"You may think that the international court trials are show trials and do not use reasonable laws"
I didn't say that was necessarily going to be the case. What I said was, in the event that such a thing were to come to pass, don't think for a second the US wouldn't intervene.
"I do think that keeping a lot of people in a camp in Cuba without trial and without telling them what they are accused of is very unreasonable."
They're granted annual reviews, in addition to the battlefield reviews they're given long before they make it to Cuba. They're granted far more due process than any other detainee in any other war I can think of. If this were WWII, many of them would have been hanged by now. None of them would have gotten half the due process they've gotten already, and they certainly wouldn't be entitled to annual review.
"The way the US is currently "fighting a war agains terrorism" is clearly showing that its freedom and justice values are very flimsy."
While I agree with regards to limited aspects of the WoT as it related to US citizens' rights, I think the vast majority of what has been done has been well within the rights of a nation attempting to defend itself from a worldwide asymetric threat never before faced by any nation on Earth.
"Send a couple of planes in US buildings"
You make it sound as if a couple of remote controlled childrens' toys were bounced into an abandoned building. I won't even respond to this line until you address what really happened. Don't downplay a horrendous mass murder and expect a reasoned response from anyone.
"Also, the laws the US uses to extradite people (e.g. drugs laws) are not very reasonable or realistic."
Extradition between nations is done by treaty. In other words, other nations must agree before the extradition even takes place.
"Note that the whole problem of drugs and drug criminality is primaly caused by drugs being illegal."
You're insinuating that if Heroin were legal, no one would die from it, no one would get sick from it, no one would get hooked on it, and everyone who's currently a heavy addict would suddenly feel right as rain. Again, this is absurd.
"As US soldiers are fighting wars that do not obey international war treaties"
Heh.. What, pray tell, is an "international war treaty"? An agreement between two nations on how they're going to kill each other? We don't, as a matter of policy, mistreat prisoners. When those among us break that policy (Abu Gharib), they are tried before their peers per the UCMJ and punished accordingly. Meanwhile, those we fight against (the foreign terrorists in Iraq, for instance) take peaceful civilians prisoner and behead them on television. We employ a professional fighting force, which does its job well and does it by the book. That's how it wins wars. The terrorists we're fighting don't obey any rules. That's why they're losing every battle they fight, and why they're losing the war.
"it is very reasonable to send them (and their principals) to an international court for it."
When our soldiers go off to battle, they are subject to the UCMJ and no other authority on this planet. Unless and until we change that via treaty, no court on this planet has jurisdiction over them other than those operating under the UCMJ. Anyone attempting to change that by force best have something better than the entire military might of the United States armed forces.
That's correct. The difference, you seem to be unaware of, is that the US attacks when its national security or the security of its allies is severely threatened militarily. A country like Iraq attacks because it wants more land and/or oil (see: Kuwait), or because it has a whole bunch of new WMDs to test and a whole bunch of people who need killing (see: Kurds, late 80's). A country like North Korea attacks because it wants more land, more power, more money, and/or more prestige for its tyrant/dictator. If North Korea would stop building nuclear weapons and ICBMs while threatning to annihilate Japan, South Korea, and the United States, we wouldn't have to consider pre-emptive military action against them. Had Saddam Hussein's government ceased its obstructionist tactics and simply allowed UN inspectors to do the job they'd been trying to do for the past 10 years, and had Saddam Hussein's government and family stopped raping, torturing, and murdering their own citizens en masse, military action against them would have been unnecessary and unsupported by virtually everyone in the US.
See, we're learning from the mistakes of the past vis-a-vis appeasement of tyrants (see: 1930s Germany). You and others seem to be stuck in the 1920s, blissfully secure in the 'knowledge' that no tyrant, no matter how bad, ever hurts anyone any time, and that nothing ever justifies military action anywhere for any reason. Usually people like that are the first ones that get run over and stuck to the treads of a tyrant's tank as it rolls forth to conquest.
"You must be the American version of a pacifist;-) Your against the war 'cause there is another country you want to blow the hell out of first;-)"
We have plenty of pacifists here. I'm just a bit of a realist. When a nuclear-armed nutcase talks of turning his neighbors's countries into a "sea of fire", and then starts showing off the weapons capable of doing so, then starts developing ICBMs, I think we should take notice. We've tried diplomacy since 1992, and it just plain hasn't worked in North Korea.
I swear, if some of you people were around in the later 30s, you'd have been protesting against going to war with Germany well into the 50s. He'd have secured the main European continent and rebuilt his offensive forces to the point of being fully prepared to take Britain, and perhaps eventually the rest of the world. Thankfully, men who saw war as the sometimes necessary evil that it is stood up and did something about it. How quickly we forget history, and the necessity of force against those who would do you harm.
Just think of how different a place the world would have been if everyone responded to Hitler's attack on Poland with an immediate and devastating attack on Germany (which was still well within reach at the time). The Nazis war machine would have never had the chance to rev up into production capable of sustaining a long, drawn-out war, and much of Europe would have been spared the hammer of German military power. But keep flashing that peace sign; the tyrants and madmen of the world love ya.
There's a world of difference between normalized extradition procedures (which occur back and forth every day around the world) and some self-proclaimed 'international criminal court' trying Americans while riding on anti-US sentiment. We allow our citizens to be tried and punished for crimes in countries all over the world every single day. The US doesn't try to skirt reasonable laws and reasonable judicial actions for its own citizens. However, if this 'international criminal court' starts picking up Americans (soldiers, for instance) and putting them up for ridiculous show trials where they're convicted of nebulous crimes sans evidence by anti-US judges, then of course we're going in to get them. To not do so would be absurd. What would you have us do? Write angry letters to the UN saying how we don't think it's fair that John Smith is rotting in jail because some court lacking any rightful authority whatsoever decided something he may have done three thousand miles away warranted it? Heh, civus romanus sum. Deal with it.:)
Which, of course, everyone knew was a lie. They may have not had any anymore, but there is no doubt whatsoever that Iraq had WMD. After all, it wasn't fresh air and sunshine that killed all those Kurds. So when a regime that kept beautiful records on everything from the people it tortured to the illegal missiles it purchased claimed it had no record of what happened to its massive quantities of extremely deadly substances (but that it thought it may have dumped some into the ground), people were most certainly a bit concerned that they had something serious to hide.
