Have Questions? 1-(888)-273-0833

If you deliver video, audio, tapes or CDs you need MMK Secure Stream right now.
MMK Secure Stream provides protection for media and can provide you with secure streaming points for live broadcasts and/or video or audio conferencing.

Click here for some possible business models.

Disney-Owned Label To Sell Full Jesse McCartney Album in MP3

Two months ago, Sony released the new Jessica Simpson single in MP3 through Yahoo! Music. This week, Variety (via PaidContent) reports that Disney-owned Hollywood Records will release Jesse McCartney's full album in MP3. It seems that some major record label execs may finally be coming to their senses:

'We're trying to be realistic,' said Ken Bunt, senior VP of marketing at Hollywood Records. 'Jesse's single is already online and we haven't put it out. Piracy happens regardless of what we do. So we're going to see how Jesse's album goes (as an MP3) and then decide on others going forward.'

Kudos to Yahoo! for making progress on this front, even if this is just a baby step in the right direction by the major record labels. DRM won't stop or even meaningfully slow 'Internet piracy.' And after years of pushing for improved compatibility with DRM formats, the record labels have witnessed more, not less, balkanization of music services and devices. If the record labels really care about making sure their customers can play music on the devices of their choice, the only solution that plays-for-sure is an open, unencrypted format like MP3.

(Cross-posted at DeepLinks)

RIAA Sells Anti-Piracy Propaganda To Your Children

/>The rapid expansion of the definition of intellectual property continues unabated, with the RIAA taking the battle for hearts and minds directly to the auditorium of your kid's school.<br /><br />The RIAA has teamed with iSafe, 'a nonprofit organization that teaches kids, teachers and parents how to be safe on the Internet, with topics such as awareness about predators, not to give out too much personal information, and the risks of getting on P2P networks.'<br /><br />Sounds fine so far. When you add in the idea of the RIAA feeding iSafe the propaganda and iSafe in turn showing up to your kids school under the guise of saving them from MySpace predators, only to tell them about how music wouldn't be made if the RIAA didn't get thier cut, it becomes something quite different. <br /><br />Obviously the information presented will be biased in favor of the industry, and I'm going to go out on a limb and bet that no one will talk about the <a href='http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/14/weird-al-yankovic-says-digital-is-a-raw-deal-for-some-artists/'>crappy record deals</a> your kid's favorite artists are living with. <br /><br />Beware, and if iSafe is coming to your kid's school, maybe you should drop in so you can <a href='http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/14/weird-al-yankovic-says-digital-is-a-raw-deal-for-some-artists/'>drop a little science</a> of your own.<br /><br />[via <a href='http://www.projectopus.com/node/5730'>Project Opus</a>]<h6 style='clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;'></h6><a href='http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/29/riaa-sells-anti-piracy-propaganda-to-your-children/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent link to this entry'>Permalink</a> <BR><a href=

Spain Outlaws P2P Networks
A new law in Spain 86'es P2P networks, bans ISPs from 'facillitating filesharing' and imposes a blanket tax on blank media.

'The tax will go into a fund which will be shared among copyright holders to compensate for piracy.'
But, the story goes on, according to a European Commission statement, 'The logic of levies would also have to be applied to broadband and infrastructure service providers including telecommunications providers that carry content.'

Yikes, this bill sounds like it was drafted by the record labels themselves. The scary thing is, for most crazy bits of legislation like this one, there is a bit of public outcry and at least some internet coverage of the badly formed bill as it makes its way into badly formed law. Not such in this case, as avid followers of P2P news got their first taste of this new law only this week.

[via P2Pnet]

Permalink
read more:

Dear New York Times Mobile
Dear New York Times Mobile Edition: While we applaud your use of typographically correct punctuation—a cause we ourselves have long advocated—we’d appreciate it even more if you would do it like professionals. Author in Unicode, the cross-platform standard. Please stop using proprietary Windows characters in a bumbling, amateurish attempt to generate typographically correct open and [...]
read more:

Jennifer Love Hewitt And Her Dates From Hell
The Hollywood actress/singer has recenty revealed that she's been on several utterly hideous love outings.The I Know What You Did Last Summer star told a US chat show "I attract interesting people. I went out with a guy who yelled at me for the entire time I was eating. 'Why are you eating your steak like that? Why do you want ketchup? What is that?' I was like, 'OK'. I was very nervous and people were like looking at us. I'm like, 'Dude, stop yelling at me for eating'. He thought the date was fantastic.""I also went out with a guy who handed me a pack of Altoids at the beginning of the night so, 'when we make out later...' and then I had another guy call us a couple in the first two seconds.""We sat down at the table and he's like, 'So, do you think other couples are staring at us?' I'm like, 'couple?' He got really attached.""I wouldn't blind date now. That would be weird," she concluded.
read more:

Swedish P2P Gains Political Boosters

Releases Summary

Redllar updated fungusHotkey and released a new fungusApp: fungusCPU alpha 0.1.0.
Andymon released a new xPaintClass xModules beta package and posted some more information about the new modules here.
Menufela is a haxie that hides your Mac OS X menubar.
Instant Rails is a one-stop Rails runtime solution containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all pre-configured and ready to run. No installer, you simply drop it into the directory of your choice and run it.

0 comments
read more:

Pictures from Tanglewood

Just posted a new set of photos from the Tanglewood grounds from the last few days of rehearsal for Gurrelieder. Hopefully it will stop raining soon and tomorrow’s will be a bit brighter.

Many of these photos were taken in the formal gardens on the Tanglewood grounds, which are well hidden near the theatre building and seem a bit forgotten (though the hedges are cleanly clipped, they’ve grown to the point of beginning to obscure some pathways).

