At 02:25 PM 3/31/2002, Morlock Elloi wrote: >Or using principles of some other existing informal schemes - like hobos and >homeless do in urban areas. If you walk close to bridges and places that they >use for shelters,
i.e. you peruse their part of the network ... >you will often see elaborate markings with chalk and sometimes even paint. And often you don't notice them because you don't know what you are looking for. Let's see, this sounds like ... >Someone wrote a paper on this, there is a whole signalling language used >to inform about many important issues - like places good to overnight at >and places never to be found at. If a relatively unsophisticated >population of travelling vagabonds can develop universally understood >signalling that does not rely on anyone else to work, I am sure that >engineers can do it as well. ... steganography. They embed the symbols on the physical fabric but it occupies such a small part of the visible panorama that it remains unseen by anyone not trained to look for it. Yeah, steganography. Anyone who is interested can learn the hobos' marks and use them for their own purposes or to entrap the hobos. The thing that saves the hobos and homeless is that most police forces don't feel that they need to systematically hunt down the hobos and homeless. Once they do the hobos' marks will serve the police. For some reason I'm not getting any warm fuzzies from this idea. You know, there seems to be a very basic flaw in any of these systems: they are open so they can be infiltrated eventually. It appears that the best you can hope for is to create new network nodes faster than old ones can be compromised (and threaten the owners of those nodes BTW). That will keep the network alive but at what cost? (Hmmm, if you do it as a trojan horse you might have plausible deniability. "But ocifer! I din't know my computer was doing that. It must be some kinda virus or sumpin it got from the Internet." Naw, that won't work for long either.) Perhaps the better way is to neutralize the threat. If the sellers of an intellectual property can be assured of their cut, the police won't come after the hobos. The engineering problem is ensuring that the IP holders get their cut, not that anyone can share IP clandestinely. The latter will likely fail if people with money/power have a vested interest in its failure. We just have to remove their vested interest in its failure and they will focus their attention elsewhere. Their attention will always be focused on the money. I guess a basic question is, "do the owners of an IP have a right to collect money for the use of their IP?" If the answer is yes, the work should be on protection of IP rights. If the answer is no then do what you will. IMHO engineers aren't good at solving moral and ethical problems with technology. <sigh> Anyone want to learn to fly? Brian Lloyd [EMAIL PROTECTED] +1.530.676.1113 - voice +1.360.838.9669 - fax
