I've been developing a similar site myself (been wanting to for a long time).
Me too! Unfortunately it's taking me a lot of time -- I have some special ideas that require programming.
The guy who started The World Forum was smart enough to use existing software instead. When I stumbled upon his site I recognized many of my ideas, and took a break from my programming for my own site to contribute a lot there. Later I went back to my own programming -- it's difficult to do both when there's very little time.
I'd love to discuss this further in another forum.
In fact several times during our discussion I've wished that we'd been at The World Forum instead, because I'm sure people there would be interested, and very likely some would contribute to our discussion. It even occurred to me that we might copy the discussion we've had so far to that site, so people can comment easily if they want. In fact right now there's a frontpage story where I think our discussion would be on-topic. Or alternatively there's a blog area where this would most definitely be considered suitable. (I never blog, but I could make an exception.)
I might add that I'm sure you'd be warmly welcomed at The World Forum. Most of the careful, insightful contributions there represent opinions somewhat similar to mine. But the site was never intended to be one-sided, quite the contrary! The discussions will become far more interesting if many different opinions are represented. Therefore I think people will be enthusiastic if you show up there.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it. Do your part.
Sorry about the delay, I've been very busy. And now this has become ridiculously long. I hope you don't mind.
The case could be made that Iraq was already a breeding ground for terrorists, which is the reason we went there in the first place.
Already a breeding ground? The incredible chaos we see now in Iraq is impossible under extremely harsh and cruel dictatorships like Saddam's. Such a chaos would be possible only if a revolution were imminent. But in that case the invasion would have been unnecessary. If people see their children starve to death and don't revolt there's a very strong iron fist keeping order. Any claim that Saddam's Iraq suffered a similar chaos under Saddam would completely invalidate what we have been told about the extreme cruelty of the dictatorship.
Note that today there are terrorist attacks several times a week, with many people getting killed every time. The kidnapping of locals has become an industry, financing and strengthening a growing mafia. To avoid the danger of these kidnappings, higher education professionals like doctors and engineers flee the country, leading to "brain drain", that is, there are too few people in some professions.
What you have said resonates with some of my concerns over the operations in Afghanistan,
I agreed with the war on Afghanistan. That country did not have the tremendous potential for post-war chaos that Iraq had. The war on Afghanistan made sense from the start.
The only mistake, but a horrible mistake, was when the US decided not to finish its work in Afghanistan, and thinned out its forces there, to turn its attention on Iraq instead. A tremendous mistake, with far more dire consequences than when the previous war on Iraq was left unfinished.
I've always said that we should never give in to them, (e.g. if they ask for release of some prisoner, or kidnap someone) don't give in to their demands, because it only legitimizes their actions, and probably encourages others to follow their example.
I agree. Giving in to kidnapper's demands would strongly encourage more kidnappings, by showing that kidnappings are profitable and give power. There would be more and more kidnappings all the time.
It's important to remember that the terrorists are not organised as one strong cooperating mafia. They are an unorganised chaos of disparate small groups without central coordination. There are conflicts and violence between them. Giving in to kidnappers one group would make a myriad of other groups think "Hey, we can try that too." Maybe even a competition for proving their "valor". Nightmare.
But the case September 11th attacks was different, the terrorists clearly wanted to kill Americans, and keep on doing so, but for what purpose? To keep us out of Saudi Arabia?
I suppose it's possible, but if that were their goal they could come much closer to achieving it by turning their anger much more against the government of Saudi Arabia than they have done, and by inciting revolt in Saudi Arabia, and by making threats and ultimatums before attacking, and so on.
I believe more in a combination of anger and despair, along with a lust for power among the leaders. Anger and despair is a dangerous combination. I think very likely it's a feeling of deep despair and frustration with the poverty and the inferior status of their countries and peoples as opposed to the West. There's probably a lot of mob rage, the kind of collective anger that turns into lynching. I also think many of the leaders are drugged
As for censoring and control that is PRECISELY what the US is worried about. [...] the UN committe head responsible for this, who just happens to be China's former Minister of Telecommunications [...] envisions the UN in a much greater supervisory role, where they decide the kind of things that are and are not allowed on the Internet.
That certainly sounds nasty. If that's indeed their intent, then I certainly don't support it. If indeed they want what you describe I agree with nearly everything you say.
But they're totally mistaken if they think that that has something to do with the root servers. There's no way you could do content filtering at the root servers, content never passes them, nor do they see any individual domain names. It is necessarily a completely separate issue.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it. Do your part.
I'm sure eventually Americans will learn how to emanate crass sanctimoniousness like "enlightened" European dillettantes such as yourself.
You mean like your grandparent-grandparent comment? "Did you miss kindergarten? Europe and Africa are continents. The USA is a Country.... Gheeesh"
Or did you mean your grandparent-sibling comment? "Europe gets along????? Har..... Eurpope gets along when the Big boys in the UK and the USA make them get along...."
Or was it your grandparent comment? Another bringing up the sins of our grandparents as if we did that.
Don't worry, there's no need for them to learn, they're already experts, that's where people like me learn it.
