The Logic Off Topic list

Hello logic-ot,

This is an excerpt from an article from the Langalist which
details a disturbing development concerning those Users that have signed
up with Juno and are using their Mailer:

> A lot of people are up in arms, outraged by the new business practices
> described in "Peer-To-Peer's Dark Side" at
> http://www.byte.com/column/BYT20010222S0004 .That article is about
> Juno (the giant ISP) inventing and implementing a new kind of business
> model whereby they can take over their customers' CPUs in an
> aggressive and stealthy manner (using a kind of "peer to peer," or
> "P2P" technology), and sell their users's aggregate computing power to
> third parties.

> You might be tempted to blow this off with the thought "Hey, Juno's a
> free ISP, and people who use it deserve what they get."

> Or you might say: "I don't use Juno. Why does this affect me?"

> Here's why: Think about how many software updates you routinely
> install over the course of a year. Worse, think of the auto-updaters
> you probably use for your OS, your office suite, your anti-virus
> definitions. It would be incredibly simple for ANY software vendor to
> add a Juno-like P2P component into its next update download. The
> thinking might go like this: "Let's see. If we slip a P2P component
> into our next software update, adjust our Terms of Service to make
> it--- like Juno's--- all retroactively mandatory, legal and risk-free
> for us, then we can build a distributed supercomputing network at our
> customers' risk and expense."

> And you might not even know that P2P software had been installed on
> your system ... until your system maintenance no longer worked
> (because there were no idle times when it would kick in); or when your
> or your business' own P2P projects got derailed because something else
> was already sopping up all the spare CPU cycles. Then there's the
> extra wear and tear on the system, the electricity consumed by systems
> that never go into sleep mode. ... Well, you get the idea.

> Your firewall won't help, because the P2P component will be part of
> some other trusted app that you normally allow to have internet
> access: You can't block one without the other.

> People, this is a Bad Thing, with capital B and T. Today, it's Juno.
> Tomorrow it could be ANY software vendor.

> I'm getting a ton of email on this; readers have started posting in
> the discussion area; and other web sites have started picking up on
> the thread, expanding the circle of information. Stealth/forced P2P is
> a *spectacularly* bad idea: You need to know about it, and soon!
> Please click over to http://www.byte.com/column/BYT20010222S0004 for
> the full scoop.
  

-- 
Best regards,
 Andr\ufffd

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