User:VladimirK

From Technologies and Politics of Control
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Welcome to "my" course bulletin board!

I encourage any suggestions, comments regarding my readmissions, affirmations, or denials in respond to the assigned project. Please make an argument when responding, don't just post a flat statement, but explain why this statement is pertinent to our assignment and to the entire course.

Thank you kindly,

VladimirK


Hai Vladimir...I chose to post here since I could not find an email address for you, and did not want to spam the main assignment page, and would rather take correspondence to a quasi-private platform. Your project, especially its methodology, has been on my mind. I can see that you are passionately interested, but feel that with your latest posts you are showing signs of frustration and discouragement. As a believer in the philosophy of #datalove, http://datalove.me, i would like to help you where and if I can. As an honest critique of your methodology and references sections I see it firstly as very original and ambitious in thought, but there are several things that stand out to me--Please do not be offended. While the Hofstadter essay is a classic writing and very relevant as a backdrop to your project, many of the other resources listed are rather old and dated. It would be nice to see more current resources listed, and I assure you there are plenty in written and video form. As for your methodology I see three main problems with it. First, much of your terminology describing networking is again rather dated, and this may in fact be a hindrance to you in your search for networking techniques to implement. Secondly, I see that your statistical tests, while sound in theory, are rather all over the place in regards to sample sizes. I mean, some of those tests such as the Monte Carlo simulation are meant to be used with very large samples, and conversely, the Fisher's exact test is meant for small sample analysis. Lastly, and most importantly is how to gain the data, and it is here that I stress that while the tools, which are commonly called packet sniffers, are free and legal to use, you must consider the privacy ethics, and possible inaccuracies. Not only are anonymizers such as Tor and i2P possible hurdles for geographical locations, for example I can spoof myself to appear to be a connection located in the UK or Germany rather easily, those concerned with privacy and in the know can actively opt out of the Whois database and the IP address will default to the main address of the ISP company, which unto itself is not all together un-useful. Also, in the case of IPv6 addresses, as opposed to the more familiar IPv4 addresses, should you come across them, are in hexidecimal notation, and can be rather confusing.

I do not claim to be a networking expert, but I do understand the basics and can direct you to people that are experts in both mainstream searchable networks and darknet methodology. I invite you to contact Telecomix.org for methodological research and help, this is what they do, among other things, and would be very friendly and willing to help you. You can find them as live chat on IRC at osiris.irc.telecomix.org #telekompaketet, or if you are not familiar with IRC protocols u can enter via webchat at http://chat.telecomix.org, can be reached at deinous@gmail.com and sometimes google talk under the same name.

Again, I only mean to help. Deinous 19:36, 6 March 2011 (UTC)