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Iranian Coup Plotters Exposed By PDF File
Renfield writes: "Security Focus has the details on how the New York Times released a SECRET CIA report on the Agency-sponsored 1953 Iranian coup on their Web site as a PDF file, with the names of foreign agents covered up with black lines and boxes. It turns out the Times didn't merge layers, and John Young of Cryptome discovered that by freezing the rendering at the right time, he could view the edited text before the black boxes covered them. He's putting up the full, unedited document on his site now. The Times says he's endangering lives, but why, oh why, didn't they use eraser tool, and how many other PDF files, Word documents, etc., contain more than meets the eye?" I wonder if there are any "aggressive" pdf viewers built to scan for just such information, too.
The fight against .doc can be accomplished without mentioning Unix, Linux, proprietary vs. open formats, etc. at all. When someone sends me a Word document, I simply reply "Please re-send this in text/HTML/RTF, I don't have or use Microsoft Word."
Word (and most other Office apps) have a "Send as mail" option hanging off the File menu. If Microsoft were not evil greedy bastards, that option would pop up a warning telling the user that the receiver of the message might not be able to read it, and then give the user a choice of 'Convert to HTML' or 'Attach in Word format'.
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Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Besides, what am I *supposed* to do? Ignore the document?
Depends. If you're in business, what you are supposed to do is get Office for Windows or the Mac. The business world has standardized on Word format. Resent it all you want, but welcome to the real world.
At least until the competing office suites get a clue and realize that Office compatibility is the ONLY feature that matters. That should be the number 1 priority. It is absolute idiocy that import/export of Office is so brain-damaged in all these suites, after all this time (in WP's case). They should not put in one more feature until that is rock solid.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
It's been a while since I worked with PDF, but doesn't writing one "optimized" removed the edit stuff (i.e., writes it all from scratch...?
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Imagine a software engineer in Belarus Republic in 1993, graduated from university (6 years), working at governmental organization that among other things monitors post-Chernobyl radioactive contamination, as a programmer, sysadmin, admin of a "WAN" based on inadequate phone lines and the worst modems that they could find and local Novell-based LAN, getting for that a salary, not significantly above the poverty level. Add dealing with broken custom software, written in foxpro and sold to that organization by some lame company, owned by a bunch of local crooks. Add the fact that all promising jobs for a programmer are in communication, and infrastructure happens to be so underdeveloped, all positions are already filled. Add fluctuation of government that brought nationalists to power and army draft in the same year, and the fact that the engineer is jewish-ukrainian by origin. What the above mentioned engineer is supposed to do? Remaining in the country promises at least major suckage of life until economy improves and at most death in the army, as conditions there were closer to a jail than to anything else even before nationalists came to power. Moving to other country can be realistic, however only two choices are present -- US and Israel.
In Israel he can expect large number of people with exactly the same education that he got, not much of a software industry, language that he doesn't know and doesn't want to know, ideology that he doesn't share, war with Palestinians that engineer wants no part of and Judaism that engineer wants no part of either, being agnostic or atheist, depending on how you define it.
In US he can expect major humiliation, frightening corporate power, a position of non-citizen for many years, stupid politicians, yet almost guaranteed decent job for anyone who got his CS education in non-american school, and has some resemblance of programming talent.
What would the engineer choose?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Yeah, I'll say. What the fuck was the US thinking, sending hundreds of thousands of troops to liberate France? All those white crosses at Normandy, that's a monument to American selfishness, right?
Invasion in Normandy happened at the time when Germany was if not dead but lethally wounded -- there was no possible turn of event could end with Nazi surviving (except, of course, an unlikely one in which US, the only country that was not weakened by a war, would switch sides and start supporting them). Until that point US didn't touch Europe, and the idea of "liberation" of France was a complete farce. At that point US was afraid of Soviet influence over Europe, not anything else.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The US bribed^H^H^Hpayed IRA and Ulster Union leaders to stop fighting in Northern Ireland (knock on wood).
