Month: November 2011
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SOPA Updates: Matt Cutts Summary, European Parliament Resolution, Sandia Labs, BSA
Continue Reading: SOPA Updates: Matt Cutts Summary, European Parliament Resolution, Sandia Labs, BSAIn the ongoing debate around the controversial “Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)” bill in the US Congress (that I have covered previously here and here), there are four updates worth reading:
- First, Matt Cutts provided a comprehensive SOPA update last week talking about all the online activism and support against the bill. Great collections of links, and I loved this part at the end:
I thought we’d have to wait 20-25 years before a critical mass of people would defend the net. But SOPA has brought that day a lot closer. SOPA galvanized the tech community, from start-ups to venture capitalists to the largest web companies. SOPA was an unexpected shock and a wake-up call. Well, guess what? Now the internet is awake. And I don’t think it’s going back to sleep any time soon. We might need to rally again in the near future, but we can do that. The internet learns fast.
- Sandia National Laboratories responded to a request from Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren with a letter outlining why SOPA wouldn’t work and would decrease our cybersecurity.
- The European Parliament adopted a resolution that included among its many clauses, one (#25) that spoke…
- First, Matt Cutts provided a comprehensive SOPA update last week talking about all the online activism and support against the bill. Great collections of links, and I loved this part at the end:
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Skype 5.x Beta For Mac OS X Includes Hidden “Push To Talk” Feature
Continue Reading: Skype 5.x Beta For Mac OS X Includes Hidden “Push To Talk” FeatureIt turns out that the Skype 5.x Beta releases for Mac OS X have a hidden feature. In my last Skype-related post about the simultaneous release of 5.7 Beta for Windows and 5.4 Beta for Mac OS X, I mentioned that the release notes for the 5.7 Beta for Windows included a “Push To Talk” feature that was not in the Mac OS X version. From those Windows release notes:
Push to Talk
We have introduced a Push to Talk feature in Skype. Many people who are playing multiplayer games have requested this from us.
With this feature you can set a hotkey which will toggle microphone muting on Skype call.
You can set the Push to Talk up on the hotkey’s selection under tools > options > advanced > hotkeys.
In my post, I mentioned that while I personally wasn’t sure I saw the need for this feature, it was an example of the continued missing parity between the two products (Skype for Windows, Skype for Mac OS X).
This morning I received a nice note from Skype’s product manager for the Skype for Mac product letting me know that this “Push To Talk” feature…
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Want a Great Weekend Project? Consider Applying for an Internet Society Job
Continue Reading: Want a Great Weekend Project? Consider Applying for an Internet Society JobThe Internet Society is hiring! We’ve got about 10 open positions right now…
17 Nov 2011 Technical Outreach for Identity and Privacy 14 Nov 2011 Regional Bureau Director, North America 09 Nov 2011 Director, Development Strategy 04 Nov 2011 Membership Program Coordinator 27 Oct 2011 Sr. Manager, Next Generation Leaders Programme 18 Oct 2011 Internet Development Manager for Africa 28 Sep 2011 Application Development Specialist 27 Sep 2011 Sr. Director of Business Development and Resource Mobilization 27 Sep 2011 Administrative Assistant 09 Sep 2011 IT System Support Specialist
To apply, just follow the links here or check out the main Internet Society Careers page. I believe strongly in the mission of the Internet Society (as I explained before) and encourage you to consider the openings… we’re looking for some great people to help the organization accomplish even more!
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Oops… Posted to the Wrong Site… See the Correct Link here
Continue Reading: Oops… Posted to the Wrong Site… See the Correct Link hereOops… this post about Google Wave is really over at Disruptive Conversations: http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2011/11/and-so-google-finally-announces-the-formal-death-of-google-wave-in-2012.html (Keeping this post up because it already went out in social networks…) -
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3 Whitepapers You Need To Read To Understand How SOPA Could Damage DNS And Decrease Security
How exactly will the proposed “Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA)” impact the DNS infrastructure of the Internet? What are the technical and engineering problems caused by the proposed bill? How will the bill actually DECREASE our national cybersecurity?
I covered the basics of SOPA (HR.3261) and its companion bill in the Senate, S.968, the “PROTECT-IP Act”, last week and and in the time since I wrote that post the public opposition to SOPA has mounted dramatically as people have come to understand what exactly these bills will do. Like many, I applaud the intent of these bills to protect intellectual property, but am concerned that the mandated mechanism of “DNS filtering” proposed by these bills will have serious negative consequences.
