M.S.S Industrials

The future internet is scary

2012-05-07T02:24:00.001-07:00

While preparing for the future, I'm trying to sensibly and soberly imagine the end-game when media corporations and the government run the internet the way they want to.

I don't mean a nightmare scenario where RFID chips are secreted beneath eyelids at birth, or where cochlear implants whisper advertising into your brain 24 hours a day. I mean an imaginary but realistic portrayal of the kind of experience we'd have if the internet was no longer in the hands of us mavericks.

Let's start with the media industry. The average commercial DVD is a prime example of what might happen if these folks control more of the internet. Firstly, any convenience brought about by advancing technology becomes secondary to advertising revenue potential.

Forced advertising

There's no reason why a DVD can't instantly skip to the main feature, for example, yet few do. Instead, we suffer piracy warnings, reveal-all trailers, adverts for rubbish we don't need and worse, sometimes the pause and skip functions are disabled on our own hardware. Disney's FastPlay is the perfect case.

Despite its name, it's designed to automatically start the advertising unless you're quick enough to hit the 'Main menu' button first, which is exactly what a room full of four-year-olds waiting for The Lion King can't do.

In the future, something similar to this DVD upgrade facility will be 'ported' to the internet, so that when you enter a URL for a site or follow a link, you'll have to wait for the advertising to finish. There will be no chance to skip, stop or open another window. The 'back' button will be disabled and your front-facing camera will be tracking your gaze.

Your privately hosted site will also be scanned for its use of commercial media, and if any is detected, more ads will be plastered over your carefully crafted CSS, just like Rumblefish does for YouTube today with a service it calls 'Friendly Music'.

Anti-piracy

This leads us to contemplate life on the internet after ACTA, or the inevitable secret version that will sneak into our laws while we're distracted by the Olympics or the Mayan end of the world.

ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, would give acceding governments the protocol and the 'collective will' to protect their creative economies from the evils of digital piracy at both the hosting and ISP levels.

This will probably be accomplished through an independent consortium of impartial media industry experts.

They'll be able to do this by monitoring your online activity, by blocking websites and by criminalising entire housing estates full of teenage infringers. All of which sounds just as frightening as random settlement letters sent from renegade law firms.

Like Phorm's behavioural targeting for advertising, your day-to-day browsing would be secretly profiled, only this time, they'll be looking for the tell-tale traces of a freeloading pirate rather than potential Marmite lovers.

Fortunately we're all Europeans now, and ACTA itself is under attack by those who'd rather the internet remain neutral. It's hoped that this vision of the future will fade in the face of the European Court of Justice, just as Phorm did before the European Commission.

After a recent High Court ruling, it's probably too late for the Pirate Bay in the UK, which leads to the obvious question of what will happen to VPNs and clever reverse-DNS trickery, which are increasingly common methods of side-stepping geographically restricted content.

It's likely they'll be tarred as technologies only used by those with something to hide, and despite their many legitimate uses as privacy and security tools, they'll be outlawed (the same could be said of torrents, of course).

In the future, they'll probably need to be licenced by companies for legitimate use, leaving us with far fewer privacy options, less control and a much bleaker future for our children's freedom online.

But a failure to understand the way the internet works has never stopped policy makers before.

Rebellion

As Eric S Raymond puts it in his open letter to Chris Dodd (MPAA chairman and CEO): "We built the internet as a tool to make every individual human being on the planet more empowered. What the users do with the internet is up to them - not up to Hollywood, not up to politicians, and not even up to us who built it.

"Whatever else we internet geeks may disagree on among ourselves, we will not allow our gift of fire to be snuffed out by jealous gods."

Eric has hit upon the fundamental problem. No one is saying that piracy is right, or that content providers shouldn't try to limit their losses. But neither did anyone draw up rules for how the internet should or shouldn't be used.

People, companies and governments joined up because they wanted to be part of the global conversation, and they couldn't afford not to.

To turn around and demand changes to the nature of that conversation is wrong, and it's our responsibility to make sure it doesn't happen. Otherwise the internet will suffer the same fate as commercial DVDs and become yet another avenue for commercial snooping.

Android malware infecting through 'legitimate websites'

2012-05-07T02:16:00.001-07:00

Lookout Mobile Security identified an industry first this Wednesday, discovering a malicious software package specifically designed to download to Android phones from hacked websites.

The trojan, called NotCompatible, comes in the guise of an automatically downloaded update file (Update.apk), which requires user confirmation to install.

Once allowed to run on the device, the trojan acts as a TCP relay that can use its host as a mask to send traffic like a proxy.

The URLs of infected sites have yet to be released, and the number of affected domains seems to be up in the air.

Lookout argues that these sites number in the tens; Symantec claims thousands could be compromised.

Also unknown is the purpose for this apparently "well-written and stable" infectious code, though Lookout speculates that the attacks are aimed at enabling anonymous hosting for criminal activity.

"There are a couple of ways [the hackers] can profit from this," said Kevin Mahaffrey, co-founder and CTO of Lookout Security. "One is general online fraud. The other is targeted attacks against enterprises."

Lookout said they haven't seen any attacks aimed at specific companies, but are tracking purchasing activity related to this trojan.

Ice Cream Frontier

Hacking is old news, but NotCompatible represents the inception of what could be a new wave of malicious software distribution via websites.

According to Mahaffrey, "This is the first time that [hackers] have used legitimate websites to serve Android malware," though it's far from being the first downloadable, Android-specific trojan.

"We see Android malware all the time," added Mahaffrey, "but it's usually served using social engineering."

