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Dept. Of Homeland Security Chooses Groove, P2P
Ryan Barrett writes "Groove Networks has
announced that their P2P infrastructure will power the
Homeland Security Information Network, an initiative to increase
information sharing between federal, state, and local intelligence agencies.
(The initiative doesn't give the govt. more information, it just helps agencies
better share the information they already have.) Groove
Workspace has also been certified with two govt. security standards,
FIPS 140-2
level 1 and NIAP CCITSE. In related news,
Groove's developers have been diagnosed with acronym whiplash."
Give the federal agency more MP3s!!! And the Justice Department can finally get quick access to pr0n so they can research it to help ban it!
April 1st isn't for awhile, go back to sleep!
I thought p2p was evil and used only by terrorists. At least that's what the RIAA told me...
It's a very interesting idea that the govt. is considering P2P technology as a way to share information...what a turnaround from their RIAA-hand-holding policy. (Sure, I'm a little biased). But more importantly, despite these security measures, I wonder how insecure our data will be. And how many more government employees will have access to it. One things for sure, they'd better make damn sure this system is safe.
Every windows user is a sadomasochist.
This will make it hard for the RIAA and MPAA to denounce p2p as evil now doesnt it?
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
Anyone have a clue what this is? Sounds like a crypt of some sort. Perhaps what the Dept is looking for...
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
So does this mean that the MPAA/RIAA will be after them?
Or the DoJ might start investigating the underhand tactics RIAA has used to curtail P2P services.
Either way, this is very good news.
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
I think it is a good idea because this way there will not need to be one central database. If my police station needed records from California they could just search and get it. It will also prove to the government that P2P programs are good and can often serve productive uses. Will medical records be next?
Get paid to read spam
Surely a product of this process is more information?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Oh yeah, and Jello Jigglers are quite pertinent as well.
Because there aren't already enough government computers and agencies that don't understand file sharing and how not to leave their files on network shaes for all to see. At least now maybe the republicans will have a more standard and powerful search app that crossreferencs more machines than having to resort to going into "My Network Places" and just randomly clicking along to access other peoples personal files.
We wouldn't want the AG catching you trading Paris Hilton pics around those government networks, would we...
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Its a sad thing, but as the posts here points out, the association has stuck, and legitimate applications of P2P technology has suffered because of it.
Look at how JXTA has been languishing for the past few years.
Cmon folks, P2P is not piracy. It mirrors how distributed complex systems in nature behave and it has the potential to create dynamic, loosely-coupled distributed systems that may just get us out of this IT rut.
How does Groove archive data? Is there a centralized secure repository or is all of the data on client nodes, only as secure as that particular user chooses to be?
Neat in a way, but it sounds like a mess for doing real work.
File: post-911-plans.doc (share or u will b... 192 KB
Damn! I hope nobody starts to download: Ad-aware, Adobe Acrobat Reader (32-bit), AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Biromsoft WebCam, Copernic Agent, Delphi 6, Diet Kaza, DirectDVD, DivX Video Bundle, Download Accelerator Plus, FireWorks 4, FIreWorks MX, Global DiVX Player, Grokster, ICQ Lite, ICQ Pro 2003a beta, iMesh, JetAudio Basic, Kaspersky Antivirus, Kazaa Download Accelerator, Kazaa Media Desktop, Matrix Movie, McAfee Antivirus, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Windows Media Player, Microsoft Windows 2003, Morpheus, msn hack, MSN Messenger (Windows NT/2000), Nero Burning ROM, NetPumper, Network Cable e ADSL Speed, Norton Antivirus, Office 2003, Panda Antivirus, PerAntivirus, Pop-Up Stopper, QuickTime, RealOne Free Player, Registry Mechanic, SnagIt, SolSuite 2003: Solitaire Card Games Suite, Spybot - Search & Destroy, Trillian, Virtual Girl Sofia, Visual Studio Net, Winamp, WinMX, WinRAR, WinZip, WS_FTP LE (32-bit), XoloX Ultra, ZoneAlarm
n a.html
That's just trouble waiting to happen... Source: http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/w32mapso
--
Real-time deal updates from multiple major deal sources
If it just disgusts you, is it porn or what?
To paraphrase some supreme court justice or another, I can't tell you where I'd draw the line, but I'll tell you on a case by case basis, if you pay my normal hourly rates.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
In related news, all terrorist data has magically turned into porn, warez, and mp3's
Many of you may know the founder of Groove (Ray Ozzie) as the guy who created Lotus Notes.
