I only read about this very briefly, but my understanding is it went beyond that. Just cutting the peering connection is fine and proper and packets then are rerouted through other peers, possibly costing more money, possibly not. Then the internet goes on as before and everyone is happy and the peers involved can negotiate a new link if they want and figure it will save them money by avoiding other routes where they have to pay for traffic.
My understanding is that in this case they not only cut the link, but they advertised routes to their other peers for traffic from the first peer, which they then maliciously, and probably in breach of those other contracts, filtered out, resulting in failed traffic routing. Basically they intentionally lied (to the routers) and said sure we'll route those and then did not.
I don't think this highlights the fragility of the internet, so much as the fact that end users usually rely upon a single peer (ISP) and if they can't trust them to not intentionally break traffic they had better find a new ISP.
When its something as horrible as chemical weapons which we know that he did have, at least at some point, you _should_ be able to prove you destroyed it. With documentation.
All the chemical weapons we knew he had (because we gave them to him) had long since passed their useful shelf life and were known to be unusable. No with any brains asked for proof that those were destroyed. What our president demanded was proof that he did not have any chemical weapons and that he was not building more.
we (UN) finally have to send in inspectors to look ourselves, don't tell us we can't look in certain places. Don't obstruct. Why? Because we really _do_ think you have stuff. We _know_ you're a Bad Guy.
He let us search everywhere we asked except inside the presidential palace (akin to the white house) because he was afraid we just wanted in there to gain intel to plan an assassination or kidnapping. Do you really think it is reasonable to think he would store chemical weapons in his own palace?
No, but we don't want a terrorist-supporting madman to be able to fuck the world economy at whim? No.
Then why did we give direct control of those oil fields to a proven liar, who has supported terrorism in the past and who has a vested interest in the oil business? How is Bush/Cheney controlling them any better for the world than Saddam? I haven't seen the economy getting better or oil prices going down, have you?
George Bush was wrong. Yeah, he was. At least as far as we know, Saddam didn't have WMDs.
Bush wasn't wrong. The intelligence both the U.S. and the U.K. gave him said there were probably no WMDs. A U.K. intelligence report alluded to communications about using them as an excuse to invade and take out Saddam. Hell, Bush said the other day his real reason for invasion was "because god wanted him to invade." WMDs were an excuse for the U.S., nothing more. The UN was concerned about them, but not concerned enough to do anything and they were right, because nothing needed to be done.
There is no elitism. What other UN member country could have taken Iraq with as few soldier and civilian deaths, captured Saddam, and helped free the Iraqi people.
What kind of crack are you smoking? Go ask the Iraqi how free they are. Go see how grateful they are. Their country is in rubble, electricity, food, and water are now rationed to them, their economy is destroyed, huge amounts of land and most of the industry has been given away to foreign corporations. Their people are arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured, and sexually abused in greater numbers than ever. Farmers are required, by law, to pay patents on the new crops we "gave" them to plant after we burned their fields. Their cash positive government accounts were taken and given to foreign corporations. Huge loans have been taken out on their behalf. Everyone knows some civilian who is now dead. And for what? People are afraid for their lives all the time, afraid of the Americans who kill them for no reason, while they are unarmed. They are afraid of the militias who are fighting to take back their country from the invaders. They are afraid of the police we have put in place and who are likely to kill and rob them as help. They are afraid of random bombings from both sides. Most of them will tell you things are much worse now, if they are not too afraid to even speak to you. And what about this great democracy we forced upon them, oh yeah the one that guarantees nearly a quarter of the population will receive no representation based upon their religion. Great. All we did was change who was in power from Saddam to people who are afraid enough that they will do what we tell them, while securing a staging area for any future operations in the region. If you truly believe we went their to help, then you have to recognize what a miserable failure is the result.
Re:Its (headline article to diff standards)
on
Nessus Closes Source
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· Score: 1
I think "to say" is okay grammar in this context. Message boards are similar to talking as much as they are to typing. In any case, it would probably be "to write" instead of "to type" tho I lack the grammatical sophistication to tell you why.
I might argue, if I felt like arguing, that "say" implies verbalization which is an unwarranted assumption. "type" implies using a keyboard, which is an understandable assumption. "write" is most correct because it does nor assume the original author was typing, dictating, or using any particular input method.
If you understand what the original writer (no ly)
Ouch. Thank you.
You probably don't need "have". Succeeded is past tense anyway.
It is a little wordy, but not, technically, incorrect.
Could probably argue that you would "develop better writing habits" instead of just "better habits" (what kind of habits?).
Conversely, this was not wordy enough to be completely clear, but again, not technically incorrect.
Oh... and 2 spaces after periods (... funny). Feel free...)
This one is firmly a matter of style, not grammar. Given that I write to specific guidelines that require single-spaces after a sentence, I hope I can be forgiven this most un-stylish style.
If I understand what you are trying to express, I think you are mistaken. The period is the end of the sentence and quotation marks always trail the final period for obscure typesetting reasons.
Point: All cctld's are administered by their country (unless delegated by said country)
Reachable via the root servers. Just because they have not messed with them does not mean they can't.
Point: I never goto the root servers for country ttld's
The vast majority of ISPs and companies automatically grab updates from the root servers, including the info for the 244+ country specific TLDs. This affects most users.
Point: 10 of the 13 root dns servers are in the US, *not* outside of the US
The root servers are not one physical server, per "root server" most are made up of several physical boxes in different locations. The majority of the physical boxes are located outside the U.S.
Point: ICANN is *not* involved whatsoever in cctld's other than if some idiot doesn't have it in their root hints file
According to every RFC I have read the root servers are responsible for maintaining those lists and ICANN is responsible for decisions regarding those root servers. Just because you feel like including several hundred servers in your config, does not mean everyone should have to. Sorry, I'm just not buying that the whole world should depend upon the U.S. for lookup info. The internet is too critical to have just one physical point of failure and also too critical to have one political point of failure. Distributed and redundant all the way.
There is a point at which this sort of nit-picking is useless. If you understand what the originally writer was trying to express, then they have succeeded. I don't think most people care to have minor spelling/grammar errors pointed out (unless they are funny). Feel free to point out any errors I make though, as I am trying to develop better habits.
Point the root servers are managed and administrated by ICANN.
Point, ICANN is administered by U.S. companies and the U.S. government and is in no way democratically nominated.
Point, most of the actual, physical root servers are paid for and located outside the U.S.
Point, the EU, the UN, and many foreign companies do not trust the US or ICANN to administer these domains for a variety of reasons, including some pretty bad behavior on the part of ICANN and it's failure to deal with many important issues.
