Re:Isn't Murdoch Australian?
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
RTFC. I said under threat, not censored.
You implied that blogs are under threat of censorship. I'm saying that there is no threat, that the material in this case wasn't censored, and that the Secret Service was performing a routine investigation.
Although, now you come to mention it, if someone has to edit their own work (or restrict it's distribution) for fear of visits from the Secret Services/FBI/CIA/MI5/KGB/Tufty Club or what ever cabal rules our lives then that seems to be a case of censorship.
It's not a case of censorship. He's free to publish whatever he wants. He removed the material upon his own free will.
The U.S. Secret Service investigated a complaint by a citizen of a possible threat against the president. They have to; it's their job to take any threat, no matter how ridiculous, seriously. They sent two agents to his house to ask him some questions. They did not break his door down, arrest him, or throw him in jail. They did not tell him to remove the content, and they are not restricting what he can publish. It was a completely routine investigation. They do hundreds of these types of investigations, and he is trying to pump it up to look like more than it actually is.
The point is that if you are going to make what sounds like a threat, you must expect to be questioned. If you make a threat against somebody on your website and someone else reports it, the police will question you, because making actual threats against someone is not protected free speech. They will not deprive you of your right to say that you want to do something bad to someone, but they will question you and the intended victim to determine whether you are seriously intent on doing bodily harm or merely talking metaphorically.
Furthermore, just because one blogger does something stupid doesn't mean that every single blog on the face of the planet is somehow theatened. That's totally ludicrous.
copying a PPV movie and keeping it, which only deprives the distributor of potential future income that you were probably never going to give them anyway.
If you aren't going to watch it again, then why do you need to keep it?
Re:Isn't Murdoch Australian?
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
The nearest to a free press these days is the blogosphere, but even that is under threat.
No, the author wasn't censored. He was investigated by the Secret Service, because some total asshole told the FBI that he was making threats against the president. The SS has to take any alleged threat seriously and investigate it.
No one told him to take down any articles. He can and will publish whatever he wants, and said as much. The only thing he took down was the article that the jerk sent in as proof that he was a threat, and he took it down voluntarily.
So, no, there is no gigantic conspiracy to censor blogs.
In Europe we are so fortunate as to be able to sample news from many sources and countries, for me that is the only way to stay properly informed.
Wow, you're lucky. I sort of wish we could do that here in the U.S. just to see what other countries are like. Our news probably tells us all we need to know, though.
U.S. citizens can only view news from the government sanctioned news station, Fox News. Realistically, I'm not sure that we would need anything else, though. Fox News is fair and balanced.
I heard that there is some kind of pirate television station called PBS (get this, "Public Broadcasting System" - how radical!) that shows BBC news, but I think that's only a rumor. There was also some rumor of stations that are broadcasting in Portugese, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, French, and (get this) Arabic! I don't know where that rumor came from, but I doubt it's true. I know that the government run cable company does not carry anything that isn't in American Newspeak. Who would watch any of that anyway? Everyone speaks perfect American here. There certainly aren't large population centers in major cities that speak other languages and would be interested in hearing news from their native land, because foreigners aren't allowed inside the U.S. (especially not Canadians and Mexicans, but I digress).
USA Today is the only paper we are allowed to read. I heard that there used to be a couple of papers that printed something called "AP" news, but I think this is only a rumor. I'm pretty sure our single newspaper would not print that type of news. Why would we need it, though? Our newspaper gets it's news directly from the source (i.e. the U.S. Government).
One really weird thing is that the bookstore downtown claims that it has several magazines from other countries! Seriously, they claim they have magazines from all over the world. That's so ridiculous. Everyone knows we can't import magazines into the U.S., because they are classified as "munitions". Time Magazine is so much better than anything else, though, because it contains only facts.
One of my professors had this magazine called, "Der Spiegel". I'm not sure what kind of loopy magazine that is, but I want no part of it. I looked at it once, and I think it was written in some kind of secret illegal code. He said he was a subscriber, too! I doubt that, since we can only subscribe to the government sanctioned Time Magazine. He's an academic, though, and some of them are radical. I should probably report him to the FBI.
That reminds me! There was a huge bust here the past week. People are saying it was about drugs, but I know better. I think some idiots were trying to start their own newspaper illegally! These nutcases always claim that the Constitution supposedly grants the right for any citizen to publish anything they want. That's completely insane! Everyone knows that only the Government should print the news so that the truth can be heard without being tainted. If everyone printed what they wanted, how would we know what the truth is? Really, I don't understand these people. Why can't they just read USA Today and Time? What they did was totally illegal and morally reprehensible. Besides, we don't need any other news publications, because we have the best in the world.
Does anyone read past the first page - the following pages contain mostly comments you've already read. Or has it been fixed now?
No, it hasn't been fixed. It's a royal pain when there are lots of posts, because you can read the first page, and then read the same exact thing on pages 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc. Eventually you'll find a page that doesn't start with the same posts that you've already read.
I really do think you're miscasting how people would react to Canada, but it's about to degrade into making fun of Canadian calvalry if we keep going:).
