I think the big hullabaloo about Windows Refund Day was not necessarily getting the $50 or so back. The real issue was that users had a contract with OEMs/Microsoft for a refund, but the OEMs and Microsoft wanted to back out on that contract. If they had just given those few people who asked their $50 (or however much) right away, it would not have become a cause celebre.
I like the SunView approach. The windowing system would directly use ioctl()s to access the graphics card. Who's up for a port of THAT to Linux?
That sounds like the same sort of thing that NT's instability is often blamed on - direct access to video hardware that runs really fast when it works. A network-transparent windowing system made a lot more sense when X was first created. At that time it was more likely that the applications wouldn't run on the machine that you were sitting at, but on some central server. Higher-powered client machines have made this less important. I had heard at one point that XFree 4 would include more efficient ways to handle local X connections to decrease the amount of overhead necessary.
It sounds in this article like there is a limited amount of peer review going on - if you can convince your immediate development team of the necessity of a feature, you can go ahead. However, from past articles about development at Microsoft I remember hearing that there wasn't a whole lot of cross-product peer review.
Maybe the Linux difference is that the peer review process is open to anybody who cares to look at the code. Consensus on features and implementation is reached through the same general process that Microsoft uses, but by including so many more people in the open source process you have the potential to really raise the standards of the finished software.
As far as control-freakery goes, Apple is a sterling example of that philosophy, but on the other hand they're widely lauded for exciting and innovative features. I'm not really an Apple fan myself, I just want to point out that centralized planning of features doesn't always equal boring products.
Glad to hear that your latest attempt at presenting your side of the issue went better than the last one. Did you have the same attendance as the last time? What was the response from the audience?
...and why nothing anyone does is going to stop fundamentalists from bringing issues like this to America's ballots.
Much as I disagree with the viewpoint of said library-filterers, there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to bring an initiative to the ballot in the same way that you or I can. Make sure you don't appear as closed-minded at the same time you are accusing others of the same thing.
I don't even really like "Althon", it's too easy to confuse with "Athalon", "Athlon", etc.
Apparently it's confusing to you - the real name of the chip is in fact "Athlon", not "Althon". If I had a dollar for every time I grind my teeth after reading "Athalon" on/., I'd use those dollars for my dental bills:)
I wouldn't say that it does more harm than good. If I was a clueless admin, I might not secure my network on my own initiative, but if I saw my network posted on a site specifically for use as a smurf reflector, I'd be more likely to change my ways. I wish more of the Internet worked this way - rather than suing misconfigured networks (which would be difficult at best), netscan.org has held them up for public ridicule and abuse. It would be great if more Internet issues could be solved by community pressure to "do the right thing" rather than battling through the underinformed legal system (which isn't particularly consistent worldwide anyway).
BTW, the number of responses for the top offender on their list is about a third of number of responses they got for the worst network the first time they ran the survey. Maybe that doesn't say anything, but maybe they are gradually forcing admins to get smart.
Well, DeCSS was written first for Windows, and then ported to Linux. I've heard that this was because of a lack of UDF (DVD filesystem) support in the linux kernel until recently, although I don't know that for a fact. The defendants were arguing that the sole purpose of DeCSS was Linux DVD support, which is not technically true. What's worse comes next, though:
Finally, and most important, the legislative history makes it abundantly clear that Section 1201(f) permits reverse engineering of copyrighted computer programs only and does not authorize circumvention of technological systems that control access to other copyrighted works, such as movies. In consequence, the reverse engineering exception does not apply.
It sounds like what is needed is a recasting of DeCSS as a clean-room implementation of a copyrighted DVD player, rather than as a method of viewing copyrighted DVDs by circumventing access protections. I'm not sure there's a real difference between those two, but apparently there is a legal difference.
I was confused about this too. However, if you read carefully, the judge is discussing the defendants' claim that DeCSS was written for the sole purpose of playing DVDs on Linux. His point is that since DeCSS runs on Windows too, it can't be considered to have Linux as its sole purpose. I don't think he phrased it quite right - it sounds like he's talking about playing DVDs on Windows and Linux, but he's really talking about running DeCSS on Windows and Linux. Small verbal difference, big legal difference.
