Re: EncFS
On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Damian Gerow wrote: Thus spake Userbeam Remailer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [27/04/05 02:33]: : EncFS provides an encrypted filesystem in user-space. It runs without : any special permissions and uses the FUSE library and Linux kernel : module to provide the filesystem interface. You can find links to : source and binary releases below. It also doesn't do locking. There was nothing below. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: EncFS
On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Damian Gerow wrote: Thus spake Userbeam Remailer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [27/04/05 02:33]: : EncFS provides an encrypted filesystem in user-space. It runs without : any special permissions and uses the FUSE library and Linux kernel : module to provide the filesystem interface. You can find links to : source and binary releases below. It also doesn't do locking. There was nothing below. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: When the Taliban came in to power, they seemed to offer some stability, albeit at a price. And I'd bet a lot of people in the shoes of the Afghanis would have been willing to pay that price. An afghani is a unit of currency, worth much less than a penny. The people who live there are Afghans or Afghanistanis or just Afs. I know it's a trivial point, but for those of us who have actually spent some time there -- and to the Afghans, of course -- it grates. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: When the Taliban came in to power, they seemed to offer some stability, albeit at a price. And I'd bet a lot of people in the shoes of the Afghanis would have been willing to pay that price. An afghani is a unit of currency, worth much less than a penny. The people who live there are Afghans or Afghanistanis or just Afs. I know it's a trivial point, but for those of us who have actually spent some time there -- and to the Afghans, of course -- it grates. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Terror in the Skies, Again?
On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, ken wrote: Sounds to me like Al-Qaeda is just getting the most mileage they can out of their little PR Event a couple of years ago. They don't even need to blow up anything to get the most bang for their buck. Hell, in this story the biggest threat was the incompetence of the airline. Assuming its true (*) the one security breach is the action of the cabin crew member who tried to reassure this woman by going on about air marshalls. That security breach should certainly get them sacked, and probably interrogated by the men in cheap suits. Or does she assume that apparently nervous middle-aged middle-class white women can't be bombers? (*) (which it might be, US print journalistic standards are higher than our British ones - if I read this in a UK paper like the Dally Mail or the Sun I'd assume it was some rambling racist fantasy put ion as political propaganda - on the other hand our broadcast journalism is mostly better than yours, so there) The article was reprinted in the News Review section of yesterday's Sunday Times (which Americans seem to prefer calling the London Times). -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Terror in the Skies, Again?
On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, ken wrote: Sounds to me like Al-Qaeda is just getting the most mileage they can out of their little PR Event a couple of years ago. They don't even need to blow up anything to get the most bang for their buck. Hell, in this story the biggest threat was the incompetence of the airline. Assuming its true (*) the one security breach is the action of the cabin crew member who tried to reassure this woman by going on about air marshalls. That security breach should certainly get them sacked, and probably interrogated by the men in cheap suits. Or does she assume that apparently nervous middle-aged middle-class white women can't be bombers? (*) (which it might be, US print journalistic standards are higher than our British ones - if I read this in a UK paper like the Dally Mail or the Sun I'd assume it was some rambling racist fantasy put ion as political propaganda - on the other hand our broadcast journalism is mostly better than yours, so there) The article was reprinted in the News Review section of yesterday's Sunday Times (which Americans seem to prefer calling the London Times). -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: SciAm: The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, R. A. Hettinga wrote: characters of Voynichese into Roman letters. An example from folio 78R of the manuscript reads: qokedy qokedy dal qokedy qokedy. This degree of repetition is not found in any known language. Arabic (my transliteration of what I was taught, may actually be Dari): lah ilahah ilahlah muhammed ur rasul allah (There is but one God and Muhammaed is his prophet.) English, Gertrude Stein: a rose is a rose is a rose. 7,320 hits on Google, some with more roses. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: SciAm: The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, R. A. Hettinga wrote: characters of Voynichese into Roman letters. An example from folio 78R of the manuscript reads: qokedy qokedy dal qokedy qokedy. This degree of repetition is not found in any known language. Arabic (my transliteration of what I was taught, may actually be Dari): lah ilahah ilahlah muhammed ur rasul allah (There is but one God and Muhammaed is his prophet.) English, Gertrude Stein: a rose is a rose is a rose. 7,320 hits on Google, some with more roses. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Multiple copies of messages
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004, Shawn K. Quinn wrote: Just today, I started getting multiple copies of each message. Am I the only person this is happening to? Three copies of your message received so far. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Multiple copies of messages
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004, Shawn K. Quinn wrote: Just today, I started getting multiple copies of each message. Am I the only person this is happening to? Three copies of your message received so far. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies
to drop packets statistically. And some allow you to ignore pings and traceroutes ;-) At the same time, I also disagree with you. If your POV is a single host, it sees the internet as a tree. Sorry. I have spent too many long hours probing the Internet from single hosts to accept this. If you understand what you are looking at, you see something much more complicated than a tree. In fact, one of the properties of trees is that you pick up any leaf node and designate it as the root. There are different types of trees. Most discussions of 'trees' are about rooted trees, which are directed acyclic graphs with one and only one root. However, all trees are acyclic. The Internet isn't. Of course, most of this discussion revolves around one word: is. If you said the Internet _can be seen_ as a tree, few would disagree with you, especially if you allowed for the fact that that tree is continuously changing its shape. But the Internet _is_ a tree? That's simply an error. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies
to drop packets statistically. And some allow you to ignore pings and traceroutes ;-) At the same time, I also disagree with you. If your POV is a single host, it sees the internet as a tree. Sorry. I have spent too many long hours probing the Internet from single hosts to accept this. If you understand what you are looking at, you see something much more complicated than a tree. In fact, one of the properties of trees is that you pick up any leaf node and designate it as the root. There are different types of trees. Most discussions of 'trees' are about rooted trees, which are directed acyclic graphs with one and only one root. However, all trees are acyclic. The Internet isn't. Of course, most of this discussion revolves around one word: is. If you said the Internet _can be seen_ as a tree, few would disagree with you, especially if you allowed for the fact that that tree is continuously changing its shape. But the Internet _is_ a tree? That's simply an error. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies - the internet is a tree.
On Sat, 10 Apr 2004, sunder wrote: Yes. I know what a tree is, and I am quite familiar with structure of the Internet. These very pretty pictures certainly look like the Internet I am familiar with, but don't resemble trees. It is a tree. I'll give you a hint. Think of this: God is like an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. Nicholas of Cusa. Let me give you a hint: a tree is an acyclic graph. The Internet shown in Eugen's pretty pictures is defined by BGP4 peerings between autonomous systems. It is highly cyclic, because everyone wants it that way. As a network, a tree is a delicate structure: any break in links fragments the network. Network engineers spend a lot of time making sure that their networks, and the Internet, are not trees. Multiple peering and transit relationships make the network robust - and cyclic. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies
On Sat, 10 Apr 2004, Eugen Leitl wrote: Yes. I know what a tree is, and I am quite familiar with structure of the Internet. These very pretty pictures certainly look like the Internet I am familiar with, but don't resemble trees. There's a continuum between a tree and a high-dimensional grid/mesh/lattice. A tree as the term is used in mathematics and computer science has a single root. A continuum has an infinite number of points in it. A grid ... none of these terms has anything much to do with one another. It isn't a minor point that the Internet is fractal. This is in fact what is consistent everywhere and has been, to the best of my knowledge, throughout the history of the Internet. If you go back to your pretty pictures and look, you will see fractal structures. Dude, hypergrids *are* fractal. Not that it has to do anything with the current topology. I don't know why you introduce hypergrids. But you might consult a mathematical dictionary - the term seems irrelevant to the current discussion. A geodesic is a minimal path in whatever geometry you are talking about. The geometry on Earth surface is anything but whatever. Way above, with nodes in mutual plain view, it's plain old Einstein-Minkowski (basically Euclidian, with relativistic corrections). The geometry on Earth surface is anything but whatever? Sorry, this makes no sense. However, a geodesic remains a path of minimal length in the geometry under consideration. Or so it was when I last did some reading in finite dimensional metric spaces. I'm claiming peering arrangement evolve to make optimal use of given physical cabling. This is quick. As the term is normally used, peering is the settlement-free exchange of trafic between autonomous systems (ASNs). Settlement-free means that no consideration ($$$) is paid. This has bugger all to do with cabling. On the longer term, physical and virtual (radio, laser) cabling evolves to minimize the load on existing links. This is slower, peering arrangements change in realtime in comparison, very like Franck-Condon principle. Peering arrangements generally involve legal departments, and rarely change once inked. In the real world, peering policies normally reflect a mixture of common sense and total misunderstanding of what the Internet is about. Some networks just peer with anyone; some have incredibly detailed contracts and involve months of negotiation. When senior management is involved, they quite often have a telco background, and think that peering has something to do with SS7. That is, they try to insist that the Internet is really just the same as the voice telephone network, and BGP4 is SS7. The results are often comic. The end result is that most UK Internet traffic, and a large part of European traffic, passes through what used to be a more or less derelict area of East London, all because of a planning error on the part of some Tokyo-based banks. A nexus is a classical tree artifact. Once the network progresses along a meshed grid hugging Earth surface, we're going to see an increase in crosslinks and exchange points, crosslinking the branches. What do you think nexus means?? Conventional definition: -- n. pl. nexus or nexuses 1. A means of connection; a link or tie: this nexus between New York's... real-estate investors and its... politicians (Wall Street Journal). 2. A connected series or group. 3. The core or center: The real nexus of the money culture [was] Wall Street (Bill Barol). -- As Lewis Carroll tried to make clear a long long time ago, it isn't very useful to conduct arguments by redefining words as you go along. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies
