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Unless of course I missed the epidemic of cops beating and shooting little children.

Yes
you
fucking
did!

Watching Al Jazeera as TV is somewhat wasteful of time, but it's worth reading their site. Today's important item: trouble is brewing in the Balkans again.

Other viewpoints to watch:

• Russia Today. It's the official line, but it's worth seeing what that line is. (Russia Today, which is more of a tabloid, is less biased than Pravda.) Important item from Pravda: Russia is building a new generation of bigger ICBMs, in case the US builds missile defenses.
• Xinhua the semi-official paper of the China. Important item today: "Yuan to strengthen mildly in 2013: analysts". The US has been lobbying for a weaker yuan. Not going to happen.
• South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's top newspaper. If something important appears in People's Daily, they'll have some good commentary on it. Important item today: multiple stories on trying to figure out what Xi Jinping is going to do now that he's taken over.

It's hard to find any coverage of those subjects in US dailies.

Screening by airline personnel was the standard prior to 9/11. It wasn't clearly better.

I know the Internet helps to spread stories around a lot more today than they would've been pre-9/11, but I don't remember horror stories about airport screening being the everyday sort of thing that they are today. I never remember hearing a story about rape victims being sent to the ER after going through airport screening or security agents helping to disperse the ashes of dead relatives all over the security checkpoint. I find it utterly sad that I am in no way surprised that there are currently over 9000 (humor not intended) results in Google for "colostomy bag tsa", with a good number of them reporting on unique incidents spread out across a number of years. In fact, if anything, I'm surprised there are only that many.

And yet you think that the old screening wasn't clearly better than what we have today? I'll take a little more risk if it means getting my dignity back.

... are experiencing record cold

Down to -50C: Russians freeze to death as strongest-in-decades winter hits

http://rt.com/news/russia-freeze-cold-temperature-379/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-25/russia-s-south-hit-by-record-low-temperatures-center-says.html

> Kosovo is somewhat different in that genocidal warfare

None of that happened in Kosovo. It happened in other Yugoslavian republics, but not in Kosovo.

...

The justification doesnt matter as there is no independent third party to judge whether the justification is sufficient or not. Without an impartial judge, the Russian justification to attack Georgia as as good as the US/EUSSR one to attack Serbia. The Russians explicitly referenced the Kosovo precedent when they attacked Georgia. "If you can redraw other countries borders at gunpoint, so can we. Go figure!"

Where are my modpoints when I need them?

As a Serbian, I may be biased towards the happening at Kosovo, but the info that USA/EU public has been fed is nothing short of scandalous, and I really didn't expect from you guys to be so much misinformed. I guess it is easier to proclaim Serbia as a "bad guy", then talk about organ thefts, drugs and terrorism, or the fact that USA president can't hold his dick in his pants.

NOT posting as AC. Time to burn some karma, I don't fucking care - you need to get the version not edited by Fox news.

Yeah, this falls right into the "Good luck with that!" pile--even if this were a serious proposal, it's already a dead one.

Flickr holder YHOO and FB are now in a "strategic alliance", and it's very safe to say the less financially successful of the two would rather listen to their more profitable partner than...

1. ...some random guy on the internet, or...
2. ...a POTUS who can barely convince even wealthy companies to conform to a Federal healthcare law, or the GOP to not try to kill it. (No, his strength is of a different and scarier kind, and though he has nerd blood I don't think it's dominant enough for him to give a shit about yet another site with random user-submitted pictures.)

So expect nothing (if not less) from this.

The most important criticism, in my opinion, is that it hides scandals:

It's not just the images. They are doing it across the board.
And in a way that makes me feel rather uncomfortable when thinking what else is possibly hidden from search results now.

It's by chance that yesterday someone in one of my online social circles decided to struck up a conversation regarding a recent ban on bestiality in Germany and how it was all, quote: "wtf?".
Apparently, there's been no law against it since 1969.

Now... The tricky part starts rearing it's ugly head when you try to find out why was it so.
Turn on "safe search" and google bestiality laws - first result is the Wikipedia page ON LAW. You know... what is a law. Google bestiality or zoofilia - and they don't exist.

