Slashdot Mirror
Paul Vixie On the Unevenly Distributed Intelligence of Internet Infrastructure
CowboyRobot writes "Writing for ACM's Queue magazine, Paul Vixie argues, "The edge of the Internet is an unruly place." By design, the Internet core is stupid, and the edge is smart. This design decision has enabled the Internet's wildcat growth, since without complexity the core can grow at the speed of demand. On the downside, the decision to put all smartness at the edge means we're at the mercy of scale when it comes to the quality of the Internet's aggregate traffic load. Not all device and software builders have the skills and budgets that something the size of the Internet deserves. Furthermore, the resiliency of the Internet means that a device or program that gets something importantly wrong about Internet communication stands a pretty good chance of working "well enough" in spite of this. Witness the endless stream of patches and vulnerability announcements from the vendors of literally every smartphone, laptop, or desktop operating system and application. Bad guys have the time, skills, and motivation to study edge devices for weaknesses, and they are finding as many weaknesses as they need to inject malicious code into our precious devices where they can then copy our data, modify our installed software, spy on us, and steal our identities."
fb.
Its not that the beta is horrid on top of that now you get spammed with mega banners and popups, what is this 2001? all over again? Is slashdot really dieing. You guys need to make your mind.
As of now on slashdot you need to have No Script running plus at least Addblock, also block the shitty flash too.
This may be actually time to start looking around, anyone interested starting slashdot 2?
I think that Slashdot is a perfect rebuttal to this theory.
The existing site, while not perfect, is far closer to the "core" of the Internet than it is to the "edge". Yet despite its shortcomings, it's actually a very usable and practical site. We can easily engage in discussion here, for example. It's anything but "stupid". It's quite smart and pragmatic.
Then we have the Slashdot beta site. It's obvious at the "edge" of the Internet, so to speak. Yet it is not "smart". As anyone who has used it will know quite well, it is as dumb as it could possibly be. It's so broken and awful in so many irreparable ways. It makes it damn near impossible to read the content here, and even more difficult to participate in discussions. It's a failure, and best categorized as "stupid".
So I don't totally buy this theory. I think that the "core" is often the "core" because it's the smartest or best way of doing something. What we find floating at the "edges" is crap, like the Slashdot beta site. It's at the "edge" because it's nothing more than a turd that has been flung away from civilization.
I'm sorry, this is off topic, but I was getting a warning at the top of Slashdot that classic is going to be going away soon (looks like in 6 months).
How many readers are going to leave if slashdot classic is cut off completely?
It's just the way TCP/IP was designed, back in the ARPANET days, you know.
Putting all the intelligence in the hosts allows for more resiliency, since it takes a lot to the bring the whole infrastructure down this way.
Mobile networks are quite the opposite, though (smarter infrastructure, a little more dumb terminals).
Software defined networks are definitely a way to bring some intelligence back in the infrastructure of IP networks.
We'll see if it will enable a smarter Internet or not.
Paul Vixie can pontificate on the Unevenly Distributed Intelligence at Dice that has resulted in this abomination known as Beta Slashdot...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
We can't change the first two without destroying the Internet, but there's no reason why computers should contain so much valuable information to steal.
that are the cause of breaches and insecurities of the Internet. Long ago that was not the case, because simply connecting a computer to the Internet would get it infected with malware. Computer and browser makers have learned how to largely avoid this, but no one has yet figured out a way to prevent trusting or stupid human beings from giving permission to install programs that subsequently are able to do severe damage. This is part of human nature and will never change.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
To validly disprove (with computing tech) my points on hosts files - which, I KNOW, can't be done: Hence their cowardly reprehensible "hit & run" downmod of my post, but yet not being able to disprove my points.
* :)
(That's really ALL I need to see/know... it tells me my points are invulnerable & they are - Truth, always is!)
APK
P.S.=> I also think it's VERY FUNNY they think their effete impotent "downmods" will "hide" my post - the fool doing the "hit & run" downmod apparently doesn't realize that MOST folks here browse well below the default "moderation threshold" (which is easily sockpuppet cheated, or by logging out of your account after downmodding others, then trolling by ac instead afterwards - talk about "Busted Code" - figures though: Look @ the TYPE of "men" (using that term loosely) who designed it: Nerd weasels who act like women (and downmod others unjustly as is thecase here), who aren't even GOOD @ design for Pete's sake... lol, about as good @ programming as Mr. Vixie's shown himself to be, what-with his EASILY redirect poisoned & fastflux botnet abused DNS system...!)
... apk
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2578510
Complaints about beta go here (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net
It's ok, I'll take that as a +1 :D
Yes, but fuck beta?
Why's the source link in the post I replied to downmodded? It works.
You forgot developers-beta, science-beta, etc.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Thanks apk. It really works. They minus moderate ya but can't hide ya outfoxed them with hosts.
Complexity is a vulnerability. Simplicity is a strength.
If something is just too simple to be modified or hacked or manipulated by anyone including the rightful owners then its too simple to be perverted by a hostile agent. Simplicity is frequently a virtue.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Fuck Beta.
