ComputerWorld: 2007 Jobs Report Snapshots

Ever wanted to feel depressed about how much money you're making? Wait no longer! ComputerWorld has published their annual survey of IT salaries.

IT salaries have risen at a slow but steady pace since hitting rock-bottom in 2002. Here are the IT pay raises from 1987 to 2007…

The 2007 median annual base salary is $80,000 (half the salaries are above the median, and half are below). For senior management, the median annual base salary is $115,000; for middle management, it's $88,000; and for staff/technical positions, it's $70,000.

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The Register: Surge in encrypted torrents blindsides record biz

Is it due to the high-profile filesharing lawsuits or - more likely - due to the fact that most of the major BitTorrent clients now come with encryption? Either way, the Register reports that over the past year, encrypted torrent traffic has risen from four percent of all BitTorrent traffic - to forty percent.

The most popular BitTorrent client, uTorrent, can be configured to use RC4 encryption to obscure torrent streams and header information. Armstrong said that although future DPI gear may be able to grab some header detail, the music or movie itself is likely to remain inaccessible.

Network Neutrality Squad

The Network Neutrality Squad (NNSquad) is an open-membership, open-source effort, enlisting the Internet's users to help keep the Internet's operations fair and unhindered from unreasonable restrictions.

Armed with an array of traffic-shaping-fighting-gadgets and a secret lair at the heart of the Internet, the Network Neutrality Squad fights a never ending battle against evil.

The project's focus includes detection, analysis, and incident reporting of any anticompetitive, discriminatory, or other restrictive actions on the part of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or affiliated entities, such as the blocking or disruptive manipulation of applications, protocols, transmissions, or bandwidth; or other similar behaviors not specifically requested by their customers.

Quick! Schneier-boy! To the Vint-mobile!

(Having interviewed both Vint Cerf and Bruce Schneier and considering them both generally good and smart folks, I want to point out that these jokes are not at their expense, but at the Stan Lee-inspired naming of the Network Neutrality Squad. That said…)

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na… NET SQUAD!

IT World: Defense comes to forefront at China's Communist Party Congress.

Woo! Party! Oh, wait, not that type of party…

However, Hu was specific in his references to one area of IT guaranteed to raise eyebrows outside the country: defense. "We must build strong armed forces through science and technology. To attain the strategic objective of building computerized armed forces and winning IT-based warfare, we will accelerate composite development of mechanization and computerization, carry out military training under IT-based conditions, modernize every aspect of logistics, intensify our efforts to train a new type of high-caliber military personnel in large numbers and change the mode of generating combat capabilities."

For Germany and other nations that feel they have already been targeted by Chinese cyberattacks, Hu's words are likely to make defense officials in Europe, North America and Japan even more nervous.

Now, you may ask, "President of China who?"

To which I say, "Yes, exactly. Hu."

To which you would respond, "No, I'm asking you."

To which I say, "Oh, I see where you may be getting confused. The President of China is Hu - spelled H-U - Jintao. It happens to be a coincidence that that it's a homophone to the question 'Who?'"

This is why I didn't make it in Vaudeville.

WebWare: Obama Pledges Net Neutrality Laws If Elected President

Net Neutrality + Politics = I'm not touching this one on the official company blog with a 10 foot pole.

He asked Obama: "Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to reinstate Net neutrality as the law of the land? And would you pledge to only appoint FCC commissioners that support open Internet principles like Net neutrality?"

"The answer is yes," Obama replied. "I am a strong supporter of Net neutrality."

Wired: Prosecutor: Linux Engineer Reiser Abused Son, Murdered Wife

The Hans Reiser trial has started in Oakland, California, for those of you following the case.

Information Week: Growing Pains - Can Web 2.0 Evolve into an Enterprise Technology?

Forget outsourcing. The real threat to IT pros could be Web 2.0. While there's a lot of hype and hubris surrounding wikis, mashups, and social networking, there's also a lot of real innovation--much of it coming from increasingly tech-savvy business users, not the IT department.

In other words, Information Week is assuming that now that the end-users have finally gotten smarter, they may decide not to keep IT geeks around any longer. God, it's like 5th grade all over again.

However, enterprises lag far behind consumers in adoption of Web 2.0 technologies. … Part of the reason is that business users already have access to more sophisticated versions of the same technologies. Blogging is publishing, a wiki is a CMS (content management system), and Ajax is a more standardized way of achieving what many internal enterprise apps already do with ActiveX or Java. Now, that doesn't mean new technologies can be ignored--their lower costs and simpler administration mean they will quickly overtake legacy platforms, and already have done so in some areas. But it does mean they need to fit in with their predecessors.

