5 Major Changes Facing the Internet in 2012

2012 is poised to go down in Internet history as one of the most significant 12-month periods from both a technical and policy perspective since the late 1990s, when this network-of-networks stopped being a research project and became an engine of economic growth.

This year the Internet will face several milestones as it undergoes its biggest-ever technical upgrade, from Internet Protocol version 4 to version 6. In addition, key contracts that the U.S. federal government controls for Internet infrastructure and operations are being re-bid. Taken together, these events could result in monumental changes in both who operates the Internet infrastructure as well as how these operations are handled:

1. The root servers may have a new operator.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has overseen the operation of the Internet root servers since the non-profit was founded in 1998. However, ICANN's contract is due to expire in March, and a new U.S.-based organization could end up in charge of this critical technical function.

The Internet's 13 root server farms are at the top of the DNS hierarchy, which matches domain names with their corresponding IP addresses for looking up Web sites. The operation of the root server farms is overseen by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which reports to ICANN.

Instead of renewing ICANN's contract for the IANA function, the U.S. government has opened up the bid to other U.S.-based organizations. On Nov. 10, 2011, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued an open bid for the IANA function. Bids were due Dec. 12 and a contract is expected to be awarded in the first quarter of this year. The new contract for the IANA function will last from April 1, 2012 until March 31, 2015.

2. A new company could operate the .com registry.

Verisign has operated the .com domain since 1999. The .com domain is the Internet's most popular top-level domain, with about 100 million .com names registered as of last month. To put this figure in perspective, the Internet has a total of 220 million domain names registered in 280 top-level domains. The number of .com names dwarfs every other domain: It's more than five times greater than those registered in the second most popular extension, which is Germany's .de.

Verisign signed an agreement with ICANN on March 1, 2006 to operate .com, and that contract expires on Nov. 30, 2012.

One positive indicator for Verisign: Last June, ICANN renewed the company's contract to operate the .net registry, which has about 12 million registered names. Verisign will run the .net registry until 2017.

3. Up to 1,000 new top-level domains will start being introduced.

ICANN plans to launch a new program Jan. 12 to add hundreds of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) such as .hotel and .paris to the Internet. This controversial plan has been under discussion for six years, and it is finally scheduled to begin. ICANN's new gTLD program represents the biggest change to the Internet's naming system since 1998, when ICANN was formed.

ICANN has run two previous efforts to expand the Internet domain name space: once in 2000, when it added seven extensions including .biz and .info; and again in 2004, when it added eight more extensions such as .asia and .jobs. None of these new domain name extensions has been particularly successful.

However, if ICANN's latest attempt to expand the domain name space succeeds, it could fundamentally change the way domain names are used. Among the new categories of names that are expected to be approved include: internationalized domain names in non-English language scripts; geographically oriented domains for cities and regions; domain names tied to specific interests as well as domain names tied to individual companies and brand

4. An additional 10,000 Web sites will support IPv6.

Sept. 30, 2012 is the deadline for all U.S. federal government agencies to support IPv6 on their public-facing Web sites and Web services. An estimated 10,000 Web sites fall under this mandate, which could help drive IPv6 deployment in the United States during the next 12 months.

Established by the Obama Administration two years ago, the federal IPv6 mandate also requires agencies to upgrade internal client applications that communicate with public Internet servers to use native IPv6. But agencies have another two years - until September 2014 - to meet this second deadline. Federal agencies are required to designate an IPv6 transition manager and to purchase network hardware and software that complies with the federal government's IPv6 testing process.

IPv6 features an expanded addressing scheme that can support billions of devices connected directly to the Internet. But IPv6 is not backwards compatible with IPv4, which is running out of addresses. Network operators can either support both protocols in what's called dual-stack mode or translate between IPv4 and IPv6, which could add latency and overhead cost.

5. Europe will run out of IPv4 addresses.

The European regional Internet registry - RIPE - is expected to run out of IPv4 addresses in 2012. Geoff Huston, adjunct research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures at Swinburne University of Technology, estimates that RIPE will run out of its remaining IPv4 address space on July 22, 2012.

In April 2011, Asia depleted all of its IPv4 address space except a small fraction held in reserve for start-up network operators. The North American registry is expected to deplete its IPv4 address space in 2013.

The depletion of IPv4 addresses in various regions of the world will put more pressure on U.S. carriers and enterprises to begin transitioning their networks to IPv6. For example, Comcast has said it will offer production-quality IPv6 services across its nationwide network in 2012.

