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Pakistan Looking For Homegrown URL Blocking System
chicksdaddy writes "Tech-enabled filtering and blocking of Web sites and Internet addresses that are deemed hostile to repressive regimes has been a major political and human rights issue in the last year, as popular protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria erupted. Now it looks as if Pakistan's government is looking for a way to strengthen its hand against online content it considers undesirable. According to a request for proposals from the National ICT (Information and Communications and Technologies) R&D Fund, the Pakistani government is struggling to keep a lid on growing Internet and Web use and is looking for a way to filter out undesirable Web sites. The 'indigenous' filtering system would be 'deployed at IP backbones in major cities, i.e., Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad,' the RFP reads (PDF). It would be 'centrally managed by a small and efficient team stationed at POPs of backbone providers,' and must be capable of supporting 100Gbps interfaces and filtering Web traffic against a block list of up to 50 million URLs without latency of more than 1 millisecond."
Porn, websites that criticize the government, members of Al-Qaeda--that whole country is like a big ole' fun game of hide-and-seek. The government hides it, and you get to seek.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The sad thing is that the governments in these oppressive countries seem to understand how the Internet actually works.. and manage to come up with actual requirements for filtering devices.
May be Pakistan is the only country that didn't manage to keep this secret. You wait for it and this will be everywhere. I wonder what country would love to block Wikileaks or The Pirate Bay, for example.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
A quote that equated to the following: don't try to solve social problems with technology.
P.S. -- As a senior *IX and network administrator, I laugh at the idea of any device "capable of supporting 100Gbps interfaces and filtering Web traffic against a block list of up to 50 million URLs without latency of more than 1 millisecond". Keep on setting those unrealistic expectations, Pakistan! Maybe your head is in the Clouds... (see what I did there?)
...what they could make of themselves if they used some of that brain power(and money) towards more constructive things.
Sounds like a job for MongoDB.
That's because their leaders(or at least many important people in the government) were educated in freer Western nations and exposed to what happens with the freedom of information. Bashar Al-Assad is an example of this.
Just append the urls determined to be unholly to the Koran.
They already have the infrastructure to punish infidels.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I'm sure uncle sam can give the pakistanis the hardware they need for free and preloaded with the software.... among other tracking software ;-)
...that this is one of our most important allies in the war on terror. I wonder how much of the billions we give them will be spent on this while we stand idly by. Remember the US of A and its allies have carte blanche to do what we tell others is wrong. Greed and hypocracy make the world go 'round.
Silence is a state of mime.
and they don't rot their brains watching oprah
Why not just block everything and only allow what's whitelisted? Examples to include in the whitelist are Corporations, Universities, and other governmental sites. All others seen as non-islamic get blocked outright. If you're not on the list, you simply fill out a form for internal review and hopefully added to the whitelist.
If they're going for total control, do it right. Better yet, just create an entirely new Pakistani network without any outside peering. A pakistani version of Wikipedia could be translated and updated via an air-gapped network scheme.
And no, I'm not the first person to think of this. I'm not that much smarter than everyone else :-P
Life is not for the lazy.
They remind me of our former communist politicians - thanks to their position, they got to visit the West, and they still didn't see. They went back home and continued vilifying things they had seen but hadn't grasped. This is such a similar situation that it's not even funny. Islam is the new communism is the new fascism.
Ezekiel 23:20
Maybe but URL filtering in under 1ms with any sizeable list of URLs is going to be pretty darn impossible. Its pretty tough to do much of any thing to traffic that requires any sort of lookup that fast. I mean DRAM fetch is 5+ns.
Even if you can search your lookup table fast enough keep in mind you are not just comparing values at fixed offsets like NAT and IP Access lists and similar need to you first have to figure out is this traffic http? Locate the host header and read until new line. Non of that is especially time consuming but its still going to be a chuck of that already tight ms.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
1 millisecond is 1,000 microseconds or 1,000,000 nanoseconds. A 2 GHz CPU runs at least one instruction every nanosecond and usually more like 6-12 instructions. As you say, the DRAM fetch is significant, but a well-designed B-tree database already loaded in RAM reduces the impact because of good algorithm design.
It's like an eternity in CPU time.
