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The FBI prevented Steven Rambam from speaking at the 2006 HOPE conference, arresting him moments before his lecture. The case against him was later found to have no merit.

The Last HOPE will take place July 18-20 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City, just across the street from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. If you are in town a day early, Ricky Gervais will be performing the Garden. Competing with the first day of the conference, the Dalai Lama will be in town. That’s New York City, something for everyone, even in the summer.

Kevin Mitnick, “the world’s most dangerous hacker” in the eyes of the government and mass media, imprisoned for over five years, and now a successful computer security consultant.
Adam Savage, co-host of the TV show Mythbusters
Steven Rambam, private eye extraordinaire, who can find out anything about anybody and has always been willing to share his knowledge of privacy with the hacker community. Steven Levy, author of Hackers: Heroes of the American Revolution and chief technology writer for Newsweek. Jello Biafra, former lead singer of The Dead Kennedys and one of America’s most interesting social activists.

Their conferences go by the name HOPE, for Hackers On Planet Earth. The upcoming conference is dubbed The Last HOPE because the hotel where the conference is held may be demolished. The first speakers for The Last HOPE conference were just announced. They are:

Conference organizers expect to have over 100 presentations in four tracks. See also “Hacker confab ‘Last HOPE’ to track attendees with RFID”.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

If you are interested in computer hacking, then 2600 is for you. They publish a quarterly magazine, have a weekly radio show on WBAI in New York City, and are holding a conference in July, also in New York City.

Update June 6, 2008: Additional speakers/topics

* Crafting a Security-Enhanced Wikipedia – Virgil Griffith
* What’s Wrong With Your Company’s Website? – The Cheshire Catalyst
* VoIP (in)security: Italians Do It Better – Alessio L.R. Pennasilico aka mayhem
* SWF and the Malware Tragedy – BeF, fukami
* Simulating the Universe on Supercomputers – Mark Vogelsberger
* Ghetto IDS and Honeypots for the Home User – Black Ratchet
* How to Make Cool Things with Microprocessors – Mitch Altman
* The Phone Losers of America – Various PLA representatives
* Botnet Research, Mitigation, and the Law – Alex Muentz
* The (Im)possibility of Hardware Obfuscation – Karsten Nohl
* Evil Interfaces: Violating the User – Gregory Conti
* Macro Social Engineering – LexIcon
* Building a Hacker Space – Representatives of the Global Hacker Space Movement
* Current and Emerging Robotic Technologies – Ben Sgro
* Methods of Copying High Security Keys – Barry Wels, Han Fey
* Threat Modeling – Kevin M. Williams
* Monumental Women and their Influence on Modern Technology – L33tphreak
* RIAA Litigations: How the Tech Community Can Help – Ray Beckerman
* Autonomously Bypassing VoIP Filters with Asterisk – Blake Cornell
* AntiSocial Networking: Vulnerabilities in Social Nets – Nathan Hamiel, Shawn Moyer

It’ll happen sooner than they think. With a growing number of alternatives to packaged media, combined with the relatively high prices of Blu-ray players and discs vs. inexpensive, so-called upconverting DVD players, Blu-ray will likely be the last major disc format you’ll ever buy.

TiVo and other DVR makers that support cable giants like Comcast have traditional VOD options, and hard drive space will continue to expand. Netflix has its rentals available to watch right from its Web site, and watching TV shows online and for free at sites like ComedyCentral.com, Hulu.com, Joost, means you don’t have to buy whole seasons of TV shows on physical discs anymore. If watching TV on a PC isn’t your thing, technologies like Sony’s Bravia Internet Link and Sling Media’s SlingProjector bring Web video directly to the TV.

Comcast customers–and there are far more of them than Fios customers–have speeds today that vary widely, but 187 kilobytes per second in real-world tests is a good estimate. Assuming a one-hour high-definition TV show (with commercials) is around 5GB, that requires 1,388,888 kilobytes per second or 1.38 megabytes per second to watch.

