Very interesting, but I still don't think this is really a long-term concern.
They seem to be doing legitimate research and publishing papers, so other clients will eventually absorb the improved unchoke algorithm (which is actually explained in Figure 9 of their paper, on page 7) which will again level the playing field. Whats most important to note is that this required no protocol change, there are no fundamental flaws or incorrect design decisions as claimed by the GP. This is simply a better way to determine which peers to upload to, and how fast to upload to each (from what I read it dynamically adjusts the rate on a per-peer basis.. very cool).
Thanks for the link though, I just skimmed the paper but will definitely give it a full reading.
I think he's referring to the initial peerid exchange. The requirement to establish a torrent session is that both parties must send out their peerids to establish the connection. This poses a problem for multicast where 1 party is sending but lots of parties are attempting to receive (ie, the link is one-way, with the receiver having no way to send back to the sender their peerids). This can probably be worked around, since peerid isn't really that necessary anyway (IIRC, it's just used as kind of a GUID).
What he says about using game theory to trick other clients into sending to you may or may not actually be true, since there are lots of clients out there and he only knows how the reference client's tit-for-tat/peer-picking algorithm works (although he's right in that it's weak). One MAY be able to use game theory to trick a specific implementation, but I don't think you could make some kind of uberclient that can trick the entire swarm into unloading their bits in your direction.
DISCLAIMER: It's been almost 2 years since I've done any torrent hacking, this information may be outdated.
Your post is dripping with contempt for the people who actually make stuff. 'so-called inventors' is a great example.
I'm a Computer Engineer. I design (proprietary) hardware. In my spare time, I'm a Software Engineer. I design (open-source) software. I am perfectly well aware of how difficult the design process is from both sides of the equation, and have no contempt what so ever for the hard-working individuals who work night and day so us geeks can have new toys to play with.
Who did invent the mentioned nintendo games console then? you? your mates?
The aforementioned hard-working individuals did. And you know what? They often hold neither the patents nor copyrights to their work (since their development time has been bought) so I fail to see how the actual developers factor into this discussion. The contempt that drips from me is specifically towards "so-called" inventors. Individuals or groups of individuals that claim incredibly obvious or non-original ideas as their own, and end up owning them due to slip-ups in the way the current intellectual property system is structured.
However, you're steering this discussion away from where we started from. I do not believe that anyone (not the inventor, developer, financer, or any other group) has the right to tell me what I can and cannot do with their product (except re-distribution in the case of easily reduplicated products, but copyright covers this).
If they want to impose restrictions above and beyond those which are already offered by copyright and trademarks (NDAs are very common with commercial hardware development packages), these restrictions must be agreed to and signed by both parties before the time of sale.
If modifying hardware breaks someone's business model, they can 1) adapt with a better business model, such as charging more up-front, or 2) cease to manufacture the good.
For a great example of a very poor business model that's been destroyed by hardware modifications, check out Pure Digital / CVS Disposable Camcorders. You are supposed to buy them (cheap), use them, and return them (for resale). I bought 5 of them and modified them to have USB ports (=added/enabled extra functionality, exactly like the modchips we are discussing here) and have no intention of returning them.
Is it your view that I've done something wrong here? I paid them what they asked for the camera, but once I walked out of the store with it.. it's mine.
You are suggesting that sellers of all products be prevented from setting any conditions on the sale of their products
Yes. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to actually own the copy that I bought and that includes the ability to modify it. There are already laws in place by society (such as Copyright) which limit what I can do with that copy in terms of distribution. If additional conditions are required (such as NDAs) then these agreements must be established before the time of purchase. Shrink-wrap licenses or EULAs should not be acceptable nor enforceable.
I guess you would also mean that a EULA should be unenforceable, and thus abolish copyright when it comes to allowing you to make copies of digital products?
What does EULA have to do with Copyright? Works, digital or otherwise, are just as protected by copyright without EULAs as they are with them.