I've always disagreed with the timing of the war in Iraq due to the fact that North Korea is, and has been, a much graver threat to the national security of the US and the stability of the entire region, but one cannot argue that most of Iraq and its neighbors are far better off without Saddam in power.
"Actually, didn't you revolve so that you wouldn't need to pay taxes to England ?"
Don't they teach history in schools anymore? If you want to know why we rebelled against our previous government, please read the list of grievances we typed up and emailed to the leader of our former government (in a manner of speaking). It reads like an 18th century Dear John letter to the King.
"They never stopped, FTP simply lost importance. IRC fserves used to have them too. Websites, DC++ hubs, eMule hubs, WinMX shares as well. It's funny, I've had people present me that and then ask me if I'm a cop as well."
I always wondered if 18 U.S.C. 1030 would make sense as a defense. After all, if you define the scope of those you allow to access something clearly, and someone outside that scope goes on to access the information, would they or would they not be in violation of 1030 (2) which makes it illegal when one "intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access"? It'd be an interesting case to defend.
"Simple solution to detect rootkits is to do an API call for file directory (dir, ls, whatever), and compare it side-by-side to a direct hardware request for a file directory."
That's cute, except you're assumiung your active memory is safe. So long as I'm running in memory, I don't even need to hook the API calls to fake return data. Jamie Butler demonstrated a technique at this year's DEFCON for hiding an active in-memory rootkit using the TLBs built into modern processors. Good luck on that one.
Unless you plan to use magnetic extraction techniques in a cleanroom to look at every bit and byte of data on the drive, you're no going to detect high-end rootkits. The old format and reinstall trick is still the only sure way.
"you offer a specular view of a US propaganda-fed dumbass."
This is what your post has consisted of thus far; ad hominem. Your first two lines and there isn't even a single argument to be found.
"You absolutely believe the embassy incident was an accident."
I said that? No, I didn't. So this part is a straw man. Ok, let's move on...
"I have no proof of either the accident theory or the opposite, and given the conditions under which it happened there will probably never be. So I suppose both are worth considering."
Here we go; you've just regurgitated what I said in my previous post.
"Astounding that there are people still believing the WMD hoax. I almost suspect you are a troll."
The tends of thousands of Kurds gassed in the late 80s were part of a hoax? Was this an April Fool's Day thing? The United Nations weapons inspectors were in on the hoax as well? The UN Security Council was in on it? Just how many were in on this elaborate conspiracy?
"You firmly believe your country goes around helping the world restore peace and love"
No, I firmly believe my country steps in when people are being slaughtered en masse, or when we're asked to by NATO and/or the UN.
"you're the good guys in Iraq"
You would prefer Saddam still be in charge, running the torture chambers, the rape rooms, and gassing Iraqi citizens by the tens of thousands? Oh, I forgot, Iraq had rivers of chocolate and children danced in the golden streets before the terrible US came in all by itself (apparently waving British and many other flags over certain units)...
"(oil? There's oil here? Oh why, what a surprise!)"
Please provide numbers for the amount of money spent on the military effort in Iraq vs the amount of money the United States has made on oil sales. I'm shocked anyone buys the leftist propaganda that oil had something to do with this. I can buy the assertion that President Bush and perhaps others in the administration had a personal grudge, but the idea that we're making money off this deal is absurd. Having spent hundreds of billions on Iraq already, we'd have to drain every last drop of oil and get top dollar for it to break even.
"that you were "helping" Afghanistan by financing terrorists against a legitimate government"
I'm not sure what kind of twisted logic is used to get "legitimate government" out of a foreign power carpet bombing civilian targets, but it must be fascinating to see the world through such a bizarre vision.
"and even claim your troops "beat their asses" in Somalia, when actually the Somali warlords put on a fierce resistance, after which it was conveniently decided that there was no point in staying there (possibly because there is no oil in Somalia?)."
160 US service members, cut off from ammo, supplies, medical care, armor, and any help whatsoever cleaned out somewhere between 500 and one thousand Somali militia, losing only 19 men out of 160. Yes, our boys did a damned fine job. As for not staying there, that was because we had a coward in the White House. Sounds like you're cheering for the warlords who were hijacking food from the civilians. That was the entire reason for US and other foreign troops being in Somalia - to protect the UN aid.
"Who are you, someone straight out from the "Full Metal Jacket" movie?"
I was about to ask you how Woodstock was. Perhaps if you put down the joint for a moment and read back, you'll notice that you've, thus far, taken the side of the Chinese government that slaughtered students in Tienamen Square and which has allowed millions to starve to death, the regime of Saddam Hussein, which is responsible for mass murders running into the tens, if not hundreds of thousands, the Soviets carpet bombing civilians in Afghanistan, and Somali warlords stealing UN food aid from the mouths of starving Somali families. Basically, you've aligned
Well, I suppose that's just a matter of whether authoritarian communist regimes are your cup of tea.
"An even more astonishing number of Americans believe it was an accident."
Pardon my ignorance, but exactly how would purposely bombing the Chinese embassy help our military efforts there? And precisely what information do you have that suggests this was anything other than an accident? Were you the military commander in charge of the mission? Were you privy to any aspect of the entire war, other than what you watched on your television? My guess would be no.
"There is undoubtedly some propaganda"
People being starved to death and murdered by their government while it sits idly by is certainly not inspirational of nationalism. Neither is using your military to threaten a peaceful island to your South filled with your own people.
"I don't have to mention WMDs, do I?"
You do realize, of course, that Kurds were murdered by the 10s of thousands by biological and chemical weapons? That shells have been recovered in the most recent war with small amounts of chemical agents? That it was the United Nations' own inspectors who reported and testified to the massive amounts of unrecovered WMDs? Now, as for what happened to those WMDs, whether they were destroyed, buried, or transferred to a foreign power, we may never find out. It's important to recognize, however, that those WMDs were not mythical in nature. They did, in fact, exist, and had been seen and verified by United Nations weapons inspectors. The only mistake was over the question of whether Saddam still had them. Saddam could have avoided the entire conflict had he opened up to weapons inspectors, but his continued obstructionist tactics worked against him.
"For my part, China has never bombed my country, never planted booby-traps, never tried to interfere with our politics, and as far as I know we've never even been at war."
