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Remember Jon Lech Johansen's arrest, or the 2006 razzia against TPB?

No, they don't (yet) have any jurisdiction, but they don't seem to know or care, and nobody seems to stop them either...

"7 might be better than vista. but i still dont believe it's the fastest ever or any of their other bs."

1. Create and sell crap OS
2. Tell everyone OS fail
3. Upgrade OS, tell everyone new OS and sell again
4. Profit!

Seriously though, can I get the last 3 yrs of my life back wasted with Vista? Laptop didn't offer XP drivers, only vista, so I couldn't even downgrade, and now I have to buy a new OS because Vista is absolute crap. I'm really wondering if Windows 7 isn't just more crap so they can come out with a "new" OS in another 3 years and force us all to buy that because "It's faster, no really we promise! The blogger we paid off says so!"

Google, please hurry with the Chrome OS, I'm so ready to give up on Windows and I know there's a Linux community but it's somewhat fragmented and 99% of the time I start Windows, open the Google Chrome browser and go straight to Google, might as well have the OS.

You mean like this ....

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Apple_releases_program_to_limit_iPod_volume

I guess Wikinews is about to get a lot more popular. Maybe it could be an eventual replacement for AP?

You can slow light down, speed it up, and even stop it altogether!

and british museums!

I suspect that the article is actually blowing out of proportion the MMO currency trading side of things. A quick googling shows that evidently gambling is illegal in china and the government has gone to lengths to crack down on it:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/China_steps_up_anti-gambling_campaign

If :
  A) MMO currency trading is not a notable contributor to China's GDP
  B) Virtual currency makes bypassing gambling restrictions easier
  C) China is genuinely interested in curbing gambling
It sounds to me like banning on-line currency trading is a no-brainer as it will criminalize the entry point people would use to get around local gambling restrictions. Any problem with MMO currency trading is purely incidental.

And I doubt China cares about the cost the rest of the world pays for [Titansteel Bar]s on the auction house..

When the incentive to compile news is financial, we will only get news that is sensational and designed to be sticky. However, when that incentive is removed, we will be able to see a rapid advance in news gathering for its own sake.

I disagree with this specific sentiment. When the incentive to compile news is no longer financial, I think there will be two groups of news-gatherers who will make it big: news-gatherers who are paid by people who want to manipulate the news and public opinion (which will rekindle the financial incentive) and activist news-gatherers with an axe to grind who want to manipulate the news and public opinion. Both these groups have significant incentives to go out and gather news. Other groups have less of an incentive. Have you visited many community news gathering/reporting sites recently? Can you name two of them which stand out as cool, neutral reporters of what happens in the world? (A hint, here's one of them.) In general, though, I don't think it bodes well for the integrity of the news.

Personally I am checking The Guardian and BBC News, CNN.com (which I agree is pretty horrible),MSNBC, The Independent, Wikinews, The Daily Beast (and Slashdot of course) and some random ones. I'd be interested to know which sources people are using to get news about the situation in Iran, or for that matter other international events of interest. Also I find it helpful to try to read around to get news and articles from different perspectives and not rely too heavily on one single source.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Traces_of_radiation_found_where_Litvinenko_ate

there are many ways to terrorize with radioactive material. but

plus side #1: it tends to get washed away after a few rains. nagasaki and hiroshima were nuked with plutonium, and they aren't permanently uninhabitable, or even radioactive above background radiation that much. although, something like chernobyl is different. it depends upon the type of radioactive element and how it is dispersed

plus side #2: any high profile place that an asshole might want to terrorize with radioactive contamination: they have radioactive detectors in place nowadays. not EVERYWHERE though, you could pick an out of the way place in a second tier city and do a lot of contamination before anyone notices, true

In a republic, the rule of law prevails rather than the rule of despots. These courts and Newsom stepped miles outside of the bounds of their offices as set by federal and state constitutions to override the will of the people. The courts and the executive are not there to invent their own laws.

You'll be alarmed to find out that there's a news corporation. Chilling.
News Corporation

There never has been anything stopping someone who has homosexual desires or has acted on such desires from getting married- though they're unlikely to want to do so. If there were a class of people who couldn't marry then it would be a matter of civil rights. But it makes no more sense for people to complain that they can't "marry" another person of the same gender than it does for them to complain that they can't "marry" their dog or their inflatable doll. What Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa did was radically redefine a word that has a perfectly clear meaning. Why? To grant legitimacy, official recognition, and government subsidy and benefits to a relationship which under any accurate name is easily recognized as entirely different from and inimical to the kind of marriage which is the fundamental building block of society.

