DistOS-2011W Justice

2011-03-14T07:20:30Z

Cha0s: /* Managing Justice */

==Members==
* Matthew Chou
* Mike Preston
* Thomas McMahon
* David Barrera

Note: research so far moved to Discussion section.

==What is Justice?==

To understand how justice can be incorporated into a distributed computer system it is critical to understand what justice is. In this section we discuss key concepts related to justice and provide some thoughts on how human justice theory can be related to justice in terms of computing.

===Theory of Justice===
For our purposes, we will discuss justice as it relates to punishment. From a philosophical point of view, there are 3 main categories of punishment; '''Teleologic, Retributive,''' and '''Teleologic Retributive'''. [3]
====Teleologic:====
The teleologic view of punishment is that any punishment should always be accompanied by some beneficial effect. Even though the act of punishing someone may itself be considered “evil”, the overall punishment will be considered “good” if it provides some form of social benefit to the society. For example, if a criminal is punished for a crime and this punishment serves to dissuade potential criminals from committing future crimes, then the overall social value of the punishment is positive.[3]

Punishment from this perspective provides a good model for computer systems as any criminal act will be handled such that punishment is beneficial for the system. A simple example of such a transaction can be visualized through the management of bandwidth. If there is a particular computer who is deemed to be a criminal bandwidth hog, using more resources than it is allowed, the perpetrator’s network connection may be throttled. This punishment would correct the deviant computer while free the resources for other computers in the system to utilize.

====Retributive:====
Retributive punishment is defined by the belief that punishment itself is either just or intrinsically valuable even if there is social benefit to the punishment. This view is probably best characterised by the phrase “eye for an eye”. Essentially punishment is dispensed because it is necessary to inflict harm on those who do bad things but society may not get any benefit from the punishment.[3] The point of view of retributive punishment is that it is better to punish someone who commits a crime regardless of the severity of the punishment.[2]

It is also important to discuss retributive punishment in comparison to retaliation. Although they both incorporate the concept punishment as a just, and necessary, act, they have very different goals. Retribution focuses on the wrongdoing of the criminal whereas retaliation is based on the right of the victim to seek punishment. Retaliation is based on the concept of deterrence; if you are convicted of a crime then someone will get to exact revenge and thus you will pay a price. Retribution requires a criminal to pay a price for the crime committed and thus he should internalize how the crime has a negative effect on society. [1]

Although the necessity of punishment is certainly true, it is hard to see a situation where truly retributive punishment is beneficial for a computer system. Since computers on a distributed system are sharing finite resources, inflicting punishment on criminal computers, without considering the benefit/harm to the society, may result in further negative effects on the system. If a crime has been committed, the effects of that crime have already had an effect on the computing system. Punishing the perpetrator of the criminal act will not reverse the effect of the act, and it may adversely affect the system.

For example, suppose a computer is caught conducting spam attacks on other computers and the punishment for this act is to remove the computer from the network. It may be the case that the criminal computer had previously provided a very efficient connection to some data set but now there is no way to communicate with this computer. As a result, members of the remaining network must use a less efficient connection to reach the same data, thus the punishment had a negative effect on the system.

====Teleologic Retributive:====
This third view of punishment combines the concept of the need to punish within the limits of what is considered reasonable punishment for the crime. From this perspective, punishment is necessary and provides a valuable service to society but it is only enforced within acceptable limits.

To illustrate this view of punishment, consider the spam attack example from the retributive section above. If the punishment is reduced from being removed from the network to simply blocking a specific type of communication originating from the criminal computer, then it would be considered a teleological retributive punishment. This new punishment would match the severity of the crime but also still allows the other computers on the network to utilize the efficient network path through the criminal computer.

===Structure of Punishment===

To maintain a stable and efficient distributed system, punishment requires structure, or more accurately, there needs to be some power imbalance designed within the system such that some computers can hand out punishments upon other, criminal computers. Here we will briefly discuss a few methods which may be used to implement a penal system into a society.

====Sovereign Rule:====
In the 1600s, Thomas Hobbes wrote a dissertation on how government and society should be structured. Within this work Hobbes discusses how punishment should be handled by a sovereign ruler. In this system, there is a known set of laws which originate from a single entity which exists above the law. This sovereign ruler is the highest authority of the law, but he may assign lesser judges who may carry out punishment in accordance to the laws.[4]

In this system, breaking the law is never excusable as the law is known to all members of the society. The exception to this are any members of society that are without reason, for example “children and madmen”. Punishment is a necessary evil and the sovereign has the right to punish any criminal in order to protect the “commonwealth”. The sovereign can even order other subjects to punish criminals but he may not order a criminal to punish himself as this violates the law of self preservation. To balance the system the sovereign may also reward individuals and thus the balance of punishment and reward are the “nerves and joints which move the limbs of a commonwealth.”[4]

Essentially, sovereign rule is one overall leader of justice who determines what is right and wrong in order to best serve the needs of a system.

====Corporal Punishment. Economic Punishment, and Prison:====
Human punishment commonly falls into three overlapping categories; corporal punishment, economic punishment, and prison. Corporal punishment involves inflicting pain or possibly disfiguring a criminal in response to the crime committed. The main idea is that the criminal should serve as a demonstration of the terrible things that befall those who break the law. Furthermore, any criminal who is disfigured must live with a visual reminder of the act they committed, thus imparting shame upon the perpetrator and allowing others in society to form a conceptual model of the type of person that individual is.[5]

Economic punishment is forcing a criminal to pay a fine for the act committed. The main idea is to make criminals internalize the social costs of the crime they committed. The penalty fine imposed upon the criminal may not be equal to the social cost of the crime committed but it should cause the criminal the same amount of distress as the crime that was committed. [1]
Prison is a modern method of punishment by which criminals are forced to exist under the watch of professionals and it is up to the discretion of the professionals as to when the punishment is complete. For example, it is up to lawyers, judges, psychologists and prison guards determine when a criminal’s prison sentence has ended.[5]

These three methods are not mutually exclusive as commonly criminals may be asked to pay a penalty fine as well as serve a prison sentence; however they all serve different purposes. All three punishment types serve as a deterrent to future criminals but each method has a different active agent; corporal punishment uses shame, economic punishment uses monetary handicapping, and prison focuses on reducing personal freedoms. These three concepts may be very useful to a distributed computer justice system.

