Who's going to maintain the access points to keep flooding Freenet day-in and day-out? Who's going to go to all the trouble to find all the Freenet nodes and keep dinging them with bogus requests?
Exhibit A: The government of the People's Republic of China
Could you name me one way in which a person could totally shut down the concept of freenet. Assuming it gets off the ground to the extent you describe how would you be able to actually shut it down.
Easy as pie: "Shutting Down Freenet for Dummies"
Step 1: Make lotsa noise about terrorists, porn, threats to the existence of humanity, and protection of children.
Step 2: US Congress passes a law making it illegal to operate and/or use a Freenet server.
Step 3: FBI sets up some sting Freenet servers and stages several very public hangings of guilty parties.
Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 for all Western Countries and Japan (making an international treaty might help here)
End result: some Freenet nodes survive in places like Zaire and Bangladesh, but (a) the bandwidth to them is limited; (b) nobody knows about them anyway. Using Freenet becomes like trying to buy a grenade launcher: certainly doable, in some parts of the world much easier than in others, especially if you know the right people, but waaaaay beyond the capabilities of an average person/geek/whatever.
Pissing people off is not a goal within itself. The fact is that those people who would be pissed off by Freenet are those who do not want any Freedom in Cyberspace - and that are already threatening it on the web.
I understand that. I highly doubt that the reason for Freenet is being able to publish the length of somebody's dick and then go "Na-na, nana na". I like the idea of Freenet. But consider real-life consequences.
What kind of information will find itself gravitating towards Freenet? If I want to publicize my collection of rubber chicken, I can get myself a page at Geocities or something like it. If I am serious about it, I'll spend $9.95 and get myself a "real" site with domain name, etc. But if my information is dangerous, illegal, likely to lead to me finding a horse's head in my bedroom -- why, I'll put it on Freenet.
I understand that Freenet doesn't specifically aim to piss people off. However, its existence and its information will piss off people, and, more important, corporations and governments. That's certainly not a good reason to stop developing Freenet. But it is a good reason not to be surprised when somebody decided to take active measures against Freenet.
Freenet is more robust than most systems since it doesn't make much difference if you bring down a small number of Freenet nodes
I am not talking about "standard" 'net DOS (e.g. smurf attacks). I am talking denial-of-service through flooding Freenet with bogus/malicious information.
Random data will only displace other data in Freenet if people actually request it
First, if I give my garbage data attactive keys, people will request it.
Second, I was under the impression that newer data will push out older data (on a FIFO overflow basis). In this case garbage data will actually displace good data just because it's newer (and, trust me, I can genearate a great deal of new garbage)
[flooding attacks] I do believe that we are better off in this department then any other equivalent system.
Two observations. First, you are more vulnerable because you are committed to accepting information from anybody. For point-of-existence reasons you cannot authenticate.
Second, consider your threat model. A lot of people are saying "well, that's not worse than the 'net in general". I don't think that's going to be good enough. There are two cruicial differences. The first one is scale. If Freenet becomes huge, a lot of its DOS problems will become easier. On the other hand, if it remains (relatively) small, DOSing it will not be hard. The second difference (as I pointed out in another post) is that Freenet is designed to make some people, corporations and government very unhappy. In a sense, one measure of success will be something like AOL trying to shut Freenet down.
There is nobody (apart from some script kiddies, but I already said 'nobody') who is really interested in shutting down large parts of the 'net. There are going to be powerful entities who will be really interested in shutting down or degrading Freenet.
Regarding the non-uniqueness of keys, that can be solved, at the loss of some convenience.
It ain't that easy. Making unique tags for each chunk of info is simple. But consider a different problem: how do I find the information I need? Crypto hashes of contents do not help at all. Again, to repeat another post, if I want to find out how many bowling balls can Clinton suck through a garden hose, and all keys like/us/politics/ClintonSucks,../ClintonSucksBowlingBalls, etc. are press releases from White House, how do I get my information?
But nothing I have seen so far has convinced me, as pessimistic as I am, that it _won't_ work,
Oh, it'll work -- for some time. The real question is robustness. Consider that you are likely to find yourself on the front lines of active information warfare. In this case the relevant question is not "does it work?", but rather "how quickly/easily can it be killed?".
Oh no not "untrusted sources". Bad not getting all that authentication.
Ahem. And the meaning of this is?
Eventually that [random-noise] information will not exist because it will not be avaible because no one in their right mind would requst random noise.
Eventually (aka "in the long term") is not important here. Freenet is designed on a FIFO overflow principle. If a node can hold 10Gb of data and I pump 10Gb of garbage into it, the node will contain only garbage. The useful information in that node is gone -- to reappear in this node it has to be reinjected or it has to propagate itself from the rest of the network. Repeat daily (hourly), attack multiple nodes simultaneously -- there IS a problem.
A read over the mailing list freenet-dev will show you that in fact these things are being addressed.
Ah, you see, sport, this is the problem. I don't believe these kinds of problems can be solved within the framework of Freenet. The point of Freenet is that it accepts information from all comers, without either trying to check who they are, or checking what do they post. Given this, the vulnerability is built-in at the ground level.
And, BTW, I usually read "is being addressed" as "we know about the problem, but we don't have a clue as what to do about it. When we think of something, we'll let you know".