Just like, shortly before the war in Iraq, that sudden unilateral "Either you're with us or you're against us." That troll wasn't even a website comment, it was the official standpoint of the United States towards its allies. And in debates, when we mentioned the inevitable post-war chaos, with either explosive terrorism spreading first in Iraq and then over the world, or civil war within Iraq, we got the inevitable response: "How can you defend Saddam?" Never getting past this off-topic strawman, never listening. Always knowing best, always holiest, never needing to listen or care.
That's where I've learned.
Fortunately most people don't use that tone. So with most people I discuss constructively and with interest in the arguments and facts. I don't often reply to people who are so sanctimonious, as you put it. But when I do, I have a tendency to respond in kind.
You troll me, I troll you.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it. Do your part.
By contrast, the UN grgoup wants to take responsibility for
I thought it was limited to the root servers and assigning names and numbers. I didn't know about these various plans.
for eliminating spam,
If what they want is to get some international cooperation going so that fines can be collected not just nationally, but also internationally, in efficient ways, maybe that would make sense. That depends on how it's arranged. It might be a good thing if what they aim at can be likened to Interpol: Routines and arrangements for exchanging information and finding culprits, but no effect on each country's laws and sovereignty.
However if the idea is to define international laws about Internet contents, depending on what that would mean, almost certainly I agree with you. We can most definitely not have some "least common denominator" where Afghans and Swedes try to agree on how much clothes people must wear on photos both on Afghan and Swedish webpages, or where North Korea and the United States try to agree on the contents of political debate in both countries.
That idea is both totally absurd and totally nightmarish. Because of the absurdity I find it extremely unlikely that that's what they aim at. But of course you never know for sure -- never underestimate the potential of stupidity.
leveling the costs of internet access globally,
That sounds to me like an axtremely cheap and efficient way to get rid of the problems with offshoring and other cases where the West can't compete well.
For decades the West has been subsidising agricultural exports to poor countries so heavily that local farmers can't compete with the resulting low prices. (In this area Europe is the worst sinner.) We have also charged import tariffs that make it very difficult for those countries to sell their products. By blocking free trade we have kept them from developing economically. People have starved and lived in misery so we didn't have to suffer the discomfort of learning a new job. Now we pay the price in the form of outsourcing and other forms of competition that have much harsher consequences that they would have had.
The sooner the various economies are better balanced and salaries start equalizing, the sooner ths problem is lessened and starts to disappear. What's needed for this is education, education, education. The Internet seems like a fantastically cheap and efficient solution for this.
and solving "multilingualism" issues on the 'Net.
What can the UN do in this area? Seems to me that the only thing they can do would be to put more emphasis and higher priority on Unicode and other internationalization issues in standardization bodies. If that's their intent, it may make perfect sense.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it. Do your part.
When you write this kind of serious, thoughtful and well-argued post, please use the real plural form viruses. The non-word virii is just a ancient, tired, weird old geek joke, somewhat like boxen and 1337, it doesn't belong in such a thoughtful text.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it. Do your part.
A man goes out and buys a fat pipe from an ISP. He then sets up a wireless router and doesn't protect it. He understands his neighbors might connect, and he has no problem with that. His neighbors in fact, do connect, tons of them connect and use it all the time. They even get little devices to extend the net further than it went before from just the mans router. Now the neighbors want to take control of the mans network. They think since they use it, they should be in control, even though it was the man who bought and built it.
Here's a more accurate version:
A man goes out and buys five computers and connects them to each other. "Hey, cool" say his neighbors. "Why don't you join me," says the first guy. So everybody buys computers and network cables and they're all connected. And everybody fiddles with the network and tests and develops cool stuff. In the end the first guy has twenty computers and his neighbors have eighty. So some of them come up with a proposal: "Suppose we cooperate and administer the network together, rather than only one of us administering everything."
Looks like the first guy answers "Nooo!!! Mine!!! Mine!!! Mine!!!"
A world leader in democracy. Yeah, right.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it. Do your part.
So when the rest of the world rebels and creates their own internet,
We already have our own interconnected networks.
The only part of the Internet that your country owns is the part that is in your country. Your country did not dig down fiber in my country and city. Nor did you install the TV cable that connects me to the dug-down fiber.
The many networks are interconnected through fibers that cross borders and oceans. Are you saying that you want the US to be disconnected from this?
If that's what you want, discuss it with your ISP or your congressman. I don't think you can convince many but do give them your opinion.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it. Do your part.
That's true. Germany had no problem sharing with the rest of Europe in the 40's.
That was our grandparents. Seventy years have passed. Europe has learned its lesson. We're not repeating the follies of our grandparents.
Sadly, judging by the angrily aggressive jingoism of some Americans, it seems now we have to wait for you to catch up.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it. Do your part.
Did you miss kindergarten? Europe and Africa are continents The USA is a Country.... Gheeesh
That's no problem because we have no problem with sharing and cooperating. Only America has this problem.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it. Do your part.
The root servers only have a small table with top-level domains (TLDs):.com,.org,.us,.gb and so on. The root servers have nothing to do with individual domain names!
If China should decide that they want to remove some TLD from the root servers, the rest of the world simply won't accept, and won't remove them. Why should they?