Just showing that he's been in the spotlight before, it's not some random Joe who's suddenly found his product approved for Government use.
What does the DHS need with really old partitioning software?
If every single department shared their information with every other department, wouldn't there be information overload? I don't think bandwidth is infinite...and even if it was, the people are still human and can only process so much information at a time. If P2P is implemented on a department-by-department basis, information overload will be reduced, but some of the benefits (e.g. increased collaboration) will be negated. Ditto if P2P is implemented on even smaller scales (sub-department). If I recall correctly Groove stores all its information on client nodes, and I believe each node caches the information on other nodes. This would create another problem with respect to information overload...hard disk space, memory for database indexes etc.
Dizzam, this is risky as hell.
The Federales can't even protect thier friggin' nuclear research labs from 5cr1p7 k166195 hacking thier way in and having thier own way.
Now, all of DHS is going to open up their entire information exchange apparatus to possible cyber-attacks, spoofing and God Knows What Else by a-Q and others?
Nice.
I don't think a-Q is going to be swapping any pr0n, unless you define it as putting fuses into hot boxes of combustible materiel.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
I don't have windows to install the evaluation software, and couldn't find technical info on it.
The app reminds me of the tools I used 6 years ago on the Shrimp tools distribution for the MBone.
Does anyone knows if the p2p software is a Distributed Hash Table, like Pastry/Chord/Kellips, or if it is based on flooding like Gnutella/FastTrack?
I work with the DoD often, and am saddened to see them adopting Groove. (It's not just for Homeland Security either. Since Groove has been rubber-stamped as "secure" software, many other military/intel groups are using it)
My dislike comes from two simple reasons: Groove is Windows-only, and Groove is non-free. (It's a paid product, not cheap, and the license enforcement is more effective than anything Microsoft Word has)
If it were up to me, this wouldn't even be a concern: everyone would have Linux (or Mac OS X), there'd be no NATs blocking ports, and we'd all just share files via cvs or rsync (tunneled over ssh of course).
Can anyone recommend a free competitor to Groove I can try to push on my Windows-using colleagues, before they get sucked into a proprietary protocol? I suspect the strongest advantage Groove has is it's ability to penetrate NAT (that and having been approved by Washington) "Free Software" would be prefered, but "free beer" is ok.
From their web site: the company has obtained more than $155 million in financing from Accel Partners, Microsoft(R) Corporation
Yup, this is P2P at it's best! With those kind of finantial backers, wonder what kind of DRM they push with each file served? Is it any wonder GWB and the folks at Homelad Security (and ain't that just a very Nazi sort of a name...) "choose" Groove?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Don't worry, they'll start turning down upload speeds and "HOTINVESTIGATION_OSAMA_BIN_LADEN_FILM.avi.exe" will be everywhere. Not to mention that those cunts at the FBI like to cancel the uploads at 99%, fucking babies.
It is part of a block of a uuencode troll. Here is an example (by me). Just copy and paste the thing into a plaintext file, and remove the characters specified in the comments section on that journal (Slashcode fucks some of it up). Then, just run a uudecode on the file. It should spit out a zip file with a jpg. Open it up and enjoy!
P.S. The one this Anonymous guy is doing SUCKS! It's just a picture of someone's head. Mine is MUCH better!
No idea what it is offhand, but here is the total of the postings so far..
E )6 6EYB9FJ*CI*6FIZBIJK*SM+6VM [BYNL+#Q,7&T ]?;W^/GZ_\0`' P$``P$!`0$!' B(F*DI.4E9:7F)F:HJ.DI::GJ*FJLK.TM;:WN+FZPL/$Q ;GZ.GJ\O/T]?;W^/GZ_]H`#`,!``(1`Q$`/ P#NO$5JEUXQJ 6J&8I&-H8#KD# &#[UM>)=NQX-_:DOK)^8HKZ(_X0[0/^?*+_`+X%%;LCE]I$ CU7_D,O_P!D `
M#!D2$P\4'1H?'AT:'!P@)"XG("(L(QP7J#A(6&AXB)BI*3
MQ\C)RM+3U-76U]C9VN'BX^3EYN?HZ>KQ\O/
M`0$!`0````````$"`P0%!@'EZ@H.$
MA8:
M3?IXN(TM_G8H"`%&>3_2N3\0(E]H]Y=V$36
=T_D:T-!_Y!1_WJ**B/\`%9_X,2S1117:!__]
`
e nd
before the decoding you will remember to remove all "whitespace"
-----
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Sorry, it's not a zip file. It is ONLY the jpg. Don't bother with the Anonymous guy's troll; it takes like 20 jumps to other comments just to get the entire block of data! Mine is all in one place.
