I guess you don't mind me scanning in your book that you've written and distribute it over p2p?
There are more differences between books and webpages then the fact that the first are usually made of sheets of paper and the second are not.
Wanting the advantages of the WWW while retaining the control that paper publications give you is like wanting to eat your cake and have it.
There is this thing called 'reasonable expectation'. In the case of the WWW the reasonable expectation to have is that publishing something on it means it is out there, will be copied, linked to, shared, archived etc. Don't like it? then don't use the WWW.
Because that is the nature of this beast called the WWW. Yeah, I know about copyright and such, and no, I am not one of those who believe information should be free always, but I do believe that when you publish toa medium that has sharing and caching and linking at its core, then you cannot blame others for your publuication being shared, cached and linked to.
It may cost a substantial amount to actually defend the case.
It costs me a few euro/year to be insured against this (oh, and with no limit on legal costs)
Part of the low cost of this comes from the fact that for many cases the cost to the defendent is indeed 0 in the end.
If a defendant can't find the funds for that - or a sympathetic solicitor - they may have no option but to cave.
True, but when a case is going to be a clear win for the defendent, then it is pretty easy to find a good lawyer. A very good chance on some nice income is not something they will pass, even if they have to wait a little time for it.
Just a sidenote but something that I find quite funny about this whole discussion: WHen you have a different system (ie, the loser pays system like most of EUrope has) then that does not only result in a different system, but also in peopel havign adapted to the differences. You CAN NOT apply behavior caused by one specific system to another, completely different system, the behavior will change as well. Please keep that in mind you Americans:)
A couple years of propaganda about 'Old Europe' and a broken school system that teaches people a very biassed and at times completely incorrect version of history, at least that is my guess..
Heh, that was one of the examples I was thinking of. Aother one is their airforce. While technologically less advanced, at least with regards to on-board computer systems, they can fly from a random strip of flat land without need for a real airstrip, can fly even when their main computer systems give up, and require very little maintenance for staying operational.
Their tanks are similar. All of it is built to last while being hundreds if not thousands of miles away from the nearest 'advanced service point' and in many cases can be repaired in the field by their operators.
It's a myth. While ago, when I had been a serviceman, I carried and fired >>very clean AK-47 on firing range and it would stuck occasionally.
Its not perfect, and actually, it has a lot of shortcommings.
That said, the opinion replied to is shared by many who used both weapons in actual combat.
The reason is simple. Tolerances on parts for an AK47 are much bigger, with the simple result that it will function in most cases even when conditions are far from perfect. The M16 requires a much higher level of precision to make and the tolerances are relatively low. A simple consequence is that it is inherently more sensitive to being dirty.
Btw, this has been shown by many tests of both weapons besides battlefield experience.
However, technologically, those are the weapons of the past. Nowadays you would be better off with some 'bullpup' system authomatic rifle, the best of both worlds (except for balance changing as your magazine empties) - I belive UK and French soldiers carry variants of these.
The 'charm' of a weapon like the AK47 is simplicity. It can be repaired with simple means, it can be cleaned with simple means, and it just needs very little attention.
This is true for most Russian equipment, simplicity, reliability despite lack of maintenance, and easy field repair are very important design considerations there.
Keep in mind also that we were discussing the cold war situation, not the latest in Western weapons technology (which may or may not have caught up with that, I take your word for it having caught up in reliability at least to some extend)
A constitution should never even approach the 600+ pages the EU Constitution had. Two, three pages at most, like the Constitution of the USA!!!
Clarity over detail is indeed the way to go (and as mentioned earlier, I consider the US constitution one of the most important documents in modern history)
I'm glad France shotr it down!!
Hehe, finally they contributed something usefull:)
It is ironic of course that their own government is for a large part responsible for the mess that was going to be the EU constitution.
Btw, the French population was not alone in rejecting it.
Actually they don't really own the assignment of addresses, those are delegated essentially irrevocably to regional organisations e.g in Europe RIPE. There's no meaningful sense in which the US retains "ownership" of that address space.
Delegated.. that is the word to keep in mind there. You cannot delegate what you do not controll.
We might as well argue that the Europeans control bar codes because GSI is a European institution and their EAN is the de facto consumer barcode standard. Sure, in theory GSI could say "No, those UPC codes from the US now clash with our reserved space, they're invalid and we'll be issuing new codes in that space", but who would listen?
Difference is that in case of the Internet people will get to deal with the consequences of a failing network, regardless of wanting to listen.
Similarly the root server situation is being exagerated. The actual servers are situated all over the world, and their actual administrators are unlikely to obey any bizarre instructions eminating either from the US government itself or from the more deranged elements of ICANN.
Seeing how ICANN decisions usually favor the interests of US based organisations over others, there is a good reason to want to change this.
As I remeber, the downloads had the full game engine and the wads for one third of the levels. The only criplling I remember (feel free to refresh my memory) was that some of the secrets were omitted.
Crippleware is defined by not providing complete functionality in the 'trial' version. For all I can see, this was the case with both games. I'd prefer calling them playable demos, I don't think crippleware does justice to what you got when downloading them, but strictly spoken, neither were proper shareware.
Well, they were good at content, but most of the content creators seem to have left to do their own thing. Sandy Petersen and American McGee spring to mind. Doom and Doom II had some beautifl levels. But as you say, doom 3 is abysmal. And not in a good way.
Hmm.. What content did ID create after Doom that qualifies as 'good' by any standard?
