Category Archives: Internet

Windows 7 Phones Home Every Time You Change Networks

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Win 7 phones home every time it connects to to a network. Microsoft keeps records of your IP numbers. And it doesn’t poll just once, but repeatedly during a session.

The good news is that, not only can you disable the service, you can even tell it to check your own server instead. If you have a server.

But it does seem like quite a lot of work. And they know your IP address anyway every time you run windows update, so the gain of changing all this is limited.

Incidentally, there is a real legal issue here: Microsoft is collecting a huge pile of data that tells it something, more or less reliable, about where users are and how long they are there. I wonder if this is compatible with data protection law in the EU (which I know considered protecting IP numbers as far back as 2008, but I don’t know if this was actually formalized). I suspect this creates a real legal problem in Switzerland.

Posted in Internet, Law: Privacy | Comments Off on Windows 7 Phones Home Every Time You Change Networks

Borg Sighted

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Yes, Microsoft is buying Skype

My reaction:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY

I am not downloading Microsoft Passport to make Skype calls. Just Not Going To Do It. (No, I don’t know that they plan to make me, but you get the idea.)

Posted in Internet | 1 Comment

A New Form of Crowdsourcing

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

In Washington, D.C., Homicide Watch D.C. editor Laura Amico noticed something odd in her Google Analytics reports yesterday: People were coming to her site looking for "20 year old male killed on fort stanton se may 4."

Turns out the cops were not reporting the homicide, but it was real.

via Google Analytics Reveal an Unreported Homicide | techPresident.

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on A New Form of Crowdsourcing

IPv6 Considered Dangerous (Updated)

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

The blog was down much of the day while I was busy in Baltimore and Washington (how does it know to die whenever, and almost only whenever, I’m out of town?). Here, according to support, is the cause:

The apache service did not like the initial IPv6 assigned to the domain. I changed out the IP and reset the apache service for the domain and I can now view the domain.

I don’t actually understand how this is possible, but if this is the straight dope, it suggests IPv6 adoption is going to be much rockier than I ever imagined.

Update: I asked for further and better particulars, and got this:

The tech who helped you is not in the office. Therefor I cannot give you an definitive answer. However, I had a similar issue on another machine. It appeared to be a kernel bug. The IP was visible to the VPS guest, but could not use. It appache cannot listen on an IP, it will not start. The best course of action was to simply renumber the IP. Hopefully this gives you more insight. If you have any additional questions, please let us know.

Posted in Discourse.net, Internet | 1 Comment

GIGANet Doubleheader in DC May 5-6

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

I’ll be speaking not once but twice at the GIGANet conference being held at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, D.C., May 5 & May 6. The title of the conference is Global Internet Governance: Research and Public Policy Challenges for the Next Decade. The first day is public-policy-oriented, and I’m on a panel at 11am on “IP addressing in the new age of scarcity” — an exciting topic given the warp-speed developments over at ARIN. (That link is a bit obscure, but trust me, this is a big deal.)

The second day is more academic, and I’ll be discussing my recent paper on ICANN’s “Affirmation of Commitments” on the first panel, at 9am, alongside presentations by Jonathan Weinberg and Konstantinos Komaitis, which I consider to be most excellent company.

The whole thing is almost a Who’s Who of governance-of-internet studies including many foreign speakers. There’s a keynote by Assistant Secretary for Commerce Larry Strickling at 12:30 on May 5. Admission to the event is free, but you should register if you plan to go. And they say that if you email icsis@american.edu before May 1, you can get free guest parking — otherwise parking is either difficult or expensive. There’s also going to be remote access, see details at the link above.

Posted in Internet, Law: Internet Law, Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on GIGANet Doubleheader in DC May 5-6

Here it Comes

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

ICM .xxx resolves.

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on Here it Comes