But the real fun part comes when you try to figure out WHY was there no law against bestiality since 1969.
Then you find out that such things are usually covered under sodomy laws, as it is considered an "unnatural act" - just like gay, anal and oral sex.
BTW... Sodomy also does not exist in the "safe search land".

And knowing that the new, safer, better, doubleplusgood search hides "explicit" content even when turned off (google a name of a well known porn star on google.com and on google.ca with "safe search" turned off) - one must wonder what else is deemed unnatural or explicit enough to be hidden or sanitized.
Are instances of reports on sexual crimes now being hidden from google search results?
I don't know. Maybe. Can't be sure anymore.

Mostly true, but I doubt the part about "building a few more nuclear plants". Those get a lot of hidden subsidies too, like grossly inadequate compulsory insurance for nuclear power plants and the state bearing most of the risks.
For instance, the financial cost from the Fukushima accident may exceed 100 billion dollars(1). But nuclear plant operators in Germany only need to insure a coverage of 2.5 billion euros. A mandatory coverage that matches disasters like Fukushima would make nuclear power a lot more expensive.

(1): http://rt.com/business/news/tepco-fukushima-costs-double-158/.

Actually, NK developed their own GNU/Linux distributions. http://rt.com/news/north-korea-cyber-weapon/?fullstory Please don't be irritated by the sensational title - that's a real problem with news sites these days, even here on slashdot. For example, see this article.

In Capitalist Russia Samsung helps surveillance of embassy staff with you. http://rt.com/news/british-diplomat-flees-russia-after-sex-scandal/

'We try pretty hard to make our products be available as widely as we can. That's our philosophy. I think sometimes we're allowed to do that. Sometimes we're not.'"

He should have stated: -

I think sometimes we're allowed to do that. Sometimes we're not, because of our perceived one sided revenue model as interpreted by the some in the newspaper industry for example.

I think the real reason the US is opposing it, is because they already own this internet. http://rt.com/usa/news/surveillance-spying-e-mail-citizens-178/

Doubtful. You mention "multiple terabytes" like its expensive. An SMS is 160 chars. Add... lets call it 15 digits for the phone number (to cover various international exchanges etc) 2 numbers.... plus the time, which can easily be stored in 32 bits if done cleverly, but lets call it 30 chars (the current output of date | wc -c) Thats.... 220 chars tops per text message. Shit, lets round that up to 256 bytes, just to make things easy and allow for tower IDs or whatever.

Now lets figure all 310 million people in the US, send 16 text messages a day. That is 4k per person, 310 million times.... or about ~1.2 terabytes per day x 2 years ... call it 1 PB (~840 TB) and goes down to as little as 53 TB at 1 sms per day per person.

I know that sounds like a lot, but how much is 1 PB of storage? A little digging says $120k could build a 1 PB array in 2009, but the same article called it a $2.8M array. (http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/09/02/138209/build-your-own-28m-petabyte-disk-array-for-117k)

So lets assume that this hasn't seriously changed (prices per unit storage tend to drop pretty reliably). ~$3M for a machine to store every text by every person in the US, assuming the average person sends less than 16 messages per day (I am pretty sure its way less than that)....not too shabby really....but still a bit pricey....

Now remember this gets to be broken up amongst how many carriers? The cost per carrier per user here is nearly nothing. They EASILY pay for this, its not even that expensive.

Julian Assange's recent "World Tomorow" show where he held a round table for his cipherpunk buddies, they said that units designed for "countrywide surveillance" (scraping ALL SMS, emails etc) for a small country runs in the $30M range....which really is cheap (maybe not for me, but for most governments). ( http://assange.rt.com/cypherpunks-episode-eight-full-version-pt1/ )

Well, these things do happen...

http://rt.com/usa/news/public-urination-warden-police-367/

Though the officer in question was fired yesterday

Bzzt wrong. Your information is out of date. The new rockets - you know, the ones aimed at Tel Aviv - are Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fajr-5

They have a much longer range than the Qassams. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to reach Tel Aviv, period.

