DSL modems are so '90s
Andreas Gustafsson doesn't like the cost of DSL modems. So he's come up with a way to stream an incoming DSL connection through his PC's audio card:
The acronym AuDSL stands for Audio Digital Subscriber Line. The idea is to replace traditional, expensive leased line modems with software modems running on PCs, connecting the leased line to an ordinary PC sound card. This makes it possible to construct a complete leased line internet gateway entirely from inexpensive commodity PC hardware.
The first AuDSL prototype installation is now successfully running at a speed of 96 kilobits per second, full duplex, over several kilometers of two-wire copper leased line.
You can download the software, which works, more or less, on Unix systems.
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Via Memepool
Bye-bye Netscape
Grizzled Web veterans remember the days of Mosaic and Cello, when being able to see a photo within a browser window was considered a big innovation. Then along came Netscape and the world changed forever.
Now, AOL Time Warner is throwing in the towel, saying it will only use Netscape technology to power other services. Given Internet Explorer's domination of the market, it only makes sense, but, still, it's kind of sad. Opera, anyone?
06/06/01
Get ready to upgrade those mail servers
AOL honcho Ted Leonsis gave a keynote speech yesteday at the Internet Content West show in Los Angeles. And what he had to say might not be good news if managing mail servers is part of your job:
E-mail, I believe, will become a distribution point for entertainment
In other words, it won't just be clueless users clogging up your servers with multi-megabyte Christmas animations anymore - real companies will be doing it, too.
Leonsis also said AOL's recent price hike shows the company is doing well - "we were able to raise prices - that's a good sign." He added that AOL surveys show that 75% of its users expect that someday soon, more people will know their e-mail addresses than their phone numbers. And as an example of how out of whack new media used to be, he said he personally spent less buying an NHL team, 45% of an NBA, the MCI Arena in Washington and the Washington Ticketmaster franchise than AOL spent buying ICQ, an instant-messaging company with no revenue and no real business plan.
The anti-.Net
No, you shouldn't be surprised that a bunch of Microsoft competitors (from Sun to Oracle to Sybase, along with help from travel-agency groups) have set up a consortium to bash Microsoft. And no, you shouldn't be surprised to learn that the group is now fighting Microsoft's .Net and Hailstorm proposals as a "clear and present danger" (hmm, isn't that usually the phrase that the president uses to send in the troops against the Colombian drug lords?).
The Project to Promote Competition and Innovation in the Digital Age, started in 1998 says it wants to "protect competition and consumer choice in the electronic marketplace:"
The clear and present danger is that Microsoft's strategy of bolting its Internet-related services to its Windows, Office and browser monopolies will lead to a monopoly in Internet services. Microsoft will then be in the position of supplanting the Internet as we know it today with an Internet proprietary to Microsoft.
Via CamWorld
The real reason to buy a Palm
There I was yesterday, waiting for them to open the door of the plane in Denver so I could hurry up and wait for a plane to Los Angeles (and Internet Content West). The guy in front of me took out his Palm and held it sideways up near his face. Huh? Then he started combing his hair with his fingers. Ah! He was using the Palm as a mirror. Who knew it was that versatile a device?
Speaking of Denver, the airport there has a couple of cool features. One is that all the restrooms double as tornado shelters. The other consists of all the free Internet-access kiosks. Give an e-mail address, watch some ads, and you're in.
Unfortunately, the concept is better than the execution, largely because the keyboards are, well, let's be charitable and say they could be better. Often, nothing happens when you hit a key. Or alternatively, you get three letters when you hit a key just once. Plus, the whole keyboard is way smaller than normal and has an odd layout (where's the backspace key?). I suppose I would be showing my age by complaining about how telnet was disabled (for the three of us left who still use terminal-based mail programs like elm instead of, say, Hotmail).
Anatomy of a DDoS attack
Steve Gibson makes a tempting target for script kiddies. After all, he's the guy who came up with ShieldsUp, a free service that can tell you whether your PC is open to attack over the 'Net.
Last month, somebody succeeded in knocking his site off the Web through a distributed denial-of-service attack. Gibson's posted a detailed analyis of the attack and how he finally got the site back up:
In two minutes we applied "brute force" filters to the Verio router, shutting down all UDP and ICMP traffic ... and GRC.COM instantly popped back onto the Internet.
