From the other side of the ponds, the story is quite different. About
113,000 people cast their vote here. In this worldwide shadow
election: Kerry wins (77.1%), and Bush comes second at 9.1%.
Surprisingly, support for Bush is largest in the Middle East (many votes
from Israel?). Some hilarious (frightening...) responses by US citizens to
this shadow-election can be found here.
Another initiative (about 20,000 people) is here. Results will be published
later today.
It's logical that the results are different than those in the US.
However, one wonders how much of a hint some (some) US citizens
(especially those posting very harsh comments in response to these
shadow-elections) need to realize that it's not just the US that
matters in this world.
Mod me flamebait, if you wish. But before you do, consider: it's not
me delivering the criticism, it's 113,000 people (on behalf of a much
larger group). I'm just the messenger boy here...
Get your copy here. It's an onion-routing network, and open mix-net if you like.
It protects your anonimity by using a number of proxies to channel the data, and encrypting the data such that one always knows only the next hop to send it to.
In contrast to, e.g., Ants or MUTE, finding your data scales as log(N) (N: number of nodes in the net), whereas Ants and MUTE scale as N^2.
And in contrast to Freenet and friends, this actually works.
Now, you can already just put all your music files in the eepsite/docroot folder of your install, and post your key on forum.i2p. That's enough for anonymous sharing.
Even better: A BitTorrent system that works completely within I2P is in the works;)
A full-page ad in the NYT costs between $75k and $120k, depending on the page, and when it will be shown. The Firefox team have not chosen a particular day for the ad, but rather a time-window of ~10 days in which it will be shown once. This is cheaper.
I don't know where the rest of the money will go now. There are tentative plans, however, to raise similar campains in other countries if the ad proves to be a success. Maybe some of the excess money can be used for that.
But then comes the question (also related to drugs, filesharing, etc.): do you have a better idea?
As for drugs. Yes, being Dutch, I know for a fact that there is a better system. A very good summary is here. This goes only for what we call "soft drugs", and not for "hard drugs". The results are surprising: while the number of youngsters that try Mariuana once of twice is significantly higher than in surrounding countries, the number of problem users/addicts is significantly lower. So going back to my original point: the Dutch government asked the question why youngsters (or people in general) were using drugs. A good component of the answer was that youngsters like to do kinky and forbidden things, because they like to revolt. Understanding this, the policy was to legalize the drugs, and the problem in much smaller now.
As for filesharing. Well, a good way to ensure that artists get the money they deserve, are networks in which you pay a flat fee, which allows you to download and swap. Thing is, the **AA don't like that, because it removes them from the position of control.
Sigh... When the US tried to stop the use of alcohol early in the 20th century, did that actually stop the use of alcohol? No! And in addition, there
was a lot of crime, because people tend to go to great lengths for what they want.
When the US declared the War On Drugs, did that stop the use of drugs? No! And in addition, there was a lot of crime, because people tend to go to great lengths for what they want.
When the US declares a War on Copyright Infringement (not: theft!), will that stop the infrigement of copyright? No! And there will be a lot of crime, because people tend to go to great lengths for what they want.
Waging a war on something does not solve the issue. Never by itself. An issue can only be solved by looking for the motives that people have for doing things.
Ask yourself: Why do people use alcohol, why do people use drugs, why do people download material from the net? Only when you know people's motives, you can start to change things, because if you don't understand the motives, and just wage a war, you deny people something that they want...
... and there will be a lot of crime because people tend to go to great lengths for something they want.
It doesn't matter at all: the essence of a multi-hop network is that you can get stuff from your own country by connecting to nodes in other countries. So once running the app becomes illegal, it will be configured such that it only connect to nodes abroad/outside EU or US/in Russia or Asia, etc.
Now might be the time to move to an anonymous P2P network. ANts is a
3rd-generation multi-hop P2P network that uses both point-to-point and end-to-end
encryption. A search for material doesn't give you a list of files and
IP addresses, like in a normal P2P network, but a list of files and
virtual addresses. Nobody knows what virtual addresses belong to
which hosts; routing is learned by ant-colony optimization.
