Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 21:05:42 -0400 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@iowna.com> To: Milo Hyson <milo@cyberlifelabs.com>, Help Victims <fight_terrorism@yahoo.com>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Helping victims of terror Message-ID: <01091221054200.11412@proxy.the-i-pa.com> References: <20010912215547.98067.qmail@web20806.mail.yahoo.com> <01091219512600.11358@proxy.the-i-pa.com>
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On Wednesday 12 September 2001 20:36, Milo Hyson wrote: > One thing I did learn from that experience is that the United States looks > MUCH different from the outside. In this country we're raised to believe > that America is #1 and that anything foreign is worthless crap, be it > products, ideas or people. However, people in other countries see through > all that. They see us for what we really are -- a bunch of spoiled, > arrogant pricks who get upset at the thought of other parts of the world > being different than us. I resent that. While a considerable portion of US citizens may fit your above description, I, for one, do not. I also know that a considerable portion of the people I know do not. I think you're generalizing too broadly. Perhaps you've been watching too much TV and have been influenced by the media's skewed portrayal of the US public. > I see all of these people on TV saying that they can't believe something > like this could happen here. Why not? It happens in other countries. Why > not here? What's so special about the US? Are we a country of super-beings? > Do we have a force field around the country to keep all of the bad men out? I have to agree with your here. In a sick kind of way, I'm actually rather relieved that this finally happened. I've been fearing it for years. I've been telling people that airport security is a joke for years and folks have thought I was kidding. I know that I'm not the only one who has realized that airport secruity is a joke, and some of the people who know it's ineffective have jobs making it effective. I consider those folks to be just as big of criminals as the wackos that flew those planes into those buildings. > Quite possible. The big argument in favor of controlling encryption has > always been to intercept and counteract terrorist and other criminal > communications. However, history has proven that US restrictions on such > technology has no effect on its development, distribution and use in other > countries. The most important thing is that steps are taken to prevent future occurances, while protecting the rights and freedoms of honest people. IOW: no new laws about what ordinary people aren't allowed to do, but maybe some new checks to make sure they're not doing things that they already aren't allowed to do. > A smarter move would be to actually support open-source in a way similar to > the European Comission's plan of declaring closed-source to be the > least-reliable type of software. This idea stems from the fact that with a > closed-source product, one has to take the manufacturer's word as to it's > stability, reliability and performance. With open-source, everyone can see > what makes it tick and what makes it crap-out. I heard that some place in South America was getting ready to pass some laws or something to this effect. This is an excellent move on the part of a country, if you ask me. -- Bill Moran Potential Technology technical services (412) 793-4257 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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