WHile I agree that they made some pretty decent maps for Doom II and Quake for example, making a decent map is not enough to provide for good game content.
Before they ever got into this FPS business they created some very good content, but that is a long time ago.
It's going to be a while before I spend money on another Id game. If I'm going to underwite the cost of demoing their engines, I at least expect a playable game for my trouble
Well, same was true for Quake III Arena imho. While it was a superb engine for FPS games, the initial game was crap imho.
I am glad I payed for it anyway, the return on investment has been very good for me so to say (think RTCW, Enemy Territory etc)
It is why I obtained a copy of Doom III as wel, I hope they do get someone to release a good game based on it, and besides, while Doom III nowhere matches the awe and inspiration of the first Doom game, it is not as bad a game as many make it. It did get me quite a few hours of entertainment still.
Islam has a fairly stable soceity and it doesn't seem to be working out for them.
First of all, while not the biggest, it is the fastest growing religion.
Second of all, Islam is not a society, it is a whole collection of them tha share a religion. Some are quite rogressive, others are not.
Or for the Native Americans, Whose society was fairly stable and got owned.
Their society was in itself sustainable, unlike the modern western one (sustainable because they did not take more from their environment then it could provide for)
Or the Chinese and Japanese who walled off their countries until some non-stable high-tech societies came in and owned them too.
Ah yes.. except for 1945-1953, Japan has been 'owned' by whom exactly?
China? noone ever owned China. Some occupied parts of it. Their civilisation is older then western civilisation by quite some margin.
Did contact with others change them? definitely. Both were pretty stable, but are on a self destructive path now.
Who do you think learned the worng leassons there?
Those who burden their environment without consideration for example?
Those who forget that technology should serve people and not the other way around for example?
If you talk about those things, look a bit beyond what happens right now, or even what happened in the last few decades. You need a much bigger scale picture and over a much longer term. Survival of a society is not about today or a timeframe of a few decades.
Not at all. I was referring to the nuclear weapons situation in Vietnam, India, and Pakistan.
Hmm, I assume you mean North Korea and not Vietnam but anyway..
Reading back the entire discussion, it was indeed not you arguing that. It was however the argument with which nuclear weapons got into the discussion.
While indeed offtopic, I would like to mention that the countries most likely to actually use nuclear weapons as a defensive strategy are North Korea and Israel, the first because their leaders are insane and the second because of lack of possibilities of their potential enimies to retaliate. Both India and Pakistan know what using nuclear weapons will mean, and will be far more reluctant.
The Cold War was bad, and I'd hate to see another nuclear arms race happen. The Cold War was a time of extreme paranoia in the U.S., somewhat similar (now that I think of it) to the fear of terrorists that is now gripping us. But that's getting even further off the subject of ICANN.:-)
It is not that offtopic actually. Part of the reasons why it is not acceptable for many outsiders to leave controll over those things in American hands is due to such paranoia, both in the USA and by the people who object.
At any rate, sorry for confusing you with the poster that started off this entire thread.
I just wonder what you found objectionable about my original post.
To me it seemed you voiced a fear that Europe would respond to the thread of a conventional attack with nuclear weapons. I tried to point out that that fear is unfounded. I also assumed (possibly wrongly) that this fear is comming from how the USA dealt with such a thread in a recent past.
What I said was that while killing people with conventional weapons is never good, it is sometimes the least worst of the alternatives (killing if it's necessary to defend a loved one, for instance). I also said that WMDs are a lot worse because they either kill in a much more horrible way, or they are much too indiscriminate
Oh, what I forgot to mention in my previous post is why I think your assumption is wrong.
There is a rather simplified way to describe the strategies and development of weapons by different countries during the second world war.
Germany tried to develop high technology weapons. They managed quite well in this but did not have the industrial resources to have it make a difference in the end. (ie, first practical jet fighter, first workable balistic missile, first rocket plane, close to developing a supersonic jet etc)
The UK developed extremely creative and flexible, yet practical weapons and defenses, which is an important part of them preventing a German invasion. (radar, the Spitfire, bouncing bombs etc)
The US just made the biggest bombers and bombs, and used technology invented, and in many cases proven by others. They had (and have) the industrial power to produce a lot of it (Flying fortress, nuclear weapons)
The French? They were stuck in the past and did not contribute much more then covert operations and providing for enough landmass to fight a large scale battle (lets try to build a castle the size of our country and hide behind the walls)
The USSR? so huge that it just drowns anyone that tries to invade it. (don't think this needs an example)
While overly simplified, there is quite some truth in this way of looking at it and it reflects the general mentality of those countries quite well.
What follows from that is that Europe (where Germany, France and the UK play important roles) is a lot more likely to try to counter superior conventional force by creative use of high technology then by nuclear force.
And by the USSR. And they're still being used that way today by a few nations I could name. I'm confident that the U.S. has moved beyond the need for that sort of thing.
Uh no. The USSR had a conventional army that at least in numbers and reliability of equipment far surpassed that of the USA, it was exactly that army they countered with the thread of nuclear weapons. The USSR also had a huge pile of them, but not to counter an attack by a conventional army but to counter a nuclear attack.
Yes, and it has been 60 years. Immediately after the explosions, ground zero of the blast sites were quite uninhabitable. There's also the fact that those bombs were mere firecrackers compared to some of the stuff we (meaning the entire world) have now.
Those sites were unihabiable for a while, but the radioactive contamination caused there is dwarved by the consequences of a single reactor failure in what was then the USSR for example.
