No, really, I mean it. Those guys are all in their 80s and prolly dont know nuthin what theyre talking about. Maybe one of them heard some companies were makin big money on the net but really, trust me, they dont know what they are doing and anyways, there will be no such tax in the next decade given the time their decisions are known to take...
Hi. Wow. I didn't know this one before... I'm ashamed. Honest. Ever since I learned to spell 'PC', I've been into distributed storage systems. When I was a kid, my friends and me used to trade toys; and whenever one of us nodes couldn't satisfy a request she would try to locate it elsewhere and tunnel it back to the originator. By the way, our Toy exChange Protocol (tcp) supported hardware handshaking and sophisticated dynamic routing (Tim, pass this car on to Chrissi and tell her it's for George; if he isn't available just have her keep it until Janie comes by, who is the mother of Alice who is the daughter of the uncle of the grandmother of the best friend of George's.) And of course we were as nuke-proof as the ARPAnet as one failing node could do little harm to the network as a whole. Soon after I got my first computer I got interested in BBSes. You know, some of those old-fashioned bulletin board systems are still around and some freaks still regularily download any kinds of information, fun games, hardcore lowest-legal-age teen porn,... eventually, they later upload their stuff to some other BBS to get credits or stuff. It's just cool. A distributed storage system where the originator of a file is veiled in darkness and requests can't be tracked. And of course there also still are some of the old BBS networks like the MAUSnet in Europe; consisting of nodes that regularily exchange their message boards, electronic mail or even software. Then there's the internet. The big hit of the 20th century. Millions and millions of hosts. No centralized brains. Total freedom of speech. Cryptography where cryptography is due. And last not least I can order pizza online:) "The internet is not decentralized enough," you say? Of course it is. Even the www, the part of the internet *everybody* knows (tho some primarily associate it with MicroSoft's Internet Exploder or "download"), is a decentralized storage system. Web sites link each other by topic and frequently requested information is replicated (mirrored). Then there is the USEnet, thousands of news servers all over the world linked to each other exchanging articles written by authors from nations from A to Z, plus some weird characters my keyboard doesn't support. Articles expire, but can't be removed from the system forcefully (except, of course, from servers that allow cancellation of articles). Encryption may be applied - but doesn't protect node owners from the law. Just look at good ol' Germany where they try to censor everything, including news feeds and offensive haircuts. Now that ought to be enough on news. Let's get to the other oldies, such as IRC. I guess some of you will hit me with a very big stick when they have read this comment but who cares? I'm a distributed system too, you know. This is robot-node-#3141 at the #con. Hit me! Go on! Have my l4m3r_k1LL4h robot put a finger trough your #eyeballs and stir your brains! (Won't kill you by the way, but we all know how disgusting the smell of stirred brains can be.)...I seem to have gotten a little off track. Anyway, the point is, Internet Relay Chat is yet another decentralized communications network... one of a billion of such systems... it's "billion", right? I simply guessed that there are billions of such systems around, each serving a different purpose. (OK with me as long as the word "billion" isn't filtered... billion, billion, billion!) And now here comes FreeNet. Wow! Number Freaking #Billion plus one. I'll just *have* to be on this network. I bet it's as cool as all the other ones. Finally, I have found a use for that extra hour we get from dailight savings time (by CReative adAPtive redundant clock reconfiguration (CRAP)). I know I'll spend days surfing the free net. It's the striking similarities to all them other gizzmos I love so much, that makes it unique. -- By the way, freenet (mobilcom) is also an ISP in Germay which is known for overpricing, censorship and being extremely unreliable. cya -lite-
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Hi. Wow. I didn't know this one before... I'm ashamed. Honest. Ever since I learned to spell 'PC', I've been into distributed storage systems. When I was a kid, my friends and me used to trade toys; and whenever one of us nodes couldn't satisfy a request she would try to locate it elsewhere and tunnel it back to the originator. By the way, our Toy exChange Protocol (tcp) supported hardware handshaking and sophisticated dynamic routing (Tim, pass this car on to Chrissi and tell her it's for George; if he isn't available just have her keep it until Janie comes by, who is the mother of Alice who is the daughter of the uncle of the grandmother of the best friend of George's.) And of course we were as nuke-proof as the ARPAnet as one failing node could do little harm to the network as a whole. Soon after I got my first computer I got interested in BBSes. You know, some of those old-fashioned bulletin board systems are still around and some freaks still regularily download any kinds of information, fun games, hardcore lowest-legal-age teen porn,... eventually, they later upload their stuff to some other BBS to get credits or stuff. It's just cool. A distributed storage system where the originator of a file is veiled in darkness and requests can't be tracked. And of course there also still are some of the old BBS networks like the MAUSnet in Europe; consisting of nodes that regularily exchange their message boards, electronic mail or even software. Then there's the internet. The big hit of the 20th century. Millions and millions of hosts. No centralized brains. Total freedom of speech. Cryptography where cryptography is due. And last not least I can order pizza online :) "The internet is not decentralized enough," you say? Of course it is. Even the www, the part of the internet *everybody* knows (tho some primarily associate it with MicroSoft's Internet Exploder or "download"), is a decentralized storage system. Web sites link each other by topic and frequently requested information is replicated (mirrored). Then there is the USEnet, thousands of news servers all over the world linked to each other exchanging articles written by authors from nations from A to Z, plus some weird characters my keyboard doesn't support. Articles expire, but can't be removed from the system forcefully (except, of course, from servers that allow cancellation of articles). Encryption may be applied - but doesn't protect node owners from the law. Just look at good ol' Germany where they try to censor everything, including news feeds and offensive haircuts. Now that ought to be enough on news. Let's get to the other oldies, such as IRC. I guess some of you will hit me with a very big stick when they have read this comment but who cares? I'm a distributed system too, you know. This is robot-node-#3141 at the #con. Hit me! Go on! Have my l4m3r_k1LL4h robot put a finger trough your #eyeballs and stir your brains! (Won't kill you by the way, but we all know how disgusting the smell of stirred brains can be.) ...I seem to have gotten a little off track. Anyway, the point is, Internet Relay Chat is yet another decentralized communications network... one of a billion of such systems... it's "billion", right? I simply guessed that there are billions of such systems around, each serving a different purpose. (OK with me as long as the word "billion" isn't filtered... billion, billion, billion!) And now here comes FreeNet. Wow! Number Freaking #Billion plus one. I'll just *have* to be on this network. I bet it's as cool as all the other ones. Finally, I have found a use for that extra hour we get from dailight savings time (by CReative adAPtive redundant clock reconfiguration (CRAP)). I know I'll spend days surfing the free net. It's the striking similarities to all them other gizzmos I love so much, that makes it unique. -- By the way, freenet (mobilcom) is also an ISP in Germay which is known for overpricing, censorship and being extremely unreliable. cya -lite-