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Do We Need a New Internet?
Richard.Tao and a number of other readers sent in a NYTimes piece by John Markoff asking whether the Internet is so broken it needs to be replaced. "...[T]here is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over. What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a 'gated community' where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety. Today that is already the case for many corporate and government Internet users. As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there." A less alarmist reaction to the question was blogged by David Akin: "If you build a new Internet and you want me to get a license to drive on it, sorry. I'm hanging out here in v.1."
And it isnt really an option either.
They don't deserve (and won't get) either.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Fucking cry babies who literally want to trade liberty for security.
How we know is more important than what we know.
A World without Anonymous Cowards? I thought I'd never see the day!
and in fact, once again, anonymity in communication enjoys particular protection by the United States Constitution.
If "they" came up with a security model that required giving up privacy, then "we" would just come up with another that did not. There is no technical reason that privacy cannot be maintained... if anything, better than it is now.
Build all the "new" Internets you want. As long as you have clueless users on your network, you'll have attack vectors.
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
The internet is unfortunately the truest form of Freedom of Speech we have available. We can't even protest in public without fear of arrest or being harmed by police. There are a lot of people with money and power would like to stop the flow of information in its tracks.
Make it quick, so we can suffer less. But who is there to say the new one isn't gonna be worse?
Do we need a new internet? Yes, absolutely. My wife informs me that "the internet is down" probably two or three times a week on average.
#DeleteChrome
We need something like internet2.
1 gigabit ethernet type system would be excellent.
Something that replaces our old dying tech like TV. HDTV is not the answer. How are we going to get higher resolution tv with these mandated systems? We wont. It hinders new tech. I would love a ultrahigh resolution channel. We will never see it unless it uses broadband as delivery.
To the Editor:
Re "A New Internet? The Old One is Putting Us in Jeopardy," by John Markoff (Week in Review, Feb. 15, 2009):
Mr. Markoff both misstates and overstates the security problems faced by the Internet as currently designed.
He never uses the word "Windows," but the virus outbreaks he describes are almost entirely a Windows phenomenon, and due to the poor design of that operating system. Microsoft's apologists have been saying for years that this was only because Windows' market share made it the more attractive target. But Apple's share of the desktop market has skyrocketed recently to 15% without any outbreaks of viruses targeting the Macintosh. And Microsoft has never commanded more than about half of the server market; the other half runs open-source operating systems such as Linux (used by Google) and FreeBSD (Yahoo), on which viruses are essentially unknown.
Markoff says it's hard to prove your identity on the internet, and proposes government regulation as a solution. But many people have been proving their identities for years now using proven technologies like public-key cryptography. The U.S. government played a negative role in the development of these technologies by attempting to regulate their distribution through export-control regulations originally intended for munitions.
Find free books.
the success of internet is based on its freedom and anonymity.
Read radical news here
Why is it a bad thing that you aren't allowed to be anonymous? I've never really been sure that having to announce who you are is a violation of privacy. Why is everyone so desperate to remain nameless?
I, Mr. Anonymous Coward, hereby give up my anonymity. Now excuse me while I browse fake porn/warez malware sites with unpatched IE6 - after all, I am now safe!
Really? Internet white flight? Fucking seriously? While we're at it, let's build internet "projects" for the people that can't afford to use the "gated internet", and let's build "un-protected only" internet kiosks so that the "less fortunate" can drink from the fountain of knowledge. Jesus.
A "gated community" with fewer abilities for users? Why not call it "Access Owned by Large corporations" or AOL for short?
This comment was thought up very late at night and does not necessarily reflect my views at a more reasonable hour.
...the long and slippery slope.
From the summary : "users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety".
*gets out clue by four* NO NO NO NO NO! *WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM*
Quote : "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
Listen...
Even if at first this New Improved Internet worked the way these fools said it should, you can have a pretty sure bet that,
human nature being human nature, a lot of the so-called "bad" which happens to people on the current internet would begin to
happen there too.
That is all.
No.
I'm melting!
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
The internet is a network of networks. It's the protocol which unites them. Do you really think you can do better than TCP/UDP/IP?
You can use "our" network of networks to build yours. It's called a VPN. You can use any protocol you want and only admit people into your VPN who agree to provide a DNA sample and be strip searched, if that's how you roll.
> ...asking whether the Internet is so broken it needs to be replaced.
Yeah, I agree. Anonymity on the internet is completely broken. It is trivial for law enforcement to get a subpoena to force websites to reveal the IP addresses of users, and also trival for law enforcement to get a subpoena to force ISPs to reveal who had that IP address at a given moment in time. Granted, there are ways to make sure that the IP address you are using can't be traced to you, but those methods are kind of a pain in the ass.
> ...where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety
WTF? Any rearchitecting of the internet needs to have subpoena-proof absolute anonymity built in from the beginning. This "proposal" is like suggesting we rearchitect transportation to make sure that vehicle occupants receive no shelter from the weather.
I propose the new internet be named the patriot net.
You cant "go" there.
The Internet is a communications network. I happens to be a "the world's" communications network, more or less.
Just like in the real world, you are (mostly) anonymous as long as you chose. Just like in the world you can choose what information you want to send, and what information you want to request (Notwithstanding the tendency of certain mainstream operating systems to make some of those choices for you)
Just like in the world, there are certain networks which are connected to the Internet in a restricted way (compare to 'gated communities'). To communicate with them, you may need some form of credential (password, public key, etc).
The Internet as it exists today is an entirely different network than it was even just 10 years ago. Its continuously being 'rebuilt'.
Also, there are many 'private' networks that are built on top of the Internet as it currently stands.
Basically, this is never going to happen, and yet is already is happening, it's just hard to see for the average clueless moron.
It was called AOL, and it didn't work. It became, in fact, what Congressional investigators called "a magnet for pedophiles."
This isn't about safety. It's about control. Control of piracy, control of political agitation, and control of the truth. For all its faults, the net has created a populace that at least has the opportunity to be far better informed about the real world than our parents' generation.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
Markoff's still a raging idiot.
They That would loose a little liberty, to gain a little security, would deserve neither and loose them both.
THIS scares me more than anything... "create a 'gated community' where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety" Oh yeah right....leave "safety" in charge of some government idiots, or the UN...no thanks!
In places where the best of the haves hide behind gated communities, you know what happens? That's where the really enterprising criminals go. All of that faux security hasn't done a damn thing in countries like Mexico for the richest, who still have to worry about things like their kids getting kidnapped. The military still faces attacks on its secure networks. The fact is, no one and no institution is an island. If you don't participating in purging the world of ne'erdowellers and their ilk, you are just deluding yourself into thinking that your investment into your own safety is helping to get rid of the problem. That's why I advise friends and family to invest in a dog or two and a gun for defending their home, not a security system that can usually be defeated by a serious criminal.
Personally I think being identifiable has much bigger security issues. Still, I think that an internet that has inter-internet border guards might as well not be the internet at all. Maybe if there were some way to switch between one or the other for whatever you're doing. Super-secure connection mode and anonymous-style connection mode. What we really need is less morons on the internet.
Hell with cable. Lets just use 4g or wimax or something.
Look at the bright side - no more tracking cookies needed if you surf from: firstname.lastname.age.sex.city.phone.address.com
Nooooooooooooooooo.
I do think we need a new internet, in that we can then properly use the plural form of internet i.e. as in "give me back my internets you bastard"
Of course no-one will use the new internet due to lack of porn and free warezes and advertisements. Part of the appeal and success of the original internet is largely due to lack of accountability, and the ability to share ones own sick fetishes with the world completely anonymously.
Not to mention the target your painting on your forehead.
I mean seriously if your going to setup a new network simply for the purpose of being secure then why not just use a vpn? assuming you manage to setup a new "secure" internet, and advertise the fact that it's secure. It's a little like posting your ip on a hacker board and saying "bEt YoU CaNt HaCk Mez"
hmm yeah good luck with that
Windows, not the internet created the legions of Spammers, botnets and virii. In the Unix world, we closed the SMTP relays. Yet the Windows bots still swarm. Now. I am not saying that in the Unix world, we would be completely free of security vulnerabilities. There would still be hackers and spammers. But they would no6t be as widespread a problem. The proliferation of Spam has been directly attributed to the rise off Windows bots. Get rid of Windows, you get rid of the problem.
The other problem is the DMCA and DMCA like legislation. We need to be rid of the DMCA by any means necessary
No anonymity on the Internet? China, North Korea, and other totalitarian states would love this.
..."if it aint broke, don't fix it."
oh, wait...
In reality, it's too large an infrastructure to just replace. To work on bit by bit (no pun intended), yes. To completely rehash, NO.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
"Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." -- Benjamin Franklin
If we cant make the comparitively tiny step of moving from ipv4 to ipv6 I think its nigh impossible to move to "a new internet".
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
What neither of you seem to understand is that the physical infrastructure is irrelevant, and always has been, by design. Internet2 is a part of the Internet. The Internet runs on fibre, serial, cable, wireless, whatever, just fine. TFA talks about (actually, only sort of scrapes the surface of) architectural changes to the Internet. IPv6 (which is only tangentially related to the security issue), DNSSEC, BGPSEC, encryption by default, and so on-- these are the things that need to happen to make the Internet a safer place. But even those aren't "a new Internet". They're the same old Internet with some improvements.
The people working on core Internet protocols have known that these things have problems for a long time. This article doesn't contribute anything to the conversation. Microsoft themselves could contribute a lot to the problem of an "insecure Internet" if they just fixed their f'ing OS.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Ben Franklin 1775.
If I have a choice between the people who gave us Echelon, Gitmo, Abu Grahib, DCMA, COPA, and failed to stop 9/11 versus virsuses and spyware...Ill take the viruses and spyware. I can protect myself from viruses and spyware much easier than I can protect myself from encroachment upon my liberty.
This is simply a horrendous idea that certainly has no place. It is basically seems to be a ploy of those who long for a tolitarian police state to get their way. This is a very tpical pattern that we see with shutting down an open society and create a police state, create fear and some horrendous problem, creating a reaction and then you can get people to demand a solution, offer them your solution which is taking away their freedom. You can basically get people to beg you to enslave them. The reason they want to do this is to gain greater control and mastery over the people and keep them from exercising control over their lives and government. They want to be able to monitor what everyone says and does, so they can then punish those who are saying things which run contrary to their agenda or who are advocating for democratic change. To stay in power indefinitely a tolitarian state needs to supress all dissent. Getting rid of privacy is the first step on the road to totalitarianism since to supress dissent they need to know who has what opinions and views so they can attack and punish them. They want to supress views and opinions as well, and want to manipulate and control information to psychologically manipulate the population by with-holding information and providing propoganda which manipulates people to support whatever objective they wish or behave in the way they please. Yo can bet that the desire to prohibit for instance pornography as a psychological and social engineering purpose, for instance.
The internet is just fine the way it is. No censorship should be allowed and anonymity should be a basic right. Only with such rights can free speech exist. There can be no free speech without anonymity since they can suppress and attack those who hold opinions they do not like.
Sure with how things are now there are spam messages in my mail box but I would rather have that and choose to opt in for a filter in my own software, than to have some mass surviellance scheme. I also think that government and the big brother nanny state poses far greater risk to our children coming from the tolitarian terror state that emerges from this than anything they will see on the internet. Those who give up their liberty for so called safety will be creating out of the government a much worse menace than anything it was supposed to protect them against.
The main thing that needs to be addressed with the internet has nothing to do with increasing surviellance or reducing privacy. There needs to be more use of SSL and there needs to be secure encrypted BGP and DNS to make sure that routing tables cannot be hacked.