He's also posted An Open Letter to the Internet's Hackers that admits they can take his site down whenever they want and pleading with them to claim victory and leave him alone.
I know that you can easily knock me off. That's not even a question. But only if I'm here can I explain that to the rest of the planet.
Thank you for your consideration . . . and for your charity.
Via Robot Wisdom.
Pain is good
A company that makes peripherals for video game consoles is working on a controller that would send electrical shocks into your arms if you start losing a multi-player game. Space.com reports:
A new gaming controller being developed by Mad Catz might add a twist to the ultimate weapon that has existed in every mano-a-mano video joust since Pong: wresting the controls out one's opponent's hands. The technology, called Bioforce, zaps players through electrodes on their skin when they've been hit in a combat game. It doesn't hurt, but at the highest setting a user's muscles will start to twitch. The first applications are expected to come through personal combat games.
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Why should iMac owners have all the eye candy?; Luxo Redux; So you think your job is bad; Google as a DNS replacement? Not so fast; Nokia exec cites stock plunge in speeding-fine appeal; The tragedy of the .coms; The Google parlor game; Some people *like* Steve the Dell Guy; Ban all Microsoft attachments?
Dot-com to bare all; iMac Dance; Wendy's remembers Dave; Search engine bites the dust; Wendy's Web site ignores Dave's death; Geek comic strip; Youngest security expert ever; Spam poetry; Confessions of a hacker; Breathless Apple; Dave Barry does Windows XP.
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This space intentionally left blank (vacation).
The most useless software ever; Is Microsoft getting ready to squash PC vendors?; Excite@Home: The Watergate of the New Economy?; No more 3Com Park. Is CMGI Field next?; Are you an e-bore?; This site'll have you coming and going; Entertainment Weekly's loss of innocence; Ensign Crusher as Entertainer of the Year; Oh, for the old days.
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Bill Gates: Father of open source; Verizon exec: Monopoly is good; Weird molecule names; E-mail: too much of a good thing?; A cluster of one; More woes for dot-bombers; Spam as weapon in the war on crime; Just when you think the Web can't get any better; Just when you think the Web can't get any worse; More proof I shouldn't be a wiseass; Using your Web logs to ID hacker attacks; Help save the FAQs; Who do you trust, baby?; Powerpuff Girls powerless against virus; Big IP pipe between US, Europe.
The profit of turning thugs into programmers; Work Name Generator; A programmer's lament; The world's best ATM; Are anti-spammers killing people?; Web services and storage; Get your Aerons here; Perl for the XXI-imum century; Microsoft's blocking of non-IE browsers.
Government info taken off the Web since 9/11; Beware hackers who talk too much; A contest you can enter sitting down; Now don't try this in the office; Bob Patterson must die; Finally, a useful 404 page; Tech calls from hell; Teletubbies XP; More XP fun; Anthrax and e-mail; Larry's ID card; World's longest gum-wrapper chain.
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Larry and Scott's dueling ID cards; Cringely: Broadband is dead; The dangers of Photoshop; The dangers of copy protection; Microsoft mining whois for telephone solicitations?; How to REALLY throw a LAN party; Good fences don't make good 'Net neighbors; How Google adapted to 9/11 news; Web services as over-hyped hooey; Why shoe guys shouldn't do open source; Online air hockey.
AT&T waives 9/11 wireless charges for some; Shifting gears; Craig Burton on the Novell/Microsoft suit; In search of the post-PC interface; Vibrating PDAs and wearable phones; Gary Condit's Web site; No, that isn't a real photo of a WTC tourist; How to throw a LAN party; How sucky is your intranet?
For grizzled 'Net veterans; UK ISP forced to pull deceptive ads; Pretty Good encryption controversy; Are you as smart as Miss America?; Really securing your computer; Still lots of insecure IIS servers; Kids, don't try this at home; Anthrax Kills; Larry's national database; Nimda hysteria?
Attack and post-attack items.
