Slashdot Mirror

Here.

Cool! Thanks! :-)

Here.

Well we need something new since Backtrace Dad died

As a Brit, I honestly have no idea whether this is parody or not.

It's a reference to a church sign seen in rural Texas:

http://gawker.com/5953608/quaint-texas-church-tells-people-to-vote-for-the-mormon-not-the-muslimyou-should-stop-by-and-pray-sometime

Whether the commenter was taking it seriously, I have no idea.

The Gawker sites have backup blogs that are now up. Gawker is at http://live.gawker.com/ Lifehacker is at http://live.lifehacker.com/ and so on. They seem to have already thought of a backup plan, albeit not a complete one.

The good news is that this is the best their sites have looked in months! I wholeheartedly approve of the new layout.

The Gawker sites have backup blogs that are now up. Gawker is at http://live.gawker.com/ Lifehacker is at http://live.lifehacker.com/ and so on. They seem to have already thought of a backup plan, albeit not a complete one.

Questions about site backup should be sent to Gizmodo, anyhow.

OK, not sure what an obscure ruling from a court in India, of all places, has to do with anything, but let me restate my point: Fuck the 1%. Fuck the sons of wealthy rich politician pricks, beat the shit out of them. Fuck the 1%. The rule of law in itself is inherently racist and exists only to serve the 1%.

I watched the first mashup presidential debate on DemocracyNow and it was excellent, they would cut from the official debate to Stein and Anderson also behind podiums and keep it rolling. With the official rules preventing Obama and Romney from interacting with each other there really isn't a need for them to be in the same room.

"The Narwhal bacons at midnight?"

Don't worry everybody. I'm just testing to see if it's a feral redditor. If it is I'll have to cut its head off and then burn the body to prevent an infestation.

I'd keep you kids locked up inside until I give the all clear if I were you.

A parallel story, not related to the case in question, but another instance of somebody being outed for their (in)actions:
http://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web

The person in that story might be a bit more on the verge of the defensible than those who would directly target a specific person - minor or otherwise - such as the one covered here.

Here's the citations, I'm sure you left them out by accident...

Michael Chertoff, George Soros

Ok as long as King George is involved.

Here's the citations, I'm sure you left them out by accident...

Michael Chertoff, George Soros

Kickstarter actually started out as a way to fund arts projects. Like somebody wanting to create a sculpture, do a fancy mural, put on a play, even make a low-budget movie. These are all things that will probably never make back their costs and have traditionally depended on the generosity of donors. These have traditionally been people with deep pockets — businesses looking to generate goodwill, rich people who've gone philanthropist — but with the whole online crowd-whatever phenomenon, there's no reason ordinary people can't do this too.

Like you, I'm bothered by the fact that Kickstarter is now dominated by startups who use it to get seed capital. There's something just plain messed up about a for-profit business that might well make its founders rich starting out by passing the hat. Still, I'm forced to admit that some intriguing projects (Pebble, Ouya, and even the much-maligned Orbit) might never have gone anywhere without the generosity of "backers". I guess there's nothing really wrong with it, as long as people understand that the money they're offering is a gift, not a purchase or investment.

But to answer your question: this is one of those weird online enthusiasms, like that Korean guy with the weird dance moves. My favorite example is this Halaal restaurant I used to live near which for no obvious reason has hundreds of 5-star reviews on Yelp. Now this is a decent restaurant, the food is OK, and the staff is very hospitable to everybody who comes in. But they seem very confused by all the non-Muslims trooping through the door. Why pay extra to eat Halaal if your religious beliefs don't require it?

Yelp is full of stuff like this, and let's not forget the bus monitor whose bullying incident earned her almost $700K. Very silly, but not that big a deal, except maybe for the potential fraud.

This article was up the other day, it has a shocking description of how abuse happens and the thought process of the abuser. Was that necessary to the overall article? It certainly caused a bit of controversy. Overall however the article presents pedophiles not as a pure embodiment of evil but as sick people who need help and counseling. That is, distinguishing pedophiles from child molesters who have acted on that impulse. It seems that allowing people who have such a bent to get help and counseling without completely destroying their lives would be better to society overall than being out for their blood or driving them to suicide from despair. Strangely the description in the article while sickening did add a human angle to the problem and helped me personally to not jump to condemn someone who might be sexually stuck as a 12 year old in an adult's body. Just... get... help.

Now that the FBI basically rejected AniSec's claims and Adrian Chen put on a pink tutu with a shoe on top of his head (Source: Link), AntiSec can now respond to the FBI's denied claims. I just threw some popcorn in the microwave.....