By the way, the root servers are already now spread all over the world.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it. Do your part.
I recognize that the rest of the world makes a valuable contribution to the internet, however: The United States developed the internet, with many large investments (DARPA etc.), and now we are expected to just give it up?
Europe invented and developed the wheel. Clearly your cars and roads belong to Europe.
Stop cooking right now, Africa invented the fire.
Clearly we need an international patent system, so that each country can hoard and control its own inventions.
What happens when China decides that no one should use the word democracy? What happens when France decides that the word Nazi can't be used?
International collaboration through organizations such as the International Telecommunication Union must be brought to an end immediately. What if China decides that no one should use the word democracy on the phone? What happens when France decides that the word Nazi can't be used on the phone?
Note that the names and numbers that would be assigned correspond to the international country codes for telephone. For China to censor your Internet usage they'd have to invade your country, just like they'd have to do for censoring your use of the telephone. It's the same thing.
One question. If the root servers and the assignment of TLDs and numbers were controlled by Europe, would you like it to stay that way? Or would you, maybe, perhaps, want the US to have some part in it?
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it. Do your part.
If I had a choice [...] I'll pick personal hygiene every time.
You must be new here.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Damn those French!! And "Lagrange points"??? I say we call them "Freedom Points".
"Freedom" fries, "freedom" toast, "freedom" points, "frogs" -- so much effort to avoid the word "French".
Well, don't be shy! Don't be hesitant! Go the whole way. Call the country "Freedom".
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time. Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
This may become long and repetitive, for lack of time for editing.
Your sig does imply an anti-US sentiment, it seems to say that America has failed, and Europe is somehow automatically better, and morally superior.
Clearly I have to scrap that sig. Clearly it doesn't convey what I wanted to convey. A few other people's reactions confirm what you have said.
That provocative superior/inferior thing was only intended as a momentary attention-grabber. I expected people to immediately look past the attention grabber and look for the real message. I never expect people to take that kind of mine-is-bigger-than-yours competition seriously. I was mistaken.
No, I meant that it takes "advantage of terrorism." I didn't mean to imply that you were going out and throwing bombs at people,
That's obvious. Of course I meant the same.
but you're not taking advantage of it any less than certain profiteers are.
Clearly I'm still not getting my message across to you. How can I make people aware of a danger if I'm not supposed to mention that danger?
My complaint is that the US has (unintentionally) played into the hands of bin Laden and (unintentionally) fostered and encouraged terrorism by creating a tremendous breeding-ground for terrorism.
I'm saying that the US is trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it. The US will keep pouring gasoline until its people notices that it's gasoline. You need to start noticing, we can't have you pouring gasoline indefinitely. If you don't stop soon we'll have the whole world on fire.
But the citizens of the US remain blissfully unaware of the danger, dreamily fantasizing that the gasoline is water and that it can put out the fire.
The fact that I try to make people aware of this gasoline does not mean that I'm taking advantage of terrorism. I can't make you aware of something without mentioning that which I try to make you aware of.
your statement [...] seems to state that we should stop trying to capture guys like Al Zarqawi,
Where on earth did you get that idea? I said no such thing!
and we are somehow just bullying Iraq by being there.
I don't care whether you're bullying or not. I care about terrorism swarming over the world.
If you're so concerned about these terrorists spreading into Europe, why aren't you helping round them up,
What??? "Rounding them up"???
Why is it that so many Americans think that everybody else is far less cocky than Americans are? Why do so many Americans think that others will submit docilely in ways that Americans would never, ever submit?
If the United States were invaded by a superior power (if such existed), would the Americans submit docilely? Of course not! Could the American resistance be quieted by "rounding them up"? Of course not! The more the invaders killed and captured your sons and brothers and fathers and nephews, the more Americans would decide to join the resistance!
Do you have any reason to doubt this?
So why fantasize about other peoples submitting docilely when you yourselves would never, ever submit that way? Why fantasize about "rounding them up" when you yourselves could never, ever be effectively rounded up? Where do these dreamy hopes come from?
The whole Iraq adventure is based on this weird fantasy that the terrorists are far, far more docile and submissive than most Americans. They certainly aren't! They are suicidally fanatical mass murderers! Their family members are of course normal people, but their life in feudal societies of warlords has probably made them far more aggressive than most Americans. Where's the evidence that they'll succumb if they are rounded up? Sheesh!
Remember this image: Visualize how Americans would react if their country were invaded and the invaders rounded up the American resistance
What's your point? The connections between Sweden and Germany don't belong to the US. Our connections to Britain, Poland and Finland don't belong to the US either.
The US has nothing to do with Sweden's connections to the rest of the world -- except, of course, our connections to the US.
Claiming that you own the Internet is like claiming that you own the world's telephone networks, or that you own the world's roads.
If you own the Internet just because you developed ARPANET, then we own the roads in the US because we invented the wheel.
Why are so many Americans questioning the idea that Europe wants to have root servers of their own?
Just imagine that the roles were reversed. Just imagine that Europe owned all the root servers. You can bet the US would immediately decide to get their own root servers. You want to be independent.
How can this not be obvious? It's important infrastructure, and you don't want to be entirely at the mercy of foreign powers. What's wrong with that?
