" I hate to break it to you, but 'Comanche 4' will no longer be realistic anymore."
A single helicopter taking out hundreds of armed military personnel, dozens of tanks, handfulls of other helicopters, jets, submarines, battleships, chemical weapons plants, anti-aircraft vehicles and artillery, missile launchers, and terrorists on snowmobiles on a single tank of gas isn't realistic because some vaporware military project got scrapped? I've only got one thing to say to you...
"they would quote us Intel to "ensure stability"."
"I asked them to cite proof that AMD systems were unstable. They could not but implied that it was common knowledge."
You can take this one step further - simply go through the articles I found and posted over a year ago. Show them the articles and then tell them that you cannot accept anything other than AMD quotes, in the interest of 'ensuring stability'.
How easily we all forget just how many times Intel's chips and boards have been junk-in-a-box. What good is a feature when you can't even keep the machine up and running? What kind of uptime does your server farm have when you're sending recalled CPUs back to the manufacturer? Or perhaps, in the case of Compaq's Itanium customers, the server simply doesn't arrive because it's determined to be defective from the get-go?
Actually, he was standing outside, leaning up against it when the police arrived.
"Also, according the the laws (at least in my state), if you FAIL to produce an ID, as requested by an officer, then you may be arrested for "failing to obey a resonable request by an officer""
Then you must have been the only one not either laughing or offended when seeing movies depicting Soviet troops demanding that civilians "show me your papers!".
"We have laws for a reason, and when someone doesn't like one, they whinnnnneeeeee and complain instead of using the system to get the law changed."
He is currently challenging the constitutionality of the law at the Supreme Court. How is this not working within the system?
" I don't like a lot of the laws on the books, but I'm not going to break them, I'm going to work within the system to get them changed, leagally."
Then you must really hate the entire civil rights movement, which engaged in mass civil disobedience protests.
What would you have this man do if he didn't have any ID? What if he didn't drive, didn't have a bank account, didn't have any bills sent to his house, and didn't get a state ID? There are indeed many who do not want the government tracking their every move, and thus choose to live a simpler life. That, at least for the time being, is their right. You and John Ashcroft may indeed one day get bar codes tatooed on every newborn's skull, but for now, there's nothing wrong with living outside the 'world'.
Tell you what, even though this is slashdot, if you're going to put together such a longwinded and self-righteous post, how about reading at least PART of the article? Otherwise, your post will, as this one does, simply ooze ignorance.
"If you infringe on someone's copyright you have stolen something. "
That might be your opinion, but it certainly is not applicable to US Copyright law. If you believe differently, please show me a single reference to 'theft' or 'piracy' in the entirity of US Copyright law.
Hint: Don't waste your time, I've gone over every inch of that area of law, and nowhere is theft mentioned.
Ergo, regardless of your philosophical interpretations of what it is, the law (in the US) calls it 'copyright infringement'. Legally speaking, calling it 'theft' is akin to calling it 'treason' or 'vehicular homocide'. From the standpoint of how the offense is viewed, it's on the same level as tresspassing. The collectible damages are simply absurdly high to discourage commercial copyright infringement.
" the way that the RIAA is handling this and it very well might be extortion. But they do have the right to control the distribution of there copyrighted work."
If this truly does amount to extortion or racketeering, as per court decision, this could call into question the legality of the RIAA's very existence, vis-a-vis RICO. Also, with regards to distribution rights, the RIAA's monopoly in the music industry actually calls into question those rights to restrict distribution, vis-a-vis anti-trust laws.
" When you're buying a car, do you test-drive every model by every manufacturer before you feel you can praise/pan the car?"
No, but I also don't berate it as garbage because I spent 5 minutes checking it out on a website.
"Can't you rely on public consensus, friends' opinions, reviewers' articles, etc.?"
If all those opinions are based on using it for a day or two? No. With the rapid pace of Freenet's development, I truly don't put much stock in anyone's opinion who hasn't used Freenet for at least a couple of months. I understand and sympathize with those who've had problems getting Freenet up and running. Part of it is simply the nature of the beast - Freenet takes some time for a new node to integrate properly with the rest of the network. This is certainly going to be the case with any unmanaged, topographically self-updating network. There are also numerous pitfalls involving the initial setup. I understand people having these problems, and I certainly don't blame them for complaining about it. The fact is that all the nicities of a polished product are non-existent at this point. This is due to the reasons I outlined in my previous post. Suffice it to say that those not technically able, or willing to commit to getting and keeping their Freenet node up and running probably should NOT be using Freenet at this point.
"And how can I take a *whole* letter out of context?! The letter says what it says."
The letter gives you the status of things at a particular time, on a particular day. Subscribe to devl and read all the messages from it for a few weeks and you'll get a better idea of how rapid Freenet's status changes. It can literally go from bad to great to mediocre to good in a single day. The regular internet often does the same. The difference here is that an entirely new network using new technology and new concepts/ideas is being built and managed, and it's being done using sparse resources (especially bandwidth) over an unstable medium (the internet).
"Bottom line: The freenet project was registered on Sourceforge at the end of 1999. It's gotten a lot of publicity and support. Four years later, all we have is a network that works "really good, really bad, or somewhere in between" according to you, and a network whose performance has "inexplicably deteriorated" since "about July 2003" according to Clarke."