It makes me quite angry that after we have fought so hard as a country to secure our liberties from a tolitarian oppressive government prying into our lives and deciding what we should look at, that we have people who are actively trying to undo these hard won liberties and turn the country into a totalitarian nightmare where people live in fear of an oppressive and tyrannical government, like china.
"Those who give up essential liberty for safety will deserve and shall get neither" -Benjamin Franklin
how about a license to WRITE about the Internet... and a death penalty attached to any abuse.
John Markoff - that prick is still talking about stuff he does not understand? Last I checked he was doing a campaign against Kevin Midnick (back in early 2000's) and stating a bunch of false facts. He is also the self-made expert for computer hackers. Freedom downtime anyone? Oh well..
That works pretty well, but maybe for the next generation they could introduce T fittings.
Long answer: No.
Whenever I read this kind of stuff I really don't think any of these people get what an "internet" is... Once more with feeling the internet is not a network; it is a network of networks.
Last time your home windows computer went down with a virus, my computer worked fine. Even with the incompetents we have in outsourced IT support, last time your corporate network collapsed under attack, mine didn't. The internet is the cess pool^W^W happy village square where we all meet together. Your own network is not the "internet" and you can run it any way you want; it won't influence the rest of the world. If you cut off the internet it by declaring "a gated community" as the article (you did read the article didn't you?) suggests, you are no longer part of the internet.
Anyone trying to build a "new" internet should be encouraged at the same time as given a gentle education in basic network theory. If it's any good, then enough people will join it that when other particular bits of the internet collapse, they can still continue with their own useful lives. We need this kind of thing. If someone could build a network for their own country which could be relied on for emergency calls and at the same time let me read slashdot that would make a real difference (no BT's "all IP" network doesn't count). Definitely it would have to have some priority mechanism so that my slashdot couldn't get in the way of your emergency stuff; however, there's no way that such a new network can be successful if it can't cope with being connected to the current internet. That would just be security through obscurity and uselessness. Like claiming a computer is secure because it's had concrete poured into it.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there.
no change there then.
Blazing Spiders
If you're going to be developing a new Internet, allow me to propose you incorporate the Aquinas Protocol. It'll allow me to monit.... eh, enjoy seeing all the wondrous new benefits this provides to our users.
I also recommend routing the entire network to a certain locale in Nevada, just for kicks.
Ta,
Bob Page.
Oh by the way... MJ12 represent! Oops, sorry.
I have to struggle to cut through his horrendous grammar to figure out what he is trying to get across. I can hardly believe he identifies himself as a writer.
Yeah, it'll be fine to have this kind of internet once they start putting drugs like these in to the food chain.
Of course we need a new internet. Someone in the IT crowd obliterated it! I've been living in a bunker ever since.
Take your corporate, commercial, interests and go somewhere else.
Leave the existing internet just the way it is, though, on your way out.
There is an inherint friction between the desires of commercial actors and private individuals attempting to maximize their freedoms. Leave the internet as the great extended T.A.Z. it can be.
Maybe this September will finally end.
We just need to educate people on how to use the internet and not fuck up their computer. It would go along the lines of, 1. Don't go to shady porn sites 2. Don't download software to turn your cursor into a piece of glitter covered shit 3. Don't send money to people in Nigeria 4. Do use anti virus/spyware/adware programs 5. Use open source software when possible 6. If you want to figure out how to fix your computer/internet go to google.com and type in your problem By my estimation this would solve around 90% of computer/internet issues. Without giving up our freedom just because you are so fucking incompetent you don't know how to work your own machine.
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
What we really need is a return to bang-path routing. Everything after there was just downhill. Hard to use for newbies and not terribly hard for anyone with a clue.
And if the net was slow, you might actually be able to do something about it, not just hope your upstream got a freaking clue.
give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety
so I'll be safer by exposing myself?
factor 966971: 966971
The new bourgeois world order demands it.
There is nothing more subversive and abhorrent to the owning/ruling classes than this peer-to-peer network, on which nobody can know you're a dog.
That the smallest pipsqueak running Apache can pass for the largest media conglomerate, oh! the humanity!
What is needs is a strict pay-as-you-go, one way network that will feed what the big media conglomerate want to the masses, in which nothing negative (to the owning classes) can travel. A virtual Disneyland(TM) where everything (appears) nice so that the masses can be fond of the status-quo.
Goddamn it I'm sick of Markoff's shit. This is only the tip of the iceberg of his anti-freedom writings.
"Anonymity on the internet" is not broken. What is broken is the law (no pun intended).
Don't blame bad social policy on the tech. Bad laws (and poorly or improperly enforced laws) are to blame here, not the networking.
I think the AOL system was pretty much what the op is suggesting--a gated, fee-driven system that is safe for the kids and spam-free.
The problem is that systems like AOL are inherently limited, with a corporate team that decides its content and direction from week to week.
The Internet is amazingly varied and dynamic by comparison and it's little wonder that AOLers eventually left to join the greater outside world.
Comparing a Net 2.0 to a gated community is an intriguing concept, but in reality it would probably be too self-limiting for people.
It's possible today to stay in your own backyard on the wild and woolly Net 1.0. Just don't publish your email address, or else change it whenever you start getting junk mail. A lot of unsophisticated users just use the email assigned to them by their broadband vendors anyway, xxxx@verizon.net for example, and whenever they move or switch services their addresses change, too.
Also, just stick to a few trusted web sites, don't browse promiscuously, and you'll be fine. But life will be boring.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
demands a new internet. I believe the porn site operators should control the internet. They have a vested interest in Quality and Competition.
I'll build my OWN internet...with blackjack...and hookers. In fact forget the internet and blackjack part.
Guns don't need criminals to be defeated, 600 people every year manage to defeat themselves and get killed by gun accidents, according to the NRA.
Dilbert RSS feed
James Boyle discusses this a fair bit in "The Public Domain, enclosing the commons of the mind" http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/11063.
The thing is that this new internet will not be the enternet or anything like it. It will be a controlled place where you go to consume information produced with the aim of being sold.
It is something which gets trialed in various guises again and again. So far it has failed every time. Here In Australia there was a Mob called Free online which offered (dialup at the time) at no charge,providing you remained in their specailly constructed little world. If you left to look at the real internet, well that was billable.
Technical reasons certainly won't make this happen (I mean look at the failure to get anyone to move to ip6) However political will might very well do so, and that will be a dark day for a lot of free speech.
Free expression will be relegated to some prescribed sets of areas with stringent controls around the margins. Copyright will be enforced so ridgedly that even fair use will become impossible. Any criticism of the new order will be removed without notice and the critics, if they persist, will have their access terminated.
The last point already happens on a smaller scale. (Even Wikipeida has barred some people from editing articles). The new internet would make it a condition of use.
We can only hope that the next attempt to produce this networked shopping center will also be a dismal failure which financially ruins its backers.
read my mind at http://the-willows.blogspot.com/
"They who give up liberty to obtain safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin
here it is.
It has long been recognized by the courts that without the ability to "speak" (communicate) to the public anonymously, the whole concept of "freedom of speech" would be a joke.
It is necessary for proper political debate to be able to express one's views without fear of repercussion. If anonymity were outlawed or otherwise prevented, people would NOT be able to express their views without others knowing who they are... and potentially threatening them, or their wellbeing, or their employment, or their families...
It all fits together. But truly, without anonymity, freedom of speech would not last.
Keep in mind that the "Federalist Papers", and other important publications of information about the formation of our country, and the war of independence, were published anonymously or under pseudonyms. If they had not been, surely the people who wrote such things (Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, etc.) would have been harassed, arrested, or even killed.
He who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserves neither. -Ben Franklin
Sorry but John was obsoelete when the Internet was young. He made his name bumbling about trying to find Tsutomo Shimomura and then when that failed wrote a book about how other people did it. If you're talking clues about the future of technology or even its current state, John Markoff has nothing to do with it. There's already an "Internet II" and it has NOTHING to do with limiting content nor authenticating access. Sorry John, another loss. The Internet will continue to evolve as it always has. Welcome to the real world, now stop daydreaming and get out of the way Ehud
Us on Linux and BSD don't have any problems.
Heck even the Mac guys seems to doing quiet well.
It's the hoards of MS Windows and MSIE users that are having the problems. And DDOS is almost exclusively caused by windows users.
I guess the real problem stems from really crappy programmers that program mostly for windows thank god. It's probably a good things they having started coding for Linux. .NET .COM ActiveX, C#. It was all cool for making cute gui apps, but once net enabled, each flaw is magnified a million times.
VB
And without open source, there is no way to plug the holes, let alone find them easily.
I know what your going to say, Linksys router also were compromised at one point and some cell phones and what not.
Again Open source is the fix.
Without open source and open standards the net would not exist! of this I am 100% sure.
Why? How? Because many many times it has been tried with closed source. Where are they now?
Compuserve, tymenet, Novell, Q-link, AOL, prodigy, minitel... Need I go on.
If we were to make a new Internet, then it should be GPL!!! Legally require that anything connected must have all network related code be open and available.
We can calling GPLnet, Opennet, FOSSINET...
But it would be far simpler if we could just get everyone over open source. We we can openly debate, and offer fixes, and because it's free there is no penalty for people to migrate to bug fixed code.
We could certainly do without the ability to spoof addresses. "Hi, did you send this message? No? Okay." And "Dude, you told me other people sent bogus crap more than once in the past day/you don't have a valid MX record, not talking to you." Really ought to take care of such things.
As for the Internet, though? No. As long as identity can be given some basic level of guarantee (via IP addresses, cookies, e-mails/contact information, and simply the desire to maintain a reputation), what we have can work. Some stuff needs fixing, some software could use selling, some communities need to learn how to run themselves, but the Internet as it is works fine. If you want to make a gated Internet community, nothing stops you. It can exist perfectly fine as an invisible subset of the Internet.
I am a science fantasy fan
The Internet itself isn't broken, not by a long shot. What's broken are certain applications that run across it.
And even then whether they're broken is arguable. Take SMTP for instance. One of the big complaints seems to be that SMTP doesn't make any guarantees that the sender is who they claim to be. My response to that is "And?". The USPS doesn't make any such guarantee about physical mail either, and we get along just fine anyway. It's just acknowledged that the identity of the sender isn't determined by the return address they put on the envelope, but by the claims in the letter inside and even those claims have to be verified independently of the Post Office. And when people are naive enough to believe any important letter just because it claims to be from someone without actually contacting that someone to verify it, we laugh at them. So when people say "I got an e-mail claiming to be from Bank of America and it was fake!", why don't we laugh at them and go "Well, YES! When the e-mail said there was a problem, why didn't you call BoA directly and ask about it?".
Same for Web browsers and web sites, and dozens of other applications. People want the transport layer to substitute for their own judgement and common sense. The Internet doesn't do that, any more than UPS or the USPS do. We don't need a replacement for them, do we?
"any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security would deserve neither, and loose both"
~Benjamin Franklin
It is saddening and frightening that redoing the internet in a matter as described above is even being thought of, I personally do not want "big brother is watching you" to become a reality in a way that would dramatically affect my life, such as changing the internet to constantly monitor me.
John Markoff is just bitter because it's so "hard" to identify people on the Intenet. He wants a hacker-detector-exploder-button so he can continue claiming to be a security expert despite ranking up there with John C. Dvorak as "Crazy old nutjobs with books to sell". This asshat likes to stir up any ridiculous controversy, as long as it gets him a TV spot on some half-assed tech-for-the-masses weekly where he can plug his latest masturbatory novel.
Yeah, the Internet is full of holes, and that's just how we like it.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Hell, we need a new reality because the one we got is full of war, famine, crime, misery and all manner of grief.
Technically, murder-suicide does not violate the golden rule.
