I think you make a good case for distcc if your job is compiling. But the world is much bigger than that. One of the things I thought was cool about OpenMosix was the general purpose approach it takes. If I can merely write my program to spawn many subprocesses (without shared memory) then I can easily and transparently leverage OpenMosix just as easily as an SMP box. Therefore OpenMosix becomes a great solution for many problems. I was thinking in general. Of course, if you're building a cluster just for compiling, then I agree with your excellent points about distcc.
Still, I'm not sure why OpenMosix would be necessarily bad at distributed compiling. Especially as your number of boxes grows larger, say 50 machines in a school lab. All you would need to do is spawn as many compiles concurrently as possible, and let OpenMosix distribute the load. Yes there is the issue of shared I/O. And compiling is not entirely compute intensive.
Perhaps that is the difference. I would think OpenMosix is good for compute intensive jobs vs. I/O intensive.
I can imagine other examples. A massive POV rendering job, where many copies of POV could be launched to render the many highly compute intensive frames of a large and long animation. (Say each frame is movie sized 4096 x 2048, at 30 fps.)
A single benchmark with very little accuracy or explanation that you can point at and say "I could do that cheaper with 3 PC's" before you even do the benchmark?
The purpose of this experiment will be to determine the effect on the brain and other organs of massive exposure to pornography and any health effects that might result. Also the effects on academic performance will be observed and reported.
If you're trying to cluster XBox'es, why not use OpenMosix? I think everything about it is cool. The load is distributed automatically. Applications don't have to be specially written. All of the boxes can see each other's filesystem? Maybe there is some downside to using OpenMosix for clustering?
Re:Quick Summary... and a Why?
on
Xbox Linux Cluster
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Why would you want to buy an XBox for this in general?
If you RTFA you will see that he didn't buy them. He received funds from his university to do this. He remarks that the XBox worked great as a general computing platform.
So why would you want to do this in general? Because if you can get someone else to pay for it, you get three useful Linux computers to use for some period of time, in exchange for producing your experimental results.
A threat to be taken seriously
on
Potato Bazookas
·
· Score: 1
President Bush needs to immediately respond to this unprecedented threat to our national security.
Since they have distributed Linux, that alone is enough to thwart the rumored patent attack.
Not necessarily true. IF SCO is doing the rumored patent attack, then they lose their GPL distribution rights. That's all. By not having any other license under which they can legally distribute GNU software, including Linux, then it would be up to the individual copyright holders of various GPL software to then sue SCO for copyright violation. As part of a copyright suit, one of the big issues would be, copyright holders would have to proove damages. Using the term You to address a hyopthetical individual copyright holder in, say, the kernel... Just how much are You damaged by SCO violating your copyright and distributing Linux without any valid licence to copy a copyrighted work? Probably not much. You could probably get an injunction to get them to stop, but that's probably about it.
In summary, it is probably much more profitable for SCO to collect $99 from every Linux box than to be distributing Linux (or any other GPL software) themselves if it comes down to a choice between the two.
Just like it is so difficult to buy a PC from a major vendor that does not already have Windows, they will also eventually try to make it impossible to buy one that does not have DRM on it which only allows you to run a policed DRM OS, read: Microsoft Windows.
Given the current number of non-US governments (various South-American, Japan, Germany, UK ?, Malyasia, China, Tiwan, South Korea, Isreal, Pakastian, probably others I've forgotten in the frequent Linux Today announcements) jumping on the open source bandwagon...
Given the Chinese governments' interest in developing their own microprocessors (Dragon? recently on Slashdot)...
I don't think that the forces of evil can force every PC everywhere to have DRM.
As long as some PC's can freely run any software, there will always be ways to defeat DRM. Or said differently, without total control, they control nothing.
Given that there will always be somebody powerful enough that doesn't want DRM, or at least, wants Free software, the DRM folks will never get total control.
When will people learn, that good does not exist w/o evil. Evil can not exist w/o good.
I therefore propose that we eliminate all evil. How? By eliminating good.
We can start by having the government establish a system whereby everyone is constantly monitored for any evil. People guilty of wrong-thinking should be sent to re-education camps. Failing that, they should be eliminated. By taking these measured, reasoned steps, we can eliminate crime and all other forms of evil.
Only good will remain. (Or will it? Would such a "good" society be worth living in?)
Is it be possible to just write a quick script to delete all of the logs automatically?
At present, the answer would be NO.
In the future, with advances in technology, it may become possible to do this.