What we have is an entirely new creation, pretty much unlike anything that came before it, which actively helps people such as whistleblowers and dissidents speak out without fear of restribution. What we have is a work in progress that continues to improve thanks to the sustained development of Toad and other developers, and the testing/bug reports of the growing Freenet community. What we have are websites that have been censored out of existence on the regular web (DMCA take-downs, etc) being mirrored so as not to be lost forever. What we have is a working anonymous BBS-like client, anonymous IRC, and numerous tools to make everyday tasks on Freenet a little bit easier. What we have is a network that changes constantly, but which has improved both in speed and efficiency overall, and continues to do so at an every-increasing rate.
"The developers think they're on the brink of a solution."
Solutions come and go every single day. New problems crop up, old ones are squashed, new ideas are tossed around, new protocols or features are implemented, tested, and either commited or removed (often for further testing/development), and new attacks are proposed, then annihilated. There is no one solution to Freenet's problems, just as there was no one solution for how we get from planet Earth to the moon, or to Mars. When you're doing something that's never been done before, you hit bumps along the way that backseat drivers can look back on and complain about. Many problems NASA had getting people to the moon can now be looked back on with disbelief. We can certainly see how the fire on the launch pad fo
" I think it's worthy to note that, in the headline, CNET News called the lawsuit a "long-shot.""
One person against a group of massive, multi-national megaconglomerates? Obviously, any counter suit is a long shot.
Look at it this way, if Microsoft paid half its employees to take a ride by your house every morning and take a dump on your lawn, then decided to really, REALLY fight as hard as possible in court (think DoJ/breakup proportions) when you sued them, would your case be anything less than a long shot?
" they are doing what they have a legal right to do in respect to protecting their property. "
Actually, this lawsuit alleges that they are, in fact, doing what they do not have a legal right to do. We shall see. Furthermore, previous tactics (such as mass-suing individuals from one location regardless of where the alleged infringement took place) has already been ruled illegal. Thus, a whole bunch of subpoenas were ruled invalid.
"Yes it is their property, without going into how they got it and if their contracts with musicians are screwing the musicians. Also forgetting that they would rather litigate than release a simple way to pay for the music online without only being able to listen to it once."
Actually, this has RICO and anti-trust implications. If the RIAA, (and thus member companies) are guilty of RICO and anti-trust violations, it may very well not be their intellectual property at all. In any event, it would be highly doubtful that they would be able to continue enforcing their IP rights.
" everyone downloading it is pirating it under the law,"
Really? Pirating? That's rather... absurd. Legally speaking, by making unauthorized copies of the music to which the RIAA holds copyrights, they're committing 'copyright infringement'. Copyright infringement is about the legal equivalent of tresspassing, only the draconian laws surrounding it have set the possible damages per infringement absurdly high to discourage commercial copyright infringement.
"This should be no surprise, they are simply using the laws we have allowed to be created. "
There's a woman in New Jersey who, along with her lawyers, not only believes differently, but is willing to put her 'rear end' on the line to prove it. Should she succeed, or even get a foot in the door, I think you'll see a whole lot more suits like her's. Do you think the RIAA can afford to engage, say 10,000 people, in long, involved lawsuits?
If convicted, the RIAA is left wide open for potential RICO suits. RICO means the music industry, as a whole, is brough down rather swiftly. The RIAA can't afford to let this case be lost. Appeals or not, a racketeering 'conviction' opens the door to the downfall of each and every RIAA member company.
"And a system in which my property can be used for purposes I find repugnant is a system where I may as well not have the property at all."
Then set your node to 'transient', and set your datastore size to an arbitrarily low size. To the best of my knowledge, your node will not bother storing information. Otherwise, simply don't run a Freenet node. I choose to run a node because I believe in both the cause of the project, and the very real life-saving benefit it serves to dissidents every single day. The Nazis and distributors of child pornography and other such horrific material will distribute their smut and hate speech one way or another. At least this way, I can help ensure some good comes of it all.
Any of the criticisms of Freenet can be equally applied to the internet as a whole. That some would abuse it does not stop me from using it as it was meant to be used. I don't think there are many who are more disgusted by child pornography than Ian, but he can't control it without allowing for control of every other "objectionable material" on Freenet (where "objectionable material" means it's objectionable to someone, somewhere - including but not limited to: references to God, sex, adult pornography, pro-communist material, anti-communist material, pro-Bush material, anti-Bush material, whistleblower accusations, etc).
" Full Disclosure: I've never installed Freenet, but I've been following its development closely since its inception. I'm subscribed to the notification of new releases from Sourceforge..."
"I've never driven, or for that matter seen, the 2004 Jaguar XKR, but I looked at it on a website. I've got to say, the thing is a total piece of junk. The radio looks like it probably doesn't give good sound, the seats don't appear very comfortable, and I seriously doubt it rides very well either. Plus, judging by the way the engine looks, it probably doesn't have any power at all. I don't understand why anyone would even bother considering to buy one"
"The last release on that page is dated July 17, 2003."
The last major release was then. That being said, the very fact that we're not even at 1.0 means that major changes happen all the time. Had you bothered to look further, or perhaps subscribed to the devl list, you'd see that stable receives updates about once a week on average, and unstable is updated almost daily. Each 'minor' update contains numerous bug fixes, and often contains new routing features or additions to the protocols. The current stable release is 5070, which was released today. The last stable release was put out about 3 or 4 days ago. The rapid, sustained development of Freenet continues to be the fastest I've ever seen, of any project I've ever followed.
"And by Clarke's own admission in his 'State of the Freenet' letter, it doesn't work very well. He *thinks* this new algorithm will solve the problems, but nobody knows that for sure."