Incidentally, the photo to the right may help provide some context for why Maestro Levine had difficulty being heard over the rain. Imagine him sitting just inside the building near the open side, with a 120-voice men’s chorus facing him; then imagine a torrential downpour on the outside.

Scandinavian Cruise

Scandinavia The cruise started in Amsterdam, Holland and sailed to Copenhagen, Denmark for the first stop. The main attraction there was Tivoli Gardens, a very nice amusement park with numerous gardens and restaurants. The next stop would be Stockholm, and the Century headed for the high seas and cruised at roughly 23 miles per hour -- pretty fast for an 815 foot, 70,606 ton ship with 2,500 people on it. The approach to Stockholm was scenic as we passed many small islands to get to the port. In Stockholm, the "old town" is the place to be, where cobblestone pedestrian streets are lined with shops and cafes. Just before departure I hiked up to the city's highpoint and found a micro geocache hidden behind a stone in a rock wall.

After cruising into Helsinki we enjoyed walking in the city center and having lunch at a nice cafe. The next morning we arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia for a two-day stay, beginning with a very early departure for Moscow (see "Flight To The Kremlin").

St. Petersburg is sometimes called the Venice of the North or the Paris of the East and it was the primary destination of the trip. There were many excursions available. Many people toured a palace that was the summer residence of Catherine the Great, a czarina who ruled Russia for about 50 years. There was also a subway ride to a large market, followed by an afternoon tea at a museum restaurant. I did not take advantage of that but I did take a subway ride in Moscow that I neglected to mention in the prior story. The subway stations -- 500 feet below ground -- were immaculate . One of them had 72 beautiful statues along the station walls. A bit different than New York!

The most popular destination in St. Petersburg is The Hermitage, the best landmark in the city and one of the early IBM "e-businesses". There is no substitute for being there in person but the next best thing is to take a virtual tour. The physical tour encompasses a complex of 5 buildings that includes a palace, a very large art museum and galleries of jeweled artifacts that showed the opulence during the reigns of czars and czarinas. Another tour included the grounds of the Imperial Palace built by Peter the Great who ruled in the early 1700s. The palace is noted for the 156 elaborate fountains on the 2,000 acres of gardens.

The next to the last stop of the cruise was at Tallinn, the capitol of Estonia, formerly part of the USSR. Tallinn It is located on Estonia's north coast to the Baltic Sea, fifty miles south of Helsinki. In addition to being a really nice medieval city of a half-million people, Tallinn has spawned an information technology industry in recent years including Skype. After leaving the cobblestoned city center where a brass band had played a nice concert, I took a detour on the way back to the ship and found two geocaches, one near the port and one in the woods.

The final stop was a familiar one -- Oslo, where I go every ninety days or so for meetings at Opera Software, where I am a director. This time was not a business trip, however, and although we only had six hours in port, we were able to visit Vigeland Park and see the 212 sculptures that depict many human life stages in bronze and granite. The rain subsided and we were able to have a cup of coffee with a Norwegian friend before heading back to the ship and sailing back to Amsterdam and then on to New York.

Other patrickWeb travel-related stories
read more:

Students not interested in school-sanctioned music downloads

Students not interested in school-sanctioned music downloads: In 2003, colleges began signing exclusive deals with online music services to great fanfare. Nearly three years later, the schools are realizing what we've known all along.(Via Ars Technica.)

Here's the money quote in the original WSJ article:

There is also little consensus among administrators about how successful the services have been in eliminating piracy. Although some say complaints from the recording industry have dropped sharply, no one can tell if that's because fewer students are engaging in illegal file-sharing or if the industry simply doesn't want to go after schools that are spending money to combat the problem. "The RIAA's push to buy into these services strikes me as protection money. Buy in and we'll protect you from our lawsuits," says Kenneth C. Green, the Campus Computing Project's director.

Of course, the RIAA denies strongly if unconvincingly:

The RIAA denies the charge. "We do sue students and send takedown notices to universities that have legal services all the time," says Mr. Sherman. Universities have a particular responsibility to teach students the value of intellectual property, he adds, because they are "probably the No. 1 creator of intellectual property." And he disputes the idea that the subscription services have fallen out of favor. The number of campuses that subscribe will increase "pretty significantly" in the fall, he says.

This "particular responsibility" of the universities is especially rich. Universities don't generate "intellectual property", they generate knowledge, most of which is effectively distributed freely as a side-effect of their teaching and research activities. Whenever universities have tried to monetize their knowledge production, they have created distortions and conflicts of interest that have damaged their core missions and their prestige as institutions supposedly run in the public interest. Even patent licensing, which involves a limited range of university production, has had a dubious overall payoff: while licensing has brought a lot of money to a few schools, it has created nasty conflicts of interest, effectively restricted commercialization of significant inventions, and impeded learning in many other schools. More generally, universities are in a difficult position relative to current trends in "intellectual property". Fair use, which is essential to scholarship, is under threat, and oligopolistic practices of publishers are creating huge stresses for university libraries. So, if universities are to do their teaching job properly in this area, their teachings may well not be at all to the liking of the RIAA, as it will necessarily probe critically the idea of "intellectual property." Using student money to pay for an RIAA-sanctioned download service does not serve critical thinking.
read more:

(Fake Headline, Serious Point:) Movie Studios, Blockbuster File Copyright Infringement Suit Against Customer For Failing to Return DVD Rentals
That's obviously not true, but from the way people talk about Rhapsody and other music 'rental' services, they believe that the story could happen, at least in principle. This is part of yet another misunderstanding about how the DMCA reworked the nature of copyright.

