Slashdot Mirror

An Insightful Guardian columnist has finally come out and said what literate people have known all along. J.K. Rowling's writing is RUBBISH.

... I don't think I'm going out on a limb here. Of course, if she has turned into a first-class writer with her forthcoming Potter book, I will happily, no, joyously, eat my words.

But until then, we have to swallow hers. ...

... Do I need to explain why that is such second-rate writing?

If I do, then that means you're one of the many adults who don't have a problem with the retreat into infantilism that your willing immersion in the Potter books represents. It doesn't make you a bad or silly person. But if you have the patience to read it without noticing how plodding it is, then you are self-evidently someone on whom the possibilities of the English language are largely lost.

This is the kind of prose that reasonably intelligent nine-year-olds consider pretty hot stuff, if they're producing it themselves; for a highly-educated woman like Rowling to knock out the same kind of material is, shall we say, somewhat disappointing.

(If you find that revelation shocking, just don't ask about Dan Brown, ok?)

Predictably, a chorus of twit commenters felt driven to argue that the Potter Phenomenon's sheer Scale and Success makes it self-evidently Valuable to Society (much like B. Gates must be an Important and Clever Person because he's Really Rich.) Uh-uh. Crappy writing is not good for anyone, just like crappy food (this may also come as a surprise to some), and on this point I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Lezard:

Children exposed to this kind of writing aren't learning anything new about words, or being stretched in any way; as Harold Bloom said, they're not going to be inspired to go off and read the Alice books, or any other enduring classic.

All the Potter franchise does, like 99% of TV and Hollywood output, is entrench the hold of pointless and mediocre culture. The only thing unusual this time, is it's Made in Britain.

Do you really think that the US military cares about abuses of power and civilian casualties, or even friendly fire deaths, if they come to light and negatively portray the services?

The US doesn't even keep a track of the number of civilians accidentally killed by its forces. Why do you think that is?

The US routinely covers up evidence and hampers investigations into actions such as media and friendly fire deaths. Want examples?

Nine British service personnel were killed in the 1991 Gulf War by A-10 pilots in a single incident, as many as died to enemy fire in the whole war, and yet the US Army refused for over 16 years to hand over footage from the aircraft of the incident, which it had claimed from day one didn't exist. Even now, it refuses to name the pilots concerned and admits that they haven't been disciplined. Read this and tell me that you still have faith in the US Army's ability to fairly investigate and discipline its personnel.

Then once you've read that, go google for Terry Lloyd and find out how he died.

Then consider the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman. What did the US Army do there? Tell the truth or cover it up? Perhaps the most prominent US soldier to ever die in action and they lied through their teeth.

And those are just a few of the many examples of the code of silence that surrounds US forces when they kill (or should I say murder?) their own, their allies or neutrals.

I find it incredible that you are naive enough to believe that such abuses would stop just because the guys doing the firing were away from the combat zone.

When it comes to criminal actions, unless it needs a convenient scapegoat, the military looks after its own. Always has, always will.

Thanks for the links. I'll take time out to view the video in full when I'm not at work. The Guardian also gave him, along with Anne McLaren a decent obituary.

Thanks for the links. I'll take time out to view the video in full when I'm not at work. The Guardian also gave him, along with Anne McLaren a decent obituary.

Actual carbonated soda is very rare; it's not that unusual to see even Coca Cola vending machines that don't actually sell cola.

Carbonated soda is not "very rare". And Coca Cola machines without soda only exist when other Coca Cola machines *with* soda sit right next to them.

Japanese vending machines almost always exist in multiple units - it's actually uncommon to see a single vending machine by itself. In the event that you *do*, that vending machine will *always* have at least one, and usually two or more flavors of carbonated soda. When vending machines are paired together, they have one particular kind of drink in each, so yes, of course you will only find carbonated drinks in one out of the four or five machines in any given spot. But they're always there.

This is a typical single-unit Suntory machine installation:
http://www.japonophile.com/wp-content/uploads/2004 -2006/jihanki.jpg

And the same for Coke:
http://z.about.com/d/gojapan/1/0/8/2/machine2.gif

This is a more common multi-machine installation:
http://www.tjf.or.jp/deai_korea/contents/teacher/m ini_en/pic_mini/life031.jpg

(I know the url says "korea", but that's Japan. Here is the original page it's from.)