You're taking the letter very much out of context. Again, reading the devl mailing list would provide you with far better understanding of the issues surrounding Freenet's development, problems, and solutions.
"Is Freenet so hard that this many programmers can't deliver a working version in close to a year?!"
This, you discern, without even having tried it? That's incredible. Listen, put down the 3-way call with Kenny Kingston and Ms Cleo, and ask some people who actually run Freenet. Or, wait a week or two for the Slashdot-Freenet overload to die down a bit (takes a little while for the network to adjust to massive influxes of new people), and *gasp* download the program so you can try it for yourself?! In case you're wondering, Freenet has worked to varying degrees since I started using it about a year ago. As the protocols and code is adjusted, things either get really good, really bad, or somewhere in between. When you're doing something this brand new, and making major changes all the time, there's nothing else to be expected. As of right now, stable is working fairly well (was working outstanding a few weeks ago), and unstable is working even better.
"The goals of Freenet are lofty, and for that maybe they deserve more patience, but when does the community just cut and run?"
I would assume that most 'cut and run' within a few days of downloading the program at this point. Why? Because it's not a simple AOLesque installation. It requires some configuration, some manual configuration, a bit of knowledge, and a lot of patience. There is a large group of die-hard Freenet users, such as myself, that would need to have serious, prolonged problems with the software before thinking about giving up on it. Most of us have talked with Toad and Ian enough to know that we're not being jerked around, and that this thing is going to move forward to the benefit of many, many different people. They're open and honest about progress and problems, and they both make themselves available all the time. Toad, especially, has gone the extra mile with me on a few different occassions to make sure that I was able to solve problems I was experiencing. I didn't get a 'RTFM', nor a non-response, and I certainly didn't get ignored. My mail to the support list has always been answered with much help from numerous people. I couldn't possibly fault any
" Freenet will blatantly be used for child porn, and probably already is."
They state as much in the FAQ. The downside of an uncensorable system is that some people will use it for things you and I would prefer to censor.;) The problem is that if you or I can remove child pornography, then the Chinese government can remove dissenting remarks, a corporation can remove documents posted by a whistleblower, and a politician/other important person can remove damaging facts posted about them. Freenet is an all-or-nothing venture.
Aside from that, the same can be said of the internet itself. The same can be said of the real world, as well. Shall we destroy the internet and the real world to prevent disgusting things from happening or being posted? Or should we address the problems behind the content, such as the abuse of children? We can continue to ignore the problems that are out there by censoring them away, or we can recognize that there exists a major problem, and then go on to solve it.
"While I'm sure there are lots of chinese people who will find value in it, "
Well, yes... considering the fact that it saves their lives. Quit living in your tiny little world and open up a little bit, just for once, hmm? Just recently, a Chinese dissident was jailed for posting "subversive" materials on the internet. Had this person had access to, and used Freenet, they would still be promoting democracy, instead of wondering how many times the guards will be back for torture sessions this week. People in China and other places DO use Freenet to communicate safely with one another. In places like China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, etc, speaking out means you're going to die. How it is you can simply brush aside the fact that Freenet saves peoples' lives every single day is beyond me.
" there are lots of child pr0nographers rubbing their dirty little fucking hands with glee. "Oh look, something free and uncensored! Better puts some child porn on it! (uploads)."
Again, the same can be said of the internet. How many sites have been busted for selling access to child pornography? How many years did those places operate with impunity? How many others continue to go undetected by law enforcement? How many others pop up on the regular internet every single day? Obviously there are those who use Freenet for things that disgust most of us, but those people will find ways to distribute that content regardless of Freenet's existence. The capture of one, or ten, or a hundred, or a thousand does little to stem the tide. Until we address the underlying problem, the content will always exist.
"Yeah, free speech is nice, but at the same time providing free speech to child pornographers and Nazis is both hypocritical and wrong."
Your definition of hypocrasy is flawed. Hypocrasy is to pretend to be or believe something which you are not, or do not believe. It would be hypocritical of Freenet to advertise free speech, and then censor that with which it does not agree.
What you mean to say is that you don't like those who would produce or distribute child pornography, and you don't like Nazis, and you wish that they would be quiet and go away. Guess what - I wish the very same thing. The difference is, I'm not willing to call for the downfall of something that saves lives every single day simply because some people use it to say or distribute things that turn my stomach. It's people like you who think that censorship stops at things with which they disagree. In fact, there will always be someone wanting to censor the very things you hold most dear, because they find it offensive. Do you believe in God? There will always be an athiest who doesn't want you 'indoctrinating' their child, and thus wants you banned from saying the word under any circumstances. You don't believe in God? There will always be someone who finds the very thought so utterly repulsive that they want you jailed for even menti
Hey slick, in case you hadn't noticed, this isn't even a 1.0 release. Could the documentation and hand-holding scripts use a bit of work? Absolutely. Would they have to be changed almost constantly due to the ever-changing nature of the code, the application, the nodes, and the network? Yup.
When the network and the code base are less volatile, then it makes more sense for people to get working on things to help out newbies. As it is, it's probably best that the AOL crowd NOT join up just yet, as they're not going to be able to provide the level of debugging assistance of your average techie. Stable and unstable are just branchs of development - the entire project is essentially in heavy (some might say 'extreme') beta testing. The difference between this project and so many others is that this one makes progress at incredible rates. Updates can happen several times a day sometimes, and the stable branch rarely goes more than a week or two without a new build. Unstable branch users are advised to update 'daily'. What does that say about the development pace?