There is no historic prcedent for information dumping and the like (I may be wrong). References?
Historic precedent? HISTORIC PRECEDENT? [boggles again, then collapses to the floor laughing] Since when to do thing on the 'net you need historic precedent? Besides, Freenet itself is what, version 0.1beta?
The server is supposed to prevent you injecting something with the same key.
But that just makes the matter worse. This means you can tie up keys that can be used against you. Let's say I want to find out how many bowling balls can Clinton suck through a garden hose. I go to Freenet and find keys/us/politics/ClintonSucks,/us/politics/ClintonSucksBowlingBalls, etc. etc. And all of them are press releases from the White House!
(you want a historic precedent? Didn't Bush buy domains like "bushsucks.com"?)
This will eventually be addressed in it's full form.
That sounds pathetic. In any case, I still believe the vulnerability is in the concept itself.
What I think is that despite the possibility for random information good information will always win in the end.
No, no. Not random. I am talking active hostile information warfare. The point of Freenet is to publish information that makes certain people, corporations and government very, very unhappy. Put 2 and 2 together yourself.
I have my doubts about the viability of Freenet and the like projects because of the ease of denial-of-service attacks against them.
Freenet by definition has to accept information from untrusted sources. As the goal is anonymity, it cannot authenticate posters. Thus, at least two DOS attacks:
(1) Plain-vanilla: rapidly dump (and continue dumping) a lot of random-noise content into Freenet from multiple launch points (DDOS). Soon enough the random noise will crowd out the real information.
(2) Targeted: let's say there is a Freenet file, e.g. '/us/politics/ClintonBlowsGoats' that you want to suppress. Just make your own file with the same net and inject it into Freenet. Again, use multiple launch points and repeat injection at will. Again, the bogus file will crowd out the "real" file very quickly.
Note that the threat model for Freenet must assume that large corporations and governments will be trying to suppress info. It's clearly within reason for them to be able to inject false/misleading/random information into Freenet from 100s and 1000s of geographically distributed machines.
An accompanying problem is non-uniqueness of keys. There could be dozens of different info chunks floating around Freenet, each tagged with a '/foo/bar/qux' key. Which one you'll get depends on the node through which you access the Freenet -- not a very desirable dependency. Try to get the same thing a day later and you may well get a different info chunk for the same key.
To summarize, this is a key vulnerability of Freenet -- it can be saturated with bogus/misleading information quickly and easily.
You are intentionally confusing the context, comparing what a benign corporation can do legally with what dictatorial government can get away with.
You didn't understand me. When I said a government (and I do not mean just the executive branch, I mean the complete "official" power structure) can execute you, I meant that a government can pass laws the penalty for breaking which is death, can prosecute you for breaking these laws, and can execute you. This is all perfectly legal and happens in all democratic countries (with the exception of those without the death penalty).
It's no difficult feat to scan serial numbers in a counting machine
Nope. But then you need such machines at all places which sell anything, plus a big-ass central database.
Perhaps I was hasty in saying that tracing of cash is technologically infeasible. It can be done (although a simpler solution would be to abolish cash at all and force everybody to use money cards/chips). I would still argue that this is infeasible politically and culturally.
The widgets model doesn't work any more, because you are using their widgets through the deep link on your site, not your widgets.
Well, do you think it is OK for me to stand in front of their store with a big placard saying "You can find widget XYZZY in the middle of aisle 15, left side, third shelf from the bottom"? After all the store wants their customers to wander around since they are more likely to buy something else...
Corporations can quite easily kill you, just like the mafia, and just like the CIA. All it takes is money and access to the right people.
Remember, we are talking in a context of what corporations special. An individual can kill you just as easily.
It's not a question of what can be done to you. It's a question of what only a government can do, and what only corporations can do. Jail and executions fall into the first category, but murders do not fall into the second -- not only corporations can murder.
They can do that now, if you use a check card. They can probably do it with cash too, if it were worth the cost of scanning the money.
I said "ATM cash withdrawal" -- I am using cash. Tracing cash does not appear to be either technologically or politically feasible in the foreseeable future.
Of course if you pay for everything with a card (credit or debit), your bank has a very good idea of what you are doing.
I will be buying a house this summer, and as part of the upgrades I will be doing, there will be a small camera mounted to the outside of the house, filming the street 24 hours a day.
No, I'm not joking. I want the cameras to come.
OK, since you want the cameras to come, you can have no objections to me installing a camera across the street from your house and pointing at your house. And another one pointing at your backyard. Maybe the cameras will have telephoto lens. Certainly they'll have low-light gear.
Please note that my cameras will be on public property (a street) and will be filming only what's visible from public property.
.. its about unfair business practices. one of which is deep linking into ticketmaster as a part of tickets.com business process.
The fact that a company has an unsustainable business model does not impose any obligations on anybody to change the law so that the model becomes sustainable.
Sure, tickermaster would like everybody to go through the front page where they can be exposed to ads. So what? Ticketmaster would also like to become the sole legal source for all tickets to anywhere.
If somebody is selling widgets fo $1.00, it's perfectly legal and moral for me to open a store next to him and start selling the same widgets for $0.90. Of course this will make the guy upset, but it's not a good reason to forbid me to sell widgets.