===Addition Concepts Related to Justice===

====Purpose of Justice:====
John Rawls provides a definition of the purpose of justice as providing two primary functions; first, justice assigns rights and duties for the basic institutions of society, and second, justice describes the best way to distribute the benefits and burdens of society. [1] This view fits well within the scope of justice for a distributed computing system as there are very clear roles which can be assigned and there are finite resources which can be used to manage the “benefits and burdens” of society. These roles will be further discussed later in this article.

====Morality====

For a system of justice to be effective, a known moral code must exist within the society. Friedrich Nietzsche provides one interpretation of morality based on social position which is divided into two categories; “master-morality” and “slave-morality”. Master-morality is split based on good vs. bad, for example, good would be things like wealth, strength, health, and power, while bad is associated terms like poor, weak, sick, and pathetic. Slave-morality, on the other hand, is based on good vs. evil, for example, good would be terms like charity, piety, restraint, meekness, submission, while evil terms are worldly, cruel, selfish, wealthy, and aggressive.[6]

Although some of these terms make no sense in the realm of computers, others certainly could work as a basis for computer morality. For example, if there were measure of strength, health, wealth based on network and data concepts like bandwidth, latency, data integrity, etc. than certain computers could be more "good" than others. Similarly, if computers were acting selfishly, cruelly or aggressively (say DoS or spam attacks) then those computers would be considered as morally "bad". Based on these moral evaluations, computers could have relationships created or destroyed. Moreover, relationship parameters could be given to computers so that if you don't care how something gets accomplished (whether it is morally good or not) then you could tell your computer to allow less moral interactions to occur.

If morality was introduced to a distributed computer system that already has a reliable reputation mechanism, then all computers would be able to know how other computers behave "socially”. This would further allow punishment methods based on shame, to be exacted based on how "bad" a computer’s moral code is. An offending would then have to rebuild a positive moral reputation before it could participate in more trusted social interactions.

==Justice Involving Computers==

How Justice applies to the realm of computers. This includes how a computer can be exposed to Justice vs. how the user would be involved in the Justice applied.

==Crime and Punishment==

A broad description of possible crimes committed within the scope of the class, and punishments for those within the system and attackers from without.

==Concept: Justice Web==

The Justice Web is a possible implementation that uses the research we have done so far. It is essentially an incrementally-deployable network system that shares resources with users within the same Justice Web, based on a morality rating. Evidence is logged so that those within the Web may be held accountable, and those without may be recorded and watched for future misbehaviour.

===What it is===

The Justice Web is an implementation that treats a network as a distributed system. Resources are shared among the users, based on some measure of trust. As the web grows, more computers become linked to each other within the web, making it harder to manage trust given to each member of the Web. Also, the Web should provide some shared protection for those within the network against external attacks.

Because of this, some sort of Justice System is needed to process evidence and sentence malicious computers. The Justice Web would need a computer or computers to act as the judge. After the judgement, the Justice Web would then need to enforce a penalty on the offender.

===What it does===

The Justice Web links multiple computers together to act as a distributed system. the amount of resources allotted to a member is dependent on their moral rating and trust. The most trusted computer would possibly be the leader of the Web, acting as the judge. To gather evidence a log is kept at each implementation node. This evidence is encrypted so that the user cannot tamper with it.

The evidence is collected by the Justice Web, and handled by members with high level of trust. That is to say, the high computers within the system would essentially be able to define how much evidence is needed, as well as what punishment is to be handed out. The power high members are not absolute, but are capable of influencing a standard set of rules. Rulings are handled using common law, with a punishment handled in the same way as previous ones, unless explicitly changed by the high members.

After the evidence is processed, and a ruling is made by the high members, the Justice Web must then enforce the punishment. For threats coming from outside the Web, each member of the Web is warned about the offender. Continued communication with the offender will be allowed, but if an infection does occur, the punishment for becoming infected would be more severe.

As for offenders within the system, the morality rating attached to that member is affected, and the amount of trust is decreased. From a practical standpoint, the punishment would involve the restriction of resources accessible to the member, while increasing the workload of the member. The amount of trust increases over time, allowing the member to slowly gain more and more access to resources, but the morality rating would be kept the same so that it is made aware that the member has done wrong in the past.

==Resources==
[1] Posner, Richard A., ''Retirbution and Related Concepts of Punishment'', The Journal of Legal Studies Vol. 9 No. 1, University of Chicago Press, 1980. [http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/glenn_loury/louryhomepage/teaching/Ec%20222/posner_punishment.pdf PDF]

[2] Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition, Harvard University Press, 2003. [http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=kvpby7HtAe0C&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=concepts+of+justice&ots=tggvx5zc67&sig=s4OHDBhkpDzumtlH0mIUO7cbCys#v=onepage&q=concepts%20of%20justice&f=false PDF] (preview copy)

[3] Ezorsky, Gertrude, ''Philosophical Perspectives on Punishment'', State University of New York Press, 1972. [http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Jba2lFg3KOMC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=concepts+of+punishment&ots=LuzbsNmWlg&sig=KTvWhaWMxIRslk38tZmucty-jNw#v=onepage&q=concepts%20of%20punishment&f=false HTML] (preview copy)

[4] Hobbes, Thomas, ''The Leviathon'', first published 1651, republished by Forgotten Books, 2008. [http://books.google.ca/books?id=-Q4nPYeps6MC&pg=PR7&lpg=PR7&dq=the+leviathan&source=bl&ots=_vZA8CpLY0&sig=Wn_1z_Sqsx3-YA2dml2A458M_xU&hl=en&ei=V0R6TZT_D8XwrAGiz8zxBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&sqi=2&ved=0CFAQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q&f=false HTML]

[5] Foucault, Michel, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Random House, New York, 1995. [http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=pWv1R2o_PWsC&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=discipline+and+punish&ots=tL8pS67AAh&sig=L9PEOPaNiLAxYCkqF627K1la5Hw#v=onepage&q&f=false PDF] (preview copy)

[6] Nietzsche, Friedrich, Ecce Homo & The Anarchist translated by Thomas Wayne, New York, 2004. [http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=xx6IfcqRvbwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=ecce+homo&ots=44YGJlQ3Hb&sig=nzwX1IBP-Qj-TOnlmBOqGWUk810#v=onepage&q&f=false PDF] (preview copy)

DistOS-2011W Justice

2011-03-14T07:20:10Z

Cha0s: /* What it does */

==Members==
* Matthew Chou
* Mike Preston
* Thomas McMahon
* David Barrera

Note: research so far moved to Discussion section.

