technology

The X Window System defined

tech help, technology / /

From Ellen Siever’s “What Is the X Window System” (O’Reilly Media: 25 August 2005):

X was intentionally designed to provide the low-level mechanism for managing the graphics display, but not to have any control over what is displayed. This means that X has never been locked into a single way of doing things; instead, it has the flexibility to be used in many different ways. Both the simplest window manager and the most complex desktop environment can, and do, use the X Window System to manage the display.

…

When you run the X Window System, the X server manages the display, based on requests from the window manager. The window manager is an application that is itself an X client, with responsibility for managing the appearance and placement of the windows on the screen.

X itself has no role in determining the appearance of the screen, or what users are allowed to do with windows. That is the job of the window manager. For example, some window managers allow you to double-click in a window’s title bar and roll up the window into the title bar like rolling up a window shade (this is referred to as shading). Other window managers don’t have that feature. X doesn’t care; it’s a window manager concern. The X server’s job is to provide the low-level support so the window manager and other applications can shade or not, as they choose.

…

The X server manages the display hardware. The server captures input events from the user via keyboard or mouse (or other input device) and passes the information to a client application that has requested it. It also receives requests from the application to perform some graphical action. For example, if you use your mouse to move a window on the screen, the X server passes the information to the window manager, which responds by telling the server where to reposition the window, and the X server performs the action. If the client is a calculator, such as xcalc, it might request that digits be displayed into the window as the user clicks on buttons to enter a number.

…

The window manager controls the general operation of the window system; in particular, it controls the geometry and aesthetics of your X display. With the window manager you can change the size and position of windows on the display, reshuffle windows in a window stack, and so on.

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A wireless router with 2 networks: 1 secure, 1 open

business, technology / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “My Open Wireless Network” (Crypto-Gram: 15 January 2008):

A company called Fon has an interesting approach to this problem. Fon wireless access points have two wireless networks: a secure one for you, and an open one for everyone else. You can configure your open network in either “Bill” or “Linus” mode: In the former, people pay you to use your network, and you have to pay to use any other Fon wireless network. In Linus mode, anyone can use your network, and you can use any other Fon wireless network for free. It’s a really clever idea.

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Details on the Storm & Nugache botnets

business, law, security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Dennis Fisher’s “Storm, Nugache lead dangerous new botnet barrage” (SearchSecurity.com: 19 December 2007):

[Dave Dittrich, a senior security engineer and researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle], one of the top botnet researchers in the world, has been tracking botnets for close to a decade and has seen it all. But this new piece of malware, which came to be known as Nugache, was a game-changer. With no C&C server to target, bots capable of sending encrypted packets and the possibility of any peer on the network suddenly becoming the de facto leader of the botnet, Nugache, Dittrich knew, would be virtually impossible to stop.

…

Dittrich and other researchers say that when they analyze the code these malware authors are putting out, what emerges is a picture of a group of skilled, professional software developers learning from their mistakes, improving their code on a weekly basis and making a lot of money in the process.

…

The way that Storm, Nugache and other similar programs make money for their creators is typically twofold. First and foremost, Storm’s creator controls a massive botnet that he can use to send out spam runs, either for himself or for third parties who pay for the service. Storm-infected PCs have been sending out various spam messages, including pump-and-dump stock scams, pitches for fake medications and highly targeted phishing messages, throughout 2007, and by some estimates were responsible for more than 75% of the spam on the Internet at certain points this year.

Secondly, experts say that Storm’s author has taken to sectioning off his botnet into smaller pieces and then renting those subnets out to other attackers. Estimates of the size of the Storm network have ranged as high as 50 million PCs, but Brandon Enright, a network security analyst at the University of California at San Diego, who wrote a tool called Stormdrain to locate and count infect machines, put the number at closer to 20,000. Dittrich estimates that the size of the Nugache network was roughly equivalent to Enright’s estimates for Storm.

…

“The Storm network has a team of very smart people behind it. They change it constantly. When the attacks against searching started to be successful, they completely changed how commands are distributed in the network,” said Enright. “If AV adapts, they re-adapt. If attacks by researchers adapt, they re-adapt. If someone tries to DoS their distribution system, they DoS back.”

