Which is why I put that last paragraph in: you might not have noticed, but the UN has outgrown it's charter, and thus it's ability to do those things effectively (things like inspection, peacekeeping, even just armed escorts for valuable supplies/relief aid etc; stuff which most people would agree doesn't fall within the UN's charter, but are damn glad the UN does anyway).
"It helps us formulate international treaties, which are the basis for international law."
Which, the US has shown in recent years, isn't worth much without enforcement. And unenforcable laws reduce the law to farce. Basic human rights should have som e teeth behind it, some way of enforcing sanctions to say 'Gulags like Guantanamo are wrong, repression of people and information like China does is wrong, and this is what we're going to do to help you decide to stop doing that'.
No...I prefer the old days, when the ICANN membership was voted in amongst the greatest nerds and hackers in the world. Too bad the ICANN forced the voted-in members out.
In reality, there's just three things wrong with the UN:
-VETO power; this HAS to be adressed; it has no place in a gathering of nations. -lack of teeth; there should be a permanent peacekeeping force under UN controll...but this only works if veto power is revoked (or at least drastically reworked) -too much diplomacy...lunacy like certain countries on the human rights commission...that would be like China on the internet-commission
What I never get is that organisations (and countries/corporations etc) are in a way set up like organisms, but always lacking that most effective way for positive evolution to happen: death. The UN charter (and any corporations charter, and every country's constitution) should include sections on it's own death and rebirth (for example a total revision after 50 years). Documents written hundreds of years ago might be relevant all those years later, but they just can't anticipate the way the world has changed, or the changed expectations of people. There's a reason why nature has this thing called death; it enables evolution.
"You, as a voter, have essentially two choices: vote for corporate america, or throw your vote away. Because that's what you do when you vote for a minor party or an independant"
That really is one of the more idiotic, uncomprehending-of-the-dmocratic-process, yet all too frequent posts I see here on/. and a lot of other US-centric boards. Please get rid of that republican-think-tank-planted-meme, and maybe you will find that if enough people vote for a different party, that party6 wins.
It just doesn't happen overnight; such things take years of momentum build-up.
Nope...as soon as we can create nanowires of any length, the space elevator is a very practical solution. And don't knock AC Clarke...he invented the communications satelite (which might have sounded impracticle to you too, but which has proved to be quite realistic).
No; nanowire is strong enough. The real problem is length; nanowires are just a couple of micrometers-millimeters long, and we have no idea how to make them longer. As soon as that is sorted, we need to think up a method of producing that length, and how do we produce it and make it go up to space (do we make it in orbit and just string it down as we make it? Do we shoot a rocket up with nanowire attached?).
But nanowire in and of itself has all the mechanical properties needed to build a space elevator.
Sounds like you just need a few systems and signals specialists there. This kind of thing is exactly what Fourier analysis was made for.
I see no reason to worry undully and think this can be done quite safely, if they leave room for adjustments when the thing is up (kinda like what they do to bridges when they turn out to have missed a harmonic frequency...they just add/change some shockabsorbers to cancel out the vibes).
Mind you, I'm not saying this is a trivial problem...just that it's a quite solvable one.
I don't think the two (porn and hate speech) commute that way. Hate speech is not on a slippery slope, and is quite easily defined; 'kill all jews/bankers' is hate speech trying to actively provoke the killing of people. Anything supporting that statement is a rationalisation based on the false (in most societies view) premise that is ok to kill an entire group of people. Note that this does not preclude any rational logic which produces a chain of logic leading to the fact that bankers are bad because [this/that/the other] and thus banking should be made illegal. What's the mayor difference? One says 'kill this group', the other doesn't. Hate speech is not on a slippery slope because it is so easy to define; it tries to kill a group of people. There is no 'bits of grey' there; hate speech is instantly and uneqiuvocally classifyable.
BTW: just saying 'I hate [group]' is not hate speech...it's just an opinion (which is sometimes even backed by logical arguments). Hate speech is 'I hate [group] and all [groupmembers] must die/be killed/deserv e to die'.
Porn however does have lots of grey area's; art being one of them. Due to the fact that the grey area exist (people have different opinions...unlike hate speech, where there can be no disagreement [unless you're the kind of person who'll insist 1+1=3]), there is a slippery slope argument to make for that.
I wasn't spouting propaganda...just what I'd heard from legitimate news sources (ie not FOX).
