that's actually been a pretty common net-wide standard for awhile to block port 25. Logic being that many old spam virus's used to set up an smtp server on the infected machine and start spamming directly from the infected computer bypassing the isp's SMTP server. By blocking port 25 on the outskirts of the ISP network and forcing customer to use their SMTP it allowed better access controls to prevent spam. and more importantly, kept entire ranges of Dynamic IP's from getting blacklisted due to spam.
In the past few years with the increase in teleworking, remote access of email, and personal domain names, as well as the evolution of the spam-virus, that ISP's have moved to allow access to port 25 outside their network, instead doing IP access controls on their outgoing SMTP server, and using SMTP Auth to allow people to connect from outside their network.
Who said it had to be an artist currently signed to one of the labels? Could always be an independant band with some pull. (Radiohead, NiN...etc). The idea is simply a case of giving them a taste of their own medicine, and make them accountable under the same rules they are holding everybody else too.... if not moreso.
As for the cop breaking the law analogy. It happens. But the cops are held to the same laws we are, and often get punishments on the harder side of what you could get. The logic is they are a cop and should've known better. The problem with the **AA right now is that they aren't being held accountable for any of their actions and get to do whatever they want.
Ya know, I was just sitting here thinking. Has anybody ever thought to check some of the lawyer's computers to see if they have "illegal copies" of music on their HDD? or even the RIAA execs? Be interesting to see what would happen if someone....say, and actual Artist... were to go after them and see what kind of defense they'd use.
Actually... That's kind of an interesting political move. Broadband Penetration rates have been a big deal lately within some political circles because of it's connection with education and certain national pride issues. US Broadband penetration has been lagging in rural and some remote areas. It's been this lack of "Broadband for all" that has prompted several Muni and Co-op broadband projects.
Now imagine what would happen politically if all of a sudden we went from 75% broadband penetration rate, to 55%? (Numbers grabbed outa ass and not in any way based on real data) True... the issue is just on paper, instead of fixing the real problem, but it might be enough to cause certain political interests to take notice.
Unfortunately don't think that will happen. The attempt to get cable to open their lines was already made a few years ago http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/24/166228. The loss and ruling in that case was ultimately the decision the bells used to be able to lock 3rd parties out of their next-gen technologies such as FiOS by getting them classified as Information Services as well instead of the traditional Telecommunications Service.
If Nothing more, I could see AT&T and Verizon working with the CableCo's to keep the Cable companies from being forced to open their lines to 3rd parties as it would give ammunition to force them to reopen their new services as well to 3rd parties. (Notice how long it took for Verizon to start rolling out FiOS? and how it's been since the above linked case that we have started to see the aggressive roll-out? )
Well with the Warcraft updates, Blizz DOES have a server which you can download from. If you are behind a firewall the blizz client will sometimes connect to their own server to download the content from, it's just slow as hell. The nice thing is that with the supposed 10mil customers they now have, it makes it a lot quicker to get EVERYBODY patched then it would be if everybody was having to connect to the same choke-point to download the latest 300meg patch to be able to connect to the server.
You can also download the patches from other 3rd party websites. The link if I recall is located within their support site.
But I guess confronting real problems isn't as much fun as kicking religious people, is it?
But isn't that what we do in this country? Not deal with the real problem and instead find the easy scapegoat to blame for all the issues?
"Society is too Violent! It must be the Video Games' Fault!" "Terrorists are attacking! It's all those crazy Islamic's Fault!" "The Economy is Faultering! It's all Bush's Fault" "Kids are having sex! It's all TV/Movies Fault!" "I can't get my Porn and movies fast enough! It's all the ISP Filtering's Fault!"
Since we lead the world in R&D research, and Patents..... What would happen if I registered for a patent for "A Method of learning Maths and Sciences", followed shortly thereafter with "A Method for applying maths and sciences in R&D".
Think I could get some of that R&D Money thru licensing of my patents?
The FCC has actually mandated that cable companies must still provide analog programming to customers for a few years PAST the broadcast cut. They did however a few month ago also rule that the cable companies could provide that analog programming thru the use of a settop box.
I honestly think it would be interesting to see how this ends up playing out. I do know that we are already setting up ADS maps in our region (Analog/Digital Simulcast), but I'm not privy to the long-term plans to know what's coming around the corner or with the upcoming changes.
