Four short links: 2 November 2009

Inside Botnets, Creating Choropleths, Privacy Simplified, Massively Machiavellian Online Social Gaming

1. Your Botnet is My Botnet (PDF) -- 2008 USENIX Security paper analysing >70G of data gathered when security researchers hijacked the Torpig botnet. A major limitation of analyzing a botnet from the inside is the limited view. Most current botnets use stripped-down IRC or HTTP servers as their command and control channels, and it is not possible to make reliable statements about other bots. In particular, it is difficult to determine the size of the botnet or the amount and nature of the sensitive data that is stolen. One way to overcome this limitation is to “hijack” the entire botnet, typically by seizing control of the C&C channel. [...] As a result, whenever a bot resolves a domain (or URL) to connect to its C&C server, the connection is redirected or sinkholed. This provides the defender with a complete view of all IPs that attempt to connect to the C&C server as well as interesting information that the bots might send..
2. cartographer.js -- build thematic maps using Google Maps. To be precise, you can build a choropleth, which is my word of the day. (via Simon Willison)
3. Making Privacy Policies Not Suck (Aza Raskin) -- interested in developing a standard set of privacy policy components the way that Creative Commons has created a standard set of copyright license components.
4. Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem of Hell (TechCrunch) -- many of those games on Facebook that your friends play are evil. To get in-game money or objects, they'll let you take a survey but at the end you're signed up for crap you never wanted. Related: this article on monetizing social networks which talks about social gaming's business model.

Four short links: 14 July 2009

Twenty Questions, CC Pix, INSERT INTO WEB, and Wash Your Hands!

1. Twenty Questions about GPLv3 (Jacob Kaplan-Moss) -- twenty very challenging questions about the GPLv3. foo.js is a JavaScript library released under the GPLv3. bar.js is a library with all rights reserved. For performance reasons, I would like to minimize all my site’s JavaScript into a single compressed file called foobar.js. If I distribute this file, must I also distribute bar.js under the GPL?
2. CC Searching within Google Image Search -- what it seems. (via waxy)
3. YQL INSERT INTO -- insert into {table} (status,username,password) values ("new tweet from YQL", "twitterusernamehere","twitterpasswordhere"). That's too cool. (via Simon Willison)
4. CleanWell -- very low-cost recyclable enviro-friendly antimicrobials to battle third-world disease. Met the founder at Sci Foo. He said women wash hands more than men, because women enter bathrooms in pairs. Single easiest way to increase handwashing compliance is to put sinks and basins outside the room, in public view.

Four short links: 14 May 2009

Open Source Ebook Reader, Libraries and Ebooks, Life Lessons, and Government Licenses

1. Open Library Book Reader -- the page-turning book reader software that the Internet Archive uses is open source. One of the reasons library scanning programs are ineffective is that they try to build new viewing software for each scan-a-bundle-of-books project they get funding for.
2. Should Libraries Have eBooks? -- blog post from an electronic publisher made nervous by the potential for libraries to lend unlimited "copies" of an electronic work simultaneously. He suggests turning libraries into bookstores, compensating publishers for each loan (interestingly, some of the first circulating libraries were established by publishers and booksellers precisely to have a rental trade). I'm wary of the effort to profit from every use of a work, though. I'd rather see libraries limit simultaneous access to in-copyright materials if there's no negotiated license opening access to more. Unlike the author, I don't see this as a situation that justifies DRM, whose poison extends past the term of copyright. (via Paul Reynolds)
3. Lessons Learned from Previous Employment (Adam Shand) -- great summary of what he learned in the different jobs he's had over the years. Sample:
   • More than any other single thing, being successful at something means not giving up.
   • Everything takes longer than you expect. Lots longer.
   • In a volunteer based non-profit people don't have the shared goal of making money. Instead every single person has their own personal agenda to pursue.
   • Unfortunately "dreaming big" is more fun and less work than "doing big".
4. Flickr Creates New License for White House Photos (Wired) -- photos from the White House photographer were originally CC-licensed (yay, a step forward) but when it was pointed out that as government-produced information those photos weren't allowed to be copyright, the White House relicensed as "United States Government Work". Flickr had to add the category, which differs from "No Known Copyright", and it's something that all sharing sites will need to consider if they are going to offer their service to the Government.