"In general the American Pluralist ("red state") ideology still believes in free speech - often to the "defend to the death your right to be wrong" level. (But they're usually quite willing to argue right back.) The Liberal ("blue state") ideology, on the other hand, believes in free speech only as long as you agree with them, and has quite the track record of using both violence (assault, theft, vandalism, arson, bombing,...) and law ("hate speech", "campaign finance reform") to suppress their opponents."
That however is propaganda. A duality where the group you support is the one who does no wrong and the 'enemy' only does wrong. It's a statement where you don't even need to know anything about recent events (which I happen to do) to know it's an outright falsehood. And then stating that, whilst accusing me of the same...how very Rove-ian of you. Anyway....the recent past makes you liar anyway; go check up on free speech zones, and what has happened to people sporting anti-bush t-shirts/posters recently.
"I would say that the standards are different, but not necessarily higher or lower."
I'd agree with that. And the reason fo that difference is because in Europe, we've seen first hand what hate speech can do. OTOH, porn hasn't ever caused the decline oif civilisation, or the attepted to kill millions. Aversion to porn however has caused quite a few people to get locked up in the US.
As for ICANN...google up on Iraqi domain names, handover of the national tld and who can and can't get registered.
I thought that Soth Afrika's apartheid had tought us that the thing to do is to utterly boycot every single company in that country, making the government cave in pretty fast. It worked in South afrika, at least.
First off, I know what I'm refering to, and it's not the Verisign stuff. ICANN has pushed out it's elected board members. This hasn't changed. The last half of your statement is pure apologist bollocks. As for political neutrality: google up on the status of the Iraq domain, and how and when that changed. I'll give you a hint; a private Iraqi citizen isn't allowed to register a domain.
No, you don't:) When you have two DNS systems, they can both assign the same number to different sites. IP6 only gives you more numbers to play with, but that won't help when the two systems aren't talking to each other.
Interetingly enough, untill very recently, that was the US, for quite a long time. And even now they've left some neato regulation in place stating that a normal citizen can't register a domain name. You have to be a (baksheesh-throwing) company to get a webpresence in Iraq now.
Hmmm...Cheny and Rove indictments are up soon...and here was me wondering what crisis would be dreamt up to displace that on the next news-cycle this time 'round.
Point is, though, that the internet shouldn't/be/ regulated. All it needs is wires (or wifi) and a place (places) to look up adresses. And that's it. Nations shouldn't be allowed to "express their position on internet issues"...they should have nothing to do there except track and kill pedophiles.
Restricting the internet is like choking off the goose which lays the golden eggs...the internet is such a success purely and ONLY because of it's un-restricted nature. So it makes sense to wrest controll from the US (at the very least untill they find a new president, prefferably one who can read) and place it in an NGO's hands.
It doesn't make sense however to then put the controll into the hands of the likes of China and Saudi Arabia (or even into an NGO where those two have any influence). Not if the internet is important to you, because the reason it is important, and why it works, is because of that unrestricted access and the fact that everyone can put up a website.
Good points. So the question becomes: what company/organisation is the EU proposing to replace ICANN, and even more importantly, who are the people behind that company/organisation. I'd wager the connections those people have to politicians will be quite enlightening.
"European governments weren't involved in designing or running it."
Design...the part of the internet most of the world (non nerds) use is the www...which was 'designed' at CERN, in Europe, by a european. The US did the distributed network stuff, though.
As for the running of the internet....the US doesn't pay for all that cable (you know, the 'net part) lying in the rest of the world, neither does it pay for all the DNS servers.
This gets said an awfull lot, but what's it based on? What magical, wonderfull thing is there on the US intarwebs that I just must have and can't live without? Sure, it'd suck to loose gmail...but no worries, there's lots of other webmail companies.
As for business...hey, my local comp store will just *gasp* make a call to Intel (or just email AMD:P) to place his order.
In the end, if the US gets cut off from the rest of the world ('cause you can bet China, Russia and India will follow the EU, judging from recent arms trades and trade disputes)...so what? Yes, it'll make me miss my boingboing.net, and bluesnews...sure, it'll make life a bit harder on businesses...but the main use of the internet will remain; I can skype all my friends, and bridge programs will be written in the first 24 hours to allow me to read/. again, and email my frtiends in the US.
I dunno...I wouldn't be too sure. Most webpages out there aren't US in origin. I'd wager that not even a third of webpages are american (why do you think Google and Yahoo are desperate to make it in Asia?). As for goods and services...most internet shopping is probably done within national borders. Sure, it would suck to loose gmail, but there are other webmail providers.
