Slashdot Mirror

Alaska had a real summer comparable to the lower 48 of the United States. Nice cabin there if the summers warm up to near 20 Celsius for months on end!

Yes, but the warmer temps up there mean more mosquitos... which are already the size of vultures.

A bit further south, in Canada, the mosquitoes take down cows. My gods, they've spread further south than I imagined.
For all our sakes, let's pray they don't descend on truly South America.

I can understand why they do it. You have stories like these, where people are getting electrocuted by iphone chargers. That kind of thing could keep people from wanting to buy iPhones. Easier to just stop people from using 'unauthorized' cables altogether, and stop that kind of story.

I can understand why they decided to do this, but all the same, to me, it's just another reason not to buy an iPhone.

You detect something that moves? shoot. That, and the ability to be remotely controlled. Normal soldiers will not want to be miles around those bots. And the "remotely controlled" part will be probably exploited, either by the enemy, or by any of the lot of people that will be around in design/control/manufacture them, or by whoever that hacks them.

Oh, I don't know... maybe in 2011? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/28/hurricane-irene-fema-response_n_939545.html

I don't believe 99% of what is paid to be published, because, well hell look who is paying for the media spin?

In this case, if you read both articles, it's hard to figure out which one isn't getting paid to publish. It's one crappy non-scientific angry opinionator against another.

Why are we getting articles here from politicians and bloggers? If we're going to get opinions, can't we at least get them from real scientists? We used to get stories on Slashdot when new studies were conducted. We don't need one every time some random person publishes their opinion (that's what the comments are for).

Letting nature take its course can be an ugly business.

Here's one, a sad story:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/ss-america-cruise-adrift_n_2663875.html

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/8_-_AmStar_7.JPG

And the Murmansk (lost during tow to a wrecking yard), now being salvaged:

http://www.afgruppen.com/Removal-of-the-wreck-Murmansk/

what the evaluation on the CO flood will say - damage, cost, cause.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/09/15/colorado-floods-weather/2816051/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/14/colorado-flooding-climate-change_n_3926284.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX3w90YecnA

How much denials there will be and if it's all blamed on the FSM (or equiv.).
Enjoy the coming show!

Umm that is illegal now as well. The using your finger to shoot someone is. Well at least shooting them with a pop-tart.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/student-suspended-for-pop-tart-gun_n_2903500.html

6. Your car could be hacked by the CIA/NSA in order to assassinate you:

See this story quoting the former counter-terrorism czar on the death of reporter Michael Hastings, who was working on an expose about CIA Director John Brennan.

Jobs said no such thing. In fact, his quotes are even more damning when contrasted to the release of the iPad mini:

"The reason we [won't] make a 7-inch tablet isn't because we don't want to hit that price point, it's because we think the screen is too small to express the software,"

and then:

"There are clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a touch screen before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps."

From an original news article at the time:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/19/apples-ipad-2-wont-be-a-s_n_767882.html

Don't try and re-write history just because it paints an inconvenient view of your pet company/deity. If you're going to post a sarcastic comment about "Slashdot" not understanding something then you could at very least make sure you're not outright making shit up yourself to start with.

It goes further than that. Even without the three-strikes laws, no one takes copyright law very seriously, for several reasons:

• The chance of getting caught pirating anything is statistically insignificant.
• Copyright law has been extended to the point where it is completely unjust and contrary to the principles set out in the Constitution for IP protections.
• The reason copyright law has been extended as such is effectively bribery and corruption.
• And finally, the very entities lobbying for stricter copyright law don't appear to follow copyright laws themselves.

Obama Comes Clean!

President Obama today announced he will no longer prevaricate (for the American audience: lie like Hell!) on the Syria matter, but instead offer them the "olive branch" of peace.