If I invent product X, who are you, or the government to dictate the terms under which I profit from my invention?
It is in the best interest of society that knowledge not be held hostage in the silos of their so-called inventors. This is precisely the original reason for copyright.. to promote progress in the science and arts by offering a TEMPORARY monopoly which then expires and your work enters the public domain.
If you don't like it, go invent your own product and stick a big "mod chip friendly" sticker on it.
No, TFA does NOT talk about blocking MACs, because that would be fscking stupid. Every time I reboot and reconnect to my ISP, I use a new MAC and therefore get a new IP (privacy... sure, the ISP can trace it, but anyone else has a bit tougher time without the ISPs cooperation), due to a little program called macchanger integrated into my bootscripts. Its site http://www.alobbs.com/macchanger [alobbs.com] says there's a similar program, SMAC, for MSWormOS. Even without that, a $5 new NIC is a new MAC.
I'm not sure exactly what you think you're getting 'privacy' from, but you know that your ISP looks at the MAC address of your Cable/DSL modem, and not that of your network card, right?
I dont know about DSL but in the case of cable, where there is no PPPoE-style authentication being performed, your modem's MAC literally is your authentication and a device with a different MAC won't be allowed to connect. Does DSL work differently? Someone enlighten me.
I believe you are confusing surface winds, which are very light, with atmospheric winds which are much faster and more then capable of blacking out the sun.. just because energy is up there, doesn't mean you can effectively harness it.
Why is it so important for Mickey Mouse to become public domain? Or more importantly any Brittney Spears song?
The way those questions are phrased leads me to believe your position is that if something has no value (specifically artistic value) to you, it has no value to anyone. Everyone has different likes and dislikes, especially when it comes to art.
Sooner or later everything old is new again. Old ideas are constantly remixed and fused with new ideas to create something bigger and better, and this is how our culture develops and grows.
Artists of all types need material to work with, and Starving artists (those who do it for the love of the craft, and not for the money) need public domain material.. it is their bread and butter, to continue the analogy:)
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls.. but consider that he's on stage 5 while you are stuck somewhere between 3 and 4.
Copyright holders have long ago broken their social contract with the people, nothing produced today will ever become public domain during your (or your children's, or possibly not even their children's) lifetime as per the original social contract that gave birth to copyright.
Yes, and both are filtered out by your brain thanks to Psychoacoustic Masking effects. Just as someone accustomed to listening to Vinyl will not hear the needle's noise, someone accustomed to listening to CDs will not hear their sampling noise.. the brain conveniently filters it out for us.
As the RIM vs NTP case has recently demonstrated, it doesn't actually matter if the patent is invalidated. It's very existence in the first place can cause a tremendous amount of harm (to the tune of $600M in this instance)..
I really like NEdit, and so do many of the folks at work. A few holdouts do use Emacs but any appeal it may have is lost on me. The standard GNU Xemacs doesn't even have different open files show up in different tabs. My idea of a good programmers editor left the terminal window behind a long time ago, but emacs seems to still be stuck there.
You conveniently managed to leap from "version numbers of other software for which Microsoft provides updates" to "version numbers for all of your software." Ok, then why encrypt it if there's nothing to worry about?
I'm not sure windows update sends all that much back either. As I understand it Microsoft sends the list of available updates and your machine then downloads anything it doesn't already have. But I might be wrong..
Windows Update is committed to protecting your privacy. To provide you with the appropriate list of updates, Windows Update must collect a certain amount of configuration information from your computer. None of this configuration information can be used to identify you. This information includes:
Operating-system version number
Internet Explorer version number
Version numbers of other software for which Windows Update provides updates
Plug and Play ID numbers of hardware devices
Region and Language setting
I don't believe for a moment that the above information isn't enough to uniquely track you. Between the PnP IDs of all of your hardware and version numbers of all of your software, you're a pretty unique datapoint.
Could the site make a claim that is was being slandered because it was not being ranked as the algorithmic ranking engine indicates?
