OverPlay

Many broadcasting companies now provide TV shows over the Internet but you’re unable to watch most of them unless you live in their country of origin.  For example, you can’t watch Hulu unless you live in the United States, you can’t watch BBC iPlayer unless you live in the United Kingdom and you can’t use the RTE Player unless you live in Ireland.

Fortunately that’s no longer a problem thanks to a solution from OverPlay.  Using OverPlay you can have access to TV shows from the UK, US, Ireland, Canada, Switzerland, and Sweden and that list keeps getting bigger.  OverPlay provide a VPN service with one or more servers in several countries.  The current price at the time of writing is $9.95 (USD) a month and that single price gives you access to ALL of those servers.

Not only that but there are no bandwidth limitations so you can watch as much as you like.  They also provide their own software so it’s easy to set up and use, however you can use your own PPTP and OpenVPN diallers if you want that flexibility.

The other advantage to using a good VPN service is that they provide a good level of anonymity.  With governments taking an increasing interest in their citizens’ Internet activities and in some cases filtering content that they don’t like, they can be a good way of accessing the true, uncensored Internet.

We reported last week on plans to enforce copyright law by forcing internet service providers to spy on consumers to detect and report every piece of copied music, movies, e-books, games and software.

Now one UK ISP, Virgin Media, is trialling some of the technology needed to do that on about 1.6 million of its customers.

Provided by Detica, a subsidiary of defence firm BAE Systems, the system is being used to try and gauge the size of the alleged piracy problem. CView, as the system is known, will take a snapshot of the scale of peer-to-peer music transfers over a few months.

It will do so by copying every packet of data that passes by, and looking for the digital signatures of data transferred using the popular bittorrent, gnutella, and edonkey file sharing protocols.

Whenever it finds a data packet that matches, it will extract the code these protocols use to identify the contents of the packet.

CView will then compare that code with a database of “musical fingerprints” to identify any music being shared, allowing it to work out if the data packet infringes copyright.

As a result, Virgin will find out how much file-sharing traffic is infringing copyright, and what the most-pirated tracks and albums are, the Register reports.

CView won’t be able to finger individual users, because the IP addresses that identify each computer’s connection will be stripped from every packet. But some Virgin customers are worried about the potential for it to be used for snooping at a later date.

CView’s technology could conceivably be used to identify people accessing certain data, for example.

Or it could block certain content, in much the same way as China’s “great firewall”.

More at New Scientist

It’s a simple concept but I’m not sure that it’s an original one.  I seem to remember using something called “Infinity” a while ago that may have worked in a similar way.  Basically I could web to an Infinity web interface using my usual browser and from there the script on the web site would pull information from the Infinity web for me.  It was like a secret part of the Internet but I don’t remember finding much of any interest on it.  I liked the idea of it through.

Yesterday I came across Freenet.  Freenet works differently in that it doesn’t use Usenet servers to store the information.  Instead you run a local service that turns your computer in to a node that networks with other users running the software.  Each node reserves some disk space on the computer that is used to store Freenet information.  It’s all encrypted and the idea is that you don’t actually know what’s stored in this space on your own machine.  It could be anything.  From what I can gather, when you request a Freenet resource, such as a web page, your node asks the node network for the information and you receive it from them.  They don’t even know they had that information nor that they sent it to you, since it’s all encrypted.

If you want even more anonymity then you can form a “Darknet” with one or more trusted nodes.  This means that you’ll only receive information directly from those nodes, but those nodes can still give you full access to Freenet by finding resources on your behalf and relaying them to you.

I was telling my friend about Freenet yesterday and he said something along the lines of “I’m not even slightly interested since I’m not a pedophile or terrorist.”  Obviously I couldn’t help but be offended since the implication is that I must be a pedophile or terrorist since I am interested in Freenet.  However I don’t think he presented a fair argument.  There are many reasons why someone might want to deny authorities the ability to remove information from the public domain, or that governments might want to unfairly limit their citizens’ Internet access.  This is especially true in countries with poor human rights.  Here is an informative list of the top 10 countries censoring the Internet.  Of course, in all cases it’s content that the government doesn’t like so the end-user doesn’t get to make their own mind up.  In the most extreme cases, the Internet could be used as a propaganda tool.

Freedom of speech is important, as is freedom of the press.  You should only accept an uncensored Internet if you truly believe that politicians are selfless creatures that have only your best interests at heart, and that you’ll never need to know anything other than what they let you know.

In case you don’t want to check out Freenet for yourself but are still curious as to the contents here’s a list of some random sites I found.

• fniki: A wiki for use over freenet
• Esperanto: Information about the artificial international language Esperanto
• Iran News Index: Censored news from Iran
• Cats: Cute images of cats, with funny captions
• Greater Secret Toad Pictures Stash: Drawings and photos of toads.
• Hooters! Boobies!! Tits!!!: Pictures of birds – of the feathered variety!
• Time Cube: Crazy pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.