Why do so many Americans assume that everybody else is far less cocky than Americans are? This weird assumption has astonished me for years.
This assumption was especially perplexing before the Iraq war, when Americans assumed that Iraqi and other Muslims would be far more docile than Americans could ever be, that they would accept occupation and peace would be possible. Why assume that?
Americans would never accept foreign occupation, why assume that others would? Where do you get these strange ideas?
Fortunately, Europe and the US are friendly and have common goals. Even so, Europe wanting its own root servers is just as natural as the United States wanting their own if the roles were reversed.
Hundreds and hundreds of products have been killed or permanently crippled because their first versions were terrible.
There's the answer! Now it's clear what has to be done to make this processor a success!
The first version was terrible, you say? Well, then simply apply the one and only strategy that always guarantees that an absolutely horrible first version becomes a great market success.
I think the big problem is that it cannot run x86 software very quickly.
Why is the standard solution to this problem to let the processor interpret x86 code? Why not first let a JIT recompiler read through the x86 code and recompile it as native Itanium code? This could be fully automatic and transparent, just like a JVM-to-native JIT compilation.
That should be very much faster than interpreting x86 code all through the program execution!
Is there some fundamental problem that makes this impossible?
There is currently only one network formally referred to as "the internet."
On the contrary, the Internet consists of a huge number of networks that are connected to each other.
In reality, these other countries could easily drop "the internet" and form their own large scale network capable of international communication. Nobody is stopping them.
I'm in Stockholm, Sweden. The United States did not finance and build the TV cable network that connects me to Stockholm's city-wide network of networks. The US did not build the city-wide network of networks either. These networks were financed by, and belong to, the cable company, various other companies, the city of Stockholm, the University of Stockholm, our Technical High School, and so on.
Go build your own if you want one too.
As you see, we already did. The fact that our networks are connected to your networks doesn't mean that you built our networks or that they belong to you.
it just echoed the prevailing anti-US sentiment around here,
The fact that someone is critical of what the US is doing doesn't mean he's anti-US.
I find it amazing that so many Americans seem to prefer that people not express opinions against what the US is doing. Sheesh, America prides itself on leading the world in democracy, and yet people should be silenced? Americans talk so much about the First Amendment, and yet people whose life is strongly and deeply affected by American power should shut up?
No, I'm most definitely not anti-American. On the contrary, in lots of things I'm enthusiastically pro-American. But that doesn't mean that I'm blind and silent. I'm very worried about what's happening.
Isn't your sig using terrorism to support your views?
Not using. It's not an opinion that uses terrorism. It's an opinion about America's self-defeating reactions to terrorism. It's a very deep worry and concern that I can't express without mentioning what I'm concerned about.
It's a serious worry that started way back in the months before the Iraq war. Back then one of the things that were debated most intensely here in Sweden was what solution Bush might have for dealing with the inevitable chaos once the US military would win the war. It seemed obvious to everyone that the Bush administration must have some completely new and absolutely revolutionary plan, because without a solution for dealing with the inevitable chaos, a war against Iraq would make no sense. For anyone knowing anything at all about Iraq, total chaos seemed completely inevitable, unless there was some unprecedented solution.
(Well, to be more precise, some debaters had theories that the Bush administration had no solution and simply didn't care about the inevitable deadly chaos. But there are always some obsessively anti-american weirdoes out on the fringes. Nobody takes them seriously.)
(Or rather, nobody here takes the fringe weirdoes seriously. It seems some Americans think that the weirdoes represent our official opinions, and get offended that "we" have such opinions.)
(I don't think it occurred to anyone here that the Bush administration might not know that total chaos was inevitable.)
Anyway, as it turned out, Iraq did turn into total chaos, and there was no new solution. On the contrary, the US seemed amazingly unprepared and bewildered. And terrorism was certainly not diminished. Whatever tiny trickle of terrorism may have occurred in, or emanated from, Iraq before the war, was turned into a massive continuous torrent of everyday terror and death and destruction.
Iraq is at the backyard of Europe. The United States has turned our backyard into an indomitable breeding-ground for terrorism that is building up and getting ready to swarm over the borders, to spread over Europe and over the world.
Do we want a breeding-ground for terrorism in our backyard? Does it make sense to have such a breeding-ground? Why is it there? What is it good for?
What can be worth such a tremendous risk?
I find your sig actually insulting
Unfortunately I've found no way to express these concerns in a way that is strongly thought-provoking without also being offensive. In fact, even when I explain these thoughts at length and with care it sometimes offends people. I get the impression that many Americans are extremely touchy on this subject, and would rather that we didn't have opinions.
But if some people are offended, sorry, that's far less important than what's actually happening to our world.
Personally I find it far more offensive that more than 1700 American soldiers have given their life in the belief that they were defending their country, when the horrible fact is that what they've done is exacerbate the problem of terrorism by several orders of magnitude.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been developing a similar site myself (been wanting to for a long time).
Me too! Unfortunately it's taking me a lot of time -- I have some special ideas that require programming.
The guy who started The World Forum was smart enough to use existing software instead. When I stumbled upon his site I recognized many of my ideas, and took a break from my programming for my own site to contribute a lot there. Later I went back to my own programming -- it's difficult to do both when there's very little time.