Four short links: 6 May 2009

Hamster Maps, Open Flu Data, Smart Grid Dollars, and Remixable Remix

1. Hamster Wheel Maps -- Jack Schulze has created an interesting way to see the world, in the form of "horizonless maps". The city unfolds in front of you like it was built on the inside of a hamster wheel and you're the hamster. Wired UK shipped an enormous foldout version.
2. Why Pig Flu is Better Than Bird Flu: Open Data (Glynn Moody) -- Glynn points to GISAID (Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data), a system set up in 2006 because scientists were finding it hard to get timely H5N1 data. Following the correspondence letter in Nature, we have all pledged to share the data, to analyze the findings jointly, and to publish the results collaboratively, on the basis of open sharing of data respecting the rights and interests of all involved parties. This system has been used in the Mexican H1N1 outbreak.
3. IBM Plays Sugar Daddy to Smart Grid (CleanTech) -- IBM said it's making $2 billion available to jump-start IT projects, including the smart grid, because of the continued difficulty for partners to get project financing. The $2 billion would come from the company's lending and leasing arm, IBM Global Financing, in the form of low-rate loans, deferred payments, and other forms of project financing. The money is tied to projects authorized under the U.S. stimulus plan, which set aside $4.5 billion for smart grid projects. (via Freaklabs)
4. Lessig's "Remix" Book Now ccFree -- the latest book by Larry Lessig is now available under a CC-BY-NC license. (via Lessig blog)

Four short links: 30 Mar 2009

A great free book, dead newspaper dig, movie Torrent wakeup, and money from free:

1. Digital Foundations with Adobe Illustrator -- CC-licensed book that gets you started using Adobe Illustrator. I'm loving it, and I have the artistic ability of a particularly philistine rock. See also their advice to authors on how to negotiate a Creative Commons license. (via bjepson's delicious stream)
2. How to Become a Death Of Newspapers Blogger -- tongue-in-cheek dig at the recent imminent deaths of newspapers being predicted. Point taken about how unproductive these are: The point's not to fix anything. It's to describe the problem more dramatically than the next guy. If Steve Outing says newspapers have a "death spiral" and Clay Shirky predicts "a bloodbath," the point goes to Shirky. Basically, imagine a group of people watching a building burn down and bickering amongst themselves about whether it's a conflagration or an inferno. It's like that, but with consulting fees. (via migurski's delicious stream)
3. BarTor, Android BitTorrent with a Twist -- take a picture of a DVD's barcode, it looks up the movie, and sends the torrent file to your desktop to be automatically downloaded. NetFlix should have a legit form of this. If iTunes Movie Store had it, you could have racks of "DVDs" in stores that you could browse and snap to "buy" (giving a cut to the store). This feels monumental.
4. Survey of Free Business Models Online -- an interesting breakdown of ways to make money from "free" on the web. (via glynn moody)

Uncommon Knowledge and Open Innovation: Building a Science Commons

The first session I attended today was John Wilbanks' "Uncommon Knowledge and Open Innovation: Building a Science Commons" presentation. John talked about the process of establishing the Science Commons and how creating a science oriented commons presented unique challenges. John first pointed out that Metcalfe's Law works for both networked computers and documents. But, he went on to extend the law to more general data as well -- something I've believed in and espoused for a number of years now.

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Four short links: 3 Mar 2009

The problems of Creative Commons around the world, ebook futures, open source biomed research, and a new open source conference:

