I’ve mentioned my stints on the help desk for Gateway computers and D-Link products before.  While I tried to be conscientious, I did get a complaint that I was taking too much time on some of my calls.  It didn’t help to mention that I was trying to help the customer accomplish their goal so they wouldn’t have to call back.

On supervisor told me I was much more suited to an in-house IT environment.  After watching this video, I’m inclined to agree.

The Website is Down

If you think we’ve exhausted all the good ideas for presenting content on your computer, watch this:

This Technology Will Blow Your Mind.. - Watch more funny videos here

Thank goodness the little guy was able to pull it together enough to accomplish his final goal.

As privacy and data protection commissioners began to express
reservations about the legality of requiring domain name
registrants to disclosure their personal information, CIRA proposed
a new policy in 2004. After two major public consultations,
mounting opposition from law enforcement about its loss of
“unfettered” access to whois data and years of operational delays,
CIRA last week began informing registrants that the new policy will
take effect on June 10, 2008.

Under the new policy, CIRA will continue to collect the same contact
information from registrants as under its current policy. However,
it will no longer require that such information be publicly
available through its whois directory. In its place, CIRA will only
require the public disclosure of limited technical information,
though individual registrants may voluntarily “opt-in” to providing
more personal information.

While the CIRA policy protects the privacy of individual
registrants, corporate or organizational registrants will typically
have their full information publicly disclosed. The policy
recognizes that corporate information does not raise specific
privacy concerns since corporate information does not constitute
personally identifiable information. Moreover, consumers may often
want to access corporate whois information when judging the
reliability of a website.

In order to ensure that domain name registrants can still be
contacted, CIRA has also established a unique message delivery
system. CIRA will allow the public to contact domain name
registrants without access to their personal information by
relaying the message through a Web-based submission form.

The Canadian changes may be long overdue, however, they also
instantly catapult the dot-ca into a global leadership position.
With more than a million Canadian domain name registrations, the
resolution of the whois issue ensures that the Canadian domain name
space is set for continued growth as it now features a “privacy
advantage” over other domains struggling to strike a similar
compromise.

From the Toronto Star

Domain name policy puts us in Internet vanguard
by Michael Geist

Mon 28 Apr 2008
Page: B02
Section: Business

The sophisticated mass infection that’s injecting attack code into hundreds of thousands of reputable web pages is growing and even infiltrated the website of the Department of Homeland Security.

While so-called SQL injections are nothing new, this latest attack, which we we reported earlier, is notable for its ability to infect huge numbers of pages using only a single string of text. At time of writing, Google searches here, here and here showed almost 520,000 pages containing the infection string, though the exact number changes almost constantly.

Other hacked sites include those belonging to the United Nations and the UK Civil Service.

The attack causes infected sites to redirect visitors to destinations that attempt to install malware on vulnerable machines. At time of writing, the malicious payloads attacked vulnerabilities that already have been patched. And in any case all three of the redirection sites were down, possibly because they were unable to handle the demand. But should the attackers get their hands on a newer exploit - say, one targeting a zero-day vulnerability in QuickTime - it would be relatively easy for them to swap out the payload.

One reason the infection has spread so widely is the attackers have managed to find a single attack string that seems to work on tens of thousands of different sites. Most web applications are custom -built for a particular site, so attackers likewise have to custom design attack parameters to exploit weakness. Not so here.

“These guys look like they’ve found a methodology to get a successful SQL injection generically across [many] websites,” said Jeremiah Grossman, CTO of WhiteHat Security, which helps companies secure web applications. “That right there is like a skeleton key.”

While the number of pages that have been infected is high, not all are able to launch an attack once a user visits them, according to Roger Thompson, chief research officer of anti-virus provider AVG.

“Very often they’re on a page but the stuff doesn’t actually fire when you get there,” he said. “This is not a cunning, premeditated task; it’s just a blast. They’re just planting the stuff where they can and the result is a lot of pages [that] don’t do anything.”

But webmasters should not be complacent about removing the injected code from their sites and fixing buggy web apps to make sure more don’t spring up.

“It’s the cleanup effort that’s just going to be monstrous,” said Grossman, who said affected companies will have to either remove each overwritten table record one at a time, or revert to a recent backup. “Either way, it’s going to take forever.”  (Source)

As our dependency on networked computers grows, our need to provide robust safeguards increases as well.  To be less than completely vigilant is to invite disaster.

