A new era for peer-to-peer applications?

ISPs To Speed Up P2P Transfers [Silicon Alley Insider]   

Peer-to-peer transfers might be getting much faster and more efficient. According to Silicon Alley Insider, some of the country's largest ISPs are set to release the first version of P4P software. P4P is the product of a coalition of ISPs, content producers, and P2P software developers. It's designed to speed up P2P file transfers without consuming more than a user's fair share of bandwidth. It also promises to bring content producers to the table, bringing P2P out of the dark alleys of the Internet and into the mainstream.

Here's how P4P promises to make P2P better: 

It makes peer-to-peer transfers -- a huge chunk of all the bandwidth used on the Internet -- more efficient by sending more traffic, when possible, across the ISP's internal network -- as opposed to across the broader Internet. It can also prioritize P2P traffic from networks with which ISPs have so-called symbiotic "peering" relationships, which could save them money.

.....

The companies that are preparing to unveil P4P, Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, have been testing P4P for several months now. And the statistics show that P2P transfers can be speeded up substantially with this new technology, while making the file transfers more efficient by reigning in the bandwidth appetite of conventional P2P. 

In the most recent P4P tests, announced yesterday, download speed increased an average 59% over traditional P2P, and up to 150% for the fastest class of users. Efficiency improved, too: The percentage of data delivered interally within each ISP -- best-case scenario -- increased from 14% for normal P2P to as much as 89% for P4P delivery.

We will continue to monitor the development of P4P and consider it as a part of our future services once we are convinced it technically works and is an appropriate next generation for file sharing.

Why You Should Pay For More Than You Watch [CableTechTalk] 

CableTechTalk posted on David Lazarus' LA Times column on a-la-carte, and their post offers another analysis of why cable bills would not go down under an a-la-carte system. Bottom line - current carriage costs for channels would go up in a-la-carte, and proponents of picking their own channels wouldn't see the changes in their cable bill that they expect. The post at CableTechTalk, coincidetnally, uses the same metaphor I did yesterday when it comes to newspapers and a-la-carte. Newspapers, which in most cities in America are themselves a monopoly, don't allow subscribers to purchase their content a-la-carte, so why should the government regulate a-la-carte delivery of cable, which competes with two satellite services everywhere and phone companies in a growing number of communities? 

Woman out $400K to 'Nigerian scam' con artists [KATU] 

This is one of the most outrageous stories I've ever read about advance fee scam email. An Oregon woman is going public about the fact that she sent $400,000 to email scammers that offered her millions if she would only pay a "one time" up-front fee. Most readers know how the story goes. The scammers continued to ask for more "one time" fees and never sent any money. Most email users have received one of these scam emails, and if you haven't read this article so you can know what they look like. 

These scammers continue to be in business because people send them money. If you see one of these scam emails in your box, just delete it.

Is There a Privacy Risk in Google Flu Trends? [NYT Bits Blog]

The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) is raising privacy concerns about the way Google is using search information from users to identify flu trends. The question that the EFF raises is that even though the flu trend information that is available to the public doesn't show any search queries that are personally identifiable, what happens if the government wants to know about a specific user's searches? Google does retain information that makes queries identifiable to a particular computer for up to 9 months. For their part, Google promises that the information provided to the public is anonymized and they promise to protect the identity of searchers.

Any thoughts?

Comments

[Chris Buechler]

The fact that people still fall for online fraud is astounding. Greed throws common sense out the window apparently. From advance fee fraud like the one mentioned, to "work from home opportunities" that either amount to assistance in money laundering, or the receiving of counterfeit checks and forwarding of that money before the check bounces, these things are all too common.

The "work from home opportunities" are easier to understand, as when people deposit these forged checks or money orders, banks are required by government regulations to credit customers' accounts within a certain amount of time, but that does not mean the funds have actually cleared. The people making these fraudulent checks do things like put one legit bank's name and address on the check, with another bank's routing number. This causes the check to first go to the bank that owns that routing number, who then forwards it to the bank whose name is listed on the check, and it eventually gets returned as non-payable to the person's bank who deposited the check. The amount is then deducted from the person's account, usually overdrawing it, sometimes significantly. This process takes several weeks, during which time the defrauded person thinks the funds have truly cleared and sent the funds to the instructed destination.