This people are not commiting a crime because they want to commit a crime; it's just that what they do has been [i]defined[/i] as a crime, by laws that are morally questionable at best, and passed by method that are morally questionable altogether.
The implicit assumption that many people seem to make is that there is a direct correspondence between something that's legally wrong and something that's morally wrong. And yes, in 90% (or more) of the cases there is. But this is not one of them; these laws serve no other purpose than to keep a business model alive that no longer makes sense in this age of the internet. These laws are morally wrong. Breaking a morally wrong law is a crime, yes, but that doesn't imply that it's wrong.
Really. Please do learn to think for yourself, instead of going for the law=good/no-law=bad automatism. It's not the same thing!
In fact, in Holland, the VVD (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie / People's party for freedom and democracy) is considered "liberal". And it's a centre-right-wing party.
In Belgium (VLD) and Germany, this is no different.
And the brain is just a little harder nonlinear function. Period.
Eh... Period!;)
No, but seriously, see my replies to some of the other repliers to my first message: it's the interactions in those complex system that make a system that is "just a bit bigger" vastly more than
"just a bit" more complex.
I think there has been (was) a view that neural nets were the solution, that's obviously not the case, but they've been over used...
Yes. That's true. It's funny in a sad way: I'm using cluster weighted models in my research. In all truth, those are just neural networks with radial basis function that, in addition to providing an output, also provide a covariance matrix for that output, which can be used either as a confidence bound, or to estimate a PDF instead of a point estimate. However, nobody in their right (?) mind is calling these models "neural networks" anymore in publications. I think this is exactly because of the backlash you describe. The reaction is like "Neural networks, ow, that's so 1990...".
Well that really depends on how you look at it, how did training take place? What is intelligence? You're vastly simplifying the arguements here, perhaps intentionally? I'm sure the hard AI faction would argue that we (human beings) are just a sum of a great number of simple nonlinear functions, out of which there is emerging complexity
Yes of course, that is true. But like I said in another post: this "just" is the problem. In mean: put 100 simple things together and have them interact, and you end up with a system that is vastly more complex than just 100 unconnected simple things. We have no idea on how to learn the parameters of such a behemoth, let alone how to initialize it.
The devil in in the interaction here.
I don't know whether I agree, but the arguement can't simply be dismissed by waving you arms in the air and saying "non-linear functions".
I think a little explanation is in order here, particularly regarding the public of my first post. Of course you are right in saying that I'm severely cutting corners by shouting "just a nonlinear function.". I knew that cutting the corner like that might trigger (or even offend, in which case I apologise) some real AI researchers. However, my comment was mainly meant for the "clueless hordes" that are engrossed by the word "Neural Network", to let them know that neural networks are not quite the awsome things many people seem to think they are.
The problem is in building the networks, biological networks are complex, with mutliple sub-networks parrallel processing, with those sub-networks interacting. Humans can't yet build networks that can do anything like this.
Still, if an artificial neural net is a simple, non-linear function, then all the more complex networks in biology are 'just' collections of such functions. Complex behaviour arriving from lots of simple, but interacting, components.
That's true of course: there are neural network models in which the properties of the neurons are fairly close to what actual neurons in our brains do. But I think that assuming that or brains are "just a bit more complex than that" is denying the problem: that is the problem: 100 simple things put together is is lot more complex than just 100 simple things. We have no idea on how to train such a network, let alone how to initialize it.
It's like saying: Hey, we have a brick here. That brick has the same properties as a brick in a real house. So even though we have no idea on how to put the bricks together to form a house, we now already have a good model of a house. This is of course simplified, but the idea is the same: It's the interaction of the components that is the problem, not the properties of the understanding of the individual components.
I do a Ph.D. in an AI-related field at the moment, and all I can say is: Don't hold your breath. While it is true that AI has made significant progress, a few remarks are in order.
