Slashdot Mirror

According to this link http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/13/is-alex-trebek-in-jeopardy.html Alex only films 2x a week, several shows a day. I reckon he probably doesn't want to bend over backwards for IBM and their little robot :3

The truth isn't always classy. Have you ever been to China? Here is some reading:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,187654,00.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/05/13/asia.whitening/
http://www.newsweek.com/2008/07/25/china-s-agony-of-defeat.html

Don't get me wrong. I like China. I like the food, the women, the Chinese sense of humor. It's more my style than the USA nowadays. But the parent poster is dead on. Modern Chinese have all kinds of complexes about their role in the world.

Then there's the one being set up to teach creationism...

I have repeatedly said I want no tax dollars paying for religious education and I would exclude any such funding. Hell above this post I questioned someone else about the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case and whether they thought locals should decide what's taught.

After cherry picking the most able and easy to teach kids, these schools will no doubt do better in standardised exams, and everyone will proclaim how great school choice is.

Like nobody will offer to teach under achievers. If there money to be made businesses will do it. As will non-profits. Hell make schools more accountable, which what school choice is all about, and public school will improve. Businesses are bad and governments are good only to socialists. Well how many people have businesses killed versus those killed by governments? Do the math and governments win hands down.

Interestingly, the best school system in the world is in Finland, which doesn't have choice, just good quality, well-funded state schools,

According to you? Then why are so many students from other nations are trying to get into US schools? And how many are trying to get into Finish schools? And if they are so good why can't US schools, public and private, duplicate what the Finish do? Of course don't let reality intrude into your mind.

Now, I'll answer a couple of my own questions. According to Newsweek Finland does have the best education, but they do not offer any evidence. And the Asia Society disagrees saying Shanghai has the best. Though not the best according to McKinsey & Company Long Beach Unified School District, in the US, is in the top 20 worldwide. The Newsweek article also says that what Finland does is being duplicated in the US, "In the United States, KIPP charter schools enroll students from the poorest families and ensure that almost every one of them graduates high school—80 percent make it to college."

Oops, don't let reality intrude.

Falcon

> There's no more pedophile priests than there are
> pedophile psychiatrists, teachers, and scout masters

cite, please.

Here's one for starters.

The commonly-held belief is that the priesthood attracts self-loathing homosexuals and/or pedophiles at a higher rate than other professions.

Please point to any evidence for the effect this "commonly-held" belief explains (to wit, the supposedly greater incidence of abuse in the Catholic Church). You don't even need to support the explanation offered by the belief, just the thing it seeks to explain.

So by this logic, using a longer cable to transmit the signal is also a copyright violation! They better regulate the maximum allowable cable lengths as well!

No, there's not a lot of material here but I think it has more to do with converting or capturing the signal to a framed encoding and then viewing this on a device unintended. There's the obvious facilitation of digital recording (like your own DVR) and redistribution or broadcasting to unintended individuals.

Basically I think it comes down to a problem with locked down system to potentially open system. The new technology could potentially facilitate this.

Remember, early on Slingbox and Tivo faced these same questionable legal issues ... looks like Slingbox's strategy is not valid in Japan.

Roger Ebert asked the same thing (on page 4)
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/04/30/why-i-hate-3-d-and-you-should-too.html

I think there's a couple reasons. The first, and probably most significant, is nostalgia by film makers. They love the motion blur of 24fps. It helps evoke the "feeling" of film. Every film student I know either wants to shoot or convert their footage to 24fps. There is a noticeable difference. When you start increasing the resolution and frame rate, you lose motion blur and it starts to look like home video or video games (when generally don't compute motion blur at all).

Another big issue is the amount of light. When you have more frames in a second, each frame has less light to suck up. It's a big issue with high-speed film. Having sensors that are more light-sensitive is a fairly recent thing (combined with advanced noise reduction) and will continuously get better.

The stuttering is something cinematographers keep in mind when shooting (or at least, they should). I read an article about shooting imax and they said the biggest problem was the stuttering. They're also using 24fps, but the screens are much larger. When you pan, the object could jump 2 to 3 feet per frame. They intentionally had slower pans to compensate. You noticing this is probably a side-effect of larger theatrical screen and larger tvs at home.

1. Regulators Failed to Address Risks in Oil Rig Fail-Safe Device
   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/us/21blowout.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
2. Spill report: It could happen again
   'Failure of management' and regulators given blame for disaster
   http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7367856.html
3. Slick Operator
   How British oil giant BP used all the political muscle money can buy to fend off regulators and influence investigations into corporate neglect.
   http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/07/slick-operator.html

This wasn't a technical failure - it was a failure brought out by greed and corruption. The blow-out was only the symptom, and addressing the symptom isn't going to prevent similar incidents from happening again.

