In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:03:39 +0100
<2279605.yOnGcMguHR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Stark warning for internet's future
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | He contrasts generative devices with "sterile appliances", closed systems
> | which appear to give consumers access to the net.
An interesting problem. What, exactly, is "access"?
In one view of the world, for example, one might need
an account with every packet router (including internal
equipment such as CD-DVD readers!). Another, only slightly
more likely one would require that every packet router
would look at the state of said account and route packets
with an appropriate delay and/or throughput calculation,
subject to other limitations imposed by its owner.
The current method simply chokes the router if the router
gets too many packets and packet requests through it -- not
all that good a thing, but a reasonably democratic one;
first come, first served.
> |
> | He argued such devices were damaging innovation and potentially putting
> | easilly-abused powers into the hands of a few companies and governments.
Companies, maybe; in an ideal world governments would
not interfere. Governments, hopefully not -- but I'll
admit the boundary line's getting a little fuzzy in spots
(Blackwater, anybody?)
Of course governments exist to attempt to limit company
and/or individual abuses of power, such as Standard Oil in
the 19th and early 20th century, and the current Executive
Branch. (At least, in theory.)
Nor is it clear to me that there's much difference
operationally, online. Who's filtering packets? Who's
asking for them? Who's delivering them? USPS versus
AT&T/Earthlink/Level3; it makes no difference really except
that the payload is electronic as opposed to paper products
(and maybe who the clientele is; AFAIK Level3 doesn't deal
directly with us DSL customers, for example).
> |
> | "Consumers are eagerly asking for technologies, which can
> | be used to surveil or control them," said professor Zittrain.
Or others in lieu thereof. Baby monitors come to mind.
Someone actually was selling an ankle bracelet for kids,
designed for commercial use; house arrest is also possible
using a vaguely similar bracelet.
And of course phone numbers are routinely tracked (though
the actual content probably shouldn't be -- though there
are a number of issues relating to data versus voice)
for billing purposes.
AFAICT, it's all bandwidth, measured in "minutes per
month", the minute being measured under standard conditions
(used to be about 3kHz or 6kbps; might be a little higher
now). It might be worth noting that there's a little
more than 40,000 minutes per month if one goes 24/7/365;
1,000 minutes is exhausted after 2 8-hour workdays.
1,000 minutes per month is about 140 bits/second, if one
assumes the aforementioned 6kbps fidelity during the
actual call. Not exactly taxing to the Internet, is it?
> |
> | He said he was concerned that users who wanted basic access
> | to the web were driving the adoption of closed systems.
A combination of users, phreakers, and malware-writers. [*]
> `----
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7364901.stm
>
> He is in favour of "programmable" blocks.
A what? Well, that sounds like a dual-decider system,
then. I'll have to think about this.
> Another new example of the dangers:
>
> Why DRM Must Die
It's not dead yet anyway? Sigh.
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Luckily, I bought only a few songs before I came to my senses,
> | so this isn't a complete disaster. I'll either find a way to
> | break the copy protection, or I'll buy the songs again--this
> | time as .mp3s. I can assure you I won't be buying them from Zune.net.
> |
> | It's easy to dismiss this as a typical Microsoft move, and
> | there's a lot of truth to that. But the simple fact is that
> | Napster, MusicMatch, and even the much-beloved Apple could
> | pull the same stunt tomorrow.
> |
> | As long as you can't play your music without permission from
> | the store that sold it to you, you haven't bought that music;
> | you're only renting it.
> `----
>
> http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006850.html
Not sure what to make of DRM. Of course DRM is highly
soiled anyway, but in an ideal world (or somebody's ideal
world, anyway) we'd be able to distinguish between:
[1] Listening to music.
[2] Having a few friends over and listening to some music,
over a beer (or maybe at a bar).
[3] Piping the music to a stadium with a few hundred thousand
friends listening in (see also [5]).
[4] Streaming the music to potentially billions of people
(see also [5]).
[5] Duplicating (or "ripping", a form of conversion) the music.
[6] Duplicating the music and selling it.
[7] Taking the music and including it in another work
(e.g., a video game, term paper).
[8] Taking the music and modifying it, and including
the result in another work (a number of rappers got into
trouble for this, AIUI).
[9] Taking the music and misrepresenting it as one's
own work. (The courts must hate this one.)
[10] Writing one's own music (not sure that's even possible
anymore, if one thinks weirdly enough -- after all, all
music has a cultural subcontext, and I've run into some
technical problems from an instrument standpoint since I
like to use ALSA; the waveforms keep mutating).
In practice the boundary between [5] and [6] is very very
thin (though one might quibble as to whether "oh, hi,
neighbor, can I pay you $1.99 to make a copy of Beyonce" ==
"Hello; how many thousands of Slightly Suspect Discs(tm)
of Ms. Knowles' work did you want to purchase today for
inventory?"; it appears RIAA thinks both are criminal
activities), and the boundaries between [1] and [5]
virtually nonexistent (that digital stream has to be
decoded somewhere!), and of course once one has [5],
[7] through [9] fall right out of the box; [6] might be a
little harder depending on how persuasive one is (and how
willing people are to buy unofficial copies).
[10], well...there's still a few composers left, methinks.
Some of them might even be non-deaf. ;-) Of course,
in light of [6] and [9], things get interesting; there's
been a couple of court cases where the claimant claims
the much more famous defendant stole and/or misrepresented
the almost exact same song, making it popular.
Welcome to the New World Order...
[rest snipped for brevity]
[*] I can't think of a better term, really, but this shows
my age.
A hacker, after all, chops up code into little pieces
and then reassembles it, hopefully in an elegant way,
but more likely just a hack job (hence the term; one might
call them a hatchet-man in other contexts).
The more insidious cracker will gain illegal access into
code and systems; the analogy here is along the lines
of safe-cracking. The two are related, unfortunately.
A phreaker is a concept straight from the 70's, or maybe
80's. Regrettably, I never got a whistle (certainly
I wouldn't phreak anyway, but I'm a curious sort), but
Stephen Levy's book mentions same. The phone system is
of course far far different from the relatively simple
and crackable one back then -- but I surmise parts of it
are still crackable.
A malware-writer writes malware -- viruses, phishing
websites, pharming attacks. The good ones are probably
well recognized within their very limited circles; the
bad ones are occasionally called "script-kiddies".
And then there's organized crime, which is presumably
financing some of this, probably a *lot* of this.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Is it cheaper to learn Linux, or to hire someone
to fix your Windows problems?
--
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