The UN and EU have decided to administer the servers in their countries with an international organization that they have some say in and presumably they feel they can trust. The US does not want them to do that. They decided they don't care what the US wants. All this means is that neither the US nor ICANN will be able to completely control the root servers for the internet and if ICANN does not want to accept the submissions, changes, and new domains that the rest of the world creates, then they can just ignore them and cut off the U.S. from them (until U.S. citizens and organizations start using the foreign ones.) If companies in the U.S. do not feel like submitting their changes/etc. to the worldwide root servers, that is fine too, it will either eventually propagate or not work for international users. If conflicts arise, then ICANN will have to decide if their authority in the US is more important than maintaining compatibility with the rest of the world and how to resolve these conflicts. Some days it feels like the U.S. has to be dragged into the global marketplace kicking and screaming.
Okay... it's now obvious to me that you have little if any idea what you're talking about, particularly concerning the Baathist regime, and as such I'm not going to waste any more time on you.
Translation: I haven't addressed even one of your points and don't intend to because...um, you're wrong and stuff + some random ad hominem attack.
Maybe you should read something on logical discourse or, you know, address any points you don't think are factually or logically correct? If you want to inform or persuade anyone you have to actually address some of the point being discussed, otherwise you are written off as a lazy, ignorant person not willing to address factual information or form any cogent arguments. Oh, and you're a poopy head.
Yeah, which somehow makes the US responsible for the invasion of Kuwait.
Who said it did? I just said we funded his rise to power, armed him, and provided him with resources while we were aware that he was doing horrible things.
Let me get this straight: Iraq, one of the world's biggest oil producers, needed the US to finance its purchase of Scud missles?
Here, let me make this simple for you. We gave Saddam money and some weapons. He used those weapons and that money. Maybe all the money he spent on scud missiles was from the oil fields and our money was spent on swimming pools. No one knows, but it really does not matter.
but now that Saddam is gone, those things are happening on a much smaller scale.
Who blew up more homes Saddam or the US per year to date? US.
Who derided the culture and beliefs of the muslims in Iraq more? Who knows, I'm guessing ugly Americans.
Who killed more children in Iraq to per year to date? US.
Who has condoned more acts of blasphemy against the muslim beliefs? Any guess?
Who arbitrarily arrested more people per year to date? Well, their jails are full and we've built more temporary facilities. In some cities we arrested every male in a certain age range. US.
Who has tortured more Iraqi per year to date? Who knows most of it by both parties is never reported.
Who humiliated more people per year to date? I'd say the U.S. since we have taken away everything from most of them.
Who has sexually abused more per year to date? Well we know of fairly widespread abuse during the American occupation and some during Saddam's. This is another one that is very hard to guess at.
Who has killed more Iraqi, per year to date? US, hands down.
Who has stolen more natural resources from the people to date? The U.S. has given more land and resources to non-Iraqi by several orders of magnitude.
Who has given away more Iraqi money to date? The US has completely drained what was a cash positive government, seizing all the funds and giving them to foreign businesses and themselves as "reparations."
Who has taken out loans on behalf of the Iraqi people? The U.S. took out millions in loans. The country was not in debt before we got there.
Would you care to address any of these points or the others I made, like the huge unemployment, the fact that many of the businesses that were owned by the people are now owned by foreign companies, the fact that we burned their fields and then gave them patented grains that they are required to pay royalties on, the fact that power, water, and food used to be easily available but now they are scarce, crime is skyrocketing, or the fact that every survey of Iraqi shows that they are much more afraid for their lives and well being now than in the past?
The Iraqi people have suffered more under American military rule than they ever did under Saddam and pretending like America is doing them or the world a favor rather than just taking what we want under any pretense is ridiculous.
If you have nothing to offer but ad hominem attacks and outrageously illogical claims, maybe you're the one who should do some reading.
How about addressing some of my points then? Bush's stated reasons for going to war were wrong. U.S. claims about Saddam's acts are hypocritical given that we helped fund some of them knowingly. Claims that the Iraqi are better off are also a load of horse crap. We've done more harm than good and rushing ahead and acting in defiance of the UN's decisions does not indicate that the US is somehow better, or less weak, it just means the US is more violent and self-serving.
You left out the part where George demands proof that Herb doesn't have anything. Can you prove you don't have anything? No you can't because it is impossible.
You also left out the part where everyone finds our GEORGE WAS WRONG, remember?
Oh and you left out the fact that about half of the club, especially George are lying, murderers and the stuff George had been helping Herb do, and what George ended up doing, which is pretty fucking atrocious and self serving. Your justification for the U.S. to do evil things is that they are doing them to people already victimized by Saddam? I take it you never took an ethics class, or even remember any of the things you kindergarden teacher told you? Your bullshit elitism about how "weak" everyone but the U.S. is, is pathetic. It's not weakness when you don't beat people up and take what you want, it is called not being a violent, thief. If you don't see the difference, maybe you should stop watching so many action films and read a few books on ethics, morality, and philosophy. There is a good one called "The New Testament" about some hippy who has a bunch of far out ideas about tolerance and forgiveness. Please ignore the violent asshats who claim to be his followers but haven't bothered to understand let alone read his teachings.
Right. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait is America's doing... blah, blah, blah.
If you don't know that the U.S. openly both financed Saddam Hussein, supported his rise to power, and provided him with weapons which he used against factions of his own people that he did not like, then you are just ignorant. Hell, I remember when he was given the key to the city in Detroit. He was a staunch and well funded U.S. puppet before he stopped following orders.
America somehow sold Soviet- and Chinese-made Scuds to Saddam.
In this case, I think we just helped finance them although in Afghanistan we did supply the natives with soviet made weapons to help hide our involvement.
It must be nice, being a non-American...
Who says I'm not an American?
The U.S. is in Iraq because they want a strategic position and the Israelis are not pliant enough. We are building ten large, permanent military bases there. The Iraqi people are not some evil group, they are just people who have seen their homes bombed, their culture derided, their children murdered, their religion de-sanctified, their people arbitrarily arrested, tortured, humiliated, sexually abused, and murdered, their natural resources stolen, their country's wealth given away as "reparations," huge loans taken out on their behalf, all their businesses given out to foreigners, their food, water, and electricity shut off, their standard of living pushed into the toilet, and a giant concrete walled fortress build in the middle of their largest city and used to house thousands of foreigners who venture out occasionally to order their native workers around or kill some more natives who are "acting up." (I might mention that although Iraq is one of the worlds largest exporters of concrete and half their plants are sitting idle, all that concrete was bought in Turkey and imported.) If I lived there I'd be shooting the invaders too. The U.S. is not there to help, they are their to pillage and to threaten other oil producers in the region. Our brilliant strategy of giving all the resources away to corporations (toys R us got war reparation money for christ's sake) has resulted in most of the country's industry has grinding to a halt, since the foreigners who own everything are too scared to even go there to get things running and as likely to be murdered by their workers as make any profit.
