Slashdot Mirror

Quoth the BBC:

The UK Ministry of Defence has urged newspaper editors to "bear in mind" the national security implications of publishing the information.

You can make a plausible case that the leaks will put lives at risk. But warning the media about publishing excerpts after the stuff is already made public? That's got fuck all to do with national security, that's politicians worrying about *personal* relations.

There, corrected that for you!

Some long-running soaps in the UK have huge audiences, and when the adverts start all the viewers turn the kettle on for a cup of tea.

See here.

Quoth the BBC:

The UK Ministry of Defence has urged newspaper editors to "bear in mind" the national security implications of publishing the information.

You can make a plausible case that the leaks will put lives at risk. But warning the media about publishing excerpts after the stuff is already made public? That's got fuck all to do with national security, that's politicians worrying about public relations.

Nah, it goes to the various media companies: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8003799.stm

In China this would be pointless because why would the government care what their people thought?

The Chinese government cares a lot about what their people think, that's why they have a lot of censorship. The Chinese government is well aware of history and of what happened to previous Chinese governments. Piss off too many (e.g. the peasants) and you die.

FWIW, a lot of the Chinese people support their own government (just look at the patriots out in full force during the Olympics).

Why?
1) The censorship and brainwashing. Control what people see and that affects what they think, and that's how you keep them supporting you.
2) Because there have actually been significant positive changes. Railways and highways have been built, many of the poor have benefited from those. Sure there's lots of bad stuff happening, but they can just look at a lot of other countries and go "We're doing better" or "we're doing pretty good given the hand we've been dealt".
3) They can see that at least some parts of the Government are trying to improve things for China, and not just a corrupt few. They're in the process of building very many nuclear reactors so that they don't have to burn so much coal and have so much pollution.

As for accountability: a number of high ranking officials actually get executed for corruption or screwing up big time[1]. Sure maybe at the very top there are untouchables, but is it really so different in the US or other countries? And how high up is this US guy anyway: http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20101104/NEWS/101109939/1078&ParentProfile=1062
They're possibly even slightly afraid of the people, they abolished the agricultural tax: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-03/06/content_422126.htm
http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/1274.html

It's not that rosy, there are lots of problems and it could fall apart: http://www.china.org.cn/china/2010-01/21/content_19282590.htm
That "houses are way too expensive" problem does exist in many other countries too though.

You can see that many of the Chinese leaders are trying though. Wish my Government (in Malaysia) was even trying to improve the country- so far they've been doing a lot of stupid/bad things. The guy at the top says lots of nice stuff, but so far it's just been talk, whereas his underlings say and do pretty bad stuff.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/09/AR2007070900689_pf.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10535226
http://www.newkerala.com/news/world/fullnews-87512.html

This is absurd. I opposed the Iraq War too but it's not a "war crime". The previous regime was in violation of the ceasefire agreement that ended the Gulf War and numerous UN resolutions passed subsequent to that agreement. The Iraq War was perfectly legal under American and international law. It was a foolhardy adventure that distracted us from more pressing concerns but it was not illegal or a war crime.

The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan disagreed.

Furthermore, the UK Attorney General could only get the invasion to be legal in UK law through Resolution criteria dating back to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Allegations he was pressured into giving the OK lack sufficient evidence.

This is absurd. I opposed the Iraq War too but it's not a "war crime". The previous regime was in violation of the ceasefire agreement that ended the Gulf War and numerous UN resolutions passed subsequent to that agreement. The Iraq War was perfectly legal under American and international law. It was a foolhardy adventure that distracted us from more pressing concerns but it was not illegal or a war crime.

The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan disagreed.

Furthermore, the UK Attorney General could only get the invasion to be legal in UK law through Resolution criteria dating back to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Allegations he was pressured into giving the OK lack sufficient evidence.

From the poison pen of xmas past.

