All interesting and true. We the People of the United States are OK with actions as long they don't directly affect us or our way of lives. Dissent is fine as long as it's on issues that we agree with.
Wow, Chris...where've you been? Drop me an e-mail, same address.
Speaking as a Sysadmin, I would agree to your defacement == stolen/damaged argument. Excellent point.
I also agree about the SWAT team being called for "some guy with detailed bombing instructions that advocates the violent overthrow of the government". I qualify that by saying if this was a person with some kind of criminal past or any reason other than just politcal dissent to raid his house. Government dissent is at the heart of most Universities, and bomb-making instructions are just a Google search away. Will we start seeing black helicopters on campus now? Will we be OK with it then?
Keep in mind that this is an 18-year old kid. 18 is that time when your ideaology has yet to be tempered with the fire os real world experience.
I agree with everthing you said, and I applaud you not being inflammatory in trying to say it.
I agree that web site hacking is neither appropriate nor effective. I agree that he should be punished.
Where I disagree is the government swooping in on him like stormtroopers, seizing his goods and ransacking his home with no rigard to his personal rights and safeties. 8 hours of interrogation without a lawyer present? Blatantly illegal Gestapo tactics.
Had the FBI pulled up to his house, read him his rights, and taken him away, you wouldn't be hearing from me on this site.
But because of these tactics, the government is further backing exactly what Raisethefist.com was attempting to illuminate the rest of us about.
It is nothing like that, unless you feel that informing people about something is the same as doing it.
I notice that University classes about Behavioral Psychology that involve serial killers and sex crimes tend not to turn out droves of murderers and rapists. Instead these classes are there to inform.
My point was this country was founded by the oppressed of another country who tookit upon themselves to take their freedom and a new land because peaceful protest simply wasn't working.
It is hypocritical to not see the parallel in the oppressed of this modern land of the "free".
I'm not seeking justification, only understanding of what was going through this kid's head.
I would agree with you if property had been stolen, or people had been harmed. Neither was the case. Like I said above, his actions were equivalent to vandalism. Bad yes, but come on? If little Timmy came running home from school chased by a SWAT team because he wrote "G.W. Bush sucks" on the schoolhouse wall, would you have the same sentiment?
It's not the legality I'm arguing, it's the motivation and punishment.
It's more like spray painting anti-government sentiment in a public area to get the word out to others that things are not right, and informing them about what the governments actions mean on a grand scale.
Illegal? Definitely. Justifiable by a squad of stormtroopers? Absolutely not. don't misunderstand, I agree that his website defacement was illegal and a federal crime and probably not to bright, but I understand the motivation behind it.
If the site was about peaceful protest, eg marches and sit-ins then I'd have a problem with it being shut down. But it wasnt about peaceful protest from what I can gather. So I beleive the investigation is fully justified.
The hypocritical sheep mentality on this site is really beginning to piss me off. We're up in arms about a software company abusing it's monopolistic status, we shout from the heavens about our so-called righte being taken away. But who does anything about it? Who says anything? Who does anything but bitch on this website?
This 18-year old kid got into some political literature and posted a website detailing his views on what the US government is doing both domestically and internationally to create to the best of their ability a global imperialism. Maybe you agree with his methods, maybe you don't. But it is his constitutional right to express his views in whatever way he deems appropriate. It is not the Government's right to say "Peaceful, organized protest is OK, but anything else (like posting a call to action website) is illegal and we will kick in your door with machine guns and drag you out of your house." Give me a break. To equate domestic political disagreement with terrorism sounds more like Communist China (Tienamen Square, anyone?) than the United States. I think all of us have forgotten why this country was founded in the first place:
"all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
E-mail me, don't hide behind moderation!
Re:Are their servers anyway.
on
AOL vs. Trillian
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Just my $.02...I use Trillian as well, specifically for the reason that another user stated above. I have friends that use Yahoo, some on MSN, lots on IM, and a few on ICQ.