==What is Justice?==

To understand how justice can be incorporated into a distributed computer system it is critical to understand what justice is. In this section we discuss key concepts related to justice and provide some thoughts on how human justice theory can be related to justice in terms of computing.

===Theory of Justice===
For our purposes, we will discuss justice as it relates to punishment. From a philosophical point of view, there are 3 main categories of punishment; '''Teleologic, Retributive,''' and '''Teleologic Retributive'''. [3]
====Teleologic:====
The teleologic view of punishment is that any punishment should always be accompanied by some beneficial effect. Even though the act of punishing someone may itself be considered “evil”, the overall punishment will be considered “good” if it provides some form of social benefit to the society. For example, if a criminal is punished for a crime and this punishment serves to dissuade potential criminals from committing future crimes, then the overall social value of the punishment is positive.[3]

Punishment from this perspective provides a good model for computer systems as any criminal act will be handled such that punishment is beneficial for the system. A simple example of such a transaction can be visualized through the management of bandwidth. If there is a particular computer who is deemed to be a criminal bandwidth hog, using more resources than it is allowed, the perpetrator’s network connection may be throttled. This punishment would correct the deviant computer while free the resources for other computers in the system to utilize.

====Retributive:====
Retributive punishment is defined by the belief that punishment itself is either just or intrinsically valuable even if there is social benefit to the punishment. This view is probably best characterised by the phrase “eye for an eye”. Essentially punishment is dispensed because it is necessary to inflict harm on those who do bad things but society may not get any benefit from the punishment.[3] The point of view of retributive punishment is that it is better to punish someone who commits a crime regardless of the severity of the punishment.[2]

It is also important to discuss retributive punishment in comparison to retaliation. Although they both incorporate the concept punishment as a just, and necessary, act, they have very different goals. Retribution focuses on the wrongdoing of the criminal whereas retaliation is based on the right of the victim to seek punishment. Retaliation is based on the concept of deterrence; if you are convicted of a crime then someone will get to exact revenge and thus you will pay a price. Retribution requires a criminal to pay a price for the crime committed and thus he should internalize how the crime has a negative effect on society. [1]

Although the necessity of punishment is certainly true, it is hard to see a situation where truly retributive punishment is beneficial for a computer system. Since computers on a distributed system are sharing finite resources, inflicting punishment on criminal computers, without considering the benefit/harm to the society, may result in further negative effects on the system. If a crime has been committed, the effects of that crime have already had an effect on the computing system. Punishing the perpetrator of the criminal act will not reverse the effect of the act, and it may adversely affect the system.

For example, suppose a computer is caught conducting spam attacks on other computers and the punishment for this act is to remove the computer from the network. It may be the case that the criminal computer had previously provided a very efficient connection to some data set but now there is no way to communicate with this computer. As a result, members of the remaining network must use a less efficient connection to reach the same data, thus the punishment had a negative effect on the system.

====Teleologic Retributive:====
This third view of punishment combines the concept of the need to punish within the limits of what is considered reasonable punishment for the crime. From this perspective, punishment is necessary and provides a valuable service to society but it is only enforced within acceptable limits.

To illustrate this view of punishment, consider the spam attack example from the retributive section above. If the punishment is reduced from being removed from the network to simply blocking a specific type of communication originating from the criminal computer, then it would be considered a teleological retributive punishment. This new punishment would match the severity of the crime but also still allows the other computers on the network to utilize the efficient network path through the criminal computer.

===Structure of Punishment===

To maintain a stable and efficient distributed system, punishment requires structure, or more accurately, there needs to be some power imbalance designed within the system such that some computers can hand out punishments upon other, criminal computers. Here we will briefly discuss a few methods which may be used to implement a penal system into a society.

====Sovereign Rule:====
In the 1600s, Thomas Hobbes wrote a dissertation on how government and society should be structured. Within this work Hobbes discusses how punishment should be handled by a sovereign ruler. In this system, there is a known set of laws which originate from a single entity which exists above the law. This sovereign ruler is the highest authority of the law, but he may assign lesser judges who may carry out punishment in accordance to the laws.[4]

In this system, breaking the law is never excusable as the law is known to all members of the society. The exception to this are any members of society that are without reason, for example “children and madmen”. Punishment is a necessary evil and the sovereign has the right to punish any criminal in order to protect the “commonwealth”. The sovereign can even order other subjects to punish criminals but he may not order a criminal to punish himself as this violates the law of self preservation. To balance the system the sovereign may also reward individuals and thus the balance of punishment and reward are the “nerves and joints which move the limbs of a commonwealth.”[4]

Essentially, sovereign rule is one overall leader of justice who determines what is right and wrong in order to best serve the needs of a system.

====Corporal Punishment. Economic Punishment, and Prison:====
Human punishment commonly falls into three overlapping categories; corporal punishment, economic punishment, and prison. Corporal punishment involves inflicting pain or possibly disfiguring a criminal in response to the crime committed. The main idea is that the criminal should serve as a demonstration of the terrible things that befall those who break the law. Furthermore, any criminal who is disfigured must live with a visual reminder of the act they committed, thus imparting shame upon the perpetrator and allowing others in society to form a conceptual model of the type of person that individual is.[5]

Economic punishment is forcing a criminal to pay a fine for the act committed. The main idea is to make criminals internalize the social costs of the crime they committed. The penalty fine imposed upon the criminal may not be equal to the social cost of the crime committed but it should cause the criminal the same amount of distress as the crime that was committed. [1]
Prison is a modern method of punishment by which criminals are forced to exist under the watch of professionals and it is up to the discretion of the professionals as to when the punishment is complete. For example, it is up to lawyers, judges, psychologists and prison guards determine when a criminal’s prison sentence has ended.[5]

These three methods are not mutually exclusive as commonly criminals may be asked to pay a penalty fine as well as serve a prison sentence; however they all serve different purposes. All three punishment types serve as a deterrent to future criminals but each method has a different active agent; corporal punishment uses shame, economic punishment uses monetary handicapping, and prison focuses on reducing personal freedoms. These three concepts may be very useful to a distributed computer justice system.

