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poeton There is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly

Check out "A Layered Naming Architecture for the Internet". This is the paper we focused on in an Advanced Networking class when we talked about naming. It aggregates several key principles from the literature into one system. I haven't read the RON paper Thomas linked to, but based on a quick glance, I'd say both papers are definitely worth your time. The Naming paper is actually written by several of the same people who wrote or collaborated on RON.

Feel free to drop me an email if you want to discuss the Naming paper.

http://nms.csail.mit.edu/papers/index.php?detail=4

poeton FBI drives for encryption backdoors

I agree with you on a logical level, I just don't think that's how it plays out in the average voter's/politician's mind. The logical leap between guns and Tor just isn't made in practice.

poeton FBI drives for encryption backdoors

But there is no "strong cryptography is bad" rhetoric out there...

How about Tor being used for CP? That's a pretty prevalent and well known argument. Any competent lawyer is going to be able to spin the same argument for strong crypto.

poeton Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch

Agreed, but it's your job as a citizen to try and pay exactly what you owe by law. If what Arrington did was legal, it wasn't wrong of him. No one should be paying more taxes than what's legally required. If there are any loopholes (so to speak), it's the role of the citizens to "exploit" them and the role of law makers to close them if necessary.

poeton Making Debian Responsible For Its Actions

And you're forgetting that there are "end-user" programs that depend on those libraries as well, so they really do need to be packaged up.

I'm not forgetting this. I don't think the user's programs should use the same libraries (or even the same language install) that the distro's programs depend on. This way, if the user messed something up (like trying to upgrade a library), the entire distro wont be hosed. It's a really bad idea from a stability, security, and design standpoint if you don't keep these two things separate.

poeton Making Debian Responsible For Its Actions

I've always thought that it was a bad idea for Linux distros to package any language libraries at all. It seems like a lot of repeated work and your users will probably end up needing to install things manually in the end. Things will require the lastest version of gems, new and essential features will be added, etc. Just give your users a manual on how to install gems (or pip, or whatever) and let it be. The users of language libraries are exclusively programmers after all; I think it's safe to assume they can handle library installation.

That said, Zed is blowing this way out of proportion.

poeton The sad truth about Facebook

The idea that a decentralized fault tolerant network is such a novel concept that it required a government to think of it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Even the telephone system is decentralized. There are decentralized fault tolerant systems all around us as examples.

It doesn't require the government to think of it, it requires the government to implement it. It would be a massively stupid decision from a business point of view to implement the Internet as it exists today. There's much more money in centralized networks. I think this should be obvious from the fact that (1) at the time all commercial companies were building centralized networks and (2) today text messages cost upwards of $1k per megabyte. The only reason why the Internet is architected the way it is today is because of government funding. One the government set the Internet in motion towards a decentralized, packet switched network, it could not be overcome by commercial companies.

poeton The sad truth about Facebook

Erm, it's most certainly a fact. Government funded projects produced the Internet, while commercial companies were producing centralized, circuit switched networks. It's self evident that no one else was doing it; every single commercial company in the world at the time was pursuing a drastically different design philosophy (the reason being that circuit switched networks were making money).

As an aside, it's not really worth joining the conversation if all you have to offer are one-line platitudes. I'd be interested in some evidence supporting your point of view, but you haven't bothered to provide any whatsoever.

poeton The sad truth about Facebook

All the networks you listed are circuit switched, centralized networks; they really don't have anything to do with the Internet at all. The claim that without ARPAnet there would be no Internet is almost self evident, considering how fundamentally different the networks you listed are from the Internet. There's no way a commercial entity would have had the same design philosophy [1, Section 3] because a commercial entity has much different motivations.

As an aside, the best example that you could have given would have been Minitel (but still, centralized and circuit switched).

[1] http://www.sigcomm.org/ccr/archive/1995/jan95/ccr-9501-clark...

poeton No expectation of privacy on public transit

The value of a blog is the writing. They don't really depend on the one photo they use. The "value" of the website in question is that they get to laugh at photos that you can't use commercially. Without the photos, the website is nothing. A legal battle around this question probably depends largely on the lawyers arguing about where the value of the commercial entity derives from.

To get a real answer you'd have to ask a lawyer. But my intuition is a blog that uses one photo per post in fine, while the website in question is not fine because it requires the photos to even exist as a website.

poeton The sad truth about Facebook

It's not the government's primary job to fund innovation. What we are seeing is that innovation is unable to sustain itself without government money.