In terms of it making itself 'respectable', I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you mean to say that 'stomach wrenching content' should somehow be removed, well then you've missed the entire point of the project. In terms of not being confronted by such content, I would argue that they're less likely to 'bump' into it on Freenet innocently than they are on the regular internet. At least on Freenet, things are generally labled fairly well, and the major indexes (currently about the only way to learn of 'freesites') pretty much sort out content by hand, ensuring timly and accurate descriptions of what each link contains. If you're offended by particular content, then don't click on the link to view it. If you're offended by the link itself, then go on one of the indexes which censors unlawfull freesites.
On Freenet, you're not forced to go anywhere you don't want, and you almost can't find something you don't want to find. Seems to me that you're safer on Freenet than you are on the regular net.
Hey, Toad. You must be busy as hell on here today. The good thing is that I would assume some donations are flowing into the project now. With the help from this, perhaps you and Ian can feel a little better about putting off the 0.6 release for a little bit in case further testing is required. Just don't get all Duke Nukum Forever on us with it.;)
Take care, and keep up the good work. You folks have been doing an outstanding job, especially recently. Don't let the nay-sayers and trolls here, or anywhere, get you down. So far as I can tell, you guys are coding your way into uncharted waters, and it's downright impossible to get much of anything right the first time around when dealing with something so totally new. Just keep chugging along with the development, and you'll always have plenty of folks ready and willing to run nodes for you guys.
" give me an implementation that doesn't use 120MB of memory and 50% of my CPU. Freenet has been a total resource pig for quite a while now, I'm surprised there hasn't been more emphasis on reducing it's usage."
What good is a node whose CPU and memory are hardly used, but fullfills no requests because the network is screwed up?
Right now, I'd say they're working towards 3 and 4, and doing a damn fine job at it. When you can design a functional, anonymous, secure, scalable, and fault-tolerant network, and have each and every node use minimal resources, feel free to let the Freenet team know. Until then, either run a node, or don't run a node - donate, or don't. But don't sit there and complain with no useful suggestions, corrections, help, or ideas to offer.
" fails to solve a problem that doesn't exist"... in your particular location at this particular time.
For dissidents in China (and yes, there really are those that use the network for this purpose), Freenet is the only really safe place to communicate with one another without fear of being dragged to prison, shot, or worse.
That you are either ignorant of this fact or apathetic to it is rather irrelevant - much like your small-minded, ignorance-based opinion.
"Are there alternate sources to get Freenet in the first place?"
Sure, from the same place you should be getting your seednodes if you're in a dangerous place to be running Freenet: a trusted friend.
I know it's an incomplete and semi-'chicken and egg' response, but it does apparently work, as there are definitely some folks from China who use this to safely communicate with one another. To me, that's worth all the extra baggage that comes along with running Freenet.
"There's a huge difference between tolerating something and actively propagating it."
You're only actively propogating it if you're downloading it. The less certain pieces of data are requested, the more likely they are to be deleted as time goes on. A system in which such disgusting material as child pornography can be censored is intrinsically a system in which political dissent, damaging truths, or other such upsetting material can be censored.
You say this as though anti-matter (also produced in labs) has any less planet-annihilating potential. Basically, we passed the threshold for potential self-annihilation as a species back in the 1940s. Every day we survive is little more than luck. Come to think of it, that we are here at all is a remarkable stroke of luck. Thus, our existence extinguished would be less of a loss to the universe than we would like to believe.
If we are to destroy ourselves, it would be nice if we could do it in such a way that our life-building components are thrown about the universe so that we might actually father an entire new population on some distant world. Couple billion years of my DNA floating around space and a whole lot of luck could even spawn a whole race of 'Me's!
I, for one, welcome our new planet-destroying scientist overlords!
"He would likely claim that non-free Java implementations are useless, and that people should support projects like Kaffee and Classpath to create a free one, instead of denying the existence and possibility of these projects as ESR did."
Oh, I think previous experience with RMS shows that he'd write a 32,000 page diatribe portraying any non-free efforts as the anti-Christ sent by the Demon to murder all of us, and our children as well.
It wouldn't surprise me if he went on to splatter lamb's blood on each and every page, then sealed the letter by slitting both his wrists and slamming his forehead into the pool of blood on the envelope repeatedly until it dried.
Come to think of it, that might make for an amusing 'reality' show on Fox.
" Unless prime > 1 (which it never is), your prime^(prime^prime) calculation tends towards zero."
Wow, someone really ought to tell the Fed about this. Apparently, they seem to think that the prime rate is currently at 4.00%.
Slightly more research seems to indicate that the Fed has been wrong about the Prime rate since their creation. Historical lows as reported by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (which are obviously either wrong or lying as per your comment) appear to dip no lower than 1.5%, but do seem to go as high as 21%. Thank goodness we have you here to spot-check jokes for correct information and then provide appropriate misinformation.
"Don't quit your dayjob. Unless you're in finance - then quit right away!:)"
Yes, funny man, you've given 'irony' an entirely new meaning.
Slashdot Mirror
" I hate to break it to you, but 'Comanche 4' will no longer be realistic anymore."
A single helicopter taking out hundreds of armed military personnel, dozens of tanks, handfulls of other helicopters, jets, submarines, battleships, chemical weapons plants, anti-aircraft vehicles and artillery, missile launchers, and terrorists on snowmobiles on a single tank of gas isn't realistic because some vaporware military project got scrapped? I've only got one thing to say to you...
pass THAT shit...