This topic has been discussed on slashdot several times before. It seems to me there is a growing consensus that this is not a good thing. Stanford University's Clean-Slate Program was originally conceived as a long term inquiry into two research questions: "With what we know today, if we were to start again with a clean slate, how would we design a global communications infrastructure?" and "How should the Internet look in 15 years?". I was quite surprised that TFA implies that by the end of the summer it will be running on eight campus networks around the country. Stanford University's Clean-Slate agenda appears to be entirely driven by big business - their seven corporate sponsors. Though they emphasise an inter-disciplinary approach, it turns out that the disciplines involved in this program are all technical or business and management oriented. They have not included disciplines appropriate to investigate social and political issues. Stanford's Clean Slate Design for a New Internet has no soul or social conscience. A new internet architecture such as proposed will open vast new markets and endless business opportunities - in short - a potential gold mine for the seven industrial sponsors. The fear is that the Stanford research program will trade off attention to social and political issues for expediency in the impetus to get the new infrastructure up and running sooner. I was so moved as to do some personal research into Stanford University's Clean-Slate Program a couple of years ago. See my blog The Internet is Broken!. Here as well you will find links to Stanfords site and the original proposal.
A new internet? But I haven't even beaten the old one yet!
Yes.
The article talks about Conficker, a worm that ONLY affects Windows machines. I'm not advocating that everybody switch to Linux, but it's a bit of a stretch to go from "worm that targets Windows" to "internet needs to be replaced". If Microsoft started making software that was actually secure, we wouldn't be worrying about things like Conficker, would we?
What really caught my attention though was the second page of the article. The writer starts talking about IPv6 like it's going to solve all of our internet security problems. Here's a hint for you: it won't.
Clearly, John Markoff (the article author) has either not done any research into the subject matter he presents, or this is alarmist journalism at its "finest". Pay no attention to this utter shit.
But their point was reasonable... and only slightly over the top.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
*checks*
...
Yep... we need a new internet
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
This one is full of fucking LOLcats and Rick Astley
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
What's really amazing is the a newspaper with the resources of the NYT allows an ignoramus like Markoff to write something so uselessly alarming and technically deficient. This is an example of the fear-mongering and the moron-level discussions of the internet that plagued us through 8 years of the Bushies. I have to admit, the general level of technical expertise of most NYTs articles is pretty low to substandard (except for Pogue).
Irrelevant musings of a NY Times writer with nothing else he could think of to submit to his editor that week.
It took decades of infrastructure building and programming and public training to make the internet what it is now.
You'd have about as much luck saying, "The English language is broken beyond repair. What we need to do is build a new one from the ground up!"
This is a silly, unrealistic idea in the same league as the one about fixing global warming by flying 10,000 jet planes day and night for years to dump chemicals in the atmosphere. Agreement on the broken-ness of the current system isn't even unanimous.
The only way to do it, other than all governments and heads of industry and media getting together to build a new internet, (uh huh,) would be to build a new system of protocols on the existing infrastructure, and try to convince people to abandon their current system. (Replace all their routers and modems?) "The first 12 months are free, and we'll bundle it with your phone bill, and anyway we're phasing out the old internet and migrating everybody over to. . . Oh wait, that's more like evolution than re-building from the ground up, which means it's still the same internet but with more appendages. . , which are backwards compatible with all the billions of dollars of technology currently in computers, homes, offices, telephone poles, data centers. . ."
Ugh. Why are we even talking about this. . ?
-FL
Gosh, halfway down the comments, and FINALLY someone mentions IPv6 and the like.
My first thougth after reading the blurb was "let's fix the problems with the current internet first before we start building something new". Plus new code has new bugs, so starting over is rarely the best option.
Get the *existing* technologies rolled out first, that should take care of some of the problems. Then start promoting public key crypto and the likes for the authentication problem.
And finally, ffs, stop thinking that you can completely control the internet. No one can. Not this version, not whatever they're wishing to replace it with.
/var/run/twitter.sock is a twitter socket puppet.
User maintains more than a dozen sockpuppet accounts on Slashdot.
Yes. people are building it all the time. Everybody is free *not* to make IP connections to computers he does not have a proof of thrust. You can use SSL, make your VPN, authorize against smartcards - iff you want. IPv6 adressed a lot of issued, end even if i am not a specialist, it seems that you can extend it.
Most Security and other problems ascribed to the Internet are in reality organizational issues, like establishing chains of thrust, like allocating resources for a fixed use (no, fixed BW does not come for free), planning ressources in general, education on different levels of hierarchy in the management (*before* making a decision), poor handling of responsibility (just because your former employee can connect to your computer, there is no need to let him log in. Unless you are doing something wrong.).
As a matter of fact, hoping that a technology solves problems for you, is stupid. To expect from smdy else to do you work is stupid. I for my part would say that basing the access controls to you companies computers onto something like "a driver license" issued by some underpaid city employee (remember if this is a "internet" and not only a "first world net", you will have poor countris as well issuing whatever is necessary to "accept a small loss in freedom". How do we handle the "axis of evil" states? Will some bureaucrat in some office decide which packes pass the the border and which dont, or can i still do that myself. And if i can to that myself, what is the difference to accepting some thrust centers certificates and not accepting some others?
Don't we go thru this same thing every few months?
The answer is still no, i don't want a nanny state run network.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Try telling it to these guys
No, Bush robbed us of our future. Obama is robbing our kids of theirs!
I need a new Internet
One that won't go away
One that won't keep me up all night
Or make me sleep all day
Against how many that DID manage to defend themselves without literally shooting themselves in the foot? And how many did not defend themselves at all and ended up victimized or killed?
/var/run/twitter.sock is a twitter socket puppet.
The cross-site problems all stem from the insecurity of the browser application. There aren't really any protocol or "internet" flaws here. Just stupid browsers and fragile web apps.
It's a lost cause. The economics which drive consumers and browser production and web app design are all against true security. They would fail miserably on a new "secured" Internet. Or, if it were really secured they would never be admitted as they would fail its prerequisites for joining a secure system.
Sure. Here is my adress: 127.23.55.3
Ping me, send me mail, send me fake rolex and pills.
These naysayers have been around forever. They were saying that the Internet was badly designed and didn't work when it started and they keep still saying. What did these people design? Teletext, ATM, Compuserve, ISDN, circuit-switched networks, and all that other overpriced crap.
What really makes these people unhappy is that the Internet is far less susceptible to corporate control than what they dreamed up. And that is, incidentally, why the Internet has been so successful.
I don't care. Just stay the hell off my lawn!
Have gnu, will travel.
That's why I advise friends and family to invest in a dog or two and a gun for defending their home, not a security system that can usually be defeated by a serious criminal.
The security companies themselves (no surprise there) actively perpetuate the myth in their laughably stupid advertisements, where some corporate office jockey actor puts on jeans and hooded sweatshirt and pretends to be a criminal breaking into the house while the poor housewife dials 911 and the criminal runs away as soon as the alarm sounds. Of course, the police always show up right away to take a report in the ad. Anyone who has lived in Los Angeles knows that is crap. The police might show up in time to rope off the area and pick up your body as part of another murder case that will never be solved. The police are not responsible for defending individual citizens, unless they have a prior comittment through witness protection or some such arrangement. They are responsible for protecting the public and society at large, but that doesn't include responding with top priority to your home security system alarm and they are not liable in any way for failing to defend you personally from violent crimes. The gun control people should try living for a year in one of those east Los Angeles neighborhoods and then see if they still hold to their views that no private citizen needs to own a gun.
A sane design for a new internet would separate certain human enterprises so we can perform each to it's greatest potential without competing interests damaging or destroying one another. As well you can tune each part for optimal security, performance, and service according to it's needs and function. As well, those activities that society deems as less than preferred yet is unwilling or unable to legislate away, make them available but expensive, so the money they raise can be spent is doing useful social work. For example, make superb, high quality pornography available, and tax the pants off it (pun intended), using the money to prevent real life sex crime. There must be dozens of other activities which can use the same model.
A significant portion of the net would be used for commercial enterprises, making spamming difficult but not impossible. Make spamming very expensive, and spammers will pay for the other parts of the internet. As well commerce should be priced to help support a significant part of the rest of the net. This would be the muscle and bone of a new internet system. You could subdivide commerce into large, medium, and small business, with certain costs and advantages to each level, insuring that all types of businesses get to thrive.
General public access, is for daily human interaction, the enterprises of friends and family, communities, and civil organizations. Spiritual, and social activities providing access to the social value in our society. This is the heart of the new internet. A diverse, active, thoughtful, and informed society can only improve the quality of life for all.
Governance, not just politics, but services and resource necessary for managing and mobilizing a society at addressing it's fundamental issues and promoting a high quality of life. Political work. Environmental work. Work towards public health, and legal equality. These are all necessary enterprises that might function under this section of the internet. The planning and functioning of society. This is like an endocrine system, a lower level infrastructure that make the critical environment for all other structures possible. A plentitude of useful information, makes people able to better pick their leaders, and an effective mean to distribute that information makes for an informed society.
A broad and significant portion of the internet must be preserved for Science, Education, Research, Development, and those human endeavors that forward the conversations relevant to human discovery. Making rich stores of knowledge available to everyone, and insuring that people are recognized and rewarded for their contributions, insuring the growth of our technology, and the success of knowledge workers is managed now and into the future. This is the brain of our new network.
By designing each part for appropriate bandwidth and transfer rate, and by having each segment of the system optimized to support present and future growth, we can insure an information resource that is secure where it needs to be secure, free where it needs to be free, and best suited to each common use. The internet should not block free human expression and enterprise (excepts where those enterprises that are determined to cause intentional harms to others, i.e. crime, terrorism, and war.) Building intelligent means to limit harm and maximize constructive use, and having appropriately draconian measures for those who engage in inappropriate use, we can build a system that serves the best intent for all users.
The reason why you are bombarded with spam is because IDIOTS BUY IT. If they did not buy from spam, then spam would stop within a month. And the reasons why virus are sent on Windows is because it is an easy system to crack. Once it is no longer dead last on the security trail, then the spam writers will target the easier system. Put the blame where it belongs; BOTH the fools that buy the spammed products and use bad OSs as well as those that send the spam and the virus.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There are, like, so many already.
Just last Friday, one of my staff sent me an internet, and I got it yesterday! Those tubes are CLOGGED with internets I tell you! Stop making new ones.
If it didn't, corporate America wouldn't be so desperate to get us to give it up. Now, I have the ability go anonymously or not, depending on what benefits me. I can identify myself in a relationship with an online business if their product or service is compelling. And I can maintain multiple identities if it is to my benefit to keep my relationships with Company A and Company B unknown to each other.
This recurring thee of my giving up these abilities in return for promises of 'really great things' (but never well defined) indicates to me that anonymity works. Or there wouldn't be such pressure to give it up.
Have gnu, will travel.
Start having IP's ban IE. Don't make network drivers for Windows.
If that's what they decided they were going to do, then they can go fuck themselves in their fake-assed Pleasantville/Stepford version of cyberspace 'cause I'M NOT PLAYING ALONG WITH IT. What they're suggesting is the absolute antithesis of Net Neutrality!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
"Microsoft themselves could contribute a lot to the problem of an "insecure Internet" if they just fixed their f'ing OS."
To true. Unfortunately, the internet is functioning precisely as Microsoft wishes.
600 people every year manage to defeat themselves and get killed by gun accidents
Yes, and over 40,000 in car accidents, 3500 in swimming pools. Where are cars and swimming pools mentioned in the constitution? It seems like it would be a lot less work and more useful to ban them first.