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What's coming in Firefox 11

Big changes are arriving in the developer's build of Firefox for Androidin a bid to make it more appealing, while the significantly more popular desktop version is getting several noteworthy but smaller changes, the company announced at the end of 2011.

Available for download now, the first versions of Firefox 11 Aurora for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android came out just after the stable build of the browser updated to version 9. The Android update is again the more notable release, as the new native Android interface reaches a wider audience. For the first time, the browser also supports playing Adobe Flash content, which competitors like Dolphin HD and Opera have offered for a while.

This is more than a new look, though, as many of the browser's features have been stripped out. This includes Firefox Sync, which allows seamless synchronization of personal data like bookmarks, passwords, and browsing history, and Mozilla's popular add-ons. In a blog post announcing Firefox 11 Aurora for Android, Mozilla promises that Sync and add-ons will return "soon."

Personally, I've found Sync to be the single most useful feature in the mobile browser. To be able to open a tab on the desktop, and have it nearly instantaneously pushed to my Android, makes jumping from desktop to phone or tablet practically seamless. On the other hand, very rough testing indicates that Firefox 11 is a much faster browser. While site-loading tests indicate speed gains only around half a second to a full second, initial app start time tests show major speed gains over the current Firefox 9 of around 50 percent.

Meanwhile, Firefox 11 Aurora for desktops gets two useful changes. Windows 7 and Vista users will no longer see the User Account Control (UAC) for Firefox after the browser's initial installation. This completes Firefox's alignment with Chrome's seamless updates, which haven't required your interaction with the UAC. On first installation, the browser now adds Chrome to its list of browsers from which it can import your personal data.

Other changes in Firefox 11 Aurora are aimed at developers. More HTML5 code is supported,Google's SPDY protocol for faster site loading can now be tested, Tilt support allows for 3D Web page visualization, and the HTML5 video controls have been redesigned. 

The new Aurora builds bump Firefox 10 to beta status. Changes in this version offer users an improved add-on experience, as all compatible add-ons except for binary add-ons will not be disabled by the browser. This sorts out the "maxversion" situation, which required developers to set a Firefox version number with which the add-on would stop being compatible. Mozilla expects that this will significantly decrease the number of problems related to add-ons. The Sync setup process has been improved, too.

For developers, Firefox 10 beta improves the developer experience in the browser with a bucket of changes. These include support of the full-screen API for better gaming in Firefox, Page Inspector and Style Inspector for testing new code, WebGL improvements for better 3D rendering, and Orion code editor support in the Scratchpad tool for on-the-fly coding. Mozilla released the Firefox 10 beta changelog here, with a scheduled graduation to stable release the last week in January.

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What the Bible Really Says About Sex

Sex is a selfish act, a conquest of personal fulfillment.

That’s the mindset of most people in our culture regarding sex—even if it’s only subconscious. For the most part, our society celebrates the process of hook up, shack up, and break up.

All you have to do is take a moment to observe the way sex is communicated in our culture.

Thousands of articles are churned out on how to cope with a past of multiple partners and how to find the next one. 

Porn is a massive industry, generating $10 to $14 billion annually in revenues. 

Nearly every sitcom on the air seems to make light of sleeping around, and films like "No Strings Attached" and "Friends with Benefits" lure young eyes to the theater, while a sex-crazed Tucker Max boasts about his conquests and skyrockets to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, becoming a cult hero for young slackers everywhere.

It also explains why sex trafficking is a $32 billion global industry, 45,000 to 50,000 young girls are trafficked in the United States every year, and why one in 12 youths experience sexual victimization, including sexual assault and attempted or completed rape.

The problem, however, is not sex.

It's us.

In order to understand this, we must first understand the underlying cause of all the problems in this world: sin.

In the Bible, Paul says of the human condition:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

"Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!" Amen (Romans 1:21-25).

And in case you think Paul is on some self-righteous kick to condemn sinners, he makes clear in the same letter that all of humanity is in the same boat, writing, "Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things" (Romans 2:1).

And to drive the point home, he writes, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." 

Thankfully, he also adds, "and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith." (Romans 3:23-25).

The point is this: as humans, we're all sinners and all in need of God's grace, given freely through Jesus. And apart from Jesus, we all pervert God's good gifts, such as sex.

Thankfully, God is also merciful and loving. This is why he sent us Jesus to save us from our sin, and it is also why he gave us the Bible to help us understand his plan for a life that honors him and as a result leads to true fulfillment.