This is Stephenson, author of Snow Crash. Remember how he depicted a world in which governments were irrelevant appendages, and corporations ran everything?
IIRC the Snow Crash world was a pretty freewheeling one. The governments were a joke, sure, but the corporations weren't all that powerful either. Most likely you are thinking about Gibson's works (Neuromancer -> Count Zero -> Mona Lisa Overdrive, etc)
Because the British govm't can't directly censor, all they have to do is make a law which allows "any nut with a lawyer" to sue an ISP into oblivion
That's a good point, but a "nut with a lawyer" is not a corporation. This is a good example of a government using roundabout routes to get to it's goals, but it's a very poor example of corporate power: Godfrey, after all, is an individual.
Historically, where government has found itself constrained by law or public pressure, it has often enough found ways to impose its will through the corporate sector.
I am not sure that's true. You'll have to come up with some arguments and examples (specific to corporations, not random people).
while corporations start taking over the prerogatives and powers of governments
That too you'll have to be more convincing about. I assume we are not speaking about lobbying which was a popular activity since at least the Roman times. Can you list some prerogatives and powers that nobody but governments used to have and now corporations (but not individuals) have?
the invasions of privacy will be conducted by corporations.
Sure. They were, are, and will be conducted. The difference is in consequences.
First of all, there are many corporations and one government. It's much easier for government agencies to cooperate and share data about me, than it is for corporations to do so. Yes, I know about consolidation of data into huge databases, but I figure it's going to be quite a while before my ATM cash withdrawals could be cross-referenced against my grocery shopping.
Second, the threat level is very different. The government can make your life very miserable and, in exterme circumstances, can kill you. The absolute worst that a corporation can do to me is to sue me into bankrupcy. That is quite unlikely, anyway, so the usual worst is that it will deny me service. Well, big deal. My life could become somewhat less convenient for me, but I'll survive.
I think that the argument "corporations are a worse threat than the government" kind of assumes that being disliked by a Big Brother government leads to approximately the same level of problems as being bombarded by spam. I can assure everybody that is definitely not so.
could leavethe laser pumping continuously at one wavelength and modulate it with this stuff.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I got the impression that this new stuff is capable only of demodulating. It does the optics->electrons interface, but I saw nothing about it's ability to do the reverse electrons->optics.
Selling one's time does not mean selling one's right to privacy, nor does the corporation's ownership of computer equipment permit surveillance that would be illegal via phone or mail.
The first one is correct, the second is not.
Basically, everything on the office computer is not mine. Just because you think of the computer in front of you as 'yours' does not mean it belongs to you. Same for a work email account -- it belongs to your employer who lets you use it.
If you want to be private, bring your own laptop or PDA to work. Use a wireless modem to access your ISP. If your employer wants to check what's in there you can tell him to go fuck himself and you'll be completely within your rights. Your stuff is private, yes, but "your" office computer and email address are not yours.
but imagine a world in which stray gunfire wasn't as abundant.. or crime wasn't so high. There wouldn't be a need for Big Brother to spy on you
You, my friend, are amazingly naive.
The Soviet Union had little crime in its Soviet days. Did this, perhaps, lead to KGB disbanding itself? The same is true for Nazi Germany -- in general, in totalitarian countries crime tends to be low for obvious reasons.
Why, do you think, people like to work for the government? Some do it because it's just a job, some do it because it's public service (and they are usually just-out-of-college kind), and many do it because it offers them an opportunity to exercise power, to feel powerful and important. Government always wants more power, regardless of crime levels or whatnot.
if you don't do anything wrong then u have nothing to hide
This has been rebutted so many times... I take it, then, that you would agree to wear a bracelet that would transmit to the police your location at all times, and a video camera, say, on a collar around your neck. After all, you have nothing to hide and consider how much the crime will be reduced if every member of the society has to wear these!
Big Brother is watching us, but he has also saved us countless times
A government is useful to have around, no question about it. However the amount of power that the government is allowed to have must be carefully controlled.
And as to saving us countless times, let me remind you that a Big Brother goverment can be very nasty to its citizens. The Soviet Union, in Stalin's time, killed ~10 million people by an artificially induced famine in the Ukraine and killed another 10 million in the labor camps. Plus out of 20 million Soviet casualties in WWII many could have been avoided.
I can go on and on, but really, the positions in this post are not rationally defensible.
From what I understand, this just takes care of the nasty fiber(optic) -> wire(electrons) interface problem. It does nothing to make the pipes fatter or to make computers run faster. So yes, it looks like a useful gadget, but the applications are limited (at least until I network my house with fiber).
Monitoring of voice mail, email, and websites browsed is commonplace in many corporations today.
Don't see much problem here. You are using somebody else's equipment during the time that you yourself sold to your employer. Not to mention that the employer is liable for much of what you do. Courts have construed porn-browsing employees as sexual-harassment environment (not that I agree with that, but reality is reality).
In other words, deal with it and if you find your employer too intrusive, move. It's not like you are an indentured servant there. (on the other hand, if you have options that did not vest yet...)
People find themselves in different situations and have different needs. I understand why Scott McNealy said there is no privacy -- he doesn't have any and it is impossible for a man in his position to be private. So? There are millions of people whose circumstances are different -- and their values are different, too.