Maybe you should stop watching fox news for a bit and take a look at any, and I mean any foreign newspaper. Or better yet, try reading a variety of them. Everything I mentioned here is pretty easy to verify except the reasons for our going there, but if you think we invaded and are building a bunch of permanent military bases in a foreign country to help to poor people out you are so hopelessly brainwashed that I don't think any facts are going to get in the way of your beliefs.
Remember, this is ultimately about what the end users prefer. No country can easily dictate what nameservers people point their workstations at.
Are you kidding? What percentage of people use anything but what their ISP or organization gives them? I'd say 90% of people using a DNS server do not even know what it is. If China mandates their ISPs use local root servers do you really think a significant percentage of people will not use that DNS server? The same goes for the EU for the most part. There is no need to dictate to individuals at all, merely common carriers and large businesses. Also, why would IT people in say, spain, who are referencing both spanish and ICANN root servers assume the ICANN ones are always right, especially when they have to do business with their own government who they know for a fact registers it's updates to the local server? Finally, why would people switch their root server to a different one if their current one is already working? You know that a number of ICANN regulated servers are physically located in foreign countries and subject to the laws there right? That means a number of them will instantly be governed by any EU/UN directives that come down the pipe. I think you underestimate just how little influence ICANN can legally wield outside the U.S.
Not to mention the open fact that Herb has been beating and molesting his children for years, and the only one who actually stepped up and did something about it was George.
...and George is any better? George helped him rape Sally in the first place and gave him a knife to stick in Avi. George is no hero, he just wanted his flunky to get back in line and obey orders and because he realized Herb had some really nice property, with lots of resources and access to bully people with even more resources. So save the altruism bullshit. George is a bullying, backstabber and no one except himself is believing his lies (because he has started chanting them to himself constantly).
Yea but unfortunatly they must have missed the fact that "George" knew that "Herb" was a a viscious killer that had killed many people.
So are half of the club members, including George. In fact George used to pay Herb to beat people up, but now he is upset because Herb does not want to be a pawn anymore.
BECAUSE GEORGE IS NOT A PUSSY LIKE MOST OF THE MEMBERS OF THIS STUPID CLUB...
George is a coward and a bully and a liar and everyone knows it.
...but stays in because he knows the damn club would fall apart without him, and he cares about those little guys.
Heh, not likely. He stays in the club because he does not want the others to gang up on him, because he needs them as much as they need him financially, because he owes half of them a lot of money and does not want his car repossessed, because he and some other club members used to get in fights and this was the only place they could talk without much risk of a real fight breaking out, and because he is smart enough to know isolation makes you weak. He also know if he picks a fight with the biggest clique in the club they will probably kick his ass and take his stuff and because he knows Lee could go kung-fu on his ass and probably turn him into dog meat.
The smart ones know that it's not him that needs us, it's us that needs him.
Need him for what? To borrow money from them? To try to pick fights? To extort money from the littlest guys? Any one who is fool enough to think the world needs the U.S. more than the U.S. needs the world is an idiot of unbelievable proportions, and any American who believes it is just promoting the stupid, arrogant American stereotype. The U.S. has lower standards of living, worse education, and more civil rights problems than about half of the U.N. members. They bring nothing special to the table.
So they go over to his house and forcibly take his computer...
Who's taking anything? they're probably setting up their own root DNS severs, pretty analogous to settin up a new website with the same content I think.
To the extent that the data coming out of the latest alt-roots conflict with the ICANN, they will be generally perceived as broken, particularly but not exclusively from the point of view of users in the US.
You're missing a few pieces. First, There will be issues with both ICANN servers not properly resolving hosts/domains outside the U.S. which most users will interpret as ICANN being broken. Second, when there is a conflict and an ISP has to decide which is "proper," well most ISPs are not in the U.S. and if the law where they are says they have to provide users with the UN/EU results or lose their common carrier status/face a fine, then they will provide the non-ICANN results or build a hack to provide both. Either way ICANN starts to be the secondary domain servers, not the primary ones.
The UN went against its own resolution and refused to enforce it. So the US was the one who got to do the actual "enforcing"
So the UN voted and decided to not do something, The U.S. ignored the UN vote and did it anyway, and you're claiming the U.S. does not deserve to be blamed for the results of their actions? Did you ever think maybe the UN voted not to do anything because most of them did not believe there was a problem (which turned out to be true). Did you ever think maybe our president declaring that he will go to war unless someone else does something that is by definition impossible is not cause for reprimand?
One day the whole club decided as a group Herb probably did not have the stolen candy and it was not right to search him. Then George declares, "unless you show me you don't have the candy I'm going to beat the shit out of you and take it." Herb empties his pockets and says, "see, nothing, is there anywhere else you want to look?" George says, "that's not proof, it could be hidden somewhere else" and beats the snot out of Herb. After ripping up all his clothes, handing out all of herb's money to his friends, ripping off a few body parts, raping him in the ass, and chaining his head to the floor, George says, "well he probably swallowed the candy, and he is an asshole anyway."
Everyone in the room picks up a stick, doesn't turn their back on George from then on. Now the club has decided maybe George is not the most stable or trustworthy person to hold on to host the club's website and you think that is an overreaction? Well, you're entitled to your opinion.
Really ? So what will the penalty for daring to send a DNS query to the US root servers be ? A year ? Perhaps two ? Or should we consider it high treason ?
None of the above. Connecting to U.S. root servers should, of course, be perfectly legal. The thing is if a series of alternate root servers is created that clones the U.S. root servers, plus includes entries for all the EU owned TLDs, like the country domains, that are not submitted to the U.S. root servers (they can and will probably grab them) and the EU root servers add new TLDs for things like hospitals, porn, restaurants, etc. you will create an interesting situation. Anyone who wants to see all the sites will have to contact both sets of TLDs or the U.S. root servers will become reliant upon EU root servers for some data. At this point there is a co-dependant situation and there is a potential for conflict. What happens when the EU root servers and the U.S. disagree? Smart IT people running ISPs and large networks will query both and have to chose to display one or the other or have a hack to let the user decide.
All the U.N. and EU need do is pass laws that legislate that ISPs and commercial networks must provide customers and employees with the DNS results of the EU/UN root servers of face a fine. I imagine all of them would comply without too much fuss as it is beneficial to their customers/users. What ISP would want to rely upon a foreign root DNS server to reference their own country's government services, when they know their government (and most others) are submitting their DNS entries to the local root DNS server, which is obviously more likely to be up to date.
I think this would make a lot of sense and I think it would make for a more robust and resilient internet in the long run.
I think the problem we are having is a lot of people trying to implement the same functionality from different directions. Personally, I think the "proper" solution is something like remote X sessions. Each user can alternately run a personal machine that serves their desktop and applications anywhere and stores their files, or hire a company to host their desktop and files for them. In this way you can get to all your installed files, applications, settings, etc. from any machine. This means if you host your own desktop you can access your files when offline and if you have a laptop you can synch any given files or applications with it for work when offline. It also means if you just purchase an account hosted remotely, you cannot do these things, but it can be offered more cheaply and uplink bandwidth is less of a concern.