Have you ever done one of those "logic puzzles" you see in game/wordsearch/crossword magazines. You are told a story something like this.
Bob, Mary and Jane went to the store. Each bought an item. One of them brought $.47 to spend, one brought $1.50 and one brought $.35. Bob didn't buy the popsicle. Jane didn't buy the bubble gum. Bob had less than $.50 to spend. The nachos one of them bought cost $1.29.
Then you are given a chart that has each person's name on it, along with a list of the items and a list of the amounts of money brought to the store. Then you have to figure out who bought what, and how much money they started with. You aren't given enough information to answer straight away - you have to figure it out.
Bringing all this information together (consider banking records, credit records, information gleaned through co-operative business (remember that supermarket "discount" card you signed up for?) forwarding addresses given to the post office, college records, income tax information - the list goes on) a decent computer app to display it all in a meaningful way, and a smart analyst to look at it, and they can figure out most anything about anyone.
Big Brother never had it so good!
And you say "bah - it's all public knowledge anyway. They can already find it out."
and my response is this: Before, it was work. Before this, it cost money. Before this they had to have a reason to look at someone so closely. Now you go tickety-tickety-tick on the keyboard and blammo - you see that Mr. Johnson is apparantly feeling ill from the sushi he ate last night (from his credit report) because he bought some pepto bismol and OTC tagament from the supermarket (from the supermarket's customer tracking database - gotta love that discount card). But what's this? He took $300 out of the atm at 6pm, spent fifty at the grocery store, then took out another $300 at 9pm. This automated traffic camera places him in the seedy side of town at 11pm. What was he doing over there in the middle of the night with $550 in cash? Looks like we need to pay closer attention to Mr. Johnson.
And yes - the terms and conditions papers from my bank when I opened my checking account said that "since 9/11 any large transactions (over $200) will be reported immediately to the department of homeland security".
This is why the thought of a cashless society scares me.
Now where's my typewriter and my compound in montana? I thought those things were standard to us luddite freaks...?
Take that, Osama!
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Some things really need to be put in perspective.
Try donating to a real cause.
There's sharing and there's sharing. Someone should inform them. undo that, I'll feel safer if no one does.
He said he couldn't work for a company with such a gov't. contract. Good for him!
Big brother is watching you...
Not so shure about that. They may be right after all. Please see the post previous to yours.
& cid=857 5583
A link just in case.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100579
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
http://news.com.com/2100-1012-5172310.html
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Will they release a "Groove P2P lite" that will allow me to login and track who is downloading my info?
And then I can start random lawsuits suing people for downloading my personal info without paying me royalties...
Oh wait... sounds vaguely fammilliar...
1) Post private personal info on Kazaa
2) Start a bunch of lawsuits
3) ????
4) Profit!!!
P2P does not seem like the best way to collaborate on sensitive data.
Actually, Mitch Kapor resigned in March of 2003.
A system for sharing information between different agencies is not necessarily a reason to dig out the tin foil hats! Honestly!
One of the major hassles as a government worker is that everyone has their own database and their own numbering system, and they don't necessarily share well. That's not referring to turf wars--that's just referring to the different systems. The FBI has their file numbers, the Department of Justice uses a different numbering system. And theoretically, the FBI is under the DOJ! HHS uses their own own numbering system, so does DCIS, etc. This is a major problem, especially when the investigative arms of different agencies are going after the same people.
I spent some time as a paralegal for the DOJ, and one of my jobs was to check the status of older investigations and see what the result was or if they were still open. In many instances, it took weeks to track them down, because all I had was a FBI number and I needed the file from DCIS's investigation. Or I might have a DOJ number and need a file from the FBI... In both instances, they'd have to search by name, and that takes a very long time.
I know very little about Groove Networks or how the technology works, but if it helps share information, it truly is a good thing. This is not a civil liberties issue--its an efficiency issue. The Government already has this data--this just lets them access it better.
Cmon folks, P2P is not piracy.
