Think "decentralised network". As gnutella and similar networks decentralise the higher layers of the OSI network model, this could bring about the same revoultion for the lower levels. And if the lower layers AND the upper layers are decentralised, then the network is virtually unstoppable!
In an effort to explain this better, and at the risk of being too wordy, let me put it like this:
If you run a gnutella/kazaa/etc node and share a lot of files (like a large enough amount for the RIAA to take note and come down on you), then you have an ISP to answer to. With a ubiquitous "lanlink", there would be no ISP; only your peers.
Right now, of course, this is unrealistic. 802.11b is too short range to be practical, and coverage is still spread too thinly to have a regular massive interconnection. But projects like these serve as a proof of concept of such possibilities, and get people to think about all of this....and I am so enthusiastic about all this that I get a woody just thinking about it. (With apologies to Sir John Carmack;) )
No, it's free as "you're free to say it sucks" not free as in "you're free to help yourself to other people labor"
You can't even count on that anymore. If you say "The US Sucks" then you must be a terrorist, so we'll need to detain you indefinitely as an "enemy combatant".
Yes, I know the exact scenario hasn't happened yet, but we're very, very close...
At my family reunion recently, I got the attention of a lot of people who ordinarily wouldn't care about genealogy with a 5' by 25' poster of 9 generations of my family tree. LUGs and advocacy could get better interest with some cool eye candy like this.
The sad part, is that here in South Carolina, "his" people are too stupid to care about what he is doing.
Case in point: In the 1960s, when he was governor here, he was the one who had the Confederate Flag flown over our statehouse. About 35 years later, this is turned into an issue against the state's Republicans, even though a Democrat was responsible for it being there in the first place. Most of the people who vote for him are blacks and ignorant redneck whites who don't seem to know or care what he's about. That's how he is able to stay in power no matter what he does, with minimal campaigning and plenty of earning opportunity from the MPAAs of the world. We need a grassroots effort to get him out of office, but I fear that the "moron majority" of our state will keep him around until he dies, just like they have with Strom Thurmond.
Re:There is indeed a grassroots opposition...
on
The Internet Power Grab
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's good to know that I won't be the only one here in South Carolina voting out the Senator from Disney. He's been in the senate far too long... we need to try to get as many of our friends to vote against him as possible.
Heh.. actually, that might be an easy way to circumvent the Ranger tracker... 'force' your ip address to a blackholed one, and serve only through 'push' requests. They could still get your IP (from the incoming 'push' connection from you to them), but they would have to actually initiate a file transfer from you, which means it would slow them down a lot.
Of course, I still believe that this action by the MPAA is a Lesser Evil(tm) than DRM/Palladium, but to each his own.
I was watching a bit of the senate discussions on this issue on CSPAN2 yesterday. Apparently, there will still be a lot of waste at nuclear plants around the country, because spent fuel rods must be kept in water to cool for five years after being removed from the reactor. Moving these still-hot rods before cooling, which contain about 97% of the original radioactivity, would be a Bad Idea(tm).
Additionally, with the many routes of transport throughout the country for getting the material to Yucca Mountain, many major cities are at risk of potential accidents, and with such a large number of shipments, the possibility of an accident has also increased.
(Not that I worry about that too much. I live within a mile of the intersection of two major interstate highways.)
Mozilla has gotten really fast; on my dad's old Pentium 90 system (first generation Pentium with Win98), I've had it running faster than IE since 0.9.8. (Before that, I never tried it using it on the system.) I guess those System Requirements are higher than necessary. (258% too high, that is). Good work guys!
And *of course* RedHat releases 7.3 _one_ day after I get home from college and my 10Mbps and arrive back at good ole' 56K. It appears that Red Hat has conspired against me, to force me to go and buy a boxed set. I will surrender this time, but only this time.
There are so many people out there sharing music and other files, that it would be difficult to actually stop them. The RIAA thought that people would give up on downloading mp3s after the death of Napster, but instead the music exchange continued (and may have even grown). Schemes like gnutella have been largely invulnerable to attack from the {RI,MP}AA, although they could still be improved to further protect their users.
My point is this: no matter what they do, people will find a way around it. There may be some martyrs at every turn, such as Emannuel Goldstein and Derek Fawcus with DeCSS, but now CSS is all but broken, and virtually anyone can find DeCSS if they look. A DRM OS, while evil, can still be broken, and tracking down the subversives who use Linux/BSD and other "unAmerican" OSes would prove difficult. And if the governement started coming after the people, they just might have a revolution on their hands.
This isn't something to get overly depressed about. We should be fighting it, but even if they win the battle of legislation, we are still able to continue the war.
MS vs. AOL is like Bush vs. Gore. There really wasn't anyone to cheer for, except Nader. And, in this battle, the only Nader-like option would be Free Software OS / MacOS using a Real ISP, and getting entertainment from independent sources. While you are still legally allowed to, that is.
Both AOL and MS, as well as the other big companies want to keep you from being allowed to do anything without their approval. They are all evil. Root for others, or root for the injuries.
If Microsoft really intended to focus on fixing the bugs in their existing software, they would be able to keep themselves busy for _at least_ a year.
And even then, Windows would still suck. After all, it's not just the bugs, but the whole structure and security model of the operating system that sucks.
Say what you will about Linux... It may have its problems, but overall it is a far better OS model. (And we can be sure the bugs in it will get fixed, eventually....:) )
Slashdot Mirror
Think "decentralised network". As gnutella and similar networks decentralise the higher layers of the OSI network model, this could bring about the same revoultion for the lower levels. And if the lower layers AND the upper layers are decentralised, then the network is virtually unstoppable!