===Addition Concepts Related to Justice===

====Purpose of Justice:====
John Rawls provides a definition of the purpose of justice as providing two primary functions; first, justice assigns rights and duties for the basic institutions of society, and second, justice describes the best way to distribute the benefits and burdens of society. [1] This view fits well within the scope of justice for a distributed computing system as there are very clear roles which can be assigned and there are finite resources which can be used to manage the “benefits and burdens” of society. These roles will be further discussed later in this article.

====Morality====

For a system of justice to be effective, a known moral code must exist within the society. Friedrich Nietzsche provides one interpretation of morality based on social position which is divided into two categories; “master-morality” and “slave-morality”. Master-morality is split based on good vs. bad, for example, good would be things like wealth, strength, health, and power, while bad is associated terms like poor, weak, sick, and pathetic. Slave-morality, on the other hand, is based on good vs. evil, for example, good would be terms like charity, piety, restraint, meekness, submission, while evil terms are worldly, cruel, selfish, wealthy, and aggressive.[6]

Although some of these terms make no sense in the realm of computers, others certainly could work as a basis for computer morality. For example, if there were measure of strength, health, wealth based on network and data concepts like bandwidth, latency, data integrity, etc. than certain computers could be more "good" than others. Similarly, if computers were acting selfishly, cruelly or aggressively (say DoS or spam attacks) then those computers would be considered as morally "bad". Based on these moral evaluations, computers could have relationships created or destroyed. Moreover, relationship parameters could be given to computers so that if you don't care how something gets accomplished (whether it is morally good or not) then you could tell your computer to allow less moral interactions to occur.

If morality was introduced to a distributed computer system that already has a reliable reputation mechanism, then all computers would be able to know how other computers behave "socially”. This would further allow punishment methods based on shame, to be exacted based on how "bad" a computer’s moral code is. An offending would then have to rebuild a positive moral reputation before it could participate in more trusted social interactions.

==Justice Involving Computers==

How Justice applies to the realm of computers. This includes how a computer can be exposed to Justice vs. how the user would be involved in the Justice applied.

==Crime and Punishment==

A broad description of possible crimes committed within the scope of the class, and punishments for those within the system and attackers from without.

==Concept: Justice Web==

The Justice Web is a possible implementation that uses the research we have done so far. It is essentially an incrementally-deployable network system that shares resources with users within the same Justice Web, based on a morality rating. Evidence is logged so that those within the Web may be held accountable, and those without may be recorded and watched for future misbehaviour.

===What it is===

The Justice Web is an implementation that treats a network as a distributed system. Resources are shared among the users, based on some measure of trust. As the web grows, more computers become linked to each other within the web, making it harder to manage trust given to each member of the Web. Also, the Web should provide some shared protection for those within the network against external attacks.

Because of this, some sort of Justice System is needed to process evidence and sentence malicious computers. The Justice Web would need a computer or computers to act as the judge. After the judgement, the Justice Web would then need to enforce a penalty on the offender.

===What it does===

The Justice Web links multiple computers together to act as a distributed system. the amount of resources allotted to a member is dependent on their moral rating and trust. The most trusted computer would possibly be the leader of the Web, acting as the judge. To gather evidence a log is kept at each implementation node. This evidence is encrypted so that the user cannot tamper with it.

The evidence is collected by the Justice Web, and handled by members with high level of trust. That is to say, the high computers within the system would essentially be able to define how much evidence is needed, as well as what punishment is to be handed out. The power high members are not absolute, but are capable of influencing a standard set of rules. Rulings are handled using common law, with a punishment handled in the same way as previous ones, unless explicitly changed by the high members.

After the evidence is processed, and a ruling is made by the high members, the Justice Web must then enforce the punishment. For threats coming from outside the Web, each member of the Web is warned about the offender. Continued communication with the offender will be allowed, but if an infection does occur, the punishment for becoming infected would be more severe.

As for offenders within the system, the morality rating attached to that member is affected, and the amount of trust is decreased. From a practical standpoint, the punishment would involve the restriction of resources accessible to the member, while increasing the workload of the member. The amount of trust increases over time, allowing the member to slowly gain more and more access to resources, but the morality rating would be kept the same so that it is made aware that the member has done wrong in the past.

===Managing Justice===

==Resources==
[1] Posner, Richard A., ''Retirbution and Related Concepts of Punishment'', The Journal of Legal Studies Vol. 9 No. 1, University of Chicago Press, 1980. [http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/glenn_loury/louryhomepage/teaching/Ec%20222/posner_punishment.pdf PDF]

[2] Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition, Harvard University Press, 2003. [http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=kvpby7HtAe0C&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=concepts+of+justice&ots=tggvx5zc67&sig=s4OHDBhkpDzumtlH0mIUO7cbCys#v=onepage&q=concepts%20of%20justice&f=false PDF] (preview copy)

[3] Ezorsky, Gertrude, ''Philosophical Perspectives on Punishment'', State University of New York Press, 1972. [http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Jba2lFg3KOMC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=concepts+of+punishment&ots=LuzbsNmWlg&sig=KTvWhaWMxIRslk38tZmucty-jNw#v=onepage&q=concepts%20of%20punishment&f=false HTML] (preview copy)

[4] Hobbes, Thomas, ''The Leviathon'', first published 1651, republished by Forgotten Books, 2008. [http://books.google.ca/books?id=-Q4nPYeps6MC&pg=PR7&lpg=PR7&dq=the+leviathan&source=bl&ots=_vZA8CpLY0&sig=Wn_1z_Sqsx3-YA2dml2A458M_xU&hl=en&ei=V0R6TZT_D8XwrAGiz8zxBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&sqi=2&ved=0CFAQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q&f=false HTML]

[5] Foucault, Michel, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Random House, New York, 1995. [http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=pWv1R2o_PWsC&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=discipline+and+punish&ots=tL8pS67AAh&sig=L9PEOPaNiLAxYCkqF627K1la5Hw#v=onepage&q&f=false PDF] (preview copy)

[6] Nietzsche, Friedrich, Ecce Homo & The Anarchist translated by Thomas Wayne, New York, 2004. [http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=xx6IfcqRvbwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=ecce+homo&ots=44YGJlQ3Hb&sig=nzwX1IBP-Qj-TOnlmBOqGWUk810#v=onepage&q&f=false PDF] (preview copy)

DistOS-2011W Justice

2011-03-14T06:54:43Z

Cha0s: /* What it is */

==Members==
* Matthew Chou
* Mike Preston
* Thomas McMahon
* David Barrera

Note: research so far moved to Discussion section.