Freedom to post whatever you want in a public forum is important in our world today. Wikileaks seems to self destructing and isn't necessary in the grand scheme of things.

Came here to say this. There will always be a vacuum for leaking facilitators, especially with the vast-reaching scale of the Internet and strong cryptography and anonymization technologies, and it will always be filled. Even without Wikileaks, there are other sites like Cryptome. Hell, even Gawker's filling that role. Hell, here's a compiled list. With decentralized file-sharing sites, any torrent tracker or public file server can operate as a host for information. As Brand famously said, "Information wants to be free", and the "99%" of any country will continue to be hungry consumers of that information.

It doesn't matter if Assange wants to be a showman or douche things up. He doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things. He's merely the current public face of a system that has always existed and will always continue to exist. You can't make an example out of a thing like that.

The Powers that Be aren't stupid. They have to know this. Our job as the Public is to systematically remove any alternatives that they have to being good and respectful to their fellow man, and leaking is a critical and and inevitable part of that mission. With the Internet, we are closer than ever to having the tools to actually accomplish this. This doesn't mean that all leaks are good and noble; it does, however, mean that we need to respect their role in making the world a better place. It also means that legislating against this inevitability is both futile and self-destructive in the short term.

Challenge accepted.

Here's Ardin's thesis, titled "The Cuban Multi-Party System: Is The Democratic alternative really democratic and an alternative after the Castro regime?" The word rape does not appear in it.

Oh, really, it's time to look at *everything a person has ever written on the internet*, really? Like you've never written anything that others could use to discredit you online, ever? Really? First off, the "seven steps to revenge" 1) was a repost, 2) begins with, basically, "don't", and is 3) in general about how, if you do, how to cause an ex boyfriend's new girlfriend to break up with him.

Secondly, if you want to take the "anything you've ever written", let's see what Assange thinks about women.

I was exactly what she secretly longed for; a man willing to openly disagree with her father. All along she had needed a man to devote herself to. All along she had failed to find a man worthy of being called a man, failed to find a man who would not bow to gods, so she had chosen a god unworthy of being called a god, but who would not bow to a man.

Wow, really Julian? You're a freaking God to women? And do we even need to get into his dating profile, Mr. I AM DANGER, ACHTUNG?

See how this "dig up anything a person has ever written" game works?

Wow, what the frick is up with your "one bullet point on a website" link? It's not a reference to anything - nothing is backed up in any way, shape or form - but man, what a stalker site that is.

You need to work on your reading comprehension on the Mundo article you linked. It says she worked as the head of the Swedish group connected to the party, a party based on peaceful civil disobedience. "Somehow" funding it? It says right there - she funded it "minimally" with the magazine Consenso. Nowhere does it say she was deported. That's only said in the counterpunch article, which the article you linked to describes as riddled with errors. And furthermore, in what f-ed up world does supporting democracy in Cuba mean "CIA agent"? I mean, for crying out loud!

The interrogation does not at all say what you nor the person who posted it claim it says. The part about Wilen hearing the news reads as follows:

Sofia and I were notified during the interrogation that Julian Assange had been arrested in absentia. Sofia had difficulty concentrating after that news, whereby I made the judgement it was best to terminate the interrogation. But Sofia had time anyway to explain that Assange was angry with her. I didn't have time to get any further details about why he was angry with her or how this manifested itself. And we didn't have time to get into what else happened afterwards. The interrogation was neither read back to Sofia nor reviewed for approval by her but Sofia was told she had the opportunity to do this later.

Amazing how "difficulty concentrating" and concerned that "Assange was angry with her" transforms into "horrified" that they brought charges. I also noted (to put it another way, it made me sick to read) how the person who posted the article tried to spin the following passage as "consent":

They fell asleep and she woke by feeling him penetrate her. She immediately asked 'are you wearing anything' and he answered 'you'. She told him 'you better not have HIV' and he replied 'of course not'. She felt it was too late. He was already inside her and she let him continue. She couldn't be bothered telling him again. She'd been nagging about condoms all night lo

Bitcoin is backed by its own economy. Everything sold for bitcoin ads value. And a lot is sold for bitcoin

This was not flamebait (well, not meant as one).
Although the actual number of confiscated Kinder Eggs is 25,000 in 2011. Illegal candy...

Why, here in Russia you can predict it with 146% accuracy!

Still better than this.

Jailed? Not that I'm aware of. Snooped on? Yes - let me find at least two links to stories that come to mind - - -

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/04/secret-service-investigates-ted-nugent-remarks-on-obama/

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-03-23/louisiana-comment-obama/53741346/1

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2012/06/terry_jones_hangs_obama.php

http://gawker.com/5498597/obama-death-tweeter-being-investigated-by-secret-service

That should be enough, I would think. I was looking for a couple others - one was a crusty old redneck, the other some black guy from a southern city, each of who made similar comments to those linked to above.

