“Google will join with five other companies to invest in a 10,000 km trans-Pacific submarine cable to carry data to and from Asia.”

Google said it would join with five other telecom companies — Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI, Pacnet, and SingTel — to invest $300 million in the construction of a 10,000 km submarine cable.

The high-speed fiber optic trans-Pacific cable, called Unity, will have a capacity of up to 7.68 Tbps and will run between the United States and Japan, about 6,200 miles. It is planned to accommodate demand for trans-Pacific bandwidth, which has grown at a rate of 63.7% annually between 2002 and 2007 and is expected to double biannually from 2008 through 2013, according to TeleGeography, a telecommunications consultancy.

… What Google gets is bandwidth at cost, said Stephan Beckert, director of research for TeleGeography, in an e-mail. Google, along with Comcast, is one of the few companies that have opted to purchase and light long-haul dark fiber, he said. It is the first non-telecom company to take an active role in submarine cable ownership.

- Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek: Link.

More details from SingTel

Using state-of-the-art Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology, it will support up to 960 Gbits per second per fibre-optic pair with a maximum of eight fibre pairs. By having a higher fibre count, it is able to offer more capacity at lower unit costs. Unity will have a potential design capacity of 7.68 Tbits per second, making it one of the highest capacity cables of its kind. This data rate is equivalent to more than seven million Internet users simultaneously having real-time access to a 1 Mb file.

NEC Corporation and Tyco Telecommunications have been jointly awarded the contract to implement this project.

- SingTel press release: Link.

“In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.”

Kevin Kelly has posted some interesting thoughts about technology and wealth in the twenty-first century:

The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports — that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.

Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?

I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

- Kevin Kelly, Edge: Link.

Via Slashdot: What Makes Something “Better Than Free”?

Go read the entire essay. But first, I’ll spill the beans:

(more…)

“Writing local Web applications can be quick, easy, and efficient for solving specific Intranet problems. Learn why a Web browser is sometimes a better interface than a GUI application … ”
Develop Web Applications for Local Use

Excerpts from SlashDot posts –

Proof-of-concept & fast-prototyping
I use Perl/CGI/Apache2/MySQL for proof-of-concept/fast-prototyping–which usually takes one to two days (or weeks). Once the functionality, testing, and etc. is done, I send the specifications and the URL to another department. Then I wait for one to two months for them to come back with a Windows .NET program (usually written in C# or VB) using MS SQL Server. During that time my co-workers continue to use my web-based stuff. (BTW, this is in a corporate environment with annual revenues of about four billion dollars and 5,000 employees.)
PatPending

---

SWILL: Simple Web Interface Link Library
If you plan to expose your application’s GUI through a web browser, have a look at SWILL, the Simple Web Interface Link Library. With a couple of function calls you can add a web front-end to any C/C++ application. I’ve used it for adding a front end to the CScout [spinellis.gr] source code analyzer and refactoring browser, and for implementing a wizard-like front-end for a stochastic production line optimization toolkit; I also supervised a student who worked on a SWILL-based gdb front end (unfortunatelly he didn’t finish it).

SWILL is great for adding an interface to legacy code, because its impact on the application can be minimal. I wouldn’t recommend its use if your GUI requirements are above what can be implemented in a dozen web pages.
Diomidis Spinellis

---

Those who fail to understand GUI apps..
Are doomed to reinvent them, poorly, in a web browser.
The premise of the article is that a local application written to target a local server with web browser client is better, but then goes on to say essentially ‘ok, here are all the pain in the ass things to overcome when trying to scale it down to a single user compared to typical web server environments’. In his article, he is trading one perceived pain in the ass set of things for another. The unstated stuff is you are requiring the unmentioned user to first have a webserver and CGI environment set up correctly before even beginning to run your app (since the aim is to be standalone on a box, the user’s system is the server). He mentions some shortcuts you can take by assuming some network security things and no DB, but in the end the shortcuts are still more work than simple GUI apps for the equivalent task.
Junta

---

You web developers…
Genuine bona fide web developer, right over here, with a bachelor’s in theoretical computer science.

