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.

Comments

Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure George W. Bush can explain me the difference between "Dissidents" and "Terrorists".

Re:Dissidents?

[WegianWarrior]

I'm not sure he can, but it is very easy:

A dissident is someone who disagree with someone you disagree with and a terrorist is someone disagreeing with you. In the same way, a freedomfighter is someone fighting an oppresive regime you don't like, while a rebel is someone fighting an oppresive regime you do like.

Re:Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dissidents boldly go where no man has gone before.

Re:Dissidents?

[Oddly_Drac]

"A dissident is someone who disagree with someone you disagree with and a terrorist is someone disagreeing with you. In the same way, a freedomfighter is someone fighting an oppresive regime you don't like, while a rebel is someone fighting an oppresive regime you do like."

Funny thing is that the world governments tend to try and tell people that this is an objective decision when it's entirely subjective and tends to depend on who's paying for the ideological dissemination of information.

eg 'Sandinistas' - 'Freedom Fighters'; 'Al Queda' - 'Terrorists'

Re:Dissidents?

[ComaVN]

It's easy, really.

Dissidents are people with an opinion that differs enough from popular opinion to attract negative attention from state officials, while terrorists are people who try to accomplish their goals by killing civilians on purpose.

Does that clear things up for you?

Of course, the word dissident is only used by people who agree with said opinion, and the word terrorist by those who disagree with said goals.

Better comparisions would be freedom fighter/terrorist, dissident/fundamentalist, and education/propaganda

Re:Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is fascinating. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.

Re:Dissidents?

[meta-monkey]

I agree with your assesment of a "freedom fighter" and a "rebel," but on the matter of "terrorist" I think you've erred. The difference between a dissident and a terrorist is not motivation, but method. A dissident may attempt to work within the system, or may protest on the edge of the system. A freedom fighter or a rebel will take up arms against the government, and the military. A terrorist, however, takes up arms against the people, and against civilians.

Sorry to pick nits, but semantics are very important, as words are pregnant in such a politically charged issue as this.

Re:Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can subscribe here, my darling little boy.

Re:Dissidents?

[MeanMF]

A freedom fighter or a rebel will take up arms against the government, and the military. A terrorist, however, takes up arms against the people, and against civilians.

I completely agree with you here, but if you look at reports from Iraq, attacks on U.S. soldiers are being carried out by "terrorists". The "t" word has lost most of its meaning these days, and is being used to describe guerilla tactics as well as attacks on civilian targets.

Re:Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the words of George Carlin: "If fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?"

Re:Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then, you seem to be an idiot not to realize that most of the offtopic comments and obvious troll comments are moderated by the editors, and not by the users. They have infinite mod points, so, sorry, nobody's wasting their mod points on you, jackass.

Re:Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does god have to do with my sexlife, you pervert?

Re:Dissidents?

[antibryce]

I don't think the US has ever called Sandinistas "freedom fighters." Especially since they were in power for 21 years (during which we financed a rebel army to fight them.)

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1006-04. ht m

Even today we seem to be very clear that they have terrorist ties.

Re:Dissidents?

[meta-monkey]

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.

Re:Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello? People at war kill civilians all the time. It is only a very recent phenomenon that military commanders have taken care to not kill civilians, and this has only occured during conflicts where they have an overwhelming military advantage and so can afford such luxuries. Remember World War II? Cities (containing mostly civillians!) were regularly attacked, even with nuclear weapons! (although more civilians were killed by conventional bombs) Try going around telling people that the allies in WWII were terrorists and see how popular you are.

Re:Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said anything about the US govt? calling the Sandanistas "freedom fighters". It is the Chomsky loving cafe communists that call the Sandanistas "freedom fighters".

Re:Dissidents?

[daveashcroft]

And maybe while we are at it: the difference between prisoners of war and "detainees".

Re:Dissidents?

[MeanMF]

"Foreign terrorists" is a favorite term of U.S. administration officials, used to describe foreigners who have entered Iraq to oppose the occupation. This Reuters report has one example. The term is also frequently used in White House press briefings in the same context.

Re:Dissidents?

[Glock27]

Hello? People at war kill civilians all the time. It is only a very recent phenomenon that military commanders have taken care to not kill civilians, and this has only occured during conflicts where they have an overwhelming military advantage and so can afford such luxuries. Remember World War II? Cities (containing mostly civillians!) were regularly attacked, even with nuclear weapons! (although more civilians were killed by conventional bombs) Try going around telling people that the allies in WWII were terrorists and see how popular you are.

The key difference between "terrorists" and "troops" (other than the fact that the terrorists are irregular forces) is that the "troops" have an identifiable state associated with them. That means we can attack them in the same way they attack us. Terrorists are mighty inconvenient in terms of conventional warfare. Some might argue that our current foray into Iraq is the result of not having an identifiable state associated with Al Qaida (or however it's spelled today). What's that saying? "If all you've got is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail."

With current technology, there is no need to kill civilians to win wars. Killing the opposing leadership, forces and infrastructure is sufficient.

Re:Dissidents?

[meta-monkey]

Okay, that's different. Now you're talking about the government calling the attackers terrorists. Before when you said "reports from Iraq," I was under the impression you were talking about the media calling them terrorists. In the Reuters report you sited, the journalists didn't call the attackers terrorists, but they quoted the general who called them "foreign terrorists." The only time the journalist refered to them in his own words, he called them "fighters." I think the media is being pretty even-handed in how they refer to the attackers, although I do think they're putting a magnifing glass on the attacks, and not reporting the positive news out of Iraq.

Re:Dissidents?

[TheCrazyFinn]

To quote Lenin:

Terrorists create terror.

A dissident is somebody with a differing, unpopular political belief.

Vaclav Havel was a dissident. Karl Marx was a dissident.

A terrorist is a person who commits acts intending to terrorise a population into submitting to said terrorists agenda (Note that this is distinctly seperate from war, which is a violent dispute between governments). Osama bin Laden is a Terrorist. Yasser Arafat is a Terrorist, Che Guevara was a Terrorist.

Re:Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cold-blooded murder of civilians is a cowardly act.

"By their fruits ye shall know them." --Allah

Re:Dissidents?

[meta-monkey]

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.

Re:Dissidents?

[daveashcroft]

I am an officer in her majesties armed forces, and am only too aware of the definition of Prisoner of War under the geneva convention...what i dont agree with is the current US interpretation of this. I disagree with you in that i believe these people should be conferred prisoner of war status. What is unacceptable to me and a great deal of my fellow officers and soldiers is that here we have a situation where people are being detained (in my mind illegaly) and with no charges having been brought against them. I have no gripes with america, and count many americans as very good friends...but i think you have a situation in cuba just now in which a future president is going to have a hard time apologising for.

Re:Dissidents?

[Entropius]

If all you've got is a hammer, and you're being attacked by flies, then don't start looking for nails: get a flyswatter.

Re:Dissidents?

[daveashcroft]

OOps - i have read over...and you werent actually disagreeing with any point of view....just clarifying a definition...which i guess is what i asked (albeit tongue-in-cheek). ...Dave...take three deep breaths and relax ;)

Re:Dissidents?

[MKalus]

With current technology, there is no need to kill civilians to win wars. Killing the opposing leadership, forces and infrastructure is sufficient

And killing the infrastructure is not killing civilians exactly how?

Civlians do rely on the infrastructure, water, electricity, gas.....

How do you think food gets into the stores? Roads etc.

How bad was it during the blackout? And that only lasted a couple of hours.

Re:Dissidents?

[meta-monkey]

Hi Dave,

My wife was stationed in Germany (Heidleberg) with the U.S. Army, and I visited her there. I met several British soldiers, including special forces, and man, those are blokes with whom I would not want to mess. Not that I would mess with them, anyway :) As an American, I am so proud to have the British as our ally, and I know that through thick and thin, you guys have our backs. Thanks.

As for the detainees, though, I'm curious, what's your justification for treating them as prisoners of war? I read through the Geneva convention's words on that issue, and I really don't think they qualify. I don't know about the moral issues, but legally, I think the U.S. is in the right here.

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?

Re:Dissidents?

[benoitg]

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.

Re:Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

You went and got them in a country 10000 miles away?

Basically what you're trying to say is that it's ok for any country to pick up and detain/execute/whatever any person, as long as he doesn't wear a uniform. Is it ok for China to kidnap an American Falung Gong follower living in New York? Didn't think so. The Geneva Convention doesn't enter into this. It's about basic human rights, which you/your government seems to forget about when it's not about Americans.

Even psychopath serial killers get better treatment in the US.

Re:Dissidents?

[Mr. Slippery]

...while terrorists are people who try to accomplish their goals by killing civilians on purpose.

Of course, "civilians" and "on purpose" are terms that can be applied flexibly.

Are Israelis living in occupied territories civilians, or invaders? Were people living in Hiroshima or Dresden civilians, or as workers in their nations' war industry were they legimate targets? When NATO bombed Kosovo rather than sending in ground troups, keeping soldiers safe while putting civilians at higher risk, were the innocents killed "on purpose"?

No one ever says "we kill innocents on purpose"; everyone adjusted their defintions of guilt and of what is avoidable to suit their own ends.

Re:Dissidents?

[Mr. Slippery]

Terrorists create terror.

All military action creates terror. It's the reason behind phenomena ranging from war dances to atomic bomb tests to "shock and awe" bombing: scare the other side to take the fight out of them.

And a lot of things can create terror. In the 1960s, non-violent Civil Rights marches scared the shit out of a bunch of rascists - did that make King a terrorist?

A terrorist is a person who commits acts intending to terrorise a population into submitting to said terrorists agenda (Note that this is distinctly seperate from war, which is a violent dispute between governments).

So the American Revolution was terrorism, not a war? Or did the Continential Congress count as a government?

And if so, why wouldn't the IRA or PLO or Al Quida count as governments rather than terrorist organizations? What does it take to make a government?

Re:Dissidents?

[eyeye]

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:-)

Re:Dissidents?

[knobmaker]

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.

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.

Re:Dissidents?

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

...and not reporting the positive news out of Iraq.

What exactly is the positive news out of Iraq? That most people are still unemployed? That there are open revolts by citizens? That crime has increased by several magnitudes? What you are getting is pretty positive. Things are FAR WORSE than you are led to believe. For instance, very few journalists cover the deaths of innocent Iraqis which happen on a daily basis. When was the last time you heard an Iraqi death reported?

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Dissidents?

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

Funny thing is that the world governments tend to try and tell people that this is an objective decision when it's entirely subjective and tends to depend on who's paying for the ideological dissemination of information.

The worst thing is that the citizens of the world simply accept the govt propaganda as truth.

eg 'Sandinistas' - 'Freedom Fighters'; 'Al Queda' - 'Terrorists'

You made a mistake. Sandinistas are not freedom fighters according to the US govt (I assume you are talking about the US govt perspective). I think you had the Nicaraguan contras in mind (they were considered 'freedom fighters'). I have the best example (which is actually kind of ironic):

"Al Qaida" in 1989: freedom fighters
Al Qaida in 1999: terrorists

Usama bin Laden in 1989: key friend of USA
Usama bin Laden in 1999: public enemy #1

Needless to say, the same person/group carrying out hte same activities are considered differently.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Dissidents?