The Bible has a lot to say about sex—including that it's good and that it glorifies God when we enjoy sex in the context for which He created it.

So, I thought I'd share seven sex essentials from the Bible that my wife Grace and I included in our new book, "Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, & Life Together":

1. God created us male and female in His image and likeness with dignity, equality, value, and worth. Men and women are different and complement one another (Genesis 1:27-28).

2. Love is more like a song than a math equation. It requires a sense of poetry and passion to be any good at it, which is why people who are stuck in their heads struggle and are frustrated by it, and lovers prefer songs to syllogisms (Song of Solomon, all of it).

3. Marriage is for one man and one woman by God’s design. This is the consistent teaching of the Bible from the table of contents to the appendix and the teaching of Jesus Christ Himself (Genesis 2:24-25, Matthew 19:4).

4. God created sex. God made our bodies “very good” with “male and female” parts and pleasures. When our first parents consummated their covenant, God was not shocked or horrified, because He created our bodies for sex. The reason that sex is fun, pleasurable, and wonderful is because it is a reflection of the loving goodness of God who created it as a gift for us to steward and enjoy (Genesis 2:24-25).

5. Sex outside of marriage is a sin. Sinful sex includes homosexuality, erotica, bestiality, bisexuality, fornication, friends with benefits, adultery, swinging, prostitution, incest, rape, polygamy, polyandry, sinful lust, pornography, and pedophilia (I Corinthians 6:9-11,18-20, Hebrews 13:4).

6. Sex is to be done in such a way that there is no shame (Genesis 2:25; Proverbs 5:18-23). Many people experience shame in regard to sex. Sometimes shame is a gift from God in response to our sexual sin, sometimes it is the devastating feeling we bear because we have been sexually sinned against, and other times we have not sinned or been sinned against sexually but feel shame because we have wrong thinking and feelings about sex in general, or a sex act in particular.

7. Your standard of beauty is your spouse. God made one man and one woman. He did not ask them if they wanted someone tall or short, light or heavy, pale or dark skinned, with long or short hair. In short, He did not permit them to develop a standard of beauty. Instead, He gave them each a spouse as a standard of beauty (Genesis 2:23, Proverbs 6:20-35).

I understand that I'm writing to an audience that may not consist entirely of  Christian believers, including some who may even be hostile to Christianity. I also understand that many of these points will either rub some of you the wrong way or even enrage you. But, I make no apologies for the Bible and what it says.

I will say this, however... I don't write them to condemn you, nor does the Bible. Rather, I ask you to consider your motivations for sex. 

Have you ever truly given yourself to someone selflessly to love them, explore them, and cherish them until death do you part? Have you spent your life pursuing pleasure instead of seeking to give pleasure to a lifelong spouse? And, are you truly happy and fulfilled with your sex life?

The problem isn't our partners. It's us. We've perverted sex and misused it. God's way is the best way, and I encourage you to humbly pray and think about what he has to say about us and sex in his word, the Bible.

As someone who was sexually active before becoming a Christian, I don’t consider myself more holy than anyone else. But, after experiencing Jesus’ forgiveness, becoming a Christian, understanding what the Bible teaches about sex, having massive change in my thoughts and actions about sex, marrying, and today, happily and faithfully married to the same woman for what is approaching 20 years, I sincerely want you to experience the fullness of what God has for you in Jesus Christ.

Source : Mark Driscoll is the founding pastor of one of America’s largest, fastest-growing and most innovative churches (Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington). He was recently named one of the “25 Most Influential Pastors of the Past 25 Years” by Preaching magazine. Driscoll is also co-founder of the Acts 29 Network (which has planted over 500 churches in the U.S. and 13 other nations around the world). He is the author of 15 books, including the newly-released "Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship and Life Together" (Thomas Nelson 2012).

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Cadillac Builds a Near Theft-Proof Escalade

If you own a Cadillac Escalade there’s a good chance you won’t tomorrow.

According to the Highway Loss Data Institute, the luxury SUV has the highest theft frequency of any vehicle, with claims made on more than 10 out of every 1,000 sold. (For comparison, the Escalade's polar opposite, the Toyota Prius is near the bottom of the list at a rate of .8 cars per 1,000.)

Although this reputation hasn’t seemed to hurt sales of the pricey but popular ride too much, Cadillac has announced a slew of modifications to the 2012 model intended to make it nearly theft-proof.

