You should take a look at Sawfish. It is just as themeable as E, you can script stuff for it in Lisp, and it has a very slick, well written feel to it (in contrast to E which feels like it has been thrown together at a demo hacking convention).
This certainly raises an interesting question - is it possible to be unbiased? Sometimes you cannot help expressing an opinion on something just by the language you use. Whether you refer to a group as "terrorists" or "freedom fighters", whether you refer to "open source" or "free software". It seems like it will be a real challenge to maintain reasonable impartiality with a collaborative development model.
Why does everyone associated with SQL suddenly think that the more things that use that bloated, outdated language, the better? What is the point of this? It is just adding a very thick, slow, and unnescessary layer to something where it is normally essential that it works as quickly as possible.
Spam is a subset of a general problem with the Internet, namely Denial of Service attacks. I think that a technical solution is desirable - "hash cash" is one potential answer. In the case of spam, it would force a user to perform a complex computation before sending each email - that would slow down spammers somewhat, but people with slower computers would be penalised. Another option is "think cash", where someone is forced to solve a problem which cannot be automated, before being permitted to submit something to the system.
It is much better to spend your time doing nothing, than to spend your time creating a "security" application which doesn't actually protect people's security. In the world of cryptography people make extremely conservative claims about software based on secure algorithms (ie. those which have undergone much peer-review without breaking) - yet here is someone using a known-insecure algorithm and claiming that his software protects people.
Wow - a 14 year old kid who claims that they are an ace cracker - and who better to judge than someone who clearly doesn't know their arse from their elbow when it comes to computers. Their idea of defacing a website is probably doing a "First Post" on Slashdot.
Well, I read the papers and it isn't quite as bad as I initially suspected. It does seem to be decentralized, and have reasonable scalability characteristics, however it is much more complex than Freenet while apparently achieving less (no obvious intelligent caching, no anonymity).
I am still rather surprised that they don't mention Freenet anywhere in their Related Work section.
This is presented as being similar to Freenet, but doesn't seem to address any of the issues the Freenet addresses. It seems to rely on centralized indexes of what files are stored where, making it rather similar to Napster. ISPs seem to be expected to maintain these indexes, so then the question is raised - can you be identified by the operator of your index?
On further examination - this basically looks like the product of someone who looked at the Freenet design, didn't understand it, and tried to reimplement it.
I read your reply here and your other grumpy post further down
Slashdot makes me grumpy, comments are often full of misconceptions presented as fact.
I have never heard of KSK@Aardvark before your post, and it is not mentioned in your FAQ.
no, but it is linked prominently in the "Help" section of the Freenet gateway as a way to find keys in Freenet, this suggests that you haven't tried the 0.3.6 release, or if you have, you didn't read the few brief paragraphs intended to help you. Besides, even if there were no good key-indexes right now, the fact that they may exist in the future is a refutation of your original criticism which is that a piece of content cannot be located in Freenet without being told its key through insecure out-of-band means.
consequently I have no idea what is KSK@Aardvark or really what you are going on about with offering hyperlinking in place of automated indexing.
Er, hyperlinking is not a replacement for automated indexing, but it is an alternative way to find information - such was the intent of the original World Wide Web.
Further, I don't recall accusing anyone of being an idiot for making a constructive suggestion about how Freenet's usability could be improved, in fact, I do my best to encourage this. Could you perhaps provide some evidence of this?
As for our "add it on later handwaving" about searching, do you suppose that when version 1.0 of Linux was released, it contained every feature that might be implemented at some point in the future? Software is built in stages, it doesn't make sense to implement searching in Freenet before the lower-level stuff is working well. As for "great things having all their legs architected at the get-go", where was Gnome architected in Linux at the get-go? Sure there was room for it to be implemented, just as there is room in Freenet for searching, but we can't do everything at once, and would fail if we tried.
I must say I generally get quite depressed when I read slashdot comments
on Freenet. Not only are many articles ill-informed, but they are the
ones that get moderated up!
Right now, the top-most article - "But seraching is the key" - is by
someone who doesn't seem to grasp the concept of hyperlinking (something
I specifically mention in the article). The second article is by
someone who doesn't think that there is a market for freedom of speech
("Freenet's biggest flaw..."). Fortunately, below that there is some
more positive stuff.
It reminds me of a story I heard about the difference between the Irish,
and the Americans:
In America people look up at the wealthy guy who lives on top of the
hill, and say "some day, I am going to be like him".
In Ireland, people look up at the wealthy guy who lives on top of the
hill, and say "some day, I am going to kill that rich bastard".
I think that if you swapped the average slashdot reader for the Irish in
that story, it would be equally true.
The fact is, strong encryption and the WWW filfills 99.9% of Freenet's goals.
Really? Freenet's first goal is to provide anonymity for the publisher of information. The WWW doesn't provide that (regardless of encryption) since you always know where the information is coming from. Freenet's second goal is to provide anonymity for the reader of informaiton. The WWW doesn't provide that as graphically demonstrated by companies like Doubleclick (regardless of encryption). Freenet's third goal is to be more efficient than the WWW. The WWW clearly doesn't fulfill this goal. So as far as I can tell, the WWW fulfills 0% of Freenet's goals.