By marriage, I mean a marriage license issued by the state in which two people live. (There are civil benefits derived from that license.) Obviously, two people are free to be emotionally attached to each other however they like regardless of law. Again:

There never has been anything stopping someone who has homosexual desires or has acted on such desires from getting married- though they're unlikely to want to do so.

What do you mean?

Again, if some group of people democratically decides that they want to spend their tax dollars subsidizing perversion, teaching it in their schools, and propagandizing each other about how wonderful sodomy really is, then to the extent that people are free to leave that society and other societies are insulated from that society's poor decision, all one can say is "may the best set of ideals win in the long run." But to have a few corrupt officials force it down the nation's throat by declaring that gender has nothing to do with marriage and to have anybody who holds other standards labeled as a dangerous "antiprogressive" is abominable. Nor will those pushing the homosexual agenda be content to browbeat and threaten those who don't agree with their views in their own country (as well as resort to actual violence when they don't get their way- see the violence against blacks and Mormons after prop 8 passed in California) - they want to push their agenda down the throats of every nation in the world.

Our society is a republic and in republics people elect representatives to represent them. You need to do anything in your power to stop corrupt people from representing you. You can vote; you can also protest. I've seen people doing this.

It's a non-binding UN resolution. Your country refused to sign it. That sounds like a win for you.

There's a reason why the decline and implosion of societies from ancient times to the present day has been strongly correlated with the rise of homosexuality and other perversions.

Please give me an example of at least one acient society and one present-day society.

You never answered how we're (1) losing 'local autonomy' (please also explain what you mean by that term) and (2) losing it to an international government.

In a republic, the rule of law prevails rather than the rule of despots. These courts and Newsom stepped miles outside of the bounds of their offices as set by federal and state constitutions to override the will of the people. The courts and the executive are not there to invent their own laws.

This is patently absurd. How do you mean marriage has been open to all citizens? What, precisely, did Massachusetts, Conneticut and Iowa do when they legalized same-sex marriage?

There never has been anything stopping someone who has homosexual desires or has acted on such desires from getting married- though they're unlikely to want to do so. If there were a class of people who couldn't marry then it would be a matter of civil rights. But it makes no more sense for people to complain that they can't "marry" another person of the same gender than it does for them to complain that they can't "marry" their dog or their inflatable doll. What Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa did was radically redefine a word that has a perfectly clear meaning. Why? To grant legitimacy, official recognition, and government subsidy and benefits to a relationship which under any accurate name is easily recognized as entirely different from and inimical to the kind of marriage which is the fundamental building block of society.

Again, if some group of people democratically decides that they want to spend their tax dollars subsidizing perversion, teaching it in their schools, and propagandizing each other about how wonderful sodomy really is, then to the extent that people are free to leave that society and other societies are insulated from that society's poor decision, all one can say is "may the best set of ideals win in the long run." But to have a few corrupt officials force it down the nation's throat by declaring that gender has nothing to do with marriage and to have anybody who holds other standards labeled as a dangerous "antiprogressive" is abominable. Nor will those pushing the homosexual agenda be content to browbeat and threaten those who don't agree with their views in their own country (as well as resort to actual violence when they don't get their way- see the violence against blacks and Mormons after prop 8 passed in California) - they want to push their agenda down the throats of every nation in the world.

There's a reason why the decline and implosion of societies from ancient times to the present day has been strongly correlated with the rise of homosexuality and other perversions.

The Church, which is located only meters from Ballo's dormitory, states that the results had shown Ballo was "depressed, irresponsible, hyper-critical and lacking in harmony."
Family blames Scientology for daughter's death

Apparently she suffered from periods of depressions; the critical and negative response she received from CoS pushed her a bit too far. She was twenty years old.

This particular case combined with other reports have caused the Norwegian Government to take a stern look at the practices of CoS; and try to evaluate if their practices comply with the law.

If losing editing rights (on Wikipedia) from CoS IPs is akin to Nazi prosecution of Jews then I wonder what they say about "The Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services is considering prosecuting and banning some Scientology practices, in particular the use of the Scientology personality test to sell courses. State Secretary Rigmor Aasrud said that the activities in question might be prosecuted as fraud or as violations of existing healthcare regulations." Or for that matter the trials against them in France.

If just losing editing rights is as bad as Nazi prosecution then by comparison other forms of prosecution must be like killing kittens with sledgehammers.