Before you ask - I think the Secret Service is basically doing the job they are supposed to do, in each of these stories. But - there is a very thin line between doing their job properly, and becoming something like the KGB or the Stazi. Very thin line, indeed. Recent events have shown that the Secret Service is NOT incorruptible. It is improbable, but possible, that the SS could be turned into a tool of the administration to round up people like Ted Nugent, and to "silence" them, in whatever manner. Ted would have to be handled very carefully. Some redneck from Backwoods, Nowhere could just be snuffed, and his family told that he "resisted arrest".

"Snooped on" is common, these days. No less common than it was during the McCarthy days. Less public than in the McCarthy days, but just as common.

The real problem with this survey is that they limited it to America.

Obama is nothing and Romney is huge in Amercia.

http://gawker.com/5914880/chinese-owner-of-amerciacom-says-romney-typo-is-helping-him-fund-his-sons-college-education

$10,000/year?! That's way over the standard pay. Facebook pays $1/hour

So that's $2000/year (assuming 40/hour weeks.. even though you could probably have the Indian employees work 12+ hours/day)

Why do they have to be paid $20,000? Why do they have to be American? Facebook pays it's Indian screeners $1/hour.

It's an appropriate portmanteau.

Sucker (one born every minute)
Borg (as in mindless collective)

Zuckerberg is completely personally identified with Facebook - so attaching him to the appellation Suckerborg - a descriptive and sneering cynical view of Facebook itself - is darkly humourous, plays on an ironic twist with some illusion-shattering perception.

Show me your "funny". You probably laugh at "IT Crowd".

Or Google employee going nuts and remotely killing all the people in the car.

Google is just as evil as the companies you named. Even more so, actually. Sadly, you are victim of their marketing on these issues. Google is extremely good at marketing - after all, they are the worlds largest advertising house. They try to maintain a white image of themselves with everything because they need that with all the privacy violations.

Personally, I rather not use any of Google's products because they have time and time again shown that they cannot be trusted and they just try to violate your privacy. This is not even an issue of rogue Google admins like David Barksdale who like to snoop on teens private chat logs, emails and searches, it is a company wide policy and how their business works. I would never use Google Docs for business as that means housing my private company data on Google. Microsoft's Office is far better for that. At least I know that Microsoft gets their money when I buy their software and has no reason to snoop on my data after that. Likewise, I would never trust Google for my private personal communication. If you don't care about your privacy, you are free to use Google. I just must say that it may come hunt you later.

I think it's funny that people complain about this while still happily submitting their clear-text passwords to Google. From there it goes to any non-honest Google admin to use and exploit. On top of that most people use the same password everywhere, so you're basically giving Google access to everything you have. Really wise, indeed.

And Google has that storage. They have datacenters all around the world. They several own 100Gbps links going all around the world. They have their own file system, data replication and network based RAID for these things. If someone has the capability to log these things, it's Google. And if someone needs this kind of information, it's Google.

The fact that you don't care that someone is looking over every step you do on internet seems funny. It's your own decision, I guess, but people don't want that kind of snooping. I really doubt you want either, or would you be okay to install my backdoor and secret remote access on your computer to see everything you do? I doubt that. More troublesome is that Google is made of geeks. Often geeks have no trouble abusing their access. Or what you think about this Google engineer.br

gawker: The ever skeptical [Norman] Mailer knew more about what was going on than he let on, saying in 1964's The Presidential Papers that: "At bottom, I mean profoundly at bottom, the FBI has nothing to do with Communism, it has nothing to do with catching criminals, it has nothing to do with the Mafia, the syndicate, it has nothing to do with trust-busting, it has nothing to do with interstate commerce, it has nothing to do with anything but serving as a church for the mediocre. A high church for the true mediocre."

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=did+hitler+love+anal+sex

The link to the first result of that search -- http://gawker.com/5511340/have-you-heard-the-sandra-bullock-hitler-poopstache-sex-tape-rumor-yet

USAToday didn't name the people they believe are responsible because they don't have any hard proof linking the smear campaign to them.

Gawker.com, though, is seemingly not burdened by any such journalistic standards :)

Meet the Pentagon Contractor That Ran a Disinformation Campaign Against Two USA Today Reporters

Last night USA Today reported that two of its staffers, Tom Vanden Brook and Ray Locker, were the targets of a smear campaign, including fake Twitter accounts and web sites established in their names, launched by a Pentagon contractor specializing in "information operations." For some reason, the paper declined to name the perpetrator:Leonie Industries

...