The article addressed this issue. Even now, Freenet is a web of hyperlinked pages, you don't need to find out about each page individually - you can just go to an index (such as "KSK@Aardvark") and navigate to whatever page you like from there. Unless *every* key in Freenet is made illegal (somewhat unlikely) you will always be able to find your way into the web and navigate to what you are looking for, just as with the WWW.
I see, so no one has any responsibility unless they are legally bound to it? What a crock!
No. My point is that you cannot expect corporations not to exploit a dumb law. Of course, corporations can be forced into appearing that they have morality, but this is - at best - a PR exercise. Corporations are immoral, their only purpose in life is to increase shareholder value. If this means that they must give the appearance of morality, then they will do that, but most of the time, it doesn't.
You can never count on corporations to do "the right" thing, their sole responsibility is to their shareholders and to increase shareholder value. If the law creates a way, immoral or not, for corporations to increase shareholder value, it is in their nature to exploit it. It is the responsibility of lawmakers to prevent this from happening, however lawmakers depend upon corporations to get them elected.
So what happens? The strong get stronger, and the weak get weaker, we may as well be kids on a remote island being seduced by the Lord of the Flies. We have two ways out, either people start using their vote (unlikely), or technology will come to our rescue just as it did when the printing press helped society break free from the church's control.
Anyone can create a "portal" on Freenet on which they can filter content as they see fit. In many ways this is just like the WWW. One popular portal is Aardvark - look at freenet:KSK@Aardvark (hyperlink assumes that you are running Freenet on your machine).
When you have run Freenet, you should go to http://127.0.0.1:8081/ in your web browser. Click on the help button. Be patient, it may take a while to retrieve stuff at first, but it will speed up as your node is integrated into the network. Leave your node running if you can so that you contribute back to the network.
When will these people see that trying to place this type of limitation on how people share information just won't work - it is akin to having a bank with no security, but then trying to chop off everyone's hands so that they can't steal anything. This mechanism would require the cooperation of all hard-drive manufacturers, who could find themselves under increasing pressure for consumers not to cooperate, and even if this were implemented in *all* hard drives (and the fact that the world is already full of hard drives which don't implement it), it only takes one person to break it (a'la DSS), and its all over.
This is a total exercise in futility and those who participate deserve to waste all of the money that will be wasted on this.
There is a paragraph on the front page outlining the current status of the project - but I guess it is too much for a slashdotter to actually look before they speak.
If research to-date is representative of reality (and it probably is), Freenet has log(n) scalability, in this regard it essentially solves the scalability "problem" that supposedly plagues P2P.
How come whenever P2P is mentioned everyone starts to spout half-truths (or just complete mis-truths) as if they knew exactly what they were talking about?
What I am curious about is how they combat people hiding behind this anonymity to launch Denial of Service attacks. In Freenet, which also provides anonymity to users, DOS attacks are not possible since the only person you end up attacking is yourself, but since what they are doing seems to be at the IP layer, I don't think they can take the Freenet approach.
Just because something is anonymous doesn't mean that you can't trust it. Freenet permits nifty things called "subspaces" which allow you to anonymously claim authorship of a number of pieces of data. If you prove to be reliable, even though people won't know your name, you can still build up a reputation that people can trust.
Slashdot Mirror
--
--
--
--
--
--
I am still rather surprised that they don't mention Freenet anywhere in their Related Work section.
--
On further examination - this basically looks like the product of someone who looked at the Freenet design, didn't understand it, and tried to reimplement it.
--
--
Further, I don't recall accusing anyone of being an idiot for making a constructive suggestion about how Freenet's usability could be improved, in fact, I do my best to encourage this. Could you perhaps provide some evidence of this?
As for our "add it on later handwaving" about searching, do you suppose that when version 1.0 of Linux was released, it contained every feature that might be implemented at some point in the future? Software is built in stages, it doesn't make sense to implement searching in Freenet before the lower-level stuff is working well. As for "great things having all their legs architected at the get-go", where was Gnome architected in Linux at the get-go? Sure there was room for it to be implemented, just as there is room in Freenet for searching, but we can't do everything at once, and would fail if we tried.
--
--
Right now, the top-most article - "But seraching is the key" - is by someone who doesn't seem to grasp the concept of hyperlinking (something I specifically mention in the article). The second article is by someone who doesn't think that there is a market for freedom of speech ("Freenet's biggest flaw..."). Fortunately, below that there is some more positive stuff.
It reminds me of a story I heard about the difference between the Irish, and the Americans:
In America people look up at the wealthy guy who lives on top of the hill, and say "some day, I am going to be like him".
In Ireland, people look up at the wealthy guy who lives on top of the hill, and say "some day, I am going to kill that rich bastard".
I think that if you swapped the average slashdot reader for the Irish in that story, it would be equally true.
--
--
--
--
--
So what happens? The strong get stronger, and the weak get weaker, we may as well be kids on a remote island being seduced by the Lord of the Flies. We have two ways out, either people start using their vote (unlikely), or technology will come to our rescue just as it did when the printing press helped society break free from the church's control.
--
--
--
This is a total exercise in futility and those who participate deserve to waste all of the money that will be wasted on this.
--
--
How come whenever P2P is mentioned everyone starts to spout half-truths (or just complete mis-truths) as if they knew exactly what they were talking about?
--
--
--
--