I love the attempt at equivocation by saying with zero proof that the missiles don't have any explosives. The entire point is to inspire terror and kill Jews, and if they can't kill Jews they'll just have to settle for terror. Go ahead, be in a city with a for-real air raid siren going off. Then, have that happen a couple of times a day for weeks. See how it affects your psyche.

Also http://rt.com/news/rt-office-arab-missile-998/

According to Russia Today, Anon took down over 700 Israeli websites, and also dumped the (sensitive) personal details of almost 5,000 Israeli government employees on the internet: http://rt.com/news/anonymous-israel-officials-leaked-002/ --------- It seems to me that the Israelis are either a) lying to save face or b) lying because they are so used to lying about everything to begin with.

http://www.economist.com/node/21564596

According to a tally by the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank, based on press reports from Pakistan, the drones have killed nearly 3,200 people since 2004, with a non-militant casualty rate of some 15%. American military men claim the rate is much lower.

15% of 3,200 people is only 480 innocent people being killed by drones because they are unfortunate enough to live in the area. American military men claim to have killed fewer civilians than that so it's totally okay. Only 174 of them were children so I don't know what the fuss is about.

3rd parties ARE LOCKED OUT. its how its always been and its not going to change, sadly.

Locked out and locked up; Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala were arrested and detained during the Hofstra University debate. During the streamed Johnson/Stein debate, Stein said DHS was involved, and that she and Honkala were zip-tied to chairs for eight hours.

Yes you have to be careful using web 2.0 in the USA
They might get you under a "retaliation" law
http://rt.com/usa/news/texas-felony-police-facebook-508/

There is zero value in bit coins and I wish Max Keiser from Russia Today needs to make a stance with Stacy Herbert on this http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report I know Max Keiser is still a sceptic for obvious reasons.

Bit Coins are being sold to us in a unique way, whereby funds can be transferred. There is nothing tangible with bit coins and it is a con on the back end of the financial crisis to try and replace currency. Please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset

If I can give you an example...... If buy gold or silver bullion I want that bullion in a physically tangible asset to which I can own and hold in my own hand.

I do not want to part with my cash with some stock trader on Wall Street or a Corrupt Banker who are quite willing to take millions off you if they can and give you a piece of paper to say you bought $1,000,000.00 in Silver Bullion. That is all you have my friends a piece of "toilet paper". Bitcoin is the same if you ask me and it is a get rich quick scheme on the back end of world financial meltdown; but the ideas of it are sold really well to you.

Just take my advice and be very shrewd with your money and only buy things you physically have an not some piece of paper ;)

Do not get conned!

Love NSN

Oh, so making a joke that could bring down an airliner is OKAY if you are a candidate for the US presidential election; but, not if you are a passenger. http://rt.com/usa/news/tsa-shirt-arijit-delta-308/

The scariest thing here is that you pretend to be informed enough to vote and one would assume you actually attempt the process. Politics being the same elsewhere is probably the closest truth in your post.

Well, I can provide citations for everything I've said, but I note other people elsewhere in this thread have already started doing so. climate change, conception...

Certainly this didn't come from the President directly as he taught Constitutional Law

I'm sure he had nothing to do with this either, right?
http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-lohier-ndaa-stay-414/

The world (especially voters and politicians) believe in nutjob armageddon/rapture bullshit and are hell-bent on making sure it happens as soon as possible

Let me help you out there -

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, AKA the Soviet Union, governed by the religion suppressing atheistic Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" operated according to the "scientific principles" of Marxist-Leninism, built an actual Doomsday weapon, that is still active: Soviet Doomsday Device Still Armed and Ready and Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine.. Apparently secular socialist progressive totalitarians are just as crazy as anyone else. Salud.

Related: Moscow arms against nuclear attack

Nearly 5,000 new emergency bomb shelters will be built in Moscow by 2012 to save people in case of potential attacks.