There is hope. According to Moore's law, cpu power doubles every 18 months. Software becomes more sophisticated by the day. New languages tend to have higher and higher levels of abstraction away from the hardware. It should become possible in the forseeable future.
Check back next year. You might be pleasantly surprised at how much innovation Microsoft will have accomplished by then. You might even find such tools as cron and bash.
Although MS deserves it... as a whole, this is not the right thing to do.
What!?! You say, it's NOT the right thing to force Microsoft to honor a legally binding contract that they signed?
Of course, you could blame Sun instead. Sun should have known better than to sign a non agression pact with Hitler. It's Sun's own fault -- after all, they expected Microsoft to honor the binding contract that they signed. Silly Sun.
What Microsoft did was okay. They should not be penalized. After all, Microsoft gained commercial advantage by signing a contract and then doing the exact opposite of what they signed. Therefore, it must be okay. Profit is all that matters, not right and wrong. This is business. There is no low too low. This is Microsoft we're talking about. They are above the standards that everyone else must live by. (Or would it be below?)
You're assuming these countries will even be using windows.
You're assuming that Palladium TCP hardware will even be capable of running anything other than Windows. The grandparent post is correct. China needs this to survive in a Palladium world. That is, where trusted computing is in the hardware and potentially also in the processor.
argue that scientific literature cannot be privately controlled or owned by the publishers of scientific journals, and must instead be available in public archives freely accessible by anyone and everyone.
Spock said it best...
"Since the information on Memory Alpha is freely available to everyone, no defensive systems were deemed necessary."
Hopefully we don't make the same mistake. The federation did not have an evil copyright industry to contend with.
there is no such thing as moral and immoral in technology
But there is such a thing as moral and immoral in people's behavior.
Reread my original post. It is about people's behavior. I'm not going to work for XX and say product xx is the best and then the next day work for YY and say competitive product yy is the best. At least one of my two statements would have to be a lie for whoever I would be whoring for at the moment.
morality ?!? this is an issue about morality?
some of you people need to get lives. there are real "morality" issues out there
You get upset and rant and rave but you never address what is wrong with having the following opinion.
If I work for company XX making product xx. I promote product xx and say it is best.
Now I go to work for YY using product yy, and say yy is best.
At least one of my two statements is a self serving lie.
Some people view telling lies as a moral issue. It is not a technology issue.
(Nevermind the fact that corporation XX's illegal or unethical behavior might open a whole other debate.)
Just because there are bigger moral issues mean that lesser issues are irrelevant? Therefore Microsoft's behavior is all okay. Nevertheless, this is off topic. The original thread was about individual self serving behavior, ala. the XX and YY example above.
unfuckingbelievable, the shit that some of you people think
You still leave unanswered why the simple XX and YY view stated above is so un...believable.
I did not compare Windows to Killing. I merely used a higher contrast example of what my entire point was about. Not having any beliefs in anything. Doing whatever is profitable at the moment.
this is FUCKING TECHNOLOGY you nut
Technology is not a RELIGION
it's not IMMORAL for me to install Windows
I'm not the one yelling and screaming.
The facts about what Microsoft has done speak for themselves to anyone who has been around longer than the dot-com boom. We're talking about a company that has been convicted of criminal conduct and upheld on appeal. This is NOT about technology. This is about people and ethics.
I have these conversations with a coworker of mine who defends Microsoft no matter how indefensible the particular point may be at the moment. Is there no limit to how people should conduct themselves in pursuit of profit? Is there no low too low? A company that will sign a contract that stipulates in writing that they will not alter certian api's, and then turn right around and violate the very letter (not just spirit) of that contract in order to kill Java.
This is a company that blatently rips off disk compression technology and bundles it into DOS, and is later called on it. Settle or pay a fine. Either way it's still the cheapest technology they ever stole. In the end, a profitable venture, so it must be okay.
You're right about one thing. This is not about technology. This is about people and their behavior. <insert silly name calling and insults here> That is the whole point of the thread beginning with the top level post. Finally, you said nothing that disputes my remarks about people, which was the entire substance of my post.
In case the point is lost on you, I'll repeat it, but without charged examples such as killing.
Some of us have ethics, morals and values. If I work for company XX, who makes product xx, and then promote xx as being the best solution, I would not then go work for YY who makes product yy which is a direct competitor of xx, and then trumpet yy as being the best. One or both of my statements concerning xx and yy must therefore be a lie. Black and white. Some of us see conduct in terms of right and wrong, not profit or less profit. This was the entirety of my point.