I'm saying that a split would actually probably hurt the US more...mainly due to outsourcing problems, and the way supply/deman chains are setup....I'd think the US has more to loose from operating on a seperate system (assuming most of the world goes with the EU...which is likely, if you've been watching the news [trade disputes, who is dealing arms to whom, which countries are benefitting from the US or EU...China and India would probably follow the EU...and that's a lot of people]).
But that's assuming breaks will really happen...I think within the first 24 hours of ISP's directing to an EU DNS, bridge programs will have been written. The whole virtue of the internet is that it's a collection of 'nets...having two DNS systems is not an insurmoutable problem by any means. Although collision would be fun, and you might get quite a few cases where you have to click on the 'no, I wanted the/other/ site with this IP' button on your browser. Because there is no way that ISP's will miss out on transatlantic bandwidth sales, even if they have to sort out DNS collision.
You really ahven't been following your government recently, have you? Have a look at the new FBI stance on porn; it's considered a higher priority than finding terrorists. I kid you not, go google; you'll find some enlightening statement from the new head honcho's.
Also, while you're at it, google for 'free speech zones', as pertaining to protesters in the US.
No matter what the supremes have done in the past (and there is none, with the new appointee(s)), you're losing it in the US. Just ask the guy who was against the Iraq war in a red state; just because it's not written into the law but enforced by your neighbours (who'll beat you up for wearing anti-bush t-shirts), it's still censorship.
"It's intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that the reason behind this EU and UN grab for internet power is in order to suppress speech they disagree with."
No, it's not obvious. What is obvious is that it's a power grab. 'Why' is open to speculation, but I'd say 'because they don't want a bullying, uni-lateraly acting, militaristic, way-too-opertunistic and aggressive nation headed by an illiterate imbecile to make decisions and exert undue influence on a system which by now is quite important to nation's economies' is much more likely than your, quite mistaken, belief that Europe is living in censorship.
Which is kind of odd, when you live in a nation which fines people up to half a million for saying 'fuck' on radio, and a nation cries out in uproar when a breast is kinda-sorta-not-really shown on tv during of all things a football match.
However, if by cencorship, you mean 'looking at intelligent design and deciding we don't want 'magic' taught in science classes'...well, then you're right.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why I put that last paragraph in: you might not have noticed, but the UN has outgrown it's charter, and thus it's ability to do those things effectively (things like inspection, peacekeeping, even just armed escorts for valuable supplies/relief aid etc; stuff which most people would agree doesn't fall within the UN's charter, but are damn glad the UN does anyway).
"It helps us formulate international treaties, which are the basis for international law."
Which, the US has shown in recent years, isn't worth much without enforcement. And unenforcable laws reduce the law to farce. Basic human rights should have som e teeth behind it, some way of enforcing sanctions to say 'Gulags like Guantanamo are wrong, repression of people and information like China does is wrong, and this is what we're going to do to help you decide to stop doing that'.
No...I prefer the old days, when the ICANN membership was voted in amongst the greatest nerds and hackers in the world. Too bad the ICANN forced the voted-in members out.
In reality, there's just three things wrong with the UN:
-VETO power; this HAS to be adressed; it has no place in a gathering of nations.
-lack of teeth; there should be a permanent peacekeeping force under UN controll...but this only works if veto power is revoked (or at least drastically reworked)
-too much diplomacy...lunacy like certain countries on the human rights commission...that would be like China on the internet-commission
What I never get is that organisations (and countries/corporations etc) are in a way set up like organisms, but always lacking that most effective way for positive evolution to happen: death. The UN charter (and any corporations charter, and every country's constitution) should include sections on it's own death and rebirth (for example a total revision after 50 years). Documents written hundreds of years ago might be relevant all those years later, but they just can't anticipate the way the world has changed, or the changed expectations of people. There's a reason why nature has this thing called death; it enables evolution.
Get Cohen to program a bittorent-website plugin for firefox, then let /. host the torrent :)
"You, as a voter, have essentially two choices: vote for corporate america, or throw your vote away. Because that's what you do when you vote for a minor party or an independant"
/. and a lot of other US-centric boards. Please get rid of that republican-think-tank-planted-meme, and maybe you will find that if enough people vote for a different party, that party6 wins.
That really is one of the more idiotic, uncomprehending-of-the-dmocratic-process, yet all too frequent posts I see here on
It just doesn't happen overnight; such things take years of momentum build-up.
Nope...as soon as we can create nanowires of any length, the space elevator is a very practical solution. And don't knock AC Clarke...he invented the communications satelite (which might have sounded impracticle to you too, but which has proved to be quite realistic).
No; nanowire is strong enough. The real problem is length; nanowires are just a couple of micrometers-millimeters long, and we have no idea how to make them longer.