1. The Case For and Against Creative Commons -- skip straight to page two, where the article talks about the places around the world where CC isn't working. "More exactly, they fear that if you try to convert artists to CC who had never thought of copyrighting their works before, they may simply fall in love with the concept of making money through full copyright and stick to it." (via Paul Reynolds on a mailing list)
2. Are We Having The Wrong Conversation About eBook Pricing? -- "The first TV shows were basically radio programs on the television — until someone realized that TV was a whole new medium. Ebooks should not just be print books delivered electronically. We need to take advantage of the medium and create something dynamic to enhance the experience. I want links and behind the scenes extras and narration and videos and conversation...". Yes, but radio shows still persist even though they're delivered through the Internet. Old formats don't have to die in the face of new media, the question is what's best for a particular purpose. I read books on my iPhone as I go to sleep at night ... I don't want hypermedia linked videos and a backchannel. I don't want the future of ebooks to be 1990s Shockwave CD-ROM "interactives". (via Andrew Savikas' delicious feed)
3. Sage -- "a new, not-for-profit medical research organization established in 2009 to revolutionize how researchers approach the complexity of human biological information and the treatment of disease. Sage’s objectives are: to build and support an open access platform and databases for building innovative new dynamic disease models; to interconnect scientists as contributors to evolving, integrated networks of biological data." Apparently they'll be seeded with a pile of high-resolution very expensive data from Merck. (via BoingBoing)
4. Open Source Bridge -- open source conference in Portland, OR, started to fill the void when OSCON moved to San Jose. Very open source: they show you all the proposals, and you can even subscribe to a feed of the proposals as they come in. Many look good, though I'm pretty sure that 1993 called and wants its Tcl back. This conference might be just the excuse I need to visit Portland.

ETech Preview: Science Commons Wants Data to Be Free

John Wilbanks has a passion for lowering the barrier between scientists who want to share information. A graduate of Tulane University, Mr. Wilbanks started his career working as a legislative aide, before moving on to pursue work in bioinformatics, which included the founding of Incellico, a company which built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical research and development. Mr. Wilbanks now serves as the Vice President of Science at Creative Commons, and runs the Science Commons project. He will be speaking at The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in March, on the challenges and accomplishments of Science Commons, and he's joining us today to talk a bit about it. Good day.

John Wilbanks: Hi, James.

JT: So science is supposed to be a discipline where knowledge is shared openly, so that ideas can be tested and confirmed or rejected. What gets in the way of that process?

This photograph is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license by Fred Benenson

JW: Well, most of the systems that scientists have evolved to do that: sharing, confirmation and rejecting, evolved before we had the network. And they're very stable systems, unlike a lot of the systems that we have online now, like Facebook. For science to get on the Internet, it has to really disrupt a lot of existing systems. Facebook didn't have to disrupt an existing physical Facebook model. And the scientific and scholarly communication model is locked up by a lot of interlocking controls. One of them is the law. The copyright systems that we have tend to lock up the facts inside scientific papers and databases, which prevents a lot of the movement of scientific information that we take for granted with cultural information.

Frequently, contracts get layered on top of those copyright licenses, which prevent things like indexing and hyperlinking of scholarly articles. There's also a lot of incentive problems. Scientists and scholars tend to have an incentive to write very formally. And the Internet, blogging, email, these are all very informal modalities of communication.

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Four short links: 2 Feb 2009

1. Songs off the Charts -- Johannes Kreidler's audio visualizations using Microsoft Songsmith. Reminds me of Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency where the amazing spreadsheet program could produce happy jingles or funereal dirges based on a company's revenues. (via Ben Fry)
2. PWN! YouTube -- elegant URL hack: replace "www." with "pwn" in a YouTube movie URL and you'll be given links to the Google content server location of the movie so you can download it.
3. Apple iPhone and Microsoft Surface -- the interesting folks at Stimulant have written the code to connect an iPhone to a Microsoft Surface. It recognizes one or more iPhones on the Surface and lets you display different things on the iPhone. In the demo you see an iPhone on a photo showing you a sketch version of the subject of the photo. The zoom is very smooth.
4. Flickr, Getty, and the Greater Good (Phil Gyford) -- "Flickr and Getty Images, the stock photography giant, are launching a new scheme which enables people to market some of their Flickr photos as stock photography through Getty." Phil points out that CC-licensing and Getty-listing are mutually exclusive, and Flickr will switch the licensing on a photo to "All Rights Reserved" if you list with Getty. The first way people think of to profit from commons are to enclose and sell them. But the commons are a lot healthier when you make money by adding to them, not taking from them.