Not exactly what I would call ‘insidious’.  Mostly, Freenet is full of crap – just like the real web.  I’m not going to lie and say that there’s no dodgy content on it.  Nobody could claim that of the real web either of course.  I did find Muslim extremist material, something called The Terrorist’s Handbook, and The Jolly Roger Cookbook (which I originally read somewhere around 1990, about 5 years before I had Internet access).  I didn’t bother clicking on them as I have no doubt they are the real deal.

Apparently here in the UK, the government can demand private keys in order to decrypt data on your computer.  This would appear to apply to Freenet’s encrypted data.  Failure to supply the key can resort in 2-5 years imprisonment under Section 49.  This also makes technology like PGP not as safe as it otherwise would be.  Truecrypt can get around this problem with plausible deniability – i.e. you can provide the password to decrypt a volume but the volume can be decrypted differently depending on the password, with the real volume remaining hidden. It would be nice if Freenet could somehow implement something similar.

Originally posted on Friday, 16 May, 2003, 16:51 GMT 17:51 UK at BBC News.

Officials in the UK are routinely demanding huge quantities of information about what people do online and who they call, say privacy experts.

Police and other officials are making around a million requests for access to data held by net and telephone companies each year, according to figures compiled from the government, legal experts and the internet industry.

The findings were announced at a public debate into government proposals to widen powers for internet snooping held in London this week.

But a Home Office spokesman disputed the figures, telling BBC News Online it estimated that the number of requests were half that suggested.

The requests include telephone billing data, e-mail logs and customer details, which privacy experts estimate could amount to a billion individual items of data, ranging from credit card numbers to numbers dialled.

Read more here.

From August net service providers in the UK will be obliged to carry out surveillance of some customers’ web habits on behalf of the police.

Controversial laws passed in 2000 oblige large communications companies to install technology that allows one in 10,000 of their customers to be watched.

The information gathered about what people look at on the web, the content of e-mail messages and their phone conversations will be passed to the police or a government monitoring station.

The demands have been criticised by experts who say the law conflicts with basic guarantees of privacy and that the government is not doing enough to help pay for the installation of the surveillance systems.

Read more here.

Dear <username>,

You have been issued a temporary ban by one of our moderators.

Category: Free Servers
Span: 11/02/2009 – 11/08/2009 23:59:59 [7 days]
Reason: Discussing or advertising unofficial servers or emulators for MMOs is not permitted on the MMORPG.com forums. These servers are against the ToS of the original game, and violate the intellectual propriety rights of the game’s publisher and developer.

This temporary ban was generated from the following post on our discussion forum:

Thread: Wanted: ability to turn back time
Below is the content of the post:

————————————————
[snip]

————————————————

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3188255#3188255
Note: If the thread or post has been deleted you will not be able to view it. The above link might not work.

Thank you,

The Staff
MMORPG.COM

If you believe you received this in error or would like more information please respond to this message or send an email with the details to community@mmorpg.com

The forum post I responded to said this…

Is [sic] SWG: Pre-CU was as “amazing” as people say it was… there would be an emulator by now and private servers running it.

I have a very strong theory that SWG Pre-Cu was NOT this amazingly perfect MMORPG that ushered in the golden age.

My post was this…

http://www.swgemu.com/

This has been in development for a long time.  Reverse-engineering a game that doesn’t exist any more has obvious added difficulties.  Personally I don’t think I’ll ever play on one of these emulators simply because I don’t think the quality will be there when it comes to support and hardware costs… then again support in SWG was always a bit LOL.  IIRC 1 week response time on tickets was considered fairly good at the time.

Your “very strong” theory (way to self-promo btw) is of course correct.  SWG was never a perfect game.  It was riddled with bugs from silly harvester animations not working to more serious problems like bugs in the skill trees and jedi defense stats not doing what they said on the tin.  It also had a terrible lack of content but because it was a sandbox, players could always find something to do.  It was also ridiculously incomplete at launch and they brought in stuff like animal mounts long before vehicles which wasn’t very Star Wars like.

However… it was hands down the best sandbox game I’ve played and I am one of those sad people that try them all and usually end up disappointed.  SWG needed fixing but it was unique and had a good community.  SOE could have spent a fraction of the cost of the rebranding to fix the problems and they would have had an absolute winner.  Instead they tried to make it more like WoW, somehow missing the obvious in that if SWG players wanted to play WoW then they already would.

Sorry but imo it is one of the worst MMO crimes of all time and I’m glad SOE felt the burn of their customer base leaving in droves afterwards.  It was a punishment they deserved… that said, if they brought back Pre-CU (or even pre-NGE), I think we’d all return in droves.   Bitter but grateful.  There is currently no game out there that is even remotely close to what SWG was.

As you can see I wasn’t trolling, acting childish or blatantly making a pain of myself.  I was just taking part in a discussion that had already been started by someone else.  I think mmorg.com were wrong to ban me over this.  They could have given me a warning or just edited my post to remove the link if they didn’t like it.  I e-mailed them back with my opinion on their actions which I’ve copied below.

Dear MMORPG.com,

I thought I was taking part in an intelligent discussion on a forum that encouraged it.

I didn’t even know there was a rule for that. A warning would have been much more appropriate since it was obviously innocent and blatantly not advertising if you read the content of my post – I even said that I would not use a 3rd party server for concerns on service levels.