[Delron Da Thugg]

I suggest you go and watch Clerks. When you get to the part about the independent contractors and the Death Star, you will be enlightened.

Re:Dissidents?

[Mr. Slippery]

I suggest you go and watch Clerks. When you get to the part about the independent contractors and the Death Star, you will be enlightened.

I've seen it, know the part you mean. It's great.

(Oh, and crack-smoking moderators: flamebait is something posted to generate a flamewar. An honestly expressed idea posted to an existing thread may be offtopic, but is not flamebait.)

Re:Dissidents?

[BCoates]

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, the Supreme Court decision that said the military had the right to try and execute them was based on an interpretation of U.S. laws that have been totally overhauled (by Congress) in the ~60 years since that case, so what was legal then may no longer be.

iirc, ianal

--
Benjamin Coates

FIRST POST

[Anonymous Coward]

SUCKERS!!!!

I'm curious

[Anonymous Coward]

does someone seriously believe Freenet is just a research project when it has such social ramifications?

In a couple of decades' time, when everything, such as phone, radio, television, movies, music, books, the lot, are locked up through DRM/Palladium, something like Freenet would be the anemia (sp?) of the command-and-control society companies are pushing us towards. It may well be illegal some time in the future.

Re:I'm curious

[Xentax]

something like Freenet would be the anemia (sp?)

I think the word you're looking for is "anathema".

Xentax

Re:I'm curious

[kfg]

Freenet would be the anemia (sp?) of the command-and-control society

Who could just eat their spinich and feel much better.

Damn, if only Bill Gates and John Ashcroft hadn't watched so much Popeye as kids we might have had them.

KFG

Re:I'm curious

[Anonymous Coward]

something like Freenet would be the anemia (sp?)

The word you are looking for is "enema."

Re:I'm curious

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent as Funny!!!!

Re:I'm curious

[kfg]

Might not do any good. Jihad (which does not exist) has been declared on my posts moderated as Funny by the Illuminati ( who also do not exist).

I have offended, ummmmmm. . . Offendi.

Perhaps it is time to return my Gallagherian Sledge-O-Matic of wit to the closet of unmoderated forums from which it came and return you to my regular program of dry erudtion and supercilious snobbery.

KFG

Re:I'm curious

[Alan Partridge]

"Of course, that does sound different then what has been said before."

What kind of baffling medical condition leads one to confuse THEN and THAN? Or ANATHEMA and ANEMIA?

Re:I'm curious

[drunkentiger]

Freenet is just a research project

It has quite a few citations. I doubt Freenet has just a pure "for research" motivation, but other computer scientists believe it has technical merit.

Re:I'm curious

[miu]

...something like Freenet would be the anemia (sp?) of the command-and-control...

I'm pretty sure this is the first instance of "pedant-bait" I've ever seen on /.

Re:I'm curious

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of baffling medical condition leads one to confuse THEN and THAN? Or ANATHEMA and ANEMIA?

It's called foreigneritis, and everybody is infected. Try writing a piece in a foreign language some time; I'm sure you'll be baffled by your own stupidity too.

Re:I'm curious

[alexo]

>> something like Freenet would be the anemia (sp?) of the command-and-control society companies are pushing us towards.
>
> I think the word you're looking for is "anathema".

Or possibly "enema".
One can argue that society needs it more than the suggested aternative.

Re:I'm curious

[Alan Partridge]

Pas du tout!

Re:I'm curious

[Anonymous Coward]

thats coz ur a n00b

Re:I'm curious

[homebrewmike]

Here's an article that will probably address just that...

http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

Hm

[Tirel]

FP!

~~ BUSH @ IIP ~~

Freenet2

[Dragoon]

Hmm, FreeNet2 ?

Didn't EFNet do this a few years ago?

Re:Freenet2

[phoxix]

Didn't EFNet do this a few years ago?

IIRC, EFNet had EFNext, which failed horribly (though it did have a lovely looking website.)

Sunny Dubey

Re:Freenet2

[Anonymous Coward]

EFNet split into EFNet and IRCNet after a disagreement over ircd in about '97

Responsibility

[TheViciousOverWind]

If Ian Clarke claims it is anything but research, then people will start to see it in a whole new light, perhaps claiming Ian (and other developers) be held resposible for its use.

Maybe he just seeks to avoid those conflicts?

Re:Responsibility

[commie_pig]

On the other hand, it could be a euphemism for "I can rig the software up to make it easier for companies to track down pirates". However, let's hope this is not the case.

Hopefully he's just trying to protect himself. The legal systems are making it far too easy to prosecute developers who have no control over the uses of their software. Sure, we know what can happen over P2P networks, but then the same could be said about the net in principle.

--"External World Viewing Interface" - the day when M$ patented the word "window"

Re:Responsibility

[Xentax]

Hold him responsible, just like we should sue Nobel for inventing better explosives and Samuel Colt for a better pistol, right?

While I'm all for a researcher taking responsibility for what he's doing, most things people point to as ethical or moral failures just don't measure up. Freenet has a stronger position than most P2P networks as far as non-copyright-infringing uses goes.

In fairness, I know you're not saying he *should* be held responsible, just that others might well TRY to hold him liable.

It would be sad if a network designed to help protect anonymous free speech was being held back from full use because (or partly because) the devs were concerned about people trying to supress it...

Xentax

Re:Responsibility

[Ibix]

If Ian Clarke claims it is anything but research, then people will start to see it in a whole new light, perhaps claiming Ian (and other developers) be held resposible for its use.

A good point, in light of Sharman Networks' problems with Kazaa. Do you think "it was just a research project" would be a defence acceptable to the serious boys in the boring suits? If it's just a research project, they would say, then you should maintain lists of those using and experimenting with it. So they know who not to bother watching, of course...

Paranoidly yours,

Ibix

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he just seeks to avoid those conflicts?

Or more likely, he is doing what his lawyer has advised him to say. Or else, he may face a nastygram in the mail when a parent of some underage p0rn actress has their video clip appear on the network.

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think that any parent distributing underage porn would have a lot more to worry about then if their copyright is being infringed upon.

Re:Responsibility

[frp001]

Mmmm... I wonder if the Chinese political prisonner who is about to be shot could get away with it by claiming it's Ian Clarke's fault!

Re:Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Responsibility

[bobbozzo]

In his speech at DefCon 0A last year, he expressed that he is trying his best to make freenet infallible to monitoring, but he admitted that it is still dangerous to put too much faith in the security of any system.

ooh ooh me me me

[Anonymous Coward]

choose MY standard of P2p, make MY P2P standard look better on MY CV, ME choose me

Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone find anything of interest in FreeNet? It was too slow for casual browsing, at least...

Apparently, it is easier to find all kinds of "interesting" stuff (mostly entertaining documents by crackpots) in run-of-the-mill p2p networks, such as DC. And all the feds looking for child porn distributors would do well to take a look at edonkey2000 network. DC is self-censoring, i.e. child/gay porn sharers aer kicked away from the hubs.

It's funny to see how hysterical people are about child porn, and how "underground" it is portrayed in the media. But yet relatively public networks such as edonkey has lots of the "pre-teen" material. It's not like it would take a heroic detective skills to raid some of the houses of people who are distributing it...

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

But yet relatively public networks such as edonkey has lots of the "pre-teen" material

I know from (huge) experience that 99% of the "pre-teen" porn on edonkey is fake. Takes ages to find what you're really looking for.

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

DC is self-censoring, i.e. child/gay porn sharers aer kicked away from the hubs.

or do you think they set themsleves up their own hub and drive them even more underground (and therefore dangerous) in fact worsening the situation you where trying to prevent ?

all systems are just the sum of their users, all the P2P systems are the same, there are fucked up people wherever you look, its wether you choose to look at what they do that should be questioned

Re:Child porn

[Oddly_Drac]

"It's funny to see how hysterical people are about child porn, and how "underground" it is portrayed in the media. But yet relatively public networks such as edonkey has lots of the "pre-teen" material. It's not like it would take a heroic detective skills to raid some of the houses of people who are distributing it..."

Of course, there is the complete lack of advertising standards on peer-to-peer networks meaning that occasionally the 'teen miss takes on hockey team' is actually a geriatric donkey-frightener taking a double-ender without her teeth in.

Personally I think the discovery of that on my hard drive would be more socially damaging.

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone else take this to mean that he looks for real kiddie porn? ...is that you timothy?

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it obvious?

(No, I'm not the guy looking for kiddie porn, just Yet Anothher AC).

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

ah, thanks for contributing to this thread. it's us ACs that keep /. alive you know.

Re:Child porn

[Library Spoff]

>>DC is self-censoring, i.e. child/gay porn sharers aer kicked away from the hubs.

funny how everyone assumes gay and kiddie porn are the same. Gay and into porn - you *must* be a kiddie fiddler. sheesh...

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahahaaha! Donkey-frightener! That's superb. I think I'm going to add that one to my quiver.

Kudos to you, my good man.

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll feel differently after you've been here.

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

AC Power!

Preach on, brotha.

Re:Child porn

[Zocalo]

On the subject of child porn's "underground" portrayal in the (mainstream) media I once read an article about an IT journalist who was always being asked by his non IT colleagues "Where's the porn?" Their intent was obviously to write another "Diss of the Internet as a hive of pedophiles" article that were and are so common. His standard response was "If it's is easy to find as you and your ilk claim, then I'm sure you can find it all by yourself, can't you."

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.

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, everyone assumes that just because you are a pedophile, you are gay! The straight pedophiles should unite to campaign against these misconceptions. :)

Re:Child porn

[perl]

What is DC?

Sounds interesting -- is it related to David Chaum's work (Dining Cryptographers)?

Any pointers?

Re:Child porn

[hkmwbz]

Direct Connect?

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Back when I was in high school, two of my friends in high school were gay and (at one time or another) had boyfriends who were in their 30s and 40s respectively.

Now, doing the nasty with a high school kid is not pedophilia. But it is very creepy at the very least.

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

So... Did anyone find any kiddie porn they'd like to share?

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer "pig wiggler"

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Internet, of course, is more than a place to find pictures of people having sex with dogs."

-- Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Time.

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Since statistically 75% of them are homosexual, it isn't surprising people make the association.

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

DC++?

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Britanny's Girls. Horrendously slow, as is most of Freenet, but high-quality images. Some movie clips, too.

Making DAMN sure I've clicked "post anonymously" on this one... :)

Re:Child porn

[Abcd1234]

Bah, that happens all the time with teenaged girls as well. It's equally creepy, IMHO, but don't go thinking it's somehow unique to the gay community.

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course that's not timothy, you narrow-minded fool. Timothy is only interested in gay kiddy porn.

My guess: pudge.

Re:Child porn

[sketerpot]

Are you using "porn" synonymously with "child porn"? If you're not, it's pretty easy to find it. I mean, just go to google and search. Child porn, OTOH, is a lot harder to find. The closest I've ever come to finding any is seeing a few links on The Freedom Engine (the oldest freenet portal) to sites that claimed to have child porn. I never found out if they actually did (I'm not tasteless), but they were there.

The journalism on the subject ranks right up there in terms of reliability as the articles that use the terms "computer" and "hard drive" interchangably. My hard drive, by the way, has an 850 MHz Duron processor and 128 megabytes (128 million bytes) of memory.