So Neal Stephenson doesn't think the Big Brother threat is something to worry about. That's fine -- he is well-off guy, upper-middle-class at least, leading a pampered, comfortable life well insulated from the rougher edges of the world. If the government takes a dislike to him, he can hire lawyers and raise all kinds of ruckus. But he may want to think about other people not as lucky as he is.
I lived (with my kids) in a neighborhood where a rare night passed without a gunshot somewhere around. I also lived in countries where the government is very interested in the details of your private life. Neal Stephenson may have his opinions, but I also have mine: the Big Brother threat is more serious than stray gunfire. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't pay attention to all the other problems of the world, but discounting the dangers of an intrusive, high-on-its-power government is not a good position.
[availability of guns in the US] it's right there in my mind whenever I'm discussing travel with friends - it's the reason I'll never set foot in America.
Interesting. If you are so afraid of dying that the probability of being killed by a gun while a tourist in the US stops you from going there, then your life should be very complicated. Your chances of being run over by a car when crossing the street are much, much higher -- so, presumably you do not cross streets. I also assume that you don't smoke, don't drink, don't eat saturated fat, don't engage in sex (what if a condom breaks?), don't drive in a car, don't swim in the ocean (sharks!!) and generally don't do anything that's riskier than being killed by a gun in the US.
Oh, well.
And, by the way, don't come even if the US prohibits all guns. The chances of your aircraft plunging into the Pacific ocean are still considerably higher than being shot in the USA while a tourist there.
The deadlier the weapon, the more deaths it will cause (by definition).
Bullshit. Example one: some rare poisons are much more deadlier than, say, arsenic. Did they cause more deaths? Example two: you would probably agree that a nuclear bomb is more deadly than conventional munitions. Yet the (in)famous bombing of Dresden in WWII killed significantly more people than a nuclear bomb did in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
So if more guns are available, more deaths will occur, and if less guns are available, less deaths will occur.
More bullshit. Most houses in Switzerland have a fully automatic assault rifle stored somewhere (most men are "reserve" members of armed forces and have their personal weapon at home). By your logic this means that Switzerland should be awash in killings. In Israel it's extremely common to see people with assault rifles slung over the shoulder to walk the streets, sit in cafes, etc. Again, this should mean that the murder rate in Israel should be extremely high, no?
I am not a big fan of NRA, but you might want to think a bit about their slogan that it's people who kill other people, not guns.
This kid isn't asking us to do his work, he's asking for our help in getting pointed the right direction.
If he doesn't know how to find basic stuff on the web (e.g. Yahoo + Google) he needs much more than just pointers on crypto. And all this crap about a poor kid who needs help to succeed in life is pure bullshit -- it explicitly does not apply to anybody who can manage to post his schoolwork as a Slashdot news item.
It seems that Slashdot has degenerated to the level of posting school-project information requests as newsworthy items.
A brief visit to Yahoo or Google would provide tons of information to sift through. If the person asking doesn't know this, it seems a waste to time to point him anywhere.
I would advise CmdrTaco and Hemos to scan through the Titanium Cranium awards (www.fourmilab.ch) -- there they'll find many more similar items. Here is an example:
From clueless@aol.com Wed Apr 17 14:38:40 1996 Subject: Project for school
Dear sir,
I am working on a project for my trigonometry class that involves the orbit of the earth and the orbit of Haley's Comet. The problem is to show whether Haley's Comet will crash into the earth using trig functions to prove my position. Can you send me information on these orbits?
I also need information about Haley's Comet for a research paper that is part of the project. Would you be able to help me with this?
The project was assigned just this week and is due on Friday, April 19.
That's because the law is reality, even if you can't see it.
Obviously, it all depends on the definition of "reality" which really depends on the context in which it was used. The original usage was in a context of something like "the reality is that people believe they own software/music/etc that they bought, so legal attempt to do it differently will fail". My point was that this reality is just a perception and as such could be easily changed. Maybe you still want to call it a reality, I don't care much.
Here's where you go wrong. You don't need a license to use a program any more than you need a license to read a book.
You are confused. You don't need a license to real a book, provided you bought the book. When you buy software, you enter into a contract with the seller. This contract specifies what you got (basically, a set of rights). It so happens that most everybody is selling software in such a way that the set of rights that you are buying is a license to use and not much more.
You are making a point that a contract is enforceable only if a court agrees to enforce it and that's a problem with click-wrap sales contracts. Maybe. We don't know. But that's still the contract under which you are buying (buying, not using) software.
No more illegal than buy a book and reading it
Again you are confusing the act of using something and the act of buying something. The analogy, in your terms, is not to reading a book, but to buying a book.
Your slamming the other guy over his correct usage of the word 'rights'
Next time I'll put in [sarcasm] tags. But are you sure it was me? I don't remember slamming anybody in this thread about the correct usage of the "rights" word. I was pointing out that when selling/licensing stuff it is impossible to give more rights than you have, but that's not really about the correct usage of the word...
Slashdot Mirror
Who's going to maintain the access points to keep flooding Freenet day-in and day-out? Who's going to go to all the trouble to find all the Freenet nodes and keep dinging them with bogus requests?
Exhibit A: The government of the People's Republic of China
Exhibit B: AOL/Time-Warner/whatever-else-got-gobbled-up
Kaa
Could you name me one way in which a person could totally shut down the concept of freenet. Assuming it gets off the ground to the extent you describe how would you be able to actually shut it down.