Let's face facts. I'm a geek. I'm never going to fit in.

TechCrunch: Myspace, Bebo, and SixApart to join Google OpenSocial

Stealing some of the thunder away from the Microsoft/Facebook deal and the development buzz around Facebook Apps, Google OpenSocial, a set of common APIs for social network applications, just announced that MySpace (big among teens), Bebo (big among Brits), and SixApart's LiveJournal (big among Smashing Pumpkins Lead Singers) are all jumping on-board the program.

On the call, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said "we've been working with MySpace for more than a year in secret on this" (likely corresponding to their advertising deal announced a year ago).

MySpace says their new platform efforts will be entirely focused on OpenSocial.

The press release names Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING as current OpenSocial partners.

We're seeing a Flixster application on MySpace now through the OpenSocial APIs. Flixster says it took them less than a day to create this. I'll add screen shots below.

Subtraction: If it looks like a cow, swims like a dolphin and quacks like a duck, it must be enterprise software

One of the main problems with enterprise software design is that the person who decides whether to buy the program is usually not the person who ends up having to use it. That leads to poor UI in enterprise software, compared to the consumer equivalents.

…[E]nterprise software rarely gets critiqued the way even a US$30 piece of shareware will. It doesn't benefit from the rigor of a wide and varied base of users, many of whom will freely offer merciless feedback, goading and demanding it to be better with each new release.

Not to mention that if you work for a company in data entry for $10 an hour, you probably really need the job. So you're not likely to complain. Because they don't hear any complaints about the software, the decision makers in the company aren't likely to worry about it.

Seriously, I'm still scarred from my one-year stint at A&P supermarkets just out of college when I was doing Retek data entry. *shudder*

Slashdot: Google Caught in Comcast Traffic Filtering?

There have been quite a few stories about Comcast and blocking BitTorrent, but it looks like those same reset packets used to block BitTorrent are now showing up when trying to connect to Google.

"Comcast users are reporting 'connection reset' errors while loading Google. The problem seems to have been coming and going over the past few days, and often disappears only to return a few minutes later. Apparently the problem only affects some of Google's IPs and services. Analysis of the PCAP packet dumps reveals several injected fake RSTs, which are very similar to the ones seen coming from the Great Firewall of China [PDF]. Did Google somehow get caught up in one of Comcast's blacklists, or are the heuristics flagging Google as a file-sharer due to the heavy traffic?"

I have a theory. Dark wizards have infiltrated Comcast are interfering with Google so no one can find out what their plans are for Halloween.

I didn't say it was a good theory.

And now for something completely different, two stories on Vint Cerf:

MSNBC Internet pioneer leaves oversight group.

After fending off an international rebellion and planting the seeds for streamlining operations, Cerf is stepping down this week as chairman of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers.

"My sentence is up," Cerf said with his characteristic sense of humor, which he and others credit for helping him steer the organization through several high-profile battles from which it emerged more stable and stronger.

You know, I've always wondered whether Vint Cerf would be cool as a Sesame Street Muppet, as part of CANAL - Corporation of Assigned Numbers and Letters. (There's precedent - there's H. Ross Parrot, after all.) "Vint Surfer" could be a surfing computer dude, and could talk about the shortage of available letter addresses in the alphabet. "See, there's only 26 letters in the alphabet, but because the alphabet has gotten so popular, there's more than 26 sounds, so sometimes we have to have letters doing double duty. Let me show you. The letter A can be pronounced 'Ahhhh' like in 'car'. But it can also be pronounced 'Ayyyy' like in 'play'"

Or he could just continue to do what he's doing and warn about the ending of the IPv4 address pool.

BBC News: Warning over Net Address Limits

While modern computers, servers, routers and other online devices are able to use IPv6, internet service providers have yet to implement the system.

"The reason they haven't - which is quite understandable - is that customers haven't asked for it yet," said Mr Cerf, adding, "my job, whether with my ICANN hat on or not, is to persuade them to ask for it.

"If you don't ask for it, then when you most want it you won't have it."

ComputerWorld: Opinion: VMware, Cisco say data center OS is on its way

John Webster at ComputerWorld waxes philosophical on events at VMworld 2007.

"As hard rock throbbed and steam rose from the main stage, I sensed tectonic plates shifting."

