Distribution

The new digital ways content was becoming distributed

Mac OS X Hacked In Half An Hour. Or Maybe Not.
To find out how secure Apple’s OS X operating system is, a Swedish-based Mac fan set up his Mac Mini on the Internet, and invited hackers to try and break through the computer’s security and gain root control.
Just six hours later, a hacker called “Gwerdna” had won the “rm-my-mac” competition by gaining the necessary access, altering the Website to read, “This sucks. Six hours later this poor little Mac was owned and this page got defaced.”
In an interview with ZDNet Australia, ‘gwerdna’ said that he managed to gain root control of the Mac in less than 30 minutes, using some unpublished exploits “of which there are a lot for Mac OS X” to hack the machine.
Gwerdna added that the hacked Mac could have been better protected, but even that wouldn’t have stopped him because he exploited a vulnerability that has not yet been made public or patched by Apple.
Declaring the OS X as “easy pickings” for hackers looking for vulnerabilities, gwerdna observed that OS X doesn’t HAVE the market share to really interest most serious bug finders.
This opinion was shared by security researcher Neil Archibald, who said: “The only thing which has kept Mac OS X relatively safe up until now is the fact that the market share is significantly lower than that of Microsoft Windows or the more common UNIX platforms.”
“If this situation was to change, in my opinion, things could be a lot worse on Mac OS X than they currently are on other operating systems,” he added.
It wasn’t a hack!
The University of Wisconsin wasn’t impressed, calling the story, “woefully misleading” and pointing out that it wasn’t a “genuine hack” but a “privilege escalation for a legitimate user.”
Dave Schroeder of the University of Wisconsin explained that because anyone logging on was allowed to set up a local account on the Swedish machine (accessed via ssh), the exercise was more like breaking into a different user account while sat behind the computer. And that is much easier then hacking into a fully protected system over the Internet.
In other words, the machine was not hacked from the outside (via the Internet), it was hacked from within – a big distinction.
In response, the University has launched another competition in which hackers are challenged to break into an OS X system connected to the internet.
Their Mac OS X Security Challenge invites users to alter the web page at test.doit.wisc.edu by Friday.
Hobson’s iChoice
Either way, all this attention adds up to something of a double edged sword for Mac fans, who enjoy far less grief from hackers and virus writers than their Windows counterparts.
Understandably, they’re keen to see their platform of choice flourish, but the more successful Apple becomes, the higher the risk becomes that they’ll be targeted by hackers.
Mac OS X hacked in half an hour (C|Net)
7 March, 2006
BT Beefs Up Broadband With Boosted Speeds
BT has announced that some of its users should be able to obtain broadband speeds of ‘up to’ 8 Mbps by the end of March.
Following successful trials, Britain’s largest telecom company confirmed that the BT ADSL Max and BT ADSL Max Premium broadband services will start rolling out across the country from March 31st.
It’s going to be a big job for the BT boys and girls, with the new services requiring the upgrading of more than 5300 exchanges, which together serve more than 99.6 per cent of UK homes and businesses.
All good news you’d think, but the new connectivity comes with a bag full of caveats related to physical factors, with only those lucky enough to live or work close to their local telephone exchange able to scoop up the maximum 8Mbit/s speed.
BT explained that an estimated 78 per cent of BT phone lines should support broadband at line rates of 4Mbit/s and above, with 42 per cent offering 6Mbit/s and above.
Paul Reynolds, BT’s Wholesale chief executive, was keen to big up his company’s commitment to broadband availability in the UK “Thanks to BT’s continued investment in the broadband network, the UK now boasts the highest level of broadband availability in the G8. We’re now building on those efforts in becoming the first operator in the UK to commit to a national service which is capable of broadband speeds of up to 8Mbit/s.
Although BT will be making the faster broadband speeds available to service providers for new orders from the end of the month, existing customers may have to wait “several months” until their lines are upgraded. In other words – loyal customers can go to the back of the queue.
BT’s line checker at bt.com/broadband is also being updated to show the expected speeds available for individual lines.