Oddly, the USA Today story on the mischief names only "Pentagon contractors" as likely culprits.
But a source familiar with the story confirms that the contractor responsible is Leonie Industries, an information operations company with more than $90 million in Army contracts in Afghanistan. It's doubly odd that USA Today didn't at least seek comment from Leonie on the disinformation, since Leonie was the primary target of the investigation that apparently sparked the sculduggery, and would be the inescapable suspect to anyone who put two and two together.

More on Leonie Industries here:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Leonie_Industries

I think it's more a case of how important the actors are. Stars get gross deals, people still trying to make it big get peanuts, but take it anyway in hopes of that big break.

This article has a good summary.

Interesting when one of their own headlines today is about a hack into someone's facebook account: http://gawker.com/5897485/white-supremacist-hacks-trayvon-martins-email-account-leaks-messages-online

if Newt is winning the Twitter primary, it's because of voter fraud. A former staffer tells us that his campaign hired a firm to boost his follower count, in part by creating fake accounts en masse:

Newt employs a variety of agencies whose sole purpose is to procure Twitter followers for people who are shallow/insecure/unpopular enough to pay for them. As you might guess, Newt is most decidedly one of the people to which these agencies cater.

About 80 percent of those accounts are inactive or are dummy accounts created by various "follow agencies," another 10 percent are real people who are part of a network of folks who follow others back and are paying for followers themselves (Newt's profile just happens to be a part of these networks because he uses them, although he doesn't follow back), and the remaining 10 percent may, in fact, be real, sentient people who happen to like Newt Gingrich. If you simply scroll through his list of followers you'll see that most of them have odd usernames and no profile photos, which has to do with the fact that they were mass generated. Pathetic, isn't it?

While it would be impossible to survey all of Gingrich"s followers, a cursory glance immediately turned up a few accounts that featured odd names, no personal information, no followers, no posts, and a small follow list. And there's certainly a healthy market out there for buying Twitter followers, either by hiring a company to strategically follow accounts that will follow you back or by paying for dummy accounts.

It's all a scam. So, why not produce some proof - audited numbers - to show that this isn't the case? Because you can't - all social media numbers are bogus - Facebook, Twitter, Google+ - you can buy as many followers as you can afford.

I guess they outsourced it to Churov & Co

even from this article it's not clear they're just going through private content on a whim.

Well, perhaps this article from 5 years ago will help to clarify the issue for you:

http://gawker.com/315901/facebook-employees-know-what-profiles-you-look-at

It was a dispersion event at an Occupy _______ site. Forgive me, I assumed that this event had reached total media saturation at this point. Here is some more information on the subject:

* http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/us/police-officers-involved-in-pepper-spraying-placed-on-leave.html
* http://gawker.com/5861688/its-a-food-product-essentially-fox-news-starts-spinning-pepper-spray-cops
* http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/casually-pepper-spray-everything-cop

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/wikileaks-reveals-that-mi_n_793816.html

Yep, big yawn-o-rama.

Yes, it pretty much is.

State Department Denies Sexual Abuse of ‘Dancing Boy’

"Of the Wikileaks cache of diplomatic cables, one of the most potentially salacious is about the entertainment at a party thrown by DynCorp, a U.S. contractor training Afghan police, in April 2009. A 17-year-old boy was hired to dance.

In Afghanistan, hiring "dancing boys" is a long-held practice in which Afghan men hire young men and boys to dress like girls and dance at weddings and other parties. They don't hire girls, because in Afghan society men and women don't mix socially. . . .

*snip*

I'm puzzled; where's the horrible human rights abuse, or even anything remotely salacious in the above story? The story says it's a common practice among Afghans, so why is it "culturally insensitive" for a group of contractors at a training session there to share in some loca dinner entertainment which the story in no way describes as being coerced or sexual? How is this any different from when Hillary Clinton goes on a state visit to Thailand and a troupe of local dancers performs at dinner?

I've seen my share of total bullshit on US media so I don't know about this, but if the linked article describes trutfully what this is about, and if the linked article I followed from that one documenting practice of this "Bacha Bazi" is truthful, well, then I can most certainly understand why this would be inappropriate at best and probably worse (not getting caught does not mean having not done anything) - especially the accusations of child prostitution stuff and such does not look good. However I'm very uncertain on what sources to trust when reading US media so I'm not saying this or that... And even then this case might be innocent, past misdeeds don't really prove anything - just does not feel right though.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/wikileaks-reveals-that-mi_n_793816.html

Yep, big yawn-o-rama.