Then again, the extra fees for -not- having long distance service are suspect as well... I wonder what their justification for that is?
I'm not sure how widespread this is, but my local telco (Ameritech) charges $5 every time you change your long distance service. So the original poster probably only got charged $5 one time. Some long distance services will credit you $5 after you switch to make up for this.
Tying into what another poster mentioned - these coral reefs (along with other remains of sea dwellers) eventually become limestone, which is where another significant portion of C02 is locked away.
Not quite - volume is the question here. An object floating in water is supported by a buoyant force. This buoyant force is the same force as the weight of the volume of water displaced by the floating object. By weight I mean the downward force which gravity would cause the displaced mass of water to exert. The difference between the force that gravity exerts on the mass of the object and the force that gravity would have exerted on the displaced volume of water results in the object remaining at or above the water line if the object displaces enough water.
I'm not sure about whether the water line moves or not, though. True, water expands when it freezes, but on the other hand the ice cubes don't float all the way down in the water - they float as far above the water line as the buoyant force can push them (at equilibrium). Perhaps the volume of the ice cube which remains below the water line is exactly the volume of water that you would get if you melted the cube, and the volume of the ice cube above the water line represents the volume which was gained during freezing. In that case, the water line wouldn't move as the ice cubes melt.
This sounds intuitively correct to me, but I don't have a rigorous proof on hand and, alas, I also haven't run the experiment. Perhaps it's time for a trip to the cafeteria to try this?
Question: during the time that this was a publicly available court record, did anyone actually get a copy of the document from the court itself? I saw the previous/. article about this where the code was posted on a web site as part of a legal document sent to one of the defendants, but I'm not sure that that has the same weight as if you actually had a copy of the document from the court archives. So: did anyone avail themselves of the DVD CCA's lawyers' slip-up?
>(remember, the U.S. has about four times as >much)
What kind of b*ll*cks is that? Personally, I'd say the reverse is true, because of the legacy of old Imperial China, which had more history than anyone.
Imperial China isn't the same country as the People's Republic of China. The PRC has only been around about 50 years, versus 200+ for the U.S. Of course Imperial/Nationalist China has a lot longer history, but I'm not really comparing whether those governments were more or less oppressive (although they may well have been) than the U.S. has been.
It's true that parts of the U.S. government have acted in such a manner in the past, and probably will try to do so again. The difference is that U.S. citizens have recourse to the protections provided by the U.S. Constitution and enforced through the judicial system. Granted, this doesn't always work (just ask the Cherokee Indians, or any of the Americans who were interned on the west coast during WWII), but there is the clear understanding that U.S. citizens have certain rights and have an expectation of legal recourse when those rights are violated. In the People's Republic of China, you have no rights except what the Party determines that you have.
In short, in the U.S. we have the rule of law, which may not always be enforced evenly. In China there is rule by fiat of the Party, which guarantees uneven standing under the law. Yes, the U.S. is far from perfect, but I don't think you can compare the full history of both countries (remember, the U.S. has about four times as much) without deciding that China has a much more oppressive government.
Dammit, I'm stumped. My many and various arguments for how to detect and avoid hacked clients are powerless in the face of your hypothetical attack on the foundation of physics:) I bow to your mastery of the forces of this universe, and even though you are currently toast with your folks, you certainly own my Einstein-limited slower-than-light dimensionally-restricted box.
Sigh...rooted again. When is Mandrake going to have a patch for this?
I don't think that all of the issues you raise will be as much of a problem as you say. Why would someone invest time into using a hacked client that produces incorrect results? The most likely reason (going by the history of this sort of project) is to move up in the ratings for the project. But to do this, you need to build up a history of past efforts, which will be destroyed every time your hacked client gets caught and you get banned from the project. As long as the project organizers can detect hacked clients, the thrill of using them will quickly wear off when people realize that there's no payoff for doing so. As for detection, see below.
