the life and times of endenizen » Internet

Caught this on BoingBoing. Looks like Google Maps is more helpful than I previously thought. It’ll even tell you how to get to France from Boston in only one step. All you have to do is “Swim across the Atlantic Ocean”.

I guess I already knew that, but at least now I can incorporate it into the rest of my driving directions for a complete guide. I just hate having to keep multiple maps with multiple sets of directions. It’s too confusing. And in that case I’d also have to get reverse directions. Swimming across the Atlantic Ocean, while I wouldn’t recommend it, is quite trivial to reverse.

Oh, and don’t forget to bring a waterproof bag with a passport and a set of clean clothes. You’ll thank me later.

A service which automates the process of filing a bankruptcy (right down to the affidavit claiming you did all the research yourself) has been found to be “practicing law” according to the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit Court (full document here).

The software did, indeed, go far beyond providing clerical services. It determined where (particularly, in which schedule) to place information provided by the debtor, selected exemptions for the debtor and supplied relevant legal citations. Providing such personalized guidance has been held to constitute the practice of law.

So if computers are capable of practicing law, it’s understandable that they’re able to do it without a license. However, they didn’t fine the computer for practicing without a license, they fined the guy running the company. But shouldn’t the computer be able to obtain a license? Or is this a simple matter of prejudice? If I program a computer to fight for its right to practice law, isn’t that really fighting for my right to program a computer that practices law?

MySpace, one of the most popular social-networking websites, has once again poked it’s head into mainstream news. Last July, the big news was of their $580 million purchase by Rupert Murdoch and his global media group News Corporation (which also owns FOX). Recently, the news hasn’t been quite so good:

Last month, for example, 14-year-old Judy Cajuste was found strangled and naked in a Newark, N.J., garbage bin. Police seized a computer from her bedroom after friends said she told them of a man in his 20s she met on MySpace. The death remains unsolved.

(Read the rest of the story here: Teens at risk on social websites, officials worry)

Such stories should demand change. When a website, merely as a side-affect of its primary use, can so easily be exploited to aid a sexual predator in seeking out a victim, alarm bells should go off in the heads of its creators because something must be wrong. A MySpace user with the default settings currently allows anyone on the internet to view their profile. Many users are not familiar with effective privacy on the internet and, just as any good parent needs to warn their children about talking to strangers, need to be told that some information is not appropriate to give out to everyone in the world, let alone any number of sexual predators who live in their immediate area. Maybe it’s not fair to point fingers at MySpace though because the same thing has been happening for years in chat rooms.

When we as internet users trade the inconvenience of real-life friends for the availability of online strangers we must realize that one does not equal the other and must therefore be wary.

Websites similar in style to MySpace, such as Facebook and XuQa, have addressed the issue of privacy by allowing only members of the site to view the contents within.

Facebook requires users to register with their school email address and has controlled the population growth by slowly allowing additional .edu addresses to register. The list is still limited to slightly over 2,500 schools. A lot of hype was generated when students from some schools were able to access it while their friends had to wait for additional servers to be added and kinks to be worked out. Facebook has one of the most restrictive privacy policies of any of the major social networking sites:

Facebook was intentionally designed to limit the availability of your profile to only your friends and other students at your school. This simple but important security measure promotes local networking and makes sure that your information is seen by people you want to share it with, and not seen by folks you don’t.

XuQa took a different approach and simply let anyone with an email address register for an account. They boast having “the most expansive college network in the World with more than 7200 universities and technical schools.” As such, they also have the most expansive network of hate-filled comments. I won’t post any examples here so you’ll just have to take my word for it. Unless you really want examples, in which case you can head over to http://www.xuqa.com and sign up for an account. I’ll let you be the judge of whether such material creates a safe environment for children. The stalker potential is as high as ever.

These are only three of the major social networking websites, though they may well be the three most popular. If the users of these websites are to be kept safe, they must either be educated, or protected against their will. Currently, Facebook has a bit of both. Their privacy policy is restrictive but it also explains why, and it has some very good reasons. XuQa isn’t restrictive at all though I will give them credit for forcing users to create an account before they view too much about other members. MySpace is dangerous. It’s 7+ million users are less-than-informed about effective privacy habits and are left open to attack by anyone who has internet access and time.

