Tech News Weekly: Edition 4-10

[Ehtyar]

The Weekly Tech News

Hi all. Sorry for the major lateness everyone, lots of stuff going on IRL As usual, you can find last week's news here.

1. Google Mystery Server Runs 13% of Active Websites

Spoiler

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/29/google_web_server/
You can probably bet it's some Python/Apache mashup, but the Google Web Server is now running 13 million active websites on the Internet, just behind Microsoft IIS with 14 million, miles behind Apache with 44 million.

The Google Web Server - custom-built server software used only by Google - now runs nearly 13 per cent of all active web sites, according to the latest survey data from the web-server-tracking UK research outfit Netcraft.

Netcraft data has the Google Web Server (GWS) running nearly 11 million active sites - i.e., sites with recently updated content. This total includes not only sites run solely by Google, but also sites the company operates on behalf of third parties via services like Blogger, Google Docs, and Google App Engine.

2. Who's the World's Largest Tech Firm?

Spoiler

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/29/biggest_tech_firm/
Well this was a shocker. Samsung recently beat out HP to be the world's biggest tech business (revenue wise) with a whopping $117.8bn over HP's $114.6bn.

The world's biggest technology company, by revenue, is now Samsung, which has just replaced HP at the top of the pile.

For 2009 Samsung brought in revenue of $117.8bn, beating HP which made $114.6bn for the year ended 31 October. It is on track to beat the ink giant in 2010 too - predicting sales of $127bn versus $120bn at HP.

3. Google Wants to See Client Addresses in DNS Queries

Spoiler

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/google-wants-to-see-client-addresses-in-dns-queries.ars
Certainly no shocker here. Google wants to see the actual client IP address in DNS queries to enable better load balancing. Isn't it enough Google that your local DNS server is typically located in the same friggin' place? Or perhaps you wanna track us some more?

Late Wednesday evening, Google employees posted an "Internet-Draft" outlining proposed changes to the DNS protocol that allow authoritative DNS servers to see the addresses of clients. This way, geographically distributed content delivery networks can tailor their answers to a specific client's network location. So a client from California would talk to a server in California, while a client in the Netherlands would talk to a server in the Netherlands.

Currently, authoritative DNS servers don't see the client address, only the address of the resolving server that is typically operated by the client's ISP. So in the current situation, if our Californian and Dutch clients both use a DNS resolver in New York, a location-optimizing authoritative DNS server would give them both the addresses of servers in or around New York. By including the client's address in the request, the authoritative server can send a better response and improve the subsequent interactions between the client and server because the request/response round-trip times across the network are shorter.

4. Gallery: The Best and Worst Fake Apple Tablets

Spoiler

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/gallery-the-best-and-worst-fake-apple-tablets/all/1
Everyone knows the Apple Tablet was released last week, but no one wants to hear anymore flapping about it, so here's a gallery or the best and worst photo-shopped imitations.

Right up until the world changed yesterday, and Steve Jobs stepped down from Mount iSinai with the Moses Tablet, we still had no idea what the iPad would look like. But that didn’t stop anyone from guessing, and better, turning to Photoshop to share their visions.

Some we laughed at, others we would have put down money for. But just how accurate were they? Here we look at the worst (and best) of Fake Tablets.

5. Simpsons, Powerpuff Girls Porn Nets Jail Time for Australian

Spoiler

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/simpsons-powerpuff-girls-porn-nets-jail-time-for-australian.ars
Not sure which side I'm on here. Some are arguing that this would only be a precursor to actual child porn, yet I fail to see anyone actually being victimized here (as would be the case with real child porn), so how can you justify punishment? However, he had been sentenced in 2003 after real child porn was found on his computer, so I can understand the judgement itself a little better.

We'll just come right out and say it: some people are into cartoon porn. Heck, even if you're not "into" it, you may have accidentally happened upon it just by running an innocent Google Image Search with SafeSearch turned off (guilty as charged). If you live in Australia, however, you may want to take extra care that your porn stash doesn't contain cartoon imagery of children. A man in Australia was recently convicted for possessing pornographic images depicting characters from The Simpsons and The Powerpuff Girls, and is now a registered sex offender.

Twenty-eight-year-old Kurt James Milner was turned into police for having questionable material on his computer in early 2008, but due to technical difficulties, police were unable to retrieve information from his machine for more than a year. Once they were able to do so, however, they found 64 sexually explicit images depicting characters from the aforementioned TV shows. As many of you Simpsons fans know, there are numerous children who make regular appearances on the show, and they were apparently "not excluded from these images.''

6. Aussie Censor Balks at Bijou Boobs

Spoiler

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/28/australian_censors/
On the other hand, this is just insane. Those given the right to determine what Australians can and can't see on the Internet have now decreed that films or photos depicting "small" breasts and female ejaculations will be refused clasification as small breats apparently encourage pedophelia. Female ejaculations are a form of golden shower (absurd), which is apparently already banned, not to mention "abhorrent".

The proposed Australian Government clampdown on smut just got a whole lot broader, as news emerged of a ban on small breasts and female ejaculation in adult material.

The end result of this widening of the censor’s net could be the addition of millions of websites to the internet filter now being proposed.

Breasts came under the spotlight a year ago, as Senators Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett commenced a campaign against publicly available porn. Rounding up magazines from corner shops and filling stations, Senator Joyce claimed that publications featuring small-breasted women were encouraging paedophilia.