Well now that's a pretty damned selfish way to look at things. That's akin to saying that Nazis Germany wasn't so bad because they never invaded your country.
I don't know which country is your's, and frankly I don't care. The US has worked hard to help out people who've been getting slaughtered around the world, and every time we do, it ends up turning around and biting us in the ass. It's real convenient, when complaining about Iraq, to forget about the torture chambers, the executions, the rape rooms, and the entire towns of Kurds who were slaughtered en masse by chemical and biological weapons. It's convenient to forget about the mass graves discovered, filled with the bodies of families slaughtered by Saddam's regime. It's convenient to forget that it's the insurgents who are blowing up mosques and civilians in Iraq. It extends a great deal beyond Iraq as well. We lost a ton of good people defending South Korea in a world-wide, UN-approved police action. Only everyone else left North Korea's million man regular army sitting at the border ready to conquer South Korea, while the US stayed behind to ensure security. We're the only ones left defending South Korea, and now they're protesting in the streets to get US troops off their soil. Fantastic; why don't we let Kim Jong-il flatten your capital with missiles and artillery and mop up the rest of your country with his army so he can finish building a few more nuclear weapons to destroy Japan. We helped the Afghanis when the Soviets started carpet bombing their cities and towns. Forget the casualties suffered by US precision guided weaponry; they were bombing every man-made structure in sight. What'd we get for thanks in helping them drive out the invaders? Somalia, 1993; World Trade Center 1996; and September 11th. Somalia's another good example. The UN couldn't get food to the people of Somalia because the warlords kept taking it by force. So the US sends troops in to help get the food to the people who are starving, ins
"I have had problems with 1 of the 3 ECS boards I've used."
I've had nothing but problems with ECS boards. The P6STM was flaky with any CPU over about 900MHz, but would run fine with slower ones. The K7SEM was very flaky. I even had one of those nearly catch fire at the ATX connector. The customer brought the machine back because it wasn't running and they noticed an odd smell coming from it. The 'odd smell' was the plastic and wire insulation fusing together at the ATX connector. That was the last ECS board I ever used, as I wasn't going to be responsible for burning down someone's house.
I now use Asus exclusively. They're rock-solid boards, with the single exception of the first-run A7V400-MX boards, which had some flaky onboard LAN controllers. Aside from that one glitch, I've yet to find any major problems with their products. Their tech support has always been very good. I get right through, it's someone who speaks English, and it's someone who actually knows what's going on (as opposed to reading off a screen). I truly can't recommend them enough, especially with the inexpensive line-up they have now. I only wish they'd add more boards supporting Opterons so I could use Asus boards when doing servers.
According to The Inq, they're definitely moving to x86, and they're talking to AMD as well. They're claiming independent confirmation of that information, and they generally have sources roaming about the halls of just about every big company.
"They will when the RIAA-sponsored Internet Copyright Infringment Evidence Preservation Act is passed. Their standard M.O. after getting spanked in court is to go buy a law that has the effect of overturning the unfavorable ruling."
Sure, but it won't be called that. Some bought-and-sold Congresscritter will introduce it as the "Securing And Verifying Electronically Transmitted Holdings Every Copyright Holder Is Locking Down Responsibly Every Night Act" - also known as the "SAVE THE CHILDREN act"
"whose activity is oooh so invisible to the Chinese authorities because everyone knows that no Communists have ever figured out how to use a packet sniffer"
Already you show a lack of understand for how Freenet works. You're an ignorant ass, a troll, and a fool.
"Riiight. And they need a darknet because Scientology is capable of decrypting PGP email and cracking SSL web connections with its evil super-xenu-powers!"
Freenet isn't about encryption so much as it is about anonymity. You can't publish to the world with PGP email and an SSL web connect you brainfucked idiot troll.
"The use of Freenet is a guaranteed way to get yourself on the official list of dissidents to watch/persecute in places like China who have no qualms about monitoring traffic."
Ian has already listed the public site of the folks in China who use Freenet daily to safely communicate with one another, you crack baby ignorant bastard.
"Freenet endangers lives so that morons can try to use "free speech" defense when they get investigated for their porn collections. You people are despicable. You would get people killed because you think yourself so important and infallable."
This is actually a decent troll, but still not quite flame-worthy you low-life, insignificant load-that-should-have-been-swallowed.
"You know, you are fooling less and less people as time goes and come to think of it, the "darknet" mode might actually be a good idea. I know for sure that it will make life easier for the kiddie porn RCMP division here in Canada. Because the use of a "darknet" Freenet will be so easily shown to be facilitating mere criminal activity that the "free speech" smokescreen will no longer be plausible."
Again, not a terrible trolling attempt. Keep working on it, sport. Maybe the GNAA will let you join up.
I'd just like to say that I think it really sucks that you have to deal with the idiots who have nothing better to do than put down the great things you guys have accomplished with Freenet. No matter how many idiots and trolls rail against the work you and others have done with Freenet, just try to remember the people in China and the former Scientologists here in US whose lives you've saved with this technology. Any invention or technology can be used for good or evil, and common sense says that the first time a caveman tied stone to wood to make a simple hammer, his first idea was likely to clobber the guy next door with it.
Thanks again for all your hard work, and I wish you guys the best of luck with 0.7. I'll certainly continue to run Freenet, and I hope things just get better and better for you guys. You really DO have a lot of support out there from people who see what you're doing, take the time to understand (ok, partially understand) what you're doing, and look at why you're doing it. I've yet to see a calm, rational argument against the continued development of Freenet and related technologies. I think one of the reasons you guys catch so much flack is because you're at the cutting edge of what's known in this field and what can be done in this field. That, invariably it seems, invites controversy and irrational backlash from those too mentally lazy to understand it.
It was great hearing you speak last Defcon, and it was good to meet you. Hope to see you there again this year. Take care.
Re:Great, here come the CP trolls
on
Revamping Freenet
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· Score: 2, Insightful
"I sure as hell have the right to decide that any computer equipment I own will NEVER help the spread of child pornography."
You sure do, and I'd advise you not to run Freenet in your case. The fact of the matter is that Freenet's security relies on everyone knowing as little as possible so as to minimize the ability of attackers to compromise anonymity. It's not the complete anonymity model, but it does simplify the equation greatly.
