Home Server Projects
The best servers are those that don't appear to be servers at all.
Tuesday 30 December 2008, 5:43 AM
Stalking Horse by the Biggest Patent Troll on the Planet
Another thought occurred to me about Microsoft's Christmas Morning Scrooge Event.
Perhaps Microsoft is using this patent to push against Android OS being used on FPGA based CPU's. Field Programmable Gate Arrays are almost perfect for "gear-shifting" CPUs. New firmware can be downloaded to the gate array and used to boost performance. Most of the products a FPGA could be easily used in would be net books or upscale handheld PDAs or smart phones. Android would be (at least in concept) a perfect OS to use because its scalable as well.
Microsoft might be using this patent solely as a stalking horse to keep other companies from attempting this maneuver. But considering the scope of the patent I would hope that it can be successfully fought in court or shown to be nothing more than prior art.
Considering that most CPUs already have "slow-down clock" OP codes built into them that part is probably the easiest means of "dumbing down" a CPU.
Even in Windows XP Pro and the Embedded versions, if the user wished to dumb-down the CPU, there is a Control Panel setting that allows the user to turn off secondary CPU cores if desired.
As far as adding services, plugging in a new high performance video card or more RAM takes care of the majority of performance increases necessary for most users. Whether the added performance increase is "automatic" or manual (plugging in a card and adding drivers) I don't see that the patent should be allowed.
Remember that this is the same company that patented scroll up and down on a page. Open Source doesn't try to dumb down a computer and then call it a desirable OS feature. And Open Source certainly doesn't file hundreds of patents attempting to "protect" meaningless IP or items in common usage or the public domain as the Gorilla seems to do.
Perhaps Microsoft is using this patent to push against Android OS being used on FPGA based CPU's. Field Programmable Gate Arrays are almost perfect for "gear-shifting" CPUs. New firmware can be downloaded to the gate array and used to boost performance. Most of the products a FPGA could be easily used in would be net books or upscale handheld PDAs or smart phones. Android would be (at least in concept) a perfect OS to use because its scalable as well.
Microsoft might be using this patent solely as a stalking horse to keep other companies from attempting this maneuver. But considering the scope of the patent I would hope that it can be successfully fought in court or shown to be nothing more than prior art.
Considering that most CPUs already have "slow-down clock" OP codes built into them that part is probably the easiest means of "dumbing down" a CPU.
Even in Windows XP Pro and the Embedded versions, if the user wished to dumb-down the CPU, there is a Control Panel setting that allows the user to turn off secondary CPU cores if desired.
As far as adding services, plugging in a new high performance video card or more RAM takes care of the majority of performance increases necessary for most users. Whether the added performance increase is "automatic" or manual (plugging in a card and adding drivers) I don't see that the patent should be allowed.
Remember that this is the same company that patented scroll up and down on a page. Open Source doesn't try to dumb down a computer and then call it a desirable OS feature. And Open Source certainly doesn't file hundreds of patents attempting to "protect" meaningless IP or items in common usage or the public domain as the Gorilla seems to do.
Monday 29 December 2008, 8:05 AM
RIAA, Lead Dog for the IP Entertainment Industry
Here's a URL related to the RIAA recent push into ISP-land.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/riaa-v-people-turns-lawsuits-3-strikes
Essentially the RIAA wants the ISPs to send an email (presumably) to their customers accusing them of file sharing music files. The French legislature evidently totally caved in to the RIAA. User blacklisting is possible there.
First off how do they identify the user or his ISP? The presumption has to be that the RIAA is spending a lot of time downloading music files from P2P systems and doing reverse DNS lookups. Doesn't that sound exactly like the very thing they are trying to stop? Does the musician get a payment each time the RIAA downloads a music file? Of course not.
I would hope that the RIAA is keeping VERY accurate time and date stamps on the downloads because nobody is going to know if Suzy is doing the music serving or her daddy is, since they are both on the same DSL connection.
On the other side of the connection the "downloader" gets away free unless the RIAA is actually breaking the law and serving real music files up to downloaders. That's illegal entrapment if the files are real music files. Its not a crime if the files are NOT real music files.
Using TOR or some other anonymous masking technology would make this RIAA technique of harassment impossible. When this doesn't work the RIAA will start paying ISP's to spy on its customers. Get ready to be aggravated yet again.
The MPAA (movie industry) is looking at the RIAA efforts with interest for sure. They have much deeper pockets and are losing more than the music industry.