It's still a question if the haste was worth the result -- both sides in Northern Ireland are in unstable position toward the political results -- fighting (actually random acts of terrorism) stopped at the price of bringing up all the political tension, and sides don't seem to be ready to come to the agreement, so it has all chances to resume.
They bribed^H^H^H^Hpayed Israel to find the peace process attractive.
Pressure on Israel government seem to have little effect on large (and vocal!) percentage of population that got kicked out of their homes, got their religious feeling insulted, or both. Again, fixing one problem, creating another. If Arabs didn't see Israel as being so dependent on US in everything they probably would be more willing to negotiate (plus see what I said in other message about Iran and religious bigotry).
They brought fragile but existing peace to Bosnia, and started the same in Kosovo. If you take the preservation of human lives as a universal standard, then there were less people killed in Kosovo this year than in a month (you pick the month) two years ago.
Maybe per month compared to situation in the middle of civil war, but not the total amount -- if left alone, fighting would cease earlier, without the amount of political complications that were caused by US/NATO bombing what they were supposed to protect and supporting every accusation against Serbs, valid or invalid one, thus fueling the hatred between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo. If US wouldn't interfere, Serbs would defeat KLA (killing some but mostly frightening the rest, causing them to disband), keep the control over Kosovo, and would be forced to give some semi-autonomy to Kosovo, letting some Albanians into local governmental structures. US didn't like that, and needed a cause for military presence in Europe.
If there is a huge rock falling down towards 100 people and you have the option to push a button that redirects the rock to another group of 10 people, what would you do? Save 90 lives and become a killer (of those 10 people who would not have died otherwise), or let 100 people die but stay morally clean? If you have the power to actually *do something*, these are the questions you face every day.
US motivation never was to preserve anyone's lives -- it either was political, up to "those people are oppressed by their insufficiently democratic government -- let's kill or starve them all to death, so their evil government will be destroyed with them", or economical, up to "we need some cheap labor here and oil there".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
so how about all those millions ppl that were sent to gulags in siberia...
The word "GULAG" has no plural. I refuse to discuss Russian history with a person that doesn't know why.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
There are some other dimensions to this case that no one has
mentioned, and they concern journalistic ethics.
In the first place, NYT reporter James Risen is essentially
taking this position when he claimes to John Young that the
families of those named may be at risk:
"You say that we have no clothes on. But unnamed, independent
Iran experts we consulted say that we do indeed have clothes on.
Therefore, if you assume that we are naked, you are responsible
for endangering the lives of others."
A complaint I lodged with Mr. Risen in the past suggests to me
that he is fully capable of spinning when he says that he
consulted independent Iran experts who told him that the
families of those named would be at risk. Indications are that
these so-called "independent" sources could well be connected to
the U.S. intelligence community -- the same people who use
classification and secrecy to cover up incompetence and/or avoid
accountability.
Therefore, I conclude that these families are not at risk, and
Mr. Risen is protecting his sources, or his career, for entirely
separate reasons. I asked him to put his experts on the record,
but he didn't respond so I have no idea who they are.
I consulted an Iran expert who says that Iran hardly needs to
read the New York Times to figure out what happened in 1953, and
that the report would probably strike them as boring.
A newspaper has no business playing redaction games for what may
be ulterior motives. I'd prefer that they skip the report
entirely rather than establish a redaction precedent for
journalism professionals. We'll eventually get the information
another way -- from Iran, if we have to.
Between 1950 and 1995 most such ventures were part of the not quite war between the US and USSR.
Actually that was used as a cause, but rarely was the reason. USSR avoided doing anything outside its borders unless was seriously threatened, and even US didn't actually threaten it to justify anything of the kind.
Perhaps you would rather the US and USSR had fought a pitched battle in Western Europe?
All european countries including USSR, avoided military conflicts after WWII -- and last time I checked, US is not located in Europe, so if a potential war between US and USSR would have any effect on Europe, it would only affect US missile bases there. However considering MAD, it wouldn't be possible, so it didn't happen.