Too often, people confuse defenses of DRM+DMCA based on their ability to prevent *infringing* uses and defenses based on protection of new business models predicated on preventing *non-infringing* uses. The former defense is about protecting copyright holder's exclusive rights, the latter is in effect about expanding those rights. These days, this confusion typically involves online music rental subscription services like Rhapsody.

The DRM on Rhapsody songs can (in theory) prevent some infringing uses. But Title 17 grants the copyright holder several exclusive rights in 17 USC 106 (e.g., copying, distribution, public performance), and keeping songs after your subscription ends doesn't infringe any of them. When the DRM prevents you from listening to the song, it's limiting a private performance. The copy you downloaded was lawfully made, and you're entitled to make fair use [*1]; to the extent the uses would be protected with a purchased copy, you can move this 'rented' copy to a portable player or make a back-up copy of it [*1], for instance.

At first, this might seem strange to some, but consider a DVD you rent from Blockbuster. If you fail to return the movie, can the copyright holder or Blockbuster sue you for copyright infringement? No, they can't; you can keep watching that movie for as long as you like. Put aside DRM+DMCA and focus on 17 USC 106 for the moment -- if you rip a copy to your computer, it's a fair use just like ripping a DVD you bought at Wal-Mart; to the extent that the latter is non-infringing, so is the former. The copyright holder could argue that this ripped copy of the rental threatens the market for the work and thus is not a fair use, but ripping the purchased DVD threatens the market in much the same way; after all, if you can rip your purchased DVD, then it threatens the market by making it harder for them to sell you a second copy for use on your computer or your portable player. [*1] You can apply the same reasoning to rented or purchased VHS.

To be clear, you could be violating your contract with Blockbuster. And services like Rhapsody could sue you for violating their Terms of Service. In principle, they could get an injunction and actual damages.

However, you aren't infringing under 17 USC 106 and thus copyright holders couldn't get statutory damages on that basis. The DRM and DMCA don't change this analysis [*2], strictly speaking. If you use FairUse4WM to unwrap your Rhapsody WM DRMed songs, you may violate their ToS, you may violate the DMCA (17 USC 1201) and have to pay statutory damages, but you are not infringing (17 USC 106). The public is still technically entitled to fair use, first sale, and all your other rights under copyright, but in exercising them you might violate the DMCA.

So this suggests one way the distinction matters (the DMCA radically changes the available remedies), but there's a bigger issue here. In reality, the people who support the DMCA's protection of this business model are not supporting the protection of copyright holder's limited exclusive rights, let alone supporting the prevention of 'Internet piracy' -- they're supporting in effect an expansion of copyright holder's rights. The DMCA gives copyright holder's essentially a broad, exclusive right to control any uses of the work and compatible devices.

Some people may still argue that we need the DRM+DMCA because it protects Rhapsody's business model and thus this expansion of rights is a good thing. You return your rented DVDs not because Blockbuster will sue you, but because they'll cut you off from renting again. Rhapsody has no similar threat to hang over your head, so you could download the entire catalog and unsubscribe.

I would dispute that the subscription models would go away for this reason, but let's assume they wouldn't offer downloads any more. The endangerment of a business model, by itself, is not a sufficient reason to extend the scope of copyright holder's rights. Title 17 entitles copyright holders to certain rights, not to certain business models. There are a lot of old and new business models copyright holders would love to protect. For instance, the movie and television studios' business models were ostensibly threatened by time-shifting, and they'd love to be able to limit it in many ways today in order to enable new revenue models. But that wasn't and isn't a sufficient reason to block time-shifting and creation of compatible devices via the DMCA, or to mandate DRM a la the broadcast flag.

A more valid argument here would be that the public benefits by protecting the rental model. Again, I would dispute that the DMCA+DRM really provides a lot of public benefit there. But, regardless, I think most would agree that there are many endangered business models that don't need protecting. I think many dislike how protection of the rental model also involves inhibiting innovation and competition in the development of compatible music devices. I think many would agree that prohibiting time-shifting and backing-up of purchased media doesn't benefit the public, even if it enables some new business models. And I bet there are many more ill-effects of the DMCA that they would disapprove of , as well.

On that basis, I think that even those who laud the DRM+DMCA's role in protecting rental models would be, on the whole, unhappy with the DMCA. To be sure, there are those who like the DMCA because it acts as a general right to control use of copyrighted works and creation of compatible devices; they laud price discrimination and platform monopolies predicated on restricting non-infringing uses. But I think many don't share that view, particularly when they see that those models aren't about stopping infringement, let alone 'Internet piracy.'

[*1 - Update: Initially, I also stuck first sale in here. We've had an interesting back-and-forthin the comments about how I may be wrong that first sale would actually apply to the DVD or to your hard drive with the Rhapsody file on it. Indeed, a court might actually view giving away your hard drive with the song as protected by first sale, but giving the away the DVD wouldn't be, since you can keep a permanent copy of the WMA file and don't have to return it, but you were just borrowing the DVD that perhaps Blockbuster itself had acquired under a revenue-sharing license agreement rather than as an outright purchase. Thanksto my interlocutor, 'analoghole' The possible problem there doesn't affect my fair use analysis, however. Note that it also doesn't change my point that you're still entitled to first sale to the extent you were with a DRM-free, rented copy. Finally, since people are really getting up in arms about a person being able to keep the songs and use them past the subscription (that's the biz model at stake), I figured I'd just pull the first sale analysis out, for clarity's sake.]