First, the "I" in AI really shouldn't be there. When people talk a diffucult decision problem (e.g. some pattern recognition problem), there comes the point where somebody will say, with a solemn voice: "So, what if we use Neural Networks?" (you can practically hear him pronounce those capitals, while he's creaming his pants at the mere thought of his new awsome intelligent system). People often assume that, because a neural network is a very simple and poor analogy of the brain, that it must have some "intelligence".
Guess what? A neural network is a simple nonlinear function. Period. Training such a thing is nothing more than estimating its parameters by minimizing some (usually quadratic) cost criterion. When you put something in, you merely evaluate a rather simple nonlinear function. There is no intelligence involved!
And then people say: "Yeah, but we have different things as well, such as clustering methods, radial basis function networks, Bayesian (belief) networks, support vector machines, evolutionary algorithms, etc,". They too, do nothing more than estimating parameters (of selecting representative examples) based on the statistics of the problem at hand.
There is a good reason for the fact that "AI" researchers themselves often refer to their field as "machine learning", rather than AI. If anything, I'd call AI "AS", for Applied Statistics, because most of the methods we use are either pure of augmented statistics.
That said, machine learning has achieved some nice things. We can do some simple decision-making, pattern recognition (e.g. face detection) and emulate some limited insect behaviour. There even are some limited commercial applications. But we should be very aware of the fact that most "spectacular" results are merely lab results. I work on face detection myself, and I can tell you that "the real world" (natural photos for me) is a bitch as far as applying methods is concerned.
"Cannot" is a big word, but you can go a long way with, say, Freenet or MUTE.
Both work differently, and MUTE is the one that's more like current P2P, except that all traffic is multi-hop, IP addresses of the actual content providers are hidden, and all network traffic is encrypted.
Teaching youngsters that something it baaad usually is the best strategy to get them to do it, whether it be sex, drugs or P2P. The British RIAA has just ensured that there will be a fresh generation of fanatical P2P users...
Come on, RIAA, 200 million people can't be wrong! Either change your CD prices, or go the way of the dinosaurs...
The latest TiVo hack... Soon coming to a Freenet or MUTE node near you... It's amazing!
(/Tell-Sell mode)
A little later, it'll be all over the general file-sharing networks, without ever having left a trace to its origin. At that stage, the cat is irrevocably out of the bag.
The point you raise is interesting: it doesn't matter that anonymous networks like Freenet or MUTE are not currently used by a lot of users; they _are_ used by ~1000-~10000 users. When more than a view of those start sharing it at high-usage filesharing networks, the cat is out of the bag. I can indeed imagine really high-profile hacks (say: like the utopical patch that'll break DRMS and/of TCPA in a few years, or so;) to be "released" in either the two-stage way I just described, or by using virusses (as a last resort).
We've all read disturbing reports on how Trusted Computing is supposed to be nailing open-source software, and keeping keeping good citizens from causing a little less income for the poor media-industry (that just made its record profit this year).
Imagine a whole new kind of knight: black to the industry, but white to freedom-loving people. A knight that, just before no non-signed applications will run anymore, patches all systems it infects to destroy the immoral TCPA-lockdown. I'd like to see how many users, after realizing that they can again run their own programs again, would like to install the latest security (whos security...?) for Windows.
Indeed, the idea is not new, and I'd sure like to see an implementation of that. We'd probably need a freenet-like public-key command structure for such a virus, for one sane person to stay in control.
That would be so cool... Ah, dream on. (And go for it!).
A nice exercise would be to "patch" all iTunes clients out their to save unencrypted AAC-files to the disk. Just an idea...;)
I suspect that the drug prohibition here is also a big part of the reason why harder drugs are so popular. As you said kids are kids, and when they find out that everything they were told about marijuana was a lie they may think that the things they were told about cocaine and heroin are lies too.
You may be more right than you think: judging by the website listed in your profile, you're an American (Pensilvania, right?), and from what I've heard from some Americans students here in Holland, American students seem to be told all kinds of scary stories on what happens if you use drugs. As we now agree upon, that is about the best policy to get children to use drugs...