Out of sight but not out of mind

William Burrows’ classic 1986 book about satellite reconnaissance, Deep Black, opened with a vivid scene of retired US Air Force Major General George Keegan recounting how in the early 1970s he had become obsessed with Soviet civil defense preparedness. As head of Air Force intelligence, Keegan had ordered his junior officers to gather all the satellite photography that they could of Soviet underground shelter building. Eventually he compiled a massive amount of data indicating—he claimed—that virtually every large apartment building erected in the Soviet Union since 1955 included a fallout shelter, factories had underground bunkers, and there were “seventy-five huge underground command posts.” A few of these underground facilities housed command centers for the Strategic Rocket Forces and were buried in the Ural Mountains. In particular, Yamantau Mountain (“Evil Mountain” in the local Bashkir language) and Kosvinsky Mountain were considered to be the Soviet equivalents to Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, home to NORAD (not to mention the W.O.P.R. and the Stargate).

Shelters part of long-term civil defense plan - Shanghai leaders stress the date of 2012 is purely a coincidence
Assessing PLA Underground Air Basing Capability

Bunkers for all

Switzerland is unique in having enough nuclear fallout shelters to accommodate its entire population, should they ever be needed.

IKEA in Hell - The interior design of Sweden’s giant nuclear bunker.

Israeli leaders spend day in 'Nation's Tunnel' nuclear bunker

The frightening truth of why Iran wants a bomb

According to Shia lore, the Imam is a messianic figure who, although in hiding, remains the true Sovereign of the World. In every generation, the Imam chooses 36 men, (and, for obvious reasons, no women) naming them the owtad or "nails", whose presence, hammered into mankind's existence, prevents the universe from "falling off". Although the "nails" are not known to common mortals, it is, at

https://rt.com/usa/news/indiana-shooting-law-state-591/

It is ironic that a company that talks freely about openness is espousing a closed ecosystem.

Exactly, but Google has been doing so for a long time. They are only little about openness while most of their stuff is actually closed source and closed ecosystem. They have both and in a way that always suits them better. There are in fact more closed systems than open, just see Google's search engine, adwords/adsense, youtube etc.. They only use and support open source when they can't be bothered to do all the work. In a way they steal from open source projects and hardly ever bring anything back.

For me this clearly looks like Microsoftesque move by Google. They try to limit the market and hide behind the curtain of "compatibility issues" when companies rightly call them out of it. But Google does not want to change. Instead, they cry like a baby and try to limit competition in China from growing too much. At the same time we have honest companies like Microsoft who actually adjust to different markets and continue providing services even if they aren't the number #1. Just look at Bing - Microsoft doesn't make a huge hullabaloo about it all the time, no, they continue improving it and providing it to users. Google cries like a baby when it isn't number #1 somewhere.

Just look at what Google did in Russian markets.

Google plays a cunning game when intellectualizing about openness of the internet, says one of the founders of the Russian search engine Yandex. Google’s primary weapons to hinder competitors are its Chrome browser and Android platform.

Speaking with The Guardian, Ilya Segalovich, chief technology officer at Yandex, has accused Google of overindulgent use of its dominant position on the market to shut out rival companies in cyber space.

The California giant's mobile platform Android is a "strange combination of openness and not openness," Segalovich added.

and here about dirty tricks in Chrome browser

Segalovich suggested Google was guilty of foul play with its Chrome browser, which he said made it difficult for users to choose rival search engines, including Yahoo, Bing and Yandex, over its own market-leading product.

"You cannot [send any code] to Android, it's semi-open source. You cannot send anything, just see and watch [how the code is changed by Google] If you download an application it may not work properly if it's not Android marketplace.

So in fact this is old problem with Google's products. Other products too... Hell, just look at Google+. It's a perfect copy of Facebook and a product that greatly emphasizes closedness. They are even more closed than Facebook as currently they only allow very few developers to be make apps and games for Google+. I mean it's been like this for ages. It feels like they've given up all hope about Google+. They're just thinking how to phase it out now that they made the whole thing such a big thing, like including it in search results etc. But Google+ is dying.

Android is about the same shit Google has thrown at us multiple times. They only open it because they used Linux as the base. They wouldn't open it otherwise. In fact they've even ignored GPL multiple times when they've been late to open up their sources as required. Android is only open because it has to be.