[*2 - Update: see a minor clarification in the comments on this. If a copy is *only* non-infringing because of some implied or express license from the copyright owner that vanishes when you circumvent, then that could change the analysis.]

read more:

Guitar Accessories - Amplifiers - Effects Area - New Areas Added
The amplifiers area includes carefully selected models from Fender and Marshall. The amplifiers listed were chosen for their performance and value. If you are looking for the right guitar amp be sure to stop by to see the choices at Riff TV. You can access the guitar amplifiers areas here:

Featured Guitar Training Tools

Get a FREE guitar scale FRETBOARD WIDGET:

Get It Here

Your own personal scale creator - nothing to buy!

Create and PRINT Guitar Scales In any key or mode - FREE!!

Get Guitar Fretboard Widget Here

RIAA Claims Victory, Innovation Has Been 'Contained'

id='vimage_1' src='http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/media/2006/06/riaa_cds.jpg' />According to Mitch Bainwol, who sits atop the RIAA as its CEO, illegal file-sharing via the Internet has been 'contained'. <br /><br />'The problem has not been eliminated,' says Bainwol. 'But we believe digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business, and file-trading is flat.'<br /><br />According to <a href='http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2006-06-12-riaa_x.htm?POE=TECISVA'>USA Today</a>, Bainwol acknowledges that legal digital downloads are making up for long-slumping CD sales, and cites this evidence along with surveys of 12,000 households to back up his statement on containment. <br /><br />Why would Bainwol, stalwart anti-P2P man that he is, come out in the press selling the story of how the RIAA has 'contained' the battle against P2P services? Surely the news that P2P has been 'contained' must be a relief to the RIAA and all those pesky lawsuits will be over post-haste, right?<br /><br />Simply not so, according to Eric Garland, CEO of Internet measurement firm Big Champagne, who says more people than ever are using file-sharing networks. 'Nearly 10 million people are on-line, swapping media, at any given time,'. That May figure is up from 8.7 million people in 2005, he says.<br /> <br />Bainwol's motivation may come from slipping public perception of the RIAA lawsuits. Mitch's predecessor, <a href='http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/10/former-riaa-chief-speaks-against-lawsuits-drm/'>Hillary Rosen, recently stated the suits had outlived their useful lifespan</a>. Calling P2P 'contained' in the press would give the RIAA a perfect exit strategy. Using this logic, the RIAA can gracefully point to a time-line that looks roughly like this...<br /><ol> <li><strong>We sued some people</strong></li> <li><strong>P2P growth flattened</strong></li> <li><strong>File-sharing was contained</strong></li> <li><strong>We diverted our efforts to stopping those nasty thieves at XM</strong></li></ol><em><strong>All before the PR pressure of suing those who are <a href='http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12441'>young</a>, <a href='http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98190,00.html'>old</a>, <a href='http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050204-4587.html'>dead</a> or <a href='http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=245416'>without a computer</a> gains any real traction with average Americans</strong></em>.<br /><br />CEO Garland of Big Champagne points out that the RIAA has made some inroads. 'They have removed the profiteers from on-line piracy,' he says. 'They've also embarked on a very successful education campaign. Kids now know about copyright, and the consequences.'<br /><br />What Garland, Bainwol and USA Today forget to tell you is, the RIAA has also succeeded in stifling innovation. Save for the few indie music distributors on-line (<a href='http://magnatune.com'>Magnatune</a>, <a href='http://www.emusic.com'>eMusic</a>, and the like who offer non-RIAA music only), the digital music market looks like a sea of clones. Subscription services with sub-par quality, similar prices, terms and selection, or iTunes with it's proprietary iPod, fixed pricing structure and non-transferability. <br /><br />They've managed to <a href='http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/'>redefine fair-use</a>, and continue to <a href='http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006/05/19/xm-says-prepare-to-fight/'>tweak the definition</a>. They are the only show in town, and that's just the way they like it. The RIAA's cartel status allows its member companies to bully the rest of the industry, <a href='http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5055744.stm'>refusing to license music for other distribution models</a>, <a href='http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20041014-4313.html'>price fixing</a>, and <a href='http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006/04/28/cheap-trick-allman-brothers-sue-sony-bmg-over-digital-distribut/'>allegations of cheating artists on royalties from digital downloads</a> are just a few of the strong-arm tactics they continue to pursue.<br /><br />If the RIAA won, this is all they won. A bland and lifeless digital music market with few real players, where a veritable sea of possibilities once lie open to discovery.<h6 style='clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;'></h6><a href='http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/13/riaa-claims-win-innovation-has-been-contained/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent link to this entry'>Permalink</a> <BR><a href=

The year that was

Draft

After missing 2006, the year in review returns for 2007. These are the trends that most seemed to effect my little part of the Interweb during the past 12 months.

Social Media

Sure, the social networks have proliferated over the years, but it wasn't until May 24 of this year that the landscape really came into shape.

Facebook's launch of its developer platform heralded in a new area of speculation and rapid growth. Watching its evolution was like watching the Web’s own growth over the past 10 years, but accelerated at an exponential rate. Geeks create some clever applications that attract tens of thousands of dedicated users, and then an entire new business stream develops. Quickly, Facebook faced competition from an alliance of services lead by Google. And even more money comes pouring into the sphere.

With Facebook becoming a platform, some smaller social networks started getting some attention: the Digg crew launched Pownce, Google bought Jaiku, and Twitter became the de facto micro-blogging tool.

All of this led to some smart people trying to figure out how to allow the social relationships defined in each of these networks to be shared amongst all the networks. Tim Berners-Lee defined this as the GGG and advocated the complex XML, while others like Tantek Celik argued for the simpler microformat approach.

