20Oct/03

VoIP Phone Appliances

WiFi VoIP Phone SIP compatible

You can register your SIP phone with Free World Dialup

The guy that made Lindows, also started - SIPPhone.com

Jeff's Blog about WiFi SIP Phones

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The concept of making free phone calls utilizing the bandwidth of the internet that I am already paying for is a big goal of mine.

At the present moment the technology to accomplish this is very GEEKY, and requires alot of configuration and 'playing with' inorder to make it work. It is far from to a point that I can have a device I can give my Mom and make calls with her.

Some companies are starting to develop these phones but they are focused towards businesses not consumers.

Google Search

NetVision Phone - Sky Wire (AU)

Spectrum24 - Symbol

Symbol - NetVision

Why a broken heart hurts so much

** Why a broken heart hurts so much **

A rejected lovers broken heart may cause as much distress in a pain center of the brain as an actual physical injury, according to new research.

msnbc.com article

CALIFORNIA RESEARCHERS have found a physiological basis for social pain by monitoring the brains of people who thought they had been maliciously excluded from a computer game by other players.

Naomi I. Eisenberger, a scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles and the first author of the study to be published Friday in the journal Science, said the study suggests that the need for social inclusiveness is a deep-seated part of what it means to be human.

“These findings show how deeply rooted our need is for social connection,” said Eisenberger. “There’s something about exclusion from others that is perceived as being as harmful to our survival as something that can physically hurt us, and our body automatically knows this.”

Eisenberger and her co-authors created a computer game in which test subjects were led to believe they were playing ball with two other players. At some point, the other players seemed to exclude the test subject from the game — making it appear the test subject had been suddenly rejected and blocked from playing with the group.

The shock and distress of this rejection registered in the same part of the brain, called the anterior cingulate cortex, that also responds to physical pain, Eisenberger said.

“The ACC is the same part of the brain that has been found to be associated with the unpleasantness of physical pain, the part of pain that really bothers us,” Eisenberger said.

Eisenberger said the study suggests that social exclusion of any sort —— divorce, not being invited to a party, being turned down for a date —— would cause distress in the ACC.

“You can imagine that this part of the brain is active any time we are separated from our close companions,” she said. “It would definitely be active when we experience a loss,” such as a death or the end of a love affair.

In a commentary in Science, Jaak Panksepp of the department of psychology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said earlier studies have shown that the anterior cingulate cortex is linked to physical pain.

He said the new study by Eisenberger and her co-authors demonstrates that the ACC is also activated by the distress of social exclusion.

“Throughout history poets have written about the pain of a broken heart,” Panksepp said in his commentary. “It seems that such poetic insights into the human condition are now supported by neurophysiological findings.”

The tendency to feel rejection as an acute pain may have developed in humans as a defensive mechanism for the species, said Eisenberger.

“Because we have such a long time as infants and need to be taken care of, it is really important that we stay close to the social group. If we don’t we’re not going to survive,” said Eisenberger. “The hypothesis is that the social attachment system that makes sure we don’t stray too far from the group piggybacked onto the pain system to help our species survive.”

This suggests that the need to be accepted as part of a social group is as important to humans as avoiding other types of pain, she said.

Just as an infant may learn to avoid fire by first being burned, humans may learn to stick together because rejection causes distress in the pain center of the brain, said Eisenberger.

“If it hurts to be separated from other people, then it will prevent us from straying too far from the social group,” she said.

Hacking your TiVo

Good story on /. about a Hacking TiVo book.

Buy on Amazon.com

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Posted
by timothy on Wednesday October
15, @12:30PM
Jason
Scott writes "TiVo: You love it or you haven't met it. For those who have
it (or are thinking of getting one), a new book is out about all the different
ways to modify, increase capacity, or even program TiVos. Whether you want to
just add a little capacity to your TiVo's drives or turn it into a full-blown
home entertainment center hooked into your home LAN, href="mailto:[email protected]">Jeff Keegan has
written a massive and all-encompassing book on this rewarding art." Read on
for the rest of Jason's review.

Hacking TiVo: The Expansion, Enhancement and Development Starter Kit
author	Jeff Keegan
pages	500
publisher	Wiley Publishing, Inc.
rating	10
reviewer	Jason Scott
ISBN	0764543369
summary	Everything from admining how cool TiVos are to turning them into your home entertainment server. Exhaustive, elaborate, and funny.