Colby Cosh: Some apparently unwelcome candour on Canada

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/transcripts/Lord-Moran.pdf

As a Canadian with a reasonably good recollection of 1984, all I can say is "ouch" and "damn straight". I've lived in five provinces (BC, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia). He has a point about the fetish in Toronto/Ottawa for loading the international penis ruler onto their iPhones. It's a bit of a culture shock for a Canadian to show up in Toronto and discover other Canadians taking themselves seriously.

Back when I was in eastern Canada, there was a lot of talk about changing the rules to allow mergers among our five large banks, so that bankers in Toronto could have bigger international wieners, and then after the party, collect state welfare like the big American banks they so bitterly envied.

On the flip side, Toronto does have a kick ass film festival, so I didn't totally feel like I was living in a foreign country.

Police seek domain closure powers - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11845961

Scarily, as you point out, all the other things are already happening and the last point was trains to gas chambers, and just yesterday the government announced massive expenditure (in the middle of a global recession) on upgrading the train services.

soon you'll lose your right to trial by jury, be logged on some huge data base, sections of the population will be segregated, forced to move from the desirable areas into slums then the trains to the gas/torture chambers will start.......

Are you being ironic? Because as it happens, every one of these is the case in the UK except the gas chambers.

Right to trial by jury - 28 day detention/recent use of this power/"Kettling" of students as young as 15 on demonstrations for 12+ hours at a time - did you know this particular policing technique originated in Nazi Poland to force Jews to the gas chamber? :/

Logged on some huge database - Police DNA database (they take a sample if merely questioning you and will lie about removing the data - EU has to get involved and force them), TV licensing, DVLA, Council Tax, Electoral register, etc, etc - in most of these cases the operating body also sells an edited version of the database to private companies for targeted mailing or other purposes.

Sections of the population segregated - Largely propaganda driven in the media against certain groups/ethnicities; in particular the Muslim population has been targeted for example by CCTV

Forced to move into slums - The new government is stripping out housing benefit and cutting down the length of time you can 'own' social housing to two years minimum (previously they were owned for life) and if your earning power increases above an arbitrary threshold they'll toss you out; the Conservative mayor of London even finds this unpalatable ) and predicts that it will lead to the cities becoming the preserve of the rich and white.

So yeah, no gas chambers just yet, but I'm sure some bright spark will suggest it as a way to cut down on the money spent in fuel subsidies for pensioners or whatever soon enough.

Posting AC because I really don't have any faith in this country any more.

soon you'll lose your right to trial by jury, be logged on some huge data base, sections of the population will be segregated, forced to move from the desirable areas into slums then the trains to the gas/torture chambers will start.......

Are you being ironic? Because as it happens, every one of these is the case in the UK except the gas chambers.

Right to trial by jury - 28 day detention/recent use of this power/"Kettling" of students as young as 15 on demonstrations for 12+ hours at a time - did you know this particular policing technique originated in Nazi Poland to force Jews to the gas chamber? :/

Logged on some huge database - Police DNA database (they take a sample if merely questioning you and will lie about removing the data - EU has to get involved and force them), TV licensing, DVLA, Council Tax, Electoral register, etc, etc - in most of these cases the operating body also sells an edited version of the database to private companies for targeted mailing or other purposes.

Sections of the population segregated - Largely propaganda driven in the media against certain groups/ethnicities; in particular the Muslim population has been targeted for example by CCTV

Forced to move into slums - The new government is stripping out housing benefit and cutting down the length of time you can 'own' social housing to two years minimum (previously they were owned for life) and if your earning power increases above an arbitrary threshold they'll toss you out; the Conservative mayor of London even finds this unpalatable ) and predicts that it will lead to the cities becoming the preserve of the rich and white.

So yeah, no gas chambers just yet, but I'm sure some bright spark will suggest it as a way to cut down on the money spent in fuel subsidies for pensioners or whatever soon enough.

Posting AC because I really don't have any faith in this country any more.

whether safeguards are necessary (an appeals process, for example)

-- boggle! Of course there must be an appeals process.