==What is Justice?==

To understand how justice can be incorporated into a distributed computer system it is critical to understand what justice is. In this section we discuss key concepts related to justice and provide some thoughts on how human justice theory can be related to justice in terms of computing.

===Theory of Justice===
For our purposes, we will discuss justice as it relates to punishment. From a philosophical point of view, there are 3 main categories of punishment; '''Teleologic, Retributive,''' and '''Teleologic Retributive'''. [3]
====Teleologic:====
The teleologic view of punishment is that any punishment should always be accompanied by some beneficial effect. Even though the act of punishing someone may itself be considered “evil”, the overall punishment will be considered “good” if it provides some form of social benefit to the society. For example, if a criminal is punished for a crime and this punishment serves to dissuade potential criminals from committing future crimes, then the overall social value of the punishment is positive.[3]

Punishment from this perspective provides a good model for computer systems as any criminal act will be handled such that punishment is beneficial for the system. A simple example of such a transaction can be visualized through the management of bandwidth. If there is a particular computer who is deemed to be a criminal bandwidth hog, using more resources than it is allowed, the perpetrator’s network connection may be throttled. This punishment would correct the deviant computer while free the resources for other computers in the system to utilize.

====Retributive:====
Retributive punishment is defined by the belief that punishment itself is either just or intrinsically valuable even if there is social benefit to the punishment. This view is probably best characterised by the phrase “eye for an eye”. Essentially punishment is dispensed because it is necessary to inflict harm on those who do bad things but society may not get any benefit from the punishment.[3] The point of view of retributive punishment is that it is better to punish someone who commits a crime regardless of the severity of the punishment.[2]

It is also important to discuss retributive punishment in comparison to retaliation. Although they both incorporate the concept punishment as a just, and necessary, act, they have very different goals. Retribution focuses on the wrongdoing of the criminal whereas retaliation is based on the right of the victim to seek punishment. Retaliation is based on the concept of deterrence; if you are convicted of a crime then someone will get to exact revenge and thus you will pay a price. Retribution requires a criminal to pay a price for the crime committed and thus he should internalize how the crime has a negative effect on society. [1]

Although the necessity of punishment is certainly true, it is hard to see a situation where truly retributive punishment is beneficial for a computer system. Since computers on a distributed system are sharing finite resources, inflicting punishment on criminal computers, without considering the benefit/harm to the society, may result in further negative effects on the system. If a crime has been committed, the effects of that crime have already had an effect on the computing system. Punishing the perpetrator of the criminal act will not reverse the effect of the act, and it may adversely affect the system.

For example, suppose a computer is caught conducting spam attacks on other computers and the punishment for this act is to remove the computer from the network. It may be the case that the criminal computer had previously provided a very efficient connection to some data set but now there is no way to communicate with this computer. As a result, members of the remaining network must use a less efficient connection to reach the same data, thus the punishment had a negative effect on the system.

====Teleologic Retributive:====
This third view of punishment combines the concept of the need to punish within the limits of what is considered reasonable punishment for the crime. From this perspective, punishment is necessary and provides a valuable service to society but it is only enforced within acceptable limits.

To illustrate this view of punishment, consider the spam attack example from the retributive section above. If the punishment is reduced from being removed from the network to simply blocking a specific type of communication originating from the criminal computer, then it would be considered a teleological retributive punishment. This new punishment would match the severity of the crime but also still allows the other computers on the network to utilize the efficient network path through the criminal computer.

===Structure of Punishment===

To maintain a stable and efficient distributed system, punishment requires structure, or more accurately, there needs to be some power imbalance designed within the system such that some computers can hand out punishments upon other, criminal computers. Here we will briefly discuss a few methods which may be used to implement a penal system into a society.

====Sovereign Rule:====
In the 1600s, Thomas Hobbes wrote a dissertation on how government and society should be structured. Within this work Hobbes discusses how punishment should be handled by a sovereign ruler. In this system, there is a known set of laws which originate from a single entity which exists above the law. This sovereign ruler is the highest authority of the law, but he may assign lesser judges who may carry out punishment in accordance to the laws.[4]

In this system, breaking the law is never excusable as the law is known to all members of the society. The exception to this are any members of society that are without reason, for example “children and madmen”. Punishment is a necessary evil and the sovereign has the right to punish any criminal in order to protect the “commonwealth”. The sovereign can even order other subjects to punish criminals but he may not order a criminal to punish himself as this violates the law of self preservation. To balance the system the sovereign may also reward individuals and thus the balance of punishment and reward are the “nerves and joints which move the limbs of a commonwealth.”[4]

Essentially, sovereign rule is one overall leader of justice who determines what is right and wrong in order to best serve the needs of a system.

====Corporal Punishment. Economic Punishment, and Prison:====
Human punishment commonly falls into three overlapping categories; corporal punishment, economic punishment, and prison. Corporal punishment involves inflicting pain or possibly disfiguring a criminal in response to the crime committed. The main idea is that the criminal should serve as a demonstration of the terrible things that befall those who break the law. Furthermore, any criminal who is disfigured must live with a visual reminder of the act they committed, thus imparting shame upon the perpetrator and allowing others in society to form a conceptual model of the type of person that individual is.[5]

Economic punishment is forcing a criminal to pay a fine for the act committed. The main idea is to make criminals internalize the social costs of the crime they committed. The penalty fine imposed upon the criminal may not be equal to the social cost of the crime committed but it should cause the criminal the same amount of distress as the crime that was committed. [1]
Prison is a modern method of punishment by which criminals are forced to exist under the watch of professionals and it is up to the discretion of the professionals as to when the punishment is complete. For example, it is up to lawyers, judges, psychologists and prison guards determine when a criminal’s prison sentence has ended.[5]

These three methods are not mutually exclusive as commonly criminals may be asked to pay a penalty fine as well as serve a prison sentence; however they all serve different purposes. All three punishment types serve as a deterrent to future criminals but each method has a different active agent; corporal punishment uses shame, economic punishment uses monetary handicapping, and prison focuses on reducing personal freedoms. These three concepts may be very useful to a distributed computer justice system.

