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in some areas they've exceeded the wildest dreams of all the dictators and tyrannies

"In some ways", maybe — because of the technology advances. But not in the killing/imprisoning part.

As for the rest, I remind you of the Godwin's Law once again... Farewell.

They think that because it is the accepted standard. Read this FAQ which Wiki linked me to. I found it quite interesting and certainly learned a couple things. I particularly like the Six Degrees of Godwin game that is mentioned in there. May have to trot it out if I get bored- it'll be a gas!

Because News Service Europe stores the infringing posts and makes them available. The judge has to honor the law and the company has to follow it not some self appointed RFC "cancel" procedure that may or may not work. Why is it that whenever a downloader gets cought people say: go for the hosters, when a hoster gets cought go for the provider when a provider ....

An enormous FAQ on RFC cancel, cancel bots, forged cancels, cancel wars, etc. can be found here:
http://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/faqs/cancel/

Unfortunately, the ability to cancel someone else's post is just too much power, so that privilege is not freely given out. Chances are, this hoster has probably turned it off. Maybe just turning it back on would be considered "following the judges orders", but it would open a lot of new problems.

A better way to fight this is using Mere Conduit, which is similar to the Safe Harbor provisions we have in the DMCA.

The original Tron was pretty poor *as a movie*, but nevertheless I enjoyed it, and continue to enjoy it today. What it really came down to, though, was that the movie was *extremely* metaphorical, and that those metaphors made sense in the context of computing at the time. (And in fact those metaphors hold up today, which is what makes the movie so much fun to watch today.)

The new Tron: Legacy didn't actually try to play with metaphors. It used the old ones from time to time, and it threw in some Unix and open-source allusions here and there (inappropriately, I might add), but other than that it just spent its effort on making things look pretty.

As a side-note: my reading of the movie is that the central theme of the movie is that open-source is good, but that the GPL is bad. And Clu is Richard Stallman. My review (which doesn't go into that in detail, admittedly) is here.

Do crabs stick to magnet?

Well if you count all the abuse the people there suffer, it's quite easy actually.

Please, count. Let's see them...

The US is going down the bad road in small steps

Germany's "bad road" ended with genocide (its militarism was nothing new, surpassed before and after). Please, indicate, which nation/race is under threat of genocide at the hands of the US. And if you can't — apologize.

But hey, you think I'm a moron

Nothing personal, dear — it is the Godwin's Law.

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

That's it.

BY the way, the person that calls Godwin's law is the looser.

http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/faqs/godwin.html

Now, the posted did not qualify as a candidate for Godwin's law

Saying:
"People who want gun control as as bad as Hitler." Does warrant an invocation of the law
"Hitler took gun's away from people." does not(In most contexts)

"It's no secret that part of Google's plan for world domination is to replace eBay, which involves selling products via Google Base and paying for them using Google Checkout. However, Google isn't yet powerful enough to launch the expected blitzkrieg, so the two companies maintain friendly relations under what's been compared to the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact signed by Von Ribbentrop for Germany and Stalin"

Who said that amateurism on the Internet was leading to the death of real journalisim ..

Godwins Lawbr>
-- br>
"we both made shells for the Nazis, but mine worked, dammit!", C. Montgomery Burns

Hey, don't forget speedbump, or Grubor.

Hey, don't forget speedbump, or Grubor.

The Kook of the Month [mind your eyes at that site] award ought to be revived...

You seem to be saying that because it's very easy to make a flawed comparison with fascist states of the past, that we shouldn't talk about whether the US is now or is becoming a fascist state.

I'm just refreshing/expanding the arguments behind Godwin's Law for the uninitiated (Since September never ended)...

You could be arguing that the actual comparisons made on this thread are faulty and attempting to paint the US as a genocidal state, but I haven't seen that.

I argue, that associating a target of the name-calling with the gross misdeeds of Fascists is the only reason to bring up such comparisons — they have no other purpose. From Tim Skirvin's excellent write-up on Godwin's Law:

In case your head has been buried in the sand for the last sixty years or so, the Nazis were a German political party led by Adolf Hitler that slaughtered upwards of ten million people that didn't meet their standards of "ethnic purity" and set off to conquer Europe and the world in World War II. They are generally considered the most evil group of people to live in modern times, and to compare something or someone to them is usually considered the gravest insult imaginable.