6 March, 2006
KiT, UK IPTV Pioneer To Close
It is with great sadness that we hear that UK IPTV innovator KiT (Kingston interactive TV) is to close its doors on 3rd April. We’ve always been huge fans of their work.
KiT was delivering IPTV, before most people who are now getting excited about the potential of delivering content over a network cable, even understood what IP stood for. How long back? 1999.
Kingston Telecom (KT), who own KiT has always been a unique proposition in the UK which has always been dominated (some would say crushed), by BT. KT was the only independent telecoms company in the UK, originally owned by the local council, Kingston Upon Hull, until it was floated in 1999.
It’s always struggled to get sufficient subscribers to support the service. Hull is an area with much financial deprivation with the average family income around £14,000/year. It’s understood that the high point of subscriptions, 10,000 at the start of the service, has lead to the current low point of 4,000. The level of financial loses and the need for KiT to refresh its now 7 year old IPTV kit is understood to have lead to the decision. The parent company, Kingston Communications (KC), feel that they can no longer justify supporting the service
Much important work has been done at KiT with many benefits from the results.
One exceptionally inspirational example was the work they did helping to turn around a failing school, Kingswood School, by getting parents and therefore their children more involved with the education provided, through technology. We covered the story back in June 2004.
Unknown to many, Blockbuster Video have been running a VoD trial on KiT for a couple of years. Their first in the world.
The BBC also benefited, after putting what we understand to be millions of pounds, into understanding how ultra local content works on IPTV over the KiT service.
About six months ago a very senior KiT person got in touch with us to say that they were up for sale.
One of the hopes had been that they would take their extensive IPTV experience, and roll it out over the UK.
There has been some wondering around the Digital-Lifestyles office if the delay in closing KiT has been a considered position by the KC. By waiting until now to close KiT, the rest of the world now realise that they all need to be in IPTV, and the number of potential purchasers will have increased.
Always one to identify a good buy, some are saying that Sky is interested in buying the remains of KiT. We understand from source inside KiT that this is unlikely, but in our view if they were to take on key members of staff, the purchaser would be getting their hands on very valuable experience. Skills like this would steer purchasers around many of the pot holes that IPTV can provide, potentially saving them millions of pounds.
We all hope that KiT, or at least its employees, have every success in the future.
24 February, 2006
Islington’s Free WiFi ‘Technology Mile’ Expands to 4Km
Islington’s free WiFi cloud to extended well beyond the initial Technology Mile.
Back in June 2005 we covered the story that Islington Council, London, were to carry out a trial to bathe their streets with WiFi, giving free access to the Council online services and the Internet generally.
It’s great to hear that they’ve judged the trial as a success at around 1,000 users a week, and are expanding it well beyond its original one mile Upper Street coverage.
Islington is a very strange mixture of ultra-rich city workers with bucket-loads of cash and many people from the opposite end of the wedge-world who families have lived there since it was a pretty rough area, which was only 20 years ago.
It’s hugely encouraging that the extension of the free WiFi is up the Holloway Road, which generally isn’t the posh end of town. Equal access to all has been a concern for some time.
They calling it a ‘canyons of coverage,’ which if you have to pick a name, I guess isn’t too bad. The council have been working with Wi-Fi whizz’s, ~~Cityscape~~ Cityspace, and are spreading the signal using wireless transmitters located on lampposts below the height of the buildings on either side of the street – a good idea, as electrical current is drawn from the lamp posts too.
The strange contrast to this story is the one we covered two days ago, where the City of London is going to get blanket WiFi coverage. Apart from the location (about 1 mile away), the big difference is the price of Wifi access – free vs a shocking £5/hour.
Islington Technology Mile
23 February, 2006
Sport1, Film1: First HDTV channels in Holland
The World Cup In Germany this year is going to be the big opener for HDTV in Europe.
When I was in Berlin mid-last year there was a lot of talk about it, and with the annoucment below, it’s clear that that HD mania isn’t going to just be restricted to Germany, as Holland follows suit.