And how, pray tell, do you enforce a compatible client.
OK, so I was a little glib about that. Let me explain my reasoning. There are really two kinds of compatibility that we care about: does the client's communication with the server follow the established protocol (data formats, ports, CRCs, etc.), and are the client's results compatible with the computations which the project intends to be running. If the client doesn't use the right protocol to talk to the project server(s), then you can ban it right there and move on. It's easy to tell if a client isn't sending data in the right sized chunks, etc. You can ban clients automatically when this happens, with no overhead in manpower (other than setting up the initial system). If I hacked the closed SETI client right now to talk to their servers on the wrong port, you can bet they would drop me like a hot potato - it would be obvious that I'm incompatible. By definition, networking protocol incompatibilities are detectable, because if you can't tell that the client isn't following the protocol, then by definition it is compatible with the protocol. If, on the other hand, the client's calculations are incompatible, then see below and my previous post.
If the client is trusted, there is no way to ensure it is valid.
Exactly correct, which is why no clients can be trusted. Closed source doesn't prevent hacked clients, it just ensures that hacked clients are only created by the more motivated. As I explain below and in my previous post, even a non-hacked client can't be trusted 100%. Distributed computing will need to be run on a basis of clients proving that they are trustworthy, rather than the server assuming they are innocent until proven guilty.
Even if you only send out one duplicate, that already doubles the workload. I guess you could randomly sample, but then your trade-off is that you will miss some.
It's true that there will have to be duplication of error, but as I explained before, even with perfect closed-source clients and perfect good will on the part of their users, you would still want some level of redundancy. Somebody's processor could be overclocked, they could have bad memory, a random cosmic ray could strike because they have the box open, etc. If you really want to be sure of a scientific calculation like this, you have to run it multiple times (preferably with different but equivalent algorithms) and compare results. Redundancy slows things down, but did you really expect these projects to finish up next week? Remember, compared to the computing resources which SETI has available in-house, they're still getting a tremendous performance boost at very low cost.
Being able to catch false positives won't be of much use if your whole network is down because it was flooded with false positives.
Once attackers realize that there's no glory (ratings advantage) in doing so, they'll quit with this attack. A huge mass of false positives can be solved by temporarily banning the source IP address or address blocks, and contacting the source's upstream provider just as you would do if you were ping flooded or attacked by any other DOS.
Open sourcing opens a big can of worms. It/forces/ you to create/correct/ and clever solutions.
Agreed - which is why open source is a good idea in the first place for this client. For all we know, there could be a computational error in the client. Sure this is unlikely, the SETI folks really know their stuff, but it's happened before with software released by very professional developers and it can only be caught by a source code audit. At the worst case, SETI could use crypto in their networking layer and release that as a binary-only library, while opening up the computational parts of the client. This would allow people to experiment with the algorithms involved and the screen saver part of the code.
Open sourcing would be a good thing...but it has to be handled very slowly and rationally and carefully.
Agreed. I'm not advocating any overnight changes in SETI@Home. It would take some work to run a secure distributed computation with open sourced clients; possibly this would outweigh the expected advantage of the open source. You really won't know the benefits of open source until you try it, just like any other software project, so it's tough to make a case when we know all the possible problems but can point to few known advantages. I just feel that there are definite advantages for them to move in the direction of open source, and the difficulties of doing so are not so great as some would say, or at least are not insurmountable.
Publishing in a hardcopy distributed media is recognised as public domain.
Sorry, but published hard copy is definitely not automatically in the public domain - it is still copyright the NY Times or whomever. The trade secret status of the information may be destroyed, but that's not the same as public domain.
With hundreds of variations of the client floating around, it's more than likely that many would be incompatible with the SETI servers.
So the SETI servers don't send them blocks, process their blocks, or record their stats. Problem solved - if you want to be a part of the project, you have to use a compatible client.
Secondly, cheating (getting counted for undeserved blocks) would expierence a boon.