"If Syria and Iran will finally sign onto the WTO's Financial Services Agreement, thus allowing the banksters in, we will refrain from unleashing a leviathan deluge of cruise missiles against them," said an annoyed Barack Obama.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/05/making-the-world-safe-for-banksters/

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-09-07/high-level-us-intelligence-officers-syrian-government-didn%E2%80%99t-launch-chemical-

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-07/obamas-missing-link-no-direct-connection-between-assad-and-gas-attack

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/05/syria-battle-maaloula_n_3872906.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/05/syria-battle-maaloula_n_3872906.html

Undoing a funny mod, but ah well... this type of idiocy is just too rampant.
Here are just a few examples of the top of my head:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Pigeon
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/30/madagascar-giant-tortoises_n_3525586.html
Tortoises in general are endangered due to sailors loving them as walking food supplies in the years 1500-1900.
And, the classical example... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo

Finally, as someone else pointed out, commercial fishing IS by definition the equivalent of people fishing for their own food - some people just outsourced their fishing to others.

The reality is, there are thousands of rebel groups in Syria, most fighting Assad in a respectable way.

Did you do a census or use random sampling to deduce that most of the groups are fighting in a respectable way? I'd love to see your data.

Also, I'm not sure if you did this on purpose, but are you confusing "most of the rebel groups" with "most of the rebels" since many of the groups are very small and a few of the big rebel groups make up the majority of the actual people?

and no funding is being planned anyways.

You are joking right? NO funding? For someone as knowledgeable about the Syrian rebels as yourself, you must know that we are arming and training them. Here are some links to get you started:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10283758/First-Syria-rebels-armed-and-trained-by-CIA-on-way-to-battlefield.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/us-aid-to-syrian-rebels

I think the totalitarian sickness Schneier describes goes well beyond the NSA. Computers and especially mobile devices are becoming creepy, for lack of a better word, even without government intervention. They are the prying eyes in your house Harriton High School Used Laptop Webcams To SPY On Students At Home, they are following your every move Government Location Tracking: Cell Phones, GPS Devices, and License Plate Readers, they are keeping tabs on what you like and don't like Mapping, and Sharing, the Consumer Genome (featured on slashdot yesterday, itself a thinly veiled phishing scam IMHO). Although subject to government abuse, none of the "services" highlighted in those links were instigated by the government. Just yesterday I was innocuously checking for prices for various professional training seminars on Google, and on cue my Email inbox started overflowing with unsolicited offers. On some days, I want to throw my smartphone in the trash and unplug my computer from the internet and only plug it back in when I need to access the SVN repository.

So Kudos to Bruce Schneier for addressing his call to the engineering community, but now it begs a question: aren't engineers, including those outside the NSA/DEA/FBI, somewhat responsible for creating this creepy user experience? I don't think they're suddenly going to wake up one day and fix it; a significant subset has embraced the creepiness and fundamentally doesn't understand why it might be a problem for others.

I dispute that these vigilantes should decide what should be "declassified" or what isn't.... I just strongly object to the methods being used by the anti-secrecy crowd, and I don't trust their motivations at all.

That is a fair enough opinion and nobody can argue with it, it is good to have a healthy dose of skepticism about any information that is presented to us via any channel. However what is more difficult to dispute is when a leaked document reveals heinous war crimes - should focusing on the messenger still be more important than a message of that significance? Also remember that Washington leaks information all the time (for example the Bin Laden operation) - why are leaks that expose crimes be worse than leaks that make the president look good? To most people that just reeks of hypocrisy.

The usual reply to this logic is "what war crimes, there were no war crimes exposed - but look over there - Assange is a narcicist and Manning is a traitor!!". However even a basic search and read of the documents they destroyed their lives to bring to us show that this claim is absolutely false:

Revelations from the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs detailed the use of paramilitary death squads, complicity in the torture of Iraqi citizens, the indiscriminate killing of civilians by private military contractors and many other abuses. Meanwhile, the leaked State Department cables brought to light scores of secret drone strikes in countries we are not even at war with, and uncovered the collusion between the U.S. and Yemini governments to lie about American responsibility for the massacre of 41 people in the Al-Majalah region. They also revealed U.S. interference with judicial efforts in Spain to investigate the Bush administration's torture practices. In Tunisia, leaks exposing the opulence and corruption of Ben Ali's government were a catalyst for the revolution that brought down the repressive regime and ignited other pro-democracy movements throughout the Arab world. The list could go on but the point is simple: it would have been a disservice to democracy to withhold this important information.

Don't confuse your little corner of the internet with the real world. In the real world, you're a tempest in a teacup, son.