We've seen this before - the mortgage disaster and bank bailouts, the savings and loan disaster, etc.

Start by fixing campaign financing - private donations only, strict annual limit per capita, no 3rd party involvement, etc.

-- Barbara

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/21/interview-with-cyber-security-czar-howard-schmidt.html

White House cyber-security coordinator Howard Schmidt:

"We've seen over time street protests in cities that shut down traffic, and this is not dissimilar in the online world. There may be a disruption for a short period of time, but the bottom line is we continue to work to make sure that the impact is minimal."

Hong Kong considers English an official language, so I think you'll find that a significant percentage of the Internet-using, learned Chinese people are at least functional in English by necessity. According to Newsweek, English is very popular among school-aged folks, with some 175 million Chinese students actively learning it in school as of 2007. More than a quarter of the Chinese people have studied English at some point in their lives. By contrast, only about one in every 6,000 people in the United States have studied Chinese. The number of people learning Chinese as a second language pales compared with the number of people learning English worldwide, and given that I think the majority of new Chinese graduates are learning it, as the older population dies off and the younger folks grow up, within at most two generations, it will probably be as easy to use English in China as it is to use it in most parts of Western Europe now.

"DDOS is neiter a legal nor a legitimate form of protest but a criminal act."

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/21/interview-with-cyber-security-czar-howard-schmidt.html

"Hundreds of Internet activists recently mounted cyberattacks on companies like MasterCard and Amazon because they had ended their affiliation with WikiLeaks. How dangerous could this kind of action be?"

Howard Schmidt: "We've seen over time [street] protests in cities that shut down traffic, and this is not dissimilar in the online world. There may be a disruption for a short period of time, but the bottom line is we continue to work to make sure that the impact is minimal."

If Assange thinks everything should be open, why isnt he (or wikileaks) releasing all the information, why are they redacting there information to protect individuals.

Well...maybe not everything.

Taliban Seeks Vengeance in Wake of WikiLeaks
Leaked U.S. Intel documents listed the names and villages of Afghan collaborators—and the Taliban is starting to retaliate.

After WikiLeaks published a trove of U.S. intelligence documents—some of which listed the names and villages of Afghans who had been secretly cooperating with the American military—it didn’t take long for the Taliban to react. A spokesman for the group quickly threatened to “punish” any Afghan listed as having “collaborated” with the U.S. and the Kabul authorities against the growing Taliban insurgency. In recent days, the Taliban has demonstrated how seriously those threats should be considered. Late last week, just four days after the documents were published, death threats began arriving at the homes of key tribal elders in southern Afghanistan. And over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen.

The violence may just be beginning. According to Agha Lali, the deputy head of Kandahar’s provincial council, threatening letters have been delivered to 70 elders in Panjwaii district. While it is unknown whether any of the men were indeed named in the WikiLeaks documents, it’s clear the Taliban believes they have been cooperating with Western forces and the Afghan government. One short handwritten note, shown to NEWSWEEK, said: “We have made a decision for your death. You have five days to leave Afghan soil. If you don’t, you don’t have the right to complain.” The screed, written on the letterhead of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s defunct Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, bore the signature of Abdul Rauf Khadim, a senior Taliban official and former inmate at the American lockup in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who had been released into—and subsequently escaped from—Kabul’s custody last year.

The frightening combination of the Taliban spokesman’s threat, Abdullah’s death, and the spate of letters has sparked a panic among many Afghans who have worked closely with coalition forces in the past, according to a senior Taliban intelligence officer who declined to be named for security reasons. The officer said he has seen reports of Afghans rushing to U.S. and coalition bases in southern and eastern Afghanistan over the past few days, seeking protection and even asking for political asylum. (U.S. military officials would not verify this information.) The Taliban officer claimed that the group’s English-language media department continues to actively examine the WikiLeaks material and intends to draw up lists of collaborators in each province, to add to the hit lists of local insurgent commanders.

WikiLeaks Comes Under Fire from Rights Groups

After drawing ire from officials in Kabul and Washington who claimed the WikiLeaks files put the lives of NATO soldiers at risk, Assange received a letter from a coalition of leading human-rights groups last week that criticized his decision to publish the names of hundreds of Afghans identified in the war logs as helpers of the NATO war effort, saying that this could make them targets of the Taliban. WikiLeaks joint-published the Afghan documents with the New York Times, the Guardian and the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. While those publications redacted names in the documents they published, WikiLeaks' version was largely unedit

Hopefully, if Manning is being tortured, someone on the staff there has at least a little human dignity and will let the world know.

From the article you quoted, but apparently didn't read:

The WikiLeaks documents reveal numerous cases of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Iraqi police and soldiers,

As you may recall, the United States isn't Iraq. Manning is not Iraqi, and is being held in the US. And, for what it is worth, Iraq is a sovereign state. The United States can influence them, but they make their own decisions. The US has been able to influence the Iraqis to improve in many areas, but old habits die hard.

