I am well aware that face recognition software is not up to this task right now (having played with some face recognition algorithms myself), but foolish is he who underestimates the rate of increase in computer power, particularly when there is such a strong motive for developing this capability.
Nobody is denying that cameras are an aid to fighting crime in some situations, but the issue is - how much power should the police have? Would it annoy you if someone followed you around with a notepad, recording your every movement, what shops you go into, how many times you use the toilet in a day, who you see (and what you do with them) etc etc? This is a perfectly legal thing for someone to do - but does that make it ok? So now the government wants to spend our money to do this to us? You may be comfortable with that, but I certainly am not.
I am not suggesting public cameras are banned, I merely suggest that the data collected using them is carefully restricted, as is the case with the Car licence plate database (all accesses are recorded, and any misuse will get the relevant person into *alot* of trouble). Requiring a search warrent to perform certain kinds of database query is one option.
In some parts of Britain (particularly in London) you can almost guarantee that at any given time there will be a camera watching you. There is even a camera outside my flat in Battersea which is capable of looking in our livingroom window. TV is filled with what can only be described as pro-surveillance propoganda (shows such as "Eye Spy" and "Police Camera Action"), and almost nobody is expressing any serious concern about this. Integrating face recognition software into this system will allow the police and their "friends" to automatically monitor your movements in public, who you hang around with, what shops you use ect etc. This is all being done in the name of combatting crime, yet all these cameras seem to do is take the police off the streets.
The British police have far too much important work to do filling out arrest reports and stamping out racism to engage in politicially incorrect things like catching criminals. Cameras on the streets (instead of police) will only give the police further excuses to disregard their responsibility to the public.
Yeah, I think ESR and some of his cohorts have been looking into the idea for a while (RMS referred me to ESR when I suggested the idea to him a few weeks ago).
Perhaps, but look at it a different way. Who loses out if people who couldn't pay for the drug anyway get it at a discount? The drugs companies don't, they couldn't sell the drugs to those people anyway. And such a system could save the lives of millions. We are talking about human life here, it is not just an academic or legal consideration.
I have always been very uncomfortable with the idea that pharmecutical companies can effectively allow millions of people to die by pricing their products out of the range of all but the rich. Witness AIDS treatments which cost very little to manufacture, yet are sold at a price that makes it impossible for those dying in the 3rd world to benefit from them.
Should the pharmecutical companies' profit motive be allowed to permit millions of people to die?
These people seem to have no trouble recognising the potential pit-falls in allowing the patenting of human genes, something fundimental to man-kind, yet they have no problem with the patenting of simple algorithms, which are fundimental to our universe! While I am glad that the UK and US governments are seeing sense in this arena, they should recognise that this is symptomatic of a much more fundimental problem with patents, and (dare I say it) the concept of intellectual property in general.
While I would vote for any politician who advocated open source software, and the principals behind it, I wonder whether enough of the public would "get it". I am often surprised by how difficult it is to persuade even intelligent computer-savvy friends of the benefits of Open Source (I pointed one guy to a page in the FSF's Philosophy section - when I asked him about it later he had assumed it was a joke!).
The real question is: does Joe public give a crap about intellectual freedom, or is this just the concern of the cyber-elite? If the answer is the latter, then how can we make the public understand why this is relevant to all?
If that is the case then it somewhat contradicts the original post that started this Freenet naming thread, which implied that the word "Freenet" was in wide use. The term "Freenet" is just a working title anyway, if the software is released it will not be called "Freenet", the network it creates will be called "The Freenet".
Not my fault if others use that name too. This thing is a "network which allows freedom" - a "Free Network", or "Freenet". This is the most appropriate name for the project, so I use it. I have yet to hear a better alternative.
I am working on a Java based project called "Freenet" which is designed to be a technological counter-measure to Internet censorship. It will be released under the GPL and it currently being developed using CVS, however it is in need of skilled Java developers. The project has attracted the attention of Richard Stallman, and there are several on-line articles about it. It allows the distribution of information while providing anonymity to both providers and consumers of information. If you are interested in finding out more or helping please look at http://freenet.on.openprojects.net/.
Firstly, well done on a facinating post, I hope it gets the rating it deserves. I am currently working on a project called "Freenet" which is designed to be a "workaround" for censorship on the Internet. It arranges computers into an anarchistic network and provides anonymity for providers, consumers, and even hosts of information. It is robust and in many ways will be more efficient than the world wide web (it has a very intelligent caching mechanism). If anyone can program in Java and would like to help please visit the Freenet homepage at http://freenet.on.openprojects.net.
Your comments about modern software have some truth, but the reality is that most modern software is much more complicated than what was used 10 years ago. In 20 years time do you still want your software written in C? 30 years time? 100 years time? By your argument it should be, yet I somehow doubt it will. It is not about programmers being lazy, it is about getting the job done quickly and reliably. The fastest way to program is in assembly, but nobody does it because 1) The code is very difficult to debug and 2) computers are fast enough that it doesn't matter. If all programmers wrote in assembly language the software we would use would be efficient but primitive. Soon a similar argument will apply to C.