Right [1], back [2], at ya [3], son.

[1] The 2012 Harris Poll Annual Public Summary Report (PDF)
[2] Banking Stinks Like Cigarettes and Politics: Survey Shows Contempt for Industry
[3] Banking Sector Is Slowly Replacing Big Oil As The Most Hated Industry

...

The Harris poll asks consumers for their opinions on six key attributes of the 60 ‘most visible’ corporations in the United States. Rating companies’ social responsibility, emotional appeal, products and services, workplace environment, financial performance and vision and leadership, the Harris RQ survey seeks to get a snapshot of corporate America’s reputation among consumers.... Banking and financial services scored terribly.

...

But the banking sector has screamed up the charts, and not counting the always-hated federal government, it was No. 2 with a bullet as of Gallup's most recent poll, taken way back in August 2012. Fifty-three percent of Americans surveyed had a negative view of banks in that poll, up from just 18 percent in 2007, before the crisis. The percentage of people with a positive view of banking has plunged to 25 percent from 50 percent in 2007.

Do you have a citation for a single dangerous fish being caught outside of that part of Japan?

Here's a few dangerous fish stories.

There was also a radiocative fish caught near California, but it wasn't deemed dangerous. But it does go to show how far the effects of the disaster have been felt so far.

Nuclear accidents have not been proven to have killed a single person.

Sa- wha- hah? What kind of logic are you spewing? Fukishama may have gotten a wiki[1] entry citing a "no deaths directly attributed" death toll, but that is by no means a trustworthy represenation of fact. Radiation poisoning[2] is a very real and well understood consequence of exposure. DNA becomes damaged and cancer results from both short term and long term exposure[3]. Sometimes the cancers can take decades to develop before actually killing you[4]. Tepco has been lying about radiation levels[5] for a long time and will continue to do so to keep people guessing about the truth. Stop helping them spread it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll
[2] http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/radiation-sickness/DS00432
[3] http://science.howstuffworks.com/radiation-sickness.htm
[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/fukushima-workers-risk-thyroid-cancer_n_3622529.html
[5] http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=26707

funded with scarce dollars.

The per-pupil expenditures in public-schools nation-wide has quadrupled since 1961. That's adjusted to inflation — the nominal increase is nearly 30-fold. And yet, even the most Illiberal segment commentators — whom you'd expect to try hardest to defend the public schools — acknowledge, that mere 30% of the nation's 8th-graders qualify as "proficient" in something as basic and fundamental as reading.

In the high-population states and locales, where one would expect the high number of customers to get a better deal through the economy of scale, the per-pupil costs are, actually, even higher. District of Columbia, for example, has spent over $17k per kid in 2010, compared to Kentucky's $10k. NYC spends even more.

Whatever is wrong with the schools, "scarcity of dollars" is not it...

Educators in some parts of the country are too busy trying to get "Creation Science" into real science textbooks. They don't have time to figure out what is actually best for the students!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/creationists-textbooks-texas_n_3689154.html

Invest in offshore wind power and water power.

It might sound silly, but it is much more cost effective than nuclear power.
Look at how much damage the Fukushima has already cost TEPCO and the Japanese government.
And it is not over yet: Fukushima's Radioactive Plume Could Reach U.S. Waters By 2014
Everybody get are "fair" share.
Just one of these accidents every twenty years and it is goodbye turnover.

They cannot find what you are not carrying.

Of course they can. Which leads us to the only real solution: don't go anywhere near the United States. Of course that still doesn't make you save from random drone strikes or kidnapping, but at least that requires targetting you or someone who happens to be in the general area.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/07/anthony-mitchell-lawsuit-third-amendment-_n_3557431.html
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/henderson.pdf - Case 2:13-cv-01154-APG-CWH United States District Court District of Nevada

19. After Plaintiff ANTHONY MITCHELL refused to allow the police to enter his home, the De-fendant police officers, including Defendants SERGEANT MICHAEL WALLER, OFFICER DAVID CAWTHORN and OFFICER CHRISTOPHER WORLEY, conspired among themselves to force AN-THONY MITCHELL out of his residence and to occupy his home for their own use. Defendant OFFICER DAVID CAWTHORN outlined the Defendants’ plan in his official report:

It was determined to move to 367 Evening Side and attempt to contact Mitchell. If Mitchell answered the door he would be asked to leave. If he refused to leave he would be arrested for Obstructing a Police Officer. If Mitchell refused to answer the door, force entry would be made and Mitchell would be arrested.