999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall; Finally, a wind-up cell phone; Enough with the ringing!; The VoIP calculator; 802.11b insecurity; Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf explains IOS DHCP; Is ENUM the mark of the devil?; AOL gives user permanent demerit; The Ballmer music video; Cleveland news flash: Y2K was last year.
Re-routing around censorship; Us vs. them in scripting; The boss button; Fighting off the hackers for fun; Peer computing as a weapon of war; Unix poetry; The Windows Fatal Exception Decoder; New Fusion widget: Getting rid of spyware; The sound of 200 cell phones going off at once; Taleban Web site hacked; Hey, sysadmin, remember Sircam?
On the importance of flame wars; Bill Gates sees dead people?; A markup language for grunts and groans; Is Microsoft leaking those Ballmer dance videos?; Good Samaritan not so good?; Steve Ballmer works up a sweat; Open-source wireless cracking; When technology goes too far; Another dumb computer arrest?; Is Cisco Communist?
Moron marketers threaten 'Net users; Finding free wireless access; Complete wastes of time; OS holy war flares in North Carolina; Are programmers weird?; Somebody actually buys an X10 camera; We're number, uh, two!; Those after-hours computer discussions; An entire city running on Linux; Distributed spam fighter under development; Could a Warhol virus infect the entire 'Net in 15 minutes?; Tell AOL what to do with its CDs.
Fusion shatters a myth; Bridging .Net and Java?; AT&T Broadband cuts off non-IIS servers to fight Code Red; Bluetoothless; Tennessee town bites into Apple; And you thought TI-99/4A fans were over the edge; Biometrics coming to your local supermarket; Steve Ballmer a-hootin' and a-hollerin'; Speaking of Web images; Just how far PC prices have fallen; Does Starbucks' CEO get his own wireless strategy?
Crackers getting more sophisticated; Sex and Microsoft Office; The wonders of science, part MXXII; Finally, a useful virus; A shocking game controller; Big Ball of Mud school of programming; Two vitally important new resources; Adobe: Ooops; Eudora Welty, dead at 92; Centralizing Unix administration in Perl; Spellchecking the entire Web.
Worm turns on Microsoft Web servers; The day the ISP died; Cell-phone users have no shame; Even Internet consultants can screw up the 'Net; Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers; The ultimate cup of coffee; The solar-powered ISP; Everhost; Internet VCer: Oops; The Lego Palm and the pink fuzzy laptop; The Microsoft-English dictionary; Putting a loved one in the home.
Saving those all important VoIP calls; This site is a bright idea; Could wireless end messy divorces?; How much will that software really cost you?; Ghosts of failed dot-coms; The spy's guide to securing your Cisco routers; Oprah for Internet czarina?; What's Microsoft doing at an open-source conference?; Like a big pizza pi; Cyber-bullies; Better check your phone bill; Have some birthday pi.
How HP wastes energy to save energy; New toy for the bored and lonely; Weird programming languages; When sponsors are speakers; The case of the disturbing backwards monitor; Congress to ICANN: Drop dead; Yet another video game made into a movie; Smile, you're on Candid (Police) Camera; High-speed hotels; Network Solutions blocking name transfers?
One of the fathers of Usenet dead at 45; Are you ready for insta-spam?; Diary of a site collapse; Skirting the issue; Assimiliating the Web; Trolling for help; Software wars; Rating the rater; True tales from the help desk; How about spam embedded in your mail?
Unix diapers; A beautiful waste of time; A P2P taxonomy; This page is too stupid; Homeless dot-commer bogus?; Whee, Linux is fun!; Blue Screens everywhere; Forget viruses: This fungus eats CDs; Microsoft revises Smart Tags a bit; Homeless dot-commers.
Slashdot crashes the NSA; They may be Smart Tags, but they're not Original Tags; What open source and California wines have in common; Jakob Nielsen no tyro; How to make Windows 2000 really, really secure; Where the Internet begins; A useful computer bug; The clothes make the geek; The end of the Internet; Why PDF bites; Novel use of a wireless phone; Hidden info; When Web sites tell too much.
DSL modems are so '90s; Bye-bye Netscape; Get ready to upgrade those mail servers; The anti-.Net; The real reason to buy a Palm; Anatomy of a DDoS attack; Pain is good.