…

The other worrisome detail in all of this is that there’s significant evidence that the authors of these various pieces of malware are sharing information and techniques, if not collaborating outright.

“I’m pretty sure that there are tactics being shared between the Nugache and Storm authors,” Dittrich said. “There’s a direct lineage from Sdbot to Rbot to Mytob to Bancos. These guys can just sell the Web front-end to these things and the customers can pick their options and then just hit go.”

Once just a hobby for devious hackers, writing malware is now a profession and its products have helped create a global shadow economy. That infrastructure stretches from the mob-controlled streets of Moscow to the back alleys of Malaysia to the office parks of Silicon Valley. In that regard, Storm, Nugache and the rest are really just the first products off the assembly line, the Model Ts of P2P malware.

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Google PageRank explained

business, law, technology / /

From Danny Sullivan’s “What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters” (Search Engine Land: 26 April 2007):

Let’s start with what Google says. In a nutshell, it considers links to be like votes. In addition, it considers that some votes are more important than others. PageRank is Google’s system of counting link votes and determining which pages are most important based on them. These scores are then used along with many other things to determine if a page will rank well in a search.

…

PageRank is only a score that represents the importance of a page, as Google estimates it (By the way, that estimate of importance is considered to be Google’s opinion and protected in the US by the First Amendment. When Google was once sued over altering PageRank scores for some sites, a US court ruled: “PageRanks are opinions–opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query….the court concludes Google’s PageRanks are entitled to full constitutional protection.)

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Surveillance cameras don’t reduce crime

security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From BBC News’ “CCTV boom ‘failing to cut crime’” (6 May 2008):

Huge investment in closed-circuit TV technology has failed to cut UK crime, a senior police officer has warned.

Det Ch Insp Mick Neville said the system was an “utter fiasco” – with only 3% of London’s street robberies being solved using security cameras.

Although Britain had more cameras than any other European country, he said “no thought” had gone into how to use them.

…

Speaking at the Security Document World Conference in London, Det Ch Insp Neville, the head of the Met’s Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido), said one of the problems was that criminals were not afraid of cameras.

He also said more training was needed for officers who often avoided trawling through CCTV images “because it’s hard work”.

…

One study suggests there may be more than 4.2 million CCTV cameras in the UK – the majority on private property – but until Viido was set up in September 2006 there had been no dedicated police unit to deal with the collection and dissemination of CCTV evidence.

From Owen Bowcott’s “CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police” (The Guardian: 6 May 2008):

Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.

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Virtual kidnappings a problem in Mexico

business, law, security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Marc Lacey’s “Exploiting Real Fears With ‘Virtual Kidnappings’ ” (The New York Times: 29 April 2008):

MEXICO CITY — The phone call begins with the cries of an anguished child calling for a parent: “Mama! Papa!” The youngster’s sobs are quickly replaced by a husky male voice that means business.

“We’ve got your child,” he says in rapid-fire Spanish, usually adding an expletive for effect and then rattling off a list of demands that might include cash or jewels dropped off at a certain street corner or a sizable deposit made to a local bank.

The twist is that little Pablo or Teresa is safe and sound at school, not duct-taped to a chair in a rundown flophouse somewhere or stuffed in the back of a pirate taxi. But when the cellphone call comes in, that is not at all clear.

This is “virtual kidnapping,” the name being given to Mexico’s latest crime craze, one that has capitalized on the raw nerves of a country that has been terrorized by the real thing for years.

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A new hot line set up to deal with the problem of kidnappings in which no one is actually kidnapped received more than 30,000 complaints from last December to the end of February, Joel Ortega, Mexico City’s police chief, announced recently. There have been eight arrests, and 3,415 telephone numbers have been identified as those used by extortionists, he said.

But identifying the phone numbers — they are now listed on a government Web site — has done little to slow the extortion calls. Nearly all the calls are from cellphones, most of them stolen, authorities say.

On top of that, many extortionists are believed to be pulling off the scams from prisons.

Authorities say hundreds of different criminal gangs are engaged in various telephone scams. Besides the false kidnappings, callers falsely tell people they have won cars or money. Sometimes, people are told to turn off their cellphones for an hour so the service can be repaired; then, relatives are called and told that the cellphone’s owner has been kidnapped. Ransom demands have even been made by text message.

