cipher: Internet

Sat, 14 Jun 2003 14:31:01 GMT

Should I restart? Irak is still a major mess! Lies, lies, lies!

SecurityFocus HOME News: RIAA messaging gambit faces countermeasures

Sat, 17 May 2003 21:32:50 GMT

To the Recording Industry Association of America, sending threatening messages to online music swappers is a potentially effective way to educate the public that trading copyrighted material is wrong. But to security geeks in the file trading community, the technique is just another volley in the electronic war with peer-to-peer opponents... and a rather trivial one at that.

Sat, 17 May 2003 21:06:55 GMT

Matrix Sequel Has Hacker Cred. Trinity uses a 'sploit [The Register] The real origin of the story is here http://www.securityfocus.com/news/4831

Sat, 17 May 2003 21:01:47 GMT

New Safari Beta fixes security hole; Online Banking compatibility. Apple has released a minor update to its Safari web browser, patching a recently discovered security hole that made it "possible to spoof SSL sites." Safari 1.0 Beta 2 (v74) is available via Software Update and on Apple's very own Safari page. Early reader reports indicate that compatibility with several online banking sites -- which prior to this update experienced authentication and connection failures -- has been sufficiently increased. Apple is being brief on exactly... [Spymac]

Thu, 08 May 2003 20:09:53 GMT

Microsoft fixes Passport flaw. The software giant works overnight to repair the password reset feature of its online identity service after a flaw was discovered that put millions of accounts at risk. [CNET News.com]

Thu, 08 May 2003 20:05:20 GMT

Mozilla 1.3.1 Available [Mozilla Dot Org] Fixed Mac issues that basically prevented almost anyone from upgrading to 1.3.

Mon, 05 May 2003 22:00:43 GMT

Apple opens the door to music pirates. Apple is promoting its new iTunes Music Store as a revolutionary step against digital music piracy, but enthusiasts this weekend discovered that the company's iTunes 4 -- which allows users to stream their music collection to anyone with Internet access -- may be used for unlawful purposes. "Apple has made it very easy for anyone to hijack these streams and to download [someone else's] music onto their local system," says Spymac reader Greg Molden. "There's... [Spymac]

Mon, 05 May 2003 21:56:46 GMT

One Million Songs Sold. The iTunes Music Store sold more than one million songs during its first week. Over half of the songs were purchased as albums and over half of the 200,000 songs offered on the iTunes Music Store were purchased at least once. More than one million copies of iTunes 4 have been downloaded, and Apple has received orders for more than 110,000 new third-generation iPods since their introduction a week ago. [May 5] [Apple Hot News]

Sun, 04 May 2003 15:49:59 GMT

Software Bullet Is Sought to Kill Musical Piracy. Record companies are financing the development of software that would sabotage the computers of people that download pirated music. By Andrew Ross Sorkin. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

... black hat hackers ...

Who'll put'em to jail?

Fri, 02 May 2003 19:07:18 GMT

Apple is Porting iTunes to Windows. An anonymous reader writes "It seems that Apple is indeed porting its new iTunes software to Windows as evidenced by a posting on its job board (No. 1949938) ... [Slashdot: Apple]

Tue, 29 Apr 2003 20:40:38 GMT

Mosaic Blows Out 10 Candles. Geeks celebrate the 10th anniversary of the browser that allowed regular people to jump onto the World Wide Web. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina led the Mosaic team in 1993 at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications; now NCSA is throwing a birthday bash. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]

Tue, 29 Apr 2003 20:38:06 GMT

Fortune on Apple Music Store.

There is an onslaught of articles about the new iTunes Music Store on the Fortune web site, including one entitled "Songs in the Key of Steve" [Jobs].

This particular article includes several debatable statements, including the following:

U.S. music sales plunged 8.2% last year, largely because songs are being distributed free on the Internet through illicit file-sharing destinations like KaZaA.

As I already mentioned in previous items, both the industry and the mainstream media have yet to provide any hard evidence that there is actually a causal link between on-line file sharing and music sales.

This same article, however, does provide some valuable information about what distinguishes Apple's offering from previous attempts to establish on-line music retail outlets. For example, the article explains how Jobs was able to convince the industry:

Apple has also come up with a copy-protection scheme that satisfies the music industry but won't alienate paying customers. You can burn individual songs onto an unlimited number of CDs. You can download them onto as many iPods as you might own. In other words, the music is pretty much yours to do with as you please. Casual music pirates, however, won't like it. The iTunes jukebox software will allow a specific playlist of songs or an album to be burned onto a CD ten times. You can burn more than that only if you manually change the order of the songs in the playlist.

This is exactly the kind of stuff that Apple can be excellent at: very simple and effective solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. Whether this solution will actually be an effective deterrent is another issue. The important point is that Jobs managed to convince the recording industry that it was a solution. And that effectively makes it a solution.

Jobs rightfully chides the recording industry for coming up with totally absurd schemes designed to prevent piracy. The industry's assumption that everyone is a thief is simply insulting. I am glad to see that Jobs is at least trying, with some degree of success so far, to find a middleground.

There is little doubt, however, that the recording industry views this as a test on a relatively small market, where the potential damage if things don't work out as planned will be minimal.