If you want to understand the technical issues with the proposed mechanism, there are three whitepapers I would recommend for reading – and for sharing with your legislators. (I’ve sent the links in to my representatives.) I’d note that the first two documents were prepared back in the spring of 2011 to address the U.S. Senate’s version, the PROTECT-IP Act, but the mechanism proposed in SOPA is essentially the same.
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An Interesting Historical Timeline of Canadian Telecommunications
Continue Reading: An Interesting Historical Timeline of Canadian TelecommunicationsLast week I was up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada for the Internet Society’s ION conference that was a part of the larger Canadian ISP Summit. This was only the first Canadian ISP Summit, but I’ve heard only excellent reports on the 3-day session and indeed we were extremely pleased by the attendance and engagement in our ION session on Monday. I was unfortunately unable to stay for the rest of the summit, but I saw this link tweeted out and had to check it out:
Historical Timeline of Canadian Telecommunications Achievements (PDF)
It turns out to be a document created for a presentation at the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly back in 2000 (hence, why the history only goes up to 1999 ;-). I’m assuming someone at the CA ISP Summit referenced this document… thus generating the tweets.
Regardless of the lack of recent info, it’s an interesting history of telecom in Canada… and gives an intriguing view into the wiring of a large country. Worth a read for those interested in the history of telecom.
Image credit: dr_opulentfish on Flickr
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OMG! Skype Simultaneously Releases (Almost) The Same Version on Windows and Mac OS X
Continue Reading: OMG! Skype Simultaneously Releases (Almost) The Same Version on Windows and Mac OS XYesterday I sat in such utter shock that I had to look out my window to see if, in fact, we were witnessing porcine aviation. My brain was having a hard time processing something I had just read online. I literally was speechless, which, if you know anything about me, is a very hard state for me to attain. 🙂
What created this cognitive dissonance?
You see…
Skype just announced the simultaneous release of new versions of Skype for BOTH Windows and Mac OS X.
Even more, the two versions almost have feature parity.
Yes, indeed, you can now get the Skype 5.7 beta for Windows and the Skype 5.4 beta for Mac OS X, both of which introduce a “Facebook video calling” feature, and both of which bring the two releases closer to “feature parity”.
Why is this a big deal?
If you have been reading this site for any length of time, you have probably seen some of these posts:
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The US Congress, PROTECT IP, SOPA, E-PARASITES… and the War For the Open Internet
Continue Reading: The US Congress, PROTECT IP, SOPA, E-PARASITES… and the War For the Open InternetIf you are a U.S. citizen and have NOT been paying attention to the madness going on in the US Congress right now with regard to the Internet, you really NEED to take a look…
If you have a website, you need to be paying attention…
If you own a domain name, you need to be paying attention…
Backed by the traditional media industries (and all their lobbying $$$) the U.S. Senate and House are considering legislation that would seriously break the Internet as we know it. Rather than the DMCA “takedown notices” that have been used to date, these new bills would require ISPs to disable access to websites.
Basically it would give corporations the ability to manipulate (through ISPs) the DNS system to block access to content that they feel is objectionable or violates their copyrights, etc.
I think we all can generally agree that stopping online piracy and illegal activities is a good goal. As well as being a consumer of online content, I am also a creator of online content, and sure, I don’t want my content pirated and mis-used by others…
but a “simple” technical solution is NOT the…
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Sweet! Apple iOS 5.0.1 Is Available Over-The-Air (OTA) – Faster and No iTunes Required!
Continue Reading: Sweet! Apple iOS 5.0.1 Is Available Over-The-Air (OTA) – Faster and No iTunes Required!For those of use with iOS devices, news of today’s iOS 5.0.1 that fixes battery issues was welcome… and along with it the news that this update is available “over-the-air” (OTA). NO iTUNES SYNC REQUIRED!
Just go into Settings, then General, then Software Update. Per this article on Mashable, your device needs to either be plugged in or have over 50% battery.
Here’s what it looked like on my iPad:
The Mashable piece said that the OTA update was faster and I can personally attest to that. I started the process to update my iPhone 4S via iTunes and the first step was to download the update from Apple. Several minutes later I decided to do the OTA process on my iPad2. The iPad2 finished the update process before iTunes had even finished downloading the update!
So yes, the OTA process is definitely faster!
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IETF Journal for October 2011 Digs into DNSSEC, Port Control Protocol, Internet Evolution
Want to learn more about what is happening with regard to standards in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)? Want to understand the details about new proposals to offer another way to secure domains using DNSSEC? Never heard of the “Port Control Protocol” before and wonder how it may (or may not) help you? Want to understand some of the latest thoughts from Internet leaders about where the Internet is evolving?
The October 2011 edition of the IETF Journal gets into all of that and more. Here’s the Table of Contents (a PDF is also available for printing or ebook reading):
