I would also be worried about those ISP terms. However, if Randy plays the
game a little differently, he has no worries. Remember [EMAIL PROTECTED]/BOINC?
They even make a package where you setup your client software, and
have it install.
Also: Randy will without doubt run into accounts where you'll have
these weird responses like
make: command not found
or worse.
so Randy should just needs to learn how to write autoconf packages and maybe
distribute binaries, and maybe inside of the BOINC. I think that's also
a far more innovate part of his research than solving minutia on all these
client machines.
peter
On [Mon Jun 09 10:45], Charles Cranston wrote:
> I might warn anybody tempted to cooperate with this request to very
> carefully check their terms-of-service agreements with ComCast to make
> sure this is not prohibited behavior.
>
> On Jun 9, 2008, at 10:27 AM, Randolph Baden wrote:
>
> >I'm not quite sure if this is appropriate for this list or not, but I
> >figure I'll give it a try anyway. Most importantly, I need to find
> >Linux users in the area, and this list is one of the few places I know
> >of doing so.
> >
> >
> >I'm a Ph.D. student in networking here at UMD, and I've hit a little
> >snag in my research. I'll be really up front about this, I'm going to
> >be asking for a lot here, and I feel a little rude for doing so, but I
> >thought I'd at least try it. In particular, I'm looking for Comcast
> >users in the area willing to do the following:
> >
> >1) Help me with IP geolocation research; that is, finding the latitude
> >and longitude of a machine given its IP address. I understand that
> >not everyone would support such research due to privacy concerns.
> >2) Give me SSH access to their Linux machine on the Comcast network
> >(to my own user account, obviously).
> >3) Set up dynamic DNS (if you don't already have it) so that I can
> >continue to log in to your computer even after Comcast changes its IP.
> >4) Allow me to compile and use a modified version of ping, which sends
> >ping probes according to a very specific schedule to a set of hosts
> >(the schedule and hosts are defined by another file; unless I'm just
> >testing it to make sure it's working, this will always be a list of
> >other machines nearby in the Comcast network). Since ping (and this
> >modified program, pink) requires raw sockets, it must be run as root.
> >I'm not asking for root access, I'm just asking that you change the
> >owner on the program to root and set the sticky bit, after I've
> >compiled it. I'm sure people will scream about how unsafe this is,
> >and I understand that; the only things I can offer are my assurances
> >that I'm not trying to do anything malicious and the source code to
> >the program.
> >5) Allow me to use the program to send a small amount of ICMP probes.
> >Unless I seriously make a mistake in the script file, you probably
> >won't even notice that I'm sending anything unless you look really
> >hard (no more than 1000 56 byte pings in a 5 minute period, probably
> >for at most 10-15 minutes a day, probably only one day a week). I'm
> >not sure exactly how long I will want to continue using the probes
> >yet, but of course you're free to opt out at any time.
> >
> >The following two are optional, but appreciated:
> >
> >6) Use Google Maps to find the latitude and longitude of your home.
> >7) Set up your router to respond to pings.
> >
> >
> >I wish that I were more to you all than some random stranger, because
> >this is a lot to ask. As it is, I'm really not expecting anyone on
> >this list to be willing to do those things (unless maybe they do know
> >me and I haven't asked them already!), but I thought I'd ask anyway.
> >:) Anyone who's still interested, respond to me directly off of the
> >list; anyone who wants to discuss how bad of an idea this is can feel
> >free to do so on the list. Unfortunately, the only compensation I can
> >offer is an acknowledgment in any papers I publish based on the
> >experiments I would run here!
> >
> >-Randy Baden