Using Fios from Verizon, it’s possible to currently download several episodes of a TV show at approximately 5 megabits per second, or 625 kilobytes per second.

To the chagrin of disc patent holders, discs are not the only way to consumer high-definition media now. There are so many other ways to get content: Set-top boxes are getting far more sophisticated and will continue to do so in the next few years. Vudu, for instance, stepped up the video on demand option by adding more content than any of its predecessors, including the option for HD purchases and rentals. Apple recently upgraded Apple TV to include rentals–standard definition and HD–and a way to bypass the need for a PC to watch films on a living room TV. Even Microsoft’s
Xbox 360 game console has a download service for movies.

So Fios is about halfway there about at best, and Comcast’s 100 megabit per second connection, which it promised at CES would be a reality by 2009, could pull it off.

Netflix, a purveyor of rental discs, obviously saw the writing on the wall, instituting its Watch It Now feature last year. Amazon.com, which sells plenty of packaged media, has its own Unbox video download service.

The likely reason? Overall consumer spending on DVDs and high-definition discs (HD DVD and Blu-ray), both purchase and rental, has been steadily decreasing since its peak at $24.5 billion in 2004. According to the Digital Entertainment Group, a trade group that represents all disc makers, spending last year amounted to $23.7 billion.

Perhaps most importantly, consumers will continue to get more and more comfortable with the idea of their library being digital. We’re already there with music, and it’s a relatively easy transition to make to one’s movie collection. But it’s also true of other things like Fandango’s digital movie tickets, or even airline tickets and gift cards. We live in a world where oftentimes the value is not in the object itself, but in the digital information stored on a computer somewhere. (It’s an attitude that’s anathema to the likes of Disney and its studio cohorts who have always pushed the concept of personal movie collections, hence the push to upgrade to the “special edition” of older films.)

The biggest roadblock is of course bandwidth, which causes the process to be long, painful, and ultimately not worth it for many. But that will change. Consider, for example, this scenario:

“It requires 193 kilobytes per second to watch live, which is easily doable on Fios barring network congestion,” McCullagh points out. (Levels of compression or a change from the H.264 video codec will have different results, of course.)

With the fall of HD DVD, Blu-ray has assumed the throne as the next format of choice, but its reign will be short-lived.

“We can use HD discs to train consumers to move into digital, but it’s a transition,” said Warner Bros.’ Dan Silverberg. “Downloaded content will come, but the consumer will get quicker tutorial into video-on-demand, etc., by owning a Blu-ray player or HD DVD.”

The studios backing Blu-ray already know this. At an HDTV confab last fall, Warner Bros.’ vice president of high-definition media development likened HD packaged media to a set of training wheels for digital downloads.

Blu-ray won’t enjoy the same decade-long dominance DVD did after it succeeded VHS. But that’s not because there will be other challenger physical disc formats. Rather, instead of buying discs from Amazon, Best Buy or Wal-Mart, people will begin getting their entertainment in the form of digital downloads in larger volumes.

A 44-minute 640×360 (not high-definition) episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles that my colleague Declan McCullagh downloaded via iTunes is 510MB.

People will get tired of replacing their favorite films to the trendy format of the moment. The price of the software ranging from $20 to $30 for Blu-ray discs right now will eventually drop. But digital copies costing less than $5 a pop, it’s an easy decision for many.

“The challenge for studios is really about convincing consumers to upgrade their libraries, (and) upconverting to 1080p (the highest resolution currently available) doesn’t necessitate buying a whole new format,” said Josh Martin, HD and video analyst for The Yankee Group.

Calling all history buffs: Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2 is making its North American debut at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

Fast forward 150 years, and an impassioned Babbage expert and wealthy financier have teamed up to build Babbage’s dream via a new exhibit running through next April.

See the photo gallery and video on News.com for more.