On Fri, 9 Apr 2004, Eugen Leitl wrote: Internet is mostly a tree (if you look at the connectivity maps). Not at all. A tree has a root; the Internet doesn't have one. Instead you have several thousand autonomous systems interconnecting at a large number of peering points. Wires over long distances will tend to follow geodesics (because cables are expensive, and an enterprise will try to minimize the costs). For a long time, most traffic between European countries was routed through Virginia. This has improved only in the last few years. In the same way a lot of Pacific traffic still runs through California. In each case what matters is not geography but politics and quixotic regulations. Within most countries the same sort of illogic applies. In the UK, for example, most IP traffic flows through London, and within London most IP traffic flows through the Docklands area, a geographically small region of East London. It's fractal: even within Docklands, almost all traffic flows through a handful of buildings, and there is a strong tendency for most of that inter-building traffic to pass through a very small number of ducts. Current flow is mostly dictated by frozen chance, politics (peering arrangements). Automating peering arrangments and using agoric load levelling in the infrastructure will tend to erode that over time. Over time, physical lines will tend to be densest along densest traffic flow. Very true -- but this has nothing to do with geodesics. American cities are orthogonal, European usually radial. The cities are ? City layouts that I am familiar with are either haphazard or built around rings or some mixture of the two. MFS built a US national ring, a ring in New York City, a ring in London, and rings elsewhere in Europe. Other carriers tended to follow the same pattern. connected with traffic ducts (rail, highway) which is typically loosely geodesic (but for obstacles in the landscape). Fiber typically follows railway or highway. That's certainly true, but now you are talking about political decisions made ages ago. Many roads in England were built by the Romans. These roads lead to London. You see the same pattern on the Continent, of course, with the roads leading to the local capital (Paris, say) and then on to Rome. That is, fiber optic paths today reflect the strategic requirements of the Roman Empire, not geometry. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies
is laid out in Europe and America. connected with traffic ducts (rail, highway) which is typically loosely geodesic (but for obstacles in the landscape). Fiber typically follows railway or highway. That's certainly true, but now you are talking about political decisions made ages ago. Many roads in England were built by the Romans. These A road is a place channeling traffic from A to B. Roman roads which are still used (I use one quite frequently) were created between areas of major human activity, requiring traffic frequent enough to warrant an expediture (in terms of wealth fraction, roman roads were just as expensive as autobahns). Indeed. But the point is that things tend _not_ to be optimized at the macro level; what happens is the opposite, micro-optimization around the results of previous decisions (some of which will have been just plain wrong). Roman engineers built roads a couple of thousand years ago, optimizing things according to then-current theories and strategies. We lay down rivers of fiber along those roads, reenforcing those ancient decisions, because the cost of reversing those ancient decisions, and all of the incalculable number of micro-decisions that followed, would be truly enormous. You can see the same pattern working itself out now. A group of Japanese banks invested in a building in Docklands, Telehouse, to act as a backup facility in case of a disaster in the City of London. This turned out to be a loser, in financial terms. The Japanese had misjudged the market demand for this kind of facility. Some telcos had put a few racks in the building. The first UK ISPs followed them there, because the facility was cheap. More ISPs followed. Some decided to build an exchange point there, the LINX, following somewhat misunderstood US models. Things mushroomed; the building, which had been quiet and empty, rapidly filled up with racks. The owners built another building across the street; investors built competing facilities a short distance away, to be close to the action. All of these were interconnected with more and more fiber. The end result is that most UK Internet traffic, and a large part of European traffic, passes through what used to be a more or less derelict area of East London, all because of a planning error on the part of some Tokyo-based banks. roads lead to London. You see the same pattern on the Continent, of course, with the roads leading to the local capital (Paris, say) and then on to Rome. That is, fiber optic paths today reflect the strategic requirements of the Roman Empire, not geometry. 1) today, EU today, elsewhere, looks different. Not at all. Everywhere we see the same pattern of pearl-like growth: someone makes a decision, and those that follow build around the first decision, micro-optimizing as they go along, creating the odd fractal shapes that are all around us. future, everywhere, looks even more different. We're at the beginning of the optimization process. You can't cheat physics in a relativistic universe, in an economic/evolutionary context. This isn't physics. It's much more like biology. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies
On Sat, 10 Apr 2004, Eugen Leitl wrote: Yes. I know what a tree is, and I am quite familiar with structure of the Internet. These very pretty pictures certainly look like the Internet I am familiar with, but don't resemble trees. There's a continuum between a tree and a high-dimensional grid/mesh/lattice. A tree as the term is used in mathematics and computer science has a single root. A continuum has an infinite number of points in it. A grid .. none of these terms has anything much to do with one another. It isn't a minor point that the Internet is fractal. This is in fact what is consistent everywhere and has been, to the best of my knowledge, throughout the history of the Internet. If you go back to your pretty pictures and look, you will see fractal structures. Dude, hypergrids *are* fractal. Not that it has to do anything with the current topology. I don't know why you introduce hypergrids. But you might consult a mathematical dictionary - the term seems irrelevant to the current discussion. A geodesic is a minimal path in whatever geometry you are talking about. The geometry on Earth surface is anything but whatever. Way above, with nodes in mutual plain view, it's plain old Einstein-Minkowski (basically Euclidian, with relativistic corrections). The geometry on Earth surface is anything but whatever? Sorry, this makes no sense. However, a geodesic remains a path of minimal length in the geometry under consideration. Or so it was when I last did some reading in finite dimensional metric spaces. I'm claiming peering arrangement evolve to make optimal use of given physical cabling. This is quick. As the term is normally used, peering is the settlement-free exchange of trafic between autonomous systems (ASNs). Settlement-free means that no consideration ($$$) is paid. This has bugger all to do with cabling. On the longer term, physical and virtual (radio, laser) cabling evolves to minimize the load on existing links. This is slower, peering arrangements change in realtime in comparison, very like Franck-Condon principle. Peering arrangements generally involve legal departments, and rarely change once inked. In the real world, peering policies normally reflect a mixture of common sense and total misunderstanding of what the Internet is about. Some networks just peer with anyone; some have incredibly detailed contracts and involve months of negotiation. When senior management is involved, they quite often have a telco background, and think that peering has something to do with SS7. That is, they try to insist that the Internet is really just the same as the voice telephone network, and BGP4 is SS7. The results are often comic. The end result is that most UK Internet traffic, and a large part of European traffic, passes through what used to be a more or less derelict area of East London, all because of a planning error on the part of some Tokyo-based banks. A nexus is a classical tree artifact. Once the network progresses along a meshed grid hugging Earth surface, we're going to see an increase in crosslinks and exchange points, crosslinking the branches. What do you think nexus means?? Conventional definition: -- n. pl. nexus or nexuses 1. A means of connection; a link or tie: this nexus between New York's... real-estate investors and its... politicians (Wall Street Journal). 2. A connected series or group. 3. The core or center: The real nexus of the money culture [was] Wall Street (Bill Barol). -- As Lewis Carroll tried to make clear a long long time ago, it isn't very useful to conduct arguments by redefining words as you go along. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies
On Fri, 9 Apr 2004, Eugen Leitl wrote: Internet is mostly a tree (if you look at the connectivity maps). Not at all. A tree has a root; the Internet doesn't have one. Instead you have several thousand autonomous systems interconnecting at a large number of peering points. Wires over long distances will tend to follow geodesics (because cables are expensive, and an enterprise will try to minimize the costs). For a long time, most traffic between European countries was routed through Virginia. This has improved only in the last few years. In the same way a lot of Pacific traffic still runs through California. In each case what matters is not geography but politics and quixotic regulations. Within most countries the same sort of illogic applies. In the UK, for example, most IP traffic flows through London, and within London most IP traffic flows through the Docklands area, a geographically small region of East London. It's fractal: even within Docklands, almost all traffic flows through a handful of buildings, and there is a strong tendency for most of that inter-building traffic to pass through a very small number of ducts. Current flow is mostly dictated by frozen chance, politics (peering arrangements). Automating peering arrangments and using agoric load levelling in the infrastructure will tend to erode that over time. Over time, physical lines will tend to be densest along densest traffic flow. Very true -- but this has nothing to do with geodesics. American cities are orthogonal, European usually radial. The cities are ? City layouts that I am familiar with are either haphazard or built around rings or some mixture of the two. MFS built a US national ring, a ring in New York City, a ring in London, and rings elsewhere in Europe. Other carriers tended to follow the same pattern. connected with traffic ducts (rail, highway) which is typically loosely geodesic (but for obstacles in the landscape). Fiber typically follows railway or highway. That's certainly true, but now you are talking about political decisions made ages ago. Many roads in England were built by the Romans. These roads lead to London. You see the same pattern on the Continent, of course, with the roads leading to the local capital (Paris, say) and then on to Rome. That is, fiber optic paths today reflect the strategic requirements of the Roman Empire, not geometry. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies
is laid out in Europe and America. connected with traffic ducts (rail, highway) which is typically loosely geodesic (but for obstacles in the landscape). Fiber typically follows railway or highway. That's certainly true, but now you are talking about political decisions made ages ago. Many roads in England were built by the Romans. These A road is a place channeling traffic from A to B. Roman roads which are still used (I use one quite frequently) were created between areas of major human activity, requiring traffic frequent enough to warrant an expediture (in terms of wealth fraction, roman roads were just as expensive as autobahns). Indeed. But the point is that things tend _not_ to be optimized at the macro level; what happens is the opposite, micro-optimization around the results of previous decisions (some of which will have been just plain wrong). Roman engineers built roads a couple of thousand years ago, optimizing things according to then-current theories and strategies. We lay down rivers of fiber along those roads, reenforcing those ancient decisions, because the cost of reversing those ancient decisions, and all of the incalculable number of micro-decisions that followed, would be truly enormous. You can see the same pattern working itself out now. A group of Japanese banks invested in a building in Docklands, Telehouse, to act as a backup facility in case of a disaster in the City of London. This turned out to be a loser, in financial terms. The Japanese had misjudged the market demand for this kind of facility. Some telcos had put a few racks in the building. The first UK ISPs followed them there, because the facility was cheap. More ISPs followed. Some decided to build an exchange point there, the LINX, following somewhat misunderstood US models. Things mushroomed; the building, which had been quiet and empty, rapidly filled up with racks. The owners built another building across the street; investors built competing facilities a short distance away, to be close to the action. All of these were interconnected with more and more fiber. The end result is that most UK Internet traffic, and a large part of European traffic, passes through what used to be a more or less derelict area of East London, all because of a planning error on the part of some Tokyo-based banks. roads lead to London. You see the same pattern on the Continent, of course, with the roads leading to the local capital (Paris, say) and then on to Rome. That is, fiber optic paths today reflect the strategic requirements of the Roman Empire, not geometry. 1) today, EU today, elsewhere, looks different. Not at all. Everywhere we see the same pattern of pearl-like growth: someone makes a decision, and those that follow build around the first decision, micro-optimizing as they go along, creating the odd fractal shapes that are all around us. future, everywhere, looks even more different. We're at the beginning of the optimization process. You can't cheat physics in a relativistic universe, in an economic/evolutionary context. This isn't physics. It's much more like biology. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Liquid Natural Flatulence
On Wed, 31 Mar 2004, Justin wrote: As for sublimate, when you toss a cup of boiling water into the air at extremely cold temperatures it converts straight into a gas, all at once. That's what I was talking about. A chemist I bumped into with that story called it sublimation, and when I said I thought sublimate was meant for solids only, he said no, that instantaneous conversion to a gas is sublimation whether origin state is a solid or liquid. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublimation_(chemistry) Sublimation of an element or substance is a conversion between the solid and the gaseous states with no liquid intermediate stage. -- http://www.britannica.com/search?query=sublimationct=fuzzy=N sublimation: in physics, conversion of a substance from the solid to the vapour state without its becoming liquid. An example is the vaporization of frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice) at ordinary atmospheric ... -- I very seriously doubt that. That chemist sounds full of shit. Boiling, evaporation, condensation, sublimation, melting, and freezing have nothing to do with the speed at which the phase change occurs. They refer to the qualitative aspect of state changes, notably the beginning, (transition,) and ending states. Sublimation is solid-gas with no intervening liquid state, that state being impossible due to prevailing pressure/temperature conditions. Yep. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Liquid Natural Flatulence
On Wed, 31 Mar 2004, Justin wrote: As for sublimate, when you toss a cup of boiling water into the air at extremely cold temperatures it converts straight into a gas, all at once. That's what I was talking about. A chemist I bumped into with that story called it sublimation, and when I said I thought sublimate was meant for solids only, he said no, that instantaneous conversion to a gas is sublimation whether origin state is a solid or liquid. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublimation_(chemistry) Sublimation of an element or substance is a conversion between the solid and the gaseous states with no liquid intermediate stage. -- http://www.britannica.com/search?query=sublimationct=fuzzy=N sublimation: in physics, conversion of a substance from the solid to the vapour state without its becoming liquid. An example is the vaporization of frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice) at ordinary atmospheric ... -- I very seriously doubt that. That chemist sounds full of shit. Boiling, evaporation, condensation, sublimation, melting, and freezing have nothing to do with the speed at which the phase change occurs. They refer to the qualitative aspect of state changes, notably the beginning, (transition,) and ending states. Sublimation is solid-gas with no intervening liquid state, that state being impossible due to prevailing pressure/temperature conditions. Yep. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
RE: Lunar Colony
On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, John Washburn wrote: I would think the problem with the camp X-Ray approach is the same as happened historically in Botany Bay or fictionally in the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. When (not if) the ongoing support of the penal colony collapses what happens? The children are in legal limbo; neither convict nor citizen. (No one Don't they all get sterilized by radiation on the way to Mars, meaning that there are no children to be concerned about? is going to pay the expense to ship them home). The colonists are cut off from the home world/empire. They had little love for the home world/empire in the first place. Cut adrift and left to their own devices why wouldn't the colonists/prisoners declare independence and have an interplanetary war of secession? Assuming that the radiation isn't such a serious problem, the moon looks like a more realistic proposition. Only a couple of days away. Lots of energy in sunlight. Lots of available minerals. Gravity well fairly shallow so things can be exported to Earth if on friendly terms and trading -- or just tossed in that direction if things go bad. ;-) -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
RE: Lunar Colony
On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, John Washburn wrote: I would think the problem with the camp X-Ray approach is the same as happened historically in Botany Bay or fictionally in the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. When (not if) the ongoing support of the penal colony collapses what happens? The children are in legal limbo; neither convict nor citizen. (No one Don't they all get sterilized by radiation on the way to Mars, meaning that there are no children to be concerned about? is going to pay the expense to ship them home). The colonists are cut off from the home world/empire. They had little love for the home world/empire in the first place. Cut adrift and left to their own devices why wouldn't the colonists/prisoners declare independence and have an interplanetary war of secession? Assuming that the radiation isn't such a serious problem, the moon looks like a more realistic proposition. Only a couple of days away. Lots of energy in sunlight. Lots of available minerals. Gravity well fairly shallow so things can be exported to Earth if on friendly terms and trading -- or just tossed in that direction if things go bad. ;-) -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Current Operational Nodes?
On Thu, 8 Jan 2004, Thoenen, Peter Mr CN Sprint SFOR wrote: Cross posting on multiple nodes since none seem reliable. Now that LNE is shutting down ... are there actually any other reliable operational nodes? Have subscribed to minder.net, algebra.com, and ds.pro-ns.net all in the last two weeks to no avail. Some return subscribed message but never forward actual traffic (just spam). Think I have had similar experience. I actually got one or two operational messages from algebra but thats it. Do we want another node? Yes, preferably one with spam filters. I can throw one up if wanted / needed / Sounds good. trusted (being a contractor for 'the man' and all such bullshit jazz) or do we just want to let this list die? Not a big fan of newsgroups. If wanted, will host offsite on a non-gov commercial server. Personal politics aside, its an enjoyable list to lurk on :) -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Current Operational Nodes?
