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The only way to counteract Government and corporation's attempts to censor the internet is to use p2p technology that prevents this, usually anonymous p2p technologies. Freenet and Mute (both on sourceforge) are good places to start.

Also show people this article on internet censorship:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimat ur/

I didn't think I'd be taken seriously ;-) Yeah, I know it's an ultra bad idea, I just thought I'd show the humor in developing a new diet based on shoddy and misinterpreted scientific facts.. kinda like a certain other doctor who did the same ;-)

FWIW, I've lost 14 pounds on the Hacker's Diet over the past month, hip hip hooray.

Nicolas Brulez:
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from my quick and dirty analysis, its a thread that does the DDOS.
It has below normal priority, and it just does a GET.

GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: www.sco.com\r\n\r\n"

Yes, because we all know how effective region codes are, don't we? Surely even the movie industry must have realized by now there is no way of creating digital media such that it is both enjoyable and uncopyable by the end user.

In the float-up-the-DRM-balloon phase, most average people aren't likely to react. And that's fine. Right now, all it does is enable the use/play of protected content. And, as noted many times in this discussion thread and in the article itself, it's an add-on to the OS. Don't want it? Don't use it. However, we've seen many instances of MS rolling an add-on into a service pack and then requiring that the service pack be installed for any future updates. It's then possible to enable the DRM package to restrict the legitimate use of non-protected content and/or software because the end-user won't have any other choice. MS will be holding all the cards. I think you're right on up until about here, but sadly I'm a bit more cynical about what the future holds. Too few people are in control of way too much on our planet (and that's another thread :p). I read a very interesting article by John Walker, author of Speak Freely recently, and you might want to give it a read. I can say the man tends to repeat himself.. but the ideas he presents and the overall picture he puts together is quite frightening, showing how the traditional giant producer/many consumers model for information and everything else can, will, and already is being imposed on the internet. A big part of this is DRM, and even moreso trusted computing.

In fact it is approximately 10 minutes there and 10 minutes back. Here's how to find out. Go to John Walker's Orrery to find the current planet positions. Mars is indicated at 1.257 AU from Earth. Since we know one AU (Sun to Earth) takes about 8 min, then 8 x 1.3 = ~10 min. Check it out yourself, it's a great tool.

For this and more, check out the link in the sig below.

--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

actually, ~2000 calorie diet with walking ~5 miles every day is very much within the range of retaining stable weight. you can't lose weight taking in 2000 calories a day unless you played several hours of high-intensity sports every day.

i'm speaking from experience here. i've tried many different weight loss approaches, but it wasn't until i cut my calorie intake to ~1200 daily that i started losing weight. i managed to stay on it for a year, losing a total of 60 pounds. it was difficult like all hell for the first two weeks, but then you get used to it. and necessity forces you to come up with some very clever cooking techniques make the most out of the calorie limit. :) (the hacker's diet was most inspiring, btw...)

"stop eating when you're not hungry, not when you're full."

It's that simple, but it ain't that easy. The Hacker's Diet talks a lot about how that piece of common sense doesn't work for most 'fatasses'.

>5: Argue that tools that can, and are infact, be used for both lawful and unlawful purposes should not themselves be illegal.

Good point. But such tools usually have some redeeming quality to them. What can p2p do besides share music files and porn?

How about sharing legal music files and legal porn?

Yeah, there's all sorts of other good uses, but that answer has a wonderful point to it. Those legal uses are just as valid as any other legal use, no matter how much the RIAA may dispise the existance of legal free music, and no matter how much pompous moralizing zealots dispise porn.

Would it be a good argument with congress? Maybe not, but I really like to think there are enough good, well intentioned, and smart congress critters to offset the idiots.

>6: Argue that general purpose computers is a tool much to useful to society to consider giving them up, or locking them away with the keys in the hands of a elite few, over an issue as trivial as some downloaded music-files.

Very true, but disabling/outlawing p2p does not prevent me from using a computer for running my business, surfing the web, corresponding by email, playing games, etc.

The technological "solutions" in the works to beat P2P would in fact have an enormous impact on all of those activities, but it would take pages to get into that. The better anti-TrustedComputing sites cover it. One powerful but long text on the subject is here.