Google tries to close it, be no mistaken. They require you to pay lots of money to Google if you want to use any of the Android trademarks, logos or name on your product. You don't get any of the Google apps if you don't pay up and stick to Google's "standards" (which are there to limit competition, like in this case). You don't even get to give your users access to Google Play so that they could buy and download apps and games. No, you don't g

I'd say that a high death-toll is pretty terrifying, but it's somewhat in relation to the chance of one (or one's relations/friends/etc) being potential victims of a future attack.

There's a combination of visibility and impact
More people harmed = likely more of impact and visibility
Harmed in a cruel/unusual way = Higher visibility (see the recent killings in France)

People die due to violence in big cities all the time. After reading about it in the news you become desensitized to reading about gang violence and bystander harm, etc if it's not in their neighbourhood. However, take a few higher-profile cases like the Canadian greyhound killer or the "bath-salts" attacks, the gruesomeness and randomness makes it a lot more frightening.

Same effect if a lot of people die at once, particularly in a violent/gruesome way.

Dying is scary to most people. A lot of people dying gets attention. Or to quote a similar way of thinking in Firefly:

Mal: [so only Jayne hears him] Now, you only gotta scare 'im.
Jayne: Pain is scary.

Pain is scary. Death is (generally) scary. Lots of death is more scary. Lots of gruesome death is really scary, but it also increases the risk of retaliation or alienation of those that support the terrorists. The IRA wouldn't have gotten much support for targeting large amount of children, etc. Religious battles sometimes get away with this more because they play the "godless heathen" card, but even that doesn't work beyond a certain level (and note I say religious, as *MANY* religions have been involved in atrocities)

John Maynard Keynes imagined a 15-hour week by the beginning of the 21st century. Henry D. Thoreau is said to have worked an average of 10-20 hours per week after his days at Walden Pond. If one chooses a simple life it has been shown time and again that a person can provide most of his own needs for less, often much less, than 20 hours of work each week. But we live in an age of dependency on and servitude to the "military-industrial complex" as described by Eisenhower (a Republican). In order to generate unimaginable wealth for a fortunate few and to fund years of armed occupation at bases around the world, some dating from the Spanish-American War, individuals are pushed to work 40+ hours each week IF they are fortunate to have the right skills, education, cultural background, social/professional network and brown-nosing. The rest of America is often juggling two to three jobs, working in excess of 60 hours each week, no vacation, and watching their net worth sinking deeper into negative. For many, unpaid bills and a trashed credit score are the least of their problems. Even when struggling people try to work together, their efforts come under attack, such as when working mothers band together to help babysit each other's kids - they are often accused of running an unlicensed daycare and shut down. Same for other efforts to make ends meet. Just this month there was a story of a woman facing fines for feeding poor neighborhood kids: http://rt.com/usa/news/philadelphia-woman-food-prattis-966/.

If people were free to provide for themselves and each other a basic subsistence then they would have true freedom to pursue their own destinies. Sure, some may put in their 20 hours and lounge around the rest of the time, but it has been shown that the mega-rich do not get where they are unless they can convince thousands of minions to propell them there. In a world that promises guaranteed employment for everyone willing and able-bodied, reasonable accomodations for those who are not able-bodied, and freedom to earn well above their needs, even if the gap between rich and poor (where "poor" never means impoverished) grew even greater, the extravagant lifestyles of the rich would not necessarily be a burden to the content and simple subsistance earners.

Why should everyone have to work 40 or 60 hours a week to earn more than they need or even want? There are countless numbers of Americans who are more than capable of earning $100k+ salaries but are content to maintain a simple, happy, and productive living pursuing careers that provide them with more enjoyment and/or opportunities to pursue causes that are important to them. Teachers, social workers, fire fighters, and park rangers come to mind. But how many of these workers today are questioning their career choices now? How many young students are changing their minds about making the world a better place because they are fearful that economic conditions will leave them paying insurance premiums they cannot afford while simultaneously paying every last penny out of pocket for essential and mandatory health care (try denying your kids cancer therapies because you think the bill is too high and see how fast you go to jail).