But regardless of what the industry's ultimate motives are, for once, it pays to be in the minority! (Well, as long as you live in the US, that is. Being a Mac user outside the US is even more challenging, as the current US-only status of the iTunes Music Store, and several other Apple offerings, unfortunately illustrates...)

[Betalogue]

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 20:24:34 GMT

XML Co-Creator says XML Is Too Hard For Programmers. orangerobot writes "Tim Bray, one of the co-authors of the original XML 1.0 specification has a new entry on his website explaining why he's been feeling ... [Slashdot]

Mon, 17 Mar 2003 19:53:57 GMT

Security hole in Windows 2000 servers. Microsoft is warning customers that a vulnerability in Windows 2000 and the company's Web server software is allowing online attackers to take control of corporate servers. [CNET News.com]

Mon, 17 Mar 2003 19:20:11 GMT

XML-RPC and OS X 10.2.5. I’ve received email from people this morning telling me that OS X 10.2.5 will contain fixes to Apple’s XML-RPC code. Which I think is great. I had no doubt they would fix the bugs.

Now, I don’t get pre-release copies of the system, so I can’t confirm this. But, assuming it’s true, the obvious question for me is: why not switch back to the system-supplied XML-RPC code?

Here’s why I do not plan to switch back:

1. My philosophy is to always use system-supplied code whenever possible. My time can be much better spent in ways other than re-inventing the wheel. However, I already have re-invented the wheel in this case. There’s a value to being in control of the source code. If I want to or need to add features, I can.

2. My XML-RPC code runs on systems previous to 10.2.5. I don’t want to require that NetNewsWire users run 10.2.5.

3. The code is designed to be forgiving of things like unencoded ampersands and characters outside of the XML-RPC spec. It has to be forgiving, because not all of the various weblog publishing systems return perfectly valid responses all of the time. (That’s just a fact of life. It’s not my job to be an XML cop. I’d rather just have things work.)

4. My code is in the form of a set of Cocoa classes. Apple’s code is procedural. I prefer using Cocoa, since NetNewsWire is a Cocoa app. It fits better.

5. My code uses CURLHandle, which is what NetNewsWire uses to read feeds and so on. There’s a value to using the same HTTP client software throughout the app. For instance, once I fix the bug with authenticating proxies in the news reader, I can fix it in the XML-RPC code at the same time, since the fix will be the same. [inessential.com]

Browser Plugin

Sat, 15 Mar 2003 09:34:58 GMT

<%radio.macros.imageref ("images/pdf-plugin.gif")%>

"Display and print PDF documents within your web browser."

Just in case you do not have it yet! Works flawless for me since early betas. Mozilla, Safari ...

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 15:43:19 GMT

Cyber terrorism 'overhyped'. Terrorists are not about to launch an attack in cyberspace, say security experts at the CeBIT technology fair. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 15:42:50 GMT

Pakistan Creates Cyber Crime Wing. A Pakistani security agency establishes a special arm to combat cyber crimes. Officials want to avoid having to rely on foreign investigators to track criminals who use the Internet. [Wired News]

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 15:40:02 GMT

What if Netscape had won?. On the eve of the anniversary of the Mosaic Web browser, CNET News.com's Charles Cooper ponders how things might have evolved had the browser wars turned out differently. [CNET News.com]

Mozilla 1.3 Release Notes

Thu, 13 Mar 2003 21:42:21 GMT

"On Mac OS X, XPInstall has been disabled for 1.3. This means that extensions and themes will not install for Mozilla 1.3 on Mac OS X. (bug 181293)"

Thu, 13 Mar 2003 20:37:20 GMT

Mozilla.org Launches Mozilla 1.3. theBrownfury writes "Mozilla 1.3 is out and about. New to this version are features like image auto sizing, bayesian junk-mail filtering, dynamic profile ... [Slashdot]

Thu, 13 Mar 2003 19:52:09 GMT

Forty Percent of All Email is Spam. PCOL writes "There's an interesting article on spam in today's Washington Post which includes an inside look at AOL's spam control center in Northern Virginia. ... [Slashdot]

Thu, 13 Mar 2003 19:49:37 GMT

The Next Big Web Thing - Really. What happened to Web services? Well, they're out there, being developed by Microsoft and Sun employees as well as folks working on other platforms. But, thankfully, what keeps showing up on the radar is not the position papers produced by vendors' marketing departments, but rather the quiet, diligent work of the W3C, which will have the last laugh, in my humble opinion. [osOpinion]

Thu, 06 Mar 2003 19:46:51 GMT

UT Austin Hit By Massive Security Breach. mrpuffypants writes "Reported in the Austin-American Statesman: The University of Texas' security was compromised over the weekend, leaking out nearly 60,000 ... [Slashdot]

Wed, 05 Mar 2003 18:06:26 GMT

Microsoft's Source Code Actions Speak Louder Than Words. It strikes me as pretty odd that Redmond feels good about its recent decision to provide Windows source code to China, considering that Microsoft executive Jim Allchin claimed not too long ago that showing source code to competitors would be a "national security risk." [osOpinion]

China does not really have a track record to shine in terms of protection of intellectual property either!