On Thu, 8 Jan 2004, Thoenen, Peter Mr CN Sprint SFOR wrote: Cross posting on multiple nodes since none seem reliable. Now that LNE is shutting down ... are there actually any other reliable operational nodes? Have subscribed to minder.net, algebra.com, and ds.pro-ns.net all in the last two weeks to no avail. Some return subscribed message but never forward actual traffic (just spam). Think I have had similar experience. I actually got one or two operational messages from algebra but thats it. Do we want another node? Yes, preferably one with spam filters. I can throw one up if wanted / needed / Sounds good. trusted (being a contractor for 'the man' and all such bullshit jazz) or do we just want to let this list die? Not a big fan of newsgroups. If wanted, will host offsite on a non-gov commercial server. Personal politics aside, its an enjoyable list to lurk on :) -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Engineers in U.S. vs. India
On 7 Jan 2004, Steve Furlong wrote: contrary to Jim's statement, Texas does license software engineers. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering .) I don't know if any other states license SEs. Quoting your own source: Donald Bagart of Texas became the first professional software engineer in the U.S. on September 4, 1998 or October 9, 1998. As of May 2002, Texas had issued 44 professional enginering licenses for software engineers. The professional movement has been criticized for many reasons. * Licensed software engineers must learn years of physics and chemistry to pass the exams, which is irrelevant to most software practitioners. This is exactly what the ACM gripes about. In order to use the title engineer in the Great State of Texas you have to pass examinations relevant to classical engineering (civil, mechanical, etc) but wholly irrelevant to software engineering. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Engineers in U.S. vs. India
On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Sarad AV wrote: Today, Bangalore stands ahead of Bay Area, San Francisco and California, with a lead of 20,000 techies, while employing a total number of 1.5 lakh engineers. I live in bangalore,those figures are correct. Meaning that 150,000 engineers are employed in Bangalore? Does this include software engineers, HTML coders, programmers, computer scientists? Does it include say railway engineers, truck mechanics, the guy who fixes your air conditioning? The term 'engineer' is far from precise; in the UK most people who work with tools can be called engineers but people who write software generally are NOT called engineers. There are further complications: for example, in certain parts of the United States (Texas comes to mind), you cannot describe yourself as an engineer without being certified as such by the state. You can be a mechanical or civil engineer, but not a software engineer, because there is no relevant test. One of the consequences of this is that Texas vastly undercounts its engineers. The civil/mechanical/etc engineers have lobbied successfully for such restrictions on the use of the job title in other states (and Canada?). There are frequent articles in ACM journals complaining about this; people who have been software engineers for decades are breaking the law if they describe themselves as such in Texas. In the same vein, what does 'techie' mean in the article quoted? When the article says that Bangalore has a lead of 20,000 techies over California, exactly what is this supposed to mean? For years Japan led the world in the use of robots because they counted as robots devices that were not counted as such in the USA and Europe, simple pick-and-place arms. I suspect that much the same thing is going on here. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Engineers in U.S. vs. India
On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Steve Mynott wrote: The term 'engineer' is far from precise; in the UK most people who work with tools can be called engineers but people who write software generally are NOT called engineers. There are further complications: for example, in I have had jobs as a software engineer in the UK and since the dot com bubble this hasn't been an uncommon job title. Go to Jobserve and count. I did, about a year ago. I found 612 references in a 5-day period, as compared with 1651 for Java and 1889 for C++. My point is not that there are no software engineers in the world, but that the term engineer is often used quite loosely and means vastly different things in different places. The UK tends to follow US fashions very closely importing in titles like CEO and CTO and the term software engineer is no different. The term 'software engineer' is becoming less common in the States these days. I have watched the job title wax and wane for more than twenty five years. I think that it was most fashionable in the early 1980s. If it isn't clear, I usually describe myself as a software engineer. I belong to the ACM (www.acm.org) and follow their articles discussing software engineering as a profession with a mild interest. As for your comments that my impression is that India has a few excellent institutions and a vast number of unbelievably bad schools I suspect this is true but applies equally to the UK and USA and indeed any country with a university system. Neither is graduating from a top engineering school such as Stanford any automatic guarantee of quality as anyone who has worked with these people knows. You don't understand. I have never ever heard of any school in the UK or the United States, no matter how bad, where degrees are routinely and rather openly sold, or where riots on campus, usually in response to examinations, frequently involve lethal weapons and deaths. Unbelievably bad means just that. I have visited India many times and have spent at least two years there in total. I went there of my own free will, travelling. And I spent enough time in various places (at least several months each in Calcutta, Delhi, Bombay, Madras, as well as many smaller and less well-known places) to have a decent overall understanding of the country. India has an excellent tradition in mathematics and some of the best software engineers I have worked with in the UK have been Indian graduates, since it's the most enterprising and highly qualified ones which tend to emigrate. India tends to stunning extremes. Many amazingly good mathematicians have come out of India; my experience is that this is strongly regional, with the best coming from Bengal in the north and then the Bangalore/ Madras/north of there region in the southeast. But you have to see those extremes. There is nothing like stepping out of a Calcutta coffee house, after having a wonderfully intelligent conversation, into the appalling streets. I think that any attempt to describe life in Calcutta as I knew it would be met with disbelief. Go there. Don't stay in a tourist hotel. It takes at least a few weeks for your eyes to adjust, for you to take in just how very very different the subcontinent is. Then you might go a little mad and run away, or you might just decide that you like the place ;-) O Reilly Associates recognise the importance of the Indian market by suppplying special low priced editions of their books to the Indian market. They are occasionally available as grey imports in the UK. Yes. This has been going on for a long long time. Most major publishers do it. I used to buy cheap technical books myself in India, Hong Kong, Japan, etc. Although they tend to be out of date, there are often very good buys. I still have some on my shelves. I am not India-bashing. I just think that the people who are so concerned about the threat of India wiping out the US software industry are uhm let's say a bit unrealistic. It might be a concern 30 years from now, although I am skeptical even of that. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Engineers in U.S. vs. India
On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Sarad AV wrote: Today, Bangalore stands ahead of Bay Area, San Francisco and California, with a lead of 20,000 techies, while employing a total number of 1.5 lakh engineers. I live in bangalore,those figures are correct. Meaning that 150,000 engineers are employed in Bangalore? Does this include software engineers, HTML coders, programmers, computer scientists? Does it include say railway engineers, truck mechanics, the guy who fixes your air conditioning? The term 'engineer' is far from precise; in the UK most people who work with tools can be called engineers but people who write software generally are NOT called engineers. There are further complications: for example, in certain parts of the United States (Texas comes to mind), you cannot describe yourself as an engineer without being certified as such by the state. You can be a mechanical or civil engineer, but not a software engineer, because there is no relevant test. One of the consequences of this is that Texas vastly undercounts its engineers. The civil/mechanical/etc engineers have lobbied successfully for such restrictions on the use of the job title in other states (and Canada?). There are frequent articles in ACM journals complaining about this; people who have been software engineers for decades are breaking the law if they describe themselves as such in Texas. In the same vein, what does 'techie' mean in the article quoted? When the article says that Bangalore has a lead of 20,000 techies over California, exactly what is this supposed to mean? For years Japan led the world in the use of robots because they counted as robots devices that were not counted as such in the USA and Europe, simple pick-and-place arms. I suspect that much the same thing is going on here. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Engineers in U.S. vs. India
On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Steve Mynott wrote: The term 'engineer' is far from precise; in the UK most people who work with tools can be called engineers but people who write software generally are NOT called engineers. There are further complications: for example, in I have had jobs as a software engineer in the UK and since the dot com bubble this hasn't been an uncommon job title. Go to Jobserve and count. I did, about a year ago. I found 612 references in a 5-day period, as compared with 1651 for Java and 1889 for C++. My point is not that there are no software engineers in the world, but that the term engineer is often used quite loosely and means vastly different things in different places. The UK tends to follow US fashions very closely importing in titles like CEO and CTO and the term software engineer is no different. The term 'software engineer' is becoming less common in the States these days. I have watched the job title wax and wane for more than twenty five years. I think that it was most fashionable in the early 1980s. If it isn't clear, I usually describe myself as a software engineer. I belong to the ACM (www.acm.org) and follow their articles discussing software engineering as a profession with a mild interest. As for your comments that my impression is that India has a few excellent institutions and a vast number of unbelievably bad schools I suspect this is true but applies equally to the UK and USA and indeed any country with a university system. Neither is graduating from a top engineering school such as Stanford any automatic guarantee of quality as anyone who has worked with these people knows. You don't understand. I have never ever heard of any school in the UK or the United States, no matter how bad, where degrees are routinely and rather openly sold, or where riots on campus, usually in response to examinations, frequently involve lethal weapons and deaths. Unbelievably bad means just that. I have visited India many times and have spent at least two years there in total. I went there of my own free will, travelling. And I spent enough time in various places (at least several months each in Calcutta, Delhi, Bombay, Madras, as well as many smaller and less well-known places) to have a decent overall understanding of the country. India has an excellent tradition in mathematics and some of the best software engineers I have worked with in the UK have been Indian graduates, since it's the most enterprising and highly qualified ones which tend to emigrate. India tends to stunning extremes. Many amazingly good mathematicians have come out of India; my experience is that this is strongly regional, with the best coming from Bengal in the north and then the Bangalore/ Madras/north of there region in the southeast. But you have to see those extremes. There is nothing like stepping out of a Calcutta coffee house, after having a wonderfully intelligent conversation, into the appalling streets. I think that any attempt to describe life in Calcutta as I knew it would be met with disbelief. Go there. Don't stay in a tourist hotel. It takes at least a few weeks for your eyes to adjust, for you to take in just how very very different the subcontinent is. Then you might go a little mad and run away, or you might just decide that you like the place ;-) O Reilly Associates recognise the importance of the Indian market by suppplying special low priced editions of their books to the Indian market. They are occasionally available as grey imports in the UK. Yes. This has been going on for a long long time. Most major publishers do it. I used to buy cheap technical books myself in India, Hong Kong, Japan, etc. Although they tend to be out of date, there are often very good buys. I still have some on my shelves. I am not India-bashing. I just think that the people who are so concerned about the threat of India wiping out the US software industry are uhm let's say a bit unrealistic. It might be a concern 30 years from now, although I am skeptical even of that. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Engineers in U.S. vs. India
