> But they'd still have to start by downloading at least enough of the shared file to be able actually view it so they can determine if the torrent is really infringing and not something else. After that, I suppose a few verified infringing block hashes would probably suffice as some level of evidence on a per user basis.
That was exactly my point.
> So as the GGP said, the enforcement police still have a significant amount more work to do than just bulk harvesting IP addresses from the trackers.
D is C++--++, and C++ is messed up enough already.
Go is more in the style of simple, elegant and powerful languages like C.
By the way, an kind of 'exception-like' mechanism (panic/recover) has recently been added to Go, and it is much more clean than 'classic' exceptions which make code a horrible mess.
This is a good point, but I assumed that if they can get a few random blocks that match the hash, that would probably be enough evidence form a legal point of view.
I wish Nokia provided some better alternatives to C++ for development on Symbian.
Java is not any better (and in many ways worse), and the S60 python port is nice, but it doesn't quite cut it for writing things like games in such limited hardware.
I would love to be able to build Symbian apps in Google's Go, it is an ideal language for secure, fast, lightweight programs for mobile apps.
> How could they possibly spy on me if I'm using a private tracker with DHT disabled?
They can't.
While ignorance is widespread among bitorrent users (as the poster illustrates with his surprise at this story), this story also seems to include some amount of FUD.
> You mean, all you have to do is send a simple request to the tracker, which will happily provide you with a fairly complete list of peers.
Most trackers (at least most public/open trackers) insert random ips to give a degree of 'plausible deniability'.
This of course is not perfect, but to be certain that a peer is serving a file the only way is to actually try to connect to it and fetch some blocks, which is quite a bit more work than just querying the tracker, specially if you have to do it for hundreds of thousands of torrents.
It was Steve Bourne who was so used to Algol that he had a bunch of macros to make his C code look-algol-like.
But what is much worse is that the Algol leaked into his shell's grammar, which is a horrible undefined mess, and over the years instead of cleaning it up, people just have piled up more and more layers of crap.
Tom Duff did a wonderful job when he designed and built the rc shell for Plan 9, I have used it extensively, and it beats any other scripting language, every feature fits beautifully with the rest, it is very powerful yet very simple and is easy to learn the whole language inside out. It is very good at helping you glue specialized tools and making the Unix tool philosophy shine in ways that are unimaginable with any other scripting language.
> If we can get rid of the old War on [some] Drugs, it's a fantastic trade. All I have to do is give up big media? Sold!
Nah, no way they will get rid of any ongoing Wars, that could mean that 1) they were wrong in fighting it 2) all the special interests (including the criminal gangs that get a monopoly in the drug trade) wouldn't like it.
So instead we just add new Wars on top of the old ones, just look at Afghanistan and Iraq!
> States have historically had more leeway in such matters; there used to be no problem, even Constitutionally speaking, with an individual state having an official religion.
Yea, and historically some states had slavery too.
Also "historically" the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, and changed things considerably (or was supposed to, anyway).
...for people (specially those sitting in the Supreme Court) to understand something as simple as: "Congress shall make no law"? Now law, means no law!
And that video games are speech is so obvious that is shameful if anyone needs it pointed out to them.
If parents don't want their children to play certain games, just like if they don't want them to read certain books, or don't want them to jump from certain bridges, it is their problem to figure out how to do this.
Like the prohibition of so many other victimless activities (drugs, prostitution, file sharing,...), the only effect of this laws is to turn law abiding, tax paying, productive members of society into criminals to fill already overflowing jails.
And of course any law that intends to protect people from themselves is bound to fail.
The approach being taken is quite similar: manipulated and fabricated studies and evidence, draconian international treaties to make sure no country is allowed to implement sane policies, suspension of basic civil liberties in the name of the war, etc.
Because jails are not full enough with non-violent 'criminals' already, maybe the US is trying to raise the incarceration rate to over 90%?
As anyone that has gone through the 'approval process' knows, it has zero to do with quality, all kinds of crap gets approved and good apps get rejected, the rules are arbitrary and are unevenly enforced. It is all about control and protecting Apple's interests.
That is generally true, but there are exceptions, some badly broken supposedly "unix" systems like Aix and Solaris have ridiculously bloated and slow processes.
Fortunately most such abominations are either dead or dying fast, and being replaced by systems like Linux where processes are extremely cheap (so cheap that 'threads' are implemented as pretty much normal processes that happen to share memory, in the style of Plan 9's rfork(2)).
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Linux audio is still as much of a ridiculous insane mess as it has always been since the advent of ALSA.
They keep adding more and more 'abstractions' and layers of crap, and audio keeps sucking more and more.
> But they'd still have to start by downloading at least enough of the shared file to be able actually view it so they can determine if the torrent is really infringing and not something else. After that, I suppose a few verified infringing block hashes would probably suffice as some level of evidence on a per user basis.
That was exactly my point.
> So as the GGP said, the enforcement police still have a significant amount more work to do than just bulk harvesting IP addresses from the trackers.
That is what I said! :)
C++ damages the brain.
D is C++--++, and C++ is messed up enough already.
Go is more in the style of simple, elegant and powerful languages like C.