Bradley Manning will go down in history as the agent of one of the largest thefts of secret documents during wartime* in US history. He knowingly provided them to an actor who he knew would disseminate them as widely as possible, including to the enemies of the United States. The Taliban have made it known they are researching the documents, no doubt Al Qaeda is as well. I doubt he will ever be free again - he will probably be lucky to avoid execution.

The Taliban and Al Qaeda are going to keep trying. I expect that some people here will not seriously question some of the nonsense they believe until something truly dreadful happens.

*Yes, the Authorization for Use of Military Force counts.

You seem to have left out some important details, including, oddly enough, the title of the story.

Pentagon: New WikiLeaks Doc Dump Endangers Lives of Iraqi Informants

Lapan said Pentagon officials don't expect any huge surprises from the scheduled dump of classified "significant activities" documents by whistleblower website WikiLeaks, but he repeated his warning that releasing the identification of individuals who worked in close cooperation with U.S. and allied forces puts their lives at risk.

"We know terrorist organizations have been mining the leaked Afghan documents for information to use against us and this Iraq leak is more than four times as large. By disclosing such sensitive information, WikiLeaks continues to put at risk the lives of our troops, their coalition partners and those Iraqis and Afghans working with us," Lapan said in a statement.

Of course, there is another article that people should see...

Taliban Seeks Vengeance in Wake of WikiLeaks

After WikiLeaks published a trove of U.S. intelligence documents—some of which listed the names and villages of Afghans who had been secretly cooperating with the American military—it didn’t take long for the Taliban to react. A spokesman for the group quickly threatened to “punish” any Afghan listed as having “collaborated” with the U.S. and the Kabul authorities against the growing Taliban insurgency. In recent days, the Taliban has demonstrated how seriously those threats should be considered. Late last week, just four days after the documents were published, death threats began arriving at the homes of key tribal elders in southern Afghanistan. And over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen.

Taliban Seeks Vengeance in Wake of WikiLeaks

After WikiLeaks published a trove of U.S. intelligence documents—some of which listed the names and villages of Afghans who had been secretly cooperating with the American military—it didn’t take long for the Taliban to react. A spokesman for the group quickly threatened to “punish” any Afghan listed as having “collaborated” with the U.S. and the Kabul authorities against the growing Taliban insurgency. In recent days, the Taliban has demonstrated how seriously those threats should be considered. Late last week, just four days after the documents were published, death threats began arriving at the homes of key tribal elders in southern Afghanistan. And over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen.

It might be handy to have some surviving informants among the Taliban since...
Suspect in Times Square bombing attempt was paid by Pakistani Taliban, indictment says

The insurance companies DO have to cover a lot of people who either didn't have coverage, couldn't get coverage, or were no longer on their parents plans (but now can be). I really don't see how this is debatable?

The insurance companies love covering a lot of the new people, because most of them are young and won't need much in the way of services. There are definitely a lot of people who wanted to buy and use insurance in the past who now will be able to. But there were even more people who didn't buy insurance because they didn't use the services enough and were willing to take the risk of not having it. Those people will have to buy it now or a penalty will cost them enough money that economically they would have been better off buying it.

We don't have to wonder, since the SecDef has said that no US soldiers, missions, or security were harmed or jeapordized by the Wikileaks releases.

Not quite. Secretary of Defense Gates said that the release of the stolen classified documents by Wikileaks is "likely to cause significant harm or damage to national security interests of the United States".

Washington (CNN) -- The online leak of thousands of secret military documents from the war in Afghanistan by the website WikiLeaks did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods, the Department of Defense concluded.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said there is still concern Afghans named in the published documents could be retaliated against by the Taliban, though a NATO official said there has been no indication that this has happened. (Re: NATO comment, see below. -CF) " We assess this risk as likely to cause significant harm or damage to national security interests of the United States and are examining mitigation options," Gates wrote in the letter. "We are working closely with our allies to determine what risks our mission partners may face as a result of the disclosure."...

Over the summer, the Pentagon created a team of more than 100 personnel made up of mostly intelligence analysts from various branches of the Defense Department as well as the FBI, who were involved in the round-the-clock review. Gates: Leaked documents don't reveal key intel, but risks remain

The phrase, "sensitive intelligence sources or methods" is primarily referring to satellites & signal intelligence. Allies and informants, key resources when fighting a counter-insurgency, have been put at risk by being named.

“My attitude on this is that there are two areas of culpability,” Gates said on ABC’s This Week. “One is legal culpability. And that's up to the Justice Department and others -- that's not my arena.

“But there's also a moral culpability,” he added. “And that's where I think the verdict is guilty on WikiLeaks. They have put this out without any regard whatsoever for the consequences.”