And it's no surprise that hackers are turning their attention towards these devices. With the recently-unveiled Samsung Galaxy S3 hitting markets later this month, the Android platform is poised to take 50 percent of the mobile market share.

Lookout is still investigating NotCompatible, but is using this attack to begin adapting to the changing landscape of mobile device vulnerabilities.

For now, Android phone manufacturers may only find solace in the timeless words of Notorious B.I.G., "Mo' money, mo problems."

Make Own Web For Free

2012-03-13T09:14:00.003-07:00

Make Money Online If you’ve ever dream about earning a living by making money online, then affiliate marketing can be your key to running a successful Internet business. Before you can start earning money online, it’s imperative to know the basics of establishing a website from the ground up. Those basics include building a website, finding the right hosting, WordPress themes and affiliate programs for your business. Read on for the easiest ways to set up your affiliate marketing business.

Step 1: Launching A Website

First and foremost, you’ll need to lay the foundation for your site. This includes setting up your own content management system and a hosting company that will ensure your site stays up and running 24/7.

WordPress and Hosting: WordPress is an open source blog and content management system that is the backbone for most affiliate sites. The reasons are because it’s a free platform that’s fairly easy to use. You can get also get thousands of plugins that will let you adjust your site to your personal requirements, and equal number of themes that will make your site stand out from the crowd. WordPress can be installed in just five minutes, but before you can do anything you have to get a domain and sign up for a hosting account. For domains you can go to GoDaddy, which is amazingly easy to use. When it comes to hosting there are tons of possibilities. One of the most reliable hosting companies is RS Hosts.

With some of the least expensive rates around, RS Hosts offers UNLIMITED Domain Hosting, GB Hosting Space, GB File Transfer AND E-mail Accounts. You can also get a FREE Domain and Site Builder with templates. Blue Host is also known for its 24/7 Phone, Chat and Email Support.

Sign up for RS Hosts

Step 2: Finding Offers To Promote

Now that your website is established, it’s time to select the right offers to promote. There are millions of programs and offers that you can choose from, but how do you choose what are best for you?

The best way to find an offer that may work for you is research all of the offers that you have available. You can start by visiting an advertiser website and seeing if they offer an affiliate program. If so, in their affiliate section you can see if they have an offer that interests you. You can click on the listing for all of the campaign information, which includes basic information such as its payout, what constitutes as a lead, the countries the offer accepts leads/signups from, and how you are allowed to promote the offer,. Depending on the offer, you will sometimes have to read and agree to an additional terms and conditions, which usually covers keyword bidding and trademark issues.

After selecting your offer, and agreeing to any additional terms, you can then access your affiliate links and campaign ad copies. Each offer is setup with their own menu tab that would allow you to grab your affiliate banner creatives, email creatives, search creatives and additional and advanced tracking.

In addition to signing up to affiliate programs directly on advertiser websites, you should familiarize yourself with affiliate networks and how they allow you to search and promote through offers.

Affiliate networks provide affiliates with direct access to thousands of different offers, and full training and support on how to promote them. Networks also centralize the tracking, payment and processing in one spot and sends one lump sum payment at the end of a billing cycle for the different offers they run on their network. Check out the top affiliate networks you should explore:

MaxBounty
FluxAds
Peerfly.com
XY7.com

Once you’re signed up with these networks, you can then start selecting from a wide range of offers and promotions and testing them out. From the network, you can login to your members area and start creating affiliate links to their main web site or to individual products directly. You’ll also be able to create new links and banners, view traffic and sales reports and monitor all payments, whether they’re past or pending.

Step 3: Building a Mailing List

Email marketing is a cornerstone of any effective online business, essential for increasing the effectiveness of your site traffic and catching.

The first step of email marketing is building a list. Even if you’re not quite ready to engage in an email marketing campaign yet, you should still be building. After all, if you’ve got a site, you’ve got site traffic, so you’ve already got the most fundamental element of email marketing at your fingertips.

When referring to an email list, what we’re really discussing is the database of email addresses, your visitors have supplied you, primarily using the following means:

Autoresponders
Sign-ups via your website
Sign-ups up via an email response

e-Money

2012-03-13T09:10:00.000-07:00

Wealth Creation Rules to Live By Money Make Online (MMO)
YOU ARE BORN TO WIN
YOU ARE BORN TO CREATE YOUR DESTINY
YOU ARE BORN TO RULE THE WORLD!!

What are your dreams and Ambitions?

To earn Extra Income?
To have a life style of your Choice??
To Own a Car or Dream House?
To Stay Fit and Healthy Always?
To Travel around the World free?
To Pursue your children for Higher Studies without any worries?
To Get Respect in Society & get Rewarded and Awarded?
To HAVE FREEDOM IN LIFE?

Have you ever wondered why money comes so easily to some people, yet others seem to struggle for every penny they earn? The difference between the two types of people often lies in how they think about money and wealth.

Here are some wealth creation rules to live by to help you become one of those who will always have more than what you need, instead of someone who never has quite enough. Change your money mindset. How you think about money and wealth is the single most important factor that determines whether you’re wealthy or not. If you hold any wrong beliefs about money, or believe that you don't have enough, that thinking can hold you back from ever becoming wealthy. Instead, recognize the power that your thoughts have over the money in your life and embrace it. A good book to read to help you change your mindset about money is Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. This book explains how your way of thinking can make you wealthy, or keep you from experiencing the riches you desire. Be optimistic about wealth. Money is important in our society. Not having enough can be a very scary thought. But instead of being fearful of money, be optimistic. Visualize yourself having enough money to pay your bills and enjoying the finer things in life. What would it feel like to have a certain dollar amount in your bank account? Focus on that image and keep it foremost in your mind. For more about CLICK HERE