Trying to cram everything over port 80 seems like a hack. Designing window managers that can display remotely, with reasonable bandwidth requirements, and which plays well with others using open, secure protocols over a dedicated port seems like a proper way to architect things. Of course since MS is the only one in the position to do this and since they are both evil and incompetent we have to rely upon a hack to bring this functionality to most users.
There is nothing whatsoever stopping the UN from making its own root servers and telling everyone to use them; they will be ignored, but that's not US's fault. Such things has been tried in the past ("use our special DNS servers, and you can type keywords into your browsers address bar", and they died off from simple lack of interest.
You don't see the difference between a company or a university setting up an alternate DNS server and the EU and U.N. setting up a whole series of DNS servers? First, some people use the alternate DNS servers right now, for example, many hospitals rely upon them for a special medical domain. Second, alternate servers don't catch on in general because they cause conflicts with the majority. The EU and U.N. are the majority and can legislate the use of their servers as the primary ones. They can make laws and have police to enforce them you know, unlike most universities.
Finally, the U.S. has pissed off a lot of the world lately with it's bullying. As someone who travels I often find very friendly and reasonable people who like to discuss, politely, why they have problems with what the U.S. is doing and why they don't trust the U.S. Heck, I live there and I don't trust the government to do what is right or to honor its treaties. You can only break your treaties and agreements so often before everyone stops believing you. This common theme of distrust for the U.S. is, in my opinion, plenty strong enough for this sort of thing to happen. The U.S. is losing power in may ways. We are in debt to everyone, no longer trusted by the international community, no longer a manufacturing giant, no longer way ahead scientifically, and rapidly losing cultural influence. Sure we have nukes, so does Pakistan and North Korea. The minute we use them again we become a pariah, to be feared and hated by the entire world. Other countries used to look up to and emulate the U.S. Now we are considered an example of what other countries want to keep from happening to them. I disagree with your assessment. If the U.S. does not relent and play nice, it will find it's root servers secondary and U.S. citizens and companies will not want to lose access to all the European and Asian markets and businesses so they will configure the new root servers in addition to the old and hire techies to make both work. If their is a conflict, there will be hacks. Expect to see a (View the U.S. or Worldwide version) option when viewing some web pages within the next decade.
But if they want to force the issue, I'm thinking that we should "remind" our foreign allies that a country with our military might cannot and will not be forced.
So you're proposing because foreign countries set up their own root servers and a international body to govern those servers we should invade them? Umm, all of them? Yeah, that would work. The U.S. does not even have enough troops to maintain an effective defense of it's territory and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq effectively. Invading a few hundred more countries, especially ones with bigger, better armed armies is a great idea. The U.S. invading China would be like the U.S. invading a live volcano. You can pour in as many troops as you want, but it isn't even going to put a dent in them. It would probably help their economy, actually. China can send more troops at us every year than we killed in all of the time we were in Vietnam without decreasing their population, just curbing it's expansion. Lets invade there, brilliant!
If need be, I highly recommend that the US resign from the UN and see how long it holds together without our monetary support.
Umm, we're billions in debt to the U.N. right now. We tried this before and they told us to bugger ourselves and got on just fine until we realized what a stupid move it was.
The internet root servers are working fine. The UN has presented no compelling arguments as to why it should be turned over to an overly beaurocratic entity that has a poor track record for making joint ventures work.
They are working fine, as far as we know, but we have no idea what all is being done with them. And then their is the fact that they are being run by for-profit corporations that pull stunts like redirecting all 404 traffic to ads, instead of following the spec and in doing so broke proper internet connectivity worldwide without any notice, or did you miss that one? You fail to elucidate how a U.N. bureaucracy is any worse than the U.S. one.
While the servers themselves may reside in the US, the organization that controls them is a true international entity.
One not chosen by any democratic process.
No one trusts the U.S. or U.S. based corporations because both have proven themselves to be untrustworthy time and again. We break our treaties and contracts, lie, violate human rights, invade foreign countries without cause, ignore international agreements we have signed, etc. Why should the whole world trust a country that has proven itself so dishonorable and untrustworthy? Governments are supposed to act for the good of those who have elected them. The EU represents Europe and the U.N. represents the world. Now tell me how the U.S. controlling all the root servers and causing a single point of failure for the whole internet serves to benefit either the EU or the world. The U.N. and EU have declared their intentions and are largely in agreement. Now they are hashing out the details of the implementation. I assume this will include the creation of alternate root servers which will eventually be accepted as the primary root servers and a governing body that will regulate and issue TLDs according to the wishes of that body. There is no reason why people have to pay for domains at all, aside from covering infrastructure and administrative fees. Maybe you don't remember when they were free, but some of us do, and there is no reason to pay tithes to U.S. corporations to use the internet. It is a world-wide infrastructure right now and there is no reason to let one country control it. Sorry, this just makes sense.
First, it is my understanding the OS is not installed. Second, they don't offer FreeDOS support. Third, they do offer Linux support. Fourth, I don't know any any such laws and others places (small shops without bulk Windows licenses) do sell machines without OS's. I can certainly buy all of a car minus the engine without any problem. I think you are reaching here. Finally, don't you think including a Linux distro (for which they will sell support) makes more sense than including FreeDOS (which they won't use and for which they won't sell support)? In the first case they have to potential to sell support and in the second they don't, it seems like a pretty obvious business decision to me unless their are other factors that you have not mentioned. Even should they include an OS they won't support, you know they are under no obligation to provide support. I'm still of the opinion that this is likely the result of their Windows purchase agreement.
Re:am I the only one who does not get it?
on
Video iPod Oct 12?
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You're right, I was thinking of AIFF, but the acronym part of my brain had overloaded.
I don't understand the frustrating part. The author tries to make an issue of having to convert iTunes songs into mp3 or WMA. But why would you want to? iTunes also plays songs bought from the iTunes Music store. The only possible reason to do the unweildy conversion is to get rid of DRM.
I disagree with this. There are instances where a person might own an mp3 player (not an ipod) and want their music in mp3 format so they can also listen to it on their portable. In this case the user might not care at all about the DRM, just the format. While the DRM can be removed, iTunes does make the format conversion needlessly obscure. Even once the DRM is removed, to export a CD full of mp3 files a user has to first convert their default import format to mp3 and then export the files. I'm not saying this is any worse than the competition by any means, merely that DRM is not a users concern all the time, just being able to convert format.
So if you were Dell, would you just stick a bunch of parts in a box and ship it, or would you at least want to boot it up first? Maybe run a diagnostic or two?
The hard drives on the boxes are blank, FreeDOS comes only on an included CD. I'd guess they would run their test suite from a CD-ROM. I suspect, however, based upon my experience purchasing from them they just throw it all together and write off the ones that get shipped back because they are DOA as a lesser expense than testing. Your explanation almost fits, but not quite.
