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By Andrew Orlowski Published Friday 1st August 2008 17:23 GMT
As expected, the US telecoms regulator has censured Comcast for violating "net neutrality" principles laid down in 2005. And as expected, Comcast has strongly hinted it will challenge the decision, arguing that it violates the FCC's own rule making obligations.

Commissioners Copps and Adelstein sided with chairman Martin in a 3:2 vote to issue an "enforcement order" against Comcast for resetting Bittorrent uploads at times of peak congestion. Comcast initially denied the practice, and has since disowned it. The case was brought by P2P service Vuze with campaign group Free Press, and was backed by Google-funded law departments at Harvard and Stanford.

Free Press hailed the decision.

"Defying every ounce of conventional wisdom in Washington, everyday people have taken on a major corporation and won a historic precedent for an open Internet," the group said.

Comcast said it was relieved the FCC didn't impose a fine, and said the technique was "reasonable, wholly consistent with industry practices," adding "we did not block access to Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services"

The cable giant also hinted at a legal challenge.

"We also believe that the Commission’s order raises significant due process concerns and a variety of substantive legal questions. We are considering all our legal options and are disappointed that the commission rejected our attempts to settle this issue without further delays."

The FCC can only act in areas authorized by Congress, and this clearly exceeds its authority, since no neutrality legislation has succeeded democratically.

As Declan McCullagh noted earlier this week, while a judicial challenge is likely to be successful, it poses risks for the network operator of greater bureaucratic meddling:

"For now, at least, the vagueness of the FCC's Net neutrality principles can be useful to both sides: broadband providers and Free Press can point to them as supporting their respective positions. If a court declares them to be unlawful, the ruling could invite more specific regulations or explicit legislation from Congress," he wrote.

For now, the Neutrality campaigners have won the symbolic victory they wanted so much.®

Today is Sysadmin Day - the annual celebration of all things sys.
Just as the website says "If you can read this, thank your sysadmin".

It is the day when we should all show a bit of appreciation for that oft-ignored or even maligned creature, the system administrator. So why not show yours some loving? You could have a whip-round and buy them a present, or at least thank them for all their hard work.

The yearly beanfeast, always held on the last Friday of July, has been running since 2001. For any actual sysadmins out there who want to help organise the next one there are groups in Catalonia, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine and Wales.

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco
Published Friday 25th July 2008 00:24 GMT
More than two weeks after security researchers warned of a critical defect in the net's address lookup system, some of the world's biggest internet service providers - including AT&T, BT, Time Warner and Bell Canada - have yet to install a patch inoculating their subscribers against attacks.

According to an informal survey of Register readers, 15 ISPs failed the "Check my DNS" test (see button to the right) on the website of researcher Dan Kaminsky, who discovered the bug. Now that attack code exploiting the vulnerability has been leaked into the wild millions of subscribers are at risk of being silently redirected to impostor sites that try to install malware or steal sensitive information. Comcast and Plusnet were the only two ISPs we found that weren't vulnerable.

The lack of action comes after Kaminsky, domain name resolution guru Paul Vixie and others have repeatedly warned that the vulnerability has the potential to wreak havoc on the net. Their advisories became more urgent following the leaking of the vulnerability details, which Kaminsky intended to keep private until next month's Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.

"It's obviously not a high enough priority in the minds of large companies yet," said Tom Parker, manager of security consulting at Mu Dynamics, a seller of security products. "It is concerning that there are lots of people out there that haven't done anything about it yet."

To be fair, installing the update that patches the vulnerability takes time at large organizations, said Danny McPherson, chief security officer at Arbor Networks, who previously worked at several ISPs. Getting approval to make big changes can take as long as a month, he says, and usually involves repeatedly testing new configurations and then rolling them out gradually throughout the system.

Even still, Parker said, for most organizations, the fix itself isn't much more complicated than running a software upgrade on a server. (The exception is organizations running version 8 of BIND; they will be forced to upgrade to version 9.)

Subscribers of ISPs that are still vulnerable ought to hardwire an alternate DNS server into their operating system. We're partial to OpenDNS (http://opendns.org/). They've been vulnerability free since at least July 8, when Kaminsky announced the bug.