An alternative hypothesis, but not one that seems warranted by the actual interview article, would be that a person became enlightened that xx was not the best and that yy was.
What he tries to accomplish is based on where he works.
If he can only push a Microsoft product, then he will.
Some of us actually have morals, ethics and values that don't change based on where we work.
It is enough for me, in my business, to be successful. I don't have any requirement that everyone else must also fail in order to measure my success by.
Let me put it differently with a hypothetical example...
Today, suppose I work for a church/charatible organization/etc. so I do good deeds. Tomorrow I get a job working for the mob, so I kill people.
What he tries to accomplish is based on where he works.
What I try to accomplish, helping people, or killing them, is based on where I work at the moment.
If he can only push a Microsoft product, then he will.
If I can only kill people today, then I will. (Or destroy other businesses, destroy competition, remove opportunity from an entire industry, etc.)
If someone can be so two-faced, then you probably shouldn't trust them. They probably have no genuine interest in your company if they work for you. Their interest changes at the whim of who they are whoring for at the moment.
Maybe it isn't this way with Rick Belluzzo, but on the face of it, but it is one plausible interpretation of the facts. So does this guy really prefer Linux?
Show me a law that compells me to look at advertising.
The corporations have not yet gotten this law passed. AFAIK, there is no sponsor.
Just because a company spends money on something, does not mean that I have to submit to it.
Ah, comrad, you need to report to a re-education camp. Corporations do things for your own good, and submitting is the best thing to do in your own interest.
There was an article on CNet last Friday about automatic recommendation systems. What happens when systems automatically recommend things?
In a incident that highlights the pitfalls of online recommendation systems, Amazon.com on Friday removed a link to a sex manual that appeared next to a listing for a spiritual guide by well-known Christian televangelist Pat Robertson.
The two titles were temporarily linked as a result of technology that tracks and displays lists of merchandise perused and purchased by Amazon visitors. Such promotions appear below the main description for products under the title, "Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for these items."
Basically, the gist of it is that people shopping for the televangellist's spiritual guide, and Amazon's recommendation system suggested that people who bought this also bought another book called The Men's Guide to Anal Sex.
I'm speculating, but I would guess that such a system could be hacked by ordering both books, and then shortly later cancelling your order. The order cancellation probably does not remove the association of these two items in the recommendation database tables.
I said this in another discussion, but here goes....
It seems inevitable that this will lead to a technology arms race.
The advertisers get more obnoxious. Browsers and proxies get better at screening out ads. More features will appear to help the end user. And those features will become more sophisticated.
Here is a hypothetical example. [Disclaimer: this example is purely hypothetical. I have not done this myself, and am not trying to induce browser authors to commit a crime. Remember, a web site has to make money, and not watching ads is stealing!] Anyway, that said, suppose a browser (or proxy?) went through all the motions of running the ad. Executed the ad code, scripts, flash animations, etc. Dutifully simulated the popup windows, and executed their code. Dutifully requested all of the graphics, flash animations, and other inline content for the popup windows. This way the server really thinks that you see the ad. After all, your browser requested a flash that is only embedded in the popup. So you must not be a thief, because you are seeing the ad. The problem is, the authors of this browser or proxy have induced their users into stealing because the browser or proxy doesn't actually display the ads or popup windows. It still consumes the bandwidth, but these evil crooks (i.e. users) don't care.
This technique will prevent the advertisers from knowing that you've seen the ad. From their perspective, your browser has executed all the right code and requested all the right content from the server that should be associated with viewing this page.
Seen from the perspective I've described it here (advertiser friendly, and users as thieves) could the above hypothetical example be construed as a circumvention device? "Our content is protected by Anti-Leech, and these evil hackers have circumvented it. That's as bad as spray painting ad billboards!"
In the end, we'll have heads up displays in cars, with ad billboards constantly popping up in our face while driving. This will be seen as enormously beneficial in eliminating the visual clutter of billboards on buildings and roadways.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you make a good case for distcc if your job is compiling. But the world is much bigger than that. One of the things I thought was cool about OpenMosix was the general purpose approach it takes. If I can merely write my program to spawn many subprocesses (without shared memory) then I can easily and transparently leverage OpenMosix just as easily as an SMP box. Therefore OpenMosix becomes a great solution for many problems. I was thinking in general. Of course, if you're building a cluster just for compiling, then I agree with your excellent points about distcc.