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget that an integral part of a journalistic child porn investigation is that the journalist has never seen any of it. Probably there have never been so many experts of something they have never seen. Kind of like UFOs.

_khl

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Since statistically 75% of them are homosexual, it isn't surprising people make the association.

Uhmmmmm BULLSHIT!

Re:Child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a problem with these types of statistics. Lets say for instance that if a male does not limit his sexuality to just woman than he is a homosexual but if a woman does not limit her sexuality to just men she is a bi-sexual.

There is the idea that pedophiles may just be omni-sexual and that the classification of them as homosexual is merely a flaw in the classification scheme. Like when you could only choose whether you were caucasion , african american, native american, hispanic, or asian. Well we know this does not cover the landscape and most of us are a mixture anyway. So the classifications fall down. Especially when say African American may mean only 1/32 African to caucasion mix. This I think is the same problem with pedophile classification.

There is also the problem with which sex of child was compared to the pedophile. I would think this would be significant information as well. I wonder if those statistics include the recent revelations about priests, and what classification they would fall into.

What is surpising is that people accept statistics like that on face value without question.

Re:Child porn

[Lord_Dweomer]

"funny how everyone assumes gay and kiddie porn are the same. Gay and into porn - you *must* be a kiddie fiddler. sheesh..."

Oh get off your high-horse. Its frustrating that you got modded +5 insightful for this. He wasn't saying that at all, nor does he necessarily assume that. Flamerule made a comment a little ways up about how

"Because dc hub operators have freedom to ban what they want, and many of them don't want to see child/gay porn, if any porn at all."

So you see, he wasn't assuming they're the same. He was stating that it is the tendency on DC for hub operators to ban people with child/gay porn. Its not that their the same, they just both happened to be banned often.

Jesus....people and the conclusions they jump to..........

Research vs. production

[heironymouscoward]

A standard problem with deploying systems is that as soon as there is a critical mass of users, the bulk of them want stability rather than innovation.

The solution is to have multiple parallel versions, one for the early adopters, one for the mass market, and one for the late adopters.

If this is not possible within Freenet itself (because the network exists as a single entity) then the solution is to have alternative products. It seems quite fair to have (e.g. Gnunet) providing a robust and stable product while Freenet continues to act as a research project: both needs are clear and there is no real need to compromise either of them.

Eventually the question of how to build such networks will be fully understood and the research will end and everyone will migrate to the One Network that does it best.

Until then, yay, more Freenet, and more choice!

Re:Research vs. production

[Teancum]

The largest complaint about freenet is that the communications protocol is largely undocumented. Sure, there are some white papers regarding the basic theory and even some substantial resources regarding what is going on down in the lower internals.

Unfortunately the only real documentation for what is happening is really at the source code level for the ubergeeks who are really into reading this and tweaking it to make it work. IMHO this is where the real "research" nature of freenet is happening.

Some very brilliant people (and I am not knocking them...I've had to work with low-level communications protocols like they are doing here for some projects of my own) are constantly coming up with new ideas to meet the overall goals of the Freenet project. Most of the time they are so excited to implement a new idea that they would rather just code it up than sit down and draft up some specification documents first. These are gennerally some very novel ideas and often they don't really turn out to help anyway, so the protocol is evolving very quickly as well.

What I think need to happen now (or very soon) is that some of the best of these ideas need to be formalized beyond the "base-line" standard code base for Freenet and put this into a formal written specification standard like an RFC, ISO, or ECMA document. This is not to say that development can't go on, but real-life network experiences have already been proven with a number of methods of very good ideas. When this is done, Freenet will indeed move into a production environment.

Re:Research vs. production

[Rich0]

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.

Re:Research vs. production

[hanssprudel]

The protocol specification is here.

Re:Research vs. production

[Anonymous Coward]

http://freenetproject.org/snapshots/

For some strange reason, there's no link to this from the main page.

Re:Research vs. production

[Teancum]

I still stand by what I said.

This link is a fairly good representation of the protocol, but this isn't the final word, and if you tried to implement a Freenet node based on the information in this document, you still couldn't get a node to work with the other nodes of the base line Java implementation of Freenet.

The real documentation is in the source code, not in a protocol document. BTW, look at the date this was last changed: Tue Jul 2 07:44:08 2002 UTC

I believe that the protocol has changed quite a bit since then, and several improvements to Freenet have been made since. Also, there are a number of "TODO" notes in the specification document. In other words, there is absolutely no version of Freenet that uses the protocol that is described in this document. Certainly not the current version. All of the details needed in order to create your own node (in C++, Modula-2, Python, or what have you) can't be done just off of this document.

That said, this document would be very useful if you were trying to hack at the communications core of Freenet to try and understand the source code. That is the main value of this document.

Why have I not tried to update it myself? Time, and trying to go through the shifting source code itself and attempt to update it.

Re:Research vs. production

[hanssprudel]

There is enough there to get one through the first six months of development. If one gets that far, filling out the missing details and changes (which AFAIK are all backwards compatible) should be no problem.

There are many things wrong with Freenet - after having used it over a long period of time I could write a book about the problems - but that the protocol isn't specified is not one of them.

Re:Research vs. production

[Teancum]

I would have to argue that this is indeed one huge problem. From plenty of experience developing software with projects much larger than the freenet project (unfortunately with propritary software goals) I have been burned whenever I got involved with a project that didn't try to get the documentation done ahead of time.

Indeed, the mantra "Resist the urge to code" is something that you really need to keep in mind, even with small projects. Freenet is not even a brand new project any more, so proceeding without a written standard and planning first without coding anything should be the current methodology.

A good example of what I feel a proper specification should follow when being written is the PNG Data Format. This has been fully vetted with many specification problems removed, the entire process was done in the open, and a product wasn't the primary emphasis of the project. Indeed, I wish most open source specifications followed this route more.

The point I'm trying to make here is that indeed this is a problem of Research vs. Production. Freenet is bent on testing and trying new and different methodologies. While this is a noble task to perform, with white papers and honest to goodness actual science in computer science (wow, does that actually happen?) there does reach a point that it needs to move more toward software engineering where specifications written in plain old English (or other common written language between developers) is used. In a production environment, you should argue what changes to the protocol need to be made, discuss them in detail just how these changes are going to affect everything (like the move from IPv4 to IPv6), perhaps do some research on just how these changes are going to affect everything, and then publish these changes as a formal specification document.

As far as the protocol being backward compatable, that is not necessarily the case. There has been a huge move with the current "research" branch of Freenet with a totally different schema on how nodes communicate with each other, and there have been several instances while I have run nodes where I was simply **REQUIRED** to upgrade if I wanted to stay with the main branch of Freenet because the protocol changes were so big that it broke with earlier versions. I know that they are still less than a 1.0 version of the project, but I'm just saying that one of the things necessary for them to get there (to version 1.0) is to do a thourough specification of the protocol.

Also, I feel that one of the reasons why you don't see alternate implementations of the Freenet protocol is two fold:

1. The complexity of the implementation
   
2. The lack of a compleated specification
   

When you have more than one implementation for a complex data format/protocol specification, you tend to find errors in each other, including the base specification.

Re:Research vs. production

[hanssprudel]

The point I'm trying to make here is that indeed this is a problem of Research vs. Production. Freenet is bent on testing and trying new and different methodologies. While this is a noble task to perform, with white papers and honest to goodness actual science in computer science (wow, does that actually happen?) there does reach a point that it needs to move more toward software engineering where specifications written in plain old English (or other common written language between developers) is used.

I would argue, that since Freenet arguably doesn't work, it has not yet nearly reached the point. Trying to a freeze a protocol to allow multiple implementations at this point would result in multiple non-working implementations...

That said, I do think there are problems with the methology that has hampered the development. A greater emphasis should have been placed on some sort of duality between simulation and testing in the wild: where equal effort was placed on trying to simulate the network in each stage of it's development. That is easy to say, but it is understandable that the people working on stuff like this for free will always veer toward the hope of short term benefits to the visible product.

Also, a lot of the "science" is rather suspect. The core arguments for why the network "should" work are veyr heuristic, and no real analysis has been that conclusively shows the algorithm working as expected.

Guatanmo Bay

[kinnell]

Perhaps if it were anything other than a research project, Mr Clarke might be classified as a terrorist.

Re:Guatanmo Bay

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you're saying that Osama could get away with 9.11 by saying that he was doing research on structural integrity of aluminum at high altitudes?

Merge the two

[MacFury]

How long before someone makes a client to merge the two transparently to the user?

Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure George W. Bush can explain me the difference between "Dissidents" and "Terrorists".

NTH post!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

yayyyy yaaayyy!!!

It's open source right?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a personality or split of vision occurs, just fork the codebase.

It's open source right? Whatever will be, will be.

Dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure George W. Bush can explain me the difference between "Dissidents" and "Terrorists".

All you patriotic cowboys have not enough mod points to make my automatic generated opinions dissappear! Muahahahaha

Chinese dissidents?

[Anonymous Coward]

who cares about them? hail mao! I mean lmao.

Unusable...

[yanestra]

The best you can say about Freenet (at least in this place) is: Totally unusable, even with several days patience there's nothing to see, absolutely nothing, from nowhere, not even from people three blocks away.

It's a pain in the ass that some people (see Peek-a-booty, see Freenet) try to promote their great ideas by making the impression that they have working software. This is simply not true.
They are (maybe) at the beginning of a long development process, but there's nothing yet to see...

Saving Private Goatse

[Anonymous Coward]

* TROLL HIGH COMMAND *
* SPECIAL OPERATION 4A72FGSE - Q7 *

* CONFIDENTIAL * FOR YOUR EYES ONLY * CONFIDENTIAL *

Special mission: saving private Goatse

Soldier, your mission is to penetrate the enemy lines
and resue the private X.C. Goatse.
His brothers Penisbirdman, WIPO Troll, Hot Grits and his
naked and pertified sister Natalie Portman have
already been killed in this war against censorship and
bigotry at the slashdot frontpage theater.
We want to save his troll family from another tragic loss
and therefore remove him from the war and return him to
his home.
You have to find this private. He is member of the 2nd
troll parachuters who were dropped behind the enemy lines
to open a 2nd front and support our main attack at the first
post. His exact location is unfortunately unknown.
The objective of his team was to infest a BSD post and hold
the thread with *BSD is dying posts until our main forces arrive.
However, due to heavy moderation his team couldn't jump into the right
thread so we have only a very vague idea of his whereabouts.
After our primary attack at the first post, you have to penetrate
the enemy lines and search for this private.
This mission is very dangerous - we expect much bitchslapping
at the first post and zealot pro-linux moderation in the back.

Best luck soldier.
If you die in action, you'll be honored posthumus by a PWP crapflood.

General Borgus Trollus Trolligulus
Troll High Command
Special Operations

Re:Saving Private Goatse

[Anonymous Coward]

WARNING TO OTM MEMBERS!

Troll High Command IS NOT affiliated and NOT supported by the Open Trolls Movement!

Please ignore the parent.

-- Brought to you by the Open Trolls Movement

Re:Saving Private Goatse

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter...however, I think your website is broken.