Heh, heh. Well, I guess I'm just of the opinion that the rest of the world places more value on Canada than most U.S. citizens think. We get used to thinking of them as kind of a puppet, and although they're fun to rip on, they have done some things internationally that places them in higher regard than the U.S. sometimes.
Well I have to agree we did nothing but fuck up during the CMC, but even with all the mistakes we managed to come to an acceptable solution between both parties.
In lieu of being blown up, it's entirely acceptable. Funny part is that, the USSR was not happy with the handling of the crisis, and deposed Kruschev. He was placed under house arrest.
As for the end of the world? I can't speak for others but my objection to Iraq is I don't want to be drafted into a war I don't support. Unfortunately I'm not convinced either candidate can avoid the draft at this point.
I don't want to be drafted for it either. I don't think we have to worry about being drafted, though. The official word is that congress hasn't done anything about reinstating the draft, the administration denys that there is a need for one, and the Selective Service says that it is unable to manage a draft at this point.
The unofficial word, however, is that they're reinstating the draft, and making it harder to dodge it. I'm sure that you've probably read the same things I have about S.89 and H.R.163, and are probably pretty worried that you're going to have to do your required 2 years of service in Iraq. There was a lot of sites quoting these two bills, and saying how horrible it was they were going to draft people for a protracted war on terrorism.
I got curious about this, so I took a look at them. First of all, it's kind of funny, because these bills weren't really designed with that in mind (they don't even mention terrorism or Iraq). Furthermore, it turns out that S.89 has been tied up in the Armed Services Committee since January. I wanted to know what was going on, so I took a look at it's sister bill H.R.189 (same text), and found out that it was voted on yesterday! Guess what, though? It failed to pass 402 to 2.
Anyway, I hope that makes you feel a little bit better.
And you know as well as I do that you're misrepresenting the global test there. I thought it was pretty clear it was an (unfortunately worded) idealogical test that needed to be passed. I thought the point was that if people violently don't support you there can be severe consequences played out over many years, and you need to do everything you can to appease everyone that you can appease. Such is the game of statesmanship.
Yeah, I got carried away. That's kind of the problem with the global test, though. Everybody's idea of it is slightly different. The administration has their own opinion, and they felt they appeased everybody they needed to, so it passed for them. Apparently, though, worldwide protests and lack of UN support does not fit their global test.
Er, I hope most people are aware of the fact that (most?) reactors are built so they cannot go critical even in a meltdown. Then again, it is the average person we are talking about here.
Critical means that the number of neutrons causing fission is constant with time, and is what happens normally in a nuclear reactor when it's generating power. So, a reactor is pretty much critical all the time, unless you're starting it or stopping it. If the reaction goes supercritical, you have a run-away chain reaction, which is how you get an atomic bomb.
You can stop nuclear fission in a reactor by inserting the reactor's control rods ("scramming"). The co
It wouldn't be a thousands of deaths situation. Invading Canada might cost us a few hundred troops and them (depending on how set they are on dying) a few hundred to a few thousand troops.
I'm not sure it matters how many deaths it causes. The initial feelings towards an action are manifested long before the first death occurs these days.
You need to remember, Canada has next to no military infastructure to work with, and unfortunately calvalry haven't been useful in war since WWI;).
Those charlatans would confound us with their super-enhanced, cyborg, hockey soldiers. Yeah, that's the ticket...
You're forgetting two things. We had a lot of support in the CMC because we played the diplomacy right, even though it was all hush-hush while it happened.
It was the total failure of diplomacy that caused it:
Eisenhower decided to play golf instead of talking to Fidel Castro.
The U.S. attempted to remove Castro from power several times.
The U.S. placed a trade embargo on Cuba.
The U.S. installed Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles in Britain, Turkey, and Italy.
The U.S. decided NOT to make an appeal to the United Nations once it had discovered the missiles.
The U.S. instituted an illegal blockade against a sovereign nation.
The U.S. sent U-2 spy planes over the USSR during the crisis.
Talk about failing The Global Test (tm). We talk about this little Iraq thing like it's the end of the world - the CMC was almost the end of the world.
I'm sure the rest of the world was simply thrilled.
Second, you're forgetting we are the US. We have a veto on the security council, and frankly unless we continue being dumb our economy would fuck up a lot of people if it crashed.
But that precludes The Global Test (tm)!
And you don't get to hush-hush the detonation of a nuke. It shows up on seismographs in China, and will be tracked by the radar of several countries.
"We didn't do it. It was obviously mismanagement of the Fermi 2 nuclear reactor that caused the explosion."
No. We wouldn't retaliate with nukes. We would take over the country using conventional forces in less than a week then go to the UN to figure out what we were going to do with them.
Yeah, it would start out as a proposed action of less than a week, but after we started the action, we'd be met with fierce resistant, and eventually we'd be caught in a mire for months, and people would start yelling, "Ealar lied, thousands died!"
I have two more words since we are battling with quotes: "Cold War".
Right, so we agree that nations take part in covert actions against their neighbors and and then deny it later.
Okay, fine, so we do a global test and we figure that the U.K., Australia, most of the rest of Europe, and China would condemn us for retaliating against Canada. Our own intelligence as well as that of Israel's assures us that Canada is the source of the attack. Meanwhile, there are millions of U.S. Citizens who lost loved ones in the Detroit massacre screaming for retribution.
