Speaking of botnets, go to What a Botnet Looks Like to see a mapped representation. Here’s the description:
Researcher David Vorel mapped interconnected, bot-infected IP addresses and created this geometric representation; CSO contributor Scott Berinato annotated the map and added interactive controls so you can zoom in and explore botnets’ inner workings.
While we we have all been focused on the Microsoft-Yahoo struggle, we have been forgetting another important fight involving the future of the Internet. This is the court case between Viacom and Google over what’s shown on YouTube. Viacom claims that the showing of clips from Viacom shows is an infringement of the copyright. At Ars Technica, Jacqui Cheng notes:
It has been just over a year since Viacom launched its $1 billion lawsuit against Google for “brazen disregard of intellectual property laws” on YouTube. Although we haven’t heard much news about the case as of late, some fightin’ words have come out of both sides recently to indicate that the case is still going strong. There’s no sign of an impending settlement, either, as Viacom is still beating the piracy drum and Google continues to stand its ground. Because of this, the eventual outcome of the Viacom suit may set a legal precedent that could send ripples throughout the entire Internet.
Presently, YouTube doesn’t check to see if what is posted is copyrighted material and relies on the safe harbor provision of current law. The article concludes:
“Nearly every major Internet company depends on the very same legal foundation that YouTube is built on,” Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Fred von Lohmann told Ars last summer. He explained that a victory for Viacom could mean a fundamental change in user-generated content, forcing sites to clear every single video before putting it up. “In other words, a decisive victory for Viacom could potentially turn the Internet into TV, a place where nothing gets on the air until a cadre of lawyers signs off.”
If the DMCA’s Safe Harbor doesn’t hold up in court against Viacom, it’s clear that Google and YouTube’s suffering would just be the tip of the iceberg. The case could have widespread implications for companies like Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Microsoft… the list goes on. Anywhere there’s a community that thrives on public participation, there’s a risk of it drastically changing (and possibly dying altogether) if Safe Harbor no longer means what it means now. Perhaps, like Viacom, Google is fighting the case until the bitter end not just to serve its own interests, but to stand up for the interests of the Internet-using public at large.
Right now, Google is king of search with Microsoft huffing and puffing in third place trying to make progress in the field. Number two Yahoo, of course, doesn’t seem to know exactly what it wants to do to catch up. BusinessWeek says neither of these Google rivals is the real threat to Google dominance:
No, one of the most formidable challenges facing Google (GOOG) is likely sitting in your pocket or purse. It’s your cell phone, and it will put added pressure on Google and other Internet companies to revamp the way they handle online marketing.
As more people use cell phones and their tiny glass screens to gain access to the Internet, Google and its fellow online advertisers will have less space, or what’s called ad inventory, to place marketing messages for customers. Google makes money selling ad inventory. And its ad inventory is diminished on a cell phone.
I previously noted the growing number of video clips on the Web that show you how to do something. Now, Katherine Boehret at the Mossberg solution has written an article about some Web sites with instructional videos:
If there’s a skill or process you want to learn or know more about, chances are there’s an online video for it. These days you can find a video that will teach you to cook, survive college, build your own headphones or even become a better kisser.
This week, I took a look at just a few Web sites that make finding these videos easy, including Howcast Media Inc.’s Howcast.com, WonderHowTo.com from WonderHowTo Inc. and eHow Inc.’s eHow.com.
I might note that my colleague Joel May and I were involved several years ago in a project for SeniorNet where we made some Windows how-to videos. They can be viewed at this link.
The investment house Morgan Stanley issues periodic studies of Internet trends. The latest trend is the rapid growth of social sites. TechCrunch reports:
Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends report from last month takes a big turn from previous reports - the focus is nearly 100% on social applications and how they are taking over the Internet.
Social sites are busy but there are other things that people do while online. Here’s a graph from the Morgan Stanley analysis:
Within the last few months, television distributors have opened up their libraries of classic content online, making thousands of episodes of programs like “The Twilight Zone” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” available free.
On Monday, Warner Brothers is expected to add a new twist, announcing the rebirth of the WB broadcast network as an Internet destination and offering programs like “Everwood” online.
The large scale infection of Internet servers mentioned Friday has been attributed by Panda Security to flaws in Microsoft server software. The Washington Post reported:
Hundreds of thousands of Web sites - including several at the United Nations and in the U.K. government — have been hacked recently and seeded with code that tries to exploit security flaws in Microsoft Windows to install malicious software on visitors’ machines.
The attackers appear to be breaking into the sites with the help of a security vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) Web servers. In an alert issued last week, Microsoft said it was investigating reports of an unpatched flaw in IIS servers, but at the time it noted that it wasn’t aware of anyone trying to exploit that particular weakness.
Microsoft has denied that its software is at fault. According to Computerworld:
Microsoft Corp. late Friday denied that vulnerabilities in its Web and SQL Server software had been exploited to hack hundreds of thousands of Internet pages.
Normally legitimate sites continue to be hijacked and infected with malware. It’s all part of a growing problem with JavaScript. Gregg Keizer reports at Computerworld:
Large numbers of legitimate Web sites, including government sites in the U.K. and some operated by the United Nations, have been hacked and are serving up malware, a security researcher said today as massive JavaScript attacks last detected in March resume.
It’s getting to the point where I am putting up with the inconvenience of disabling JavaScript (and it is inconvenient). Fortunately, the extension “No Script” for the Firefox browser allows for control over individual sites. Still, you don’t know who to trust anymore.
More details are at Websense.
There has been talk for some time that the Internet faces several capacity problems. One is the simple fact that we may soon run out of new IP addresses in the present “dotted quad” system . That’s supposed to be taken care of by a new system of longer numerical addresses called IPv6. A more difficult problem is that capacity to transfer information is being stretched by ever more traffic. AT&T says that the system will reach its limit in 2010. ZDNet reports:
Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded.
There is a lot of talk that in the future the cell phone will be the platform used by many instead of a PC. Mobility has a high premium with users and I have posted before about Walt Mossberg’s prediction that soon we will be online all the time. In developing nations there is also a matter of cost and BBC News has made the case that the cell phone with expanded capabilities, not the conventional computer, is going to be the dominant technology factor in areas like Africa. PC Magazine has had several articles on the cell phone (especially the iPhone) as a computer platform. A recent article has some interesting facts about the use of cell phones versus computers globally. It concludes:
If we do see this shift in personal computing, as many have suggested, the ramifications for our industry are enormous. Today, much of the technology industry is driven by the traditional PC hardware and software vendors. In the future, however, the carriers, handset makers, and a broad range of OS and software companies may be the ones leading the way