The UK is becoming worse, there is a proposal by the home secretary to throw someone out of his house even if there was not enough evidence to charge; this is going to be abused by wifes who want a divorce -- get the bloke out on made up complaints of violence; by the time that he would be allowed back in she will have started the legal process and grabbed the property and stopped him seeing the kids.

yet no flight out of El Al has ever been hijacked in more than half a century.

FYI, that's close, but not quite true.

If by "worldwide attention" you mean "an article on Slashdot with 45 comments on it and the odd mention elsewhere", yes.

It's on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/us_and_canada/ in the "also news" 1-liners just above John Travolta's new kiddie. Nothing on the (UK) Telegraph's USA news site, nor the Sydney Morning Herald. It is on the (Jo'burg) Mail and Guardian "world news" site but as the second-last story. Basically, no-one much cares.

Yes yes! State Security! Then you can give them the coolest badges ever!

It's so cute that this mom ACTUALLY believes her kid(s) when they say that they "stumbled upon the porn by accident".

It's actually pretty easy.

Only pencils? But what about paintbrushes?

Paintbrush injury pupil set to receive pay-out: he fell on a paintbrush which pierced his eye. ... ruled that North Lanarkshire Council failed to prevent a foreseeable risk of harm.

A horrible event, and at least they're not banning brushes -- YET -- but I'm sure someone somewhere is now thinking about it.

Student suffers catastrophic brain damage in paintbrush accident. Sues for £2.5m

Don't forget to ban paintbrushes. They can cause real harm!

Paintbrush injury pupil set to receive pay-out

The culture didn't change, the leadership did with the previous leadership having enforced a culture that was not representative of the people. That's why the Western backed Shah was overthrown in the first place, '79 is the point in which Iran became representative of itself in that it's leadership was representative of the people, it's only in recent years it's once again reached the point where it's leadership is running on a different path to it's people and maintaining that standpoint through force which is precisely why I made the point that it's only in recent years that Iran has started to deteriorate back towards dictatorship.

Have a look here to see Iran's leadership mechanism in place since 1979:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8051750.stm

You'll notice that it's actually designed to be accountable and democratic, but like all democractic systems it's fallable in the face of rigged elections, and it's precisely that that is moving Iran towards dictatorship now. Up until this point it has in fact worked in a fairly democratic manner.

No, but they have banned paintbrushes... A sad story, but really, why not wrap our kids up in cotton wool and let them do nothing?...

Ships call at several ports.

A ship from China to Europe will probably stop at several major European ports. For an example, see here.

A modern form of using wind for propulsion is using kites. They develop them in my home town, but I have yet to see them in action: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7205217.stm

Free speech is causing harm!

Just like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or releasing the names and addresses of informants against Mafia hit men, or the names and locations of informants against Al Qaeda & Taliban cut-throats & beheaders like Wikileaks is doing.

Dead informants mean fewer people to pass on information on scum like Shahzad, who tried to bomb Times Square with a bomb like this.

Calling himself a Muslim soldier, Shahzad pleaded guilty in June to 10 terrorism and weapons counts. He said the Pakistan Taliban provided him with more than $15,000 and five days of explosives training late last year and early this year, months after he became a U.S. citizen.

Would even a Wembley stadium type attack convince even most people many on Slashdot that terrorism is a serious problem? I wonder.

Bin Laden's demand to the United States (The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.) is that we all convert to his brand Islam, change our governments to observe Sharia, or he and his minions will continue to try to kill us. Their ultimate goal is to conquer the world for Islam, not simply get the US out of anywhere, destroy Israel, or anything else. Al Qaeda believes it is justified in killing 4,000,000 Americans in pursuit of its goal. As it is, Al Qaeda's world wide body count must be easily in the tens of thousands by now.

Meanwhile, planning continues for the next Al Qaeda assault in Europe, following up on the successful mass attacks in London and Madrid, various assassinations, and the failed attacks in Germany, France, and other places. (Hopefully there is a well placed informant or two that will survive the Wikileaks releases.)

I wonder how many on Slashdot are members of the Internet Jihad, or are otherwise radicalized and trying to influence opinion?