Those consequences could be the loss of innocent lives, Gates said, and not just those of American troops.

“If I'm angry, it is because I believe that this information puts those in Afghanistan who have helped us at risk. It puts our soldiers at risk because they can learn a lot -- our adversaries can learn a lot about our techniques, tactics and procedures from the body of these leaked documents,” the secretary said.

Gates said that having an intelligence background, he knows that “protecting your sources is sacrosanct.” He noted that “there was no sense of responsibility or accountability” associated with the leak of information. WikiLeaks Guilty on Moral Grounds, Gates Says

With apologies to an unnamed NATO official (what sort of job did he have?) the Taliban are starting to hunt down people. (The Taliban have assembled a group to examine the Wikileaks documents.)

After WikiLeaks published a trove of U.S. intelligence documents—some of which listed the names and villages of Afghans who had been secretly cooperating with the American military—it didn’t take long for the Taliban to react. A spokesman for the group quickly threatened to “punish” any Afghan listed as having “collaborated” with the U.S. and the Kabul authorities against the growing Taliban insurgency. In recent days, the Taliban has demonstrated

And all they have is their opinion, because even the Department of Defense was forced to admit [slashdot.org] that the facts do not back that position.

Just random events then.......

Late last week, just four days after the documents were published, death threats began arriving at the homes of key tribal elders in southern Afghanistan. And over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen.

Who could imagine they could be sensitive about that sort of thing?

Funny, who would have thought that freedom of speech could actually work?

Funny, who would have thought that publishing lists of informants against terrorists would result in them being killed or intimidated? Doesn't that contradict all of our experience with the Mafia?

Reality has a well known liberal bias. It's the same here.

LOL.... You mean, "Newsrooms have a well known liberal bias. It's the same here."

The killings and intimidation are already under way.

I guess you've fallen behind on Taliban press releases and activities.

Late last week, just four days after the documents were published, death threats began arriving at the homes of key tribal elders in southern Afghanistan. And over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province's embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen.

I don't know why anyone would expect anything else given their sensibilities and tendencies toward killing the innocent. And don't forget, the hand of the Taliban is reaching beyond their borders.

I'd be curious to know what those charts define as 'output'. Do they include non-tangible things like consulting or knowledge work of any kind? Are we perhaps producing less finished products, but more parts which can be stamped out easier without labor? I know that hit Oregon hard during the recession. We have a high amount of companies that produce only parts. During a recession, companies that produce finished products draw from their surplus part warehouses, and don't restock their part shelves.

It sure seems like many of our products, including famous ones, have decreased. Even the Red Flyer Wagon:(
Newsweek gallery of products no longer made in America

We've been doing it or 2,000 years, and it seems to have worked out ok.

In the best country in the world, they have been giving free university education for 100 years, and they seem to be doing fine.

False. It may have been true at one time, but even Sarah Palin is pro-decriminalization, if not outright legalization

She said "If we're talking about pot, I'm not for the legalization of pot". Her position appears to be aligned with those that think the growers and supply lines should be illegal, and police should continue to target those, but not target individuals smoking a joint in their own homes. There are huge problems with that approach, as it leaves the supply side under the control of criminals.

I think what you mean is "Republican politicians".

Maybe. Libertarian thoughts and liberal social attitudes are becoming more mainstream in conservative society. The world is changing, and attitudes towards cannabis are softening, but this conservative response is still quite typical.

Sure they did. Who else was it that was dealing in the derivatives market? The market for which dwarfed the entirety of the US economy for the next 40 years or so. If it wasn't the investment bankers, then who the fuck was orchestrating the whole thing?

600,000,000,000,000?

http://www.newsweek.com/1995/02/26/the-internet-bah.html
PS: look at the date... Some "prophecies" just aren't worth the ink.

I was so glad to read that Ebert also hates 3D. It's just so nice to know that I am not alone.

Ebert: "Why I Hate 3-D (And You Should Too)"
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/04/30/why-i-hate-3-d-and-you-should-too.html

there was such a rush to publicize them without proper redaction and editing. PROVE to me that

You're spreading FUD. Read this instead:

A lawyer representing the whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks says
U.S. government officials have been given codes and passwords granting them online access to official U.S. government documents that WikiLeaks so far has not published.