A forward-thinking mathematician and engineer, Babbage designed the Difference Engine in 1847. His intent was to create an automated computing machine, but he was never able to turn his vision into reality.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

That crime is going on, every day, on a single entity known as the Internet. What authorities do you need to monitor, looking for those illegal activities, and then act on those, both defensively and, either yourselves or certainly other agencies, offensively in order to shut down a crime in process?

Rep. Issa: With a search warrant. Today every ISP is being maliciously attacked–this goes beyond the .mils and .govs–but I think that’s the important reason that we approach it today. Every ISP is being attacked, maliciously both from in the United States and outside of the United States, by those who want to invade people’s privacy.

Mueller: I think that’s going to require some thought because an individual company can say “OK, I consent to have somebody protect me.” But if the filter is inappropriately placed just protecting that particular company, it may have to be one or two or three institutions or ISPs off, and that’s where you would have a problem. whether it would be, i forget what company you mentioned, but Lockheed Martin saying,” I’m willing for somebody to protect me,” but the protection may be two or three companies off. Lockheed Martin has no mechanism in order to affect the company that’s two or three off, if you see what I’m getting at.

(Credit:
Anne Broache/CNET News.com)

When the FBI suggested that it should be able to perform wide-scale Internet monitoring to detect “illegal activity” on Wednesday, the bureau raised more questions than it answered.

Rep. Conyers: (Nods)

If that consent were granted, do you believe that current laws either can or reasonably easily could be made to protect them? In other words, a voluntary program that would begin allowing federal agencies to counter-attack and to defend on behalf of those who waive current possible restrictions in that sense. And that’s probably my most important question to get this committee thinking of.

If you go into a place and there’s a crime actively being committed, let’s say there’s a bookie joint, and there’s tens of thousands of illegal transactions going on every minute. And you know that. And you have proof of that. You don’t question your ability to go in and to harvest the fruit of all the activities in there, is that correct?

To help clear things up, we’re providing the transcript of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s exchange at a House of Representatives hearing with Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican. Issa made his fortune by founding Directed Electronics, a publicly traded company that sells
car alarms and home theater loudspeakers.

Mueller: With a search warrant, quite honestly.

Issa also is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, which is holding a closed hearing on Thursday devoted to the Bush administration’s so-called Cyber Initiative. In January, President Bush signed a pair of secret orders–National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23–that apparently deal with detecting and preventing Internet disruptions.

Mueller: That’s correct.

Every portal leading out of the United States, some of them going in and out of the United States, but talking only about your jurisdiction in the United States. Every portal coming into this country is being attacked by those who would harvest information, both national security secrets and just the common information of private individuals and private individuals.

Now, I’m a civil libertarian. I was with Bob Barr arguing some of the elements of the Patriot Act that we still don’t agree should have been there. But when I set up the crime scenario, how is it that you’re going to get the right to react when today, people would say that if they, if you’re addressing an action from an American person, you don’t have that right? How are you going to do it, and how can we help you do it appropriately and constitutionally?

Rep. Issa: Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. Hopefully 163.33.33.0 will be protected if they ask to be, whoever they are. (Editor’s note: 163.33.33 seems to be an Internet protocol address near San Jose, Calif.)

FBI director Robert Mueller, shown here at Wednesday’s hearing, says ‘legislation has to be developed’ that would ‘identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to preempt that illegal activity.’

And secondly, and this goes to a legal opinion you may or may not be able to help us with today, but I’d like you to try to work on it. If ISPs or other private entities, a Lockheed Martin on one hand, and my old company, Directed Electronics on the other, if they consented to participation voluntarily in being, in fact, defended in a Cyber Initiative–and that includes ISPs that hypothetically got consent from every single person who signed up to operate under their auspices.

Rep. Issa: OK, and one follow-up question, or two follow-up questions, because I know we’re not going to get it all resolved today. One, can you have someone on your staff designated to work with members of Congress on trying to craft that legislation? I’d appreciate being able to work with that person.