ALSO, Trillian supports 128-bit end-to-end encryption (Blowfish) for the AOL and ICQ protocols, which is something that no one else does. I would think that the privacy freaks (myself included) would grab it just for that.
I can't believe you still have one of my all-time favorite games in this world on floppy!!!! My copies of BTI,II, and III were destroyed, unfortunately. You want to talk about plot? World immersion? The graphics meant very little to me, that game was kick ass.
E-mail me, send smoke signals, or SOMETHING and let me know if there's someplace I can get these games. I read that there was a collector's set that had them, but it went out of print (dammit!)
Final Fantasy VII took it further, with mini games (Chocobo Racing, Chocobo Breeding, arcade games, etc.) and even introduced enemies that were more challenging than the final boss (anyone ever beat that giant robotic monster at the bottom of the ocean?)
Emerald Weapon, and yes, I did. Though it's nigh impossible if you haven't bred the Golden Chocobo and gotten the 'Knights of the Round' materia. Emerald was even harder than Ruby, who's ass I also whooped.
I haven't gamed that hard since. I remember back in the dorms when FFVII came out, you could walk down the hall and everyone with an open door would be playing FFVII. It became like a competition as to who could finish it fastest (then who could finish with the most stuff...like Sephiroth's sword).
I played FFVIII, but it just didn't have the same magic for me that VII did. Ah well.
It was. If you listen really really REALLY hard to the rear surround channels (the back of the theater), you'll hear whispered voices chanting the language of Mordor ('Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul' == 'One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them. One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them') both in the scene where the Ring is forged and in the scene where the fire-runes are revealed (correct me if I have the scenes wrong, but I *know* I heard it twice in the movie...once louder than the other time. It was kinda freaky.)
I am officially a massive loser for both noticing that and for informing others. If you'll excuse me, I'll be off taping my glasses.
Re-read the Hobbit sometimes. A film adaptation would have an ABSURD amount of speaking parts. Not to mention the fact that the main protagonist is a big ass dwarf chomping dragon that lives in a mountain lying on a massive hoard of treasure.
But we'll see. I wouldn't mind seeing the Hobbit on the big screen.
Agreed....I thought about that when I saw FOTR. They even led up to it with G****'s speech before the Fellowship entered...the place where all the E**** lived. (Sheesh, this is getting retarded. I'll do this instead:)
SPOILER!!! Gimli's infatuation with Lady Galadriel doesn't really come into play until the Two Towers (where Gimli and Legolas' friendship blossoms), so it would make since for the Gimli-Galadriel thing to be in the next movie, rather than this one. Had it gone into this movie, there wouldn't have been any time to follow up on it, and it just would have seemed out of place.
I agree. The novels never actually got into what Sauron could DO with the ring, just that it was a focal point of his power and blah blah blah. It was SWEET seeing Sauron actually using it in battle.
Cooler still if he'd cast something like 'Monster Summoning IV' or 'Earth Maw'.
Oh, God...I'm slipping farther and farther down the loser ladder.
...circumvent the use of encryption on our own shores (Magic Lantern) as well as digitally eavesdropping on all Internet traffic (Carnivore)...give a software company notorious for creating and distributing exploit-laden software power to further abuse it's monopoly, and now we're selling supercomputers overseas. That's just great.
The only comfort I can take is the fact that I didn't vote for that idiotic fuckstick. Small comfort indeed.
OK, stop the presses. I swore I wouldn't take a stance on this, but this just pushed my buttons.
I'm a long-time fan of Weis & Hickman....I got hipped to the Chronicles Trilogy when I was in the 7th grade, and have faithfully followed the stories of Tanis & Co. across every Dragonlance novel I could find. I remember being moved almost to tears by the events of Chronicles 2 and 3 (I won't spoil it for people that haven't read it), as well as the MANY heart wrenching moments in the Legends series that came after it. This is definitely excellent story-telling.
HOWEVER...