But then we are right back to where we started! Firstly C++ is too full of legacy junk carried over from C, Java would be better than C++ as they started with a (more or less) clean slate. The problem with C++ is the symbols - you can't deny that for(x=0;x is more intimidating than for x in range(0, 100):. The complexities introduced by pointers add to this visual complexity dramatically. Also, C++ is much less forgiving than Python when you make a mistake (who hasn't used '=' when they wanted '=='). I would expect people to advocate their pet languages for this role, but C++ is taking it a bit far!
This sounds a little like the old argument assembly language advocates used to make. The reality is that in order for computer science to progress, our tools must grow more sophisticated. Fortunately the rapid improvement in computer speed allows the use of less efficient languages, with the benefit that they are higher-level. To insist that students start with the lowest common denominator would hold back progress.
I quite like ML having learned it at university (in the department that invented the language, University of Edinburgh, CS dept), however I don't think there is anything that would put kids off faster. Even second year CS students, all of whom knew C, and probably several other languages, found ML extremely difficult to grasp initially. Also, ML's reliance on recursion, while nice for those who appreciate the finer things in computer science, would really baffle many kids.
I read this over the weekend, bear in mind that they don't try to connect up any nerves or anything (except those required to live) so you still can't feel or move anything below your neck after the procedure.
The irony here isn't lost on me, but what is so wrong with this idea provided that it is done in a transparent manner? The Internet does provide an excellent tool for finding computers in this way, and I think a security system based on this principle would sell - and rightly so. I don't think this kind of system would nescessarily be a challenge to personal freedom provided it is done properly.
But that guy who wrote that MS Word macro virus (Melissa?) did get tracked down using a 'watermark' of sorts didn't he? They simply did a web search for other Word documents which had the same ID key as the one that was being distributed, and got the guy that way.
Well, we had a power-cut in the office this-morning which provided the perfect excuse to visit the near-by Regent's Park to view the eclipse. It started out well at 10.30, we could see the moon eating away at the disk (both through special glasses and a pin-hole projector made from a printout of source I am working on). As the moment of maximum coverage approached (11.18) big black clouds came and obscured the sun... typical. Some police arrived, we joked that they would take out loud-speakers and start announcing "There is nothing to see here...", which would have been somewhat accurate at that time. Irritatingly it seemed like all around London the skies were clear, but thick cloud just over us:-( There was a noticable drop in temperature, but only at about 11.10 did we notice a visible drop in light level. Fortunately the cloud thinned allowing us to see the sun without needing glasses, this was quite a sight, but by this point the moon was receeding. All in all, not quite a spiritual experience, but a good excuse to get out of the office!
...is that it is possible for people to run software downloaded from the Internet, which (especially on Win machines) then have a free reign over the computer. People should be made to realise that running a computer program created by someone else is the same as inviting them to sit down at your computer for as long as they like, and turning your back while they do whatever they want. But it is worse than this, you are also extending this invitation to EVERYONE who may have had similar access to this person's computer! So what should we do? One option is to dramatically improve security in computers. The Unix method of process ownership is a step in the right direction, but not far enough. Java's sandbox or Python's padded-cells are probably the closest thing to what we need. Another option is to attempt to change people's behaviour. Microsoft shouldn't distribute software which allows a program to be launched straight out of an email with a double-click. And people should be made to realise the risk they are taking every time they download something from the web. I should also stress that it is not just Windows lusers that are at fault here. How many people here have downloaded a RPM, or a tarball, done a su root and installed it?
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I am not suggesting public cameras are banned, I merely suggest that the data collected using them is carefully restricted, as is the case with the Car licence plate database (all accesses are recorded, and any misuse will get the relevant person into *alot* of trouble). Requiring a search warrent to perform certain kinds of database query is one option.
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The British police have far too much important work to do filling out arrest reports and stamping out racism to engage in politicially incorrect things like catching criminals. Cameras on the streets (instead of police) will only give the police further excuses to disregard their responsibility to the public.
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Should the pharmecutical companies' profit motive be allowed to permit millions of people to die?
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The real question is: does Joe public give a crap about intellectual freedom, or is this just the concern of the cyber-elite? If the answer is the latter, then how can we make the public understand why this is relevant to all?
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So what should we do? One option is to dramatically improve security in computers. The Unix method of process ownership is a step in the right direction, but not far enough. Java's sandbox or Python's padded-cells are probably the closest thing to what we need.
Another option is to attempt to change people's behaviour. Microsoft shouldn't distribute software which allows a program to be launched straight out of an email with a double-click. And people should be made to realise the risk they are taking every time they download something from the web.
I should also stress that it is not just Windows lusers that are at fault here. How many people here have downloaded a RPM, or a tarball, done a su root and installed it?
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(What is the smily for extreme scarcasm?)
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