I don't think the crowd around here are the ones you have to convince of that.
As I sat here pondering this article, tinfoil hat atop my head, I realized that the government was telling me something... Knowing that the government does everything ass-backwards, it is clear that their security standards are warning us of an impending attack by aliens.
Spaceman SPIF is coming to cause us much PAIN.
This is strange. Through the NSF, the goverment is already pouring money into Project IRIS, a collaboration of some of the best minds in true decentralized peer-to-peer architecture. It includes some of the creators of Chord (MIT), Pastry (Rice), and Kademlia (NYU) -- three of the fastest distributed hash table implementations out there (logarithmic time). So why are they investing in the Groove? Although I realize Microsoft has a well-staffed, well-funded research department (they were partly responsible for Pastry), it seems better to just pour more money into an already-going, well-researched project.
- shadowmatter
Funny, I said this same thing and got "flamebait". Who's cock are you sucking?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Not to veer dangerously offtopic in a slashdot post, but I would be very happy if the P2P filesharing networks were shut down, and research focused instead on other, better uses for P2P.
Bittorrent, for one example. A distributed website distribution system, that would make sites go faster the more people reading them, for another. In this case, a distributed resource network for sharing data amongst spooks. Another would be a decentralized network file server using the famous 1-2, 2-3, 3-1 file transfer system (Ok, I forget the name and it wasn't that famous).
Except for viruses, computers aren't pro-active enough on the LAN. There is no easy way to share data, information, PDA files, or anything else without setting explicit servers and explicit clients. More research into simpler, decentralized networking systems would be very helpful.
It's not that I don't like filesharing pirated content. It's just that there are so many other uses for the technology that are being underrepresented at the table.
*Full Disclosure, I've got e-donkey running right now.
The ______ Agenda
The Dept. of Homeland Security is run by crazy neocons who like tracking Texas Democrats.
...we all know P2P is dying! Last I heard, Kazaa was buried. Even naptser that was spiritually resurrected in dying. Hence, P2P is dead!
"My logic is undeniable."
Groove, as a successful example of a secure, stylish, and well designed communication platform employing a handful of todays top [web] standards has been an inspiration to me. Congrats to the dev team, the leader of which (IIRC from back when I was looking into this software years ago) was also one of the top dogs behind Lotus Notes. I'm not a member of the target audience for Lotus Notes nor Groove, but I just had to take the demo for the latter out for a spin after reading about the technology behind it. Well executed project -- give yourselves a pat on the back (that is, if the Homland Security execs are too stiff to pat it for you)!
This is a Government Server
**No Unauthorized Use**
_Directories/Files Available
__1. Emails Scanned
__2. Active Cases
__3. Cases on Hold
__4. Wire Tap Transcripts
__5. Satellite Photographs
__6. Prisoners Incarcerated List
__7. Archive Files
__-----A. Old Files
__-----B. Bob's Files **Top Secret**
__----------1. Porn0 Pics
__----------2. MP3 Files
__----------3. Porn0
__----------4. Misc. Pics
Hummmm . . . now where did I put that warez directory?
My Doctor prescribed daily nasal saline irrigation, hehe
Since someone else has already pointed out what the "crypt" is in technicality (part of a UUEncoded file), I'll tell you what it really is. It's proof that no amount of expanded or enhanced power on the government's part will ever make any of us safer from whatever Bogeyman we're worrying about today.
<hypothetical>Suppose you're a terrorist, and you've just finished the final draft of the Secret Terrorism Plans. Now you need to distribute it to your cohorts. The problem is, "the man" is spying on all internet traffic, and you suspect they might even be able to crack PGP. How, then, can you possibly send a copy of the Secret Terrorism Plans to 18 of your closest friends without being caught?
Easy, you bury it in shit.
You take your Secret Terrorism Plans file and PGP-encrypt it, just for good measure. You then UUEncode the encrypted file, and split it into 10 chunks. Each chunk gets posted as a comment to a different Slashdot story. Somewhere out-of-band - or even in-band, say, as part of the previous message - you tell the recipients to start looking for parts of the file in the first Slashdot story with "Linux" in the story text on March 15th.