Re:Saving Private Goatse

[Anonymous Coward]

yes we have server problems for the moment (it's because we use a BSD server who has died!)

feel free to email at opentrolls@free.fr
we'll contact you later when the website is up and running again (on a windows 2003 server!)

From the old article, it says...

[AArmadillo]

# What is Freenet?

Freenet is free software designed to provide a forum where information can be published and consumed without fear of censorship. It does this by providing a completely decentralized, and robust way that people can publish and read information anonymously. Freenet grew out of a paper I wrote while still a student at Edinburgh University.

Sounds like the canary has changed its tune, eh? Now freenet is a research project, not a 'forum where information can be published and consumed without fear of censorship.' Although I always respect a developer that wants to go back and fix bugs with a system before moving to another release (or I suppose in this case, after moving to another release), the email from Ian Clarke sounds downright aggorant -- you can address points about bugs without telling someone to go use another network. I don't use freenet, so it doesn't really affect me, but I definately feel sorry for those who do/did.

Re:From the old article, it says...

[javatips]

The two premises can be both thrue. The fact that it's a research project does NOT conflict with the fact that information can be published and consumed without fear of censorship.

Re:From the old article, it says...

[Anonymous Coward]

"in a robust way"

Re:From the old article, it says...

[Anonymous Coward]

How'd this get modded up?

Changed what tune? Canary? Where? I'm a bit irked at the misleading statement made by the unnamed reader that submitted this, and I'd be interested to see links to where Freenet was said to be anything more than a glorified pet project.

It's been my understanding that Freenet's always been basically in a continuous beta as a research project...

And as "Javatips" noted, it can be both a research project and a 'forum where information can be published and consumed...' (etc etc)

What do you think protocols like Gopher, http, and even the standard that became the 'net started out as? :P

Re:From the old article, it says...

[Bronster]

But it does conflict with ...and robust way that....

Guess it's too much to ask to even read the parent post these days.

Re:From the old article, it says...

[ttrafford]

I personally don't see how the words "research" and "robust" can't be together. Actually, I find it pretty strange people would make that assumption.

Re:From the old article, it says...

[AArmadillo]

I suppose I should have linked to the source where I copied that quote from, since it wasn't directly linked from the front page -- here. The issue isn't that it is in beta, or is a research project, but that the project has projected the illusion of being an anonymous and secure way to share controversial, or even possibly illicit, material. There are many people who have put a lot on the line on the basis that freenet meets these standards. As in, they could go to jail simply because of the information they have put out on freenet.

Re:From the old article, it says...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about "robust", then? And what about when the newfound "experimental nature" of Freenet prevents information from being published and consumed?

Want some?

[Anonymous Coward]

SSK@CJQPlUMajRGvVol9fLRm7zTCj4EPAgM/moira.tar.bz2/

^^ 230MB of sweet preteen porn.

Enjoy.

Freenet not perfect

[Henry V .009]

Ian Clarke is just saying that Freenet is imperfect, and some people are overreacting to what he said. Freenet is not about to start divulging anybody's anonyminity anytime soon. Actually the "research" is looking into continually better ways of protecting it. Freenet still has a long way to go, and creating some sort of pseudo-"stable" branch is not going to help things. Ian Clarke was talking about the bugs found in all software programs, not actual design failures. Of course, perfect security is a pipe dream, and those people who are throwing this tantrum can stop asking for it.

I hear it's great!

[taff^2]

Do I detect a hint of bitterness?

Always the dissidents....

[Anonymous Coward]

How many nefarious uses of the Internet are defended by pointing out how dissidents need to make use of them to save the whales or whatever. I think that whole argument is a giant red herring.

Re:Always the dissidents....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no. Whale saving is a rare occurence. Everyone uses peer to peer networking to backup their music and films ... so they can download them later, because of course they've damaged the original media.
Quite odd just how many /. users have damaged CDs ... never happened to me or anyone I know.

Re:Always the dissidents....

[swdunlop]

Try seeing how long those CD's stay unscratched when you work in hostile conditions; do enough field work in the desert, and you'll develop a new respect for music players with no fucking moving parts.

Re:Always the dissidents....

[Smedrick]

Screw the desert...all you need is a girlfriend who loves to borrow your music. Talk about hostile conditions...

Re:Always the dissidents....

[Anonymous Coward]

How many nefarious uses of the Internet are defended by pointing out how dissidents need to make use of them to save the whales or whatever.

The freenet users are the whales.

And I don't mean that as a compliment.

Re:Always the dissidents....

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever modded the parent down obviously never had a girlfriend.

I hate child p0rn

[Anonymous Coward]

They keep going on about how they've busted "big rings" of "thousands of people", but it seems that happens when they take down a pay site & arrest the owners of the (oftentimes) stolen credit card numbers.

They ought to comb through the P2P networks with bots & compare files with 'interesting' file names with a database of known files' MD5 hashes. They'd be able to take most of it down pretty quickly if they did that.

Did I mention I hate child pron?

"child/gay"?

[kerry-buckley]

i.e. child/gay porn sharers aer kicked away from the hubs.

Why are you lumping gay porn in with child porn? Is the only acceptable porn that depicting women, or heterosexual couples?

Just curious.

Re:"child/gay"?

[meta-monkey]

Oh, and that heterosexual couple darn-well better be married and do it with the lights off, too. We're a Christian nation, didn't you hear?

Re:"child/gay"?

[Flamerule]

Why are you lumping gay porn in with child porn?

Because dc hub operators have freedom to ban what they want, and many of them don't want to see child/gay porn, if any porn at all.

I think you read too much into that comment.

Re:"child/gay"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you lumping gay porn in with child porn? Is the only acceptable porn that depicting women, or heterosexual couples?

Well duh. Unless you're Aarkieboy you're not going to be trolling for gay porn on the Internet.

Re:"child/gay"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh it doesn't take much to get kicked on DC... I have seen a guy get a death threat and a permban from an op on DC just because he was sharing teen porn. I mean, holy shit, google has a teen porn section.

Re:"child/gay"?

[hendridm]

> Why are you lumping gay porn in with child porn?

He's not necessarily lumping them together, the DC ops are. Apparently they don't like gay porn which isn't uncommon among heterosexual males.

Can't we all just get along and share our gay porn freely?

Re:"child/gay"?

[Anonymous Coward]

have seen a guy get a death threat and a permban from an op on DC just because he was sharing teen porn.

It's not like he was losing anything - there is no good stuff on such hubs in the first place :-).

Re:"child/gay"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cause it's just as discusting and wrong.

Re:"child/gay"?

[gblues]

well, that'd surely help the video compression a lot, what with all those black frames. ;)

Nathan

Re:"child/gay"?

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

By using a slash (i.e. x/y) you are implying that they are the same, when in fact they are not (unless you are anti-homosexual). I think the appropriate thing would be to use a comma (eg. x,y; or x, and y)

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:"child/gay"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the only acceptable porn that depicting women, or heterosexual couples?

Depends on what "acceptable" means. I'll tolerate a lot more than I desire or wish to assist. I've no objection to someone else enjoying gay porn, but I prefer to avoid it and don't want to use up any of my bandwidth on it. The same goes for a lot of things, such as music that I don't happen to like.

Re:"child/gay"?

[mutewinter]

goatse.cx nuf said.

Re:"child/gay"?

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course you can't enjoy it too much, so the sound compression would be pretty good too.

looking for distributors

[RicRoc]

I like this comment:

It is estiamted that, after digging a 100 ft well, it is possible to achieve over six kilobits of extra RAM storage at 20 kHz.
We are currently looking for distributors.


Data storage in a well!

Seriously, though, I've been thinking that something like this is the solution to the real-world problem of permanent storage. CDs die. Tapes (or their hardware) die. Harddrives die. The only way to maintain permanent storage over _long_ periods of time is to think of it like drops in an ocean: data forever moving. The net will live forever.

We need a p2p network for secure, private file storage, not sharing. Anybody know of such a project? I don't think it's freenet, nor is it kazaa. Is this a new p2p idea? Data always flowing, noone knowing what's there. Just have everyone pay N MB to store one MB of private data, then the data can be N (-1?) fold secure.

Re:looking for distributors

[mrtroy]

I would strongly recommend doing some sort of operation like this with a small number of users, and all of whom who you know you can trust.

Or just buy a RAID

If you had some sort of p2p network like that, people would find ways to not provide any storage area and still use yours, use massive bandwidth for transferring what they have on your storage, or possibly crack it to get your data.

which would suck.

Re:looking for distributors

[mtucker]

How about OceanStore? The whole ocean thing even goes along with the "flow" analogy ;)

"OceanStore is a global persistent data store designed to scale to billions of users. It provides a consistent, highly-available, and durable storage utility atop an infrastructure comprised of untrusted servers."

Re:looking for distributors

[DirtyCowboy]

This sounds a little like the OceanStore Project that a friend of mine worked on in grad school.

Re:looking for distributors

[Anonymous Coward]

believe it or not, Sourceforge is down.

Re:looking for distributors

[Bish.dk]

We need a p2p network for secure, private file storage, not sharing. Anybody know of such a project?

I suggest that you take a look at Oceanstore, which seems to fit your description rather nicely... even the metaphor of an ocean of data.

Re:looking for distributors

[MP3Chuck]

WASTE perhaps? (I don't know all the details of WASTE but it sounds kind of like what you're intersted in.)

Re:looking for distributors

[Lord_Dweomer]

"The net will live forever."

Yes, it probably will. However, how many times have you gone to a website with some very hard to find piece of information.....only to find that the last crucial link in your quest is a broken link? No thanks. If I'm using this for file storage, it needs 100% dependability....or at least improved dependability over current storage media.

Re:looking for distributors

[RicRoc]

Thank you, looks interesting!

Re:looking for distributors

[RicRoc]

Thank you, looks interesting!

THE TROLL WAR

[Anonymous Coward]

The Troll War
Chapter 1

It was 03:00. The moonless night engulfed three individuals in complete darkness. Three individuals who moved, with surprising grace, toward a single destination. Three individuals on a campaign; a mission. A campaign to rid Slashdot of lame trolls. A mission to ultimately destroy Slashdot forever.

A low candle flame, flickering slightly in the crisp Autumn night breeze, lit the storm sewer corridors and access tubes with a deep yellow pallor. Faint whisperings, little more than leaves brushing against ancient cement walls to the rest of the world, could be heard.

"Where is Alan? I thought I saw him approaching a moment ago," Trollaxor hissed. Standing a full 6 foot, with slicked-back black hair and a few day's worth of stubble, Trollaxor looked every bit the revolutionary in his black leather biking jacket. His green eyes pierced the dimly lit darkness, awaiting a response.

"I believe he tripped on his beard," Linus stated matter-of-factly, with just a hint of impatience. Linus Torvalds, Open Source hero and maintainer of Linux, stood taut as coiled snakes as he realized the gravity of the situation.

"Contact him. We have already overstayed our time in this place, even as we arrive." Trollaxor pushed.

"Fine," Linus Torvalds threw back the hood that concealed his Finnish visage, which was painted with tightly closed eyes and a look of grim concentration. He rubbed his temples lightly as sweat began to bead upon his high Finnish forehead.

Mumbling rapidly in Finnish, Linus turned to the East, now raising one hand above his head, palm extended to the direction of the sun's somnal abode.