Mobile Web

The announcement, and then release of Apple ’s iPhone created shock waves amongst fan-boys, UI experts, phone manufacturers and carriers, and at least one search engine. It even inspired me to finally get a cellphone. From the perspective of Web development, the iPhone introduced a concept for displaying Web pages that is provoking discussion in that community: it takes sites designed for a desktop and shrinks the display to fit on its screen. Other mobile browsers, notably the Opera flavours, relied on the a separate style sheet to render an optimized version of a given site.

With the iPhone and Google’s “gPhone” system, Android, mobile Web browsing is becoming far more common — even Canadian carriers have deigned to lower their rates for 1Gb of data from $2,400/month to $100/month.

Multi-Touch

The iPhone’s big feature was undoubtedly the use of the first consumer friendly multi-touch screen. Effectively, a couple of fingers and some natural gestures replaced the stylus and keyboard. Almost immediately, Microsoft introduced Surface, which is table that uses the multi-touch interface to act as a sales unit, a waiter, a photo album, or a paint canvas.

By the end of the year, other mobile devices were appearing with a multi-touch screen, and speculation is rampant that Apple will introduce a multi-touch laptop or desktop in the coming months

Apple reworked the JavaScript engine of it’s Safari browser to create new event observers specifically designed to react to finger swipes and pinches. ECMAScript 4.0 may even incorporate such observers into the final specification.

HTML Rebirth

After years of lobbying, the W3C decided to reopen development of the lingua franca of the Web. The consortium promised to make the development of the new HTML standard open and transparent, and quickly, hundreds of passionate Web developers signed-on to participate. Many of those were members of the alternate HTML standard group, WHATWG; and as a result WHATWG’s proposals have become the draft recommendation.

What that draft contains, however, is quite contentious, and the Web standard community is splitting over both its proposal and the methods used to come to said proposal.

No matter what the final recommendation, practical implementation may occur faster than many expect. Already parts of the draft have been built into beta releases Opera, Safari, and Firefox.

P2P Fear Mongering or Vaild Business Concern?

id='vimage_1' src='http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/media/2006/06/peer.gif' />Former White House security advisor Howard Schmidt, turned private-sector president of R&H Security Consulting warned corporations they need to address a 'new generation' of security weaknesses enabled by peer-to-peer (P2P) networks on the systems of third-party contractors and business partners.<br /><br />'It's a very important and emerging issue,' Schmidt said. 'We [talk a lot] about intrusion detection and antivirus...but one thing we're not paying enough attention to is P2P file sharing networks and how much data we're really exposing inadvertently, which we have no control over.'<br /><br />Shenanigans. Yes, you heard me, shenanigans. This is an excellent example of a security 'expert' using the spooky acronym P2P to sell security audits. <strong>This is the equivalent of telling you how dangerous your neighborhood is while trying to sell you an alarm system</strong>. Schmidt didn't stop there, he went on to expose exactly what this enormous P2P threat is:<br /><p>'Schmidt said IT managers typically control the use of file sharing networks within their own networks but contractors or agents working for their organisation can often keep or access corporate data on their laptops or home PCs, alongside P2P clients. He added that these users may then look for music or movie downloads on P2P applications, and inadvertently expose the entire contents of the hard drive.'</p>I'm not buying it. Sure, theoretically someone could make several mistakes in setting up eDonkey or a similar file-sharing app, and potentially expose some data. However, from a risk management point of view the threat of spyware/malware or keylogging applications is a much larger blip on the radar. <br /><br />It seems villainizing P2P as a concept hasn't gone out of style. Sometimes I wonder if it ever will.<br /><br />[via <a href='http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/news/2158677/third-parties-expose-firms-via'>IT Week</a>]<h6 style='clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;'></h6><a href='http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/20/p2p-fear-mongering-or-vaild-business-concern/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent link to this entry'>Permalink</a> <BR><a href=

Troll's View

The overnight flight to Oslo was uneventful and the weather on arrival Monday morning was as rainy as it was leaving New England -- Norway is 59 degrees north latitude (and ten degrees east longitude) so it is not too far north of home. Opera Software is a short cab ride after taking the clean and comfortable train from the airport to central Oslo.

After the board proceedings a some follow-on meetings, it was time for a taxi ride to the Holmenkollen Park Hotel where a special dinner would be held for my friend and Opera chairman Christian Thommessen who will be leaving the board to take on an important position as a diplomat at the United Nations Development Program at U.N. Plaza in New York. I am sorry we will be losing him from the board but am happy that he will be putting his time and energy into some really important work and also that he and his family will be close enough for more frequent visits.

During my last trip to Oslo in February, I was determined to find the "Troll's View" geocache which is hidden across the street from the world famous Holmenkollen Ski Jump. The first jumps at the "Holmenkollrennet" took place in January 1892. The world's skiing elite meets at Holmenkollen every year and 50,000 spectators watch the jumps from the 180 feet high spectacle. The view of Oslo and the fjord below is breathtaking. The cache is in the woods near the famous Kollen Troll but it was so cold and there was so much snow and I was not dressed for the hunt. I finally had to give up.

Yesterday when I got to Holmenkollen, the rain had stopped and the weather was perfect. I remembered where to have the taxi stop to wait for me. It did not take too long to follow the needle into the woods and find a blue bag hanging in a tree exactly at the latitude and longitude where it was supposed to be. I signed the logbook and headed back to the taxi and on to the hotel. It was a late but delightful evening with my colleagues from Opera Software. Results for the first quarter were posted during the day.

Microsoft's Zune Won't Play Protected Windows Media

In yesterday's announcement of the new Zune media player and Zune Marketplace, Microsoft (and many press reports) glossed over a remarkable misfeature that should demonstrate once and for all how DRM and the DMCA harm legitimate customers.