Part of that is due to the fact that the bombs exploded at a height were fallout was minimized and substantial inmediate damage was guaranteed. The relatively low level of contamination did not have that much to do with the size of the nukes but with how they were used.
While the inhabitants of both cities that survived the initial blasts had and in many cases still have to deal with the consequences of radioactivity, both cities have been inhabited for quite some time, it took far less then 60 years for them to become save again.
I don't recall ever insinuating that I do expect everyone to think my way. Someone asked what was wrong with nuclear weapons and I responded. If you have a problem with that, then I'd say that it's your problem and you need to deal with it. I'm not going to keep my mouth shut just because I think that someone out there might not agree with me.
I have no problem with you voicing your opinion regardless of me agreeing with it, I rather value that over you shutting up really.
That said, my comment is based on you giving the impression of believing that the American (tm) way of dealing with issues being the only way.
You basicly projected past US policy onto Europe and assumed Europe would act in an identical way (countering the thread of superior conventional forces with nuclear weapons), and expressed a 'fear' based on that assumption.
The interesting thing, I think, is that Doom I & II were released shareware. Doom had to be a seriously good game or no one would ever have bought the full version. How many full versions of Doom3 would have been sold, I wonder?
The original versions of Doom 1 and 2 were called shareware, but they were not proper shareware. A possitive name for them would be 'demo', a less positive name would be 'crippleware'. ID used a shareware like method by lack of a proper and widespread distribution channel, but for the rest very little changed.
If you wanted, you could have downloaded a demo version of Doom 3, and looked at the game before buying it, just like I did.
What did make a difference of course is that due to the hype, more people got the full version of Doom 3 without ever seeing the demo.
Were Doom 1 and 2 good games? I think they were, but mostly due to being different from anything else at the time, and thus being revolutionary. Doom 3 just rehashes the same kind of content, and well, we have seen enough of it already.
An entirely different question is what will happen with the engine on the long term. For example, I do run the Quake 3 engine a lot, but not because I play QUake 3 a lot... I did run the Quake 1 engine a lot, but not ecause of playing Quake 1 that much (tho I did play and finish it)
As I mentioned in another post, ID is not good at creating content, and ever since total conversions of Doom 2 started appearing, it became clear that they needed others to make good games based on their engines. They fully realized this when they made Quake 3, but failed to remember while making Doom 3 obviously.
Back in the days of Doom 2 and Quake, there was no real competition to what ID made. In the days of Quake 2 there was, but ID was the one who made the best engine, and they were the first to sell a game based on it obviously. Quake 2 was just as bad a game as Doom 3 is when looking at the single player part of it.
What was good about Quake 2 was its multiplayer mode. While Quake 1 allowed multiplayer as well, the initial DOS version required either external tools for IP networking, or a nullmodem cable or modem connection for multiplayer modes.
Then came Quake 3, which never got a playable single player mode, rather, it concentrated on multiplayer mode almost exclusively. The engine however was capable of single player mode quite well as shown by for example Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
By the time of Quake 3, it was clear that ID could create a good engine, but needed third parties for creating good content, and one can argue that Quake 3 served more as a demonstration of the graphics capabilities of the Engine then anything else.
In the years to follow quite a few good games were build on this engine, including what I still consider one of the best multiplayer games so far, Enemy Territory. This resulted from finding a very good balance between complexity of gameplay (relatively simple) and realism (amazingly good for its time). You can get inmersed in the games without having to learn too much, and can quickly learn enough to have an enjoyable gaming experience.
It seems to me the mistakes with Doom 3 are in 2 distinct areas. First of all, the balance between gameplay and realism is not right (as the article suggests also). Second, and imho even more important, ID can't create proper content, and rehashing the same old content in a new engine is just boring. They saw this when making Quake 3, and didn't even try, but failed to remember this for Doom 3. They were making a demo for the engine and confused it with making a complete game with entertaining content.
To me this is quite evident from the fact that old (Doom 2) based games like terminal velocity and a game like Duke Nukem 3d are a lot more fun to play then anything ID ever made except maybe for the original Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein.
For the record, the steam engine was invented by the Greeks millenia ago, and yet they only get a footnote? Guess what, they didn't do anything interesting with it.
The Greek and the people from Cartago, and others who had access to steam engine technology (actually, it was a steam turbine, not a traditional steam engine as we know it) did something significant with it. They decided that while potentially powerfull, the effects it would have on their social structure and population would be devastating. They did something that modern civilisations seem to have forgotten, they decided to forego technology in favor of a stable society.
If you think an 'Empire' sacrifices its own tax dollars and the blood of its own people to make sure democracy takes roots in a foreign land, then yeah -- I'm proud of this Empire.
Ah yes, now tell me, where exactly did it bring demmocracy?
Maybe it will over time in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is too early to say for now. Don't forget however that the USA is not the only one being active there.
Last I heard, the oldstyle European empires mainly used their colonies as income sources, leaving most of them (esp the third-world ones) as basket cases when they left.
Definitely, and that was a bad thing.
Europe did learn its lesson there however. You may want to take a peek at a globe sometime to find that virtually all of those colonies are independent now, and many became independent not because of fighting for it, but as a consequence of the realisation that past policies were bad. (and yes, quite a few had to fight for it also, especially in the beginning of decolonisation. Keep in mind that the USA played a big role in a former French colony, with somewhat doubtfull results)
This new American Empire sure looks good by comparison.
Yeah. I heard about a referendum or two in a couple of teeny countries about that. But don't worry, all the big important countries like Luxembourg are in favor of this newfangled constitution.
