^wow. That kind of deserves a thread of it's own.
Is that true, all that? I mean, I dont suspect him of lying - but is it a realistic analysis?
-tomos
Is it likely that it is game over?
Very good question.
I suspect that it very likely is true/realistic, given that he is apparently expressing his qualified opinion and interpretation of facts regarding the construction of the consortium
W3C. I recall that, a few years ago, Microsoft ably demonstrated how to force through the adoption/enforcement of their proprietary standards in W3C, in their method of promulgation of the XML standard (e.g., which was in train as far back as 1999 in
"the XML wars"). IBM were similarly pushing
their preferred/proprietary standards counter to that.
I recall reading a technical paper in about 2003/4 by the author of
Speak Freely (
John Walker). He described that he was handing over
SF to the public domain and abandoning it as-is/was, as he reckoned that the introduction of
NAT (Network Address Translation) in routers had effectively defeated the longer-term possibility of a free, anonymous Internet (OWTTE).
Notwithstanding,
SF seems to be able to offer - in its crypto form, at any rate - something that probably did not exist before in the public domain, namely secure P2P encrypted voice communication - and it works.
Post SnowdenGate, we could presume that The NSA would probably hate the thing.
Useful, but probably a bit off-topic:
Spoiler
I just now looked at the
Sourceforge links for this. The file versions of the different options don't seem to be any different/changed to the ones I have (same date/version), but there seems to be some confusing duplication of the project in Sourceforge (or circular linking) and it is difficult to establish whether the available downloads are the same thing or whether they are crypto
and non-crypto versions, or just the latter.
I wondered whether there might have been some tampering of downloadable installation files to deliberately confuse/defeat/remove the crypto capability. Fortunately the source is available.
These are the files I had: (downloadable here -
SpeakFreely v7.6a.zip):
For whatever motivation, it seems that with unique IDs in the CPU, unique IDs in the ubiquitous Windows OS, MAC addresses, NAT, the use of HTTP headers, the use of NSA-prescribed "randomly generated numbers" (refer
How did the NSA hack our emails?), **RA lobbying, DMR and copyright laws, the Internet has been ring-fenced and secured with the apparent objective of zero control, freedom, anonymity and privacy for the individual (or corporate) person. We will all be increasingly taxed for using this "free" service. The golden days/potential of the WWW of yore are probably well and truly over. The tax could arguably be in the form of our loss of freedom/privacy/anonymity and the selling of our demographic data, so that we can be targetted for advertising/marketing purposes.
In 1997, I had a large assignment (as an independent consultant) for a client, the objective being to establish the potential marketing benefits of e-commerce for the client organisation and how that could be usefully fitted into their strategic marketing plan. It was a big and important project, and our MD peer-reviewed my work every inch of the way, as he could not afford any mistakes.
I recall thinking that the indications were that the WWW was heading towards becoming one huge near-perfect world market (economic) infrastructure for goods and services (which was a good thing), but that it could tend to obliterate or subsume the use of the thing for personal/confidential purposes or free distribution/access of knowledge (which latter was its originally intended design purpose).
That seems to have become increasingly the reality, and the unpredicted advent of 9/11 seems to have moved that future into reality with the speed and momentum of a runaway express train.
One cannot predict the future for the WWW/Internet, but one can only suppose. I think it looks hopeful, and at the same time pretty grim.
One potential hope seems to be bitcoinage. A market needs a universally stable and acceptable currency as "money" (medium of exchange) for trade in fungible and other commodities, and services. Currently the market has a multitude of establishment artificially-controlled currencies, with the US$ being dominant. My hope is that bitcoinage will eventually settle into the dominant role of
de facto international trade currency, thus reducing government power/control over our currencies and money and trade. However, I don't think they will take the potential existential threat of bitcoinage lying down and I wonder whether the speculation in bitcoinage will not be its own undoing. Historically, speculation has helped to stabilise some currencies and wreck others, but bitcoinage is not so simple.
We shall see.
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