"I can't seem-- to contact him--" Linus grunted in broken English. "I will try another method!"

Now a tributary of Old Swedish poured from the well of Linus's foreign maw. Trollaxor started, "Linus, if he is lost to us, there is nothing you can do, not even a fossil language can bring him to us now!"

Linus broke his linguistic trance and turned to Trollaxor. "In the name of all discontinued Japanese Transformers! The enemy must have captured him! Damn him and his filth-ridden beard! Now you know why I hate working with dirty GNU hippies!"

The enemy, as both Trollaxor and Linus knew too well, were the nefarious Slashdot Moderators, a group of numb-minded, brainwashed denizens of their strange, dark world that patrolled in hopes of "disabling" those who rebelled against their beloved Commander's will. "As dirty as he was, he was a valuable ally that you and I and the rest of the free world needed," Trollaxor dryly pointed out. "If the Mods got him, we must forego tonight's plans and rescue him immediately!"

Grunting again, this time out of frustration and anger, Linus whispered sharply thru clenched teeth in a heavy accent, thick with Finnish and Old Gutnish phonemic forms. "In the name of unmade Beast Wars toys, how are you and I to do a thing if the Mods patrol tonight?"

Trollaxor, ever the rebel to thrive against challenge, grew a vicious smile as he turned to Linus again. "The harder they patrol, the harder we troll, my friend." Linus remained nonplussed. As Trollaxor tightened the belts on his black leather biking jacket and made sure all miscelanaous zippers were sealed, his face brightened even more. "We've faced worse setbacks. Remember the Fallen Trolls. And remember moreso those Trolls who have gone over to the other side."

As Trollaxor's voice trailed off, Linus hung his head and exhaled slowly. Thoughts of the fallen whipped thru Linus's Finnish brain like TCP packets to Linux's bit bucket. "No, how can I not remember. Troll Mastah, Signal 11, travesty... They tried to break us!"

"Looks like they'll try again!" Trollaxor replied, smiling, completing a verse from "Wild Boys", the infamous Duran Duran track that Trollaxor and his camp had taken up as their anthem. "Now come on. We have some Mods that need bitchslapped tonight!"

Linus closed his eyes and bobbed his head three times

Freenet preteen pr0n links !

[Anonymous Coward]

Who wants underage porn on freenet?

CHK@ZcoQ3U8hhBlwCqtvaLLbfFG9GsYOAwI,xtHJ0ZmayJSL f7 vsSzCmJQ/Set 21.rar
little-virgins.com Set 21. Blonde girl, no breasts, no pubic hair, age guess 10-11 years. 104 pictures.

CHK@nugZJA8bXrNEd9t0evhrSr29PRYOAwI,j0HRlYOmkBUa Ev dZLqp8rw/Set 30.rar
little-virgins.com Set 30. Blonde girl, no breasts, no pubic hair (same girl as Set 21) and Redhead girl, no breasts, no pubic hair. Age guess 10-11 years both girls. 103 pictures.

CHK@4M3mMWG0jUo6r~aonWy8dlx23d8OAwI,H6ZSDC55PhgL Nw ktq7jk-A/hussy-BDC-katya.rar
BD-Company Katya. Brunette girl, no breasts, no pubic hair. Age guess 9-10 years. 103 files in RAR, but only 80 are extractable, the others are corrupt.

CHK@4WcwCHeK~cHXG5-7RwgRfY6U~Z0OAwI,njhoDZElbnGC Xc EmdP077w/hussy-BDC-marina.rar
BD-Company Young Strawberries Marina. Young brunette girl, no breasts, no pubic hair. Age guess 9-10 years. Several spread pussy pics and some closeup pussy shots. 113 pictures.

CHK@00MfHsfdYBrMthBm4cYPxE~-rWgOAwI,UVk96BLx6szW zp BkD6vzRQ/hussy-FA-56a.rar
LS-Models Fallen Angels 56. Brunette girl, budding breasts, unknown pubic hair. Age guess 13-14 years. 63 files in RAR but only 31 are extractable, the rest are corrupt.

CHK@oytY-8F9gQPvh7px3Kek2gX3-JAOAwI,cGTLDuU6lVAV NY 3h92V1MA/hussy-FA-57a.rar
LS-Models Fallen Angels 57. Blonde girl, no breasts, no pubic hair. Age guess 8-9 years. 53 pictures.

CHK@UktPdvRk7971iERtqCVrCEpvLqANAwI,HcUxp38OTr3B CD -yrH6s0Q/hussy-GA-nadya.rar
Gentle-Angels sets 109 and 110, Nadya. Brunette girl, budding breasts with large puffy nips, shaved pubic hair. Age guess 14-15 years. Set 109 55 pictures, Set 110 58 pictures, 113 pictures total.

CHK@Vn7oo1kovQ8f7crkTNXJrY6H9ggOAwI,jDC0-pa42olL uZ uVnOwQcQ/hussy-LF-twogirls.rar
Lolitas-Factory.co m set Twogirls. Two brunette girls, one with budding breasts and one with no breasts, the younger girl has no pubic hair and the older has her first hair. Age guess 10 and 12 years. 100 files in RAR but only 98 are extractable, the other two are corrupt.

CHK@9ym9QXLx6V2vMfIA92KkjIu8qLUOAwI,CcDFiIFttzwK On oRvylFZg/hussy-LSG-14.rar
LS-Girls set 14. Beautiful brunette girl, barely budding breasts, no pubic hair at all. A closeup shows 1 breast, bellybutton, and hairless pussy. Age guess 11 years. 99 pictures.

CHK@SH3-SiSTEeIkBmppLORYQPYoeZEOAwI,yNs-0CrPOGH3 dF U23VXPqw/hussy-LV-39.rar
LS-Models.com set 39. Brunette girl, hairy arms and legs, budding breasts, no visible pubic hair. Age guess 13 years. 52 pictures.

CHK@Lu3anLbNqP1FRweaxKCN~n-jYH8PAwI,WO6woRcVGe0U p4 yZmkbylg/hussy-MLL-nora.rar
MyLittleLolita.com Nora. Brunette girl, no breasts, big bellybutton, no pubic hair. Several closeups of her beautiful bellybutton and hairless pussy. Age guess 10-11 years. 177 pictures!!

CHK@oXFam6N3Ky7wxla9MC29KbDqz0kOAwI,ZL-i0g-m6aNQ rq gJD0cMKw/hussy-NA-146-nelly.rar
LS-Models Natural Angels set 146. Dirty blonde girl, no breasts, no pubic hair. Age guess 10 years. 75 pictures.

CHK@RUwLMogkZxrFASQcms0dR9t2TPcNAwI,ivCchrSYOCIO rF lRvQ45ag/hussy-OL-tonia.rar
OnlineLolita.com Tonia. Brunette girl, budding breasts, first pubic hair, not facially attractive. Age guess 11-12 years. 57 pictures.

CHK@sc~UL9nq-mSFHU5iE4CQ0CUNY2UPAwI,WCjnGEA0GUDD 0n WGG4iT1Q/hussy-PG-Olga.rar
PreteenGoddess.com Olga. Blonde girl, no breasts, huge delicious bellybutton, no pubic hair. Age guess 10 years. Some images blurry, but #133 and #135 alone would make a gay man cum, this girl is amazing. 169 pictures!

CHK@x9Dbz0mOUuyTkNghA~jBVyu1ogINAwI,-u1P84jeR6jv BO DkUMa1iw/hussy-PL-12.rar
Pearl Lolitas set 12. Blonde girl, barely budding breasts, big bellybutton, no pubic hair. Age guess 12 years. 61 pictures.

Lora.rar
Lolita-Dreams Lora. Brunette girl, no breasts, no pubic hair. Age guess 11 years. 160 pictures!

As I see it

[L-s-L69]

Ive been using freenet for quite a long time. And have, in the past hyped it up and distributed CDs of it and related software to people. As it stands at the moment I will not use freenet until it improves drastically. The latest builts wont retrive anything, even the common link pages. Last time i checked most site maintainers had abandened their site because the network was so sucky. Ian Clark seems to be one of the worst freenet developers. His conserns over the type of material beening distibuted seem to be one of the many reasons freenet development is not progressing as well as it should. I only hope freenet will continue and grow into something to be proud of. We all need this kind of network, if not now, in the future.

Re:As I see it

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe you can spend your time learning how to spel

Re:As I see it

[jgvernonco]

I'll make sure and use my spell-check on this one! I participated in Freenet for several months.Being a "newbie" to the system, I waited patiently for my node to "mature", with associated improvements in performance. I did not expect Freenet to be anything like the internet in terms of performance; I did expect to be able to move about, slowly but surely. What I found was that performance was worse, rather than better (or the same). I was actually quite reluctant to do so, but I disengaged. The primary reason was that I was allowing an open node into something that seemed quite unstable. I do not "P2P" anywhere, and my support for Freenet is entirely philosophical, but I have to be practical, too. I hope that this helps explain what some of we "expatriates" are thinking.

What more do you guys want?

[SmirkingRevenge]

I'm sorry, but this guy isn't being paid for his project, made all of his source open, and worked his ass off on something the community uses.

He doesn't "owe" anyone anything, and we should all be thankful that (and this is the main advantage with open source) a project isn't dead just because it's creator is tired of maintaining it.

Instead of complaining about it, branch the code! Make it better! Or at least make it into whatever you want. You see, that's the beauty of open source, instead of "shit, or get off the pot" it's "code or STFU".

Re:What more do you guys want?

[NDPTAL85]

Slashbots just take and take and take and never give anything in return. Heck they couldn't if they wanted too since only a very small minority of Slashdot posters can program worth a damn.

Re:What more do you guys want?

[Snaller]

He doesn't "owe" anyone anything,

No, he owes everybody respectful behaviour.

You see, that's the beauty of open source, instead of "shit, or get off the pot" it's "code or STFU".


You forgot "I can't program, so i'd like you to do this"

Re:What more do you guys want?

[HRbnjR]

Actually, wrong.

They posted on Slashdot years ago asking for donations to hire a developer to build this next generation secure p2p network.

After reading their paper I thought it was a good idea, so I gave them money.

Now, it's years later, and I'm still waiting for something I can use. They owe me.

Re:What more do you guys want?

[Dhalka226]

No, he owes everybody respectful behaviour.

He owes respectful behavior to those who give it in return.

For 2.5 years, I ran a fan website for a music artist. I donated well over 40 hours per week of my time, donated money for things like various domain names (a friend provided free box and colo via a contact he had for which I am eternally grateful), and eventually watched the site grow to supplant all other fan sites for the artist. It even become bigger and more popular than any of his officially sanctioned sites.

We developed good contacts with the artist's management, published our appreciation for his talents, created free advertising for him (on and off the Internet medium), and in return even got both he and his managers posting on our message boards instead of their official ones.

People still gave me crap about how I chose to run my website. Everybody decided they knew how to do it better than I did despite the success. The rest of the staff and I carefully met and discussed each of our rules, not only to establish them but to establish their limits. For instance, one rule was that we wouldn't permit swearing. It's not because I don't swear or mind seeing it, but the artist was twelve years old when he entered his contract and it seemed best to instate the rule. We decided exactly what we considered swearing. But when I said "hell"--a word we had explicitly determined was not considered swearing and that most people don't consider to be--I took shit about how I break my own rules and I'm a terrible moderator and blah blah blah.

