Author Archives: Scott C. Lemon

About Scott C. Lemon

I'm a techno futurist, interested in all aspects of humanity, sociology, community, identity, and technology. While we are all approaching the Singularity, I'm just having fun effecting the outcomes of the future!

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Peer to peer and community proxies will wipe this out …
If you read this article, you might get the idea that people can track down your geographic location accurately when you are cruising the web. Although this is true for now, it is becoming easier to “mask” your location with simple peer to peer or community proxies.

A proxy is a machine that someone places on the internet which allows you to “relay” your web requests through. Any web site that you then visit will see the requests coming from the proxy, rather than your computer! In the example in the article, if you were to locate a proxy in the UK, you would be able to visit the UK gambling sites since they would see the traffic coming from a UK computer … not yours in the US.

This entire situation gets more and more complex as more people allow for the sharing of computing resources on their laptops and home computers. As the desire for more privacy increases … at least among groups of computer users … I believe that people will begin to install proxies to share for a variety of purposes …

Geolocation will not have a chance against these types of proxies and relays …

Geolocation Enables Internet Borders [Slashdot]

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Continuous connectivity … even in the air …
As I continue to look at the ways that we will be “always connected to the net” I can see that the number of “gaps” in conmnectivity is constantly decreasing at an ever quickening rate. We are now going to have Internet connectivity while flying!

I have recently been leaving my laptop – equipped with an Orinoco/Lucent 802.11b wireless card – on all of the time. As I go from home, to various offices, and to friends houses, I am starting to observe the amount of connectivity that I have. And the “gaps” in my connectivity – the time that I am “off the net” – are getting smaller and smaller. I even noticed lately that it is becoming a “driveway to driveway” experience … I don’t lose my 802.11b access till I am driving on to my street, and I regain access in the parking lot of one of my clients!

With the purchase of my new generation of wearable computers I am looking at the new cellular data services to see how I can cheaply have “low speed” access almost all the time. What’s cool about this project at Boeing is that I’ll now be covered while traveling on the various airlines.

An always connected world is not too far away …

FCC Approves Airline Internet Service. The Federal Communications Commission has approved Boeing’s Connexion service, putting high-speed Internet at the fingertips of flying passengers one step closer to realization. [Product News]

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A very cool proxy/redirection script …
I have recently been working on learning Perl. It’s a fairly amazing and flexible language, there is a ton of open source code written in Perl, and it’s available for almost every platform out there.

In looking around recently, I found this Proxy script that is a very powerful script. It provides a flexible proxy for HTTP and FTP that can strip various content, manage cookies, and provide nearly anonymous browsing. There are a whole slew of things that I can think of possible using this code. The author even added a number of features similar to the Crowds proxies with groups of proxies.

I’m going to install this on a couple of my servers and do some experimentation. If you want to see a demo of this, visit the authors homepage and he has a demo version up and running!

CGIProxy 1.5. Anonymizing, filter-bypassing HTTP proxy in a CGI script (in Perl) [freshmeat.net]

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802.11b Bundle includes VPN software …
This is a very interesting bundle, since it is one of the first that includes some VPN software to provide security over 802.11b WLANs.

VPNs are one of the best solutions for security in these scenarios, since they provide security of communications over ANY medium … both wired and wireless!

Palm Targets WLANs. Offers bundle with WLAN card [allNetDevices Wireless News]

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Distributed memory spaces for distributed applications …
One of the key requirements for an effective distributed application is a distributed memory space … something discussed by David Gelernter in Mirror Worlds.

This particular implementation has some interesting twists … an XML version tuplespace, implemented as a SOAP service. A very cool idea!

Rogue Wave release XML tuple space implementation. Ruple
is a technology that allows disparate applications to collaborate,
and is an implementation of Linda tuple spaces. [xmlhack]

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Virtual Keyboards for data input …
These are two examples of the amazing leaps in technology in the area of man-machine interfaces. Both of these companies are using various techniques to detect the physical characteristics of the hand during typing. By detecting what your hands and fingers are doing, these devices can “guess” which keys you are typing!

I really have to say that I like the Senseboard better than the Samsung unit … but I’m going to guess that we will be seeing more and more of these types of devices being worn by the people around us!

PC World: Virtual Keyboards Let You Type in Air. Call it air guitar meets computer keyboard. Two firms here at Comdex, Samsung and Senseboard, are showing off gizmos that attach to your hands and track your finger movements so you can type without a keyboard to input data into a personal digital assistant or other handheld device. [Tomalak’s Realm]

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Interesting “virus-free” Internet Cafe solution …
I was thinking of various solutions for securing Internet Cafe computers from viruses and trojan-horses. This is an issue for both the owner of the computer and the customer using it.

When a customer walks in to use the computer, they are expecting a system that is ready to use, and one that does not contain any viruses or software which might compromise their security. The issue is that viruses and trojan-horses can be installed by other customers – either by accident or by malicious intent.

What would happen, however, if I took my own operating system on my own CD-ROM into the cafe and booted it? I could then be reasonably assured that the entire computer would be running my OS and applications … on a storage medium that can not be infected. If my data is all stored out in the net, I would be able to access all of it.

Of course, this does not take into account the possibility of a ‘hacked’ keyboard or BIOS … but it’s getting much better!

Lnx Bootable Business Card 1.618 (development). A bootable rescue CD cut to the size and shape of a business card. [freshmeat.net]