Slashdot Mirror
Iran Moves To End "Facebook Revolution"
We've had a few readers send in updates on the chaotic post-election situation in Iran. Twitter is providing better coverage than CNN at the moment. There are both tech and humanitarian angles to the story, as the two samples below illustrate. First, Hugh Pickens writes with a report from The Times (UK) that "the Iranian government is mounting a campaign to disrupt independent media organizations and Web sites that air doubts about the validity of the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the nation's president. Reports from Tehran say that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were taken down after Mr Ahmadinejad claimed victory. SMS text messaging, a preferred medium of communication for young Iranians, has also been disabled. 'The blocking of access to foreign news media has been stepped up, according to Reporters Without Borders. 'The Internet is now very slow, like the mobile phone network. YouTube and Facebook are hard to access and pro-reform sites... are completely inaccessible.'" And reader momen abdullah sends in one of the more disturbing Ask Slashdots you are likely to see. "People, we need your urgent help in Iran. We are under attack by the government. They stole the election. And now are arresting everybody. They also filtered every sensitive Web page. But our problem is that they also block the SMS network and are scrambling satellite TVs. Please, can you help us to set up some sort of network using our home wireless access points? Can anybody show us a link on how to install small TV/radio stations? Any suggestion for setting up a network? Please tell us what to do or we are going to die in the a nuclear war between Iran and US." Update: 06/14 18:32 GMT by KD : Jim Cowie contributes a blog post from Renesys taking a closer look at the state of Iranian Internet transit, as seen in the aggregated global routing tables, and concluding that the story may not be as clear-cut as has been reported.
On one hand, we have the freedom and lives of millions of people. On the other hand we can help bring Twitter down. Tough choice...
In the absence of an external interfering force (e. g., the army of the Soviet Union), the fate of a nation is determined by its people. Period.
I didn't know you could win an argument by appending a "Period." after your thesis.
I didn't know you could win an argument by appending a "Period." after your thesis.
Actually the correct steps are:
* Present your thesis.
* Exclaim PERIOD!
* Clamp your hands to your ears and run away shouting "lalalalalalala cant hear you!", before any counter-argument can be made.
And there you go, argument won.
The Long Now Foundation
"I'm tired of tolerance. "Lawful good" alignment is suicide for the rest of the world."
Mmm, chaotic evil. The breakfast of superpowers.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Win an "argument?" Sorry. This is abuse...
"Democracy." It's just a slogan.
In the absence of an external interfering force (e. g., the army of the Soviet Union), the fate of a nation is determined by its people. Period. I didn't know you could win an argument by appending a "Period." after your thesis.
What you really mean is you mean is:
tl;dr
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Please spare me the "I'm the wise and more worldly European" bullshit. When did I ever say the US was "special" or "all that"? What I love about Europeans is that even when an American is willing to be critical about his own country you attack him for it and somehow construe it into the person having an ignorant myopic view of the world. In other words, from your perspective we're fucking morons no matter what we do or say. It's why so many people in this country don't give a fuck what you people think because your still so fucking bitter about not running the world anymore. Get over it. Maybe one day you assholes will get off your fucking high horses and get a perspective that doesn't involve having a stick up your ass. Until then, I couldn't give a fuck what you think.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Hello, I'm extrasolar and I don't know much about the subject of this conversation, but I'll take a look anyway and see what I can make of it.
Reporter, I strongly suggest you learn A LOT more about history. If you want to talk about the difference of cultures, you need to actually learn about them.
Wow, that sounds like a reasonable appeal. You get the moral high ground for making such a statement. Because the more we learn about the respective cultures we can make a more comprehensive and subtle evaluation of each and be better prepared to make decisions about foreign policy.
For starters, you need to learn that Americans have the most violent culture of any first world country.
Wait, what? This doesn't sound subtle at all. Where *did* this guy learn his "history" complete with a top ten list of most violent countries? He loses the moral high ground and sounds as wacky as the fellow he's replying to.
Oh, and I'm American.
That explains it.
(Hey, I see Americans all the time. I even live there.)