Sep 26th, 03
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_A discussion of Voice-over-IP and a good explanation of why folks needs something that penetrates firewalls_
Skype Firewall and NAT (Network Address Translation) traversal:
Non-firewalled clients and clients on publicly routable IP addresses are able to help NAT’ed nodes to communicate by routing calls. This allows two clients who otherwise would not be able to communicate to speak with each other. Because the calls are encrypted end-to-end, proxies present no security or privacy risk.
Likewise, only proxies with available spare resources are chosen so that the performance for these users is not affected.
Several new techniques were also developed in order to avoid end-user configuration of gateways and firewalls, whose non-intuitive configuration settings typically prohibit the majority of users from communicating successfully. In short, Skype works behind the majority of firewalls and gateways with no special configuration.
Global decentralized user directory:
Most instant message or communication software requires some form of centralized directory for the purposes of establishing a connection between end users in order to associate a static username and identity with an IP number that is likely to change. This change can occur when a user relocates or reconnects to a network with a dynamic IP address. Most Internet-based communication tools track users with a central directory which logs each username and IP number and keeps track of whether users are online or not. Central directories%
Sep 24th, 03
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Windworks Sailing Center. Connie and I just did the second round of classes on sailing over there.
They have a really great series called “Adventure”:http://www.windworkssailing.com/adventure_lessons.htm Lessons where you don’t have to sit a class room and have the instructor say, please say “PORT” class, and you say, “PORT”.
Instead, you read the book at home and then head out, so it is much more practical. After two 2-day sessions and studying the US Sailing books a little, Jim (a great instructor) has got us taking out 38′ sailboats out with ease. How terrific.
Now on to Coastal Navigation and the final class on Bareboat cruising and we are ready to head to Tahiti!
Sep 21st, 03
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Ken Kifer’s Bike Pages — bicycle travelogues, bike safety, bicycling advocacy, and cycling humor.. Sad to say, Ken got hit by a drunk driver while biking at home. An eclectic guy, sad to see. A great site he has/had.
Sep 21st, 03
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Arrgghh. Mark over at “TQHosting”:http://tqhosting.com has switched from ensim as the control panel for shared sites to cpanel. Have to say cpanel is incredibly powerful, but now ever path name has changed. Mark was nice enough to run scripts to flip over nearly everything, but gallery, so now I’m reinstalling that. Need to remember how to do it and use a tool that edits a remote FTP flle like Crimson Editor – Free Text Editor, Html Editor, Programmers Editor for Windows.
This thing treats FTP sites like regular directories, so you can open files via FTP, edit them and it knows how to save them via FTP. I know FTP is not secure, etc., but it is very nice thing. Surprising there aren’t more utilities like this.
Sep 19th, 03
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I’ve been trying to get our old Visioneer 7600 to work and have lost the CD. Thank goodness for “dll-files.com”:http://dll-files.com or “downloadthis.com”:http://www.downloadthis.net/dllfiles.html they actually have all these random DLLS that various folks spill everywhere.
The required files that are needed are:
* maxkrnl.dll
* www.dll-files.com – download maxcodec.dll is a good example. Used by PaperPort 6.1.
* maxutil.dll
* pperr.dll
* maxrast.dll
Well, now it says it can’t find the device and connect. Arrrghh.
Sep 19th, 03
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Hey Ludwig, here’s the next big thing, it’s a peer to peer voip service. Give it a try!
Skype is moving like wildfire through my family and friends. Wow. Easier than e-mail and chat (now that they are garbaged up with features). [John Robb's Weblog]
Listening to
Landslide by Dixie Chicks from Home (03:50)
Sep 19th, 03
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Good notes from Ray Ozzie about the problem with firewalls. Folks in homes and in business are going to discover this soon. Basically, you have to armor every PC since if you have one infected one, then someone VPNs in and the whole network is poluuted. My buddy, Jon Lazarus, has a good explanation. The Internet is like a dirty stream where you want to get a little clean water. Even one little leak pollutes everything. This means that the vulnerability assessment and individual PC monitoring tools had better get much better.
Just think what would happen if a student went to school, picked up a worm and them wifi’ed into a home or into Starbucks. Everyone would get contaminated. At “Ignition”:http://ignitionpartners.com, even on our private IP addresses, we get 20 pings per minute from various hackers trying to get in.
BoingBoing: Firewalls are Broken, links to this. Just as in the Infoworld article a few days ago, people are discovering why compartmentalized security such as that implemented by Groove is so important moving forward. The alternative is more than a bit frightening: Recognizing their valid concerns, would you allow your employer to “lock down” and remotely manage your home computer? [Ray Ozzie's Weblog]
Listening to
Come Away With Me by Norah Jones from Come Away With Me (03:17)
Sep 19th, 03
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I’m just not sure that prosecuting your customers and telling them they are wrong are a good strategy. Never mind what the law says, its interesting to me to see that folks download songs yes, but iTunes is doing well and most folks are happy to pay $1-2 for a ring tone for goodness sakes. Let’s hope other emulate Magnatune
Magnatune is a killer new record label that is doing everything a cutting-edge record label should be doing. They offer music from a wide range of genres that you can download, stream, and listen to, but like shareware, you only buy stuff you like after trying it out first. The label splits profits with artists 50-50, and even offers a sliding scale when buying through paypal. After paying for an album, you get both high quality MP3 and uncompressed WAV files for download. [MetaFilter]
Listening to
American Life [Peter Rauhofer's American Anthem, Pt. 2] by Madonna from American Life [Remixes] (06:02)
Sep 18th, 03
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a little ludwig goes a long way: NATs and VOIP. I’m amazed. Ludwig found he could just use his VOIP phone from his phone without dinking with his firewall. I wonder how Vonage figured this out?
I bet Gary Burd: NATs and Internet telephony is right that what they are doing is having an intermediary so that Vonage on Ludwig’s machine only has an outbound port and it is not true peer-to-peer when doing PC-to-PC. Since Vonage is really designed for PC-to-PSTN that makes sense. As Gary points out the problem is that you aren’t peer-to-peer so the server side has to pay for hauling the traffic up and down.
That is how AOL IM for instance works today. OK for text, but what happens when people ship 5MB pictures to and fro.