As a Usenet discussion gets longer it tends to get more heated; as more heat enters the discussion, tensions get higher and people start to insult each other over anything they can think of. Godwin's Law merely notes that, eventually, those tensions eventually cause someone to find the worst insults that come to mind - which will almost always include a Nazi comparison.

Let me expand upon the nice reference to Godwin's Law that some AC referenced...

Godwin's Law:
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

So what? Perhaps I should have included examples such as China, North Korea, the former USSR, and a host of other nations where the government does/would routinely trample the rights and and deny the liberties of its subjects ... whenever it suited the government in question to do so.

The problem is that none of the examples I can think of involves a government that was once known for protecting the rights of the People and promoting their liberties while at the same time defining those rights and liberties broadly and in a central (legal) document (e.g., a constitution). As far as I know, Germany never has been a nation that civil libertarians pointed to with pride as they used it for an example of how things should be done. The U.S. was once such a shining example. The situation has decayed to the point where the U.S. government can only be described as being somewhat less oppressive overall than that of any other major world power.

An observation that is very relevent to this forum is the way that government at all levels is rapidly adopting the latest tech to benefit itself, at the expense of the people it is supposed to serve. Germany was well known for using new tech for all the wrong reasons.

People have been crying, "Godwin's Law!", to stifle conversations (both good and bad) for many years, since back when UseNet and FidoNet were the major online forums -- I know, I've been participating in such forums since about a decade before Godwin made his insightful comment. To find out more about Godwin's Law and how to avoid getting squelched by its mere invocation, see The Godwin's Law FAQ.

First post and it's already Godwin time! Is this a record?

Relegating their set of newsgroups under comp.* (one of the Big 8 hierarchies) would render it subject to their newsgroup creation procedures which involves an eleborate public voting process. That is fine for public newsgroups but not appropriate for a set of groups belonging to and managed by a specific organization.

Essentially these are simply local newsgroups that the Mozilla organization has chosen to distribute around the net. They could have started web forums but this way you can read their groups with your local newsreader instead.

Evilness and stupidness are not mutually exclusive. The infamous Idi Amin comes to mind. Just look at the vicious murderers in prison with IQs below 85.

Until you are ready to accuse Bush of plotting to intentionally kill a few million civilians, you should leave Hitler alone.

See Tim Skirvin's excellent commentary.

A good example is Bush'e reply recently to the number of civilian killed in Iraq.

RTTF. And shame on Slashdot for not allowing people to killfile threads.

The key similarities between Bush and Hitler are that both are fierce nationalists pushing agendas that include aggressive foreign policies and a reduction in civil rights.

Hitler was a fierce racist, not just nationalist. Bush obviously has no problems with Americans of any race -- just look at his administration. You can't dismiss Rice, Gonzales, Powell, Alito as "uncle toms". There is no nationalism as in "America for Americans" either -- if anything, Bush is blasted by dimwits from Left and Right for being too easy on the immigrants (legal and otherwise).

And then, of course, there is Godwin's Law. In short, you may truly hate George W. Bush, but he is not sending (nor would like to send) millions of innocent people to gas chambers. To compare someone to Hitler, the accusation must of that kind of gravity.

"You don't have the hipness down, but you've certainly shown the ability to not say anything substantiative."

Were that actually true, you would have mistaken me for one of your own. Instead, you felt a compelling need to single me out from the typical slashdot crowd (which you describe perfectly in your reply).

"I find your behavior bizarre."

Likewise, juveniles find the behavior of seasoned adults odd, too.

"...and congratulate yourself on being so much more informed than the Slashdot masses."

That is always cause for celebration, though I can understand you being a bit jealous.

"...and it would be the single most informative post in this entire story."

I don't generally set my sights so low. Just about anything that's thought out qualifies as the most informative post on slashdot... and posts like that are truly rare. That's why I felt it was time to speak up and give you boys a treat.

"...and you certainly haven't given me enough to make me want to buy a Lexis/Nexis subscription."

What type of vehicle you choose to drive is immaterial to this discussion. If you want to impress someone, how about sticking to the topic at hand and saying something informative.

"I remember a guy from Basic Training who reminds me of you. Kept claiming that he'd been a sergeant before, and was just re-enlisting. He never convinced me either."