“I imagine how the great jihad will take place, how the Muslims will win, God willing, and rule the whole world, and establish the greatest empire once again!!!” reads another Internet posting from Mr. Abdulmutallab.

This is not the secular, political language of resistance against foreign occupation. It is the language of apocalyptic salvation. It has nothing to do with Iraq, Afghanistan or the Palestinians, although countless young Muslims identify passionately with stories of perceived injustice. Radical Islam claims that martyrdom is the ultimate act of faith – the highest duty of a believer, next to the worship of Allah itself.

“

Free speech is causing harm!

Just like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or releasing the names and addresses of informants against Mafia hit men, or the names and locations of informants against Al Qaeda & Taliban cut-throats & beheaders like Wikileaks is doing.

Dead informants mean fewer people to pass on information on scum like Shahzad, who tried to bomb Times Square with a bomb like this.

Calling himself a Muslim soldier, Shahzad pleaded guilty in June to 10 terrorism and weapons counts. He said the Pakistan Taliban provided him with more than $15,000 and five days of explosives training late last year and early this year, months after he became a U.S. citizen.

Would even a Wembley stadium type attack convince even most people many on Slashdot that terrorism is a serious problem? I wonder.

Bin Laden's demand to the United States (The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.) is that we all convert to his brand Islam, change our governments to observe Sharia, or he and his minions will continue to try to kill us. Their ultimate goal is to conquer the world for Islam, not simply get the US out of anywhere, destroy Israel, or anything else. Al Qaeda believes it is justified in killing 4,000,000 Americans in pursuit of its goal. As it is, Al Qaeda's world wide body count must be easily in the tens of thousands by now.

Meanwhile, planning continues for the next Al Qaeda assault in Europe, following up on the successful mass attacks in London and Madrid, various assassinations, and the failed attacks in Germany, France, and other places. (Hopefully there is a well placed informant or two that will survive the Wikileaks releases.)

I wonder how many on Slashdot are members of the Internet Jihad, or are otherwise radicalized and trying to influence opinion?

“I imagine how the great jihad will take place, how the Muslims will win, God willing, and rule the whole world, and establish the greatest empire once again!!!” reads another Internet posting from Mr. Abdulmutallab.

This is not the secular, political language of resistance against foreign occupation. It is the language of apocalyptic salvation. It has nothing to do with Iraq, Afghanistan or the Palestinians, although countless young Muslims identify passionately with stories of perceived injustice. Radical Islam claims that martyrdom is the ultimate act of faith – the highest duty of a believer, next to the worship of Allah itself.

“

Not very observant then. Pass Trafalgar Square often?

Phillip.

From what I remember reading, cats have poor pattern recognition skills, but an extremely strong visual-adrenal response. However, lest we imagine that cats are hopelessly stupid and coast solely on hormones, they are also capable of modulating the tone of their purring to manipulate humans. Anecdotes don't count for much, but I can say that one of my cats is smart enough to push doors open, and that she plays "fetch" with me (I'll toss a toy, she'll run to get it, plays with it for a moment, then brings it back and drops it within 6" of me to do it all again).

According to the UN, the efforts governments are making to curb CO2 emissions are a far cry from what is needed to keep climate change within acceptable limits: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11813578

Welcome to the UK then.

The instructions to the dispatchers in cases like this used to be that they ignore you and hang up. This has thankfully recently changed as a result of a inquiry on a case where a girl was hijacked and called 999 (UK equivalent of 911) twice, got ignored twice and was raped and murdered. This has also happened more than once - 2003, 2004, 2007 are the well known cases which have made the national media.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/magazine/7748046.stm

However, IIRC even the new instructions which have been put in after this, still require the dispatcher to try to talk to you first which will make the phone speak and give away your position and the fact that you have dialed straight away (you really do not want your pants talking to you when you are looking down the barrel of a 9mm handgun). In addition to that nobody knows that you are not listened to and nobody knows that you are supposed to press a few numbers to indicate that you actually mean what you mean. And nobody knows the text number even if it is available in your area and it is not standardised internationally.