People rejected a bad constitution, what is the problem with that?
That constitution also included some good things, but overall it was not good and the way it was conceived was extremely undemocratic and uninspired.
A constitution should be made with a vision on what is desired, not as a consequence of repeated compromise.
Especially when the biggest population increases in their countries are happening to hostile immigrants.
Despite the fact that many (but by far not all) immigrants are muslims, the large majority of them is not hostile. Many move to Europe in search of a better life and realize quite well that the system in Europe makes for that. Many integrate quite well. There is also a small but clearly visible group that does have hostile intentions, but that is not a reason to call the majority of them hostile.
Oh of course it was a complete failure. As against (say) the French approach, which was to kiss Saddam's ass until he was tickled enough to move out on his own. The non-inflammatory point here being sometimes you have to seize the moment: something the overly-fond-of-talk EU politicians have not (yet) realized. (Of course, the realization will come pretty quick the day the Eiffel Tower is razed to the ground by one of the lovely people residing in Paris'
Ah yes, the superior USA army did such a good job at preventing the 9/11 attacks...
Maybe you should look a bit at history to find that in fact the USA supported the extremists that planned those for a long time. Supporting extremism, no matter if it comes in handy at the moment, is bound to backfire on you.
TNT, napalm, and bullets don't turn several square miles of real-estate into a radioactive glass desert the way nukes do.
Now lets see..
First of all, the one and only country to have used nuclear weapons in war is the USA, this despite the fact they had a superior conventional army at that time.
Looking at the two cities targetted back then, we can see the aftermatch of nuclear warfare tho on a small scale. Its bad, but by far not as bad as you describe. 60 years later, people are living there, and without ill effects.
The concept of nuclear weapons to counter a superior conventional force was used throughout the cold war by the USA..
Did it ever occur to you that not everyone will think and respond in the same way as you do?
Maybe governments have other tasks besides spending too much money on defense? (like.. ensuring the population is having enough to eat, ensuring there is economic development, ensuring social issues get addressed etc)
I know it is somewhat hard to believe for fans of the current USA government, but the current militaristic tendencies in the USA don't make for a safer world. Sure, one evil dictator got removed from power, but don't forget he was helped into power by the same people who removed him. Also don't forget that the USA helped many more dictators to power then they removed.
The outcome of recent elections in Iran can be traced back in part to the attitude of the USA trying to put pressure on that country while ignoring the reason why that country might be striving for nuclear weapons (get yourself a president who can pronounce that correctly btw) and ignoring the fact that Iran has by now developed a level of democracy beyond virtually any USA friendly place in the middle east. All that resulted from pressure on that country, combined with past involvement of the USA in the rather oppressive regime of the Sjah, is a swing towards a more hardline government there.
Also, from the lack of weapons of mass distruction in Iraq, while we know they were there in the early 90s, one could come to the conclusion that the policies of the Clinton administration (use diplomacy, and if it really fails, keep to your word and use force where needed) were a lot more effective then anything that followed after it.
All of history shows that militarism leads to war, not to peace and prosperity.
Defense is important, and having a military force that can serve that goal is a good thing. The EU has some way to go there, but if you are arguing that you need a USA style and size army for that then you are seriously wrong. If you think Europe depends on the USA for that, well, keep in mind that the USA can only support its insane army due to outside investments in the USA, so much for your independence.
You do need a USA style and size army if your goal is to force your view onto others. One day I hope the USA and its people will learn that doing that is guaranteed to backfire in the end.
Just in case, I am extremely fond of the concepts the USA was founded on, and consider its constitution one of the most important documents in modern history. If you think I am "anti American" you are quite wrong. I do however object to the "American Empire" that it currently strives for.
I have dealt with cleaning up servers that were compromised. Installing a version of netstat/ps/top etc that skip specific processes and connections is not unusual. Usually the compromise was detected due to the server trying to initiate connections while it should not.
The theory is that creating a single 'bottleneck' that sees all traffic allows for better control over that traffic and makes it possible to detect (and in many cases block) such traffic.
I have found this theory to match reality as long as good security practises are in place, and that includes documenting what a server should be doing, and configuring a firewall to only allow that and nothing else, and to log traffic that should not be there.
The problem is often that having a firewall makes people think they can forego locking down their servers properly. That is a mistake, but it is as big a mistake to think that locking down things properly eliminates the need for a 'guard at the gate'.
Hmm, a more detailed response is in order I think..
First of all, very few servers have any need to make http connections, and if they do, it is very often known to what machines they will connect, when they will do so and why. Lacking this information already means that you are not implementing good security practises.
I'd go as far as saying that each and every connection initiated by a server must be known. There are valid reasons for servers to make outbound connections in certain cases, but those are limited, and should not be that difficult to document. You REALLY should document them.
Documenting this makes it relatively easy to detect and block the activities of such a rootkit.
A possible exception is a smtp server, but in that case there are other means to monitor its activity, and a dedicated firewall machine is still going to be helpfull.
At any rate, arguing that you don't need a firewall to protect your servers because they are properly locked down is like arguing that you don't need a guard at the gate of a military base since everything is in lockers.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess you don't mind me scanning in your book that you've written and distribute it over p2p?
There are more differences between books and webpages then the fact that the first are usually made of sheets of paper and the second are not.
Wanting the advantages of the WWW while retaining the control that paper publications give you is like wanting to eat your cake and have it.
