An Update from NeilPeart.net - June 2011

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Test Your Browser's IPv6 Readiness with a Simple Web Page In Brief

In preparation for World IPv6 Day, Google's set up a simple test page to allow users to check whether or not their current browsers, systems, and networks are set up to handle the impending changeover. If you're not sure what the whole IPv6 changeover is about, check out our post What does the IPv6 transition mean to me? [Ready for the future of the Internet? via Google Operating System] More »

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Apple To Patent Anti Piracy Technology

Have you ever seen people at concerts holding an iPhone up in the air, trying to record the live performance (and probably uploading it somewhere later on as well)? But they usually don’t know that the moment they do that, they are infringing on IP copyright law. Piracy is punishable by law, even if it is sporadically enforced. It hurts the device manufacturers as well whose device is being used in ways they never intended. No one wants to be blamed for what they never did. Camera phones are a huge part of our lives these days and often the most handy way of capturing the precious moments around us. But some people do use the built in camera’s in ways that were not intended by the manufacturers. Apple’s R&D department has made a major break-through in anti-piracy technology and has applied to acquire the patent for that as well. Apple’s anti-piracy technology is based on a simple but ingenious idea. In movie theaters, they distribute special infrared waves for hearing aid devices. Apple’s new technology will enable the iPhone to detect those infrared signals and the iPhone will sense that you are in a movie theater. Now if you will try to record a scene from Kung Fu Panda 2 with your iPhone this weekend, it will automatically sense that you are in a movie theater trying to record, and will shut off the camera automatically. Another possibility with the same technology can be that the movie/snap you capture will be watermarked with the name of the movie. The same will be true with music concerts, if you try to take a picture of Lady Gaga, the whole picture could be watermarked with LadyGaga, but for that concert the management will have to bombard infrared waves on the audience. This technology may have other implications as well, such as in museums and historical places. Here the authorities can set up infrared signals for each place, so that when you point your iPhone towards that, it will catch those signals and then show the detailed info about that on your iPhone screen, replacing the human guide or tour guide headphones. It may take some time to completely implement this technology, and it may take even longer for us to see the practical implications of this technology. But none the less, even though this technology is simple and ingenious, it will have far reaching effects. Whether people like it or not, the millions of artists worldwide will love it since they lose money from piracy on a daily basis. At the end of the day, anti-piracy laws will more than likely be something that we become accustomed to with time. However, these new laws will no doubt make big waves at first as people begin to think that their personal freedoms are being limited when they can no longer do what they want to do with the hardware that they have purchased. Fortunately or unfortunately, companies are in the business of making money, and taking the hard line with piracy will benefit their bottom line. Martin’s Take: This patent is about remote controlling functionality on Apple devices. Turning off features on the phone while the guy with his Android phone can still take a picture of his loved one on the concert, may be seen positively by the industry, but certainly not by consumers. I have not found any limitations to that feature online. Can the technology turn off the complete phone? What if the phone is turned off then and someone needs to call in an emergency? This new technology is one step closer to 1984 in my opinion, with company’s being able to control what you can do with your electronic devices, and what you cannot.

