A likely story. I'll bet this is just some cover for the Strategic Defense Initiative. ("No, we here at Nasa have no idea exactly what could have vaporized your surveillance satellites Mr. Yeltsin. We have strong suspicions that it was the Chinese.") Hee hee.
I guess I was ambiguous. The port scans are coming from all over the place. Saw one from a domain in Russia. I've complained both to my ISP and some of the domains involved, but never get any interest. I think it's so widespread, it's like complaining about someone turning without using their signals.
Port scanning is ilegal. The fact that it's your own box doesn't change that.
No it isn't 'illegal'. It may be against the Terms of Service of a provider, but there's no law against it. And it isn't even against the TOS if you're doing it locally and not across the provider's network.
As far as what you can do to improve security: spend @$150 for a Linksys router. (There are others, such as those made by Beadle, but LinkSys was cheapest last I knew). Besides allowing up to 255 computers to share the cable modem, it acts as a firewall to keep out hackers. It also can keep you out of trouble with RoadRuner. The RR Terms of Service forbids 'servers' (basically anything which can allow people out in the world at large access to files on your computer. So Napster would qualify, for example). If you're running any sort of Unixoid O/S, there's bound to be a 'server' or two by their definition. The last time I talked to RR, they weren't enforcing this provision of the TOS, but that may have changed, or could at any time. At any rate, a firewall just makes life easier, security-wise. Mine catches two or three port scan attempts per day.
Ah, cool. I knew that they had a 4-port hub built-in, but wasn't aware that they did 10/100. I'm pretty impressed with LinkSys. Their product is half the price I paid a year ago for my Beadlenet router, and they'll allow up to 255 users to share, whereas Beadle wants to charge according to number of users. I think anyone hooking up to a cable modem ought to have one of these devices just for the firewall function. It wouldn't surprise me to find them furnishing built-in VPN functions in the near future, as well.
This story reminds me of a rare victory over the increasingly restrictive Cox@Home. Shortly after I installed my firewall, I got a very snotty letter from them, accusing me of running Napster, which is a 'server' under their definition. I wasn't, and asked them just WTF they had that indicated that I was. A little later in the day, I got a groveling letter addressed to a large group. It seems that someone on their staff had made a coding mistake, and any customer computer that didn't respond to his probe (i.e. anyone running a firewall) got labeled a Napster user. After the flames of Hades descended on their emailbox due to these automaticlly-emailed accusations, they issued this apology. I had to laugh out loud when I read that letter.
I can certainly sympathize, and I wasn't defending @Home. In fact, I find their restrictions to be pretty onerous myself, and I'll probably jump ship at some point just because of their attitude.
That said, it sounded like Roblimo was stuck with them for the time being, and I thought I'd suggest something that might work for him until he can find an alternative. If you have both @Home and DSL, I'd be interested to know if you've done any sort of comparison between them as to throughput, customer support, etc.
I think that capitialists do ultimately want as much money as they can get, but the process of getting there sometimes doesn't look like it. A company may sacrifice current income in return for increasing market share. This is done in order to later maximize income by being the dominant player in that market. When taken to an extreme, you get what's called 'predatory pricing' - selling below market rates in order to drive your competitors out of business. When they're gone, you can then squeeze the customers as much as you please. Acting like this is when the government starts getting attentive and you run the danger of getting slapped down by some regulatory agency.
I haven't read their service agreement lately (they seem to change once a month), but the last time I checked the Cox@Home one, you could do things like run servers, VPNs, upload scads of data, etc. by becoming an @Work user. Same hardware hookup, but they remove those restrictions, plus they don't cap the data rates. So, while it might be true that you're stuck with your provider, it's not technically true that you're without recourse for obtaining these services. You just have to be willing to pay the additional money, a question best left up to you as to whether it's worth it.
I see that others (including Roblimo himself) are parsing the exact meaning of the Service Agreement. Rather than get into that, I'd like to recommend that, if the goal is just to share the cable modem (oops, I mean "Comcast Equipment"), you ought to just buy an inexpensive Linksys router and hook it between the Comcast Equipment and other computers (perhaps using a 10/100 hub to hook the machines themselves together, since I don't think the Linksys router provides 100 MBps Ethernet). They'll be unable to tell, short of physical inspection, how many machines you have on the line. Nor should it be any of their business anyway, IMO, no matter what their Service Agreement document says. You also get the additional benefit of a hardware firewall between you and the hordes who seem to be constantly trying to find an open port on my @Home machine.