Along with updated electronic key encryption, the latest Escalade gets a strengthened steering column lock, new wheel locks to protect its expensive rims, and an available inclination sensor that that sets off the alarm if the angle of the parked car changes as it is being lifted or towed. There’s also an enhanced “shock sensor” option that can detect if a window has been broken into, to help prevent grab and go thefts.

Of course if all else fails, the Escalade also comes equipped with GM’s subscription OnStar telematics system, which can track the location of a stolen vehicle and disable it remotely.

Cadillac says that “combined, these technologies comprise one of the most-extensive sets of theft-deterrent measures available for this type of vehicle and meet or exceed security specifications among global vehicle security analysts”

Of course they left out one thing that many of the Escalade’s high profile and net worth owners add as an aftermarket option:

A bodyguard.

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Delete those text messages before sell your old smartphone or else

Santa Claus may be bringing you a new iPhone this Christmas, but be careful when you get rid of your old phone: All sorts of confidential information can readily be found on old cellphones purchased from eBay, Craigslist, and more.

“I’m talking about dressing up like a woman for Black Friday [for the] sympathy,” reads one text message pulled off an iPhone bought on Craigslist.

Phone numbers, email account information and potentially embarrassing details are easily found on most devices, said Lee Reiber, director of mobile forensics for AccessData.

“We see lots of sensitive information,” Reiber told FoxNews.com. To find out just how much, AccessData bought and tested five used cellphones exclusively for FoxNews.com: Two HTC Androids, an LG Android, an iPhone 3G and a Sanyo 2300 flip phone. The phones were bought on Craigslist, eBay, and from a cellphone reseller.

Reiber used Mobile Phone Examiner Plus (MPE Plus), a common forensics software tool, to dig up private, confidential information including Social Security numbers and credit card information.

In some cases, data was simply left on the phone for anyone to see. The Sanyo had an active Yahoo! account turned on, and AccessData was able to recover its username and password.

Once hackers get into an email account, they're able to uncover much more information. “That can be the springboard to get into other areas you really don’t want them in,” said Andrew Hoog, chief investigative officer at viaForensics, a digital forensics firm in Chicago.

The iPhone 3G also had its contacts in the phone. AccessData easily uncovered the geographic area each phone came from, as well.

Despite the removal of individual applications, forensic technology allows anyone to view old files still stored in the phone. In one case, this included what the owner was doing and where, thanks to the geo-location feature in the iPhone, Reiber said.

“I actually identified the reservoir in Utah where they took pictures while they were boating,” he told FoxNews.com.

To avoid giving sensitive information to your cellphone’s next owner, people need to take a few simple steps, Hoog said. Sellers need to restore the device back to factory settings -- “They are pretty much all going to have a reset setting somewhere,” he said -- and that includes pulling the activation card from the carrier.

“You shouldn't include your SIM card when you sell your device,” he added, since data is stored there as well as on the device. If the phone has an SD card, sellers should erase all of the data on that as well.

If possible, Reiber advised, run updates on the phone’s operating system to eliminate much of the data stored in the phone’s file system. EBay offers instructions to customers who visit the company's eBay Instant Sale or eBay iPhone page on how to remove data before selling a cellphone.

“Consult your owner's manual on how to back-up your phone's data safely and securely before erasing anything,” the site notes. It includes specific instructions for the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android.

Reiber also advised consumers to follow similar steps when selling digital tablets -- and it’s key to follow similar (but more extensive) steps before selling a computer, of course. He recommended running a program called Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN) to clear the hard drive.

And if you’re a buyer and you find the previous owner’s data still in a phone you buy, he advises to remove it quickly. “You need to go through the steps like it’s yours to get rid of that data,” Reiber told FoxNews.com. If there’s something criminal left on there, for example, it could be dangerous or incriminating for you, he said.

Just remember, keep the cross-dressing comments to yourself -- and when it’s selling time, clear the phone and cards before you drop them in the mail.

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RI reputation at stake in feud with RIM, BRTI says

The Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Body (BRTI) has defended the government’s dealings with BlackBerry producer RIM, saying that it was a necessary show of strength by Indonesia as a nation.

“We are squaring up against foreigners and we need to stand up. Indonesia should be respected as a big country,” BRTI member Heru Sutadi told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

In a meeting with the government on Thursday, to the dismay of Indonesian officials RIM announced that it favored Singapore over Indonesia for the location of its new server.

The government has subsequently threatened to end all BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) services in the country.