As soon as that is sorted, we need to think up a method of producing that length, and how do we produce it and make it go up to space (do we make it in orbit and just string it down as we make it? Do we shoot a rocket up with nanowire attached?).
But nanowire in and of itself has all the mechanical properties needed to build a space elevator.
Sounds like you just need a few systems and signals specialists there. This kind of thing is exactly what Fourier analysis was made for.
I see no reason to worry undully and think this can be done quite safely, if they leave room for adjustments when the thing is up (kinda like what they do to bridges when they turn out to have missed a harmonic frequency...they just add/change some shockabsorbers to cancel out the vibes).
Mind you, I'm not saying this is a trivial problem...just that it's a quite solvable one.
I don't think the two (porn and hate speech) commute that way. Hate speech is not on a slippery slope, and is quite easily defined; 'kill all jews/bankers' is hate speech trying to actively provoke the killing of people. Anything supporting that statement is a rationalisation based on the false (in most societies view) premise that is ok to kill an entire group of people. Note that this does not preclude any rational logic which produces a chain of logic leading to the fact that bankers are bad because [this/that/the other] and thus banking should be made illegal. What's the mayor difference? One says 'kill this group', the other doesn't. Hate speech is not on a slippery slope because it is so easy to define; it tries to kill a group of people. There is no 'bits of grey' there; hate speech is instantly and uneqiuvocally classifyable.
BTW: just saying 'I hate [group]' is not hate speech...it's just an opinion (which is sometimes even backed by logical arguments). Hate speech is 'I hate [group] and all [groupmembers] must die/be killed/deserv e to die'.
Porn however does have lots of grey area's; art being one of them. Due to the fact that the grey area exist (people have different opinions...unlike hate speech, where there can be no disagreement [unless you're the kind of person who'll insist 1+1=3]), there is a slippery slope argument to make for that.
I wasn't spouting propaganda...just what I'd heard from legitimate news sources (ie not FOX). "In general the American Pluralist ("red state") ideology still believes in free speech - often to the "defend to the death your right to be wrong" level. (But they're usually quite willing to argue right back.) The Liberal ("blue state") ideology, on the other hand, believes in free speech only as long as you agree with them, and has quite the track record of using both violence (assault, theft, vandalism, arson, bombing, ...) and law ("hate speech", "campaign finance reform") to suppress their opponents."
That however is propaganda. A duality where the group you support is the one who does no wrong and the 'enemy' only does wrong. It's a statement where you don't even need to know anything about recent events (which I happen to do) to know it's an outright falsehood. And then stating that, whilst accusing me of the same...how very Rove-ian of you. Anyway....the recent past makes you liar anyway; go check up on free speech zones, and what has happened to people sporting anti-bush t-shirts/posters recently.
"I would say that the standards are different, but not necessarily higher or lower."
I'd agree with that. And the reason fo that difference is because in Europe, we've seen first hand what hate speech can do. OTOH, porn hasn't ever caused the decline oif civilisation, or the attepted to kill millions. Aversion to porn however has caused quite a few people to get locked up in the US.
As for ICANN...google up on Iraqi domain names, handover of the national tld and who can and can't get registered.
I thought that Soth Afrika's apartheid had tought us that the thing to do is to utterly boycot every single company in that country, making the government cave in pretty fast. It worked in South afrika, at least.
First off, I know what I'm refering to, and it's not the Verisign stuff. ICANN has pushed out it's elected board members. This hasn't changed. The last half of your statement is pure apologist bollocks. As for political neutrality: google up on the status of the Iraq domain, and how and when that changed. I'll give you a hint; a private Iraqi citizen isn't allowed to register a domain.
No, you don't :) When you have two DNS systems, they can both assign the same number to different sites. IP6 only gives you more numbers to play with, but that won't help when the two systems aren't talking to each other.
Bet you posted that using Lynx, didn't you? :)
"Who controls Iraq's TLD?"
:)
Interetingly enough, untill very recently, that was the US, for quite a long time. And even now they've left some neato regulation in place stating that a normal citizen can't register a domain name. You have to be a (baksheesh-throwing) company to get a webpresence in Iraq now.
I agree wholeheartedly with your post, though
Hmmm...Cheny and Rove indictments are up soon...and here was me wondering what crisis would be dreamt up to displace that on the next news-cycle this time 'round.
Point is, though, that the internet shouldn't /be/ regulated. All it needs is wires (or wifi) and a place (places) to look up adresses. And that's it. Nations shouldn't be allowed to "express their position on internet issues"...they should have nothing to do there except track and kill pedophiles.
