Damn it, I was thinking the same thing.Ranooth said:
7 cards given to the 7 guardians of man. I wonder who gets the one card to rule them all?
Elite Seven Chosen As Guardians of the Internet
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
- Start date
7 cards given to the 7 guardians of man. I wonder who gets the one card to rule them all?
I don't want to turn this into a giant rant a thon, so I will simply say that while not perfect the US and UK for all their differances have the highest consistant standards in terms of human rights, and free speech. What's more I feel that if you distribute too many of them, it defeats the purpose of limiting the number to begin with.Tarmon said:
Without going into uber-politics, consider the various discussions I've been involved in about Russia recently over the movie "Salt", this is a nation with a horrendous record when it comes to Human rights and despite it's attempts at reform it's massively backslid. It's been involved with attempting to assasinate a pro-western leader in Ukraine during an election to install one more favorable to it's interests, it's invaded Georgia, it's turned off the fuel to the EU to make a point, and it's threatened Poland with nuclear force for hosting a US anti-missle base. That is to say nothing for the spy ring that we just uncovered not too long ago. Basically Russia is regressing back into what it was as the USSR and I think trusting them for something like this is foolish, and for many of the same reasons as China as Russia is one of those nations that are likely to be behind any kind of event (other than terrorism) that leads to the Internet needing to be taken down and rebooted... like a global war or whatever.
When you have nations like France you look towards things like their position on free speech, and the press. The people there believe they have free speech and a free press, but then when you look at "The War On Terror" and what was actually going on with France and it's violations of sanctions through things like The "Oil For Food program", combined with how it reported these revelations compared to what the res tof the world found... well you can see the issues with them being involved in anything involving free speech. France is another nation that is very much interested in information control. Heck, every once in a while I've read stuff about how France is so paranoid that it has done things like limit the numbers of foreign movies that can be shown in proportion to domestically produced French ones to limit the influance of outside ideas and limit the risk of gradually losing their own culture.
Australia would normally be right up there with the US and UK in my mind if it wasn't for this entire "national firewall" thing, and some of their censorship crazy leaders.
India doesn't have a clear seperation of Church and State which makes me wary of trusting them with anything like this until they establish one. For all the strides they have made I have over the years heard about things like thousands upon thousands of people gathering to witness a statue drinking milk, as well as religiously based laws that have created things like a city where apparently Monkeys are allowed to roam free and do pretty much anything, and something called "The Temple Of The Rat" which is a maintained national landmark where vermin run free.
Japan has also made strides but it's also very racist, very xenophobic, and under US occupation despite how we decide to term it diplomatically. Despite their "Self Defense Force" the US pretty much has Japan covered with military bases and could wipe it out at will, it's one of our major staging areas for that entire region and arguablly our biggest "foothold" and strategic asset in Asia and the eastern world, as well as our tripwire when it comes to hostilities because for any serious war to be waged by powers down there one of the first things they would have to do is deal with the massive US military power based in Japan.
Now, I understand a lot of nerds feel a certain kinship with the Japanese due to a shared love of pop culture featuring science fiction, fantasy, and general insanity. Heck, I can say I feel that way to some extent as well. That is not all that Japan is however, and it's important to remember that. These guys were trying to conquer the world not even a hundred years ago, conducting horrible experiments, and most importantly committed so many atrocities among their neighbors like China and Korea that they are massively reviled. While not politic to point it, Japan's survival and somewhat cordial relations nowadays can also be attributed to the US occupation because we are also pretty much protecting them. If the US was ever to pull out, even with the SSDF, I don't think it would be too long before someone down there would find reasons to wage a war of vengeance.
I write more about Japan than many nations, because I think a lot of "fans" or self styled "otaku" don't really get it. Injections of reality prevented me from going Weeaboo a long time ago, and when I used to game with a lot of navy people who were stationed down there I learned a bit about it from a strategic perspective. The US Navy being tenatively guests on the paperwork, but ultimatly being a polite occupying force (and not well liked by a lot of people because of it) that is also understood even by those who don't like them as a nessicary evil because the US is Japan's bodyguard for all intents and purposes as well. Or at least that's how it's been explained to me. Having learned about things like "Unit 731" as well (I think I have the number correct) while it didn't change my love of some of their fiction, I admit it did a lot to influance how I think about Japan, especially seeing as the 1940s might not be recent, but they aren't ancient history either.
When it comes to Switzerland, the biggest problem I have with them is that their pretensions of neutrality generally come down to self interest at the expense of everyone else. Perhaps an impression I get from their heavy (and very famous) involvement in banking. While I have no real fear of them invading anyone militarily (corperatly is something else), at the same time they aren't a group I would be inclined to trust to responsibly reset something like this. Their (in)famous neutrality probably makes them the best case currently for someone else who might be given a full set of keys, but at the same time I'm speaking for myself and my opinion and I'm not entirely comfortable with it, and you don't want too many out there. Part of my opinion isn't so much that there is anything drastically wrong with other nations in many cases, but simply that they aren't the best choice or have things that work against them more than the US or UK do. The US and UK being the best choices in my opinion (and tht's what it is, an opinion)... which is not to say that everyone else invariably blows chips in some horrible way, just that they aren't as good/reliable to my way of thinking. Some of my reasons (like with Switzerland) aren't the best, but that isn't the point, the point is that it comes down to trust and doubts, where I have less of them with those groups.