There are two ways that people could cheat: returning false negative results without actually checking the results, and returning false positive results when there really isn't a positive.
False negatives can be easily caught by issuing the same blocks to other clients. Compare the results, and if they disagree run them again at SETI HQ, and ban the cheating clients from participating. The article already discusses how they are sending the same blocks to two clients at once, they just need to up that level of redundancy a little bit to solve this problem. You couldn't normally trust even a non-hacked client to provide the correct results 100% of the time anyway, because that machine might have bad RAM, an overclocked processor, no cooling, the case off, and a RF transmitter in the next room. Some level of redundancy will always be necessary for this sort of project, and can also be used to catch cheaters.
False positive results are even easier to catch. Don't you think that SETI HQ will check any positive results themselves before going public? They aren't going to call the NY Times on the strength of hacked.linux.box returning a positive on it's first data block, let me tell you. Just ban clients that return false positives, and get on with the thing.
When discussing open-sourcing distributed.net's key cracking, where there's a prize attached, it has been pointed out that a hacked client could be used to return a false negative but inform the user so that they can claim the prize before d.net can. But for SETI@Home, there isn't any danger of that. Who is going to believe J. Random Hacker's claims of detecting SETI on his bedroom PC? Even if someone did this, there's only one place that the raw data could have been coming from, because J. Random Hacker certainly doesn't have a high-powered radio telescope in the back yard generating all that data.
In short, I have yet to hear a good explanation of why the benefits of open-sourcing the client wouldn't exceed the problems (minimal, see above) of doing so.
I'm sure there's a whole lot of people who would like to see 2600 go down in flames. I'm not a member of the group nor do I necessarily condone all of their actions. But even if they had done something illegal (which is still in dispute) they shouldn't be denied a reasonable opportunity to organize their defense. Especially since their lawyers are already involved in two other cases over the same issue at opposite ends of the country.
On the bright side, though, if the judge continues to make such decisions without allowing the defendants their due process and the case is lost, there's a good chance that they could have a successful appeal. That's a pessimistic way to look at things, but with the U.S. legal system sometimes that's the best viewpoint.
Linux needs a DVD player (among other things) then it should pay for the license just like everyone else.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be happy to pay money for a proprietary DVD viewer which runs under Linux. This is the same set of people who would pay for Opera under Linux or for closed-source games, for example. Unfortunately, there are no DVD viewers available for Linux at any price. That is, until some hackers got fed up with the situation and wrote one.
DVDs are copyrighted, you have NO right to make any copies of it EVEN for your own private use (this is not like VHS or CDs).
How, exactly, are DVD's not like CD's? Both contain copyrighted material, both are combinations of bits on a physical medium, both are licensed to users for their own home viewing, and as far as the legal system is concerned, up to this point users have exactly the same rights to make a backup copy of a DVD for archival purposes that they have to backup a CD.
Today, right now, the law states you cannot make copies of DVDs. Period.
I think you need to be a little more specific. Obviously someone is copying DVD's - there's a bunch for rent at the video store down the street:) That was an absurd counterexample, but if this case was as open-and-shut as you say, I don't think we would be seeing nearly the amount of controversy that we are. Please specify the exact law which specifies that it is illegal to copy DVD's for any purpose, at any time. Answer: there is no such law - there are laws which may restrict your rights to copy DVD's for some purposes and at some times, but there is no absolute ban on the practice. The exact interpretation of these restrictions is the real reason the whole issue is in court right now.
Linux could have a DVD player (like Windows has) - they just had to do what anyone else has to do.
There's more than one way to do it(tm): Windows users are happy to pay for their proprietary DVD-viewing software, and I'm sure some Linux users would feel the same. But until such a thing exists for Linux users, it's ridiculous to expect them to wait an indeterminate length of time for that product when there are alternative but completely legal (or at least I assume that they are legal pending a court decision otherwise) means of viewing DVD's under Linux.