I'd love to discuss this further in another forum.
In fact several times during our discussion I've wished that we'd been at The World Forum instead, because I'm sure people there would be interested, and very likely some would contribute to our discussion. It even occurred to me that we might copy the discussion we've had so far to that site, so people can comment easily if they want. In fact right now there's a frontpage story where I think our discussion would be on-topic. Or alternatively there's a blog area where this would most definitely be considered suitable. (I never blog, but I could make an exception.)
I might add that I'm sure you'd be warmly welcomed at The World Forum. Most of the careful, insightful contributions there represent opinions somewhat similar to mine. But the site was never intended to be one-sided, quite the contrary! The discussions will become far more interesting if many different opinions are represented. Therefore I think people will be enthusiastic if you show up there.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.
Sorry about the delay, I've been very busy. And now this has become ridiculously long. I hope you don't mind.
The case could be made that Iraq was already a breeding ground for terrorists, which is the reason we went there in the first place.
Already a breeding ground? The incredible chaos we see now in Iraq is impossible under extremely harsh and cruel dictatorships like Saddam's. Such a chaos would be possible only if a revolution were imminent. But in that case the invasion would have been unnecessary. If people see their children starve to death and don't revolt there's a very strong iron fist keeping order. Any claim that Saddam's Iraq suffered a similar chaos under Saddam would completely invalidate what we have been told about the extreme cruelty of the dictatorship.
Note that today there are terrorist attacks several times a week, with many people getting killed every time. The kidnapping of locals has become an industry, financing and strengthening a growing mafia. To avoid the danger of these kidnappings, higher education professionals like doctors and engineers flee the country, leading to "brain drain", that is, there are too few people in some professions.
Health Now: Kidnappings Bleed Iraq of Doctors
Global Policy Forum: Abductions Surge in Iraq
China Economic Net: Common Iraqis concerned about image as kidnappings surge
What you have said resonates with some of my concerns over the operations in Afghanistan,
I agreed with the war on Afghanistan. That country did not have the tremendous potential for post-war chaos that Iraq had. The war on Afghanistan made sense from the start.
The only mistake, but a horrible mistake, was when the US decided not to finish its work in Afghanistan, and thinned out its forces there, to turn its attention on Iraq instead. A tremendous mistake, with far more dire consequences than when the previous war on Iraq was left unfinished.
I've always said that we should never give in to them, (e.g. if they ask for release of some prisoner, or kidnap someone) don't give in to their demands, because it only legitimizes their actions, and probably encourages others to follow their example.
I agree. Giving in to kidnapper's demands would strongly encourage more kidnappings, by showing that kidnappings are profitable and give power. There would be more and more kidnappings all the time.
It's important to remember that the terrorists are not organised as one strong cooperating mafia. They are an unorganised chaos of disparate small groups without central coordination. There are conflicts and violence between them. Giving in to kidnappers one group would make a myriad of other groups think "Hey, we can try that too." Maybe even a competition for proving their "valor". Nightmare.
But the case September 11th attacks was different, the terrorists clearly wanted to kill Americans, and keep on doing so, but for what purpose? To keep us out of Saudi Arabia?
I suppose it's possible, but if that were their goal they could come much closer to achieving it by turning their anger much more against the government of Saudi Arabia than they have done, and by inciting revolt in Saudi Arabia, and by making threats and ultimatums before attacking, and so on.
I believe more in a combination of anger and despair, along with a lust for power among the leaders. Anger and despair is a dangerous combination. I think very likely it's a feeling of deep despair and frustration with the poverty and the inferior status of their countries and peoples as opposed to the West. There's probably a lot of mob rage, the kind of collective anger that turns into lynching. I also think many of the leaders are drugged
As for censoring and control that is PRECISELY what the US is worried about. [...] the UN committe head responsible for this, who just happens to be China's former Minister of Telecommunications [...] envisions the UN in a much greater supervisory role, where they decide the kind of things that are and are not allowed on the Internet.
That certainly sounds nasty. If that's indeed their intent, then I certainly don't support it. If indeed they want what you describe I agree with nearly everything you say.
But they're totally mistaken if they think that that has something to do with the root servers. There's no way you could do content filtering at the root servers, content never passes them, nor do they see any individual domain names. It is necessarily a completely separate issue.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.
I'm sure eventually Americans will learn how to emanate crass sanctimoniousness like "enlightened" European dillettantes such as yourself.
You mean like your grandparent-grandparent comment? "Did you miss kindergarten? Europe and Africa are continents. The USA is a Country.... Gheeesh"
Or did you mean your grandparent-sibling comment? "Europe gets along????? Har..... Eurpope gets along when the Big boys in the UK and the USA make them get along...."
Or was it your grandparent comment? Another bringing up the sins of our grandparents as if we did that.
Don't worry, there's no need for them to learn, they're already experts, that's where people like me learn it.