There are several reasons, Among them:
1. A lot more and technologically more advanced (read: more expensive) equiptment is needed in the headend to provide those digital channels
2. You are getting a LOT more channels (Typical Analog "tier" may be in the neighborhood of 60-90 channels in the under 100 block. Digital you can easily double if not triple+ that). Each channel you get the cable company has to pay the upstream provider for, usually in a per-subscriber payment scheme. Higher cost of programming == higher cost for consumer
3. Increased costs of troubleshooting. With an analog signal if you have noise in the line, you just have to deal with some static or "snow" in the picture. With Digital, because you are cramming more data (channels) within the same frequency range, and it's digitized, noise on the line can cause tiling or a channel to go completely dark. Signal levels are MUCH more important requiring line quality to be that much better. Easy way to look at it.... you have a tap out on the outskirts of the coverage area that everytime it rains the moisture causes interference on the line increasing the noise. Several years ago it wasn't that big a deal. could effect maybe 2-3 channels and they were still watchable. customers were less likely to notice or complain. Today however, that same space taken by those 2-3 channels could now be carrying 20-36 channels and causing constant tiling or the picture to go out. Obviously a MUCH bigger customer impact and therefor not something that can be let to slide.
4. In some areas analog only service may be artificially cheaper because today it's primarily lower income and older customers who have no upgraded to digital. Besides allowing these customers access to cable channels they are used to having, there could even be some franchise agreements that impose some sort of price control on analog channels as they may be seen as providing a community service/utility.
I'm pretty sure that Cable has not been allowed to completely darken the analog channels and move them to digital. I personally can forsee that the upcoming broadcast analog change could have a big effect for cable companies too since they've gotten the ruling that while they must still provide support for analog televisions, than can do so by the use of a settop box.
So are we saying that the fact that all these loan companies are failing or are in trouble now is because of a software bug and not because people can't pay their bills?
Ya know... just thought about this for a second, and the big problem with that idea is that for all intents and purposes, the old Graphic Adventure genre of games is dead. They died out before the current age of mainstream gaming really hit it's stride. The problem with that? Because these games are 1. old and 2. not really publically well-known, you end up having a harder time convincing studios to use the stories in a movie form. They don't have the "built in audience" of say a Resident Evil, Silent Hill, or even Wing Commander. The result, we are much less likely to see a quality adaptation of the game, and could end up with some questionable content like the old Maniac Mansion TV series.
I would almost LOVE to see Grim Fandango as a movie. First time I played that game I honestly felt that it was probably easily one of the best over-all stories I'd ever come across in any medium. Even better, Doesn't Lucas already have the rights to the story since it was done by their game division?
Good in theory, not so much in practice. Actually... don't know if it's so much in theory either. The Old testament has a lot of the same eye-for-an-eye / Remove the offending part kind of violent justice as I believe the Islamic texts may have. It wasn't until the new testmament in the bible that the whole 'turn the other cheek' message really became such a large part of the teachings. Considering it wasn't until Christ that the Christian church and Judism split, that would mean that the Jewish texts still have that message of how to perform justice.
Now, Outside of just basing it off texts, let's look at actions. I believe it can be safely said that the Christian church has been responsible for more bloodshed this Millenia than other other religion. The death toll of the Crusades was in itself an extremely high number.... then you can factor in all the violence committed upon people who were believed to have spoken heresy or blaspheme against the church during the earlier part of the Millenia. People who had disagreements with the church proper were prosecuted thru-out the Christian Church's history. It wasn't really until the Great Reformation with Martin Luther splitting off from the Catholic church and creating the Protestant denominations that you started seeing things become a little more civilized. Of course, this had another couple of benefits for christianity. It set a precedant that to this day you still being used. If a group of people have a disagreement on an interpretation of the Bible, or even basic Theology, they can split from the church and become a new Denomination. This has gotten to the extreme that today you even have a large number of "non-demoniational" churches. Besides acting as a bit of a release valve for some of the tensions that come up...it's also decentralized things and kind of weakened the ability for one interpretation of the Bible to be used to control people. There's also the political / PR factor that if an offshoot goes crazy, they can easily be written off as a bunch of crazy quacks and not part of the church proper.
I Believe Islamic faiths are still a bit more centralized in the overall scheme of things. This makes it easier for a set group to have a power base over a large number of people. In many ways....The faith has not been diluted thru the course of history as other current modern religions have. Yes, we may see some of the ways which the church has police authority over large groups of people (and nations) as a bit....well....backward, but in many ways Europe dealt with some of the same issues in it's past when the pope had a lot more political control over the world.