Of course, you can't write the code in Python, Perl or Ruby. You have to use C++.
Not as difficult as it seems. A Bloom Filter of 60-million URLs would only take up 75MB. With only 64 gigs of ram, you could reliably blacklist billions of URLs in a deterministic amount of time.
So if they mostly blocked porn websites, it would be nice if they shared it with me so I can... ahem... train my parental control software ?
Yeah, right...
It sounds quite doable to me. All http requests are independent and thus can be evaluated in parallel by whatever number of machines they're willing to throw at the problem. Finding out if any single http request is in their database in 1ms should be trivial.
It's a shame to waste resources trying to stop the few who can read from doing so.
That dude with the wayward boat with the sharp propeller did a pretty good job of blocking sites. Is he for hire?
Table-ized A.I.
block 50 million urls, 100 million spring up the next day. block those, and 200 million more pop up. it's a game of whack-a-mole you can never win. so they'll waste all this money, instead of just letting their people be free. of course a lot of it is porn and thought critical of religion, and this is why they hate it. because it represents their end: the end of the thought control of an oppressive system, this one based on religion. they know what they are fighting: they are fighting their extinction. and by "they" i mean those who think you can control or dominate others, based on religion or whatever basis that unfortunately some in society still believe is right. it just makes your society weak and violent and cruel
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wow. I love what you wrote. It resonates.
That sounds like a great result for the November election, but what do you propose doing about Pakistan?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
block outside DNS servers, override blacklisted DNS resolution to a blocked page. much faster than trying to scan and intercept in real time make the filter part of the infrastructure
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I feel for their citizens.....BUT nothing we can do.nor should we do anything until their citizens make a stand. If they are not willing to fight for their freedoms why should we help. When they don't even lift there own fingers
Jack of all trades,master of none
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
Princess Leia to Grand Moff Tarkin
It's likely the world would have been a better if they had.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
This country has not been able to build anything on its own. It begs borrows and steals and paints it green. The way the things are moving in Pakistan
Any cricket loss,gambling controverst ended up with breaking TV sets
Anything related to musical entertainment which does not resemble mullah's Karaoke, CD's music shops went up in smoke
Any outrage event ended up burning down KFC's & Pizza Huts, Oil tankers
Now this internet blockade - where will the unwashed and bearded abdul's will get their daily entertainment
The wimmen are already covered up head to toe and no one can be sure if there is a dude hiding inside.
If by any chance it is a wimmen under the burkha then they are already taken as the successful abdul speaks for at least 4 wimmen.
So what remains for entertainment in Pakistan?
With IPv6 and web sites capable of running multiple IP addresses literally thousands of them, you are talking billions of addresses.
They of course will take the easy route, forget black lists, they will go with white lists.
Block every IP and only allow cleared ones through. They are absolutely not interested in the benefit to the country or people, they are only interested in keeping power, psychopathically feeding their own individual ego and lusts.
White lists create their own problem, as does wireless and satellite. They wont really keep information out they will however generate a huge amount of frustration.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
the fastest current routers (hardware based) will reroute traffic within 50ms, that's assuming the backup route is already programmed in hardware. URL filtering + trough the filter routing at 1ms is impossible i think.
1 millisecond is 1,000 microseconds or 1,000,000 nanoseconds. A 2 GHz CPU runs at least one instruction every nanosecond and usually more like 6-12 instructions. As you say, the DRAM fetch is significant, but a well-designed B-tree database already loaded in RAM reduces the impact because of good algorithm design.
It's like an eternity in CPU time.
Of course, you can't write the code in Python, Perl or Ruby. You have to use C++.
Yeah but when you drink from the fire hose of 100 GB with an average of 56 bytes per http GET string request it is exteremely difficult if not outright impossible
Isn't that what happened to Afghanistan? Between the Soviets, local war lords, the Taliban, foreign "freedom fighters/insurgents", and NATO, that country was/is royally fucked for at least 100 years.
All we need to do is pull out NATO and mine the border.
I live in US since 1993, and I would rather live in USSR if it was not destroyed and turned into shit by people who "grasped" your myths.