Microsoft's Zune will not play protected Windows Media Audio and Video purchased or 'rented' from Napster 2.0, Rhapsody, Yahoo! Unlimited, Movielink, Cinemanow, or any other online media service. That's right -- the media that Microsoft promised would Play For Sure doesn't even play on Microsoft's own device. Buried in footnote 4 of its press release, Microsoft clearly states that 'Zune software can import audio files in unprotected WMA, MP3, AAC; photos in JPEG; and videos in WMV, MPEG-4, H.264' -- protected WMA and WMV (not to mention iTunes DRMed AAC) are conspicuously absent.

This is a stark example of DRM under the DMCA giving customers a raw deal. Buying DRMed media means you're locked into the limited array of devices that vendors say you can use. You have to rebuy your preexisting DRMed media collection if you want to use it on the Zune. And you'll have to do that over and over again whenever a new, incompatible device with innovative features blows existing players out of the water. Access to MP3s and non-DRMed formats creates the only bridge between these isolated islands of limited devices.

The real culprit here is the DMCA -- but for that bad law, customers could legally convert DRMed files into whatever format they want, and tech creators would be free to reverse engineer the DRM to create compatible devices. Even though those acts have traditionally been and still are non-infringing, the DMCA makes them illegal and stifles fair use, innovation, and competition.

May this be a lesson to those who mistakenly laud certain DRM as 'open' and offering customers 'freedom of choice' simply because it is widely-licensed. With DRM under the DMCA, nothing truly plays for sure, regardless of whether you're purchasing from Apple, Microsoft, or anyone else.

Take action now to support DMCA reform and to stop the government from mandating more DRM.

[Postscript: In an interview with Engadget, Microsoft Zune architect J Allard pointed out that Zune has sufficient video format support, in part because there's 'Lots of DVD ripping software out there that encodes to those formats, so the most popular formats out there, whether it's MPEG-4 or H.264, we'll support those.' Gee, he isn't suggesting that his business model benefits from customers using tools like DeCSS or Handbrake to evade the DRM on DVDs, right? Especially since Microsoft is furiously trying to squash the FairUse4WM tool, that would seem rather hypocritical.]

(Cross-posted at DeepLinks)

Surprise of the year: IE8 will use Standards mode by default

When I woke up this morning and checked my RSS feeds I had to rub my eyes and look again. Was I still asleep and dreaming? But no, I was awake, and what I saw reported from multiple sources is that Microsoft has reversed its decision to make IE8 behave like IE7 unless specifically requested.

Wow. I didn't see that coming. And even more surprising is their reason for making the change. In Microsoft's Interoperability Principles and IE8 on the IEBlog, IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch says:

In light of the Interoperability Principles, as well as feedback from the community, we're choosing differently. Now, IE8 will show pages requesting 'Standards' mode in IE8's Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8's 'IE7 Standards mode' will need to request that explicitly (using the http header/meta tag approach described here).

And in a press release titled Microsoft Expands Support for Web Standards, Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie states that

there is a concrete benefit to Web designers if all vendors give priority to interoperability around commonly accepted standards as they evolve

No, I'm not making this up.

It seems like Microsoft actually listened to the developer community, which is so surprising to me it hasn't quite sunk in yet. As a standards-advocating web developer I have become so used to Microsoft completely ignoring the needs of myself and my fellow standardistas that I could never have imagined them changing their minds on this.

And it doesn't stop there. Dean Hachamovitch goes on to say that:

Long term, we believe this is the right thing for the web. Shorter term, leading up not just to IE8's release but broader IE8 adoption, this choice creates a clear call to action to site developers to make sure their web content works well in IE.

And Ray Ozzie hints at better education for developers who do not use web standards:

we will work with content publishers to ensure they fully understand the steps we are taking and will encourage them to use this beta period to update their sites to transition to the more current Web standards supported by IE8

Sounds great. Thanks for listening!

I hope that this new focus on web standards and interoperability also means cleaning up the horrible, stinking, inaccessible piles of code that are regurgitated by products like MOSS and Visual Studio. I also hope that it means educating Visual Studio cowboys to use and understand web standards.

Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.

Posted in Browsers, Web Standards.

Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks

My new book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks is now available for purchase in both paperback and digital editions.

Paperback and free PDF edition from Rosenfeld Media

Order the book from Amazon.com
(paperback only)

Description
Forms make or break the most crucial online interactions: checkout (commerce), registration (community), data input (participation and sharing), and any task requiring information entry. In Web Form Design, Luke Wroblewski draws on original research, his considerable experience at Yahoo! and eBay, and the perspectives of many of the field's leading designers to show you everything you need to know about designing effective and engaging Web forms. See Complete Description...

Testimonials
'Luke's book is by far the most practical, comprehensive, data-driven guide for solving form design challenges that plague every interface designer. It is an essential reference that will become a must-read for many years.'
—Irene Au Director of User Experience, Google

'Luke Wroblewski has done the entire world a great favor by writing this book. Online forms are ubiquitous and ubiquitously annoying but they don't have to be. Wroblewski shows Web designers how to present forms that gather necessary information without unnecessarily badgering and annoying visitors. With deft explanations and clear examples, he presents a clear case for better Web forms and how to achieve them. This book will help you every day.'
—Alan Cooper Chairman, Cooper; author, The Inmates are Running the Asylum

'If I could only send a copy of Web Form Design Best Practices to the designer of every web form that's frustrated me, I'd go bankrupt from the shipping charges alone. Please. Stop the pain. Read this book now.'
—Eric Meyer author of CSS: The Definitive Guide

'Form design has historically been an afterthought, a partial chapter in past web design primers. Thankfully, we now have Luke's indispensable best practices in print. This book will now sit on my desk whenever I'm designing an application.'
—Dan Cederholm Principal, SimpleBits; author of Bulletproof Web Design

More Testimonials...