The fact of the matter is that web applications are a pretty good idea if what you’re trying to do is simple enough that a browser makes sense as a GUI, or is likely to change often enough that you need to constantly update it. And if you’ve got something where users edit information that has to be publicly available right away (read: CMS systems, calendars, various news sites *cough*slashdot*coughcough*), your publishing is just about as simple as it possibly could be.
mstahl

---

When the web apps are taking over …
A lot of people are replacing client-server apps with browser based apps, with zero install hassles - which this particular example doesn’t really have. But learning to build html apps in CGI mode is easier than re-learning event loops for GTK land (even in perl).

Of course, debugging in-browser apps is getting easier with firebug [getfirebug.com] and other developer oriented firefox bits. Now, whether the app is built using perl-CGI, mod_perl, php, ruby on rails, even servlets doesn’t matter - the UI can actually work very well. For instance my sudoku [dotgnu.info], in fact looks better in HTML than if I (let me repeat, if *I*) had done it with GTK or MFC.
Gopal.V

---

Ugh
I’ve had to support a lot of web-apps, and I can say a web browser is *never* a better interface than a GUI application.

If they meet the following restrictions, they *might* be considered equal:

1) Does not use Java.
2) Works on multiple browser, including future versions of IE which may have more strict security settings.
3) Does not require any client-side settings to work. (For instance, lowering security settings, turning off the pop-up blocker, etc.)

But every web-app I’ve ever had to maintain in a corporate environment violated every one of these rules. And I’m talking about big companies making these web-apps, like IBM and Siemens.
Blakey Rat

---

GUI switch to browser: success story
(Last Journal: Saturday January 20, @12:46PM)
You are exactly right. When other business competitors (to us) were developing elaborate GUI based alternatives to our browser portal, our clients (and theirs) migrated to our platform instead. Which Industry? The Insurance companies - Progressive, Infinity, State Farm, etc. It was a perfect match for all their agents distributed across the nation (and who weren’t even located on those companies premises). For heavy form processing, the browser already provided the interface - the backend delivery system we developed was a snap. And this was over a decade ago, long before distribution across the internet - just using their intranets. The biggest bonus from this GUI switch to browser? Maintenance - by far. Feature changes (like menu arrangements or additions) a close second.
skoaldipper

---

JavaScript Event Problems
I think major compatibility issues always have to do with the very basic ways the different browsers handle javascript and event. A GREAT example is if you ever have to write somecode for when a page unloads. It’ll work fine in IE, Safari, and Firefox, but good luck getting it to work on Opera. I spent hours trying to figure out why onunload didn’t work on Opera… apparently it’s a “feature!”

Anyway, whenever I’ve had problems with script compatibility it’s ALWAYS been with event hooks, and with very basic interpretation differences in javascript between browsers. And let me tell you, getting these scripts to work is a LOT more than 5 minutes per browsers. Sometimes you’ll need to write an extra 200 lines of script just to get the same feature in all browsers.
Bozzio

---

“Audio ‘fingerprint’ for content-relevant ads”
The Register reports:

The first thing that came out of our mouths when we heard that Google is working on a system that listens to what’s on your TV playing in the background, and then serves you relevant adverts, was “that’s cool, but dangerous”.

… The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that’s adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject.

… Google says that its fingerprinting technology makes it impossible for the company (or anyone else) to eavesdrop on other sounds in the room, such as personal conversations, because the conversion to a fingerprint is made on the PC, and a fingerprint can’t be reversed, as it’s only an identity.

But we should think that “spyware” might take on an extra meaning if someone less scrupulous decided on a similar piece of software.

[The Register: Link]

Thanks, Geoff.

Boing Boing reports:

Google has re-lauched Writely, the online word-processor they recently bought, in public beta. Writely does everything Word does, for free — and saves its output as PDFs and even RSS feeds (subscribe to a word-processor doc!). It features collaborative editing — multiple editors on the same doc at once — and can be used as the editor for writing your blog, saving out to a post instead of a file on your machine. This is a great-looking program for people who have always-on Internet, and for so long as you don’t worry about the NSA demanding that Google turn over its Writely files as part of some “security” procedure.