Still, I'm not sure why OpenMosix would be necessarily bad at distributed compiling. Especially as your number of boxes grows larger, say 50 machines in a school lab. All you would need to do is spawn as many compiles concurrently as possible, and let OpenMosix distribute the load. Yes there is the issue of shared I/O. And compiling is not entirely compute intensive.
Perhaps that is the difference. I would think OpenMosix is good for compute intensive jobs vs. I/O intensive.
I can imagine other examples. A massive POV rendering job, where many copies of POV could be launched to render the many highly compute intensive frames of a large and long animation. (Say each frame is movie sized 4096 x 2048, at 30 fps.)
A single benchmark with very little accuracy or explanation that you can point at and say "I could do that cheaper with 3 PC's" before you even do the benchmark?
But this will prevent you from getting the grant.
wouldn't it be ironic if someone built and used a large-node cluster of these and to crack the Micro$oft XBox keys?
Would the massive availability of cheapo TCPA / TPM chips help with key cracking efforts?
Would there be any way to take advantage of the clustered graphics processing power of the hardware GPU?
i.e. can the graphics hardware be run in a mode that achieves much higher quality rendering at speeds that are unsuitable for gameplay?
If so, then a cluster might make a good rendering farm.
I don't know, but it's just a thought. Any good disproof to blow this idea away?
He got a grant to figure that out.
Grant poposal:
The purpose of this experiment will be to determine the effect on the brain and other organs of massive exposure to pornography and any health effects that might result. Also the effects on academic performance will be observed and reported.
If you're trying to cluster XBox'es, why not use OpenMosix? I think everything about it is cool. The load is distributed automatically. Applications don't have to be specially written. All of the boxes can see each other's filesystem? Maybe there is some downside to using OpenMosix for clustering?
Why would you want to buy an XBox for this in general?
If you RTFA you will see that he didn't buy them. He received funds from his university to do this. He remarks that the XBox worked great as a general computing platform.
So why would you want to do this in general? Because if you can get someone else to pay for it, you get three useful Linux computers to use for some period of time, in exchange for producing your experimental results.
President Bush needs to immediately respond to this unprecedented threat to our national security.
I wonder if they actually check the comments to see if they're made by American citizens
You should have left off the last eight words.
Since they have distributed Linux, that alone is enough to thwart the rumored patent attack.
Not necessarily true. IF SCO is doing the rumored patent attack, then they lose their GPL distribution rights. That's all. By not having any other license under which they can legally distribute GNU software, including Linux, then it would be up to the individual copyright holders of various GPL software to then sue SCO for copyright violation. As part of a copyright suit, one of the big issues would be, copyright holders would have to proove damages. Using the term You to address a hyopthetical individual copyright holder in, say, the kernel... Just how much are You damaged by SCO violating your copyright and distributing Linux without any valid licence to copy a copyrighted work? Probably not much. You could probably get an injunction to get them to stop, but that's probably about it.
In summary, it is probably much more profitable for SCO to collect $99 from every Linux box than to be distributing Linux (or any other GPL software) themselves if it comes down to a choice between the two.
Just like it is so difficult to buy a PC from a major vendor that does not already have Windows, they will also eventually try to make it impossible to buy one that does not have DRM on it which only allows you to run a policed DRM OS, read: Microsoft Windows.
Given the current number of non-US governments (various South-American, Japan, Germany, UK ?, Malyasia, China, Tiwan, South Korea, Isreal, Pakastian, probably others I've forgotten in the frequent Linux Today announcements) jumping on the open source bandwagon...
Given the Chinese governments' interest in developing their own microprocessors (Dragon? recently on Slashdot)...
I don't think that the forces of evil can force every PC everywhere to have DRM.
As long as some PC's can freely run any software, there will always be ways to defeat DRM. Or said differently, without total control, they control nothing.
Given that there will always be somebody powerful enough that doesn't want DRM, or at least, wants Free software, the DRM folks will never get total control.
Luckily, in America, rights are protected, not business models.
Meesa thinks yousa hasa got it backwards.
When will people learn, that good does not exist w/o evil. Evil can not exist w/o good.
I therefore propose that we eliminate all evil. How? By eliminating good.
We can start by having the government establish a system whereby everyone is constantly monitored for any evil. People guilty of wrong-thinking should be sent to re-education camps. Failing that, they should be eliminated. By taking these measured, reasoned steps, we can eliminate crime and all other forms of evil.