In The Netherlands, authorities do about the opposite: children at school (from ages 15/16) sometimes get information-flyers about common soft-drugs. In addition, there are information sites like this one (Dutch information-site). These flyers and sites contain very practical information and answers to questions, such as, "What is it", "What does it do to you?", "What should you be aware of if you use it?".
The rationale here is that if children are going to try soft-drugs, so might as well make sure that they know what to expect and how to handle it. Again: ideologically very ugly (arguably), but it works! And surely, like you said, it doesn't create myths about the soft-drugs that children might get disappointed in, and that might encourage them to use hard-drugs.
On a completely different subject: the same goes for teenage sex and pregnancy. What people always tell me here, is that in the US, education on these matters is sparse of nonexisistent, based on the ideology that these kids shouldn't have sex, so we shoudn't encourage them. In The Netherlands, on the other hand, people have realized that kids are going to have sex no matter what you do, and so education starts at the age of 12 or 13. This basically entails the biology of the human reproductive system, how things work, how to take precautions, how STDs are spread, etc. Very useful. As a result, the teenage pregnancy rate is very low here.
Is what the people told me on American sex/pregnancy education true? Do people really think "If we don't tell them, they might not try sex", or is that a "Euro-lie" about Americans?
While the parent is true about the fact that Europe, in general, tends to have a less exterme-kneejerking-attitude towards drugs than the US, there are still considerable differences.
The Netherlands, for example, has by far the most liberal attitude of the bunch: the main point of many Dutch laws is the freedom of self-determination . This leads to an attitude in which drugs are primarily regarded as a public-health issue, and only after that as a criminal issue. In The Netherlands, we do make a difference between drugs that are both phychologically and physically additive ("hard-drugs", and just as forbidden as in the US), and drugs that are only psychologically additive ("soft-drugs", and tolerated). For more info, there is an excellent Wikipedia article. If nothing else, read just the first section.
The effect of our liberal policy has often been disputed by less-tolerant (in matters of drugs) countries in Europe (especially France has often tried to force The Netherlands to change its policy). The net effect seems to be the following:
The percentage of youngsters that try Mariuana once of twice is considerably higher than in, e.g., the US and France. However, the percentage of youngsters that are regular users is considerably lower than in e.g. the US or France.
It actually really simple: kids are kids, and the best way to get them to do something is by forbidding it. Kids in Holland don't regularly use drugs because it's not forbidden, and thus not kinky or exciting. Period.
Like I said, though, the are considerable differences in Europe. While France is comparatively tough on drugs, Scandinavia is a bit tolerant and Holland is very tolerant.
Looking at it from a little larger distance, I can see that the problem is cultural: In Holland, we are not so ideological, and we're used to thinking for ourselves and being flexible (our past as a trading nation (no no, not just drugs;) has forced us to be that way). We are therefore more likely than, say, the US, to choose a policy that looks awful on paper (our tolerance policy, that seems to forego all ideological bases), but that works in practice. In contrast, a country like the US (and much of this also goes for France) is much more bound by ideology, principles and inflexibility, and therefore more likely to choose a policy that looks very good on paper (war on drugs, highly principled and ideological) but just doesn't work in practice.
The cultural differences also make it easier for a politician in Holland a pass a bill that contains a tolerant drug policy. Just imagine what would happen in Kerry would say: "In my presidential term, I would tolerate soft-drugs, because such a policy works: we get less crime, less users, less victims". Well, what would happen is clear: Bush 2004 here we come!:(
Slashdot Mirror
Fortunately, it's US citizens and not Europeans that get to pick the next US president.
Don't rest assured: It's not the American people either... Remember that Gore had about 500000 more votes than Bush in 2000.
From the other side of the ponds, the story is quite different. About 113,000 people cast their vote here. In this worldwide shadow election: Kerry wins (77.1%), and Bush comes second at 9.1%. Surprisingly, support for Bush is largest in the Middle East (many votes from Israel?). Some hilarious (frightening...) responses by US citizens to this shadow-election can be found here.
Another initiative (about 20,000 people) is here. Results will be published later today.