On Tue, 6 Jan 2004, Declan McCullagh wrote: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-407043,curpg-3.cms Today, Bangalore stands ahead of Bay Area, San Francisco and California, with a lead of 20,000 techies, while employing a total number of 1.5 lakh engineers. ek lakh = 100,000 I am sure that there are a lot of good engineers in India. However, the educational system has to be seen to be fully appreciated. When my wife and I last travelled in north India, admittedly quite some time ago, what began as a riot at the University of Lucknow -- students protesting over invigilation of exams, I believe -- escalated into a conflict that eventually involved the armed police on the one hand and the military on the other. The university campus was destroyed, burned down. I spent several months in Calcutta over a couple of years. During at least one visit there were riots at the university; the papers reported bodies hanging from trees. Many had been shot. Same story: students protested because they were stopped from openly exchanging papers, consulting books, or just chatting with friends during examinations. Many were also angry because invigilators were actually checking the identities of those writing the exam papers. The going rate for a degree at the time was several hundred dollars. Knowledge of the subject was not much relevant. Such education as occurred largely involved rote learning, often based on texts many years out of date. Moreover, it is found out that the Americans are shying away from the challenges of math and science. A recent National Science Foundation Study reveals a 5 per cent decline in the overall doctoral candidates in the US over the last five years. No telling what this actually means, given that a large percentage of doctoral candidates are foreign. It is becoming much harder for foreign students to get into the US, so many are going to universities in Europe. This change has occurred in the last five years -- more precisely, since 9/11. The India side story: India produces 3.1 million college graduates a year, which is expected to be doubled by 2010. The number of engineering colleges is slated to grow 50 per cent, to nearly 1,600, over the next four years. My impression is that India has a few excellent institutions and a vast number of unbelievably bad schools. It seems likely that the flow of money into Bangalore and a few other centers will gradually improve this situation, but it is likely to take decades, and per-capita convergence with the US and Europe seems unlikely within the century. While 1.5 lakh (150,000) engineers may sound like a lot, you have to bear in mind that there are about 100 crore (1 billion) people in India. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Sunny Guantanamo (Re: Speaking of the Geneva convention)
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, J.A. Terranson wrote: Why does the US military have to treat them as though they had US constitutional rights? They are not citizens or physically present in the United States. In a nutshell, our Constitution *recognizes* universal human rights. It does not *establish* these rights. If we are going to be faithful to this premise, physical location is a non-sequitor. This is a valid and probably commendable political position. I do not believe, however, that it reflects current practice in the USA or elsewhere. I say probably because it seems likely that adopting this as a practice would have very high costs. How far would you have this go? Is the US government to be obligated to ensure these rights to everyone everywhere? Does this mean liberating slaves in China and Saudi Arabia, for example? Opening up Russian jails? Forcing countries everywhere to grant the vote to women, to educate children? Hmmm. Does the application of this principle mean that the US government is going to require the British government to recognize the right to keep and bear arms? ;-) -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Sunny Guantanamo (Re: Speaking of the Geneva convention)
On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a nutshell, our Constitution *recognizes* universal human rights. It does not *establish* these rights. If we are going to be faithful to this premise, physical location is a non-sequitor. This is a valid and probably commendable political position. I do not believe, however, that it reflects current practice in the USA or elsewhere. I say probably because it seems likely that adopting this as a practice would have very high costs. ... And why would you think that American judicial morality and justice should be dependent on cost? After all it would be cheaper for the cops on a traffic stop to administratively just shoot you in the head for an offense then go through the costs and rigors of a trial. The personal cost for the police concerned would be very high: those who weren't really good at running away would be shot dead. The cost for those hiring the police would be astronomical: wages would have to rise to reflect the danger. The cost for politicians mandating such a policy would be equally high: they would be out of office and facing criminal charges themselves. If the US tried to export its notion of rights, the global reaction would be similar. In either case you could not put a cost on the ensuing chaos. The US has global hegemony because in reality its policies are reasonable, because it isn't worth anyone's while to try to oppose it. If Saddam had been less of an idiot, if he had left Kuwait alone, he would be relaxing in one of his palaces today and his sons would be out snatching women off the street, torturing people who had annoyed them -- you know, having a good night out. China would like to have more power in its region, but the cost of really pushing for this is much higher than any conceivable gain, and anyway they can provoke the US a great deal with no particular reaction. So the political elite concentrates on increasing the production of Barby dolls and stacking up hundred dollar bills. European calculations are the same: the potential cost of challenging the US is incalculable, the potential gain relatively miniscule. Come on, let's go down to the pub instead. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Sunny Guantanamo (Re: Speaking of the Geneva convention)
On Fri, 19 Dec 2003, Steve Schear wrote: If Saddam had been less of an idiot, if he had left Kuwait alone, he would be relaxing in one of his palaces today and his sons would be out snatching women off the street, torturing people who had annoyed them -- you know, having a good night out. [Jim, don't you ever do a bit of research on historical topics before spouting off? Google is your friend. Use it.] Steve, do you ever find a propagandist whose BS you didn't swallow? The tone of this conversation is deteriorating ;-) -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Sunny Guantanamo (Re: Speaking of the Geneva convention)
On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a nutshell, our Constitution *recognizes* universal human rights. It does not *establish* these rights. If we are going to be faithful to this premise, physical location is a non-sequitor. This is a valid and probably commendable political position. I do not believe, however, that it reflects current practice in the USA or elsewhere. I say probably because it seems likely that adopting this as a practice would have very high costs. .. And why would you think that American judicial morality and justice should be dependent on cost? After all it would be cheaper for the cops on a traffic stop to administratively just shoot you in the head for an offense then go through the costs and rigors of a trial. The personal cost for the police concerned would be very high: those who weren't really good at running away would be shot dead. The cost for those hiring the police would be astronomical: wages would have to rise to reflect the danger. The cost for politicians mandating such a policy would be equally high: they would be out of office and facing criminal charges themselves. If the US tried to export its notion of rights, the global reaction would be similar. In either case you could not put a cost on the ensuing chaos. The US has global hegemony because in reality its policies are reasonable, because it isn't worth anyone's while to try to oppose it. If Saddam had been less of an idiot, if he had left Kuwait alone, he would be relaxing in one of his palaces today and his sons would be out snatching women off the street, torturing people who had annoyed them -- you know, having a good night out. China would like to have more power in its region, but the cost of really pushing for this is much higher than any conceivable gain, and anyway they can provoke the US a great deal with no particular reaction. So the political elite concentrates on increasing the production of Barby dolls and stacking up hundred dollar bills. European calculations are the same: the potential cost of challenging the US is incalculable, the potential gain relatively miniscule. Come on, let's go down to the pub instead. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Sunny Guantanamo (Re: Speaking of the Geneva convention)
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, J.A. Terranson wrote: Why does the US military have to treat them as though they had US constitutional rights? They are not citizens or physically present in the United States. In a nutshell, our Constitution *recognizes* universal human rights. It does not *establish* these rights. If we are going to be faithful to this premise, physical location is a non-sequitor. This is a valid and probably commendable political position. I do not believe, however, that it reflects current practice in the USA or elsewhere. I say probably because it seems likely that adopting this as a practice would have very high costs. How far would you have this go? Is the US government to be obligated to ensure these rights to everyone everywhere? Does this mean liberating slaves in China and Saudi Arabia, for example? Opening up Russian jails? Forcing countries everywhere to grant the vote to women, to educate children? Hmmm. Does the application of this principle mean that the US government is going to require the British government to recognize the right to keep and bear arms? ;-) -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, James A. Donald wrote: On 17 Dec 2003 at 22:54, Michael Kalus wrote: No, but it is very interresting that all of this didn't matter while Saddam was the good guy for our causes (and by that I mean the Western world general). You are making up your own history. When Saddam came to power, he seized western property and murdered westerners, especially Americans, and you lot cheered him to an echo. Saddam was always an enemy of the west, he was never a good guy. He was at times an ally, in the sense that Stalin and Pol Pot were at times temporary allies, yet somehow I never see you fans of slavery and mass murder criticizing the west for allying with Stalin. Relevant numbers from the Times today, quoting Air Force Monthly, January 2003: from 1980 to 1990 Iraq imported 28.9 billion pounds worth of weapons. 19% by value were from France; 57% from the Soviet Union (ie Russia), East Germany, and Czechoslovakia; 8% from China. Sales from the United States were inconsequential and did not make the list. From earlier articles in other publications I believe that in fact US sales were a small fraction of 1%. It is not coincidental that the Security Council members opposed to taking any action on Iraq's repeated violations were France, Russia, Germany, and China: Iraq's weapons suppliers. These repeated claims that Saddam was somehow the US's boy in the Middle East are puzzling. The US did not supply any significant number of weapons or other military aid to Iraq. They did give limited support to Iraq in its war against Iran, a direct consequence of the Irani occupation of the US embassy in Teheran and kidnapping of its staff. If you look at the tactics and weapons used by Saddam in the invasion of Kuwait and in the resulting Gulf War, they were Soviet. Chirac's personal relations with Saddam go back to at least 1975, the year that France signed an agreement to sell two nuclear reactors to Iraq. There have been rumors for a long time that Saddam provided financial support to Chirac in various election campaigns. The evidence points to deep ties between Russia, France, and Iraq that goes back decades, plus somewhat weaker ties to China and Germany. Relations between the US and Baath-controlled Iraq were bad from the beginning; American bodies dangling from ropes in Baghdad were not the beginning of a great romance. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, BillyGOTO wrote: On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 07:18:04PM +, Jim Dixon wrote: Relevant numbers from the Times today, quoting Air Force Monthly, January 2003: from 1980 to 1990 Iraq imported 28.9 billion pounds worth of weapons. 19% by value were from France; 57% from the Soviet Union (ie Russia), East Germany, and Czechoslovakia; 8% from China. Sales from the United States were inconsequential and did not make the list. From earlier articles in other publications I believe that in fact US sales were a small fraction of 1%. I smell statistical acrobatics by the USAF... Do we really measure weapons in pounds? In the UK we measure sales in pounds sterling. One pound = $1.75 and rising. I'd rather see a listing of weapons imports from JUST the period of the Iran-Iraq war than a listing of weapons imports from 1980-1990. One is included in the other. From memory, total US military sales to Iraq in the decade were $3 million. As we all know, in Washington DC a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there -- pretty soon you are talking real money. Three million dollars will buy you a few coffee pots and a monkey wrench for your AWACS aircraft. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