What are you going to do? Make your citizens happy and alienate the rest of the world, or make the rest of the world happy and get assassinated by your own people for your own inaction?
I still wish they would have just improved on IRC. IRC has been around since the late 1980s, and was a significant improvement over talk.
Yeah, IRC has some nice features, and it was the way to do IM before there was such a thing as IM (talk and write be damned). All the cool kids were using it.
Unfortunately, its adoption as a standard ran into some issues:
RFC 1459, the Internet Relay Chat Protocol RFC was placed into the "Experimental" category.
Many programs implemented special improvements that were eventually collectively released as RFCs 2810 through 2813. These RFCs, though, were marked as "Informational".
The IRC Client-To-Client Protocol (CTCP) for sending structured data between clients was released as an Internet Draft, but was never made an RFC.
I think the real killer of IRC as a standard, was the release of RFC 2779, "Instant Messaging / Presence Protocol Requirements". IRC just wouldn't fit this model without a major overhaul, and at that point, you have to question whether it would be worth trying to do that without sacrificing compatibility. It was probably easier to just write a new standard.
How does it compare to Jabber? Well, IRC is much simpler (try to write IRC with netcat, then try XMPP).
At it's base level, yes, it's definitely easier. You can do most of what you need for IRC with just a Telnet client. This is kind of fun actually.
The only chance you even had of making one - that regional IP laws harm open source - has now apparently been abandoned even by you.
No it hasn't. You just lack reading comprehension.
What you just said is not that "open source" is harmed (it provably is not) but that US commercial interests are harmed.
No, I said that Open Source is harmed. Open Source is harmed when developers have to spend time scanning their code for patented algorithms and stripping them out of the codebase (like what OpenSSH has had to do). Some of these algorithms may be necessary for interoperability with other software. If the interoperability is not allowed, that hurts Open Source. But I guess that someone that hates Open Source as much as you can't understand that.
With the U.S. and Europe forcing their IP laws on other countries through the UN, it will no longer be possible for any open source project to implement any patented algorithm. But, I guess that's just fine with you, since you want to see Open Source die a painful death.
The OSS projects go right along, all that is impaired is the opportunity (in the US, germany and a few other backward nations) to profit from these projects on an individual basis.
It's got nothing to do with profit. It's illegal even when you are giving it away for free. That's probably hard for you to understand, since you insist on saying that Open Source means "for profit".
There is nothing at all to prevent me or you or anyone else from contributing to open source projects - encrypted or otherwise.
Yes there is - it's called the LAW. I don't know why you don't understand that - oh, that's right, you think you are above the law. You know, if you live in a country where possession of strong encryption is illegal, you cannot write open source software to do strong encryption.
I myself have contributed to encyption projects (and even written a newbie "howto encrypt your linux system to protect your privacy") and I've seen no MIB.
Really, I'm happy for you. Really, I am. You seem to live a charmed life driving drunk with no regard at all for any country's laws. Others, have not been so lucky.
I've also submitted quite a lot of code to an open source project that is widely employed in those "ez 123" dvd rippers, and I've seen no hollywood process servers.
Oh, really? Which project is it? What code did you write? Give me a list. I doubt you can, because I bet you haven't written anything.
but gpg and other projects still continue to evolve... and will, even without (shudder) US funding.
That doesn't even have anything to do with this discussion. You just don't have any argument at all so you throw in anything. You know you're done. You might as well just give up right now.
I really can't believe you're tryuing to make such a provably toothless argument. Even projects like asfrecorder linger long after their useful life has ended - not because they were "closed down" or "unprofitable" but simply because they no longer need to exist - they're obsolete.
So stuff lingers, big fucking deal! You think there's no IP in obsolete software?
Anyone who uses mandrake and has directed their computer to zarb.org can attest to the stupidity of your argument. Decss, gif tools, strong encryption - all that "unprofitable" and/or "illegal" stuff is available from servers located all over the world.
Yeah, if you like to surf the illegal warez boards. Why do hate Open Source so much that you want to link it to pirates?
Even (your example) bnetd is easily obtained from the very first link found under a google search.
No it isn't. Bnetd is the third link, and there's no active development on it. It's a fucking archive of the last official versi
This is a great news! After years of being an Internet Draft, Jabber finally entered the Internet Standards Track. This is good news for end-users, as a standard IM protocol with a standard presence protocol is exactly what we need to integrate disparate messenging devices like cell phones, VOIP phones, and IM clients. I am totally thrilled about this.
Since XMPP has been in development for a while, hopefully it shouldn't take too much time for it to climb the Standards Track to full Internet Standard.
Right now, XMPP is in the Proposed Standard category, which is the first step (look at the bottom of the list).
The next level up is Draft Standard. To become a Draft Standard, the RFC has to be a Proposed Standard for at least six months, have two independently developed interoperable implementations, and have had "sufficient" successful use. I think that Jabber is pretty much a shoe-in for this category. Several servers been in operation for years from which a large amount of experience with the protocol has been gained, so there shouldn't be any contention about XMPP not being mature. There are many independent implementations, so that shouldn't be an issue either. I don't think there will be any problems getting to Draft Standard in six months.