Sport1, a new pay-TV channel will be the first HDTV channel in Holland and on the back of it they’ll be launching Film1 – no prizes for guessing what they’ll be putting on that.
Dutch Sport1 and Film1 to launch HDTV channels with World Championship football
News release follows
Amsterdam, 21 February 2006 – New Dutch pay-TV service Sport1 will air the World Championship football in Germany in the HDTV (High Definition Television) format to kick off the first Dutch HDTV channel fully dedicated to sports. A Sport1 HDTV channel will launch early June, driven by the start of the World Championship on June 9, and will also show matches from the main European football competitions as well as a wide variety of international sports in the HDTV format. Launching at the same time in early June, a Film1 HDTV channel will show the latest Hollywood movies in the HDTV format.
The launch of these two channels is an important step forward in making the superior HDTV broadcasting available in the Netherlands. chellomedia, the owner of Sport1 and Film1 in the Netherlands, has concluded an agreement to this effect with the digital cable platforms of UPC, Essent, Multikabel and CaiW. These Dutch cable operators are currently preparing their technical infrastructures for the launch of HD services. Digital cable is optimally suited to HDTV transmission due to the very high capacity of the cable infrastructure.
chellomedia, which bought the film and sports rights for the Netherlands from Canal+ last year, first concentrated on the launch of Sport1 and Film1 as a digital pay-TV service. The main goal was more content and more channels for the consumer at a lower price. The launch of HD channels for Sport1 and Film1 is a logical next step in the strategy to become the leading provider of sport and film content in the Netherlands. Another step, in advance of the launch of the HDTV channels is the change to broadcast Film1 and Sport1 in the anamorph widescreen format (16:9), coming from the older 4:3 screen format related to analogue television (as far as the content allows for this).
HDTV: far better picture and sound
Jeroen Bergman, Managing Director of chellomedia Benelux added: “A growing number of consumers are buying high quality flatscreen TV systems for their homes, with which they enjoy a better viewing experience. HDTV transmission here provides a huge improvement of picture and sound quality over current standards of transmission. HDTV offers television viewing of the future. There has not been such a technological revolution since the move from black and white TV to colour. We are proud to be among the initiators of the future of a new standard of television viewing.” Consumers need a HDTV ready TV set and HDTV ready digital decoder for viewing in the HDTV format.
Film1 and Sport1
Film1 and Sport1 are Dutch pay-TV services of chellomedia, the European content and digital services division of Liberty Global, Inc. Film1 boasts four movie channels and broadcasts first-rate films that are making their first appearance on Dutch television. These vary from blockbusters to independent and art house films.
Sport1 is a 24-hour sports channel with an extensive range of live sports. This channel can be extended to maximally eight sport channels, enabling viewers to decide for themselves what matches to follow. Sport1 televises all the major European soccer leagues, as well as the UEFA Champions League, the English FA Cup and the Copa Libertadores, as well as hockey, basketball, baseball, darts, golf and tennis.
21 February, 2006
City of London Gets Blanket WiFi
The City of London is to get blanket Wi-Fi, with city slickers able to access the Web anywhere within London’s famous financial district, the Square Mile.
The scheme, run in partnership with London-based WiFi vendor The Cloud, is set to go live in the next few months and provide Wi-Fi access on streets and in open spaces throughout the City.
The Cloud’s unique open network concept lets different service providers offer WiFi services to its customers and supports high speed internet access, rich email access, music, video and other entertainment services, as well as the all-important VoIP services
The City network will comprise around 150 WiFi network “nodes” lurking inside lampposts, closed-circuit TV poles and street signs, offering connectivity to an estimated 350,000 Londoners as well as the hordes of tourists who regularly tramp through the area.
“This will allow people to have continuous online access, whether in a taxi or an open area, across the financial centre,” said Peter Bennett, a spokesman for the Corporation of London.
Unfortunately, unlike the free Wi-Fi service a few miles away in Islington, north London, the service won’t be free, with online access rates dependent on the rates charged by service providers.