Here’s the relevant section of the transcript from the House Judiciary hearing on Wednesday:

Rep. Issa: Director, there isn’t enough time in five minutes to open and close the subject of the Cyber Initiative, but this committee, in my opinion, is going to be the lead committee on, ah, the actual effectiveness of that initiative. As we both know it’s compartmented, highly classified. But I’d like to concentrate just on what laws or changes that you would need from this committee if you were to do the following, and I’ll set out a scenario.

Rep. Issa: Mr. Chairman, I do hope that when we look at the Cyber Initiative, we view ourselves as the primary committee that has to clear the way for appropriate action on behalf of our government, all branches.

Rep. Conyers: As you wish, Mr. Issa.

And it is a question of the legislation catching up to the technology. Understanding that these crimes are being committed every moment. But then identifying our ability to focus on the particular criminal element as it’s coming through and preempt that criminal element, whether it be .mil, .gov, .com, whichever network you’re talking about.

Mueller: I think legislation has to be developed that balances on one hand, the privacy rights of the individual who are receiving the information, but on the other hand, given the technology, the necessity of having some omnibus search capability utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to preempt that illegal activity where it comes through a choke point as opposed to the point where it is diffuse on the Internet.

But more importantly they want to take control of computers, they want to hack them, they want to steal information. This is also true of the .mils and .govs. Every one of our congressional offices, every day, is under attack.

Like other Walkman phones before it, the Sony Ericsson W980 promises a full media player, but it offers a unique design that we hadn’t yet seen. With at least one notable exception, Sony Ericsson has done a decent job with its Walkman phones (the recent Sony Ericsson W760a won the CNET Editors’ Choice Award), so we put it through its paces to see how it would fare. The design turned out to be both interesting and intuitive, and the varied feature set largely lived up to our expectations. Performance was also satisfactory, even if some calls sounded a tad harsh and the phone was slow to start up. Check out our full Sony Ericsson W980 review and the W980 slide show.

catch some tunes with the Sony Ericsson W980

Last February we took our first trip to the GSMA World Congress. While in Barcelona we saw a gallery of new snazzy cell phones that put to shame most anything we see in the United States. And while we were excited to see them, we knew that it would be a long time before they arrived in the United States. Fortunately, that time has come, as the first GSMA model, the Sony Ericsson W980, arrived on our desk this week.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

“We are more frustrated than anybody else,” Steve Swasey, Netflix VP Corporate Communications said. As it did after the last (and only) major shipping outage in Netflix, in March of this year, Netflix will issue a credit to affected customers, although the company has yet to determine exactly what that credit will be.

Break out the books and Scrabble board. (Click on the image for a larger view.)

The Netflix streaming service also remains online. Calling the customer service number plays a recording that alerts users to the shipping outage and then reminds users that, “You can watch movies or TV episodes instantly on your PC or your TV, with the Netflix player by Roku.”

Netflix will not reveal the source of the problem that is affecting all 55 of its shipping facilities, other than to say, “it’s technological.” The customer-facing Web site remains online and users can access and update their lists of requested movies, and watch previews.

And when will the service be back up? Swasey ponts to the Netflix Community Blog for updates, but said, “We don’t know if we are going to ship today or not.”

Although there is no guarantee of timeliness to Netflix customers, they have become accustomed to very rapid shipping of their discs, and Swasey said it was vital for Netflix to get in front of the issue. But he said that, “There’s been very little negativity around this. Maybe two dozen people have vociferously complained, out of 8.4 million members. There’s no hue and cry from the populace, because we do continue to provide excellent service.” Swasey continued his message on the issue of Netflix’s service: “More than 80 percent of customers join because they got a personal recommendation, ” he said. “It is what we live for. We take this stuff very seriously.”

Netflix, and its customers, are currently experiencing the worst system failure in the DVD shipper’s history. The company shipped no discs on Tuesday, only “a few” yesterday, and so far none today. Affected customers are receiving e-mails telling them their discs are delayed.