The final step in the Standards Process is Internet Standard, where the RFC retains its RFC number, and gets the all important STD series number. A standard needs to be in the Draft Standard category at least four months (or until at least one IETF meeting has occurred, whichever comes later). On the technical side, there needs to be a significant implementation of the protocol and much more experience using it needs to be gained. The level of maturity for Standards is such that the protocol is believed to be beneficial to the community. Again, since XMPP has been in the works for over two years now and there are now commercial implementations, I don't think there is a problem with the usage requirements. Furthermore, as the only open messaging protocol, it has a large value to the Internet. Thus, I think getting Jabber to full standard easily is not out of the question.
In about a year, we'll have an Internet Standard for IM and prescence (and an open one, at that)!
There's other distros that include it all and don't care - because they're hosted and maintained in places that have sane IP laws.
That's my point; no place with IP laws will be writing open source. This is similar to why there are no U.S. based open source encryption projects. This hurts open source, because there are less people able to contribute to it.
This is why domestic IP laws don't mean a fucking thing (here it comes again) UNLESS YOU ARE IN IT FOR PROFIT.
Yes, they do. It doesn't matter if you aren't in it for profit. If you distribute code that contains someone's intellectual property, you open yourself to litigation by the owner of the intellectual property.
Is it really your argument all OSS projects are "doomed" because they are not profitable?
No, that's obviously not the case.
That regional "illegality" can shut down a project? You said this, but I still cannot believe anyone who knows his ass from an rpm would posit such a stupid thesis.
Sure it can. Bnetd still hasn't recovered from the DMCA violation they were slapped with. I don't see anybody in countries with sane IP laws rushing to take it over.
Just like decss, huh?
Yes. Although, Jon was acquitted, legal action was taken against him. The result of this is the reason Mandrake doesn't contain the libdvdcss library.
Hell, just like mandrake - sure seems to have fucked them in the ass.
No, not like Mandrake. Mandrake removes software that violates IP laws so that they don't get taken to court.
that recital of fact omits that the administration got other nation's help by lying to them, just like the administration got the US to support the war by lying to them.
Alright, let's stick with the facts, then. Although it seems pretty unlikely that the administration didn't know that the information they were relying on was bad, there is no actual proof that the administration lied. The only thing that we know is that the intelligence was poor. You may have a pretty strong opinion that the administration lied, but no one has conclusively proved that the administration willfully mislead anybody. There is strong suspicion and conjecture, but there is no actual proof.
If you want to say that the administation got other nation's help using bad information, that's fine. I totally agree with that.
It also pretended that current UN resolutions allowed us to do so. (A claim I've noticed since has been dropped when no WMD were found.)
All that was ever claimed was that Iraq failed to meet the obligations of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 and several other resolutions. Resolution 1441 contains the following:
Recalling that its resolution 678 (1990) authorized Member States to use all necessary means to uphold and implement its resolution 660 (1990) of 2 August
1990 and all relevant resolutions subsequent to resolution 660 (1990) and to restore international peace and security in the area
The Japanese prime minister even said that no further UN resolution is necessary to invade Iraq.
And '49 nations' is mostly crap. We had one military significant and independent ally in that war that I know of.
What does that mean? Other nations don't count unless they're France, Germany, or Russia? There were 49 other nations that supported our position. While the U.K., Australia, and Poland were the only nations that provided combat troops, the following countries provided logistical and intelligence support, chemical and biological response teams, overflight rights, humanitarian and reconstruction aid, and political support: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, and the Ukraine. It takes a lot more than guys with guns to run a military action.
What we need for 'war outside international law', aka, unprovoced and/or without UN mandate, isn't just 'international national support', (Which in this case means 'Britian'.), but a damn good reason.
Again, it was more that "just 'Britain'", and based on the information that we had, the administration felt they had a "damn good reason". We told the U.N. what we were about to do, we played by the rules, and we hoped that they would support us. There's not much more you can do.
However, Bush and co managed to trick the US, and several other countries, into thinking the UN was broken, when in fact it was functioning completely correctly, at least in respect to policing Iraq.
He didn't trick anybody into thinking the U.N. was broken. It wasn't about tricking anybody into thinking the U.N. was broken, it was about getting military and political support for a military operation. This is totally different from getting U.N. approval for the operations in Iraq.
We don't need UN support if actually attacked. It's right there in the rules. If attacked, you have the right not only to defend, but to attack back. It's the original attack that's illegal. You can even attack if it looks like they're massing troups to attack.
Canada claims it didn't do it. No, they would never supply a disgruntled militia group with the means to blow up Detroit. You have a smoking crater where Detroit used to be, but the rest of the world has no proof that Canada actually did it, except what you're telling them.
Saying they'd suddenly not support us going to war against a nation if we were attacked by said nation is absurd right-wing propoganda.
So you're saying that we would have the full support of the U.K. and Australia in this case?
I really can't think of many invasions in the last 30 years, unless you count the ones done by members of the security council.