Compared vs that I would rather have texts to 112 (999/911 are handled by same call routing) anyday.

As Spy Masters, the DHS is demonstrating an ability to create solutions that clearly create comedy for the Bad Guys. I can see this blowing up nicely in 23 months for a certain executive branch "member?" But there is a light at the end of this DHS tunnel, citizens of the U.S. should see a reduction of arrests of various kinds of Perverts, as the DHS/TSA hires more people to Handle America's "insecurity?"

Honestly, this whole thing is a joke and just shows how becoming too PC is a weakness. If we would just profile we wouldn't need half the security we have.

Profile whom, and how?

Racial profiling is not only bigotry, a violation of the guarantee of equal protection, and a great way to motivate more hatred -- and thus more attacks -- against the U.S., but it doesn't work. As soon as you know that they're looking twice at people of Arabic descent, just send in an English/Jamaican guy.

You think a blond-haired blue-eyed woman can't be a terrorist? Think again.

Religious profiling -- what, you're going to ask me for a baptism certificate from a State-approved church before I can get on the plane? And again, a great way to motivate more hatred and more attacks against the U.S.

Any profile you set up, is just an incentive for the other side to recruit people who can pass as not fitting it -- and a way to make the 99.9999% of people fitting that profile who are innocent, angry enough at you to think of joining that other 0.00001%.

As for "behavioral profiling", it's pseudoscientific garbage.

You want a secure flight? The best idea I've ever heard to secure a plane against terrorists is that, just like we've got emergency oxygen masks, we should put emergency Louisville Sluggers in tubes running down the side of the plane. In case of emergency, the pilot pushes a button, the tubes rotate open, and you've got passengers armed with something every American knows how to swing.

Only in America's broken system would you run the risk of losing money by just giving people your account number.

Or the UK.

That was a direct debit, so it is very easy to contact the bank and have the charge reversed.

Only in America's broken system would you run the risk of losing money by just giving people your account number.

Or the UK.

Yes, you're right. Etch-a-sketches and finger paints are creative media.

I apologize. I shouldn't have compared them to the iPad.

Slashdot isn't known for covering how artists use technology. David Hockney is a blue chip artist that has been working with the iPad and the iPhone to make work that gets serious press. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11666162

I work in media arts too. The iPad is sprouting like kudzu in creative work.

1. The structure of the article may suggest a connection between AnonymousLeaker and Mackay

   No it does not. MacKay is a separate story. The leaker is clearly someone else.

2. Expenses were due for official publication in June 2009 anyway.

   The official publication was redacted, there would have been no real scandal. The CD sold to the Telegraph was copies of the originals.

So Wikileaks published the data and.... nothing.

Not true. The Guardian did a weekend special with pages and pages covering the Wikileaks data, and they continued to publish articles based on the Wikileaks data for a week afterwards. They have an online tag for Wikileaks articles: guardian.co.uk/media/wikileaks shows 474 articles, many of them mentioning "war logs" in the title. They also published Afghanistan: the war logs and Iraq: the war logs, with numerous articles based directly on the leaked data. Likewise, the New York Times published the series The War Logs based on the leaked data, as did Der Spiegel.

I know what you are getting at though,and the Guardian also had an editorial talking about this point (Assange is 'force-feeding truth to a world that has no stomach for it'): that the released data has been ignored by much of the mainstream media, whereas in the past in would've been lapped up. Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers was widely examined and discussed in the media, and this hasn't happened so much with the Wikileaks data. They blame general resignation and apathy amongst the population, and a lack of people who are willing to stand up and actually protest against the things that are done in their name. However, I have another hypothesis: the opponents of Wikileaks have done a really great job at getting the media to shoot the messenger, rather than listen to the message.