The news about the 2009 event is notable because it adds credibility to China as a home for serious video game playing and players. The news comes shortly after the Championship Gaming Series–a professional video game league–announced that it would be opening a training facility and the world’s first video game arena in Wuhan, China.

The 2009 World Cyber Games grand final will be held in Chengdu, China. The 2008 final is being held in Cologne, Germany.

The World Cyber Games brings the top video game players from dozens of countries together for several days of matches. The players play several leading games, with champions being crowned in each title.

(Credit:
World Cyber Games)

And while the World Cyber Games made its announcement Tuesday, it also said it would be holding a “formal” announcement ceremony in Chengdu on April 23.

The 2007 tournament was held in Seattle, while the 2008 final will be held in Cologne, Germany, this November. But that has been known for some time.

The exact dates of the 2009 event weren’t revealed.

The World Cyber Games, probably the largest global video game tournament, announced Tuesday that it will hold the grand finale of its 2009 event in Chengdu, China.

What’s not known is if there will be protests surrounding the World Cyber Games in Chengdu along the lines of what’s been seen in Paris and San Francisco this week in relation to the passage of the Olympic torch.

Like I said, a good password-manager is essential. I’ve used one for years to store all kinds of critical information–not just passwords, but also alarm codes, credit card numbers, software activation info, and so on. (RoboForm’s Safenotes feature handles stuff like that.) I know we’re only talking nine bucks here, but, hey, it’s a movie ticket.

(Credit:
Siber Systems, Inc.)

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Alas, the free version of RoboForm has some serious limitations, which is why most users spring for the $29.95 Pro version. Here’s your chance to save nine bucks: Deal-of-the-day site Yugster is offering RoboForm Pro for $20.95. But it’s today only (Friday, Sept. 12), so chop-chop.

This isn’t boxed software, but rather a download. When you place your order, Yugster will shoot you the necessary download link, license code, and activation instructions.

A good password-manager is absolutely essential, and most users of RoboForm would agree it’s one of the best. (CNET certainly does: Check out the five-star review.) The program remembers your passwords for various sites and automatically fills them in when you visit. It can also auto-fill Web forms for you, generate robust passwords, and even sync with your Palm or Windows Mobile phone.

Pinnacle Video Transfer is compact enough for you to easily carry on the go.

One of the most daunting tasks in video archiving is getting the footage digitized and transferred to an easily accessible storage device. This is especially tiresome and tedious if the original is in tape format.

The Pinnacle Video Transfer provides high-quality MPEG-4 encoding in H.264 at up to 720×480/576 (NTSC/PAL) resolution and supports multiple inputs including S-Video, composite video, and stereo audio. You can choose to set the quality of the digitized footage to be good, better, or best. The lower the quality, the less storage space the video requires. The device uses high-speed USB 2.0 connection to offer digital video transfer speed up to 480Mbps.

You can get it now for $99, which is a very reasonable price if you have a lot of tapes and want to transfer them into digital clips without the hassle of using a computer or fiddling with conversion software.

Unfortunately, the Pinnacle Video Transfer can only convert/transfer from an analog source (like the VCR, analog TV turner). With digital footage (like recorded TV shows from a DVR) you will still need to play it with a device with an analog output before you can take advantage of this device. This also means the time it requires to transfer is as long as the video itself. However, it does significantly simplify the task down to pressing only one button.

About the size and weight of a cigarette pack, this little device is capable of converting analog videos from any source into MPEG-4-quality video files and saving them to any USB 2.0 storage device, including thumb drives, without the need for a PC. You can also choose to convert video footage directly into mobile devices such as an
iPod, PSP, or any other MPEG-4 video player with built-in storage.

For this reason, I am impressed with the Video Transfer from Pinnacle.

(Credit:
Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

The device can also charge or power the target mobile device during the transferring if the device is USB bus-powered, such as the iPod Nano or pocket-size external hard drives.

The MPAA’s case against IsoHunt is in the U.S. District Court of Central California in Los Angeles, which is perceived by many to be extremely friendly to copyright holders.