No. The ranking engine is not a static entity. The rankings change all the time as they tweak the algorithm and it's parameters, and they have no obligation to either keep anything from changing or disclose exactly how they rank (since that is one of their major trade secrets).
The best explanation based on our entire understanding of reality is that consciousness is an illusion. It has important survival advantages. No magic required.
I agree completely.. but who is the illusionist? Seems like an easy way out to me..
In order to have memories, thoughts, consciousness, or dreams, we need the hardware of the brain.
Memories come in different flavors, I think simple muscle memory is possible without a brain.. but I'm not sure. We just agreed consciousness was an illusion..
If this is a rotting hunk of meat, we have nothing. How could we?
Only if you choose to define yourself by that hunk of meat.
And if your brain is damaged, why can this change your personality or make you a drooling vegetable if we really are spirits far above the mortal coil?
I think of the soul as the electromagnetic field that controls/is controlled by/results from the firing of neurons in your brain. If we accept this, then the body is nothing but a machine controlled by this field. If the machine is damaged, then communication and control of the body also become damage, leading in a vegetable. The existence of vegetables in no way disproves having a soul.
Oh and as far as starving to death.. I must have missed that when I signed up:P
I find accepting the reality as presented through my senses to be a fairly small leap of faith, as the "real world" is the simplest and most likely explanation for what my senses present to me
It has been my experience that the senses lie and deceive too often to put that much faith into them. Even if you look at how vision actually works, it's millions of receptor cells that give your brain a raw signal which is then 'processed' into what you actually see.
By our previous reasoning, this processing is nothing but a random firing of neutrons.. it's actually quite remarkable that most of us can even agree at what we're looking at:)
According to string theory, our world is something like 11 dimensional. I'm not saying that trusting the 4 or so dimensions that you can perceive is wrong, just that it's (at least in a scientific sense) a very limited view of the world.
What makes you think there is a "dream realm" or that dreaming is more than just your brain at work while you're asleep?
I will answer that with a question: What makes you think there is a "real world", or that being awake is any more real then being asleep?
The reason I choose sleep as an example is that it's a transient state of being, where you can consciously exist but not physically exist. I have had lucid dreams, where I become aware that I'm dreaming and can interact with as well as manipulate the dream.
If you choose to see yourself as a random firing of neurons, then that is probably on some level an accurate (but very, very limited) view of the world. There is more then one meaning of random, and it doesn't have to just mean chaotic.
The reality is that we probably have nothing to look forward to after we die.
Upon what do you base this assertion?
I don't think we understand consciousness nearly well enough to be able to make such a strong statement.
I find it far more likely that after you die, you inhabit the dream realm (or a realm similar to it) semi-permanently. I say this because 1) it's a place where you exist without physical body, 2) you're comfortable with it, as you spend 1/3 - 1/4 of your life there anyway and 3) the rules of the place allow you to construct your own Heaven, Hell, or whatever else it is you "expect" to be in the afterlife for yourself out of nothing but thought.
These beliefs are, from what I understand, vaguely Buddhist.. but they allow within them an infinite amount of possibilities; everyone is free to create their own after-life (or allow someone else to create it for them).
Myself and my friends all heavily use eBay up here in Canada, because the markups on certain items (cellphone accessories, car audio, jewelry) are often 200-500% locally, even from traditional retail outfits. For example, they actually charge $30 for a leather cell phone case here. $20 if you go to one of those shady asian-import places. These items have no value on ebay, and often sell for $0.01 plus $6 - $9 shipping..
Plus, if I buy locally I'm paying 14% tax.. if I buy from eBay, I've got a good chance of avoiding taxes entirely (depends on the cost of the item.. under $10 nobody bothers, and if the seller is nice enough to ship as a 'Gift' then it's totally tax-free for me).
In summary, eBay is still cheaper (in many cases) for those of us north of the border.