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Am I missing something here?
I only read about this very briefly, but my understanding is it went beyond that. Just cutting the peering connection is fine and proper and packets then are rerouted through other peers, possibly costing more money, possibly not. Then the internet goes on as before and everyone is happy and the peers involved can negotiate a new link if they want and figure it will save them money by avoiding other routes where they have to pay for traffic.
My understanding is that in this case they not only cut the link, but they advertised routes to their other peers for traffic from the first peer, which they then maliciously, and probably in breach of those other contracts, filtered out, resulting in failed traffic routing. Basically they intentionally lied (to the routers) and said sure we'll route those and then did not.
I don't think this highlights the fragility of the internet, so much as the fact that end users usually rely upon a single peer (ISP) and if they can't trust them to not intentionally break traffic they had better find a new ISP.
When its something as horrible as chemical weapons which we know that he did have, at least at some point, you _should_ be able to prove you destroyed it. With documentation.
All the chemical weapons we knew he had (because we gave them to him) had long since passed their useful shelf life and were known to be unusable. No with any brains asked for proof that those were destroyed. What our president demanded was proof that he did not have any chemical weapons and that he was not building more.
we (UN) finally have to send in inspectors to look ourselves, don't tell us we can't look in certain places. Don't obstruct. Why? Because we really _do_ think you have stuff. We _know_ you're a Bad Guy.
He let us search everywhere we asked except inside the presidential palace (akin to the white house) because he was afraid we just wanted in there to gain intel to plan an assassination or kidnapping. Do you really think it is reasonable to think he would store chemical weapons in his own palace?
No, but we don't want a terrorist-supporting madman to be able to fuck the world economy at whim? No.
Then why did we give direct control of those oil fields to a proven liar, who has supported terrorism in the past and who has a vested interest in the oil business? How is Bush/Cheney controlling them any better for the world than Saddam? I haven't seen the economy getting better or oil prices going down, have you?
George Bush was wrong. Yeah, he was. At least as far as we know, Saddam didn't have WMDs.
Bush wasn't wrong. The intelligence both the U.S. and the U.K. gave him said there were probably no WMDs. A U.K. intelligence report alluded to communications about using them as an excuse to invade and take out Saddam. Hell, Bush said the other day his real reason for invasion was "because god wanted him to invade." WMDs were an excuse for the U.S., nothing more. The UN was concerned about them, but not concerned enough to do anything and they were right, because nothing needed to be done.
There is no elitism. What other UN member country could have taken Iraq with as few soldier and civilian deaths, captured Saddam, and helped free the Iraqi people.
What kind of crack are you smoking? Go ask the Iraqi how free they are. Go see how grateful they are. Their country is in rubble, electricity, food, and water are now rationed to them, their economy is destroyed, huge amounts of land and most of the industry has been given away to foreign corporations. Their people are arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured, and sexually abused in greater numbers than ever. Farmers are required, by law, to pay patents on the new crops we "gave" them to plant after we burned their fields. Their cash positive government accounts were taken and given to foreign corporations. Huge loans have been taken out on their behalf. Everyone knows some civilian who is now dead. And for what? People are afraid for their lives all the time, afraid of the Americans who kill them for no reason, while they are unarmed. They are afraid of the militias who are fighting to take back their country from the invaders. They are afraid of the police we have put in place and who are likely to kill and rob them as help. They are afraid of random bombings from both sides. Most of them will tell you things are much worse now, if they are not too afraid to even speak to you. And what about this great democracy we forced upon them, oh yeah the one that guarantees nearly a quarter of the population will receive no representation based upon their religion. Great. All we did was change who was in power from Saddam to people who are afraid enough that they will do what we tell them, while securing a staging area for any future operations in the region. If you truly believe we went their to help, then you have to recognize what a miserable failure is the result.
I think "to say" is okay grammar in this context. Message boards are similar to talking as much as they are to typing. In any case, it would probably be "to write" instead of "to type" tho I lack the grammatical sophistication to tell you why.
I might argue, if I felt like arguing, that "say" implies verbalization which is an unwarranted assumption. "type" implies using a keyboard, which is an understandable assumption. "write" is most correct because it does nor assume the original author was typing, dictating, or using any particular input method.
If you understand what the original writer (no ly)
Ouch. Thank you.
You probably don't need "have". Succeeded is past tense anyway.
It is a little wordy, but not, technically, incorrect.
Could probably argue that you would "develop better writing habits" instead of just "better habits" (what kind of habits?).
Conversely, this was not wordy enough to be completely clear, but again, not technically incorrect.
Oh... and 2 spaces after periods (... funny). Feel free...)
This one is firmly a matter of style, not grammar. Given that I write to specific guidelines that require single-spaces after a sentence, I hope I can be forgiven this most un-stylish style.
Thanks for your comments.
If I understand what you are trying to express, I think you are mistaken. The period is the end of the sentence and quotation marks always trail the final period for obscure typesetting reasons.
Point: All cctld's are administered by their country (unless delegated by said country)
Reachable via the root servers. Just because they have not messed with them does not mean they can't.
Point: I never goto the root servers for country ttld's
The vast majority of ISPs and companies automatically grab updates from the root servers, including the info for the 244+ country specific TLDs. This affects most users.
Point: 10 of the 13 root dns servers are in the US, *not* outside of the US
The root servers are not one physical server, per "root server" most are made up of several physical boxes in different locations. The majority of the physical boxes are located outside the U.S.
Point: ICANN is *not* involved whatsoever in cctld's other than if some idiot doesn't have it in their root hints file
According to every RFC I have read the root servers are responsible for maintaining those lists and ICANN is responsible for decisions regarding those root servers. Just because you feel like including several hundred servers in your config, does not mean everyone should have to. Sorry, I'm just not buying that the whole world should depend upon the U.S. for lookup info. The internet is too critical to have just one physical point of failure and also too critical to have one political point of failure. Distributed and redundant all the way.
You meant to say its.
Surely you mean that he meant to type "its."
There is a point at which this sort of nit-picking is useless. If you understand what the originally writer was trying to express, then they have succeeded. I don't think most people care to have minor spelling/grammar errors pointed out (unless they are funny). Feel free to point out any errors I make though, as I am trying to develop better habits.
Point the root servers are managed and administrated by ICANN.
Point, ICANN is administered by U.S. companies and the U.S. government and is in no way democratically nominated.
Point, most of the actual, physical root servers are paid for and located outside the U.S.
Point, the EU, the UN, and many foreign companies do not trust the US or ICANN to administer these domains for a variety of reasons, including some pretty bad behavior on the part of ICANN and it's failure to deal with many important issues.