Or maybe you would have liked eating lots of black bread and sending your tax returns to Moscow?
As a matter of fact, I like black bread (one made in Russia, not something I see in local stores that looks like clay with hay mixed in, and tastes like one, too). However the political situation at the time of Cold War reliably prevented direct military confrontation.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Someone needed an explanation, why American citizens are hated as much as their government. I hope, the above message gives a good example of something that can piss off even the most civilized and non-judgmental foreigner.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Are we talking about Chechnya here? Or Russia? I'm sure whatever "uncivilized" aspects of Chechen society have been cleansed by bombing the shit out of Grozny.
We are talking about early 19'th century, the last time when Chechnya was independent.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Have you ever considered that, in a nation where 'We the People' are sovereign, it is a blight upon that sovereignty that so many ideas and data are kept from their knowledge?
You raise a very interesting and important point, and yes I have considered this in some detail. However it is somewhat tangential to my original post. Like you, I neither condone the activities of the U.S. or U.K. governments, nor do I believe that information like this should be kept from the people who make decisions, if even the decision on whom to vote for. I am merely pointing out that for whatever reason this information was classified Secret, which means that only a restricted body of individuals may access the information, and the information may not be shared among those who lack sufficient clearance. If this material still holds a Secret classification, then it is illegal to allow individuals to access this information. While we may debate whether the material was classified correctly, whether the public had a right to know this information, or even whether any organization should have the right to hide such information from the public, while it holds a Secret classification it needs to be protected in accordance with this classification level. Individuals who violate these laws go to jail, and I don't see why those who wear press badges are necessarily exempt.
The point of my post was the following apparent inconsistency: When one body misplaces Secret information we raise a huge ruckus, whereas when another body mishandles information with the same level of classification, then it's ok since "It is in the interests of the people." I would argue that for classification to have any meaning whatsoever, then leaks of classified information to the press must be prosecuted with the same intensity as what the New Mexico lab is experiencing.
Secrecy has few places in a true democracy or republic.
(A most curious stance on a site that champions privacy and the right to encrypt). Secrecy has its places, however it is dangerous to a democracy or republic to cede to secrecy too much power. I agree that the immoral acts of the U.S. and U.K. governments are disgusting and the public is better off knowing than not knowing about such things, however I also acknowledge that we have many secrets (e.g. biological weapons secrets) that are much better off being out of the public domain. As a consequence, I would argue that we should vigorously protect our national secrets as a point of principle, and we should call for reform to the classification system so that it cannot be abused.
And while you're at it, don't forget to run rough shod over the first amendment and freedom of the press.
I never called for anything of the sort; all I am advocating is that we hold journalists to the same laws as the rest of us.
And there is no oil nor anything worth in Kosovo. No administration could have pulled a war like this off, and even this way the Clinton administration has the Republicans^H^H^H^Hwolves hanging off their throats for 'waste of taxpayer money'. Just look at the position of the GOP to see the selfish american politics that has dominated this land for such a long time. By the way, there is no oil nor anything worth mentioning in Kosovo, and there is much cheaper (and much more isolated and less militant and less organized) mass-labor force in Asia. Your suggestion is not credible, think for a moment. Dont you think that there is a tiny chance, just by the rule of big numbers, that the US sometimes does something good - just by accident? I mean, even assuming that the US was the evil, the US could make mistakes as well and do something good, occasionally, right?
--Coke
so you wont discuss with me because i prooved to you that ussr did indeed harm its own citizens...
USSR harmed its own citizen -- as well as US and almost every country in the world. However I talk about using military force to do that, what was claimed in a previous post.
i am not native english speaker so thats why my english may be fucked up (bosnian/croatian/serbian is my native language) ... anyway gulag are nothing else than work camps for soviet ppl that didnt share same opinion as stalin did
"GULAG" is a Russian abbreviation for "State Department of [Penitentiary] Camps" -- camps themselves NEVER were mentioned as "GULAG" or "GULAGs", only a system as a whole. Therefore it couldn't be in plural in any language.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
PDF's alow you to chang the file just by adding to the end of it. so to get the orignal file just open it up with emacs find the end of the orginal file then delete the rest and re open it in your favirot pdf viwer. the full spec for pdf is on adobes web site.