Other ISPs that were reported vulnerable include: Skybroadband, Carphone Warehouse Broadband, Opal Telecom, T-Mobile, Videotron Telecom, Roadrunner, Orange, Enventis Telecom, Earthlink, Griffin Internet and Jazztel. Virgin Media, and Demon Internet were reported as potentially being vulnerable. If we missed any, please leave a comment below, along with the IP address of the DNS server. ®

May 6, 2008


By Wesley Pruden - Davy Crockett is the patron saint of every politician who ever left Washington with a bruised ego and a broken heart. When he was bounced out of Congress in 1830, Davy told the folks on the banks of the Nolichucky River in Tennessee: "I'm going to Texas, and the rest of you can go to hell."

Departing presidents have left town nursing similar sentiments but avoided saying them out loud. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, continuing their endless rassling match today in Indiana and North Carolina, could take Davy Crockett's benediction as a caution. George W. Bush surely feels like Crockett is kin, and there's the fantasy of a speech floating across the Internet that George W. could but never would deliver. But if he had only the self-discipline of his critics, this is what he might say:

"If the polls are right, more than half of you don't regard yourselves as 'my fellow Americans," so I'll cut right to the chase. I'm getting out of Dodge. Before anyone gets in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, let me assure you that no laws were broken, the Constitution is intact. I'm quitting because I'm fed up with you people. You have no interest in what's actually going on in the world. Most of you are too lazy to do your homework and figure it out.

"Let's start local. The politicians and pundits have persuaded you that the economy is in the tank. That's despite record numbers of homeowners, including record numbers of minority homeowners. Minority business ownership is at record levels, too. Our unemployment rate is as low as it ever was during the Clinton administration. The stock market has rebounded to record levels and more Americans than ever own stocks. But all you can do is whine about gasoline prices, and most of you are too dumb to realize that the price of gasoline is high because the Chinese and the Indians are driving cars now, and because Al Gore and a handful of wacko greenheads are more worried about polar bears and their beachfront property than they are about you.

"I'm tired of this 'blood for oil" crap. If I were trading blood for oil, I would have seized Iraq's oil fields a long time ago. And don't give me this 'Bush lied, people died' crap, either. I could have planted chemical weapons planted all over Iraq to be 'discovered.' Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty. The rest of the world thought Saddam Hussein had the goods, too, same as me.

"Fools don't understand that we face a unique enemy. The 'soldiers' of our new enemy, unlike our old Soviet enemies, are actually eager to die. That's OK with me, and good riddance, as long as they aren't trying to take as many of you with them as they can. But they want to kill you in the name of what I generously called 'the religion of peace' (not that I ever believed it any more than you do). You all should be grateful that the Islamists haven't killed more of us here in the United States since September 11, but you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that.

"I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight, but most of you think 'a long and difficult fight' amounts to a single season of 'Survivor.' You won't look through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do.

"The facts are easy enough to find. They're all over the Internet, along with a lot of stuff that ain't true. You have to pay attention and sort it out, but most of you would rather watch 'American Idol'. I could say more about your idiotic belief that government, not your own wallet, is where money comes from. But it would sail right over your heads.

"So I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy-efficient house down there that Al Gore could only dream of. Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting too. That means Nancy Pelosi will be your new president. God bless what's left of America. Some of you know what I mean. The rest of you can kiss my you know what."

We might well think he wants to say all that. But of course presidents would never say such things.

Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Times.

In January, Nature launched an informal survey into readers' use of cognition-enhancing drugs. Brendan Maher has waded through the results and found large-scale use and a mix of attitudes towards the drugs.

Brendan Maher

The US National Institutes of Health is to crack down on scientists 'brain doping' with performance-enhancing drugs such as Provigil and Ritalin, a press release declared last week. The release, brainchild of evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen of the University of California, Davis, turned out to be an April Fools' prank. And the World Anti-Brain Doping Authority website that it linked to was likewise fake. But with a number of co-conspirators spreading rumours about receiving anti-doping affidavits with their first R01 research grants, the ruse no doubt gave pause to a few of the respondents to Nature 's survey on readers' use of cognition-enhancing drugs.

The survey was triggered by a Commentary by behavioural neuroscientists Barbara Sahakian and Sharon Morein-Zamir of the University of Cambridge, UK, who had surveyed their colleagues on the use of drugs that purportedly enhance focus and attention (Nature 450, 1157–1159 ; 2007). In the article, the two scientists asked readers whether they would consider “boosting their brain power” with drugs. Spurred by the tremendous response, Nature ran its own informal survey. 1,400 people from 60 countries responded to the online poll.

