This is news because, in spite of the PC drivel about the USA being a multicultural country, the dominant culture (GW and his poodles, CEOs, University deans) is without doubt Protestant. Like the silly English show very often, Protestants will do what they can to belittle Catholics. It so happen that illiterate {US literacy being lower than in the European Union] TV-brainwashed Amerikans think Italy a backward Catholic country where everybody goes to church and eats a bit of corn at the farm while singing "O sole mio". The poor sods would be shocked to know that Italians have by now overcome the Catholic Church domination and enjoy a standard of living far superior to Americans, if measured not by GNP, but by how many people live below the poverty line. In most Sicilian towns there are far less murders than in Houston...In Texas hordes of religious fanatics go to church every Sunday [and I have seen it with my own eyes], not in Italy... Notice GW usage of the words: God, bless, etc. No European head of state would dare to make these religious references, precisely because in all EU countries there is a separation [my spelling of this word is right, most of the Americans in this thread got it, however, wrong] between State and Church. 2. On the issue of jurisdiction, there is at present no consensus on what can or cannot be done in many cases, so much so that authoritative voices in the US (e.g. Prof. Goodman at GeorgiaTech) have stated clearly that without a new international treaty there is no way we can effectively fight cybercrime.
To sum it up: Italy is not what CNN/Fox/The NY Times masters of deceit make of it and as to the legal issue, there is at present lots of fog.
I believe there are three issues here, which probably better be kept separate: - should ICANN be controlled only by the US-if so why? - has ICANN done, so far, a good job? - has this US administration any plans for ICANN? If so, do we like them?
As to exclusively the first question, the answer seems to me an unqualified NO. Why? Because the Internet is de facto no longer in American hands, because the number of Internet hosts outside the US is greater than the number of those in the US, because the USA have repeatedly shown they do not believe in international cooperation nor in international law. As to the second point, again the answer is likely to be NO, for many reasons better explained by the various ICANN critics. As to the third questions, the answer is YES. And no, only Americans might go along with the plans of this administration who does not acknowledge any international body, and this irrespective of whether we like or not its programme. Every time I read this kind of items on slashdot, I wonder how comes that US slashdot readers seem as brainwashed as ordinary US citizens in believing that the world stops at the non-existent boundaries of the non-existent "Western Hemisphere"[a geographical non sequitur]. The planet is much, much wider than Texas plus Washington, DC...
All this bears no relation to whether or not we like Mr Bush gang of warmongers and imperial tin soldiers (which I don't).
I believe that there is a small minority (count me in) who does what you suggest. This is, unfortunately, most unlikely to dent the profits of the big outfits, who can count on their TV networks to brainwash the meek masses and lead them in a daze to the theater slaughter. No, I think that the only way to get out of this is, like with music, to support alternative distribution mechanisms-while contesting any attempt to strengthen a copyright legislation(US) which, far from defending authors' rights, is stifling every development.
Right, he's not Natalie Portman, but a true primadonna much the same.
Perusal of his stodgy reply, which I bothered to read, shows it to be just a geekily framed whine, because nobody loves him.
A quick look at his home page will also show Exhibit B: Mr. RMS does write about every single political issue on the planet. What for? Who cares what does he believe? Where did he get his purported guruness, which in any case would be only limited to geekspace, not to the full space-time continuum.
I am not politically correct, and so to sum it all up, throw him to the lions, so that they also can have some fun....
Nobody questions by now the fact that AmerICANN must be destroyed, and so must be its links to the US DoC. The real question is: to be replaced by what? By the pseudo-democratic fiction of the At-Large membership, which has provided us with ineffable twits of the caliber of Andy Müller-Maguhn (the Chaos Computer Club would-be At-Large director)? Or else by government representatives, as the GAC (Governmental Advisory Committee) keeps clamoring about? Folks, let's drop this matter... Let's just fuck up as much as we can the single DNS root server system, as already proposed by many worthy colleagues and fellow Netters, and let us deny a single entity the privilege of deciding on who can and who cannot get a domain name. We want a real Internet democracy? Why allow corporate/government goons to edict rules which are technically unnecessary then? ThufirHawat
PS I fully back smagruder in his request for a Public Flogging of the current AmerICANN directors...
Nope, the issue is not a technical one, it's political-rather ethnocentrical.
Why should a silly corporation, incorporated in the State of California, and reporting essentially only to the US Department of Commerce, run alone the root servers for the whole planet Earth? I understand that many Americans find difficult to believe that there are those who, without being terrorists, believe the US has no valid claim to being the world's policeman (quite the contrary, the USA violate systematically international law, treaties they have signed, elementary rules, and now even the Geneva convention).
So please get ICANN out of the US DoC claws, that's what this is all about. And stop stonewalling (one of the standard US foreign policy techniques, besides the subtle tanks and warplanes...)
Yes, I believe you are oversimplifying.
