Monthly Archives: August 2005

Wireless hijacking under scrutiny

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Interesting BBC NEWS story…

A recent court case, which saw a West London man fined £500 and sentenced to 12 months’ conditional discharge for hijacking a wireless broadband connection, has repercussions for almost every user of wi-fi networks.
It is believed to be the first case of its kind in the UK, but with an estimated one million wi-fi users around the country, it is unlikely to be the last.

Hmmm… what’s the legal principle here? That any unauthorised use of anything is automatically illegal? If you’re a householder and you knowingly leave your DECT phone out on the street for any passer-by to use, shouldn’t you bear some responsibility? Running an ‘open’ wireless network is an exact analogy. People shouldn’t steal cars, but we would feel less sympathy for a motorist whose car has been hijacked if it turned out that he always leaves his car unlocked with a note to that effect pinned to the windscreen.

Man dies as son, 7, drives on M5

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From BBC NEWS…

A father died after he allowed his seven-year-old son to drive at 70mph along a motorway, an inquest heard.

Peter Mourier, 50, of Kingshill, Kempsey, Worcestershire, was killed when the car left the M5 and crashed into a tree on 4 March.

The boy was driving from the passenger seat when he hit an object between junctions 12 and 11a. He, and his two brothers in the back seat, were unhurt.

Gloucestershire coroner Alan Crickmore recorded a verdict of accidental death.

Depravity on, er, eBay

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From the You-couldn’t-make-it-up Department (via The Register)…

The Belfast Telegraph and Sinn Fein are leading a campaign to KO eBay auctions of DVD bare-knuckle gypsy-on-gypsy fight action. The newspaper has already provoked eBay.co.uk to pull two auctions for such material, although there is plenty of raw footage still available to eager punters.

The blurb for one of these sensitive productions reads

This is Real Bare Knuckle Gypsy Fights on DVD! Over two hours of Gypsys punching the hell out of each other and shouting stuff that you wont be able to understand! Filmed in England, Ireland and Scotland in country lanes, warehouses and front gardens! This is real footage all caught on camcorder, so dont expect hollywood quality. Just like the film Snatch, only this is for real!

A 100% Genuine Gypsy production comes on a disc like the one pictured below. No sleave [sic], bare disc of Bare Knuckle Fights!

The other interesting snippet from The Register report is the news that Sinn Fein has a “spokesperson on human rights”. Whatever next.

Old wine, new bottle

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I love WordPress, but found the default (Kubrick) presentation template too restrictive (particularly because it forced me to squeeze photographs into a maximum width of 450 pixels). Also, it seemed to waste a lot of screen space, forcing readers to scroll too much. And the interminable Archives list down the right hand side was getting, well, ridiculous. So with Quentin’s advice and expertise, some of these problems have been addressed. Hope you think it’s an improvement.

L’iPhone est arrive!

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Yawn. According to the New York Times…

Apple Computer and Motorola plan to unveil a long-awaited mobile phone and music player next week that will incorporate Apple’s iTunes software, a telecommunications industry analyst who has been briefed on the announcement said on Monday.

The development marks a melding of two of the digital era’s most popular devices, the cellphone and the iPod, which has become largely synonymous with the concept of downloading songs from the Internet or transferring them from compact discs. Roger Entner, a telecommunications analyst with Ovum, a market research firm, said he had been told by an industry executive that the new phone, to be made by Motorola, would be marketed by Cingular Wireless. Mr. Entner said it would include iTunes software, which helps power the iPod.

Filesharing traffic continues to dominate

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According to a Macworld UK report…

A new study that looks at the impact of peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic on service provider networks shows file swapping forges on unabated.

CacheLogic of Cambridge, England says the practice shows no sign of slowing down despite court rulings that have shut down some popular sites such as Suprnova, a BitTorrent tracking service that offered links to pilfered television and movie content.

CacheLogic’s global monitoring network shows 60 per cent of all Internet traffic is the result of peer-to-peer file-sharing platforms, with eDonkey taking over the top spot from BitTorrent.

“The Whack-A-Mole game continues,” says Andrew Parker, CacheLogic’s CTO. “The authorities go after one [peer-to-peer] system and another one pops up.”

At the end of 2004, BitTorrent accounted for 30 per cent of all Internet traffic. But after the Motion Picture Association of America’s moves to shut down BitTorrent tracking sites, centralized servers for locating distributed content, swappers began moving to other less-publicized services. Today, eDonkey, a system that uses no centralized servers or tracking sites, consumes the most bandwidth of any application on the Internet, particularly overseas, according to Parker. In the US, Gnutella has seen resurgence in popularity among swappers.

Of the files being swapped on the four major file-sharing systems (eDonkey, BitTorrent, FastTrack and Gnutella) 62 per cent is video and 11 per cent is audio, with the rest being miscellaneous file types, according to the study.

Gillmor on Google’s “Unnecessary Arrogance”

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Google is a great company, but a layer of hubris threatens to encrust the excellence. It was exemplified most recently by the childish banning of contact with CNET journalists after the news site did a story highlighting what can be done to invade privacy using the company’s own tools.

The attitude problem has been evident for a while now. While I support the company’s refusal to offer “guidance” to Wall Street — a game used by public corporations to game the stock market — the utter opacity of the operation is disconcerting. It’s one thing to stick to principle, but another to rub people’s faces in it, such as when Google held an open house and had the CFO — the chief food officer, not the chief financial officer — give a presentatinon. Cute, but that stunt will be remembered by people whom Google will someday need.
Right now, Google needs no one’s special good will, and acts that way. This is reminiscent in some ways of Microsoft, a company that had public support and industry allies, but almost no tech-world friends. Google is no Microsoft, yet, certainly not in the willingness to flout the law. But Google’s willingness to flout other norms — in particular, its grossly insufficient privacy stance, which amounts to “trust us” — will eventually rebound in ways the company may not appreciate today.

I attribute much of Google’s arrogance as the missteps of a young company. (It’s baffling, however, that someone like Eric Schmidt, a seasoned executive, could have such a tin ear.) The public still thinks of Google as a hero, and the good it does still far outweighs the bad. The well isn’t bottomless, though; it never is.

Amen. [link]