I am not a computer professional; I do international development work and so I travel a fair bit. I was in Afghanistan and Pakistan last summer and Iraq last November and December.
I found Afghanistan pretty likeable, but it would be a hard place to live for an extended period. Outside of Kabul it gets very primitive very quickly. Additionally, the security situation outside of Kabul is very much worse than it is inside.
I found Iraqis (and most people, really) to be pretty nice, hospitable people, but the situation there is just all kinds of bad. The security situation is part of it, and this keeps you indoors and in very close quarters a lot of the time, and this gets old quick. And regardless of how you feel about the current administration or the war, being an American in Iraq is a mighty uncomfortable thing to be in 2004.
I presume the people paying big money for these services are military or military contractors. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, these guys live in shipping containers, often in the middle of nowhere. In the Green Zone, shipping containers are stacked everywhere and people are shoved into any space that will fit them. Many people --civilian contractors -- share their bunks in shifts.
If you are really considering this just for the money, I would think very carefully about what you are doing. How much is money really worth? Because especially in Iraq, you will be exposing yourself to physical danger and psychic stress that is considerable.
And if you are going for a travel experience, I can support that, but I would suggest that in a military environment you are unlikely to get much of a cultural experience. There are other, better ways to do this.
If you really believe in what you would be doing (as I did), then go, but do keep an open mind and remain observant and inquisitive; regardless of your position now, you will find things are quite different from how you thought they were.
This is a great idea, but I think you're limiting yourself artificially. You will probably have a hard time attracting wireless users to connect only to local content.
The BBSes that were really good were the ones that had decent content. If you lived in an area that had a lot of BBSes, the duller ones fell by the wayside pretty quickly. If anything kept them alive, it was the fact that you didn't get a busy signal when you tried to dial them.
Why not put something online that has very local content and let a broader cross-section participate? If the content is good, and you can get the word out, they will come.
My advice to you is the same as it would be to anyone else: figure out how to be happy. I mean truly happy, not I-just-got-a-new-big-screen-TV happy. This is really not easy, and it is different for everyone, but I can give you some pointers:
Try to recognize that being smarter than other people does not necessarily make you smart. You don't know a whole lot more than you know. Take pleasure in the finding out and the understanding; not in being "smarter" than someone else.
I can't tell you what will make you happy, but I can assure you that it's not your job, or how much money you have, how big a house you live in or what kind of car you drive. Many people -- including allegedly "smart" people -- never figure that out.
You can learn from people who are dumber than you.
People can be difficult and our institutions are inflexible. When you have different needs from others, and have different talents, some of life's interactions can be difficult or unsatisfying. But if you can recognize what makes you truly happy -- and stop struggling for things that don't -- none of that will matter so much, and a lot of it will fall into place.
I recently returned from Kenya, where muggers are frequently beaten to death. But there are still more muggers in Nairobi than in pretty much any other city on Earth. Go figure.
I realize I am posting this way too late for anyone to actually read it, butâ¦
I lived in Egypt for four years. The Film Review Board there is notoriously fickle. Some things get through that you cannot believe, others are banned for no apparent reason.
The original Matrix was a big hit in the Cairo cinemas. I was stunned that they let this deeply subversive film in the country. The plot of the movie is that your life is a lie; a simulacrum that fiendish authority figures (represented by security men in dark suits, no less) are force-feeding you so that you will docilely give them the power they need to survive. But if you know the truth, it is possible to resist, and perhaps even defeat the established authority. The very paranoid Egyptian government allowed thousands of young Egyptians to get this message at their local cinema.
On the other hand, they cut all the references to âoeZion.â
Re:I'm more amazed....
on
Baked Apple
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· Score: 1, Funny
Who thinks like that? How can you train your brain not to function? How can you train yourself not to be curious?
I wonder the same thing every time I hear George W. Bush speak.
3) The editors started this thing on a whim and lucked out when it became popular enough that they could make a living doing it. But they're not professional editors, publishers, or fact checkers, and they're not particularly interested in those things. And with a few thousand people critiquing every story, no amount of sloppiness goes unnoticed.
First off, you're absolutely right. To say that there was no reason to get involved in Somalia is flat wrong. To say that objectives were ill-defined and the means of obtaining them poorly thought-out; or that domestic committment was too shallow for such an operation is another matter, but that's not what Katz said.