As a relatively early convert to the TiVo way of life, I always found it hard
to describe to people who didn't have one why their lives could be changed by
it. If I was lucky, I could get friends to visit and with a few short minutes of
demonstration, I'd sold another one. If they were farther away, I just hoped
they would stop by some day and I'd have another convert. Why was I so intent on
this? Because if you watch TV, or even if you don't watch as much as you used
to, TiVo can change your life completely. It frees you from the tyranny of
watching shows when you're told to watch them, and then goes on to turn your
entire television experience from one bombarded with ads and missing all the
"good stuff" on scattered random channels, to a true symbiotic relationship
where you sit down in front of the tube and every single moment is one filled
with shows you want to watch about stuff you're interested in.

A lot of Slashdot readers know what I'm talking about, because they have a
TiVo or other PVR in their home right now. So when I tell you that this book
will take your TiVo to the next level, I hope you get as excited as I was after
reading the dozens of tricks, programs, and hacks this book lists.

The opening chapter describes, in succinct but energetic fashion, why every
person with a TV should have a TiVo. Keegan's description may fall towards the
evangelical side of things, but he goes out of his way to explain why his
feelings are so strong. In fact, this book has an interesting side-effect:
converting those who don't own a TiVo. Just a quick browse through the first few
chapters will have someone who's heard of TiVo but never used one chomping at
the bit to get down to the store. To the TiVo army, this is a powerful munition
indeed.

From there, it's a powerful spiral into chapter after chapter of
modifications, starting with back doors in the code and moving into opening the
TiVo's case (explained with lots of clear pictures), adding storage, and even
working with the TiVo's OS (a variation of Linux) to turn it into a
web-accessible site or to improve performance.

One inspiring chapter describes the author's experience at a baseball game,
having his father go to get refreshments and missing some great plays, and the
author pulling out his Palm Pilot with cellular modem to tell his TiVo over the
web to record the game's highlights on the news. With that tantalizing trick
presented, Keegan goes into the whole involved deal, everything from modifying
the TiVo to creating the external server to feed the TiVo information.

As I said, the tricks come fast and furious: TiVo as a way to browse photo
galleries. TiVo pulling down the current weather and presenting the radar maps.
TiVo printing Caller ID information on the screen when someone calls. By the
time you're done with the book, you'll be wondering what there is that you
can't do with it. And that, to me, is the sign of a truly great
instructional book.

A warning: If you want a neutral voice in the author, this isn't the book for
you. Keegan's enthusiasm drips from many pages, written in the tone of the guy
down the street with the new toy who simply has take you to the den and
show you how cool it is, describing in greater and greater detail all the cool
stuff he's discovered tinkering with it. The author's wife, newborn daughter,
mother and father make appearances all throughout the book, including a
particularly touching description of having his father design an assembly
language program to manipulate an LED display. No, really, it's touching. I did
a search for Jeff and information on him and I found a photo of him in href="http://cache.cow.net/keegan.jpg">this costume. Honestly, I'm
speechless. The man has achieved what we call "full commitment."

By about halfway through the book it stops being an instruction manual and
begins being a full-on reference book, giving you explicit instructions on
programming in Tcl, mucking about in Linux, and generally being a hard-core
warranty violator. One appendix is dedicated to being a Tcl reference list while
another hits you up for some basic Linux training (to be able to work
comfortably in the OS).

Keegan has also been kind enough to include a CD-ROM with pretty much all the
programs and utilities needed to accomplish what's in his book. It's a telling
personal trait that he apologizes for putting it all on a CD instead of enabling
readers to go out and search for the programs themselves.

To say I learned things in this book is an amazing understatement. Just to
know that some of these things are even possible with my TiVo guarantee
how I'll be spending the next few hundred dollars, buying larger drives, getting
a cache card, and wiring the machine for ethernet. And Yes, it tells you how to
get the shows off of your TiVo onto your computer's hard drive.

When I ordered this book from Amazon, I found out it was an href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0764543369">Amazon
exclusive, so that's the only place to get it right now. On the other hand,
I was able to get my copy in a very short time, so I'm fine with that ... but I
hope that you can get it in other places in the future. Regardless, it was worth
the money I paid for it, especially since Amazon had 30 percent off in some
effort to push to product. Great for me; I'm glad this book came into my
collection and I think any TiVo owner (or hopeful TiVo owner) will agree.

Blocking unwanted calls to your home

This is information on blocking unwanted calls from your house.

DoNotCall.gov - Register your home phone with the this list to stop unwanted calls.

No Call List re-approved - NYTimes (free signup required)

Do Not Call List - NYTimes (free signup required)

Watch with Built in USB Drive

I am always wondering where/when to carry around my USB Drive. Now they have found a way so that I have it always... a Watch with a built in USB Drive!