That sounds very relevant... thank you for sharing. I recall this beggar who kept insisting he was Jesus Christ. We scorned and ridiculed him, spat on him and turned him away. It turns out He was Jesus Christ, and we foolishly acted just like you. There's a lesson to be learned in that story, my son... and I hope some day you'll learn the true lesson (as opposed to what you so foolishly think the lesson was).

http://www.killfile.org/~daemons/kotm/hls.html
and the more informative
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.usenet.kooks/br owse_thread/thread/35cc7cddab433421/547781a96d875f 9c?lnk=st&q=Hook+line+sinker+lewis&rnum=11&hl=en#5 47781a96d875f9c
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.scient ology/browse_thread/thread/24d189321502a4ee/0ae364 01a863961b?lnk=st&q=Hook+line+sinker+lewis&rnum=30 &hl=en#0ae36401a863961b

Let that be your final lesson. And so it is ordered, and so it shall be.

AFAIK he hasn't done anything serious enough to warrant losing his license permanently.

What the hell does he have to do? Attack the opposing counsel in open court?

My favorite part of this: on page two, they talk of how Cane Toads can be used to make zombies.

I appreciate Cane Toads, if you hadn't guessed.

                                                - Tim Skirvin

L. Detweiler's entry in Net.Legends.FAQ

L. Detweiler (you are all TENTACLES of the CYPHERpunk anarchoSYNDICALIST
pseudospoofing CONSPIRACY; everyone who contacts me via post or email is a
tentacle of a single Medusa):
All information relevant has been deleted (probably by the cypherpunk
pseudospoofers); ask around - old-timers can tell you about him, through
"safe" avenues (like email). Warning: attempting to disillusion him of
his theories usually results in threatening mail and getting incorporated
into said theories. Handle With Extreme Care. Appeared occasionally on
the news.* hierarchy (for instance, news.admin.policy), crossposted to hell
and back. Author of the Internet Anonymity FAQ and the InterNet Writer Resource
Guide, pre-legendary status... first name apparently Lawrence or Larry.
Contrib. post:
>I think this article was some sort of satire but I fell asleep on
>the spacebar and, ya know, I just don't get it. Anyone care to boil it
>down to a sentence or two?
Yes. L. Detweiler, the guy who posts as an12070, and who also posts
(now less frequently) under his own account
"ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu", is a paranoid psychotic (or
someone doing a good parody of one) who believes there is a nationwide
conspiracy out to get him, said conspiracy consisting of almost every
prominent cryptographer on the net. He periodically rants against this
conspiracy. He makes lots of extremely bizarre claims, such as stating
that every person posting articles saying he's nuts is in fact a
pseudonym of the great conpiratorial group. He's pretty much
ignorable, although he has sent death threats to a large number of
people that some have taken seriously.
--
...This *may* all be a "front"; he comes across as relatively sane in
email (just don't mention Nick Szabo or Tim C. May...). There's really no
way to tell, which may actually be the point of all this... Was peculiarly
insistent on wanting to become the poster of *this* FAQ as well (to the
point of my having to tell the news.answers team "Don't approve this unless I
send it to you"...). Posted as ld231782@<various>.lance.colostate.edu (L.
Detweiler) and an12070@anon.penet.fi (various constantly-changing identities)
- this last address has been disabled by the anon server's sysadmin, and was
been proven to be him on several different occasions, although he was hiding
it fiercely for a time... his Colorado address has gone also (2/94), according
to the sysadmin; this impending loss apparently prompted the Blacknet notices.
He's not been seen since from that address - but beware: anyone who "talk"s
you may actually be either Detweiler or a Tentacle incognito... MUAaahahaaa!!!
The person posting to (among other places) news.admin.* as tmp@netcom.com is,
if not this entity, making a good run at attempting to imitate Detweiler
(posting to all the same old places, antagonizing Tim May, having S. Boxx and
Blacknet show up in tmp@'s constantly-changing .sigs, assuming a dizzying
variety of identities...) - but with somewhat better material this time
around... and given Detweiler's bee-in-the-bonnet, impersonating him
succe

U.S. government (Calmly): We just need some log files from you.

Rackspace: Oh wow!!! We will damage our reputation by giving you far more than you asked!!! Our customer's trust means nothing to us!

This was not even the dreaded "Feds", he peed his pants over -- just a local police department, which never even contacted me. Evidently, customer loyalty is overrated...

Part of the reason South Park got a contract and had such good buzz was because the short "Spirit of Christmas" was widely spread around via tape and Internet. I and most of my hipster Internet friends new about South Park before it ever aired.

If he's like most people, he doesn't earn $1000000000 a year. If he's like most HDTV owners, he probably earns $50K, and still spent too much on television, hasn't maxed out his 401K, IRA or savings. Hopefully he didn't put it on his creditcard.