What John Robert Reule Tolkien did was take that kind of story-telling and make it EPIC, meaning it sucked you into an entire world, right down to the language. You cared not only about the Fellowship (as a group and as individuals) but about how their decisions affected the rest of the world. When you finish Return of the King, you KNOW that you have just borne witness to the passing of one age, and the beginning of another. The Lord of the Rings is great in that respect. It's like reading about the Japanese feudal period or the European Renaissance (if you're a history nut). THAT is why those books are great, and that is why they've stood the test of time.
Tolkien did that as well as made the story telling INTERESTING, made us care about what happened, rather thatn just dry storytelling. My heart was in my throat when Frodo finally reached the Cracks of Doom, I was sweating in anticipation to find out what was happening in the great battles taking place outside the gates of Mordor, as well as the conflict at Orthanc and at Minas Tirith (excuse me if I get the Two Towers and Return of the King mixed up). And I can't be the only one that was excited when the "Sword that was Broken" was renewed.
That is epic storytelling. These are excellent books. To say anything less says something about the reader.
Not to mention what happened the last time the FBI decided to abuse it's powers in blatant and utter disregard for the consitutionally guaranteed rights of the American people.
And this time we're GIVING the government this power by agreeing to be spoon-fed this 'for our own good' and 'war on terrorism' bullshit.
I say no thank you. If there was a tracking device installed subcutaneously on every single American citizen in the country, and our borders were closed, THEN would you people feel safe?
Slashdot Mirror
All interesting and true. We the People of the United States are OK with actions as long they don't directly affect us or our way of lives. Dissent is fine as long as it's on issues that we agree with.
Wow, Chris...where've you been? Drop me an e-mail, same address.
Speaking as a Sysadmin, I would agree to your defacement == stolen/damaged argument. Excellent point.
I also agree about the SWAT team being called for "some guy with detailed bombing instructions that advocates the violent overthrow of the government". I qualify that by saying if this was a person with some kind of criminal past or any reason other than just politcal dissent to raid his house. Government dissent is at the heart of most Universities, and bomb-making instructions are just a Google search away. Will we start seeing black helicopters on campus now? Will we be OK with it then?
Keep in mind that this is an 18-year old kid. 18 is that time when your ideaology has yet to be tempered with the fire os real world experience.
E-mail me! Don't hide behind moderation!
I agree with everthing you said, and I applaud you not being inflammatory in trying to say it.
I agree that web site hacking is neither appropriate nor effective. I agree that he should be punished.
Where I disagree is the government swooping in on him like stormtroopers, seizing his goods and ransacking his home with no rigard to his personal rights and safeties. 8 hours of interrogation without a lawyer present? Blatantly illegal Gestapo tactics.
Had the FBI pulled up to his house, read him his rights, and taken him away, you wouldn't be hearing from me on this site.
But because of these tactics, the government is further backing exactly what Raisethefist.com was attempting to illuminate the rest of us about.
E-mail me, don't hide behind moderation!
It is nothing like that, unless you feel that informing people about something is the same as doing it.
I notice that University classes about Behavioral Psychology that involve serial killers and sex crimes tend not to turn out droves of murderers and rapists. Instead these classes are there to inform.
E-mail me, don't hide behind moderation!
I agree.
My point was this country was founded by the oppressed of another country who tookit upon themselves to take their freedom and a new land because peaceful protest simply wasn't working.
It is hypocritical to not see the parallel in the oppressed of this modern land of the "free".
I'm not seeking justification, only understanding of what was going through this kid's head.
E-mail me, don't hide behind moderation!
I would agree with you if property had been stolen, or people had been harmed. Neither was the case. Like I said above, his actions were equivalent to vandalism. Bad yes, but come on? If little Timmy came running home from school chased by a SWAT team because he wrote "G.W. Bush sucks" on the schoolhouse wall, would you have the same sentiment?
It's not the legality I'm arguing, it's the motivation and punishment.
E-mail me, don't hide behind moderation!
It's more like spray painting anti-government sentiment in a public area to get the word out to others that things are not right, and informing them about what the governments actions mean on a grand scale.