In addition to the website, I also wrote a piece of GPL'd message board software. Again, I get dozens of complaints. I'm not talking feature requests here, I am talking about people telling me that my documentation sucks and my support--which I stated I would not offer but gave some support responses anyway--sucked, or that it just wasn't good enough for them. Then they were shocked when I told them "if it does not meet your standards, find another piece of software."

Where am I going with this? Quite simply, I was donating my time and services--both to the artist and, more directly, to the fans that took advantage of what I offered, and then to the users of my software--and I was not about to bend over backwards being respectful to people who wanted nothing more than to run their mouths at me. If anything, they owed me respectful behavior--respect for what I had done, the success I had, and even the fact that they used the service I provided them to bitch about the service I provided them. They did not deliver that respect and I certainly did not oblige them what they did not give me. I would not dare tell somebody else they need to.

"Either help, stop griping or find an alternative" seems an exceptionally reasonable response to me. Frustrated, maybe, but reasonable. And as far as this--

You forgot "I can't program, so i'd like you to do this"

--you're right, that request does enter in, but it is all the more reason to be respectful and patient. Not only is one taking advantage of a free product offered, created with donated time, but they are requesting that the author alter the program to suit them. Nagging or bitching that things aren't going your way are disrespectful and will almost certainly be met by an equal level of disrespect.

Did you read the newsgroup comments Ian replied to? Things like, "they have led a lot of people to have some expectation of usefulness despite the fact that it is clearly alpha software yet they have a release called 'stable'." Aside from being a crappy sentence, it is complaining that they just aren't doing things right, that they are misleading people and that, most annoyingly, their program is not useful. Of course, not doing thigns "right" is from the perspective person doing the bitching and, so far as I can tell, not anybody actually contributing to the project development.

Continuing, "I suspect part of the proble

Then and Now

[Plasmic]

Ian's Comments on Freenet... Then and Now

Real vs. Theoretical:

Then: "Freenet is not just theoretical, it has been downloaded by over 1.2 million users since the project started, and it is used for the distribution of censored information all over the world, including countries such as China and the Middle East." -- Freenet web site

Now: "Freenet is a research project, always has been. If people find that its usable, then great, they can help us research how to make it better." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

Use Freenet vs. Use Something Else:

Then: "Freenet is a pretty effective and scalable way to distribute large files and it is immune to "denial of service" attacks, so it is certainly useful beyond its primary goal of permitting anonymous information distribution." -- Ian, GrepLaw Interview

Now: "If you want something easy to use that works today and claims to protect your anonymity, I suggest you try Earth Station 5, its developers tell us that its just *great*!" -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

Production vs. Development:

Then: "Freenet is also actively used in other countries, including the United States, to distribute censored information such as the Church of Scientology "Operating Thetan" documents. Freenet has been download by over 2,000,000 people." -- Ian, GrepLaw Interview

Now: "I have never ever characterized Freenet as being anything other than in development. Either help, stop griping, or find an alternative." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

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.

Re:Then and Now

[Rogerborg]

I'm getting the distinct impression that it's all getting too big for Ian, and he really doesn't know what to do next. I read his post as a plea for help, but sans the important admission that he really, really needs it.

I wonder if he's stuck in the situation where he really wants to retain control over Freenet (for the best of reasons), but has hit the limit of his technical ability.

Where should he go from here? Assign the copy rights to the FSF and trust in the basic goodness of people, I suggest.

Re:Then and Now

[Anonymous Coward]

There was (understandably) a perception among some people that Ian was implying that Freenet was already very secure and fully anonymous.

If you read closely what he actually said, he did push it strongly, but what he was mainly saying was that it was a working system to transfer files. He did boast about its use to transfer prohibited information, but he didn't explicitly recommend it.

He may have meant well, but his attitude has probably led some people to make bad decisions about what is safe for them to put on freenet. But then, the Slashdot editors are probably about as guilty of hyping freenet as well.

Re:Then and Now

[Snaller]

Now: "Freenet is a research project, always has been. If people find that its usable, then great, they can help us research how to make it better." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

It would appear its not a newsgroup but a webboard?

Re:Then and Now

[Sanity]

I'm getting the distinct impression that it's all getting too big for Ian, and he really doesn't know what to do next. I read his post as a plea for help, but sans the important admission that he really, really needs it.

The post was a plea for people to stop griping, and start helping - nothing more, nothing less.

I wonder if he's stuck in the situation where he really wants to retain control over Freenet (for the best of reasons), but has hit the limit of his technical ability.

If there was a problem here, which there isn't, it would be an organizational one, not a technical one.

Where should he go from here? Assign the copy rights to the FSF and trust in the basic goodness of people, I suggest.

We have already agreed on a resolution to this issue (in fact, we did probably about 24 hours before this was submitted - which raises some questions as to the motives of the poster).

Re:Then and Now

[Sanity]

Then: "Freenet is not just theoretical, it has been downloaded by over 1.2 million users since the project started, and it is used for the distribution of censored information all over the world, including countries such as China and the Middle East." -- Freenet web site

Now: "Freenet is a research project, always has been. If people find that its usable, then great, they can help us research how to make it better." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

No contradiction here. Linux had many users before reaching 1.0, this indicated that it was not just vaporware, but surely didn't indicate that it was production ready.

Then: "Freenet is a pretty effective and scalable way to distribute large files and it is immune to "denial of service" attacks, so it is certainly useful beyond its primary goal of permitting anonymous information distribution." -- Ian, GrepLaw Interview

Now: "If you want something easy to use that works today and claims to protect your anonymity, I suggest you try Earth Station 5, its developers tell us that its just *great*!" -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

Wow - I think someone needs a lesson in irony.

Then: "Freenet is also actively used in other countries, including the United States, to distribute censored information such as the Church of Scientology "Operating Thetan" documents. Freenet has been download by over 2,000,000 people." -- Ian, GrepLaw Interview

Now: "I have never ever characterized Freenet as being anything other than in development. Either help, stop griping, or find an alternative." -- Ian, Newsgroup posting

Again, no contradiction here either. Every single one of those 2,000,000 people saw that it was 0.xxxx, they knew that it wasn't yet production ready, and they wanted to try it anyway.

Please stop trying to turn a minor debate that has already been resolved into some kind of massive split in the ranks of Freenet. I have never seen the Freenet development process as vibrant or as active as it is now. Yes, they recently did some pretty significant code-overhauls that have destabilized the network temporarily, but when it comes back it will be better than ever.

Whoever submitted this divisive crap to Slashdot is just trying to stir up shit, where really there is nothing to stir up.

Re:Then and Now

[SWroclawski]

Do you realize that your post is in response to a post by Ian or are you trolling?

Re:Then and Now

[__past__]

It would appear its not a newsgroup but a webboard?

Gmane is a service that lets you read and post to mailing lists via NNTP with a usenet newsreader, and makes archives available on the web. So, Ian posted to a mailing list, which was routed to usenet and archived as a (read-only) "webboard".

And now, would somebody please mod me off-topic? :-)

Re:Then and Now

[Snaller]

Gmane is a service that lets you read and post to mailing lists via NNTP with a usenet newsreader, and makes archives available on the web. So, Ian posted to a mailing list, which was routed to usenet and archived as a (read-only) "webboard".

Ooh, that sounds usefull. Does it work with any mailinglist or only a select few?

And now, would somebody please mod me off-topic? :-)

Schush! Not so loud, they do that at the slightest provokation, such as setting a comma wrong! (How about modding some threads up instead?)

Re:Then and Now

[__past__]

Does it work with any mailinglist or only a select few?

Well, read the page! You can get basically any mailing list via gmane that can be subscribed by anybody. For the mailing list manager, gmane looks just like any other (human) subscriber.

And it is very useful indeed. Thanks, Larsi!

Ok, Ok, so it's a research project....

[QCompson]

but he didn't have to be snide about it. Next time Mr. Clarke should take a few deep breaths before he responds; otherwise he really comes off sounding obnoxious.

RIAA...

[BiggerIsBetter]

Funny how the RIAA and friends can move heaven and earth in an attempt to get info on people trading bad music on P2P networks, and yet nobody can do same to cut down on kiddie porn. Where the fuck are the priorities???

Re:RIAA...

[Rogerborg]

There's no money in helping kiddies. There's votes to be had in saying that you're going to help them, but saying is a very different thing from doing.

Re:RIAA...

[Anonymous Coward]

How is shutting down their business "helping" them? Kids have to make money somehow. And the sex industry is way more lucrative than those lemonade stands. Isn't this supposed to be a free society?

We have always been at war with FreeNet.

[pb]

Nothing to see here, move along...

Not "then". Use "than". Sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

English is my second language and I end up the one correcting YOU. Sheesh

The FreeNet Users Are Revolting!

[da3dAlus]

Of course they are...a bunch of unbathen geeks downloading pr0n. What did you expect?

[Laugh, that was funny]

So where does this leave the US army in Iraq?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dissidents are people with an opinion that differs enough from popular opinion to attract negative attention from state officials, while terrorists are people who try to accomplish their goals by killing civilians on purpose.


I think your definitions need work.

Note to moderators: this is not flamebait. Do some research.

Re:So where does this leave the US army in Iraq?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain? Where does it leave the US army?

Re:So where does this leave the US army in Iraq?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see... an oven is for cooking food, while a refrigerator is for storing it.

But wait!

Where does that leave laundry machines? Which one are they used for: cooking or storing food? I'm so confuuuused!!!

Re:So where does this leave the US army in Iraq?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was... surreal. Thank you.

Paranoia, suspicion and speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

Some intelligence agencies have got to Ian, and coerced him into making Freenet unusable and deterring people who would insert material beyond the reach of the laws of their country of residence.

Ian's lawyer has warned him that encouraging people to use Freenet could make him personally culpable, and eligible for extradition to any number of countries under the extradition treaties

Ian's time in USA, before, during and after the Sep 11 attacks, have screwed with his head

Anarchists of the world, UNITE!

[kfg]

(Cue music)

Ian Clarke, Ian Clarke, riding through the land. . .

"Blimey, this redistribution of free information is trickier than I thought."

Look, you take a few million rugged individualists the try to throw one blanket over them this sort of thing is bound to happen. An acquiantence of mine once complained that they couldn't get people who were Libertarians to register as party members.

Well duh!

Parties aren't part of the Constitutional structure of America. Why would a real Libertarian join one?

The very concept is a bit like the proverbial procrastinators meeting or herd of cats.

This was bound to happen. It's also bound to blow over. Maybe it'll even result in some "genetic annealing" of the net.

KFG

Re:Anarchists of the world, UNITE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting point about the self-contradictory nature of trying to bring network structure to anarchists.

It turns out that the Constitution does have a small clause that allows the creation of political parties -- the 1st amendment. I know that some libertarians are too independent to ever join the party. But some do join the party as an expression of their free speech, and also as a practical way to coalesce their political power. Think of it as being "flexible" rather than "self-contradictory".

Re:Anarchists of the world, UNITE!

[kfg]

You are butting up against a point I did not make.

KFG

Re:Anarchists of the world, UNITE!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are butting up against a point I did not make.

