circuit-switched network, it has zero visibility of the bearer channels. Once the call's set up, bits is bits. No firewalls, censorware, caches, or other content-invasive intermediaries a la the Internet as people tend to see it nowadays. Thus the amount of intelligence in the Internet's switches (routers) is many orders of magnitude above what goes into a telephone switch, even a huge one."

Whoops, so much for the stupid network theory...

8:27:32 PM    Google It!    

The Internet gets serious

The Internet Gets Serious: "computer security and digital rights are so vexing because their solutions seek to protect technology from itself. How does one make computer systems secure from code writers whose goal is to defeat such security? And how does one protect digital content when technology, by its nature, encourages copying? The challenge for policymakers is great." [Washington Post]

5:49:16 PM    Google It!    

Asia-Pacific Governments Role in Internationalized Domain Names

The Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT), a regional intergovernmental telecommunication organization, in its preparation of common proposals to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, 23 September - 18 October 2002, includes a proposal from APT members concerning the Role of Member Administrations in the Management of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) and Addresses (Word), which would include an instruction to the ITU Secretary-General to promote effectively the role of Member States in the internationalization of domain names and address of their respective languages.

5:30:06 PM    Google It!    

ITU-T Workshop on IP & Optical Networks

The ITU-T is organizing a workshop on IP and Optical networks in Chitose, Japan from 9-11 July 2002. Participation is open to non ITU-T members. The relevant ITU-T Study Groups (SG13 and SG15) have made available their respective general work plans for IP networks (Word, PDF) and Optical Transport Networks.

4:58:31 PM    Google It!    

New IPv6 Policy

APNIC (clear winner of the RIR logo competition) has announced that a "common global IPv6 policy has now been accepted by consensus in all Regional Internet Registry (RIR) communities – APNIC, ARIN and RIPE NCC. This new global IPv6 policy will be implemented by all RIRs from 1 July 2002."

12:38:49 PM    Google It!    

Wasn't that the point?

Looks like the International Emergency Preference Scheme mailing list has recently been overwelmed by SPAM. There's a certain irony there. Dear list administrator, see this Majordomo tip.

11:59:20 AM    Google It!    

Every dial you take

Every dial you take. The FBI is asking for more information about what you do on the phone, and no one is saying no.  [Salon.com]. On a related note, remember that VeriSign recently announced the somewhat unusually-named NetDiscovery Service "enabling carriers to meet June 30 CALEA Deadline with Minimum Expense", taking "full advantage of VeriSign's core expertise in security and bridges our telecom, PKI, and IP network assets".

11:37:31 AM    Google It!    

Cyberspace Security Plans

According to this SecurityFocus article by Kevin Poulsen, an early draft of the White House's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, envisions the same kind of mandatory customer data collection and retention by U.S. ISPs as was recently enacted in Europe. According to this Washington Post article, the plans will be released in late summer to be implemented through the new US Homeland Security Department. It's interesting to note that a US President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, established under Executive Order 13231, and acting through the SANS Institute, asked a series of questions on cybersecurity, which included questions about securing "the traffic control systems of the internet (Domain Name Servers, Border Gateway Protocols)". Oddly, the latter falls under the heading National Level Institutions and Policies, which suggests somebody doesn't understand the "traffic control system of the Internet".

10:58:48 AM    Google It!    

Quote of the Day

Stephen Wolfe: "It's scary to think that the infrastructure of the industrialized world is increasingly based on software like this." (refering to AutoCAD rev. 12 but perhaps applicable elsewhere): [Quotes of the Day]

10:35:19 AM    Google It!    

Applications for .org reassignment

ICANN has posted a list of 11 applications received for .org reassignment [ICANN Announcements]

10:23:29 AM    Google It!