Just like, shortly before the war in Iraq, that sudden unilateral "Either you're with us or you're against us." That troll wasn't even a website comment, it was the official standpoint of the United States towards its allies. And in debates, when we mentioned the inevitable post-war chaos, with either explosive terrorism spreading first in Iraq and then over the world, or civil war within Iraq, we got the inevitable response: "How can you defend Saddam?" Never getting past this off-topic strawman, never listening. Always knowing best, always holiest, never needing to listen or care.
That's where I've learned.
Fortunately most people don't use that tone. So with most people I discuss constructively and with interest in the arguments and facts. I don't often reply to people who are so sanctimonious, as you put it. But when I do, I have a tendency to respond in kind.
You troll me, I troll you.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.
By contrast, the UN grgoup wants to take responsibility for
I thought it was limited to the root servers and assigning names and numbers. I didn't know about these various plans.
for eliminating spam,
If what they want is to get some international cooperation going so that fines can be collected not just nationally, but also internationally, in efficient ways, maybe that would make sense. That depends on how it's arranged. It might be a good thing if what they aim at can be likened to Interpol: Routines and arrangements for exchanging information and finding culprits, but no effect on each country's laws and sovereignty.
However if the idea is to define international laws about Internet contents, depending on what that would mean, almost certainly I agree with you. We can most definitely not have some "least common denominator" where Afghans and Swedes try to agree on how much clothes people must wear on photos both on Afghan and Swedish webpages, or where North Korea and the United States try to agree on the contents of political debate in both countries.
That idea is both totally absurd and totally nightmarish. Because of the absurdity I find it extremely unlikely that that's what they aim at. But of course you never know for sure -- never underestimate the potential of stupidity.
leveling the costs of internet access globally,
That sounds to me like an axtremely cheap and efficient way to get rid of the problems with offshoring and other cases where the West can't compete well.
For decades the West has been subsidising agricultural exports to poor countries so heavily that local farmers can't compete with the resulting low prices. (In this area Europe is the worst sinner.) We have also charged import tariffs that make it very difficult for those countries to sell their products. By blocking free trade we have kept them from developing economically. People have starved and lived in misery so we didn't have to suffer the discomfort of learning a new job. Now we pay the price in the form of outsourcing and other forms of competition that have much harsher consequences that they would have had.
The sooner the various economies are better balanced and salaries start equalizing, the sooner ths problem is lessened and starts to disappear. What's needed for this is education, education, education. The Internet seems like a fantastically cheap and efficient solution for this.
and solving "multilingualism" issues on the 'Net.
What can the UN do in this area? Seems to me that the only thing they can do would be to put more emphasis and higher priority on Unicode and other internationalization issues in standardization bodies. If that's their intent, it may make perfect sense.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.
When you write this kind of serious, thoughtful and well-argued post, please use the real plural form viruses. The non-word virii is just a ancient, tired, weird old geek joke, somewhat like boxen and 1337, it doesn't belong in such a thoughtful text.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.
A man goes out and buys a fat pipe from an ISP. He then sets up a wireless router and doesn't protect it. He understands his neighbors might connect, and he has no problem with that. His neighbors in fact, do connect, tons of them connect and use it all the time. They even get little devices to extend the net further than it went before from just the mans router. Now the neighbors want to take control of the mans network. They think since they use it, they should be in control, even though it was the man who bought and built it.
Here's a more accurate version:
A man goes out and buys five computers and connects them to each other. "Hey, cool" say his neighbors. "Why don't you join me," says the first guy. So everybody buys computers and network cables and they're all connected. And everybody fiddles with the network and tests and develops cool stuff. In the end the first guy has twenty computers and his neighbors have eighty. So some of them come up with a proposal: "Suppose we cooperate and administer the network together, rather than only one of us administering everything."
Looks like the first guy answers "Nooo!!! Mine!!! Mine!!! Mine!!!"
A world leader in democracy. Yeah, right.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.
So when the rest of the world rebels and creates their own internet,
We already have our own interconnected networks.
The only part of the Internet that your country owns is the part that is in your country. Your country did not dig down fiber in my country and city. Nor did you install the TV cable that connects me to the dug-down fiber.
The many networks are interconnected through fibers that cross borders and oceans. Are you saying that you want the US to be disconnected from this?
If that's what you want, discuss it with your ISP or your congressman. I don't think you can convince many but do give them your opinion.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.
That's true. Germany had no problem sharing with the rest of Europe in the 40's.
That was our grandparents. Seventy years have passed. Europe has learned its lesson. We're not repeating the follies of our grandparents.
Sadly, judging by the angrily aggressive jingoism of some Americans, it seems now we have to wait for you to catch up.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.
Did you miss kindergarten? Europe and Africa are continents
The USA is a Country.... Gheeesh
That's no problem because we have no problem with sharing and cooperating. Only America has this problem.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.
The root servers only have a small table with top-level domains (TLDs): .com, .org, .us, .gb and so on. The root servers have nothing to do with individual domain names!
If China should decide that they want to remove some TLD from the root servers, the rest of the world simply won't accept, and won't remove them. Why should they?
By the way, the root servers are already now spread all over the world.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.
I recognize that the rest of the world makes a valuable contribution to the internet, however:
The United States developed the internet, with many large investments (DARPA etc.), and now we are expected to just give it up?