You've got this backwards. It is specifically the government's job to fund innovation is currently is commercially untenable. Otherwise, who else would do it? Often times after the government's grant expires, the innovation is still commercially untenable. This makes sense because the research is exclusively targeting projects whose commercial viability is unclear. But other times we get things like the Internet, GPS, etc.

Now we can have a long and interesting discussion about specifies; i.e., whether said research is worth it in the long run, how soon should certain technologies be cut off, etc. But the fact that the government is funding technology that isn't able to sustain itself without government money is not a negative thing; that's exactly what the government is meant to do.

poeton No expectation of privacy on public transit

AdSense policies are part of a larger superset of things that you can get cut off for. State and federal laws are also part of that set. As the article notes, "state law that prohibits people from using someone else's identity for commercial purposes without that person's permission". I'm not a lawyer, but in my (unqualified) opinion this is pretty clear cut.

poeton Pentagon destroys thousands of copies of Army officer's memoir

This is a common misunderstanding. Yes, if someone purposely tries to release classified information they will face charges. That isn't what happened in this case.

In the defense industry, an author can write a book (or a scientific paper, or really anything else) and s/he gets it the content reviewed for release. The release reviewers are responsible for ensuring there is no classified content in the written work. It is not within the capabilities of any single person to vett a manuscript completely. Inadvertently including information that is classified is understandable. Hell, in some cases individual pieces of information are not classified but the aggregate is. Hence the need for the release review process. This is standard practice in the defense industry.

In this case, the release review was done incorrectly. The people on the hook here are the ones who reviewed his manuscript, not the author himself. Your claim that the author would be facing charges if there was classified information in the book is incorrect.

poeton Pentagon destroys thousands of copies of Army officer's memoir

The whole reason why this situation happened is that the vetting was not properly done.

poeton Facebook is not worth $33 billion

It strikes me as a bad plan to depend on 400% growth that's sustainable over a decade. You're right, people are horrible at taking growth variables into account. They usually overestimate them.

Facebook may well achieve the numbers outlined above. But let's not kid ourselves. People were doing the same back of the envelope calculations for MySpace when it first started to get big. I see nothing wrong with a judicious use of common sense and caution in this case.

poeton Leaving .net

Unfortunately this sort of view isn't very compatible with the indie developer ideal, or the ideals the author holds--which might one of the many reasons why you see so much Rails/PHP development in the non-enterprise space.

I'd say a much more likely reason is that the enterprise can't get enough programers to support anything other than the MS stack. The culture at large enterprise simply isn't compatible with the hacker mindset. Banks are a notable exception in my mind, but then again banks have always been fairly agile when it comes to turning a profit.

Also, the open source ideal isn't an "indie developer" ideal. Serious systems engineering goes on in the open source community and it produces what often are the technically superior solutions.

poeton A blackhat social engineered me by posing as an early adopter of my startup

If I could give one piece of advice to every startup who is worried about server security, it would be this: read the NSA's two page pamphlet for hardening Red Hat Enterprise Linux [1] for a quick overview and then move on to the ~200 page complete guide [2]. The principles are generally applicable to most Linux systems.

The NSA's guide is good enough for low value targets. Besides, these are your tax dollars at work, so you really should make use of them. :-p

[1] http://www.nsa.gov/ia/_files/factsheets/rhel5-pamphlet-i731....

[2] http://www.nsa.gov/ia/_files/os/redhat/rhel5-guide-i731.pdf

On the web application side, you're going to want OWASP. http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page

EDIT: Just thought of something.... There were several privilege escalation exploits for the kernel made public around this time frame [3]. I'm guessing that's the reason why his kernel was silently upgraded. :-p

[3] http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-988-1

poeton Security Lessons Learned From The Diaspora Launch

I find educating the least talented coder I work with a mostly social problem that I can solve over lunch [1]. But yes, I've definitely felt the pain of monkey patching gone awry. :-p Working around a restriction enforced by your language is no picnic either though and it's not really something you can solve cleanly.