Looks like Alan got the ones I was thinking of. I was counting members of the security council, though, too. I don't know if you want to count India and Pakistan in there too when India had to regain lost territory around Kargil in 1999.
Well, for instance, how would the U.K. feel? Would they support us, or Canada? What about Australia?
I think you should note how rare it is for a country to invade another country these days.
Is it really that rare? I can think of quite a few invasions in the last 30 years. What time period are you comparing it to?
One of the reasons is that UN would be quick to condemn it.
Which doesn't really mean a whole lot. It just means that they strongly disagree with your actions. It doesn't mean that they've implemented any sanctions against you or other types of actions. A country can make an entire resolution with just condemn clauses without stating what they want to do about it.
Slashdot Mirror
You implied that blogs are under threat of censorship. I'm saying that there is no threat, that the material in this case wasn't censored, and that the Secret Service was performing a routine investigation.
Although, now you come to mention it, if someone has to edit their own work (or restrict it's distribution) for fear of visits from the Secret Services/FBI/CIA/MI5/KGB/Tufty Club or what ever cabal rules our lives then that seems to be a case of censorship.
It's not a case of censorship. He's free to publish whatever he wants. He removed the material upon his own free will.
The U.S. Secret Service investigated a complaint by a citizen of a possible threat against the president. They have to; it's their job to take any threat, no matter how ridiculous, seriously. They sent two agents to his house to ask him some questions. They did not break his door down, arrest him, or throw him in jail. They did not tell him to remove the content, and they are not restricting what he can publish. It was a completely routine investigation. They do hundreds of these types of investigations, and he is trying to pump it up to look like more than it actually is.
The point is that if you are going to make what sounds like a threat, you must expect to be questioned. If you make a threat against somebody on your website and someone else reports it, the police will question you, because making actual threats against someone is not protected free speech. They will not deprive you of your right to say that you want to do something bad to someone, but they will question you and the intended victim to determine whether you are seriously intent on doing bodily harm or merely talking metaphorically.
Furthermore, just because one blogger does something stupid doesn't mean that every single blog on the face of the planet is somehow theatened. That's totally ludicrous.
If you aren't going to watch it again, then why do you need to keep it?
No, the author wasn't censored. He was investigated by the Secret Service, because some total asshole told the FBI that he was making threats against the president. The SS has to take any alleged threat seriously and investigate it.
No one told him to take down any articles. He can and will publish whatever he wants, and said as much. The only thing he took down was the article that the jerk sent in as proof that he was a threat, and he took it down voluntarily.
So, no, there is no gigantic conspiracy to censor blogs.
Wow, you're lucky. I sort of wish we could do that here in the U.S. just to see what other countries are like. Our news probably tells us all we need to know, though.
U.S. citizens can only view news from the government sanctioned news station, Fox News. Realistically, I'm not sure that we would need anything else, though. Fox News is fair and balanced.
I heard that there is some kind of pirate television station called PBS (get this, "Public Broadcasting System" - how radical!) that shows BBC news, but I think that's only a rumor. There was also some rumor of stations that are broadcasting in Portugese, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, French, and (get this) Arabic! I don't know where that rumor came from, but I doubt it's true. I know that the government run cable company does not carry anything that isn't in American Newspeak. Who would watch any of that anyway? Everyone speaks perfect American here. There certainly aren't large population centers in major cities that speak other languages and would be interested in hearing news from their native land, because foreigners aren't allowed inside the U.S. (especially not Canadians and Mexicans, but I digress).
USA Today is the only paper we are allowed to read. I heard that there used to be a couple of papers that printed something called "AP" news, but I think this is only a rumor. I'm pretty sure our single newspaper would not print that type of news. Why would we need it, though? Our newspaper gets it's news directly from the source (i.e. the U.S. Government).
One really weird thing is that the bookstore downtown claims that it has several magazines from other countries! Seriously, they claim they have magazines from all over the world. That's so ridiculous. Everyone knows we can't import magazines into the U.S., because they are classified as "munitions". Time Magazine is so much better than anything else, though, because it contains only facts.
One of my professors had this magazine called, "Der Spiegel". I'm not sure what kind of loopy magazine that is, but I want no part of it. I looked at it once, and I think it was written in some kind of secret illegal code. He said he was a subscriber, too! I doubt that, since we can only subscribe to the government sanctioned Time Magazine. He's an academic, though, and some of them are radical. I should probably report him to the FBI.
That reminds me! There was a huge bust here the past week. People are saying it was about drugs, but I know better. I think some idiots were trying to start their own newspaper illegally! These nutcases always claim that the Constitution supposedly grants the right for any citizen to publish anything they want. That's completely insane! Everyone knows that only the Government should print the news so that the truth can be heard without being tainted. If everyone printed what they wanted, how would we know what the truth is? Really, I don't understand these people. Why can't they just read USA Today and Time? What they did was totally illegal and morally reprehensible. Besides, we don't need any other news publications, because we have the best in the world.
</SATIRE>
No, it hasn't been fixed. It's a royal pain when there are lots of posts, because you can read the first page, and then read the same exact thing on pages 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc. Eventually you'll find a page that doesn't start with the same posts that you've already read.