Honestly, From typing my responses to comments on these lines of debate I've started to come to a bit of a personal realization. A lot of the issues which people are blaming the middle-east for, and islamic faiths out of that area....Europeans and the christian faith have already gone thru. I would almost say it's almost like some growing pains that a people and religion will go thru. Admittedly I'm no expert on history, especcially for that part of the world, but if you look it would see that it's only been in recent history (past 100 years or so?) that that part of the world has started it's trek to 'modernize' and connect with the world as a whole while under it's own leadership (not colonized by outsiders). The European countries for centuries had their interconnected world....full of wars, and tied together thru the Pope for centuries. The Pope said Jump, and the countries obeyed. Even here in the USA we have the advantage of basically being seeded by the existing european social evolution, and ended up becoming a big melting pot. Those countries in the Middle east had their culture.... and at one point the european powers came in and basically colonized them and said "This is the way you are going to do things". It's only been since the American Revolution that the colonization of remote ter
People who burned crosses in yards did not do so in an attempt to convert them to Christianity. It was a lower case T, for "Time to Leave" (Southpark joke). Seriously now, it was intimidation to get minorities, usually blacks to leave town or stop making trouble. It was NOT a religious statement. So trying to equate a burning cross with a crucifix is not a correct comparison.
But isn't the motive for some islamic terrorists to try and convince those they see as outsiders to get out of their backyard/part of the world. For instance... Some don't like Israel being there, and due to our support of Israel we are considered part of the problem.
In general, Terror/Fear is used for 2 primary reasons. To try and get people to lose resolve (Get out!), or to control a people. This whole situation we are seeing it used both ways. The Terror groups are using it to try and get us to back out of the area/fight they feel they are in there; and our own Gov'ment is using fear to control the american public.
The problem which I see here is that in many ways this is NOT a religious issue. There are a lot of gripes which that part of the world has with us and others that are not based off the different religious beliefs. But rather than deal with those gripes, or even acknowlege them, It is a lot easier to say it's due to religious differences. (Personally, from part of my understanding, some of those gripes date back to the crusades, so yes, there may be a religious start. but Christians were far from innocent during the crusades..and enough time has passed where whatever gripes there may be have evolved beyond the religious issues that may have started them).
Attacks on abortion clinics and doctors was decried by all Christians with the exception of those doing the crime. As a result, there have not been abortion clinic attacks in over 10 years. Even then, those attacks were targeted. Who was the target of 9-11? Have you seen the mothers of abortion clinic bombers proudly displaying their sons pictures and claiming them to be martyrs? Did these mothers receive large payments from religions leaders around the world?
In Today's media, what's going to get better ratings....Showing the "bad guys" as being a fringe group and all the other 'spokes-people' who are decrying their actions? Or painting them as 2 dimensional bad guys? For that matter, is today's mass general public in this country even going to care, or intelligent enough to realize there's more to the story they get thru mainstream national sources? There have been, especcially at the beginning of all this, MANY groups which came out and decried the terrorist acts...you just didn't hear about them much over here.
There are also many social issues at play here. Some of these people only know about Islam what they are told by their teachers. They only know about Christianity what they are told. The EXACT same thing can be said about things over here. Most people only know about christianity what they are told. They only know about islam what they are told. There are some nut-job cults and groups here in the US which have some very radical interpretations of the Bible. Occasionally you see some pop their head up (Branch Davidians?)... but for now many are sitting quiet. (some with major stockpiles of their own). Why are the leaders/nutjob groups in Islamic religions any different from these Christian groups? I honestly can't say I know for certain, but could even the lack of alternative sources of information such as the same internet access we have here, or even our mass media (with all it's flaws), limit the access of alternative points of view over there from their local leaders.
It's LONG been known that religion is a great way to control people or get into/stay in power. Just because somebody claims to be a religious leader and has large numbers of people following them.... o
Ok... I know that this is going to probably be considered troll-y by some, and I do not mean to be. This post is just to ask a simple question.
By grouping an entire religion due to certain tactics of fanatics who claim to follow those beliefs, and then assuming that that same problem does not exist within another, doesn't sound quite right to me.
Here in the US you have groups claiming to be Christian who for decades would burn crosses to terrorize an entire section of the population... and perform all sorts of murders and other crimes against those segments of population for the express purpose of causing fear. More recently, you have people claiming to be Christian blowing up abortion clinics because they do not agree with the idea.