The poster child for the "Broken Internet" is the email protocol SMTP. There are other options. You can get X.400/X.500 based email and all you need to do is download Isode and install it... and get all the right certificates and find someone who is willing to talk to you. The US Government is required to migrate to X.400 based email sometime based on their GOSSIP standard. Many commercial mail platforms started out with X.400 and converted but you can see their history with the x.500 style directory services. There are lots of OSI standards that could replace the current TCP/IP stuff yet it appears that no one cares.
Actually most of the problems on the internet come from to much controll, not to little controll. The 2 big problems are net neutrality and privacy. Both are in danger because companies are able to record information like your IP-Address.
So if you want to make a new Internet, get rid of source IP-Addresses. Make the router aware of connections.
The Dancing Bunny Problem. There's an aphorism we seem to have forgotten: "never solve a social problem with a technical solution". The answer is more education for users; I don't see how any technical solution* can solve the dancing bunny problem.
* Well, S60-style platform security would go a long way, but I'd rather claw my eyes out with rusty 14.4k ISA modems than live in a world with locked-down computers for everyone
Anonymity is sometimes bad.
When there is a need to verify identity, like when doing a financial transaction, anonymity is bad. Both sides want to make sure, in the strongest possible way, that they are dealing with the actual entity they believe they are dealing with.
Anonymity is sometimes good.
If we are posting a political opinion, exposing government corruption, or just doing private things, anonymity is good, maybe even essential.
The next generation internet should support both; in the strongest possible way.
Absolutely. If worse comes to worse, there's always encrypted transmissions point-to-point via direct line, wireless mesh networking, and sneakernet. Now that people have had a taste of what's possible, new methods of communication "off the 'net" could be established.
With big brother looking over your shoulder, we wouldn't have access to illegal downloading sites. Sure there could be legit sites to show tv shows and feed us ads to generate revenues, but what about for pirating programs? There arent enough open source programs to fill my unique computing needs!!!
Not on my internets you don't!
Eat sleep die
They had to get assistance when the place almost burned to the water. Sealand is also no where near self-sustaining.
When people complain about SMTP being broken, they're not talking about SMTP. They're talking about the model that SMTP embodies: free-as-in-beer, unmetered email in which the receiver stores the message. SMTP is a simple, robust, and efficient way of implementing this model, and replacing it with a different wire protocol will change absolutely nothing about the spam problem.
Which aspect of the model would you change? Would you start charging for email? Would you implement a receiver-pulls-the-message system? Would you have email servers require certificates (which can be done within SMTP)?
Okay, so you know what you want to change? Good. Now advocate that instead of just whining that SMTP sucks.
At least right now, we have more privacy than we would have if we have to tell the world who we are. When the "new" internet fails, and it would...then there goes every ones security....
Lets just keep the old one eh?
Have we forgotten that Markoff's an idiot?
You know damned well that the vast majority of infections are social engineering not technical engineering.
Every so often you get a big major incident on some flaw(every OS has a major flaw once in a while), but most of them are caused by getting people to click on things. Microsoft hasn't made it any easier, but you can run an smtp server as a regular user on Linux too, and if you made it easy enough for regular users to install software, you could easily make it easy enough for them to install malware.
you can just not go on the fucking internet at all. You do know there's a superset beyond the internet right? It's called real life.
Yeh, sure more guns are the answer, so the criminals get bigger guns, so everyone needs to get even bigger guns and so on until everyone has a tactical nuke.
In civilized countries, one does not "need" to own a gun at all. If no one had guns, those who do would be much more easily indentified and the guns removed. When you make seeing someone carrying a gun out of the ordinary, then you will make progress.
I have never seen a gun in public other than attached to a policemans belt, and I would like to keep it that way.
Adding more weapons NEVER helps a situation.
Its like school shootings, some moron always says of everone was armed they could have stopped them.
Bullshit, all that would happen is everyone would open fire on those carrying guns, regardless of whether they were the actual shooter or not, as they would most likely not know who waqs the real shooter.
Frankly, the US has as much of a violence problem with guns because it does not have a modern social welfare system, you can have as little crime as you like when you are prepared to pay a
liveable ammount to those who cannot get work.
Now of course, the micro dick gun nuts who inhabit this site will mod me down, but I have enough karma to see that lot off many many times.
Idiot-proofing the internet will never work. There seem to be a limitless pool of "better idiots".
Not that it could ever happen, at least in the USofA (see our driving license "requirements"), but letting an internet-connected PC propagate any virus, trojan, worm, ... should result in a six months suspension of access to the internet (first offense) and doubling for each subsequent offense. If there is no one in the organization, household, ... with the competence to prevent it, hire a "chaffeur", or use "public transport" (yeah, I know, but if Johnny can't do his school projects at the library, perhaps they should be funded so he can).
I am willing to kick in a couple of dollars per month to fund the enforcement.
There has been some talk about separating the control plane from the data plane (ie, packet header from data). The phone network had its share of unsecurities when they were using in-band signalling, but since the two planes were separated, phones became far more secure. The same technique can be applied to the data network. If we separate the control information from the actual user data, we may achieve better security, as it would thwart any attempts to mess with the packet header, redirection attacks, prefix hijacks, or any of that other garbage. And the technology already exists. Look at MPLS- your computer can signal the upstream equipment to set up a connection to a specific address, and all you have to do is send forward data with the given label ID. The technology is already being used to route traffic within ISPs, but the security benefits of it won't really materialize until it's pushed out to the user level. Of course, good luck getting everyone switched over.
Regular users can't run standard SMTP servers, since SMTP must listen on port 25. Port 25 is a privileged port that requires root privileges to bind.
In the future, when most users run under normal accounts, it might be helpful for mail servers to refuse connections with source-ports equal to or greater than 1024. (Being root is required to bind 1-1023).
Then again, ISP egress filtering for port 25 can have almost the same effect, today.
"where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety." Replace anonymity with privacy and tell me what this sounds like.
Maybe a top secret underground internet.. shhhh.. :)
Cthulhu Saves -- in case He's hungry later.
I saw the phrase "new internet" and walked away apathetically, feeling no sense of threat to the way things are right now.
before u think of a new internet
human doesn't belief in god for "control"
but instead
human likes to control
that's so ironic
hahahaha......u dun like "control" becoz u r not the "controller"....
Why can't I boot my PC anymore? -BF
the US military is already onto the idea of another version of the internet. Perhaps, like most military technology, on some level this will be incorporated to our existing infrastructure. ... my 2 cents
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Compu$erve wants it's $5.00/hr connection fee business model back.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
What no comments about the internet being broken?
No jokes about asking for the number to Al Gore? MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!1 It's happening already. People are being silenced. It's the only reason that there is a intelligent discussion on slashdot.
Aside: A bit melodramatic sure. But, I really was surprised
This sounds like an attempt to get NIST or some other federally-funded entity to blow billions of dollars developing an ineffective, worthless series of new networking equipment and protocols which benefit a few malicious corporate stakeholders. In fact, I think there was a previous slashdot on such a topic, when funding was announced for NIST's research project into the same topic =).
Can anyone even broadly state the objectives of a secure internet? Is it one where people don't get viruses? Is it one where you can exactly trace the path taken by every packet you receive? Is it one where eavesdropping is impossible? Or impersonation? What about where its impossible to register "phishing" domain names like g00gle.com? Is it one where its impossible to pirate media? Anyone who's taken an undergraduate security or cryptography class will probably realize that all of the above objectives are impractical and therefore unrealizable.
Maybe its one where you have to pay extra to use Google instead of Live search. Or maybe, its one where you have to pay more to use Napster than Itunes. That sounds secure to me; and, personally, I think those are the only broad goals that can be obtained by re-architecting the internet.
IBM has a front company doing research into biometrics which has been funded for more than a decade and showed longterm consistent financial losses ... hmmmm, biometrics is important to somebody well-connected. Don't forget the interesting book 'IBM and the Holocaust' if you want to know all about their early support for biometrics and negative eugenics ...
Thumbscan, semen sample and implanted RFID chip required to gain access to your own email ... ok, maybe I was joking about the middle one. RFID is here folks, and it isn't just for prisoners, children, and old people. I've been hearing about Internet 2.0 for a while now on the Alex Jones radio show at infowars.com and it truly is very scary. You Americans won't know what you have until it is gone - I'm Australian and I feel like I live in a police-state. You don't have to read 'One Dimensional Man' by Marcuse to be able to read between the lines any more.
This article definitely smacks of FUD. I'm not going to go at length here, but I would like to remind everyone that the Internet is insecure by design as it doesn't distinguish which router path that packets should take. So, unless everyone here encrypts the data on every packet that they send out, sometime in theory can know what you're doing. And even then, they know you're doing something, they just don't exactly what.
So, I'd rather say that we don't have anonymity, which is both good and bad, already, but at least we don't have to worry about placating a single authority on the Internet as it is. I'll take the so-called insecurity of the Internet over the real insecurity of having my data constantly under threat from a single authority.
Yeh, sure more guns are the answer, so the criminals get bigger guns
Bigger is not always better. To suggest that criminals having "bigger" guns will somehow negate our firearms simply displays your ignorance of guns. Have you ever even held a gun or fired one? It was people like you who pushed the "assault weapons" bans simply because they looked scary and had large magazines without even realizing that such features made them no more effective than non "assault weapons" firing the same standard calibers.
In civilized countries, one does not "need" to own a gun at all. If no one had guns, those who do would be much more easily indentified and the guns removed.
which will make you even more vulnerable to street toughs and other criminals who can already easily overpower the average citizen in a "strong arm" crime. Guns are the great equalizer, they prevent the physically strong from always taking what they want from the weaker members of our society. Look at how the world was before the invention of firearms. Lords and nobles controlled everything with strong sword arms and groups of tough men at arms and everyone who wasn't was a serf laborer on the lands of the local lord or part of the Church that convinced the serf to "accept their lot in life".
When you make seeing someone carrying a gun out of the ordinary, then you will make progress.
If you were a criminal and you were sure that nobody had guns who would you target? The wealthiest enclave of disarmed citizens that you could find. I think that you will find that many of the areas with the highest murder and crime rates in the country (DC, New York, etc) have the strictest anti-gun laws.
I have never seen a gun in public other than attached to a policemans belt, and I would like to keep it that way.
I wouldn't. I would prefer that everyone who wished to exercised their right to carry a firearm and was trained in its proper use. The violent crime rate would dwindle to insignifigance because few criminals would be willing to stake their lives on a petty crime that involved a direct confrontation with an armed citizen. Remember also that the police are NOT responsible for protecting you personally. You cannot sue them for damages because they failed to get there in time and someone beat you within an inch of your life or stole your car. They don't care unless you were killed and then what difference does it make to you? If you are looking to the police to always be there to protect you then you may be in for a nasty surprise one day.
Now of course, the micro dick gun nuts who inhabit this site will mod me down, but I have enough karma to see that lot off many many times.
The right to own a gun is paramount in our Constitution. It is second only to speech and the supreme court has said that owning a gun is an individual right. That is pretty much the end of the discussion as far as I am concerned. You name calling liberals are all the same, no respect for the traditions and institutions that made this country great and kept it going for the past two centuries.
The right to own a gun is enshrined in your US constitution, which basically means you are stuck with the worlds highest gun crime rate.
The best thing we ever did in this country (Australia) was remove all but the most essential firearms (Farmers and the like), and all semi automatic rifles from our society. Since then there have been NO gunrelated mass murders, unlike the US which has at least one a year.
The proposition that more guns make anyone safer is ludicrous.
The simple fact that we do no need guns in our society in Australia, negates all of the laughable points you make. IF they were true, our society would be extremely violent. It is not.
Understand?
The people build an anarchic communication medium to safeguard their freedom, governments at first is sleepy and allow it to become a glocal network, but now they understood how much control they lost over their sheep and want to shut it down and replace it with their own thing.