The UN and EU have decided to administer the servers in their countries with an international organization that they have some say in and presumably they feel they can trust. The US does not want them to do that. They decided they don't care what the US wants. All this means is that neither the US nor ICANN will be able to completely control the root servers for the internet and if ICANN does not want to accept the submissions, changes, and new domains that the rest of the world creates, then they can just ignore them and cut off the U.S. from them (until U.S. citizens and organizations start using the foreign ones.) If companies in the U.S. do not feel like submitting their changes/etc. to the worldwide root servers, that is fine too, it will either eventually propagate or not work for international users. If conflicts arise, then ICANN will have to decide if their authority in the US is more important than maintaining compatibility with the rest of the world and how to resolve these conflicts. Some days it feels like the U.S. has to be dragged into the global marketplace kicking and screaming.
Okay... it's now obvious to me that you have little if any idea what you're talking about, particularly concerning the Baathist regime, and as such I'm not going to waste any more time on you.
Translation: I haven't addressed even one of your points and don't intend to because...um, you're wrong and stuff + some random ad hominem attack.
Maybe you should read something on logical discourse or, you know, address any points you don't think are factually or logically correct? If you want to inform or persuade anyone you have to actually address some of the point being discussed, otherwise you are written off as a lazy, ignorant person not willing to address factual information or form any cogent arguments. Oh, and you're a poopy head.
Yeah, which somehow makes the US responsible for the invasion of Kuwait.
Who said it did? I just said we funded his rise to power, armed him, and provided him with resources while we were aware that he was doing horrible things.
Let me get this straight: Iraq, one of the world's biggest oil producers, needed the US to finance its purchase of Scud missles?
Here, let me make this simple for you. We gave Saddam money and some weapons. He used those weapons and that money. Maybe all the money he spent on scud missiles was from the oil fields and our money was spent on swimming pools. No one knows, but it really does not matter.
but now that Saddam is gone, those things are happening on a much smaller scale.
Who blew up more homes Saddam or the US per year to date? US.
Who derided the culture and beliefs of the muslims in Iraq more? Who knows, I'm guessing ugly Americans.
Who killed more children in Iraq to per year to date? US.
Who has condoned more acts of blasphemy against the muslim beliefs? Any guess?
Who arbitrarily arrested more people per year to date? Well, their jails are full and we've built more temporary facilities. In some cities we arrested every male in a certain age range. US.
Who has tortured more Iraqi per year to date? Who knows most of it by both parties is never reported.
Who humiliated more people per year to date? I'd say the U.S. since we have taken away everything from most of them.
Who has sexually abused more per year to date? Well we know of fairly widespread abuse during the American occupation and some during Saddam's. This is another one that is very hard to guess at.
Who has killed more Iraqi, per year to date? US, hands down.
Who has stolen more natural resources from the people to date? The U.S. has given more land and resources to non-Iraqi by several orders of magnitude.
Who has given away more Iraqi money to date? The US has completely drained what was a cash positive government, seizing all the funds and giving them to foreign businesses and themselves as "reparations."
Who has taken out loans on behalf of the Iraqi people? The U.S. took out millions in loans. The country was not in debt before we got there.
Would you care to address any of these points or the others I made, like the huge unemployment, the fact that many of the businesses that were owned by the people are now owned by foreign companies, the fact that we burned their fields and then gave them patented grains that they are required to pay royalties on, the fact that power, water, and food used to be easily available but now they are scarce, crime is skyrocketing, or the fact that every survey of Iraqi shows that they are much more afraid for their lives and well being now than in the past?
The Iraqi people have suffered more under American military rule than they ever did under Saddam and pretending like America is doing them or the world a favor rather than just taking what we want under any pretense is ridiculous.
If you have nothing to offer but ad hominem attacks and outrageously illogical claims, maybe you're the one who should do some reading.
How about addressing some of my points then? Bush's stated reasons for going to war were wrong. U.S. claims about Saddam's acts are hypocritical given that we helped fund some of them knowingly. Claims that the Iraqi are better off are also a load of horse crap. We've done more harm than good and rushing ahead and acting in defiance of the UN's decisions does not indicate that the US is somehow better, or less weak, it just means the US is more violent and self-serving.
You left out the part where George demands proof that Herb doesn't have anything. Can you prove you don't have anything? No you can't because it is impossible.
You also left out the part where everyone finds our GEORGE WAS WRONG, remember?
Oh and you left out the fact that about half of the club, especially George are lying, murderers and the stuff George had been helping Herb do, and what George ended up doing, which is pretty fucking atrocious and self serving. Your justification for the U.S. to do evil things is that they are doing them to people already victimized by Saddam? I take it you never took an ethics class, or even remember any of the things you kindergarden teacher told you? Your bullshit elitism about how "weak" everyone but the U.S. is, is pathetic. It's not weakness when you don't beat people up and take what you want, it is called not being a violent, thief. If you don't see the difference, maybe you should stop watching so many action films and read a few books on ethics, morality, and philosophy. There is a good one called "The New Testament" about some hippy who has a bunch of far out ideas about tolerance and forgiveness. Please ignore the violent asshats who claim to be his followers but haven't bothered to understand let alone read his teachings.
Right. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait is America's doing... blah, blah, blah.
If you don't know that the U.S. openly both financed Saddam Hussein, supported his rise to power, and provided him with weapons which he used against factions of his own people that he did not like, then you are just ignorant. Hell, I remember when he was given the key to the city in Detroit. He was a staunch and well funded U.S. puppet before he stopped following orders.
America somehow sold Soviet- and Chinese-made Scuds to Saddam.
In this case, I think we just helped finance them although in Afghanistan we did supply the natives with soviet made weapons to help hide our involvement.
It must be nice, being a non-American...
Who says I'm not an American?
The U.S. is in Iraq because they want a strategic position and the Israelis are not pliant enough. We are building ten large, permanent military bases there. The Iraqi people are not some evil group, they are just people who have seen their homes bombed, their culture derided, their children murdered, their religion de-sanctified, their people arbitrarily arrested, tortured, humiliated, sexually abused, and murdered, their natural resources stolen, their country's wealth given away as "reparations," huge loans taken out on their behalf, all their businesses given out to foreigners, their food, water, and electricity shut off, their standard of living pushed into the toilet, and a giant concrete walled fortress build in the middle of their largest city and used to house thousands of foreigners who venture out occasionally to order their native workers around or kill some more natives who are "acting up." (I might mention that although Iraq is one of the worlds largest exporters of concrete and half their plants are sitting idle, all that concrete was bought in Turkey and imported.) If I lived there I'd be shooting the invaders too. The U.S. is not there to help, they are their to pillage and to threaten other oil producers in the region. Our brilliant strategy of giving all the resources away to corporations (toys R us got war reparation money for christ's sake) has resulted in most of the country's industry has grinding to a halt, since the foreigners who own everything are too scared to even go there to get things running and as likely to be murdered by their workers as make any profit.
