SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 9 submissions in the queue.
SoylentNews
A ZDNet story explains that Niagarafiles, renamed as NiFi, will be released under the Apache license. The tool, which is conceptually derived from flow-based programming, is used for automating data flows across multiple networks, even where data formats and protocols differ.
The project's lead developer, Joseph Witt, said the NSA took great pains to develop the tool in a way that would eventually allow the agency to release its source code.
"From its inception, NiFi was developed with an open source philosophy in mind and with the hopes of eventually being truly open sourced," Witt explained.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The NSA Will Release 'Niagarafiles' Data Analysis Tool as Open Source
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 31 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @03:36PM
Why? Are you one of those people who'll pass up cutting-edge medical therapies for the homeopathic stuff because you just have a better feel about "natural" remedies?
Do you have any idea how big the NSA is, and all the kinds of research that goes on there? Are you familiar with the way large organizations operate, and in particular how large research organizations operate? At a typical college or university, the chemistry department has little to no idea what the hell the sociology department is doing, let alone the geology department. You should know that Dean Wormer doesn't want to, nor is able to, inject himself into all the thousands of research programs that are going on.
Whatever floats your boat. This is, after all, the age of being proud of one's ignorance in science and technology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @03:40PM
Well, this is a tool which is controlling data flows over multiple networks. Wouldn't you be suspicious that one of the networks the data flows to might be the NSA's network?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @04:00PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_%28computing%29 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday November 26 2014, @04:02PM
That's a terrible analogy. It is based on the assertion that the NSA's stuff is gold, and everything else is quackery.
A better analogy would one that presents the NSA software as something has great technical qualities (ignoring all moral issues), but at the same time, because of who the author is, there is a real possibility that using it is risky, even potentially fatally risky. Finally, the issue being solved is not a hypercritical issue, it is neat and all that, but life will go on with out it.
So, the new and improved medical analogy would be:
This is more like you have a cold, call up your doctor's office to get an appointment on a soon-ish basis, and they tell you that the only doctor who can see you is Dr. Josef Mengele. You decide against taking the appointment, get some over the counter cough syrup at a supermarket, and just stick it out, because the cure could be far, far worse than the disease.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @05:28PM
No, your analogy is just as poor. You're assuming there is only one author. You're arguing that you'll throw out entire treatment approaches, or whole hospital systems, because you don't trust the doctors in the pediatrics wing of a particular hospital. I think the university analogy is entirely appropriate. I wouldn't discount, or worse, claim immoral the materials science research at MIT because of racist or sexist proclamations coming out of some of the liberal arts professors.
Again, many people seem to have really basic misunderstandings of many issues on this topic. If you are an American, then clearly you are an immoral POS who wants to spy on my personal business. You mean I cannot broad-brush you that way? You can't do that to an organization like the NSA, or NIH, or the University of California system, or Microsoft, or IBM, etc. What you get with the NSA issue is that it allows people to paint a circle of morality around themselves on this topic such that they can cast aspersions at anything on the other side of the line. It satisfies a basic human desire to make one feel good about themselves by putting the person next to them down, in much the same way that anti-abortionists act, or the interest people have in negative gossip, and here we can shit all over the thousands of people that work at that organization including the ones doing basic research, the summer students, the secretaries, etc. At one level I understand the reason people act that way, but ultimately I find it to be a very small-minded and ignorant way to live one's life, and I really question their critical thinking abilities.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday November 26 2014, @06:37PM
Then there's the fucking Nazi principle. Godwin be damned.
"I mean, hey! The Nazis did good research! We can't let is just sit there unused, now they've lost, can we?" Paperclip asshats.
NO! You don't use Nazi shit, on principle. That's defining the qualities of your own humanity. You don't use NSA shit, wherever consciously possible. On principle.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by tynin on Wednesday November 26 2014, @06:59PM
The Nazi Principle sounds like one stern SOB.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday November 28 2014, @01:58AM
That's "principal" -- 20 lashes!!!!!
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday November 26 2014, @07:11PM
Using Nazi research is/was acceptable except for knowledge that was gained at the expense of someone else. Experimenting on other living humans as the big one. There were two arguments involved. Forbidding the use of that research creates little incentive for anyone to do that kind of research again. Not using that research means that all those people died horribly for nothing. Both sides have merit. Ignoring Nazi research on rockets, jets, and airplanes would be silly. What is unethical about better understanding rockets by studying Nazi engineering? Learning how to construct and launch rockets doesn't turn you into a Nazi or anything.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday November 26 2014, @08:16PM
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?"
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday November 26 2014, @09:31PM
Which was said by an actual Nazi. Has studying the V2 made the rest of the world into Nazis with that mindset? No.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday November 26 2014, @10:51PM
Actually, it was sung by a jew making fun of a Nazi. Unless...
you don't mean...
Tom Lehrer is a Nazi? This is news to me. It's probably news to him too; somebody should let the guy know!
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday November 26 2014, @10:53PM
lol, nice. Never knew it wasn't an actual quote attributed to Braun.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by itn on Thursday November 27 2014, @12:37AM
The first one might be a pretty flawed argument. The experiments in question were done for the purpose of war. Someone who's willing to freeze people to death, in order to wage a war more efficiently, surely isn't that concerned about citations. More importantly, his leaders aren't. Besides, after you win the war, you get to write the history.
Granted, this principle would not apply only to war, so I think there's some merit. But it will never stop something like the Nazi experiments.
It's gruesome but I think there's only one question to ask: Will using the results make the society (or humankind) better or worse?
Maybe the fact that the research and the results were used for killing a lot of people (far more than died in the hypothermia or pressure chamber experiments)?
(Score: 1) by monster on Thursday November 27 2014, @02:46PM
I disagree to the "Using Nazi research is/was acceptable except for knowledge that was gained at the expense of someone else." part.
Knowledge is just that, it's neither bad nor good by itself. The Nazis did horrendous misdeeds, and are justly abhorred for that, but that doesn't mean that the insights they got in the process should be rejected or forgotten. Somehow, the argument is similar to "If a mobster gives money to charity, should the charity reject the money, even if there are no strings attached to it?"
As you said, using knowledge acquired by the Nazis doesn't turn you into one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @07:52PM
Outstanding. This reply couldn't be a better example of the GP post. So full of broad brushing and moral absolutionism that you just gotta love the caricature it makes. It simply has to be a post intending to be ironic.