Well, then evidently you ended up making the point inadvertently. Specifically, you wrote:

Parties aren't part of the Constitutional structure of America.

That is the statement I was refuting. I disagree with your idea that parties "aren't part of the Constitutional structure of America". The Constitution does, in fact, create the structure that allows political parties to exist.

The Constitutional structure that provides for political parties is not large and detailed (like it is for the establishment of Congress). But the structure that provides for political parties does, nonetheless, exist -- entirely within the 1st amendment.

Re:Anarchists of the world, UNITE!

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

I know that some libertarians are too independent to ever join the party.

I'm not a liberatarian but most so-called liberatarians in USA are liberatarian/right or liberatarian/conservative. Hence, they end up watering down their principles and joining the Republicans.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Anarchists of the world, UNITE!

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

I'm not an anarchist but there is something about anarchism that most people don't understand.

You can very well have the same social institutions, structures, and relationships under anarchism. For example, you can have a school (a socialist institution) under anarchism without any problems. BUT there is one KEY difference. Any institution or relationship or structure under anarchism must be VOLUNTARY. So, you can still have a school where people are educated but they must be voluntary. In contrast, modern day schools (which are socialist; with some capitalist ones) are NOT voluntary.

Contrary to popular belief, anarchism is not chaos! Status-quo supporters in the early 1900's (who were mostly capitalists, colonialists, or imperialists) discredited anarchism by equating it with 'chaos', 'anarchy', and 'disorder'. An anarchist society will have none of that...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Anarchists of the world, UNITE!

[kfg]

It is the same part of the Constitution that allows the Boy Scouts of America to exist.

I made my point explicitly.

The point "I" made is your own.

KFG

Re:Anarchists of the world, UNITE!

[kfg]

The best definition of an anarchist that I know of is someone who doesn't need a cop to tell him what to do.

KFG

Re:Anarchists of the world, UNITE!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the same part of the Constitution that allows the Boy Scouts of America to exist.

Right. So do you also wonder why a "real Libertarian" would join the boy scouts?

What is it about "real Libertarians" that you think makes them unsuitable for participating in anything that isn't "part of the Constitutional structure of America"?

Re:Anarchists of the world, UNITE!

[kfg]

What is it about "real Libertarians" that you think makes them unsuitable for participating in anything that isn't "part of the Constitutional structure of America"?

Absolutely nothing.

I find it amusing that some of them find themselves unsuitable for joining a political party, made a joke about it, tied it to an analogous joke about a procrastinators club and implied my aquaintence was attempting to herd
cats, taking further amusment that all the while he is a cat himself expressing distress over the behaviour of cats and apparently oblivious of the fact.

And just to make sure people could understand I was approaching the issue from a not entirely serious point of view right off the bat I started things off with topic line that made a joke about orginizing anarchists.

And all of this analogous to the situation Freenet now finds itself in.

I could have also thrown in a joke about a "Non Joiners Club" and brought up Will Rogers' famous response to the question,"Do you belong to an orginized political party?"

"No, I'm a Democrat."

But I didn't.

I thought that would be overkill.

The personal point of view that leads one to the Libertarian political stand is one that tends to agree strongly with Washington's Farewell Address to Congress.

Indeed, you'll often find a link to it prominently displayed on the front page of their websites.

There is no law of nature that prevents cats from herding. They simply don't feel like it. It isn't in their personal nature.

Where on earth you got the idea that I made any statement about Libertarians being unable to belong to a political party out of my bemused observation

that by their nature they are not inclined to do so is beyond me.

I'm inclined to believe you made it up.

You wouldn't, by chance, belong to the Libertarian Party, would you?

That would explain it.

KFG

Re:Anarchists of the world, UNITE!

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

I suppose if you subscribe to the Confucious school of thought and like simplicity in your definitions... I personally go with more complex definitions :)

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Anarchists of the world, UNITE!

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't, by chance, belong to the Libertarian Party, would you?

Monster Raving Looney actually, but if I lived in the US then Libertarian seems to be the closest equivalent.

I have always understood

[br00tus]

I have been following Freenet and Freenet development for some time, and I have always undesrtood that Freenet is in the process of development. What is Freenet's version number? Is it 1 or above? No, it is 0.

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.

Freenet revolt link has been changed

[lone_marauder]

It now points to freenet's donation page.

What's with Ian Clarke ?

[Snaller]

He's acting like a stroppy school kid "try earthstation 5" indeed. Somebody stole his Power Puff Girls collection?

Re:What's with Ian Clarke ?

[Snaller]

He's acting like a stroppy school kid "try earthstation 5" indeed. Somebody stole his Power Puff Girls collection?

request for information

[smd4985]

does anyone know why the new freenet build is so buggy? i understand that there were a huge messaging change (use of NIO), but is it buggy just because there was so much code change or because NIO is broken? any information would be appreciated....

Phew!

[WWWWolf]

I had been having headaches to get to Freenet lately. So it was just a technological/ideological problem? For a moment, I thought it was a Coordinated Attack from MPAA, RIAA and Valve Software to stop the distribution of movies, mp3's and HL2 source code.

I was already genuinely worried that I was about to lose my access to my precious very slow bits and Java proggies that hog CPU and memory when they start up! But if it's a technology problem or an ideological one, it can be fixed...

Typically, I'm too tired to do anything until this "proven" software hits APT...

Blown way out of proportion

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a project leader telling someone to help fix what's broken, wait till it's fixed, or go play somewhere else. Happens all the time, read some Linus Torvalds posts to see how he gives people hell who give him shit. Nothing new here, move on. It's not the end of Freenet.

Re:Blown way out of proportion

[garote]

Why is there always at least one haughty poster who, TEN PAGES DOWN in a list of interesting and relevant replies, seems to think it's appropriate to write, "Nothing new here, move on." ?

I reiterate: No one here forced you to hit "read more".

Entropy

[RPoet]

I'm trying out Entropy at the moment, and I have to say I'm impressed! It seems to work almost exactly like Freenet (keybased, same kinds of keys, same syntax for keys), but it's a lot faster. Perhaps like Freenet was in the old days, I don't know. Entropy is actually fast enough to be usable.

Re:Entropy

[jmpvm]

Part of the reason it is "a lot faster" than Freenet is because the network is much, much smaller. Not only does a small network perform better, it also does less to preserve your anonymity.

Re:Entropy

[Harik]

And there's talk of making the two networks compatable in the future. Freenet is hindered #1 by java. It just dosn't lend itself to an async message based protocol. Lots of blocking threads and context switches. The alternative is Non-Blocking IO, which was only recently added to java and buggy as hell. Entropy is a good starting point for a native-language implementation of freenet. Certanly a lot of extremely expensive crypto would do better as native code, maintained by other people. (OpenSSL, anyone?) However, freenet DOES work. I can browse freesites that havn't been inserted in months, so apparently the data is still around. I think a lot of the slowdown is due to java NIO bugs causing two nodes to continually wait on a write to complete to the other before reading. Eventually the problem will be tracked down and fixed and we'll all go back to the fast freenet we were used to.

Storm in a teacup

[Sanity]

I am disappointed that Slashdot would post this kind of thing, we have this kind of discussion on the Freenet mailing list all the time, in fact many of our debates are far more heated. Whoever submitted this story is just trying to stir up some crap, and it is a shame that Slashdot has given them a voice. It is interesting that they didn't also link to the rest of the discussion after the email they quoted where the debate was largely resolved - I guess that wouldn't have helped the "fracturing in the ranks!" hysteria.

What part of >0.<5.1 don't people understand? How can people claim that we describe Freenet as production ready when the fact that Freenet isn't is embodied in the very name of each release?!

This is not inconsistent in it being downloaded by users, nor is it inconsistent with people using it - since, as anyone familiar with Open Source development, such usage is part of any O.S development process.

Anyone that does choose to use Freenet is encouraged to understand what it does and does not protect at the moment, and those that do, do-so on this basis.

We agreed to resolve these issues by creating a more conservative stable branch of Freenet, and efforts are underway to make this happen as we speak. Bottom line: "Move along, there is nothing to see here".

Re:Storm in a teacup

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of >0.

The part where you say that something is less that 0. but more than 5.1? :)

(It did take me a second to parse your sentence...)

Re:Storm in a teacup

[Anonymous Coward]

> I am disappointed that Slashdot would post this kind of thing,

I'm disappointed that Slashdot prints stories on Freenet at all.

Clearly there's a big chunk of the "Your Rights Online" crowd thats glomed onto the idea of a Government-proof, RIAA-proof, wonder network of the future. But it's clear right now that Freenet is extremely small scale and no where near ready for the kinds of things the average slashbot wants it to be used for. So, it would be best if /. just shut up on the subject until Freenet gets established.

Absolutely correct

[Anonymous Coward]

I think many of the people on the Freenet development list should read this comment.

WHAT PART OF 0.X DON'T PEOPLE UNDERSTAND?

If Clarke was trying to mislead people about Freenet's production readiness we would have seen 1.0 long ago.

+1 Informative

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators - do your thing.

Rubbish!

[Anonymous Coward]

His conserns over the type of material beening distibuted seem to be one of the many reasons freenet development is not progressing as well as it should.

Rubbish! He has fought against those that wanted to remove any index site from the Freenet gateway page which liked to something questionable. You don't know what the hell you are taking about.

bad statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:bad statistics

[Rhone]

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.

There's also the issue of how the people are categorized in the first place. There are large groups of men out there who consider themselves "boy lovers". Most people would automatically categorize them as gay without giving it much thought, but many (maybe most) "boy lovers" are not attracted to adults of either sex--only to boys. It is therefore rather misleading that they often get classified as gay.

Reminds me...

[mirabilos]

... of the times when I was still using freenet-project.

On IRC, they always were mobbing me because of
OpenBSD, and after two head developers, Ian Clarke
being one of them, named me a Nazi and made tail-
length comparisions, I left.

Not only this saved me from the hassle of putting
up first Java then freenet-project up on OpenBSD
and publishing the results as a service to the
general public, no it also showed me, again, that
many projects have problems with their attitude
(can't exclude MirBSD though).

They were trying to replace fproxy by a Mozilla
(full bloat version) fork with fproxy integrated
at that time. Nothing really stable...

PS: Please don't ask for the IRC logs of when They
offended me - I delete my logs daily.

Re:Reminds me...

[BCoates]

What's your nick on #freenet, and roughly when did this happen?

--
Benjamin Coates

Re:Reminds me...

[mirabilos]

Same nick as here, and when... I don't have an idea.

Liar liar your pants on fire

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been on #freenet almost from day one and I have no recollection of any such incident, it is also totally out of character for Ian Clarke to do any such thing. The only people they ban are blatant trolls and even they are given more of a chance than on most irc channels.

Hardly surprising that you don't have IRC logs of this incident since you were clearly dreaming.

Re:Liar liar your pants on fire

[mirabilos]

Surprisingly enough you're an anonymous coward.
'nuff said, I got over it with this freenet-project.

The New Network is Good and there is NO Revolt

[Famatra]

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.

0.x stuff is in production all the time...

[Hobart]

ICQ was released in late 1996. It's /STILL/ a 0.x "beta" product, and always will be.

OpenSSL is at 0.97 ... I dare say hundreds of thousands use it, if you count OpenSSH using it, then millions do.