Some people don't understand you because you are ignorant and stupid.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Many Pakistani people illiterate, and the educated ones are mostly in favour of the government, and they believe, their government is helping keep the purity of the nation and religion, so it is indeed a great result for the November elections.
That's fascinating, my ping to google.com is 21ms. According to your post there must be no routers between me and google.
Perhaps you mean microseconds instead of milliseconds?
I live in US since 1993, and I would rather live in USSR if it was not destroyed and turned into shit by people who "grasped" your myths.
The Russians had very little chance grasping anything after the regime broke down, what with the half a millenium spent in real or virtual serfdom, first to samoderzhavie, then to the communist party, and now to the Russian style of government that is almost, but not quite entirely unlike samoderzhavie again. You can't change the spirit of the people overnight. My folks were in a better starting position, but we still have a long way to go and we're not ashamed to admit it (well, at least some of us). You have the right to remain bitter, and I'm not questioning that, just don't touch my right to remain an optimist.
Ezekiel 23:20
Painting Islam in broad strokes as fascism is not very helpful nor descriptive. Most muslims are moderate and/or secular.
Remember that Islam is some 80% jewish/christian theology at the least, and that it is regional culture and real world politics that prompted what we do recognize as fascist movements to grow.
You want the moderate and intellectual muslims, as well as like-minded jews and christians, on your side against totalitatianism.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Just like US people !
creating a national censorship scheme around a white list is a terrible idea. you'd be painting a target on ever site on the list. talk about making it easy for Anonymous and their skiddie freedom fighters to give you a hard time.
The Russians had very little chance grasping anything after the regime broke down, what with the half a millenium spent in real or virtual serfdom, first to samoderzhavie, then to the communist party, and now to the Russian style of government that is almost, but not quite entirely unlike samoderzhavie again.
So they are animals just like blacks and Arabs? I think, we have heard that crap already from other people.
My folks were in a better starting position, but we still have a long way to go and we're not ashamed to admit it (well, at least some of us).
Most immigrants to US are regretting ever stepping into a continent-wide snake pit you call a country, but they are too poor and mentally exhausted for another move across the globe, so they invent elaborate fantasies to justify their choice to come here. If you need any examples, just look at the Jewish immigrants from ex-USSR. All of them, myself included, faced mild discrimination based on their ethnicity not unlike Hispanics in US. Tiny percentage of them believed in any god, leave alone cared for any form of Judaism. Just look how most of them convinced themselves that they believe in an omniscient, but for some reason racist magical man in the sky despite 15-20 years of education absolutely incompatible with that idea. Want to know why they are so intellectually impotent? This is why, they have torn their brains apart with those delusions! It's painful for me to see those wrecks of human beings, especially considering that most of my relatives are in this category.
I do not suffer from those problems -- I came here because industry and science in all ex-USSR countries were destroyed, and remained in shambles for at least a decade. My choice to move into a country with functioning industry and dysfunctional society was justified despite being painful and despite my rejection of the most fundamental positions of its poisonous ideology.
You have the right to remain bitter, and I'm not questioning that,
I am not bitter. I hate you, I hate your masters, I hate your ideology, and I am perfectly content with my hatred toward people, organizations and ideologies who richly deserve it. It's your stupid American idea, a part of your brainwashing, that hatred is wrong yet somehow fighting enemies is good -- my position is the exact opposite, there is nothing wrong with rejecting and opposing something terrible and keeping it from entering your mind, but it would be a truly worthless kind of person if he can accomplish more by destroying what he hates rather than by building something he likes. That's right, in my mind all your heroes, politicians, criminals, businessmen and other "cool" or "powerful" guys are worthless and all those uppity engineers, scientists, mathematicians, artists and other geeks, are the best of the whole mankind -- how is that for a culture?
I find it ironic that despite this, you and your masters, along with everyone else, benefit from my work more than from any person that ever liked you or agreed with you. This became possible because I didn't have a single trace of greed in my motivation to study or to become an engineer -- I am free from the thing that taints your whole society, poisons your thoughts, destroys your education and derails your efforts. I may be talented and there are various circumstances of my life that ended up improving me in various ways, but it was purity of my motivation to study, that made my upbringing fundamentally different from all of you. It could not ever be done in US. It can't now be done anywhere. No one can reproduce the advantage I had because its source, a society that does not motivate people by greed and powerlust, is destroyed.