It is true that Japan has much more variety of drink types in their vending machines than we do. But I disagree that their drinks are all that much healthier. Their vending machines contain drinks of the following types:

a) Canned iced coffee - always sweetened
b) Soda
c) Beer
d) Sweetened, processed juice drinks (their equivalent to "Sunny Delight")
e) Iced tea (unsweetened)

Of those, only tea is even remotely healthy and calorie-free. And it's true that it's usually available for those who want it. But then, diet soda is always available at vending machines here too; not as healthy as tea, but at least calorie-free and non-obesity forming. Most people choose something else, in both countries.

Our problem is portion control. The standard bottle size in vending machines here is 20oz. A Japanese canned coffee is I think 7oz. Big difference. We're drinking almost three times the sugar in our sugar drinks as they are, just because we're drinking a lot more of it. (This extends beyond vending machines too; go to McDonald's there and the "large" drink is the same size as a "small" here.)

Combined with the rest of their diet, which is a lot less fatty and rich in calories, and with a lot smaller portions, and of course they're in better shape. Though with the rise of fast food there, they're fattening up now just like we already have. (Most articles on this are a bit alarmist, IMO - it's still obvious that they're in pretty good shape, but obesity rates are rising.)

It's really not rocket science why we're all getting fat. Too many calories, too big portions. It drives me crazy how people read stuff like "fructose makes you fat!" and think they can just cut out fructose and lose weight. Meanwhile, they're still eating double quarter pounders with cheese, a large fries and two apple pies for lunch and wondering why they're still getting fat. The culprit to gaining weight is calories. That's it. Simple laws of physics. All of these foods that supposedly "cause" obesity do so because they are high in calories and low in nutrients. That includes fructose. The bottom line is you need to control your calorie intake, which means both controlling the types of food you eat as well as the amounts.

"Journals (Science [biggest journal, of the America Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)], and Nature) have prohibited taking OOXML documents, because they do not correspond to existing standards such as MathML and SVG and are not backwards compatible to Word 2003 and previous. Compatibility packs do not even help.[2][3] As Microsoft will stop selling Word 2003 by July 1, 2007[4], this is a very bad precedent for future-proofing documents.

1] http://www.sciencemag.org/about/authors/prep/docx. dtl "Because of changes Microsoft has made in its recent Word release that are incompatible with our internal workflow, which was built around previous versions of the software, Science cannot at present accept any files in the new .docx format produced through Microsoft Word 2007, either for initial submission or for revision. Users of this release of Word should convert these files to a format compatible with Word 2003 or Word for Macintosh 2004 (or, for initial submission, to a PDF file) before submitting to Science"

"Because of changes Microsoft has made in its recent Word release that are incompatible with our internal workflow, which was built around previous versions of the software, Science cannot at present accept any files in the new .docx format produced through Microsoft Word 2007, either for initial submission or for revision."

"Users of Word 2007 should also be aware that equations created with the default equation editor included in Microsoft Word 2007 will be unacceptable in revision, even if the file is converted to a format compatible with earlier versions of Word; this is because conversion will render equations as graphics and prevent electronic printing of equations, and because the default equation editor packaged with Word 2007 -- for reasons that, quite frankly, utterly baffle us -- was not designed to be compatible with MathML."

[3]http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/04/math-markup -marked-down.html "Math markup marked down"
        http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/12608/1023/
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/20 07/06/04/scientists_hold_off_on_that_upgrade_to_of fice_2007.html

Nature's analysis of OOXML:
"We currently cannot accept files saved in Microsoft Office 2007 formats. Equations and special characters (for example, Greek letters) cannot be edited and are incompatible with Nature's own editing and typesetting programs"

[4] http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=519 "July 1: No more Office 2003 for OEMs" by Mary Jo Foley"

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/business_ap plications/the_pointless_office_converter_delay.ht ml "The Pointless Office Converter Delay"

"Two important Microsoft topics--interoperability and Office file formats--intersect on the Mac desktop, and they brutally cross like swords.

Two weeks ago, Microsoft broke a promise made in December: The spring beta release of OOXML (Office Open XML) converters for Mac Office. "

"It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career. It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday."

They're not even subtle about this anymore. They're openly shaking down their own artists.

Actually in this case they do.

