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Microsoft Windows 95 was released on August 24th, 1995.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/173161-48-windows-release-date

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/stories/1995/debut082495.htm

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/08/dayintech_0824

So, either all of those places (and a good chunk more) have been "fixed", or you're the one trying to change reality.

An interesting effect of this is that your "left wing" president is in complete lock step with the UK Conservative party which has been accused of being the most right-wing mainstream political party in Europe.

Really? Because Brits think that our President hates their guts. One of the first things he did was to diss the sitting Labour Prime Minister. So you're honestly going to argue that Barack Obama has warm feelings for the Tories?

And just who is it that's "accusing" the UK Conservative Party of being the most right-wing of the mainstream parties in Europe? Would that be, oh.... Labour? I mean, that would be a shock now, wouldn't it?

And then they'll all stop using high speed trains, just like they stopped flying, right?

Yes... until the psychological damage is outweighed by inconvenience.

http://thestatsblog.wordpress.com/2008/01/16/fear-of-flying-after-911-led-to-increase-in-auto-deaths/

Remember, the airlines "had" to be bailed out in 2001.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/06/remember_the_airline_bailout.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html

This is Obama's America, not Stalin's Russia.

Not Stalin's USSR yet, but Obama definitely represents a continued worsening of the neo-con BS Bush II took to heights once thought unsurpassable.

You may think that the reason you're dissatisfied with theObama administration is because of substantive objections to their policies: ... Or because thePresident has escalated a miserable, pointless and unwinnable war that is entering its ninth year. Or because he has claimed the power to imprison people for life with no charges and to assassinate American citizens without due process, intensified the secrecy weapons and immunity instruments abused by his predecessor, and found all new ways of denying habeas corpus. Or because he granted full-scale legal immunity to those who committed serious crimes in the last administration. Or because he's failed to fulfill -- or affirmatively broken -- promises ranging from transparency to gay rights.

Source: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/10/gibbs/index.html

Assange is employing a multi-layered defense strategy and he seems to be quite smart in his plans and execution.

However, this is just bidding for time: through his actions Assange made himself an enemy of the USA and also of the NATO coalition on the ground in Afghanistan. While I don't believe Poland will actively pursue his arse throughout the world, I am pretty sure the Americans will get a benevolent help from almost all NATO partners. Ouh, did I mention Sweden is part of the Partnership for Peace framework since 1994?

I'm a journalist by trade and education and I can assure you his revealings were not of the Woodward & Bernstein kind. A responsible journalist is always protecting the sources and editing sensitive data (be it sensitive for national security ofr for the safety of innocents). Assange did nothing like this, and people are currently dying in Afghanistan because of that.

For all I can see, he's just a narcissistic enemy of the United States, and he'll be soon meeting his fate (which I assume involves some Gitmo holidays).

My source for torture not working is several years of various readings, news articles, and so on. Sorry, I don't have a library saved, but I've been hearing it over and over for nearly the past decade. Here's what a google search for "torture truth" yields, among other things:

Washington Post: 5 myths about torture and truth
- Gestapo had better results from tips and informers, and failed to break (with torture) many.
- between 1500 and 1750, French prosecutors tried to torture confessions out of 785 individuals.... the number of prisoners who said anything was low, from 3 percent in Paris to 14 percent in Toulouse. [note: that's three percent said ANYTHING, let alone the truth]
- the CIA's own 1963 interrogation manual explains that "a time-consuming delay results" -- hardly useful when every moment matters.
- you can't reliably train to resist torture

Washington Post: The Torture Myth

Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq.... says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop."

That's from someone whose job has been to extract information, and he says that torture doesn't work well.

Perhaps you don't like the Washington Post. Let's look at the BBC, reknowned as one of the better news sources in the world. (This was found by googling for "torture effective".)

BBC News: The truth about torture
This would actually seem to support your claims: they note several torturers who feel it's very effective. I'll accept that as a counterpoint. I'm including it so that you don't claim that I'm not linking things which disagree with what I expected to find. (There are several articles/pages about harsh techniques having yielded valuable information.)