Timothy Matusheski, a lawyer from Hattiesburg, Miss., who says he represents whistle-blowers and has been in touch with both WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and at least one government official involved in investigations of WikiLeaks, said the site had set up a “secure channel” through which authorized users could access the unpublished material. He said credentials for using this channel had been forwarded to representatives of the U.S. government whom he did not identify. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Domscheit-Berg: what are the agreements re iraq? i need to understand what the plan is there, and what the constraints are Assange: "A person in close contact with other WikiLeaks activists around Europe, who asked for anonymity when discussing a sensitive topic, says that many of them were privately concerned that Assange has continued to spread allegations of dirty tricks and hint at conspiracies against him without justification. Insiders say that some people affiliated with the website are already Assange: brainsorming whether ther e might be some way to persuade their front man to step aside, or failing that, even to oust him." Domscheit-Berg: what does that have to do with me? Domscheit-Berg: and where is this from? Assange: Why do you think it has something to do with you? Domscheit-Berg: probably because you alleg this was me Domscheit-Berg: but other than that just about nothing Domscheit-Berg: as discussed yesterday, this is an ongoing discussion that lots of people have voiced concern about Domscheit-Berg: you should face this, rather than trying to shoot at the only person that even cares to be honest about it towards you Assange: No, three people have "relayed" your messages already. Domscheit-Berg: what messages? Domscheit-Berg: and what three people? Domscheit-Berg: this issue was discussed Domscheit-Berg: [Redacted] and i talked about it, [Redacted] talked about it, [Redacted] talked about it, [Redacted] talked about it Domscheit-Berg: lots of people that care for this project have issued that precise suggestion Domscheit-Berg: its not me that is spreading this message Domscheit-Berg: it would just be the natural step to take Domscheit-Berg: and thats what pretty much anyone says Assange: Was this you? Domscheit-Berg: i didnt speak to newsweek or other media representatives about this Domscheit-Berg: i spoke to people we work with and that have an interest in and care about this project Domscheit-Berg: and there is nothing wrong about this Domscheit-Berg: it'd actually be needed much more, and i can still only recommend you to finally start listening to such concerns Domscheit-Berg: especially when one fuckup is happening after the other Assange: who, exactly? Domscheit-Berg: who exactly what? Assange: Who have you spoken to about this issue? Domscheit-Berg: i already told you up there Assange: those are the only persons? Domscheit-Berg: some folks from the club have asked me about it and i have issued that i think this would be the best behaviour Domscheit-Berg: thats my opinion Domscheit-Berg: and this is also in light to calm down the anger there about what happened in 2007 Assange: how many people at the club? Domscheit-Berg: i dont have to answer to you on this j Domscheit-Berg: this debate is fuckin all over the place, and no one understands why you go into denial, especially not the people that know about other incidents Assange: How many people at the club? Assange: In what venue? Domscheit-Berg: in private chats Domscheit-Berg: but i will not answe

Obviously women constructed Afghanistan, Iran (and islamic countries in general) as a massive smokescreen to disguise the truth that they really run everything.

Sneaky bitches. Maybe that's why the bead-jigglers and the trouser-rollers don't let them join.

---- posted in verbatim for /. proof ----

Theres been a lot of alarming but rather brief statements in the past few days about Haystack, the anti-censorship software connected with the Iranian Green Movement. Austin Heap, the co-creator of Haystack and co-founder of parent non-profit, the Censorship Research Center, stated that it had halted ongoing testing of Haystack in Iran; EFF made a short announcement urging people to stop using the client software; the Washington Post wrote about unnamed engineers who said that lax security in the Haystack program could hurt users in Iran.

A few smart people asked the obvious, unanswered question here: What exactly happened? With all that light and fury, there is little public info about why the worlds view of Haystack should switch from it being a step forward for activists working in repressive environments that provides completely uncensored access to the internet from Iran while simultaneously protecting the users identity to being something that no-one should consider using.

Obviously, some security flaw in Haystack had become apparent, but why was the flaw not more widely documented? And why now?

As someone who knows a bit of the back story, Ill give as much information as I can. Firstly, let me say I am frustrated that I cannot provide all the details. After all, I believe the problem with Haystack all along has been due to explanations denied, either because its creators avoided them, or because those who publicized it failed to demand one. I hope I can convey why we still have one more incomplete explanation to attach to Haystacks name.

(Those whod like to read the broader context for what follows should look to the discussions on the Liberation Technology mailing list. Its an open and public mailing list, but it with moderated subscriptions and with the archives locked for subscribers only. Im hoping to get permission to publish the core of the Haystack discussion more publicly.)

First, the question that I get asked most often: why make such a fuss, when the word on the street is that a year on from its original announcement, the Haystack service was almost completely nonexistant, restricted to only a few test users, all of whom were in continuous contact with its creators?

One of the things that the external investigators of Haystack, led by Jacob Appelbaum and Evgeny Morozov, learned in the past few days is that there were more users of Haystack software than Haystacks creators knew about. Despite the lack of a public executable for examination, versions of the Haystack binary were being passed around, just like unofficial copies of Windows (or videos of Iranian political violence) get passed around. Copying: its how the Internet works.

We were also told that Haystack had a centralized, server-based model for providing the final leg of the censorship circumvention. We were assured that Haystack had a high granularity of control over usage. Surely those servers could control rogue copies, and ensure that bootleg Haystacks were exc

The Hurt Locker was an amazingly good movie.
Intense, interesting.

