“…aims to assemble the open-source programming community’s work on Gnutella, a popular piece of file-swapping software capable of turning anyone with a computer into a music pirate.

Gnutella is similar to online music-sharing program Napster but allows anything in a digital format to be traded–from pirated MP3 music files to grandmothers’ secret pie recipes.

Started by a group of programmers at the America Online-owned Nullsoft, the Gnutella project was shut down after AOL discovered the “unauthorized” development effort. But before AOL’s action, the software escaped into the wild, and programmers around the Net quickly began developing their own sets of “clones” that worked like the original.”

“”Skins” are a recent product of the hyper-democratization of code. The computer equivalent of back-ally chin tucks, skins allow a growing number of applications to change their looks in a growing number of ways, almost all of them bad. In a scenario that undoubtedly leaves DeTocqueville twitching uncomfortably in his grave, an unthinking Jolt- and marketing-fueled push towards visual freedom — is leaving 15 years of common-sense progress in user-interface design bleeding in a ditch.”

” In 1999, police officers searched for individuals in the National Crime Information Center database 2 million times daily, up from the 600,000 daily transactions averaged in 1988. Likewise, wiretaps are expected to rise more than 300 percent in the next 10 years, according to the 2001 FBI budget request.
The trends will only get worse, as technology lowers the barriers that face law enforcement surveillance, said Thomas M. Cecil, a superior court judge for the county of Sacramento, Calif. “In reality, most of what we have is the illusion of openness. Today, we have de facto privacy policy because we are inefficient; probing and gathering are time consuming and expensive. That protects our privacy,” he said. ”

“Stephenson challenged the more than 1,000 people who had gathered from around the world to focus their attention less on installing encryption software against the vague threat of snooping by Big Brother, a reassuringly simple fantasy of a totalitarian state, and more on the very real pattern of injustice brought to bear on people through employers and other institutions.

Stephenson said he was less worried these days about broad, theoretical privacy issues than about a recent incident in which a stray bullet crashed through a window at a friend’s house and narrowly missed a sleeping child.”

“Stephenson’s speech was a lot more subtle and textured than the discussion of it here would lead you to believe. In fact, he said that he greatly admired people like Phil who have brought encryption to the world, and believes in fighting oppression in all its forms. The underscored point, however, was the “in all its forms” part. He referred back to our hominid ancestors and showed a pie chart of what their threat model might have been. It was about 98 percent HYENAS and about 2 percent OTHER. Once early man developed some good spears, he said, the hyena problem was less pressing–but early man didn’t move on to try to conquer threats like intestinal parisites. His point, then, was that we need to update our threat models more often, and more subtly, than humans usually do. He then showed another pie chart. 98
percent was BIG BROTHER. 2 percent was OTHER. It got a big laugh from the crowd, because a lot of people recognized themselves. Stephenson again said that it was important ot expose and fight the bad things that “domination systems” to, but said that we should open the pie chart up to include and focus on other threats as well. In fact, he conceded, his pie chart of the threat model with lots of slices still could have the largest slice devoted to worrying about Big Brother. I hope that this gives a more full description of what Stephenson said in his talk. I wrote the story for the Washington Post, and tried to get as much of that flavor into it as I could. ”

“”Tomorrow we’re sending someone to cut firewood,” McGarvey said flatly. “We’ve been asked to pick up dog poop, and even to provide escort service–that one we turned down. We’ll do anything that’s legal.”

On Mylackey.com, consumers can find someone to detail their car ($75), repair their snowboard ($30) or walk their dog–individually or with a pack–($18-$38 for up to 2 hours). Among its most popular offerings are lackeys who run errands for $40 for a 2-hour period. ”