Firstly, you need to be a UK citizin and enter a UK postcode to use the Goverment ePetition.

Secondly, let me quote the example of the Road Charging ePetition on the same site. It forced a response from the (then) Prime Minister Tony Blair and was widely reported in the news and debated in Parliament.

See...
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2007/02/ 13/road_charge_petition_was_a_car_crash_waiting_to _happen.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6349027.stm
for more information, or Google it.

That was well over 1m votes in a country with a total population of 60m, or 1 in 60.
So, yes, I think they can work.

For those not aware of how British politics works: Blair (and now Brown's) government both follow what is known as the 'tabloid agenda', the most read tabloid in the world is 'The Sun' this is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Heads of the Labour government regularly meet with Rupert Murdoch, in fact Murdoch was known as the hidden member of Tony Blair's government. Don't think Brown is any better though: an interview (sadly I think that's been taken off-air so you'll have to trust me) with the editor of The Sun revealed that Rupert Murdoch often used to joke about having to visit both Number 10 and Number 11 whenever he was in the UK.

As the BBC is competition to Murdoch he would like to see it shutdown. This is natural. Unfortunately for him the BBC is not controlled by the government, but the BBC Trust is. So when the government comes out with weird statements like:

there is evidence that certain aspects of the proposals may have a negative effect on investment in similar commercial services which would not be in the long-term public interest.

It's pretty obvious to me who's behind the complaints. The people--whom the government are supposed to serve--just want the BBC to be the best it can be, and if private media can't keep up? Then it shouldn't be in business! Particularly when considering how these words are touting 'public interest' then enforcing the use of DRM? Public interest my arse. In the words of Hugo Swire (shadow culture secetary):

We're going to have to see if this trust has teeth and the iPlayer is the test... There are companies who feel threatened by the BBC.

So as usual, it's all big company interests. I somehow doubt that the BBC Trust will listen to the Open Source Consortium. Not that I think they shouldn't try, however it's unlikely they'll be able to remove their heads from Rupert Murdoch's arsehole long enough to listen. :)

From the parents link:NASA is seeking public opinion on ways to detect possible biohazards from Mars samples returned to the Earth.

Wouldn't any biohazard, bacteria or virius, culture fairly easily in a petri dish? If it could survive and breed in us, it could survive and breed in a lab. It's not like we don't already have experience with weaponized viriuses, what's another few grams of potential mass extinction added to the collection?

And for every who thinks we stopped biological weapons research in 1972, look at this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,821306 ,00.html

It's probably nonsense, as many posters have already pointed out, but that won't stop it being used as "evidence" for more nonsense like some important South Africans' beliefs about how to stop AIDS http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,36 04,1477400,00.html .

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that maybe, just maybe, that has something to do with the Vatican banning the use of condoms. What with Italy being a predominantly Catholic country with a reputation for promiscuity, and all.

Although they would have you believe that condoms don't stop aids anyway.

This is standard bait & switch. They want to do this to make money/gain more control (allowing them to make more money). That it's to catch terrorists or criminals is: (a) a segway to the standard "if you're not doing anything wrong, why should you be worried?" (b) a way to get funding into the hands of your friends (ID cards and the proposed tube scanners aren't going to solve any crime problems, only funnel huge sums of money to defence contractors.) This is obvious if you look at London where the huge number of cameras and the already in-place surveillance veil didn't help one little bit in preventing terrorist attacks/attemtps. Although, it's convenient that all the cameras on the underground train platform when the cops killed Jean Charles de Menezes. Technology's funny that way.

The real reward is raisins.

I'd take the sex here and now, personally.

Man, are they going to be pissed when they discover it's really 72 raisins...

(Really!)

"i wonder how many of this guys peers, if not himself, were getting stoned in the back of a car listening to "we don't need no education..." and other wonders of pink floyd's "the wall" 25 years ago"

Probably. He smoked pot at Eton and was a member of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford a few years later.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,37 5883,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snuff_films#Recorded_ murders

There you go.

"If you have proof: Show it."

I did, now let's see whether you're man enough to admit you were completely wrong. Because you were.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,37 5883,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snuff_films#Recorded_ murders

There you go, I will happily accept your mea culpa at your convenience.

You were wrong. Be a man and admit it.

I'm with you, but where are you getting info to support the claim that no snuff movies have ever been found?