Users running home servers need to think long and hard about what sorts of entertainment program material to allow to be downloaded even by family members through Internet connections.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/riaa-v-people-turns-lawsuits-3-strikes
Essentially the RIAA wants the ISPs to send an email (presumably) to their customers accusing them of file sharing music files. The French legislature evidently totally caved in to the RIAA. User blacklisting is possible there.
First off how do they identify the user or his ISP? The presumption has to be that the RIAA is spending a lot of time downloading music files from P2P systems and doing reverse DNS lookups. Doesn't that sound exactly like the very thing they are trying to stop? Does the musician get a payment each time the RIAA downloads a music file? Of course not.
I would hope that the RIAA is keeping VERY accurate time and date stamps on the downloads because nobody is going to know if Suzy is doing the music serving or her daddy is, since they are both on the same DSL connection.
On the other side of the connection the "downloader" gets away free unless the RIAA is actually breaking the law and serving real music files up to downloaders. That's illegal entrapment if the files are real music files. Its not a crime if the files are NOT real music files.
Using TOR or some other anonymous masking technology would make this RIAA technique of harassment impossible. When this doesn't work the RIAA will start paying ISP's to spy on its customers. Get ready to be aggravated yet again.
The MPAA (movie industry) is looking at the RIAA efforts with interest for sure. They have much deeper pockets and are losing more than the music industry.
Users running home servers need to think long and hard about what sorts of entertainment program material to allow to be downloaded even by family members through Internet connections.
Saturday 27 December 2008, 2:41 PM
P3 Xubuntu
I've been running Xubuntu 8.1 on a 700 Mhz P3 COMPAQ ENPRO computer with 512 MB of RAM. This system originally had Windows 2000 on it and it ran fairly well if a little slow. I've tried Debian 4.0 on it and wasn't really impressed. With an earlier version of Ubuntu it was a little more lively. Xubuntu and a P3 is a good combination, especially with the xfce desktop. This system has a 20 GB HDD and a CDRW drive. The OS installation began as a Live CDROM install. In this system a DVD player/writer would not be a happy choice. I have used it for light-duty tasks that do not require much CPU cycle time.
Overall the desktop is responsive. The usual desktop applications work fairly well. There are 2 default desktops compared to the typical 4 in other Linux distributions. It can be set for 4 if desired but performance might suffer on older or slower CPUs. The admin tools typically found on Ubuntu and Debian Gnome desktops are installed.
There is a render issue with the desktop and it might be a compatibility issue with the X driver. There are a number of fonts when using Open Office that just do not look very good on the screen. Display resolution of the Intel chip-set as well might be at fault since 1024 x 768 seems to look the best but the funky fonts still do not render well. Web pages seem to come out looking as expected. I have run Xubuntu at work in VMWare Workstation and it looks and works well so the issue might be the driver.
OpenOffice 2.4 is one of the applications I use often. The only thing noticeably odd is that a lot of contractions always seem to come up tagged as errors. I typically use OO to write my blogs before uploading them. If there is a setting I'm missing I haven't found it yet. I suspect a dictionary issue.
Firefox 3.0.5 came as an update to the version on the distribution. I installed a number of plug-ins and extensions and everything seems to run error free even though the CPU is fairly slow. In many ways this system is much like the new Intel Atom systems at least in feature set and speed. So Xubuntu might be a OS solution for the Atom netbooks.
The version of Synaptic and apt work very well. I was able to remove the packages that it seems every Linux system configuration guru thinks everybody wants. For instance, Bluetooth and Bit Torrent are NOT packages I want on any computer, Linux, BSD or Windows. They removed easily.
The applications button and sub-menus of the xfce desktop is more intelligently laid out compared to the same in a Debian Gnome desktop.
On this P3, Xubuntu is going to stay the OS of choice.
Overall the desktop is responsive. The usual desktop applications work fairly well. There are 2 default desktops compared to the typical 4 in other Linux distributions. It can be set for 4 if desired but performance might suffer on older or slower CPUs. The admin tools typically found on Ubuntu and Debian Gnome desktops are installed.
There is a render issue with the desktop and it might be a compatibility issue with the X driver. There are a number of fonts when using Open Office that just do not look very good on the screen. Display resolution of the Intel chip-set as well might be at fault since 1024 x 768 seems to look the best but the funky fonts still do not render well. Web pages seem to come out looking as expected. I have run Xubuntu at work in VMWare Workstation and it looks and works well so the issue might be the driver.