"I have the right to express that everytime freenet comes up. I have the right to let as many people I know understand that if they run a freenet node, they ARE aiding in the spread of child porn, that they are helping the worlds worst monsters commit their crimes."
If this were truly your goal, you would simply repost what Freenet's own site has to say on the subject. They freely admit that any content possibly attainable may, at some point, be stored on your computer. Your stated goal is false; your actual goal is to demonize something you don't understand and don't like by spreading Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt in the minds of those curious about it. If you're going to express hatred of something, try not to lie about your reasons for doing so. 'Education' isn't it.
"NAMBLA expresses their "viewpoints" on the regular internet."
A good point. You're supporting them, by the way, when you pay your ISP. Your payment partially subsidizes the upstream provider (including their hardware, bandwidth, etc) of your ISP, which in turn allows the worldwide internetwork upon which NAMBLA distributes its message worldwide to function.
See, the thing with people like you is that you like to pretend that anything new that gets misused by a small group only exists for the purposes of helping that group. You like to pretend that that group, child pornographers in this case, never existed before the birth of Freenet. Therefore, you get to toss out twisted logic in a fit of rage against Freenet; calling it a pedo network and the like. Unfortunately for your logic and the rest of the world, pedophiles and child pornographers existed before Freenet. They used the internet before Freenet existed. Do you support the internet? They continue to use it. They also existed before the internet. They distributed videos of their crimes against children as well. Do you support VHS? Prior to that, they used magazines to distribute their awful content. Do you support the printing press?
Using the logic that any technology which can be mis-used by evil-doers to facilitate their criminal acts must be banned, we'd have to drop ourselves back to the stone age. I take that back - we'd have to go back to before man existed. So long as man has used tools, a small minority has mis-used those tools to rape, torture, and kill others. Banning those tools will not make that minority go away.
What we are left with is the fact that no matter what we do, there will always be monsters in the world. Banning the technology which has already allowed groups of Chinese dissidents to openly communicate back and forth with ideas banned under penalty of death is not the answer. Banning the technology which has allowed former Scientology members to speak out about the lies, hatred, and crimes of that cult without fear of being hunted down and murdered (as several former members have been) is not the answer. This technology has the potential for substantial beneficial use. It has already shown that it, as anything else, can be used for good as well as for evil. That you ignore the good to rage against the evil shows an irrational hatred of something you do not understand.
Don't run Freenet if you don't want to. I don't care and I sure as hell know Ian Clarke doesn't care. I've met Ian, and he's a good guy. It infuriates him to no end when someone like you comes around after reading three whole sentences about Freenet and starts babbling on about how it's just there for pedophiles. Your spreading FUD and irrational rage does your argument no good. The fact of the matter is that Freenet's already proven its worth to good and decent people around the world and no one's forcing (or even asking) you to run it.
"Bonus poiints if there is a scene where Anakin kills Jar-Jar."
Double bonus points if there's a 10-second scene with no dialog or other characters except for Jar-Jar putting a laser pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger.
Was it? How many people close to the company got rich off this "stupid" move? Daryl and his pack of frothing lawyers have made money hand-over-fist off the people they've suckered into investing in this sham. Basically, investors threw money into a major gamble with an incredible payoff. It's like playing the lottery; you know you're wasting your money, but you keep hoping at the chance at big bucks. This is a classic pump-and-dump stock scheme, and I tend to think the only thing holding back the SEC investigation is the fact that the case against IBM hasn't yet been dismissed as being without merit.
"Right now the law says you can marry anyone, as long as you are the opposite sex. That is discrimination."
That's not discrimination because it doesn't matter what your gender is. What matters is that the combination of individuals entering into the marriage must be 1 man and 1 woman. Both men and women are allowed to enter the marriage contract on equal footing regardless of their gender, regardless of their race, and regardless of their sexual orientation. The state is merely defining conditions to enter into the contract. Those conditions do not discriminate between who may enter into that contract, but it does set parameters such as the number of people and the combination of their genders.
That's quite a bit different from, say, separate water fountains.
"Inanimate objects cannot consent to anything, and as such they cannot enter contracts. Children cannot legally consent to anything without the permission of a parent or guardian, and as such they cannot enter legal contracts with few exceptions."
Who decides that? Who decides which contracts are enforceable and which are not? Who decides the age at which a person may enter into a contract? Who decides the exceptions? Ahh, yes, our government... which is also the entity we expect to uphold the contracts we allow.
"Two people of the same gender who are of legal age can enter most contracts."
There are plenty of contracts they cannot enter into. One of them is marriage. Again, the state governs by the laws we the people allow the legislatures to pass.
"Sure, if you can explain how existing marriage laws can be quickly adapted to allow for multiple partners."
Which just makes it seem as though the entire issue is more about convenience than anything else. Either it's a 'civil right' to be able to marry whoever you want, or it isn't. The convenience of the laws shouldn't be a concern.
"I really hate the polygamy comparison because it demonstrates that the person making it has not, in any way, studied the relevant issues but is instead relying upon stupid analogies because they can't actually come up with a good reason to deny same-sex couples."
Deny what? They have equal protection under the law. What they're looking for is more options under the law, and they're looking for it in the wrong place. Laws are made in the legislature, and what's irked me in this whole gay marriage issue has been the failure of the courts and the legislatures to control those who would legislate from the bench. If a state wants to allow same-sex marriages, then by all means do so, but I think they're opening a door to things they aren't going to like. When you start redefining marriage, you really have to ask, where does it stop?
"Bringing up polygamy, animal marriage or marriage to inanimate objects only demonstrates that you don't actually have a good reason against same-sex marriage so you're bringing up irrelevant garbage in an attempt to distract from the real issue."
What real issue? How is it that the inevitable consequences of allowing homosexual marriage are irrelevant? Or do you really believe it'll stop at gay marriage?
Slashdot Mirror
"You may think that the international court trials are show trials and do not use reasonable laws"
I didn't say that was necessarily going to be the case. What I said was, in the event that such a thing were to come to pass, don't think for a second the US wouldn't intervene.
"I do think that keeping a lot of people in a camp in Cuba without trial and without telling them what they are accused of is very unreasonable."