Meritline

and a pictures of the watch.

Camping Equipment

In talking to Tad and Erika there are several good places online to buy Equipment for camping. Of course in San Diego, REI or A16 is a great place to start. But you pay a premium for the convience.

CampMor - http://www.campmor.com/

Sierra Trading Post - http://www.sierratradingpost.com

Northern Mountain - http://www.northernmountain.com/index.html

REI - http://www.rei.com

What I need to get:

1. Good Bed Roll - Therm-a-Rest 2.5" - LE CampRest

2. Some Cooking Utencils
   
3. Folding Shovel?
   
4. Good Hat (rice patty hat)
   
5. Folding Chairs
   
6. Camelbak
   

Panoramic Photos of Japan at Night

http://ww4.tiki.ne.jp/~mmurakami/setoy/map.html

Spam Fighters Turn to Identifying Legitimate E-Mail

Interesting article from NY Times on Spam Fighters Turn to Identifying Legitimate E-Mail.

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October 6, 2003 Spam Fighters Turn to Identifying Legitimate E-Mail By SAUL HANSELL he software engineers helped create the spam problem. Can they solve it? As politicians have been racing to find ways to ban the junk e-mail known as spam, Internet providers have been boasting about filtering technologies capable of identifying the sort of messages typically sent by spammers and disposing of them. But the spammers have been keeping ahead of the law and the filters. The open nature of e-mail technology — designed decades ago by computer scientists who had little reason to anticipate spam — lets spammers hide their tracks and transform many of their messages to avoid detection. As a result, many e-mail software experts now contend that the most powerful way to clean people's mailboxes is to focus not on catching the spam, but on identifying the legitimate mail. "People have been spending all their time creating filters to find the bad guys," said Nico Popp, vice president for research and advanced products of VeriSign, the largest registrar of Internet sites and a seller of online identification systems. "We want to turn that on its head and find ways to identify the good guys and let them in." Put simply, these efforts are trying to develop the Internet equivalent of caller ID, a technology that will let the receiver of an e-mail message verify the identity of the sender. As with caller ID for telephones, senders will be able to choose whether to remain anonymous. But also like caller ID, recipients may presume that those who do not identify themselves are sending junk. The loudest calls for such a system are coming from the banks, travel companies and online stores that are finding that much of their e-mail is getting caught in spam filters. The advertisers gave the big Internet providers an earful recently at a forum sponsored by Doubleclick, an advertising technology company. The Internet providers responded that they were working on standards for a new system, and that their much-delayed proposal would be published this fall. The technical challenges to creating such an identification system are daunting. The millions of computers that process e-mail for half a billion users may need to be retrofitted. Moreover, the Internet is not governed in any organized way. Rather, it is influenced by impromptu committees that nudge practices in certain directions. These plans must compensate for e-mail technology designed two decades ago by a happy-go-lucky confederation of computer scientists. They created the protocols — the technical communication rules for e-mail — in such a trusting and open way that now anyone can send e-mail impersonating someone else with little prospect that the messages can ever be traced to the original sender. Little did these pioneers suspect that the systems, meant to exchange research papers, would lead to a global system that provides nearly instant communication for hundreds of millions of people, yet now is in danger of being overrun by anonymous purveyors of pills and pornography. A lot of money is riding on how these problems are solved. And under the technical discussion of spam fighting systems is a power struggle between the companies that send a lot of e-mail and the large Internet service providers. The e-mailers are exasperated with the filters and want a system that defines their e-mail as legitimate and guarantees its delivery. The Internet providers are concerned more about customer complaints and do not want to promise to deliver any particular mail. Some are also wary about creating an industry standard for spam fighting, because the big providers are finding that their proprietary spam filters attract new customers. Circling all of these discussions are a group of e-mail handling companies and other organizations that expect to profit if their identification ideas are accepted as the standard. (Even the Postal Service wants to get into the act, with an electronic postmark.) The upper hand is probably held by the four largest service providers — Microsoft, America Online, Earthlink and Yahoo — which have been meeting since April to try to define spam fighting standards. They say they must go slowly out of respect for the decentralized nature of the Internet (and on the advice of their lawyers). "We're very self-conscious about being a big player in the e-mail business, and we don't want to be seen as laying out the law for everyone," said Brian Sullivan, senior director for mail operations at America Online. "We need to build a consensus around a framework." There already does appear to be agreement that any system would be optional for senders. Most likely big commercial e-mailers would use it at first. Mail from others that did not adopt these new technologies — individuals, small business, those in foreign countries — might still be delivered but it would be subject to