Maybe you should stop watching fox news for a bit and take a look at any, and I mean any foreign newspaper. Or better yet, try reading a variety of them. Everything I mentioned here is pretty easy to verify except the reasons for our going there, but if you think we invaded and are building a bunch of permanent military bases in a foreign country to help to poor people out you are so hopelessly brainwashed that I don't think any facts are going to get in the way of your beliefs.
Remember, this is ultimately about what the end users prefer. No country can easily dictate what nameservers people point their workstations at.
Are you kidding? What percentage of people use anything but what their ISP or organization gives them? I'd say 90% of people using a DNS server do not even know what it is. If China mandates their ISPs use local root servers do you really think a significant percentage of people will not use that DNS server? The same goes for the EU for the most part. There is no need to dictate to individuals at all, merely common carriers and large businesses. Also, why would IT people in say, spain, who are referencing both spanish and ICANN root servers assume the ICANN ones are always right, especially when they have to do business with their own government who they know for a fact registers it's updates to the local server? Finally, why would people switch their root server to a different one if their current one is already working? You know that a number of ICANN regulated servers are physically located in foreign countries and subject to the laws there right? That means a number of them will instantly be governed by any EU/UN directives that come down the pipe. I think you underestimate just how little influence ICANN can legally wield outside the U.S.
Not to mention the open fact that Herb has been beating and molesting his children for years, and the only one who actually stepped up and did something about it was George.
...and George is any better? George helped him rape Sally in the first place and gave him a knife to stick in Avi. George is no hero, he just wanted his flunky to get back in line and obey orders and because he realized Herb had some really nice property, with lots of resources and access to bully people with even more resources. So save the altruism bullshit. George is a bullying, backstabber and no one except himself is believing his lies (because he has started chanting them to himself constantly).
Yea but unfortunatly they must have missed the fact that "George" knew that "Herb" was a a viscious killer that had killed many people.
So are half of the club members, including George. In fact George used to pay Herb to beat people up, but now he is upset because Herb does not want to be a pawn anymore.
BECAUSE GEORGE IS NOT A PUSSY LIKE MOST OF THE MEMBERS OF THIS STUPID CLUB...
George is a coward and a bully and a liar and everyone knows it.
Heh, not likely. He stays in the club because he does not want the others to gang up on him, because he needs them as much as they need him financially, because he owes half of them a lot of money and does not want his car repossessed, because he and some other club members used to get in fights and this was the only place they could talk without much risk of a real fight breaking out, and because he is smart enough to know isolation makes you weak. He also know if he picks a fight with the biggest clique in the club they will probably kick his ass and take his stuff and because he knows Lee could go kung-fu on his ass and probably turn him into dog meat.
The smart ones know that it's not him that needs us, it's us that needs him.
Need him for what? To borrow money from them? To try to pick fights? To extort money from the littlest guys? Any one who is fool enough to think the world needs the U.S. more than the U.S. needs the world is an idiot of unbelievable proportions, and any American who believes it is just promoting the stupid, arrogant American stereotype. The U.S. has lower standards of living, worse education, and more civil rights problems than about half of the U.N. members. They bring nothing special to the table.
So they go over to his house and forcibly take his computer...
Who's taking anything? they're probably setting up their own root DNS severs, pretty analogous to settin up a new website with the same content I think.
To the extent that the data coming out of the latest alt-roots conflict with the ICANN, they will be generally perceived as broken, particularly but not exclusively from the point of view of users in the US.
You're missing a few pieces. First, There will be issues with both ICANN servers not properly resolving hosts/domains outside the U.S. which most users will interpret as ICANN being broken. Second, when there is a conflict and an ISP has to decide which is "proper," well most ISPs are not in the U.S. and if the law where they are says they have to provide users with the UN/EU results or lose their common carrier status/face a fine, then they will provide the non-ICANN results or build a hack to provide both. Either way ICANN starts to be the secondary domain servers, not the primary ones.
The UN went against its own resolution and refused to enforce it. So the US was the one who got to do the actual "enforcing"
So the UN voted and decided to not do something, The U.S. ignored the UN vote and did it anyway, and you're claiming the U.S. does not deserve to be blamed for the results of their actions? Did you ever think maybe the UN voted not to do anything because most of them did not believe there was a problem (which turned out to be true). Did you ever think maybe our president declaring that he will go to war unless someone else does something that is by definition impossible is not cause for reprimand?
One day the whole club decided as a group Herb probably did not have the stolen candy and it was not right to search him. Then George declares, "unless you show me you don't have the candy I'm going to beat the shit out of you and take it." Herb empties his pockets and says, "see, nothing, is there anywhere else you want to look?" George says, "that's not proof, it could be hidden somewhere else" and beats the snot out of Herb. After ripping up all his clothes, handing out all of herb's money to his friends, ripping off a few body parts, raping him in the ass, and chaining his head to the floor, George says, "well he probably swallowed the candy, and he is an asshole anyway."
Everyone in the room picks up a stick, doesn't turn their back on George from then on. Now the club has decided maybe George is not the most stable or trustworthy person to hold on to host the club's website and you think that is an overreaction? Well, you're entitled to your opinion.
Really ? So what will the penalty for daring to send a DNS query to the US root servers be ? A year ? Perhaps two ? Or should we consider it high treason ?
None of the above. Connecting to U.S. root servers should, of course, be perfectly legal. The thing is if a series of alternate root servers is created that clones the U.S. root servers, plus includes entries for all the EU owned TLDs, like the country domains, that are not submitted to the U.S. root servers (they can and will probably grab them) and the EU root servers add new TLDs for things like hospitals, porn, restaurants, etc. you will create an interesting situation. Anyone who wants to see all the sites will have to contact both sets of TLDs or the U.S. root servers will become reliant upon EU root servers for some data. At this point there is a co-dependant situation and there is a potential for conflict. What happens when the EU root servers and the U.S. disagree? Smart IT people running ISPs and large networks will query both and have to chose to display one or the other or have a hack to let the user decide.
All the U.N. and EU need do is pass laws that legislate that ISPs and commercial networks must provide customers and employees with the DNS results of the EU/UN root servers of face a fine. I imagine all of them would comply without too much fuss as it is beneficial to their customers/users. What ISP would want to rely upon a foreign root DNS server to reference their own country's government services, when they know their government (and most others) are submitting their DNS entries to the local root DNS server, which is obviously more likely to be up to date.
I think this would make a lot of sense and I think it would make for a more robust and resilient internet in the long run.
I think the problem we are having is a lot of people trying to implement the same functionality from different directions. Personally, I think the "proper" solution is something like remote X sessions. Each user can alternately run a personal machine that serves their desktop and applications anywhere and stores their files, or hire a company to host their desktop and files for them. In this way you can get to all your installed files, applications, settings, etc. from any machine. This means if you host your own desktop you can access your files when offline and if you have a laptop you can synch any given files or applications with it for work when offline. It also means if you just purchase an account hosted remotely, you cannot do these things, but it can be offered more cheaply and uplink bandwidth is less of a concern.