Roaming Wi-Fi enabled punters without a provider will have to fork out a fairly hefty £5 ($8.70 US) per hour to use the service.
Michael Snyder, the chairman of the City of London’s Policy Committee, said that the network would help the City maintain its position as the world’s leading financial centre, letting city workers and visitors to stay in touch with their office via handheld devices while on the move.
“The City is a fast moving environment and we are responding to the increasing time pressures faced by workers by providing the technology for them to stay up to date, wherever they are in the Square Mile,” he added.
The move follows an announcement that The Cloud would be installing network hubs and rolling out WiFi in nine cities across Britain, including Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Oxford and Liverpool.
Three other London boroughs are also scheduled to go wireless in the next few months, which should help the UK keep its number two world ranking for wireless hotspot locations
According to figures from the Wi-Fi Alliance, the UK – along with the WiFi-tastic US – accounts for nearly half of the planet’s 10,800 wireless locations.
The Cloud
City Of London
21 February, 2006
LEA Universal NetPlug Review (92%) – Home Networking Without The Wires
Introduction
There’s a growing reliance and expectance of networks in the home to handle all of this digitised media that we want to chuck around our homes, from room to room.
Many houses that were constructed recently, or depending on the country you live in, within the last three years, are network cabled with Cat5+. The majority of us who live in houses over three years old find they have a problem.
WiFi has helped many, but many houses in Europe have walls of considerable thickness, and without regular repeaters, WiFi can struggle to provide complete coverage.
Usually beyond that there the idea of retro fitting of Cat5 cabling to a house. Given the level of mess created, this usually doesn’t go down too well with the neater partner in a relationship.
Power Line Communication (PLC) has been designed to fill this gap in the market. PLC uses an adaptors that plugs into the houses main circuit and the network, using the house’s power cabling and the network cabling.
You may think that plugging your computer into the mains power by unconventional means is just asking for trouble. People used to think that electric washing machines were a bad idea as ‘electrics and water do not mix’. However, PLC has been around for some time now in the form of narrow band, and since the year 2000 a broadband communication channel has been available.
LEA Universal NetPlug
We’ve had our hands on the LEA Universal NetPlug for a while and ran it on trial for a while.
I installed two LEA NetPlug devices, one on my work computer upstairs and the other on my entertainment computer downstairs. The work computer is running Ubuntu Linux and the other, Microsoft Windows.
What’s involved in getting the network setup? Basically nothing. Take the power lead, plug it into one end of the NetPlug. The Ethernet (RJ45) goes in the other end.
With the second computer connected with the same 2-minute setup, you’re able to communicated between them, if they’re network software is setup.
If you’re OK running without encryption, then that’s all you need to do – no software required.
The only time you need to resort to using software is configuring the encryption. This uses 56 bit-DES encryption, which provides reasonable protection from those who aren’t paranoid about been snooped on.
Up to 16 NetPlug’s can be used on the same network.
The NetPlug is based on HomePlug v1.0.1 standard and they report a raw data speed of upto 14Mbps. These speeds are fine for most home computing needs including Web-browsing activity (your DSL connection is likely to be considerably slower than this anyway).
Testing
I checked to see if both computers had Internet access and could share files. They did and could, without any set-up programs or reconfiguration. They just worked.
There are some who say that vacuum cleaners interfere with PLC signal, so I did some cleaning in the vicinity of both computers, I even plugged the vacuum cleaner next to the PLC device. There was no notable lose in connection speeds.
Benefits
It is a lot faster to plug a device into a wall than it is to lay a single cable. It creates an instant network at the flick of a mains switch. The real benefit will come to people who use mobile networks such as LAN (Local Area Network) party goers. These people have to build a multi-computer network before the party even starts. Bring a PLC device and abolish trailing cables.
Comparison
There are different ways of creating a computer network. A traditional wired network is the cheapest but takes the longest time to set-up, unless you do not mind trailing cables. PLC devices cost more but are the quickest to set-up, and do not require any new cables. Wireless networks are the most expensive but can take less time to set-up than a traditional wired network, and offer out of doors networking.