greater scrutiny. The clearly identified mail "will be like the express line at the airport," said Kevin Doerr, a business manager for antispam products at Microsoft. "You will only be frisked once and not thrown in with the unwashed masses." Eventually, however, Internet Service providers expect to develop easy ways to help individuals and small businesses identify their e-mail so it, too, would have the benefit of the express line through the spam filters. Most likely, individual users would not have to do anything differently as they read their mail. But some of the more elaborate proposals envision requiring users to get updated software that they could set to determine the sort of e-mail they want to read or delete. There is also a growing agreement that it is not enough for an e-mail sender to identify itself. The sender must also earn the trust of e-mail recipients, by promising to follow certain standards and having violations tallied and published. That would let people choose to discard mail from senders with high complaint rates. "Just because we can verify your identity doesn't mean you send good email," said Miles Libbey, the manager for antispam products at Yahoo. "You absolutely need identity and you also need reputation." Deciding whose mail will be delivered and whose will be bounced is a thankless task, and most proposals envision that several independent groups would publish e-mail standards. A sender would choose one of these to follow, and that group, in turn, would monitor its compliance. Truste, a group that monitors Web site privacy policies, wants to get into that business. The biggest unanswered question is how to identify each sender in a way that cannot be counterfeited. As with so many other issues, there is a choice between simple and quick solutions that are limited and technically flawed and more comprehensive approaches that will take years to fully adopt. The most robust, but most complicated approach would have every sender attach to each message a unique code, called a digital certificate, which the recipient's Internet provider or e-mail software could authenticate. Others argue that a far simpler approach would be good enough: they propose the creation of a registry of e-mail servers — the computers that process the mail for big companies and internet providers — whose owners have been verified. Any mail sent from an unregistered server would be automatically suspect. The Internet service provider group appears to prefer this approach, at least as a first step. But the big e-mail senders, and some security experts, say that it would be flawed. They note that spammers appear to be skilled and shameless hackers. Many have found ways to secretly take over the computers of unsuspecting people to relay their messages and to attack computers used by groups that fight spam. Only digital certificates, they say, can clearly distinguish legitimate e-mail senders from counterfeit ones. "It's not easy to change something as successful and widely used as e-mail," said Richard Reichgut, a vice president at AuthentiDate, a company that has a contract to develop electronic postmarks based on digital certificates for the Postal Service. "But the only way to fix e-mail is to have a strong way to know who is sending you mail." Moreover, using digital certificates can allow finer distinctions among mail from one sender. A bank's credit card statements might get one identifier and its offers of new services another. "My concern is that the solution not be penny-wise and pound-foolish," said Hans Peter Brondmo, a senior vice president of Digital Impact, a company that sends mail on behalf of big companies. "We could take six more months and have something that is far more comprehensive." Mr. Brondmo is one of the main developers of Project Lumos, a sender identification proposal by the E-mail Service Provider Coalition, a group of big e-mail senders. Some Internet service providers acknowledge that ultimately some form of digital certificate may be useful. But they disagree that the simpler approach, based on an existing identification number assigned to each server called Internet Protocol address, is too vulnerable to attacks. Internet Protocol "spoofing is hard to do and easy to detect," Mr. Doerr of Microsoft said. And that position is endorsed by Paul Q. Judge, the chairman of the Anti-Spam Research Group of the Internet Emerging Issues Task Force, one of the main groups that publishes standards for the Internet. "There is a huge gain that can happen today with I.P.-based systems that use existing technology," Mr. Judge said. "The benefit of having a certificate for each individual e-mail is not worth the hassle and the cost." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top

IIS v6.0 Manager for Windows XP

With IIS 6.0 Manager for Windows XP, administrators can remotely manage an IIS 6.0 server from a Windows XP Professional workstation. This tool only installs a snap-in for Microsoft Management Console and its associated DLLs and documentation; it does not install the complete IIS 6.0 server on your local computer.

This tool is available only in English. When installed on non-English editions of Windows XP, IIS 6.0 Manager, documentation, folders, and shortcuts appear as English-only.

After installation, IIS 6.0 Manager and IIS 5.1 Manager coexist in separate directories on the same computer.

Start the IIS 6.0 Manager after installation from the administrative tools folder in the Control Panel, not from the Computer Management console. If the IIS 5.1 Manager is also installed, it will appear in the Computer Management console, not the IIS 6.0 Manager.

View:

Internet Information Services (IIS) Home

Download:

Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Manager for Windows XP