I’ve been seeing questions raised within the tech crowd regarding the absence of women in high tech.  One such conversation mentioned a tech conference that was scheduled to have 20 some odd speakers, only one of whom was a woman.

I’m not questioning the validity of that observation.  I agree that there are too few women in prominent positions within the community.  That’s not to say there aren’t women in the tech field.  They just aren’t often given as many opportunities as their fellow male counterparts to be highly visible and influential.

But it did get me thinking; is technology neutral on sexuality?  There’s certainly tech gadgets and applications geared toward men, women, children, tweens, just about every demographic one can imagine but one.  Gays.

Why are there no prominent gay voices within the tech field?  Is there any application or program that especially appeals to gays?  I know there are gay themed websites, but where are the gay entrepreneurs, the gay VCs, the proudly gay developers?  Is being gay of no consequence to technology?

I sense an increasing merge between social networking and productivity.

Tools like Zoho Office and Google Docs facilitate creation as well as collaboration. Zigtag and Shyftr add a social element to our bookmarks and RSS feeds.

What was once a solitary endeavor; write a blog post, bookmark a favorite website, eventually became a shared experience (think StumbleUpon) and now has evolved into a fully interactive social activity. Even boring old Micrsoft allows me to write a document in Office Live then collaborate with others on it.

Now it appears the potential downside to social productivity is being discussed on Friendfeed and Twitter, sites that are far more social than productive. Once we share our content does it remain ours or become the property of the web? How can we know when and where comments and feedback are posted? The conversation is at risk of becoming fragmented, spread around to too many places, sites we may not frequent. Do we have any control over what we send out to others? Do the concepts of licensing and intellectual property need to be re-evaluated?

Back in the “old days”, the social web and productivity were isolated. I could type a document in Word or chat on IRC, but the two never crossed paths. These days that boundary has been breached, well before we’ve clearly thought out how we want to engage in the cross-talk.

What are your concerns? Is social productivity a big step forward or a pointless step sideways?

My local Von’s offers free Wi-Fi.  Any business that offers its customers free connectivity ought to be applauded, but…a grocery store?  Am I supposed to wedge my laptop into the child seat and surf the web as I try to decide between tuna and ham for my sandwiches?  Will I be tempted to send out a Twitter to garner opinions on which brand of toilet paper is superior?

Where I eat, where I might sit and enjoy a cup of coffee, where I stay for the night; yes, I will be thankful for the opportunity to wirelessly access the internet.  Where I buy my toothpaste, not so much.

Humans started to form societies as soon as we learned to communicate. Small groups of hunter-gatherers formed larger groups to ensure their survival. In order to coordinate their hunting parties, they had to develop a means of communication. Communication became the means of cooperation.

Look at the terminology I just used; communicate, coordinate, cooperate. The prefix co means together; joint; jointly; mutually. Co is the prefix that defines human society. As individuals, early man was nearly helpless. He had no fur, not very good teeth, relatively poor eyesight. He was near the bottom of the food chain. Yet collectively, humans survived, even prevailed against adversity.

Communication, the ability to share ideas, is what has enabled us to reach the 21st century without becoming extinct. Our means of communication have evolved from the written word to the printed page, from smoke signals to the telephone, from street singers to MP3s. And now we have the internet.

Even though it’s only a few decades old, the internet has begun to evolve, too. At first it was a simple repository of electronic pages; you had to know where to look to find what you needed. Hyperlinking gave this electronic library continuity, a means to get from one document to another. Soon this medium earned its title as the world wide web. Anyone anywhere with internet access could communicate with others from across the globe. The internet reduced the time it took to send a message from one pole to the other to a matter of seconds.

Just as early man had the entire world to himself, early users of the web felt like citizens of the planet. Eventually, though, just as mankind settled into towns and cities and states, electronic communication is becoming more localized. Ebay is a world market, Craigslist is a local one. Local communities are finding new ways to use the internet to stay in touch, to be politically active, to recruit volunteers. Just like society, the internet is becoming more and more community oriented. Just as you can be a member of the human race while at the same time be a member of your neighborhood, the internet will always be a global means of communication, but the true value of the medium is shifting toward those around you. Social networking is starting to focus more on the small scale, the local group. It’s not unprecedented; it’s exactly the way human society itself evolved.

Originally submitted to David Farber’s Interesting People mailing list:

Clearly whatever it is that Dutch politician Geert Wilders wants to talk
about in his film is going to be the end of the internet. The news that
Network Solutions decided to pre-empt his use of a domain name registered
through them for the purpose of promoting his film need not be re-hashed
here.

