Ps Chris
You were Right

....PRECISELY those states that are/were considered Rogue States by the US government.

Wow, I'm getting too old for this.

My mistake. I shouldn't have blamed IBM, WCG, United Devices, or anyone in particular for cleansing the list.

The list of countries at UD's grid.org does not have Cuba listed in their drop-down list of countries either, so I don't think there was any cleansing by IBM or WCG which uses the UD software.

http://www.grid.org/stats/geos/

In the meantime, perhaps those out there without a country, or who find themselves in a country not particularly friendly to them, can consider affiliating their nationalism with the island nation of Mauritius. A 2001 report from the United Nations described it as follows:

"In spite of the existing communal and lingusitic differences, Mauritius is famous across the world for having by and large successfully managed diversity. With a mix of various ethnic groups, cultures, languages, and religions which in many other countries create a chaotic situation, Mauritius has succeeded in creating a stable and harmonious society... It is a place where each community values its own special identity and still respects the other communities making allowance for their right to their different identities. It is one of the few remarkable success stories in the developing world..."

This small peaceful island nation is currently #43 out of the 112 ranked teams on WCG, which is not bad for a 720 square mile nation.

Perhaps we can show our support for this example of tolerance, where Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian and others live in harmony, and respect one another.

And although the world clearly is far from reflecting this example of peace, perhaps we can come together in this forum and respect the views of others who share our belief in the WORLD COMMUNITY part of the WCG. I know that everyone on this forum shares a common goodwill, or they wouldn't be here, even if some of them don't always reflect their charity and compassion, which has been on occasion "less than readily apparent" in their postings.

Feel free to join me in peaceful and tolerant Mauritius, or continue supporting your individual countries with a competitive spirit, as that works to recruit new members to the grid and help the project as well.



PS: Since WCG did not recognize San Francisco as a country unto itself (which I am sure would please many!), I gave serious thought to defecting to Canada. However, I realized that Canada would need 4000 additional defectors to have a chance to move them up a single spot from their current #2 in the geography standings, so I decided to go with Mauritius. I noted my numbers alone have been able to move Mauritius up about 15 places in the country standings, from #58 to #43! Makes me feel that one person maybe can make a difference sometimes!

Well, as expected earlier, It's all BUSHIT :
I just found this post in the User-News (not new Users) - Forum:



Sounds perfectly reasonable. Does it not?

A quick check revealed that Seti@home (hosted in Berkeley, which is in the US I believe) has contributing members in:
Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lybia, Sudan, Syria.
(http://setiathome2.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/countries.html)

So, bbover3, you just trying to get this out of the way in the pre-Xmas rush? What's true for SETI is not true for WCG? P_LEASE!
How DARE the powers in charge use the name WORLD COMMUNITY grid and then rule part of that world unfit to contribute?
And....
Hasn't Afghanistan been brought back into the happy happy group of democratic nations under the oh so courageous leadership of the US commander in Chief? And they still aren't good enough?

Sir, have you NO decency?


Happy Crunching

David,

Like I said in the parallel thread http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=1070, The prohibition on software export from the US to those six countries would not be violated by the inclusion of those countries in the member profile edit page. Omitting those countries from the profile edit page does not prevent export of the WCG agent software to those countries.

I can pick any country I want in my profile, it may mean that I live there, or maybe I used to live there, or maybe that I have some sentimental attachment to that place. It is completey independent of my current geographical location, but is being treated here as if this unvalidated optional user setting is critical to the enforcement of US export laws. If these export laws are really that important, then I sure hope WCG and IBM have implemented some other preventative measure to prevent people in those six countries from downloading the WCG agent software.

I guess I just don't see the link between the optional profile setting and the US export law. Adding those countries to the drop down liost does not mean that laws are being broken. Omitting them from the list does not mean that laws are not being broken. The list is completely independent from the country to which a members downloads the WCG agent software.

Looking at the map at the bottom of the global stats page ( http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/stat/global.html ) more than hald of the members are not registered to one of the geographical regions. If you assert that the country setting in a user's profile is accurate, then that means that over half of the WCG members do not live within the boundaries of any country on the planet. I don't want to sound like No-MAD, but isn't the US worried about the fact that the majority of WCG members are extraterrestrials? Seems like there should be export laws against that


Anyway, I am in the USA, and I think those six countries should be added to the list.

That's a good point joat.

There must be thousands of extraterrestrials that are unaccounted.

When it comes to software and international sactions I think people usually would rather err on the side of caution. Whenever there is something that is not clear it only makes sense to just leave out a few names and deal with explaining it to the public rather than dealing with a lawsuit. I don't think WCG (or really anyone for that matter) gives a rats arse about who uses this software.
Keep in mind that China has a very large percentage of pirated software (perhaps nearly 90%). China is not part of the international copyright treaty, in other words these Chinese sites are legal in their country of hosting so there is very little anyone can do about it.
So any software that is created in the US will likelybe copied in China and other similar places and then distributed without restrictions.