Now, such a system as I propose would change the nature of how we understand free markets. People would have much better control of their budgets because most spending would be for desireable but non-essential items, such as smart phones, automobiles, fashion, and comfortable housing, which would motivate most people to work. But it wouldn't be wealth and prosperity for all. 40 hours working low-skill, low-demand jobs might only pay enough to cover the cable TV bill in your public funded dormitory that you have to share with a unkempt redneck and his pet racoon. Given such a possibility most people would try to achieve some level of eduction, try to climb the corporate ladder, start a consulting business, or whatever it takes to get what they want o

As far as I can tell, the whole point of this "OpenStand" posturing is to oppose Russian and Chinese posturing that the ITU ought to handle Internet governance issues and standards (see here for example). So, yeah, it's not aimed at ISO specifically, but it is aimed in that sort of general direction.

Try a Google search instead of propagating something not true. Here is one story, and here is another. These are what we know for sure, there are 20,000 more cases being investigated allegedly.

From the same site:

What would have likely been a routine flight out of a Florida airport this weekend ended with a woman being sent to the emergency room after TSA agents insisted on groping a traumatized rape victim in a security pat-down that put her in the hospital.

Live free or die indeed.

but if that schedule is rigidly enforced it's going to result in people dying from fatigue caused mistakes, carelessness, or suicide.

Yes, yes it will.

Oh, you thought that they were getting embroiled in a game of diplomatic chicken with one of the richest and most influential countries on this planet because it was "the right thing to do"? That's quaint.

If Ecuador really cared about "doing the right thing," they'd have a much better record on human rights than they do. No, this entire pissing contest is a way for Ecuador to burnish its own image with none of the risk that comes from taking a meaningful stand on something. But then, why enact significant reform, when you can make a token gesture and have this happen:

The mother of the hero of wikileaks goes on the record saying: "I was hopeful because I knew that President Correa, his government and the people wanted to ensure Julian’s safety, and they have a strong record of human rights and free speech," about a country who throws people in jail for 3 months up to 2 years, depending on the government official who was "offended" (look up "desacato"), and which the president has *taken advantage of*... that's a government that's REALLY committed to free speech and human rights.

Why enact reforms to fix problems, when you can just buy yourself the allegiance of wikileaks?

And before you start with "the US and UK and Sweden are just as bad on human rights," - spare me. If they're just as bad, then Ecuador should be getting criticized just as roundly as the rest of them, not hailed as some sort of hero for the singular, *self-serving* act of helping Assange avoid answering questions about his alleged crimes.

At this point in time, ideas like yours may put you into a terrorist watch list.

You want to disclose information about public officials, you want to make that information public?

Here is what you should find and read in that article I linked to:

On Wednesday, an administrator for the WikiLeaks Twitter account wrote that the site suspected that the motivation for the attacks could be that particularly sensitive Stratfor emails were about to be exposed. A hacker group called AntiLeaks soon after took credit for the assaults on WikiLeaks and mirrors of their content, equating the offensive as a protest against editor Julian Assange, âoethe head of a new breed of terrorist.â As those Stratfor files on TrapWire make their rounds online, though, talk of terrorism is only just beginning.

You see, providing the public with information about the inner government workings is now called 'new breed of terrorism' and I am very confident that what you are talking about can be construed as disclosing information about the inner government working.

---

This is what happens when people give up their individual freedoms, and it all starts with the calls to equality, social contract, etc., all of which means simply one thing and one thing only: giving more power to the government.

Once the government has the powers over the individuals for the sake of "ensuring equality" at this point the government simply has the power over the individuals and there is nothing that can take that power back.

Hush! They might hear you! Just because you don't live in a police state does not mean you cannot be extradited to one.

Apparently the story from the Guardian is false.

https://rt.com/news/assange-granted-asylum-ecuador-298/

link

"[W]hat Kim Dotcom ran is just a service that's like a post office. He was the post office it was being mailed to,"

"Why do you shut down the post office thinking that's where the problem is? It's not,"

Damn, and all this time I was hoping for a counter-cyber attack to play Aerosmith's Pink on all the Whitehouse's computers.

what the NSA is doing or unbridled capitalism.