FBI Interrogator says cookies are more effective than torture

On the other hand, there are lots of pages about torture being ineffective, too:

Information Secured Through Torture Proved Unreliable, CIA Concluded

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods.... The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions.... Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

(Bold emphasis added by me. The "results" yielded by torture were valueless, whereas what he said before they tortured him was useful.)

Former Head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Says Torture Produces Unreliable Information
http://www.youtube.

My source for torture not working is several years of various readings, news articles, and so on. Sorry, I don't have a library saved, but I've been hearing it over and over for nearly the past decade. Here's what a google search for "torture truth" yields, among other things:

Washington Post: 5 myths about torture and truth
- Gestapo had better results from tips and informers, and failed to break (with torture) many.
- between 1500 and 1750, French prosecutors tried to torture confessions out of 785 individuals.... the number of prisoners who said anything was low, from 3 percent in Paris to 14 percent in Toulouse. [note: that's three percent said ANYTHING, let alone the truth]
- the CIA's own 1963 interrogation manual explains that "a time-consuming delay results" -- hardly useful when every moment matters.
- you can't reliably train to resist torture

Washington Post: The Torture Myth

Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq.... says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop."

That's from someone whose job has been to extract information, and he says that torture doesn't work well.

Perhaps you don't like the Washington Post. Let's look at the BBC, reknowned as one of the better news sources in the world. (This was found by googling for "torture effective".)

BBC News: The truth about torture
This would actually seem to support your claims: they note several torturers who feel it's very effective. I'll accept that as a counterpoint. I'm including it so that you don't claim that I'm not linking things which disagree with what I expected to find. (There are several articles/pages about harsh techniques having yielded valuable information.)

FBI Interrogator says cookies are more effective than torture

On the other hand, there are lots of pages about torture being ineffective, too:

Information Secured Through Torture Proved Unreliable, CIA Concluded

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods.... The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions.... Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

(Bold emphasis added by me. The "results" yielded by torture were valueless, whereas what he said before they tortured him was useful.)

Former Head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Says Torture Produces Unreliable Information
http://www.youtube.

Just so you know, if torture doesn't yield reliable information, you're doing it wrong.

Of course you're doing it wrong, you're torturing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100502492.html

For six decades, they held their silence.

The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them.

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.

...he'd be playing war games (not necessarily on a computer) where he played the side of the Taliban.

(citation needed)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/25/AR2009102502633.html

The NYTimes, Newsweek, and a host of human rights groups seem to disagree.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/world/asia/29wikileaks.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/09/AR2010080903045.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703428604575419580947722558.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLESecondNews
http://en.rsf.org/united-states-open-letter-to-wikileaks-founder-12-08-2010,38130.html

Does "funded entirely by its own revenue" include the near $15 billion that the post office has borrowed from the US Treasury?

GAO report: "In each of the last 3 fiscal years, the USPS borrowed the maximum $3B from the US Treasury and incurred record financial losses. In fiscal year 2010, the USPS plans to borrow another $3B from the US Treasury." "In fiscal year 2010, USPS expects a record loss of over $7B, and its outstanding debt to increase to $13.2B."

Sorry, but just because the Post Office is "independent" does not mean that it does not receive taxpayer assistance, or that the government is not going to assume those liabilities over time, especially if the Post Office continues to run at record losses. In fact, with respect to retirement benefit payments, the Post Office has unique requirements above other government agencies precisely because "[u]nlike other federal agencies, whose future ability to pay retirement benefits remains unquestioned, the USPS's ever-declining mail volume has made prepayment seem like a sensible precaution. If the Postal Service can't afford to pay for these retiree benefits now, what makes Congress think it will be able to pay in the future, when the number of postal ratepayers will have plummeted still further? If first-class mail volume continues its downward spiral, taxpayers will be next to foot the bill." [link]

Doesn't support the indefinite holding of suspects without charge in internment camps. One measure of a society is how you treat undesirables, and Guantanamo bay is an indelible stain on the Bush/Cheney years.

