Author Archive for Paul Adams

File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
12
2008

Obfuscated TCP Protects Against Sniffers

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As a proposed solution to the problem of ISPs monitoring Internet traffic, one Adam Langley has devised a system of encrypting packets at the TCP level.

Obfuscated TCP uses encrypted, signed packets to make it harder for snooping middlemen to wiretap data.

The project is only in a beginning stage, with a rough implementation in the form of a Linux kernel patch plus userspace tools. The hugest hurdle, as ever, will be to gain the widespread adoption that would make it viable.

There’s a discussion of ObsTCP underway at Reddit.

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File Under: Humor
Jun
12
2008

How Do Programmers Eat Lunch?

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In the spirit of If a Programming Language Was a Boat, What Boat Would it Be?, Anti Veeranna has launched a deep investigation into the ways one’s eating habits are affected by one’s programming language of choice.

* PHP devs go at random times, some of them run, some walk, some take the elevator. (loose coding style)

* DB devs choose someone, who will then go to kitchen and fetch the food for everyone (also known as proxy)

* Frontend (HTML) devs decorate their food with cucumbers, tomatoes and generally everything else in the fridge and then play around with it until the food is cold

What else?

Image from Raelyn Wheatens

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File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
11
2008

Assess Secure Sites’ Security with TLS Report

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tlsreport.png

Those sites with the little padlocks aren’t all the same, you know. A new tool checks the integrity of the TLS and SSL connections that secure them, and assigns ratings from A to F.

With TLS Report, you can examine your own site or someone else’s, or just browse the ratings for fun.

File Under: Other
Jun
11
2008

Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint to Block Usenet

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New York’s Attorney General has just launched a blacklist-based initiative to quell undesirable Internet content. Child pornography is the target, although like all blacklists there will be a large number of blocked innocents and civilian casualties.

An undercover investigation by the Attorney General’s office uncovered a major source of online child pornography known as “Newsgroups,” an online service not associated with websites. The Newsgroups act as online public bulletin boards where users can upload and download files. Users access Newsgroups through their Internet Service Providers.

According to a report by Declan McCullagh, Sprint will be blocking the entire alt. hierarchy of Usenet, while good old Time Warner Cable has no time for such fussiness and will just stop offering all Usenet access. Verizon, the third participating ISP, has not yet announced its blocking plans.

There are plenty of other ways for subscribers to these ISPs to access Usenet still. It’s an ineffectual solution and a scary precedent. ISPs, whether under the influence of governmental or financial pressure, should not control what their customers can and can’t access, not least because they exert their control so sloppily.

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File Under: Uncategorized
Jun
10
2008

Why Is Google’s App Engine Blocking All Links to PayPal?

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Because they can?

Because they want to protect you?

Because they know best?

Because PayPal sucks?

Because they are pushing their competing service, Google Checkout?

Remember, guys, don’t be evil.

Update: A Google employee named “Marzia” updated the Google groups thread thanking everyone for the bug update.

“Thanks for the report! This is a bug, and we have located the problem.

There was an error in our anti-phishing protections that was blocking

some specific URL domains from being fetched using the URLFetch

service. This was an oversight on our part, and these specific domain

restrictions will be removed in the next few days.”

The message both verifies that the block was unintentional and verifies it originates from Google servers purportedly protecting users from phishing sites.

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File Under: Mobile
Jun
10
2008

Sync Your iPhone 2.0 for $99, Or For Free

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Another major component of the iPhone announcement yesterday, in addition to the App Store I griped about previously, is MobileMe, the service previously known as .Mac.

For $99 per year, Apple will store all your data on their servers — email, calendar — and

auto-synchronize it to your desktop machine as well as your iPhone. It’ll all be accessible at me.com too, when that site launches, on what will doubtless be a flashy Ajax-heavy page.

Apple says “Me.com is such a great web experience, it seems as if you’re using desktop software,” and also “To use the new web applications, make sure you have one of these browsers: Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, or Firefox 2 or later” — i.e., not IE 6.

Shortly after Apple’s announcement of MobileMe, I got a press release from Funambol, the open-source-happy mobile company, promising that their free sync software will do the same exact thing for free.

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File Under: Business, Mobile
Jun
9
2008

iPhone App Store Exclusivity Is a Big Drawback

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The new iPhone is open to third-party applications, hooray! However, those applications can apparently only be distributed through the new App Store, “the exclusive channel for iPhone and iPod touch applications.” Yuck.

The App Store is probably a fine thing for the type of shareware mentality that seems to populate the Apple universe: application developers take home 70% of the proceeds for apps they sell, and Apple handles credit-card processing, distribution, and all that bother.

But it imposes a level of lockdown that will probably conflict with open-source licenses, and it gives Apple and its carriers ultimate control over what you’re allowed to install on your phone. App Store applications will be wrapped with Apple’s FairPlay DRM for access control, to ensure that they can’t be distributed beyond the single phone they were bought on. It’s reminiscent of the awful walled-garden distribution mechanism for third-party apps on the Sidekick, which involve licensing hurdles and make each precious bit you’re allowed to download seem like a gift from the Lord. As a result of that, there are hardly any third-party apps for the Sidekick. For instance, there’s no real IMAP client. If there were, I’d have bought a Sidekick, with its roomy keyboard, years ago.

Compare that with the Palm platform’s so-called “open plain” distribution model. To install an application on your Palm, you can just download it like any executable, from the developer’s site or an intermediary, either directly onto your Palm or onto a computer from which you can transfer it to your Palm. You can even email apps and install them that way. By no coincidence, the Palm ecosystem has developed tens of thousands of applications, many of them free. Many of them are terrible, too, but there are lots gems in the chaff — and, if you’re so inclined, you can write your own or modify existing apps to make them better.

It’s hard to resist the pull of the flashy, newly discounted device; but resist it I shall, if it wants that much control over what I do with it.

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File Under: Visual Design
Jun
9
2008

Eye Candy Is Easier With jQuery UI 1.5

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jQueryjQuery, the lightweight and powerful JavaScript library, has released a new edition of its UI component, which offers a wealth of ways to fancy up web sites’ user interfaces. It enables the easy creation of drag-and-droppable items on a page, mouse-resizable elements, and a host of cool effects.

The new edition includes an effects library called Enchant, whose visually exciting methods are called things like explode and pulsate; a theme engine called ThemeRoller; a testing and debugging suite; and more.

Check it out.

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File Under: operating systems, Software & Tools
Jun
6
2008

FreeBSD Leaving CVS At Last

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Everyone’s changing their version control system these days. Most seem to be moving from a centralized system, like CVS or Subversion, to one of the new-fangled distributed systems like Git and Mercurial.

FreeBSD, never the trend-setter, is leaving behind the crusty old CVS its source tree has been on for centuries, and upgrading — to Subversion, the whipping boy of 2008! When rats like Rails start migrating away from a sinking ship, leave it to good old FreeBSD to grab that tiller, so popular five years ago.

On Reddit, there’s a discussion, in which the sound reasons for the choice are outlined and attacked.

Image by Tortuga One, Flickr’s most tireless documentor of pharmacies.

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