You seem more like a jealous fuck, then anything else.

I call this the GodTVWin's law: If you complain about consumerism, your opponent tries to make you appear jealous as an attempt to end the conversation. It's like Godwin's law.

Although, if he does make $1,000,000,000 , then I am jealous. I just want a small piece of that.

"Latino" is somehow a disagreeable word for you due to its ethnic generality, yet you feel comfortable using terms like "gringo" and "white."

Here's Voz de Aztlan: Anti-semitism and embracing terrorism and hate. And here's the MEChA "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán," which among other things claims that the southwestern US "belongs... not to the foreign Europeans," and declares, "Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada." Care to translate that for us - and explain how it's not racist?

I nor do I support the Republican Party

And, by the way, by mentioning "Mein Kampf," you have triggered Godwin's Law. Buh-bye.

6. "Hitler!" Ha! The thread is over!

Nope, doesn't work that way. Not only is it wrong to say that a
thread is over when Godwin's Law is invoked anyway (Usenet threads
virtually always outlive their usefulness), but long ago a corollary to
the Law was proposed and accepted by Taki "Quirk" Kogama (quirk@swcp.com):

Quirk's Exception: Intentional invocation of this so-called
"Nazi Clause" is ineffectual.

Sorry, folks. Nice try, though.

B1FF (HEY D00DZ!1!! THIS IZ K()()L!!1!!):
extremely unorthodox (but somewhat consistent, and *easily* mimickable)
typography in his posts (ALL CAPS, I->1, O->0, E->3, etc.) "K00L, DUD3Z!",
plus much surfer-type slang. B1FF posts from a Commodore C-64, and is a Kool
Dude who Rilly Knows Net.Stuff. Has many imitators. Remembered semi-fondly by
millions. Had a girlfriend, Buffy (tee-hee! :-) :-) *giggle*! :-) :-) ),
[or possibly Muffy; rumors are flying that Muffy has been killed by kibologists
- I would remind people that Rumors are Treason and make The Computer unHappy;
have a Nice Day, Citizen...] who would probably blow Phil Gustafson's diodes
permanently were she to appear on afu... B1FF is *not* Kibo, nor is Kibo B1FF.
Nu-uh. Nope. B1FF was last seen proclaiming his new account, b1ff@aol.com (an
obvious forgery, of course - B1FF has no minuscules) and before that, his
BIFFSTER@DELPHI.COM account (and before *that* on news.groups, quickly
followed by buffy).

However with all the terrorism and patriotism nowdays, peasants can't afford to not cooperate, "just in case" you got blamed for being terrorist or unpatriotic.

Back in the "good old days" I had the nerve (or the foolishness) to play with the ire of a certain Kook of the Month. The man called his local police department (in Colorado) and the police department of my then-ISP. The cops never contacted me, but they did call the ISP.

The owner -- Bob Carp (spit), also of TheCIA.net -- left me a frantic voice message and did not even let me download my files -- so scolding was the urine running down his legs.

This was all in 1996, when Bush was in Texas, and Clinton was running the country... Oops.

• The Net Legends FAQ
  
• The Happynet Manifesto
  
• The New Hacker's Dictionary
  
• The alt.sex.hello-kitty FAQ

6. "Hitler!" Ha! The thread is over!

Nope, doesn't work that way. Not only is it wrong to say that a thread is over when Godwin's Law is invoked anyway
(Usenet threads virtually always outlive their usefulness), but long ago a corollary to the Law was proposed and accepted
by Taki "Quirk" Kogama (quirk@swcp.com):

Quirk's Exception: Intentional invocation of this so-called "Nazi Clause" is ineffectual.

Sorry, folks. Nice try, though.

This Gestapo crap should not be tolerated.

Wow- the 2nd post already enacted Godwin's Law! This thread is over too soon.

Well, the nazis will hate this one for sure.

I think this is the fastest invocation of Godwin's Law on /. ever. One post!

Yes

Actually I thought Hipcrime had been at work (clicky)..

Oh, and if you transfer a domain from another registrar to them (like I did from 000domains), they charge $8 for the transfer, but kick in another year

Hmmm...unless they added *2* years to the previous expiration date, then they weren't doing anything special.

*Whenever* you transfer a domain name to another registrar, the expiration date is automatically extended by another year. So basically you're getting a $2 incentive to transfer to them from another registrar. The added year is actually a requirement.

