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Sysadmins Restore Iraqi ISP
Hen3ry writes "Brian McWilliams of Wired News reports on the dedicated staff of Iraq's State Company for Internet Services, or SCIS, and how they built, maintained, and rebuilt Internet access before, during, and after the war. Ba'ath Party loyalists still run SCIS but their dedicated employees continue to press on. Fascinating stuff about how one sysadmin managed to keep the country online up until a US missle struck the roof of the Ministry of Information building."
Why'd they do that? Saddam will only wind up beheading the sysadmins who did it when he gets back from Wal-Mart, picking up this week's armament.
Mom says my
pity about law and order.
Great pirorities, guys.
I'm not Seth.
"the ISP has not been restored, and its owners are committing suicide on the walls of Baghdad. I will take you there to show you. In ONE HOUR."
I thought it was standard sysadmin practice to stop DOS missle attacks.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
More recent intelligence suggests that the explosion was actually the resulted of an SCIS server reacting violently to being /.'d. US military experts are now considering trying to harness the power of slashdot to use as a weapon against terrorists.
You're absolutely right.
Mom says my
ALL YOUR ISP are Belong to US. good stuff, hopefully they can stop the continued attacks on US forces and restore order in general, but it's nice that Iraqis will soon be able to surf for pr0n again.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Fascinating stuff about how one sysadmin managed to keep the country online up until a US missle struck the roof of the Ministry of Information building.
The RIAA must have found out they were pirating music...
(come on, it was either that or a Bill Gates finding out about a Linux server)
I don't know about anyone else, but I want to find out how I can get a ".iq" domain...
If credit cards aren't accepted, I'm sure I could find a camel to trade, somewhere around here.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I read the article and it said they did go around the UN embargo to get the equipment, but my question is who sold them the gear?
I'm not trying to troll or anything, I'm really interested in this paradox.
There were embargos put on Iraq following the war from the UN.
Everyone violates the embargos.
US goes around the UN.
Everyone bitches about the US.
No one bitches about the people who broke the UN embargo and thumbed thier noses at International Law.
As soon as they're available, I suspect that a lot of people will want to register numeric .iq domains. 180.IQ will probably be the first to go.
...or is the acronym too close to SCSI? I read therough the article and think "that made no sense whatsoever" so I go back just to notice it sais SCIS instead of SCSI.
I think this might be what Sen Hatch has in mind for copyright violators.
.02
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
To parent poster: RTFA.
US officals are NOT participating.
It seems telling that the first serious poster ends up being clueless and making no sense.
I guess all we can handle is jokes and idiocy.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It would appear that the sysadmins literally poured blood, sweat, and tears into keeping the ISP up and running under Hussein. Not to mention going way above the "call of duty" to make certain that something of the equipment survived missle attacks, fires, and looting.
The real point here is that contact with the outside world is an extremely valuable commodity to these people, and something that we in the Western nations take horribly for granted. Think of Iraqi expatriates in other parts of the globe who don't know if relatives are alive or dead. Or, in the interest of balancing out FoxNews' reporting, a hypothetical Iraqi blogger can now give the outside world a better picture of what's going on in the country. I think that this is a positive step towards rebuilding. Yes, it's an odd, sideways step, given the other needs. But when you consider just how much emotional investment the sysadmins had in this project, their priorities are entirely understandable.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
Well they aren't that effective against a DDOS by missiles. Prehaps they need to upgrade :)
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Maybe they're paying that admin what he's worth now! --Sigless and clueless
End of Line.
Yeah, this is what's important in Iraq today: Connectivity.
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
I was merely assuming (blindly) that MAJ wanted to say since anarchy and rioting is still the general rule in Iraq, maybe other things might be a bit more important than restoring Joe Iraqi's ability to check his Yahoo mail.
But that's a ridiculous idea; I'm an idiot.
Mom says my
nah...
"Unlike in the past, SCIS now allows customers to use online chat services, and doesn't block any Web destinations aside from pornography sites. "
Sorry to ruin your joke...
way to never turn down a chance to show your contempt for conservatives
in the interest of balancing out FoxNews' reporting
So if you're the balance for Fox, who is the balance for CNN?
You see, the success of Fox is directly tied to the rise of CNN and their particular flavor of the truth. Bemoan them all you want, but when you say that Fox needs a balance, instead of realizing that they are the balance, you come across like an idealogue.
Not so much electronic connectivity, but good old human communication. Iraq needs a free press among other things as well.
Well, at least you have the courage to admit it.
So, how many sysadmins do you know that would be good riot cops?