I've always thought that if you're out there on the internets, then you do so at your own risk. My parents indiscriminately run around the web like the web whores that they are and nine times out of ten they get in trouble for it and I have to advise them on what to do next. I love them dearly but honestly, if you can't navigate safely then get off and stop hoarkin' all the good bandwidth.
I would jump at the chance for them to have their own playground where they could go and feel 'safe'.
On the off chance you're not trolling...
I strongly identify as a liberal and a progressive. However, I couldn't care less about gun control. Criminals will have guns regardless. Conversely, most people will not bother to own guns, regardless. That means that gun ownership is also not a solution to crime.
We need effective police, and more importantly, we need social policies that eliminate the bitter poverty related to a lot of gun-related crime. If you release harmless prisoners, increase welfare, legalize marijuana, provide higher education for all and good jobs for everyone, you will see a decrease in gun-related violence. Happy people don't go on shooting sprees.
Any door can be broken with a sledgehammer and an oxygen torch. It is not the door that protects. It is people inside and outside, and also the moral and written laws, which make the door work.
Training police around the world, international effort, WTU-world telecommunication union, UN, Interpol, legislature update in all 200 countries, this is what will make the network more secure. And also eradicating the reasons of crime.
The reason you are bombarded with spam is that people believe it is effective. Like most marketers, the thing spammers are best at selling is their own services.
Oh, it does generate a few sales. Something like 4 sales per million spam e-mails.
I think a better answer to this is education. In grade school computer classes children should be learning about the dangers of the internet, not playing Oregon Trail. Computers have become such a big part of everyday life, yet parents and teachers neglect to teach kids about them. Kids have myspace accounts and buy stuff off ebay but aren't taught about privacy and security. You wouldn't send your kid to the store alone and forget to tell them not to talk to strangers, look both ways before crossing the street, and not to walk around flashing their money. The reason behind this may be that adults are just as ignorant. Which is why schools are just as much to blame. They should hire computer teachers that are a bit more than babysitters.
Trade Anonymity for security? The very idea sounds like trading liberty for security. Not everyone lives in a free-ish country.
Anonymity is key for using the internet in the promulgation of freedom. The democratic nature of its communications is not the 'killer app' as classically defined, but it is the paradigm shift that comes along for the ride as national telecoms shifted to ubiquitous IP transport for POTS.
I'll take my spam and the other bullshit as the cost of this breakthrough. I'm not interested in a effective online network to pay my bills, or wank my thang as a fat westerner who has the right to disagree with their government already. Besides, there's plenty of efficient software to deal with this issue.
Now, if a government/conspiracy/interest group wanted to end net neutrality and free speech of the internet, I'd start going after the software that lets us effectively deal with the chaff, like BrightMail, and other AV/Anti-Phish research in general.
That all being said, whatever they TRY to engineer, it will break down in the end. It's like DRM, we can beat it, it would just be an arms race, and a complete waste of resources. Such reinvention that seeks the promise of 100% security will just serve to further criminalize those who need their anonymity to pursue their free speech rights. And require more technical expertise to successfully execute.
Really David? you think that various forces wouldn't shut down v.1, not especially quick in non-free regions? Those people understand what a threat free mass communication is to their stranglehold on power. THAT is their business.
Anyone seen my low uid? last seen 10 years ago while panning the #@$# out of Taco's 'web based discussion system'
Nah, just wait for Web 2.0 SP1.
i would say that on average mac users are dumber (as far as tech is concerned anyway) than windows users, have you seen the hardware prices for those systems? yet they don't often get these viruses. you can say its just because virus writers don't target them, but why would that be? surely windows machines with virus wary users and an AV, would be a less tempting target, than a mac user who blindly clicks through everything because he feels "immune" to these viruses, unless the operating system was inherently less secure.
to me the only other possibility, is that virus writers also hate Microsoft products.
mostly i run windows myself with no AV, and sometimes (cent OS) Linux as a root user, and never get any viruses on either.
but any non-tech (just wants to do word processing web browsing, ect) user i would recommend either Ubuntu, or perhaps a hackintosh if they are that way inclined.
I'd love to see a new regulated internet rollout, Preferably built upon a new protocol that assigns addresses based upon connection locations, so that all connections are completely traceable. It would be nice to be able to do banking or gaming on a separate, secure, high-bandwidth connection. But I'd also like to keep the old one, for legacy applications, file sharing and for stopping media corporations for building a targeted advertising profile on me. Why can't we have both?
Wireless mesh networks, people able to communicate with their neighbors without government 'assistance'. Encryption implemented on NIC hardware for point-to-point tunnelling and in software for applications by default.
The world is about >. from general communications which are too easy for individuals to protect and too hard for governments to deal with without HUGE investments.
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. " Ben Franklin
Let's build our own wireless mesh, and leave the federal government out of it. It's our country, and we don't need the permission of the beltway bandits...or their hands in our pockets and data.
---The right to own a gun is enshrined in your US constitution, which basically means you are stuck with the worlds highest gun crime rate.
So be it. But wait, what about places like Switzerland, who has the highest per capita ownership in the world? Why arent they proportionately as violent? In fact, every able bodied man must have a machine gun with ammo in their house at all times.
And about the "worlds highest gun crime rate"... I heard if you eliminate cars, you end up with a 0% car fatality rate!
---The best thing we ever did in this country (Australia) was remove all but the most essential firearms (Farmers and the like), and all semi automatic rifles from our society. Since then there have been NO gunrelated mass murders, unlike the US which has at least one a year.
The proposition that more guns make anyone safer is ludicrous.
It would seem that being a break-apart from UK, you would understand that our old reason for enshrining gun rights in our Constitution is that it's the ultimate switch to stop a deranged government. Its not about safety from the robber, nor is it to protect against wild animals, or as a cool hip jewelery. It's there to serve as the forth branch of government, when our government has gone deranged and needs to be stopped.
Perhaps, that view is a long gone one, in which governments now serve the people: Look at your country today. Few guns available to select, internet nanny ISPs mandated by your federal government, government mandated monopolies that do not provide decent services, unjust and unfair taxation, and other issues. Perhaps the grand scheme of things was to disarm the populace to make them more malleable to "certain social changes".
Though, judging by your tone and level of arrogance and "trust in the system", you will always believe that guns are evil and only increase violence. That's your fallacy to believe. I've studied our US history and know how we won our freedom. I also know that to make sure we stay free, we need to remind everybody with the sacrifice of our patriots who serve us, and that patriot is the everyman. Not the police. Not the military, and most certainly not any politicians.
You can have a secure network.
Use ssh.
Why do they let marketting people
pretend to be technical?
Since then there have been NO gunrelated mass murders
When people are denied access to firearms then they will find other ways. So banning guns will not eliminate violence or mass murders. The human race was violent before firearms became available and they are violent still. Nothing will change that, unfortunately.
Bigger guns?
It's ridiculous that someone with such childish concepts has a say in who should own a gun. I'm trying to imagine how the scene would play out in your head...
"A ha! I am a burgler with a .38 caliber handgun!" .38? Bah! I, a simple American homeowner am brandishing a colt .45!" .50 caliber handgun! That's the most powerful handgun ever made! You can never defeat me then!"
"A
"Curses! Foiled for now. But I'll be back. Back with a
Seriously. There's no "Arms Race" when it comes to home protection. Or Dragonball-Z
"Excuse me, do you have a caliber that's over 9000?"
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The concern that I have with any so-called 'Clean Slate' approach to reinventing the Internet, is that it would tend to focus on problems perceived in the current Internet (security, mobility, etc.). The danger is that the strengths of the current architecture are likely to be overlooked.
Any new Internet architecture should hold true to the principles articulated in RFCs 1958 and 3439.
A focus on security issues without respecting current Internet architecture strengths is likely to result in something more closely resembling the PSTN or Cable TV networks. Both those networks are highly secure (relative to the Internet) and both are centrally managed. Of course, the downside is that the network manager exerts a large degree of control over what can be done on their network. This naturally has an negative impact on innovation. Innovation can only occur within the limits of what the network owner can currently think of and allow.
Internet architecture (in broad terms) differs from PSTN or Cable networks in using intelligent end-points and a relatively simple network core. PSTN and Cable networks are just the opposite: The 'intelligence' is contained in the network core and end-points are relatively 'dumb'.
I'm all for blue-sky investigation into all possibilities, but lets not rush forward with a focus on current problems without recognition of exactly what has made the current Internet a success.
and it completely kills innovation and opensource, which is what THEY want.
This movement a there's to a non democratic world is gonna really explode. More and more people that are non violent in nature are getting ticked off and now getting angry.
The next gen terrorists are all of us. /. but what ya need to do to get attention and the message across is goto there blogs and there websites and get the lead out. Ya do not have to get mean and nasty let them lose it as they often do.
OR is it. ART is meant to be shared. Is it?
Is open source software going to be able to be made?
Is a game i next going to get open sourced for free?
Its fine and dandy talking at
They will be looking like the nuts at the end of the day.
Make lists and help each other. PROACTIVE works.
You can only talk so much before that no longer is what is needed. They are not listening.
They do not care what you say. They will care when you say it where they want to brain wash people.
They will care when you pass out printed copies of the truth.
They will care when hundreds of thousands a mixed music cdrs start popping up free a charge.
Of course chicken shits around the world that yap about doing things are everywhere.
What have you done lately for real freedom?
We need effective police, and more importantly, we need social policies that eliminate the bitter poverty related to a lot of gun-related crime.
I too would like to see more effective police and less poverty, but I do not and have never subscribed to the notion that banning private ownership of firearms is somehow the answer to these problems.
Criminals will have guns regardless. Conversely, most people will not bother to own guns, regardless. That means that gun ownership is also not a solution to crime.
Yes, yes, and yes. There will always be crime and criminals, even if many people chose to exercise their right to be armed. Crime is not so much a problem to be solved as it is a condition to be contained and mitigated. However, I do maintain that the number of violent crimes in which individual citizens are directly confronted by armed criminals, in robbery for example, would probably decrease. If criminals are going to risk their lives then they won't being doing it in a thrill seeker liquor store holdup that nets them $30 dollars and a six-pack or a home invasion to steal your DVD player and digital television.
If you release harmless prisoners, increase welfare, legalize marijuana, provide higher education for all and good jobs for everyone, you will see a decrease in gun-related violence. Happy people don't go on shooting sprees.
As a libertarian I would like to see regulated legalization of most drugs, as alcohol and tobacco are regulated today, and the release of non-violent drug offenders from our overcrowded prisons. Naturally, I do not support an increase in welfare (ala the indefinite "such sums" clause in the economic stimulus bill) and would prefer that private charity and community faith based programs step in to fill those needs. It is true that happy people don't generally go on shooting sprees, but I am sure that Mr. Madoff was quite happy before he was caught, so even happy people can commit crimes.
DNRTFA, but just to give some perspective here: if you talk to people involved in the security research community, they've talked a lot in the past several years about what they call a 'digital Pearl Harbor'. That's the idea that given the security holes in the existing network framework, it's almost inevitable that some kind of large-scale event will take place that will kill public confidence in the internet. Not talking about the security of any single OS or system or website here; rather, the fact that on current networks, for the whole thing to be secure, every single box on the network needs to be secured, which is, in practice, almost impossible. Large-scale DDOS attacks, identity theft, spoofing, botnets- the idea is that one or more of these will be pointed at internet infrastructure in a concerted way to disrupt something huge- say the American stock exchange system, or POS credit-card processing for an entire region of the world, or a digitally coordinated run on the banking system. Something that, by virtue of its scale and impact, forces a re-think of the entire system, or pushes a lot of things that have migrated online back offline, because of security or liability concerns.