There is this thing called 'reasonable expectation'. In the case of the WWW the reasonable expectation to have is that publishing something on it means it is out there, will be copied, linked to, shared, archived etc. Don't like it? then don't use the WWW.
Because that is the nature of this beast called the WWW. Yeah, I know about copyright and such, and no, I am not one of those who believe information should be free always, but I do believe that when you publish toa medium that has sharing and caching and linking at its core, then you cannot blame others for your publuication being shared, cached and linked to.
Think before you publish etc.
It may cost a substantial amount to actually defend the case.
:)
It costs me a few euro/year to be insured against this (oh, and with no limit on legal costs)
Part of the low cost of this comes from the fact that for many cases the cost to the defendent is indeed 0 in the end.
If a defendant can't find the funds for that - or a sympathetic solicitor - they may have no option but to cave.
True, but when a case is going to be a clear win for the defendent, then it is pretty easy to find a good lawyer. A very good chance on some nice income is not something they will pass, even if they have to wait a little time for it.
Just a sidenote but something that I find quite funny about this whole discussion: WHen you have a different system (ie, the loser pays system like most of EUrope has) then that does not only result in a different system, but also in peopel havign adapted to the differences. You CAN NOT apply behavior caused by one specific system to another, completely different system, the behavior will change as well. Please keep that in mind you Americans
What are you basing this on exactly?
A couple years of propaganda about 'Old Europe' and a broken school system that teaches people a very biassed and at times completely incorrect version of history, at least that is my guess..
Heh, that was one of the examples I was thinking of. Aother one is their airforce. While technologically less advanced, at least with regards to on-board computer systems, they can fly from a random strip of flat land without need for a real airstrip, can fly even when their main computer systems give up, and require very little maintenance for staying operational.
Their tanks are similar. All of it is built to last while being hundreds if not thousands of miles away from the nearest 'advanced service point' and in many cases can be repaired in the field by their operators.
It's a myth. While ago, when I had been a serviceman, I carried and fired >>very clean AK-47 on firing range and it would stuck occasionally.
Its not perfect, and actually, it has a lot of shortcommings.
That said, the opinion replied to is shared by many who used both weapons in actual combat.
The reason is simple. Tolerances on parts for an AK47 are much bigger, with the simple result that it will function in most cases even when conditions are far from perfect. The M16 requires a much higher level of precision to make and the tolerances are relatively low. A simple consequence is that it is inherently more sensitive to being dirty.
Btw, this has been shown by many tests of both weapons besides battlefield experience.
However, technologically, those are the weapons of the past. Nowadays you would be better off with some 'bullpup' system authomatic rifle, the best of both worlds (except for balance changing as your magazine empties) - I belive UK and French soldiers carry variants of these.
The 'charm' of a weapon like the AK47 is simplicity. It can be repaired with simple means, it can be cleaned with simple means, and it just needs very little attention.
This is true for most Russian equipment, simplicity, reliability despite lack of maintenance, and easy field repair are very important design considerations there.
Keep in mind also that we were discussing the cold war situation, not the latest in Western weapons technology (which may or may not have caught up with that, I take your word for it having caught up in reliability at least to some extend)
A constitution should never even approach the 600+ pages the EU Constitution had. Two, three pages at most, like the Constitution of the USA!!!
:)
Clarity over detail is indeed the way to go (and as mentioned earlier, I consider the US constitution one of the most important documents in modern history)
I'm glad France shotr it down!!
Hehe, finally they contributed something usefull
It is ironic of course that their own government is for a large part responsible for the mess that was going to be the EU constitution.
Btw, the French population was not alone in rejecting it.
Actually they don't really own the assignment of addresses, those are delegated essentially irrevocably to regional organisations e.g in Europe RIPE. There's no meaningful sense in which the US retains "ownership" of that address space.
Delegated.. that is the word to keep in mind there. You cannot delegate what you do not controll.
We might as well argue that the Europeans control bar codes because GSI is a European institution and their EAN is the de facto consumer barcode standard. Sure, in theory GSI could say "No, those UPC codes from the US now clash with our reserved space, they're invalid and we'll be issuing new codes in that space", but who would listen?
Difference is that in case of the Internet people will get to deal with the consequences of a failing network, regardless of wanting to listen.
Similarly the root server situation is being exagerated. The actual servers are situated all over the world, and their actual administrators are unlikely to obey any bizarre instructions eminating either from the US government itself or from the more deranged elements of ICANN.
Seeing how ICANN decisions usually favor the interests of US based organisations over others, there is a good reason to want to change this.
As I remeber, the downloads had the full game engine and the wads for one third of the levels. The only criplling I remember (feel free to refresh my memory) was that some of the secrets were omitted.
Crippleware is defined by not providing complete functionality in the 'trial' version. For all I can see, this was the case with both games. I'd prefer calling them playable demos, I don't think crippleware does justice to what you got when downloading them, but strictly spoken, neither were proper shareware.
Well, they were good at content, but most of the content creators seem to have left to do their own thing. Sandy Petersen and American McGee spring to mind. Doom and Doom II had some beautifl levels. But as you say, doom 3 is abysmal. And not in a good way.
Hmm.. What content did ID create after Doom that qualifies as 'good' by any standard?
WHile I agree that they made some pretty decent maps for Doom II and Quake for example, making a decent map is not enough to provide for good game content.
Before they ever got into this FPS business they created some very good content, but that is a long time ago.