While it sounds like Mr. Montgomery has a great grasp of the technical aspects of his effort, I'd have liked the interviewer to ask some questions about the project's strategy for getting the eventual product adopted at large. The scenario that comes to my mind is the GIF format. Unisys started enforcing its patents to this technology in 1994, requiring developers to pay a fee to use the GIF format [redundant usage I know, but it seems to read better]. There was widespread grumbling and talk of revolt, but here we are, six years later, still using it while its anointed successor, PNG, languishes. The reason is all of the legacy code out there that must be accomodated. MP3 has gained such a foothold that any tool is going to have to support it. That being the case, the 'good enough' mindset takes over, and it becomes much harder to displace a technology that's already doing an adequate job. If there's a battle-plan to get VQL adopted, I'd like to hear what it is. I might even help:-)
If you're really determined, you can vote. The federal government passed voting regulations that effectively gutted state's attempts to suppress voter fraud. So go to your local library and get a voter registration card. Fill it out, making sure to lie where appropriate, and then just mail it in. You'll be signed up with no questions asked. When you get your voting materials, follow the instructions in order to get an absentee ballot. When it comes, fill it out, mail it in, and presto, you've voted. You can even do this multiple times in order to vote more than once. Of course, your parents are going to wonder what this stuff in the mail is, so you might have to find a friendly locale for a mail drop.
I'm not actually advocating this, just using it to illustrate how easy it is to game the system. Absent the mail problem noted above, there's absolutely nothing to prevent someone doing this. And most adults don't have the mail problem. If we ever go to an online version of voting, I believe fraud will become even easier.
Not to mention that there's lots of ancillary stuff that has to be developed such as resists, lens coatings, etc. I'm not even sure that there's going to be such a thing as resists or lenses at this size level. I suspect optical photolithography is going to run out of gas before it gets to these feature sizes. We may be looking at direct electron-beam writing for 10 nm. If that's so, it's going to be one slooow process.
I think online voting is a bad idea. Much as I like it for my stock proxies, electing politicians is another story. I believe fraud would skyrocket to such an extent that most elections would be questionable. Once you don't have to show your face at a poll, there's pretty much nothing standing in the way of registering large numbers of nonexistent 'voters' and having them vote the way you want. The mail-in ballot system that's becoming more and more prevalent is bad enough, but putting it online makes it way too easy. Just think of the [insert favorite demon group here: Christian Coalition, AFL/CIO, etc.] getting their members together to create vast number of new voters in an attempt to influence the outcome of some tight contest. The stakes are high enough that this will happen.
In Canada, for example, the courts have decided that it's okay to redistribute broadcast TV as long as the commercials remain intact. It's not taking money out of anyone's pocket as long as 'recording viewings' are factored into the original advertising and residuals charges.
Perhaps Canada handles the broadcast business model differently, but in the U.S. that argument wouldn't fly. Many network shows here leave open commercial slots that the local broadcaster can use for local ads. It's one reason the DirecTV satellite system isn't allowed to use a commone network feed for their customers to view ABC, CBS, NBC, or FOX. Until they clamped down on this, I had it for a while and it was heaven. Being in the Pacific time zone, I could watch the network shows at 5pm via the East Coast feed if I wanted.
Thought of one more:
3) If people are watching the shows after passing them around, it gets harder and harder to determine the ratings, so it's difficult to prove to an advertiser how many people are viewing it (and therefore their commercials).
Perhaps the proper way for the content producers to embrace this technology would be for them to arrange for digital signatures to be attached to the content and then relay the information about viewing back to some database. This brings up some privacy issues, but I've given them the idea; implementation is their problem:-).
These technologies don't remove the commercials for you, so what exactly would television execs have to make a stink about that they didn't with VHS?
I can provide a couple of answers off the top of my head:
1) They'd be afraid that they'd lose out on revenue from the reruns. Besides the reruns of the networks themselves (complete with new commercials), the shows are sold to individual TV stations, who run their own commercials with them. If people had them available thru other means, that market could be hurt.