An Introduction to IPv6

Right now, most of the world is using IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4). The problem is that it does not allow for enough addresses. The world is just too big of a place. Enter IPv6. It provides vastly more addresses (2^128) and is the future of the web. Most users will not notice a difference, but networking personnel will (you can test your IPv6 connectivity here) An IPv6 address has a few differences from IPv4. The first is that it is in hexadecimal instead of decimal. The second is that it is split up into larger segments and more of them. The third is that it uses colons (:) rather than periods (.) to divide these segments. In the end, one does not resemble the other. This is good because it prevents confusing the two. Hexadecimal is better than decimal for a few reasons. For one, it takes up less space. The number “255″ is “FF” in hex; that is %50 smaller. Hexadecimal also relates more closely to binary. The number “1111″ is “15″ in decimal but “F” in hex. So “11111111″ is “FF” in hex, which is a much cleaner conversion than “255″ is. The downside is that humans typically think in decimal, so working with hex takes some getting used to. IPv6 has a much larger address size. It has eight sections to it. IPv4 had half of that. The sections themselves are larger too: each one has four digits. IPv4 could only have three, and that only went to 255 tops. It should be obvious why this new address can afford all the room we have come to need. Hopeful it will for a long time. Here is a sample address. FF00:00FF:0000:0000:0000:02f3:0000:0001 At this point, you may begin to see the down side to IPv6: it is long and hard to remember. To make them more human readable, there are a few conventions to short address when you have a lot of zeros present. First of all, you can skip leading zeros, so “0001″ becomes “1″ and “02f3″ becomes “2f3″ (IPv4 did this too). Second, groups of all zeros can be abbreviated to “::” (a double colon) once; you put nothing there. That makes “:0000:0000:0000:” reduce to “::” but “:0000:” cannot as it would be ambiguous. You can apply the first rule, making it “:0:” now. Putting all these rules into place gives us the following address. FF00:FF::2f3:0:1 This address is about as long as an IPv4 number. Notice how the “00FF” shrank to “FF” and the “FF00″ did not. That was done intentionally to show the difference between leading and trailing zeros. There is one more thing you really need to know if you are working with IPv6. The loop-back address, which was 127.0.0.1 in IPv4, is ::1 now. It works exactly the same way. You will have to use the ping6 command in Windows or Linux, so ping6 ::1 is what you would type into the command line. This will give many XP users an error as IPv6 may not be enabled on your computer. We have guides on how to enable IPv6 in XP, and how to assign IPv6 addresses in Linux. Some other factoids about IPv6 are that it has is easier to route, more secure, and works better with mobile technology. There are changes to the way the packets of information are sent that makes it more efficient (e.g. better headers). It is more secure because it requires the use of IPSec, which is only optional in IPv4. IPv6 has an address recovery system, so when you change locations, it tries to keep the same address. These are are some of the that US government is switching over to it. I should note that IPv6 has been found to have vulnerabilities. Maleware tunneling is described in an article (note: a .pdf file) from the us-cert.gov site. It often has to do with how firewalls are configured. Different sources may give different opinions on how secure IPv6 is. Wondering what happend to IPv5? It did exist. It was developed in the 1970′s to be used in audio and video streaming. It was called the Internet Stream Protocol. It did not get far past the experimental stage and was never adopted. Ideas from it helped to form IPv6.

QuickScreenShots, Portable Screenshot Taking Application

As a blog owner I know of the importance of screenshots to visualize the textual information of each individual post. For that, they are even more important than other media like videos, considering that not everyone can or likes to play videos while reading an article. But screenshots are also important for search engine visibility. There are other situations where you may need to create screenshots, for instance when creating PowerPoint presentations, writing your midterm paper or resume. The Windows operating system comes with options to create a fullscreen screenshow with the print key. You can paste that screenshot in your favorite image editor. Microsoft has improved the abilities of the operating system with the snipping tool of Windows 7. This tool can take full screen screenshots or screenshots of a region. The tool is still very limited on the other hand. QuickScreenShots is a free portable software for Windows that can be used to take screenshots on the system. It supports full desktop, active window and region screenshots which should be sufficient for most users. Users can click on buttons in the application interface to trigger the screenshots, or use global hotkeys to do so. The screenshots are shown in the program interface. Five options are listed on the right side. They allow the user to auto copy and auto save the screenshot. Auto copy moves the screenshot to the Windows Clipboard, while auto save saves it directly to the local hard drive. A total of three effects can be added to each screenshot as well. This includes a shadow and black and white effect, as well as an option to rotate the screen by 10 degrees. Auto save, shadow and rotate have preference buttons next to them. It is for instance possible to change the rotation angle or the default save directory. Four buttons a the bottom can be used to save, copy and view the screenshot. QuickScreenShots is not as sophisticated as commercial tools such as SnagIt or WinSnap, but that does not make it a bad screenshot taking tool. The thing that is missing most is a resize feature to resize screenshots before they are saved. This means that some post-processing needs to be done in an image editor or another program. Windows users who are interested in the program can download a portable version or installer from the project website over at Google Code. It will run on all versions of Windows from Windows 9x on.

Google killing off support for old browsers

Starting on August 1st, Google will drop support for old browsers. Such browsers include Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Safari 3 and Firefox 3.5 (or lower). If you choose to not upgrade (or cannot), Google says unfortunately: In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely. Figures from StatCounter and NetApplications seem to imply that about 17 percent of the world will need to upgrade their browsers, mainly thanks to a huge number of IE6 users in China (over 25 percent). Venkat Panchapakesan, VP of engineering at Google, says the move is necessary for the future: These new browsers are more than just a modern convenience, they are a necessity for what the future holds. For web applications to spring even farther ahead of traditional software, our teams need to make use of new capabilities available in modern browsers. Permalink | Comments