Send these terrorist supporters to Gitmo!!

-Typical conservative

So...

Did you hear the news today? The guy who blew up that bus full of Israeli's yesterday in Burgas, was apparently a former Gitmo resident, who was sent back to Sweden. He was originally picked up in Afghanistan. Oops. To be fair, the government officials related to the case have refused to comment on this. And as a note, there are several dozen stories on this as well besides the one on RT. I'm just too lazy to link to something else, or something non-english. The Bulgarian media were the ones to release the information.

I recently read an article in a international-edition newspaper (sorry - can't remember which) by an apologist writer for the Chinese government censorship. He claimed that the Chinese government doesn't have an issue with reporting corruption by local government officials - indeed they see this as a useful public service and a vent for the public - and so won't censor these stories, but he did say they will censor stupid rumours (sham cures for radiation) but primarily anything that might cause a public gathering to take place. (After all, that's how revolutions get started! ;-) This project will find a way to verify this, though what happened with T^2 and the blind dissident GC obviously doesn't fit his model.

But don't pretend for a moment we are any better. The news is heavily censored everywhere, even in liberal western democracies:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/18/google-getting-more-requests-from-democracies-to-censor/

Libel laws are a very effective way to cause self-censorship by the media:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-censorship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-libel-laws-are-stifling-free-speech-says-un-894519.html
http://overland.org.au/blogs/loudspeaker/2012/03/defamation-laws-the-real-threat/
http://www.law.uts.edu.au/comslaw/factsheets/archivedfactsheets/freespeechanddefamationpre2010.html
http://www.studentatlaw.com/articles/130/1/Defamation-and-Freedom-of-Speech/Page1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/12/opinion/self-censorship-at-cbs.html
http://www.japanlaw.info/law2003/2003_LIBEL_LAW_AND_CORRUPTION.html

There's also soft self-censorship too even in the US: "Sure you can print that... if you are prepared for consequences... Ah wonderful. I knew we could find common ground."
http://rt.com/usa/news/editor-at-top-us-newspaper-resigns-over-censorship/
http://cofcc.org/2011/03/new-york-times-editor-confesses-to-censoring-information-about-black-crime/
http://usmediaandisrael.com/intimidation-at-the-new-york-times/
http://omnologos.com/watch-out-for-self-censorship-at-the-new-york-times/

"Tell the truth and run." - Yugoslav proverb

RT is Russia Today. My understanding from a Russian is that it is a mouthpiece for pro-Putin factions. From what I can see, it could teach our guys a lot about doing one sided, push-your-viewpoint style journalism. Fox/MSNBC are pretty bad but that is JV and RT is varsity.

As was pointed out here this was not a military drone. Until they can spoof p(y) code, this is nothing. For just this reason, all military equipment is required to use an encrypted signal (of course, this was as of 10 years ago, when I was still working with military GPS systems)- civilian GPS can be pretty easily jammed and/or spoofed- "civilian" GPS is also called "C/A" or coarse acquisition- which was designed only to get you "about right" before the receiver switches over to the more precise encrypted code. Anti-spoofing is a very important part of true military grade GPS. Many civilian users (surveying companies, particularly) would pay *big* money to get access to this- but they don't get the keys.

I think this article should be more accurately titled "Texas college hacks insecurely designed civilian drone"

Yes, yes they do.

It was just last month I was reading about it. Again.

Or is it that they only want this access for themselves and you're a tairist if you don't think the FBI should have all access to all your activities and communications.

or any other news channel

RT's coverage of Syria shooting down Turkish plane is enlightening on that point:

Turkey's downed jet: NATO action in disguise?

It's quite a thorough analysis, and a totally different spin than anything I had heard on BBC, RTE (Ireland) or US news sources. I guess all news sources are biased, and you need to take more than one point of view if you want to be able to form your own balanced opinion.