I agree with your point that if the law is wrong, fight that first. That's why I'm happy to see the EFF (in another Wired article yesterday) mention that they were planning to challenge the constitutionality of the DMCA during this legal challenge. However, I'm not convinced that the existing law was broken in this case. Now if someone is actually using Linux + DeCSS + a professional-grade DVD writer + a bunch of DVD blanks to bootleg copyrighted DVD's, then I will agree with you that that person is doing something illegal (at least within the U.S.) and I wouldn't be defending them. But just distributing code which could be used for that purpose is not the same thing at all, and linking to a site which distributes that code is no more illegal than a newspaper that prints the street addresses where lots of drug busts occur.
"Now really, Ms. Gross, I think it's a mistake for you to assume you're talking to a moron," said the judge, who pronounced Linux with a hard "i" and required a short briefing on the concept of linking.
The same article also describes the judge complaining about the defendant's lack of preparation, even though he denied their request for a postponement. The 2600 news section bears this out as well, describing how they had just 8 hours to talk to attorneys and prepare their case. This has all the signs of a travesty of justice in the making.
I thought the whole point of using an NT server was that it was easy to use, and thus you don't have to hire expensive admins with real knowledge of networking, security, and so forth. The ease of use of NT should make it possible for a less-knowledgeable sysadmin to keep up an NT server just as well as a more-knowledgeable *nix admin keeps up a *nix server. Or at least that's what I hear from Microsoft...
Slashdot Mirror
I think the big hullabaloo about Windows Refund Day was not necessarily getting the $50 or so back. The real issue was that users had a contract with OEMs/Microsoft for a refund, but the OEMs and Microsoft wanted to back out on that contract. If they had just given those few people who asked their $50 (or however much) right away, it would not have become a cause celebre.
That sounds like the same sort of thing that NT's instability is often blamed on - direct access to video hardware that runs really fast when it works. A network-transparent windowing system made a lot more sense when X was first created. At that time it was more likely that the applications wouldn't run on the machine that you were sitting at, but on some central server. Higher-powered client machines have made this less important. I had heard at one point that XFree 4 would include more efficient ways to handle local X connections to decrease the amount of overhead necessary.
It sounds in this article like there is a limited amount of peer review going on - if you can convince your immediate development team of the necessity of a feature, you can go ahead. However, from past articles about development at Microsoft I remember hearing that there wasn't a whole lot of cross-product peer review.
Maybe the Linux difference is that the peer review process is open to anybody who cares to look at the code. Consensus on features and implementation is reached through the same general process that Microsoft uses, but by including so many more people in the open source process you have the potential to really raise the standards of the finished software.
As far as control-freakery goes, Apple is a sterling example of that philosophy, but on the other hand they're widely lauded for exciting and innovative features. I'm not really an Apple fan myself, I just want to point out that centralized planning of features doesn't always equal boring products.
Glad to hear that your latest attempt at presenting your side of the issue went better than the last one. Did you have the same attendance as the last time? What was the response from the audience?
Much as I disagree with the viewpoint of said library-filterers, there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to bring an initiative to the ballot in the same way that you or I can. Make sure you don't appear as closed-minded at the same time you are accusing others of the same thing.
Not in the face!
Not in the face!
Apparently it's confusing to you - the real name of the chip is in fact "Athlon", not "Althon". If I had a dollar for every time I grind my teeth after reading "Athalon" on /., I'd use those dollars for my dental bills :)
I wouldn't say that it does more harm than good. If I was a clueless admin, I might not secure my network on my own initiative, but if I saw my network posted on a site specifically for use as a smurf reflector, I'd be more likely to change my ways. I wish more of the Internet worked this way - rather than suing misconfigured networks (which would be difficult at best), netscan.org has held them up for public ridicule and abuse. It would be great if more Internet issues could be solved by community pressure to "do the right thing" rather than battling through the underinformed legal system (which isn't particularly consistent worldwide anyway).
BTW, the number of responses for the top offender on their list is about a third of number of responses they got for the worst network the first time they ran the survey. Maybe that doesn't say anything, but maybe they are gradually forcing admins to get smart.