That's a nice Catch-22 you've created there, Officer. Pity about that pesky Third Amendment (plaintiff is also suing under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments as well).

The US government is all for fundamental freedoms, providing your use of them can be logged, queried at will and used against you later.

No, I'm afraid not. Let's go down the amendments one by one and see where we come out:

First amendment: Freedom of speech and the press.
The United States has no Journalistic shield law. Basically, if a whistleblower drops of some incriminating government documents, publication can land you in jail. Failing to reveal your source? That's a one-way trip to Guantanamo. Then there's the designated Free Speech Cages, surrounded by police, cameras, and barbed wire, and usually located far away from a place where your protect might be visible. Failure to protest within the cage will and you in a different cage. Don't worry -- they pre-construct them for all major events at nearby warehouses.

The right to bear arms
In New York and elsewhere... yeah, no. There are so many examples of the constant attempts to remove this or at least regulate it to the point it is effectively removed, I won't provide more examples. Go look them up yourself.

Not having soldiers quartered in your home
Yeah... a guy was recently arrested, beaten, and dragged out of his house for refusing to allow the police entry, so they could pitch a tent and enact surveillance of one of his neighbors. The story has since vanished off the internet, and very few sites still have any information on it.

Unlawful search and seizure
The Department of Homeland Security has granted itself the ability to declare arbitrary constitution-free zones, which cover approximately 80% of the US population -- as most of the population lives within 50 miles of one of the country's borders, and that's one of the areas covered.

Right not to self-incriminate
unless of course, the FBI thinks you might have child porn. ...

I could go on, but I think you get the point: They're not for all fundamental freedoms... they just want them on paper, but not in reality. Subtle difference.

some people stubbornly cling to facts... Total cancers caused by Fukushima disaster: zero.

Apparently you're not one of those who stubbornly stick to facts. A quick googling turns up pages and pages of news stories about thyroid cancers, that one showed up first.

And it's not just this black budget' either. Google "GOA DOD not auditable" and you'll find that the office of accounting has pretty much zero idea how the Pentagon budget (of some 800 billion at present) is spent.

See this huff post article for example. Further digging indicates that the DoD has effectively been unaccountable even since before 2001.

Currently they are promising to be auditable by 2017...

Deputy Attorney General James Cole also issued a three-and-a-half page memo..."expectation that states...will address the threat those state laws could pose to public safety, public health and other law enforcement interests"

Hmm, bet we can guess those "interests." Like keeping their hands on their drug money and free labor.

Marijuana impairs attention. That seems to be the linkage that most people cite. But I find no hard statistics on this either.

Since there is no legally recognized impairment level for Marijuana, and no legally recognized tests, (other than blood draws) either device based tests, or field sobriety tests, its hard to prove the extent to which it is present in accident situations. So if there was a car crash, the police have no real way to prove it was even a factor.

University of Washington cited an Australian study showing that the research is a total mess in this area. So a local TV station then went out and did their own tests.

Specifically on this issue too. Obama said he wouldn't spend federal funds fighting state's medical marijuana laws, yet his government has raided more dispensaries in states with medical marijuana laws than Bush's. source.

I don't regret voting for him in the general elections, but I do regret not giving money or volunteering for a better candidate in the primaries.

Tesla is a big target in the crosshairs of the automotive industry right now so I'm very skeptical. Tesla is doing what no other company has been able to do in the US and that seems to be a problem with everyone from dealers to falsified reviews in The New York Times. Let's do without the TFA drama have a look at the the egregious attack vectors listed:

1) You want to leverage a tool on a website with some useful functionality. You enter your email/password. They willfully and incorrectly store that information and are subsequently compromised (or worse, they use it themselves).

This is a really broad claim. What's more, if you haven't logged in over an SSL connection then... well, you're kind of a dumbass.