Slashdot generates more than a million pageviews a day, with tens of stories and thousands of comments posted. Helpfully, your 10 UUEncoded chunks of the Secret Terrorism Plans are moderated -1, Troll, so that most people never even see them. Of those who do see them, most will ignore them, a few will wonder (as you did) what they are, fewer still will recognize that they're pieces of a UUEncoded file, and probably nobody will bother trying to track down all the parts and assemble them. Except for your intended recipients, that is.</hypothetical>
Am I saying that Slashdot is a medium for terrorist communications? Of course not, though it's certainly possible. What I'm getting at - finally, straying on-topic - is that no amount of Groove, or P2P, or database crosschecking, or FBI wiretapping cable modems and DSL connections, is going to find the Secret Terrorism Plans. People coordinated enough to simultaneously take control of three airliners are not going to be sending around "Secret Terrorism Plans.doc" via email.
IMO, Groove won't do any more to fight $BOGEYMAN than CAPPS or CAPPS II. It's just going to make it easier for "the man" to inconvenience the people who aren't doing anything wrong.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
If that were true, they'd stop trying to bust Kazaa.... but they are equally concerned with the mediums used (let's not forget the VCR was considered an instrument of the devil not so long ago).
P2P is a great technology, and if the Gov't. can learn to use it, then the RIAA can too. This brings me to a patentable idea, which someone has yet to suggest (as far as I know at least). Y not let people trade MP3s online, but for a fee. Instead of a stupid one-way download from itunes, e.t.c. y not let the users share their libraries among each other, and charge a fee like say 10 cents or something? The 10 cents go to the industry/artist, the users get the songs, and we're all happy (I think). If this is the first time anybody has seen this idea and they like, please don't forget to send me a slice of the millions you'll make with this idea (I'm trying to implement it myself, but have limited resources)...
My Favourite Meme
The few times I saw screens of terminals being used by agencies to track terrorists, looks like they were using some irc-like protocol. (A screen like this was shown during the 60 minutes special on the NSA.) So, what is wrong with using an irc-like protocol (encrypted, and within tempest-secure facilities or on tempest-secure terminals), for real-time information sharing and then a wiki or www + ftp for sharing of files?
-- SKYKING, SKYKING, DO NOT ANSWER.
Give agencies the power to better share information? What a violation of my privacy!
Or just just post the whole GPG message straight to a few messages via an anonymous proxy. There's also alt.messages.anonymous - now that place is scary. I hate to think what kind of stuff goes through there.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Awhile ago my friend and I formed a band (that only lasted for a few weeks) and we called it..."The Department of Homeland Groove". I thought it was catchy.
And now it actually makes sense.
I belong to the ______ generation.
I .... I thought P2P is evil? For pirating and stuff? I sure hope that the RIAA won't go and shut down the Dept. Of Homeland Security ... ohhh ... the confusion ... hurts ...
Oh really? The way the media has been buzzing about, I'd gotten the idea that there was a terrorist act at the Super Bowl... something about a warhead malfunction or something?
A) Source code, or
B) Linux/Debian/U*nix versions
This is a closed source Microsoft Windows 98/NT/2000/ME/XP pure play.
Have these idiots actually learnt anything about security and monocultures ?.
...will this network be encrypted? If so, what do you think the chances are that other peer-to-peer software developers will follow suit in order to stay up with the current trend in technology?
Interesting news to coincide with the conflicting, leaked letter from the California attorney general's office (even more interestingly is the indirect way in which one of these stories coincidentally lead me to the other, but I won't get into that). State courts disagree with the feds, I guess... Pretty easy when the MPAA feeds you your opinions, though.
To cut a long story short, it was completely and utterly unusable. After a few weeks we ditched Groove and went back to using email and IRC.
What if the bad guys take over? Where the hell have you been for the last 4 years, while these evil bastards have been raping our country?
Isn't this similar to WASTE? http://sourceforge.net/projects/waste/
They should have invested some money or codeveloped an open source project. Oh wait, Ass Kroft (!) still has his finger in all this.
(The initiative doesn't give the govt. more information, it just helps agencies better share the information they already have.)
I think you are confusing data with information.
By organising a fixed amount of data in different ways it's possible to get more information out of it than you could previously.
No but, yeah but, no but...
...p2p is a terrorist tool! I thought there was even a US secretary general or something who warned of the evil of p2p? Wasn't this the tool of the devil which helped distribute child porn and mp3's? WHAT IS THE GOV'T THINKING!!!???
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
that does nothing I couldn't accomplish in an hour of python scripting around ssh
andI were inclined to touch Windows programming, I might do it myself...