You believe this only if you haven't been watching the news:
Obama endorses indefinite detention w/o trial:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052104045.html

Plus, Obama has graduated to assassinating Americans without any due process -- he says you're a bady, you die:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/07/assassinations

So yes, aside from some trivial diction things (although is it just me -- Obama doesn't sound all that articulate at all), Obama sucks as badly as Bush.

You may think that the reason you're dissatisfied with theObama administration is because of substantive objections to their policies:that they've done so little about crisis-level unemployment, foreclosures and widespread economic misery. Or because of the White House's apparently endless devotion to Wall Street. Or because thePresident has escalated a miserable, pointless and unwinnable war that is entering its ninth year. Or because he has claimed the power to imprison people for life with no charges and to assassinate American citizens without due process, intensified the secrecy weapons and immunity instruments abused by his predecessor, and found all new ways of denying habeas corpus. Or because he granted full-scale legal immunity to those who committed serious crimes in the last administration. Or because he's failed to fulfill -- or affirmatively broken -- promises ranging from transparency to gay rights.

Remember, a vote for a Democrat or a Republican is a vote for the status quo, no matter what BS they vomit during the campaign.

I have yet to see a single piece of evidence that Ted Stevens was not a 100%, bought and paid for shill to industry, with no ethics or redeeming value. He treated congress like a smash and grab for money for his supporters. I'm sad he died in a plane crash instead of prison where he would have been if it weren't for the ineptitude of the prosecutors of his corruption investigation.

You mean like the prosecutor being held in contempt for withholding evidence? Or the part where the FBI agent and the star witness against Stevens? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021303092.html

"Geekoid", Nice try at repeating a lie and then spinning it. But you're lying flat out.

Try the truth per the Washington Post:

Judge Orders Probe of Attorneys in Stevens Case; Prosecutor Misconduct Alleged In Former Senator's Trial

[In April], a new team of prosecutors asked Sullivan to dismiss Stevens's conviction and indictment after uncovering notes from previous prosecutors that contradicted testimony from a key government witness. Paul O'Brien, one of the new Justice lawyers, told Sullivan that "we deeply, deeply regret that this occurred." Laura Sweeney, a department spokeswoman, said officials will review Sullivan's order "and will continue to cooperate with the court on this matter." During and after the trial, the judge reprimanded prosecutors several times for how they had handled evidence and witnesses. He chastised prosecutors for allowing a witness to leave town. He grew more agitated when he learned that prosecutors had introduced evidence they knew was inaccurate, and he scolded them for not turning over exculpatory material to the defense. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said ... after seeing so much "shocking and disturbing" behavior by the government "In 25 years on the bench, I have never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I have seen in this case."

Pretty much he was railroaded by an overzealous and lying Bush Administration US Justice Department (and corrected by the Obama Administration, nice irony). Righty or Lefty, everyone deserves a fair trial. Get that into your overly-partisan thick head. You on the left are as bad as the rightist when it comes to hating your political enemies so much you'd screw up our justice system to punish them whether they deserved it or not -- and lying and smearing people in public without regard to the truth. Liars like you, left and right, are so damnably stupid they think they can get away with it. There was serious prosecutor misconduct, not "baseless rumor" - nice try but you lied and are busted. See the part in italics in the quote above? It was the federal prosecutors (under Holder/Obama) that asked the conviction to be overturned (RTFA linked), not the judge. Care to retract your post as the lie that it is?

The real question is who vetted Julian Assange?

Well, who vetted these guys? I'm sure I could find a few others if I spent more than 30 seconds looking. How do we know if the US government has these documents, someone won't leak them? Oh wait, someone did. How do we know no-one else leaked them elsewhere. How can we trust *anyone*?

Answer: we choose someone to trust, and we do.

Why should we trust the US government?

That tax rebate basically means that the rest of us are paying for part of your car.

It also means hybrid owners are paying way more in subsidies to big oil when they aren't using as much of it. Linky

Nothing like 12 times as much subsidy for big oil as for 'green' tech.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/28/AR2010052801856.html

Um, yes, people overwhelmingly want it repealed [biased Rasmussen poll quoted]

um, No, they don't.