RE: The killer app for encryption
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Tyler Durden wrote: I'm very interested in hearing about whether any P2P networks support encrypted transactions of any sort yet (ie, can one yet pay for some files via P2P)? Are there any P2P Networks being designed deliberately to support anything/everything, including peered IP Telephony? What exactly do you mean by peered IP telephony? Voice telephony requires delays measured in tens of milliseconds. A bit difficult if you also want encryption, anonymity, etc. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Michael Kalus wrote: BTW, can you provide me with a reference for the dangling bodies'? Because I was unable to find anything on this so far. I was travelling in the area (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey) at the time. In the 1960s the usual overland traveller's route through the region to Europe had been Bombay - Gulf - Iraq (Basra) - Turkey. In the 1970s, when I was there, the route had shifted to Pakistan - Afghanistan - Iran - Turkey because of attacks on foreigners and in particular the hanging of several Americans as supposed CIA agents, spies. The Baath Party took over in 1968 and nationalized the oil industry in 1972; the surge in anti-western agitation occurred in that period. Googling provides a lot of hits, mostly propaganda for one side or the other. One interesting quote regarding the Baath takeover: To the end Qassim retained his popularity in the streets of Baghdad. After his execution, his supporters refused to believe he was dead until the coup leaders showed pictures of his bullet-riddled body on TV and in the newspapers. (From Out of the Ashes, the Resurrection of Saddam Hussain, by Andrew and Patrick Cockburn.) The coup leaders included one Saddam Hussian, who of course killed the rest over the next few years. This time around the president's bullet-riddled body has not been displayed on TV. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Daniel Roethlisberger wrote: 19% by value were from France; 57% from the Soviet Union (ie Russia), East Germany, and Czechoslovakia; 8% from China. [...] It is not coincidental that the Security Council members opposed to taking any action on Iraq's repeated violations were France, Russia, Germany, and China: Iraq's weapons suppliers. You are confusing todays Germany with the communist pre-1989 Eastern Germany, I am not confusing them at all. There is ample evidence that the Germans sold to Saddam both before and after the reunification of Germany. two *very* different things (I thought the British had better knowledge of the Olde Europe than the fellow Americans do?) As to the rest, always look at who published the facts. It's the same sources that claimed the Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It's The _UN_ claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They ordered them destroyed, and actually watched some being destroyed until Saddam threw them out in the late 1990s. They subsequently reported that they could not account for tons of chemical weapons; this was one of the reasons for the second war. unfortunate that most people fall for this kind of manipulative misinformation. The manipulative misinformation is the claim that the US somehow armed Saddam Hussein. He had French planes, Czech weapons, Russian tanks; we saw them burning on TV in both wars. There is no evidence at all that the US supplied weapons in any quantity to Iraq, just unsubstantiated claims from the usual mob, the ones who supposedly know all those secrets hidden from the rest of us. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, James A. Donald wrote: On 17 Dec 2003 at 22:54, Michael Kalus wrote: No, but it is very interresting that all of this didn't matter while Saddam was the good guy for our causes (and by that I mean the Western world general). You are making up your own history. When Saddam came to power, he seized western property and murdered westerners, especially Americans, and you lot cheered him to an echo. Saddam was always an enemy of the west, he was never a good guy. He was at times an ally, in the sense that Stalin and Pol Pot were at times temporary allies, yet somehow I never see you fans of slavery and mass murder criticizing the west for allying with Stalin. Relevant numbers from the Times today, quoting Air Force Monthly, January 2003: from 1980 to 1990 Iraq imported 28.9 billion pounds worth of weapons. 19% by value were from France; 57% from the Soviet Union (ie Russia), East Germany, and Czechoslovakia; 8% from China. Sales from the United States were inconsequential and did not make the list. From earlier articles in other publications I believe that in fact US sales were a small fraction of 1%. It is not coincidental that the Security Council members opposed to taking any action on Iraq's repeated violations were France, Russia, Germany, and China: Iraq's weapons suppliers. These repeated claims that Saddam was somehow the US's boy in the Middle East are puzzling. The US did not supply any significant number of weapons or other military aid to Iraq. They did give limited support to Iraq in its war against Iran, a direct consequence of the Irani occupation of the US embassy in Teheran and kidnapping of its staff. If you look at the tactics and weapons used by Saddam in the invasion of Kuwait and in the resulting Gulf War, they were Soviet. Chirac's personal relations with Saddam go back to at least 1975, the year that France signed an agreement to sell two nuclear reactors to Iraq. There have been rumors for a long time that Saddam provided financial support to Chirac in various election campaigns. The evidence points to deep ties between Russia, France, and Iraq that goes back decades, plus somewhat weaker ties to China and Germany. Relations between the US and Baath-controlled Iraq were bad from the beginning; American bodies dangling from ropes in Baghdad were not the beginning of a great romance. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, BillyGOTO wrote: On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 07:18:04PM +, Jim Dixon wrote: Relevant numbers from the Times today, quoting Air Force Monthly, January 2003: from 1980 to 1990 Iraq imported 28.9 billion pounds worth of weapons. 19% by value were from France; 57% from the Soviet Union (ie Russia), East Germany, and Czechoslovakia; 8% from China. Sales from the United States were inconsequential and did not make the list. From earlier articles in other publications I believe that in fact US sales were a small fraction of 1%. I smell statistical acrobatics by the USAF... Do we really measure weapons in pounds? In the UK we measure sales in pounds sterling. One pound = $1.75 and rising. I'd rather see a listing of weapons imports from JUST the period of the Iran-Iraq war than a listing of weapons imports from 1980-1990. One is included in the other. From memory, total US military sales to Iraq in the decade were $3 million. As we all know, in Washington DC a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there -- pretty soon you are talking real money. Three million dollars will buy you a few coffee pots and a monkey wrench for your AWACS aircraft. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
RE: The killer app for encryption
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Tyler Durden wrote: I'm very interested in hearing about whether any P2P networks support encrypted transactions of any sort yet (ie, can one yet pay for some files via P2P)? Are there any P2P Networks being designed deliberately to support anything/everything, including peered IP Telephony? What exactly do you mean by peered IP telephony? Voice telephony requires delays measured in tens of milliseconds. A bit difficult if you also want encryption, anonymity, etc. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Michael Kalus wrote: BTW, can you provide me with a reference for the dangling bodies'? Because I was unable to find anything on this so far. I was travelling in the area (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey) at the time. In the 1960s the usual overland traveller's route through the region to Europe had been Bombay - Gulf - Iraq (Basra) - Turkey. In the 1970s, when I was there, the route had shifted to Pakistan - Afghanistan - Iran - Turkey because of attacks on foreigners and in particular the hanging of several Americans as supposed CIA agents, spies. The Baath Party took over in 1968 and nationalized the oil industry in 1972; the surge in anti-western agitation occurred in that period. Googling provides a lot of hits, mostly propaganda for one side or the other. One interesting quote regarding the Baath takeover: To the end Qassim retained his popularity in the streets of Baghdad. After his execution, his supporters refused to believe he was dead until the coup leaders showed pictures of his bullet-riddled body on TV and in the newspapers. (From Out of the Ashes, the Resurrection of Saddam Hussain, by Andrew and Patrick Cockburn.) The coup leaders included one Saddam Hussian, who of course killed the rest over the next few years. This time around the president's bullet-riddled body has not been displayed on TV. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Daniel Roethlisberger wrote: 19% by value were from France; 57% from the Soviet Union (ie Russia), East Germany, and Czechoslovakia; 8% from China. [...] It is not coincidental that the Security Council members opposed to taking any action on Iraq's repeated violations were France, Russia, Germany, and China: Iraq's weapons suppliers. You are confusing todays Germany with the communist pre-1989 Eastern Germany, I am not confusing them at all. There is ample evidence that the Germans sold to Saddam both before and after the reunification of Germany. two *very* different things (I thought the British had better knowledge of the Olde Europe than the fellow Americans do?) As to the rest, always look at who published the facts. It's the same sources that claimed the Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It's The _UN_ claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They ordered them destroyed, and actually watched some being destroyed until Saddam threw them out in the late 1990s. They subsequently reported that they could not account for tons of chemical weapons; this was one of the reasons for the second war. unfortunate that most people fall for this kind of manipulative misinformation. The manipulative misinformation is the claim that the US somehow armed Saddam Hussein. He had French planes, Czech weapons, Russian tanks; we saw them burning on TV in both wars. There is no evidence at all that the US supplied weapons in any quantity to Iraq, just unsubstantiated claims from the usual mob, the ones who supposedly know all those secrets hidden from the rest of us. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Nomen Nescio wrote: Your whole post is based on the feeling that we're gonna do what they did to us. There were at least three points made in my post: * The treatment of Saddam seems well within the rules laid down by the Geneva conventions. * On the other hand, he and his government routinely violated the Geneva conventions and encouraged others to do so. * The US and the UK should step back and let Iraqis decide what to do with Saddam. Nowhere did I advocate gassing villages, rape, murder, torture, invasion of neighboring countries for all that good loot, setting off explosives in crowds, nor even the beatings handed out to captured British pilots. In doing so you have manifested what has been written here about gasing into the abyss and so on. I have gazed into the abyss and seen a man having his teeth checked and getting a haircut. :-| -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Sunny Guantanamo (Re: Speaking of the Geneva convention)