===Addition Concepts Related to Justice===

====Purpose of Justice:====
John Rawls provides a definition of the purpose of justice as providing two primary functions; first, justice assigns rights and duties for the basic institutions of society, and second, justice describes the best way to distribute the benefits and burdens of society. [1] This view fits well within the scope of justice for a distributed computing system as there are very clear roles which can be assigned and there are finite resources which can be used to manage the “benefits and burdens” of society. These roles will be further discussed later in this article.

====Morality====

For a system of justice to be effective, a known moral code must exist within the society. Friedrich Nietzsche provides one interpretation of morality based on social position which is divided into two categories; “master-morality” and “slave-morality”. Master-morality is split based on good vs. bad, for example, good would be things like wealth, strength, health, and power, while bad is associated terms like poor, weak, sick, and pathetic. Slave-morality, on the other hand, is based on good vs. evil, for example, good would be terms like charity, piety, restraint, meekness, submission, while evil terms are worldly, cruel, selfish, wealthy, and aggressive.[6]

Although some of these terms make no sense in the realm of computers, others certainly could work as a basis for computer morality. For example, if there were measure of strength, health, wealth based on network and data concepts like bandwidth, latency, data integrity, etc. than certain computers could be more "good" than others. Similarly, if computers were acting selfishly, cruelly or aggressively (say DoS or spam attacks) then those computers would be considered as morally "bad". Based on these moral evaluations, computers could have relationships created or destroyed. Moreover, relationship parameters could be given to computers so that if you don't care how something gets accomplished (whether it is morally good or not) then you could tell your computer to allow less moral interactions to occur.

If morality was introduced to a distributed computer system that already has a reliable reputation mechanism, then all computers would be able to know how other computers behave "socially”. This would further allow punishment methods based on shame, to be exacted based on how "bad" a computer’s moral code is. An offending would then have to rebuild a positive moral reputation before it could participate in more trusted social interactions.

==Justice Involving Computers==

How Justice applies to the realm of computers. This includes how a computer can be exposed to Justice vs. how the user would be involved in the Justice applied.

==Crime and Punishment==

A broad description of possible crimes committed within the scope of the class, and punishments for those within the system and attackers from without.

==Concept: Justice Web==

The Justice Web is a possible implementation that uses the research we have done so far. It is essentially an incrementally-deployable network system that shares resources with users within the same Justice Web, based on a morality rating. Evidence is logged so that those within the Web may be held accountable, and those without may be recorded and watched for future misbehaviour.

===What it is===

The Justice Web is an implementation that treats a network as a distributed system. Resources are shared among the users, based on some measure of trust. As the web grows, more computers become linked to each other within the web, making it harder to manage trust given to each member of the Web. Also, the Web should provide some shared protection for those within the network against external attacks.

Because of this, some sort of Justice System is needed to process evidence and sentence malicious computers. The Justice Web would need a computer or computers to act as the judge. After the judgement, the Justice Web would then need to enforce a penalty on the offender.

===What it does===

===Managing Justice===

==Resources==
[1] Posner, Richard A., ''Retirbution and Related Concepts of Punishment'', The Journal of Legal Studies Vol. 9 No. 1, University of Chicago Press, 1980. [http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/glenn_loury/louryhomepage/teaching/Ec%20222/posner_punishment.pdf PDF]

[2] Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition, Harvard University Press, 2003. [http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=kvpby7HtAe0C&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=concepts+of+justice&ots=tggvx5zc67&sig=s4OHDBhkpDzumtlH0mIUO7cbCys#v=onepage&q=concepts%20of%20justice&f=false PDF] (preview copy)

[3] Ezorsky, Gertrude, ''Philosophical Perspectives on Punishment'', State University of New York Press, 1972. [http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Jba2lFg3KOMC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=concepts+of+punishment&ots=LuzbsNmWlg&sig=KTvWhaWMxIRslk38tZmucty-jNw#v=onepage&q=concepts%20of%20punishment&f=false HTML] (preview copy)

[4] Hobbes, Thomas, ''The Leviathon'', first published 1651, republished by Forgotten Books, 2008. [http://books.google.ca/books?id=-Q4nPYeps6MC&pg=PR7&lpg=PR7&dq=the+leviathan&source=bl&ots=_vZA8CpLY0&sig=Wn_1z_Sqsx3-YA2dml2A458M_xU&hl=en&ei=V0R6TZT_D8XwrAGiz8zxBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&sqi=2&ved=0CFAQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q&f=false HTML]

[5] Foucault, Michel, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Random House, New York, 1995. [http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=pWv1R2o_PWsC&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=discipline+and+punish&ots=tL8pS67AAh&sig=L9PEOPaNiLAxYCkqF627K1la5Hw#v=onepage&q&f=false PDF] (preview copy)

[6] Nietzsche, Friedrich, Ecce Homo & The Anarchist translated by Thomas Wayne, New York, 2004. [http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=xx6IfcqRvbwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=ecce+homo&ots=44YGJlQ3Hb&sig=nzwX1IBP-Qj-TOnlmBOqGWUk810#v=onepage&q&f=false PDF] (preview copy)

DistOS-2011W Justice

2011-03-14T06:43:53Z

DistOS-2011W Justice

2011-03-10T18:05:40Z

Cha0s: /* Crime and Punishment */

2011-03-01T14:04:17Z

Cha0s: /* Diaspora: Distributed Social Networking */

=cha0sPod=
cha0sPod is currently offline, as I am setting a pod up on a remote server rather than a home server to improve performance. Link will be posted in this section upon it going live.
==Introduction==
For my implementation report, I will be setting up and using a server running Diaspora. Diaspora is a distributed social network meant to directly compete with centralized social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. My report will focus on my personal experience with Diaspora, both as an administrator as well as a client. Due to time constraints, most of the administrator reporting will involve setting up the pod, while the client portion will focus on the interactions of two test user accounts.