I have seen enough anecdotal evidence to back up the GP's point. The smartest guy in my university classes had a very, very strange introverted personality and behaviors that definitely bordered on autism.
There is a certain degree of intelligence where the logical side of the brain dominates to the extent that the emotional/social side begins to suffer.. it's not as impossible as you seem to think it is, but also not nearly as common as the GP thinks.
if you're going to pretend to engage in illegal activity
I'm with you, up until that point. Nothing of that sort is going on here.
What this little experiment is showing, is that the media companies are not actually connecting to the people they claim are spreading their works, and are not actually obtaining the works from them. What they are in fact doing is asking the tracker for all of machines it "thinks" are participating in the swarm right now. There are a large number of reasons why this information could be inaccurate or out of date.
In fact, a URL can be built and entered into a web browser that will make it look like that machine has joined the swarm (most trackers are http based, parameters are passed via GET). Does entering or clicking on that URL now make you a copyright infringer?
This is a very slippery slope, and what it highlights is that not nearly enough discretion is being used in sending out these notices. Joining a swarm is just an HTTP GET request, and issuing one is NOT "pretending to engage in illegal activity".
The moral of this story is that if you do the right thing and inform those affected then you risk personal liability, charges, fees and so on...
Instead, you should just sell the exploit to the highest bidders (probably hackers employed by the Russian mob). He could have gotten a few thousand for it no problem (and as an extra added bonus, no probation!).
You'd have to be daft to to allow javascript on any random site.
First, that's a terrible argument. See here for an explanation why.
Second, why do you believe this? What is the worst thing a random piece of JavaScript can really do? Steal the cookie with my login info for Slashdot?
If you use Internet Explorer, I will agree with you. I would even go further and not allow anything through to that browser from any random site, other then maybe images.
But with Firefox or just about any another browser, these types of things happen VERY, VERY infrequently. When they do, I follow tech news and will in most cases be patched before I ever come across the exploit in the wild. The hassle of having to re-enable JavaScript all the time isn't worth the "risk" for users like me.
Slashdot Mirror
Very interesting, but I still don't think this is really a long-term concern.
They seem to be doing legitimate research and publishing papers, so other clients will eventually absorb the improved unchoke algorithm (which is actually explained in Figure 9 of their paper, on page 7) which will again level the playing field. Whats most important to note is that this required no protocol change, there are no fundamental flaws or incorrect design decisions as claimed by the GP. This is simply a better way to determine which peers to upload to, and how fast to upload to each (from what I read it dynamically adjusts the rate on a per-peer basis.. very cool).
Thanks for the link though, I just skimmed the paper but will definitely give it a full reading.
I think he's referring to the initial peerid exchange. The requirement to establish a torrent session is that both parties must send out their peerids to establish the connection. This poses a problem for multicast where 1 party is sending but lots of parties are attempting to receive (ie, the link is one-way, with the receiver having no way to send back to the sender their peerids). This can probably be worked around, since peerid isn't really that necessary anyway (IIRC, it's just used as kind of a GUID).
What he says about using game theory to trick other clients into sending to you may or may not actually be true, since there are lots of clients out there and he only knows how the reference client's tit-for-tat/peer-picking algorithm works (although he's right in that it's weak). One MAY be able to use game theory to trick a specific implementation, but I don't think you could make some kind of uberclient that can trick the entire swarm into unloading their bits in your direction.
DISCLAIMER: It's been almost 2 years since I've done any torrent hacking, this information may be outdated.
Your post is dripping with contempt for the people who actually make stuff. 'so-called inventors' is a great example.
I'm a Computer Engineer. I design (proprietary) hardware. In my spare time, I'm a Software Engineer. I design (open-source) software. I am perfectly well aware of how difficult the design process is from both sides of the equation, and have no contempt what so ever for the hard-working individuals who work night and day so us geeks can have new toys to play with.
Who did invent the mentioned nintendo games console then? you? your mates?