…

No money changed hands in her case, but in many instances — as many as a third of the calls, one study showed — the criminals make off with some valuables. One estimate put the take from telephone scams in Mexico in the last six months at 186.6 million pesos, nearly $20 million.

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Abuse of “terrorist” investigative powers

security, technology / /

From BBC News’ “Council admits spying on family” (10 April 2008):

A council has admitted spying on a family using laws to track criminals and terrorists to find out if they were really living in a school catchment.

A couple and their three children were put under surveillance without their knowledge by Poole Borough Council for more than two weeks.

The council admitted using powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) on six occasions in total.

Three of those were for suspected fraudulent school place applications.

…

RIPA legislation allows councils to carry out surveillance if it suspects criminal activity.

On its website, the Home Office says: “The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) legislates for using methods of surveillance and information gathering to help the prevention of crime, including terrorism.”

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Tim O’Reilly defines cloud computing

business, technology / /

From Tim O’Reilly’s “Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing” (O’Reilly Radar: 26 October 2008):

Since “cloud” seems to mean a lot of different things, let me start with some definitions of what I see as three very distinct types of cloud computing:

1. Utility computing. Amazon’s success in providing virtual machine instances, storage, and computation at pay-as-you-go utility pricing was the breakthrough in this category, and now everyone wants to play. Developers, not end-users, are the target of this kind of cloud computing.

This is the layer at which I don’t presently see any strong network effect benefits (yet). Other than a rise in Amazon’s commitment to the business, neither early adopter Smugmug nor any of its users get any benefit from the fact that thousands of other application developers have their work now hosted on AWS. If anything, they may be competing for the same resources.

That being said, to the extent that developers become committed to the platform, there is the possibility of the kind of developer ecosystem advantages that once accrued to Microsoft. More developers have the skills to build AWS applications, so more talent is available. But take note: Microsoft took charge of this developer ecosystem by building tools that both created a revenue stream for Microsoft and made developers more reliant on them. In addition, they built a deep — very deep — well of complex APIs that bound developers ever-tighter to their platform.

So far, most of the tools and higher level APIs for AWS are being developed by third-parties. In the offerings of companies like Heroku, Rightscale, and EngineYard (not based on AWS, but on their own hosting platform, while sharing the RoR approach to managing cloud infrastructure), we see the beginnings of one significant toolchain. And you can already see that many of these companies are building into their promise the idea of independence from any cloud infrastructure vendor.

In short, if Amazon intends to gain lock-in and true competitive advantage (other than the aforementioned advantage of being the low-cost provider), expect to see them roll out their own more advanced APIs and developer tools, or acquire promising startups building such tools. Alternatively, if current trends continue, I expect to see Amazon as a kind of foundation for a Linux-like aggregation of applications, tools and services not controlled by Amazon, rather than for a Microsoft Windows-like API and tools play. There will be many providers of commodity infrastructure, and a constellation of competing, but largely compatible, tools vendors. Given the momentum towards open source and cloud computing, this is a likely future.

2. Platform as a Service. One step up from pure utility computing are platforms like Google AppEngine and Salesforce’s force.com, which hide machine instances behind higher-level APIs. Porting an application from one of these platforms to another is more like porting from Mac to Windows than from one Linux distribution to another.

The key question at this level remains: are there advantages to developers in one of these platforms from other developers being on the same platform? force.com seems to me to have some ecosystem benefits, which means that the more developers are there, the better it is for both Salesforce and other application developers. I don’t see that with AppEngine. What’s more, many of the applications being deployed there seem trivial compared to the substantial applications being deployed on the Amazon and force.com platforms. One question is whether that’s because developers are afraid of Google, or because the APIs that Google has provided don’t give enough control and ownership for serious applications. I’d love your thoughts on this subject.

3. Cloud-based end-user applications. Any web application is a cloud application in the sense that it resides in the cloud. Google, Amazon, Facebook, twitter, flickr, and virtually every other Web 2.0 application is a cloud application in this sense. However, it seems to me that people use the term “cloud” more specifically in describing web applications that were formerly delivered locally on a PC, like spreadsheets, word processing, databases, and even email. Thus even though they may reside on the same server farm, people tend to think of gmail or Google docs and spreadsheets as “cloud applications” in a way that they don’t think of Google search or Google maps.