2) A digital copy makes commercial skipping even easier than with digital tape. Just hit the 'jump ahead 1 minute' and you're instantly at that spot. Keep doing it until you're past the commercial. I actually had an RCA VCR that would do this automatically. After it had recorded a show, it went back over it and marked the commercials (detected by totally black screen which preceeds a commercial, a screen condition that almost never occurs in a show itself. Watch for it sometime and you'll see what I mean.), then would automatically fast-forward through the commercial on playback. It broke my heart when it pulled up lame and I had to shoot it. It wouldn't surprise me to see this provision put into a Tivo-type unit. With that, you'd not even be bothered with the fast-forward; it would be like the commercial had never existed.
For a long time I thought Prince was a joke, patricularly that business where he changed his name. Some time ago, I found out why he'd done it: the contract he had signed gave his masters the rights to the name 'Prince' and any name he later changed to, even if he left the label. Bound by this provision, and wanting to depart, he changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph. I presume that, since he's gotten his name back, there must have been some time limit in the contract. No one I've ever spoken to about him has been aware of this story, attributing his name change to some sort of flighty 'artiste' whim. I still don't like his music, but the guy's not stupid. His opinions on Napster are therefore of interest.
The French law says that it's illegal to "display for sale," within France, Nazi-related items. One question facing the parties in this case is, where exactly is the 'displaying' happening? In Yahoo's shoes, I'd be arguing that the data for the items reside on my U.S. servers, and that the 'displaying' is happening there. It would be the same as if I erected a big banner across the border in, say, Spain, offering Nazi memorabilia for sale. Someone standing in France could read it, but I would not be violating French law just because they can see it. And French Customs officials would still have the ability to prevent Nazi memorabilia from entering at their borders, even if someone managed to buy it.
In furtherance of my argument, I'd cite any instances in which Yahoo had been required to remove items whose sale would violate U.S. law, but not necessarily the laws of other countries. Any case where this happened would be indicative that the law that should apply is that of the U.S., where the servers reside.
What kind of light does this sort of business ethic (or lack thereof) shine on the open-source community, and Free vs. free software?"
I think this is just the world in microcosm, and you'll find this sort of behavior in the underbelly of any human institution. When I was in college, I had a number of friends who were pre-med. They told me astounding tales of the underhanded tactics that the pre-med students would employ in order to sabotage their fellows. Things like taking their lab cultures out of the incubator and destroying them. They did this because grades were assigned via a fixed curve, so only so many out of a class would get 'A's. So, I guess I'm not either surprised or particularly alarmed to find out that some within the software industry use gutter tactics in the internecine battles. As far as its implications for Free/free software, I have to think that flipping over the right rocks there would find some interesting crawly things as well. It's just a given that some individuals in any group will use underhanded techniques to achieve their goals.
My first piece of advice is to find yourself a lawyer to advise you. Call me cynical, but if you make an attempt at filtering content and then fail, you're going to get sued by someone's parents. It might still happen anyway. I recall that a black man sued Collier's because his son happened across what he termed 'racially offensive' material on the CDROM version of their encyclopedia. The son claimed he was looking for the Niger River and misspelled it, resulting in him finding references to things like Joseph Conrad's book, "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'". I don't think the suit got very far, but it still consumed time and money for Colliers. I don't mean to throw cold water on your efforts, which sounds admirable, but just be aware of the hazards and protect yourself as much as possible.
It's a pretty interesting debate - how do national laws apply to the Internet?
The New York Times (free registration required) is reporting here that a man has been convicted for operating an internet gambling business that took bets from Americans. I would never have predicted this outcome, since he estabished the business in Antigua (where it's legal) and was himself out of the country when the bets were taken. If he weren't an American citizen, I don't believe he could have been prosecuted. I find this ruling disturbing, since it implies that one can be prosecuted according to the laws of one's home country, even if one's activities are legal where they take place. I'm hoping this ruling is overturned, as it's completely wrong, IMO. Using this logic, some despotic regime would be within its rights to prosecute its citizens for criticizing it while in the U.S.
Slashdot Mirror
Go to cnet.com and do a search. You'll find lots of sites offering it. Or Linksys equipment is sold at any Fry's.