Sorry but I strongly disagree. You might call mainstream journalism crap, and some of the writing along with the various media biases are certainly worthy of that term, but the mainstream media is still the place where we get the boots on the ground to actually find out what's happening in the world. Take that away and I don't know how much 'reporting' the blogosphere can actually support.
[snip][emphasis doubly added]

Is this what you're looking for?

... to try to save a dying business model.

The reporters can always get day jobs and keep their writing game up at wikinews.

That's not unique to Palin, all politicians do that, especially at debates ("The question, I think ... is... [but what about the question he asked you?]" (One of Obama's responses to a question in the first debate (paragraph "We haven't seen the language yet")); "If [condition that doesn't apply], then [irrelevant answer], else if [irrelevant condition], then [irrelevant answer] else [nobody cares]." (general gist of Obama's response to Joe the Plumber -- and just because Joe isn't a Plumber, and his name isn't "Joe" doesn't mean his argument is invalid.); "FUCK YOU! I know more than anyone here!" (McCain quote, not verbatim, but the expletive was, said in committee, in Congress, while in session, and no, that comma wasn't wrong.))

Finally, moderators, please remember that (-1, troll) != (-1,idontlikethat)

Al Qaeda is known to have substantial capital

Reading this I rather got the impression that they were strapped for cash most of the time, and what they had they had got through legal dealings with the US of other Bin Laden family parts.

So would Afghan opium, which the Taliban has extensively invested in.

Blatant misrepresentation. By 2000 the Taliban had banned opium production and by 2001,

U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation last summer.

. -- http://opioids.com/afghanistan/index.html

One wonders how important that was for the US to start the war in Afghanistan, considering that a lack of Afghan opium would be a severe problem for the so-called "War on Drugs" in the US, a war that the government wages against its own citizens.

I said in a private offline conversation (so I unfortunately cannot provide a link) at Christmas 2001 that I expected the Afghan opium production to be back at the world's number 1 within five years, and lo and behold,

Illicit opium production, now dominated by Afghanistan, was decimated in 2000 when production was banned by the Taliban, but has increased steadily since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and over the course of the War in Afghanistan

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium (follow the references)

Last year 80% of the world's opium came from Afghanistan and production is up over 239% since 2003, according to U.S. government estimates.

-- http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/2005_Afghan_opium_harvest_begins

Furries are fans of each other.

Finally, blacklists in general are prone to misuse, abuse and human error.

Absolutely. In Finland, a leading critic of internet censorship had his website added to the list, and the list also contains:

• THC hearing aid devices
• IT consulting service for teachers
• Music instrument store
• Doll store
• Computer repair service
• Windows tips in Thai
• Data Management and Biostatistics Network Journal Guestbook
• English and Thai discussion of gay rights (no images!)

This story is really about Wikimedia Commons, the free database of media. Wikimedia Foundation also runs for example Wikinews and Wikiversity, where videos might fit in perfectly.

It isn't just China. Tell me where I can find Al-Jazeera's english channel broadcasting in America. Or the man arrested for rebroadcasting an Arabic channel in New York

Wikinews is the one who broke the story. The Register quoted them. Please correct this http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/British_ISPs_restrict_access_to_Wikipedia_amid_child_pornography_allegations

Whether or not that image should be considered child porn should be up to the courts to decide.

And from January, according to Government guidance, it seems the IWF are going to be handling reports of "extreme pornography" (that criminalises possession of adult images considered "extreme" and "disgusting", even those involving consenting adults, staged acts, and screenshots from legal films), which is broader and far vaguer than child porn law - so if they start blocking anything that might "potentially" be extreme, I worry that this could mean a lot more sites being blocked.

This also shows that they are willing to blacklist mainstream sites - well, at least they get points for being consistent I suppose (there`s nothing worse than selective enforcement) - but the point is that images that might "potentially" come under the extreme porn law have been found on mainstream non-porn sites. Now even if it may be the case that such a site would never be prosecuted, this shows that the IWF may happily censor any site that has a potentially extreme image on it, no matter what site it is on, or for what purpose it is there for.

It is also misleading that the site returns a fake 404 message - Virgin Media do this, although apparently Demon do not. Is this something decided on a per-ISP level, and something worth complaining to them about?

It's not like Wikipedia is hosted in some lawless country - it's hosted in the US, which has similar laws on child porn, and if it was really a problem it would be easy to cooperate with the US to remove the images.

Amazon also has these images, which are not blocked.