Not really. Docking has been done automatically, manually by an onboard pilot, and remotely. Russian spacecraft since 1985 have used the Kurs system (which they now have to buy from Ukraine, at a somewhat inflated price). That's a full-auto, straight-on approach system, and has a good track record. The US used onboard pilot control for final shuttle docking. The Dragon spacecraft was remotely controlled into a close position to the ISS, then grabbed with the robot arm.

Docking can be complicated. Until the craft are very close and have a very low relative speed, the orbital mechanics dominate the problem. So the maneuvering craft has to be aligned in the direction for firing its maneuvering engine for orbit adjustment. Early docking (Gemini, Apollo, etc.) was done with the target spacecraft aligned with its own orbit, so that the maneuvering craft didn't have to reorient to dock.

Docking with something big, like the ISS, requires attitude changes and final maneuvering just before docking. Here's a video of a Soyuz docking with the ISS, using one of the less favorable docking locations because two other craft were docked already.

This recent Chinese dock was aligned with the orbit.

This is a fantastic question, and indeed, the first question that ought to be asked in any discussion about Syria.

First of all, the idea that a revolution in a Muslim country would be anything even close to the Velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia (which resulted in Czech & Slovakia amicably separating) is one of the most inane assumptions anyone could make of Muslims. In Tunisia, where the Arab Spring started, this is what is going on today - from a country that was always assumed to be very Westernized, and far from Islamic, thanks partly to the efforts of its ex ruler Ben Ali. I'm no fan of Muammar Gadaffi, but in Libya, the way he was lynched pretty much demonstrated that those replacing him are no better than he was. In Egypt, the end of Mubarak has also meant an Islamic regime is on the verge of taking over that country, suppressing the Copts even more, and if they have their way, restarting their jihad against Israel. All the ignoramuses in the West who support these 'democratic' movements seem blissfully unmindful of the fact that these movements are also supported by al Qaeda. Reason is simple - what those people want is not political pluralism, and DEFINITELY NOT religious pluralism. What they want is Shariah states in their countries, and if there happen to be non Muslims there, to hell with them. Already, Christians have fled the newly US established 'democratic' Iraq for Syria, which they are now starting to flee for Lebanon. In Egypt and Tunisia too, Copts & Jews are getting ready to flee, if they haven't done so already. And if the Sunnis lose, retribution like the one by Gen Hafez al Assad in 1982 in Homs is likely to follow. So it's a struggle for survival for both sides.

The Arab League was pretty happy to support these 'democratic' movements in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, but a funny thing happened in Bahrein. Since that country is 75% Shia, the Arab league, which now has only one Shia government in it - Iraq - doesn't want democracy there. So when the Arab Spring spread there, the Arab League was quick to propagandize that that actually was an Iranian attempt to take over the country via its Shia proxys, and the Saudis sent in troops to prevent their monarchy from collapsing.

In Syria, what the Arab League alleged about Bahrein is even more true about Syria - in the converse sense. This is not an 'Arab Spring' type revolution, like in Eypt, Libya and Tunisia (where Jihadi elements came to power). It is a power struggle between the Sunni majority in that country, backed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, vs a non Sunni coalition of Alawites, Druze, Syrian Christians and others led by the Baath party, and backed by Iran and Hizbullah. In short, it is a civil war, where both sides have everything to lose. If the Alawites lose, they will be massacred - already, there have been reports of Syrian Christians, Alawites and Shia being driven

epic failure of an IPO? The company's goal is to sell a share of itself for the highest price it can. How did Facebook fail?

By doing just about everything that would have raised its price wrong. Source: Pretty much every major news outlet that's reported on it. http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/tygrrrr-express/2012/may/25/why-facebook-ipo-failed/ http://www.theage.com.au/business/world-business/facebook-ipo-fail-may-cost-nasdaq-us100m-20120606-1zuys.html http://rt.com/usa/news/facebook-ipo-globe-internet-644/ http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/business/962290-192/signs-of-facebook-ipo-failure-dots-connecting.html http://www.forbes.com/sites/tykiisel/2012/05/23/facebooks-ipo-dealing-with-a-failed-project/

It would have been nice if you provided a link or two.