It's logical that the results are different than those in the US. However, one wonders how much of a hint some (some) US citizens (especially those posting very harsh comments in response to these shadow-elections) need to realize that it's not just the US that matters in this world.
Mod me flamebait, if you wish. But before you do, consider: it's not me delivering the criticism, it's 113,000 people (on behalf of a much larger group). I'm just the messenger boy here...
Get your copy here. It's an onion-routing network, and open mix-net if you like. It protects your anonimity by using a number of proxies to channel the data, and encrypting the data such that one always knows only the next hop to send it to.
In contrast to, e.g., Ants or MUTE, finding your data scales as log(N) (N: number of nodes in the net), whereas Ants and MUTE scale as N^2. And in contrast to Freenet and friends, this actually works.
Now, you can already just put all your music files in the eepsite/docroot folder of your install, and post your key on forum.i2p. That's enough for anonymous sharing.
Even better: A BitTorrent system that works completely within I2P is in the works ;)
A full-page ad in the NYT costs between $75k and $120k, depending on the page, and when it will be shown. The Firefox team have not chosen a particular day for the ad, but rather a time-window of ~10 days in which it will be shown once. This is cheaper.
I don't know where the rest of the money will go now. There are tentative plans, however, to raise similar campains in other countries if the ad proves to be a success. Maybe some of the excess money can be used for that.
...when Slashdot needs as +6 or +7 Insightful. Thanks for that comment!
But then comes the question (also related to drugs, filesharing, etc.): do you have a better idea?
As for drugs. Yes, being Dutch, I know for a fact that there is a better system. A very good summary is here. This goes only for what we call "soft drugs", and not for "hard drugs". The results are surprising: while the number of youngsters that try Mariuana once of twice is significantly higher than in surrounding countries, the number of problem users/addicts is significantly lower. So going back to my original point: the Dutch government asked the question why youngsters (or people in general) were using drugs. A good component of the answer was that youngsters like to do kinky and forbidden things, because they like to revolt. Understanding this, the policy was to legalize the drugs, and the problem in much smaller now.
As for filesharing. Well, a good way to ensure that artists get the money they deserve, are networks in which you pay a flat fee, which allows you to download and swap. Thing is, the **AA don't like that, because it removes them from the position of control.
Sigh... When the US tried to stop the use of alcohol early in the 20th century, did that actually stop the use of alcohol? No! And in addition, there was a lot of crime, because people tend to go to great lengths for what they want.
When the US declared the War On Drugs, did that stop the use of drugs? No! And in addition, there was a lot of crime, because people tend to go to great lengths for what they want.
When the US declares a War on Copyright Infringement (not: theft!), will that stop the infrigement of copyright? No! And there will be a lot of crime, because people tend to go to great lengths for what they want.
Waging a war on something does not solve the issue. Never by itself. An issue can only be solved by looking for the motives that people have for doing things.
Ask yourself: Why do people use alcohol, why do people use drugs, why do people download material from the net? Only when you know people's motives, you can start to change things, because if you don't understand the motives, and just wage a war, you deny people something that they want...
... and there will be a lot of crime because people tend to go to great lengths for something they want.
It doesn't matter at all: the essence of a multi-hop network is that you can get stuff from your own country by connecting to nodes in other countries. So once running the app becomes illegal, it will be configured such that it only connect to nodes abroad/outside EU or US/in Russia or Asia, etc.
KILL HIM! Why? Simple... You'll get a lighter sentance.
Of course you jest, but the very sad reality is that the second part of the above quote is actually true...
I'm not sure whether your post deserves a +5 Insightful or a -1 Flamebait, maybe a +5 Cynical/realist will do.
Now might be the time to move to an anonymous P2P network. ANts is a 3rd-generation multi-hop P2P network that uses both point-to-point and end-to-end encryption. A search for material doesn't give you a list of files and IP addresses, like in a normal P2P network, but a list of files and virtual addresses. Nobody knows what virtual addresses belong to which hosts; routing is learned by ant-colony optimization.
The network is small now, and it needs nodes. Go to the page here (Coralized) or download the webstart file directly from here (also Coralized).