It was possible under a system that was destroyed by people like you. At some point it will become possible again, but it's very unlikely that anyone alive now, will ever see it. But when it will happen, modern Capitalism will be seen as something just
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
If the USSR was that cool than please explain 1956 or the Prague Spring.
If the USSR was that cool than please explain 1956 or the Prague Spring.
If the capitalism is so cool then please explain the Ludlow Massacre, the Kent State shootings, Vietnam war, and even OWS if you want.
And if you insist on counting military interventions in neighboring countries, the USA leads that list. The USA routinely installs and removes strongmen around the globe; sometimes with military force, sometimes with money that buys local agitators and hand-picked challengers. Why do you think Egypt arrested a couple dozen foreigners just a week or two ago?
No nation, no system is perfect. There is opposition within any system - at very least because the opposition wants to climb to the top and rule the roost. You cannot expect power-hungry people to remain docile.
At the same time, it is often dangerous to let those power-hungry people rule the country. The 20th century is full of examples, may they remain unnamed to prevent invocation of Godwin's Law. Who is to judge the potential ruler? Is he a new Vaclav Havel or a new Islam Karimov? That remains to be an unanswered question. The problem of this question is not in choosing the judges, the problem is that judges have no information to base their decision upon. Campaign promises do not count; recall is contingent on acquiescence of the parliament - which gets undermined first... human history is full of dictators.
In these circumstances it is often safer to keep the devil that you know instead of letting a new, unknown devil into your home.
In any case, the GP (Alex) is absolutely right. Ex-USSR people who were raised in best years of Soviet socialism and then got magically transported into the USA have tremendous advantage. They are not burdened with all the "education" that is dished out in US public schools; they are often not drafted into the herd mentality of US universities; they are not polluted with all the wrongs of this society. As a side effect, most graduates of USSR's universities are very well educated - and they have no debts to pay for half of their life.
The old USSR was not ideal. Life there was largely boring and bland. However it offered several advantages. For example, USSR guaranteed stability of your life. There were no worries about losing one's job. There were no worries about losing one's housing (though it wasn't that great to begin with.) You were guaranteed medical services (the most basic ones, by western standards.) You weren't paid much; you actually were only paid to buy food. But in exchange everything in your life was taken care of, one way or another. The USA is moving in this direction too.
Then USSR did not have millionaires. There were a few artists and a few other workers who got paid much more than other; but the entire country knew them and could count them on fingers of one hand. Most people were poor, but they were equally poor. The money went to the state, and the state was the only entity that was filthy rich. Those monies were spent on various projects that mattered to the whole country. The USA is raising taxes bit by bit, and the end will be the same - the working stiff will be left with only food money, but an extensive net of social services will take care of the rest. This is an ideal environment for adult children who are too afraid to take risks and to try new things.
All http requests are independent and thus can be evaluated in parallel by whatever number of machines they're willing to throw at the problem.
It should be also mentioned that this evaluation can be done in hardware. A single FPGA can implement multiple matching circuits, and you can have thousands of FPGAs in the system. It is also perfectly scalable.
If you really think we all believe the bullshit fed to us by our masters, you are sorely mistaken. Don't let the media tell you we don't exist. We do, and we're sorry for what our hijacked country has done in our name. Please tell your family that I, personally, am sorry.
"If the capitalism is so cool then please explain the Ludlow Massacre, the Kent State shootings, Vietnam war, and even OWS if you want. "
You're dodging the question, I never put America on a piedestal. It's just strawmen.
You're dodging the question
There is no exact answer to your question because you postulated that "USSR is so cool" (that wasn't what the GP claimed) and then demanded proof of that statement.
No government can be "cool" for everyone. If the government protects me from being robbed, it necessarily restricts rights of the robber. Humans only can choose between several types of the government, from Somalia's anarchy to Uzbekistan's strict dictatorship, with every other country in between.