If you ask me, No religion is really free from having people claiming to follow it doing really stupid things. The real differences I see is that when it is the religion you believe in (or are just more familiar with) it is a lot easier to see the person as a crazy person with his own agenda hiding behind the religious beliefs. It also doesn't help that unlike christianity which has such a large coverage over the globe today that it's almost impossible to associate it with one skin tone, culture, or part of the world. Islam however, while also having a very large world-wide following, seems a bit easier to "define"...
Yes... there are some legitimate religion based issues that exist here. (thinking the whole grudge about the crusades doesn't help). But there are also much LARGER and more important issues that need to be addressed. Unfortunately human nature and the way things are currently being handled definately doesn't help the situation... from either side.
The point of my post was how thinking that the REAL ID is the solution to the fake-ID problem, is just kidding yourself on the realities of the world. While I personally believe there is a much larger, and less, "honest", reason why the idea has been push, I also fully realize the herd mentality of the nation as a whole when a story or issue like this surfaces. I intentionally tried to avoid a tinfoil hate brigade tone to the original post.
In other examples of the situation, Let's just look at a VERY simple real-world verifiable way in which they have used "terrorists" and 9/11 to push something down our throat that actually has uses that have no actually reference to the way it was sold to the public. Yes people, I'm refering to our favorite piece of post-9/11 legislation....The Patriot Act. Or to be more specific, one simple clause that's in it that we can now see every day.
This past summer I developed a nasty chest-cold due to allergies causing some complications. I go to Walmart to buy some simple over-the-counter medication to help me clear out. The medication I wanted I discovered is now behind the counter, with a notice stating "Due to the Patriot Act we must now verify the ID of anybody wanting to purchase xxxxx medications". Now what does cold/allergy medication have to do with middle-east terrorists or 9/11? Nothing. I has to do with good ole' boys cooking meth with massive ammounts of this medication. Several states had enacted laws limited the purchase, and/or requiring ID for the medication to help cut down access to the ingredients for manufacturing illegal drugs.....But the federal government throws a federal level law in the Patriot act because they know people won't question it because of Terrorists.
Ok... now I don't have a problem with it. I get a cold and have to show ID. big whoop. But it's a perfect example of how it's become common over the past several years for the powers that be to take something that they want to pass, or to give themselves powers that they want to have, and then package it and market it as something "to protect us against terrorists"... and the people buy it without question.
Ya... i have issues with the Government. Sadly, I have more issues with the current state of the public at large where we have become content to not question anything, and can no longer have a meaningful public discussion when we disagree on a topic without it degrading into an insult filled shouting match that has people accusing their neighbor of being un-american. Call me crazy, but I thought part of the job and responsibility of being an American was to help provide the additional checks and balances to the governmental system.
Not neccessarily. How are the everyday businesses you visit going to verify that the ID is a Valid ID and not just a good-looking forgery, unless they too have scanners that have access to said national database to query the card against? Or is it going to be like the cards/scanners mentioned in yesterday's story on anonymous drinking (too lazy to link)? In that case the bar-code is a simple open format that is easy to crack, and a mag stripe you can always demagnetize.
And just like bars today that swipe ID's, instead of making it harder to create a fake ID, It makes the people checking the ID's less observant and allows them to easily just rely on the technology. IOW's... It's another great way for the public as a whole to pop their head in the sand and say we are secure when in reality we've not really improved anything and possibly even removed some of the accountability people once had in preventing the fraud.
In a related bit..... Think about this.. What do you need to get a state issued ID? Social Security Card? Birth Certificate? Well.... What do you need to get a replacement Social Security Card? Not much other than filling out some paperwork and your Birth Certificate. Soooooo, what do you need to get you birth certificate? In many areas, you just need to go down to the local dept of health and request a copy of it. Not very hard to do at all. Even easier, you could use a service like VitalChek and not even have to show up in person to request the Birth Certificate......And that's assuming that you are using a real Birth Certificate. There isn't really any system set up where the DMV can verify that the certificate your giving them is officially issued. The only thing on them that "proves" they are real is a simple notery-style Official Seal crimped in the paper.
An ID system is only as strong as it's weakest link. And right now we have a MASSIVELY weak link in the process for birth Certificates which this is not changing. All this does (not including potential privacy concerns) is give everybody a warm fuzzy cause they think they are doing something to better the situation.