As for outlawing P2P, there are several issues. For one it outlaws legitimate use. For another they will still be developed internationally and you have the same problem of persecuting millions of grandmothers and school children. A third problem is that is is a powerful and valuable and expanding technology, it will in fact impact future business use and web surfing and games and who knows what sort of other applications.

>7: Continue to press the point that copyrigth-law is supposed to serve a *purpose*, the creation of science and the useful arts. If it ain't serving this purpose, it's unconstitutional and harmful...

As good as this point is, I suspect that this Congressional roundtable will argue that it is out of scope.

True. Of course when you narrow the scope to cover only only a pre-determined "solution" then of course you can only get the "answer" you decided you wanted to get in the first place and the real problem remains.

>8: Continue to point out that the music-cartel is in trouble because they're providing a service noone really needs or wants anymore...

Again, a good point but I suspect that Congress will not listen to this arguement and that making this arguement will only alienate the law makers and hasten the advent of nasty regulations.

True, though we can try to remind them there there was a very large and very powerful union / lobby of people employed sweeping horse-shit out of city streets, and we can point out some of the absurd laws they convinced earlier congresses to pass against automobiles.

Congress should not be in the business of passing laws to prop up weak and failing businesses that are being displaced by vigorous competitors showing strong growth. There are numerous non-RIAA music companies showing double-digit and sometimes even triple-digit strong growth rates.

(Emphasizing a "weakness theme" for declining RIAA companies and a "strength theme" for growing independant lables may help persuade those who tend to side with BigBusiness. A common conservative(?) meme is that success = strength = virtue, that BigBusiness has proven it's strength and value and should be protected and rewarded.)

>9: Try to get politicians to understand that not everything which is *disliked* should be *illegal*...

Very true, but can we show Congress that P2P is as useful as the web in areas beside media file sharing and porn?

Th

Correction -- This is how the internet was *designed* to work. However, big broadband providers (cable and phone companies) have a vested interest in undermining the end-to-end principle the internet was founded on, making users into content consumers, and have done so by encourging things such as PPPoE and NAT. Sure, you can still run a PTP application from behind a NAT box, but it requires some port forwarding, which the average user won't be able to do. In fact, many all-in-one broadband "modems"/NAT devices don't even allow this these days, and many service agreements prohibit the operation of services on the user's assigned IP address, further undermining e2e. One of the promises of v6 is that it will allow every machine on the internet to have its own true IP address, if desired. This seems increasingly unlikely, as there are powerful forces that very much like the current imbalance between content providers and content consumers, and will bring great resources to bear against a return to the "wild west" of the early days of the internet, when every node could be a provider.

There's some interesting stuff on this at Digital Imprimatur and on Larry Lessig's site. A good place to start is Lessig's article called "The End of End-to-End: Preserving the Architecture of the Internet in the Broadband Era"

I've only heard of Speak Freely in passing before. But, I had no idea it was written and maintained by one of Autodesk's and Autocad's founders.

= 9J =

There's so much wrong with Garfinkel's "review" of IPv6 that I won't be reading his security books. Meanwhile, at the SpeakFreely RIP (repost) thread, the NAT bashers get poked pretty hard.

Seems to me that they are saying much the same thing. Walker:

There are powerful forces, including government, large media organisations, and music publishers who think this situation is just fine. In essence, every time a user--they love the word "consumer"--goes behind a NAT box, a site which was formerly a peer to their own sites goes dark, no longer accessible to others on the Internet, while their privileged sites remain. The lights are going out all over the Internet.

For all of its apparent utility, NAT is really the devil. It's a Faustian bargain (...) Getting everybody's home machine out from being a NAT box should make possible a lot of interesting applications that are either very difficult or downright impossible today. And in all likelihood, some of those applications will not be popular with the Recording Industry Association of America or the Motion Picture Association of America

Walker sees NAT as encroaching oppression by the "powers that be", whereas Garfinkel seems to take the "powers that be" point of view! Simson how you've changed!

In fact, Walker is skeptical that even IPv6 could promote "consumers" back to "peers":

First of all, any bets on when IPv6 will actually be implemented end-to-end for a substantial percentage of individual Internet users? And even if it were, don't bet on NAT going away. Certainly it will change, but once the powers that be have demoted Internet users from peers to consumers, I don't think they're likely to turn around and re-empower them just because the address space is now big enough.