Book Contents

Thanks to everyone who helped make this book possible! Especially the teams at Rosenfeld Media and Etre, and all the designers who helped contribute ideas, perspectives, and review time.

Tags: forms, guidelines, Web applications, usability, user experience, interaction design
read more:

Design Accessible Web Sites (Book review)

It's good to see more books on Web accessibility being published. More books means different authors and different writing approaches, and a greater chance of there being a book available that suits different people.

I mention this because to some people, words such as standards, regulations, or compliance are huge turn-offs that make them effectively stop listening. Maybe Design Accessible Web Sites will sit better with that crowd, since the author, Jeremy Sydik, presents the information in a gentler way, without getting overly hung up on checkpoints and accessibility guidelines.

I think it's a very good approach. There isn't much sense in slavishly following recommendations just to tick checkboxes without knowing what the benefit is. And I've been seeing quite a bit of that lately...

It seems that often when a client requires their website to be accessible, the task of making sure it is accessible is handed over to a back-end developer who also happens to be the only one on the project who has any sort of knowledge of front-end development. But that developer is very rarely aware of what makes a website accessible, so they turn to checking points off the WCAG checklists and checking checkboxes in whichever IDE they are using. And that often leads to badly implemented accessibility, like the issues I mentioned a while ago in Overdoing accessibility.

Apologies for the long introduction, but it's there since I think Design Accessible Web Sites could actually work for the developers I am thinking of. There is not a lot of pedantery and preaching and 'you must follow these guidelines exactly, or else'. Instead, the author focuses on the end result – if doing this or that actually makes the site more accessible. And in the end that is a lot more important than ticking boxes in a checklist.

The book consists of five parts and goes through everything from best practices to testing to taking a look at the legal situation that surrounds Web accessibility. It's written in a very easy-to-read and friendly manner that makes it a pleasure to read. The advice it contains is correct and up-to-date, and focuses on how the end user is affected instead of following outdated guidelines to the letter.

Speaking of guidelines, the book teaches how to design accessible sites by following ten principles instead of various guidelines. I won't quote the entire list of principles, but a couple of my favourites are these:

Users' time and technology belong to them, not to us. You should never take control of either without a really good reason.

Progressively enhance your basic content by adding extra features. Allow it to degrade gracefully for users who can't or don't want to use them.

Design Accessible Web Sites is an excellent read that I highly recommend.

Design Accessible Web Sites: Author: Jeremy Sydik; ISBN-10: 1934356026; ISBN-13: 978-1934356029

Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.

Posted in Accessibility, Reviews.

Big Content Eyes P2P, May Destroy Internet As Result

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 Release

This morning we released the Preview 3 build of the ASP.NET MVC framework. I blogged details last month about an interim source release we did that included many of the changes with this Preview 3 release. Today's build includes some additional features not in last month's drop, some nice enhancements/refinements, as well as Visual Studio tool integration and documentation.

You can download an integrated ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 setup package here. You can also optionally download the ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 framework source code and framework unit tests here.

Controller Action Method Changes

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 includes the MVC Controller changes we first discussed and previewed with the April MVC source release, along with some additional tweaks and adjustments.

You can continue to write controller action methods that return void and encapsulate all of their logic within the action method. For example:

which would render the below HTML when run:

Preview 3 also now supports using an approach where you return an "ActionResult" object that indicates the result of the action method, and enables deferred execution of it. This allows much easier unit testing of actions (without requiring the need to mock anything). It also enables much cleaner composition and overall execution control flow.

For example, we could use LINQ to SQL within our Browse action method to retrieve a sequence of Product objects from our database and indicate that we want to render a View of them. The code below will cause three pieces of "ViewData" to be passed to the view - "Title" and "CategoryName" string values, and a strongly typed sequence of products (passed as the ViewData.Model object):

One advantage of using the above ActionResult approach is that it makes unit testing Controller actions really easy (no mocking required). Below is a unit test that verifies the behavior of our Browse action method above:

We can then author a "Browse" ViewPage within the ViewsProducts sub-directory to render a response using the ViewData populated by our Browse action:

When we hit the /Products/Browse/Beverages URL we'll then get an HTML response like below (with the three usages of ViewData circled in red):

Note that in addition to support a "ViewResult" response (for indicating that a View should be rendered), ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 also adds support for returning "JsonResult" (for AJAX JSON serialization scenarios), "ContentResult" (for streaming content without a View), as well as HttpRedirect and RedirectToAction/Route results.

The overall ActionResult approach is extensible (allowing you to create your own result types), and overtime you'll see us add several more built-in result types.

Improved HTML Helper Methods

The HTML helper methods have been updated with ASP.NET MVC Preview 3. In addition to a bunch of bug fixes, they also include a number of nice usability improvements.

Automatic Value Lookup

With previous preview releases you needed to always explicitly pass in the value to render when calling the Html helpers. For example: to include a value within a <input type="text" value="some value"/> element you would write:

The above code continues to work - although now you can also just write:

The HTML helpers will now by default check both the ViewData dictionary and any Model object passed to the view for a ProductName key or property value to use.

SelectList and MultiSelectList ViewModels

New SelectList and MultiSelectList View-Model classes are now included that provide a cleaner way to populate HTML dropdowns and multi-select listboxes (and manage things like current selection, etc). One approach that can make form scenarios cleaner is to instantiate and setup these View-Model objects in a controller action, and then pass them in the ViewData dictionary to the View to format/render.