You can compare governments using different metrics. You can use freedom as a yardstick; then Somalia wins hands down. You can use employment and social stability as a measure; then Uzbekistan is a winner. Different groups of people (a.k.a. nations) choose and keep different styles of government based on what works for them. USSR fell when the government was no longer satisfactory to the society - and that happened because the decay of the society, built into the structure of USSR's socialism, damaged the country so much that there wasn't enough food to get by. The USA is falling because the decay of the society, built into the USA's capitalism, is eliminating the working class by encouraging employers to move out of the country (taxes are high, competition from China is strong, can't build anything in the USA.) By some estimates, half of americans receive government assistance at expense of the other half and of Chinese banks. This cannot continue forever.
I'm living in a post-communist country and have met a few half-Russian guys and they all have this rose colored view of communism.
The whole idea of communism was a half-baked mess, make-it-up-as-we-go. People with actual education were dismissed, sent to the Gulag, sometimes executed (someone wanted their flat e.g.), or just given unskilled work. The new intellectual elite was deliberately raised from the worker class, people with intellectual parents were banned from the field of humanities. People beggining from midmanagement level were expected to write regular reports to the national security. It was a paradise for snitches. And the party was keen to jail/execute its own people when they steered too far from the groupthink or even if they were just simply in the way of someone more powerful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Rajk#Trial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81rp%C3%A1d_Szakasits
http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A1lffy_Gy%C3%B6rgy (sorry no English source)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_K%C3%A9thly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Nagy
The soft dictatorship of the late 70ies and 80ies was a result of financial difficulties. That was when the people in power realized that the system cannot be sustained indefinitely and there's a need for smooth transition to capitalism.
I'm living in a post-communist country and have met a few half-Russian guys and they all have this rose colored view of communism.
Then perhaps they know something that you don't? Many of your friends (and more people on Slashdot) have somewhat fond memories of the old USSR (of best parts of it, admittedly!) - are they all wrong, despite being there, and you alone are correct, even though you were (probably) living in Eastern Europe then, like in Hungary? Note that in USSR those countries were considered "a near abroad" and visiting you would be seen as a half-step toward going all the way capitalist.
The whole idea of communism was a half-baked mess
Absolutely. As a social system it was unsustainable. I don't think you can find many people who'd argue the opposite. By the way, your ideas about GULAG and snitching and jailing are a complete mess too; you might just as well recall Ivan IV "The Terrible" - and I will recall Vlad Tepes in return :-) As reported, they did lots of spying and snitching in East Germany, but not in USSR - not after Stalin died anyway. We are talking about half a century here. USSR in 1980's was extremely safe for living, and there was hardly anyone to spy upon (talks in kitchens with a bottle of vodka at hand don't count.) You'd have to go against the state to earn your three square meals per day on sunny beaches of Kolyma river. Attacking the state, peacefully or not, was not tolerated (see modern China.) Your links telling about Hungarian opposition only tell that Socialism in the Eastern Bloc was sustained by dictatorial methods. It can be easily seen why that was necessary - once the oppression was removed these regimes promptly fell.
So we have here a duality. On one hand, we have a society that is unstable by design, like a traditional, well known commune. On the other hand, life for most people was good enough in that commune (until the 1990s, at least.)
You cannot reconcile these two. People from the ex-USSR are selectively remembering the good parts, but most understand, logically, that the society that delivered those good parts could not possibly exist for long. It's pure nostalgia. Besides, there were bad parts too; I couldn't buy SciFi books anywhere; Stanislaw Lem was published in qty. 50,000 once per decade, in a 350M country! (But that's a minor problem, compared to 1+ hour travel to work in public transportation; bad living conditions; inferior medicine; etc.)
Perhaps you do not have much good to say about the socialist past of your country. I have no knowledge on that front, and it would be foolish of me to tell you, a citizen of that country, how you should feel about something. However life in the old USSR was not all bad. As the G*P poster (Alex) said, many curse Gorbachev and his Perestroika for what he did to USSR. A good half of the current population of Russia is of that opinion; that's why they vote for Putin - because he represents (and does) a movement toward those old ideals, toward a strong, stable, independent state. Also note that Communists are not getting much of the vote - only hopeless idealists vote for them.)