This is sort of the 'motivating example' for research into a 'new internet'; networking technologies that would provide the ability (nor the requirement) for better identification and authentication of users, that would offer richer options for preventing unauthorized access, etc. On top of this, it would be nice to give network operators the ability to make their own decisions about policies related to resource (like bandwidth) usage, rather than being very tightly constrained by the structure of the existing protocol stack. What would be nice, in an ideal world, would be to enable everyone to create the network that they need, and then provide a mechanism to negotiate between themselves if you need to talk across networks. My public access wireless network for my apartment building might not care who you are. But if you want to talk to a bank, it might like to have a verification of your identity before it allows you to create a connection. Let the bank ask my network for additional credentials, and I can then either pass them along, or do business elsewhere.
That's much closer to the idea that researchers are pursuing: give people a platform for creating networks that work the way that the network owner works, rather than just the way that the hardware designer wants. In other words, there's a lot of talk about duplicating the success of Linux as a network application platform in the network infrastructure space. Linux doesn't demand that you use a specific server or client or storage format; why does the network hardware essentially assume that you're going to use certain types of authentication (most often none), only certain types of packets, and always going to want to route them the same way? The current suite of protocols, along with some often hardware-level assumptions, make it difficult to create a network that is more secure than the current internet, even in your own private network, but also make it difficult to create a network that offers better privacy or anonymity. The research in the 'next internet' tends to be focused into the area of enabling choice in these areas, rather than fixing a single policy. Unfortunately, media coverage of this research is pretty abominable and usually results in a chorus of Slashdot 'from my cold dead hands' knee jerks.
I have never seen a gun in public other than attached to a policemans belt, and I would like to keep it that way.
It's always amused me that even the gun control nuts don't really believe in gun control; they just believe in a caste system.
In your gated community, the cameras were purely physical, and the guards are really there to be intimidating. Just like taking your shoes off at the airport does little to provide *real* security, when so many people have unsupervised access to "secure" areas. (if I drive to the local airport, I have to pass everything shy of a rectal examination. But, if I fly a private plane to the same airport, I'm given the red-carpet treatment and my identity is never even so much as questioned...)
Years ago, I set up a computer shop with very little money. I think my total going in was around $2,500 dollars, including the first and last month's rent, advertising, phone expenses, inventory, and furniture. Very, very low budget.
And I made it work! We had card tables with nice table cloths to hold the computers. I made work benches myself out of 2x4s and molded Formica counter tops that were on sale. Etc. Etc.
But for a security system, I got an old 8 MM film camera, drilled a hole in the handle, and bolted it to a bracket I found just outside the back door of the shop. To make it look "live", I found a round headphone wire, plugged it into the headphone jack on the top, and ran it up through a hole that I drilled in the ceiling just above it.
It was big, and intimidating.
For additional measure, I downloaded a tone generator off the Intarwebs and left it on the computer all night long, just loud enough that you could hear it clearly anywhere in the building, but softly enough that you couldn't hear it outside.
The combination of the two was good enough to fool both an alarm company installation tech, and two on-duty police officers. Granted, my measures provided no additional "real" security. But when the front window was broken, none of the expensive computers on display were stolen, and I had no trouble at all with "five finger discounts".
And, how long did your doughnut-loving security guards stop actual crimes from happening with their faux security measures that you never heard of, because they never happened?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The gun doesn't help if they're not home, which people usually are not when they're being robbed. The dogs may or may not help, but most breeds are as likely to play with the burglars as bite them, and whether or not they barked at all much less enough to alert the neighbors is really up in the air depending on the dog, neighbors and the circumstances.
The fact that security systems can be defeated by a serious criminal is irrelevant. Most robberies aren't perpetuated by serious criminals like we see on TV, for starters. And more to the point, the mere act of putting that little "Secured by ADT [or whatever]" sign in your lawn makes your house instantly more secure -- even if you never did install ANY sort of system or hook it up with a security company. It doesn't say "I have great shit, rob me!" If anything it says you're more paranoid of being robbed, which most robbers won't care about.
What it really does say is "this is a harder target." You're not likely to have vastly greater things than your neighbors, since your neighbors almost certainly share a similar income bracket with you, but suddenly they have to contend with an alarm in your house and nothing next door. The vast, vast majority of burglars are going to go "naw, fuck that" and move on to a softer target. They're not out for petty thrills, they're out to steal shit and make money. It's kind of like claiming there's no point to closing your door since a determined burglar can just break a back window. Well, yeah, but you also don't need to go out of your way to make yourself a target. Or in this case, there's nothing wrong with doing things that make you less of a target. Shooting a robber in the face or having your dog rip his penis off is a good consolation prize, but the ultimate victory is them not trying to rob you at all. That's the biggest benefit of (the illusion of) a security system.
I'm all for buying dogs; giving a dog a loving home is a win even if you ultimately get robbed and the dog doesn't help one bit, and it has a similar "keep walking" benefit as the alarm. I don't necessarily have a problem with guns either. Let's just not claim that security systems are worthless because the guys from Oceans 11 could get by them no problem. That was never the point.
Might end up...?
What planet are they from? On my planet it is standard operating procedure the treat the internet as completely and utterly hostile.
The Microsoft security model can be compared to Britney Spear's underwear. Most of the time it isn't even there at all, and when it is there it is overly complicated but still doesn't cover much.
we valued our internets. We didn't just toss 'em out and replace 'em when one of 'em got a broken tube, like you youngsters do with your cheap disposable internets nowadays.
LOL, you always SAY you would use your guns to protect you from your govt, but Bush and his cronies used your contituion as toilet paper
and you did nothing.
We do not have nanny ISP's here. Unlike yours ours have taken a strong stance against govt filtering of the Internet, whereas your ISP and telcos actively assisted your govt to spy on you secretly. So much for your much vaunted freedom, and privacy.
If you have a look at our history, we managed to
become independant from the UK without killing
anyone, as the US could have done in time. One of the great tragedies of modern history is the US becoming a country before it was mature enough to handle that status, becoming the international equivalent of an 8 year old with a loaded machine gun.
The Swiss being a responsible people can manage guns in their society without regular massacres, which the US simply does not seems to be capable of.
A society born in violence becomes violent it seems.
There is surely no more futile and stupid human condition than patriotism. No real good has and will ever come of it.
Sounds like the "Information Purification Directives" for a new generation.
Cue the blonde with the sledgehammer...
Information wants to be free -- but informants want to be paid.
how did you type that with nigger dick in your mouth AND in your ass?
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
There are always people who ask, "Why do you post those trollish words? Do you have insecurities involving blacks and homosexuals?"
The answer is, yes. We're Southern Baptist closet faggots who happen to have a homoerotic envy of the nigger-man's masculinity, huge penis, and reproductive success.
Fortunately, somebody created a support group for people with homosexual nigger issues. That support group is known as the Gay Niggers Association of America. We toil endlessly to make aware others of our plight. Homosexually worshipping while simultaneously envying and even sometimes hating the powerful nigger-beast is a big deal. We respect negroes as we respect horses: They are a symbol of wild, bestial strength which have even human women wanting a taste of the endless flow of hay-flavored semen gushing from the massive dong's meatus.
We artificially inseminate black women so that our legacies may live on in blackness. Sow blacks are perfectly cool with this because they know that whites take care of their offspring(even dung beetles take better care of their offspring than niggers do) and the icing on the cake is that their offspring won't look like bonobo chimplets.
I read the title and thought they meant better protocols, faster throughput, and a button for punching people in the face when they make asinine comments.
What a let down ...
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
And it *is* an option, and would not "create a 'gated community' where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety" -- the article even states that that is just one alternative, in fact, quite the opposite is just as possible.
If there was a new web that was based on security AND privacy (very likely via heavy encryption right out of the box), I'd "hit it so hard, whoever pulls me outa that would be crowned the king of England" as they say.
It's just that there does not seem to be much of an incentive for ISPs to do this. We *can* (and do) build a second-generation Internet (one that's secure) on top of the old infrastructure, but because it's not a separate network it's still being bogged down even if it's not itself being directly affected.
What's needed is a completely separate network, very possibly with improved routing from the lowest layers. This can be done with embedded routers in the home, but requires ISPs to upgrade or replace a good deal of their gear, driving up cost (in a time where a 'net connection is all but regarded as a utility, same as power and water). And for what? For a new Internet that's technically superior in a way that, sadly, only a minority of users are interested in or even able to comprehend. As I said, there's not much incentive for ISPs.
If this ever happens, it's going to be a grass-roots movement as in the old BBS days.
"Good news, everyone!"
Troll?? For fuck's sake, someone mod this as the 'insightful' it deserves!
At one point, newsgroups used to about as relevant we the web is now to most internet users up to the end of the 90s. Now, newsgroup servers are a barren wasteland of spam, porn and a few remnants of piracy before P2P file sharing became common-place. Most ISPs have all but abandoned newsgroups, treating such services as a lost cause.
Ten years later, the web is starting to look a lot like most newsgroups did shortly after the turn of the millennium. Many of the web-based communities powered by blogging or forum software are in a state of declining user, while at the same time, under constant attack from spam bots, turning many of these sites into ghost towns. Based on what happened to the newsgroups within the last decade, it's no surprise what fate will soon await the web.
That said, it's a bit ridiculous to say the internet itself is somehow "broken" or needs to be replaced. The internet will be fine. Our habits, on the other hand, need to change. Rather than relying upon a pack-rat mentality, where every user requires an ever increasing amount of publicly accessible storage, we need a system which intelligently weeds out redundant data, so only a few copies of the same image/video/audio/etc... exist on the internet and can be referenced by anyone using a local copy of that particular file as an "alias" until the system recognizes it as a duplicate upon uploading. This will reduce the amount of "net junk" floating around, making the entire network much more efficient.
(Likewise, this will probably be what finally leads us into the age of cloud computing, where p2p like functions are simply a normal function of the OS and networking software, as needed.)
8==8 Bones 8==8
This and similar "new internet" ideas are always about control, not about "security" in the general meaning. And the question always is who wants that control, and how the power in the hands of the controller would be (mis)used.
"They" don't really care about people's security, but more about what they can do, access and use anonymously. It's been always about that, and not about trying to protect the users.
I'm sure the RIAA and the MPAA would really like such an abomination, NSA and the likes included. I'd say that's a pretty strong lobby.
Also, I'd say we could have a pretty strong hunch how a certain widespread operating system's problems might spring such ideas among those with interest.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
People should already be doing that for the existing intarweb, no?
When I was growing up, I was fascinated with radio communication. I started out with a CB radio in my parents' basement. It didn't require a license, it was open to everyone, and anyone could go down to their local radio shack, pick up their own rig, and be on the air in 20 minutes.
It was a mess. Idiots talking over each other all the time. Some of them running linear amplifiers drowning out everyone else.
Then I got my Ham Radio license and set up my ham shack. Everything was regulated and orderly. I gave out my call sign with each transmission, and there was a level of respect with fellow hams.
Communication was much smoother, and you didn't have a bunch of morons trying to interrupt your transmissions.
Back in the 1900's with spark gap transmitters that belched signals out all over the spectrum you had greedy bastards trying to hog available resources in the same way spammers do today. Eventually, people came to realize that it was such a mess that it was time to regulate it. And as a result of the legislation things started to become orderly.
I wonder if everyone back then started crying like all the whiney nancys on this board when people suggested they try to regulate some of the radio activity.
I think it would be great to have an Internet license for some part of the net, if it were somehow possible. I certainly would encourage it if they could find a way to do it.
"...the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there."
;-)
like porn sites!
seriusly: various projects built a net in the net (see freenet, tor), so no news here.