This common usage points up a meaningful difference: people tend to think differently about cloud applications when they host individual user data. The prospect of “my” data disappearing or being unavailable is far more alarming than, for example, the disappearance of a service that merely hosts an aggregated view of data that is available elsewhere (say Yahoo! search or Microsoft live maps.) And that, of course, points us squarely back into the center of the Web 2.0 proposition: that users add value to the application by their use of it. Take that away, and you’re a step back in the direction of commodity computing.

Ideally, the user’s data becomes more valuable because it is in the same space as other users’ data. This is why a listing on craigslist or ebay is more powerful than a listing on an individual blog, why a listing on amazon is more powerful than a listing on Joe’s bookstore, why a listing on the first results page of Google’s search engine, or an ad placed into the Google ad auction, is more valuable than similar placement on Microsoft or Yahoo!. This is also why every social network is competing to build its own social graph rather than relying on a shared social graph utility.

This top level of cloud computing definitely has network effects. If I had to place a bet, it would be that the application-level developer ecosystems eventually work their way back down the stack towards the infrastructure level, and the two meet in the middle. In fact, you can argue that that’s what force.com has already done, and thus represents the shape of things. It’s a platform I have a strong feeling I (and anyone else interested in the evolution of the cloud platform) ought to be paying more attention to.

Tim O’Reilly defines cloud computing Read More »

6 reasons why “content” has been devalued

art, business, history, law, technology / /

From Jonathan Handel’s “Is Content Worthless?” (The Huffington Post: 11 April 2008):

Everyone focuses on piracy, but there are actually six related reasons for the devaluation of content. The first is supply and demand. Demand — the number of consumers and their available leisure time – is relatively constant, but supply — online content — has grown enormously in the last decade. Some of this is professional content set free from boundaries of time and space, now available worldwide, anytime, and usually at no cost (whether legally or not). Even more is user generated content (UGC) — websites, blogs, YouTube videos — created by non-professionals who don’t care whether they get paid, and who themselves pay little or nothing to create and distribute it.

The second is the loss of physical form. It just seems natural to value a physical thing more highly than something intangible. Physical objects have been with us since the beginning of time; distributable intangible content has not. Perhaps for that reason, we tend to focus on per-unit costs (zero for an intangible such as a movie download), while forgetting about fixed costs (such as the cost of making the movie in the first place). Also, and critically, if you steal something tangible, you deny it to the owner; a purloined DVD is no longer available to the merchant, for instance. But if you misappropriate an intangible, it’s still there for others to use. …

The third reason is that acquiring content is increasingly frictionless. It’s often easier, particularly for young people, to access content on the Internet than through traditional means. …

Fourth is that most new media business models are ad-supported rather than pay per view or subscription. If there’s no cost to the user, why should consumers see the content as valuable, and if some content is free, why not all of it? …

Fifth is market forces in the technology industry. Computers, web services, and consumer electronic devices are more valuable when more content is available. In turn, these products make content more usable by providing new distribution channels. Traditional media companies are slow to adopt these new technologies, for fear of cannibalizing revenue from existing channels and offending powerful distribution partners. In contrast, non-professionals, long denied access to distribution, rush to use the new technologies, as do pirates of professional content. As a result, technological innovation reduces the market share of paid professional content.

Finally, there’s culture. A generation of users has grown up indifferent or hostile to copyright, particularly in music, movies and software.

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His employer’s misconfigured laptop gets him charged with a crime

law, security, technology / /

From Robert McMillan’s “A misconfigured laptop, a wrecked life” (NetworkWorld: 18 June 2008):

When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts issued Michael Fiola a Dell Latitude in November 2006, it set off a chain of events that would cost him his job, his friends and about a year of his life, as he fought criminal charges that he had downloaded child pornography onto the laptop. Last week, prosecutors dropped their year-old case after a state investigation of his computer determined there was insufficient evidence to prove he had downloaded the files.

An initial state investigation had come to the opposite conclusion, and authorities took a second look at Fiola’s case only after he hired a forensic investigator to look at his laptop. What she found was scary, given the gravity of the charges against him: The Microsoft SMS (Systems Management Server) software used to keep his laptop up to date was not functional. Neither was its antivirus protection. And the laptop was crawling with malicious programs that were most likely responsible for the files on his PC.

