Quote from: Babylon on June 19, 2011, 12:31:39 AM

Afghans drove out every major world power. The Romans, The Greeks, the Russians, they are still working on us, but my money is on them.

By that kind of logic, I have defeated my math prof. Roll Eyes

The don't defeat, they just persevere without changing and have the inherent low value of their landmass cause every half-sane opponent to leave, then emerge from hiding, return to their old ways and that's it.

They are sociopolitical equivalent of a chemical system in a very low energy state. Much like such a chemical system they are unlikely to change on their own and would require tremendous energy input just to change them a little bit, and perhaps even more energy and a lot of know-how to change them in a manner that would be somewhat stable and won't immediately revert to old status quo upon being left unattended.

In other words, Afghani status quo seems pretty close to the maximum devastation a military opponent could inflict on a different society, thus attempts to alter them via force are usually fruitless and eventually just run out of steam.

Quote from: Jessy Kang on June 19, 2011, 06:49:52 AM

It seems the embarrassing IRC logs are "offline":
http://bitcoinstats.com/irc/bitcoin-dev/logs/2011/06/15/3#l1062344

That's right- don't fix the problem, just hide the evidence.

I had an IT buddy explain an interesting point to me. Usually it's the Geeks that find vulnerabilities in the projects code- then the Public Relations/Business types figure "security in obscurity" try to hush it up, or attack the Geeks who found it- rather than get the hole patched.

Here we have a gaping vulnerability in the Public Relations policy and now the Geeks, rather than patch it up are similarly hoping for "security in obscurity", and attacking the Public Relations/Business types who pointed it out Huh

Reposted the logs here.

I'd like to thank the Politicals for joining in this thread and so eloquently illustrating the cause of our concerns.

PR "vulnerabilities" operate differently from the ones that happen in the wonderful realm of computer code, methinks.

Disclosure is the very vector by which they do damage so limiting disclosure is a legitimate PR response.

Having said that, I have come to the idea that individuals so concerned could join efforts in order to provide the Politically Inclined Users with a better, more liberal platform to carry out their discourse and incentivize them to relocate that discourse away from "main" forum and into said more liberal platform.

P.S.:
Banning search engines from the Politics forum is entirely reasonable and should be done.