They're granted annual reviews, in addition to the battlefield reviews they're given long before they make it to Cuba. They're granted far more due process than any other detainee in any other war I can think of. If this were WWII, many of them would have been hanged by now. None of them would have gotten half the due process they've gotten already, and they certainly wouldn't be entitled to annual review.
"The way the US is currently "fighting a war agains terrorism" is clearly showing that its freedom and justice values are very flimsy."
While I agree with regards to limited aspects of the WoT as it related to US citizens' rights, I think the vast majority of what has been done has been well within the rights of a nation attempting to defend itself from a worldwide asymetric threat never before faced by any nation on Earth.
"Send a couple of planes in US buildings"
You make it sound as if a couple of remote controlled childrens' toys were bounced into an abandoned building. I won't even respond to this line until you address what really happened. Don't downplay a horrendous mass murder and expect a reasoned response from anyone.
"Also, the laws the US uses to extradite people (e.g. drugs laws) are not very reasonable or realistic."
Extradition between nations is done by treaty. In other words, other nations must agree before the extradition even takes place.
"Note that the whole problem of drugs and drug criminality is primaly caused by drugs being illegal."
You're insinuating that if Heroin were legal, no one would die from it, no one would get sick from it, no one would get hooked on it, and everyone who's currently a heavy addict would suddenly feel right as rain. Again, this is absurd.
"As US soldiers are fighting wars that do not obey international war treaties"
Heh.. What, pray tell, is an "international war treaty"? An agreement between two nations on how they're going to kill each other? We don't, as a matter of policy, mistreat prisoners. When those among us break that policy (Abu Gharib), they are tried before their peers per the UCMJ and punished accordingly. Meanwhile, those we fight against (the foreign terrorists in Iraq, for instance) take peaceful civilians prisoner and behead them on television. We employ a professional fighting force, which does its job well and does it by the book. That's how it wins wars. The terrorists we're fighting don't obey any rules. That's why they're losing every battle they fight, and why they're losing the war.
"it is very reasonable to send them (and their principals) to an international court for it."
When our soldiers go off to battle, they are subject to the UCMJ and no other authority on this planet. Unless and until we change that via treaty, no court on this planet has jurisdiction over them other than those operating under the UCMJ. Anyone attempting to change that by force best have something better than the entire military might of the United States armed forces.
That's correct. The difference, you seem to be unaware of, is that the US attacks when its national security or the security of its allies is severely threatened militarily. A country like Iraq attacks because it wants more land and/or oil (see: Kuwait), or because it has a whole bunch of new WMDs to test and a whole bunch of people who need killing (see: Kurds, late 80's). A country like North Korea attacks because it wants more land, more power, more money, and/or more prestige for its tyrant/dictator. If North Korea would stop building nuclear weapons and ICBMs while threatning to annihilate Japan, South Korea, and the United States, we wouldn't have to consider pre-emptive military action against them. Had Saddam Hussein's government ceased its obstructionist tactics and simply allowed UN inspectors to do the job they'd been trying to do for the past 10 years, and had Saddam Hussein's government and family stopped raping, torturing, and murdering their own citizens en masse, military action against them would have been unnecessary and unsupported by virtually everyone in the US.
See, we're learning from the mistakes of the past vis-a-vis appeasement of tyrants (see: 1930s Germany). You and others seem to be stuck in the 1920s, blissfully secure in the 'knowledge' that no tyrant, no matter how bad, ever hurts anyone any time, and that nothing ever justifies military action anywhere for any reason. Usually people like that are the first ones that get run over and stuck to the treads of a tyrant's tank as it rolls forth to conquest.
"You must be the American version of a pacifist ;-) Your against the war 'cause there is another country you want to blow the hell out of first ;-)"
We have plenty of pacifists here. I'm just a bit of a realist. When a nuclear-armed nutcase talks of turning his neighbors's countries into a "sea of fire", and then starts showing off the weapons capable of doing so, then starts developing ICBMs, I think we should take notice. We've tried diplomacy since 1992, and it just plain hasn't worked in North Korea.
I swear, if some of you people were around in the later 30s, you'd have been protesting against going to war with Germany well into the 50s. He'd have secured the main European continent and rebuilt his offensive forces to the point of being fully prepared to take Britain, and perhaps eventually the rest of the world. Thankfully, men who saw war as the sometimes necessary evil that it is stood up and did something about it. How quickly we forget history, and the necessity of force against those who would do you harm.
Just think of how different a place the world would have been if everyone responded to Hitler's attack on Poland with an immediate and devastating attack on Germany (which was still well within reach at the time). The Nazis war machine would have never had the chance to rev up into production capable of sustaining a long, drawn-out war, and much of Europe would have been spared the hammer of German military power. But keep flashing that peace sign; the tyrants and madmen of the world love ya.
There's a world of difference between normalized extradition procedures (which occur back and forth every day around the world) and some self-proclaimed 'international criminal court' trying Americans while riding on anti-US sentiment. We allow our citizens to be tried and punished for crimes in countries all over the world every single day. The US doesn't try to skirt reasonable laws and reasonable judicial actions for its own citizens. However, if this 'international criminal court' starts picking up Americans (soldiers, for instance) and putting them up for ridiculous show trials where they're convicted of nebulous crimes sans evidence by anti-US judges, then of course we're going in to get them. To not do so would be absurd. What would you have us do? Write angry letters to the UN saying how we don't think it's fair that John Smith is rotting in jail because some court lacking any rightful authority whatsoever decided something he may have done three thousand miles away warranted it? Heh, civus romanus sum. Deal with it. :)
"Iraq: "Dude, We don't have any!"
Which, of course, everyone knew was a lie. They may have not had any anymore, but there is no doubt whatsoever that Iraq had WMD. After all, it wasn't fresh air and sunshine that killed all those Kurds. So when a regime that kept beautiful records on everything from the people it tortured to the illegal missiles it purchased claimed it had no record of what happened to its massive quantities of extremely deadly substances (but that it thought it may have dumped some into the ground), people were most certainly a bit concerned that they had something serious to hide.
I've always disagreed with the timing of the war in Iraq due to the fact that North Korea is, and has been, a much graver threat to the national security of the US and the stability of the entire region, but one cannot argue that most of Iraq and its neighbors are far better off without Saddam in power.