"they would quote us Intel to "ensure stability"."
"I asked them to cite proof that AMD systems were unstable. They could not but implied that it was common knowledge."
You can take this one step further - simply go through the articles I found and posted over a year ago. Show them the articles and then tell them that you cannot accept anything other than AMD quotes, in the interest of 'ensuring stability'.
" However when I need my server farm to be up 24/7 and dont realy NEED the extra speed the AMD chips just dont look to good."
Yeah, Ok.
How easily we all forget just how many times Intel's chips and boards have been junk-in-a-box. What good is a feature when you can't even keep the machine up and running? What kind of uptime does your server farm have when you're sending recalled CPUs back to the manufacturer? Or perhaps, in the case of Compaq's Itanium customers, the server simply doesn't arrive because it's determined to be defective from the get-go?
Whoops.
"Driving an automobile"
His daughter had been driving, not him.
"since this guy was parked IN a car"
Actually, he was standing outside, leaning up against it when the police arrived.
"Also, according the the laws (at least in my state), if you FAIL to produce an ID, as requested by an officer, then you may be arrested for "failing to obey a resonable request by an officer""
Then you must have been the only one not either laughing or offended when seeing movies depicting Soviet troops demanding that civilians "show me your papers!".
"We have laws for a reason, and when someone doesn't like one, they whinnnnneeeeee and complain instead of using the system to get the law changed."
He is currently challenging the constitutionality of the law at the Supreme Court. How is this not working within the system?
" I don't like a lot of the laws on the books, but I'm not going to break them, I'm going to work within the system to get them changed, leagally."
Then you must really hate the entire civil rights movement, which engaged in mass civil disobedience protests.
What would you have this man do if he didn't have any ID? What if he didn't drive, didn't have a bank account, didn't have any bills sent to his house, and didn't get a state ID? There are indeed many who do not want the government tracking their every move, and thus choose to live a simpler life. That, at least for the time being, is their right. You and John Ashcroft may indeed one day get bar codes tatooed on every newborn's skull, but for now, there's nothing wrong with living outside the 'world'.
Tell you what, even though this is slashdot, if you're going to put together such a longwinded and self-righteous post, how about reading at least PART of the article? Otherwise, your post will, as this one does, simply ooze ignorance.
"If you infringe on someone's copyright you have stolen something. "
;)
That might be your opinion, but it certainly is not applicable to US Copyright law. If you believe differently, please show me a single reference to 'theft' or 'piracy' in the entirity of US Copyright law.
Hint: Don't waste your time, I've gone over every inch of that area of law, and nowhere is theft mentioned.
Ergo, regardless of your philosophical interpretations of what it is, the law (in the US) calls it 'copyright infringement'. Legally speaking, calling it 'theft' is akin to calling it 'treason' or 'vehicular homocide'. From the standpoint of how the offense is viewed, it's on the same level as tresspassing. The collectible damages are simply absurdly high to discourage commercial copyright infringement.
" the way that the RIAA is handling this and it very well might be extortion. But they do have the right to control the distribution of there copyrighted work."
If this truly does amount to extortion or racketeering, as per court decision, this could call into question the legality of the RIAA's very existence, vis-a-vis RICO. Also, with regards to distribution rights, the RIAA's monopoly in the music industry actually calls into question those rights to restrict distribution, vis-a-vis anti-trust laws.
Thanks Teddy (trust-buster)
" When you're buying a car, do you test-drive every model by every manufacturer before you feel you can praise/pan the car?"
No, but I also don't berate it as garbage because I spent 5 minutes checking it out on a website.
"Can't you rely on public consensus, friends' opinions, reviewers' articles, etc.?"
If all those opinions are based on using it for a day or two? No. With the rapid pace of Freenet's development, I truly don't put much stock in anyone's opinion who hasn't used Freenet for at least a couple of months. I understand and sympathize with those who've had problems getting Freenet up and running. Part of it is simply the nature of the beast - Freenet takes some time for a new node to integrate properly with the rest of the network. This is certainly going to be the case with any unmanaged, topographically self-updating network. There are also numerous pitfalls involving the initial setup. I understand people having these problems, and I certainly don't blame them for complaining about it. The fact is that all the nicities of a polished product are non-existent at this point. This is due to the reasons I outlined in my previous post. Suffice it to say that those not technically able, or willing to commit to getting and keeping their Freenet node up and running probably should NOT be using Freenet at this point.
"And how can I take a *whole* letter out of context?! The letter says what it says."
The letter gives you the status of things at a particular time, on a particular day. Subscribe to devl and read all the messages from it for a few weeks and you'll get a better idea of how rapid Freenet's status changes. It can literally go from bad to great to mediocre to good in a single day. The regular internet often does the same. The difference here is that an entirely new network using new technology and new concepts/ideas is being built and managed, and it's being done using sparse resources (especially bandwidth) over an unstable medium (the internet).
"Bottom line: The freenet project was registered on Sourceforge at the end of 1999. It's gotten a lot of publicity and support. Four years later, all we have is a network that works "really good, really bad, or somewhere in between" according to you, and a network whose performance has "inexplicably deteriorated" since "about July 2003" according to Clarke."