Well, DeCSS was written first for Windows, and then ported to Linux. I've heard that this was because of a lack of UDF (DVD filesystem) support in the linux kernel until recently, although I don't know that for a fact. The defendants were arguing that the sole purpose of DeCSS was Linux DVD support, which is not technically true. What's worse comes next, though:
It sounds like what is needed is a recasting of DeCSS as a clean-room implementation of a copyrighted DVD player, rather than as a method of viewing copyrighted DVDs by circumventing access protections. I'm not sure there's a real difference between those two, but apparently there is a legal difference.
I was confused about this too. However, if you read carefully, the judge is discussing the defendants' claim that DeCSS was written for the sole purpose of playing DVDs on Linux. His point is that since DeCSS runs on Windows too, it can't be considered to have Linux as its sole purpose. I don't think he phrased it quite right - it sounds like he's talking about playing DVDs on Windows and Linux, but he's really talking about running DeCSS on Windows and Linux. Small verbal difference, big legal difference.
The goggles do nothing!
I'm not sure how widespread this is, but my local telco (Ameritech) charges $5 every time you change your long distance service. So the original poster probably only got charged $5 one time. Some long distance services will credit you $5 after you switch to make up for this.
Tying into what another poster mentioned - these coral reefs (along with other remains of sea dwellers) eventually become limestone, which is where another significant portion of C02 is locked away.
Not quite - volume is the question here. An object floating in water is supported by a buoyant force. This buoyant force is the same force as the weight of the volume of water displaced by the floating object. By weight I mean the downward force which gravity would cause the displaced mass of water to exert. The difference between the force that gravity exerts on the mass of the object and the force that gravity would have exerted on the displaced volume of water results in the object remaining at or above the water line if the object displaces enough water.
I'm not sure about whether the water line moves or not, though. True, water expands when it freezes, but on the other hand the ice cubes don't float all the way down in the water - they float as far above the water line as the buoyant force can push them (at equilibrium). Perhaps the volume of the ice cube which remains below the water line is exactly the volume of water that you would get if you melted the cube, and the volume of the ice cube above the water line represents the volume which was gained during freezing. In that case, the water line wouldn't move as the ice cubes melt.
This sounds intuitively correct to me, but I don't have a rigorous proof on hand and, alas, I also haven't run the experiment. Perhaps it's time for a trip to the cafeteria to try this?
Question: during the time that this was a publicly available court record, did anyone actually get a copy of the document from the court itself? I saw the previous /. article about this where the code was posted on a web site as part of a legal document sent to one of the defendants, but I'm not sure that that has the same weight as if you actually had a copy of the document from the court archives. So: did anyone avail themselves of the DVD CCA's lawyers' slip-up?
Imperial China isn't the same country as the People's Republic of China. The PRC has only been around about 50 years, versus 200+ for the U.S. Of course Imperial/Nationalist China has a lot longer history, but I'm not really comparing whether those governments were more or less oppressive (although they may well have been) than the U.S. has been.
It's true that parts of the U.S. government have acted in such a manner in the past, and probably will try to do so again. The difference is that U.S. citizens have recourse to the protections provided by the U.S. Constitution and enforced through the judicial system. Granted, this doesn't always work (just ask the Cherokee Indians, or any of the Americans who were interned on the west coast during WWII), but there is the clear understanding that U.S. citizens have certain rights and have an expectation of legal recourse when those rights are violated. In the People's Republic of China, you have no rights except what the Party determines that you have.
In short, in the U.S. we have the rule of law, which may not always be enforced evenly. In China there is rule by fiat of the Party, which guarantees uneven standing under the law. Yes, the U.S. is far from perfect, but I don't think you can compare the full history of both countries (remember, the U.S. has about four times as much) without deciding that China has a much more oppressive government.
Here's the link: http://copyleft.net/cgi-bin/copyleft/t 039.pl.