Conclusion
The LEA Universal NetPlug device is firmly positioned between traditional wired networking and wireless networking – in the cost and ease of set-up stakes. If you want a quick and easy way to set-up a network and do not need out of doors networking, the LEA Universal NetPlug device will do the job.
The styling isn’t going to get you excited, but over time, we’d imagine that PLC devices are going to become more ‘home friendly’, probably incorporated into the plug. In January 2006, LEA released a home-focued version of this – it’s smaller and looks a lot better.
Score 92%
+ve: Anyone can use it. Setup near instant. No problems running.
-ve: Styling could be slicker. Encryption setup only on Windows.
LEA Universal NetPlug
17 February, 2006
Mayday! Mayday! UK Digital TV Boxes In Trouble Again
For the second time in a fortnight, coastguards have been scrambled after a digital TV box sent out a signal on a wavelength used by ships in distress.
Mrs Donaldson, a 67 year old pensioner in Plymouth, Devon, came back from an evening at the cinema to find investigators waiting outside her door, “holding a massive antenna.”
After picking up the ‘distress’ signal from Mrs Donaldson’s Freeview box, two lifeboats and a police launch spent a fruitless three hours searching 20 miles of coastline looking for what they believed to be a mystery vessel in trouble.
Two weeks previously, a faulty TV digital box in Portsmouth resulted in a coastguard helicopter from RAF Kinloss being scrambled for a two hour search of the harbour area before the signal was traced to a household inland.
RAF spokesman Michael Mulford confirmed that the Aeronautical Rescue Co-ordination Centre at Kinloss had detected the beacon – transmitting on the major emergency frequency – from one of five orbiting satellites.
Once the RAF had established that the source wasn’t coming from a nearby vessel or missing plane, they contacted Ofcom who were able to track the signal down to a household.
At the time, an Ofcom spokesman was reported as saying that the signal was a “real one-off”, adding that “digital boxes only receive signals.” When we spoke to Ofcom today, they claimed to have said it was ‘probably’ a one-off.
Beacons not boxes
The frequency used by the digital Freeview set-top box (officially called the Civil Distress Frequency) exactly matched the one reserved for emergency distress beacons.
These beacons are carried by ships, yachts and aircraft, and when they come into contact with water, automatically broadcast a signal that identifies the vessel and its location.
Will the digi-TV rollout be scuppered?
With Digital TV boxes being responsible for two major incidents in just two weeks, some serious issues are being raised for the proposed roll out of digital TV in the UK.
Ofcom officials told us that they think that only two boxes failing out of the ten million Freeview boxes already sold isn’t much of a problem.
But with the cost of the two wasted rescue operations exceeding what has been reported as £20,000, lifeboat crews have warned that such rogue signals could cost lives in the future.
An Ofcom spokesman explained that the faulty boxes are now being examined for malfunctioning components, adding: “Apparently any device capable of receiving a signal can also send a signal if it malfunctions. To the best of our knowledge these are the only two out of millions of Freeview users in the UK to have experienced this problem.”
Confusingly they said that they hoped to have the results of the tests in a ‘couple of weeks,’ but might not make the findings public. They refused to be drawn on who made the Distressing digi-box, or indeed if both boxes were made by the same company. They also wouldn’t reveal the price range of the offending box.
Meanwhile, it looks like they’ll be no shiny digital future for Mrs Donaldson who has said that she won’t be getting a replacement box as she would “hate to cause more bother”. Bless.
14 February, 2006
Vodafone Embrace SIP Internally. Nokia To Supply: 3GSM
The news is coming out of 3GSM thick and fast, so we’re going to be reporting in a slightly different way. When we see a press release that we thinks of interest to you, Dear Reader, we’ll put it up in full, with a brief comment at the top. Normal service will be resumed post 3GSM.
This _is_ an interesting one. Nokia and Vodafone have knocked heads a few times about Nokia and their domination of the handsets market – and Vodafone’s keenness for their relationship with the subscriber not to be lost.