[Boing Boing: Link]

Also via Slashdot.

Cool!

Darknet: anonymous data transfer –

Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a “darknet”. The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

“There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet,” says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. “If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check. The right to exchange information in private is fundamental to the democratic society. Without a safe and convenient way of accessing the Internet anonymously, this right is rendered null and void.”

File sharing of music, films, and other forms of culture is where the surveillance of Internet addresses has attracted the most attention, largely because the entertainment industry has been so aggressive in suing Internet users for copyright infringement, suing college students and single mothers alike without concern.

“But there are much more fundamental values at stake here than copyright,” Rickard Falkvinge says. “The new technology has brought society to a crossroads. The only way to enforce today’s unbalanced copyright laws is to monitor all private communications over the Internet. Today’s copyright regime cannot coexist with an open society that guarantees the right to private communication.”

“Until we have changed the laws to ensure that citizens’ right to privacy is respected, we have a moral obligation to protect the citizens from the effects of the current routine surveillance,” Falkvinge continues. “This is our technical means to do just that.”

The service is provided by the Swedish high-tech company Relakks, which offers a neutral IP on top of your existing ISP service through a strongly encrypted VPN connection. Basically, this gives users the advantage of a Swedish IP address from anywhere in the world.

The cost of the service is 5 euros per month, and it is available now at www.relakks.com. A portion of the subscription fees will go towards the Pirate Party’s work in changing the copyright and privacy laws and making the service obsolete.

[Pirate Party: Link]

Via SlashDot.

See also

• Pirate Party
• Pirate Bay’s Backstory via Boing Boing

.

“Dan Kaminsky, DNS hacker and rootkit infection sleuth, has devised a test for checking to see if your Internet connection is “neutral” — that is, whether your connection is being filtered, throttled, slowed down, or monkeyed with secretly by your ISP:”

Kaminsky calls his technique “TCP-based active probing for faults.” He says that the software he’s developing will be similar to the Traceroute Internet utility that is used to track what path Internet traffic takes as it hops between two machines on different ends of the network.

But unlike Traceroute, Kaminsky’s software will be able to make traffic appear as if it is coming from a particular carrier or is being used for a certain type of application, like VoIP. It will also be able to identify where the traffic is being dropped and could ultimately be used to finger service providers that are treating some network traffic as second-class.

[Link]

Via Boing Boing

David Kirkpatrick, Fortune senior editor: “The people who want to rip you off are very polite with each other when they’re buying and selling credit card numbers.”

The Internet economy, as we journalists like to write, has a lot to do with sharing. And commerce, at sites like eBay, is based largely on trust. But until recently I didn’t realize that these same principles govern online dealmaking among criminals.

My naiveté was alleviated with an eye-popping tour of underground Web sites, conducted by two executives from RSA Cyota, an online security firm that works for banks like Barclays, Citibank, Washington Mutual. They showed me a variety of sites frequented by people who steal and trade credit card numbers and then use them to steal money.

This infrastructure for online crime is far more multi-layered and sophisticated than I ever imagined.

Says Marc Gaffan, a marketer at RSA: “There’s an organized industry out there with defined roles and specialties. There are means of communications, rules of engagement, and even ethics. It’s a whole value chain of facilitating fraud, and only the last steps of the chain are actually dedicated to translating activity into money.”
[Link]

via SlashDot

Previously: AT&T Forwards ALL Internet Traffic Into NSA Says EFF - secret NSA data-closets tap everything, or damned near, according to testimony by retired ATT engineer.

Now, you didn’t really think the Power would let a lawsuit challenge National Security …? Ryan Singel and Kevin Poulsen report:

The federal government intends to invoke the rarely used “State Secrets Privilege” — the legal equivalent of a nuclear bomb — in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s class action lawsuit against AT&T that alleges the telecom collaborated with the government’s secret spying on American citizens.