We asked specifically about three drugs: methylphenidate (Ritalin), a stimulant normally used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder but well-known on college campuses as a 'study aid'; modafinil (Provigil), prescribed to treat sleep disorders but also used off-label to combat general fatigue or overcome jet lag; and beta blockers, drugs prescribed for cardiac arrhythmia that also have an anti-anxiety effect. Respondents who had not taken these drugs, or who had taken them for a diagnosed medical condition were directed straight to a simple questionnaire about general attitudes. Those who revealed that they had taken these drugs, or others, for non-medical, cognition-enhancing purposes were asked several additional questions about their use. Here's what they had to say:

One in five respondents said they had used drugs for non-medical reasons to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory. Use did not differ greatly across age-groups (see line graph, right), which will surprise some. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in Bethesda, Maryland, says that household surveys suggest that stimulant use is highest in people aged 18–25 years, and in students.

For those who choose to use, methylphenidate was the most popular: 62% of users reported taking it. 44% reported taking modafinil, and 15% said they had taken beta blockers such as propanolol, revealing an overlap between drugs. 80 respondents specified other drugs that they were taking. The most common of these was adderall, an amphetamine similar to methylphenidate. But there were also reports of centrophenoxine, piractem, dexedrine and various alternative medicines such as ginkgo and omega-3 fatty acids.

The most popular reason for taking the drugs was to improve concentration. Improving focus for a specific task (admittedly difficult to distinguish from concentration) ranked a close second and counteracting jet lag ranked fourth, behind 'other' which received a few interesting reasons, such as “party”, “house cleaning” and “to actually see if there was any validity to the afore-mentioned article”.
Our question on frequency of use, for those who took drugs for non-medical purposes, revealed an even split between those who took them daily, weekly, monthly, or no more than once a year. Roughly half reported unpleasant side effects, and some discontinued use because of them. Some might expect that negative side effects would correlate positively with a low frequency of use, but that doesn't seem to be the case in our sample (see bar graph, right). Reported side effects included headaches, jitteriness, anxiety and sleeplessness.

Neuroscientist Anjan Chatterjee of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia predicts a rise in the use of these drugs and other neuroenhancing products and procedures as they become available (A. Chatterjee Cam. Q. Healthc. Ethics 16, 129–137; 2007). Like the rise in cosmetic surgery, use of cognitive enhancers is likely to increase as bioethical and psychological concerns are overcome (see 'Worrying words') and as the products gain cultural acceptance. One difference, Chatterjee says, is that use of cognitive enhancers doesn't rely on training of medical specialists such as surgeons. Internet availability will also greatly accelerate use, he says.

Our poll found that one-third of the drugs being used for non-medical purposes were purchased over the Internet (see pie chart). The rest were obtained from pharmacies or on prescription. It is unclear whether the prescribed neuroenhancers were diverted from other people's prescriptions, prescribed for different purposes or at different doses for the user. A breakdown of how such drugs were obtained in different countries shows that slightly fewer US users get drugs from the Internet. In the few respondents from Britain that answered this question (n = 14), all but one reported the Internet as their source.

All participants who took part in the survey were asked 10 questions designed to gauge their attitudes towards neuroenhancing drugs. Almost all respondents (96%) thought people with neuropsychiatric disorders who have severe memory and concentration problems should be given cognition-enhancing drugs. But perhaps surprisingly, a high four-fifths thought that healthy adults should be able to take the drugs if they want to. And 69% reported that they would risk mild side effects to take such drugs themselves.

When asked whether healthy children under the age of 16 should be restricted from taking these drugs, unsurprisingly, most respondents (86%) said that they should. But one-third of respondents said they would feel pressure to give cognition-enhancing drugs to their children if other children at school were taking them. Morein-Zamir found this coercive factor very interesting. “These numbers strongly suggest that even if policies restricted their use by kids, pressure would be high for parents,” she says.

Few studies have looked in depth at the prevalence of this kind of drug use or at people's attitudes towards it. And few data are available on how effective these neuroenhancing agents are or on long-term side effects. The NIDA doesn't fund any such studies, according to Volkow, but the US Department of Defense does. Chatterjee says that he is working with Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania on a small study of the effects of these drugs in students.

The most popular of the drugs used by respondents to Nature 's poll seem to have fairly mild neuroenhancing effects, says Chatterjee, who calls the massive media interest in these drugs “neurogossip”. Nevertheless, the numbers suggest a significant amount of drug-taking among academics. As Eisen's April Fool's prank spread from blog to blog, it was hard to tell who was in on the joke and who was taking the announcement at face value. Although tricking people was a goal, Eisen had been aiming for something so ridiculous that most would chuckle. Instead, he worries that he might have hit a nerve: “I think it did make it less funny because it is actually too real.”