However, before bemoaning yet another registrar freely deciding, as is its
right, with whom it chooses to do business, it’s important to look at the
big picture. No, it is not “censorship” for Network Solutions to decide how
it wants its services to be used. There are a number of internet registrars
all over the world, and as recently demonstrated with Enom having been
notified by the US State Department that, yes, the OFAC SDN list means
something, one might do well to select one’s registrar based in part on an
understanding of the legal climate where that registrar is located.

But, perhaps we might understand Network Solutions policy more clearly by
looking at domain names registered through NSI which freely promote killing
Muslims rather than merely making films about them. Take for example the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, affectionately the Tamil Tigers - a nearly
universally recognized terrorist group perhaps best known for the
assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, but which has engaged in far more numerous
outright massacres in predominately Muslim areas of Sri Lanka.

The Tamil Tigers maintain at least two, if not more, domain names through
Network Solutions - eelam.com and eelamweb.com. Here, one can learn the
answers to all of your frequently asked questions about ethnic cleansing
such as at: http://www.eelamweb.com/faq/ which states “Muslims have been
asked to leave the Tamil Eelam territory until the independence of Tamil
Eelam.” This polite request is normally made at gunpoint during operations
of the Tamil Tigers.

So, the takeaway from these two actions of Network Solutions: (1)
prohibiting an NSI domain name to be used to promote an anti-Muslim film,
and (2) permitting two NSI domain names to be used to promote the mass
eviction and murder of Muslims in Sri Lanka; indicates that one needs to
apply a balanced perspective of how NSI would like its domain name services
to be used, before making rash judgments of alleged “bias”. If the
continued operation of eelam.com and eelamweb.com is any indication, NSI’s
view would appear to be that Mr. Wilders just isn’t going far enough.

Next up, the Islamic Army of Iraq, and their Louisiana brigade, courtesy of
iaisite.info, registered through Directnic.

John Berryhill, Ph.d., Esq.

While humorous, Mr. Berryhill’s comment does raise a serious question. What is the role of a host in monitoring and controlling the content of sites that register through them? If AT&T gets its way, webhosts may soon be legally and financially liable for the content carrid on their networks. Can we trust private companies to decide what is available on the internet?

Have the terrorists won yet?

An American internet company has inactivated the website of a Dutch right-wing politician, who was planning to release a critical film about the Qur’an, the Islamic holy book, on the site.

Network Solutions announced late Saturday that it had suspended the site, www.fitnathemovie, as the company assesses whether it contravenes its “acceptable use policy.”

Politician Geert Wilders says he’s made a 15-minute film as a warning to the  West about the teachings of the Qur’an.

Wilders is a well-known anti-Islamist who has called for a stop to immigration from Muslim countries and a halt to the building of new mosques in his country.

Wilders has said he’s not against Muslims but against their faith. He has previously talked about the “tsunami of Islamization” in the Netherlands, which is home to about one million Muslims.

After being turned down by at least four broadcasters in the Netherlands, Wilders announced this week that he planned to release Fitna  —the Koranic term for “strife” — on March 31 over the internet.

“If need be, I will personally distribute DVDs,” Wilders told Dutch news agency ANP after hearing about the website’s inactivation.

On Saturday, about 2,000 protesters gathered in downtown Amsterdam to demonstrate against Wilders and his film.

Calling their protest ”Netherlands shows its colours,” demonstrators say they were upset over what they saw as a right-wing witch hunt against Muslims.

Dutch officials fear the movie could spark violent protests in Muslim countries, and have emergency evacuation plans in place for their citizens in those countries.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has said he rejects Wilders’s views, but supports his freedom of speech.  (Source)

The Muslim terrorists  have done better than killing all the infidels, they’ve made us afraid.  In our fear, we will do what they couldn’t, destroy Western civilization from within.  In our fear we’ll restrict liberty, bypass Constitutional protections and permit our government to act in any way they see fit…just save us from the terrorists.  We once thought the greatest threat to our way of life were the Japanese, the Germans, the Muslims.  We were wrong.  The greatest threat we face is our own fear, our own impotence to provide security while at the same time maintaining our freedom.

Twitter and FriendFeed are becoming popular ways for like-minded people to communicate and keep in touch.

So how many of you use those services? It would be cool to share our usernames and build a network of atheist and free thinking folk.  You may also want to check out Twhirl as a Twitter desktop client.

