Month: May 2005
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Dissecting the Witty Worm
A clever new paper by Abhishek Kumar, Vern Paxson, and Nick Weaver analyzes the Witty Worm, which infected computers running certain security software in March 2004. By analyzing the spray of random packets Witty sent around the Internet, they managed to learn a huge amount about Witty’s spread, including exactly where the virus was injected…
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On a New Server
This site is on the new server now, using WordPress. Please let me know, in the comments, if you see any problems.
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About This Site
Ed Felten says: Hi, I’m Ed Felten. In my day job, I’m a Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University, and Director of Princeton’s Center for InfoTech Policy. Alex Halderman says: Hi, I’m J. Alex Halderman. In my afternoon and night job, I’m a graduate student in Computer Science at Princeton University.…
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BitTorrent Search
BitTorrent.com released a new search facility yesterday, making it slightly easier to find torrent files on the Net. This is an odd strategic move by BitTorrent.com – it doesn’t help the company’s customers much, but mostly just muddles the company’s public messaging. [Backstory about BitTorrent: The BitTorrent technology allows efficient Internet distribution of large files…
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A Land Without Music
Here’s a story I heard recently from an anonymous source. Based on the source’s identity and some of the details of the story, I believe it to be true. I have omitted some details here, to protect the source. A well-known company, running a massive multi-player virtual world, was considering adding a new space to…
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Moving to New Server
I’ll be moving this site to a new server over the next few days, so there may be a few glitches. Please let me know if any problems persist.
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Broadcast Flag and Compatibility
National Journal Tech Daily (an excellent publication, but behind a paywall) has an interesting story, by Sarah Lai Stirland, about an exchange between Mike Godwin of Public Knowledge and some entertainment industry lobbyists, at a DC panel last week. Godwin argued that the FCC’s broadcast flag rule, if it is reinstated, will end up regulating…
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Is the FCC Ruling Out VoIP on PCs?
The FCC has issued an order requiring VoIP systems that interact with the old-fashioned phone network to provide 911service. Carriers have 120 days to comply. It won’t be easy for VoIP carriers to provide the 911 service that people have come to expect from the traditional phone system. The biggest challenge in providing 911 on…
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Why I Can't Tinker with my Household Cleaner
John Mark Ockerbloom emailed an interesting story about Federal regulation of tinkering with household chemicals, which I quote here with permission: I just washed our kitchen floor tonight. And (I admit guiltily)I haven’t done it in a while– usually I “let” my wife do it. So I look at the small print on the label…
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Course Blog: Lessons Learned
This semester I had students in my course, “Information Technology and the Law,” write for a course blog. This was an experiment, but it worked out quite well. I will definitely do it again. We required each of the twenty-five students in the course to post at least once a week. Each student was assigned…