The Washington Post recently found different results (sorry, probably have to register). I'm sure you'll say they're biased, too, but the point remains that Rasmussen's results aren't the only ones we have available.

On what fucking planet and what fucking logic do you blame the actions of psychopaths on anyone other than the psychopaths?

Try visiting planet logic. They are both responsible.

You will recall that the original subject of this article was Marc Thiessen's Op-Ed in the Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/02/AR2010080202627_pf.html Thiessen argued that Assange had "blood on [his] hands," "moral cuplability" etc. for the Afgan informants who will be killed by the Taliban.

On what fucking planet do you blame the actions of the Taliban on anyone other than the Taliban? On Planet Republican, where Thiessen blames it on Assange.

If Assange is responsible for killings of informants by the Taliban, then the Bush Administration is equally responsible for the killings of MSF workers by the Taliban.

I think the killing of medical workers is even worse than the killing of informants. The informants are informing to advance their own personal situation (even their safety), whereas the MSF workers are motivated by non-political humanitarian goals. You are free to disagree.

If you give a machine gun to a soldier and tell him to massacre everybody in a village, I think that soldier is criminally responsible and should be prosecuted. But the people who gave the orders, and the people who were responsible for the policy, were even more responsible and should also be prosecuted.

I don't expect Bush, Powell, Thiessen, etc. to be prosecuted, because the law has been hijacked by the interests of the powerful. But the people who are most responsible for needless killings are the people at the top.

It doesn't look like you've spent much time thinking the matter out. The Taliban aren't "psychopaths." It's their country, and they're fighting the invaders. You can't understand what's going on if you don't make an effort to understand your enemy. So I'll excuse you from any further discussion of this matter.

The term "psychopath" might better be applied to those American soldiers who gang-raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, and killed her along with her family. Or the American soldiers who hung Dilawar from the ceiling and kicked him until he died. Or any of the other torturers, up the chain of command.

They broke the story of the secret network of CIA prisons in other nations.

The same reporter, Dana Priest, also wrote a series of stories that exposed the management problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Just two of their most well-known investigations recently.

They broke the story of the secret network of CIA prisons in other nations.

The same reporter, Dana Priest, also wrote a series of stories that exposed the management problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Just two of their most well-known investigations recently.

Thank you, AC

The reason I read the Washington Post is because they are willing to post articles like the one mentioned. While I do not agree with what most of the article says, I think that is the responsibility of any good citizen to take in arguments from both sides of a story. The Washington Post allows me to do this by posting articles from both sides of the spectrum on any given issue. Unlike some other news organizations they will also post the more "liberal" side of the story:

In regards to the wikileaks article, the wapo also has an interview with Assange himself. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkpoint-washington/2010/07/who_is_julian_assange_of_wikil.html

That being said, I think that Thiessen's article does make one good point about WikiLeaks endangering the lives of informants in Iraq. There is no good reason that Assange did not redact the documents to remove any names or other personally identifiable information. Doing so would have minimized the risk of lives, and accomplished his goal of disseminating information.

While we're talking about the Washington Post:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/

Remember the saying 'two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead'?

How about 854 000? I'm sure they are all completely trustworthy huh.

I had 'jet fuel' as on my list of things that wouldn't ever likely get replaced with electric storage, and now this reduces the list a bit. Can we just start putting up some modern nuclear reactors and get out of the Middle East then? We've got plenty of sources here for real oil needs.

No one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the U.S. civilian nuclear reactor program. but 10,000 or so Americans have died so far as a result of making war in the Middle East.

I would like to call your attention to the following quote from a WP article from November 24, 2009 speaking to their decision to shutdown all of their national offices: "...Brauchli, a former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, acknowledged that "unquestionably there are advantages to having someone on the ground at times." But, he said, "We are not a national news organization of record serving a general audience. Nor are we a wire service or cable channel." Maintaining that The Post's strength is to report issues through a "Washington prism," Brauchli cited recent examples of education and economic reporters filing major dispatches from other cities to illustrate national trends..." (Original article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/24/AR2009112403014.html ) I believe the telling bit is the "Washington Prism", or mouth piece of the very regimes which are being called out in the leaked information. In that light this comes as no surprise. Also the author is a "fellow" of AEI. To quote wikipedia "Some AEI scholars are considered to be some of the leading architects of the second Bush administration's public policy."