Neil Peart Discusses Moving Pictures on CBC's Strombo

It was back on March 19th when we first reported that Neil Peart made a rare appearance on the CBC talk-show Strombo which was formerly called The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos. Though taped in March, the episode isn't expected to formerly air on the CBC until June 17th. However one segment of the video interview is now available ONLINE and features Neil Peart breaking down Rush's classic Moving Pictures, track by track: The Rush drummer breaks down the band's classic album 'Moving Pictures', track-by- track... 'That was an important time musically and a great time for the three of us in terms of having a good time and sharing our goals and making music,' he says about the recording of the album, originally released in 1981. 'There was nothing self-indulgent or so-called pretentious about it. It was true boyish enthusiasm that was involved in creating all those things. We were progressing and learning and developing taste at the same time.' Rush is playing 'Moving Pictures' in its entirety on its current Time Machine Tour. 'We still like to play these songs,' says Peart, 'and we're still proud of them.' The entire video interview should be available online shortly after it airs on the CBC on June 17th. Click HERE to view the 15-minute video segment that's available now. Thanks to Eric from Power Windows for alerting us to the news.

Apple To Patent Anti Piracy Technology

Have you ever seen people at concerts holding an iPhone up in the air, trying to record the live performance (and probably uploading it somewhere later on as well)? But they usually don’t know that the moment they do that, they are infringing on IP copyright law. Piracy is punishable by law, even if it is sporadically enforced. It hurts the device manufacturers as well whose device is being used in ways they never intended. No one wants to be blamed for what they never did. Camera phones are a huge part of our lives these days and often the most handy way of capturing the precious moments around us. But some people do use the built in camera’s in ways that were not intended by the manufacturers. Apple’s R&D department has made a major break-through in anti-piracy technology and has applied to acquire the patent for that as well. Apple’s anti-piracy technology is based on a simple but ingenious idea. In movie theaters, they distribute special infrared waves for hearing aid devices. Apple’s new technology will enable the iPhone to detect those infrared signals and the iPhone will sense that you are in a movie theater. Now if you will try to record a scene from Kung Fu Panda 2 with your iPhone this weekend, it will automatically sense that you are in a movie theater trying to record, and will shut off the camera automatically. Another possibility with the same technology can be that the movie/snap you capture will be watermarked with the name of the movie. The same will be true with music concerts, if you try to take a picture of Lady Gaga, the whole picture could be watermarked with LadyGaga, but for that concert the management will have to bombard infrared waves on the audience. This technology may have other implications as well, such as in museums and historical places. Here the authorities can set up infrared signals for each place, so that when you point your iPhone towards that, it will catch those signals and then show the detailed info about that on your iPhone screen, replacing the human guide or tour guide headphones. It may take some time to completely implement this technology, and it may take even longer for us to see the practical implications of this technology. But none the less, even though this technology is simple and ingenious, it will have far reaching effects. Whether people like it or not, the millions of artists worldwide will love it since they lose money from piracy on a daily basis. At the end of the day, anti-piracy laws will more than likely be something that we become accustomed to with time. However, these new laws will no doubt make big waves at first as people begin to think that their personal freedoms are being limited when they can no longer do what they want to do with the hardware that they have purchased. Fortunately or unfortunately, companies are in the business of making money, and taking the hard line with piracy will benefit their bottom line. Martin’s Take: This patent is about remote controlling functionality on Apple devices. Turning off features on the phone while the guy with his Android phone can still take a picture of his loved one on the concert, may be seen positively by the industry, but certainly not by consumers. I have not found any limitations to that feature online. Can the technology turn off the complete phone? What if the phone is turned off then and someone needs to call in an emergency? This new technology is one step closer to 1984 in my opinion, with company’s being able to control what you can do with your electronic devices, and what you cannot.

Computer Case Desk Build Stashes CPU in Plain Sight

If you’re looking to declutter your workspace and give it a futuristic vibe that shows off your computing hardware, you’ll be hard pressed to top this custom built desk-as-computer-case setup. Peter Brands, a Dutch case modding hobbyist, decided to take things to the next level by ditching his old tower-style case and building a desk that houses his entire PC. The end result is pretty impressive. He had a neighbor help him weld the case, glass custom cut for the surface, and with a careful arrangement of the internal components and some stylish case lighting he ended up with a desk that looks like it is right out of a sci-fi movie.

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Teen in China sells his own kidney to get iPad 2

The Shanghai Daily has reported today that 17-year-old teenager Anhui Province Zheng sold his kidney to be able to purchase an Apple iPad 2. Zheng sold his kidney for about $3000 USD, but says now that his health is worsening. "I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it. A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan," says the teen. The hospital in which his surgery was performed did not meet safety qualifications for organ removal/transplants but claimed they knew nothing of the surgery after police probed them. After selling the kidney, Zheng bought an iPad 2 and an iPhone but when pressed by his mother as to where he got them he explained the surgery. The video is in Chinese but you can see his scar: Permalink | Comments