It's going to be a while before I spend money on another Id game. If I'm going to underwite the cost of demoing their engines, I at least expect a playable game for my trouble
Well, same was true for Quake III Arena imho. While it was a superb engine for FPS games, the initial game was crap imho.
I am glad I payed for it anyway, the return on investment has been very good for me so to say (think RTCW, Enemy Territory etc)
It is why I obtained a copy of Doom III as wel, I hope they do get someone to release a good game based on it, and besides, while Doom III nowhere matches the awe and inspiration of the first Doom game, it is not as bad a game as many make it. It did get me quite a few hours of entertainment still.
Islam has a fairly stable soceity and it doesn't seem to be working out for them.
First of all, while not the biggest, it is the fastest growing religion.
Second of all, Islam is not a society, it is a whole collection of them tha share a religion. Some are quite rogressive, others are not.
Or for the Native Americans, Whose society was fairly stable and got owned.
Their society was in itself sustainable, unlike the modern western one (sustainable because they did not take more from their environment then it could provide for)
Or the Chinese and Japanese who walled off their countries until some non-stable high-tech societies came in and owned them too.
Ah yes.. except for 1945-1953, Japan has been 'owned' by whom exactly?
China? noone ever owned China. Some occupied parts of it. Their civilisation is older then western civilisation by quite some margin.
Did contact with others change them? definitely. Both were pretty stable, but are on a self destructive path now.
Who do you think learned the worng leassons there?
Those who burden their environment without consideration for example?
Those who forget that technology should serve people and not the other way around for example?
If you talk about those things, look a bit beyond what happens right now, or even what happened in the last few decades. You need a much bigger scale picture and over a much longer term. Survival of a society is not about today or a timeframe of a few decades.
Not at all. I was referring to the nuclear weapons situation in Vietnam, India, and Pakistan.
:-)
Hmm, I assume you mean North Korea and not Vietnam but anyway..
Reading back the entire discussion, it was indeed not you arguing that. It was however the argument with which nuclear weapons got into the discussion.
While indeed offtopic, I would like to mention that the countries most likely to actually use nuclear weapons as a defensive strategy are North Korea and Israel, the first because their leaders are insane and the second because of lack of possibilities of their potential enimies to retaliate. Both India and Pakistan know what using nuclear weapons will mean, and will be far more reluctant.
The Cold War was bad, and I'd hate to see another nuclear arms race happen. The Cold War was a time of extreme paranoia in the U.S., somewhat similar (now that I think of it) to the fear of terrorists that is now gripping us. But that's getting even further off the subject of ICANN.
It is not that offtopic actually. Part of the reasons why it is not acceptable for many outsiders to leave controll over those things in American hands is due to such paranoia, both in the USA and by the people who object.
At any rate, sorry for confusing you with the poster that started off this entire thread.
I just wonder what you found objectionable about my original post.
To me it seemed you voiced a fear that Europe would respond to the thread of a conventional attack with nuclear weapons. I tried to point out that that fear is unfounded. I also assumed (possibly wrongly) that this fear is comming from how the USA dealt with such a thread in a recent past.
What I said was that while killing people with conventional weapons is never good, it is sometimes the least worst of the alternatives (killing if it's necessary to defend a loved one, for instance). I also said that WMDs are a lot worse because they either kill in a much more horrible way, or they are much too indiscriminate
I completely agree there.
Oh, what I forgot to mention in my previous post is why I think your assumption is wrong.
There is a rather simplified way to describe the strategies and development of weapons by different countries during the second world war.
Germany tried to develop high technology weapons. They managed quite well in this but did not have the industrial resources to have it make a difference in the end. (ie, first practical jet fighter, first workable balistic missile, first rocket plane, close to developing a supersonic jet etc)
The UK developed extremely creative and flexible, yet practical weapons and defenses, which is an important part of them preventing a German invasion. (radar, the Spitfire, bouncing bombs etc)
The US just made the biggest bombers and bombs, and used technology invented, and in many cases proven by others. They had (and have) the industrial power to produce a lot of it (Flying fortress, nuclear weapons)
The French? They were stuck in the past and did not contribute much more then covert operations and providing for enough landmass to fight a large scale battle (lets try to build a castle the size of our country and hide behind the walls)
The USSR? so huge that it just drowns anyone that tries to invade it. (don't think this needs an example)
While overly simplified, there is quite some truth in this way of looking at it and it reflects the general mentality of those countries quite well.
What follows from that is that Europe (where Germany, France and the UK play important roles) is a lot more likely to try to counter superior conventional force by creative use of high technology then by nuclear force.
And by the USSR. And they're still being used that way today by a few nations I could name. I'm confident that the U.S. has moved beyond the need for that sort of thing.
Uh no. The USSR had a conventional army that at least in numbers and reliability of equipment far surpassed that of the USA, it was exactly that army they countered with the thread of nuclear weapons. The USSR also had a huge pile of them, but not to counter an attack by a conventional army but to counter a nuclear attack.
Yes, and it has been 60 years. Immediately after the explosions, ground zero of the blast sites were quite uninhabitable. There's also the fact that those bombs were mere firecrackers compared to some of the stuff we (meaning the entire world) have now.
Those sites were unihabiable for a while, but the radioactive contamination caused there is dwarved by the consequences of a single reactor failure in what was then the USSR for example.
Part of that is due to the fact that the bombs exploded at a height were fallout was minimized and substantial inmediate damage was guaranteed. The relatively low level of contamination did not have that much to do with the size of the nukes but with how they were used.