Fiola had been an investigator with the state’s Department of Industrial Accidents, examining businesses to see whether they had worker’s compensation plans. Over the past two days, however, he’s become a spokesman for people who have had their lives ruined by malicious software.

…

[Fiola narrates his story:] We had a laptop basically to do our reports instantaneously. If I went to a business and found that they were out of compliance, I would log on and type in a report so it could get back to the home office in Boston immediately. We also used it to research businesses. …

My boss called me into his office at 9 a.m. The director of the Department of Industrial Accidents, my immediate supervisor, and the personnel director were there. They handed me a letter and said, “You are being fired for a violation of the computer usage policy. You have pornography on your computer. You’re fired. Clean out your desk. Let’s go.” …

It was horrible. No paycheck. I lost all my benefits. I lost my insurance. My wife is very, very understanding. She took the bull by the horns and found an attorney. I was just paralyzed, I couldn’t do anything. I can’t describe the feeling to you. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. It’s just devastating.

If you get in a car accident and you kill somebody, people talk to you afterwards. All our friends abandoned us. The only family that stood by us was my dad, her parents, my stepdaughter and one other good friend of ours. And that was it. Nobody called. We spent many weekends at home just crying. I’m 53 years old and I don’t think I’ve cried as much in my whole life as I did in the past 18 months. …

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How technologies have changed politics, & how Obama uses tech

history, politics, technology / /

From Marc Ambinder’s “HisSpace” (The Atlantic: June 2008):

Improvements to the printing press helped Andrew Jackson form and organize the Democratic Party, and he courted newspaper editors and publishers, some of whom became members of his Cabinet, with a zeal then unknown among political leaders. But the postal service, which was coming into its own as he reached for the presidency, was perhaps even more important to his election and public image. Jackson’s exploits in the War of 1812 became well known thanks in large measure to the distribution network that the postal service had created, and his 1828 campaign—among the first to distribute biographical pamphlets by mail—reinforced his heroic image. As president, he turned the office of postmaster into a patronage position, expanded the postal network further—the historian Richard John has pointed out that by the middle of Jackson’s first term, there were 2,000 more postal workers in America than soldiers in the Army—and used it to keep his populist base rallied behind him.

Abraham Lincoln became a national celebrity, according to the historian Allen Guelzo’s new book, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America, when transcripts of those debates were reprinted nationwide in newspapers, which were just then reaching critical mass in distribution beyond the few Eastern cities where they had previously flourished. Newspapers enabled Lincoln, an odd-looking man with a reed-thin voice, to become a viable national candidate …

Franklin Delano Roosevelt used radio to make his case for a dramatic redefinition of government itself, quickly mastering the informal tone best suited to the medium. In his fireside chats, Roosevelt reached directly into American living rooms at pivotal moments of his presidency. His talks—which by turns soothed, educated, and pressed for change—held the New Deal together.

And of course John F. Kennedy famously rode into the White House thanks in part to the first televised presidential debate in U.S. history, in which his keen sense of the medium’s visual impact, plus a little makeup, enabled him to fashion the look of a winner (especially when compared with a pale and haggard Richard Nixon). Kennedy used TV primarily to create and maintain his public image, not as a governing tool, but he understood its strengths and limitations before his peers did …

[Obama’s] speeches play well on YouTube, which allows for more than the five-second sound bites that have characterized the television era. And he recognizes the importance of transparency and consistency at a time when access to everything a politician has ever said is at the fingertips of every voter. But as Joshua Green notes in the preceding pages, Obama has truly set himself apart by his campaign’s use of the Internet to organize support. No other candidate in this or any other election has ever built a support network like Obama’s. The campaign’s 8,000 Web-based affinity groups, 750,000 active volunteers, and 1,276,000 donors have provided him with an enormous financial and organizational advantage in the Democratic primary.

…

What Obama seems to promise is, at its outer limits, a participatory democracy in which the opportunities for participation have been radically expanded. He proposes creating a public, Google-like database of every federal dollar spent. He aims to post every piece of non-emergency legislation online for five days before he signs it so that Americans can comment. A White House blog—also with comments—would be a near certainty. Overseeing this new apparatus would be a chief technology officer.