On the matter of theft of food aid, I should point out that this happens almost universally with food aid. Food assistance, while pretty uncontroversial outside the international aid community, is the most controversial kind of assistance within it. It tends to get stolen to support whoever is in charge, and it generally warps the economic and political fabric of the area where it's used -- and sometimes quite far from the area where it's used. And the availability of cheap food through commodity programs often throws struggling farmers out of business, ensuring that there will be a shortage next year, too.
I actually think the Scarfo case is a good thing. The logger was used in accordance with a court order, and the whole thing gives lie to the argument that we can't have readily available crypto because it makes the actual bad guys invulnerable to law enforcement.
When I think old Usenet, I think Serdar Argic, the prolific anti-Armenian cross-poster who was widely suspected to be a bot. Was the reality or artificiality of Argic ever definitively determined?
Makes me want to pull out my old "Howling Through The Wires World Tour" t-shirt.
Re:Why can't anyone see the implications of this?
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 2
If I were a NYC city planner, I think I would start looking at options for Dutch-style bike lanes.
IT Corps is a program run by George Mason University in cooperation with the UN Development Programme that sends IT people all over the world to do international development work. They don't pay -- in fact, you have to pay your own way -- but you get to work within the UN system (with all the support and prestige that implies) and they have programs in many countries where nobody else is doing this kind of thing.
I toured one UNDP project that used IT Corps people in Egypt. It was a young project, but it had potential.
I recall hearing tales in the 80s of a trojan that would cycle the horizontal and/or vertical hold so fast that some cheapo monitors would actually explode. Not sure if there was any truth to it or not.
The sanctions are working pretty well then? Saddam is unable to pursue weapons of mass destruction? The majority of inspectors seem to disagree with you.
American policy toward Israel since the sixties has been pretty one-sided. That they occasionally curb the worst of the Israelis' excesses doesn't change that.
Your position seems to be that any information that does not fall into a black and white category is to be disregarded, because the world is black and white.
I see...the concept of an indirect attack. It has to come to this. Paint a big conspiracy and then accuse the USA of the worlds ills.
Not exactly. When the US gives weapons to the Israelis, who consistently turn around and use them in contravention of international law, and then more weapons are sent again the following year, one does not really have to paint a big conspiracy to find a connection.
You can say whatever you want about Saddam Hussein, and most of it will be true, but it does not change the fact that US policy in Iraq is not just inhumane, but just plain stupid. All it has succeeded in doing is giving the ruling government a convenient bogeyman to blame all the country's ills on, while at the same time making sure that the population is too busy trying to scrape out a living to mount a decent opposition. Saddam is still able to get whatever he wants; just about the only thing that gets through the sanctions in bulk is military materiel. There have been recent attempts to ease the sanctions that have been opposed by nobody but Saddam Hussein. The sanctions are probably what has kept him in power.
The point of my last post was that in ten years or so, there will be a whole generation of millions of desperate Iraqis who have grown up with every reason to hate the United States. I do not expect your arguments that it was Saddam's fault will hold much weight with them. You may think they're wrong, and you may even be right, but that won't improve your security much.
You're a confused idiot, just remember that you, your kids and your grandkids have to live in the world you manage to construct.
That's an interesting point: how did the world we're currently living in come to be constructed?
Self defense is entirely legal and legitimate, which rules out your definition.
Is it really that simple? There are many in Iraq and Palestine who have excellent reason to feel they are under attack by the United States, either directly or indirectly. There are a significant number of civilians in Afghanistan who have been killed or rendered homeless by American bombing; there are thousands more who lived in fear of it happening to them. These people have a real fear of losing their lives or property as a result of American policy; do they have a "legal and legitimate" right to attack the United States?
Osama bin Laden and his followers believe the holy places of Islam are under threat from American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, and that they have a duty to defend them. You may not agree with them, but their opinions are sincerely held. What are their rights of self-defense in this case?
Whatever you think the answers to these questions are, do take a moment to consider that to many people they are not academic or distant questions, but have a very immediate significance to their daily lives. And, moral considerations aside, consider whether or not it is in the interests of America's national security to minimize the number of people who have real reason to ask such questions. And how hard, really, would that be to do?
