Re: 25 tbreg relays in directory

[Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:13:13 -0500 punkle jones <punkle.jones@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 2:59 PM, Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>     On Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:19:21 -0500 punkle jones <
>> punkle.jones@xxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>> >Unlurking for the first time, I think.
>>
>>      Welcome to the fray! ;)
>> >
>> >Why not join forces with a popular freeware/shareware product like Aim or
>> >Winamp, with an "uncheck to opt out" option and a description of tor.
>>  Such
>> >a bundle could be preset to relay, and there's got to be a magic bandwidth
>> >that most western users could tolerate.  Is it ethically wrong to insert
>> TOR
>> >into the userspace of the less-informed by associating it with a popular
>> >(hopefully not unsavory) download?  Does this concept fly in the face of
>> >free will?  Is it just too sneaky?  It's not like you'd be putting five
>> new
>> >toolbars into their browser.
>> >
>>     Take a look at some reasons, beginning at
>>
>> https://www.torproject.org/download.html.en#Warning
>>
>> Then let us know whether you still see a way for such an "uncheck to opt
>> out"
>> arrangement to be a good idea.  Keep in mind that, in general, people do
>> not
>> currently read EULAs displayed by software installer packages, so you're
>> not
>> likely to get them to read and understand a bunch of pages from the tor
>> project's web site in the middle of installing a different package that
>> also
>> includes tor.
>>
>> Well, my thinking was along the lines of causing more TOR installations,
>with the motivation provided up front and not during an installation..  Just

     Well, we have recently and suddenly gotten about 40% more relays, very
few of which seem to be tbreg relays, so it certainly looks like someone or
something has achieved that result.

>because it's installed doesn't mean it has to be used.  I imagined a
>good-faith service that someone runs because they feel it benefits everyone
>without necessarily needing it themselves.  The sketchy part is getting
>folks to run another thing on their computer to help other folks out.
>Unless a ton of new tor installations would be a burden instead of a boon.
>
     If they are legitimate, it would be very much a boon.  I haven't lately
looked at the distribution of relays over version strings, so I don't have
a good benchmark to use for comparison if I decided to look at the current
distribution.  Does anyone else happen to have any records that could be
used for this purpose?
     If, OTOH, they are new relays using insecure, out-of-date versions like
the 0.2.1.2-alpha that was reported as being the version used by the tbreg
relays, then "burden" would still not be a good description of the situation.
8-|


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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