What we have is an entirely new creation, pretty much unlike anything that came before it, which actively helps people such as whistleblowers and dissidents speak out without fear of restribution. What we have is a work in progress that continues to improve thanks to the sustained development of Toad and other developers, and the testing/bug reports of the growing Freenet community. What we have are websites that have been censored out of existence on the regular web (DMCA take-downs, etc) being mirrored so as not to be lost forever. What we have is a working anonymous BBS-like client, anonymous IRC, and numerous tools to make everyday tasks on Freenet a little bit easier. What we have is a network that changes constantly, but which has improved both in speed and efficiency overall, and continues to do so at an every-increasing rate.
"The developers think they're on the brink of a solution."
Solutions come and go every single day. New problems crop up, old ones are squashed, new ideas are tossed around, new protocols or features are implemented, tested, and either commited or removed (often for further testing/development), and new attacks are proposed, then annihilated. There is no one solution to Freenet's problems, just as there was no one solution for how we get from planet Earth to the moon, or to Mars. When you're doing something that's never been done before, you hit bumps along the way that backseat drivers can look back on and complain about. Many problems NASA had getting people to the moon can now be looked back on with disbelief. We can certainly see how the fire on the launch pad fo
" I think it's worthy to note that, in the headline, CNET News called the lawsuit a "long-shot.""
:)
One person against a group of massive, multi-national megaconglomerates? Obviously, any counter suit is a long shot.
Look at it this way, if Microsoft paid half its employees to take a ride by your house every morning and take a dump on your lawn, then decided to really, REALLY fight as hard as possible in court (think DoJ/breakup proportions) when you sued them, would your case be anything less than a long shot?
Or in this case, a long shit?
" they are doing what they have a legal right to do in respect to protecting their property. "
... absurd. Legally speaking, by making unauthorized copies of the music to which the RIAA holds copyrights, they're committing 'copyright infringement'. Copyright infringement is about the legal equivalent of tresspassing, only the draconian laws surrounding it have set the possible damages per infringement absurdly high to discourage commercial copyright infringement.
Actually, this lawsuit alleges that they are, in fact, doing what they do not have a legal right to do. We shall see. Furthermore, previous tactics (such as mass-suing individuals from one location regardless of where the alleged infringement took place) has already been ruled illegal. Thus, a whole bunch of subpoenas were ruled invalid.
"Yes it is their property, without going into how they got it and if their contracts with musicians are screwing the musicians. Also forgetting that they would rather litigate than release a simple way to pay for the music online without only being able to listen to it once."
Actually, this has RICO and anti-trust implications. If the RIAA, (and thus member companies) are guilty of RICO and anti-trust violations, it may very well not be their intellectual property at all. In any event, it would be highly doubtful that they would be able to continue enforcing their IP rights.
" everyone downloading it is pirating it under the law,"
Really? Pirating? That's rather
"This should be no surprise, they are simply using the laws we have allowed to be created. "
There's a woman in New Jersey who, along with her lawyers, not only believes differently, but is willing to put her 'rear end' on the line to prove it. Should she succeed, or even get a foot in the door, I think you'll see a whole lot more suits like her's. Do you think the RIAA can afford to engage, say 10,000 people, in long, involved lawsuits?
Ah yes, P2P lawsuits - the new face of law.
" So if convicted, the RIAA"
If convicted, the RIAA is left wide open for potential RICO suits. RICO means the music industry, as a whole, is brough down rather swiftly. The RIAA can't afford to let this case be lost. Appeals or not, a racketeering 'conviction' opens the door to the downfall of each and every RIAA member company.
Jackpot.
Now we're getting close.
"And a system in which my property can be used for purposes I find repugnant is a system where I may as well not have the property at all."
Then set your node to 'transient', and set your datastore size to an arbitrarily low size. To the best of my knowledge, your node will not bother storing information. Otherwise, simply don't run a Freenet node. I choose to run a node because I believe in both the cause of the project, and the very real life-saving benefit it serves to dissidents every single day. The Nazis and distributors of child pornography and other such horrific material will distribute their smut and hate speech one way or another. At least this way, I can help ensure some good comes of it all.
Any of the criticisms of Freenet can be equally applied to the internet as a whole. That some would abuse it does not stop me from using it as it was meant to be used. I don't think there are many who are more disgusted by child pornography than Ian, but he can't control it without allowing for control of every other "objectionable material" on Freenet (where "objectionable material" means it's objectionable to someone, somewhere - including but not limited to: references to God, sex, adult pornography, pro-communist material, anti-communist material, pro-Bush material, anti-Bush material, whistleblower accusations, etc).
" Full Disclosure: I've never installed Freenet, but I've been following its development closely since its inception. I'm subscribed to the notification of new releases from Sourceforge ..."
"I've never driven, or for that matter seen, the 2004 Jaguar XKR, but I looked at it on a website. I've got to say, the thing is a total piece of junk. The radio looks like it probably doesn't give good sound, the seats don't appear very comfortable, and I seriously doubt it rides very well either. Plus, judging by the way the engine looks, it probably doesn't have any power at all. I don't understand why anyone would even bother considering to buy one"
"The last release on that page is dated July 17, 2003."
The last major release was then. That being said, the very fact that we're not even at 1.0 means that major changes happen all the time. Had you bothered to look further, or perhaps subscribed to the devl list, you'd see that stable receives updates about once a week on average, and unstable is updated almost daily. Each 'minor' update contains numerous bug fixes, and often contains new routing features or additions to the protocols. The current stable release is 5070, which was released today. The last stable release was put out about 3 or 4 days ago. The rapid, sustained development of Freenet continues to be the fastest I've ever seen, of any project I've ever followed.
"And by Clarke's own admission in his 'State of the Freenet' letter, it doesn't work very well. He *thinks* this new algorithm will solve the problems, but nobody knows that for sure."