Slashdot Mirror
I am not a computer professional; I do international development work and so I travel a fair bit. I was in Afghanistan and Pakistan last summer and Iraq last November and December.
I found Afghanistan pretty likeable, but it would be a hard place to live for an extended period. Outside of Kabul it gets very primitive very quickly. Additionally, the security situation outside of Kabul is very much worse than it is inside.
I found Iraqis (and most people, really) to be pretty nice, hospitable people, but the situation there is just all kinds of bad. The security situation is part of it, and this keeps you indoors and in very close quarters a lot of the time, and this gets old quick. And regardless of how you feel about the current administration or the war, being an American in Iraq is a mighty uncomfortable thing to be in 2004.
I presume the people paying big money for these services are military or military contractors. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, these guys live in shipping containers, often in the middle of nowhere. In the Green Zone, shipping containers are stacked everywhere and people are shoved into any space that will fit them. Many people --civilian contractors -- share their bunks in shifts.
If you are really considering this just for the money, I would think very carefully about what you are doing. How much is money really worth? Because especially in Iraq, you will be exposing yourself to physical danger and psychic stress that is considerable.
And if you are going for a travel experience, I can support that, but I would suggest that in a military environment you are unlikely to get much of a cultural experience. There are other, better ways to do this.
If you really believe in what you would be doing (as I did), then go, but do keep an open mind and remain observant and inquisitive; regardless of your position now, you will find things are quite different from how you thought they were.
This is a great idea, but I think you're limiting yourself artificially. You will probably have a hard time attracting wireless users to connect only to local content.
The BBSes that were really good were the ones that had decent content. If you lived in an area that had a lot of BBSes, the duller ones fell by the wayside pretty quickly. If anything kept them alive, it was the fact that you didn't get a busy signal when you tried to dial them.
Why not put something online that has very local content and let a broader cross-section participate? If the content is good, and you can get the word out, they will come.
My advice to you is the same as it would be to anyone else: figure out how to be happy. I mean truly happy, not I-just-got-a-new-big-screen-TV happy. This is really not easy, and it is different for everyone, but I can give you some pointers:
Try to recognize that being smarter than other people does not necessarily make you smart. You don't know a whole lot more than you know. Take pleasure in the finding out and the understanding; not in being "smarter" than someone else.
I can't tell you what will make you happy, but I can assure you that it's not your job, or how much money you have, how big a house you live in or what kind of car you drive. Many people -- including allegedly "smart" people -- never figure that out.
You can learn from people who are dumber than you.
People can be difficult and our institutions are inflexible. When you have different needs from others, and have different talents, some of life's interactions can be difficult or unsatisfying. But if you can recognize what makes you truly happy -- and stop struggling for things that don't -- none of that will matter so much, and a lot of it will fall into place.
I recently returned from Kenya, where muggers are frequently beaten to death. But there are still more muggers in Nairobi than in pretty much any other city on Earth. Go figure.
I realize I am posting this way too late for anyone to actually read it, butâ¦
I lived in Egypt for four years. The Film Review Board there is notoriously fickle. Some things get through that you cannot believe, others are banned for no apparent reason.
The original Matrix was a big hit in the Cairo cinemas. I was stunned that they let this deeply subversive film in the country. The plot of the movie is that your life is a lie; a simulacrum that fiendish authority figures (represented by security men in dark suits, no less) are force-feeding you so that you will docilely give them the power they need to survive. But if you know the truth, it is possible to resist, and perhaps even defeat the established authority. The very paranoid Egyptian government allowed thousands of young Egyptians to get this message at their local cinema.
On the other hand, they cut all the references to âoeZion.â
I wonder the same thing every time I hear George W. Bush speak.
The site says the launch was delayed due to fog. If the thing is running on GPS-assisted autopilot, what difference does fog make?
...GoodyearNet?
I can see the RFC now.
As an aid professional this doesn't sound right to me. To what department are you referring?
I read that three times and I don't get it. I thought April Fools' Day was over, yes?
There is a third possibility:
3) The editors started this thing on a whim and lucked out when it became popular enough that they could make a living doing it. But they're not professional editors, publishers, or fact checkers, and they're not particularly interested in those things. And with a few thousand people critiquing every story, no amount of sloppiness goes unnoticed.