How would the applet be able to display itself then?
What do mean? The Mayor gave them free WiFi! FREE!
They don't even need the cardboard sign that says, "Will work for bandwidth", anymore.
Seriously, what more do they need?
</SATIRE>
Yeesh... I think you found the missing picture of tubgirl's face.
I just noticed that you have "." in your $PATH.
MUH, HA, HA, HA!
lol! :D
Heh, heh. Well, I guess I'm just of the opinion that the rest of the world places more value on Canada than most U.S. citizens think. We get used to thinking of them as kind of a puppet, and although they're fun to rip on, they have done some things internationally that places them in higher regard than the U.S. sometimes.
Well I have to agree we did nothing but fuck up during the CMC, but even with all the mistakes we managed to come to an acceptable solution between both parties.
In lieu of being blown up, it's entirely acceptable. Funny part is that, the USSR was not happy with the handling of the crisis, and deposed Kruschev. He was placed under house arrest.
As for the end of the world? I can't speak for others but my objection to Iraq is I don't want to be drafted into a war I don't support. Unfortunately I'm not convinced either candidate can avoid the draft at this point.
I don't want to be drafted for it either. I don't think we have to worry about being drafted, though. The official word is that congress hasn't done anything about reinstating the draft, the administration denys that there is a need for one, and the Selective Service says that it is unable to manage a draft at this point.
The unofficial word, however, is that they're reinstating the draft, and making it harder to dodge it. I'm sure that you've probably read the same things I have about S.89 and H.R.163, and are probably pretty worried that you're going to have to do your required 2 years of service in Iraq. There was a lot of sites quoting these two bills, and saying how horrible it was they were going to draft people for a protracted war on terrorism.
I got curious about this, so I took a look at them. First of all, it's kind of funny, because these bills weren't really designed with that in mind (they don't even mention terrorism or Iraq). Furthermore, it turns out that S.89 has been tied up in the Armed Services Committee since January. I wanted to know what was going on, so I took a look at it's sister bill H.R.189 (same text), and found out that it was voted on yesterday! Guess what, though? It failed to pass 402 to 2.
Anyway, I hope that makes you feel a little bit better.
And you know as well as I do that you're misrepresenting the global test there. I thought it was pretty clear it was an (unfortunately worded) idealogical test that needed to be passed. I thought the point was that if people violently don't support you there can be severe consequences played out over many years, and you need to do everything you can to appease everyone that you can appease. Such is the game of statesmanship.
Yeah, I got carried away. That's kind of the problem with the global test, though. Everybody's idea of it is slightly different. The administration has their own opinion, and they felt they appeased everybody they needed to, so it passed for them. Apparently, though, worldwide protests and lack of UN support does not fit their global test.
Er, I hope most people are aware of the fact that (most?) reactors are built so they cannot go critical even in a meltdown. Then again, it is the average person we are talking about here.
Critical means that the number of neutrons causing fission is constant with time, and is what happens normally in a nuclear reactor when it's generating power. So, a reactor is pretty much critical all the time, unless you're starting it or stopping it. If the reaction goes supercritical, you have a run-away chain reaction, which is how you get an atomic bomb.
You can stop nuclear fission in a reactor by inserting the reactor's control rods ("scramming"). The co
I'm not sure it matters how many deaths it causes. The initial feelings towards an action are manifested long before the first death occurs these days.
You need to remember, Canada has next to no military infastructure to work with, and unfortunately calvalry haven't been useful in war since WWI ;).
Those charlatans would confound us with their super-enhanced, cyborg, hockey soldiers. Yeah, that's the ticket...
You're forgetting two things. We had a lot of support in the CMC because we played the diplomacy right, even though it was all hush-hush while it happened.
It was the total failure of diplomacy that caused it:
- Eisenhower decided to play golf instead of talking to Fidel Castro.
- The U.S. attempted to remove Castro from power several times.
- The U.S. placed a trade embargo on Cuba.
- The U.S. installed Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles in Britain, Turkey, and Italy.
- The U.S. decided NOT to make an appeal to the United Nations once it had discovered the missiles.
- The U.S. instituted an illegal blockade against a sovereign nation.
- The U.S. sent U-2 spy planes over the USSR during the crisis.
Talk about failing The Global Test (tm). We talk about this little Iraq thing like it's the end of the world - the CMC was almost the end of the world. I'm sure the rest of the world was simply thrilled.Second, you're forgetting we are the US. We have a veto on the security council, and frankly unless we continue being dumb our economy would fuck up a lot of people if it crashed.
But that precludes The Global Test (tm)!
And you don't get to hush-hush the detonation of a nuke. It shows up on seismographs in China, and will be tracked by the radar of several countries.
"We didn't do it. It was obviously mismanagement of the Fermi 2 nuclear reactor that caused the explosion."
Yeah, it would start out as a proposed action of less than a week, but after we started the action, we'd be met with fierce resistant, and eventually we'd be caught in a mire for months, and people would start yelling, "Ealar lied, thousands died!"
I have two more words since we are battling with quotes: "Cold War".
Right, so we agree that nations take part in covert actions against their neighbors and and then deny it later.