You're taking the letter very much out of context. Again, reading the devl mailing list would provide you with far better understanding of the issues surrounding Freenet's development, problems, and solutions.
"Is Freenet so hard that this many programmers can't deliver a working version in close to a year?!"
This, you discern, without even having tried it? That's incredible. Listen, put down the 3-way call with Kenny Kingston and Ms Cleo, and ask some people who actually run Freenet. Or, wait a week or two for the Slashdot-Freenet overload to die down a bit (takes a little while for the network to adjust to massive influxes of new people), and *gasp* download the program so you can try it for yourself?! In case you're wondering, Freenet has worked to varying degrees since I started using it about a year ago. As the protocols and code is adjusted, things either get really good, really bad, or somewhere in between. When you're doing something this brand new, and making major changes all the time, there's nothing else to be expected. As of right now, stable is working fairly well (was working outstanding a few weeks ago), and unstable is working even better.
"The goals of Freenet are lofty, and for that maybe they deserve more patience, but when does the community just cut and run?"
I would assume that most 'cut and run' within a few days of downloading the program at this point. Why? Because it's not a simple AOLesque installation. It requires some configuration, some manual configuration, a bit of knowledge, and a lot of patience. There is a large group of die-hard Freenet users, such as myself, that would need to have serious, prolonged problems with the software before thinking about giving up on it. Most of us have talked with Toad and Ian enough to know that we're not being jerked around, and that this thing is going to move forward to the benefit of many, many different people. They're open and honest about progress and problems, and they both make themselves available all the time. Toad, especially, has gone the extra mile with me on a few different occassions to make sure that I was able to solve problems I was experiencing. I didn't get a 'RTFM', nor a non-response, and I certainly didn't get ignored. My mail to the support list has always been answered with much help from numerous people. I couldn't possibly fault any
" Freenet will blatantly be used for child porn, and probably already is."
;) The problem is that if you or I can remove child pornography, then the Chinese government can remove dissenting remarks, a corporation can remove documents posted by a whistleblower, and a politician/other important person can remove damaging facts posted about them. Freenet is an all-or-nothing venture.
They state as much in the FAQ. The downside of an uncensorable system is that some people will use it for things you and I would prefer to censor.
Aside from that, the same can be said of the internet itself. The same can be said of the real world, as well. Shall we destroy the internet and the real world to prevent disgusting things from happening or being posted? Or should we address the problems behind the content, such as the abuse of children? We can continue to ignore the problems that are out there by censoring them away, or we can recognize that there exists a major problem, and then go on to solve it.
"While I'm sure there are lots of chinese people who will find value in it, "
Well, yes... considering the fact that it saves their lives . Quit living in your tiny little world and open up a little bit, just for once, hmm? Just recently, a Chinese dissident was jailed for posting "subversive" materials on the internet. Had this person had access to, and used Freenet, they would still be promoting democracy, instead of wondering how many times the guards will be back for torture sessions this week. People in China and other places DO use Freenet to communicate safely with one another. In places like China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, etc, speaking out means you're going to die. How it is you can simply brush aside the fact that Freenet saves peoples' lives every single day is beyond me.
" there are lots of child pr0nographers rubbing their dirty little fucking hands with glee. "Oh look, something free and uncensored! Better puts some child porn on it! (uploads)."
Again, the same can be said of the internet. How many sites have been busted for selling access to child pornography? How many years did those places operate with impunity? How many others continue to go undetected by law enforcement? How many others pop up on the regular internet every single day? Obviously there are those who use Freenet for things that disgust most of us, but those people will find ways to distribute that content regardless of Freenet's existence. The capture of one, or ten, or a hundred, or a thousand does little to stem the tide. Until we address the underlying problem, the content will always exist.
"Yeah, free speech is nice, but at the same time providing free speech to child pornographers and Nazis is both hypocritical and wrong."
Your definition of hypocrasy is flawed. Hypocrasy is to pretend to be or believe something which you are not, or do not believe. It would be hypocritical of Freenet to advertise free speech, and then censor that with which it does not agree.
What you mean to say is that you don't like those who would produce or distribute child pornography, and you don't like Nazis, and you wish that they would be quiet and go away. Guess what - I wish the very same thing. The difference is, I'm not willing to call for the downfall of something that saves lives every single day simply because some people use it to say or distribute things that turn my stomach. It's people like you who think that censorship stops at things with which they disagree. In fact, there will always be someone wanting to censor the very things you hold most dear, because they find it offensive. Do you believe in God? There will always be an athiest who doesn't want you 'indoctrinating' their child, and thus wants you banned from saying the word under any circumstances. You don't believe in God? There will always be someone who finds the very thought so utterly repulsive that they want you jailed for even menti
Hey slick, in case you hadn't noticed, this isn't even a 1.0 release. Could the documentation and hand-holding scripts use a bit of work? Absolutely. Would they have to be changed almost constantly due to the ever-changing nature of the code, the application, the nodes, and the network? Yup.
When the network and the code base are less volatile, then it makes more sense for people to get working on things to help out newbies. As it is, it's probably best that the AOL crowd NOT join up just yet, as they're not going to be able to provide the level of debugging assistance of your average techie. Stable and unstable are just branchs of development - the entire project is essentially in heavy (some might say 'extreme') beta testing. The difference between this project and so many others is that this one makes progress at incredible rates. Updates can happen several times a day sometimes, and the stable branch rarely goes more than a week or two without a new build. Unstable branch users are advised to update 'daily'. What does that say about the development pace?
