Salocin

What does the internet look like? A few projects out there have approached the problem of creating a graphical representation of the internet - here are a few examples of the pictures you can come up with.

Far too often I see presentations from companies that show a computer in a home, connected to a modem, connected to this comic cloud shape labeled “internet”. Picturing the internet as an impending storm is eerily appropriate if you were a dot com in the 1990s, but the metaphor isn’t really very accurate.

In a recent class regarding the territoriality and legal regimes governing the internet, we were asked (as a conversation starter), “What does the Internet look like?” and “Where is the Internet?” So I looked into the question and found a couple of obvious answers, and here they are.

First of all, the Internet crosses borders effortlessly. This isn’t as facile a comment as it first seems. What I mean is that if the quickest (note: not shortest) way to route a communication from Miami to Seoul is via Cuba, that’s the way the routers will send it, and to hell with politics. This website is hosted in Livingston in the United Kingdom, but I am in Philadelphia, and most of my PHP code snippets are kept on a virtual drive somewhere else. This means that a map of the internet will be largely non-territorial in nature. Even if you can resolve IP addresses with country suffixes, just because a website ends in ‘.jp’ does not mean that the data you get when you look at it has come to you from Japan. The net result of all this is that it becomes extremely difficult to censor or control what is on the internet. Countries like China and Singapore try to do it by controlling every single access point that crosses their national borders. Whilst this is possible, it is both difficult and costly, because you have to funnel all the information through a restricted (controllable) number of channels. Even then, people can disguise packets of information going through those channels and sneak the information past the controls anyway.

The internet is a descendant of ARPAnet, which was built with redundancy in mind. That means that if you destroy a part of the network, the rest of the network routes around the damage to continue to function. It does this without the need to ask some central authority which way to go – the process is recursive and automatic; built into every router and every computer. The data’s most efficient path to its destination can fluctuate rapidly. Each document you send or receive over the internet is broken into “packets”, and these all flow through the system separately, possibly through different paths, and are reconstituted on the other end. So when you look at the map, you can draw different connections between any two points. The extent to which this is still true is debatable, with ultra-high bandwidth backbones carrying most of the traffic, but the network’s capability to do this remains, it’s just that when a backbone drops, the remaining routes in the network can no longer handle the high demand for traffic.

So what does a map of the internet look like? Well if you took every node connected to the internet and plotted how each and every single one was connected to all others, you’d need a very big piece of paper to plot it on. But if you set a program to plotting the nature of the internet that surrounds you, you can get something that looks a little like this (published in Wired Magazine in 1998)...

A stripped down map of the internet, showing just the links from my computer to a few others, looks like this...

But what of networks within networks? Take Gnutella, for example, a filesharing program that creates a peer-to-peer networking infrastructure. This uses the internet to connect, but doesn’t have the same fixed-point architecture; instead, in a way, it 'floats' above the internet. In other words, if you map the Gnutella network, two adjacent links on your Gnutella map could be at the opposite ends of the Internet map, but the network functions in a way that is very similar to the internet itself. These maps show personal connections forged between your computer and those of others, and how that network – which was dynamically created and constantly reforms itself as people leave and join – allows you to search the shared files of a computer on the other end of the network.

The GnuTella network’s dynamic and reforming structure makes it a very interesting phenomenon to study, especially since the introduction of “UltraPeers”, individuals who allow their node in the network to host a large number of “leaf nodes”, so that bandwidth needs can be funneled through volunteers who have bandwidth to spare.

A map of a small part of the GnuTella network as viewed from my PC is here…

So what does the entire internet look like? A few projects have drawn interesting pictures, and they sometimes look a little like this…

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Links that may be of interest

• Stephen Brooks’ most excellent website containing his simple but powerful network mapper
• The Internet Mapping Project Mapping Gallery
• The GnutellaVision project page
• Gnucleus GnuTella client with built-in mapper

The new installment is upon us, and as with most recent films, I find myself comparing my list of expectations with what really happened and asking, "is it just me"?