The anti-Wikileaks organisations have become much, much better at handling the media than they were during the time of the Vietnam war. The Pentagon has a put together a team of 120 people to deal with the Wikileaks problem. They have been amazingly successful in waging a media campaign to discredit Assange, and in turning media attention away from the data that Wikileaks has leaked, and onto unproven allegations of:

• Rape
• Personality issues (abuse of power, sexism, attitute towards women etc.)
• Financial fraud
• Anti-U.S. government bias
• Endangering the lives of troops
• Endangering the lives of collaborators and their families

Assange obviously has issues with U.S. foreign policy, but so do many people, including many Americans. Apart from that, nothing in the list has been proven, and yet - based entirely on these "rumours" - the media has mostly been manipulated into discussing Assange and his personal life and supposed "recklessness", rather than the leaked data.

The assault on Assange has been slow but relentless. He has lost support in several jurisdictions (Iceland, Sweden), and he is about to become an international fugitive from justice - Sweden has requested that Interpol issue a warrant for his arrest. This is for a man who was informed, in writing, by the prosecutor that there was no warrant for his arrest, and that he was free to leave the country. The Australian government has signalled that it would cooperate with a U.S. prosecution of Assange. His British visa expires next year and is unlikely to be renewed. There are certainly clandestine operations against Wikileaks: Assange has had laptops stolen from his checked luggage on international flights, and Wikileaks operatives in other countries have been put under surveillance.

Dealing with Assange was not enough - he had to be discredited, so that people would no longer support him, his organisation, or the principles of leaking data to the world. The opponents of Wiki

1.5 million people have died as a result of our attack on Iraq. White ones, brown ones, Americans, Iraqis, mostly civilians and many of them not from bombs but from starvation after the infrastructure needed for their water, food, and medical care was destroyed.

You will be relieved to know that those figures are almost certainly not true.

ORB's "million Iraqi deaths" survey seriously flawed, new study shows. More here.

Leftist billionaire George Soros underwrote the widely quoted Lancet study written by an anti-war professor. As time goes by it keeps looking worse, and worse.

The Wikileaks contents tend to undermine them as well:

The logs showed there were more than 109,000 violent deaths between 2004 and the end of 2009.

They included 66,081 civilians, 23,984 people classed as "enemy", 15,196 members of the Iraqi security forces, and 3,771 coalition troops.

Iraqi news site in english.

Sir –

You have a very persuasive argument, except you neglect one minor detail: You assume people will take the moral high ground when money is involved. They usually don't. Lawyers aren't any different than Joe Q. Public on the street, excepting that they dress better, make somewhat more money, and (hopefully) are somewhat better trained for their professional field than most.

It is true, and the theme of your post is pursuasive. There are numerous arbitrary and high barriers to entry to effective legal persuasion, not least of which is the need for a lawyer to effectively engage the system.

That being said, in my experience, even after explanation the vast majority of the population lack the ability to understand issues and form concise, sensible arguments on one side or the other of the issues (concise is important because the general response to a failure to understand issues is to verbose verbiage).

To most lawyers, the messes created by the self-represented are often impermeable to the discourse that leads to efficient resolution. That doesn't take away from the access to justice argument you put forward - the law should be clearer and easier to access - but at the same time it's often cheaper and more effective for people to pay a lawyer than self-represent (and that's why most educated people do). I think legal aid is a reasonable solution in many cases - but it has its drawbacks as well (it discourages early settlement, for example).

Finally, it's a central point of economics that specialization creates wealth. Having lawyers allows for more efficient use of the available time and energy of the population; it'd be absurdly inefficient for police, doctors, engineers, janitors, miners, etc., to spend the extraordinary amount of effort necessary to understand every facet of every issue of every dispute that occurs in their lives. Furthermore, the cost to the taxpayer of having the uneducated aggrieved senselessly stand in front of judges for hours bantering about irrelevant points is an enormous cost to society; I find myself regularly reducing well intentioned but misdirected efforts of clients down to the salient points. It's better that a client pay me to do this than the taxpayer, otherwise we create a moral hazard.

Additionally, your argument loses a lot of its intellectual purity and moral superiority when you make the reductio ad absurdum argument in paragraph two. Your post would have gone better without that.