If (they? we?) want to build a secure internet over the current one, and having net neutrality as baseline, I think this can just be of the same interest as freenet or tor.
Tor and Freenet did a good job to let You surf as anonymous, and so We may need just the opposite: a secure network where to surf with a strong identity.
I also rememeber a bunch of years ago they told ipv6 would solve typical ipv4 security issues, but I may have confused with ipsec!
nop, nop, nop #VBLANK
I will take Internet 1.0 with all of these assholes any day over a safe/secure sterilized Internet. Long live the Anonymous Coward! But please, watch your fucking language here, okay? There are mindless sheeple that may take offense to your goatse shit. Cunts.
In twelve years on the internet I have had zero privacy problems, zero credit card problems, no spyware incidences and exactly 1 virus infection - which was due to some unpatched 0-day exploit in Windows NT back then. It didn't result in any data-loss though, because I back up my stuff.
If the internet really is that dangerous, I am -along with most of the people I know- a pretty freaky statistical outlier.
Other posts here debate the surrender of anonymity, and the article presents Conficker as an example of how broken the Internet is. Spam is mentioned often too.
We *could* digitally sign our e-mails, and I *could* choose only to accept signed e-mails. I could even filter out e-mails signed by people who aren't in my address book, and maybe glance at the subject lines occasionally. Spam problem fixed! No Internet 2.0 required.
Now all we have to do is convince enough people sign their e-mails for this solution to be practical -- no small task.
Conficker is an easy one too. If the Internet was more heterogeneous, writing malware as effective as Conficker would require writing it for many platforms. The argument against the MS monopoly is the same as the argument against monoculture crop dependency. Nature has proven repeatedly how crap an idea it is.
So is an Internet 2.0 safer for EVERYONE, or just an attempt to support a fundamentally flawed OS deployment?
If you can not use computer in right way, you do not need Internet and freedom it gives you. If you buy bad software from only one well known vendor, don't blame Internet for it's unsafety.
Can you blame supermarket for selling you quite legal alcohol? It's your decision to drink it.
Silly press and TV says "COMPUTER virus, COMPUTER malware", but it is WINDOWS-only viruses, WINDOWS-only malware, WINDOWS-only worms. It's your decision to use Windows, it's your decision to be unsafe.
Don't worry. We still have Fox News.
um, fuck you and your biggot horse.
Invest all the money you'd invest into the new internet into improving the OpenBSD firewall (incoming and outgoing), installer and mandatory access controls, Wine, X's DRI and a next-gen 3D game engine with insane powertools and not only would you save a shitload of money on the long run, you wouldn't even have to start over with internet v.3 because you wouldn't need any.
Kthnxbye. Grow some brains.
Here be signatures
As a side benefit, no IRC weenies are going to ask you for your A/S/L
Whats next? live web cams in every room in everyones house that are mandatory?
if you had a good idea on how to build the new Internet and need some minimal founding?
I mean a real alternative, with excellent privacy, no way to control the actual data flowing (neutrality built in), no central points of failure (not even "servers"), very generic (not just for exchanging "files" around) and absolutely easy to build application on. Oh and in the process kill that openid nonsense (for something better of course).
Moderation is overrated.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." I personally think that the anonymity that the internet provides is an essential freedom - the moment you start allowing gates to close around the Web is the moment that the ultimate expression of the freedom of speech and of opinion - the ability of anyone with a computer to broadcast their thoughts without censorship - fails to bear the full fruit of it's potential.
How refreshing to see an original, well-thought-out, literate GNAA troll such as yours.
With citations, even!
Mad propz to you, good sir.
The internet (v1) is nothing more than a reflection of the real world it exists in. A 'safer' version will be an illusion as long as the real world hasn't changed.
The problems in the real world must be fixed first, starting with the biggest problems. In the middle east there's a religion which is being severely abused to incite hate and wage wars around the globe. Defeating the fanatics there is essential to free up all the resources currently being used to make war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Israel. With all the money now available from the military budgets no longer needed it's possible to fix most of the social inequalities around the world, thus further reducing the conflict potential. Now all that remains are the criminals profiting from crime both in the real world and on the internet, especially the Russian Mafia and similar. They can fairly easily defeated through international cooperation (which is much easier without major international conflicts) in blocking their money transfers, and when they go broke they go away. Same thing with the spammers and so on. Kill their money flow and they die.
There! - Fixed it. No need for a brand new illusion of safety and security.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
You sir, are absolutely right: limiting private ownership of guns would have similar effects to banning cars and pools. Witness the chaos in most of europe, as gun-deprived citizens descend into mostly normal, everyday lives.
Microsoft themselves could contribute a lot to the problem of an "insecure Internet" if they just fixed their f'ing OS.
fixing
3: the sterilization of an animal; "they took him to the vet
for neutering" [syn: {neutering}, {altering}]
Yeah, couldn't agree more :-)
sigs are hazardous to your health
"He didn't hesitate, even for a second. "Online Video!"."
Sure, and pretty soon people aren't going to be satisfied with a little windows with 640x480, they'll want 1920x1080 on their computer and set top boxes. Then all those people who say "...I only use 40M a month, so only the pirates care about ISP download caps..." will finally understand why download caps are anti-technology and anti-consumer.
I believe the ISPs (like Comcast) knew this change was coming 2-3 years ago and they're looking for new revenue sources to pay for infrastructure upgrade costs. I think Verizon's FIOS presents a difficult challenge to Comcast because there is significantly more bandwidth in fiber, but more importantly, Verizon is a large, well-financed company that won't be going away.
You can already see Comcast's HD TV offerings are not very good; they offer few channels, and the ones they offer have so many artifacts it makes you wonder exactly how Comcast will compete on the TV front with Verizon now offering almost 200 HD channels, not to mention higher bandwidth offerings and as of now, no download caps.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
What I totally disagree with is the notion (which for some reason seems to be widespread amongst technology-oriented people) that a "New Internet" is somehow not an option. It is. The Internet as we know it can be "Compuserved". It's technically feasible. All it takes is a legal basis and the political will to impose enforcement.
This is because the means are already lined up; in principle people are no more anonymous on-line than they can have untraceable land-line telephones, deep-packet inspection has become routine and can be scaled up to encompass every single bit sent over the internet, any sessions that use un-authorised encryption or un-authorised protocols can be cut off by ISPs as soon as they're started, and Internet Cafes can be obligated to examine your ID before they give you access (like in China).
And there is political support for it too. Just look at publishers: from software to books to music to movies and newspapers. They stand to gain a bundle if only they could throttle almost all un-authorised copying over the Internet. Which they will be able to if they can steer the Internet in the direction of a gated community. How dearly would they love to have the Compuserve model introduced for the Internet at large. They also have more than enough money to buy political influence, and they can wave the argument "Look ... we're trying to protect jobs here". You will need a more convincing argument than: "Look I want to be able to browse porn, warez, and other copyrighted material as per my First Amendment rights, so the Internet has got to remain free and anonymous"
So please don't confuse political inertia and a sympathy for freedom with impossibility.
The Swiss have ammo control, for one.
They also face severe penalties related to the use of their service weapon. And non-service weapons have some control.
It would nice if we could still access the internet through the other way just as easy. Say in your browser pops up a log in window for the session so you can log into 'safe' sites, but you are able to browse old internet without this log in. That is basically what everyone else is thinking and probably my two cents weren't invested in a trusted company (if you get my play on the proverb).
Have you read Wells' short story? I only ask because the guy wasn't actually crucified...
I like your sig, though. True visionaries, if you'll excuse the pun, rarely gain anything but scorn.
"Good news, everyone!"
This is the same tired siren song that tyrants and despots have sung since the dawn of time. "In order to secure your freedom, we must sacrifice your liberty. In order to maintain security, we must sacrifice your privacy."
As always, my answer is "No, thank you."
Security is an illusion. The world is not safe and never will be. I value my privacy and freedom more than I value the fool's gold of security.
Any security measure that demands the sacrifice of my liberties is not worth having.
This is just another move by the power elite to convince us that the internet needs them as gatekeepers. All I have to say to them is FOAD.
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.
So you can get actual physical artifacts via the internet now? I'm intrigued.
no.
We need a secure dominating OS.
But how many people die in both a car accident and a swimming pool? That's a more interesting statistic.
Comparing gun deaths with swimming pool drowning is a bad analogy anyway, since drowning people is not a swimming pool's primary purpose. You should be comparing gun deaths with moat drowning. Does the constitution say anything about a citizen's right to bear a moat?
The Internet needs to be more secure and the belief is that they can do that by rebuilding the Internet? I don't get that at all - why not demand that the Operating Systems be more secure? because most of them are not. Why not demand all email be secure? because none of it is. What I find is that the arguments do seem to be more about controlling the content, a recurring theme for the last 10-15 years. The Internet has completely changed how content is delivered to the masses and how the masses communicate with each other. The masses are now becoming more independent of the mass media that was supposed to entertain and inform them. Well, the entertainment hasn't changed at all in that time within mass media but the Internet has ushered in new kinds of entertainment. Hollywood is still pushing a tired set of movies that have been remade again and again. And the Internet has created Virtual Worlds where the story is about participating not passivity. News organizations used to be the only way for news and information but they have all slowly become personalities instead of reporters. Where is the lone reporter pushing the tough questions onto politicians, or corporations? They don't but bloggers have come about to question that authority and they news media can't stand that. Newspapers are losing out because no one cares about the owner's politics - newspapers never seemed to be about news just what the editors wanted the local populace to think about. You can bring out a new Internet and tell us it's new and improved but I don't think anyone really will believe it. It's like CAN-SPAM bill that was supposed to rid us of spam but didn't. The easier solution would have been to encrypt email with PGP. If sender may still be able to obtain the Public Signature of the receiver to send but without receiver having the sender's signature - which should be issued by a key authority - then the message shouldn't be delivered. There is an idea, not a solution, to the problem of spam but then again encryption is something that the governments of the world don't want people to start using. I'll take the current Internet and push for more secure methods within the OS to protect me.
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
And initially two died in a blogging accident. After the results got posted there was a great uprising!
A new field for hackers!
Persian Project Management Software as a Service
I have been arguing this for years. Not that we get rid of the current net. It has its place. I have argued that we need to create a second, secure internet for business transactions. We remove commercialism from the internet for the most part (as far as secure communications go). The second net would be for transactions etc. It would have authorized log ons etc. for every user, and encrypted secure transmissions. Now this would lead to increased consumer confidence in the internet as a business medium. It would be a giant boost to the economy, and would transform our economy. Retail shops would largely disappear in short order, because it will be cheaper to do all transactions online and ship the order. No need to hire all the help, like cashiers, no need to write off shoplifting losses. Things would be cheaper because there would be fewer middlemen, and who have lower costs. Lots of people would lose jobs, but jobs would open up in other areas. Why don't we do it? One reason only: cost. We are talking about developing new protocols, hardware and software, infrastructure. The cost would be dramatic. Therefore it probably will not happen. Just like secure credit cards. Excellent idea, but it increases costs too much for anyone to impliment.
Open Source: Eroding the Digital Divide
For banking, taxes, etc., use the "Trusted Internet." For Slashdot, YouTube, Google, etc., use v1. But then I thought what would happen down the road: most businesses (i.e. content providers) want to know who you are so they can target their advertising. More and more of the Internet stables would move to v2, leaving v1 as a spam-filled world with a low signal-to-noise ratio: very similar to what Usenet is now. And v1 would suffer the same fate as Usenet: most people won't use it much, it will cost the ISPs more to provide, and there will be politicians calling to shut it down due to the terrorists/pedophiles/anarchists/communists/bogeyman. At that point, say goodbye to anonymity on the Internet.