To my knowledge, the US has never started a war by invading another country. Can you give an example?
Vietnam, Grenada, Panama to name a few most blatant ones that immediately come to mind.
America comes in to defend freedom.
Invading a sovereign country has nothing to do with "freedom", no matter what the invader thinks of himslef.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Bosnia was indeed 'left alone' as you say, and 200 thousand people died. 'Doing nothing' ('letting the rock fall') caused the death of tenthousand muslims in Sebrenica. Is that the kind of peace and sovereignty of nations you envision?
Actually yes. Conflicts like that, no matter how much third parties will try to suppress them, will claim their number of victims. There is no "good" way out for people involved, and suppressing conflict earlier will cause more deaths later -- perpetuating the hatred and making the end result worse.
And there is no oil nor anything worth in Kosovo.
There was however US influence in Europe that decreased because of the formation of EU. US needed to reaffirm its dominant position in NATO, establish presence in the Eastern Europe, and create a country (Kosovo is de-facto a colonized country now) dependent on US military force -- something that Europe never had before.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Considering that Cuba, the most US-hating counry in the world, has an US military base on its territory, I don't think that it can be considering as "not minding" American military bases. More likely treating US as "ridiculously overpowered character" in world politics.
The base at Quantanimo was established when Cuba was an ally of the US. We have a lease on the land where the base sits, paid with a token amount of money. When the current regime lead by Castro overthrew the previous regime, Castro decided to leave our base alone, and has refused to cash the checks we send the Castro goverment in lease payments as a form of protest.
Of course we're not giving up the base--after Castro tried to put nuclear warheads pointed at the US east coast on his territory, we sort of have a very strong interest in making sure Castro doesn't repeat that fairly serious mistake that almost plunged us into a nuclear war with the Soviets back in the 60's.
Better to invade a small country than to kill billions.
However, our relations with Cuba is the exception to the rule. Most of the places where the United States has a base, the host country has desired to have our base be there--in part because they see the presence of a US base as a stabalizing force in the region, and in part because they see us as helping foot part of the hosting country's defense bill.
Money talks in international relations.
Of course the United States is fairly well hated by most of the world--but that's in part because we tend to staff our overseas bases with testosterone-laden 19 year olds who have no respect for anything except their own penis, who then take R&R where they are stationed. And in part because of the fact that because it's so expensive for us Americans to go to a foreign country that is not Canada or Mexico, the people who do make the journey to Europe tend to be wealthy snobs.
And the best way to be universally hated is to have tourists who make the French seem exceedingly reasonable and respectful in comparason.
. People here don't find it immoral to expose CyberPatrol blacklists... they find it immoral to blacklist at all.
"Information wants to be free," they chime.
Given this strange behavior to this story, I have to ask. Is it "information wants to be free, except when lives are at stake"?
If you don't see the difference between exposing a list of blocked sites and exposing a list of names which may endanger the lives of people, then you've a very warped sense of morality.
"Information wants to be free". What does that mean? An evocative phrase devoid of rational content... Freedom of information and the need for privacy have to be balanced.
I, too, was outraged by our young hacker's actions, until I sat down and thought about it. Let's take each one of these things in sequence:
/least/ guilty is our hacker. His crime? Announcing that it is possible to remove those little pieces of tape to see the words beneath. The other two parties are responsible for /anything/ that happens beyond that; the gov't for letting such information fall into unscrupulous hands (Are you reading, Los Alamos?) and the Times, for handling such a dangerous secret with such disrespect.