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,37 5883,00.html

The iPhone does not use 3G technology, but a variant of the existing wireless technology called Edge. So far in the UK, only Orange has installed this technology into its network - but O2 is expected to roll out Edge technology in time for Christmas, and also, it is thought, in time for the iPhone. Last night O2 said officially that it had not signed a contract with Apple.

The other operators, however, say that upgrading to the new high-speed data service needed for the iPhone is not expensive, as it is merely a software upgrade; it does not need a full-scale refit of existing wireless networks, unlike the switch to 3G, which has cost the industry billions of pounds.

-California is not a warzone.
-You _have_ a tap. Care to walk miles for water every day?
-Beijing "air pollution capital of the world"
-A valid point
-I heard a report on the BBC today talking about this informal study they're doing on quality of life in Baghdad. All three of the families they are tracking got about an hour a day of electricity this week, and constant electricity supply is in the dim future.

Free market economies work best when prices are elastic; that is, where changes in price affect the demand for the product. This allows price to signal the level of available supply and prevent shortages of goods.

I agree with this part. Price ensures that demand equals supply. It does this 2 ways: Higher prices decrease demand from consumers. They also increase supply by giving added incentive to producers by giving them increased potential profit. But if we keep prices artificially low (or non-existent), what's the incentive for hospitals to hire more docs and nurses? For drug companies to research more drugs? For people to go to medical school and incur hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and dedicate their lives to a very demanding career?

The easy solution is to have the government throw money at it. But that's a finite pool of resources, and if you set the direct cost of healthcare at zero, you have essentially unlimited demand.

The problem with healthcare is that it is not elastic. If I have cancer, a broken leg or some other ailment I have to get it fixed - regardless of the cost.

For things that threaten life, limb and eyesight, yes, I agree that care is perfectly inelastic. But what about all the other stuff? There are plenty of healthcare decisions that are subject to economic principles:

Do I wait to take my sniffly kid to the doctor to see if it'll clear up on its own, or do I go the first day after he cries all night? Do I go to the doc with a bad ankle sprain, or do I wait a few days to see if it'll clear up? If I keep getting bronchitis a few times every year, do I decide to quit smoking? If I'm overweight and having health problems, do I make an effort to improve my health because my high-BP and cholesterol meds cost a lot?

If your allow price to regulate supply and demand in the smaller healthcare decisions that use up the majority of doctor's time and resources, then you free up a whole lot of resources to cope with the price-inelastic major health problems.

It also pays because you can remove the inefficent insurance companies. If everybody is covered then there is no need to have a bureaucracy to decide if a person is covered.

Insurance is a good thing. It allows many people to share the cost of risk, and it works exceedingly well! And do you mean to claim that the government bureaucracy that will need to exist to administer a system of socialized medicine (that will have absolutely no incentive to be efficient, like all government bureaucracies) will be more efficient that the admin overhead of private corporations who must be mindful of the bottom line? This doesn't make sense.

Socialised health care is not evil communism

No, it's a naive, misinformed solution to a difficult problem.

When you trust the security of your nation to the government, why do you not trust your healthcare to them too?

And if we trust them with that, then why shouldn't we entrust them with food production and entertainment and clothing and... Well, everything?

Government should do what only government can do. I don't like the idea of law enforcement and international armed conflict left up to mercenaries. But as far as anything else, you ought to take a long hard look at why you think the government is "best" equipped to take care of it.

I fear that had he born in the United States, he would not have been able to continue with his studies, in fact, he probably would have been bankrupt

Yeah, and had he lived in the UK, he'd be dead. The NHS in the UK

"It was a weapon that we believe was stocked from the ex-regime time and it had been thought to be an ordinary artillery shell set up to explode like an ordinary IED and basically from the detection of that and when it exploded, it indicated that it actually had some sarin in it," Kimmitt said.

Tests conducted by the Iraqi Survey Group (search) -- a U.S. organization searching for weapons of mass destruction -- and others concluded the mustard gas was "stored improperly," which made the gas "ineffective."

The CIA asked for the investigation, the DOJ got Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to do the investigation. They (the CIA) also were a bit miffed by the outing of not just their agent but the cover company and all their contacts.

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1 052798,00.html

See: Sept. 28, 2003: CIA Director George J. Tenet calls on the Justice Department to investigate the leak. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4764919

The world's most dangerous person commutes the sentence of one of his
brownshirts.