John Walker is playing it on the safe side, and just warning users that he can no longer guarantee support as he will not be providing it himself. It is fairly mature software though, and doesn't need much updating with time, so that's why there hasn't been much development over the past few years.

Since John has withdrawn from development though, developers have been working on the NAT issue, and have a solution for many circumstances. Also the Speex codec has been added, so the quality/bitrate is now back in the league of the alternatives. So basically, it doesn't need much to keep it up to date.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/wb/speak-freely.pl?read=50 1

http://www.fourmilab.ch/wb/speak-freely.pl?read=50 9

John Walker is playing it on the safe side, and just warning users that he can no longer guarantee support as he will not be providing it himself. It is fairly mature software though, and doesn't need much updating with time, so that's why there hasn't been much development over the past few years.

Since John has withdrawn from development though, developers have been working on the NAT issue, and have a solution for many circumstances. Also the Speex codec has been added, so the quality/bitrate is now back in the league of the alternatives. So basically, it doesn't need much to keep it up to date.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/wb/speak-freely.pl?read=50 1

http://www.fourmilab.ch/wb/speak-freely.pl?read=50 9

Gentlemen do not read each others' mail.
-- Secretary of State Henry Stimson

It's not the easiest program to use, but it does work well. It's development has been discontinued, but you can still get the source code if you get it quickly. I'd like very much to see someone pick up its development, or to at least use its technology in a new program.

Gentlemen do not read each others' mail.
-- Secretary of State Henry Stimson

It's not the easiest program to use, but it does work well. It's development has been discontinued, but you can still get the source code if you get it quickly. I'd like very much to see someone pick up its development, or to at least use its technology in a new program.

Future headline: "MAE-East and MAE-West routers begin dropping ``UnTrusted'' packets; wireless traffic at all time high"

--

The internet was designed to be a peer-to-peer place, and this sort of mentality plays into that idea.

We'll buy non-DRM hardware

Trusted Computing is subtle and insidious. If you have "non-DRM hardware" pretty much all that accomplished is that YOU get locked out. You can't run any of the new software. You can't use any of the new files. You get locked out of more and more websites.

Non-DRM hardware is like a speakerless computer. The "new enhanced" computer can do everything the old computer can do. There is no reason NOT to buy the computer that has free speakers (or DRM) attached, you can just leave the speakers (or DRM) turned off and it works just like a "plain" computer. Of course if you leave the DRM turned off you get locked out of all of the new software, new files, and new websites. Ultimately you may end up locked out of the internet.

As for other countries, either they adopt it or they get locked out of all sorts of things. I'm pretty sure they are also planning on having each country run its own "Root Of Trust". Most countries will absolutely JUMP at the chance to have that sort of power over all of the computers in their country. The Digital Imprimatur is a long read, but it contains an excellent description of how seductive Trusted Computing can be for any government.

I certainly HOPE that there is a massive rebellion against Trusted Computing, but do not underestimate the threat! They have a very very plausible route to conquering the world with this crap. In many ways it is exacly like Microsoft's notorious "Embrace and Extend" tactic. The new Trusted Computers will "embrace" ALL existing software and files and websites. It then "extends" new software files and websites. For anyone who goes along with the change everything "just works", all old stuff and all new stuff. Anyone does not go along with the change begins suffering more and more as they run into more and more "new stuff" that doesn't work. They get error messages when they try to instal new software. They get error messages when they try to open new files. They get error messages when they try to view a new website. They get error messages when they try to read E-mail. Error messages saying that they have "old" and "obsolete" hardware. Messages telling them they need to "upgrade".

Most people are not techies, they don't understand anything about Trusted Computing. They just want the damn computer to work. When they start downloading free music files and they get error messages about their hardware, they don't care why they are getting errors, they just want it "fixed" so it will work. They will choose the new "enhanced" computer because that is the only one that can play the free files. That is the only "fix" to be able to play all of the free music and stuff they will be offered.

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Is it the man trying to keep the masses consuming what he dishes out, and keep them from distributing their own content?

John Walker's eclectic site, fourmilab.org (fourmilab.ch) has a JavaScript (ECMAScript) stenography app.

He also offers a public domain stenography app in portable C.

Those looking for really random numbers, of course, will know about his HotBits.

John Walker's eclectic site, fourmilab.org (fourmilab.ch) has a JavaScript (ECMAScript) stenography app.

He also offers a public domain stenography app in portable C.