My terms of service with a game that I no longer play are between Sony Online Entertainment and myself. They are none of your god-damn business and they are most certainly not law – Not in the US and not in my country. Even if you were somehow responsible for enforcing SOE’s terms of service, you’ll quite clearly find I’ve not broken them as no game company would have the audacity to try and ban freedom of speech on a 3rd party web site.

Bollocks to you and your moderator. Please upgrade my ban to a permanent one so I’m not tempted to try and engage in any other discussions on your site. What a ridiculous rule that is. When Darkfall was trying to release, you were all slagging it off so much I’m surprised they didn’t sue you for liable as you most certainly DID have a serious impact on how potential customers viewed their game, and yet I can’t innocently mention a 3rd party emulator in a discussion that was already about it? Hypocrisy!

Stick your censorship right up your arses.

Rob.

To the Members of the California State Assembly:

I am returning Assembly Bill 1176 without my signature.

For some time now I have lamented the fact that major issues are overlooked while many
unnecessary bills come to me for consideration. Water reform, prison reform, and health
care are major issues my Administration has brought to the table, but the Legislature just
kicks the can down the alley.

Yet another legislative year has come and gone without the major reforms Californians
overwhelmingly deserve. In light of this, and after careful consideration, I believe it is
unnecessary to sign this measure at this time.

Sincerely,

Arnold Schwarzenegger

In order to do so they’ve decided to send me a code in the mail.  No problem.  I’ll just wait for the mail and put the code in to their website when I get it…  Right?

So I’m waiting.  It’s now October 29th and my funds are still frozen for that business.  The clock is ticking as it won’t be able to pay it’s suppliers soon unless PayPal restore the access or it’s bailed out by Director’s funds while they dick around.  As it turns out, the reason it’s taking so long is that despite me living in the UK, my business being based in the UK, and the PayPal account being managed by PayPal UK, they’ve decided to send the letter from Nebraska, USA.  Presumably surface mail too from the looks of it.  Seriously wtf?

I wonder how much interest they make on all their customers funds when they pull that little scam…

Time to look at other payment processors while that little bit of paper floats across the Atlantic methinks!

My wife and I bought the Aion collector’s edition and managed to get in to head-start before the main horde of players joined in later on in the week. It’s a great game so far, I must say. The attention to detail is very nice and the fights feel fast paced and dynamic.

In many ways it’s like most other MMOs in that there are a lot of “collect 10 of these”, “kill 5 of those” type of quests but it’s extremely well polished. It’s really nice to see a new MMO that actually feels finished. There’s a reason for that of course -- it’s been around in South Korea for quite some time now and is only new to the Western World.

What makes it different from other MMOs?  Well, it’s not repeating the same tired old orcs, elves and dwarves formula.  This time it’s basically angels vs demons where everyone gets to play celestial creatures… and we get to fly!  Not only fly but fight while flying!  The game seems to be quite PvP orientated, although I’ve had no experience of that myself.  I think they officially call it PvPvE in that there are 2 player teams, the Elyos and the Asmodians, and also an NPC team called the Balor.

Unfortunately we’re really struggling to play the game in Europe at the moment.  NCSoft have woefully oversold their capacity and it’s impossible to play unless you want to queue at login servers for anywhere from 2 to 4 hours!  I’m not kidding either.  For some reason they don’t have to queue in North America, China, nor Korea.  It seems Europe has been handed the shitty end of the stick on this one!

What’s even worse is that we can’t get any official replies from NCSoft staff as they’re currently unable to respond on the forums due to another technical issue, although individual NCSoft employees have apparently managed to get a few messages out on Twitter!

I have one other gripe as well.  The Aion support hours end at 8pm.  It’s like the GMs just go home and they don’t even leave a skeleton crew or even a means to leave messages.  If you try to send in a petition in these out of office hours, you’ll be asked to try again later.  This means that the general chat channels basically turn to hell after 8pm.  I’ve seen people nattering about child pornography and all sorts of inappropriate topics and nobody can report them!

Perhaps in other places in the world they just don’t have the same dire behaviour from their youth that we, in particular Britain, suffer from and so perhaps it’s not been a problem for them until now.  But it’s something that needs to be addressed very quickly in my opinion.  Some people have suggested using the ignore feature but I consider that a complete cop out.  People like that need punishing, not ignoring.

Anyway in short, Aion looks to be a great game but the quality of service that NCSoft is currently giving European players is awful.  I really hope it doesn’t turn too many people away from the game, but unfortunately the forums are jammed full with “Screw you NCSoft!” and “That’s it, I’ve cancelled!” type of threads.

I was using my laptop and connecting to my iMac across the network and browsing through its files. The connection would occasionally drop and it would sometimes show folder contents as empty when I knew for a fact they were not. The option to share the screen would also disappear at random and occasionally the whole iMac would disappear from Finder.

Much cursing was done.

The problem turned out to have an odd solution. I noticed it was connecting to the shares using the Windows smb protocol rather than AFP (Apple’s File Sharing Protocol) so I disabled smb on the iMac. Now everything works fine. At least until I try to access the iMac from Windows anyway….