1) The Times acquires a document outlining the dirty particulars of a covert US operation. Parts of this document include name, places, and even possibly addresses, all of which could be harmful, to say the least.
2) The Times throws the digital equivalent of little bits of electrical tape over enough of the details to protect the individuals, leaving just enough to scandalize the reader and condemn the gov't for being bad, bad men. (Insert Fox Mulder and Whistling Theme Music.)
3) Our friend, the hacker, removes the pieces of tape, and posts it on his website, detailing how the act was done, and why the Times needs to be more careful when handling sensitive gov't documents.
First of all, the party
Posting the complete document on his website, was just nudging the last sheep out the door. Any foreign intelligence agency worth its dark sunglasses is likely capable of having done this, for themselves, if they really wanted the info. More than likely, they already have it. 1953 was a long time ago, in Intelligence years.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
File formats, other specs, or whatever, won't get anyone killed by it's release.
I won't bet on it -- people do a lot of awful things out of disgust.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Exposing the story was one thing, and certainly merits CIA internal investigation. Putting individuals lives at stake to satisfy ego is another. There was no legitimate purpose in doing so. The hole in PDF could have been demonstrated in any other number of ways. The story itself was also already exposed. The only thing gained by the person who did this was a feeling of playing God with other peoples lives. It is not their place to have made that decision.
Funny because the CIA and/or the New York Times thinks that drawing black boxes on top of the images in a PDF is "security" and sad because this does endanger the lives of the families of the people who collaborated with the CIA. When a few small business owners are killed or their houses are burned down in Los Angeles and Long Island in coming months, it will be because of this episode.
PDF is completely, utterly unprotectable. If you can read it, you can dissect it.
Have a "locked" PDF? Run it through Ghostscript, convert it back to Postscript, and do whatever you want with it.
Have a PDF encrypted for use with one of those "secure" book readers, as was done with the recent Stephen King novella? Then just run the reader alongside a debugger and intercept the Postscript parsing code to reconstruct the original file. Oh! But that's in violation of the licensiung terms of the "secure" reader!
The only way to make a PDF or Postscript file like this "safe" is a simple one. You need to replace the critical text or images with those black boxes, not simply cover it up using PDF or drawing tools. The original snippet of text needs to be utterly absent from the resulting file. Period. And then don't kid yourself if you think you can restrict or trace redistribution. Lock it all you want; the source Postscript can be recovered with a copy of Ghostscript and twenty minutes with the documentation, or failing that, by a C programmer armed with a debugger.
If you look at the article, you see that this document refers to the coup against Prime Minister Mossadeq, a nationalistic politician in Iran that Washington was afraid would play to the Communists, since Russia had had a lot of influence in Iran ever since the days of the Cossak Brigade, and those long, romantic evenings when British and Russian officials would stay up late, carving up the national resources and self-determination of what is now modern Iran. Mossadeq had made moves that seemed to suggest that he wanted to nationalize the oil industry in Iran, removing the monopoly held by the British, who had bought the rights to all of Iran's oil reserves for a handful of glass beads some years before. Amusingly, this oil monopoly was the precursor to the modern petrolium company named BP. Think about that the next time you stop at their pumps. Basically, the CIA paid people in the streets of Tehran to protest against Mossadeq, in order to give the Shah good cover for having him dismissed. Mossadeq had a lot of popular appeal, and the Shah was afraid of what might happen if he removed him from office.
But to the point; I agree that this action was irresponsable. I think the correct move would have been to notify the Times, as he did, make sure the oversite got corrected, and then drop it. Maybe write an article. But there is no need to personally reveal these names, once the nature of the security problem had been made public. If this had been some other document, there might be hell to pay here. If it had been some other document. But Mossadeq had absolutely nothing to do with the regime instituted by revolutionaries in 1978-79 under the influence of Ayatollah Khomeini. Therefore, it is kind of questionable who these people's lives would be in danger from. Mossadeq was part of the dynasty that was swept away by Khomeini and his ilk; he was a secularist of sorts, who advocated Iran taking control of its own affairs, but was not interested in the establishment of an Islamic republic. I am not sure what the view of Mossadeq inside the Iran of today is, but I doubt that there are many strong supporters of him around to make any moves against those who plotted against him. Also, keep in mind that the names of those on the CIA side involved in the operation have been available for years, people like Kermit Rosevelt, who was out in the streets of Tehran handing people 20 dollar bills to go protest against Mossadeq.