In terms of it making itself 'respectable', I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you mean to say that 'stomach wrenching content' should somehow be removed, well then you've missed the entire point of the project. In terms of not being confronted by such content, I would argue that they're less likely to 'bump' into it on Freenet innocently than they are on the regular internet. At least on Freenet, things are generally labled fairly well, and the major indexes (currently about the only way to learn of 'freesites') pretty much sort out content by hand, ensuring timly and accurate descriptions of what each link contains. If you're offended by particular content, then don't click on the link to view it. If you're offended by the link itself, then go on one of the indexes which censors unlawfull freesites.
On Freenet, you're not forced to go anywhere you don't want, and you almost can't find something you don't want to find. Seems to me that you're safer on Freenet than you are on the regular net.
Interesting.
Hey, Toad. You must be busy as hell on here today. The good thing is that I would assume some donations are flowing into the project now. With the help from this, perhaps you and Ian can feel a little better about putting off the 0.6 release for a little bit in case further testing is required. Just don't get all Duke Nukum Forever on us with it. ;)
Take care, and keep up the good work. You folks have been doing an outstanding job, especially recently. Don't let the nay-sayers and trolls here, or anywhere, get you down. So far as I can tell, you guys are coding your way into uncharted waters, and it's downright impossible to get much of anything right the first time around when dealing with something so totally new. Just keep chugging along with the development, and you'll always have plenty of folks ready and willing to run nodes for you guys.
What good is a node whose CPU and memory are hardly used, but fullfills no requests because the network is screwed up?
Priority 1: Create secure, anonymous, decentralized network
Priority 2: Get network reasonably functional
Priority 3: Get resource usage reasonably low
Priority 4: Get network running very well
Priority 5: Get resource usage way down
Right now, I'd say they're working towards 3 and 4, and doing a damn fine job at it. When you can design a functional, anonymous, secure, scalable, and fault-tolerant network, and have each and every node use minimal resources, feel free to let the Freenet team know. Until then, either run a node, or don't run a node - donate, or don't. But don't sit there and complain with no useful suggestions, corrections, help, or ideas to offer.
" fails to solve a problem that doesn't exist" ... in your particular location at this particular time.
For dissidents in China (and yes, there really are those that use the network for this purpose), Freenet is the only really safe place to communicate with one another without fear of being dragged to prison, shot, or worse.
That you are either ignorant of this fact or apathetic to it is rather irrelevant - much like your small-minded, ignorance-based opinion.
"Are there alternate sources to get Freenet in the first place?"
Sure, from the same place you should be getting your seednodes if you're in a dangerous place to be running Freenet: a trusted friend.
I know it's an incomplete and semi-'chicken and egg' response, but it does apparently work, as there are definitely some folks from China who use this to safely communicate with one another. To me, that's worth all the extra baggage that comes along with running Freenet.
"There's a huge difference between tolerating something and actively propagating it."
You're only actively propogating it if you're downloading it. The less certain pieces of data are requested, the more likely they are to be deleted as time goes on. A system in which such disgusting material as child pornography can be censored is intrinsically a system in which political dissent, damaging truths, or other such upsetting material can be censored.
"That's highly amusing, but you might want to look up "straw man" in your dictionary of philosophy."
I think I found it. Joy.
You say this as though anti-matter (also produced in labs) has any less planet-annihilating potential. Basically, we passed the threshold for potential self-annihilation as a species back in the 1940s. Every day we survive is little more than luck. Come to think of it, that we are here at all is a remarkable stroke of luck. Thus, our existence extinguished would be less of a loss to the universe than we would like to believe.
If we are to destroy ourselves, it would be nice if we could do it in such a way that our life-building components are thrown about the universe so that we might actually father an entire new population on some distant world. Couple billion years of my DNA floating around space and a whole lot of luck could even spawn a whole race of 'Me's!
I, for one, welcome our new planet-destroying scientist overlords!
We don't need these old, damn-near useless satellites.
Hmm... that's what happens when you're out of school a decent number of years. :)
;)
My thinking was at least semi-logical; the mistake owed to a bit of hurried posting from work and non-thinking. My bad
"He would likely claim that non-free Java implementations are useless, and that people should support projects like Kaffee and Classpath to create a free one, instead of denying the existence and possibility of these projects as ESR did."
Oh, I think previous experience with RMS shows that he'd write a 32,000 page diatribe portraying any non-free efforts as the anti-Christ sent by the Demon to murder all of us, and our children as well.
It wouldn't surprise me if he went on to splatter lamb's blood on each and every page, then sealed the letter by slitting both his wrists and slamming his forehead into the pool of blood on the envelope repeatedly until it dried.
Come to think of it, that might make for an amusing 'reality' show on Fox.
" Unless prime > 1 (which it never is), your prime^(prime^prime) calculation tends towards zero."
:)"
Wow, someone really ought to tell the Fed about this. Apparently, they seem to think that the prime rate is currently at 4.00%.
Slightly more research seems to indicate that the Fed has been wrong about the Prime rate since their creation. Historical lows as reported by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (which are obviously either wrong or lying as per your comment) appear to dip no lower than 1.5%, but do seem to go as high as 21%. Thank goodness we have you here to spot-check jokes for correct information and then provide appropriate misinformation.
"Don't quit your dayjob. Unless you're in finance - then quit right away!
Yes, funny man, you've given 'irony' an entirely new meaning.