Europe invented and developed the wheel. Clearly your cars and roads belong to Europe.
Stop cooking right now, Africa invented the fire.
Clearly we need an international patent system, so that each country can hoard and control its own inventions.
What happens when China decides that no one should use the word democracy? What happens when France decides that the word Nazi can't be used?
International collaboration through organizations such as the International Telecommunication Union must be brought to an end immediately. What if China decides that no one should use the word democracy on the phone? What happens when France decides that the word Nazi can't be used on the phone?
Note that the names and numbers that would be assigned correspond to the international country codes for telephone. For China to censor your Internet usage they'd have to invade your country, just like they'd have to do for censoring your use of the telephone. It's the same thing.
One question. If the root servers and the assignment of TLDs and numbers were controlled by Europe, would you like it to stay that way? Or would you, maybe, perhaps, want the US to have some part in it?
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.
If I had a choice [...] I'll pick personal hygiene every time.
You must be new here.
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Damn those French!! And "Lagrange points"??? I say we call them "Freedom Points".
"Freedom" fries, "freedom" toast, "freedom" points, "frogs" -- so much effort to avoid the word "French".
Well, don't be shy! Don't be hesitant! Go the whole way. Call the country "Freedom".
-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
This may become long and repetitive, for lack of time for editing.
Your sig does imply an anti-US sentiment, it seems to say that America has failed, and Europe is somehow automatically better, and morally superior.
Clearly I have to scrap that sig. Clearly it doesn't convey what I wanted to convey. A few other people's reactions confirm what you have said.
That provocative superior/inferior thing was only intended as a momentary attention-grabber. I expected people to immediately look past the attention grabber and look for the real message. I never expect people to take that kind of mine-is-bigger-than-yours competition seriously. I was mistaken.
No, I meant that it takes "advantage of terrorism." I didn't mean to imply that you were going out and throwing bombs at people,
That's obvious. Of course I meant the same.
but you're not taking advantage of it any less than certain profiteers are.
Clearly I'm still not getting my message across to you. How can I make people aware of a danger if I'm not supposed to mention that danger?
My complaint is that the US has (unintentionally) played into the hands of bin Laden and (unintentionally) fostered and encouraged terrorism by creating a tremendous breeding-ground for terrorism.
I'm saying that the US is trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it. The US will keep pouring gasoline until its people notices that it's gasoline. You need to start noticing, we can't have you pouring gasoline indefinitely. If you don't stop soon we'll have the whole world on fire.
But the citizens of the US remain blissfully unaware of the danger, dreamily fantasizing that the gasoline is water and that it can put out the fire.
The fact that I try to make people aware of this gasoline does not mean that I'm taking advantage of terrorism. I can't make you aware of something without mentioning that which I try to make you aware of.
your statement [...] seems to state that we should stop trying to capture guys like Al Zarqawi,
Where on earth did you get that idea? I said no such thing!
and we are somehow just bullying Iraq by being there.
I don't care whether you're bullying or not. I care about terrorism swarming over the world.
If you're so concerned about these terrorists spreading into Europe, why aren't you helping round them up,
What??? "Rounding them up"???
Why is it that so many Americans think that everybody else is far less cocky than Americans are? Why do so many Americans think that others will submit docilely in ways that Americans would never, ever submit?
If the United States were invaded by a superior power (if such existed), would the Americans submit docilely? Of course not! Could the American resistance be quieted by "rounding them up"? Of course not! The more the invaders killed and captured your sons and brothers and fathers and nephews, the more Americans would decide to join the resistance!
Do you have any reason to doubt this?
So why fantasize about other peoples submitting docilely when you yourselves would never, ever submit that way? Why fantasize about "rounding them up" when you yourselves could never, ever be effectively rounded up? Where do these dreamy hopes come from?
The whole Iraq adventure is based on this weird fantasy that the terrorists are far, far more docile and submissive than most Americans. They certainly aren't! They are suicidally fanatical mass murderers! Their family members are of course normal people, but their life in feudal societies of warlords has probably made them far more aggressive than most Americans. Where's the evidence that they'll succumb if they are rounded up? Sheesh!
Remember this image: Visualize how Americans would react if their country were invaded and the invaders rounded up the American resistance
What's your point? The connections between Sweden and Germany don't belong to the US. Our connections to Britain, Poland and Finland don't belong to the US either.
The US has nothing to do with Sweden's connections to the rest of the world -- except, of course, our connections to the US.
Claiming that you own the Internet is like claiming that you own the world's telephone networks, or that you own the world's roads.
If you own the Internet just because you developed ARPANET, then we own the roads in the US because we invented the wheel.
More on this here.
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Why are so many Americans questioning the idea that Europe wants to have root servers of their own?
Just imagine that the roles were reversed. Just imagine that Europe owned all the root servers. You can bet the US would immediately decide to get their own root servers. You want to be independent.
How can this not be obvious? It's important infrastructure, and you don't want to be entirely at the mercy of foreign powers. What's wrong with that?
Why do so many Americans assume that everybody else is far less cocky than Americans are? This weird assumption has astonished me for years.
This assumption was especially perplexing before the Iraq war, when Americans assumed that Iraqi and other Muslims would be far more docile than Americans could ever be, that they would accept occupation and peace would be possible. Why assume that?