Slashdot Mirror
So late comer to the conversation, and didn't see any other mention of it....But did anybody else notice the TARDIS / Police box on the book cover?
that's actually been a pretty common net-wide standard for awhile to block port 25. Logic being that many old spam virus's used to set up an smtp server on the infected machine and start spamming directly from the infected computer bypassing the isp's SMTP server. By blocking port 25 on the outskirts of the ISP network and forcing customer to use their SMTP it allowed better access controls to prevent spam. and more importantly, kept entire ranges of Dynamic IP's from getting blacklisted due to spam.
In the past few years with the increase in teleworking, remote access of email, and personal domain names, as well as the evolution of the spam-virus, that ISP's have moved to allow access to port 25 outside their network, instead doing IP access controls on their outgoing SMTP server, and using SMTP Auth to allow people to connect from outside their network.
Great idea. Somebody let me know when the Pay Per View event hits Piratebay! :-)
Who said it had to be an artist currently signed to one of the labels? Could always be an independant band with some pull. (Radiohead, NiN...etc). The idea is simply a case of giving them a taste of their own medicine, and make them accountable under the same rules they are holding everybody else too.... if not moreso.
As for the cop breaking the law analogy. It happens. But the cops are held to the same laws we are, and often get punishments on the harder side of what you could get. The logic is they are a cop and should've known better. The problem with the **AA right now is that they aren't being held accountable for any of their actions and get to do whatever they want.
Ya know, I was just sitting here thinking. Has anybody ever thought to check some of the lawyer's computers to see if they have "illegal copies" of music on their HDD? or even the RIAA execs? Be interesting to see what would happen if someone....say, and actual Artist... were to go after them and see what kind of defense they'd use.
Call me crazy, But I think I see a PREVIEW button right next to the SUBMIT button.
Dude! If you are gonna play Red Dragon, Why not use the RIPterm client so you can get full on graphics and not just Ansi?!
Actually... That's kind of an interesting political move. Broadband Penetration rates have been a big deal lately within some political circles because of it's connection with education and certain national pride issues. US Broadband penetration has been lagging in rural and some remote areas. It's been this lack of "Broadband for all" that has prompted several Muni and Co-op broadband projects.
Now imagine what would happen politically if all of a sudden we went from 75% broadband penetration rate, to 55%? (Numbers grabbed outa ass and not in any way based on real data) True... the issue is just on paper, instead of fixing the real problem, but it might be enough to cause certain political interests to take notice.
Unfortunately don't think that will happen. The attempt to get cable to open their lines was already made a few years ago http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/24/166228. The loss and ruling in that case was ultimately the decision the bells used to be able to lock 3rd parties out of their next-gen technologies such as FiOS by getting them classified as Information Services as well instead of the traditional Telecommunications Service.
If Nothing more, I could see AT&T and Verizon working with the CableCo's to keep the Cable companies from being forced to open their lines to 3rd parties as it would give ammunition to force them to reopen their new services as well to 3rd parties. (Notice how long it took for Verizon to start rolling out FiOS? and how it's been since the above linked case that we have started to see the aggressive roll-out? )
Well with the Warcraft updates, Blizz DOES have a server which you can download from. If you are behind a firewall the blizz client will sometimes connect to their own server to download the content from, it's just slow as hell. The nice thing is that with the supposed 10mil customers they now have, it makes it a lot quicker to get EVERYBODY patched then it would be if everybody was having to connect to the same choke-point to download the latest 300meg patch to be able to connect to the server.
You can also download the patches from other 3rd party websites. The link if I recall is located within their support site.
HAHA... and then I remember a few years back when the Salvation Army was staying at the same hotel which DragonCon was being held at in Atlanta.
Any group which can pretty much peacefully co-exist with the geekdom and counter-culture that is a huge mega convention is alright in my book.
(And I've heard numerous stories post-con of the Salvo people showing up in the hotel bars after-hours.... or even a few at room-parties)
But isn't that what we do in this country? Not deal with the real problem and instead find the easy scapegoat to blame for all the issues?
"Society is too Violent! It must be the Video Games' Fault!" "Terrorists are attacking! It's all those crazy Islamic's Fault!" "The Economy is Faultering! It's all Bush's Fault" "Kids are having sex! It's all TV/Movies Fault!" "I can't get my Porn and movies fast enough! It's all the ISP Filtering's Fault!"
ok... a bit extreme.. but you get the idea.
Since we lead the world in R&D research, and Patents..... What would happen if I registered for a patent for "A Method of learning Maths and Sciences", followed shortly thereafter with "A Method for applying maths and sciences in R&D".