The State Secrets Privilege is a vestige from English common law that lets the executive branch step into a civil lawsuit and have it dismissed if the case might reveal information that puts national security at risk.

Today’s assertion severely darkens the prospects of the EFF’s lawsuit, which the organization had hoped would shine light on the extent of the Bush Administration’s admitted warrantless spying on Americans.

The government is not admitting, however, that AT&T aided the National Security Agency in spying on American’s phone calls and internet communications.
[Link]

See also full filing (pdf)
Via boingboing

Newfangled spam zombies read your past email, imitate your style:

When a computer is turned into a spam zombie, it will first be mined of its address book, mail client configuration, and mail archives. Then the spam program will use Natural Language Processing techniques to send spam messages to the victim’s contacts that look a lot like messages that the user has previously sent.
[SlashDot]

Such are the monsters of our cleverness. Beware, Daedalus!

Now we’re getting somewhere —

Cabspotting traces San Francisco’s taxi cabs as they travel throughout the Bay Area. The patterns traced by each cab create a living and always-changing map of city life. This map hints at economic, social, and cultural trends that are otherwise invisible. The Exploratorium has invited artists and researchers to use this information to reveal these “Invisible Dynamics.”

The core of this project is the Cab Tracker. The Tracker averages the last four hours of cab routes into a ghostly image, and then draws the routes of ten in-progress cab rides over it.

The Time Lapse area of the project reveals time-varying patterns such as rush hour, traffic jams, holidays and unusual events. New projects are produced by the Exploratorium’s visiting artists and also created by the larger Cabspotting community.

Via boingboing

Posted at LinuxElectrons -

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on [April 5, 2006] filed the legal briefs and evidence supporting its motion for a preliminary injunction in its class-action lawsuit against AT&T. After asking EFF to hold back the documents so that it could review them, the Department of Justice consented to EFF’s filing them under seal — a well-established procedure that prohibits public access and permits only the judge and the litigants to see the evidence. While not a party to the case, the government was concerned that even this procedure would not provide sufficient security and has represented to the Court that it is “presently considering whether and, if so, how it will participate in this case.”

“The evidence that we are filing supports our claim that AT&T is diverting Internet traffic into the hands of the NSA wholesale, in violation of federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “More than just threatening individuals’ privacy, AT&T’s apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans’ Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now.”

EFF’s evidence regarding AT&T’s dragnet surveillance of its networks includes a declaration by Mark Klein, a retired AT&T telecommunications technician, and several internal AT&T documents. This evidence was bolstered and explained by the expert opinion of J. Scott Marcus, who served as Senior Technical Advisor for Internet Technology to the Federal Communications Commission from July 2001 until July 2005.

The internal AT&T documents and portions of the supporting declarations have been submitted to the Court under a tentative seal, a procedure that allows AT&T five court days to explain to the Court why the information should be kept from the public.

Thanks, Geoff

Software firm Check Point wishes to acquire rival firm Sourcefire. The stakes: control of national security software. Feds nix deal. Game over? Not yet: Check Point’s move.

The Register reports:

Check Point Software has dropped its bid for US rival Sourcefire after objections from the FBI and Pentagon were heard by the Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investments [CFIUS].

The Committee has also overseen the recent rumpus surrounding the Dubai carve-up of P&O.

Federal agency objections to the security software tie-up centre on the implementation of Sourcefire’s anti-intrusion software ‘Snort’ by the Bureau and Department of Defense, AP reports. In private meetings between the panel and Check Point, FBI and Pentagon officials took exception to letting foreigners acquire the sensitive technology. If the $225m deal had gone ahead as announced back in October, Check Point would have got the rights to all patents and source code.

But wait, there’s more:

Check Point says the two companies will find ways round the roadblock. CEO Gil Shwed said: “We’ve decided to pursue alternative ways for Check Point and Sourcefire to partner in order to bring to market the most comprehensive security solutions.”

(more…)