Illegal? Definitely. Justifiable by a squad of stormtroopers? Absolutely not. don't misunderstand, I agree that his website defacement was illegal and a federal crime and probably not to bright, but I understand the motivation behind it.
E-mail me, don't hide behind moderation!
If the site was about peaceful protest, eg marches and sit-ins then I'd have a problem with it being shut down. But it wasnt about peaceful protest from what I can gather. So I beleive the investigation is fully justified.
The hypocritical sheep mentality on this site is really beginning to piss me off. We're up in arms about a software company abusing it's monopolistic status, we shout from the heavens about our so-called righte being taken away. But who does anything about it? Who says anything? Who does anything but bitch on this website?
This 18-year old kid got into some political literature and posted a website detailing his views on what the US government is doing both domestically and internationally to create to the best of their ability a global imperialism. Maybe you agree with his methods, maybe you don't. But it is his constitutional right to express his views in whatever way he deems appropriate. It is not the Government's right to say "Peaceful, organized protest is OK, but anything else (like posting a call to action website) is illegal and we will kick in your door with machine guns and drag you out of your house." Give me a break. To equate domestic political disagreement with terrorism sounds more like Communist China (Tienamen Square, anyone?) than the United States. I think all of us have forgotten why this country was founded in the first place:
"all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
E-mail me, don't hide behind moderation!
You just summarily described Jabber.
Just my $.02...I use Trillian as well, specifically for the reason that another user stated above. I have friends that use Yahoo, some on MSN, lots on IM, and a few on ICQ.
ALSO, Trillian supports 128-bit end-to-end encryption (Blowfish) for the AOL and ICQ protocols, which is something that no one else does. I would think that the privacy freaks (myself included) would grab it just for that.
I can't believe you still have one of my all-time favorite games in this world on floppy!!!! My copies of BTI,II, and III were destroyed, unfortunately. You want to talk about plot? World immersion? The graphics meant very little to me, that game was kick ass.
E-mail me, send smoke signals, or SOMETHING and let me know if there's someplace I can get these games. I read that there was a collector's set that had them, but it went out of print (dammit!)
Final Fantasy VII took it further, with mini games (Chocobo Racing, Chocobo Breeding, arcade games, etc.) and even introduced enemies that were more challenging than the final boss (anyone ever beat that giant robotic monster at the bottom of the ocean?)
Emerald Weapon, and yes, I did. Though it's nigh impossible if you haven't bred the Golden Chocobo and gotten the 'Knights of the Round' materia. Emerald was even harder than Ruby, who's ass I also whooped.
I haven't gamed that hard since. I remember back in the dorms when FFVII came out, you could walk down the hall and everyone with an open door would be playing FFVII. It became like a competition as to who could finish it fastest (then who could finish with the most stuff...like Sephiroth's sword).
I played FFVIII, but it just didn't have the same magic for me that VII did. Ah well.
A CIA Agent, and United States MARINE isn't supposed to be a tough guy? Have you ever actually picked up a Clancy novel?
Oh my GOD that's funny! lol!
/.
WHY do I never have mod points when the sarcasm brigade is unleashed on
/me wipes the tears out of his eyes.
OK, I'm done. Funny funny stuff.
It was. If you listen really really REALLY hard to the rear surround channels (the back of the theater), you'll hear whispered voices chanting the language of Mordor ('Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul' == 'One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them. One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them') both in the scene where the Ring is forged and in the scene where the fire-runes are revealed (correct me if I have the scenes wrong, but I *know* I heard it twice in the movie...once louder than the other time. It was kinda freaky.)
I am officially a massive loser for both noticing that and for informing others. If you'll excuse me, I'll be off taping my glasses.
Not rubles...hryvnia.
http://www.uazone.net/Hryvnia/
Well then I misread. My mistake.
I agree with professional discipline...but criminal penalties seem a little harsh.
Installing a screensaver is neither a large nor is it a questionable change to a system.