Note that the network is now still very small. It might also take a good while to connect. Java 1.5 is required.
I feel secure and cuddly again... ;)
This people are not commiting a crime because they want to commit a crime; it's just that what they do has been [i]defined[/i] as a crime, by laws that are morally questionable at best, and passed by method that are morally questionable altogether.
The implicit assumption that many people seem to make is that there is a direct correspondence between something that's legally wrong and something that's morally wrong. And yes, in 90% (or more) of the cases there is. But this is not one of them; these laws serve no other purpose than to keep a business model alive that no longer makes sense in this age of the internet. These laws are morally wrong. Breaking a morally wrong law is a crime, yes, but that doesn't imply that it's wrong.
Really. Please do learn to think for yourself, instead of going for the law=good/no-law=bad automatism. It's not the same thing!
In fact, in Holland, the VVD (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie / People's party for freedom and democracy) is considered "liberal". And it's a centre-right-wing party.
In Belgium (VLD) and Germany, this is no different.
Liberal = right-wing in most of Europe.
Pfff... I'd better watch out when I use my (licensed) copy of MATLAB. It does all those things to a matrix, plus a few more ;)
+5: Insightful
That is exactly the problem, as with as other (normal) computer programs: the GIGO (Garbage in, Garbage out) principle still applies.
And the brain is just a little harder nonlinear function. Period.
Eh... Period! ;)
No, but seriously, see my replies to some of the other repliers to my first message: it's the interactions in those complex system that make a system that is "just a bit bigger" vastly more than "just a bit" more complex.
I think there has been (was) a view that neural nets were the solution, that's obviously not the case, but they've been over used...
Yes. That's true. It's funny in a sad way: I'm using cluster weighted models in my research. In all truth, those are just neural networks with radial basis function that, in addition to providing an output, also provide a covariance matrix for that output, which can be used either as a confidence bound, or to estimate a PDF instead of a point estimate. However, nobody in their right (?) mind is calling these models "neural networks" anymore in publications. I think this is exactly because of the backlash you describe. The reaction is like "Neural networks, ow, that's so 1990...".
Well that really depends on how you look at it, how did training take place? What is intelligence? You're vastly simplifying the arguements here, perhaps intentionally? I'm sure the hard AI faction would argue that we (human beings) are just a sum of a great number of simple nonlinear functions, out of which there is emerging complexity
Yes of course, that is true. But like I said in another post: this "just" is the problem. In mean: put 100 simple things together and have them interact, and you end up with a system that is vastly more complex than just 100 unconnected simple things. We have no idea on how to learn the parameters of such a behemoth, let alone how to initialize it.
The devil in in the interaction here.
I don't know whether I agree, but the arguement can't simply be dismissed by waving you arms in the air and saying "non-linear functions".
I think a little explanation is in order here, particularly regarding the public of my first post. Of course you are right in saying that I'm severely cutting corners by shouting "just a nonlinear function.". I knew that cutting the corner like that might trigger (or even offend, in which case I apologise) some real AI researchers. However, my comment was mainly meant for the "clueless hordes" that are engrossed by the word "Neural Network", to let them know that neural networks are not quite the awsome things many people seem to think they are.
Populism? Yes, guilty as charged ;)
The problem is in building the networks, biological networks are complex, with mutliple sub-networks parrallel processing, with those sub-networks interacting. Humans can't yet build networks that can do anything like this.
Still, if an artificial neural net is a simple, non-linear function, then all the more complex networks in biology are 'just' collections of such functions. Complex behaviour arriving from lots of simple, but interacting, components.
That's true of course: there are neural network models in which the properties of the neurons are fairly close to what actual neurons in our brains do. But I think that assuming that or brains are "just a bit more complex than that" is denying the problem: that is the problem: 100 simple things put together is is lot more complex than just 100 simple things. We have no idea on how to train such a network, let alone how to initialize it.