Easy as pie: "Shutting Down Freenet for Dummies"
Step 1: Make lotsa noise about terrorists, porn, threats to the existence of humanity, and protection of children.
Step 2: US Congress passes a law making it illegal to operate and/or use a Freenet server.
Step 3: FBI sets up some sting Freenet servers and stages several very public hangings of guilty parties.
Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 for all Western Countries and Japan (making an international treaty might help here)
End result: some Freenet nodes survive in places like Zaire and Bangladesh, but (a) the bandwidth to them is limited; (b) nobody knows about them anyway. Using Freenet becomes like trying to buy a grenade launcher: certainly doable, in some parts of the world much easier than in others, especially if you know the right people, but waaaaay beyond the capabilities of an average person/geek/whatever.
Kaa
Pissing people off is not a goal within itself. The fact is that those people who would be pissed off by Freenet are those who do not want any Freedom in Cyberspace - and that are already threatening it on the web.
I understand that. I highly doubt that the reason for Freenet is being able to publish the length of somebody's dick and then go "Na-na, nana na". I like the idea of Freenet. But consider real-life consequences.
What kind of information will find itself gravitating towards Freenet? If I want to publicize my collection of rubber chicken, I can get myself a page at Geocities or something like it. If I am serious about it, I'll spend $9.95 and get myself a "real" site with domain name, etc. But if my information is dangerous, illegal, likely to lead to me finding a horse's head in my bedroom -- why, I'll put it on Freenet.
I understand that Freenet doesn't specifically aim to piss people off. However, its existence and its information will piss off people, and, more important, corporations and governments. That's certainly not a good reason to stop developing Freenet. But it is a good reason not to be surprised when somebody decided to take active measures against Freenet.
Kaa
Freenet is more robust than most systems since it doesn't make much difference if you bring down a small number of Freenet nodes
I am not talking about "standard" 'net DOS (e.g. smurf attacks). I am talking denial-of-service through flooding Freenet with bogus/malicious information.
Random data will only displace other data in Freenet if people actually request it
First, if I give my garbage data attactive keys, people will request it.
Second, I was under the impression that newer data will push out older data (on a FIFO overflow basis). In this case garbage data will actually displace good data just because it's newer (and, trust me, I can genearate a great deal of new garbage)
Kaa
[flooding attacks] I do believe that we are better off in this department then any other equivalent system.
/us/politics/ClintonSucks, ../ClintonSucksBowlingBalls, etc. are press releases from White House, how do I get my information?
Two observations. First, you are more vulnerable because you are committed to accepting information from anybody. For point-of-existence reasons you cannot authenticate.
Second, consider your threat model. A lot of people are saying "well, that's not worse than the 'net in general". I don't think that's going to be good enough. There are two cruicial differences. The first one is scale. If Freenet becomes huge, a lot of its DOS problems will become easier. On the other hand, if it remains (relatively) small, DOSing it will not be hard. The second difference (as I pointed out in another post) is that Freenet is designed to make some people, corporations and government very unhappy. In a sense, one measure of success will be something like AOL trying to shut Freenet down.
There is nobody (apart from some script kiddies, but I already said 'nobody') who is really interested in shutting down large parts of the 'net. There are going to be powerful entities who will be really interested in shutting down or degrading Freenet.
Regarding the non-uniqueness of keys, that can be solved, at the loss of some convenience.
It ain't that easy. Making unique tags for each chunk of info is simple. But consider a different problem: how do I find the information I need? Crypto hashes of contents do not help at all. Again, to repeat another post, if I want to find out how many bowling balls can Clinton suck through a garden hose, and all keys like
But nothing I have seen so far has convinced me, as pessimistic as I am, that it _won't_ work,
Oh, it'll work -- for some time. The real question is robustness. Consider that you are likely to find yourself on the front lines of active information warfare. In this case the relevant question is not "does it work?", but rather "how quickly/easily can it be killed?".
Kaa
Oh no not "untrusted sources". Bad not getting all that authentication.
/us/politics/ClintonSucks, /us/politics/ClintonSucksBowlingBalls, etc. etc. And all of them are press releases from the White House!
Ahem. And the meaning of this is?
Eventually that [random-noise] information will not exist because it will not be avaible because no one in their right mind would requst random noise.
Eventually (aka "in the long term") is not important here. Freenet is designed on a FIFO overflow principle. If a node can hold 10Gb of data and I pump 10Gb of garbage into it, the node will contain only garbage. The useful information in that node is gone -- to reappear in this node it has to be reinjected or it has to propagate itself from the rest of the network. Repeat daily (hourly), attack multiple nodes simultaneously -- there IS a problem.
A read over the mailing list freenet-dev will show you that in fact these things are being addressed.
Ah, you see, sport, this is the problem. I don't believe these kinds of problems can be solved within the framework of Freenet. The point of Freenet is that it accepts information from all comers, without either trying to check who they are, or checking what do they post. Given this, the vulnerability is built-in at the ground level.
And, BTW, I usually read "is being addressed" as "we know about the problem, but we don't have a clue as what to do about it. When we think of something, we'll let you know".
There is no historic prcedent for information dumping and the like (I may be wrong). References?