It's a screensaver. Listen to yourself.
Re-read the Hobbit sometimes. A film adaptation would have an ABSURD amount of speaking parts. Not to mention the fact that the main protagonist is a big ass dwarf chomping dragon that lives in a mountain lying on a massive hoard of treasure.
But we'll see. I wouldn't mind seeing the Hobbit on the big screen.
Agreed....I thought about that when I saw FOTR. They even led up to it with G****'s speech before the Fellowship entered...the place where all the E**** lived. (Sheesh, this is getting retarded. I'll do this instead:)
SPOILER!!!
Gimli's infatuation with Lady Galadriel doesn't really come into play until the Two Towers (where Gimli and Legolas' friendship blossoms), so it would make since for the Gimli-Galadriel thing to be in the next movie, rather than this one. Had it gone into this movie, there wouldn't have been any time to follow up on it, and it just would have seemed out of place.
I agree. The novels never actually got into what Sauron could DO with the ring, just that it was a focal point of his power and blah blah blah. It was SWEET seeing Sauron actually using it in battle.
Cooler still if he'd cast something like 'Monster Summoning IV' or 'Earth Maw'.
Oh, God...I'm slipping farther and farther down the loser ladder.
...circumvent the use of encryption on our own shores (Magic Lantern) as well as digitally eavesdropping on all Internet traffic (Carnivore)...give a software company notorious for creating and distributing exploit-laden software power to further abuse it's monopoly, and now we're selling supercomputers overseas. That's just great.
The only comfort I can take is the fact that I didn't vote for that idiotic fuckstick. Small comfort indeed.
OK, stop the presses. I swore I wouldn't take a stance on this, but this just pushed my buttons.
I'm a long-time fan of Weis & Hickman....I got hipped to the Chronicles Trilogy when I was in the 7th grade, and have faithfully followed the stories of Tanis & Co. across every Dragonlance novel I could find. I remember being moved almost to tears by the events of Chronicles 2 and 3 (I won't spoil it for people that haven't read it), as well as the MANY heart wrenching moments in the Legends series that came after it. This is definitely excellent story-telling.
HOWEVER...
What John Robert Reule Tolkien did was take that kind of story-telling and make it EPIC, meaning it sucked you into an entire world, right down to the language. You cared not only about the Fellowship (as a group and as individuals) but about how their decisions affected the rest of the world. When you finish Return of the King, you KNOW that you have just borne witness to the passing of one age, and the beginning of another. The Lord of the Rings is great in that respect. It's like reading about the Japanese feudal period or the European Renaissance (if you're a history nut). THAT is why those books are great, and that is why they've stood the test of time.
Tolkien did that as well as made the story telling INTERESTING, made us care about what happened, rather thatn just dry storytelling. My heart was in my throat when Frodo finally reached the Cracks of Doom, I was sweating in anticipation to find out what was happening in the great battles taking place outside the gates of Mordor, as well as the conflict at Orthanc and at Minas Tirith (excuse me if I get the Two Towers and Return of the King mixed up). And I can't be the only one that was excited when the "Sword that was Broken" was renewed.
That is epic storytelling. These are excellent books. To say anything less says something about the reader.
Stop buying new UNIVERSAL cds, that is.
This can't possibly float...too many people in too many offices around the world pop in a cd to listen while sitting in a cubicle for 8 hours.
Either that, or mp3 will become even more popular....the only way to listen to music on a computer!
Not to mention what happened the last time the FBI decided to abuse it's powers in blatant and utter disregard for the consitutionally guaranteed rights of the American people.
COINTELPRO
And this time we're GIVING the government this power by agreeing to be spoon-fed this 'for our own good' and 'war on terrorism' bullshit.
I say no thank you. If there was a tracking device installed subcutaneously on every single American citizen in the country, and our borders were closed, THEN would you people feel safe?
forced me to stick with the good ol' aluminum coated plastic discs.
Sorry to nitpick, but....aren't they PLASTIC coated ALUMINUM discs?