It's like saying: Hey, we have a brick here. That brick has the same properties as a brick in a real house. So even though we have no idea on how to put the bricks together to form a house, we now already have a good model of a house. This is of course simplified, but the idea is the same: It's the interaction of the components that is the problem, not the properties of the understanding of the individual components.
I do a Ph.D. in an AI-related field at the moment, and all I can say is: Don't hold your breath. While it is true that AI has made significant progress, a few remarks are in order.
First, the "I" in AI really shouldn't be there. When people talk a diffucult decision problem (e.g. some pattern recognition problem), there comes the point where somebody will say, with a solemn voice: "So, what if we use Neural Networks?" (you can practically hear him pronounce those capitals, while he's creaming his pants at the mere thought of his new awsome intelligent system). People often assume that, because a neural network is a very simple and poor analogy of the brain, that it must have some "intelligence".
Guess what? A neural network is a simple nonlinear function. Period. Training such a thing is nothing more than estimating its parameters by minimizing some (usually quadratic) cost criterion. When you put something in, you merely evaluate a rather simple nonlinear function. There is no intelligence involved!
And then people say: "Yeah, but we have different things as well, such as clustering methods, radial basis function networks, Bayesian (belief) networks, support vector machines, evolutionary algorithms, etc,". They too, do nothing more than estimating parameters (of selecting representative examples) based on the statistics of the problem at hand.
There is a good reason for the fact that "AI" researchers themselves often refer to their field as "machine learning", rather than AI. If anything, I'd call AI "AS", for Applied Statistics, because most of the methods we use are either pure of augmented statistics.
That said, machine learning has achieved some nice things. We can do some simple decision-making, pattern recognition (e.g. face detection) and emulate some limited insect behaviour. There even are some limited commercial applications. But we should be very aware of the fact that most "spectacular" results are merely lab results. I work on face detection myself, and I can tell you that "the real world" (natural photos for me) is a bitch as far as applying methods is concerned.
"Cannot" is a big word, but you can go a long way with, say, Freenet or MUTE.
Both work differently, and MUTE is the one that's more like current P2P, except that all traffic is multi-hop, IP addresses of the actual content providers are hidden, and all network traffic is encrypted.
Teaching youngsters that something it baaad usually is the best strategy to get them to do it, whether it be sex, drugs or P2P. The British RIAA has just ensured that there will be a fresh generation of fanatical P2P users...
Come on, RIAA, 200 million people can't be wrong! Either change your CD prices, or go the way of the dinosaurs...
as in:
DeDRMS.exe MyMusicFile.aac
...you mean? Get it here. It's C#, so also for Linux.
(Tell-Sell mode)
The latest TiVo hack... Soon coming to a Freenet or MUTE node near you... It's amazing!
(/Tell-Sell mode)
A little later, it'll be all over the general file-sharing networks, without ever having left a trace to its origin. At that stage, the cat is irrevocably out of the bag.
The point you raise is interesting: it doesn't matter that anonymous networks like Freenet or MUTE are not currently used by a lot of users; they _are_ used by ~1000-~10000 users. When more than a view of those start sharing it at high-usage filesharing networks, the cat is out of the bag. I can indeed imagine really high-profile hacks (say: like the utopical patch that'll break DRMS and/of TCPA in a few years, or so ;) to be "released" in either the two-stage way I just described, or by using virusses (as a last resort).
Interesting...
We've all read disturbing reports on how Trusted Computing is supposed to be nailing open-source software, and keeping keeping good citizens from causing a little less income for the poor media-industry (that just made its record profit this year).
Imagine a whole new kind of knight: black to the industry, but white to freedom-loving people. A knight that, just before no non-signed applications will run anymore, patches all systems it infects to destroy the immoral TCPA-lockdown. I'd like to see how many users, after realizing that they can again run their own programs again, would like to install the latest security (whos security...?) for Windows.
Indeed, the idea is not new, and I'd sure like to see an implementation of that. We'd probably need a freenet-like public-key command structure for such a virus, for one sane person to stay in control.
That would be so cool... Ah, dream on. (And go for it!).