And you chipheads continue to talk about iPods, iPhones, and Winbloze.

Allegedly, Paul Dacre (Daily Mail editor) is a friend of Gordon Brown (new UK Prime Minister, for those not keeping up at the back). Not sure if that has any bearing on things or not:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/story/0,,2115 307,00.html

However, as it's a story about a bunch of foreigners trying to get to the UK, it's standard Daily Mail fare, really. These ducks are different to us - they're not even the same species!

The men who stare at goats: http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilos ophyandsociety/0,6121,1355882,00.html

Police organizations are already talking about it. Most of the basics of such a system are already in place with modern vehicles, it would just take a law and some tweaking with the main computer. Of course, it wouldn't work on older vehicles (unless you're talking about something more drastic such as EMP), so it would take some time for it to be useful.

Here's a Guardian article discussing it

"He didn't pay any attention to millions of people. Why the fuck would he care what one computer predicts?"

I know this was rhetorical, but those millions of people don't have all the information to work from he does.
---
Yes, directly from the Supreme Being.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1586978,00. html

"President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."...

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,211328 9,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

Yesterday, however, some scientists doubted whether Russia's latest Arctic grab stood up to scrutiny.

To extend a zone, a state has to prove that the structure of the continental shelf is similar to the geological structure within its territory. Under the current UN convention on the laws of the sea, no country's shelf extends to the North Pole. Instead, the International Seabed Authority administers the area around the pole as an international area.

"Frankly I think it's a little bit strange," Sergey Priamikov, the international co-operation director of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St Petersburg, told the Guardian. "Canada could make exactly the same claim. The Canadians could say that the Lomonosov ridge is part of the Canadian shelf, which means Russia should in fact belong to Canada, together with the whole of Eurasia."

----
Pwned! All your base are belong to ... Canada!!

In your opinion not mine. If I have to whip out an anecdote Ill talk about my grandfather who lived under the Canadian system. When he was diagnosed with bladder cancer he was told he was too old for them to give him chemo he spent a short bit of time getting into the us system where he was treated with chemo. Sadly the time he had to wait meant the chemo did not work but it did add a year or two to his life. Hey but at least Canada was nice enough to foot the hospice bill eh?

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/nhs/story/0,,661131 ,00.html

"It's the biggest health scandal in modern Britain: according to a World Health Organisation report to be published later this year, around 10,000 British people die unnecessarily from cancer each year - three times as many as are killed on our roads. If Britain had the same services as the best available in Europe, it would save 25,000 lives a year - the population of a small town."

I am not saying the US system is perfect there is room for improvement and at a state level I dont hove a problem with provided health care just not at the fed. That too much power to give to them and if you disagree just realize that *if* Hillary had succeeded in 1993 right now we would have had 6 years of George Bush and the Neocons running healthcare in this nation. the more power you hand government in a Democratic nation the more likely someone who disagree with the person who put it into place will be wielding it down the line.

I live in Minnesota which has the best coverage of any state (I think its around 95% of the population has insurance and all insurance agencies must be non-profit) and I am quite happy with it but I dont think this system should be imposed on, say, Florida..

Submitted for your approval: Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps I think a problem is that no matter what fact or evidence you can bring to light, you can always be passed off as another crazy. And when an awful truth finally does come out ("What? There are no WMDs? Bush and his administration lied to us?") what do we do? We get people into Congress and the Senate who are going to fight for what the American people want. And they did, for about two days. "President Bush, bring out troops home or else!" "No." "Please?" "No." "Fine. Have a candy bar."

But what about the innumerable volunteers who can download the code and fix what they like? They take one look at the effort involved and run. OpenOffice is an extremely complex mountain of source code. As far as I know, in the five years it has been available as open source, not one contribution to the program has come from amateurs. The outsiders who have provided input have been full-time professionals employed by Linux companies to help make the software credible.

I think you're missing the point of my question. The BBC does online streaming right now. Are you saying they fund this via BBC Worldwide, not via the license fee? Because I was under the impression that they specifically asked for the license fee to be increased so that they could do more online, and are planning on spending far more on digital than BBC Worldwide takes in.