Facebook group against this
Pledgebank ISP boycott
Wikinews story

The technical press are swarming. Dunno if the national press are too as yet.

The IWF apparently sought the advice of police before blocking. Now, the police in the UK are notorious for trying it on with censorship cases, so that doesn't mean the image is illegal.

The album was released in 1976; child porn was illegalised in the UK in 1978. If the album was distributed in the UK since 1978 with that cover, it's probably legal.

The album cover has been reprinted in many books. Most of those books are in the Briitsh Library. Are those now obscene?

Question for all: Has this precise image ever come to court? In the UK, in the world?

The IWF had it pointed out that they were censoring encyclopedia text, which was clearly not illegal. The IWF responded that they needed to block the page to block the image effectively. This is of course utterly ludicrous bollocks, but apparently that's the advice the IWF have received.

They were also asked if they'd be censoring Amazon as well. They said they'd have to get back on that one.

It's the clbuttic error, but this time on a top-10 site for everyone.

Disclaimer: I do press for Wikipedia/Wikimedia in the UK as a volunteer (and I've been on my email and phone all last night to about 2am and today since 9am). However, I am not a WMF employee and cannot legally claim to speak for them, only as a volunteer editor.

I though that This Development essentially made this a none issue? Am I missing something?

Oooh oooh! I want karma! The relevant xkcd is http://xkcd.com/304/ . Also while I'm here I'll note that Munroe has stated that his use of Xenocide wasn't based on knowledge that it was widely considered to be not a great book but rather that he personally did not like it the first time he read it. See http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Randall_Munroe,_writer_of_xkcd,_talks_about_the_comic,_politics_and_the_internet where I interviewed Munroe for Wikinews.

Wikinews coverage.

Collaboration page (here: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Talk:Wikileaks_obtains_10_years_of_messages,_interviews_from_Osama_bin_Laden_translated_by_CIA) has a nice little note saying that "authenticated by the US CIA" is essentially.. what's the word? oh yeah, "wrong".

In 2006 there was a pretty bad storm in Buffalo NY in October...

October Storm

Aren't anecdotes wonderful?

Wikinews did an in-depth report and interviewed the accused behind the attempted removal: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Alleged_'rights_group'_tries_to_have_4,000_anti-Scientology_videos_removed_from_YouTube

And is it really wise to invite yet another country that can barely defend itself (let alone contribute to the defense of others) into NATO?

Well, looking at the casualty figures from both sides, the Georgian army did actually fare surprisingly well, given the sheer size of the forces opposing them. Of course, this is mostly thanks to the modern equipment supplied to them by US, and training of their troops by US instructors. If this can be achieved in a mere 2 years, consider what could be done in a dozen.

Isn't this all a moot point given the fact that Germany and France were opposed to bringing Georgia into NATO?

Well, Germany apparently changed their mind on the matter.

Stalin redrew the map to lump them into Georgia back in the day -- and the Georgians did their very best to try and assimilate/bury their culture.

That's not correct - South Ossetia was a part of Georgia before the latter was even annexed by Russia. Though it is true that it was to Georgia what Caucasus as a whole was to Russia - a mountaneous region inhabited by fiercely independent and aggressive people that did not acknowledge any higher power over them, and frequently raided the bordering villages for loot.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Madrid_skyscraper_devastated_by_fire

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4261315.stm

http://www.libertysflame.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=1356

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/spain_fire_2005.html

http://judicial-inc.biz/Madrid_skyscraper.htm

Wikinews (http://en.wikinews.org) (from the Wikimedia foundation). Many members have press cards.

Well,when YOU are sitting there in the path of a hurricane in waist deep water while the buses that could get you to safety are sitting there idle then you can say everyone should "do for themselves". besides I thought that was the whole POINT of having a government in the first place? There are some jobs like national defense and disaster relief that are simply too big to "do it yourself",therefor we pay taxes so that an organization with "supposedly" better resources can handle the big jobs.

As someone in AR who went down and saw how the mobile homes sat here unused until they were sold off,the amount of mismanagement was just unbelievable to me. But of course anyone that dumps a million gallons of fresh water in the sewer has shown they are simply too incompetent to continue existing. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Russian troops have since then retreated from Georgian controlled territory back into Ossetia and Abkhazia. It seems that we have a ceasefire in effect now, for some time at least.

*sigh* You can mod my parent post down as "-1, Wrong Guess", it seems. We broke the ceasefire once again.