2) An attacker gains access to a website's database of authenticated tokens. It has free access to all of that siteâ(TM)s cars up to 3 months with no ability for the owners to do anything about it.

This is no less dubious that so many online services that I couldn't begin to count. The risk of compromise is an accepted one and hopefully mitigated. No fair faulting them without seeing how they would handle said compromise.

In a nutshell, TFA is going to need to find more substantial basis for panic than this. Sheesh.

All Snowden and Manning did was tell the truth. We should be *very* careful about outlawing the truth in America.

There were reporters that knew the date of the Normandy invasion, D-Day, in World War 2. They didn't reveal it. If they had revealed it, that would have been "telling the truth." It also would have likely turned the invasion into a disaster, and possibly resulted in a different outcome to the war.

Great Britain was in danger of being starved into submission by the German U-Boats in World War 2. The U-Boat menace was brought under control because the Allies were able to break the Enigma code system and read German Navy communications. Some Germans suspected from time to time that their communications were compromised, but they were always mollified by the apparent strength of Enigma. When the truth was finally revealed in the 1970s, the Germans were stunned. Had that information been revealed during the war, it still would have been "the truth." But the revelation of that information during the war against the U-Boats would have enabled the Germans to take effective countermeasures quite easily since the ability of the Allies to decrypt Enigma codes always hung by a thread. If the German radio traffic with the U-Boats would have been unreadable, it is possible that the British Isles could have been starved into submission. That would have meant a much more difficult war than it already was, and possibly one with a different outcome.

You're right, America (and the UK) should be *very* careful about outlawing the truth. By the same token, great care needs to be taken regarding the handling of some types of truth, otherwise it may be your fleet on the bottom of the ocean in the future. Had war come with the Soviet Union in the 1970s to 1980s, that is probably where much of the US fleet would have ended up. John Walker and his spy ring gave the Soviet Union the means to read American naval codes. NATO would probably have been either forced to use nuclear weapons in Europe - which it was and is prepared to do, or surrender.

A man telling his wife or girlfriend that a pair of jeans make her butt look big is telling the truth too. Who is going to sign up for that? Improperly revealing national security secrets is far more dangerous than telling a wife or girlfriend her butt looks big in a pair of jeans. The feedback loop just tends to be longer, if you're lucky.

Iran Warns U.S. Against Syria Intervention, Revolutionary Guard General Predicts 'Severe Consequences'
Syria crisis: UK and US move closer to intervention

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4117625&cid=44668899 where though you point out old IE builds bugs (IE 11 exists free/no bugs) it's easily gotten around. With Win7 only 2 remote bugs (environment strings/dao) that are easily manually fixed or have free better alternatives!

(Where only 1 app, an Apple product no less, exploits 1 and data middleware that's old that has more able replacements).

You fail!

Fact: You're the hypocrite whose methods were used against him to greater harm to your "evidences" by far (26 total in only 2 examples) in that link above.

( By the way: How's Linux doing @ NASDAQ this week? Not good http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/22/nasdaq-shutdown_n_3798675.html )

Nice to see NASDAQ doing so well on Linux lately http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/22/nasdaq-shutdown_n_3798675.html 3 "strikes you're out". Old OS versions = patch tuesday, or upgrade. Simple. Especially on IE 11, since it's free. That takes out all of your examples including Visual Studio. What you put up != all MS products. You fail.

TFA (& everyone else it seems) misses a key option: release anonymously using US First Amendment protection.

The US has **the most journalistic freedom in the world**

Sorry, but that koolaid? Yeah, not good for you.

You do remember 2 days ago, don't you? This "country with the most journalistic freedom in the world" just sentenced a whistleblower working with the press to 35 years of hard time. And they act disappointed that he might see the light of day before he is dead, too.

Accept it...in fact, the Guardian is working with NY Times to release future Snowden info *precisely* because the US has the 1st Amendment. From The Guardian's editor:

Journalists in America are protected by the first amendment which guarantees free speech and in practice prevents the state seeking pre-publication injunctions or "prior restraint"

Not only that, in the US, journalists may use **anonymous sources**...they risk their reputation and job, and it has to be cleared by their editors, but it is done routinely (ex: Deep Throat).