Historic precedent? HISTORIC PRECEDENT? [boggles again, then collapses to the floor laughing] Since when to do thing on the 'net you need historic precedent? Besides, Freenet itself is what, version 0.1beta?
The server is supposed to prevent you injecting something with the same key.
But that just makes the matter worse. This means you can tie up keys that can be used against you. Let's say I want to find out how many bowling balls can Clinton suck through a garden hose. I go to Freenet and find keys
(you want a historic precedent? Didn't Bush buy domains like "bushsucks.com"?)
This will eventually be addressed in it's full form.
That sounds pathetic. In any case, I still believe the vulnerability is in the concept itself.
What I think is that despite the possibility for random information good information will always win in the end.
No, no. Not random. I am talking active hostile information warfare. The point of Freenet is to publish information that makes certain people, corporations and government very, very unhappy. Put 2 and 2 together yourself.
Kaa
I have my doubts about the viability of Freenet and the like projects because of the ease of denial-of-service attacks against them.
Freenet by definition has to accept information from untrusted sources. As the goal is anonymity, it cannot authenticate posters. Thus, at least two DOS attacks:
(1) Plain-vanilla: rapidly dump (and continue dumping) a lot of random-noise content into Freenet from multiple launch points (DDOS). Soon enough the random noise will crowd out the real information.
(2) Targeted: let's say there is a Freenet file, e.g. '/us/politics/ClintonBlowsGoats' that you want to suppress. Just make your own file with the same net and inject it into Freenet. Again, use multiple launch points and repeat injection at will. Again, the bogus file will crowd out the "real" file very quickly.
Note that the threat model for Freenet must assume that large corporations and governments will be trying to suppress info. It's clearly within reason for them to be able to inject false/misleading/random information into Freenet from 100s and 1000s of geographically distributed machines.
An accompanying problem is non-uniqueness of keys. There could be dozens of different info chunks floating around Freenet, each tagged with a '/foo/bar/qux' key. Which one you'll get depends on the node through which you access the Freenet -- not a very desirable dependency. Try to get the same thing a day later and you may well get a different info chunk for the same key.
To summarize, this is a key vulnerability of Freenet -- it can be saturated with bogus/misleading information quickly and easily.
Kaa
You are intentionally confusing the context, comparing what a benign corporation can do legally with what dictatorial government can get away with.
You didn't understand me. When I said a government (and I do not mean just the executive branch, I mean the complete "official" power structure) can execute you, I meant that a government can pass laws the penalty for breaking which is death, can prosecute you for breaking these laws, and can execute you. This is all perfectly legal and happens in all democratic countries (with the exception of those without the death penalty).
It's no difficult feat to scan serial numbers in a counting machine
Nope. But then you need such machines at all places which sell anything, plus a big-ass central database.
Perhaps I was hasty in saying that tracing of cash is technologically infeasible. It can be done (although a simpler solution would be to abolish cash at all and force everybody to use money cards/chips). I would still argue that this is infeasible politically and culturally.
Kaa
The widgets model doesn't work any more, because you are using their widgets through the deep link on your site, not your widgets.
Well, do you think it is OK for me to stand in front of their store with a big placard saying "You can find widget XYZZY in the middle of aisle 15, left side, third shelf from the bottom"? After all the store wants their customers to wander around since they are more likely to buy something else...
Kaa
Corporations can quite easily kill you, just like the mafia, and just like the CIA. All it takes is money and access to the right people.
Remember, we are talking in a context of what corporations special. An individual can kill you just as easily.
It's not a question of what can be done to you. It's a question of what only a government can do, and what only corporations can do. Jail and executions fall into the first category, but murders do not fall into the second -- not only corporations can murder.
They can do that now, if you use a check card. They can probably do it with cash too, if it were worth the cost of scanning the money.
I said "ATM cash withdrawal" -- I am using cash. Tracing cash does not appear to be either technologically or politically feasible in the foreseeable future.
Of course if you pay for everything with a card (credit or debit), your bank has a very good idea of what you are doing.
Kaa
I will be buying a house this summer, and as part of the upgrades I will be doing, there will be a small camera mounted to the outside of the house, filming the street 24 hours a day.
No, I'm not joking. I want the cameras to come.
OK, since you want the cameras to come, you can have no objections to me installing a camera across the street from your house and pointing at your house. And another one pointing at your backyard. Maybe the cameras will have telephoto lens. Certainly they'll have low-light gear.
Please note that my cameras will be on public property (a street) and will be filming only what's visible from public property.
Still feeling comfortable?
Kaa
.. its about unfair business practices. one of which is deep linking into ticketmaster as a part of tickets.com business process.
The fact that a company has an unsustainable business model does not impose any obligations on anybody to change the law so that the model becomes sustainable.
Sure, tickermaster would like everybody to go through the front page where they can be exposed to ads. So what? Ticketmaster would also like to become the sole legal source for all tickets to anywhere.
If somebody is selling widgets fo $1.00, it's perfectly legal and moral for me to open a store next to him and start selling the same widgets for $0.90. Of course this will make the guy upset, but it's not a good reason to forbid me to sell widgets.
Kaa
This is Stephenson, author of Snow Crash. Remember how he depicted a world in which governments were irrelevant appendages, and corporations ran everything?
