Internet

Boost Up Your Net With ISP Injections

/ Christopher Parsons

I’ve written about Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technologies before, and their various potential privacy issues. Generally, I’ve talked about how the possibility of having your ISP persistently monitor your online actions could stifle the substantive abilities exercising of autonomy, liberty, and freedom of conscious. I won’t revisit those issues here, though I’d recommend checking out my earlier post on DPI. What follows examines how ISPs are injecting information into the webpages that you visit, which prevents you from viewing webpages as they were designed.

Web Tripwires

When you visit a webpage, your computer downloads a little bit of code and renders it on your screen – the web is an environment where visual stimulation necessitates copying data. Recently, researchers from the University of Washington and the International Computer Science Institute have discovered that about 1.3% of the time what is displayed on your computer’s screen has been altered. This having been said,

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Social Networking: The Consumption?

/ Christopher Parsons

A little while ago, the New York Times ran a piece where they discussed the ‘Sticky-factor’ of Facebook. Effectively the article boiled down to the fact that it’s a nightmare to exit the Facebook ecosystem – actually removing your data from their ecosystem borders on being a Sisyphysian task. The most poignant part of the article reads:

It’s like the Hotel California,” said Nipon Das, 34, a director at a biotechnology consulting firm in Manhattan, who tried unsuccessfully to delete his account this fall. “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

The Obligations of Social Networking

Imagine this: you adopt some service or another and it doesn’t require you to exchange the popular unit measurement for access to that service (i.e. you don’t shell out cash for access). That said, you do provide an alternate form of capital – one that tends to elude a clear monetary value – your personal information. You give information concerning your religious orientation, your gender, relationship status, etc. Now, you’re not required to put all of that information into a public space, but what you do provide should be accurate to improve the service for both yourself and – this is the catchy part – the other people who are using the service. The system is more valuable both to others, and to yourself, by providing as much accurate information as possible.

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The Book Industry Needs to Change! Why (most) authors and publishers need not fear online piracy

/ Christopher Parsons

Ars technica has a pretty good rebuttal to the recent piece in the London Times that offered the (seeming) common line of crap that you hear when old industries talk about peer to peer networks. You know what the line is in its general format: “Without the guarantee of making money through our tried, tired and tested revenue streams, authors will stop writing, culture with wither away AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!” (There is often a “Think of the children!” added in there for good measure.)

Now, why isn’t it likely that authors are going to flee writing like bookworms from a server farm?

(1) It’s a pain in the ass to scan a book, cover to cover. Don’t believe me? Scan a decent book and then post it for all of us at The Student Bay. I bet you give up before you get halfway through your task. And I bet that you can’t scan in Communicative Action (ISBN-10 0807015075) in a searchable PDF format! (Let’s see if this whole reverse psychology stuff really works…)

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Who Are You?

/ Christopher Parsons

If you visit this blog, or any facet of my website, I can identify the IP addresses that have been here. From there I can backtrack and identify the geographic location(s) that my visitors are from and, if I really desire, can spend the time to trace individual computers. This means that I can identify a visitor to the terminal that they access the computer from; I can bridge the ‘divide’ between digital environments and the analogue environment that we eat and breathe in.

Dynamic Identity and Static Info-Requirements

There is a common myth that you can be anyone that you want on the ‘net, that identity is effectively infinite, that identity is mutable insofar as people can assume a multitude of identities that deviate from their analogue identity. Some argue that this degree of mutability persists online, and often identify Massively Multiplayer Online (MMOs) environments such as Second Life (SL), Guildwars (GW), and World of Warcraft (WoW) as prime examples of this mutability, but such assertions are misleading at best. Players in these digital environments assume command of avatars that are created during the character generation phase of the MMO experience. During this phase you can choose your avatar’s gender, race, and basic ‘geographical’ starting locations.

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Three-Strike Copyright

/ Christopher Parsons

To fully function as a student in today’s Western democracies means having access access to the Internet. In some cases this means students use Content Management Systems (CMSs) such as Drupal, Blackboard, or wikis (to name a few examples) to submit homework and participate in collaborate group assignments. CMSs are great because teachers can monitor the effectiveness of student’s group contributions and retain timestamps of when the student has turned in their work. Thus, when Sally doesn’t turn in her homework for a few weeks, and ‘clearly’ isn’t working with her group in the school-sanctioned CMS, the teacher can call home and talk with Sally’s parents about Sally’s poor performance.

At least, that’s the theory.

Three-Strike Copyright and Some Numbers

I’m not going to spend time talking about the digital divide (save to note that it’s real, and it penalises students in underprivileged environments by preventing them from acting as an equal in the digitized classroom), nor am I going to talk about the inherent privacy and security issues that arise as soon as teacher use digital management systems. No, I want to turn our attention across the Atlantic to Britain, where the British parliament will soon be considering legislation that would implement a three-strike copyright enforcement policy. France is in the process of implementing a similar law (with the expectation that it will be in place by summer 2008), which will turn ISPs into data police. Under these policies if a user (read: household) is caught infringing on copyright three times (they get two warnings) they can lose access to the ‘net following the third infringement.

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OpenID and You

/ Christopher Parsons

People are doing more and more online. They use Flickr to upload and share their pictures, they blog using Blogger and Livejournal, and chat using AOL systems. In addition to doing more online, the more they do, the more passwords they (tend) to have to know. They also have to create a discrete user profile for each new environment. With OpenID, those hassles could be over!

What is OpenID

OpenID is an open source community project that is intended to act as a centralised user-space. It is describes as:

a lightweight method of identifying individuals that uses the same technology framework that is used to identify web sites … It eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience. You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.(Source)

In essence, users will be able to carry their profiles and data with them, regardless of the service or content providers that they turn to. the major upshot, for consumers, is that it should mitigate some difficulties and hassles related to online lock-in. At the same time, it means that the different communities and spaces a person participates in will have access to that centralised knowledge basin, from which increasingly complex and rigorous digital portfolios can be developed.

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