"Actually, didn't you revolve so that you wouldn't need to pay taxes to England ?"
Don't they teach history in schools anymore? If you want to know why we rebelled against our previous government, please read the list of grievances we typed up and emailed to the leader of our former government (in a manner of speaking). It reads like an 18th century Dear John letter to the King.
Perhaps, but doesn't 18 USC 1030 say essentially the same thing?
"They never stopped, FTP simply lost importance. IRC fserves used to have them too. Websites, DC++ hubs, eMule hubs, WinMX shares as well. It's funny, I've had people present me that and then ask me if I'm a cop as well."
I always wondered if 18 U.S.C. 1030 would make sense as a defense. After all, if you define the scope of those you allow to access something clearly, and someone outside that scope goes on to access the information, would they or would they not be in violation of 1030 (2) which makes it illegal when one "intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access"? It'd be an interesting case to defend.
I called this over two years ago.
6 062
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=77984&cid=692
I should be a lawyer.
"Simple solution to detect rootkits is to do an API call for file directory (dir, ls, whatever), and compare it side-by-side to a direct hardware request for a file directory."
That's cute, except you're assumiung your active memory is safe. So long as I'm running in memory, I don't even need to hook the API calls to fake return data. Jamie Butler demonstrated a technique at this year's DEFCON for hiding an active in-memory rootkit using the TLBs built into modern processors. Good luck on that one.
Unless you plan to use magnetic extraction techniques in a cleanroom to look at every bit and byte of data on the drive, you're no going to detect high-end rootkits. The old format and reinstall trick is still the only sure way.
"you offer a specular view of a US propaganda-fed dumbass."
This is what your post has consisted of thus far; ad hominem. Your first two lines and there isn't even a single argument to be found.
"You absolutely believe the embassy incident was an accident."
I said that? No, I didn't. So this part is a straw man. Ok, let's move on...
"I have no proof of either the accident theory or the opposite, and given the conditions under which it happened there will probably never be. So I suppose both are worth considering."
Here we go; you've just regurgitated what I said in my previous post.
"Astounding that there are people still believing the WMD hoax. I almost suspect you are a troll."
The tends of thousands of Kurds gassed in the late 80s were part of a hoax? Was this an April Fool's Day thing? The United Nations weapons inspectors were in on the hoax as well? The UN Security Council was in on it? Just how many were in on this elaborate conspiracy?
"You firmly believe your country goes around helping the world restore peace and love"
No, I firmly believe my country steps in when people are being slaughtered en masse, or when we're asked to by NATO and/or the UN.
"you're the good guys in Iraq"
You would prefer Saddam still be in charge, running the torture chambers, the rape rooms, and gassing Iraqi citizens by the tens of thousands? Oh, I forgot, Iraq had rivers of chocolate and children danced in the golden streets before the terrible US came in all by itself (apparently waving British and many other flags over certain units)...
"(oil? There's oil here? Oh why, what a surprise!)"
Please provide numbers for the amount of money spent on the military effort in Iraq vs the amount of money the United States has made on oil sales. I'm shocked anyone buys the leftist propaganda that oil had something to do with this. I can buy the assertion that President Bush and perhaps others in the administration had a personal grudge, but the idea that we're making money off this deal is absurd. Having spent hundreds of billions on Iraq already, we'd have to drain every last drop of oil and get top dollar for it to break even.
"that you were "helping" Afghanistan by financing terrorists against a legitimate government"
I'm not sure what kind of twisted logic is used to get "legitimate government" out of a foreign power carpet bombing civilian targets, but it must be fascinating to see the world through such a bizarre vision.
"and even claim your troops "beat their asses" in Somalia, when actually the Somali warlords put on a fierce resistance, after which it was conveniently decided that there was no point in staying there (possibly because there is no oil in Somalia?)."
160 US service members, cut off from ammo, supplies, medical care, armor, and any help whatsoever cleaned out somewhere between 500 and one thousand Somali militia, losing only 19 men out of 160. Yes, our boys did a damned fine job. As for not staying there, that was because we had a coward in the White House. Sounds like you're cheering for the warlords who were hijacking food from the civilians. That was the entire reason for US and other foreign troops being in Somalia - to protect the UN aid.
"Who are you, someone straight out from the "Full Metal Jacket" movie?"
I was about to ask you how Woodstock was. Perhaps if you put down the joint for a moment and read back, you'll notice that you've, thus far, taken the side of the Chinese government that slaughtered students in Tienamen Square and which has allowed millions to starve to death, the regime of Saddam Hussein, which is responsible for mass murders running into the tens, if not hundreds of thousands, the Soviets carpet bombing civilians in Afghanistan, and Somali warlords stealing UN food aid from the mouths of starving Somali families. Basically, you've aligned
"China may not be perfect"
Well, I suppose that's just a matter of whether authoritarian communist regimes are your cup of tea.
"An even more astonishing number of Americans believe it was an accident."
Pardon my ignorance, but exactly how would purposely bombing the Chinese embassy help our military efforts there? And precisely what information do you have that suggests this was anything other than an accident? Were you the military commander in charge of the mission? Were you privy to any aspect of the entire war, other than what you watched on your television? My guess would be no.
"There is undoubtedly some propaganda"
People being starved to death and murdered by their government while it sits idly by is certainly not inspirational of nationalism. Neither is using your military to threaten a peaceful island to your South filled with your own people.
"I don't have to mention WMDs, do I?"
You do realize, of course, that Kurds were murdered by the 10s of thousands by biological and chemical weapons? That shells have been recovered in the most recent war with small amounts of chemical agents? That it was the United Nations' own inspectors who reported and testified to the massive amounts of unrecovered WMDs? Now, as for what happened to those WMDs, whether they were destroyed, buried, or transferred to a foreign power, we may never find out. It's important to recognize, however, that those WMDs were not mythical in nature. They did, in fact, exist, and had been seen and verified by United Nations weapons inspectors. The only mistake was over the question of whether Saddam still had them. Saddam could have avoided the entire conflict had he opened up to weapons inspectors, but his continued obstructionist tactics worked against him.
"For my part, China has never bombed my country, never planted booby-traps, never tried to interfere with our politics, and as far as I know we've never even been at war."
Well now that's a pretty damned selfish way to look at things. That's akin to saying that Nazis Germany wasn't so bad because they never invaded your country.
