It included a pointer to the Delay Tolerant Network Research Group, which is working on standard protocols to solve those problems. I can see a number of applications for these systems right hear on earth. Imagine a network stack that could queue those file transfers and emails for that 30 second window of bandwidth you get as you drive by that open roadside WiFi access point…

• Slow motion coolness
• Fun with airport announcers
• God HATES Shrimp.

You may now return to your everyday life.

He talked for awhile about his research into networks of social interaction and how online communities like Friendster and Orkut relate to his research.

You can listen to the show via RealAudio.

Thank you for your patience!

Update: All done!

DJ Danger Mouse created a remix of Jay-Z’s the Black Album and the Beatles White Album, and called it the Grey Album. Jay-Z’s record label, Roc-A-Fella, released an a capella version of his Black Album specifically to encourage remixes like this one. But despite praise from music fans and major media outlets like Rolling Stone (”an ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time”) and the Boston Globe (which called it the “most creatively captivating” album of the year), EMI has sent cease and desist letters demanding that stores destroy their copies of the album and websites remove them from their site. EMI claims copyright control of the Beatles 1968 White Album.

I’ve downloaded the album, and it rocks!. If I get a few comments requesting it, I’ll mirror the album on my site.

Well in San Francisco on April 3rd, they’re taking it to the next level… Flash Mob Supercomputing:

A Flash Mob supercomputer is hundreds or even thousands of computers connected together via a LAN working together as a single supercomputer. A Flash Mob computer, unlike an ordinary cluster, is temporary and organized on-the-fly for the purpose of working on a single problem. Flash Mob I is the first of it’s kind. By bringing hundreds of people like you together in one room, we will have enough computing power to become one of the fastest supercomputers on the planet.

They’re attempting to build an impromptu supercomputer from hundreds or thousands of personal computers networked and running Linux.

I think it will be more of a novelty than anything else, but it once again brings up an interesting point. When communties come together and combine computing power, some very interesting problems could be solved. I think we’ll see more of stuff like this in the future.

So I check out my server logs. I find two referrals from blog.johnkerry.com:

172.144.61.107 - - [18/Feb/2004:01:13:28 -0500] “HEAD /blog/index.php HTTP/1.1″ 200 0 “http://blog.johnkerry.com” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.01 [en]” 206.65.72.35 - - [20/Feb/2004:23:59:07 -0500] “HEAD /blog/index.php HTTP/1.0″ 200 0 “http://www.blog.johnkerry.com” “StarProse Referrer Advertising System 2004″

Hmm… Interesting. So I check out where those IP’s are coming from.

-=[krezel@metcalf ~]=- -=>resolveip 172.144.61.107 Host name of 172.144.61.107 is AC903D6B.ipt.aol.com -=[krezel@metcalf ~]=- -=>resolveip 206.65.72.35 Host name of 206.65.72.35 is bess-proxy.cajun.net

It looks like at least one of the hits came from somebody’s home PC connected via AOL, and the other seems to be connected through some sort of open proxy.

Next step, obviously is to do some googling.

A search for “StarProse Referrer” comes up with a few interesting hits. I get a couple of hits to actual software listings for “StarProse Referrer Advertising System 2004″:

Referrer Advertising is a new concept in which your website address is sent to thousands of public websites which publish there referrer statistics. Referrer advertising can be very successful and does not take a huge cash investment or take up a lot of your time to get started. Referrer advertising does not apply to Can Spam Act of 2003.

Lovely. Some googling on “blog.johnkerry.com” comes up with hit after hit after hit to other people’s referrer logs listing “blog.johnkerry.com”. And then of course lots of other bloggers also complaining about being spammed by Kerry.

I’m not going to say that I’m surprised by this. But I am very unhappy that in their quest to gain some “internet cred” (and increase their google hits), Kerry and his supporters have resorted to tactics only previously used by porn and drug spammers. Unfortuantely this is will hardly ever make the evening news, no matter how low I think it is.

Oh yeah… And Dean has been doing it too…