Well, this vet says it's crap.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/23/when-cin-ma-v-rit-isn-t.html

I'll go with the vet.

replying to myself ...

I just downloaded the archive from WikiLeaks (googling wardiary.wikileaks.org doesn't work because of "Disallow: /" in robots.txt) and greped for "Khalifa Abdullah"; he was mentioned in a NewsWeek article as one of the civilians who has been killed because of the war diaries being published on WikiLeaks. His name is not in any of the documents.

I've found lots of other names in the documents but only of "insurgents" or of people that have been killed by either side. I have only read maybe hundred of the reports so this doesn't disprove TFA.

According to Newsweek, a man named Khalifa Abdullah was killed after the release of these documents. So that's one man dead already.

Read the article carefully. It says, as you've quoted, that these documents were released, and then Khalifa Abdullah was killed. But was he killed because he was named and revealed in the Wikileaks documents, or did the Taliban decide to kill him for other reasons? The article doesn't actually answer this question, but since the Wikileaks documents are public, it shouldn't be too hard to check - and a quick search for site:wikileaks.org khalilfa abdullah turns up no results.

Perhaps the article was written to imply that Khalifa Abdullah was dead because of the WIkileaks documents, without actually saying so, because there isn't any actual evidence for it?

According to Newsweek, a man named Khalifa Abdullah was killed after the release of these documents

Yes. According to Newsweek, a man was assassinated after the release of the documents. But apart from the simple fact of an assassination having occurred, Newsweek provides no evidence that it has anything to do with the leaked documents.

From your Nesweek article:

One short handwritten note, shown to NEWSWEEK, said: “We have made a decision for your death. You have five days to leave Afghan soil. If you don’t, you don’t have the right to complain.” The screed, written on the letterhead of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s defunct Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, bore the signature of Abdul Rauf Khadim, a senior Taliban official and former inmate at the American lockup in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who had been released into—and subsequently escaped from—Kabul’s custody last year.

And now from a DOD press release:

In early June, the ISAF intercepted orders from Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Omar, who directed his fighters to kill innocent Afghan civilians. This order is in direct contradiction to Omar’s instructions last year urging his followers to minimize civilian casualties in an attempt to compete with the ISAF’s population-centric tactical directives.

Did you catch the part about early June? The only evidence Newsweek provides that the killing of Abdullah is the fact that his neighbors have death threats from a man who ordered civilians killed months before the Wikileaks affair started. Oh, that and the fact that the Taliban, "quickly threatened to “punish” any Afghan listed as having “collaborated” with the U.S. and the Kabul authorities against the growing Taliban insurgency." Something they've been saying since fucking forever, and something it's very much in their interest to say right now. It's entirely to their advantage to make Wikileaks look as dangerous to NATO collaborators as possible—cuts down on collaboration, you see?

So. If Wikileaks got Khalifa Abdullah killed, which document is the smoking gun? Searchable copy of the site here. I'll wait. Don't bother using Khalifa as part of the search query, by the way. There's only one document containing it, and that just happened to be one of several drivers stopped along a road while out to fetch firewood.

The Newsweek story is entirely disingenuous. How many petty assassinations are there in that country every month? Apart from having occurred on the same day as the leaks, and the Taliban making scary noises about how very dangerous is is to collaborate with Americans, what fucking proof is there that Khalifa Abdullah's death had anything to do with Wikileaks? What grounds for suspicion?

The Wikileaks documents may well get people killed. It may already have done so. Do you have even a shred of proof, however, that Khalifa Abdullah was killed because of it?

From the Newsweek article you refer to:

Locals have long known that the Taliban deals harshly with those it suspects of working against it: the ruthless guerrillas have assassinated scores, if not hundreds, of tribal elders and Afghans of all ages for their alleged cooperation with the coalition. In one particularly gruesome case a few months ago, according to the intelligence officer, the Taliban discovered that a group of recent high-school graduates in Ghazni province had been feeding information to the Americans.

I wouldn't exactly say these guys were safe had the documents not been leaked. Safe*r*, true, but certainly not safe.

Wikileaks and Julian Assange own this now. The good, and the ill, from publishing that information are on them. And it looks pretty ill to me.

According to Newsweek, a man named Khalifa Abdullah was killed after the release of these documents. So that's one man dead already. The Taliban has vowed to hunt down and kill anyone who is a "spy", and they are using the Wikileaks information to do it, so there will be more. Some of the people listed in Wikileaks have disappeared, hopefully into hiding rather than dead.

Julian Assange's stance on this is callous. He "insisted that any risk to informants' lives was outweighed by the overall importance of publishing the information." Okay, at least one man is dead now. What is that "overall importance"? I sure don't see it.