There is some precedent for Obama’s vision. The British government has already used the Web to try to increase interaction with its citizenry, to limited effect. In November 2006, it established a Web site for citizens seeking redress from their government, http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/. More than 29,000 petitions have since been submitted, and about 9.5 percent of Britons have signed at least one of them. The petitions range from the class-conscious (“Order a independent report to identify reasons that the living conditions of working class people are poor in relation to higher classes”) to the parochial (“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to re-open sunderland ice rink”).

How technologies have changed politics, & how Obama uses tech Read More »

Why you should not run Windows as Admin

security, technology / /

From Aaron Margosis’ “Why you shouldn’t run as admin…” (17 June 2004):

But if you’re running as admin [on Windows], an exploit can:

  • install kernel-mode rootkits and/or keyloggers (which can be close to impossible to detect)
  • install and start services
  • install ActiveX controls, including IE and shell add-ins (common with spyware and adware)
  • access data belonging to other users
  • cause code to run whenever anybody else logs on (including capturing passwords entered into the Ctrl-Alt-Del logon dialog)
  • replace OS and other program files with trojan horses
  • access LSA Secrets, including other sensitive account information, possibly including account info for domain accounts
  • disable/uninstall anti-virus
  • cover its tracks in the event log
  • render your machine unbootable
  • if your account is an administrator on other computers on the network, the malware gains admin control over those computers as well
  • and lots more

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I for one welcome our new OS overlords: Google Chrome

business, technology / /

As some of you may have heard, Google has announced its own web browser, Chrome. It’s releasing the Windows version today, with Mac & Linux versions to follow.

To educate people about the new browser & its goals, they release a 38 pg comic book drawn by the brilliant Scott McCloud. It’s a really good read, but it gets a bit technical at times. However, someone did a “Reader’s Digest” version, which you can read here:

http://technologizer.com/2008/09/01/google-chrome-comic-the-readers-digest-version

I highly encourage you to read it. This browser is doing some very interesting, smart things. And it’s open source, so other browsers can use its code & ideas.

If you want to read the full comic, you can do so here:

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

BTW … I don’t think Chrome has the potential of becoming the next big browser; I think instead it has the potential to become the next big operating system. See http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/meet-chrome-googles-windows-killer/ for more on that.

I for one welcome our new OS overlords: Google Chrome Read More »

Dropbox for Linux is coming soon

business, tech help, technology / /

According to this announcement, a Linux client for Dropbox should be coming out in a week or so:

http://forums.getdropbox.com/topic.php?id=2371&replies=1

I’ve been using Dropbox for several months, and it’s really, really great.

What is it? Watch this video:

http://www.getdropbox.com/screencast

It’s backup and auto-syncing done REALLY well. Best of all, you can sync between more than one computer, even if one is owned by someone else. So I could create a folder then share it with Robert. It shows up on his machine. If either of us changes files in the folder, those changes are auto-synced with each other.

Very nice.

So check it out when you get a chance. 2 GB are free. After that, you pay a small fee.

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Fat footers

tech help, technology / /

Jerry wrote this & sent it to a client;

A fat footer is a means of showing secondary navigation, or
showcasing primary navigation, or reinforcing selected pieces of your
navigation. Here are some examples:

On a long-scroll blog page, put some choices at the bottom:
http://bokardo.com/

Put sales and branding at the top and navigation at the bottom:
http://www.dapper.net/

Promote the pages you really want them to visit:
http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/

Pizazz at the top, decision-making choices at the bottom:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/

We think it’s usually best to have a color change for the footer:
http://billyhughes.oph.gov.au/

Fat footers Read More »

Russian music sites

art, business, technology / /

I just had a student email me asking about Russian music download sites. Here’s what I told him:

http://www.mp3sparks.com isn’t accepting payments. Dunno why. They haven’t for a long time, so they’re out of the picture, as far as I’m concerned.

I recommend looking at http://www.mp3fiesta.com now, as well as http://www.mp3sugar.com.

There’s a huge list of Russian music sites here: http://www.squidoo.com/russianmp3sites

Lots of good info there.

Oh, and don’t forget the Amazon MP3 store. It’s actually nice – cheaper than Apple, but not as cheap as the Russians!

Russian music sites Read More »