Think I could get some of that R&D Money thru licensing of my patents?
The FCC has actually mandated that cable companies must still provide analog programming to customers for a few years PAST the broadcast cut. They did however a few month ago also rule that the cable companies could provide that analog programming thru the use of a settop box.
I honestly think it would be interesting to see how this ends up playing out. I do know that we are already setting up ADS maps in our region (Analog/Digital Simulcast), but I'm not privy to the long-term plans to know what's coming around the corner or with the upcoming changes.
There are several reasons, Among them:
1. A lot more and technologically more advanced (read: more expensive) equiptment is needed in the headend to provide those digital channels
2. You are getting a LOT more channels (Typical Analog "tier" may be in the neighborhood of 60-90 channels in the under 100 block. Digital you can easily double if not triple+ that). Each channel you get the cable company has to pay the upstream provider for, usually in a per-subscriber payment scheme. Higher cost of programming == higher cost for consumer
3. Increased costs of troubleshooting. With an analog signal if you have noise in the line, you just have to deal with some static or "snow" in the picture. With Digital, because you are cramming more data (channels) within the same frequency range, and it's digitized, noise on the line can cause tiling or a channel to go completely dark. Signal levels are MUCH more important requiring line quality to be that much better. Easy way to look at it.... you have a tap out on the outskirts of the coverage area that everytime it rains the moisture causes interference on the line increasing the noise. Several years ago it wasn't that big a deal. could effect maybe 2-3 channels and they were still watchable. customers were less likely to notice or complain. Today however, that same space taken by those 2-3 channels could now be carrying 20-36 channels and causing constant tiling or the picture to go out. Obviously a MUCH bigger customer impact and therefor not something that can be let to slide.
4. In some areas analog only service may be artificially cheaper because today it's primarily lower income and older customers who have no upgraded to digital. Besides allowing these customers access to cable channels they are used to having, there could even be some franchise agreements that impose some sort of price control on analog channels as they may be seen as providing a community service/utility.
I'm pretty sure that Cable has not been allowed to completely darken the analog channels and move them to digital. I personally can forsee that the upcoming broadcast analog change could have a big effect for cable companies too since they've gotten the ruling that while they must still provide support for analog televisions, than can do so by the use of a settop box.
As we used to say in the Trenches of Tech Support...
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people."
So are we saying that the fact that all these loan companies are failing or are in trouble now is because of a software bug and not because people can't pay their bills?
Screw the Hero.....Ginger Lynn was the friggin Mechanic!
Makes you wonder what they did in the down-time...;-)
Ya know... just thought about this for a second, and the big problem with that idea is that for all intents and purposes, the old Graphic Adventure genre of games is dead. They died out before the current age of mainstream gaming really hit it's stride. The problem with that? Because these games are 1. old and 2. not really publically well-known, you end up having a harder time convincing studios to use the stories in a movie form. They don't have the "built in audience" of say a Resident Evil, Silent Hill, or even Wing Commander. The result, we are much less likely to see a quality adaptation of the game, and could end up with some questionable content like the old Maniac Mansion TV series.
I would almost LOVE to see Grim Fandango as a movie. First time I played that game I honestly felt that it was probably easily one of the best over-all stories I'd ever come across in any medium. Even better, Doesn't Lucas already have the rights to the story since it was done by their game division?
Good in theory, not so much in practice. Actually... don't know if it's so much in theory either. The Old testament has a lot of the same eye-for-an-eye / Remove the offending part kind of violent justice as I believe the Islamic texts may have. It wasn't until the new testmament in the bible that the whole 'turn the other cheek' message really became such a large part of the teachings. Considering it wasn't until Christ that the Christian church and Judism split, that would mean that the Jewish texts still have that message of how to perform justice.
Now, Outside of just basing it off texts, let's look at actions. I believe it can be safely said that the Christian church has been responsible for more bloodshed this Millenia than other other religion. The death toll of the Crusades was in itself an extremely high number.... then you can factor in all the violence committed upon people who were believed to have spoken heresy or blaspheme against the church during the earlier part of the Millenia. People who had disagreements with the church proper were prosecuted thru-out the Christian Church's history. It wasn't really until the Great Reformation with Martin Luther splitting off from the Catholic church and creating the Protestant denominations that you started seeing things become a little more civilized. Of course, this had another couple of benefits for christianity. It set a precedant that to this day you still being used. If a group of people have a disagreement on an interpretation of the Bible, or even basic Theology, they can split from the church and become a new Denomination. This has gotten to the extreme that today you even have a large number of "non-demoniational" churches. Besides acting as a bit of a release valve for some of the tensions that come up...it's also decentralized things and kind of weakened the ability for one interpretation of the Bible to be used to control people. There's also the political / PR factor that if an offshoot goes crazy, they can easily be written off as a bunch of crazy quacks and not part of the church proper.