Only good will remain. (Or will it? Would such a "good" society be worth living in?)
Is it be possible to just write a quick script to delete all of the logs automatically?
At present, the answer would be NO.
In the future, with advances in technology, it may become possible to do this.
There is hope. According to Moore's law, cpu power doubles every 18 months. Software becomes more sophisticated by the day. New languages tend to have higher and higher levels of abstraction away from the hardware. It should become possible in the forseeable future.
Check back next year. You might be pleasantly surprised at how much innovation Microsoft will have accomplished by then. You might even find such tools as cron and bash.
The WIPO Troll returns again, showering Slashdot in 45,000 copies [....]
WIPO? Is that some new brand of bathroom tissue?
Although MS deserves it... as a whole, this is not the right thing to do.
What!?! You say, it's NOT the right thing to force Microsoft to honor a legally binding contract that they signed?
Of course, you could blame Sun instead. Sun should have known better than to sign a non agression pact with Hitler. It's Sun's own fault -- after all, they expected Microsoft to honor the binding contract that they signed. Silly Sun.
What Microsoft did was okay. They should not be penalized. After all, Microsoft gained commercial advantage by signing a contract and then doing the exact opposite of what they signed. Therefore, it must be okay. Profit is all that matters, not right and wrong. This is business. There is no low too low. This is Microsoft we're talking about. They are above the standards that everyone else must live by. (Or would it be below?)
You're assuming these countries will even be using windows.
You're assuming that Palladium TCP hardware will even be capable of running anything other than Windows. The grandparent post is correct. China needs this to survive in a Palladium world. That is, where trusted computing is in the hardware and potentially also in the processor.
argue that scientific literature cannot be privately controlled or owned by the publishers of scientific journals, and must instead be available in public archives freely accessible by anyone and everyone.
Spock said it best...
"Since the information on Memory Alpha is freely available to everyone, no defensive systems were deemed necessary."
Hopefully we don't make the same mistake. The federation did not have an evil copyright industry to contend with.
there is no such thing as moral and immoral in technology
But there is such a thing as moral and immoral in people's behavior.
Reread my original post. It is about people's behavior. I'm not going to work for XX and say product xx is the best and then the next day work for YY and say competitive product yy is the best. At least one of my two statements would have to be a lie for whoever I would be whoring for at the moment.
morality ?!? this is an issue about morality? some of you people need to get lives. there are real "morality" issues out there
You get upset and rant and rave but you never address what is wrong with having the following opinion.
If I work for company XX making product xx. I promote product xx and say it is best.
Now I go to work for YY using product yy, and say yy is best.
At least one of my two statements is a self serving lie.
Some people view telling lies as a moral issue. It is not a technology issue.
(Nevermind the fact that corporation XX's illegal or unethical behavior might open a whole other debate.)
Just because there are bigger moral issues mean that lesser issues are irrelevant? Therefore Microsoft's behavior is all okay. Nevertheless, this is off topic. The original thread was about individual self serving behavior, ala. the XX and YY example above.
unfuckingbelievable, the shit that some of you people think
You still leave unanswered why the simple XX and YY view stated above is so un...believable.
compare buying Windows to Killing
I did not compare Windows to Killing. I merely used a higher contrast example of what my entire point was about. Not having any beliefs in anything. Doing whatever is profitable at the moment.
this is FUCKING TECHNOLOGY you nut
Technology is not a RELIGION
it's not IMMORAL for me to install Windows
I'm not the one yelling and screaming.
The facts about what Microsoft has done speak for themselves to anyone who has been around longer than the dot-com boom. We're talking about a company that has been convicted of criminal conduct and upheld on appeal. This is NOT about technology. This is about people and ethics.
I have these conversations with a coworker of mine who defends Microsoft no matter how indefensible the particular point may be at the moment. Is there no limit to how people should conduct themselves in pursuit of profit? Is there no low too low? A company that will sign a contract that stipulates in writing that they will not alter certian api's, and then turn right around and violate the very letter (not just spirit) of that contract in order to kill Java.
This is a company that blatently rips off disk compression technology and bundles it into DOS, and is later called on it. Settle or pay a fine. Either way it's still the cheapest technology they ever stole. In the end, a profitable venture, so it must be okay.
You're right about one thing. This is not about technology. This is about people and their behavior. <insert silly name calling and insults here> That is the whole point of the thread beginning with the top level post. Finally, you said nothing that disputes my remarks about people, which was the entire substance of my post.