Restricting the internet is like choking off the goose which lays the golden eggs...the internet is such a success purely and ONLY because of it's un-restricted nature. So it makes sense to wrest controll from the US (at the very least untill they find a new president, prefferably one who can read) and place it in an NGO's hands.
It doesn't make sense however to then put the controll into the hands of the likes of China and Saudi Arabia (or even into an NGO where those two have any influence). Not if the internet is important to you, because the reason it is important, and why it works, is because of that unrestricted access and the fact that everyone can put up a website.
Good points. So the question becomes: what company/organisation is the EU proposing to replace ICANN, and even more importantly, who are the people behind that company/organisation. I'd wager the connections those people have to politicians will be quite enlightening.
"European governments weren't involved in designing or running it."
Design...the part of the internet most of the world (non nerds) use is the www...which was 'designed' at CERN, in Europe, by a european. The US did the distributed network stuff, though.
As for the running of the internet....the US doesn't pay for all that cable (you know, the 'net part) lying in the rest of the world, neither does it pay for all the DNS servers.
Most spam (+-40%) originates from within the US.
" but more so for people outside the US"
:P) to place his order.
/. again, and email my frtiends in the US.
This gets said an awfull lot, but what's it based on? What magical, wonderfull thing is there on the US intarwebs that I just must have and can't live without? Sure, it'd suck to loose gmail...but no worries, there's lots of other webmail companies.
As for business...hey, my local comp store will just *gasp* make a call to Intel (or just email AMD
In the end, if the US gets cut off from the rest of the world ('cause you can bet China, Russia and India will follow the EU, judging from recent arms trades and trade disputes)...so what? Yes, it'll make me miss my boingboing.net, and bluesnews...sure, it'll make life a bit harder on businesses...but the main use of the internet will remain; I can skype all my friends, and bridge programs will be written in the first 24 hours to allow me to read
All the bitching about ICANN the past couple of years here on /. lead me to believe: it is broke. So fix it.
"this really hurts the non-US areas most"
/other/ site with this IP' button on your browser. Because there is no way that ISP's will miss out on transatlantic bandwidth sales, even if they have to sort out DNS collision.
I dunno...I wouldn't be too sure. Most webpages out there aren't US in origin. I'd wager that not even a third of webpages are american (why do you think Google and Yahoo are desperate to make it in Asia?).
As for goods and services...most internet shopping is probably done within national borders. Sure, it would suck to loose gmail, but there are other webmail providers.
I'm saying that a split would actually probably hurt the US more...mainly due to outsourcing problems, and the way supply/deman chains are setup....I'd think the US has more to loose from operating on a seperate system (assuming most of the world goes with the EU...which is likely, if you've been watching the news [trade disputes, who is dealing arms to whom, which countries are benefitting from the US or EU...China and India would probably follow the EU...and that's a lot of people]).
But that's assuming breaks will really happen...I think within the first 24 hours of ISP's directing to an EU DNS, bridge programs will have been written. The whole virtue of the internet is that it's a collection of 'nets...having two DNS systems is not an insurmoutable problem by any means. Although collision would be fun, and you might get quite a few cases where you have to click on the 'no, I wanted the
You really ahven't been following your government recently, have you? Have a look at the new FBI stance on porn; it's considered a higher priority than finding terrorists. I kid you not, go google; you'll find some enlightening statement from the new head honcho's.
Also, while you're at it, google for 'free speech zones', as pertaining to protesters in the US.
No matter what the supremes have done in the past (and there is none, with the new appointee(s)), you're losing it in the US. Just ask the guy who was against the Iraq war in a red state; just because it's not written into the law but enforced by your neighbours (who'll beat you up for wearing anti-bush t-shirts), it's still censorship.
"It's intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that the reason behind this EU and UN grab for internet power is in order to suppress speech they disagree with."
No, it's not obvious. What is obvious is that it's a power grab. 'Why' is open to speculation, but I'd say 'because they don't want a bullying, uni-lateraly acting, militaristic, way-too-opertunistic and aggressive nation headed by an illiterate imbecile to make decisions and exert undue influence on a system which by now is quite important to nation's economies' is much more likely than your, quite mistaken, belief that Europe is living in censorship.
Which is kind of odd, when you live in a nation which fines people up to half a million for saying 'fuck' on radio, and a nation cries out in uproar when a breast is kinda-sorta-not-really shown on tv during of all things a football match.
However, if by cencorship, you mean 'looking at intelligent design and deciding we don't want 'magic' taught in science classes'...well, then you're right.