Google helps to test whether your ISP blocks Bittorrent

Google's Vint Cerf just announced on the company's blog that it has launched an initiative called M-Lab aimed at testing end users' Internet connections for various types of interferences. Consumers can use M-Lab's servers to test whether their ISPs block Bittorrent, among other things. From the Google Blog: "Over the course of early 2009, Google will provide researchers with 36 servers in 12 locations in the U.S. and Europe. All data collected via M-Lab will be made publicly available for other researchers to build on." Google is cooperating with established research projects to get M-Lab going, and one of the projects that benefits from the search giant's server power is Glasnost - a web-based tool that aims to find IP-based interference for Bittorrent file transfers. Glasnost was launched almost a year ago as an easy-to-use tool to detect Comcast-style interference with Bittorrent, and it has proven to be hugely popular, which has sometimes resulted in overloaded servers. Google's infrastructure should help alleviate some of these problems and also draw more attention to ISPs that do block Bittorrent, which in turn could help to keep the whole net neutrality debate in the public spotlight.

Source: http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-961.html

Google 'GDrive' revisits tech-pundit G-spot

The GDrive rumors have resurfaced. Yet again. And true to form, at least one tech pundit is predicting that Google's alleged online storage extravaganza will murder the personal computer. Talk of the ever-elusive GDrive first appeared in March 2006, when Google dropped a mention into a PowerPoint presentation intended for a gathering of industry analysts. Eventually withdrawn by Google - who said it was not intended for publication - the PowerPoint revealed a plan to store "100% of User Data." "With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)," the presentation read, before off-handedly telling analysts that this sort of indexing was already part of in-house company projects known as GDrive, GDS, and Lighthouse. Then in November of 2007 The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was quite possibly "a few months" away from releasing a hard-drive-meets-net service. The Journal's sources said that Google planned to offer some storage for free, while charging for additional space. Then they said Google wanted the service to behave "like another hard drive that is handy at all times." But the latest rumors point to something a little more prosaic. According to blogs from Google watchers Tony Ruscoe and Alex Chitu, it looks like Google will roll GDrive into the existing Google Docs and Spreadsheets, offering a means of syncing online files with those on the desktop.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/27/gdrive_googasm/

Blu - Ray Live Dialing Home

You know that endless wait while a Blu-ray Disc title loads into your player before the first menu screen appears? And those discs that either refuse point blank to load, or load then stall? Well, it seems it might not just be that the players themselves are really slow: research from a company involved in the development of multimedia back-up software suggests that some discs are firing up BD-Live functionality, and effectively using their Ethernet ports and your internet connection to 'call home' to the studio that made them. And that could have real implications for the amount of data those studios could be gathering about how and where discs are being watched. Investigations by SlySoft, which makes the popular AnyDVD software to back up DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc content onto a computer hard drive, has revealed that some BD players don't offer the user the choice of turning off BD-Live functionality. As the company's head of development, Peer van Heuen, says, when SlySoft looked at some BD-Live-enabled discs "we were absolutely dumbfounded. Sometimes the films actually contacted the manufacturer and did so with the user not knowing about it or even being in a position to recognize that a download connection was taking place. So next time you're twiddling your thumbs waiting for your new disc to load, could just be that the movie is busy telling its maker where you live, and just who's watching...

SourcE: http://whathifi.com/blogs/industry_insider/archive/2009/01/26/bd-phone-home.aspx

Hacker wins right to legal review

Gary McKinnon, the self-confessed hacker wanted in the US for allegedly corrupting dozens of military computers, has won the right to a fresh review of his case, raising the spectre of another assault on Britain's extradition rules. Mr McKinnon, 42, is accused of carrying out the "the biggest ever military hack'' after breaching US government networks from his north London bedroom after the September 11 2001 attacks. Mr McKinnon has admitted infiltrating secure systems, but maintains he was motivated only by curiosity about UFOs. The High Court ordered the review yesterday after it emerged the hacker has recently been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. Mr McKinnon's legal team has argued that Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, did not properly consider his medical condition when authorising his extradition.

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/39ed1310-e9ba-11dd-9535-0000779fd2ac.html