The aforementioned hard-working individuals did. And you know what? They often hold neither the patents nor copyrights to their work (since their development time has been bought) so I fail to see how the actual developers factor into this discussion. The contempt that drips from me is specifically towards "so-called" inventors. Individuals or groups of individuals that claim incredibly obvious or non-original ideas as their own, and end up owning them due to slip-ups in the way the current intellectual property system is structured.
However, you're steering this discussion away from where we started from. I do not believe that anyone (not the inventor, developer, financer, or any other group) has the right to tell me what I can and cannot do with their product (except re-distribution in the case of easily reduplicated products, but copyright covers this).
If they want to impose restrictions above and beyond those which are already offered by copyright and trademarks (NDAs are very common with commercial hardware development packages), these restrictions must be agreed to and signed by both parties before the time of sale.
If modifying hardware breaks someone's business model, they can 1) adapt with a better business model, such as charging more up-front, or 2) cease to manufacture the good.
For a great example of a very poor business model that's been destroyed by hardware modifications, check out Pure Digital / CVS Disposable Camcorders. You are supposed to buy them (cheap), use them, and return them (for resale). I bought 5 of them and modified them to have USB ports (=added/enabled extra functionality, exactly like the modchips we are discussing here) and have no intention of returning them.
Is it your view that I've done something wrong here? I paid them what they asked for the camera, but once I walked out of the store with it.. it's mine.
You are suggesting that sellers of all products be prevented from setting any conditions on the sale of their products
.. to promote progress in the science and arts by offering a TEMPORARY monopoly which then expires and your work enters the public domain.
Yes. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to actually own the copy that I bought and that includes the ability to modify it. There are already laws in place by society (such as Copyright) which limit what I can do with that copy in terms of distribution. If additional conditions are required (such as NDAs) then these agreements must be established before the time of purchase. Shrink-wrap licenses or EULAs should not be acceptable nor enforceable.
I guess you would also mean that a EULA should be unenforceable, and thus abolish copyright when it comes to allowing you to make copies of digital products?
What does EULA have to do with Copyright? Works, digital or otherwise, are just as protected by copyright without EULAs as they are with them.
If I invent product X, who are you, or the government to dictate the terms under which I profit from my invention?
It is in the best interest of society that knowledge not be held hostage in the silos of their so-called inventors. This is precisely the original reason for copyright
If you don't like it, go invent your own product and stick a big "mod chip friendly" sticker on it.
I'm feeding a Troll aren't I?
No, TFA does NOT talk about blocking MACs, because that would be fscking stupid. Every time I reboot and reconnect to my ISP, I use a new MAC and therefore get a new IP (privacy... sure, the ISP can trace it, but anyone else has a bit tougher time without the ISPs cooperation), due to a little program called macchanger integrated into my bootscripts. Its site http://www.alobbs.com/macchanger [alobbs.com] says there's a similar program, SMAC, for MSWormOS. Even without that, a $5 new NIC is a new MAC.
I'm not sure exactly what you think you're getting 'privacy' from, but you know that your ISP looks at the MAC address of your Cable/DSL modem, and not that of your network card, right?
I dont know about DSL but in the case of cable, where there is no PPPoE-style authentication being performed, your modem's MAC literally is your authentication and a device with a different MAC won't be allowed to connect. Does DSL work differently? Someone enlighten me.
I believe you are confusing surface winds, which are very light, with atmospheric winds which are much faster and more then capable of blacking out the sun.. just because energy is up there, doesn't mean you can effectively harness it.
Why is it so important for Mickey Mouse to become public domain? Or more importantly any Brittney Spears song?
.. it is their bread and butter, to continue the analogy :)
The way those questions are phrased leads me to believe your position is that if something has no value (specifically artistic value) to you, it has no value to anyone. Everyone has different likes and dislikes, especially when it comes to art.
Sooner or later everything old is new again. Old ideas are constantly remixed and fused with new ideas to create something bigger and better, and this is how our culture develops and grows.