(Is this a networking editorial or a romance novel with Fabio on the cover?)

VMware Inc. President and CEO Diane Green sees a data center operating system coming. … one has to admit that VMware is much more than a hypervisor. And if VMware sees a data center operating system on its road map to the future, then an operating system is what VMware will surely become. …

Speaking the next day at this event, Cisco Systems Inc. CEO John Chambers preached the virtues of data center fabric on the horizon. What's that? Recall those early depictions of Ethernet as a cloud. Now imagine a data center cloud populated by servers, storage and Cisco's "intelligent" networking gear, all managed by Cisco and its partners -- starting with VMware. As proof, Chambers ran a demo of Cisco's VFrame provisioning virtual machines under VMware. So adding the data center operating system and the intelligent data center fabric yields "The data center is the computer," I guess.

Great. We used to say "the network is the computer." Now "the data center is the computer." Why can't we let the computer be the computer? What's wrong with the computer that the computer can't even be a computer? Why must you always judge the computer? Why can't the computer just be itself instead of trying to hold to some arbitrary standard that the computer's parents came up with? What if the computer doesn't want to do binary math all day? What if the computer wants to do stand up comedy, performing at comedy clubs in the East Village? Maybe the computer doesn't need its entire future planned out for it! Maybe the computer just needs to figure out what it wants to be in life, Computer's Dad!

Why does no one understand the computer?

InformationWeek: Web 2.0 Summit: U.S. Becoming Less Relevant in Global, Internet Economy.

In a speech on technology trends, Mary Meeker, managing director of Morgan Stanley's global technology research team, said the U.S. has become less relevant over the years to the global economy.

The U.S. share of the global gross domestic product has declined steadily since 1999 to 19% today from 22%. While this has been good news for other countries, it hasn't been a favorable trend for the U.S.

In Svedeesh:

In a speech oon technulugy trends, Mery Meeker, munegeeng durectur ooff Murgun Stunley's glubel technulugy reseerch teem, seeed zee U.S. hes becume-a less relefunt oofer zee yeers tu zee glubel icunumy. Bork bork bork!

Zee U.S. shere-a ooff zee glubel gruss dumesteec prudooct hes decleened steedeely seence-a 1999 tu 19% tudey frum 22%. Vheele-a thees hes beee guud noos fur oozeer cuoontreees, it hesn't beee a fefureble-a trend fur zee U.S.

APC Magazine: Device Driver updates causing Vista to deactivate

After weeks of grueling troubleshooting, I've finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA -- something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation. …

So pirates haven't been slowed down at all, and the rest of us -- the legitimate purchasers -- are left to live with Windows Activation. You really need to ask the question - who's benefiting here? Certainly not users, and given the amount of discontent this is likely to cause, arguably not Microsoft either.

When I reviewed Vista for HardOCP, it didn't even take updating the device driver to trigger deactivation. The thing rebooted on me when I breathed on it funny…

ComputerWorld: MySpace adds Skype VOIP to popular social network

From the people who brought back pages that load music the instant you visit them from the dark days of the 1990s Web, MySpace has decided to team up with VoIP network Skype to provide voice service to MySpace's IM client.

The new capabilities will be available in November. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Adding Skype voice services to MySpace's IM system will not require MySpace users to download additional Skype software.

Finally! Some real competition against AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, IRC, Google Talk, Gadu-Gadu, Groupwise, QQ, SILC, Simple, Sametime, Jabber, XMPP, WLM, Paltalk, PSYC, eBuddy, Xfire, MXit, Meebo, and IMVU.

In the meantime, I believe my views on MySpace can be summed up by nerd-core gangsta ("Nerdsta?") Terp 2 It.

NetworkWorld: Pump-and-dump spam goes Top 40

When they started filtering text spam, the spammers switched to image spam, which took up more bandwidth and space. Then when they started filtering image spam… they went to MP3 files which took up even more files.

Oh, those wacky, bandwidth-hogging good-for-nothing spammers.

But the MP3 files are recordings of a monotone voice telling recipients to buy stock in a little-known company, giving the stock ticker symbol and directing them to read about the company in the news. With pump-and-dump stock spam, spammers blast messages persuading people to buy a penny stock, then once the stock price goes up the spammers sells their shares at a profit.

According to Sophos, which reported this blast today, the recorded voice is randomly altered so that antispam filters can't detect it.

I would not be surprised if spammers started sending video files next.