Dammit, I'm stumped. My many and various arguments for how to detect and avoid hacked clients are powerless in the face of your hypothetical attack on the foundation of physics :) I bow to your mastery of the forces of this universe, and even though you are currently toast with your folks, you certainly own my Einstein-limited slower-than-light dimensionally-restricted box.
Sigh...rooted again. When is Mandrake going to have a patch for this?
I don't think that all of the issues you raise will be as much of a problem as you say. Why would someone invest time into using a hacked client that produces incorrect results? The most likely reason (going by the history of this sort of project) is to move up in the ratings for the project. But to do this, you need to build up a history of past efforts, which will be destroyed every time your hacked client gets caught and you get banned from the project. As long as the project organizers can detect hacked clients, the thrill of using them will quickly wear off when people realize that there's no payoff for doing so. As for detection, see below.
OK, so I was a little glib about that. Let me explain my reasoning. There are really two kinds of compatibility that we care about: does the client's communication with the server follow the established protocol (data formats, ports, CRCs, etc.), and are the client's results compatible with the computations which the project intends to be running. If the client doesn't use the right protocol to talk to the project server(s), then you can ban it right there and move on. It's easy to tell if a client isn't sending data in the right sized chunks, etc. You can ban clients automatically when this happens, with no overhead in manpower (other than setting up the initial system). If I hacked the closed SETI client right now to talk to their servers on the wrong port, you can bet they would drop me like a hot potato - it would be obvious that I'm incompatible. By definition, networking protocol incompatibilities are detectable, because if you can't tell that the client isn't following the protocol, then by definition it is compatible with the protocol. If, on the other hand, the client's calculations are incompatible, then see below and my previous post.
Exactly correct, which is why no clients can be trusted. Closed source doesn't prevent hacked clients, it just ensures that hacked clients are only created by the more motivated. As I explain below and in my previous post, even a non-hacked client can't be trusted 100%. Distributed computing will need to be run on a basis of clients proving that they are trustworthy, rather than the server assuming they are innocent until proven guilty.
It's true that there will have to be duplication of error, but as I explained before, even with perfect closed-source clients and perfect good will on the part of their users, you would still want some level of redundancy. Somebody's processor could be overclocked, they could have bad memory, a random cosmic ray could strike because they have the box open, etc. If you really want to be sure of a scientific calculation like this, you have to run it multiple times (preferably with different but equivalent algorithms) and compare results. Redundancy slows things down, but did you really expect these projects to finish up next week? Remember, compared to the computing resources which SETI has available in-house, they're still getting a tremendous performance boost at very low cost.
Once attackers realize that there's no glory (ratings advantage) in doing so, they'll quit with this attack. A huge mass of false positives can be solved by temporarily banning the source IP address or address blocks, and contacting the source's upstream provider just as you would do if you were ping flooded or attacked by any other DOS.
Agreed - which is why open source is a good idea in the first place for this client. For all we know, there could be a computational error in the client. Sure this is unlikely, the SETI folks really know their stuff, but it's happened before with software released by very professional developers and it can only be caught by a source code audit. At the worst case, SETI could use crypto in their networking layer and release that as a binary-only library, while opening up the computational parts of the client. This would allow people to experiment with the algorithms involved and the screen saver part of the code.
Agreed. I'm not advocating any overnight changes in SETI@Home. It would take some work to run a secure distributed computation with open sourced clients; possibly this would outweigh the expected advantage of the open source. You really won't know the benefits of open source until you try it, just like any other software project, so it's tough to make a case when we know all the possible problems but can point to few known advantages. I just feel that there are definite advantages for them to move in the direction of open source, and the difficulties of doing so are not so great as some would say, or at least are not insurmountable.
Sorry, but published hard copy is definitely not automatically in the public domain - it is still copyright the NY Times or whomever. The trade secret status of the information may be destroyed, but that's not the same as public domain.
I've disagreed with this before, so here goes:
So the SETI servers don't send them blocks, process their blocks, or record their stats. Problem solved - if you want to be a part of the project, you have to use a compatible client.