Fung said he’s been fighting the MPAA’s attempts to require him to turn over user logs on the grounds that his company is based in Canada, which has stricter privacy laws than the United States.

In August, the judge denied TorrentSpy’s appeal. The decision will conceivably enable the MPAA to gain access to users’ personal information in similar cases, say legal experts.

The courts have not yet ruled on whether search tools can be held liable for copyright infringement. Most relevant cases have been settled before going to trial, copyright experts said. It’s important to note that IsoHunt and TorrentSpy don’t store any unauthorized movie files on their sites but the search engines are often used to find pirated copies.

This can’t come as good news to Gary Fung, chief executive of IsoHunt. His company was among a group of torrent-file search engines, which also included TorrentSpy, accused of copyright infringement in a 2006 lawsuit filed by the MPAA. With TorrentSpy gone, the MPAA can now set its sights on IsoHunt.

“IsoHunt is located in Canada and has a slightly different set of circumstances than TorrentSpy,” said IsoHunt’s attorney, Ira Rothken, who also represented TorrentSpy. “IsoHunt is waiting for the (judge’s decision) on a motion for summary judgment. The company is looking forward to defending itself and being the first to go to trial in a search-engine case.”

But Fung is up against an MPAA legal juggernaut that is playing on its home turf, is fresh off a series of court victories, and has plenty of money. The lobbying group for the six largest movie studios said in a statement on Thursday that it took issue with TorrentSpy’s suggestion earlier this week that it lost on a technicality.

TorrentSpy, once one of the most popular indexes of BitTorrent files, shut down on Monday following a two-year copyright battle with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). TorrentSpy, accused in a lawsuit of encouraging copyright infringement, finally crumpled under the legal costs.

“The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the content industries and sends a clear message to operators of other illegal BitTorrent portals that they will not be allowed to operate in the United States without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.” –statement from MPAA

In June, TorrentSpy was ordered by a federal judge to provide the film studios with user information found in the company’s computer RAM. TorrentSpy filed an appeal and argued that data in a computer’s RAM was too temporary to be considered “stored information,” and that it was impractical for companies to produce such material as part of a civil suit.

“There is no reason for us not to see this through. We’ve come this far,” Fung told CNET News.com on Thursday. “TorrentSpy shutting down doesn’t mean a victory for the MPAA. The judge declared that TorrentSpy didn’t adhere to court procedures. That’s different than a judge deciding against the company after hearing their arguments.”

But Fung points out that TorrentSpy was never able to argue the main copyright issues in court. The presiding judge found in favor of the film studios after ruling that TorrentSpy destroyed evidence. Fung says he is determined to take up the copyright issue to the end. Unlike TorrentSpy, he doesn’t care what it costs.

“The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the content industries,” the MPAA said in its statement, “and sends a clear message to operators of other illegal BitTorrent portals that they will not be allowed to operate in the United States without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.”

Whether that is true, the film industry has racked up plenty of file-sharing victories. Besides TorrentSpy, the MPAA was blamed for driving LokiTorrent and SuprNova.org out of business. And more recently, the MPAA won important legal precedents in the TorrentSpy case.

The movie industry has seen mixed results from suing individuals for file sharing but continues to clobber BitTorrent search engines.

But the 25-year-old CEO acknowledges that the U.S. and Canadian governments have agreed to honor court decisions in each other’s countries.

“TorrentSpy’s characterization of the site’s closure as a voluntary decision conveniently
ignores the fact that after two years of intense litigation by the major Hollywood studios, a
federal court found TorrentSpy liable for copyright infringement,” the MPAA said in the statement. “Late last year the court imposed the harshest sanction against the TorrentSpy defendants and ruled in favor of the studios because of TorrentSpy’s brazen, continuous, and systematic destruction of evidence and subversion of the judicial process. In short, the ruling meant that TorrentSpy would have to shut down their site sooner or later.”