On Wed, 17 Dec 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In response to such damning reports, the Administration contends that the detainees are dangerous terrorists and thus do not deserve any legal protections, much less liberal sympathies. But after two years of investigations at the camp, the Administration has yet to charge any detainee with a crime or bring a case before a military tribunal. Thus, the public has no way to determine what alleged crimes these men are charged with committing, much less whether or not they are guilty. Interesting. If the prisoners at Guantanamo are POWs, why should they be charged with crimes? It is no crime to be an enemy soldier. However, customary practice is to lock POWs up until the conflict is over. This certainly is what happened in the two world wars, at least in Europe; it also happened during the Korean and Vietnam wars. If these are members of al-Quaeda and prisoners of war, should they not be released when and only when al-Quaeda declares the conflict over? Would not a US government releasing them before the end of the war be derelict in its duty? If they are instead unlawful combatants because they have violated the Geneva conventions (because they have carried arms in battle but discarded them and hid among civilians, say) or if they are spies (out of uniform, engaged in espionage), is the US not being somewhat charitable in treating them as POWs? If they are neither POWs nor unlawful combatants nor spies, if they are just terrorists, why is the US obliged to treat them as though they are in the United States? Presumably they were captured outside the US and were not taken into the US after capture. Why does the US military have to treat them as though they had US constitutional rights? They are not citizens or physically present in the United States. If any of those at Guantanamo is an American citizen, then of course he should be returned to the States and tried for carrying arms against his country. Treason, isn't it? Let us say that by agreement between the US and the Afghan government (which no one seems to deny is the rightful government of the country) terrorists captured in Afghanistan are being held in Guantanamo. Why should US law apply instead of Afghan law? I know for a fact that conditions in Afghan jails are nowhere near as comfortable as those in Guantanamo. An American friend of mine spent six months in a jail in Kabul. If you didn't buy food from the guards, you starved. If you bought coal from them to heat your cell -- tiny windows high in thick stone walls, so no real ventilation -- you were slowly poisoned by carbon monoxide. If you didn't, you froze. It's cold in Kabul in the winter. The beatings were free. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Michael Kalus wrote: I have gazed into the abyss and seen a man having his teeth checked and getting a haircut. :-| And how would you have felt to be the one who got your teeth checked and get a haircut with the whole world watching? You have omitted a bit. A better question might be: how would you have felt if you had looted an entire country for 30 years, invaded two others, annihilated any who objected, butchered hundreds of thousands of people, dispatched assasins after enemies abroad, laughed at anyone who objected -- and then had been submitted to what appeared to be a polite and conscientious public dental exam and haircut? Damn lucky, to be honest. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Nomen Nescio wrote: Your whole post is based on the feeling that we're gonna do what they did to us. There were at least three points made in my post: * The treatment of Saddam seems well within the rules laid down by the Geneva conventions. * On the other hand, he and his government routinely violated the Geneva conventions and encouraged others to do so. * The US and the UK should step back and let Iraqis decide what to do with Saddam. Nowhere did I advocate gassing villages, rape, murder, torture, invasion of neighboring countries for all that good loot, setting off explosives in crowds, nor even the beatings handed out to captured British pilots. In doing so you have manifested what has been written here about gasing into the abyss and so on. I have gazed into the abyss and seen a man having his teeth checked and getting a haircut. :-| -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Michael Kalus wrote: I have gazed into the abyss and seen a man having his teeth checked and getting a haircut. :-| And how would you have felt to be the one who got your teeth checked and get a haircut with the whole world watching? You have omitted a bit. A better question might be: how would you have felt if you had looted an entire country for 30 years, invaded two others, annihilated any who objected, butchered hundreds of thousands of people, dispatched assasins after enemies abroad, laughed at anyone who objected -- and then had been submitted to what appeared to be a polite and conscientious public dental exam and haircut? Damn lucky, to be honest. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Sunny Guantanamo (Re: Speaking of the Geneva convention)
On Wed, 17 Dec 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In response to such damning reports, the Administration contends that the detainees are dangerous terrorists and thus do not deserve any legal protections, much less liberal sympathies. But after two years of investigations at the camp, the Administration has yet to charge any detainee with a crime or bring a case before a military tribunal. Thus, the public has no way to determine what alleged crimes these men are charged with committing, much less whether or not they are guilty. Interesting. If the prisoners at Guantanamo are POWs, why should they be charged with crimes? It is no crime to be an enemy soldier. However, customary practice is to lock POWs up until the conflict is over. This certainly is what happened in the two world wars, at least in Europe; it also happened during the Korean and Vietnam wars. If these are members of al-Quaeda and prisoners of war, should they not be released when and only when al-Quaeda declares the conflict over? Would not a US government releasing them before the end of the war be derelict in its duty? If they are instead unlawful combatants because they have violated the Geneva conventions (because they have carried arms in battle but discarded them and hid among civilians, say) or if they are spies (out of uniform, engaged in espionage), is the US not being somewhat charitable in treating them as POWs? If they are neither POWs nor unlawful combatants nor spies, if they are just terrorists, why is the US obliged to treat them as though they are in the United States? Presumably they were captured outside the US and were not taken into the US after capture. Why does the US military have to treat them as though they had US constitutional rights? They are not citizens or physically present in the United States. If any of those at Guantanamo is an American citizen, then of course he should be returned to the States and tried for carrying arms against his country. Treason, isn't it? Let us say that by agreement between the US and the Afghan government (which no one seems to deny is the rightful government of the country) terrorists captured in Afghanistan are being held in Guantanamo. Why should US law apply instead of Afghan law? I know for a fact that conditions in Afghan jails are nowhere near as comfortable as those in Guantanamo. An American friend of mine spent six months in a jail in Kabul. If you didn't buy food from the guards, you starved. If you bought coal from them to heat your cell -- tiny windows high in thick stone walls, so no real ventilation -- you were slowly poisoned by carbon monoxide. If you didn't, you froze. It's cold in Kabul in the winter. The beatings were free. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violaton of Geneva convention?
then given way to the wishes of the Iraqi people. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Anonymous wrote: The U.S. official's way of behaving like Texas rednecks are embarrassing. Not only are they cheering we got him like a child who can not withhold his enthusiasm. Displaying Saddam the way they did are also possibly a clear violation of the Geneva convention as far as I can tell. The Geneva conventions require, among other things, that soldiers wear uniforms. Maybe it was just the movies, but I do believe that in the first and second world wars combatants dressed in civilian clothes were routinely shot. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
the second world war: they were members of uniformed units and not in uniform; or they were considered to be gathering information and not in uniform. There are larger questions here. Irregular forces whose tactics consist largely of murdering random civilians because that's easier than fighting soldiers are not military forces in the sense of the Geneva conventions, especially where they conceal their weapons and hide behind civilians. They are unlawful combatants and need not be treated as POWs if captured. Nor should their leaders be. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Anonymous wrote: The U.S. official's way of behaving like Texas rednecks are embarrassing. Not only are they cheering we got him like a child who can not withhold his enthusiasm. Displaying Saddam the way they did are also possibly a clear violation of the Geneva convention as far as I can tell. The Geneva conventions require, among other things, that soldiers wear uniforms. Maybe it was just the movies, but I do believe that in the first and second world wars combatants dressed in civilian clothes were routinely shot. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
the second world war: they were members of uniformed units and not in uniform; or they were considered to be gathering information and not in uniform. There are larger questions here. Irregular forces whose tactics consist largely of murdering random civilians because that's easier than fighting soldiers are not military forces in the sense of the Geneva conventions, especially where they conceal their weapons and hide behind civilians. They are unlawful combatants and need not be treated as POWs if captured. Nor should their leaders be. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Responding to orders which include a secrecy requirement
On Sat, 30 Aug 2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote: This has been proposed for, but it fails for the usual reasons. An ISP is free to say anyone requesting a tap is required to pay a fee, just as any ISP is free to say that it will handle installation of special Carnivore equipment for a certain fee. My (perhaps flawed) reading of Steve's post was different from Tims: the ISP bills the *tapped* person for misc unplanned network work, not the *tappers*. The ISP puts it into their contract: if tapped by court order, we'll bill you for our effort. In the UK ISPs certainly can bill the police for any taps installed at their standard rates, just as the telcos have always billed the police for the cost of wire taps. There was a lot of opposition from ISPs to taps 2-3 years ago; it largely disappeared when it became clear that they would be paid. The FBI made a presentation on Carnivore a couple of years ago at a NANOG conference in Washington. In a side remark, the guy giving the presentation made it clear that the practice in the US is the same: ISPs are paid by the police for any taps, paid at their normal rates. If your CPA has his time spent on govt things, can he bill you for it? If your ISP is hassled by RIAA, can they bill you? Certainly, if its in your contract. I ran an ISP for seven years and was involved in a number of industry associations. Never heard of anyone anywhere billing a customer for the cost of taps, or of anyone putting such a provision in their contracts (I reviewed quite a few such contracts very carefully). It would amount to a form of tax without any basis in legislation and would, I believe, arouse very strong opposition. But perhaps I miss the point of the thread ;-) -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881
Re: Slashdot | Florida Proposes Taxing Local LANs (fwd)
On Tue, 26 Aug 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote: I don't get it -- exactly what do they think they would be taxing? 9% of what? The bits and bytes that flow thru? The owners already paid a sales tax on the hardware, or is this like a yearly property tax? Bizarre! A bit tax has been proposed in the European Union several times. The general idea is to levy a tax on each bit/byte of Internet traffic that flows through some specified point or set of points. So far the Internet service providers have successfully lobbied against the tax. The US legislators obviously haven't clearly thought through their proposal yet. But it would be easy enough to, for example, reason that it costs N cents to push a megabyte down a telephone wire, and so it would be 'logical' to impose a tax 0.09 * N cents/megabyte. The LAN is just a way around the telephone wire, right? On Mon, Aug 25, 2003 at 06:35:47PM -0500, Jim Choate wrote: http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/08/25/2248224.shtml?tid=103tid=98tid=99 -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881