So get off your high-horse and put your code where your mouth is. Go create a competing product and sell it to the government for half of what Groove charges.
A technology is purely a means for achieving any number of ends. The specific ends for which it is used are individual and not directly the responsibility nor the scope of that technology.
The specific uses it is employed for are the issue for anyone taking offence at the incursions on their business model.
That the government is using that very same technology as a means to counter terrorism will make their rhetoric much more difficult to promote. Instantly any question of "how could this technology be used excapt for illegal purposes?" has been answered and with resounding implications for the security of the nation.
Deal with the specific actions. Don't try to suppress the technology.
Perhaps its adoption by the Department of Homeland Security will, once and for all, demonstrate that there are legitimate uses for the technology.
By extension, perhaps this will also serve to undermine the RIAA and MPAA's rhetoric that they have some sort of right to monitor the private communications of citizens using this technology.
Perhaps the Department of Homeland Security has genuinely made a move which will uphold the privacy rights of its own citizens.
Maybe I'm a rose coloured glasses type of idealist or a romantic, but I'd like to think so.
Get real, they wernt surfing beaucse they were pervs, they were looking for kiddy porn to bust.
Their outside access is logged *and* reviewed, so you know they wernt doing it 'for fun'.. Unless they were new on the job and totally stupid...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I have worked for a similar entity as a contract sysadmin, and yes they actually DO review.
The initial review is done by software, then the 'suspicious' logs are sent to the network security department for human review... It doesn't catch 100%, but that doesn't mean you cant get caught..
In a smaller shop, I was doing the entire process, and reporting violations direct to HR..
It was not my favorite part of my job, but it was part of my duties. ( as well as watching application usage, for 'unapproved' apps.. )
In these times you have to do this, or open yourself up to various lawsuits.. just a sad reality now. ( actually this is what started the 'small shops' monitoring, due to some threatening emails being sent.. only took one person to screw it up for the rest of us )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Where have I seen this before... a groupware platform built on required client software that costs money, and proprietary protocols? Ah yes, it was Mr. Ozzie's last invention, Lotus Notes. But this time, we also get to share our identities with the rest of the Groove network.
Notes is a case study in how proprietary groupware is doomed to lose out to standards. The same will happen with Groove.
As a recent piece opined, "the only thing harder than using Notes is getting rid of it"
And it seems to be true. InfoWorld's own CEO gave up his attmpt to get rid of Notes. Won't that make it difficult to migrate to Groove?
Here's a glimmer of hope for anyone still roped to Notes. At my company we have 200 of 450 desktops converted from Notes mail to Thunderbird/Sendmail/OpenLDAP and most of the rest will be done this week. Mainly, all it took was perseverance.
It's too bad Ozzie couldn't find a way to make Groove open and still make money.
Groove workspaces need a central server(s) to coordinate sharing. How would it work in an event of true security crisis?
And it is Windows only with major ties to Microsoft. If this news true, Microsoft will be entrenched there for decades.
Nice payoff for their original investment in Groove. Learn people.
Yesterday, we read a post about the CA Attorney General who (asting as a shill for either the MPAA or RIAA) said in so many words that the only use for P2P was the illicit sharing of files.
Now today we learn the US government is using this tool in the war on terror.
Don't blame the tool - blame the user of the tool. Tools aren't smart. Neither are some people.
I used it about a year ago. It has a nice concept of using P2P to share files and communicate amongst your peers on your buddy list. It was a beefed up version of AIM, with tons of features. Common chalkboard, common workplace, share desktop, etc.
The fall back I saw is that it ate of memory. I had a 256mb and 800mhz and it was lagging. I only ran a Windows version. I don't know if a linux version exists.
This monstrosity not only sucks up far more drive space that you'd think reasonable, but saturates bandwidth with it's proprietary and inefficient transport mechanism. When you're mobile (presumably the environment this will be used) drive space and bandwidth are really precious commodities. Then there's the question of incorporating Groove content into the enterprise -- it can't be done. The proprietary format means no enterprise data can get to Groove and no data can be obtained from Groove except by manual file import/export. With Groove, you pretty much throw out every other system you have.
Function is far more important than style, and while Groove is stylish and pretty, it just won't do the job that Homeland Security needs it to do. The pat on the back should be reserved for those who actually improve Homeland Security rather than spend scarce taxpayer dollars on shiny baubles like this.
Finally, someone gets it. Thank you.
