M-Lab und Google: Tools gegen Provider-Tricks


Google hat gemeinsam mit US-Bürgerrechtlern eine Website mit Werkzeugen gestartet, die es Internet-Nutzern ermöglichen, Verstöße gegen die Netzneutralität durch ihre Provider zu erkennen. So gibt es ein Online-Tool, mit dem der Nutzer prüfen kann, ob sein Provider hinter seinem Rücken den Datenverkehr des BitTorrent-Protokolls behindert.

futurezone.orf.at

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Google and Friends Release Net Neutrality Measuring Tools


Google and a group of partners have released a set of tools designed to help broadband customers and researchers measure performance of Internet connections. The set of tools, at MeasurementLab.net, includes a network diagnostic tool, a network path diagnostic tool and a tool to measure whether the user's broadband provider is slowing BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P-to-P) traffic.

slashdot.org

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The country's new robots.txt file


Here's a small and nerdy measure of the huge change in the executive branch of the US government today. Here's the robots.txt file from whitehouse.gov yesterday:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /query.html
Disallow: /omb/search
Disallow: /omb/query.html
Disallow: /expectmore/search
Disallow: /expectmore/query.html
Disallow: /results/search
Disallow: /results/query.html
Disallow: /earmarks/search
Disallow: /earmarks/query.html
Disallow: /help
Disallow: /360pics/text
Disallow: /911/911day/text
Disallow: /911/heroes/text

And it goes on like that for almost 2400 lines!

Here's the new Obamafied robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/

kottke.org

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ISPs can profit from busting file sharers


Jerry Scroggin, the owner of a Louisiana Internet Service Provider, says he's skeptical of a service that proposes to pay ISPs to police their networks for pirated music and movies.

I wrote about Scroggin last month following the music industry's announcement that it would scale back a longtime strategy of suing individuals suspected of music piracy, and instead enlist the help of ISPs to thwart copyright violations

cnet.com

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80 Million Tiny Images


We present a visualization of all the nouns in the English language arranged by semantic meaning. Each of the tiles in the mosaic is an arithmetic average of images relating to one of 53,464 nouns. The images for each word were obtained using Google's Image Search and other engines. A total of 7,527,697 images were used, each tile being the average of 140 images.

csail.mit.edu

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The Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time


From the moment people started using passwords, it didn’t take long to realize how many people picked the very same passwords over and over. Even the way people misspell words is consistent. In fact, people are so predictable that most hackers make use of lists of common passwords just like these. To give you some insight into how predictable humans are, the following is a list of the 500 most common passwords. If you see your password on this list, please change it immediately. Keep in mind that every password listed here has been used by at least hundreds if not thousands of other people.

whatsmypass.com

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Did UK hacker Gary McKinnon find NASA ufo fraud?


Extradition of UK hacker Gary Mckinnon to the U.S. might reveal that NASA defrauded taxpayers for billions of dollars. If McKinnon loses his fight against extradition he could face “up to 70 years in prison if found guilty in the US of breaking into military computers” and NASA computers. Then again, maybe not.

examiner.com

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Internet Explorer security alert


Users of the world's most common web browser have been advised to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

bbc.co.uk

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21 million German bank accounts - yours for only €12m


Identity thieves who claim they stole details of 21 million German bank accounts are offering to sell the data on the black market for €12 million (US$15.3 million), a German magazine reported over the weekend.

To prove they weren't bluffing, the crooks produced the compact disc containing the names, addresses, phone numbers, birthdays account numbers, and bank routing numbers of 1.2 million accounts. Two investigative reporters for WirtschaftsWoche say they obtained the CD during a face-to-face meeting at a hotel in Hamburg with two individuals involved with the theft. The journalists were posing as interested buyers working for a gambling operation.

theregister.co.uk

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Millionen von Bankdaten illegal im Umlauf


Namen, Bankverbindung, Geburtsdaten - und manchmal sogar detaillierte Angaben zur Vermögensanlage: Laut der "Wirtschaftswoche" sind auf dem Schwarzmarkt die Bankdaten von 21 Millionen Bundesbürgern illegal im Umlauf. Die Staatsanwaltschaft ist eingeschaltet.

spiegel.de wiwo.de

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German Gov't Donates 100,000 Images To Wikipedia


The German Federal Archive has agreed to donate 100,000 images to Wikipedia under the German version of the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License. These pictures cover a period from 1860 to present. This is the largest picture donation ever to Wikipedia, and possibly the largest in the history of the free culture movement.

slashdot.org

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30+ Eye-Opening Web Development Screencasts


We've all felt that haze that forms around your eyes when you're trying to study lines and lines of code from a written tutorial. After an hour or so, you're eyes simply become too weakened to continue reading. That's why I'm such a huge fan of video tutorials. You can sit back and learn at your own pace. I've compiled a list of over thirty screencasts that are guaranteed to help you.

nettuts.com

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