If journalists release secret info, they can be subpoenaed to reveal their source. IF THEY REFUSE...the journalist can be jailed ONLY a short period of time, never more than 6-9 months as a 'coercive tactic'...but the gov't HAS TO LET THEM GO if they still don't talk!!!

This process is something every college journalism major learns.

And everything we learn in college turns out to be 100% correct in the real world. You know, the one with rendition, the one with state-sanctioned indiscriminate murder from the sky, the one where the definition of torture is changed to suit the needs of the day, the one where the most prominent "news network" is a not-thinly-veiled-at-all pure propaganda machine, and the one where journalists don't necessarily need to be coerced to give up information, they just need to be surveilled 24/7 with an abundance of technology to wait for the one minute they screw up something (like using their secret password on a computer that already has a trojan installed by those first-amendment-fearing goons).

Glenn Greenwald is using Snowden to further his career...the way he's shopping Snowden interviews around proves it.

The Guardian could have done this **completely differently** and Snowden would still have his job, and Greenwald would have a book deal and a ton of street cred...

Yes, you are clearly qualified to judge the situation when you don't even understand why Snowden did not go to the New York Times directly in the first place. Mr. Snowden, by all accounts, is a pretty damn smart man. There's a reason things unfolded the way they did. A track record of lacking whistleblower protection, the treatment of Manning, the mere lip-service to first amendment protection, and the general ineptitude of most major journalistic powerhouses in the US are part of that reason.

TFA (& everyone else it seems) misses a key option: release anonymously using US First Amendment protection.

The US has **the most journalistic freedom in the world**

Accept it...in fact, the Guardian is working with NY Times to release future Snowden info *precisely* because the US has the 1st Amendment. From The Guardian's editor:

Journalists in America are protected by the first amendment which guarantees free speech and in practice prevents the state seeking pre-publication injunctions or "prior restraint"

Not only that, in the US, journalists may use **anonymous sources**...they risk their reputation and job, and it has to be cleared by their editors, but it is done routinely (ex: Deep Throat).

If journalists release secret info, they can be subpoenaed to reveal their source. IF THEY REFUSE...the journalist can be jailed ONLY a short period of time, never more than 6-9 months as a 'coercive tactic'...but the gov't HAS TO LET THEM GO if they still don't talk!!!

This process is something every college journalism major learns.

Glenn Greenwald is using Snowden to further his career...the way he's shopping Snowden interviews around proves it.

The Guardian could have done this **completely differently** and Snowden would still have his job, and Greenwald would have a book deal and a ton of street cred...

When the Tea Party first started getting media attention, I was interested in subscribing to their newsletter, but now they're basically just the Christian conservative message wrapped up in some anti-tax stuff.

Denninger quoted here, voted for Obama BTW:

Karl Denninger, an original organizer of the Tea Party, is out with a livid blog post blasting current leaders of the conservative movement and the apparent hypocrisy in their views of the economic issues that originally catalyzed its creation.

According to Denninger, "Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, and douchebag groups such as the Tea Party Patriots" are to blame for the bastardization of a movement that now seems focused on "Guns, gays, God," instead of the Tea Party's original mission: to castigate the federal government for supporting the "rampant theft" of taxpayer dollars that went toward "propping up FAILED private businesses."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/20/karl-denninger-tea-party_n_770108.html

Sadly.

You keep shoving words in my mouth. Let's clear a few things up

you claim to support someone's cause in general

No, I didn't. I said he acted unethically in leaking the diplomatic cables. That's a specific claim, not a general one, and the claims of support I made for him were specific to instances where he leaked war crimes, such as the Apache leak, which I gave as a specific example of an instance where he was in the right.

but they did it in the wrong waaaaay

I never said that. My issue is that what he did in leaking the diplomatic cables was wrong, since he had no justification in leaking them. That his method for doing it was also wrong is of no importance compared to that fact.

claiming that revealing war crimes is a "wrong"

I explicitly claimed the opposite of that, since I said I was fine with his leaking the Apache footage, but wasn't fine with his leaking the diplomatic cables, since they revealed no crimes on the part of the US government. I asked you to provide evidence that the diplomatic cables revealed any war crimes on the part of the US government, and instead you linked me to examples of entirely separate leaks, none of which I have or have claimed to have any issues with.

this "leaking indiscriminately" storyline holds no water when he gave the documents to a responsible media organization

Again, you're talking about a separate incident that's unrelated to the one I'm taking issue with. But feel free to keep insisting that I have problems with everything he's ever done, even though I'm repeatedly stating the opposite of that. Run with that straw man! It makes it easier to dismiss the arguments I make that inconveniently don't fall in line with the portrait you're trying to paint of me.