I would like to call your attention to the following quote from a WP article from November 24, 2009 speaking to their decision to shutdown all of their national offices: "...Brauchli, a former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, acknowledged that "unquestionably there are advantages to having someone on the ground at times." But, he said, "We are not a national news organization of record serving a general audience. Nor are we a wire service or cable channel." Maintaining that The Post's strength is to report issues through a "Washington prism," Brauchli cited recent examples of education and economic reporters filing major dispatches from other cities to illustrate national trends..." (Original article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/24/AR2009112403014.html ) I believe the telling bit is the "Washington Prism", or mouth piece of the very regimes which are being called out in the leaked information. In that light this comes as no surprise.

I know it's popular to repeat the talking points, but your statement is not quite incorrect. I had a long rambling comment with lots of links, but then I found this article which addresses most of the points I wanted to mention rather nicely. Basically, he didn't meet his original campaign promise of 16 months, but even during his campaign he had softened his stance since it became apparent that withdrawing that quickly might be too dangerous for the troops. That said, he did meet the goal he set near the beginning of his presidency.

Ironically, this plan, with the troops mostly being out by the end of August but with 50,000 staying through the end of 2011, rather closely resembles Bush's timetable, which called for troops to be out of cities and villages by June 30th, 2010, and out of the country entirely by the end of 2011. I think it's funny how governments can take the same package, but wrap it up with a nice new face on it and then sell it to us as a new product. In the end, it's basically the same plan as before.

Not specific to network analysis, but the government knows few bounds in intelligence spending. See the recent Washington Post article.

uh, there are names in the wikileaks postings. Several news outlets, including the Washington Post, have searched the released docs and found names that weren't redacted:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/29/AR2010072904900.html

wikileaks didn't scrub the docs thoroughly, even the founder of wikileaks is basically saying "hey, not our problem!" He's not denying it, I find it interesting you are.

Washington DC says no. 1998-2003 study shows that at red light camera intersections, collisions more than doubled, Injury and fatal collisions increased by 81%, and t-bones increased by 30%.

At intersections without red light cameras over the same time period, collisions up by 64 percent; injury and fatal crashes rose 54 percent; and broadside collisions rose 17 percent.

Source

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/25/AR2010072502620_pf.html

So we find out next spring how things are going. I'll bet you a fiver that things are going fairly well.

Do you really think any law enforcement agency has the resources to investigate thousands of complaints with little more than a screenshot of someone's junk and their IP address?

Maybe if the IP address resolved to Whitehouse.gov. Don't you miss Bill Clinton?

Number of my countrymen to be killed or wounded while Clinton nailed a fat secretary: 0. Number of my countrymen to be killed or wounded from the two wars started and unfinished during Bush's administration: 5,589 and rising.

And which one did we try to impeach? Yeah, I kinda do miss Clinton.

Stacy Snyder was not denied a teaching credential solely for posting a picture on MySpace. You can read the reasons in the judge's decisions (PDF).

Starting on page 6, Mid-Placement Evaluations, we find Ms. Snyder:

- had “problems with discipline and also with content”
- "had difficulty maintaining a formal teaching manner"
- was "ignorant of basic grammar, punctuation, spelling, and usage"
- on several ... would “make up an answer” or “give the wrong answer” to student questions about literature or grammar.
- left too many students behind as a result of ineffective lessons.
- efforts to “share her personal life” with the students crossed into “unprofessionalism.”
- told an English class that her Valentines Day had been “ruined” when she encountered her former husband while dining out with her boyfriend.

As for the MySpace photo, it would have been less of a problem if Ms. Snyder had not directed her students to visit her MySpace page (something else she was instructed not to do (page 8)). The photo, along with a letter of apology featuring many grammar mistakes, was the last straw that led to Ms. Snyder without a teaching credential.