Okay, so your "global test" tells you that the U.S. should nuke Canada. I still don't think the U.K. would agree with that.
You don't happen to be one of those who think Saddam was behind 9/11 do you? That's the only way what you just say makes any sense.
No, it makes sense, because I can remember history. Three words: Cuban Missle Crisis
Proves how much you know - I'm a Massachusetts Democrat.
Okay, fine, so we do a global test and we figure that the U.K., Australia, most of the rest of Europe, and China would condemn us for retaliating against Canada. Our own intelligence as well as that of Israel's assures us that Canada is the source of the attack. Meanwhile, there are millions of U.S. Citizens who lost loved ones in the Detroit massacre screaming for retribution.
What are you going to do? Make your citizens happy and alienate the rest of the world, or make the rest of the world happy and get assassinated by your own people for your own inaction?
Yeah, IRC has some nice features, and it was the way to do IM before there was such a thing as IM (talk and write be damned). All the cool kids were using it.
Unfortunately, its adoption as a standard ran into some issues:
- RFC 1459, the Internet Relay Chat Protocol RFC was placed into the "Experimental" category.
- Many programs implemented special improvements that were eventually collectively released as RFCs 2810 through 2813. These RFCs, though, were marked as "Informational".
- The IRC Client-To-Client Protocol (CTCP) for sending structured data between clients was released as an Internet Draft, but was never made an RFC.
I think the real killer of IRC as a standard, was the release of RFC 2779, "Instant Messaging / Presence Protocol Requirements". IRC just wouldn't fit this model without a major overhaul, and at that point, you have to question whether it would be worth trying to do that without sacrificing compatibility. It was probably easier to just write a new standard.How does it compare to Jabber? Well, IRC is much simpler (try to write IRC with netcat, then try XMPP).
At it's base level, yes, it's definitely easier. You can do most of what you need for IRC with just a Telnet client. This is kind of fun actually.
No it hasn't. You just lack reading comprehension.
What you just said is not that "open source" is harmed (it provably is not) but that US commercial interests are harmed.
No, I said that Open Source is harmed. Open Source is harmed when developers have to spend time scanning their code for patented algorithms and stripping them out of the codebase (like what OpenSSH has had to do). Some of these algorithms may be necessary for interoperability with other software. If the interoperability is not allowed, that hurts Open Source. But I guess that someone that hates Open Source as much as you can't understand that.
With the U.S. and Europe forcing their IP laws on other countries through the UN, it will no longer be possible for any open source project to implement any patented algorithm. But, I guess that's just fine with you, since you want to see Open Source die a painful death.
The OSS projects go right along, all that is impaired is the opportunity (in the US, germany and a few other backward nations) to profit from these projects on an individual basis.
It's got nothing to do with profit. It's illegal even when you are giving it away for free. That's probably hard for you to understand, since you insist on saying that Open Source means "for profit".
There is nothing at all to prevent me or you or anyone else from contributing to open source projects - encrypted or otherwise.
Yes there is - it's called the LAW. I don't know why you don't understand that - oh, that's right, you think you are above the law. You know, if you live in a country where possession of strong encryption is illegal, you cannot write open source software to do strong encryption.
I myself have contributed to encyption projects (and even written a newbie "howto encrypt your linux system to protect your privacy") and I've seen no MIB.
Really, I'm happy for you. Really, I am. You seem to live a charmed life driving drunk with no regard at all for any country's laws. Others, have not been so lucky.
I've also submitted quite a lot of code to an open source project that is widely employed in those "ez 123" dvd rippers, and I've seen no hollywood process servers.
Oh, really? Which project is it? What code did you write? Give me a list. I doubt you can, because I bet you haven't written anything.
but gpg and other projects still continue to evolve... and will, even without (shudder) US funding.
That doesn't even have anything to do with this discussion. You just don't have any argument at all so you throw in anything. You know you're done. You might as well just give up right now.
I really can't believe you're tryuing to make such a provably toothless argument. Even projects like asfrecorder linger long after their useful life has ended - not because they were "closed down" or "unprofitable" but simply because they no longer need to exist - they're obsolete.
So stuff lingers, big fucking deal! You think there's no IP in obsolete software?
Anyone who uses mandrake and has directed their computer to zarb.org can attest to the stupidity of your argument. Decss, gif tools, strong encryption - all that "unprofitable" and/or "illegal" stuff is available from servers located all over the world.
Yeah, if you like to surf the illegal warez boards. Why do hate Open Source so much that you want to link it to pirates?
Even (your example) bnetd is easily obtained from the very first link found under a google search.
No it isn't. Bnetd is the third link, and there's no active development on it. It's a fucking archive of the last official versi
Since XMPP has been in development for a while, hopefully it shouldn't take too much time for it to climb the Standards Track to full Internet Standard. Right now, XMPP is in the Proposed Standard category, which is the first step (look at the bottom of the list).
The next level up is Draft Standard. To become a Draft Standard, the RFC has to be a Proposed Standard for at least six months, have two independently developed interoperable implementations, and have had "sufficient" successful use. I think that Jabber is pretty much a shoe-in for this category. Several servers been in operation for years from which a large amount of experience with the protocol has been gained, so there shouldn't be any contention about XMPP not being mature. There are many independent implementations, so that shouldn't be an issue either. I don't think there will be any problems getting to Draft Standard in six months.