I thought you were an authority on this?

I never claimed to be an authority on Bradley Manning's case. Re-read what I said, and you'll see that the only claim to authority I made was that I had a background in teaching ethics and the criteria related to whistleblowing. The fact that I asked you in good faith to provide more information on the points where you were unclear what you were talking about should have been evidence of the fact that I was open to new information and being corrected on factual inaccuracies on my own part. Instead, what you've provided is evidence of unrelated activities on his part, none of which I take issue with.

[a whole lot of links to stuff I have no issue with and never claimed I did]

Thanks for the info. I mean that. But, once again, what does any of that have to do with the diplomatic cables? I'm fine with him leaking war crimes on the part of the US government. I'm not fine with him leaking the diplomatic cables, simply because he did so without justification. Show me a single war crime on the part of the US government that he revealed by leaking the diplomatic cables. That's what I asked you to show me.

Again, point me to the lawbreaking engaged in by the US that he unveiled in the diplomatic cables.

Weak. Sauce. Claiming to be an "authority" on these issues and asking what lawbreaking Manning revealed

Reading comprehension isn't your thing, I see. Re-read what you quoted from me. The key phrase there: in the diplomatic cables. The rest of that stuff you linked to is fine. Why you continue to think I have a problem with it is beyond me. At this point, I'm inclined to think you're just trolling for fun, but if so, that's fine, since I have time to kill too. :)

You're flying past mountain ranges of lawbreaking and corruption to complain about a molehill.

I'm fine with him having revealed lawbreaking, and

you'd have found plenty of cases of me defending Snowden and his choice to leave the country, as well as contrasting Snowden's actions with the actions undertaken by Manning, not to mention providing the specific criteria by which I say that he acted unethically, rather than just pulling random reasons out of my ass to fit the occasion.

That's the definition of concern trolling: you claim to support someone's cause in general, but they did it in the wrong waaaaay. It's the same tactic whether it's used to dismiss gay rights protestors chaining themselves to the White House fence or dismissing Bradley Manning. And like I said, if you didn't find this excuse that doesn't stand up to scrutiny, you'd find another.

First, this wouldn't have happened in the first place if we weren't warmongering jackasses who invade and bomb countries based on lies and selective standards.

You're arguing that one wrong turn deserves another. That's hardly the morale high ground to be starting your attack on my comment from.

Psst....claiming that revealing war crimes is a "wrong" just like the war crimes themselves isn't going to help your protestations that you aren't a right wing authoritarian. And again, this "leaking indiscriminately" storyline holds no water when he gave the documents to a responsible media organization that asked the USG for help in redacting the documents before publication multiple times but were ignored.

Third, he tried taking his evidence to "responsible" outfits like the NYTimes and the WaPo, and was ignored.

I'm not sure what evidence you're talking about, nor am I aware of any attempt by him to contact those outlets for any reason. I'd love a link to some additional information.

I thought you were an authority on this? Bradley Manning Tried Going To NY Times, Washington Post, Politico Before Turning To WikiLeaks

Fourth, "following proper channels" isn't meant to protect whistleblowers, but to cover up crimes.

I don't know why you decided to add scare quotes

Oh, maybe since they tend to get shut down and prosecuted. John Kiriakou: "Everyone is corrupt, I've come to learn"

In 2009, Kiriakou took the position of senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under John Kerry. His job was to investigate waste, fraud, abuse and illegality and he turned his attention to the 2001 Dasht-i-Leili massacre, in which an American-backed warlord had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of Taliban soldiers when he ordered them to be crammed into metal containers and then loaded onto trucks bound for a prison in Shibarghan, Afghanistan.