IIRC the Snow Crash world was a pretty freewheeling one. The governments were a joke, sure, but the corporations weren't all that powerful either. Most likely you are thinking about Gibson's works (Neuromancer -> Count Zero -> Mona Lisa Overdrive, etc)
Because the British govm't can't directly censor, all they have to do is make a law which allows "any nut with a lawyer" to sue an ISP into oblivion
That's a good point, but a "nut with a lawyer" is not a corporation. This is a good example of a government using roundabout routes to get to it's goals, but it's a very poor example of corporate power: Godfrey, after all, is an individual.
Historically, where government has found itself constrained by law or public pressure, it has often enough found ways to impose its will through the corporate sector.
I am not sure that's true. You'll have to come up with some arguments and examples (specific to corporations, not random people).
while corporations start taking over the prerogatives and powers of governments
That too you'll have to be more convincing about. I assume we are not speaking about lobbying which was a popular activity since at least the Roman times. Can you list some prerogatives and powers that nobody but governments used to have and now corporations (but not individuals) have?
the invasions of privacy will be conducted by corporations.
Sure. They were, are, and will be conducted. The difference is in consequences.
First of all, there are many corporations and one government. It's much easier for government agencies to cooperate and share data about me, than it is for corporations to do so. Yes, I know about consolidation of data into huge databases, but I figure it's going to be quite a while before my ATM cash withdrawals could be cross-referenced against my grocery shopping.
Second, the threat level is very different. The government can make your life very miserable and, in exterme circumstances, can kill you. The absolute worst that a corporation can do to me is to sue me into bankrupcy. That is quite unlikely, anyway, so the usual worst is that it will deny me service. Well, big deal. My life could become somewhat less convenient for me, but I'll survive.
I think that the argument "corporations are a worse threat than the government" kind of assumes that being disliked by a Big Brother government leads to approximately the same level of problems as being bombarded by spam. I can assure everybody that is definitely not so.
Kaa
could leavethe laser pumping continuously at one wavelength and modulate it with this stuff.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I got the impression that this new stuff is capable only of demodulating. It does the optics->electrons interface, but I saw nothing about it's ability to do the reverse electrons->optics.
Kaa
Selling one's time does not mean selling one's right to privacy, nor does the corporation's ownership of computer equipment permit surveillance that would be illegal via phone or mail.
The first one is correct, the second is not.
Basically, everything on the office computer is not mine. Just because you think of the computer in front of you as 'yours' does not mean it belongs to you. Same for a work email account -- it belongs to your employer who lets you use it.
If you want to be private, bring your own laptop or PDA to work. Use a wireless modem to access your ISP. If your employer wants to check what's in there you can tell him to go fuck himself and you'll be completely within your rights. Your stuff is private, yes, but "your" office computer and email address are not yours.
Kaa
but imagine a world in which stray gunfire wasn't as abundant.. or crime wasn't so high. There wouldn't be a need for Big Brother to spy on you
You, my friend, are amazingly naive.
The Soviet Union had little crime in its Soviet days. Did this, perhaps, lead to KGB disbanding itself? The same is true for Nazi Germany -- in general, in totalitarian countries crime tends to be low for obvious reasons.
Why, do you think, people like to work for the government? Some do it because it's just a job, some do it because it's public service (and they are usually just-out-of-college kind), and many do it because it offers them an opportunity to exercise power, to feel powerful and important. Government always wants more power, regardless of crime levels or whatnot.
if you don't do anything wrong then u have nothing to hide
This has been rebutted so many times... I take it, then, that you would agree to wear a bracelet that would transmit to the police your location at all times, and a video camera, say, on a collar around your neck. After all, you have nothing to hide and consider how much the crime will be reduced if every member of the society has to wear these!
Big Brother is watching us, but he has also saved us countless times
A government is useful to have around, no question about it. However the amount of power that the government is allowed to have must be carefully controlled.
And as to saving us countless times, let me remind you that a Big Brother goverment can be very nasty to its citizens. The Soviet Union, in Stalin's time, killed ~10 million people by an artificially induced famine in the Ukraine and killed another 10 million in the labor camps. Plus out of 20 million Soviet casualties in WWII many could have been avoided.
I can go on and on, but really, the positions in this post are not rationally defensible.
Kaa
From what I understand, this just takes care of the nasty fiber(optic) -> wire(electrons) interface problem. It does nothing to make the pipes fatter or to make computers run faster. So yes, it looks like a useful gadget, but the applications are limited (at least until I network my house with fiber).
Kaa
Isn't a honeypot considered entrapment?
No, especially if it's a not a publicly accesible system.
If I have a fake safe at home to distract the thieves from a real one, that's not entrapment.
Kaa
Monitoring of voice mail, email, and websites browsed is commonplace in many corporations today.
Don't see much problem here. You are using somebody else's equipment during the time that you yourself sold to your employer. Not to mention that the employer is liable for much of what you do. Courts have construed porn-browsing employees as sexual-harassment environment (not that I agree with that, but reality is reality).
In other words, deal with it and if you find your employer too intrusive, move. It's not like you are an indentured servant there. (on the other hand, if you have options that did not vest yet...)