By the way, an kind of 'exception-like' mechanism (panic/recover) has recently been added to Go, and it is much more clean than 'classic' exceptions which make code a horrible mess.
Still only needs to download the whole file once at most, not once from every peer.
You got it wrong, his (right) palm is a nerd's best friend!
The US is planning to force other countries to accept ACTA as part of future trade deals, this will impact many Asian countries.
This is a good point, but I assumed that if they can get a few random blocks that match the hash, that would probably be enough evidence form a legal point of view.
I wish Nokia provided some better alternatives to C++ for development on Symbian.
Java is not any better (and in many ways worse), and the S60 python port is nice, but it doesn't quite cut it for writing things like games in such limited hardware.
I would love to be able to build Symbian apps in Google's Go, it is an ideal language for secure, fast, lightweight programs for mobile apps.
For any other system to provide something as elegant and convenient as Plan 9's cpu(1) command.
> How could they possibly spy on me if I'm using a private tracker with DHT disabled?
They can't.
While ignorance is widespread among bitorrent users (as the poster illustrates with his surprise at this story), this story also seems to include some amount of FUD.
> You mean, all you have to do is send a simple request to the tracker, which will happily provide you with a fairly complete list of peers.
Most trackers (at least most public/open trackers) insert random ips to give a degree of 'plausible deniability'.
This of course is not perfect, but to be certain that a peer is serving a file the only way is to actually try to connect to it and fetch some blocks, which is quite a bit more work than just querying the tracker, specially if you have to do it for hundreds of thousands of torrents.
It was Steve Bourne who was so used to Algol that he had a bunch of macros to make his C code look-algol-like.
But what is much worse is that the Algol leaked into his shell's grammar, which is a horrible undefined mess, and over the years instead of cleaning it up, people just have piled up more and more layers of crap.
Tom Duff did a wonderful job when he designed and built the rc shell for Plan 9, I have used it extensively, and it beats any other scripting language, every feature fits beautifully with the rest, it is very powerful yet very simple and is easy to learn the whole language inside out. It is very good at helping you glue specialized tools and making the Unix tool philosophy shine in ways that are unimaginable with any other scripting language.
We have better shells now, that there are people still using bourne-style shells is rather sad, and bash in particular is a hideous abomination.
Also, python and even perl can't come anywhere near the elegant expressive power of shell pipelines.
> If we can get rid of the old War on [some] Drugs, it's a fantastic trade. All I have to do is give up big media? Sold!
Nah, no way they will get rid of any ongoing Wars, that could mean that 1) they were wrong in fighting it 2) all the special interests (including the criminal gangs that get a monopoly in the drug trade) wouldn't like it.
So instead we just add new Wars on top of the old ones, just look at Afghanistan and Iraq!
> States have historically had more leeway in such matters; there used to be no problem, even Constitutionally speaking, with an individual state having an official religion.
Yea, and historically some states had slavery too.
Also "historically" the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, and changed things considerably (or was supposed to, anyway).
The church, as usual, seems to think that the greatest virtue is ignorance.
This is not surprising given that faith requires ignorance, faith and knowledge are incompatible.
And of course keeping the herd ignorant makes controlling and manipulating it much easier.
...for people (specially those sitting in the Supreme Court) to understand something as simple as: "Congress shall make no law"? Now law, means no law!
And that video games are speech is so obvious that is shameful if anyone needs it pointed out to them.
If parents don't want their children to play certain games, just like if they don't want them to read certain books, or don't want them to jump from certain bridges, it is their problem to figure out how to do this.
Like the prohibition of so many other victimless activities (drugs, prostitution, file sharing, ...), the only effect of this laws is to turn law abiding, tax paying, productive members of society into criminals to fill already overflowing jails.
And of course any law that intends to protect people from themselves is bound to fail.
The War on File Sharing is the new War on Drugs.
The approach being taken is quite similar: manipulated and fabricated studies and evidence, draconian international treaties to make sure no country is allowed to implement sane policies, suspension of basic civil liberties in the name of the war, etc.
Because jails are not full enough with non-violent 'criminals' already, maybe the US is trying to raise the incarceration rate to over 90%?
I'm sure it is too minimalistic for you, but I have friends using it in their companies intranets: werc.
It is implementing the rc shell and is very simple and designed for extremely lazy people like me that wants to do as little work as possible.
As anyone that has gone through the 'approval process' knows, it has zero to do with quality, all kinds of crap gets approved and good apps get rejected, the rules are arbitrary and are unevenly enforced. It is all about control and protecting Apple's interests.
Sure, it is full of trolls and other scum, but so is every other place online, and in IRC you often can find some pretty interesting people.
Politicians should stay the fuck away from shit they don't understand!
Which I guess in practice means they should stay the fuck away from pretty much everything.
That is generally true, but there are exceptions, some badly broken supposedly "unix" systems like Aix and Solaris have ridiculously bloated and slow processes.
Fortunately most such abominations are either dead or dying fast, and being replaced by systems like Linux where processes are extremely cheap (so cheap that 'threads' are implemented as pretty much normal processes that happen to share memory, in the style of Plan 9's rfork(2)).