Those looking for really random numbers, of course, will know about his HotBits.

John Walker's eclectic site, fourmilab.org (fourmilab.ch) has a JavaScript (ECMAScript) stenography app.

He also offers a public domain stenography app in portable C.

Those looking for really random numbers, of course, will know about his HotBits.

I do not think we should expect...perfectly valid HTML. Using Frontpage will make sure its not

I'm curious if fuzbuh is planning to let his/her 11 year old post just anything to the web site, or will fuzbuh screen the content first? I'm interested in this topic because my seven year old wants his own web page (he's so damn creative I can't wait to see it), and I plan to build it with him, starting Christmas break. My plan is to build a web site locally, then upload it to our "free" web address at our ISP. There's no way I'm going to let my seven year old upload pages to the public site; an 11 year old, I'm not so sure. But if fuzbuh does the uploading, there's the chance to fix invalid HTML.

Ouch, talk about crap HTML. If you do that, be sure to run it through the demoroniser.

How many of you will put your sensitive data in his site?

I recommend grabbing the js and html yourself, so you can understand it. I don't recommend putting anything sensitive in this guy's site, because he can read it, and because it's not over a HTTPS or SSL connection, so can anyone else.

Here are the source files, for your reading pleasure. Also, I recommend using this offline, if you get it, or over SSL and HTTPS. I would personally prefer encrypting using PHP & MySQL, so that it's all behind the scenes.

Agreed. It's odd. I'd like to see more evidence, too.

> Anyone remember the 17.3Kev neutrino?

Nope. Got a URL? My favorite heavy particle was the Oh-My-God Particle, rest mass 3x10e20 eV, about that of a bacterium and the energy of a brick falling on your toe. Time delay between the flash of light from whatever spawned it and "it", about two weeks... from Milliway's, the Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe.

Of course, back then it took super programmmers to cram a complex graphical application into an 8086 running DOS.

(Note the above is a question, hence in this sentence, the question mark is justified...)

As with many other things in 1970s computing, UNIVAC was way ahead.

Nope - check out the Univac ANIMAL story for an earlier version of a self replicating program, 1975. (notice I'm not claiming ANIMAL was the 'first' self replicator either - 99.9% of claimed 'firsts' are just ignorant of other acheivements).

In many ways John Walker's "Animal" program probably qualifies as the first virus, and it dates back to the mid seventies.

"as it's a bit different here in the Windows world where Apple doesn't own the OS and hardware."

And soon you won't even own your own hardware in the Windows world.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/NoTreason/NoTre ason.html

you didn't read The Digital Imprimatur did you? do it now, but keep in mind it's a worst-case-scenario model. i really don't think restricted access is the solution. honeypots either. let's just write good code in the first place, and not keep it behind locked doors so that in the event something bad does happen, we can fix it as quickly as possible.

> That hurts a bit, but my reaction is to say that AOL doesn't need my mail. But
> what happens when ISPs start to enforce no-server limitations? What happens when
> governments start to enforce them?!

Here's what John Walker thinks will happen if these trends continue. I don't like the trend toward a consumer Internet either, since I run a mail and DNS server on my cable modem, not to mention an ssh server so I can get at my stuff from other computers. My ISP has/had? a policy against _file_ servers, which is how I plan to justify running the servers I do if they ever give me any trouble.

> Eventually, this will lead to healthy competition between the "subculture nets" > and "The Internet".

That kind of competition isn't healthy. DNS inconsistencies suck. It's extra work for anyone who has to make sure they're DNS setup is ok.

> (we all know there's no such thing as The Internet, right? that it's just a
> generic term that we use to refer to consumers of IPV4 address space).

The Internet is an IP internetwork. It is the biggest one around, and is really the only global one that most people are on, so we call it the Internet.

There's no way to tell if the poker hand I describe in an email is real or if it's part of a encrypted message.

That could work a little, as might the general class of steganographic tricky.

But Walker already addressed that point just fine. Basically, they can make it so hard to evade the controls that the end result is indistinguishable from perfect control, even though 0.0001% of people can sneak around it for occasional small messages.

Missing URL ???
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/

I do not know why /. lost it...
Could be a bug. :(

but doesn't seem to realize these two facts:
2. Most users don't care about running their own website.