Sending US soldiers to put up fiber would be a little weird if crime is rampant; however, if a bunch of specialists want to do their part, let 'em - that's what your parent is saying.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
" instead of realizing that they are the balance, you come across like an idealogue."
Anybody who defends fox is by definition an idealogue.
War is necrophilia.
touche'
So, how many sysadmins do you know that would be good riot cops?
That's a very valid statement; I stand corrected. This is one sysadmin that won't be working anywhere near riots.
Although if you offered
unlimited Mountain Dew and
dates with actual living girls,
I'll bet you'd have plenty of volunteers from said sys admins.
;)
I was only thinking--as I'm sure was Michael's_A_Jerk--that getting Internet working (sooner than cooperative civilization) is frivolous, bordering on insulting, but there's no rule dictating the sysadmin has to wait until the military has the important stuff done.
Point taken. You're right.
Mom says my
One dedicated sysadmin holding the entire country internet access on his shoulders... before, during and after the war... under fire...
A war hero. If the media can't find the authentic ones, it creates them.
had put in long hours cobbling together bootlegged software and
Someone needs to tell these guys about FreeBSD and Linux.
bash$
Ironically, it was Operation Iraqi Freedom that ultimately severed Iraq's residents from the Internet.
Ironically? Not really. Knowing a little bit about history would give you a lot of examples, e.g.
DDR - Deutsche Democratische[sp] Republik
bash$
http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ Real Iraqi blogger. He's had some stuff to say about the ISPs before.
So they would be free to download pr0n. God bless America
he wasn't playing Wolfenstein:ET all the time, so he could concentrate on his sysadmining. He didn't need to play because there was plenty of real life killing and explosions to suffice...
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
I find it very telling that an unprovoked attack on the USA that killed around 2,795 is a "tragedy" and a "slaughter" and justifies destroying all our rights and 2 foriegn countries. And yet, another unprovoked attack that kills at least 3,240 civilians is just a "few sandy buttholes."
All this is really good, but what i really want to know is where can i register my pr0n.raises.your.iq ?
Or, in the interest of balancing out FoxNews' reporting, a hypothetical Iraqi blogger can now give the outside world a better picture of what's going on in the country.
Or, in the interest of balancing BBC World News reporting, Where's Raed can report on stuff that is closer to reality. Like, reporting from this planet.
Derek
I mean, for being able to keep the service running, amidst bullets and bombs flyng around all over the place, you can't beat that kind of dedication.. and skill too.
Anyone here recruiting, if you can look past their so called prior political allegience (heck, most of 'em were forced to support anyway), here you guys can have some really good sysadmins, frontline tested, baptised by fire and with battle scars to show.
How many of us can say exactly the same? Let's see.. If SCO regime are smart, they would hire these guys, at least to keep their website from being DDOS/nuked or hacked by /. ers.. :-P but they're are dumb anyway, for waging war against the USA of IT World (Yeah, I mean IBM)
Sheesh, here I am worrying about others when I should be worrying about myself!
Will sys-admin for food
And PAYING for everything should be the responsibility of the occupying powers.
Unfortunately US Troops are shooting civilians so its still unclear who is upholding the Law.
I know I'm joing to take a Karma hit but honestly and moronic one-liner like that gets classified as Insightful days after US Troops fire into an unarmed crowd. If that happened in Zimbabwe everyone would condemn the goverment troops, but in Iraq its "reasonable force".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
No one will give you the satisfaction of a Troll 5. I know, I've tried and it's impossible (almost).
Life is not for the lazy.
Why has no one mentioned Where is Raed?
. . . a new wave of spam for that "most wanted" deck of cards?
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
So never mind that Saddam had WMDs, as the Kurdish and Iranian survivors of his WMD attacks will attest. Never mind that he never let your UN pals do their weapon inspections unobstructed. Sometime between the Iran-Iraq war and now those WMDs magically disappeared and we should all take Saddams word for it. After all, Iraq is only as big as California, where could he hide the things?
And the ~300,000 Iraqis Saddam's dictatorship murdered? No mass destruction there, no sir. No need to worry about such a dictatorship developing nukes.
I guess you Former Soviet Useful Idiots really were desperate for new employment.
You just posted almost the exact same message a little ways above this one. Got anything else to say besides how the troops have nothing better to do than kill innocents?
hesitation
j ec tid=13087653_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-US %2DTROOPS%2DADMIT%2DSHOOTING%2DIRAQI%2DCIVILIANS-n ame_page.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_ob
"It is not very safe here today to say all the information," Harif said. ... And Carnivore is Everywhere!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Their foresight may have saved Iraq's only ISP. After Baghdad fell to coalition troops on April 9, the Information Ministry was vandalized and set ablaze. Internet cafes were ransacked. Looters ransacked warehouses containing millions of dollars of SCIS computer gear, according to Harif.