The issue at stake is not to find the gizmo rel.3 fix which will allow a perfectly technical solution.
The real problem is political: the US is unwilling to relinquish control of the root servers to anybody but ICANN, a corporation which is still under tight DoC control, but is supposed to govern the planetary Internet. Did I hear "There the Americans go again.."? Right, they do.
Until such a moment when a full international organisation, acting by a charter agreed upon by regional world (which is indeed slightly bigger than Texas + Washington and NY)representatives, takes control of the root servers, a practical solution is very hard to achieve.
The 'nice pot of money' for domain names currently goes into:
- first and foremost, commercial registrars' balance sheet;
- lavish pay of ICANN officers.
Not to ruggedized RAID DNS servers...
I believe that many slashdotters are missing the point: should the Bundestag take the decision to switch to Linux, this would be a powerful signal. Don't forget that while Microslob is getting out of trouble nearly unscathed in the US, thanks to a justice system which is overtly partisan (and now swings with G W B), the European Commission investigation on Microsoft is not over yet.
I think that showing that in Europe not everybody has to play by the MS tune is very important.
Should Americans like to see how their government fanatically preaches free market but acts otherwise, go here: http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/pdf/usrbt2001.pdf and see how you have been fooled so far...
The parallel seems a bit thin: Seven of Nine is very removed from the human race-T'Pol less.
What's wrong with having an attractive woman in a ST series? Are we condemned to have self-assured, executive-style uglies only, like the dreadful Janeway?
"Meaningless sex-aPPeal"? Pal, let's vote and see how many here liked her and how many didn't-I have some idea as to the result...
Thufir -WIndows ME does not run on mentats-
Hmm: I thought her name was T'Pol (at least that is what appeared in the subtitles), but if you got the spelling right then she is indeed the same T'Pau who supervises the ceremony on Vulcan with Spock and Kirk, so we'll finally know what happened BKA (Before Kirk Appeared).
OK, folks, let's face it-what's happened is that after the dreadful political correctness of ST:V, what with the Native American, the female commander (she of the croaking voice), the black Vulcan etc. they finally got it that ST fans don't particularly like that.
So, back to a swarthy, rather illiterate captain (who resembles Kirk in more than one way), a very attractive woman (though Vulcan, to pre-empt attacks of the rabid feminist armies), a back to basics science etc.
Let's give the poor ST folks a chance and let's see how it develops. So far it's not bad at all.
Slashdot Mirror
This is news because, in spite of the PC drivel about the USA being a multicultural country, the dominant culture (GW and his poodles, CEOs, University deans) is without doubt Protestant.
Like the silly English show very often, Protestants will do what they can to belittle Catholics. It so happen that illiterate {US literacy being lower than in the European Union] TV-brainwashed Amerikans think Italy a backward Catholic country where everybody goes to church and eats a bit of corn at the farm while singing "O sole mio". The poor sods would be shocked to know that Italians have by now overcome the Catholic Church domination and enjoy a standard of living far superior to Americans, if measured not by GNP, but by how many people live below the poverty line. In most Sicilian towns there are far less murders than in Houston...In Texas hordes of religious fanatics go to church every Sunday [and I have seen it with my own eyes], not in Italy...
Notice GW usage of the words: God, bless, etc.
No European head of state would dare to make these religious references, precisely because in all EU countries there is a separation [my spelling of this word is right, most of the Americans in this thread got it, however, wrong] between State and Church.
2. On the issue of jurisdiction, there is at present no consensus on what can or cannot be done in many cases, so much so that authoritative voices in the US (e.g. Prof. Goodman at GeorgiaTech) have stated clearly that without a new international treaty there is no way we can effectively fight cybercrime.
To sum it up: Italy is not what CNN/Fox/The NY Times masters of deceit make of it and as to the legal issue, there is at present lots of fog.
I believe there are three issues here, which probably better be kept separate:
- should ICANN be controlled only by the US-if so why?
- has ICANN done, so far, a good job?
- has this US administration any plans for ICANN? If so, do we like them?
As to exclusively the first question, the answer seems to me an unqualified NO. Why? Because the Internet is de facto no longer in American hands, because the number of Internet hosts outside the US is greater than the number of those in the US, because the USA have repeatedly shown they do not believe in international cooperation nor in international law.
As to the second point, again the answer is likely to be NO, for many reasons better explained by the various ICANN critics.
As to the third questions, the answer is YES. And no, only Americans might go along with the plans of this administration who does not acknowledge any international body, and this irrespective of whether we like or not its programme.
Every time I read this kind of items on slashdot, I wonder how comes that US slashdot readers seem as brainwashed as ordinary US citizens in believing that the world stops at the non-existent boundaries of the non-existent "Western Hemisphere"[a geographical non sequitur]. The planet is much, much wider than Texas plus Washington, DC...