He realized that fact, and stated it exactly:

"In any case, the key lesson of the mass introduction of NAT is that it demonstrates, in a real world test, that the vast majority of Internet users do not notice and do not care that their access to the full range of Internet services and ability to act as a peer of any other Internet site has been restricted."

Why not just use Speak-freely? It's non-vapor, public domain code, works really well, and doesn't have for-profit sleaze-ware hooks. The UNIX client talks to the Windows client without fuss, and overseas sound quality is usually better than the real telephone. Even on 56k dial-up. It'll work just fine on a 486 too. NASA used it to communicate with the Space Shuttle on several missions.

Maintainership is in transition, but the package is already mature so that's not too big a worry.

old homepage:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/
new homepage:

http://speak-freely.sourceforge.net/

Long live speak-freely, thanks to free software!
(it rocks; Linux users be sure to grab the tcl/tk frontend)

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>I mean how hard would it be to tune these portals to work on browsers other than IE? These portals should be fixed anyhow, not just for Linux, but for other browsers out there such as Opera, Mozilla, etc, etc.

Hard? click :)

John Walker is also the author of a fascinating set of free programs and book on dieting called the Hacker's Diet in which he discusses a realistic way to lose weight while remaining healthy, using techniques of project management which have served him well in other fields of endeavor. Check it out! (I have the Palm version running myself and have lost 6kg)

Yes, it's true he said it would be too expensive for his server if he tried to relay NAT users. But much of his rant was also about how it makes internet users into consumers and are dependant upon centralized servers. If you read the rant linked in the EOL announcement, it gives the heart of his reasoning and why he wrote SpeakFreely in the first place. (no, I didn't read it all either, it's huge!)

Over the last two years I have become deeply and increasingly pessimistic about the future of liberty and freedom of speech, particularly in regard to the Internet. This a complete reversal of the almost unbounded optimism I felt during the 1994-1999 period when public access to the Internet burgeoned and innovative new forms of communication appeared in rapid succession. In that epoch I was firmly convinced that universal access to the Internet would provide a countervailing force against the centralisation and concentration in government and the mass media which act to constrain freedom of expression and unrestricted access to information. Further, the Internet, properly used, could actually roll back government and corporate encroachment on individual freedom by allowing information to flow past the barriers erected by totalitarian or authoritarian governments and around the gatekeepers of the mainstream media.

So convinced was I of the potential of the Internet as a means of global unregulated person-to-person communication that I spent the better part of three years developing Speak Freely for Unix and Windows, a free (public domain) Internet telephone with military-grade encryption. Why did I do it? Because I believed that a world in which anybody with Internet access could talk to anybody else so equipped in total privacy and at a fraction of the cost of a telephone call would be a better place to live than a world without such communication.

The rest seems to discuss how his dreams were/will be squashed, but IMO, he appears to still have his rose colored glasses on.

speak freely is a Free program for Windows and *nix. It supports strong encryption (by default) and is very light on bandwidth. It works more like a walkie-talkie than a phone though.

Or you could just send GPG-encrypted emails..

Note speakfreely.org is no longer the Speakfreely homepage. That site contains an old version and is morphed into a commercial non-free software sales site (with no obvious link to the new site -- argh).

Visit http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/ for the real webpage.

although in several months this will transfer to:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/speak-freely- u/
and
http://sourceforge.net/projects/speak-freely- w/

for the UNIX and Windows versions respectively.

The latest version is 7.6a.

"Speak Freely is a public domain, cross-platform Internet telephony application which conforms to all relevant standards, implements most principal audio compression algorithms, and provides military-grade encryption with AES, Blowfish, IDEA, and DES with keys as long as 256 bits.

Speak Freely is available for Unix-like platforms (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX, etc.) and Windows machines. Both versions are completely compatible and interoperate. In addition, Speak Freely supports the RTP and VAT protocols, and can communicate with any compliant Internet audio application."

and it rocks!

The Debian package is criminally out of date.

What type of encryption is used?

Skype uses AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), which is also used by U.S. Government organizations to protect sensitive, information. Skype uses 256-bit encryption, which has a total of 1.1 x 1077 possible keys, in order to actively encrypt the data in each Skype call or instant message.

Which protocols does Skype use?

Skype uses a proprietary protocol which we have developed. We looked at many available protocols when designing Skype and none were good enough for us. We hope you agree!

a booster a day keeps the exploding space shuttles away: http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/rocketaday.html