I’ll go first. I’m jeber on both services. Among my Twitter friends are several atheists and free thinkers. Add them as your friends. Let’s talk.

Tim Wu, writing for Slate, asks;

Has AT&T Lost Its Mind?

Chances are that as you read this article, it is passing over part of AT&T’s network. That matters, because last week AT&T announced that it is seriously considering plans to examine all the traffic it carries for potential violations of U.S. intellectual property laws. The prospect of AT&T, already accused of spying on our telephone calls, now scanning every e-mail and download for outlawed content is way too totalitarian for my tastes. But the bizarre twist is that the proposal is such a bad idea that it would be not just a disservice to the public but probably a disaster for AT&T itself. If I were a shareholder, I’d want to know one thing: Has AT&T, after 122 years in business, simply lost its mind?

No one knows exactly what AT&T is proposing to build. But if the company means what it says, we’re looking at the beginnings of a private police state. That may sound like hyperbole, but what else do you call a system designed to monitor millions of people’s Internet consumption? That’s not just Orwellian; that’s Orwell.

The puzzle is how AT&T thinks that its proposal is anything other than corporate seppuku. First, should these proposals be adopted, my heart goes out to AT&T’s customer relations staff. Exactly what counts as copyright infringement can be a tough question for a Supreme Court justice, let alone whatever program AT&T writes to detect copyright infringement. Inevitably, AT&T will block legitimate materials (say, home videos it mistakes for Hollywood) and let some piracy through. Its filters will also inescapably degrade network performance. The filter AT&T will really need will be the one that blocks the giant flood of complaints and termination-of-service notices coming its way.

But the most serious problems for AT&T may be legal. Since the beginnings of the phone system, carriers have always wanted to avoid liability for what happens on their lines, be it a bank robbery or someone’s divorce. Hence the grand bargain of common carriage: The Bell company carried all conversations equally, and in exchange bore no liability for what people used the phone for. Fair deal.

AT&T’s new strategy reverses that position and exposes it to so much potential liability that adopting it would arguably violate AT&T’s fiduciary duty to its shareholders. Today, in its daily Internet operations, AT&T is shielded by a federal law that provides a powerful immunity to copyright infringement. The Bells know the law well: They wrote and pushed it through Congress in 1998, collectively spending six years and millions of dollars in lobbying fees to make sure there would be no liability for “Transitory Digital Network Communications”—content AT&T carries over the Internet. And that’s why the recording industry sued Napster and Grokster, not AT&T or Verizon, when the great music wars began in the early 2000s.

Here’s the kicker: To maintain that immunity, AT&T must transmit data “without selection of the material by the service provider” and “without modification of its content.” Once AT&T gets in the business of picking and choosing what content travels over its network, while the law is not entirely clear, it runs a serious risk of losing its all-important immunity. An Internet provider voluntarily giving up copyright immunity is like an astronaut on the moon taking off his space suit. As the world’s largest gatekeeper, AT&T would immediately become the world’s largest target for copyright infringement lawsuits.

On the technical side, if I were an AT&T engineer asked to implement this plan, I would resign immediately and look for work at Verizon. AT&T’s engineers are already trying to manage the feat of getting trillions of packets around the world at light speed. To begin examining those packets for illegal pictures of Britney Spears would be a nuisance, at best, and a threat to the whole Internet, at worst. Imagine if FedEx were forced to examine every parcel for drug paraphernalia: Next-day delivery would soon go up in smoke. Even China’s Internet, whose performance suffers greatly from its filtering, doesn’t go as far as what AT&T is proposing.

If this idea looks amazingly bad for AT&T, does the firm have an ingenious rationale for blocking content? “It’s about,” said AT&T last week, “making more content available to more people in more ways going forward.” Huh? That’s like saying that the goal of a mousetrap is producing more mice. If the quote makes any sense it all, perhaps it means that AT&T, the phone company, has aspirations to itself provide Internet content. Could it really be that AT&T’s master strategy is to try and become more like AOL circa 1996?

A different theory is that AT&T hopes that filtering out infringing material will help free up bandwidth on its network. What is so strange about this argument is that it suggests that AT&T wants people to use its product less. That’s like Exxon-Mobil complaining that SUVs are just buying up too much gas. It suggests that perhaps AT&T should try to improve its network to handle and charge for consumer demand, rather than spending money trying to control its consumers.