If Bond were as aged as his film franchise, he would be well past his use-by date as a British spy, but probably in better condition than the stories that expound his most recent achievements. It would seem that in his most recent incarnation, Bond has stolen a page from xXx, and become an extreme sports enthusiast, and now relies more on his gadgets than his wits to keep him alive.

Please attach your seatbelt, keep your hands and feet inside the cliché machine at all times and do not touch the props, as these are for product placement purposes only. Grab hold of your martini, and if you’re holding tight, we’ll run through the pre-flight checklist.

• Witty one-liners after every villain is dispatched? Check.
  
• Gadgets less believable than last time? Check.
  
• Bond girls to make your jaw drop, getting out of the water in a bikini, in slow motion. Did I mention the bikini? Check.
  
• Effete, deviant criminal mastermind with physical/psychological defect? Check.
  
• Hero challenges misguided greater authority? Check.
  
• Doomsday device? Check.
  
• World saved? Check.
  

By all accounts, it’s a Bond film. So why am I left with the impression that something is missing? We’ll get back to that later. First, what’s it all about?

The political backstory and setting, which serve more as bookends than as a backdrop to the film, is North Korea, and a 007 mission going somewhat awry. Forget that completely, because it isn’t useful until the end of the film, roll credits, and start again.

Iceland. Yes, Iceland. Probably because it has the word “Ice” in its name and this is a bit of a running theme in the film. Where was I? Oh yes, Iceland. But first, Havana. Yes, Havana. Why? Not sure really, could have been Panama, or Russia, but its cool to pick on the current President’s enemies, so there you go, Havana. Where was I?

Forget the location, it’s not important, they had to pick a hot country by the sea so Halle Berry could get out of the water in her bikini. In slow motion. Did I mention the bikini?

The reason I’m going round in circles here is that I’m trying not to give any of the little things away, because there’s no big twist to give away, and if I tell you some of the small things that you discover about the film as you watch it, you’ll find even less of a plot than I did. Although we might have to check with Heisenberg and his friend’s cat, the very small is not my domain.

What you’ll find if you watch it (which I actually do encourage you to do), is that the film, like the last few, is location-based rather than plot-based, and that the general effect is that Bond is trying to track someone down, and for some trivial reason decides Gustave Graves is the big master criminal he’s after, and after you strip out the minor references to Korean politics and conflict diamonds, what you have is an extreme sports bonanza with electronic gizmos thrown in.

So having failed to explain the film, because I can’t get a handle on what to tell you, let me switch modes: I see all these spy films tending towards exactly the same script. Whether you come from the originally understated, gentlemanly spy: Bond, or the American Superspy: Mission Impossible, or from the Extreme Sports Champion Turned Spy: xXx, all of these films are gradually homing in on the script that will best please the moviegoer of today. It’s to the extreme end of the sophistication/action tradeoff, where one-liners are used as a proxy for sophistication, and the solution to every tricky situation is to either use a gizmo, or create a surfboard out of something, pronto.

Those things that made Bond Bond cannot be ignored, and so they are present. His English sophistication is parodied to the extreme, and exposed through the lines he says after each stunt. He still goes to London, but the conversations with M are how the lever of plot development gets cranked, rather than a seamless integration with the rest of the film. It’s very much Bond on his own, and the rest of the world be damned.

So did I like it? Well, uncannily, yes. So why am I slating it? I can go watch Mission Impossible and see an extremely well made flick about a superhero spy. I can’t find the modern equivalent of Bond anywhere. So to revert to type and repeat my oft-heard diatribe, I feel that scripts and films are tending towards the point of maximum return, which is fine in business, but not good for art, because it destroys variety. If the 15-year-olds who spend the most on movies today are paying for this now, they won’t thank you in 10 years, and I’m not thanking you now. Not because it’s bad, but because I can’t find all the other stuff that used to get made, and that I miss. Does that make me old? Damn.

Oh yes - and I suddenly remember that I told you, in parentheses, that you should watch the film. It's very good fun, and now that I have done you the service of rebasing your expectations, you'll enjoy it plenty.