A likely story. I'll bet this is just some cover for the Strategic Defense Initiative. ("No, we here at Nasa have no idea exactly what could have vaporized your surveillance satellites Mr. Yeltsin. We have strong suspicions that it was the Chinese.") Hee hee.
I guess I was ambiguous. The port scans are coming from all over the place. Saw one from a domain in Russia. I've complained both to my ISP and some of the domains involved, but never get any interest. I think it's so widespread, it's like complaining about someone turning without using their signals.
Port scanning is ilegal. The fact that it's your own box doesn't change that.
No it isn't 'illegal'. It may be against the Terms of Service of a provider, but there's no law against it. And it isn't even against the TOS if you're doing it locally and not across the provider's network.
As far as what you can do to improve security: spend @$150 for a Linksys router. (There are others, such as those made by Beadle, but LinkSys was cheapest last I knew). Besides allowing up to 255 computers to share the cable modem, it acts as a firewall to keep out hackers. It also can keep you out of trouble with RoadRuner. The RR Terms of Service forbids 'servers' (basically anything which can allow people out in the world at large access to files on your computer. So Napster would qualify, for example). If you're running any sort of Unixoid O/S, there's bound to be a 'server' or two by their definition. The last time I talked to RR, they weren't enforcing this provision of the TOS, but that may have changed, or could at any time. At any rate, a firewall just makes life easier, security-wise. Mine catches two or three port scan attempts per day.
Ah, cool. I knew that they had a 4-port hub built-in, but wasn't aware that they did 10/100. I'm pretty impressed with LinkSys. Their product is half the price I paid a year ago for my Beadlenet router, and they'll allow up to 255 users to share, whereas Beadle wants to charge according to number of users. I think anyone hooking up to a cable modem ought to have one of these devices just for the firewall function. It wouldn't surprise me to find them furnishing built-in VPN functions in the near future, as well.
This story reminds me of a rare victory over the increasingly restrictive Cox@Home. Shortly after I installed my firewall, I got a very snotty letter from them, accusing me of running Napster, which is a 'server' under their definition. I wasn't, and asked them just WTF they had that indicated that I was. A little later in the day, I got a groveling letter addressed to a large group. It seems that someone on their staff had made a coding mistake, and any customer computer that didn't respond to his probe (i.e. anyone running a firewall) got labeled a Napster user. After the flames of Hades descended on their emailbox due to these automaticlly-emailed accusations, they issued this apology. I had to laugh out loud when I read that letter.
I can certainly sympathize, and I wasn't defending @Home. In fact, I find their restrictions to be pretty onerous myself, and I'll probably jump ship at some point just because of their attitude.
That said, it sounded like Roblimo was stuck with them for the time being, and I thought I'd suggest something that might work for him until he can find an alternative. If you have both @Home and DSL, I'd be interested to know if you've done any sort of comparison between them as to throughput, customer support, etc.
I think that capitialists do ultimately want as much money as they can get, but the process of getting there sometimes doesn't look like it. A company may sacrifice current income in return for increasing market share. This is done in order to later maximize income by being the dominant player in that market. When taken to an extreme, you get what's called 'predatory pricing' - selling below market rates in order to drive your competitors out of business. When they're gone, you can then squeeze the customers as much as you please. Acting like this is when the government starts getting attentive and you run the danger of getting slapped down by some regulatory agency.
I haven't read their service agreement lately (they seem to change once a month), but the last time I checked the Cox@Home one, you could do things like run servers, VPNs, upload scads of data, etc. by becoming an @Work user. Same hardware hookup, but they remove those restrictions, plus they don't cap the data rates. So, while it might be true that you're stuck with your provider, it's not technically true that you're without recourse for obtaining these services. You just have to be willing to pay the additional money, a question best left up to you as to whether it's worth it.
I see that others (including Roblimo himself) are parsing the exact meaning of the Service Agreement. Rather than get into that, I'd like to recommend that, if the goal is just to share the cable modem (oops, I mean "Comcast Equipment"), you ought to just buy an inexpensive Linksys router and hook it between the Comcast Equipment and other computers (perhaps using a 10/100 hub to hook the machines themselves together, since I don't think the Linksys router provides 100 MBps Ethernet). They'll be unable to tell, short of physical inspection, how many machines you have on the line. Nor should it be any of their business anyway, IMO, no matter what their Service Agreement document says. You also get the additional benefit of a hardware firewall between you and the hordes who seem to be constantly trying to find an open port on my @Home machine.