Kaa
People find themselves in different situations and have different needs. I understand why Scott McNealy said there is no privacy -- he doesn't have any and it is impossible for a man in his position to be private. So? There are millions of people whose circumstances are different -- and their values are different, too.
So Neal Stephenson doesn't think the Big Brother threat is something to worry about. That's fine -- he is well-off guy, upper-middle-class at least, leading a pampered, comfortable life well insulated from the rougher edges of the world. If the government takes a dislike to him, he can hire lawyers and raise all kinds of ruckus. But he may want to think about other people not as lucky as he is.
I lived (with my kids) in a neighborhood where a rare night passed without a gunshot somewhere around. I also lived in countries where the government is very interested in the details of your private life. Neal Stephenson may have his opinions, but I also have mine: the Big Brother threat is more serious than stray gunfire. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't pay attention to all the other problems of the world, but discounting the dangers of an intrusive, high-on-its-power government is not a good position.
Kaa
[availability of guns in the US] it's right there in my mind whenever I'm discussing travel with friends - it's the reason I'll never set foot in America.
Interesting. If you are so afraid of dying that the probability of being killed by a gun while a tourist in the US stops you from going there, then your life should be very complicated. Your chances of being run over by a car when crossing the street are much, much higher -- so, presumably you do not cross streets. I also assume that you don't smoke, don't drink, don't eat saturated fat, don't engage in sex (what if a condom breaks?), don't drive in a car, don't swim in the ocean (sharks!!) and generally don't do anything that's riskier than being killed by a gun in the US.
Oh, well.
And, by the way, don't come even if the US prohibits all guns. The chances of your aircraft plunging into the Pacific ocean are still considerably higher than being shot in the USA while a tourist there.
Kaa
The deadlier the weapon, the more deaths it will cause (by definition).
Bullshit. Example one: some rare poisons are much more deadlier than, say, arsenic. Did they cause more deaths? Example two: you would probably agree that a nuclear bomb is more deadly than conventional munitions. Yet the (in)famous bombing of Dresden in WWII killed significantly more people than a nuclear bomb did in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
So if more guns are available, more deaths will occur, and if less guns are available, less deaths will occur.
More bullshit. Most houses in Switzerland have a fully automatic assault rifle stored somewhere (most men are "reserve" members of armed forces and have their personal weapon at home). By your logic this means that Switzerland should be awash in killings. In Israel it's extremely common to see people with assault rifles slung over the shoulder to walk the streets, sit in cafes, etc. Again, this should mean that the murder rate in Israel should be extremely high, no?
I am not a big fan of NRA, but you might want to think a bit about their slogan that it's people who kill other people, not guns.
Kaa
This kid isn't asking us to do his work, he's asking for our help in getting pointed the right direction.
If he doesn't know how to find basic stuff on the web (e.g. Yahoo + Google) he needs much more than just pointers on crypto. And all this crap about a poor kid who needs help to succeed in life is pure bullshit -- it explicitly does not apply to anybody who can manage to post his schoolwork as a Slashdot news item.
Kaa
It seems that Slashdot has degenerated to the level of posting school-project information requests as newsworthy items.
A brief visit to Yahoo or Google would provide tons of information to sift through. If the person asking doesn't know this, it seems a waste to time to point him anywhere.
I would advise CmdrTaco and Hemos to scan through the Titanium Cranium awards (www.fourmilab.ch) -- there they'll find many more similar items. Here is an example:
From clueless@aol.com Wed Apr 17 14:38:40 1996
Subject: Project for school
Dear sir,
I am working on a project for my trigonometry class that involves the
orbit of the earth and the orbit of Haley's Comet. The problem is to
show whether Haley's Comet will crash into the earth using trig
functions to prove my position. Can you send me information on these
orbits?
I also need information about Haley's Comet for a research paper that
is part of the project. Would you be able to help me with this?
The project was assigned just this week and is due on Friday, April
19.
Thank you very much
Kaa
Might I introduce you to a word - tangible
Thank you. I am honored.
That's because the law is reality, even if you can't see it.
Obviously, it all depends on the definition of "reality" which really depends on the context in which it was used. The original usage was in a context of something like "the reality is that people believe they own software/music/etc that they bought, so legal attempt to do it differently will fail". My point was that this reality is just a perception and as such could be easily changed. Maybe you still want to call it a reality, I don't care much.
Here's where you go wrong. You don't need a license to use a program any more than you need a license to read a book.
You are confused. You don't need a license to real a book, provided you bought the book. When you buy software, you enter into a contract with the seller. This contract specifies what you got (basically, a set of rights). It so happens that most everybody is selling software in such a way that the set of rights that you are buying is a license to use and not much more.
You are making a point that a contract is enforceable only if a court agrees to enforce it and that's a problem with click-wrap sales contracts. Maybe. We don't know. But that's still the contract under which you are buying (buying, not using) software.
No more illegal than buy a book and reading it
Again you are confusing the act of using something and the act of buying something. The analogy, in your terms, is not to reading a book, but to buying a book.
Your slamming the other guy over his correct usage of the word 'rights'
Next time I'll put in [sarcasm] tags. But are you sure it was me? I don't remember slamming anybody in this thread about the correct usage of the "rights" word. I was pointing out that when selling/licensing stuff it is impossible to give more rights than you have, but that's not really about the correct usage of the word...
Kaa