I don't know which country is your's, and frankly I don't care. The US has worked hard to help out people who've been getting slaughtered around the world, and every time we do, it ends up turning around and biting us in the ass. It's real convenient, when complaining about Iraq, to forget about the torture chambers, the executions, the rape rooms, and the entire towns of Kurds who were slaughtered en masse by chemical and biological weapons. It's convenient to forget about the mass graves discovered, filled with the bodies of families slaughtered by Saddam's regime. It's convenient to forget that it's the insurgents who are blowing up mosques and civilians in Iraq. It extends a great deal beyond Iraq as well. We lost a ton of good people defending South Korea in a world-wide, UN-approved police action. Only everyone else left North Korea's million man regular army sitting at the border ready to conquer South Korea, while the US stayed behind to ensure security. We're the only ones left defending South Korea, and now they're protesting in the streets to get US troops off their soil. Fantastic; why don't we let Kim Jong-il flatten your capital with missiles and artillery and mop up the rest of your country with his army so he can finish building a few more nuclear weapons to destroy Japan. We helped the Afghanis when the Soviets started carpet bombing their cities and towns. Forget the casualties suffered by US precision guided weaponry; they were bombing every man-made structure in sight. What'd we get for thanks in helping them drive out the invaders? Somalia, 1993; World Trade Center 1996; and September 11th. Somalia's another good example. The UN couldn't get food to the people of Somalia because the warlords kept taking it by force. So the US sends troops in to help get the food to the people who are starving, ins
"I have had problems with 1 of the 3 ECS boards I've used."
I've had nothing but problems with ECS boards. The P6STM was flaky with any CPU over about 900MHz, but would run fine with slower ones. The K7SEM was very flaky. I even had one of those nearly catch fire at the ATX connector. The customer brought the machine back because it wasn't running and they noticed an odd smell coming from it. The 'odd smell' was the plastic and wire insulation fusing together at the ATX connector. That was the last ECS board I ever used, as I wasn't going to be responsible for burning down someone's house.
I now use Asus exclusively. They're rock-solid boards, with the single exception of the first-run A7V400-MX boards, which had some flaky onboard LAN controllers. Aside from that one glitch, I've yet to find any major problems with their products. Their tech support has always been very good. I get right through, it's someone who speaks English, and it's someone who actually knows what's going on (as opposed to reading off a screen). I truly can't recommend them enough, especially with the inexpensive line-up they have now. I only wish they'd add more boards supporting Opterons so I could use Asus boards when doing servers.
According to The Inq, they're definitely moving to x86, and they're talking to AMD as well. They're claiming independent confirmation of that information, and they generally have sources roaming about the halls of just about every big company.
"They will when the RIAA-sponsored Internet Copyright Infringment Evidence Preservation Act is passed. Their standard M.O. after getting spanked in court is to go buy a law that has the effect of overturning the unfavorable ruling."
Sure, but it won't be called that. Some bought-and-sold Congresscritter will introduce it as the "Securing And Verifying Electronically Transmitted Holdings Every Copyright Holder Is Locking Down Responsibly Every Night Act" - also known as the "SAVE THE CHILDREN act"
"whose activity is oooh so invisible to the Chinese authorities because everyone knows that no Communists have ever figured out how to use a packet sniffer"
Already you show a lack of understand for how Freenet works. You're an ignorant ass, a troll, and a fool.
"Riiight. And they need a darknet because Scientology is capable of decrypting PGP email and cracking SSL web connections with its evil super-xenu-powers!"
Freenet isn't about encryption so much as it is about anonymity. You can't publish to the world with PGP email and an SSL web connect you brainfucked idiot troll.
"The use of Freenet is a guaranteed way to get yourself on the official list of dissidents to watch/persecute in places like China who have no qualms about monitoring traffic."
Ian has already listed the public site of the folks in China who use Freenet daily to safely communicate with one another, you crack baby ignorant bastard.
"Freenet endangers lives so that morons can try to use "free speech" defense when they get investigated for their porn collections. You people are despicable. You would get people killed because you think yourself so important and infallable."
This is actually a decent troll, but still not quite flame-worthy you low-life, insignificant load-that-should-have-been-swallowed.
"You know, you are fooling less and less people as time goes and come to think of it, the "darknet" mode might actually be a good idea. I know for sure that it will make life easier for the kiddie porn RCMP division here in Canada. Because the use of a "darknet" Freenet will be so easily shown to be facilitating mere criminal activity that the "free speech" smokescreen will no longer be plausible."
Again, not a terrible trolling attempt. Keep working on it, sport. Maybe the GNAA will let you join up.
Ian,
I'd just like to say that I think it really sucks that you have to deal with the idiots who have nothing better to do than put down the great things you guys have accomplished with Freenet. No matter how many idiots and trolls rail against the work you and others have done with Freenet, just try to remember the people in China and the former Scientologists here in US whose lives you've saved with this technology. Any invention or technology can be used for good or evil, and common sense says that the first time a caveman tied stone to wood to make a simple hammer, his first idea was likely to clobber the guy next door with it.
Thanks again for all your hard work, and I wish you guys the best of luck with 0.7. I'll certainly continue to run Freenet, and I hope things just get better and better for you guys. You really DO have a lot of support out there from people who see what you're doing, take the time to understand (ok, partially understand) what you're doing, and look at why you're doing it. I've yet to see a calm, rational argument against the continued development of Freenet and related technologies. I think one of the reasons you guys catch so much flack is because you're at the cutting edge of what's known in this field and what can be done in this field. That, invariably it seems, invites controversy and irrational backlash from those too mentally lazy to understand it.
It was great hearing you speak last Defcon, and it was good to meet you. Hope to see you there again this year. Take care.
"I sure as hell have the right to decide that any computer equipment I own will NEVER help the spread of child pornography."
You sure do, and I'd advise you not to run Freenet in your case. The fact of the matter is that Freenet's security relies on everyone knowing as little as possible so as to minimize the ability of attackers to compromise anonymity. It's not the complete anonymity model, but it does simplify the equation greatly.
"I have the right to express that everytime freenet comes up. I have the right to let as many people I know understand that if they run a freenet node, they ARE aiding in the spread of child porn, that they are helping the worlds worst monsters commit their crimes."