There are two ways that people could cheat: returning false negative results without actually checking the results, and returning false positive results when there really isn't a positive.
When discussing open-sourcing distributed.net's key cracking, where there's a prize attached, it has been pointed out that a hacked client could be used to return a false negative but inform the user so that they can claim the prize before d.net can. But for SETI@Home, there isn't any danger of that. Who is going to believe J. Random Hacker's claims of detecting SETI on his bedroom PC? Even if someone did this, there's only one place that the raw data could have been coming from, because J. Random Hacker certainly doesn't have a high-powered radio telescope in the back yard generating all that data.
In short, I have yet to hear a good explanation of why the benefits of open-sourcing the client wouldn't exceed the problems (minimal, see above) of doing so.
I'm sure there's a whole lot of people who would like to see 2600 go down in flames. I'm not a member of the group nor do I necessarily condone all of their actions. But even if they had done something illegal (which is still in dispute) they shouldn't be denied a reasonable opportunity to organize their defense. Especially since their lawyers are already involved in two other cases over the same issue at opposite ends of the country.
On the bright side, though, if the judge continues to make such decisions without allowing the defendants their due process and the case is lost, there's a good chance that they could have a successful appeal. That's a pessimistic way to look at things, but with the U.S. legal system sometimes that's the best viewpoint.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be happy to pay money for a proprietary DVD viewer which runs under Linux. This is the same set of people who would pay for Opera under Linux or for closed-source games, for example. Unfortunately, there are no DVD viewers available for Linux at any price. That is, until some hackers got fed up with the situation and wrote one.
How, exactly, are DVD's not like CD's? Both contain copyrighted material, both are combinations of bits on a physical medium, both are licensed to users for their own home viewing, and as far as the legal system is concerned, up to this point users have exactly the same rights to make a backup copy of a DVD for archival purposes that they have to backup a CD.
I think you need to be a little more specific. Obviously someone is copying DVD's - there's a bunch for rent at the video store down the street :) That was an absurd counterexample, but if this case was as open-and-shut as you say, I don't think we would be seeing nearly the amount of controversy that we are. Please specify the exact law which specifies that it is illegal to copy DVD's for any purpose, at any time. Answer: there is no such law - there are laws which may restrict your rights to copy DVD's for some purposes and at some times, but there is no absolute ban on the practice. The exact interpretation of these restrictions is the real reason the whole issue is in court right now.
There's more than one way to do it(tm): Windows users are happy to pay for their proprietary DVD-viewing software, and I'm sure some Linux users would feel the same. But until such a thing exists for Linux users, it's ridiculous to expect them to wait an indeterminate length of time for that product when there are alternative but completely legal (or at least I assume that they are legal pending a court decision otherwise) means of viewing DVD's under Linux.
I agree with your point that if the law is wrong, fight that first. That's why I'm happy to see the EFF (in another Wired article yesterday) mention that they were planning to challenge the constitutionality of the DMCA during this legal challenge. However, I'm not convinced that the existing law was broken in this case. Now if someone is actually using Linux + DeCSS + a professional-grade DVD writer + a bunch of DVD blanks to bootleg copyrighted DVD's, then I will agree with you that that person is doing something illegal (at least within the U.S.) and I wouldn't be defending them. But just distributing code which could be used for that purpose is not the same thing at all, and linking to a site which distributes that code is no more illegal than a newspaper that prints the street addresses where lots of drug busts occur.
From the Wired article:
The same article also describes the judge complaining about the defendant's lack of preparation, even though he denied their request for a postponement. The 2600 news section bears this out as well, describing how they had just 8 hours to talk to attorneys and prepare their case. This has all the signs of a travesty of justice in the making.
I thought the whole point of using an NT server was that it was easy to use, and thus you don't have to hire expensive admins with real knowledge of networking, security, and so forth. The ease of use of NT should make it possible for a less-knowledgeable sysadmin to keep up an NT server just as well as a more-knowledgeable *nix admin keeps up a *nix server. Or at least that's what I hear from Microsoft...