A nice exercise would be to "patch" all iTunes clients out their to save unencrypted AAC-files to the disk. Just an idea... ;)
I suspect that the drug prohibition here is also a big part of the reason why harder drugs are so popular. As you said kids are kids, and when they find out that everything they were told about marijuana was a lie they may think that the things they were told about cocaine and heroin are lies too.
You may be more right than you think: judging by the website listed in your profile, you're an American (Pensilvania, right?), and from what I've heard from some Americans students here in Holland, American students seem to be told all kinds of scary stories on what happens if you use drugs. As we now agree upon, that is about the best policy to get children to use drugs...
In The Netherlands, authorities do about the opposite: children at school (from ages 15/16) sometimes get information-flyers about common soft-drugs. In addition, there are information sites like this one (Dutch information-site). These flyers and sites contain very practical information and answers to questions, such as, "What is it", "What does it do to you?", "What should you be aware of if you use it?".
The rationale here is that if children are going to try soft-drugs, so might as well make sure that they know what to expect and how to handle it. Again: ideologically very ugly (arguably), but it works! And surely, like you said, it doesn't create myths about the soft-drugs that children might get disappointed in, and that might encourage them to use hard-drugs.
On a completely different subject: the same goes for teenage sex and pregnancy. What people always tell me here, is that in the US, education on these matters is sparse of nonexisistent, based on the ideology that these kids shouldn't have sex, so we shoudn't encourage them. In The Netherlands, on the other hand, people have realized that kids are going to have sex no matter what you do, and so education starts at the age of 12 or 13. This basically entails the biology of the human reproductive system, how things work, how to take precautions, how STDs are spread, etc. Very useful. As a result, the teenage pregnancy rate is very low here.
Is what the people told me on American sex/pregnancy education true? Do people really think "If we don't tell them, they might not try sex", or is that a "Euro-lie" about Americans?
While the parent is true about the fact that Europe, in general, tends to have a less exterme-kneejerking-attitude towards drugs than the US, there are still considerable differences.
The Netherlands, for example, has by far the most liberal attitude of the bunch: the main point of many Dutch laws is the freedom of self-determination . This leads to an attitude in which drugs are primarily regarded as a public-health issue, and only after that as a criminal issue. In The Netherlands, we do make a difference between drugs that are both phychologically and physically additive ("hard-drugs", and just as forbidden as in the US), and drugs that are only psychologically additive ("soft-drugs", and tolerated). For more info, there is an excellent Wikipedia article. If nothing else, read just the first section.
The effect of our liberal policy has often been disputed by less-tolerant (in matters of drugs) countries in Europe (especially France has often tried to force The Netherlands to change its policy). The net effect seems to be the following: The percentage of youngsters that try Mariuana once of twice is considerably higher than in, e.g., the US and France. However, the percentage of youngsters that are regular users is considerably lower than in e.g. the US or France.
It actually really simple: kids are kids, and the best way to get them to do something is by forbidding it. Kids in Holland don't regularly use drugs because it's not forbidden, and thus not kinky or exciting. Period.
Like I said, though, the are considerable differences in Europe. While France is comparatively tough on drugs, Scandinavia is a bit tolerant and Holland is very tolerant.
Looking at it from a little larger distance, I can see that the problem is cultural: In Holland, we are not so ideological, and we're used to thinking for ourselves and being flexible (our past as a trading nation (no no, not just drugs ;) has forced us to be that way). We are therefore more likely than, say, the US, to choose a policy that looks awful on paper (our tolerance policy, that seems to forego all ideological bases), but that works in practice. In contrast, a country like the US (and much of this also goes for France) is much more bound by ideology, principles and inflexibility, and therefore more likely to choose a policy that looks very good on paper (war on drugs, highly principled and ideological) but just doesn't work in practice.
The cultural differences also make it easier for a politician in Holland a pass a bill that contains a tolerant drug policy. Just imagine what would happen in Kerry would say: "In my presidential term, I would tolerate soft-drugs, because such a policy works: we get less crime, less users, less victims". Well, what would happen is clear: Bush 2004 here we come! :(