BoingBoing Gadgets: Dungeons & Dragons 4.0 Makes Remote Pen-and-Paper Play Easier

Joel Johnson talked to people from Wizards of the Coast about the upcoming Dungeons and Dragons revision, 4.0 - and the changes are major indeed. Part of D&D 4.0 will be the inclusion of computerized character creation - both character sheets and character models - and a VoIP enabled Internet-compatible client. Not to be confused with the Dungeons and Dragons MMORPG, this allows pen and paper gamers to play the table-top game online.

This quote is particularly insightful:

"I think the real target of this are people who can't play D&D anymore. Like myself. I have two kids and I don't have time to get together with friends anymore. I only have a few hours after they go to bed. I will finally be able to shelve MMOs and play the game I love again." What defeats most heroes, simply, is time and its little henchman lack-of-access. … Pushing D&D in this way is both an admission of the problems of modern (adult) living while using modernity to circumvent it.

Basically, D&D 4.0's biggest feature is a telecommuting/teleconferencing app… that happens to play a fantasy game. A herald for things to come in business communication? Perhaps.

There's a party tonight at NetQoS, and I hope to have video of it tomorrow.

In the meantime, there's a lot of news from America's Most Huggable Multi-billion Dollar International Mega-Corporation, Apple.

Apple: Mac OS X Leopard Features

Apple, set to release the much anticipated "Leopard" operating system before the end of this month, has published a site listing all the feature upgrades of the new OS. Of particular interest to networking people are the following two:

Self-Tuning TCP: Let Leopard adjust TCP buffer size automatically. Get optimum application performance, especially in high-bandwidth/high-latency environments.

AAC-LD Codec: Enjoy crystal-clear audio with AAC-LD compression technology. It combines the advantages of perceptual audio coding with low delay that's optimal for real-time audio and video conferences.

If you've got Macs on your network, it may be useful to keep an eye out for these two features.

Blackfriars' Marketing: Why EDGE versus 3G matters less than you think.

This article from a Mac fan (he discloses that he owns Apple stock at the end of the article) points out that the Apple iPhone's relatively low-bandwidth EDGE support really isn't hampering the phone compared to the high-bandwidth 3G phones out on the market - going into how there's a difference between bandwidth and latency - and the EDGE network has very low latency.

Bandwidth doesn't affect the mobile phone experience nearly as much as most people think. And in some cases, high bandwidth Internet is actually worse for the user than a low-bandwidth one.

The result: loading Web pages on a 3G phone may actually take about the same amount of time as a phone loading those pages over an EDGE network because all the network time is spent setting up and tearing down connections, not actually sending big amounts of data. And so far, most carriers have preferred to optimize bandwidth at the expense of latency. Why? Because it's more marketable.

Because of the sophisticated signaling needed to do high-data rate transmission over narrow-band radios, higher bandwidth networks don't do as well in real-world radio environments as a lower speed network will. Multi-path interference, doppler frequency changes, and radio noise disrupt high-bandwidth signals more than low. And since phones using TCP connections -- the dominant connection type used in Web browsing -- have to retransmit data that is corrupted by errors, even an error rate only a few percent higher will dramatically slow down Internet experiences.

He makes some very good points. Of course, I haven't updated my phone in years, and its top features include "voicemail" and "an LCD screen," so for me this is a little moot…

TechRepublic.com: Sanity Check - 10 Dirty Little Secrets you should know about working in IT.

It is true, IT has the potential to be "crazy-making." Me, I get through the day by straddling the line between sanity and madness; and seeing how close to the edge I can go before tipping all the way over. In other words, listening to the voices in my head helps me unwind. Hey, I should put that on a t-shirt…

So why is IT a breeding ground for crazy? Jason Hiner believes he has some of the answers in the style of a Letterman-Approved Regulation Top Ten List.

And finally…

Slightlywarped.com: Web Worm Invasion

It's not what you think.

Network World: Researchers ping through first full “Internet Census” in 25 years.

Over two months, researchers at the Information Sciences Institute pinged (pung?) every IP address in IPv4. Even more interesting:

These addresses appear in the chart as a grid of squares, each square representing all the addresses beginning with the same first number ("128," in the preceding example). The map is arranged in ascending numerical order, but instead in a looping pattern called a Hilbert curve, which keeps adjacent addresses physically near each other, on chart," but also makes it possible to zoom seamlessly in to show greater detail. "The idea of using a Hilbert curve actually came from a web comic, xkcd," said Heidemann.