I think I still have a piece of the Goodyear blimp that got stuck in a Micro-cell storm in Coral Springs, FL, a few years ago.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Goodyear_blimp_crashes_in_Florida

I'm sure they used weather forecasting, but a micro-cell in a warm, water-rich state is going to spring up now and again; Then where are ya with a 40-ton load?

...to start reversing the DEPLORABLE conditions started by Jimmy "I'm a fucking moron" Carter.

You know - the guy who thought that if the US didn't RECYCLE nuclear waste back into fuel (which would SOLVE the "nuclear waste storage" issue) it would be an "example" to tin-pot dictatorships and insane genocidal religious nations like North Korea, Pakistan, India, Iran, Syria, China... and they wouldn't try to get nuclear weapons. Yeah, how'd that work out for us?

The guy who coddled so-called "environmentalists" to the point where we haven't built SAFE, CLEAN electrical power generation anywhere because nobody can get past the permits process and NIMBY enviro-wacko whining.

Think about it - even the founder of Greenpeace (who long ago left the organization when it became obvious the commies and inmates were running the asylum and not interested in real, rational discussion) says we need nuclear energy because so-called "renewable" sources are inherently (a) unreliable and (b) limited in the scope of what we can do with them.

...to start reversing the DEPLORABLE conditions started by Jimmy "I'm a fucking moron" Carter.

You know - the guy who thought that if the US didn't RECYCLE nuclear waste back into fuel (which would SOLVE the "nuclear waste storage" issue) it would be an "example" to tin-pot dictatorships and insane genocidal religious nations like North Korea and Iran and they wouldn't try to get nuclear weapons.

The guy who coddled so-called "environmentalists" to the point where we haven't built SAFE, CLEAN electrical power generation anywhere because nobody can get past the permits process and NIMBY enviro-wacko whining.

Think about it - even the founder of Greenpeace (who long ago left the organization when it became obvious the commies and inmates were running the asylum and not interested in real, rational discussion) says we need nuclear energy because so-called "renewable" sources are inherently (a) unreliable and (b) limited in the scope of what we can do with them.

FTR, I might as well cite a source why I think we are in the sixth major mass extinction of species on our planet.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Largest_mass_extinction_in_65_million_years_underway,_scientists_say

The mass extinction we are driving is big enough that the current epoch, the Holocene, may be ended prematurely and a new epoch name created to describe the current era of (unstoppable?) extinctions.

Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.

The article itself links to an article from a year ago:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Spirit_Rover_on_Mars_finds_water_made_'silica-rich_soil'

It's taken a year for the paper to be published in Science, along with more evidence of other silica outcrops.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080522145222.htm

Original sources:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/320/5879/1063
http://www.mars.asu.edu/news/news-silica.html

"I deleted the article after a highly concerned late-night phone call from Mike Godwin."

Also, Check this out.

You actually missed one of the wiki* in this conflict. In particular, Wikileaks is reporting that the Wikimedia Foundation is suppressing a news item on Wikinews about Wikipedia.

It's also worth noting that all of the above sites are managed using the MediaWiki software.

The Wikinews discussion about the story is here.

Wikipedia Signpost has another take on the porno conflict.

# 22:51, 9 May 2008 Brianmc (Talk | contribs) deleted "Child pornography scandal erupts on Wikipedia; FBI to investigate" (content was: '#REDIRECT Wikinews:Story preparation/Child pornography scandal erupts on Wikipedia; FBI to investigate' (and the only contributor was 'DragonFire1024'))
# 22:33, 9 May 2008 Brianmc (Talk | contribs) deleted "Wikinews:Story preparation/Child pornography scandal erupts on Wikipedia; FBI to investigate" (Factually incorrect, Valleywag is not credible)

This article article mentions Wikileaks, Wikimedia and a Wikinews article linking to the Wikileaks article.

Nowhere is Wikipedia mentioned in the article. Wikipedia is a Wikimedia project, but they're not one and the same.

Yes, that's a lot of Wiki there, but Wikipedia is not once mentioned in the article.

The book Doctrine and Covenants (D&C) is not the same as the Book of Mormon. Also, take a look at this picture and tell me the Mormons don't believe in the Bible: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Image:Latter-day_Saint_Scripture_Quadruple_Combination.jpg

...and the Wikinews article on the same story.

Well strike me down with a giant hailstorm, looks like a slashdotter didn't Read The F****ing Article, or even the URL, I'd never have believed it.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Huge_interest_brings_Wikileaks_offline