7. Settlement Rejected in ‘Shocking’ RIAA File Sharing Verdict

Spoiler

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/settlement-rejected-in-shocking-riaa-file-sharing-verdict/
The RIAA has offered Jammie Thomas-Rasset a $25,000 settlement in the case against her for sharing music illegally, which she has refused and is continuing her appeal.

The recording industry is demanding Jammie Thomas-Rasset pay $25,000 to settle out of court the nation’s first file sharing case against an individual to have gone to trial –- a settlement offer the Minnesota mother of four is rejecting, lawyers in the case said Wednesday.

The development came days after the federal judge in the case reduced to $54,000 a jury’s June finding that Thomas-Rasset must pay $1.92 million for file sharing 24 songs on Kazaa. Following Friday’s decision by U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, the Recording Industry Association of America proposed that Thomas-Rasset pay $25,000 to close the case.

8. Ubisoft's New DRM Solution: You Have Be Online to Play

Spoiler

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/01/ubisofts-new-drm-solution-you-have-be-online-to-play.ars
*sigh* These people will never learn. In fact I think they're getting dumber...

Ubisoft does not have the best history when it comes to invasive—if not downright broken—DRM, but the company's upcoming "solution" to game piracy is much worse than anything we've seen in the past. The gist is simple: every time you want to play your game, it has to phone back to Ubisoft before giving you permission to play. No Internet connection? You're simply out of luck.

Ubisoft of course points out that this move has some benefits for games. Now you can access your saved games anywhere! You don't need the disc in the drive! You can play from any computer that has an Internet connection! Brent Wilkinson, Director, Customer Service and Production Planning at Ubisoft, thinks you'll like this decision. "We think most people are going to be fine with it. Most people are always connected to an Internet connection," he told GameSpy.

9. IPv4 Free Pool Drops Below 10%, 1.0.0.0/8 Allocated

Spoiler

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/01/24/2139250/IPv4-Free-Pool-Drops-Below-10-10008-Allocated
I'm not in the habbit of directly linking a Slashdot article here, but this one is a very nice summary. Basically we're still running out of IPv4 IPs, so ICANN is considering allocating some of the more troublesome remaining blocks like 1.0.0.0/8 and 27.0.0.0/8 which have been classified as "reserved" until now, and so have been affected by misuse.

"A total of 16,777,216 IP address numbers were just allocated to the Asian Pacific Network Information Centre IP address registry for assignment to users. Some venerable IP addresses such as 1.1.1.1 and 1.2.3.4 have been officially assigned to the registry itself temporarily, for testing as part of the DEBOGON project. The major address blocks 1.0.0.0/8 and 27.0.0.0/8, are chosen accordance with a decision by ICANN to assign the least-desirable remaining IP address ranges to the largest regional registries first, reserving most more desirable blocks of addresses for the African and Latin American internet users, instead of North America, Europe, or Asia. In other words: of the 256 major networks in IPv4, only 24 network blocks remain unallocated in the global free pool, and many of the remaining networks have been tainted or made less desirable by unofficial users who attempted an end-run around the registration process, and treated 'RESERVED' IP addresses as 'freely available' for their own internal use. This allocation is right on target with projected IPv4 consumption and was predicted by the IPv4 report, which has continuously and reliably estimated global pool IP address exhaustion for late 2011 and regional registry exhaustion by late 2012. So, does your enterprise intranet use any unofficial address ranges for private networks?"

10. Do You Have a Pad I Could Borrow?

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFNQE_TzQNI
Awesome spoof of the iPad, made long before the thing was even announced.

Ehtyar.

[JavaJones]

Another great roundup. Some real shockers and sad-to-see moves this time, that continue to signal the end of civilized society.

Re: the MadTV iPad spoof prediction, I was shocked to see A: how incredibly psychic they were and B: how Apple apparently didn't care to check the possible repercussions of their intended name use before announcing it to the world. A quick Google (ok, ok, fine, Bing, hehe) search would surely have turned up this gem...

- Oshyan

[Ehtyar]

Some real shockers and sad-to-see moves this time, that continue to signal the end of civilized society.

-JavaJones (February 01, 2010, 03:09 PM)

Indeed

Re: the MadTV iPad spoof prediction, I was shocked to see A: how incredibly psychic they were and B: how Apple apparently didn't care to check the possible repercussions of their intended name use before announcing it to the world. A quick Google (ok, ok, fine, Bing, hehe) search would surely have turned up this gem...

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (February 01, 2010, 03:09 PM)

I would not be at all surprised if they fully aware of the repercussions. Think of how they must be salivating over all the free publicity they're getting.

Ehtyar.

[f0dder]

Interesting that SourceForge's blocking of "axis of evil" countries isn't mentioned

[JavaJones]

Yeah, I thought of the possibility Apple knew about the MadTV skit (hard to imagine they wouldn't) and may have even thought it would boost their publicity. I guess it has... I dunno, maybe they're masters of manipulating publicity and media attention... ok wait, scratch that, they *are* masters of it, so it shouldn't' surprise me that they would be savvy enough and have the stomach to take the risk and put it out there with that name, knowing the potentially negative repercussions. Maybe they just have a (nearly) iron-clad brand now. *sigh*

- Oshyan

[Ehtyar]

Maybe they just have a (nearly) iron-clad brand now. *sigh*

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (February 01, 2010, 07:08 PM)

Given the amount of crap Apple have gotten away with in this past year I'd say that's a very fair assessment, lol.

Ehtyar.