You have no right to anonymity. And if you think you are anonymous when surfing the net at work or home, you are sorely mistaken.
This post should be very, very, redundant by now, but if the internet gets in any way less free and I end up losing access to information streams, it will be a huge loss. I have learned about so many things through the internet. Anything that slows the rate of knowledge prorogation is, in my view, evil.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
and there you have your internet 2
Anyone else notice what Conficker and the Morris worm had in common? They both took advantage of a lack of diversity in the connected population - Conficker vs Windows, Morris vs. early BSD.
A gated-community internet would almost certainly be a "trusted computing" internet, with only a few blessed OS configurations allowed - the perfect environment for mass pwnage.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Lessig warned that there will be an "i-9/11" which would result in an "i-PATRIOT Act". I don't think 9/11 was orchestrated by the government (I do believe they had prior knowledge), but dammit, Lessig warned us!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq7qxECor_8
The NYTimes article claimed that the "secure network" would be implemented transparently - meaning that the real issue of flaws in the hosts (PCs, servers, etc.) will remain, since there won't be any need to re-engineer the flawed applications and services.
25 years ago - when DEC was still pushing DECnet, IBM was pushing SNA, the Europeans were pushing OSI, and the phone companies were pushing X.25, the big issue was Host Security vs. Network Security (as well as centrally managed versus a distributed management model.)
Some sites wanted security functions implemented in the network - so that they wouldn't have to do it in the host. (Packet) Networking people - Internet types - thought that security functions are best implemented in the host, especially as that is where the security needs were best known.
DECnet, SNA, X.25 were all centrally managed networking systems. If you wanted to do something new, you had to get network management buy-in. To some extent, we've returned to those days with managed switches, et. al. - in part because hosts don't implement security as well or as flexibly as necessary.
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QoS, if available to the end user, is exploitable by bad actors. How is it "feasible" to stop them from making your QoS useless? Oh I see, inspect every packet for legal content! And punish the miscreants! And make sure we can tell who they are! Oh wait, that's right, can't do that with current mechanisms.
Licenses are the beginning of the police state. Security which takes away the commons is the violence of the powerful upon the innocent. Freedom has a price and it is easily payed today, but costly to get back after we lose it.
Wasn't the alternative internet popular in the 90s? It was called AOL. It went away for a reason. Like I used to tell friends years ago, the internet is the wild west of the computer world- you're responsible for your own safety, no one else. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
Did you really just try to state that accidentally killing people with guns is their intended purpose? 'Cause that was the topic.
Nice try; I wish you better luck in actually adding something of value to the conversation next time.
... great; now, on the new tubes, I gotta have my shoes x-rayed before I can log in.
If you like the TSA, you gonna *love* this.
We already have gated communities on the web: they're the "web2.0" sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo etc.
1. You have to give up some identification when you enter/join (even if it's quite weak: ie. usually you're verified email address)
2. You have to introduce yourself (or be introduced as in LinkedIn) before you can send anyone a message.
3. All you communications are through a central server that verifies the identity of both endpoints and records all communication (possibly for ever!).
And, yes, it's been seen that people happily give up a whole heap of private info to be part of these clubs...
It would be interesting to find out what the ratio is between email and social-site IM'ing these days.
Joel at Joel on Software wrote an article I remember reading that said starting over is more often than not a bad idea. For one thing, it's counterproductive as you spend exorbitant amounts of time building things that you've already built at some point. Another thing is that this is probably also a theory that will ultimately lead to "leaky abstraction". This new internet will inevitably run into problems because users do unexpected things. I can't remember who, but someone once said (Perelman perhaps?), that as technology becomes more secure, more technology becomes available to break it.
All that being said though, there are perhaps building new technologies. This is why scientists have been researching internet 2. Faster speeds, better securty, etc.: all good. However, we need to compromise and integrate old and new.
Get me a meat pie floater!
... network security theory holds that is no such thing as security that cannot be broken.
Is that some specific result I'm not aware of? I'm aware of the Slashdot consensus, but that's not the same thing as a theory-specific result. Wouldn't it be more likely something from cryptography rather than networking? Do you have a citation?
If you have liberty, you can provide your own safety. If someone else provides your safety by taking your liberty, you will never be safe from your guardians. (Or, less cynically, from their failures.)
Besides, 100% safety doesn't exist.
This is possibly the best idea that I've ever heard. You're just all looking at it wrong. The new gated community isn't for everybody, it's just for certain users. You are all picturing rich Southern California hillside type of gated communities. What we really need to build is more of a Supermax-style gated community.
Of course, participation would be completely voluntary. We just need to advertise it to the right people. It would be the B Ark of the Internet.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
The internet is perfect. PERFECT. It's anarchy working as it should. Businesses can thrive, and people can post fucked up things to 4chan. Leave it be.
...in parts of the internet (e.g. email) we do need to replace the current "receiver pays" model with a "sender pays" model or even a "both pay" model. That will instantly eliminate spam, close mail relays and shift the source of viruses to more controlled areas.
He who gives up liberty for security deserves neither!
Guess Who?
I think not need new internet
http://webmasterseoblog.com
For days, the above post was sitting at +max for insightful... all of a sudden somebody comes along and mods it down (more than once) for "Troll".
How weird is that?
Witness the chaos in most of europe, as gun-deprived citizens descend into mostly normal, everyday lives.
It's great that your non-gun-deprived masters are letting you enjoy a spell of normalcy. Why, it's been more than a decade since Europe's last state-supported genocide. That's just super!
The computer security industry makes me sick. It is nothing other than one big fraud. No single company is able to detect all or even a sufficent number of threats to be able to protect users from the dangerous that lurk on the Internet. Now these same people are making these ridiculously outrageous claims. The underlying problem is not anonymity. The problem is the protocols and programs that run on top of TCP/IP largely. The other significant problem is the dangerous default settings and policies of market leading commercial closed source software companies. That's basically Microsoft. Deviate even a little and you've significantly reduced the risk. Deviate some more and you are almost guaranteed not to notice anything other than occasional (although unsettling more often real problems) problems related to a failure of industry to patch a few very important underlying protocols like TCP/IP & DNS. The Internet doesn't need to be overhauled or replaced. It just needs companies to act a little less egregiously by not selling security such as anti-virus and the Internet service providers to actually maintain and upgrade routers, DNS, mail and the likes. The closest thing to a problem today is spam. If this is at the heart of the problem then we simply need to migrate to an open authenticated mail solution where receivers have to white list senders first. That doesn't mean you can't email somebody you don't know. All anonymous communication from entire continents doesn't need be blocked either. We just need to standardize on an authentication protocol for e-mail so that we know the same 'person' is sending us mail that we talked to last week. An initial e-mail communication may require other means. Or where that can't be done maybe a user needs to be directed to a website instead to answer a few questions.
Are you a U.S citizen living in America? Then yes, you have that right and so do I. It was one of the founding principles of this country and I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU AND ANYONE ELSE TO PROTECT IT. That's not flaming you either. I will fight and die to defend the essential liberties that were provided to me by the founding fathers and the men who fought and died during our battle for independence.
If you really are an American, than you are a very sad example indeed. Anonymity is at the very heart of what it MEANS to be an American in this country.
If you really feel that I don't have a right to anonymity, then you feel that you have a right to know who I am. Who the HELL do you think you are? Why do you get the right to demand the identity of another American citizen? Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Right there in the very founding framework of our country. As long as I am not hurting you, you have no rights to detain me, demand my papers, or interfere with my actions in any way, shape, or form.
What about voting for public officials? That's anonymous. What about juries? That's also anonymous when you give your vote for guilty and not guilty. You are astonishingly ignorant of what anonymity is and why it is important to this country.
I guarantee you, if you tried to stop me in the street and demand my driver's license and attempted to inform me that I had no right to refuse your request... it would get ugly rather quickly. That certainly seems to be what you are saying when you make the statement that my rights don't exist.
On the other hand, if I came onto your property and you informed me that I would need to "surrender" my anonymity in return for goods and services, that is another situation entirely. I still had my rights to anonymity, but voluntarily chose to reveal my identity to you in order to complete a business transaction. You have every right to refuse me your goods and services as well.
Just remember that I get to choose where and when I reveal my identity. That is my right, and you cannot infringe upon it. If you don't like it, just walk away.
No, you are just ignorant and never read my statements in the first place. "Pure" Anonymity is nearly impossible to obtain legally as your gateway to the Internet almost always involves a relationship with another person that knows who you are.
Anonymity, considered from the point of view of the packets destination, can be provided by a single proxy alone. As long as the administrator operating that proxy does not publicly divulge the logs to anyone else, they have effectively protected the IP address that the packets originated from. The destination is aware of the proxies IP address, that is all. I am also referring to a truly anonymous proxy that does not divulge the IP address of the clients it is serving. They do exist, in abundance. Granted this is not "pure" anonymity, but your identity is still protected from 3rd parties.
Freenet and TOR represent a different method in obtaining anonymity that is considerably more complex. By running a TOR exit node, I am relaying packets from an intermediary node to the final destination. I do not know who originated those packets anymore than the destination itself. If anyone were to approach me and demand the identity of the person sending those packets, I would not possess any information that would allow me to do that.
Your statement certainly seems to be incredibly ignorant. However, I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume you meant that if I thought Freenet or TOR provided me anonymity, that I was "sorely mistaken". If you really know what these networks provide, and how they provide it, you may have been referring to the vulnerabilities present in both of them. In that case, you are still
I don't know as much about TCP/IP as I'd like to, but I thought that IPv6 had the idea of setting new security standards, so that your system wouldn't be open for everyone by default.
One just has to treat the Web as a huge marketplace, where trust must be earned by *eveyone*, who wants to be trusted.
So no, we really don't need a gated community as much as we need to educate people - and give them options. The Microsoft stragegy ("Trustful" Computing) means everything is fine, as long as you implicitly trust M$ to handle everything.
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
You mean we cant just "Ctrl + Alt + Del" the dang thing? :D
Cheers, Jeremy Reger www.romanstwelve.net - Total Web Consulting
Let's give up and make a new internet then shall we.
Seriously, what do these two facts prove? In 2002 Microsoft realised that they actually needed to write secure operating systems, and have in the seven years since then added an annoying dialog box to combat the problem.
And a bunch of other companies are making $79 billion revenue by selling products which claim to patch certain flaws in a fundamentally-insecure system, to varying success.
How about instead of blaming the Internet, we build a fucking secure operating system for 98% of the machines on it.
"...one alternative would, in effect, create a 'gated community' where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety..."
Those who give up freedom for security shall not have, nor do they deserve, either.
-Ben Franklin
I'm with David Akin. All the mainstream users will use internet v2, and take the criminals with them. Internet v1 will go back to what it was in 1993 and be relatively safe due to lack of interest by users and subsequently the criminals.
-Viz
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
...but to protocols instead of entire world-wide networks: This sounds strangely like Telnet vs SSH. People still use telnet, it is just a lot less prominent due to the security risks. Also, HTTP is the most widely used protocol for hypertext, although HTTPS is more secure.
Hostes futuri sint socii.
The fact is, no one and no institution is an island.
Except Alkatraz... although, even that was insecure.
Hostes futuri sint socii.
There is no particular case that we can prove he came up with this, but it seems he applied it whenever he thought necessary.
An earlier variant by Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanack (1738): "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."
The saying has also appeared in many paraphrased forms:
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.
He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.
He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.
People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.
If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both.
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.
Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither.
Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.
"I only speak the truth"
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Should have posted this with above:
This was used as a motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania. (1759); the book was published by Franklin; its author was Richard Jackson, but Franklin did claim responsibility for some small excerpts that were used in it.
"I only speak the truth"
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