While the inhabitants of both cities that survived the initial blasts had and in many cases still have to deal with the consequences of radioactivity, both cities have been inhabited for quite some time, it took far less then 60 years for them to become save again.
I don't recall ever insinuating that I do expect everyone to think my way. Someone asked what was wrong with nuclear weapons and I responded. If you have a problem with that, then I'd say that it's your problem and you need to deal with it. I'm not going to keep my mouth shut just because I think that someone out there might not agree with me.
I have no problem with you voicing your opinion regardless of me agreeing with it, I rather value that over you shutting up really.
That said, my comment is based on you giving the impression of believing that the American (tm) way of dealing with issues being the only way.
You basicly projected past US policy onto Europe and assumed Europe would act in an identical way (countering the thread of superior conventional forces with nuclear weapons), and expressed a 'fear' based on that assumption.
The interesting thing, I think, is that Doom I & II were released shareware. Doom had to be a seriously good game or no one would ever have bought the full version. How many full versions of Doom3 would have been sold, I wonder?
The original versions of Doom 1 and 2 were called shareware, but they were not proper shareware. A possitive name for them would be 'demo', a less positive name would be 'crippleware'. ID used a shareware like method by lack of a proper and widespread distribution channel, but for the rest very little changed.
If you wanted, you could have downloaded a demo version of Doom 3, and looked at the game before buying it, just like I did.
What did make a difference of course is that due to the hype, more people got the full version of Doom 3 without ever seeing the demo.
Were Doom 1 and 2 good games? I think they were, but mostly due to being different from anything else at the time, and thus being revolutionary. Doom 3 just rehashes the same kind of content, and well, we have seen enough of it already.
An entirely different question is what will happen with the engine on the long term. For example, I do run the Quake 3 engine a lot, but not because I play QUake 3 a lot... I did run the Quake 1 engine a lot, but not ecause of playing Quake 1 that much (tho I did play and finish it)
As I mentioned in another post, ID is not good at creating content, and ever since total conversions of Doom 2 started appearing, it became clear that they needed others to make good games based on their engines. They fully realized this when they made Quake 3, but failed to remember while making Doom 3 obviously.
Back in the days of Doom 2 and Quake, there was no real competition to what ID made. In the days of Quake 2 there was, but ID was the one who made the best engine, and they were the first to sell a game based on it obviously. Quake 2 was just as bad a game as Doom 3 is when looking at the single player part of it.
What was good about Quake 2 was its multiplayer mode. While Quake 1 allowed multiplayer as well, the initial DOS version required either external tools for IP networking, or a nullmodem cable or modem connection for multiplayer modes.
Then came Quake 3, which never got a playable single player mode, rather, it concentrated on multiplayer mode almost exclusively. The engine however was capable of single player mode quite well as shown by for example Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
By the time of Quake 3, it was clear that ID could create a good engine, but needed third parties for creating good content, and one can argue that Quake 3 served more as a demonstration of the graphics capabilities of the Engine then anything else.
In the years to follow quite a few good games were build on this engine, including what I still consider one of the best multiplayer games so far, Enemy Territory. This resulted from finding a very good balance between complexity of gameplay (relatively simple) and realism (amazingly good for its time). You can get inmersed in the games without having to learn too much, and can quickly learn enough to have an enjoyable gaming experience.
It seems to me the mistakes with Doom 3 are in 2 distinct areas. First of all, the balance between gameplay and realism is not right (as the article suggests also). Second, and imho even more important, ID can't create proper content, and rehashing the same old content in a new engine is just boring. They saw this when making Quake 3, and didn't even try, but failed to remember this for Doom 3. They were making a demo for the engine and confused it with making a complete game with entertaining content.
To me this is quite evident from the fact that old (Doom 2) based games like terminal velocity and a game like Duke Nukem 3d are a lot more fun to play then anything ID ever made except maybe for the original Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein.
Its too bad the mods fail to see why your comments are in fact relevant to the discussion.
While I disagree with you on points, the subject you talk about is part of the underlying reasons for the strive for a non USA dependent setup.
The U.S. just happens to own the means by which all of these networks communicate. Any other country could've done the same (theoretically, anyhow).
They don't.
What they do currently own is the assignment of addresses and the means to translate somewhat more human orriented names to such addresses.
Most of the interconnects are not US owned however, neither is the majority of the physical infrastructure.
For the record, the steam engine was invented by the Greeks millenia ago, and yet they only get a footnote? Guess what, they didn't do anything interesting with it.
The Greek and the people from Cartago, and others who had access to steam engine technology (actually, it was a steam turbine, not a traditional steam engine as we know it) did something significant with it. They decided that while potentially powerfull, the effects it would have on their social structure and population would be devastating. They did something that modern civilisations seem to have forgotten, they decided to forego technology in favor of a stable society.
If you think an 'Empire' sacrifices its own tax dollars and the blood of its own people to make sure democracy takes roots in a foreign land, then yeah -- I'm proud of this Empire.
Ah yes, now tell me, where exactly did it bring demmocracy?
Maybe it will over time in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is too early to say for now. Don't forget however that the USA is not the only one being active there.
Last I heard, the oldstyle European empires mainly used their colonies as income sources, leaving most of them (esp the third-world ones) as basket cases when they left.
Definitely, and that was a bad thing.
Europe did learn its lesson there however. You may want to take a peek at a globe sometime to find that virtually all of those colonies are independent now, and many became independent not because of fighting for it, but as a consequence of the realisation that past policies were bad. (and yes, quite a few had to fight for it also, especially in the beginning of decolonisation. Keep in mind that the USA played a big role in a former French colony, with somewhat doubtfull results)
This new American Empire sure looks good by comparison.