The final step in the Standards Process is Internet Standard, where the RFC retains its RFC number, and gets the all important STD series number. A standard needs to be in the Draft Standard category at least four months (or until at least one IETF meeting has occurred, whichever comes later). On the technical side, there needs to be a significant implementation of the protocol and much more experience using it needs to be gained. The level of maturity for Standards is such that the protocol is believed to be beneficial to the community. Again, since XMPP has been in the works for over two years now and there are now commercial implementations, I don't think there is a problem with the usage requirements. Furthermore, as the only open messaging protocol, it has a large value to the Internet. Thus, I think getting Jabber to full standard easily is not out of the question.
In about a year, we'll have an Internet Standard for IM and prescence (and an open one, at that)!
That's my point; no place with IP laws will be writing open source. This is similar to why there are no U.S. based open source encryption projects. This hurts open source, because there are less people able to contribute to it.
This is why domestic IP laws don't mean a fucking thing (here it comes again) UNLESS YOU ARE IN IT FOR PROFIT.
Yes, they do. It doesn't matter if you aren't in it for profit. If you distribute code that contains someone's intellectual property, you open yourself to litigation by the owner of the intellectual property.
Is it really your argument all OSS projects are "doomed" because they are not profitable?
No, that's obviously not the case.
That regional "illegality" can shut down a project? You said this, but I still cannot believe anyone who knows his ass from an rpm would posit such a stupid thesis.
Sure it can. Bnetd still hasn't recovered from the DMCA violation they were slapped with. I don't see anybody in countries with sane IP laws rushing to take it over.
Just like decss, huh?
Yes. Although, Jon was acquitted, legal action was taken against him. The result of this is the reason Mandrake doesn't contain the libdvdcss library.
Hell, just like mandrake - sure seems to have fucked them in the ass.
No, not like Mandrake. Mandrake removes software that violates IP laws so that they don't get taken to court.
Alright, let's stick with the facts, then. Although it seems pretty unlikely that the administration didn't know that the information they were relying on was bad, there is no actual proof that the administration lied. The only thing that we know is that the intelligence was poor. You may have a pretty strong opinion that the administration lied, but no one has conclusively proved that the administration willfully mislead anybody. There is strong suspicion and conjecture, but there is no actual proof.
If you want to say that the administation got other nation's help using bad information, that's fine. I totally agree with that.
It also pretended that current UN resolutions allowed us to do so. (A claim I've noticed since has been dropped when no WMD were found.)
All that was ever claimed was that Iraq failed to meet the obligations of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 and several other resolutions. Resolution 1441 contains the following:
The Japanese prime minister even said that no further UN resolution is necessary to invade Iraq.
And '49 nations' is mostly crap. We had one military significant and independent ally in that war that I know of.
What does that mean? Other nations don't count unless they're France, Germany, or Russia? There were 49 other nations that supported our position. While the U.K., Australia, and Poland were the only nations that provided combat troops, the following countries provided logistical and intelligence support, chemical and biological response teams, overflight rights, humanitarian and reconstruction aid, and political support: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, and the Ukraine. It takes a lot more than guys with guns to run a military action.
What we need for 'war outside international law', aka, unprovoced and/or without UN mandate, isn't just 'international national support', (Which in this case means 'Britian'.), but a damn good reason.
Again, it was more that "just 'Britain'", and based on the information that we had, the administration felt they had a "damn good reason". We told the U.N. what we were about to do, we played by the rules, and we hoped that they would support us. There's not much more you can do.
However, Bush and co managed to trick the US, and several other countries, into thinking the UN was broken, when in fact it was functioning completely correctly, at least in respect to policing Iraq.
He didn't trick anybody into thinking the U.N. was broken. It wasn't about tricking anybody into thinking the U.N. was broken, it was about getting military and political support for a military operation. This is totally different from getting U.N. approval for the operations in Iraq.
Canada claims it didn't do it. No, they would never supply a disgruntled militia group with the means to blow up Detroit. You have a smoking crater where Detroit used to be, but the rest of the world has no proof that Canada actually did it, except what you're telling them.
Saying they'd suddenly not support us going to war against a nation if we were attacked by said nation is absurd right-wing propoganda.
So you're saying that we would have the full support of the U.K. and Australia in this case?
What if Canada denys the attack?
Looks like Alan got the ones I was thinking of. I was counting members of the security council, though, too. I don't know if you want to count India and Pakistan in there too when India had to regain lost territory around Kargil in 1999.
Well, for instance, how would the U.K. feel? Would they support us, or Canada? What about Australia?
I think you should note how rare it is for a country to invade another country these days.
Is it really that rare? I can think of quite a few invasions in the last 30 years. What time period are you comparing it to?
One of the reasons is that UN would be quick to condemn it.
Which doesn't really mean a whole lot. It just means that they strongly disagree with your actions. It doesn't mean that they've implemented any sanctions against you or other types of actions. A country can make an entire resolution with just condemn clauses without stating what they want to do about it.