Hmmm, one guy takes gear to their house and it's "foresight" while others doing the same are called looters. I suppose it helps that Harif brought enough of it back for things to work. I imagine much of the stolen warehoused computers will be working too now. All around a good deal. People making use of equipment that would have sat in a warehouse forever should not be looked at in the same light as people breaking into hospitals and stealing airconditioning equipment. The fall of a totalitarian government is not easy.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
" So Mr. Knee-Jerk, what did I say in defense of Fox?"
You said they were a balance to CNN.
Since fox is so right wing conservative I suppose you think this means CNN is some sort of a flaming liberal homosexual communist atheist environmentalist liberal organization.
Did I get that right?
War is necrophilia.
What I think of CNN is irrelevant to the assertion that they are balanced by Fox. CNNs bias has been documented before, and I'm sure a new independant study will find that Fox will have the opposite bias. And that was the original point that you were unable or unwilling to grasp.
As to your question, "I suppose you think this means CNN is some sort of a flaming liberal homosexual communist atheist environmentalist liberal organization," you forgot "America haters" and "terrorist apologists".
In the article I want to respond to:
Many of those were starved by the sanctions (directly or indirectly), but that's beside the point. It's true the government killed a lot . Exactly how many is hard to say - less than the U.S did in Vietnam, but more than Russia did in Chechnya.The intent is important. The society of the area is volatile and violent, and most of the area's leaders (who live in that environment) believe that it's basically a choice between using both the threat and application of cruelty against the people to control them, or allowing the people to kill each other (even escalating to civil warfare).
In other words, the Iraqi governmnet killed enough people to prevent an even greater loss of life if people weren't controlled.
I don't think that's true in absolute terms - but I never lived there. The only two true democracies in the region aren't really part of the Arabic culture - Turkey and Israel, and Turkey has a lot of trouble staying democratic. Factions have deep, almost irrational beliefs in their tribes/political factions/races/religions, and have certainly shown no reluctance to kill in response to a nasty look. It's entirely possible that such a society would degenerate into something like Somalia without an iron rule.
In Iraq, life was pretty good for anyone not opposed to Saddam Hussein - they had more religious and gender freedom than almost any other country in the region, and before the sanctions, consistantly decent medical care and even recently a top-notch education system. The price for this was political obedience, and a high price for the disobedient.
You'd think that the U.S government would have learned how hard it is to manage such an "act first (and violently), think later - if you absolutely have to" culture after the hidious mess in Lebanon. But American politicians aren't known for their ability to learn anything. The mess in Iraq has just started and seems to be getting worse - I wouldn't be surprised if within a few years, the death toll of American soldiers will be higher from the peace than the war.
One positive thing about the common hatred of Americans in Iraq, it might unite the different factions as long as they continue to occupy the country. They might hold off massacring each other until the shared American threat is driven out.
A that point we'll see if they can kill more of each other than the Iraqi government did.
"you forgot "America haters" and "terrorist apologists"."
Forgive me. I forgot that these days republicans consider people who disagree with them as terrorist and haters of america. I suppose it won't be long that liberals too will be rounded up and taken to those concentration camps that the muslims are being shipped to.
War is necrophilia.
"CNNs bias has been documented before"
In the past, your argument about CNN's bias was true. Turner made sure of that when he controlled the company. Unfortunately, since CNN is now controlled by Time Warner AOL (and whatever other subsidiary you want to throw in there) they've just become another sensationalist news outlet -- completely devoid of any real news. That also means they no longer take a side on the issues. But then again, they never cover the issues because real issues and events from around the world are bad for ratings.
It all comes back to the fourth estate argument. Fox was a good fourth estate during the Clinton administration, but they're completely supportive of the Bush administration. Therefore, shouldn't CNN be launching large stories on the mistakes of the current government?
As a liberal, I disagree with the vast majority of the Fox news network's views, but 1) they have every right to say it, and 2) the country needs a news outlet that will investigate the government (as was the case under the Clinton administration).
Today, however, who will investigate Bush? None of the major networks will because they're afraid of offending viewers and losing ratings. They all forget how many newspapers and books the watergate scandal sold.
So, in effect, no, CNN does not effectively balance out FOX news anymore because they have yet to jump on the fallacies of the Bush adminstration and expose them to the country.
It's not a matter of balance between the two networks, but a matter of balance against the current government.