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Fracturing P2P Networks
A reader writes: "If you run Freenet and have noticed that you practically can't access anything on the network, you are not alone; a group of Freenet users has organized a Freenet Revolt by forming a separate network running an old, proven build of Freenet, and things have been heating up on the freenet-devel mailing list with a scary declaration by project leader Ian Clarke that Freenet is a research project and has always been, which scared some list members, since Freenet has been actively promoted as a production network and has a sensitive userbase, including Chinese dissidents. Some people are already moving to similar networks like GNUnet and Entropy. " Of course, that does sound different then what has been said before.
When the journalists reporting on the subject don't have a clue, then it's hardly suprising that their articles are somewhat skewed. Skip forward a few years and now we are getting the same standards of journalistic brilliance applied to P2P and the whole copyright issue.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Real vs. Theoretical:
Use Freenet vs. Use Something Else:
Production vs. Development:
I didn't find any direct conflicts in the articles linked above, but there's certainly a shift in tone. It's also worth mentioning that they have a release called "stable", in addition to the "development" and "unstable" branches.
I don't think that's true. I went to cnn.com and foxnews.com and looked up recent stories about U.S. soldiers under attack in post-war Iraq. In the CNN story they call the attackers "gunmen." In the Fox News report they call them "ex-soldiers," and also mention "dissidents" who were protesting and throwing rocks. I think the media is using the correct words.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Direct Connect?
Clever signature text goes here.
The solution is to have multiple parallel versions, one for the early adopters, one for the mass market, and one for the late adopters.
Freenet DOES have stable, unstable, and development branches.
I used to run stable all the time. It broke about every other version for a while. I upgraded to unstable which seemed to be working better.
I now have a collection of freenet.jar.#### files for each build I've installed. The freenet website does not maintain an archive of builds, so I have to maintain my own. Of course, Builds change almost daily or even more often, so I can't count on actually downloading a stable build.
There also is no official changelog on their website. Apparently if you browse the developer mailing list you might find a list of what changed.
What Freenet really needs is some good-old change control and documentation. They can dump whatever they want into the development branch, but before moving it to unstable or stable they should make a changelog listing what changed, and then post it to the website. They should also keep an archive of prior releases. Having the source code in a CVS is NOT a substitute for this. If I know that build xyz works fine I need to know which versions of every source file went into that build.
They can also stand to use sourceforge/etc for bug tracking.
I'm all for researching the design of the alogrithm, but forcing all users to be beta-testers all the time isn't the way to build a user-base. If users want to be both stable and on the cutting edge they can just run two nodes in parallel.
This sounds a little like the OceanStore Project that a friend of mine worked on in grad school.
D'oh -- the stuff that buys me beer! Ray -- the guy who sells me beer!
Linux was at version 0.x from 1991 until 1994 when version 1.0 was released. I remember people using Linux 0.x in 1994 though (and 1995, 1996), sometimes in a production capacity, although I'm sure caveats would have recommended against it. In fact, was Linux version 1.0 ready to be used in a production environment with no worries? Not really (I remember my 1.x server getting the "ping of death" and going down, among other things). Freenet was released in 1999. When it goes to version 1.x, that's when I'll expect a more production-oriented p2p network. But Ian does not feel it is ready, and I tend to agree. Linux was very complex, but it did have many other OS's to compare with, it was not totally groundbreaking and revolutionary (although it partly was). Freenet is forging a new path, thus takes more time.
You got it completely backwards. This is understandable because the links in the article are semi-slashdotted.
The people who want to hold Ian Clarke responsible are the users. They are concerned about potential flaws in the system that could could expose them to liability. (And if you are a Chinese dissident, liability may include getting killed.)
Some users are saying Ian Clarke is covering his butt by saying it is just a research project.
I think you read too much into that comment.
That's pretty easy, too, Dave.
Check the Geneva Convention. A "prisoner of war" is a legal definition. You have to meet certain criteria in order to be considered an official "prisoner of war," and those criteria are specifically enumerated in the Geneva convention. In general, you have to be a member of, or closely affiliated with, an armed force of a legitamate government. The Al Qaeda fighters are not uniformed, and are not under the command of a governmental authority responsible for their actions. Therefore, they cannot be official prisoners of war, and therefore they do not receive any of the protections afforded by the Geneva convention. Also, it's not like they play by the rules of Geneva convention, anyway.
