Category Archives: Internet

This seems like a big deal.

Official Google Blog: A new approach to China:

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

See also AP via NYT, E-Mail Breach Has Google Threatening to Leave China.

Wendy Grossman has an interesting net.wars column up, Car talk, in which she expands on a CNBC suggestion that the Internet displaces the car:

… today's young people find their independence differently: through their cell phones and the Internet. … As children, many baby boomers shared bedrooms with siblings. Use of the family phone was often restricted. The home was most emphatically not a place where a young adult could expect any privacy.

Today, kids go out less, first because their parents worry about their safety, later because their friends and social lives are on tap from the individual bedrooms they now tend to have. And even if they have to share the family computer and use it in a well-trafficked location, they can carve themselves out a private space inside their phones, by text if not by voice.

That rings true: I had put down our eldest's seeming lack of enthusiasm for getting a driving license to his taste for being chauffeured — beats walking to the parking spot. But maybe it's the times and the PC in his room.

Both Google and Yahoo now have pages disclosing what they think they know about you based on your searching habits, information used to target ads.

You can turn the 'feature' off by blocking cookies or opting out.

I wrote the post below about Phil Agre seven weeks ago, but somehow never put it online. Now I read via the Great Grimmelmann that Phil Agre Is Missing and there is a web site dedicated to finding Phil Agre.

It seems I am not the only one wondering Where's Phil Agre?.

Phil was an incandescent presence in the early Internet studies world. He was a brilliant but erratic presenter. Mostly brilliant, once in a while just boring. But mostly brilliant. Scary brilliant. I remember being on a panel with Phil, we met for dinner or something the night before, he had a talk planned and written out. I saw him the next day carrying around a bound set of lined paper, like one uses for a diary, and writing in it, covering every line, page after page. Finally I asked him what he was writing. “I had a different idea for the talk.” And indeed the talk he gave was nothing like the one he'd told us about the day before, but it was brilliant.

Phil also ran RRE – the Red Rock Eater, a set of links and notes that had thousands of subscribers, back at a time when that was a lot of subscribers.

Where does the name Red Rock Eater come from?

Bennett Cerf's Book of Riddles.

Question: What is big and red and eats rocks?

Answer: A big red rock eater.

Why such a funny name?

I wanted something as un-computer-like as possible.

Does the word “red” in the list's name have a political meaning?

Absolutely not.

Then one day, some time in 2003, he stopped posting to RRE, and more or less around then vanished from the conference scene. I miss him. I hope you're OK, Phil. There's a folder in my inbox waiting for you.

For a minute there I thought I'd gotten my first phishing email from Iran. But after a look at the headers, I think maybe not?

Received: from law.miami.edu ([172.16.8.69]) by EXCHVS.law.miami.edu with Microsoft SMTPSVC;
Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:28:14 -0500
Received: from ([194.225.184.9])
by mx-01.law.miami.edu with ESMTP id 5202001.34032630;
Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:27:46 -0500
Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
by mta.iums.ac.ir (Postfix) with ESMTP id CAFB3D74D7E;
Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:56:57 +0330 (IRST)
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at mta.iums.ac.ir
Received: from mta.iums.ac.ir ([127.0.0.1])
by localhost (mta.iums.ac.ir [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024)
with ESMTP id egIez7IMCKAL; Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:56:57 +0330 (IRST)
Received: from mta.iums.ac.ir (mta.iums.ac.ir [194.225.184.9])
by mta.iums.ac.ir (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8333DD74D4B;
Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:56:52 +0330 (IRST)
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:56:47 +0330 (IRST)
From: OWA Management Group
Message-ID: <2520384.58051258932407817.JavaMail.root@zimbra.iums.ac.ir>
Subject: Account Update
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Originating-IP: [173.162.144.44]
X-Mailer: Zimbra 5.0.16_GA_2921.RHEL4 (zclient/5.0.16_GA_2921.RHEL4)
To: undisclosed-recipients:;

It all looks very convincing…the IP numbers in the top part are Iranian. I might believe except for that last little bit, the X-Originating-IP … that comes from Comcast here in the US of A. Whether it went via Iran, or most of it is a forgery, I can't quite tell, as it's odd that this IP number doesn't appear anywhere else. I suppose another possibility is that it really is Iranian, and someone forged the X-Originating-IP to make it look like it came from Comcast, but I'm not sure why they would bother.