Here Nokia IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) will go Worldwide for Vodafone. The real buzz is that Vodafone will be SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) enabling their core network.
This is the switch to IP for Vodafone and, we judge, an acceptance that they need to fit in to the significantly cheaper IP world, rather than just sticking to their expensive, proprietary cellular networks.
Vodafone awards global contract to Nokia for IMS
Espoo, Finland – Nokia has been selected by Vodafone Group as a preferred supplier, with a contract to begin deploying the Nokia IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) solution to Vodafone affiliates worldwide. The first deployments are expected during 2006.
Under the agreement, Nokia becomes a preferred supplier of Vodafone’s IMS network architecture and the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) technology that will enable Vodafone to pilot next generation services and start interoperability testing. Nokia is also deploying its OMA-compliant Presence and List Management solutions. IMS is an essential element of the Nokia Unified Core Network solution and a key enabler of multi-access methods.
“Vodafone is excited by the enormous possibilities that are emerging with IP Multimedia,” says Detlef Schultz, Head of Global Supply Chain Management at Vodafone. “IMS is going to play a strategic role in our future service delivery. We intend to pilot the next generation of services using this technology and will start interoperability testing with other operators as soon as possible. We have the utmost confidence in Nokia’s ability to deploy IMS on a world-wide scale.”
“We are extremely pleased to be cooperating with Vodafone in pioneering the benefits of IMS for consumers,” said Giuseppe Donagemma, Vice President, Networks, Nokia. “Vodafone clearly recognizes how important IMS is in providing next generation multimedia services that are rich in possibilities and independent of access.”
Nokia provides to the telecommunications market a complete, end-to-end solution for IMS-based multimedia, including the Nokia IP Multimedia Subsystem solution and application servers for services such as Presence, which are connected to the IMS via the open IMS Service Control (ISC) interface. Nokia is the leading vendor of IMS/SIP enabled terminals, with several models of video sharing and SIP enabled terminals already on the market.
With its IMS solution and wide range of IP multimedia capable devices, Nokia has taken the lead in making IP Multimedia commercial. Nokia has over 70 IMS references, including 48 commercial references for the fully IMS compatible Push to talk over Cellular (PoC) solution and 14 references for IMS Core with mobile and fixed operators globally. Commercial launches include over 20 PoC and several Video Sharing services.
14 February, 2006
NTL And BitTorrent Announce P2P File-Sharing Trial
Major UK consumer broadband providers NTL are teaming up with BitTorrent, the developers of the world’s most popular peer-to-peer (P2P) application.
The download service will offer a large variety of licensed video content for purchase in the UK, including popular films, music videos and TV programmes.
BitTorrent’s enormous bandwidth-hogging qualities has proved expensive for some Internet providers, but NTL are looking to speed delivery and reduce network costs by using CacheLogic’s caching technology which stores frequently downloaded files within the NTL network.
NTL believes that this combination will provide ultra-fast download speeds of broadcast quality content – or, as Kevin Baughan, their director of network strategy liked to call it, a “transformational video downloading experience.”
BitTorrent is already firmly established as the de facto tool of choice for connoisseurs of pirated TV and movie files, with BitTorrent traffic estimated to hog around a third of all internet bandwidth, and an even higher ratio on NTL’s network.
Naturally, rights holders and movie heavyweights weren’t too chuffed to see their content whizzing around the Internet for gratis, and quickly hired in squadrons of lawyers to apply pressure on BitTorrent.
Late last year, a deal was struck with the Motion Picture Association of America to remove copyrighted material from the BitTorrent.com search engine, and the company has since been in talks with movie moguls and Internet service providers to find ways to use the software for the distribution of legal, paid-for downloads.
“NTL has seen a huge percentage of their traffic in the BitTorrent protocol,” said BitTorrent President Ashwin Navin. “But in the past, neither rights holders, ISPs nor BitTorrent derived any economic benefit from it.”
NTL’s trial is expected to start next month and run through the summer, with a small initial sample group of around 100 homes.
BitTorrent
ntl
13 February, 2006