While it sounds like Mr. Montgomery has a great grasp of the technical aspects of his effort, I'd have liked the interviewer to ask some questions about the project's strategy for getting the eventual product adopted at large. The scenario that comes to my mind is the GIF format. Unisys started enforcing its patents to this technology in 1994, requiring developers to pay a fee to use the GIF format [redundant usage I know, but it seems to read better]. There was widespread grumbling and talk of revolt, but here we are, six years later, still using it while its anointed successor, PNG, languishes. The reason is all of the legacy code out there that must be accomodated. MP3 has gained such a foothold that any tool is going to have to support it. That being the case, the 'good enough' mindset takes over, and it becomes much harder to displace a technology that's already doing an adequate job. If there's a battle-plan to get VQL adopted, I'd like to hear what it is. I might even help :-)
If you're really determined, you can vote. The federal government passed voting regulations that effectively gutted state's attempts to suppress voter fraud. So go to your local library and get a voter registration card. Fill it out, making sure to lie where appropriate, and then just mail it in. You'll be signed up with no questions asked. When you get your voting materials, follow the instructions in order to get an absentee ballot. When it comes, fill it out, mail it in, and presto, you've voted. You can even do this multiple times in order to vote more than once. Of course, your parents are going to wonder what this stuff in the mail is, so you might have to find a friendly locale for a mail drop.
I'm not actually advocating this, just using it to illustrate how easy it is to game the system. Absent the mail problem noted above, there's absolutely nothing to prevent someone doing this. And most adults don't have the mail problem. If we ever go to an online version of voting, I believe fraud will become even easier.
Not to mention that there's lots of ancillary stuff that has to be developed such as resists, lens coatings, etc. I'm not even sure that there's going to be such a thing as resists or lenses at this size level. I suspect optical photolithography is going to run out of gas before it gets to these feature sizes. We may be looking at direct electron-beam writing for 10 nm. If that's so, it's going to be one slooow process.
I think online voting is a bad idea. Much as I like it for my stock proxies, electing politicians is another story. I believe fraud would skyrocket to such an extent that most elections would be questionable. Once you don't have to show your face at a poll, there's pretty much nothing standing in the way of registering large numbers of nonexistent 'voters' and having them vote the way you want. The mail-in ballot system that's becoming more and more prevalent is bad enough, but putting it online makes it way too easy. Just think of the [insert favorite demon group here: Christian Coalition, AFL/CIO, etc.] getting their members together to create vast number of new voters in an attempt to influence the outcome of some tight contest. The stakes are high enough that this will happen.
In Canada, for example, the courts have decided that it's okay to redistribute broadcast TV as long as the commercials remain intact. It's not taking money out of anyone's pocket as long as 'recording viewings' are factored into the original advertising and residuals charges.
Perhaps Canada handles the broadcast business model differently, but in the U.S. that argument wouldn't fly. Many network shows here leave open commercial slots that the local broadcaster can use for local ads. It's one reason the DirecTV satellite system isn't allowed to use a commone network feed for their customers to view ABC, CBS, NBC, or FOX. Until they clamped down on this, I had it for a while and it was heaven. Being in the Pacific time zone, I could watch the network shows at 5pm via the East Coast feed if I wanted.
Thought of one more:
:-).
3) If people are watching the shows after passing them around, it gets harder and harder to determine the ratings, so it's difficult to prove to an advertiser how many people are viewing it (and therefore their commercials).
Perhaps the proper way for the content producers to embrace this technology would be for them to arrange for digital signatures to be attached to the content and then relay the information about viewing back to some database. This brings up some privacy issues, but I've given them the idea; implementation is their problem
These technologies don't remove the commercials for you, so what exactly would television execs have to make a stink about that they didn't with VHS?
I can provide a couple of answers off the top of my head:
1) They'd be afraid that they'd lose out on revenue from the reruns. Besides the reruns of the networks themselves (complete with new commercials), the shows are sold to individual TV stations, who run their own commercials with them. If people had them available thru other means, that market could be hurt.