According to Heru, it was essential that a RIM server or data center was located in Indonesia in the interest of the country’s safety and security.

“If the server is not here in Indonesia, we cannot trace potential terrorism and corruption cases. We also have no idea what they are doing with data from Indonesian users,” he said.

Indonesia is the Southeast Asia’s top BlackBerry user, boasting 2.63 million users in 2010. That figure is expected to rise to 4 million users by the end of 2011.

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Study Finds How Child Abuse Changes the Brain

Children exposed to family violence show the same pattern of activity in their brains as soldiers exposed to combat, scientists said on Monday.

In a study in the journal Current Biology, researchers used brain scans to explore the impact of physical abuse or domestic violence on children's emotional development and found that exposure to it was linked to increased activity in two brain areas when children were shown pictures of angry faces.

Previous studies that scanned the brains of soldiers exposed to violent combat situations showed the same pattern of heightened activity in these two brain areas—the anterior insula and the amygdala -- which experts say are associated with detecting potential threats.

This suggests that both maltreated children and soldiers may have adapted to become "hyper-aware" of danger in their environment, the researchers said.

"Enhanced reactivity to a...threat cue such as anger may represent an adaptive response for these children in the short term, helping keep them out of danger," said Eamon McCrory of Britain's University College London, who led the study.

But he added that such responses may also be underlying neurobiological risk factor which increases the children's susceptibility to later mental illness like depression.

Depression is already a major cause of mortality, disability, and economic burden worldwide and the World Health Organization predicts that by 2020, it will be the second leading contributor to the global burden of disease across all ages.

Childhood maltreatment is known to be one of the most potent environmental risk factors linked to later mental health problems such as anxiety disorders and depression.

A study published in August found that found that people who suffered maltreatment as children were twice as likely as those who had normal childhoods to develop persistent and recurrent depression, and less likely to respond well or quickly to treatment for their mental illness.

McCrory said still relatively little is known about how such early adversity "gets under the skin and increases a child's later vulnerability, even into adulthood."

In the study, 43 children had their brains scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Twenty of the children who were known to have been exposed to violence at home were compared with 23 who had not experienced family violence.

The average age of the maltreated children was 12 years and they had all been referred to local social services in London.

When the children were in the scanner they were shown pictures of male and female faces showing sad, calm or angry expressions. The researchers found that those who had been exposed to violence showed increased brain activity in the anterior insula and amygdala in response to the angry faces.

"We are only now beginning to understand how child abuse influences functioning of the brain's emotional systems," McCrory said. "This research...provides our first clues as to how regions in the child's brain may adapt to early experiences of abuse."

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Facebook Prepping for Massive Hiring Spree

Facebook plans to nearly double in size in the next year.

The social network announced plans on Friday to dramatically expand its operations, adding a wealth of new engineers to enhance features and write fresh code for the website that links more than 800 million users worldwide.

"We'll be adding thousands of employees in the next year," Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg announced from the company's New York City offices on Friday. Facebook currently has about 3,000 employees in California, Sandberg said, but just 100 in its Big Apple facility -- mainly marketing staff.

The company plans to expand that Madison Avenue office by opening its first East Coast engineering office. 

And Facebook's recruitment drive is already in full swing, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

"They're accepting applications now if any of you need a job," Bloomberg told a group of reporters hastily assembled for the last-minute announcement. 

Sandberg refused to announce exactly how many employees the company would hire for the new department, however, stating only that the company would be hiring "as many qualified candidates" as possible.

The news was nevertheless pleasing not just to Bloomberg but also to New York senator Chuck Schumer, who joined Sandberg to unveil the new engineering offices.

"New York is pleased to call Facebook a friend," Schumer joked, adding that there was "so much to like about Facebook -- get it?"

The news underscores a growing high-tech trend in New York City, Bloomberg said, noting that high-tech jobs in the city have grown by 30 percent in the past year -- even outstripping tech Meccas like Silicon Valley and Boston on some metrics, he said.

"The smartest thing tech and social media companies can do is move to New York," Bloomberg said.

As proof, Bloomberg noted that the city is becoming the birthplace for more and more Internet startups, ticking off several well-known dotcoms that got their big break in the Big Apple.

"We're ... home to an increasing number of home-grown success stories, including Etsy and Hunch and Kickstarter, TheLadders, Foursquare, Gilt Groupe and Meetup," Bloomberg said 

Facebook's Friday announcement should encourage other visionaries to start in the city as well, he said.

"We want the next Facebook to start here in New York."

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