" As reported, they did lots of spying and snitching in East Germany, but not in USSR "
I personally know people who told me that they had to write such reports. Most of these records were destroyed in 1989. The remaining parts got accesibble only in recent years, so you can look up what was written about you.
Even famous rock musicians had to write these reports (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyula_Vikid%C3%A1l )
As I said, I don't know what was happening in Hungary. A common Soviet man only knew who was the leader of the Communist party there. Those Communist parties were very young, and they were basically forced upon people (as I understand) so it is logical to believe that leaders of those parties didn't feel all too secure in their chairs. That was not the case in USSR; several generations changed in the country, and by 1950's all the positions of power were held by people who never saw Czar, never owned a business, never were allowed to travel abroad, and never paid (or were paid) in gold. In a way, USSR did create a new man - a member of the hive, who is only comfortable inside the box. Eastern Europe, on the other hand, was full of people who had other ideas in their recent memory. Perhaps some even lost a lot after Communists took over around 1945. So revolts 10 years later are very easy to understand.
But with regard to "people who told me that they had to write such reports," now you have my testimony that I have never needed to write anything like that or even knew how - and nobody ever approached me with such requests.
Perhaps it's a function of what friends one keeps. I'm sure that an otherwise unemployed lady who likes to visit restaurants in Moscow and establish liaisons with foreign visitors had a good chance of being talked to about such things. But if you are a machinist at a factory, or a farmer on a farm a thousand miles away from Moscow - what can you possibly tell, and about who? Secret police in USSR was not omnipotent; they had to use their limited resources wisely.
Regardless, it's all history now. All we can do is to know it and be sure to not reuse its worst parts in the future. The good parts will come naturally.
USSR fell when the government was no longer satisfactory to the society - and that happened because the decay of the society, built into the structure of USSR's socialism, damaged the country so much that there wasn't enough food to get by.
There was definitely more than enough food there. Anti-USSR propaganda made plenty of effort to paint "starving Russians" picture, however it was completely baseless, food lacked variety for decades, but there would be heads rolling (well, not literally, but there would be people shot) if government allowed shortages, or anything unhealthy was allowed into the system. The only thing that resembles a "food shortage" was a shortage of sugar around 1989 (I may be a year off in either direction) -- something that happens in Russia and ex-USSR countries every time when people expect a problem in economy in the future, and try to stock up on something useful, valuable and potential material for making homemade alcohol drinks. That was well into the "liberalization of economy" that scared the poplation, and I am sure, no sane person would expect a genuine society-destroying food shortage to be limited to sugar.
Perestroika was not initiated by the population or society as a whole -- if anything, all dissidents' opinions were ignored, and they were not ever invited to be a part of the process. The problem was the same as with Khruschev -- Communist Party leaders making arbitrary decisions. In that case Gorbachev initiated long-needed liberalization, but had absolutely no idea how to implement it beyond proclaiming political freedoms, he would do better if he just stopped at that because that was the only area where he was somewhat competent. Economy was in a mild recession in late 80's (less of a recession than the rest of the world had a decade earlier), but it was a combination of irresponsible experimentation with economy, destruction of established links between USSR members, and attempted implementation of Libertarian ideas that caused a massive looting and collapse of early 90's.
I remember it very well because I have left in the middle of collapse, at the end of 1993, almost two years after USSR dissolution.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The soft dictatorship of the late 70ies and 80ies was a result of financial difficulties. That was when the people in power realized that the system cannot be sustained indefinitely and there's a need for smooth transition to capitalism.
You can't have "financial difficulties" in a country that is run as a giant nonprofit -- there is no place to lose money in the first place. This is just not possible -- not until there is some massive shortage of natural resources or population losing capability to work so production is lost, however neither of those things would be cured by Capitalism.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Absolutely. As a social system it was unsustainable.
Even USSR implementation of Socialism sustained itself pretty well for over 70 years, across various governments that made all kinds of stupid mistakes unrelated to the ideas of Capitalism and Communism. There is absolutely no evidence that is is "unsustainable", other than the fact that it was eventually destroyed, however since all social and economic systems are eventually destroyed, this is irrelevant.