I'm also not buying his idea that this is really the US military's fault, together with Amnesty International, for not helping him redact the critical info. Much of the info is years old. What was the big rush? If Wikileaks didn't have enough volunteers to vet the info carefully, why rush ahead and publish it anyway?

If I were Julian Assange, I wouldn't be sleeping well at night.

steveha

I wonder what it would cost if you factored in maintenance too. I bet the maintenance on a hybrid or electric would be a lot more than on a conventional vehicle, especially if you had to replace the battery. It would also be harder to find a garage outside of the dealership to service it (and those are generally cheaper than dealerships).

No. Private enterprise did not want the internet. In large part they said "it's just a fad, no significant amount of commerce will be done over the internet." Were you asleep all through the 90's? Here is a typical such article from Newsweek in 1995:

http://www.newsweek.com/1995/02/26/the-internet-bah.html

Exactly who are the innocent people that have died as a result of this leak?

Khalifa Abdullah

First off, he has announced a withdrawal date for Iraq, not Afghanistan. So your entire point is off.

Are ou simply not paying attention or did you legitimately not know what you were talking about?

Secondly, announcing a withdrawal date for Afghanistan is the only way it can be done. Unless you're advocating a permanent occupation, then a withdrawal must happen.

Wrong, dates lead to attacks after the fact. It's like crooks who want to burglarize your home, if they know when you will be gone, they will pick that time to avoid resistance. What works is conditioned based withdraws that rely on the ability of the area to maintain it's own protection so the transition is basically lateral. This will not require our troops to be there for a permanent occupation either. Your narrow minded comments on this seems lacking of any genuine thought. Combine with your first Gaff, I'm not sure we can trust most of anything you say.

When a withdrawal is going to happen, the "enemy" will certainly know a month in advance whether you announce it or not. You don't suddenly pull out an occupying army without making arrangements with the local security forces (amongst a lot of other giveaways) so that means people will know. All you'd accomplish by trying to withdraw suddenly and secretly is either looking stupid or, if by some miracle yo managed it, creating a power vacuum that no-one had been prepared for resulting in destructive chaos.

Unless of course it's a condition based withdraw in which the replacements are equally skilled and able. Then what will happen is basically a lateral move and a transition of control. OF course you haven't seemed to think about that at all have you? I'm sure glad you are not in the military, cut and running is not the only option.

I'm going to cut through all the media spin and tell this to you straight: The US is losing in Afghanistan. They've been unable to bring down the Taliban. They control a tiny handful of the total number of strategic areas they would need to in order to actually say they controlled Afghanistan. The government there is a brutal regime in waiting. What exactly are you advocating? Permament occupation?

Of course they are loosing, that was the entire point of posting. We are loosing because we cannot guarantee the safety of the people and we can't even keep secrete documents that have the potential of identifying Afghan citizens aiding our efforts out the the enemy's hands. We didn't prevail in Iraq until we were able to ensure the people that we wouldn't just abandoning them to the enemy, we have announced a time table in Afghanistan and ensured the people of Afghanistan that we will leave them to suffer the Taliban. They have no incentive to stand up to the violence of the Taliban and help us, they have no incentive to point out where the Taliban is hiding, they have nothing but our guarantee to cut and run. I mean hell, when the time was right for a surge, we waited six months while our leaders played golf and talked it over sipping their mint juleps from a sterling silver cups and then they committed only about half of the requested support. But I guess that's something else you are conveniently missing.

What am I advocating? a conditioned based withdrawal that ensures the citizens of Afghanistan will be safe or as safe as they are now with the Afghan people running their own security and possibly advisers aiding but eventually removed too. For too long Afghanistan was neglected because of the war in Iraq, but cutting and running now that Iraq is winding down isn't the answer. What we will end up with is the exact same problem we had that caused us to go to war in the first place. A country that harbors terrorists who can recruit, train, and operate freely within it's borders. A count

Did you actually read them?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/publication-of-afghan-informant-details-worth-the-risk-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange/story-e6frg6so-1225898273552

The sanitized version in papers had names blacked out, but the actual leaked docs were basically unedited. The Taliban has already announced they're using it to compile a list of people to kill.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/30/taliban-says-it-will-target-names-exposed-by-wikileaks.html

The oil has stopped. Great. The problem is what caused the leak in the first place. If somebody is driving drunk and causes a massive accident, and then saves someone from it they deserve accolades for the saving, but they were still driving drunk.

BP, through it's incompetence and unwillingness to adhere to proper safety protocol and play it fast and loose caused the fucking spill in the first place. Why should they be patted on the back for cleaning up their own mess? They should be telling us why this shit ain't gonna happen again, and the only things I've seen them doing other than stopping the leak is lie and twist things in their communication to the public, and otherwise carry on business as usual.