Yes, it pretty much is.

State Department Denies Sexual Abuse of ‘Dancing Boy’

"Of the Wikileaks cache of diplomatic cables, one of the most potentially salacious is about the entertainment at a party thrown by DynCorp, a U.S. contractor training Afghan police, in April 2009. A 17-year-old boy was hired to dance.

In Afghanistan, hiring "dancing boys" is a long-held practice in which Afghan men hire young men and boys to dress like girls and dance at weddings and other parties. They don't hire girls, because in Afghan society men and women don't mix socially. . . .

. . . according to both the State Department, which investigated the incident, and DynCorp, no such sexual abuse occurred.

We did not find anything that there was any kind of misconduct of that kind at all," Susan Pittman, a spokeswoman for the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told TPM. "It was just inappropriate."

DynCorp says one manager present stopped the dancing halfway through after "recognizing that the situation was culturally insensitive." At the State Department's request, DynCorp fired several managers involved and flew "senior leadership" to Afghanistan to do face-to-face ethics training.

"They responded responsibly," the State spokeswoman said.

I'm puzzled; where's the horrible human rights abuse, or even anything remotely salacious in the above story? The story says it's a common practice among Afghans, so why is it "culturally insensitive" for a group of contractors at a training session there to share in some loca dinner entertainment which the story in no way describes as being coerced or sexual? How is this any different from when Hillary Clinton goes on a state visit to Thailand and a troupe of local dancers performs at dinner?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/wikileaks-reveals-that-mi_n_793816.html

Yep, big yawn-o-rama.

Yes, it pretty much is.

State Department Denies Sexual Abuse of ‘Dancing Boy’

"Of the Wikileaks cache of diplomatic cables, one of the most potentially salacious is about the entertainment at a party thrown by DynCorp, a U.S. contractor training Afghan police, in April 2009. A 17-year-old boy was hired to dance.

In Afghanistan, hiring "dancing boys" is a long-held practice in which Afghan men hire young men and boys to dress like girls and dance at weddings and other parties. They don't hire girls, because in Afghan society men and women don't mix socially. . . .

. . . according to both the State Department, which investigated the incident, and DynCorp, no such sexual abuse occurred.

We did not find anything that there was any kind of misconduct of that kind at all," Susan Pittman, a spokeswoman for the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told TPM. "It was just inappropriate."

DynCorp says one manager present stopped the dancing halfway through after "recognizing that the situation was culturally insensitive." At the State Department's request, DynCorp fired several managers involved and flew "senior leadership" to Afghanistan to do face-to-face ethics training.

"They responded responsibly," the State spokeswoman said.

It's a pity they've been pwn3d by the Chinese government, twice. They also hire irresponsible assholes from time to time.

Gawker: A source who worked with Jobs emailed to say "several people had security clearances at Pixar since, in the early days, they were selling an image rendering software system that could be used to enhance satellite surveillance photographs and film. There was even a Chernobyl demo. They thought that the 'spooks' would provide a huge market."

I should know better than to trust a slashdot poster. If this is legit, it's a lot better.

First 9 months of 2011:
Revenue: $2.5 billion
Operating income: $1.2 billion
Net income: $714 million

http://gawker.com/5866291/source-reveals-facebook-is-gushing-cash

Shouldn't you be endorsing Safari instead, Mr. Takei?

p.s. you gotta purty deep voice for an Asian gay guy.

a) Pelosi (and her family and friends) flew on a "private" air force C-37A jet (a modified Gulfstream V.) So they never went through security. Nor did they apparently ever fly sober.
b) Boehner does fly commercial, but apparently bypasses security.

Legally... You mean like this?

Yeah, and that will never happen. The day that happens all developer tools become illegal, all file sharing becomes illegal, including FTP sites, and putting an app on a SD card becomes illegal. Ain't gonna fucking happen and your full of shit. And what type of app cannot be found on iTunes or the Android market. And barring that can't be installed on Windows, Mac OS X, or linux.

BTW Cory Doctorow needs to STFU as well, he doesn't seem to have problems with making money of the non-free Kindle. He is always on his high-horse about censorship unless its at Boing Boing. And I for one have never heard any righteous condemnation of Federated Media and it's dodgy deals with small bloggers, because oh wait, he is making fuckloads of money from Boing Boing and the Federated Media partnership.

Not true. Congress has an approval rating lower than the IRS.

http://gawker.com/5860272/the-irs-is-more-than-four-times-more-popular-than-congress

(Yeah, yeah, the IRS rating is from 2009, just enjoy it you nitpicking bastards.)