OpenOffice 2.4 is one of the applications I use often. The only thing noticeably odd is that a lot of contractions always seem to come up tagged as errors. I typically use OO to write my blogs before uploading them. If there is a setting I'm missing I haven't found it yet. I suspect a dictionary issue.
Firefox 3.0.5 came as an update to the version on the distribution. I installed a number of plug-ins and extensions and everything seems to run error free even though the CPU is fairly slow. In many ways this system is much like the new Intel Atom systems at least in feature set and speed. So Xubuntu might be a OS solution for the Atom netbooks.
The version of Synaptic and apt work very well. I was able to remove the packages that it seems every Linux system configuration guru thinks everybody wants. For instance, Bluetooth and Bit Torrent are NOT packages I want on any computer, Linux, BSD or Windows. They removed easily.
The applications button and sub-menus of the xfce desktop is more intelligently laid out compared to the same in a Debian Gnome desktop.
On this P3, Xubuntu is going to stay the OS of choice.
Friday 26 December 2008, 3:31 PM
Privacy Abuse by Technology
The RIAA using Internet Service Providers to hunt down IP "pirates" are going to do it without search warrants. There is no way for the RIAA or any other copyright owner to know when piracy is going on without subverting the privacy of the ISP customer. Without knowing what data is being transmitted up and down the ISP connection, the RIAA, or the Motion Picture Academy or any other corporate entity will not be able to get a search warrant in the first place. College students have already been subjected to this sort of scrutiny by their network provider, usually their own college. If the RIAA manages to subvert enough ISPs, they can "own" all the file-swapping users on the Internet simply because they will have all the ISPs in their pocket.
Internet service providers the RIAA subverts will issue new privacy policies their users will have to click-through. There will be a paragraph or two that will surrender the user's rights to have his data connections kept private. With those paragraphs the ISP will be able to monitor your business without a wiretap warrant. If your ISP is not very profitable or has been having financial problems, a little monetary inducement paid to the ISP will aid the RIAA to get what they want. The ISP becomes the paid stooge of the RIAA.
Obviously the lowest level of monitoring will simply be looking for file titles for songs and movies. You can do that with a file browser. The RIAA needs to induce the ISP to do the filename searches at the very least to identify potential pirates. Everybody's digital traffic gets looked at in this stage of the search. The ISP will clone the data stream and capture it onto a separate system to analyze the traffic off-line looking for file titles.
Traffic analysis will identify file-swapping servers. Examining TCP protocol behavior will reveal Bit-torrent servers and clients. Doing a DNS lookup of the remote connected IP address reveals whether the address is a registered website. If its not, the ISP has just identified another potential pirate. There will be an immediate ID of both parties if the ISP owns both ends of the IP connection. Size of the files reveals potential music or movie thefts. Examining the embedded file header reveals the type of file especially in Windows/DOS file formats.
Assuming that the ISP reports its suspicions to the RIAA, potentially a match can be made to the IP address with another ISP's report for the remote connection. All it takes is a computer program running match checks. Report the IP address with a date and time stamp and the ISP can spit out the user identity and address based on their logon files.
The next mechanism the ISP will use is signature analysis, the same way anti-virus software works. By looking for a string of characters in the traffic passing through the user connections to the ISP, pirates will be identified. The "virus signature" will be some digital watermark embedded in the music or movie file. This will catch the idiots that didn't re-sample the music or movie file and uploaded it unaltered from the CD or DVD.
Users storing data files in on-line storage space is another opportunity for the ISP to "rat-out" its customers. Data mining is a lot easier when the data is not moving around. Having the data stored on a hard drive somewhere within the ISP's control allows detailed string searching to go on during "quiet" time for the ISP. In fact, it is an excellent way for catching stupid pirates. This is how Suzy the 14 year old fictional pirate in a previous blog gets caught. Offer free "in-the-cloud" storage space to your users and then run your search engines on the files stored there. Everything gets time and date stamped when the file is stored, built-in evidence logging!
With the economy in the tank and new user accounts likely to plateau, the ISPs are going to be looking for opportunities to make a little more cash or to buy new equipment upgrades. Getting "blood money" from the RIAA or the movie industry might be one way for them to fluff up their bottom line. Don't expect much help from the courts either. The precedent has already been set. Microsoft's EULA has been successfully defended and every software or service user agreements since then allows for a "click-through" sealing the contract.
It will take a number of lost court cases to set enough precedents to force the RIAA and similar ilk to disconnect from the ISPs meanwhile individual rights have been eroded again. Expect to see this soon if it hasn't already happened.