I Believe Islamic faiths are still a bit more centralized in the overall scheme of things. This makes it easier for a set group to have a power base over a large number of people. In many ways....The faith has not been diluted thru the course of history as other current modern religions have. Yes, we may see some of the ways which the church has police authority over large groups of people (and nations) as a bit....well....backward, but in many ways Europe dealt with some of the same issues in it's past when the pope had a lot more political control over the world.
Honestly, From typing my responses to comments on these lines of debate I've started to come to a bit of a personal realization. A lot of the issues which people are blaming the middle-east for, and islamic faiths out of that area....Europeans and the christian faith have already gone thru. I would almost say it's almost like some growing pains that a people and religion will go thru. Admittedly I'm no expert on history, especcially for that part of the world, but if you look it would see that it's only been in recent history (past 100 years or so?) that that part of the world has started it's trek to 'modernize' and connect with the world as a whole while under it's own leadership (not colonized by outsiders). The European countries for centuries had their interconnected world....full of wars, and tied together thru the Pope for centuries. The Pope said Jump, and the countries obeyed. Even here in the USA we have the advantage of basically being seeded by the existing european social evolution, and ended up becoming a big melting pot. Those countries in the Middle east had their culture.... and at one point the european powers came in and basically colonized them and said "This is the way you are going to do things". It's only been since the American Revolution that the colonization of remote ter
But isn't the motive for some islamic terrorists to try and convince those they see as outsiders to get out of their backyard/part of the world. For instance... Some don't like Israel being there, and due to our support of Israel we are considered part of the problem.
In general, Terror/Fear is used for 2 primary reasons. To try and get people to lose resolve (Get out!), or to control a people. This whole situation we are seeing it used both ways. The Terror groups are using it to try and get us to back out of the area/fight they feel they are in there; and our own Gov'ment is using fear to control the american public.
The problem which I see here is that in many ways this is NOT a religious issue. There are a lot of gripes which that part of the world has with us and others that are not based off the different religious beliefs. But rather than deal with those gripes, or even acknowlege them, It is a lot easier to say it's due to religious differences. (Personally, from part of my understanding, some of those gripes date back to the crusades, so yes, there may be a religious start. but Christians were far from innocent during the crusades..and enough time has passed where whatever gripes there may be have evolved beyond the religious issues that may have started them).
In Today's media, what's going to get better ratings....Showing the "bad guys" as being a fringe group and all the other 'spokes-people' who are decrying their actions? Or painting them as 2 dimensional bad guys? For that matter, is today's mass general public in this country even going to care, or intelligent enough to realize there's more to the story they get thru mainstream national sources? There have been, especcially at the beginning of all this, MANY groups which came out and decried the terrorist acts...you just didn't hear about them much over here.
There are also many social issues at play here. Some of these people only know about Islam what they are told by their teachers. They only know about Christianity what they are told. The EXACT same thing can be said about things over here. Most people only know about christianity what they are told. They only know about islam what they are told. There are some nut-job cults and groups here in the US which have some very radical interpretations of the Bible. Occasionally you see some pop their head up (Branch Davidians?)... but for now many are sitting quiet. (some with major stockpiles of their own). Why are the leaders/nutjob groups in Islamic religions any different from these Christian groups? I honestly can't say I know for certain, but could even the lack of alternative sources of information such as the same internet access we have here, or even our mass media (with all it's flaws), limit the access of alternative points of view over there from their local leaders.
It's LONG been known that religion is a great way to control people or get into/stay in power. Just because somebody claims to be a religious leader and has large numbers of people following them.... o
Ok... I know that this is going to probably be considered troll-y by some, and I do not mean to be. This post is just to ask a simple question.
By grouping an entire religion due to certain tactics of fanatics who claim to follow those beliefs, and then assuming that that same problem does not exist within another, doesn't sound quite right to me.
Here in the US you have groups claiming to be Christian who for decades would burn crosses to terrorize an entire section of the population... and perform all sorts of murders and other crimes against those segments of population for the express purpose of causing fear. More recently, you have people claiming to be Christian blowing up abortion clinics because they do not agree with the idea.