"Communism is unsustainable" is a propaganda formula that is based on a dogma that claims, people can not do anything useful unless they are forced to do so under the pain of death, or by the greed. In its turn it is based on two religious beliefs -- about fear of Hell and eternal torture being the force that keeps people from sinning all the time (the list sins includes sloth), and about all people by their nature being sinners (and therefore motivated by greed), lacking virtues unless they dedicate their whole lives to service of God.
Like all beliefs about human nature that are based on religion, they are completely wrong -- humans evolved to form a healthy society, and therefore they already have a healthy balance of co-operative and competitive tendencies. This happened long before the invention of Capitalism, currency, property and government, and it's nothing short of insane to reduce humans' motivation to greed, powerlust and fear of death. Current Capitalist society over-emphasizes those forms of motivation, so almost everyone at the top of it is mentally deficient, with those motivations trumping everything else. Those people obviously want themselves to be recognized as "normal" humans, however in reality not only they are sick and dangerous, a society can not survive if it was possible for the rest of population to have such motivation.
Communism as a social system is based on the idea that in the absence of a threat, or recognition of power over other humans as an accomplishment, people would be motivated by their own desire to co-operate and participate in the functioning society. In a society that achieved abundance of material goods (that, I believe, mankind as a whole already did, in the end of 20th century), such society would be optimal because people would not waste their efforts and resources on damaging or destroying each other, but abundance would make it very easy and safe to develop new things without any additional motivation of greed and fear. However since Communism as a political movement started in 19th century, and the first government of Communists appeared in early 20th century in a very poor, war-devastated Russia, there had to be a compromise with government forcing and encouraging co-operation on people in the absence of abundance. Therefore Socialism, not Communism, had to be implemented, as only a society that promotes co-operation can reach the state when Communism is possible. I see no flaw is this decision -- it contradicts the idea of what is and isn't a "right" or "property" under US-style Capitalism, but those ideas are not even shared by all Capitalist societies. In USSR, Socialism managed to degenerate into Stalinism, however as it was clearly seen at the time after Stalin's death, that it was capable of returning to its intended direction once the deviation is over. Brezhnev's "Developed Socialism" was another (milder) deviation of the same kind, and there was no reason to expect that it would not be over if Gorbachev's Perestroika was not derailed into a Libertarian and pro-Capitalism mess that it was. The end of USSR was an accident -- there are many countries with all forms of government that were dissolved or had their social system changed in a similar circumstances. Capitalist countries aren't any more stable than this, Russian Empire certainly was not before Communists, as they succeeded in taking it over in the first place.
Just the fact that such society survived through almost the whole 20th century, shows that government enforcing greed and competiti
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Even famous rock musicians had to write these reports (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyula_Vikid%C3%A1l [wikipedia.org] )
Hungary is not USSR.
Accept it, all post-Stalin examples of egregious abuse by "Communists" that you know, are from outside of USSR.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I don't think, there are many people in US who truly realize just how much of what you are told is bullshit. Certainly I wouldn't know if I was born here.
It's not just what you recognize as "media". It's things that wormed their way into public consciousness by being the only depiction of ideas available. I would say, all Americans "knowledge" of alternatives to Capitalism are about as media-induced as depictions of pirates and ninjas -- the popular image of pirates being based on one actor in a movie, and ninjas... pretty much out of nothing but likely through a tradition of actors playing assassins in Japanese theater being dressed in black uniform used by stage hands (as in "this person isn't really here").
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Socialism in USSR lacked the will to live. It was not energetic enough to compete on the international scene. Messages from abroad, with pictures of NYC city streets paved with gold, were not helpful.
Many problems could be prevented by stopping Gorbachev (you may want to follow this link.) There would be no Chechnya, for example.
In other words, the path to a Star Trek replicator goes through Communism, and not the other way around.
The path to any sane society goes through people who are moral. This is something that many societies lack. The US society is one of the worst in this respect, but the modern Russian society is also far from being healthy. Amoral people cannot build anything - and they don't; their domain is theft, consumption and destruction. Who builds things these days? Chinese, because they are honest workers.
Also note that Communists are not getting much of the vote - only hopeless idealists vote for them.