You have ignored the desires of this community to push your own agenda. You merely want us to believe you care, nothing more.
"Bad guys have the time, skills, and motivation to study edge devices for weaknesses..."
But you know, it's funny... I would have thought the giant corporations that are behind manufacturing these devices (and in many cases the software for them) have just as much skill to look at these things from the other end.
Apparently what they have lacked is the motivation to do so. That should change.
Unless you're on Android KitKat, of course. Apparently, it ignores /etc/hosts completely now.
DNS can use UDP, yes, but it can also use TCP, so as an example of "a UDP", it is quite poor.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Liv'in on the edge...
Ever since he became a Dice shareholder, that is. But does he know that Dice assigns zero value to Slashdot?
Errr...just how does this relate to /. beta? Show us how this is a beta killer.
"they need to inject malicious code into our precious devices where they can then copy our data, modify our installed software, spy on us, and steal our identities."
Not on my networks, which comprise about 1 million people at the moment.
All of our infrastructure is open source and we don't have those issues. Been opeperating a standatf 3.x kernel on 25 routers with millions of people accessing them, along with the server software, also LINUX based running Apache, Tomcat Servlets, and PostGRES...OpenLDAP and TLS for the internal key management infrastructure.
so I don't see a problem with the internet as designed, works very well. It doesn't need change.
You are trying to change the internet for your own malicious purposes, in my opinion, than actually address the problem:
1) Internet security as far as functionality is concerned, works extremely well. I travel and I go to many places, and there has only been once in the past two years I couldn't access my VPN server due to a real internet outage. I say outage because the local admin at your so called "smart edge" made a few bad investment decisions, proprietary gear bankrolled with back doors.
2) Most of the problems you do see with sites, internet infrastructure is entirely not related to the internet as designed per se, but a frustration with governments who don't like what the internet is doing. That is, an obstruction to their spheres of power and political and industrial espionage which they require to gain an edge to stay in power.
The internet has a nasty habit of revealing the connections of two sets of laws that normally can't be seen by the plebs: That is the ones that say you have to spend 5 years in prison for 1 ounce of pot, complete with a criminal record so you will never be hired again vs. If you're say a Banker, and rob whole countries you get a pay raise and pat on the back or send you send the plebs to thier doom. For example, when the French found they couldn't get any of their gold back from the Fed they invaded Mali to stabilize their banks.
So I don't see any problems with the internet.
I do see a problem with governments and the internet coexisting together though, but that is not a technology problem.
As I see it, one or the other has to go and so far the internet is fighting a losing battle.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
* :)
It'll allow you to access CLASSIC slashdot for as long as it exists on the server/IP noted, stopping the redirect...
APK
P.S.=> I only got redirected to it once, hasn't happened since because of hosts overriding I do - I couldn't stand the beta since it DEMANDS javascript to particpate here (that, is going to KILL this site if they keep it up - since everyone KNOWS that javascript is TRULY, the "root of all evil" online as a scripting language in in document for Pete's sake, in trackers, malicious script, etc. - they didn't LEARN by the Adobe & MS example in macros apparently. CGI bin &/or Win CGI was a SAFER model to do the same, all server-side like a GOOD "client-server" design model where work is done server side, & no business logic in the front-end OR processing CPU cycles excessively eaten by clientside PC processing either)... apk
You're an idiot.
If he's an idiot, what are you? He supplied an easy working solution. Have you? No. You're an off topic useless troll.
"it's not ready" as you say, so can we please stop use it until it is ready?
PLEASE stop redirect us to this not ready thing
PLEASE let users themselves choose if they want to betatest this not ready thing.
Well it seems to have improved a bit since I last tried it.
Pity it takes so much vertical room that I have to scroll a lot of see comments. Still work to do. So I don't think its going away anytime soon.
Also why do we still have 'load more' on a desktop system in this day and age?
And the serif fonts, I know they're supposed to be more readable but they seem strangely irritating.
serif fonts is never more readable on screen, and you should at least have 300dpi before you use seriffed fonts.
(as always on the web, prettify headings etc if you like, but whatever you do in the CSS, never change the normal text font.)
Let's hope dice stop forcing all of us to suffer this horrible beta madness now. they got their feedback, all the feedback they ever gonna get... why make the pain longer?
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
* :)
(Enjoy!)
APK
P.S.=> Via a SIMPLE easily done hosts file edit, you control THEM, not the other way around... apk
"the Internet core is stupid, and the edge is smart"
That is true on SO many levels.
Let's punch them where it hurts. FUCK BETA
Very true.
make it go away
Yeah, but he used the IP address for goat.cx, wise guy.
Then the ac troll's stupid. APK put up the IP address for slashdot.org in place of beta.slashdot.org and it works.
You must be some sort of a Markov chain.
Perhaps
Paul Vixie on measures to prevent the Internet's architecture from assisting Dos attackers.
(It will still be dumb core, smart(er) edge after the changes.)
they're afraid of apk (they minus mod him but can't prove him wrong).
AFIK SMS was a testing mode, rides along the signal path anyway, essentially free to implement, Yet they monitized the crap out of it.
wanted: one clever sig,apply within