For those of you who are interested in RegisterFly but don't want to line the pockets of some anonymous coward, you can access RegisterFly here. I wouldn't recommend it, though, as it seems people have had problems, especially with their hosting.

Your idea of running fake open proxies for spammers to discover and 'abuse' is not new. There is already software for this purpose. Search for 'proxy honeypot' or 'proxypot' in Google.

In fact, Ronald F. Guilmette who ran the monkeys.com anti-spam website and open proxy blocklist and who was forced to shut down due to DDoS-attacks also ran an extensive network of proxypots to unconver those criminal spammer gangs who regularly abuse open proxies and also to uncover the rouge ISPs who host these criminals and who let the proxy hijackers to be connected.

Mr. Guilmette posted several times to the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup (charter) compiled lists of the top proxy-abuse allowing ISPs and extensive analyses of the proxy-hijackers' operations (examples here, here, here, here and here). This anti-spam work was partly very fruitful, resulting in several ISPs to be outed as spammer-friendly and also being forced to clean up their act.

I call "Godwin's Law", albeit improperly, you lose.

I can say that I'm a toaster all day long, but that doesn't make me a toster. The AC below is correct--no mainstream Christian religion recognizes Mormonism as "Christian". The teachings of Mormonism do not coincide with, nor can they be reconciled with, the teachings of Christianity.

I could cite examples, and this discussion could spiral further and further off-topic until it runs afoul of Godwin's Law, or we can just agree to disagree :-)

In case you're interested, I've also got a page up of Neal Stephenson's short work, fiction and non-fiction.
BTW, this book is the first book of three in Baroque Cycle, and they'll be released at six month intervals. So says HarperCollins.

Completely OT (like the thread...), but anyone remember Godwin's Law?

"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

When I read that years ago, it really got me thinking. Here's something that was born on Usenet but indeed it does seem to hold true to real life as a natural law. Though this particular discussion is not a Usenet example, it is a discussion. Anyone notice consistant examples of this being demonstrated IRL?

Fascinating.

At long last, maybe Archimedes Plutonium will get the attention he deserves for his brilliant theories explaining how the entire universe is really a single atom of plutonium.

001 A picture introduction to the ONE ATOM PLUTONIUM EVERYTHING UNIVERSE, 231PU ATOM TOTALITY theory

Excerpt follows:

Note that the start of this website is the Atom Totality theory and the end of this website is sci.religion which is apt, for think of the website rankings not as linear but as a circle coming back around. So we start with the hard core most general of all sciences and the most easily verified of all sciences-- physics and like a circle we come around to the worship of physics in sci.religion. Below in chemistry I have a circular periodic table, so think of the rankings on this website as sci.physics at the top and coming full circle back around is sci.religion which is basically the worship of physics since God is 231Pu and the best bible is the best most up-to-date physics textbook.

• Google Groups: NANAS
• Charter
• Newsgroup Public Key
• nana.* Homepage

• Google Groups: NANAS
• Charter
• Newsgroup Public Key
• nana.* Homepage

Well, there is already a pretty large Email and USENET Spam archive at the NANAS (news.admin.net-abuse.sightings) newsgroup.

You can check the Google Groups archive

You can read the NANAS charter at http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/nana/charter/nan as.html

...no law without exceptions and additions and... here's the FAQ: http://www.killfile.org/faqs/godwin.html

Racism and Anti-Semitism in Europe? Fascism?

You are coming perilously close to invoking Godwin's Law

This guys idea would essentially ruin the Carnivore project.

OK, assuming for a moment the judge wouldn't simply grant the FBI permission to open the entire vault, this idea totally misses the point of Carnivore. Carnivore is a box that sits on the ISP's network and snoops the traffic, looking for whatever the FBI wants. It would sit on the network right next to the "vault" and see the exact same traffic the "vault" sees; nothing the "vault" does would hid anything from the Carnivore box. Get it?

THIS IDEA WILL NOT WORK.

Ah, Dartmouth, home of Usenet's greatest genius. Must be the water.

And a good place to remind yourself that your personal usenet kook isn't as kooky as he/she could be ...

John Grubor

ThomasW540

Michael Falkner

Terri DiDisto

Brandy Alexandre - Tim Skirvin (tskirvin@killfile.org)

And a good place to remind yourself that your personal usenet kook isn't as kooky as he/she could be ...

John Grubor

ThomasW540

Michael Falkner

Terri DiDisto

Brandy Alexandre - Tim Skirvin (tskirvin@killfile.org)