Artists of all types need material to work with, and Starving artists (those who do it for the love of the craft, and not for the money) need public domain material
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls.. but consider that he's on stage 5 while you are stuck somewhere between 3 and 4.
Copyright holders have long ago broken their social contract with the people, nothing produced today will ever become public domain during your (or your children's, or possibly not even their children's) lifetime as per the original social contract that gave birth to copyright.
Yes, and both are filtered out by your brain thanks to Psychoacoustic Masking effects. Just as someone accustomed to listening to Vinyl will not hear the needle's noise, someone accustomed to listening to CDs will not hear their sampling noise.. the brain conveniently filters it out for us.
As the RIM vs NTP case has recently demonstrated, it doesn't actually matter if the patent is invalidated. It's very existence in the first place can cause a tremendous amount of harm (to the tune of $600M in this instance)..
I really like NEdit, and so do many of the folks at work. A few holdouts do use Emacs but any appeal it may have is lost on me. The standard GNU Xemacs doesn't even have different open files show up in different tabs. My idea of a good programmers editor left the terminal window behind a long time ago, but emacs seems to still be stuck there.
From the horse's mouth:
Windows Update is committed to protecting your privacy. To provide you with the appropriate list of updates, Windows Update must collect a certain amount of configuration information from your computer. None of this configuration information can be used to identify you. This information includes:
I don't believe for a moment that the above information isn't enough to uniquely track you. Between the PnP IDs of all of your hardware and version numbers of all of your software, you're a pretty unique datapoint.
Could the site make a claim that is was being slandered because it was not being ranked as the algorithmic ranking engine indicates?
No. The ranking engine is not a static entity. The rankings change all the time as they tweak the algorithm and it's parameters, and they have no obligation to either keep anything from changing or disclose exactly how they rank (since that is one of their major trade secrets).
The best explanation based on our entire understanding of reality is that consciousness is an illusion. It has important survival advantages. No magic required.
:P
I agree completely.. but who is the illusionist? Seems like an easy way out to me..
In order to have memories, thoughts, consciousness, or dreams, we need the hardware of the brain.
Memories come in different flavors, I think simple muscle memory is possible without a brain.. but I'm not sure. We just agreed consciousness was an illusion..
If this is a rotting hunk of meat, we have nothing. How could we?
Only if you choose to define yourself by that hunk of meat.
And if your brain is damaged, why can this change your personality or make you a drooling vegetable if we really are spirits far above the mortal coil?
I think of the soul as the electromagnetic field that controls/is controlled by/results from the firing of neurons in your brain. If we accept this, then the body is nothing but a machine controlled by this field. If the machine is damaged, then communication and control of the body also become damage, leading in a vegetable. The existence of vegetables in no way disproves having a soul.
Oh and as far as starving to death.. I must have missed that when I signed up
I find accepting the reality as presented through my senses to be a fairly small leap of faith, as the "real world" is the simplest and most likely explanation for what my senses present to me
:)
It has been my experience that the senses lie and deceive too often to put that much faith into them. Even if you look at how vision actually works, it's millions of receptor cells that give your brain a raw signal which is then 'processed' into what you actually see.
By our previous reasoning, this processing is nothing but a random firing of neutrons.. it's actually quite remarkable that most of us can even agree at what we're looking at
According to string theory, our world is something like 11 dimensional. I'm not saying that trusting the 4 or so dimensions that you can perceive is wrong, just that it's (at least in a scientific sense) a very limited view of the world.
What makes you think there is a "dream realm" or that dreaming is more than just your brain at work while you're asleep?
I will answer that with a question: What makes you think there is a "real world", or that being awake is any more real then being asleep?
The reason I choose sleep as an example is that it's a transient state of being, where you can consciously exist but not physically exist. I have had lucid dreams, where I become aware that I'm dreaming and can interact with as well as manipulate the dream.