I just don’t get the business aspect, so perhaps the only explanation that makes any sense is a political one. It may be that AT&T so hates being under the current network neutrality mandate that it sees fighting piracy as a way to begin treating some content differently than others—discriminating—in a politically acceptable way. Or maybe AT&T thinks its new friends in the content industry will let them into Hollywood parties if they help fight piracy. Whatever the explanation, AT&T is choosing a scary, expensive, and risky way to make a point. It is also, so far, alone on this one among Internet service providers; the cable industry is probably licking its chops in anticipation of new customers. That’s why if this plan goes any further, and I were an AT&T shareholder, I’d have just one thought: SELL.

Posted to CircleID by Al Iverson:

…WAY wrong. This is just mind blowing.

Ever been prosecuted for tracking spam? Running a traceroute? Doing a zone transfer? Asking a public internet server for public information that it is configured to provide upon demand?

No? Well, David Ritz has. And amazingly, he lost the case.

Here are just a few of the gems that the court has the audacity to call ”conclusions of law.” Read them while you go donate to David’s legal defense fund. He got screwed here, folks, and needs your help.

“Ritz’s behavior in conducting a zone transfer was unauthorized within the meaning of the North Dakota Computer Crime Law.” You might not know what a zone transfer is, but I do. It’s asking a DNS server for all the particular public info it provides about a given domain. This is a common task performed by system administrators for many purposes. The judge is saying that DNS zone transfers are now illegal in North Dakota.

“The Court rejects the test for “authorization” articulated by defendant’s expert, Lawrence Baldwin. To find all access “authorized” which is successful would essentially turn the computer crime laws of this country upside down.” That’s untrue. The judge is trying to hang David out to dry, even when provided evidence of what actually constitutes hacking or cracking. Accessing a server on the public internet that is set up to provide that public info is not a crime, and saying that it is not a crime doesn’t suddenly damage computer crime law. The judge just amended the definition of “unauthorized” to include public internet servers that were expressly configured to provide info to anybody who asks for that info.

“Ritz has engaged in a variety of activities without authorization on the Internet. Those activities include port scanning, hijacking computers, and the compilation and publication of Whois lookups without authorization from Network Solutions.” I’m not touching the “hijacking computers” statement—who knows what the judge means, and I don’t think it’s wise to assume that the judge’s definition matches the common one. But what really jumps out here is this: Publication of WHOIS information. You know, business records. Who owns a domain. Public information. The judge has arbitrarily decided that it is illegal to take information from WHOIS data—necessary information when compiling a report on a company or activity, to make sure you’re talking about the right person—and put it in a spam report or on a website.

Mickey Chandler calls the court documents in this case “12 pages of bad law,” and I couldn’t agree more.

It appears this North Dakota judge hasn’t a clue about the internet and didn’t bother to consult anyone who does.  No court should be allowed to pass judgment on a citizen without a full understanding of the elements of a case.  In addition to contributing to the defendant’s fund, this story should be circulated widely to encourage the higher courts to overturn the sentence and reprimand the judge.

In 1969, ARPANET went live.  A creation of ARPA, this fist computer network was meant to provide redundancy for government communications.  The Defense Department realized that existing communications methods were vulnerable to attack  These were still the days of the Cold War, and it was the intention of the DoD to counter any measure the Russians might take against us.

The internet was a brilliant idea.  It was not a point-to-point communication method, like telephones and telegraphs were.  It broke messages into packets, and those packets were routed through a variety of servers, assembled once they arrived at their destination.  If one line, or twenty lines, of the network were compromised, the message would still get through by finding intact routes to follow.  The DoD understood that redundancy was the only viable solution to the vulnerability of point-to-point communications.

Leonard Kleinrock with first IMP

These days we depend on both wired communications and wireless.  Cell phones are so ubiquitous that in the case of a national emergency, nearly every person witnessing the event in person or on TV will want to call their family and friends (or upload a picture of it to YouTube).  According to the following article from Wired News, our wireless infrastructure may not yet be up to the task, leaving us once again vulnerable to a major communications break-down.

…so many people tried to send text messages on New Year’s Eve that networks got jam-packed and many of the missives arrived hours later - or not at all.

“Think of any traffic artery during rush hour: You have a large number of people who are trying to access it at the same time,” said Joe Farren, assistant vice president of public affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, a wireless industry group. “It’s really no different with regard to wireless networks.”