The process took 62 days. A similar census of the IPv6 ranges would, if my math is right, take 40,483 years and 41 days. Hmm, there’s got to be a better way to figure out IPv6...

Ordigami: IPv6 in Origami.

Conservative estimates on deployment imply that there will be about 2000 addresses for each square meter of the Earth’s surface. To illustrate that, Etienne Cliquet created an origami sheet one meter square, with 2000 triangles on it – one for every IP address in that theoretical meter.

Beskerming.com: The difference between theory and practice.

McAfee recently put out a study that while 90% of users believe they’re using up-to-date Antivirus software, only 51% actually were.

While the figures demonstrate an increase in the percentage of users over the last three years who believe that they are maintaining up-to-date antivirus protection (weekly or daily updating), the percentage of users who are not actually running any protection (or maintaining protection at the level they think they are) have been dropping a lot slower than the first set of figures would suggest. With more than 90% of respondents indicating that they were maintaining daily / weekly coverage from their antivirus software, it might be somewhat of a surprise to see that 49% of respondents were actually not running any antivirus software, or antivirus software that was not updating definitions on a daily or weekly basis.

Of course, there are those smug guys who will point out that this is mainly a Windows problem…

Slashdot Firehose: Do Content Provider Executives Read Online Forums?

This was a question submitted to Ask Slashdot – it wasn’t picked up, but it’s still a good question.

Given the hundreds — if not thousands — of submissions to slashdot, digg, techdirt, et al regarding DRM and all of its catastrophic failures (let's use Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as the main example), do the decision makers and visionaries at these companies put any stock into the horribly negative feedback all over the web concerning these topics?

The cynic answers: “No, what does Joe CIO care about some Internet portal?” But is that being too cynical? Does online commentary and popular opinion online matter?

Network World: Cisco will move the market towards all-in-one branch solutions

Cisco is moving towards integrating switching, routing, messaging, intrusion-prevention, network optimization, wireless LAN, VoIP, dessert topping and floor waxing into a single, all-in-one solution.

It's still all-too-common to see a patchwork of legacy products from different vendors in branch offices. There also is inconsistency in the capabilities at each branch. For example, some may have optimization, others may not. Some may have IDS; others may not. When companies install a consistent product line at their growing number of branch offices, it makes it much easier for the IT staffs to manage the equipment-and to roll out Web-based services.

I'm a big fan of all-in-one solutions too. I want ya to pay particular attention, because The Amazing Master Tool Corporation, a subsidiary of Fly By Night Industries has entrusted who? -- me! -- to show you! -- the handiest and the dandiest network appliance you've ever seen, and don't ya wanna know how it works! First you take an ordinary network. You place the network between the patented ports! Then you reach for the tool that is not a router, not a firewall, not a packet sniffer! What in the hell can it possibly be? SLEDGE-O-MATIC!

Network World: Feds pull the domain name plug on State of California

For a few hours, the work of the State of California government was imperiled because the U.S. General Services Administration - a branch of the Federal Government - decided to pull the plug on the ca.gov domain name.

In early September the Transportation Authority of Marin, a ten-person agency charged with managing transportation funding in Marin County, California, discovered that the servers that handled the agency's Web and domain name service had been hacked and were being used to create links to pornographic Web sites…

On Tuesday, at around 2 p.m., the federal organization responsible for managing the .gov top level domain pulled the plug on the ca.gov domain, according to Jim Hanacek, a public information officer with California's Department of Technology Services. The "ca.gov domain was removed as a valid address by the federal GSA, who has an office that oversees the use of the .gov domain," he said.

In the end, the ca.gov domain name was only saved because it takes 24 hours for changes to propagate through DNS servers. Ca.gov was back up and running within those 24 hours.

However, Governor Schwarzenegger warned that had they not acted so quickly, then SKYNET may have very well become self-aware and launched an attack against those it perceived as its enemies, ushering in Judgment Day.

New York Times: Sputnik

The Soviet Union launched a small, round object into orbit around the Earth - the first time in human history anyone had ever done so. There was panic as people believed it was an intercontinental weapon or spy device of some kind, it was a propaganda victory for the Soviet Union, and it heralded in the Space Age.

People panicked, prompting the New York Times to clarify in its coverage:

The satellites could not be used to drop atomic or hydrogen bombs or anything else on the earth, scientists have said.

Although the line before it certainly seems quaint in comparison.

Military experts have said that the satellites would have no practicable military application in the foreseeable future.