Specifically, the BBC made a grand total of £6.9 million in profits from BBC Worldwide last year according to their official figures linked to above, and the planned spending on iPlayer and related digital offerings as per the Guardian page is £1.2 billion. Explain to me again how BBC Worldwide is funding iPlayer?

Indeed. With movements such as the one I assume you are referring to: the UK is just a few steps away from protesting being redefined as terrorism in the Orwellian landscape of current political newspeak. The UK will be in dire straits indeed then. Protesters could be legally incarcerated or whisked away to other countries for a bit of friendly torture/reeducation.

I think the basic problem is that people do not want to believe that their leaders could be capable of such acts. Somehow most people disengage their critical faculties when thinking about politics and politicians. On the one hand just about everyone is convinced that corruption is rampant. At the same time the very same people will instinctively insert a huge and powerful it_must_be_just_misguided_good_intentions filter when they observe the actions of politician:

"I'm sure he means well. He truly believes that gradually taking away the freedom of the population will make us safe from terrorists."

"It's to save the children that every single citizen must be spied upon!"

"I'm sure they really thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."

"I'm sure that the way they ignored all the sites with radioactive materials during the invasion, choosing to go straight for the oil, was an honest mistake. Too bad about the population drinking water from radioactive barrels freely pillaged from the areas that we said were our targets but we failed to care in the least about during the invasion."

"I'm sure they really are planning to leave Iraq. Huge permanent bases? You must be mistaken. We went in to free Iraq, or was it disarm? Or to fight Al Quaeda? Or because they planned 9/11? Well anyway, one of those, it was for a good cause."

How do you describe people that go out of their way to interpret reality in terms of misguided good intentions on the part of their leaders?

Sheeple is a rather offensive term, but it sure does fit the bill nicely.

Brazilian ISPs have always had the duty to record and keep everything that's sent by anyone over the internet. If someone feels defamed by anything that can be proved to come from that ISP, the company is held responsible if the author cannot be found. Brazilian judges have always been very, very eager to grant injunctions against any publication of personally derogatory words or images.

This includes books too, a famous example was a few years ago, when a biography of soccer star Garrincha was pulled out of bookstores at the request of his daughters. The reason? It was stated in the book, based on his lovers' declarations, that Garrincha's penis was approximately 27 cm (11 inches) long. This book was later released, after an appeals court decided that saying a man has a large penis is not a derogatory statement.

Hardly surprising - see here

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/opinion/story/0,, 2107262,00.html

"But arguing over whether discussion should focus on the worst offender, versus a general industry indictment, can be a distraction from the need to implement privacy protections which cannot be easily ignored."

http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001218. html

http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/mt-comments.cgi? entry_id=1218

Clinton launched cruise missile attacks against terrorist training camps in Sudan and Afghanistan

Ten years ago, NSA/GCHQ used fax intercepts to catch the french selling weapons components to Iran. (Bamford's conclusion that the turbos were harmless civilian generators is ridiculous.) Iran is heating up again, and I'm sure France would like to sell them munitions; besides making money, it will put sand in the gearbox of the anglo-saxons.

i think the main benefit of spying on consumer technology like blackberries is that it could be easier to install and harder to trace.

they never did find who were spying on the greeks.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1703702,00 .html

Seven hundred people, eh? I can't wait until another story like this comes out.

.haeger

Enemies of the US are for instance:
NATO Allies:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4 456801,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_fire
Industrial competitors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enercon
and Linux using flag burning commies that are trampling on the constitution of course...
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/31975.html

"It's no secret that part of Google's plan for world domination is to replace eBay, which involves selling products via Google Base and paying for them using Google Checkout. However, Google isn't yet powerful enough to launch the expected blitzkrieg, so the two companies maintain friendly relations under what's been compared to the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact signed by Von Ribbentrop for Germany and Stalin"

Who said that amateurism on the Internet was leading to the death of real journalisim ..

Godwins Lawbr>
-- br>
"we both made shells for the Nazis, but mine worked, dammit!", C. Montgomery Burns

The CIA has been doing nasty stuff in Europe. Of course, torture is illegal, which is why the CIA uses extraordinary rendition and secret prisons in Eastern Europe, rather than torture people at home.

For your enlightenment:
CIA ran secret prisons for detainees in Europe, says inquiry
German ministers 'knew about CIA torture cells'
CIA jails in Europe 'confirmed'