I'm not sure it was absurd. You can see from those links what happens in the absence of a rule-of-law dispute resolution procedure: Violence. It's not absurd, it's not even hyperbole, it's the natural consequence of the demand for justice (in some form, to someone) and the absence of the supply of "justice" (or the appearance of justice, or a justice-like substitute).

Lastly, there is no transparency in the legal system and you're being intellectually dishonest to state otherwise: The legal system is incredibly complex and largely unavailable to the poor. When you have a system that necessitates the use of lawyers and attorneys in every legal preceding, to the point that attempting to advance a case pro se is laughed at by every judge and legal professional -- what then can we honestly say about transparency in the system? If the system requires experts that are licensed through the state to interpret or apply its rules, then the system is not transparent. In fact, it is utterly impervious to external examination, and any protests against it are swiftly dismissed as "uneducated" or rogue. The system is self-contradictory: Pract

Top judge says internet 'could kill jury system'
The jury system may not survive if it is undermined by social networking sites, England's top judge has said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11796648

Slashdot says that UPI.com said that physorg.com said that Tech Radar said that MIT said that there is an interesting paper at http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/58402/656284100.pdf?sequence=1 and the BBC went to learn more, conduct an interview and take photos http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11544037

Try this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11544037

I'm typing this on a tram from a netbook tethered to my Android phone. How good is your tethering app?

It does the job. When my office's broadband connection went down a few weeks, tethered my iPhone and was back up and running in a few minutes. Fortunately there's a 3G Vodafone mast right outside the building.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm

The night club offers its VIP clients the opportunity to have a syringe-injected microchip implanted in their upper arms that not only gives them special access to VIP lounges, but also acts as a debit account from which they can pay for drinks.

This sort of thing is handy for a beach club where bikinis and board shorts are the uniform and carrying a wallet or purse is really not practical.

...plus a criminal record and a £3000 legal bill when he lost his appeal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-11736785

(This is a reference to God's number, which is 20.)

Stopped reading after the first sentence...

Scientists working on the big bang machine in Geneva have done the seemingly impossible: create, capture and release antimatter.

The "machine" in question does have a name, you know?
BBC News also has coverage,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11773791

You might be interested in this article. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11741350 Given how rampant daydreaming is, I'm not so sure you can blame contemporary television on attention span problems. Maybe TV is one factor keeping us from fighting the natural inclination for our minds to wonder, I don't know. Just food for thought.

* Conservative: David Cameron (prime minister), William Hague (foreign secretary), Jeremy Hunt (culture secretary), Philip Hammond (transport secretary), David Willetts (universities minister), Sir George Young (leader of the Commons)
* Lib Dem: Danny Alexander (chief secretary to the Treasury), Chris Huhne (energy and climate change secretary)
* Labour: Ed Balls, David Miliband, Ed Miliband (leadership candidates), Lord Mandelson (former business secretary), Jacqui Smith (former home secretary), Ruth Kelly (former transport secretary), James Purnell (former work and pensions secretary)

All of whom studied the same course (politics, philosophy and economics) at Oxford.

more people should sabotage countries like Iran, or all muslim countries in general, for the simple reason that their handling of minorities can only be described as "genocidal".

Iran's proud but discreet Jews: "the father of Iran's revolution, Imam Khomeini, recognised Jews as a religious minority that should be protected." "Imam Khomeini made a distinction between Jews and Zionists and he supported us," says [Jewish community leader] Mr Hammami."

Persian Jews: "Jews are protected in the Iranian constitution."

Righteous Among the Nations: Muslims Who Saved Jews from Holocaust: "The Righteous Among Nations are gentile rescuers who make up 'a small minority who mustered extraordinary courage to uphold human values,' according to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial museum...Gershman's story begins during the Holocaust and involves Albanian Muslims -- villagers, peasants and farmers -- who risked their lives and the lives of their families to shelter Jews fleeing Nazi Germany."

If you think that is genocide, I suggest you study the history of a real genocide, one that took place, unfortunately, at the heart of the Christian nations of Europe, who for centuries reviled Jews as the Christ Killer, and adorned churches and cathedrals with anti-Semitic imagery.