Communist party in modern Russia has very little to do with Communist ideas and often associates with Nationalists (thus pissing off all intellectuals and ethnically non-Russian people), however it's still second most popular party just by association. The third place by popularity is split between Socialists (SR or "Just Russia") and weirdos (LDPR) that are basically bullshit-slinging clowns when it comes to any proclaimed ideology.
On the other hand, all prominently pro-Capitalism and Libertarian parties have truly microscopic amount of support (and this is why they whine to all their friends abroad before and after every election).
It's certainly more than a half of Russia (and even more if you count other ex-USSR countries) that sees dissolution of USSR as a terrible mistake, and Capitalism as the wrong direction. If it was "truly democratic" (and not just a balance of power between rich oligarchs and incompletely-corrupt politicians who refuse to destroy oligarchs but keep them in check), it would be back to USSR already.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
They have the Taliban in their backyard. Their IT department has already developed a very effective "fire" wall...mainly just "fire": http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/12/24/008227/taliban-seizes-and-burns-pcs-cell-phones-to-stop-obscenity
I agree, but only because I'm not that familiar with the history of the USSR as of my own country.
Hungary started to borrow from Western countries at that time to get some high tech stuff. (E.g. modernizing the Metallurgical plant in my hometown with Japanese industrial computers.)
Socialism in USSR lacked the will to live. It was not energetic enough to compete on the international scene. Messages from abroad, with pictures of NYC city streets paved with gold, were not helpful.
I agree with that, however I don't see Capitalism as having "will to live" at this point, either. There just isn't much of an opposition, and its propaganda is still effective.
Many problems could be prevented by stopping Gorbachev (you may want to follow this link.) There would be no Chechnya, for example.
As much as I would be happy if such a thing happened, it's not that simple. I can't claim that I know Gorbachev's motivation, but I have fairly good idea about what Communists, at least sane and smart ones, were thinking.
Let me elaborate on this, putting some things in modern terms and context.
Communists' theory claims that government, laws, social system, and the structure of society in general inevitably adjusts to reflect its foundation in economy. A major change, such as revolution, happens when the economic model forced upon the society by its current structure is inconsistent with the development of its economy, in particular when large segments of populations defined by their role in economy, have their interests in a conflict that can be resolved by changing the rules for their roles.
Most famous is the conflict between capitalists and workers in its original 19th century form -- society recognizes capitalists as exclusive owners of all means of production, workers can only support their lives by working for capitalists, getting only basic life support in return. At the very beginning of Capitalism, worker's efficiency was close to the efficiency of subsistence farmer, and only by pooling combined, organized efforts, they can sustain production and give the capitalist a modest amount of surplus product that he can sell -- most of the product had to be sold for food to feed the workers.
As the efficiency of the workers grew and their salaries did not, capitalists end up with greater and greater amount of surplus product. If workers for some reason happened to be in a position of effective collective bargaining, capitalists would have to increase salaries, thus reducing the conflict between themselves and workers. If capitalists for some reason happened to be in a position to enforce their will upon workers, they would be in a position to keep workers poor, or even keep workers in conditions that are certain to cause disease and early death. High concentration of workers and increased literacy can cause the former condition (workers organize strikes, form unions), but increasing efficiency cause the latter (capitalists become so rich, they can take over cities, control the only source of employment in the area reachable by a worker, control various forms of private armies, force politicians to pass laws, etc.) The second trend eventually outpaces the former, and workers are in a situation when the only way to improve their condition beyond basic sustenance is to strip capitalists of their control over means of production (a.k.a. "have nothing to lose but their chains"), therefore eventually there is a revolution that preserves workers' collective work but removes capitalists' ability to take away the products of their work.
As the history of 20th century shows, this scenario can be staved off by increasing the salaries to the level when workers do not have sufficient motivation to fight, guaranteeing legal protection of unions, etc., however as capitalists (or, now, companies as individual ownership became an obstacle for growth) compete with each other, their collective interest is still to keep workers as close to the poverty line as possible. Except before the problem was with chronically terrible conditions, and now it is with constant threat of unemployment that inevitably results with homelessness and death. So conflict is still alive, it is just bei
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
If you were trying to filter a 100 Gbps stream you would certainly use a server cluster, a blade rack, or custom ASIC hardware. The problem is scalable so it can be solved by throwing money at it.