If you choose to see yourself as a random firing of neurons, then that is probably on some level an accurate (but very, very limited) view of the world. There is more then one meaning of random, and it doesn't have to just mean chaotic.
The reality is that we probably have nothing to look forward to after we die.
Upon what do you base this assertion?
I don't think we understand consciousness nearly well enough to be able to make such a strong statement.
I find it far more likely that after you die, you inhabit the dream realm (or a realm similar to it) semi-permanently. I say this because
1) it's a place where you exist without physical body,
2) you're comfortable with it, as you spend 1/3 - 1/4 of your life there anyway and
3) the rules of the place allow you to construct your own Heaven, Hell, or whatever else it is you "expect" to be in the afterlife for yourself out of nothing but thought.
These beliefs are, from what I understand, vaguely Buddhist.. but they allow within them an infinite amount of possibilities; everyone is free to create their own after-life (or allow someone else to create it for them).
Myself and my friends all heavily use eBay up here in Canada, because the markups on certain items (cellphone accessories, car audio, jewelry) are often 200-500% locally, even from traditional retail outfits. For example, they actually charge $30 for a leather cell phone case here. $20 if you go to one of those shady asian-import places. These items have no value on ebay, and often sell for $0.01 plus $6 - $9 shipping..
Plus, if I buy locally I'm paying 14% tax.. if I buy from eBay, I've got a good chance of avoiding taxes entirely (depends on the cost of the item.. under $10 nobody bothers, and if the seller is nice enough to ship as a 'Gift' then it's totally tax-free for me).
In summary, eBay is still cheaper (in many cases) for those of us north of the border.
I have seen enough anecdotal evidence to back up the GP's point. The smartest guy in my university classes had a very, very strange introverted personality and behaviors that definitely bordered on autism.
There is a certain degree of intelligence where the logical side of the brain dominates to the extent that the emotional/social side begins to suffer.. it's not as impossible as you seem to think it is, but also not nearly as common as the GP thinks.
if you're going to pretend to engage in illegal activity
I'm with you, up until that point. Nothing of that sort is going on here.
What this little experiment is showing, is that the media companies are not actually connecting to the people they claim are spreading their works, and are not actually obtaining the works from them. What they are in fact doing is asking the tracker for all of machines it "thinks" are participating in the swarm right now. There are a large number of reasons why this information could be inaccurate or out of date.
In fact, a URL can be built and entered into a web browser that will make it look like that machine has joined the swarm (most trackers are http based, parameters are passed via GET). Does entering or clicking on that URL now make you a copyright infringer?
This is a very slippery slope, and what it highlights is that not nearly enough discretion is being used in sending out these notices. Joining a swarm is just an HTTP GET request, and issuing one is NOT "pretending to engage in illegal activity".
Clearly, disclosing security vulnerabilities doesn't pay
The moral of this story is that if you do the right thing and inform those affected then you risk personal liability, charges, fees and so on...
Instead, you should just sell the exploit to the highest bidders (probably hackers employed by the Russian mob). He could have gotten a few thousand for it no problem (and as an extra added bonus, no probation!).
And what are they going to use to compile that "something else" with? Visual Studio .NET?
You'd have to be daft to to allow javascript on any random site.
First, that's a terrible argument. See here for an explanation why.
Second, why do you believe this? What is the worst thing a random piece of JavaScript can really do? Steal the cookie with my login info for Slashdot?
If you use Internet Explorer, I will agree with you. I would even go further and not allow anything through to that browser from any random site, other then maybe images.
But with Firefox or just about any another browser, these types of things happen VERY, VERY infrequently. When they do, I follow tech news and will in most cases be patched before I ever come across the exploit in the wild. The hassle of having to re-enable JavaScript all the time isn't worth the "risk" for users like me.
There is nothing inherently evil about JavaScript, get a hold of yourself.
I almost never want to see the garbage that Flash is used for, but I almost always want the functionality you get when JavaScript is enabled.
Flashblock is the appropriate balance of convenience and annoyance for the average user.