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Bond 20 : Die Another Day [ IMDB ]

Starring...

• Bond, James Bond
  
• Bond girl 20, but is she all she seems?
  
• Rosamund Pike is lovely
  
• Cookie Cutter Criminal
  
• "Expensive Acne"
  

Traliers [ Hi Res | Med Res | Lo Res ]

Just when you thought that, having taken over your mailbox and your browser window, spammers had all the bases covered, now they use admin alerts to advertise direct to your screen.

Recently, a new breed of spam has arrived. I don't know if you've noticed it, perhaps you are so inured to the popup windows from your browser that you didn't even realize they were different, but now spammers have a way of making a window pop up on your screen with their message in it. No action is required on your part, they just have to target your computer's address, and up it comes, in the form of an administrator alert.

The implications of this are a little worrying - no longer is this something that occurs because I stepped into the wrong webpage, this is something that is done to your computer by a third party, by hijacking an administrator service on your machine.

Technically, it's hacking (or "cracking", to use the correct term), at the very least it's theft of resources : It's unauthorised access to the functionality of my assets so that the purposes of the spammer can be served.

So people with poor products seek to transfer the costs of their advertising to the recipient of the message - we've seen this before, it's the same economic argument as email spam, it's annoying, but governments are really slow at enacting legislation to protect us from such intrusions.

In this case, the intrusion seems to be coming from people using DirectAdvertiser software. If you want to be very afraid, you can always read their testimonials page.

This new breed of spam points to a larger problem through - this vulnerability in Windows was discovered by a marketer before it was discovered by any security expert. In other words, since they have the incentive to find and use such technology, their efforts at detecting holes in the our firewalls are much more focused and effective than those of our software providers.

That Microsoft software is full of holes is not new, but the ease with which spammers find ways to access our computers surely points to a greater vulnerability that is inherent in the design of such software. Each individual hole in our IT security becomes merely another symptom of the flawed design and weak security built into all the products we install.

Below are pictures of the spams I've bothered to grab off my screen - if you grab one, mail it to me at contributions@ salocin.com and I'll put it up. I tend to receive the University Diplomas one over and over.

If a picture is worth a thousand words then one good idea may be worth millions of dollars in the movie world.

Leo starring Joseph Fiennes and Elizabeth Shue has an excellent idea and explores it in a delicate and intelligent manner.

The shame is that there are ten franchise movies for every Leo, whilst you could afford to make ten Leo’s for the price of one Mission Impossible or XXX. Go figure.

It is hard to discuss the film at length without giving away the central conceit and although I believe the film is more affecting if you have that knowledge from the start, I will respect the intentions of the writer and director who clearly felt differently.

What I can say is that the standard of acting is universally excellent. Elizabeth Shue excels in her part as a guilt ridden mother although I could not help but wonder if her tearful final scene was necessary to the story or an excuse for her to further flex some acting muscles. Joseph Fiennes delivers a majestic understated performance in the lead whilst Sam Shephard as a grizzled diner manager and Mary Stuart Masterson give excellent support. And Dennis Hopper … well he plays Dennis Hopper in yet another ‘signature’ psychopath performance. It is a shame because his is the only part that seems untrue. It is as if casting him is cinematic shorthand for ‘bad man’ in the same way Paul Sorvino equals ‘gangster’ or Meg Ryan equals ‘cookie lovelorn yuppie’.

The first time director Mehdi Norowzian for the most part does an excellent and controlled job, allowing the story to play out at its own pace, although there are moments when his background in advertising show through with some unnecessarily self conscious and overtly showy shots and compositions.

Writers Amir and Massy Tadjedin have constructed an elegant and lyrical parable and although the titular Leopold Bloom is a character from Ulysses with its themes of circularity, of insight spanning a life time and eventually of finding peace within the self, it was another Joyce work, ‘Dubliners’, that came to mind for me. Leo is a cinematic representation of epiphany and a film I would certainly recommend to any filmgoer looking for ideas once the lights dim and the curtains part.

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trailer [ slow connection | fast connection ]

IMDB Entry