If this were truly your goal, you would simply repost what Freenet's own site has to say on the subject. They freely admit that any content possibly attainable may, at some point, be stored on your computer. Your stated goal is false; your actual goal is to demonize something you don't understand and don't like by spreading Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt in the minds of those curious about it. If you're going to express hatred of something, try not to lie about your reasons for doing so. 'Education' isn't it.
"NAMBLA expresses their "viewpoints" on the regular internet."
A good point. You're supporting them, by the way, when you pay your ISP. Your payment partially subsidizes the upstream provider (including their hardware, bandwidth, etc) of your ISP, which in turn allows the worldwide internetwork upon which NAMBLA distributes its message worldwide to function.
See, the thing with people like you is that you like to pretend that anything new that gets misused by a small group only exists for the purposes of helping that group. You like to pretend that that group, child pornographers in this case, never existed before the birth of Freenet. Therefore, you get to toss out twisted logic in a fit of rage against Freenet; calling it a pedo network and the like. Unfortunately for your logic and the rest of the world, pedophiles and child pornographers existed before Freenet. They used the internet before Freenet existed. Do you support the internet? They continue to use it. They also existed before the internet. They distributed videos of their crimes against children as well. Do you support VHS? Prior to that, they used magazines to distribute their awful content. Do you support the printing press?
Using the logic that any technology which can be mis-used by evil-doers to facilitate their criminal acts must be banned, we'd have to drop ourselves back to the stone age. I take that back - we'd have to go back to before man existed. So long as man has used tools, a small minority has mis-used those tools to rape, torture, and kill others. Banning those tools will not make that minority go away.
What we are left with is the fact that no matter what we do, there will always be monsters in the world. Banning the technology which has already allowed groups of Chinese dissidents to openly communicate back and forth with ideas banned under penalty of death is not the answer. Banning the technology which has allowed former Scientology members to speak out about the lies, hatred, and crimes of that cult without fear of being hunted down and murdered (as several former members have been) is not the answer. This technology has the potential for substantial beneficial use. It has already shown that it, as anything else, can be used for good as well as for evil. That you ignore the good to rage against the evil shows an irrational hatred of something you do not understand.
Don't run Freenet if you don't want to. I don't care and I sure as hell know Ian Clarke doesn't care. I've met Ian, and he's a good guy. It infuriates him to no end when someone like you comes around after reading three whole sentences about Freenet and starts babbling on about how it's just there for pedophiles. Your spreading FUD and irrational rage does your argument no good. The fact of the matter is that Freenet's already proven its worth to good and decent people around the world and no one's forcing (or even asking) you to run it.
Wimp.
"Bonus poiints if there is a scene where Anakin kills Jar-Jar."
Double bonus points if there's a 10-second scene with no dialog or other characters except for Jar-Jar putting a laser pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger.
"Remember the DB driven file system, for the searches and everything?"
You're referring to WinFS, which was removed from the Longhorn non-server edition to bring it closer to being only extremely delayed.
XAML has also been somewhat stripped down, though it's still in the roadmap so far as I know; at least, it is for the time being.
"I'm sure many of you would strongly disagree with the idea that XP can run acceptably with 128MB of RAM."
Windows XP runs fine on 128MB of RAM. The problem comes when you try to install or run applications which require any memory whatsoever.
But Windows XP runs fine on 128MB of RAM.
"what SCO did was an incredibly stupid idea."
.
Was it? How many people close to the company got rich off this "stupid" move? Daryl and his pack of frothing lawyers have made money hand-over-fist off the people they've suckered into investing in this sham. Basically, investors threw money into a major gamble with an incredible payoff. It's like playing the lottery; you know you're wasting your money, but you keep hoping at the chance at big bucks. This is a classic pump-and-dump stock scheme, and I tend to think the only thing holding back the SEC investigation is the fact that the case against IBM hasn't yet been dismissed as being without merit.
The operative words are, hasn't yet
"Right now the law says you can marry anyone, as long as you are the opposite sex. That is discrimination."
That's not discrimination because it doesn't matter what your gender is. What matters is that the combination of individuals entering into the marriage must be 1 man and 1 woman. Both men and women are allowed to enter the marriage contract on equal footing regardless of their gender, regardless of their race, and regardless of their sexual orientation. The state is merely defining conditions to enter into the contract. Those conditions do not discriminate between who may enter into that contract, but it does set parameters such as the number of people and the combination of their genders.
That's quite a bit different from, say, separate water fountains.
"Inanimate objects cannot consent to anything, and as such they cannot enter contracts. Children cannot legally consent to anything without the permission of a parent or guardian, and as such they cannot enter legal contracts with few exceptions."
Who decides that? Who decides which contracts are enforceable and which are not? Who decides the age at which a person may enter into a contract? Who decides the exceptions? Ahh, yes, our government... which is also the entity we expect to uphold the contracts we allow.
"Two people of the same gender who are of legal age can enter most contracts."
There are plenty of contracts they cannot enter into. One of them is marriage. Again, the state governs by the laws we the people allow the legislatures to pass.
"Sure, if you can explain how existing marriage laws can be quickly adapted to allow for multiple partners."
Which just makes it seem as though the entire issue is more about convenience than anything else. Either it's a 'civil right' to be able to marry whoever you want, or it isn't. The convenience of the laws shouldn't be a concern.
"I really hate the polygamy comparison because it demonstrates that the person making it has not, in any way, studied the relevant issues but is instead relying upon stupid analogies because they can't actually come up with a good reason to deny same-sex couples."
Deny what? They have equal protection under the law. What they're looking for is more options under the law, and they're looking for it in the wrong place. Laws are made in the legislature, and what's irked me in this whole gay marriage issue has been the failure of the courts and the legislatures to control those who would legislate from the bench. If a state wants to allow same-sex marriages, then by all means do so, but I think they're opening a door to things they aren't going to like. When you start redefining marriage, you really have to ask, where does it stop?
"Bringing up polygamy, animal marriage or marriage to inanimate objects only demonstrates that you don't actually have a good reason against same-sex marriage so you're bringing up irrelevant garbage in an attempt to distract from the real issue."
What real issue? How is it that the inevitable consequences of allowing homosexual marriage are irrelevant? Or do you really believe it'll stop at gay marriage?