Surely, there are better examples of people being harmed by inadvertent disclosures on the internet.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601624.html

Google am hard.

As stated somewhere else in this thread she was not defined the certification due to the MySpace picture only.

The judge ruling:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/Decision%202008.12.03.pdf

The problem isn't that this picture was posted. The problem is that the school board over-reacted to something that really had absolutely no bearing on her ability to teach.

Also wrong.

While I agree about the general point your making, this woman should not be your torchbearer for this cause. The "Drunken Pirate" picture was just one example of many issues this student-teacher had, and not even the most egregious. Bad classroom management (yelling "shut up!" at the students), unprofessional conduct (telling them about an encounter with her ex-husband while on a date with her boyfriend), blurring personal-professional boundaries (telling her kids about her MySpace account), poor grammar skills (while teaching an English class!), inability or unwillingness to prepare for the lessons, making up answers to students' questions, etc.

The picture wasn't even the main thing the school took issue with. Nor was its "Drunken Pirate" caption. Along with the picture, she posted a public note talking about problems she had with her supervising teacher as the real reason she wouldn't apply at the school after completing her student teaching. Reading the judge's ruling (or even just the findings of fact) on this case puts it in a whole new light.

The original article, and most of the posts here, can be used to illustrate another important issue: if one makes snap judgments based on partial information, it is easy to be misled. Following the links all the way to http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/Decision%202008.12.03.pdf (the judge's decision) reveals that the plaintiff failed to achieve a satisfactory rating during student teaching, which contributed to her not getting a teaching certificate. Snyder and Mayer-Schoenberger failed to include that inconvenient fact.

Perhaps before jumping into a stranger's fight (or, in this case, flaming about narrow-minded opposition to free speech), we should take the time to learn more of the facts.

I doubt it. People love microsoft. They don't care if it kills http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/29/AR2005082901444.html

Obama ran on the platform of invading Pakistan, another failed campaign promise.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/01/AR2007080101233.html

the regulations don't matter in this case. i'm glad you admit we need some regulations, but the real issue here is regulator==regulated

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/22/AR2010072205133.html?hpid=topnews

His statement came after Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) asked about a Washington Post article that reported that dozens of former Interior officials had crossed over into the oil industry and that three out of four industry lobbyists had once worked for the federal government.

The rate is more than double the norm in Washington, where industries recruit about 30 percent of their lobbyists from the government, according to data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. With more than 600 registered lobbyists, the industry has among the biggest and most powerful contingents in Washington, The Post reported.

the lobbyists, the interior officials, the corporate assholes: all the same people

all the same smoochy same golf hole playing same bar attending backslapping crowd of assholes

that's why we had the disaster in the gulf

you can pass all the regulations you want, it doesn't matter if the ones who are supposed to be policing the industry ARE the industry

I'm weary and I just ain't got the time, and I'm wasted and I can't find my way home.

To hell with medical pot, when is it going to be legal for all adults? It's one of the safest psychoactive drugs there is. There is no lethal dose, there is no physical addiction (as opposed to coffee, alcohol, or tobacco), and actually prevents cancer. If you smoke cigarettes, you really should be smoking pot as well.

The laws against it cause all the problems it purports to solve, just as alcohol prohibition did. Teenagers shouldn't smoke pot, but unlike beer, it's easier for a teen to obtain than it is for an adult. Like alcohol prohibition, it allows adulterants to be added whether on purpose or accident; you cannot regulate an illegal substance. Its prohibition finances violent gangs. Marijuana doesn't "lead to harder drugs", but its prohibition does, since the people who sell heroin and cocaine also sell marijuana. Rather than wasting tax dollars jailing dopers, it could be taxed itself.

There is no reason whatever for this plant to be against the law. The only people who the pot laws help are those who grow, import, and sell it. Anyone who is for pot being against the law is being duped or bribed by the drug cartels.

I hope you take back the "barely literate people" part because it is untrue.

Really? And you know that becasue that is what you feel, or you actually did some research?