Trying to cram everything over port 80 seems like a hack. Designing window managers that can display remotely, with reasonable bandwidth requirements, and which plays well with others using open, secure protocols over a dedicated port seems like a proper way to architect things. Of course since MS is the only one in the position to do this and since they are both evil and incompetent we have to rely upon a hack to bring this functionality to most users.
There is nothing whatsoever stopping the UN from making its own root servers and telling everyone to use them; they will be ignored, but that's not US's fault. Such things has been tried in the past ("use our special DNS servers, and you can type keywords into your browsers address bar", and they died off from simple lack of interest.
You don't see the difference between a company or a university setting up an alternate DNS server and the EU and U.N. setting up a whole series of DNS servers? First, some people use the alternate DNS servers right now, for example, many hospitals rely upon them for a special medical domain. Second, alternate servers don't catch on in general because they cause conflicts with the majority. The EU and U.N. are the majority and can legislate the use of their servers as the primary ones. They can make laws and have police to enforce them you know, unlike most universities.
Finally, the U.S. has pissed off a lot of the world lately with it's bullying. As someone who travels I often find very friendly and reasonable people who like to discuss, politely, why they have problems with what the U.S. is doing and why they don't trust the U.S. Heck, I live there and I don't trust the government to do what is right or to honor its treaties. You can only break your treaties and agreements so often before everyone stops believing you. This common theme of distrust for the U.S. is, in my opinion, plenty strong enough for this sort of thing to happen. The U.S. is losing power in may ways. We are in debt to everyone, no longer trusted by the international community, no longer a manufacturing giant, no longer way ahead scientifically, and rapidly losing cultural influence. Sure we have nukes, so does Pakistan and North Korea. The minute we use them again we become a pariah, to be feared and hated by the entire world. Other countries used to look up to and emulate the U.S. Now we are considered an example of what other countries want to keep from happening to them. I disagree with your assessment. If the U.S. does not relent and play nice, it will find it's root servers secondary and U.S. citizens and companies will not want to lose access to all the European and Asian markets and businesses so they will configure the new root servers in addition to the old and hire techies to make both work. If their is a conflict, there will be hacks. Expect to see a (View the U.S. or Worldwide version) option when viewing some web pages within the next decade.
But if they want to force the issue, I'm thinking that we should "remind" our foreign allies that a country with our military might cannot and will not be forced.
So you're proposing because foreign countries set up their own root servers and a international body to govern those servers we should invade them? Umm, all of them? Yeah, that would work. The U.S. does not even have enough troops to maintain an effective defense of it's territory and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq effectively. Invading a few hundred more countries, especially ones with bigger, better armed armies is a great idea. The U.S. invading China would be like the U.S. invading a live volcano. You can pour in as many troops as you want, but it isn't even going to put a dent in them. It would probably help their economy, actually. China can send more troops at us every year than we killed in all of the time we were in Vietnam without decreasing their population, just curbing it's expansion. Lets invade there, brilliant!
If need be, I highly recommend that the US resign from the UN and see how long it holds together without our monetary support.
Umm, we're billions in debt to the U.N. right now. We tried this before and they told us to bugger ourselves and got on just fine until we realized what a stupid move it was.
The internet root servers are working fine. The UN has presented no compelling arguments as to why it should be turned over to an overly beaurocratic entity that has a poor track record for making joint ventures work.
They are working fine, as far as we know, but we have no idea what all is being done with them. And then their is the fact that they are being run by for-profit corporations that pull stunts like redirecting all 404 traffic to ads, instead of following the spec and in doing so broke proper internet connectivity worldwide without any notice, or did you miss that one? You fail to elucidate how a U.N. bureaucracy is any worse than the U.S. one.
While the servers themselves may reside in the US, the organization that controls them is a true international entity.
One not chosen by any democratic process.
No one trusts the U.S. or U.S. based corporations because both have proven themselves to be untrustworthy time and again. We break our treaties and contracts, lie, violate human rights, invade foreign countries without cause, ignore international agreements we have signed, etc. Why should the whole world trust a country that has proven itself so dishonorable and untrustworthy? Governments are supposed to act for the good of those who have elected them. The EU represents Europe and the U.N. represents the world. Now tell me how the U.S. controlling all the root servers and causing a single point of failure for the whole internet serves to benefit either the EU or the world. The U.N. and EU have declared their intentions and are largely in agreement. Now they are hashing out the details of the implementation. I assume this will include the creation of alternate root servers which will eventually be accepted as the primary root servers and a governing body that will regulate and issue TLDs according to the wishes of that body. There is no reason why people have to pay for domains at all, aside from covering infrastructure and administrative fees. Maybe you don't remember when they were free, but some of us do, and there is no reason to pay tithes to U.S. corporations to use the internet. It is a world-wide infrastructure right now and there is no reason to let one country control it. Sorry, this just makes sense.
First, it is my understanding the OS is not installed. Second, they don't offer FreeDOS support. Third, they do offer Linux support. Fourth, I don't know any any such laws and others places (small shops without bulk Windows licenses) do sell machines without OS's. I can certainly buy all of a car minus the engine without any problem. I think you are reaching here. Finally, don't you think including a Linux distro (for which they will sell support) makes more sense than including FreeDOS (which they won't use and for which they won't sell support)? In the first case they have to potential to sell support and in the second they don't, it seems like a pretty obvious business decision to me unless their are other factors that you have not mentioned. Even should they include an OS they won't support, you know they are under no obligation to provide support. I'm still of the opinion that this is likely the result of their Windows purchase agreement.
You're right, I was thinking of AIFF, but the acronym part of my brain had overloaded.
I don't understand the frustrating part. The author tries to make an issue of having to convert iTunes songs into mp3 or WMA. But why would you want to? iTunes also plays songs bought from the iTunes Music store. The only possible reason to do the unweildy conversion is to get rid of DRM.
I disagree with this. There are instances where a person might own an mp3 player (not an ipod) and want their music in mp3 format so they can also listen to it on their portable. In this case the user might not care at all about the DRM, just the format. While the DRM can be removed, iTunes does make the format conversion needlessly obscure. Even once the DRM is removed, to export a CD full of mp3 files a user has to first convert their default import format to mp3 and then export the files. I'm not saying this is any worse than the competition by any means, merely that DRM is not a users concern all the time, just being able to convert format.
So if you were Dell, would you just stick a bunch of parts in a box and ship it, or would you at least want to boot it up first? Maybe run a diagnostic or two?
The hard drives on the boxes are blank, FreeDOS comes only on an included CD. I'd guess they would run their test suite from a CD-ROM. I suspect, however, based upon my experience purchasing from them they just throw it all together and write off the ones that get shipped back because they are DOA as a lesser expense than testing. Your explanation almost fits, but not quite.