If you ask me, No religion is really free from having people claiming to follow it doing really stupid things. The real differences I see is that when it is the religion you believe in (or are just more familiar with) it is a lot easier to see the person as a crazy person with his own agenda hiding behind the religious beliefs. It also doesn't help that unlike christianity which has such a large coverage over the globe today that it's almost impossible to associate it with one skin tone, culture, or part of the world. Islam however, while also having a very large world-wide following, seems a bit easier to "define"...
Yes... there are some legitimate religion based issues that exist here. (thinking the whole grudge about the crusades doesn't help). But there are also much LARGER and more important issues that need to be addressed. Unfortunately human nature and the way things are currently being handled definately doesn't help the situation... from either side.
The point of my post was how thinking that the REAL ID is the solution to the fake-ID problem, is just kidding yourself on the realities of the world. While I personally believe there is a much larger, and less, "honest", reason why the idea has been push, I also fully realize the herd mentality of the nation as a whole when a story or issue like this surfaces. I intentionally tried to avoid a tinfoil hate brigade tone to the original post.
In other examples of the situation, Let's just look at a VERY simple real-world verifiable way in which they have used "terrorists" and 9/11 to push something down our throat that actually has uses that have no actually reference to the way it was sold to the public. Yes people, I'm refering to our favorite piece of post-9/11 legislation....The Patriot Act. Or to be more specific, one simple clause that's in it that we can now see every day.
This past summer I developed a nasty chest-cold due to allergies causing some complications. I go to Walmart to buy some simple over-the-counter medication to help me clear out. The medication I wanted I discovered is now behind the counter, with a notice stating "Due to the Patriot Act we must now verify the ID of anybody wanting to purchase xxxxx medications". Now what does cold/allergy medication have to do with middle-east terrorists or 9/11? Nothing. I has to do with good ole' boys cooking meth with massive ammounts of this medication. Several states had enacted laws limited the purchase, and/or requiring ID for the medication to help cut down access to the ingredients for manufacturing illegal drugs.....But the federal government throws a federal level law in the Patriot act because they know people won't question it because of Terrorists.
Ok... now I don't have a problem with it. I get a cold and have to show ID. big whoop. But it's a perfect example of how it's become common over the past several years for the powers that be to take something that they want to pass, or to give themselves powers that they want to have, and then package it and market it as something "to protect us against terrorists"... and the people buy it without question.
Ya... i have issues with the Government. Sadly, I have more issues with the current state of the public at large where we have become content to not question anything, and can no longer have a meaningful public discussion when we disagree on a topic without it degrading into an insult filled shouting match that has people accusing their neighbor of being un-american. Call me crazy, but I thought part of the job and responsibility of being an American was to help provide the additional checks and balances to the governmental system.
Not neccessarily. How are the everyday businesses you visit going to verify that the ID is a Valid ID and not just a good-looking forgery, unless they too have scanners that have access to said national database to query the card against? Or is it going to be like the cards/scanners mentioned in yesterday's story on anonymous drinking (too lazy to link)? In that case the bar-code is a simple open format that is easy to crack, and a mag stripe you can always demagnetize.
And just like bars today that swipe ID's, instead of making it harder to create a fake ID, It makes the people checking the ID's less observant and allows them to easily just rely on the technology. IOW's... It's another great way for the public as a whole to pop their head in the sand and say we are secure when in reality we've not really improved anything and possibly even removed some of the accountability people once had in preventing the fraud.
In a related bit..... Think about this.. What do you need to get a state issued ID? Social Security Card? Birth Certificate? Well.... What do you need to get a replacement Social Security Card? Not much other than filling out some paperwork and your Birth Certificate. Soooooo, what do you need to get you birth certificate? In many areas, you just need to go down to the local dept of health and request a copy of it. Not very hard to do at all. Even easier, you could use a service like VitalChek and not even have to show up in person to request the Birth Certificate......And that's assuming that you are using a real Birth Certificate. There isn't really any system set up where the DMV can verify that the certificate your giving them is officially issued. The only thing on them that "proves" they are real is a simple notery-style Official Seal crimped in the paper.
An ID system is only as strong as it's weakest link. And right now we have a MASSIVELY weak link in the process for birth Certificates which this is not changing. All this does (not including potential privacy concerns) is give everybody a warm fuzzy cause they think they are doing something to better the situation.