---added note
I just had a deja-WTF moment. Back on November 29th I ranted right here about Cloud computing opening the doors for the "a------ in Hollywood to attach themselves like remoras to the ISPs." Its happened already, just a few days ago! I have no idea if I picked it up from what I was reading on websites or what. If I was paranoid, I'd think they're reading my email already. That's the deja-WTF part of it.
Its scary when you realize that you can think just like people you
despise. I do not have a problem with copyrighted material being protected. I have a problem with the methods the copyright owners use to trample all over the rights of people who are NOT infringing their copyright. They have no business looking through my email, my files or my web browsing.
Internet service providers the RIAA subverts will issue new privacy policies their users will have to click-through. There will be a paragraph or two that will surrender the user's rights to have his data connections kept private. With those paragraphs the ISP will be able to monitor your business without a wiretap warrant. If your ISP is not very profitable or has been having financial problems, a little monetary inducement paid to the ISP will aid the RIAA to get what they want. The ISP becomes the paid stooge of the RIAA.
Obviously the lowest level of monitoring will simply be looking for file titles for songs and movies. You can do that with a file browser. The RIAA needs to induce the ISP to do the filename searches at the very least to identify potential pirates. Everybody's digital traffic gets looked at in this stage of the search. The ISP will clone the data stream and capture it onto a separate system to analyze the traffic off-line looking for file titles.
Traffic analysis will identify file-swapping servers. Examining TCP protocol behavior will reveal Bit-torrent servers and clients. Doing a DNS lookup of the remote connected IP address reveals whether the address is a registered website. If its not, the ISP has just identified another potential pirate. There will be an immediate ID of both parties if the ISP owns both ends of the IP connection. Size of the files reveals potential music or movie thefts. Examining the embedded file header reveals the type of file especially in Windows/DOS file formats.
Assuming that the ISP reports its suspicions to the RIAA, potentially a match can be made to the IP address with another ISP's report for the remote connection. All it takes is a computer program running match checks. Report the IP address with a date and time stamp and the ISP can spit out the user identity and address based on their logon files.
The next mechanism the ISP will use is signature analysis, the same way anti-virus software works. By looking for a string of characters in the traffic passing through the user connections to the ISP, pirates will be identified. The "virus signature" will be some digital watermark embedded in the music or movie file. This will catch the idiots that didn't re-sample the music or movie file and uploaded it unaltered from the CD or DVD.
Users storing data files in on-line storage space is another opportunity for the ISP to "rat-out" its customers. Data mining is a lot easier when the data is not moving around. Having the data stored on a hard drive somewhere within the ISP's control allows detailed string searching to go on during "quiet" time for the ISP. In fact, it is an excellent way for catching stupid pirates. This is how Suzy the 14 year old fictional pirate in a previous blog gets caught. Offer free "in-the-cloud" storage space to your users and then run your search engines on the files stored there. Everything gets time and date stamped when the file is stored, built-in evidence logging!
With the economy in the tank and new user accounts likely to plateau, the ISPs are going to be looking for opportunities to make a little more cash or to buy new equipment upgrades. Getting "blood money" from the RIAA or the movie industry might be one way for them to fluff up their bottom line. Don't expect much help from the courts either. The precedent has already been set. Microsoft's EULA has been successfully defended and every software or service user agreements since then allows for a "click-through" sealing the contract.
It will take a number of lost court cases to set enough precedents to force the RIAA and similar ilk to disconnect from the ISPs meanwhile individual rights have been eroded again. Expect to see this soon if it hasn't already happened.
---added note
I just had a deja-WTF moment. Back on November 29th I ranted right here about Cloud computing opening the doors for the "a------ in Hollywood to attach themselves like remoras to the ISPs." Its happened already, just a few days ago! I have no idea if I picked it up from what I was reading on websites or what. If I was paranoid, I'd think they're reading my email already. That's the deja-WTF part of it.
Its scary when you realize that you can think just like people you
despise. I do not have a problem with copyrighted material being protected. I have a problem with the methods the copyright owners use to trample all over the rights of people who are NOT infringing their copyright. They have no business looking through my email, my files or my web browsing.
Monday 22 December 2008, 7:29 PM
RIAA changes tactics
According to the Wall Street Journal RIAA is getting cozy with ISPs.
Check this out:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122966038836021137.html
Cloud computing is going to be somewhat affected by this as well.
Check this out:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122966038836021137.html
Cloud computing is going to be somewhat affected by this as well.
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