You know guys, this was in conventional news yesterday, or maybe even two days ago. As for the subject matter...
Yes, i'm sort of afraid that some of these individuals will try to hold Internet hostage, for whatever reason.Therumancer said:
The Elders once said: the Internet is a living, breathing thing. Powerful. Beautiful. Ninety-nine percent of the time, cruel.Mana Fiend said:
It would seem to me that most of your objections to those nations are very subjective of nature. Because for as far as I can see the US and UK have alot against them to if you you look at it this way.Therumancer said:
The US for instance still had slavery when almost every other country in the world was against it. They recently passed a insane law in Arizona (you being a pretty smart guy you probably know wich one I'm talking about so I won't explain further) and they're well known for completely disregarding the rest of the world in there decisions for instance going to war while the rest of the world (except for the UK) is telling them not to.
I'm out of time, mabey I'll continue this rant another time. But before I go I just want to say something about the UK; you do realize that the Queen of England is also the head of the English church don't you.
However, a lot of the points you make are actually advantages. Things like slavery, and state laws are about personal freedom, the abillity of the people to make their own desicians. At first it might be odd to say that slavery is an expression of personal freedom, consider how it got started, and why it was being allowed to begin with. In a lot of places you had goverments coming down and banning slavery in it's entirety, in the US given that the ownership of blacks was a granted right for a long time, this basically didn't happen and the people themselves were allowed to find their own moral compass in the matter. While slavery was a hot issue around the time of The Civil War, the fighting broke out due to economics, slavery was a side issue despite the propaganda (especially later). For all of the comments by guys like Lincoln it's important to note that it wasn't until decades later that blacks were even recognized as being fully human.Tarmon said:
The bottom line being that with The Internet being what it is, you have to look carefully at the issues of personal freedom vs. goverment control and what a lot of other nations seem to think of this when it comes to free speech and the like. A lot of the world will present things like strong bans on free speech to limit hate speech and the like, or the abillity of the goverment to make sweeping proclaimations with any kind of local empowerment being fairly minimal as advantages, however they are not. Freedom has it's dark side, and the fact that America embraces this as the price of the benefits is one of the things that makes the US unique in a global sense.
In short, in pretty much any case of America doing something messed up in it's domestic policy, stop and think about the issue in an overall sense, and the rights of the people to decide something (even if messed up) as part of freedom, as opposed to the federal goverment wading in with a punk hammer to force the people to do whatever the people currently in power think is morally correct at the moment. Even if well intentioned stopping them is arguably the greater evil when looking at the issue of personal freedom.
When it comes to The Queen in the UK, she doesn't have any real official power in the goverment. As a result it's not a big deal. She does not pass laws, or set policy, in a functional sense the only thing the Royals really do is act as figureheads, and diplomats.
The Queen could not for example suddenly declare that dogs are sacred by the word of god, and pass laws that would make it a death penelty offense to harm, or even interfere with a dog doing whatever it wanted to in the city of London which would become a shining beacon to everything canine and the obvious holiness of the species.
In other countries this is not the case. The above example is literal to India (according to some things I've read), albiet I don't think they are quite harsh enough to enforce a death penelty. In their case though it's monkeys, not dogs.
As a network engineer, I can say that the likelihood of every major international ISP catastrophically failing at the same time is impossible.
Yes, physically impossible. Not statistically improbable.
That level of "Cyber-terrorism" would have to start as an infiltration job extraordinaire in some major computer/software manufacturer (think: Microsoft), implant code that couldn't be detected and fixed by any national agency, and spread across the majority of private-sector businesses that use the net.
The keys to making this "perfect storm" are individually laughable and unlikely, never mind it all coming together.
Kids, the internet thrives on redundancy and failsafes. It's simply too complicated for any entity to crash the entire network at once.
Thousands of DDoS attacks and infiltrations are performed every day on the internet, and their impact is neglible. We used to have 88% spam rate for years (of all email traffic sent) and it didn't crack the web. I've watched hurricanes wipe out half of southern Florida, but their internet hub keeps ticking.
This "Elite Seven" group amuses me greatly though. Thanks for the laugh guys.
Yes, physically impossible. Not statistically improbable.
That level of "Cyber-terrorism" would have to start as an infiltration job extraordinaire in some major computer/software manufacturer (think: Microsoft), implant code that couldn't be detected and fixed by any national agency, and spread across the majority of private-sector businesses that use the net.
The keys to making this "perfect storm" are individually laughable and unlikely, never mind it all coming together.
Kids, the internet thrives on redundancy and failsafes. It's simply too complicated for any entity to crash the entire network at once.
Thousands of DDoS attacks and infiltrations are performed every day on the internet, and their impact is neglible. We used to have 88% spam rate for years (of all email traffic sent) and it didn't crack the web. I've watched hurricanes wipe out half of southern Florida, but their internet hub keeps ticking.
This "Elite Seven" group amuses me greatly though. Thanks for the laugh guys.
this is nerd epic. like a modern lord of the rings... for geeks.
sweet.
its also like the osterhagen key, but good instead of bad, and with the internet.
and you would rally at a single point, not multiple points across the globe.
okay so maybe its only a bit like the osterhagen system.
sweet.
its also like the osterhagen key, but good instead of bad, and with the internet.
and you would rally at a single point, not multiple points across the globe.
okay so maybe its only a bit like the osterhagen system.