For example, below I'm creating a SelectList view-model class over the set of unique category objects in our database. I'm indicating that I want to use the "CategoryID" property as the value of each item in the list, and the "CategoryName" as the display text. I'm also setting the list selection to the current CategoryId of the Product we are editing:

Within our view we then just have to write the below code to indicate that we want to create a drop-downlist against the SelectList we put into ViewData:

This will then render the appropriate drop down with items and selection for us at runtime:

Built-in error validation support isn't included with our HTML helpers yet (you currently need to write code for this) - but will show up in the future, which will make form editing scenarios even easier.

You'll also start to see ASP.NET AJAX helper methods show up in future preview releases as well, which will make it easier to integrate AJAX into MVC applications with a minimum of code.

URL Routing Improvements

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 includes a number of improvements to the URL routing system. URL routing is one of the most "fundamental" components of a web MVC framework to get right, hence the reason we've spent a lot of focus the first few previews getting this area nailed. Our new URL routing engine will ship in .NET 3.5 SP1 this summer, and will support both Web Forms and MVC requests. ASP.NET MVC will be able to use the built-in .NET 3.5 SP1 routing engine when running on .NET 3.5 SP1. ASP.NET MVC will also include its own copy of the assembly so that it can also work on non-SP1 systems.

Some of the URL Routing Improvements in the Preview 3 release include:

MapRoute() and IgnoreRoute() helper methods

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 includes new "MapRoute" and "IgnoreRoute" helper methods that you can use to more easily register routing rules. MapRoute() provides an easy way to add a new MVC Route rule to the Routes collection. IgnoreRoute() provides an easy way to tell the URL routing system to stop processing certain URL patterns (for example: handler .axd resources in ASP.NET that are used to serve up JavaScript, images, etc).

Below is an example of the default RegisterRoutes() method within Global.asax when you create a new ASP.NET MVC project where you can see both of these new helper methods in action.

The MapRoute() helper method is overloaded and takes two, three or four parameters (route name, URL syntax, URL parameter default, and optional URL parameter regular expression constraints).

You can call MapRoute() as many times as you want to register multiple named routes in the system. For example, in addition to the default convention rule, we could add a "Products-Browse" named routing rule like below:

We can then refer to this "Products-Browse" rule explicitly within our Controllers and Views when we want to generate a URL to it. For example, we could use the Html.RouteLink view helper to indicate that we want to link to our "Products-Browse" route and pass it a "Food" category parameter using code in our view template like below:

This view helper would then access the routing system and output an appropriate HTML hyperlink URL like below (note: how it did automatic parameter substitution of the category parameter into the URL using the route rule):

We could alternatively use the new Url.RouteUrl(routeName, values) within views if we wanted to just retrieve the URL for a named route (and not output the <a> html element).

We could also use the new RedirectToRoute(routeName, values) helper method on the Controller base class to issues browser redirects based on named routing rules.

Richer URL Route Mapping Features

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 also supports a bunch of new URL route mapping features. You can now include "-", ".", ";" or any other characters you want as part of your route rules.

For example, using a "-" separator you can now parse the language and locale values from your URLs separately using a rule like below:

This would pass appropriate "language", "locale", and "category" parameters to a ProductsController.Browse action method when invoked:

URL Route Rule	Example URL	Parameters Passed to Action method
{language}-{locale}/products/browse/{category}	/en-us/products/browse/food	language=en, locale=us, category=food
	/en-uk/products/browse/food	language=en, locale=uk, category=food

Or you can use the "." file extension type at the end of a URL to determine whether to render back the result in either a XML or HTML format:

This would pass both "category" and a "format" parameters to the ProductsController.Browse action method when invoked:

URL Route Rule Example URL Parameters Passed to Action method

products/browse/{category}.{format} /products/browse/food.xml category=food, format=xml

/products/browse/food.html category=food, format=html

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 also supports wildcard route rules (these were also in Preview 2). For example, you can indicate in a rule to pass all remaining URI content on as a named parameter to an action method:

This would pass a "contentUrl" parameter to the WikiController.DisplayPage action method when invoked:

URL Route Rule	Example URL	Parameters Passed to Action method
Wiki/Pages/{*contentUrl}	/Wiki/Pages/People/Scott	contentUrl="People/Scott"
	/Wiki/Pages/Countries/UK	contentUrl="Countries/UK"

These wildcard routes are very useful to look at if you are building a blogging, wiki, cms or other content based system.

Summary

Today's Preview 3 release of ASP.NET MVC includes a bunch of improvements and refinements. We are starting to feel good about the URL routing and Controller/Action programming model of MVC, and feel that those areas are starting to bake really well. In future preview releases you'll start to see more improvements higher-up the programming model stack in areas like Views (html helpers, validation helpers, etc), AJAX, sub-controllers and site composition, deeper Login, Authentication, Authorization and Caching integration, as well as data scaffolding support.

I also have a (very) long tutorial post that I started putting together this past weekend that walks-through building an application using ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 that I'm hoping to wrap up and post in the next few days. This should provide both a good intro to ASP.NET MVC, as well as help provide some context on how all the pieces fit together if you are interested in using the ASP.NET MVC option.

Hope this helps,

Scott

You Searched for

stop piracy

Quick Assistance enter your phone # and we will call you ASAP.
No hard-core sales pitch just the information you need.

		Name
Area	Pre	Number

<% = strTxtLoadNewCode %> Enter the code exactly as you see it in the image: (CaSe SeNsitiVe) (Cookies must be enabled) <% if captcha<>"" then captcha=replace(captcha,"flagset\|","") response.write captcha end if %>

Get a FREE guitar scale FRETBOARD WIDGET: Get It Here