Looking better does not make for looking good.
Yeah. I heard about a referendum or two in a couple of teeny countries about that. But don't worry, all the big important countries like Luxembourg are in favor of this newfangled constitution.
People rejected a bad constitution, what is the problem with that?
That constitution also included some good things, but overall it was not good and the way it was conceived was extremely undemocratic and uninspired.
A constitution should be made with a vision on what is desired, not as a consequence of repeated compromise.
Especially when the biggest population increases in their countries are happening to hostile immigrants.
Despite the fact that many (but by far not all) immigrants are muslims, the large majority of them is not hostile. Many move to Europe in search of a better life and realize quite well that the system in Europe makes for that. Many integrate quite well. There is also a small but clearly visible group that does have hostile intentions, but that is not a reason to call the majority of them hostile.
Oh of course it was a complete failure. As against (say) the French approach, which was to kiss Saddam's ass until he was tickled enough to move out on his own. The non-inflammatory point here being sometimes you have to seize the moment: something the overly-fond-of-talk EU politicians have not (yet) realized. (Of course, the realization will come pretty quick the day the Eiffel Tower is razed to the ground by one of the lovely people residing in Paris'
Ah yes, the superior USA army did such a good job at preventing the 9/11 attacks...
Maybe you should look a bit at history to find that in fact the USA supported the extremists that planned those for a long time. Supporting extremism, no matter if it comes in handy at the moment, is bound to backfire on you.
TNT, napalm, and bullets don't turn several square miles of real-estate into a radioactive glass desert the way nukes do.
Now lets see..
First of all, the one and only country to have used nuclear weapons in war is the USA, this despite the fact they had a superior conventional army at that time.
Looking at the two cities targetted back then, we can see the aftermatch of nuclear warfare tho on a small scale. Its bad, but by far not as bad as you describe. 60 years later, people are living there, and without ill effects.
The concept of nuclear weapons to counter a superior conventional force was used throughout the cold war by the USA..
Did it ever occur to you that not everyone will think and respond in the same way as you do?
Maybe governments have other tasks besides spending too much money on defense? (like.. ensuring the population is having enough to eat, ensuring there is economic development, ensuring social issues get addressed etc)
I know it is somewhat hard to believe for fans of the current USA government, but the current militaristic tendencies in the USA don't make for a safer world. Sure, one evil dictator got removed from power, but don't forget he was helped into power by the same people who removed him. Also don't forget that the USA helped many more dictators to power then they removed.
The outcome of recent elections in Iran can be traced back in part to the attitude of the USA trying to put pressure on that country while ignoring the reason why that country might be striving for nuclear weapons (get yourself a president who can pronounce that correctly btw) and ignoring the fact that Iran has by now developed a level of democracy beyond virtually any USA friendly place in the middle east. All that resulted from pressure on that country, combined with past involvement of the USA in the rather oppressive regime of the Sjah, is a swing towards a more hardline government there.
Also, from the lack of weapons of mass distruction in Iraq, while we know they were there in the early 90s, one could come to the conclusion that the policies of the Clinton administration (use diplomacy, and if it really fails, keep to your word and use force where needed) were a lot more effective then anything that followed after it.
All of history shows that militarism leads to war, not to peace and prosperity.
Defense is important, and having a military force that can serve that goal is a good thing. The EU has some way to go there, but if you are arguing that you need a USA style and size army for that then you are seriously wrong. If you think Europe depends on the USA for that, well, keep in mind that the USA can only support its insane army due to outside investments in the USA, so much for your independence.
You do need a USA style and size army if your goal is to force your view onto others. One day I hope the USA and its people will learn that doing that is guaranteed to backfire in the end.
Just in case, I am extremely fond of the concepts the USA was founded on, and consider its constitution one of the most important documents in modern history. If you think I am "anti American" you are quite wrong. I do however object to the "American Empire" that it currently strives for.
I understood your point,
I have dealt with cleaning up servers that were compromised. Installing a version of netstat/ps/top etc that skip specific processes and connections is not unusual. Usually the compromise was detected due to the server trying to initiate connections while it should not.
The theory is that creating a single 'bottleneck' that sees all traffic allows for better control over that traffic and makes it possible to detect (and in many cases block) such traffic.
I have found this theory to match reality as long as good security practises are in place, and that includes documenting what a server should be doing, and configuring a firewall to only allow that and nothing else, and to log traffic that should not be there.
The problem is often that having a firewall makes people think they can forego locking down their servers properly. That is a mistake, but it is as big a mistake to think that locking down things properly eliminates the need for a 'guard at the gate'.
Hmm, a more detailed response is in order I think..
First of all, very few servers have any need to make http connections, and if they do, it is very often known to what machines they will connect, when they will do so and why. Lacking this information already means that you are not implementing good security practises.
I'd go as far as saying that each and every connection initiated by a server must be known. There are valid reasons for servers to make outbound connections in certain cases, but those are limited, and should not be that difficult to document. You REALLY should document them.
Documenting this makes it relatively easy to detect and block the activities of such a rootkit.
A possible exception is a smtp server, but in that case there are other means to monitor its activity, and a dedicated firewall machine is still going to be helpfull.
At any rate, arguing that you don't need a firewall to protect your servers because they are properly locked down is like arguing that you don't need a guard at the gate of a military base since everything is in lockers.