So then, a "Prisoner of War" is someone who meets the criteria specified by the Geneva convention, and a 'detainee' is somebody captured during military action who does not fit that criteria.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
There are way more heterosexual pedophiles. The only reason some people think there are more homosexual than heterosexual pedophiles is because the moral majority has decided in the past to persecute homosexual pedophiles more stringently.
I note that it is fairly acceptable for straight guys to relate their interest in young girls -- sometimes even preteen. It is not acceptable in the gay community, which is so paranoid about what idiots like you will think.
Studies have been done that show sexual response to children to be fairly common in a population of 'normal' people, FYI. It's time people realized this.
_khl
In WWII, eight German soldiers infiltrated the U.S. to commit acts of sabotage. They were captured, tried for espionage before a military tribunal, and found guilty. Six were executed, and two served long prison sentences. As they were engaged in clandestine acts of espionage and sabotage, they were not covered under the Geneva convention, and were not Prisoners of War, so it was perfectly legal to try and execute them. How is the current situation with Al Qaeda different?
Well for one thing they were at least charged with something! Some of the prisoners in Guantanamo were ex-taliban and probably meet the definition for prisonners of war, some are Al-Quaida and probably do not. But that's not the point.
The point is that they are EITHER prisonners of war (with specific rights), suspected spies (with specific rights) or common criminals (also with specific rights). Right now the US claim "none of the above". They are held in an artificial legal no man's land by their jailers. Isn't it pretty hypocrytical that they are being held in Cuba to shield them from the jurisdiction of their captor's own tribunals, and yet the same captors do not recognise the jurisdiction on the foreign country they are being held in either either. So whose jurisdiction are they under?
Even the most fierce oponents of this policy do recognise that a great many of them are probably guilty (of something). But having them handled outside any judicial system does not help the cause and sets a HORRIBLE precedent for other countries. I personally find the current situation worse than a mock trial! At least after a mock trial it is known who and where they are, and what they were charged with.
Your example is flawed, many of the people in Guantanemo where taken there after fighting a war in their own country.
In your example that would be like Germany entering France, taking some of the resistance and executing them. They were the bad guys remember.
But I suppose you didn't want to draw that parallel eh.
p.s
Britain is not your ally, Tony Blair is:-)
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
This thing about a 'revolt' is false. First, Ian Clarke endorsed the idea (From the developer newsgroup October 5 2003):
Reskill wrote:
> Stricter upgrading sounds good to me if it helps bring the network out
> of this hole... but I do think that, while the technically minded among
> us play with the latest code, some of us reside on a separate network
> so we can enjoy freenet for what it really is.
>
> For those wanting to give this a try, see http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/freenet/
Lets do this properly and keep it under the project umbrella. The last
thing we need are different competing and deliberately incompatable
Freenet versions.
Basically stable should be reverted to whatever the current consensus is
on a stable version, and we need two separate seedlists.
I already have a seednode harvester set up, I can easily set up two each
specific to a different network provided there are volunteers who will
make their nodes available for seeding.
Ian.
Second, this is split (making a second network from a older (ver. 692) more functioning version) is win-win for everyone. The new secondary Freenet network I was on was much faster then the current one (Getting 100,000 kilobytes per second thoughput, and that was just because there is a default cap of 100,000). And the developers get a network to study that has 1 build, instead of a willy-nilly collection of many different builds.
The detainees at Guantanamo are not being tried. The problem is that these people are in a legal limbo. If they committed crimes, try them and punish them. But we have no way of knowing what these people are even accused of doing.
To believe that our government would not detain innocent people is to be naive to the point of absurdity.
The point here is that locking people up indefinitely, with no right to face their accusers and defend themselves, is unAmerican, and should be deeply offensive to every real American. We should all resent the erosion of America's reputation as the world's greatest bastion of liberty and justice. If we lose that, we've lost something a whole lot more important than anything the terrorists can take from us.
Some people, though, get off by mislabelling both so that others will download it. Put up what you prefer, but label it appropriate. Many people don't have a problem with other people enjoying their variety of pr0n (be it by preference or fetish - so long as it is legal), but it's really a pain when you download a 125MB file only to find it is something else.While I accept pr0n for "alternative preferences" than my own, it's definately not a turn-on. With the illegal stuff, it's even worse, because now it's been on my hard-drive, and were it to be found it would look bad even if it hadn't been what I was looking for.
It's an assumption, but perhaps this is what the parent was discussion, as I have noticed the behavior of posting such material mislabelled is becoming too prolific in P2P lately.