How about a slightly newer article: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/08/new-report-reveals-bp-s-long-history-of-safety-problems.html

I realize you're probably on BP's payroll, but seriously, get your head out of your ass.

Maybe if the country wasn't so obsessed with computer crime that it looks for black-hat hackers in ridiculous places, we wouldn't have this problem.

Chemistry sets and other "gateway drugs" to the sciences and engineering are also not as easily available any more. And isn't "creativity" declining too?

Capitalism would be just fine if not for our ridiculous "corporate personhood" doctrine, the result of a few corrupt assholes in black robes called the "Supreme Court" getting paid off at just the right time.

The end result is the corporatist government of the US today - laws written by the corporations, for the corporations, Fuck The People. Our two-party system hasn't helped much either, if you look at each party, it's not a question of one party being corporatist and the other not, it's just which corporations the party in question is a stooge of. Both parties are beholden to the MafiAA/"entertainment" types, which is why copyright law is so fucked up. Both parties are beholden to Big Oil - sure the Democraps talk a good game to keep their sierra club/PETA/ecoterrorist types on board, but at the end of the day, do you really think they're going to do something that seriously causes trouble for the big oil corporations? I doubt it.

Illegal immigration? The Democraps are sure that the illegal immigrants are going to become their new core voting block, just like the blacks they've kept uneducated in ghettos for the past 40 years are today. The Rethuglicans, or at least most of their higher ranking members, salivate at illegal immigration as a way to keep wages down and prevent the middle class from growing. And if someone from either side happens to talk about illegal immigration sanely, well, watch what happens to them - just look what happened to Lou Dobbs getting bounced from CNN when they went on their "Mexico Uber Alles" kick, or the fact that Duncan Hunter got basically held off camera in the Rethuglican debates.

Take a look at the Obama campaign - especially when they deliberately cut off every bit of default identity detection on donations in order to deliberately enable donation fraud and refused to fix their deliberately broken process. Wonder where all that money was coming from, and what "interests" it supported? I don't.

The story in The Sunday Times of London that kicked all this off has been fully retracted with several uses of the phrase "We apologise." The German newspaper that reported that the IPCC erred in its assessment of climate impact in Africa also retracted that story.
 
Speaking as a journalist, the most damning phrase I see in The Times' retraction is this one (boldfaced emphasis mine):

A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this.

So what really happened there? It sounds suspiciously like somebody high up at The Times or News Corporation didn't like the point of view presented and changed it to fit his or her own worldview, facts be damned.

I can't speak for all of the previous administration, but President Bush stopped using his personal email while in his term.

Meh ... they just bought an existing company.

They did the same thing with Pure Digital Technologies, the makers of the Flip Video cameras. Yes, they bought them after they were popular, but it is a sign that they are interested in selling consumer products. Their CEO said as much in a recent interview with Newsweek

Then why is there no link to said website in the fine summary?

Probably for the same reason there is no link to it in your post either ?

Just typing something ending in .com or .net doesn't magically make it a hyperlink ... the URL tag is your (and kdawson's) friend.

As you are obviously having trouble finding your address bar and typing 12 characters in it, here it is for your convenience ... http://newsweek.com/ ... now you do know where your left mouse button is ???

He also signed an order for an extra-judicial killing of an American citizen, ignored when an American citizen was killed and is making the greatest changes to arresting, prosecuting and punishing government whistleblowers since the cold war. Obama has also kept the manhunting squads (warning PDF) created by Vice Pres Cheney running at full steam. These are the same sort of people who pulled off that assassination in Dubai, but will likely be far more competent.

Science vessels? According to Newsweek, it's photographers and people looking to document the damage that BP is turning away. Now that's some unadulterated bullshit "damage control."

Ostensibly all that gawker traffic could just get in the way. But earlier on there were some science vessels offering to drop in and help measure the progress of the oil plume in the region, and they were turned away. Though now it looks like just last week, NOAA's started deploying a fleet of research vessels to start measuring
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/01/95170/noaa-research-ship-to-search-gulf.html

Anyway, just another lame episode of politicians vs. scientists vs. politicized environmentalists where the scientists are kind of caught in the middle again.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/deepwaterhorizon/7011584.html

But I guess they're doing pretty well so far with their coverage on bp.com and using dispersants to keep most of the spill at depth and keeping away science vessels so they're free to misunderestimate the true magnitude.

Science vessels? According to Newsweek, it's photographers and people looking to document the damage that BP is turning away. Now that's some unadulterated bullshit "damage control."

I heard on NPR that some people looking to investigate beaches were turned away by policeman and when they asked the policemen who was paying them to do that the policeman said they were off duty police officers employed by BP. I don't know if that's true or if the people are lying but the stinks worse than crude if it's the truth and I hope the US AG criminal investigation gets to the bottom of that.