All this bears no relation to whether or not we like Mr Bush gang of warmongers and imperial tin soldiers (which I don't).
I believe that there is a small minority (count me in) who does what you suggest.
This is, unfortunately, most unlikely to dent the profits of the big outfits, who can count on their TV networks to brainwash the meek masses and lead them in a daze to the theater slaughter.
No, I think that the only way to get out of this is, like with music, to support alternative distribution mechanisms-while contesting any attempt to strengthen a copyright legislation(US) which, far from defending authors' rights, is stifling every development.
Right, he's not Natalie Portman, but a true primadonna much the same. Perusal of his stodgy reply, which I bothered to read, shows it to be just a geekily framed whine, because nobody loves him. A quick look at his home page will also show Exhibit B: Mr. RMS does write about every single political issue on the planet. What for? Who cares what does he believe? Where did he get his purported guruness, which in any case would be only limited to geekspace, not to the full space-time continuum. I am not politically correct, and so to sum it all up, throw him to the lions, so that they also can have some fun....
Nobody questions by now the fact that AmerICANN must be destroyed, and so must be its links to the US DoC.
The real question is: to be replaced by what?
By the pseudo-democratic fiction of the At-Large membership, which has provided us with ineffable twits of the caliber of Andy Müller-Maguhn (the Chaos Computer Club would-be At-Large director)? Or else by government representatives, as the GAC (Governmental Advisory Committee) keeps clamoring about?
Folks, let's drop this matter... Let's just fuck up as much as we can the single DNS root server system, as already proposed by many worthy colleagues and fellow Netters, and let us deny a single entity the privilege of deciding on who can and who cannot get a domain name.
We want a real Internet democracy? Why allow corporate/government goons to edict rules which are technically unnecessary then?
ThufirHawat
PS I fully back smagruder in his request for a Public Flogging of the current AmerICANN directors...
Nope, the issue is not a technical one, it's political-rather ethnocentrical. Why should a silly corporation, incorporated in the State of California, and reporting essentially only to the US Department of Commerce, run alone the root servers for the whole planet Earth? I understand that many Americans find difficult to believe that there are those who, without being terrorists, believe the US has no valid claim to being the world's policeman (quite the contrary, the USA violate systematically international law, treaties they have signed, elementary rules, and now even the Geneva convention). So please get ICANN out of the US DoC claws, that's what this is all about. And stop stonewalling (one of the standard US foreign policy techniques, besides the subtle tanks and warplanes...)
Yes, I believe you are oversimplifying. The issue at stake is not to find the gizmo rel.3 fix which will allow a perfectly technical solution. The real problem is political: the US is unwilling to relinquish control of the root servers to anybody but ICANN, a corporation which is still under tight DoC control, but is supposed to govern the planetary Internet. Did I hear "There the Americans go again.."? Right, they do. Until such a moment when a full international organisation, acting by a charter agreed upon by regional world (which is indeed slightly bigger than Texas + Washington and NY)representatives, takes control of the root servers, a practical solution is very hard to achieve. The 'nice pot of money' for domain names currently goes into: - first and foremost, commercial registrars' balance sheet; - lavish pay of ICANN officers. Not to ruggedized RAID DNS servers...
I believe that many slashdotters are missing the point: should the Bundestag take the decision to switch to Linux, this would be a powerful signal. Don't forget that while Microslob is getting out of trouble nearly unscathed in the US, thanks to a justice system which is overtly partisan (and now swings with G W B), the European Commission investigation on Microsoft is not over yet.
I think that showing that in Europe not everybody has to play by the MS tune is very important.
Should Americans like to see how their government fanatically preaches free market but acts otherwise, go here: http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/pdf/usrbt2001.pdf and see how you have been fooled so far...
The parallel seems a bit thin: Seven of Nine is very removed from the human race-T'Pol less. What's wrong with having an attractive woman in a ST series? Are we condemned to have self-assured, executive-style uglies only, like the dreadful Janeway? "Meaningless sex-aPPeal"? Pal, let's vote and see how many here liked her and how many didn't-I have some idea as to the result... Thufir -WIndows ME does not run on mentats-
Hmm: I thought her name was T'Pol (at least that is what appeared in the subtitles), but if you got the spelling right then she is indeed the same T'Pau who supervises the ceremony on Vulcan with Spock and Kirk, so we'll finally know what happened BKA (Before Kirk Appeared).
OK, folks, let's face it-what's happened is that after the dreadful political correctness of ST:V, what with the Native American, the female commander (she of the croaking voice), the black Vulcan etc. they finally got it that ST fans don't particularly like that. So, back to a swarthy, rather illiterate captain (who resembles Kirk in more than one way), a very attractive woman (though Vulcan, to pre-empt attacks of the rabid feminist armies), a back to basics science etc. Let's give the poor ST folks a chance and let's see how it develops. So far it's not bad at all.