Just throwing it out there.
Capitolism? Is that the ideology that wants to put domes on everything?
Sorry, I had to.
First off, you're absolutely right. To say that there was no reason to get involved in Somalia is flat wrong. To say that objectives were ill-defined and the means of obtaining them poorly thought-out; or that domestic committment was too shallow for such an operation is another matter, but that's not what Katz said.
On the matter of theft of food aid, I should point out that this happens almost universally with food aid. Food assistance, while pretty uncontroversial outside the international aid community, is the most controversial kind of assistance within it. It tends to get stolen to support whoever is in charge, and it generally warps the economic and political fabric of the area where it's used -- and sometimes quite far from the area where it's used. And the availability of cheap food through commodity programs often throws struggling farmers out of business, ensuring that there will be a shortage next year, too.
I actually think the Scarfo case is a good thing. The logger was used in accordance with a court order, and the whole thing gives lie to the argument that we can't have readily available crypto because it makes the actual bad guys invulnerable to law enforcement.
1) The court order authorized them to use "intrusive methods" to place the device.
2) As I understand entrapment, the action the defendant has been enticed into has to be (or lead to) what they are being charged for.
My company leases PCs from Dell also. When the lease is up, they have the option of buying the PCs at $1 each.
When I think old Usenet, I think Serdar Argic, the prolific anti-Armenian cross-poster who was widely suspected to be a bot. Was the reality or artificiality of Argic ever definitively determined?
Makes me want to pull out my old "Howling Through The Wires World Tour" t-shirt.
If I were a NYC city planner, I think I would start looking at options for Dutch-style bike lanes.
I toured one UNDP project that used IT Corps people in Egypt. It was a young project, but it had potential.
This is great news for dogs!
I recall hearing tales in the 80s of a trojan that would cycle the horizontal and/or vertical hold so fast that some cheapo monitors would actually explode. Not sure if there was any truth to it or not.
The sanctions are working pretty well then? Saddam is unable to pursue weapons of mass destruction? The majority of inspectors seem to disagree with you.
American policy toward Israel since the sixties has been pretty one-sided. That they occasionally curb the worst of the Israelis' excesses doesn't change that.
Your position seems to be that any information that does not fall into a black and white category is to be disregarded, because the world is black and white.
Not exactly. When the US gives weapons to the Israelis, who consistently turn around and use them in contravention of international law, and then more weapons are sent again the following year, one does not really have to paint a big conspiracy to find a connection.
You can say whatever you want about Saddam Hussein, and most of it will be true, but it does not change the fact that US policy in Iraq is not just inhumane, but just plain stupid. All it has succeeded in doing is giving the ruling government a convenient bogeyman to blame all the country's ills on, while at the same time making sure that the population is too busy trying to scrape out a living to mount a decent opposition. Saddam is still able to get whatever he wants; just about the only thing that gets through the sanctions in bulk is military materiel. There have been recent attempts to ease the sanctions that have been opposed by nobody but Saddam Hussein. The sanctions are probably what has kept him in power.
The point of my last post was that in ten years or so, there will be a whole generation of millions of desperate Iraqis who have grown up with every reason to hate the United States. I do not expect your arguments that it was Saddam's fault will hold much weight with them. You may think they're wrong, and you may even be right, but that won't improve your security much.
That's an interesting point: how did the world we're currently living in come to be constructed?
Is it really that simple? There are many in Iraq and Palestine who have excellent reason to feel they are under attack by the United States, either directly or indirectly. There are a significant number of civilians in Afghanistan who have been killed or rendered homeless by American bombing; there are thousands more who lived in fear of it happening to them. These people have a real fear of losing their lives or property as a result of American policy; do they have a "legal and legitimate" right to attack the United States?
Osama bin Laden and his followers believe the holy places of Islam are under threat from American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, and that they have a duty to defend them. You may not agree with them, but their opinions are sincerely held. What are their rights of self-defense in this case?
Whatever you think the answers to these questions are, do take a moment to consider that to many people they are not academic or distant questions, but have a very immediate significance to their daily lives. And, moral considerations aside, consider whether or not it is in the interests of America's national security to minimize the number of people who have real reason to ask such questions. And how hard, really, would that be to do?