...and I am so enthusiastic about all this that I get a woody just thinking about it. ;) )
In an effort to explain this better, and at the risk of being too wordy, let me put it like this:
If you run a gnutella/kazaa/etc node and share a lot of files (like a large enough amount for the RIAA to take note and come down on you), then you have an ISP to answer to. With a ubiquitous "lanlink", there would be no ISP; only your peers.
Right now, of course, this is unrealistic. 802.11b is too short range to be practical, and coverage is still spread too thinly to have a regular massive interconnection. But projects like these serve as a proof of concept of such possibilities, and get people to think about all of this.
(With apologies to Sir John Carmack
I bet those guys on the team are glad that they incorporated Junk Mail Filtering in the latest releases of Mozilla.
;) )
(Now that I think about it, maybe that is why they added that feature....
No, it's free as "you're free to say it sucks" not free as in "you're free to help yourself to other people labor"
You can't even count on that anymore. If you say "The US Sucks" then you must be a terrorist, so we'll need to detain you indefinitely as an "enemy combatant".
Yes, I know the exact scenario hasn't happened yet, but we're very, very close...
If there was no copyright, Microsoft could hijack all of linux, close it up, and that source would never again see the light of day.
If there were no copyright, Microsoft would make no profit, either. "Pirates" would have run them out of business before Gates got his first billion.
I hope so.... I want one. I miss good ole' 1885.
buford_t
"If you're going to build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?" - Doc
Unfortunately, no... but the linux kernel poster might... by attracting geeky linux chicks. Me like.
At my family reunion recently, I got the attention of a lot of people who ordinarily wouldn't care about genealogy with a 5' by 25' poster of 9 generations of my family tree. LUGs and advocacy could get better interest with some cool eye candy like this.
The sad part, is that here in South Carolina, "his" people are too stupid to care about what he is doing.
Case in point: In the 1960s, when he was governor here, he was the one who had the Confederate Flag flown over our statehouse. About 35 years later, this is turned into an issue against the state's Republicans, even though a Democrat was responsible for it being there in the first place. Most of the people who vote for him are blacks and ignorant redneck whites who don't seem to know or care what he's about. That's how he is able to stay in power no matter what he does, with minimal campaigning and plenty of earning opportunity from the MPAAs of the world. We need a grassroots effort to get him out of office, but I fear that the "moron majority" of our state will keep him around until he dies, just like they have with Strom Thurmond.
It's good to know that I won't be the only one here in South Carolina voting out the Senator from Disney. He's been in the senate far too long... we need to try to get as many of our friends to vote against him as possible.
How's that for grassroots?
Heh.. actually, that might be an easy way to circumvent the Ranger tracker... 'force' your ip address to a blackholed one, and serve only through 'push' requests. They could still get your IP (from the incoming 'push' connection from you to them), but they would have to actually initiate a file transfer from you, which means it would slow them down a lot. Of course, I still believe that this action by the MPAA is a Lesser Evil(tm) than DRM/Palladium, but to each his own.
Yep.
I was watching a bit of the senate discussions on this issue on CSPAN2 yesterday. Apparently, there will still be a lot of waste at nuclear plants around the country, because spent fuel rods must be kept in water to cool for five years after being removed from the reactor. Moving these still-hot rods before cooling, which contain about 97% of the original radioactivity, would be a Bad Idea(tm).
Additionally, with the many routes of transport throughout the country for getting the material to Yucca Mountain, many major cities are at risk of potential accidents, and with such a large number of shipments, the possibility of an accident has also increased.
(Not that I worry about that too much. I live within a mile of the intersection of two major interstate highways.)
Mozilla has gotten really fast; on my dad's old Pentium 90 system (first generation Pentium with Win98), I've had it running faster than IE since 0.9.8. (Before that, I never tried it using it on the system.) I guess those System Requirements are higher than necessary. (258% too high, that is). Good work guys!
And *of course* RedHat releases 7.3 _one_ day after I get home from college and my 10Mbps and arrive back at good ole' 56K. It appears that Red Hat has conspired against me, to force me to go and buy a boxed set. I will surrender this time, but only this time.
There are so many people out there sharing music and other files, that it would be difficult to actually stop them. The RIAA thought that people would give up on downloading mp3s after the death of Napster, but instead the music exchange continued (and may have even grown). Schemes like gnutella have been largely invulnerable to attack from the {RI,MP}AA, although they could still be improved to further protect their users.
My point is this: no matter what they do, people will find a way around it. There may be some martyrs at every turn, such as Emannuel Goldstein and Derek Fawcus with DeCSS, but now CSS is all but broken, and virtually anyone can find DeCSS if they look. A DRM OS, while evil, can still be broken, and tracking down the subversives who use Linux/BSD and other "unAmerican" OSes would prove difficult. And if the governement started coming after the people, they just might have a revolution on their hands.
This isn't something to get overly depressed about. We should be fighting it, but even if they win the battle of legislation, we are still able to continue the war.
MS vs. AOL is like Bush vs. Gore. There really wasn't anyone to cheer for, except Nader. And, in this battle, the only Nader-like option would be Free Software OS / MacOS using a Real ISP, and getting entertainment from independent sources. While you are still legally allowed to, that is. Both AOL and MS, as well as the other big companies want to keep you from being allowed to do anything without their approval. They are all evil. Root for others, or root for the injuries.
If Microsoft really intended to focus on fixing the bugs in their existing software, they would be able to keep themselves busy for _at least_ a year. And even then, Windows would still suck. After all, it's not just the bugs, but the whole structure and security model of the operating system that sucks. Say what you will about Linux... It may have its problems, but overall it is a far better OS model. (And we can be sure the bugs in it will get fixed, eventually.... :) )