[1] Obviously large companies with massive Ruby code bases can't really do this. Not sure what to say there.

poeton Security Lessons Learned From The Diaspora Launch

I'm keeping this in my back pocket the next time I have a conversation about why I prefer Ruby's monkey patching paradigm to Python's strictness. This is better than all my current examples. :)

poeton Security Lessons Learned From The Diaspora Launch

I agree with the sentiment, but it's important to note that excellent programming requires some pretty high level theoretical understanding of Computer Science (i.e. Algorithms). There's a slow way to do everything and a fast way to do some things; programmers need to understand the theory behind this. In addition, if you're trying to teach someone how to write secure code, they're going to need at least some understanding of crypto. Crypto has theoretical aspects to it as well. Basically when you keep all the parts of theory that are useful to programming, there isn't much extra stuff left. It turns out the things you could remove only amount to about one theory course in your standard competitive Computer Science curriculum.

The real reason why we have an issue producing quality programmers is more fundamental; we just don't have enough people who are good at teaching it. It's not because we "waste" time on one or two courses on some theoretical aspects.

Another thing to consider is allowing Computer Science majors to opt out of general education requirements in favor of more programming classes. Allowing this would free up a semester or more for most undergraduates (as opposed to the one course saved from cutting theory). Even with just average teaching, a semester can make a big difference.

poeton Website pulled on US church that wants to burn Korans [by Rackspace]

Rackspace is within their rights as a private entity to make this decision, but I'm also within my rights as a consumer never to purchase hosting from them again.

poeton H-P Sues Hurd After Oracle Appointment

Hurd falsified expense reports for personal gain [1]. Not sure what your definition of fraud is, but that qualifies in my book. I'm not saying I disagree with Oracle hiring Hurd, but HP's problem with Hurd had nothing to do with his personal life.

[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870330970457541...

"[Hurd] submitted inaccurate expense reports that were intended to conceal... a 'close personal relationship'".

poeton Rate our startup: Challenge.gov

Tough talk like that will win you cheap points, but you're just wasting peoples' time by taking a rushed and uninformed barf in the comment box. Let's examine your basic claim that: "[excluding the blatant propaganda, the projects] are just feel-good projects of no consequence". Here are some challenges featured on the front page:

* An X prize for green cars with a prize pool of $10,000,000. Run by Progressive Insurance and the X Prize Foundation.

* An X prize for green aerospace with a prize pool of $16,500,000. Run by NASA and the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency Foundation.

It took me about 5 minutes to verify that you just cherry picked from the data to support your preconceived notions. I have absolutely no idea how you could have thought you were adding to the conversation.

poeton Wikipedia lets you create books

Using a new account is providing me enough cognitive dissonance to post again... TBH it's kind of arbitrary I'm using this account. :-p

I'd be happy to proof read (in addition to Computer Science I also study English). Although admittedly my experience with the JVM approaches zero, so I can't be of much help there. Good to go on the CL pieces though.

poeton Wikipedia lets you create books

Ignore the rabble. :-/

poeton Bribing maitre d' to skip the line

The underlying assumption that being a market economy precludes a market from being unethical strikes me as overly simplistic.

poeton Re: yesterday's "Why I'm not hiring" WSJ op-ed and why it was poop

Editorialized submission headline for a highly editorialized piece. Regardless of the issues at hand, no thanks.

poeton So, What Does "HREF" Stand For, Anyway?

You're right. I did not realize your blog post was from 2008 (I falsely assumed it was a recent post). I based my assertions off of the fact that Google has a cache of the page in question dating back to July 1st 2010: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a6pIrYo.... Unfortunately, it is too late to edit my original comment to remove my inaccuracies. Thanks for digging this information up. :)

poeton So, What Does "HREF" Stand For, Anyway?

There's absolutely no way for your claim to be true unless the information is only found on blog posts. Decently crafted Google queries easily return the primary source (which is not a blog post).

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aw3.org+href+...

During the discovery process, just replace "hypertext reference" with whatever you suspect HREF to stand for. The grandparent post is absolutely correct in criticizing these types of blog posts.

poeton Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

Let's put aside the specific instance of Gates/Stallman and extend your argument to the general case. People in the philanthropic-billionaire camp usually only exist in countries with basic rights that roughly approximate those in the civil liberty camp. Consider the wealthiest charitable foundations [1]. The only outlier is a foundation from the UAE (whose endowment is a relatively small percentage of the sum). This is only a basic analysis, but I hope you get the gist of my argument: you can't naively separate the contributions of businessmen and civil rights activists; it is a mutualistic relationship.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_charitable_f...