Americans would never accept foreign occupation, why assume that others would? Where do you get these strange ideas?
Fortunately, Europe and the US are friendly and have common goals. Even so, Europe wanting its own root servers is just as natural as the United States wanting their own if the roles were reversed.
Sheesh.
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The word "of" is not a verb, you stupid illiterate moron.
Now you of gone offended him you insensiti clod!
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Hundreds and hundreds of products have been killed or permanently crippled because their first versions were terrible.
There's the answer! Now it's clear what has to be done to make this processor a success!
The first version was terrible, you say? Well, then simply apply the one and only strategy that always guarantees that an absolutely horrible first version becomes a great market success.
Put a sticker on it with the name "Microsoft".
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I think the big problem is that it cannot run x86 software very quickly.
Why is the standard solution to this problem to let the processor interpret x86 code? Why not first let a JIT recompiler read through the x86 code and recompile it as native Itanium code? This could be fully automatic and transparent, just like a JVM-to-native JIT compilation.
That should be very much faster than interpreting x86 code all through the program execution!
Is there some fundamental problem that makes this impossible?
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There is currently only one network formally referred to as "the internet."
On the contrary, the Internet consists of a huge number of networks that are connected to each other.
In reality, these other countries could easily drop "the internet" and form their own large scale network capable of international communication. Nobody is stopping them.
I'm in Stockholm, Sweden. The United States did not finance and build the TV cable network that connects me to Stockholm's city-wide network of networks. The US did not build the city-wide network of networks either. These networks were financed by, and belong to, the cable company, various other companies, the city of Stockholm, the University of Stockholm, our Technical High School, and so on.
Go build your own if you want one too.
As you see, we already did. The fact that our networks are connected to your networks doesn't mean that you built our networks or that they belong to you.
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And while you're reading, your colleague with the GUI is already productive.
otherwise my job would be even harder to bare.
You're not supposed to bare your work. Read your NDA again.
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it just echoed the prevailing anti-US sentiment around here,
The fact that someone is critical of what the US is doing doesn't mean he's anti-US.
I find it amazing that so many Americans seem to prefer that people not express opinions against what the US is doing. Sheesh, America prides itself on leading the world in democracy, and yet people should be silenced? Americans talk so much about the First Amendment, and yet people whose life is strongly and deeply affected by American power should shut up?
No, I'm most definitely not anti-American. On the contrary, in lots of things I'm enthusiastically pro-American. But that doesn't mean that I'm blind and silent. I'm very worried about what's happening.
Isn't your sig using terrorism to support your views?
Not using. It's not an opinion that uses terrorism. It's an opinion about America's self-defeating reactions to terrorism. It's a very deep worry and concern that I can't express without mentioning what I'm concerned about.
It's a serious worry that started way back in the months before the Iraq war. Back then one of the things that were debated most intensely here in Sweden was what solution Bush might have for dealing with the inevitable chaos once the US military would win the war. It seemed obvious to everyone that the Bush administration must have some completely new and absolutely revolutionary plan, because without a solution for dealing with the inevitable chaos, a war against Iraq would make no sense. For anyone knowing anything at all about Iraq, total chaos seemed completely inevitable, unless there was some unprecedented solution.
(Well, to be more precise, some debaters had theories that the Bush administration had no solution and simply didn't care about the inevitable deadly chaos. But there are always some obsessively anti-american weirdoes out on the fringes. Nobody takes them seriously.)
(Or rather, nobody here takes the fringe weirdoes seriously. It seems some Americans think that the weirdoes represent our official opinions, and get offended that "we" have such opinions.)
(I don't think it occurred to anyone here that the Bush administration might not know that total chaos was inevitable.)
Anyway, as it turned out, Iraq did turn into total chaos, and there was no new solution. On the contrary, the US seemed amazingly unprepared and bewildered. And terrorism was certainly not diminished. Whatever tiny trickle of terrorism may have occurred in, or emanated from, Iraq before the war, was turned into a massive continuous torrent of everyday terror and death and destruction.
Iraq is at the backyard of Europe. The United States has turned our backyard into an indomitable breeding-ground for terrorism that is building up and getting ready to swarm over the borders, to spread over Europe and over the world.
Do we want a breeding-ground for terrorism in our backyard? Does it make sense to have such a breeding-ground? Why is it there? What is it good for?
What can be worth such a tremendous risk?
I find your sig actually insulting
Unfortunately I've found no way to express these concerns in a way that is strongly thought-provoking without also being offensive. In fact, even when I explain these thoughts at length and with care it sometimes offends people. I get the impression that many Americans are extremely touchy on this subject, and would rather that we didn't have opinions.
But if some people are offended, sorry, that's far less important than what's actually happening to our world.
Personally I find it far more offensive that more than 1700 American soldiers have given their life in the belief that they were defending their country, when the horrible fact is that what they've done is exacerbate the problem of terrorism by several orders of magnitude.
I also find it offensive t
Well spoken! True! I wish they would read what you said!
-- Terrorism may have turned the United States into a nation of fear and aggression, but it won't succeed in Europe.