Section 2 describes the specifics of Diaspora, particularly how it functions from the client's perspective, Section 3 covers my experience in setting up a Diaspora pod, Section 4 includes additional details in regards to the management of the cha0sPod, Section 5 covers my experience in using Diaspora as a client, Section 6 contains my conclusion, and Section 7 includes all references made in the document.

==What Is Diaspora?==
===Diaspora: Distributed Social Networking===
Diaspora is designed to decentralize social networks, so that privacy can more easily be managed by the individual user. With a centralized social network, all information, messages, and pictures posted are effectively owned by the corporation hosting the network. The idea of sacrificing all of your privacy in exchange for a service is exactly what Diaspora hopes to prevent [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html?_r=1].

How it accomplishes this is the utilization of user-owned servers, called "pods". Pods are used to host content, such as status updates and pictures, and communicate with other pods so that the content is available across the network. Users may either create a pod, join an associate's, or sign up in a pod open to the public. In any case, Diaspora prioritizes user privacy using a number of methods, which are described below [https://joindiaspora.com/].

===Aspects===
Aspects are used to maintain multiple identities in the social network. By default, every user starts with the "Home", "Family", and "Work" aspects. When the user posts, they can specify which aspects to post to. For example, if the user posts to the home aspect, only friends associated with the home aspect will see the post. When a friend is added, the user specifies which aspects the friend should be associated with.

New aspects can be created at any time, so that users can customize the privacy of their content on a per-update basis. This means that a user may have "Employees" and "Supervisors" aspects, so that messages can be sent to a manager's employees based on the level of privacy the message needs.

===Content Ownership===
Users maintain ownership of all content posted, including pictures. This means that the user has control over how photos are distributed. Again, this is done through the aspect system, so that photos are only seen by the people you want them to.

==Setting Up Diaspora==
===Preparation===
For the purposes of evaluating a Diaspora implementation, I have opted to set up a home server. The home server in question is an old Dell Dimension 3000 running Ubuntu 10.04 and an Apache server. After registering the domain cha0sNet.com and configuring my router, my server was online.

''Steps used in setting up cha0sPod can be found at Diaspora's main site.''[https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Installing-and-Running-Diaspora]

The next step is installing some additional software. The following section includes the title of the software, a brief explanation of what it does, and the command for installing it in Ubuntu.

Build Tools: Specific Build Tools used to compile the other software packages.

sudo apt-get install build-essential libxslt1.1 libxslt1-dev libxml2

Ruby: A programming language.

sudo apt-get install ruby-full

MySQL: A database for the server.

sudo apt-get install mysql-server libmysqlclient-dev libmysql-ruby

OpenSSL: An open-source (durr) encryption library.

sudo apt-get install libssl-dev

ImageMagick: Image processing library used to compress and resize uploaded images.

sudo apt-get install imagemagick libmagick9-dev

Git: A version control system used to download and update Diaspora.

sudo apt-get install git-core

Redis: key-value store used for background job processing.

sudo apt-get install redis-server

RubyGems: Package manager for the Ruby programming language. Used to install “library” gems.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:maco.m/ruby
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rubygems

Bundler: Manages gems.

sudo gem install bundler

With all the prep work completed, my system is ready to host a new Diaspora pod. The details of that are outlined in the next section.

===Setting up the Pod===

The first obvious step is to actually download Diaspora from the git repository, which can be done with the following command:

git clone http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora.git

Next, change directories so that you are in the diaspora root directory. The diaspora directory is located wherever you ran the git command, unless specified otherwise. Not realizing this, I ended up installing it in my home directory, before eventually moving it to /var.
Successfully switching to the diaspora directory (tricky I know), running the command:

bundle install

will install Diaspora’s gem dependencies.

The next step is starting MySQL, which I had previously set up while configuring my Apache server. It says to run

sudo service mysql start

to get the database started, but for me it started automatically on installation.

With all this out of the way, it’s time to configure Diaspora so that it actually works (An important feature).

===Configuring cha0sPod===

Up to this point, everything was going fine. I followed each step outlined by the main site, and more or less it all went smoothly. This is the moment where it stopped going smoothly.

The first bout with configuration comes in the app_config file. To create it, run the code:

cp config/app_config.yml.example config/app_config.yml

and then change certain values within the file. The only field I changed during my initial configuration was:

pod_url: http://www.cha0sNet.com

though, I’m not really sure if that was necessary. So, everything fine here.

Configuring the database comes next, a process similar to the above configuration. Run the code:

cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml

The values in this file are more important, since this is where you configure the user/password Diaspora uses to access your MySQL database. Just enter username/password used for the test, development, and production databases. I used the same account for each one, because I’m risky I guess. Obviously the user account needs to be created before or at this stage, unless you just used root. But that’s probably I bad idea, which is why I went ahead and created a new user account for Diaspora purposes.

With the database information all properly configured, it’s time to create the databases and tables. Luckily Diaspora automates this, and initializes the databases with the following code:

bundle exec rake db:create
bundle exec rake db:migrate

Of course, this is all works theoretically and there must not be many people struggling with this step, otherwise there would be some sort of warning. Despite that, this is the first instance of something going wrong.

Diaspora uses three databases, one for each stage of development. For whatever reason, the diaspora_production table was never created. I didn’t discover this until much later, as prior to my launching my pod into the internet, Diaspora used the first two databases.

The fix was simple enough; I simply copied diaspora_test and named the copy diaspora_production. Overall, this was the easiest obstacle to overcome.

===Running cha0sPod (First Attempt)===

Now, prior to deciding to run it on my Apache server, I attempted to run the server using the default configuration using thin. To do this, run the code:

./script/server

while I was able to access my local instance, I was unable to access it neither through the local area network nor over the internet. Eventually I figured out that it was because I wasn’t running it as root [http://xkcd.com/149/]. The command to get it running is thus:

sudo ./script/server

And it appeared to work. At least, the command line showed no errors. However, accessing through the LAN and WAN resulted in a blank page being rendered client-side, and an error I couldn’t really find much documentation on. In search of a solution, I ventured beyond the basic setup page, and found one detailing how a Diaspora instance can be run through Apache[https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Installing-on-Ubuntu-Apache]. Since I already had a server set up, I decided to try this option out.