A source had told Kiriakou that Americans wearing T-shirts and blue jeans oversaw the box-up of the prisoners.

"I wanted to know,â Kiriakou said, "were these guys CIA officers? If they weren't, who were they? Were they Defense Department? Were they contractors? Who were these guys? And why didnâ(TM)t they stop this from happening? ...

Six weeks later, Kiriakou got a phone call from John Kerry asking if he was investigating the CIA.

"I said, 'Yes, I am.' [He said,] 'I want you to stop right now.' I said 'but we've got a story here. This is a serious situation.' 'I want you to stop right now,'" Kerry repeated. "So I stopped."

Former CIA Officer & Whistleblower

Started at the Ms Magazine blog, ended, IIRC, at Huffpo. Notable for the heavy handed moderation protecting and defending Ms. Heidi's recounting of her fears and anxieties. (And ignorance.)

nteresting you should mention doctors and late career employees. Those people are not the rich. They might just about pay top tier tax on the last few percent of their earnings if they are lucky. They are well off but still middle class.

Except that these are the people that politicians go after when they're looking for money. Obama himself drew the line in the sand at 250k w/ the Bush tax cut expiration. And the reason they do it is because there simply isn't enough money in the super upper echelon to pay for all the programs our bloated government wants to run. You can't just gouge the .1% -- you could take all their money and it wouldn't put a dent in our budget. And that's why they go after the "upper middle class", as you refer to them. And it's also why we rail against it and claim government should be smaller.

You fell for one of the oldest tricks in the political book. You think you are rich because you earn, say , $100,000 and that when people talk about rich people paying their fair share that means you. It doesn't.

No sir, I'm afraid you fell for it. You're letting the politicians fan the flames of intense hatred people you have of the financial fatcat to raise taxes on the upper middle class and "lesser rich". Look at the legislation yourself. None of it targets the millionaires and billionaires. Every single tax break cuts off or phases out somewhere in the 100k - 200k range. Every single tax hike tends to target the 125k+ individual or the 250k+ joint. If what you said was true, this would not be the case. Hell, just look at the Obamacare tax that is 250k+ joint: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/04/obamacare-investment-income-tax_n_2236687.html

And what crime against humanity did he expose? oh, right none.

Repeating a Big Lie doesn't make it true. It just makes you a bigger liar.

Recent studies have shown that shaming obese people leads to greater weight gain, not weight loss.

crime against humanity

Here's a few:

http://collateralmurder.com/
1. Murdering journalists.
2. Murdering kids.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/bradley-manning-leaks_n_3788126.html
3. Thousands of 'unrecorded' civilian deaths.
4. Torture and illegal rendition.

Go read up a bit, you ignorant, git.

"We all know — because we are being constantly reminded — that we are getting fat. Americans are at the forefront of the trend, but it is a transnational one."

Mexico is now the fattest country:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/mexico_weighs_in_first_place_as_H9SVnsADtIaVUjnLgwfTsL
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/mexico-obesity_n_3567772.html
http://metro.co.uk/2013/07/11/mexico-overtakes-america-as-worlds-fattest-country-3879512/

Two weeks ago:
LinkedIn Shuts Down TopTal Ads That Featured Photos Of Female Engineers

In the last two weeks, have they fixed the cultral problem at Linked-In? I doubt it.

Originally it was the only social network that I was willing to join.
Now it's the social network that I am most happy to have left.

Don't worry, we have great journalists like Michael Grunwald that are dying to write stories about drone attacks on sources - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/17/michael-grunwald-julian-assange_n_3773981.html

In the case of Roundup, a lot of studies have been done testing the danger to human health, and it seems to be no more dangerous than manure.

Well, there have been a lot of studies run by Monsanto that seem to show that. But then there are other studies that show links to Parkinson's and Autism, cancer, degradation of soil nutrients, as well as lethal effects in amphibians, and perhaps most alarming, a recent study found roundup in the urine of 44% of European Union citizens. Not only that, but it seems that it is actually many of the adjucts used in Roundup applications that are being shown to have the most toxicity, an issue most of the studies completely ignore by studying only the glyphosate, instead of the entirety of the compounds being used in such abundance.