"Illiteracy is increasing in China, despite a 50-year-old campaign to stamp it out and a declaration by the government in 2000 that it had been nearly eradicated. The reasons are complex, from the cost of a rural education to the growing appeal of migrant work that draws Chinese away from classrooms and toward far-off cities. "
"From 2000 to 2005, the number of illiterate Chinese adults jumped by 33 percent"
"Since 70% of China's population live in the countryside, and rural adult illiteracy rates are high and the gender disparities are also large in the countryside, the priority and the difficult area of literacy work lies in rural areas."

Just becasue the facts get in the way of your feeling of "the way things should be", don't let that stop you from judging others who point the facts out. Talk about feeling superior.

Actually, according to TFA (Washington Post), they simply added some images to cover up the dead video feeds.

Original image here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/19/AR2010071905256.html

Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post recently wrote a hilariously crotchety op-ed on the subject of real-time news publishing in the era of the internet: "Gene Weingarten column mentions Lady Gaga."

Never assume venality where stupidity will do.

Yes. More generally, don't assume evil where stupidity will do.

We still see libertarians regularly on /. who are so sincerely addled by their ideology that they don't recognize state failures like Somalia and the tribal lands in northern Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan as real world examples of their theories in action.

Hi, I'm a libertarian.

You paint an overly simplistic view of the world. There are a bunch of people who consider themselves libertarians, and not all of them are stupid or dupes. The core idea of libertarianism is simple, but people can and do take it in different directions.

stateless, unregulated societies are unstable

I agree with you on this point.

There are some libertarians, the anarcho-capitalists, who believe that we don't need any sort of government at all; that the free market can and will solve all problems, right up to and including the national defense. Like you, I don't think Anarcho-Capitalism has been proven to work in the real world, and indeed you have listed some sobering counter-examples.

Then there are libertarians like me, the minarchists, who believe we do need a government but it should be small and do little. The "government is like fire: a useful servant but a terrible master" libertarians. The libertarians who believe that government should do only what people cannot do for themselves, and little more. (I'm not opposed to government funding for advanced research into space flight, fusion power, and other advanced new technologies.)

But having that debate means first figuring out that we aren't sociopaths on either the left or the right (and don't kid yourself: at the level of the political leadership the left has always been dominated by sociopaths, just like the right, and for the same reasons.)

A libertarian would tell you that the real problem is that the government is too powerful. People who want to exert power over others are drawn to government because it gives them that power. If the government were cut way back, people might be less drawn to it; certainly if government were less powerful, large companies wouldn't be so compelled to make huge political donations or spend huge sums on lobbyists.

And most importantly, if government were really small and did very little, it wouldn't matter so much whether our rulers were sociopaths or not. If our rulers were perfect angels, and perfectly wise, we could give them unlimited power; since they are just people, and politicians at that, we don't dare trust them with any more power than we must.

[libertarians] simply can't believe that people would behave in such obviously idiotic, sub-optimal ways for centuries or longer.

Some of us can. But let's flip that around. Can you believe that a government would seriously enact a budget that plans to average almost a one trillion dollar deficit per year for the foreseeable future? That's not paying down the debt at all, and adding almost a trillion dollars to the debt each year. Can this continue indefinitely? Will the USA be able to get these planned loans on schedule?

You may not be a fan of the free market, but this is scarier. Under the free market, if a company makes bad decisions, it will be forced out of business by the uncaring feedback of the market: other, better-run companies will beat it. But there is no way for a bad company to wreck the entire economy. Government can do it, though.

steveha

At least we respect freedom of religion in this country

But not freedom from religion.

conclusion i reached after perusing the website:
Get your daily dose of fear-mongering: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/ While there are some valid points; they're completely over-shadowed by irrelevant statistical data based on convenient assumptions and horse turds so large you'd think the poor equine has Elephantiasis of the colon. But hey, they're painted purple; which makes it ok. Do i hear kittens mewing?
my point:
freedom of information (transparency) is great and all but things are (or at least started off to be) classified for a reason. So maybe there needs to be some review process (improvements?) for such things by qualified individuals.
However, that doesn't warrant such a website as this. Nor should i make the comment about turds; but they started it.