===Attaching Pod to Apache===

As I already have an Apache server set up, the first step to attaching my Diaspora instance to my Apache server is to install the passenger module. The passenger module allows Apache to serve Ruby on Rails applications, such as Diaspora. The code to install passenger is as follows:
gem install passenger

passenger-install-apache2-module

The guide says to load the module into Apache Config, but it did this automatically for me, so I just skipped that step.

All that’s left to do is create a new virtual host for the Diaspora instance, which is fairly simple. I simply used the default Apache virtual host file and changed it to reflect this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot "/var/diaspora/public"
<Directory "/var/diaspora/public">
Allow from all
AllowOverride None
Options -MultiViews
</Directory>

And then ran the following code:

sudo a2dissite 000-default
sudo a2ensite default
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

To activate my Diaspora server. This is of course when the fact that diaspora_production didn’t actually exist came to light, but the problem was solved easily using the method described earlier. And thus, cha0sPod was online.

==Managing The Pod==
After setting up the pod, there are additional options available to the administrator. Much of Diaspora is automated, so this section is mostly about managing the pod as a stand-alone server.

===Customizing The Pod===
An interesting part of Diaspora is that each pod is an independent system, and so a user's experience may differ greatly from one pod to another. For instance, cha0sPod does not currently support certain features that the major pods do, such as finding friends and posting to a Facebook account.

Besides services, each page (referred to as a view) may be customized visually using the HAML markup language. I had never heard of this mark-up language before this point, and so opted not to mess with the website pages, with the exception of my welcome page.

===Managing Sign Ups===
There are two distinct classes of pods: public and private. Public pods allow anyone to go to their website and sign up for an account, while private pods requires an invitation. This can be set in the "config/app_config.yml" file, which of course would require a server restart afterwards. cha0sPod is a private pod, and will remain in this state as it is mainly for personal use.

==Using Diaspora As A Client==
Diaspora is still in it's early stages of testing, being in an open "Alpha" stage currently, so it's understandable that things aren't going to work perfectly. I created two user accounts to test the capabilities of Diaspora as a sort of messenger between two contacts. These two accounts are:

*cha0s: Thomas McMahon
*adm1n: Aurora Rhys

It's important to note that user accounts are local to a pod, so the same username can be used across multiple pods. A global username is created by appending the domain name to the username (i.e. cha0s@cha0sNet.com).

My testing of the Diaspora service involved four stages:

===Stage One: Communication Within Established Pod===
As a sort of control test, I registered cha0s and adm1n as users on an already established server: www.poddery.com. The purpose of this test was to observe the communication between two users within the same pod, which has a reputation for being reliable. The sequence of events were as follows:
#cha0s searches for "Aurora Rhys" and finds her profile page.
#cha0s adds Aurora to his "Work" aspect.
#adm1n receives a notification that "Thomas McMahon" has requested to add her. adm1n adds Thomas to her "Work" aspect.
#cha0s posts "Hello." to his "Work" aspect.
#adm1n sees salutation, and responds.
#cha0s receives response.

As expected, there were no problems communicating within the same pod. The next test was to determine if cha0sPod is capable of the same interaction.

===Stage Two: Communication Within cha0sPod===
This test more or less mirrored the first test, except executed on the cha0sPod server. The purpose of this test was to ensure cha0sPod behaved normally with internal communication when compared to an established server. The results of the test were the same as above, showing that cha0sPod could achieve internal communication between two users.

===Stage Three: Communication Between Two Established Pods===
To test how well pods are able to communicate with each other, I registered adm1n on a different pod: the.diasperse.com. By testing the communication between two established pods, I would be able to compare how well my pod is able to communicate in contrast. The sequence of events were as follows:
#cha0s searches for "Aurora Rhys", but cannot find the one on diasperse.com
#adm1n logs out of diasperse.com, and logs back in.
#cha0s is now able to see Aurora Rhys, and adds her to his "Family" aspect.
#adm1n receives a notification that "Thomas McMahon" has requested to add her. adm1n adds Thomas to her "Family" aspect.
#cha0s posts "Hello." to his "Family" aspect.
#adm1n does not receive message.
#adm1n posts "Hello?" to her "Family" aspect.
#cha0s does not receive message.

As you can see from above, there was a failure to communicate between the two pods. The strange part is that cha0s was able to find adm1n, but unable to receive messages from her. Even after logging in and out, there were no messages. Obviously, this didn't bode well for cha0sPod.

===Stage Four: Communication Between cha0sPod and Established Pod===
The final test I ran was to see if cha0sPod would be able to communicate with an established pod. To do this, I had cha0s (logged in to the cha0sPod) search for adm1n (logged in to the poddery pod). cha0s was able to find adm1n, but like above, was unable to do anything more than that.

===Results===
As far as communication goes, it appears as though Diaspora may be in a temporary rough patch. However, there are many reports of successful pod-to-pod communications online, so it's possibly just a recent bug that needs to be fixed, or else an issue with pods running different versions.

I will continue testing once the official cha0sPod is established on a remote server, and hopefully the communication issue is solved by then. But right now I would recommend waiting before switching from Facebook to Diaspora, unless you enjoy submitting bug reports.

==Conclusion==

===Personal Review===
Diaspora aims to create a social network that prioritizes privacy, and it does just that. Through the usage of servers owned by the clients, and the concept of aspects, information posted can only be accessed by the users it's intended for. The Diaspora interface abstracts the individual pods so as to appear as a single system successfully, though there are major bugs that prevent the Diaspora from being used as a legitimate social network at this point in time. These results are hardly surprising, given that Diaspora is still in its "Alpha" stage of testing.

Diaspora has shown a lot of promise from my usage of it, and will only get better as more services are integrated into it. Overall, this experience has been a positive one, even though there were a few difficulties trying to get the server to run, and I plan on creating a legitimate pod on a remote server for my personal usage.

===Future Work===
As far as future plans go, the wiki suggests that the main changes that are occurring at the moment involve securing messages sent between pods. Beyond that, launching Diaspora as a full-fledged social network competitor would be the ultimate goal.

==References==

Give references in proper form (not just URLs if possible, give dates of access).