Millions and millions of messages did get through New Year’s Eve, and a minor delay in a holiday wish is hardly the end of the world. But there have been multiple occasions in recent years when getting in touch with loved ones was more vital - the Sept. 11 attacks, the 2003 blackout, Hurricane Katrina.

“What happens where there is an emergency?” asked Scott Midkiff, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Virginia Tech. “This has been a big problem with the voice cellular system. It will probably become more of a problem with text messaging.”

The cell phone carriers say they are working to expand their systems’ capacity. Jeffrey Nelson, spokesman for Verizon Wireless, said the company invests almost $6 billion annually in the wireless network.

But the number of cell phone subscribers in the U.S. nearly doubled between the end of 2001 and the end of 2006, growing from 128 million to 233 million users, Farren said.

In an emergency, it could be a concern, Cameron said.

“I didn’t have a connection using cell phones for several days, and that was really frightening,” he said of living in New York after the Sept. 11 attacks. “I didn’t talk to my parents for a week and a half.”

“It’s definitely a really big question mark,” said Rajan Shah, who sent his New Year’s text messages before the clock struck midnight to beat the rush. “It really makes you rethink technology and whether we are able to be connected through a global catastrophe.”

Text messages already use a different transmission system from cell phone calls. There may be a way to differentiate among types of information or to create a separate system for people to use in emergencies.

Farren said emergency networks in place and now being expanded allow emergency service personnel to maintain voice cell phone service in times of need.

But that doesn’t help average Joe trying to find Mrs. Joe.

The next step may be some consumer education, Farren said.

“In an emergency situation, you really should stay off your phone” if possible, he said.

(For a good read on the history of the internet, visit The Living Internet)

For crying out loud.  Will companies please either: hire professional network engineers who can build a secure network and understand vulnerabilities and encryption or, stay out of networking until you can afford to/care to.

Despite what should have been an unavoidable lesson in pathetic networking by TJMaxx, companies continue to roll out networks apparently without a clue as to how to set them up or secure them.

Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner passenger jet may have a serious security vulnerability in its onboard computer networks that could allow passengers to access the plane’s control systems, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

The computer network in the Dreamliner’s passenger compartment, designed to give passengers in-flight internet access, is connected to the plane’s control, navigation and communication systems, an FAA report reveals.

The revelation is causing concern in security circles because the physical connection of the networks makes the plane’s control systems vulnerable to hackers. A more secure design would physically separate the two computer networks. Boeing said it’s aware of the issue and has designed a solution it will test shortly.

“This is serious,” said Mark Loveless, a network security analyst with Autonomic Networks, a company in stealth mode, who presented a conference talk last year on Hacking the Friendly Skies (PowerPoint). “This isn’t a desktop computer. It’s controlling the systems that are keeping people from plunging to their deaths. So I hope they are really thinking about how to get this right.” (Wired News)

Wired.com reports:

If you want a true snapshot of what people are watching and whom they’re listening to online, look no further than the file-sharing underground.

With Hollywood sweating over piracy and record labels crying over losses, activity on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks has emerged as the most reliable barometer for determining what’s hot and what’s not among the most tech-savvy media consumers.

Top Songs of 2007
1. Shop Boyz, “Party Like A Rock Star”
2. Akon, “I Wanna Luv U”
3. Sean Kingston, “Beautiful Girls”
4. Mims, “This Is Why I’m Hot”
5. Akon, “Don’t Matter”
6. T-Pain, “Bartender”
7. Soulja Boy, “Crank Dat Soulja Boy”
8. Justin Timberlake, “My Love”
9. DJ Unk, “Walk It Out”
10. Jim Jones, “We Fly High”

Top Movies of 2007
1. Resident Evil: Extinction
2. Pirates of The Caribbean: At World’s End
3. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
4. Ratatouille
5. Superbad
6. Beowulf
7. Transformers
8. American Gangster
9. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
10. Stardust

Top TV Shows of 2007
1. “Heroes”
2. “Prison Break”
3. “Top Gear”
4. “Smallville”
5. “Desperate Housewives”
6. “House, M.D.”
7. “Lost”
8. “Grey’s Anatomy”
9. “24″
10. “Dexter”

Top Music Artists of 2007
1. T.I.
2. T-Pain
3. Akon
4. 50 Cent
5. R. Kelly
6. Lil Wayne
7. Justin Timberlake
8. Fergie
9. Ludacris
10. Snoop Dogg

So what does this say about the younger generation?  Does this provide a snapshot of the interests of the 16-25 year old crowd, or does it only indicate what was available to share online?