When I visited MySpace for the research on this article, I clicked on “Browse” and I was presented with a list of 18 (the youngest allowable age) to 35 year old women in the U.S. who recently logged in and had pictures available for viewing. I’m not sure if I should be worried but child predators would probably start with a very similar search. I opened the first 5 profiles. 3 of them (along with a whole pile of personal pictures) came complete with first and last name, age, city and state. Ok, now I’m worried…

The government is watching you! Maybe not, but your boss is watching you! Aw heck, *someone* is watching you! The internet isn’t a safe place so why not protect your privacy while you’re browsing the www. With these simple steps, you can create a secure “tunnel” between the computer you’re using and a remote server. Your data will be encrypted before being passed through the tunnel to prevent anyone from seeing (or restricting) your internet browsing. This technique is useful if certain websites are blocked (typical of some schools) or if you just don’t want your privacy thrown out the window as your boss monitors every website you visit. Besides, you’re devoted to your job and wouldn’t dare visit sites like Slashdot, BoingBoing or FARK on company time.

Note: For certain software setups and configurations, this can tend to be a very involved process. For this guide, I’ll be using a feature specific to PuTTY. This may work with other SSH software but I make no guarantees, though you should be able to find other solutions easily with Google.

The process:

1. Get PuTTY.
2. Optional: If you’re adding this rule to a previously saved session, make sure to select that session and hit load before you continue.
3. Click on “Tunnels” in the options list and enter 1080 for the source port (1080 is the “official” SOCKS port, though you can choose a different one if you so desire). Click the Dynamic radio button and hit Add.

4. Optional: Scroll back up to the Session options and save the session.
5. Make sure the Host Name (or IP) is set correctly in the Session options and click Open.
6. When you login, you should have a tunnel between your computer and the server you connected to (If it doesn’t work, make sure you entered all of the information correctly). Now we have to configure Firefox to work with our newly created tunnel.
7. Open up Firefox and click Tools->Options. Click on Connection Settings at the bottom of the panel.
8. Select “Manual proxy configuration”, type in 127.0.0.1 for the SOCKS Host and put in 1080 (where 1080 is the port you used in the PuTTY tunnel).

That’s it! You should now be able to browse the internet through the tunnel. To make sure it’s working visit www.whatismyip.com and you should see the ip of the server you created the tunnel to. If you have any questions about this HOWTO, please post them below and I’ll respond as best I can.

The development world has realized the true power of AJAX. With that, everyone wants to release the slickest, easiest, and most powerful online email and calendaring system… first. Once people find a good one and get used to it, chances are they won’t want to switch. Remember the launch of GMail and the mad rush to get an invitation? Well, now that everyone who wanted a GMail account has one (and 100 more invites to boot), it’ll be pretty darn tough for any competition to sprout up in the area. Yahoo is still beta-testing their new interface (which I hear is pretty neat) but who will want to switch email addresses *again* and update everyone in their address book *again*. If Google releases a calendar service, it would all but solidify their place on the top of free web-based email and calendar services. However, this is hardly the solution for the corporate environment.

Corporations need security. They need control. They need customizable in-house email servers. For the open-source community, you get to take your pick from a multitude of software packages. On Planet Microsoft, you get Exchange. Few have been able to stand up to the might of Exchange. Some businesses are even using 12-year-old installations because it’s worked *that* long. Of course, anyone who’s ever tried to get a Microsoft application to Play Well With Others knows that it’s a nightmare at worst, and an inconvenient, semi-working, mess at best.

Enter Zimbra.

The team behind Zimbra (Zimbra, Inc.) just released Beta 3 of their very popular corporate email and calendaring solution. Zimbra comes with everything: mail server, web server, db server, spam filters, and a web-based interface to rival Outlook on speed *and* features. I’ve been running a Zimbra server (the free open source edition rather than the network edition) for a couple weeks now and it’s been a vast improvement over the previous methods of trying to combine offline and online calendars or trying to sync Outlook between all the computers I use during the day.

The sentiment among some of my colleagues is that email clients don’t belong on the web. In some cases, I might have to agree with them. Zimbra is more than just a web-based email client though. If you’d prefer, you can set up your email the same way that you would with any other mail server. Still, if I need to check my email over the web and I’m given the choice, I’d choose Zimbra any day.