Re:0.x stuff is in production all the time...

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

Your points still don't prove anything. Any software with a version less than 1 is still in its early stages. It's a standard software engineering practice to release the first "solid" version as 1.0. The fact that some of them are stable is a pure coincidence. I will guarantee you that the VAST MAJORITY of software with a version less than 1 is not very stable and lacks quality.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:0.x stuff is in production all the time...

[Hobart]

Your points still don't prove anything.

We're on opposite sides of a subjective point here, so I don't believe I can convince you, but hopefully you can understand my point:

Regardless of the majority behavior (>50%) of software projects where 1.0 or later is considered stable, lots of software has, and will continued to be, presented to the end users, and end up in a production position.

I have the greatest respect for Mr. Clarke's work. However he did not push his work out to the public under a big disclaimer explaining "Don't use this". He did the opposite. And now that he has a big userbase of people, allegedly including people who are putting their safety at risk, and he's cursing them out.

Having users is great, and he would continue to have "understanding" users of a not-for-primetime product if he labeled it as such. "I didn't label it 1.0" is not a valid explanation.

(And, again, I refer you to the fact that OpenSSL, one of the only two SSL/TLS toolkits in widespread use [besides NSS], still being 0.x , but when the users have a problem, their developers respond, and the developers don't suddenly introduce changes that impact performance, telling the users "It's not 1.0".)

Re:0.x stuff is in production all the time...

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

NOT QUOTED IN ORDER

(And, again, I refer you to the fact that OpenSSL, one of the only two SSL/TLS toolkits in widespread use [besides NSS], still being 0.x , but when the users have a problem, their developers respond, and the developers don't suddenly introduce changes that impact performance, telling the users "It's not 1.0".)

That is in the minority. A large majority of software with
We're on opposite sides of a subjective point here ...

I don't see this as being very subjective. It is WELL KNOWN that
Regardless of the majority behavior (>50%) of software projects where 1.0 or later is considered stable, lots of software has, and will continued to be, presented to the end users, and end up in a production position.

Yes...but it doesn't prove anything. You can't make a strategic decision based on such a result. The probability of dying in a car crash when not wearing a seat belt is very high. However, there is a nonzero probability that you will SURVIVE without wearing a seat belt. Now, would you go around driving your car without a seat belt? Same thing here...

However he did not push his work out to the public under a big disclaimer explaining "Don't use this". He did the opposite. And now that he has a big userbase of people, allegedly including people who are putting their safety at risk, and he's cursing them out.

First of all, there are hardly any software which says 'do not use this'. Even version 0.2 software have no disclaimers (other than the standard no liability for damage stuff). In any case, I don't think he is implying that you shouldn't use it. Rather, he is saying that this is a progress-in-work and hence may be flawed.

As far as people putting their lives on the line, I understand your point. However, these people chose to adopt an early work (they are early adopters). The risk is always there that the software won't work as intended. Note that the issue here is flawed software, and not an ethical problem. In other words, it's not as if FreeNet all of a sudden started disclosing identities on purpose. As an analogy, the secure computer that you take for granted might actually have a bug. One day, someone might discover how to break into your computer due to some software bug (say a buffer overflow :) ). Now, your life might be put at risk (if this computer is very important). But can you really blame the software (especially if it is Free Software with no guarantees or liability)? I see the same issue here.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:0.x stuff is in production all the time...

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

IGNORE THE OTHER POST!!!!
NOT QUOTED IN ORDER.. other post has some errors due to use of less than sign :(

(And, again, I refer you to the fact that OpenSSL, one of the only two SSL/TLS toolkits in widespread use [besides NSS], still being 0.x , but when the users have a problem, their developers respond, and the developers don't suddenly introduce changes that impact performance, telling the users "It's not 1.0".)

That is in the minority. A large majority of software with less than 1.0 are not very good. This is a standard practice. This doesn't mean that I (albeit a home user only) does not use less than 1 software. But it does mean that I don't expect much out of it. If it works, great; otherwise, I am not going to be hostile to the developers. (BTW, perhaps an even better example is Mozilla Firebird, which I'm using now. It's great... a little unstable... but quite usuable).

We're on opposite sides of a subjective point here ...

I don't see this as being very subjective. It is WELL KNOWN that less than 1 software isn't really release quality. That's just standard practice. It's not as if I'm making this stuff up so it is somewhat objective.

Regardless of the majority behavior (greather 50%) of software projects where 1.0 or later is considered stable, lots of software has, and will continued to be, presented to the end users, and end up in a production position.

Yes...but it doesn't prove anything. You can't make a strategic decision based on such a result. The probability of dying in a car crash when not wearing a seat belt is very high. However, there is a nonzero probability that you will SURVIVE without wearing a seat belt. Now, would you go around driving your car without a seat belt? Same thing here...

However he did not push his work out to the public under a big disclaimer explaining "Don't use this". He did the opposite. And now that he has a big userbase of people, allegedly including people who are putting their safety at risk, and he's cursing them out.

First of all, there are hardly any software which says 'do not use this'. Even version 0.2 software have no disclaimers (other than the standard no liability for damage stuff). In any case, I don't think he is implying that you shouldn't use it. Rather, he is saying that this is a progress-in-work and hence may be flawed.

As far as people putting their lives on the line, I understand your point. However, these people chose to adopt an early work (they are early adopters). The risk is always there that the software won't work as intended. Note that the issue here is flawed software, and not an ethical problem. In other words, it's not as if FreeNet all of a sudden started disclosing identities on purpose. As an analogy, the secure computer that you take for granted might actually have a bug. One day, someone might discover how to break into your computer due to some software bug (say a buffer overflow :) ). Now, your life might be put at risk (if this computer is very important). But can you really blame the software (especially if it is Free Software with no guarantees or liability)? I see the same issue here.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Nothing wrong with it

[phorm]

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.

Doesn't work.

[Kjella]

There's no way to ensure that those N-fold people actually stay with the program, and not quit/delete data/fake storing data.

If you gather up a bunch of say 5 friends, which all store data on multiple disks or with redundancy (RAID1 / RAID5), located in different areas (no natural disasters taking out all) running different systems (not all taken by same Windoze worm) you'll have better data security than 1000 random P2P users.

Kjella

Are you trolling for the spin-off Freenet or typo?

[Kjella]

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).

Yeah. 100,000 kilobytes. 100 Megabytes. 800 Megabit throughput per second. Where's this, Freenet over Internet 2?

Kjella

+1 Insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, some sanity in this discussion.

DIBS

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly p2p as it operates between named entities, but this may be the solution for the problem:
http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~emin/source_code/dib s/index.html

Re:Storm in a teacup (Long live Fred!)

[Myself]

Making a more conservative "stable" code branch isn't going to improve anything if the underlying network (by which I mean the vast body of nodes and datastores) doesn't work. The difference between a Yugo and a Porsche is irrelevant when the roads are flooded.

What Freenet needs, and what fredisdead hopes to accomplish, is a network on which routing actually routes, and datastores actually store data. It would be icing on the cake of address resolution keys actually resolved addresses, too. The trouble with the development network is that it's too big, and too unwieldy, to do anything efficiently with the current routing algorithms. Freenet has serious issues with scalability, and the fact that most users don't want to run the daily-upgrade treadmill doesn't seem to be helping.

We can move a lot of traffic, and most of the whiny users, onto a separate "production" network. If the effort takes off, it'll be big enough to provide useful anonymity but small enough that routing might still be functional. Then development can continue, hopefully with a more enthusiastic user base, which can upgrade every time Toad sneezes and help debug Next-Generation Routing, which I'm still optimistic about.

You're absolutely right that Freenet has always been straightforward about its status as a work in progress. "Stable" is, in the sense that it doesn't spontaneously stop accepting connections, or decide to use 100% CPU for no apparent reason. But "stable" and "useful" are two vastly different things. The users that Freenet has attracted want something useful. If the development network begins to outperform the production network, then perhaps another switch will be in order. But there's no sense in trying to force users to remain on a useless network when they obviously have things to get done and are willing to split off in order to accomplish them.

In the grand scheme of things, I agree that fredisdead is a minor event that's probably not deserving of a Slashdot story. But it's a social statement: Freenet is too interesting, and too widely publicized, to remain so broken for so long. Develop, test, and develop some more. But don't drag everyone along for the bumpy ride.

Seems to be a Typo

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to be a typo, but why not try it out?

Here are a few mirror sites where freenet.jar content build can be found:

http://misty.d2dc.net:65535/pub/freenet
http://www.geocities.com/freenetfid/

a few words

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people would automatically categorize them as gay without giving it much thought, but many (maybe most) "boy lovers" are not attracted to adults of either sex--only to boys.

"Boylove" and "gay" have a common history. It's not accidental that gays have been accused of having something to do with child/youth sexuality. Much of the homosexuality described in art and history has been pederastic. In the past 20 years, in reaction to heavy political and social pressures, gay has been defined away from it's historical precedents, and it's social agenda, to be an exclusively adrophilic homosexuality. The high tension between the concepts of "boylove" and "gay" is partially a product of our recent history of sexual liberation, and the cultural wars thereof. (I could go on...)

Anyway, it isn't true that most boylovers only love boys. Some boylovers identify as gay and also love men. Some boylovers are straight with sexual tendencies towards boys. Many are married, or in long term homosexual relationships with adults. Many, of course, are not attracted to adults of either gender in the least.

Probably a significant proportion of homosexual boylovers are more exclusively attracted to boys due to the political wars that have gone on during the past 20 years. The gay community is one of the most vocal opponents to the concept of boylove, even though many gay men are themselves attracted primarily to teens and boys. This is because of the constant, prejudicial accusation of gay men as child molesters. The men who can adapt to an androphile (gay) exterior prefer this mode of existance to living under a more consonant, but embattled identity (boylove, pederasty, etc).

So, while your commentary carries some truth, it is much more complex than that.

_khl

Osama Research Company

[Anonymous Coward]

(aka Osama Bin Laden:)

What do you mean?! I *was* doing research on structural integrity, you unsensitive clod!

Iraqi civilian deaths

[Anonymous Coward]

"When was the last time you heard an Iraqi [civilian] death reported? "

Every day on Fox News and CNN. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Things aren't far worse than what we have been led to believe, since we haven't been told anything other than the truth of what is happening.

That is not anarchism

[Anonymous Coward]

"For example, you can have a school (a socialist institution) under anarchism without any problems"

Well, there is one little problem: once you have strong government present, it is not anarchism.

"BUT there is one KEY difference. Any institution or relationship or structure under anarchism must be VOLUNTARY."

No, anarchism means no government. It does not mean "any government no matter how oppressive as long as it is voluntary". Besides, any "socalist" institution, such as what you mentioned, is not voluntary.

"Status-quo supporters ....discredited anarchism by equating it with ... 'anarchy'...."

Shocking! That is outrageous! It is as bad as if someone equated catholicism with catholics!

"'. An anarchist society will have none of that..."

It can't exist, since once you get more than a few people together you have government. The most anarchist society has been proposed by the Libertarian Party, which for better or worse advocates the least government of anyone.

The Emma Goldsmans who claim to be furthering anarchy by having the government take away more freedoms from the people are for the birds. Literally, coo-coo.