Re: [tlug] Wifi hotspot access in Tokyo

[Benjamin Tayehanpour <benjamin@example.com>]

Holy triple-post, Turnbull!


On 19 March 2014 07:00, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:
> I think anybody politically astute enough to be Pope -- yeah, I'd take
> an individual consultation from him.

Ha!

> Benjamin, that's disingenous.  In context, Raymond clearly meant
> individual by individual, ie, anarchy, vs. the people as a whole, aka
> democracy.

Which I then went on to address, I think you'll find.

> If they had a clue what they were doing, you probably would be given
> the answer that no, you're not allowed to use SSH from their network.
> (Script kiddies banging on every advertised sshd port on the Internet,
> yes?)  If I were them, in many cases I would forbid it too.

I have never, ever, visited a site (physical) where I knew the person
running the network and knew them to know what they were doing, where
port 22 outwards have been blocked. Port blocking is crude and
ultimately inefficient. Reactive network monitoring puts a stopper in
most abusive attempts, and it has the added bonus of not being the the
way of legitimate users.

My university has all outbound ports unlocked, except those blocked
upstream by the provider (i. e. legacy SMTP and some Windows junk).
Heck, it has most of the *inbound* ports open as well. Yes, you get
assigned externally routable IPv4 addresses. Which is kinda wasteful,
but also quite useful. You're expected to know how to harden your
computer.

> Clue is sadly lacking.  My university has a stated policy of not
> allowing use of peer-to-peer networking software.  Excuse me, but WTF?
> What is the Internet if not a peer-to-peer network?  They "clarified"
> that by saying "file-sharing" software.  What is any store-and-forward
> network but file-sharing software?  How about Word?[1]  This is also
> the same university that dealt with the Ping o' Death by firewalling
> all ICMP.

Ours has a similar blanket policy, and you're expected to know when
it's okay to break it. Two of the few hard rules are "use the wired
and not the wireless if you have to use Bittorrent" and "don't do
detectable piracy".

That last one is interesting. I once got caught in their automatic
warning system because their reactive network monitor detected a spike
in data traffic shortly after HTTP(S) traffic with the Pirate Bay.
Which is sort of a clever rule, hats off to them. But anyway, I
e-mailed them and explained that no, I wasn't torrenting illegal
content on the university network. I was torrenting on my home server,
and SCPing the downloaded files to the university. And the warning was
withdrawn.

> So I really don't know what the ethical thing to do is.  The people
> who make the rules on the one hand forbid perfectly harmless, even
> socially beneficial activities because of the name of the software
> used.  On the other hand, they permit really dangerous behavior (eg,
> use of Windows :-) because everybody does it.  When the rules make no
> sense, should you revise them in your head and obey the rules you
> think "they" meant?  Or snicker and do whatever-you-please because
> contradictory rules ain't really rules at all?

Well, ideally both philosophies would amount to the same thing. I
rather meant the first one, though. As I said, they probably would
have permitted it if they knew how to phrase the rule correctly. Sure,
there's a fair amount of snickering too, but nothing sinister.