In case the point is lost on you, I'll repeat it, but without charged examples such as killing. Some of us have ethics, morals and values. If I work for company XX, who makes product xx, and then promote xx as being the best solution, I would not then go work for YY who makes product yy which is a direct competitor of xx, and then trumpet yy as being the best. One or both of my statements concerning xx and yy must therefore be a lie. Black and white. Some of us see conduct in terms of right and wrong, not profit or less profit. This was the entirety of my point.
An alternative hypothesis, but not one that seems warranted by the actual interview article, would be that a person became enlightened that xx was not the best and that yy was.
What he tries to accomplish is based on where he works. If he can only push a Microsoft product, then he will.
Some of us actually have morals, ethics and values that don't change based on where we work.
It is enough for me, in my business, to be successful. I don't have any requirement that everyone else must also fail in order to measure my success by.
Let me put it differently with a hypothetical example...
Today, suppose I work for a church/charatible organization/etc. so I do good deeds. Tomorrow I get a job working for the mob, so I kill people.
What he tries to accomplish is based on where he works.
What I try to accomplish, helping people, or killing them, is based on where I work at the moment.
If he can only push a Microsoft product, then he will.
If I can only kill people today, then I will. (Or destroy other businesses, destroy competition, remove opportunity from an entire industry, etc.)
If someone can be so two-faced, then you probably shouldn't trust them. They probably have no genuine interest in your company if they work for you. Their interest changes at the whim of who they are whoring for at the moment.
Maybe it isn't this way with Rick Belluzzo, but on the face of it, but it is one plausible interpretation of the facts. So does this guy really prefer Linux?
Show me a law that compells me to look at advertising.
The corporations have not yet gotten this law passed. AFAIK, there is no sponsor.
Just because a company spends money on something, does not mean that I have to submit to it.
Ah, comrad, you need to report to a re-education camp. Corporations do things for your own good, and submitting is the best thing to do in your own interest.
There was an article on CNet last Friday about automatic recommendation systems. What happens when systems automatically recommend things?
In a incident that highlights the pitfalls of online recommendation systems, Amazon.com on Friday removed a link to a sex manual that appeared next to a listing for a spiritual guide by well-known Christian televangelist Pat Robertson.
The two titles were temporarily linked as a result of technology that tracks and displays lists of merchandise perused and purchased by Amazon visitors. Such promotions appear below the main description for products under the title, "Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for these items."
Basically, the gist of it is that people shopping for the televangellist's spiritual guide, and Amazon's recommendation system suggested that people who bought this also bought another book called The Men's Guide to Anal Sex.
I'm speculating, but I would guess that such a system could be hacked by ordering both books, and then shortly later cancelling your order. The order cancellation probably does not remove the association of these two items in the recommendation database tables.
I said this in another discussion, but here goes....
It seems inevitable that this will lead to a technology arms race.
The advertisers get more obnoxious. Browsers and proxies get better at screening out ads. More features will appear to help the end user. And those features will become more sophisticated.
Here is a hypothetical example. [Disclaimer: this example is purely hypothetical. I have not done this myself, and am not trying to induce browser authors to commit a crime. Remember, a web site has to make money, and not watching ads is stealing!] Anyway, that said, suppose a browser (or proxy?) went through all the motions of running the ad. Executed the ad code, scripts, flash animations, etc. Dutifully simulated the popup windows, and executed their code. Dutifully requested all of the graphics, flash animations, and other inline content for the popup windows. This way the server really thinks that you see the ad. After all, your browser requested a flash that is only embedded in the popup. So you must not be a thief, because you are seeing the ad. The problem is, the authors of this browser or proxy have induced their users into stealing because the browser or proxy doesn't actually display the ads or popup windows. It still consumes the bandwidth, but these evil crooks (i.e. users) don't care.
This technique will prevent the advertisers from knowing that you've seen the ad. From their perspective, your browser has executed all the right code and requested all the right content from the server that should be associated with viewing this page.
Seen from the perspective I've described it here (advertiser friendly, and users as thieves) could the above hypothetical example be construed as a circumvention device? "Our content is protected by Anti-Leech, and these evil hackers have circumvented it. That's as bad as spray painting ad billboards!"
In the end, we'll have heads up displays in cars, with ad billboards constantly popping up in our face while driving. This will be seen as enormously beneficial in eliminating the visual clutter of billboards on buildings and roadways.