You're correct about IRC; I've seen it run several times on SIPRNET backbones.
People coordinated enough to simultaneously take control of three airliners are not going to be sending around "Secret Terrorism Plans.doc" via email
People who take control of four airliners might be stupider, you never know.
Chandler is "Intended as an open source personal information manager for email, calendars, contacts, tasks, and general information management, as well as a platform for developing information management applications". That's pretty much the exact same decentralized server-less information distribution and synchronization space Groove is in. Building that while sitting on the Groove board, well, the conflict-of-interest is pretty obvious.
By the way, not to join the tinfoil-hat wearing crowd but it was was widely reported several years ago that Notes' vaunted security was compromised in international (non-US) versions by including an NSA private key. Supposedly 24 of the 64 bits used in the keys were always an NSA key, thus leaving holders of the US's key 40 bits to crack instead of the 64 needed by anyone else. This news apparently caused consternation among non-US customers, especially folks like embassies and other government agencies. I don't recall how the whole thing played out, not even how valid it was, and probably worded it wrong, but I'd be concerned about Groove having a similar set of "privileged keys".
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Nothing inexplicable about that; British Aerospace is the UK's biggest defense contractor, and one of the world's foremost manufacturers of torture equipment.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Why do you need PGP and split UUEncoded chunks when you can just speak in /. codewords? E.g.
Bill Gates is evil = America must die
RIAA is evil = Zionists must die
SCO is evil = Infidels must die
Diebold is evil = Everyone but Wahabbists must die
Linus = Allah
DDoS = terrorist attack
1337 = operative
virii/worms = WMD
Then, you can just say 1337 will spread worms and DDoS SCO servers for Linus. Linus is great.
Well, you must be a pretty lame coder to get stuck at such a basic level. I wrote some code to send mails/instant messages to lots of people in Groove, and it was not difficult.
of course, off with the patriot act and the dmca for just saying that.
scary, no?
I played with groove about a year and a half ago and really liked it's collaborative features... however, I did NOT like that it was an ASP model where THEY host your files and you are dependent on THEIR servers/network.... &shrug* maybe that's changed, or maybe for a real big client they offer the ability to buy/keep the server in-network (the customers network, I mean)
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Sending email and instant messages from Groove are not what I'd call enterprise data integration. Try getting documents to export into Stellent or Autonomy without requiring manual import/export procedures. Integrate that IM traffic into a Tibco or MQS messaging system, or into some XML stream. Without each user manually performing some export process, data in Groove is securely locked within Groove.
Peer-to-peer communication is nearly irrelevant to homeland security and intelligence functions. Getting data from the field and into the analysis/decision support process is the exact issue these guys are having trouble with. Groove doesn't address that.
But bravo for writing some code capable of sending data from Groove to anything else. That's actually a pretty rare accomplishment from what I've seen.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
I saw your post while meta-moderating, and I felt I should throw in my $0.02.
/. has some of the ideas. Etc. etc... Only Groove puts all of those functional possibilities in one package. It's really THE P2P package.
First off, Groove is a unique product. There isn't another quite like it. NetMeeting has some of the ideas. AIM/MSN/ICQ has some of the ideas. All P2P clients like Kazaa, BitTorrent, etc. have some of the ideas. SSH, CVS, RSync, and others have some of the ideas. Outlook has some of the ideas.
Developing new components for use in the Groove environment is, the last time I checked, a fairly easy thing too. That makes it even better. Finally, with the addition of a Groove server to the mix, which I haven't used but did advocate to them about 3 years ago, you have a product mix that is irresistible.
It's secure, extendible (ActiveX/COM), functional (multiple interaction workspaces can be available to the user and more are available as needed) , enabling (P2P), and robust (client/server).
You've probably seen more hype than you care for at this point, but you really should look into the products' abilities a bit more. You will quickly see that, like in the Windows world, there are pieces of Groove all over the Linux landscape. But there is nothing else like Groove.
As far as OS lock-in is concerned, this is the gov't you're talking about. They don't really get locked in. They have more of a history of adopting a generation of technology, freezing on it until it's absolutely worthless or too expensive to keep, discarding it, and then replacing it from scratch. No? You probably know more about that than I do, but that has been my impression from working with any federal level agencies. I'm much happier with the gov't investing in tools that already work, where possible, rather than dropping another XX Billion $$$ developing and supporting it themselves.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!