2) A digital copy makes commercial skipping even easier than with digital tape. Just hit the 'jump ahead 1 minute' and you're instantly at that spot. Keep doing it until you're past the commercial. I actually had an RCA VCR that would do this automatically. After it had recorded a show, it went back over it and marked the commercials (detected by totally black screen which preceeds a commercial, a screen condition that almost never occurs in a show itself. Watch for it sometime and you'll see what I mean.), then would automatically fast-forward through the commercial on playback. It broke my heart when it pulled up lame and I had to shoot it. It wouldn't surprise me to see this provision put into a Tivo-type unit. With that, you'd not even be bothered with the fast-forward; it would be like the commercial had never existed.
For a long time I thought Prince was a joke, patricularly that business where he changed his name. Some time ago, I found out why he'd done it: the contract he had signed gave his masters the rights to the name 'Prince' and any name he later changed to, even if he left the label. Bound by this provision, and wanting to depart, he changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph. I presume that, since he's gotten his name back, there must have been some time limit in the contract. No one I've ever spoken to about him has been aware of this story, attributing his name change to some sort of flighty 'artiste' whim. I still don't like his music, but the guy's not stupid. His opinions on Napster are therefore of interest.
The French law says that it's illegal to "display for sale," within France, Nazi-related items. One question facing the parties in this case is, where exactly is the 'displaying' happening? In Yahoo's shoes, I'd be arguing that the data for the items reside on my U.S. servers, and that the 'displaying' is happening there. It would be the same as if I erected a big banner across the border in, say, Spain, offering Nazi memorabilia for sale. Someone standing in France could read it, but I would not be violating French law just because they can see it. And French Customs officials would still have the ability to prevent Nazi memorabilia from entering at their borders, even if someone managed to buy it.
In furtherance of my argument, I'd cite any instances in which Yahoo had been required to remove items whose sale would violate U.S. law, but not necessarily the laws of other countries. Any case where this happened would be indicative that the law that should apply is that of the U.S., where the servers reside.
Here's another article (free registration required) from the New York Times on this subject: "French Nazi Memorabilia Case Presents Jurisdiction Dilemma"
What kind of light does this sort of business ethic (or lack thereof) shine on the open-source community, and Free vs. free software?"
I think this is just the world in microcosm, and you'll find this sort of behavior in the underbelly of any human institution. When I was in college, I had a number of friends who were pre-med. They told me astounding tales of the underhanded tactics that the pre-med students would employ in order to sabotage their fellows. Things like taking their lab cultures out of the incubator and destroying them. They did this because grades were assigned via a fixed curve, so only so many out of a class would get 'A's. So, I guess I'm not either surprised or particularly alarmed to find out that some within the software industry use gutter tactics in the internecine battles. As far as its implications for Free/free software, I have to think that flipping over the right rocks there would find some interesting crawly things as well. It's just a given that some individuals in any group will use underhanded techniques to achieve their goals.
My first piece of advice is to find yourself a lawyer to advise you. Call me cynical, but if you make an attempt at filtering content and then fail, you're going to get sued by someone's parents. It might still happen anyway. I recall that a black man sued Collier's because his son happened across what he termed 'racially offensive' material on the CDROM version of their encyclopedia. The son claimed he was looking for the Niger River and misspelled it, resulting in him finding references to things like Joseph Conrad's book, "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'". I don't think the suit got very far, but it still consumed time and money for Colliers. I don't mean to throw cold water on your efforts, which sounds admirable, but just be aware of the hazards and protect yourself as much as possible.
Actually, it's 'precedents' in the context in which it was used.
It's a pretty interesting debate - how do national laws apply to the Internet?
The New York Times (free registration required) is reporting here that a man has been convicted for operating an internet gambling business that took bets from Americans. I would never have predicted this outcome, since he estabished the business in Antigua (where it's legal) and was himself out of the country when the bets were taken. If he weren't an American citizen, I don't believe he could have been prosecuted. I find this ruling disturbing, since it implies that one can be prosecuted according to the laws of one's home country, even if one's activities are legal where they take place. I'm hoping this ruling is overturned, as it's completely wrong, IMO. Using this logic, some despotic regime would be within its rights to prosecute its citizens for criticizing it while in the U.S.