Re: Slashdot | Florida Proposes Taxing Local LANs (fwd)
On Tue, 26 Aug 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote: I don't get it -- exactly what do they think they would be taxing? 9% of what? The bits and bytes that flow thru? The owners already paid a sales tax on the hardware, or is this like a yearly property tax? Bizarre! A bit tax has been proposed in the European Union several times. The general idea is to levy a tax on each bit/byte of Internet traffic that flows through some specified point or set of points. So far the Internet service providers have successfully lobbied against the tax. The US legislators obviously haven't clearly thought through their proposal yet. But it would be easy enough to, for example, reason that it costs N cents to push a megabyte down a telephone wire, and so it would be 'logical' to impose a tax 0.09 * N cents/megabyte. The LAN is just a way around the telephone wire, right? On Mon, Aug 25, 2003 at 06:35:47PM -0500, Jim Choate wrote: http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/08/25/2248224.shtml?tid=103tid=98tid=99 -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881
Re: bbc
On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote: Did the IRA bomb the BBC newserver or something? They've been down for two days now. There has certainly been no interruption in service in the UK; I look at it daily. However, news.bbc.co.uk is not one machine. The BBC has at least two clusters of servers, one at Telehouse in London and the other in Telehouse America in New York. When I was providing services to the BBC (up until about 18 months ago), these server farms were connected by a private circuit, enabling the NY site to mirror the UK site. Custom DNS software looked at where you were (by IP address) and then gave you an IP address in either London or New York, depending on whether you connected through the London Internet exchange. What's most likely is that someone along the way has tried to be clever with caching/proxying and in effect has broken your connection. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881
Re: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who 's ne
On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, Tyler Durden wrote: Let's have some history here. The Muslims have not been at war against the Israelites since Biblical times. That is completely wrong. Hell, there haven't been any Israelites for nearly two millenia. More to the point, there were no Muslims in Biblical times. The Muslims appeared around 600 years after Christ, centuries after the beginning of the Jewish diaspora. The Romans drove the Jews out of Jerusalem and Judea after their rebellion (66-135 AD). The Christians introduced anti-Jewish laws in roughly 300-600 AD, when Jerusalem was under Byzantine rule. I believe that it is generally accepted that until quite recently, in historical terms, the Jews fared much better under the Muslims than under the Christians. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 -- THAT'S A CHANGE OF ADDRESS: I'm no longer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who 's ne
On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, Tyler Durden wrote: Let's have some history here. The Muslims have not been at war against the Israelites since Biblical times. That is completely wrong. Hell, there haven't been any Israelites for nearly two millenia. More to the point, there were no Muslims in Biblical times. The Muslims appeared around 600 years after Christ, centuries after the beginning of the Jewish diaspora. The Romans drove the Jews out of Jerusalem and Judea after their rebellion (66-135 AD). The Christians introduced anti-Jewish laws in roughly 300-600 AD, when Jerusalem was under Byzantine rule. I believe that it is generally accepted that until quite recently, in historical terms, the Jews fared much better under the Muslims than under the Christians. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 -- THAT'S A CHANGE OF ADDRESS: I'm no longer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: all about transferable off-line ecash (Re: Brands off-line tech)
On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, Trei, Peter wrote: I was living in Britain (and of an allowance-recieving age) when decimalization occured. While we lost the big penny, we gained the 50p piece. In those days, it was a large, heavy, seven-sided coin, bigger than a US half-dollar, and worth $1.20. It felt good in your pocket. Since then, the Brits have shrunk it to a much smaller size. Do they still call the 1 pound coins 'maggies'? I have been living in the UK for 17 years and have never heard this term. Younger people aren't sure who Maggie is anyway ;-) (15-year old daughter sitting next to me: Who's Maggie? and then Why would a pound be called Margaret Thatcher? ) -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 -- THAT'S A CHANGE OF ADDRESS: I'm no longer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: all about transferable off-line ecash (Re: Brands off-line tech)
On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, Trei, Peter wrote: I was living in Britain (and of an allowance-recieving age) when decimalization occured. While we lost the big penny, we gained the 50p piece. In those days, it was a large, heavy, seven-sided coin, bigger than a US half-dollar, and worth $1.20. It felt good in your pocket. Since then, the Brits have shrunk it to a much smaller size. Do they still call the 1 pound coins 'maggies'? I have been living in the UK for 17 years and have never heard this term. Younger people aren't sure who Maggie is anyway ;-) (15-year old daughter sitting next to me: Who's Maggie? and then Why would a pound be called Margaret Thatcher? ) -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 -- THAT'S A CHANGE OF ADDRESS: I'm no longer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DC to get spycams --no choice but to accept it
On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Eric Murray wrote: He said city officials had studied the British surveillance system, which has more than 2 million cameras throughout the country, and were intrigued by that model. snip Intrigued by the fact that cameras have almost NEVER helped to solved crimes in Britain, in spite of their ubituity? Intrigued by the fact that their citizens let them do it. It's not about solving crimes against citizens. FWIW few people in the UK object to security cameras (although there is considerable dislike of traffic cameras). If anything people seem to feel reassured by the presence of cameras. I believe that the statistics suggest that introducing cameras into an area will move crime elsewhere. That is, crime falls locally but goes up in nearby camera-free areas. As regards the other point, there certainly have been many notorious crimes where video tape was at least part of the basis for conviction, notably the Bulger case, where two boys kidnapped and murdered a small child. In fact the only complaint I recall hearing recently about cameras was from someone upset that the police couldn't track down the person who stole their back, which had been locked outside a police station, right in front of a security camera. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 -- CHANGE OF ADDRESS: I'm no longer at [EMAIL PROTECTED] --
Re: RSA cracked:In Russia!
On Wed, 30 Jan 2002, mattd wrote: cryptographers, Kryptogorodok. The existence of Kryptogorodok, sister city to Akademogorodok, Magnetogorsk, and to the rocket cities of Kazhakstan, had been shrouded in secrecy since its establishment in 1954 by Chief of Secret Police L. Beria. Not surprising, given that Beria died in December of 1953. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 -- CHANGE OF ADDRESS: I'm no longer at [EMAIL PROTECTED] --
Re: Rogue terror state violates Geneva Convention
On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Mon, Jan 14, 2002 at 01:13:41AM +0800, F. Marc de Piolenc wrote: I'll say it again - these are not prisoners of war! This is the heart of the matter. If the detainees are determined to be POWs, that triggers a certain level of legal protection. So far, it seems as though the U.S. is saying they are not but we'll extend them some of the benefits because we're nice guys. Conventionally, in order to be a prisoner of war you have to be a soldier. To be considered a soldier, you have to be in uniform and you have to be part of an organized military force, meaning that you have a rank and, unless you are the commander in chief, you have a superior to report to. This is an essential requirement, because PoWs are supposed to be handled through their own chain of command. In the second world war, people out of uniform but carrying guns were often just shot out of hand. If taken prisoner, they weren't treated as prisoners of war but as spies, bandits, or terrorists. Some of us remember the chief of police in Saigon dealing out summary justice during the Tet offensive on this basis: the VC wasn't in uniform, so he just shot him, right in front of all of those cameramen. Those fighting on behalf of the Taleban appear to be an unorganized militia - no uniforms, no ranks, no saluting, just guns and lots of spirit. You can't make them PoWs because they don't recognize any chain of command. -- Jim Dixon[EMAIL PROTECTED] tel+44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881
Re: [FREE] stratfor (fwd)
On Mon, 1 Oct 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Sun, Sep 30, 2001 at 04:11:21PM -0400, James B. DiGriz wrote: What I find interesting is how we can have a war without a Congressional declaration, which out of practical if not legal necessity requires something at least approximating a foreign power as the enemy. It would be extremely helpful if there were some overt state action or at least a smoking gun to publicly identify such party. Call me unusually hawkish, but I don't see why that's necessary. Let's say our fleet was attacked at Pearl Harbor 60 years ago -- but by an enemy who did not paint his flag on his aircraft. Congress could, and should, declare war on an unidentified enemy. I admit the situation is not as clear here, since generally only nationstates can raise air armadas and non-nationstate organizations could have trained the Hijacking 19, but perhaps the parallels are nevertheless sufficient. Think of it as an unidentified co-conspirator approach. Better parallels: the Barbary pirates, against which the US sent a fleet in the early 1800s, or the US Army's incursion into Mexico under Gen Pershing in the early 1900s. You can dispatch troops without a nation-state as the target. -- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015
Re: Anglo-American communications studies
[Apologies for continuing this odd thread but ...] On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, Tim May wrote: Anyway - I heard Americans on the TV last week talking about "railway" instead of "railroad". And "station" instead of "depot" (though Grand Central Station is I suppose quite old, so you must have had that one for a while) The most interesting Britishism to suddenly invade our shores and spread rapidly is "gone missing." I'm now hearing this in American movies, t.v. shows, and, importantly, television news. "The hunt is on for the fugitives in Texas who have gone missing." This is definitely new to our shores; I'm surprised (and pleased) at how rapidly it has spread. "At university" and "at hospital" have not become common (though "at The more common British term is "in hospital". I don't recall ever hearing anyone say "at hospital". There are innumerable small distinctions in usage . If you are in hospital, you are ill, not a member of the staff. Your being ill may the result of an injury. That is, the same term covers both sicknesses and injuries. If you are in hospital because of a broken back, people will say that you are ill. If you are sick, on the other hand, it means that you have vomited. college" and "at school" are fully equivalent and are common). They aren't equivalent at all. In the UK [young] children go to "school" and "college" generally refers to something very roughly equivalent to either an American senior high school or junior college. My company has university students spending a year or so with us on placement; if you ask them when they are going back to school, they tend to be offended, thinking you are poking fun at them. Taking the mickey, that is. -- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015
Re: How the Feds will try to ban strong anonymity
On Sun, 8 Oct 2000, Steve Furlong wrote: In general, look at what China is doing. Britain and Russia, too. Britain is doing a lot less than you seem to think. The RIP act has been passed, but to a rising chorus of protests from all sides, including industry. Actual implementation of the bill will not occur for some time (1-2 years). In the meantime opponents of the bill are preparing their legal cases, arguing that the act is in violation of various European Union directives. At the practical level, UK ISPs have seen no change at all. -- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015