So I doubt that this document is going to make any revelations that will inspire action on the part of the Iranian people. For them, it will just be one more document proving that the United States can't be trusted. Like they neeed more proof.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Although what he found he could do with the pdf files was intresting. He shouldnt Publish this material. The iranian Ayatolahs are crazier than anyone thinks, and they still have all the power in iran despite what anyone thinks.
People think the iranian government is crazy, this isnt true. The iranian government has no power. The ayatolahs do and they are the crazy ones.
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Here's my mirror
That's because most of the unsuccessful-at-home people who want to immigrate to the US are the most vulnerable to hollywood's propaganda machine.
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Here's my mirror
it's been mentioned in comp.risks numerous times - ms word files by default are saved by revisions.
Tracking revision is not activated by default, although there may be an option to make it the default. A standard Word installation will have it off, however.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Yeah? And what about the democratic/human rights situation in the early 19th century in the USA? Only landowners could vote, there was slavery...
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Here's my mirror
What this comes down to is:
But, clearly, in some circles, there is some belief that the NYT is some impartial, competent institution that is in a privileged position to receive confidential information. For the reasons given above, I think this attitude is wrong. However, even if we admit the premise of a special status for the NYT, I think this blunder suggests that the NYT simply isn't competent to work responsibly in the on-line media.
As for me, I stopped reading the NYT for its informational content a few years ago. In the areas I know about, I found their articles to be too often poorly researched, factually inaccurate, and logically inconsistent, and I had to conclude that this was likely to be true for their articles in areas that I didn't know about.
But the NYT is clearly still of enormous influence in US society because of its readership, the access it is given in some circles, and the beliefs many people seem to have about the quality and integrity of their reporting. So, from that point of view, it is useful to have a rough idea of what they are writing. For accurate information and insightful analysis, however, I'd recommend going elsewhere.
(For some history of the media, including the NYT, I found the book "Life the Movie" by Neil Gabler very interesting.)
If "sane by a human points of view" means humane, then no, US foreign policy has not been humane since (or before) the Gulf War. There are numerous such examples (launching cruise missiles at medicine plants in Sudan, selling napalm to Turkey so it can kill Kurds, killing about a half a million children in Iraq according to UNICEF, etc...) but I'll stick with the stories you think pass for evidence as to the good intentions of the US government.
First off, I do grant you that the US government would like to see a long term ceasefire and some sort of peace in Northern Ireland. This is in the foreign policy interest of the US, so it's no surprise. As far as paying Israel for the "peace process" (which is really just setting up and formalizing an apartheid type system in Israel) that is totally incorrect. Israel was still the biggest receiptient of US aid when it was occupying South Lebanon (against the UN resolution for it to withdraw) from 1982 until just a few weeks ago. They weren't paid to get out, the war had no popular support in Israel and no strategic value anymore for Israel. Domestic pressure was probably the biggest factor, not US government money.
Furthmore the idea that the US went to war to save Kosovars is ridiculous. The US government and its allies could care less about them, look how few of them they were willing to take in significant numbers as refugees. Bombing exaceberated the situation in Kosovo (as admitted by the US general Clarke) resulting in more casualties and undermining all the efforts of domestic opposition groups inside Yugoslavia to get rid of Milosevic. The bombing certainly wasn't support by them, and they couldn't even begin to organize rallies against Milosevic until after the war was over. Bombing a country isn't the best way to affect social change, as should be obvious from dealing with Iraq.
All governments make up fairy tales as to why they are attacking another country, they must do for the war to be accepted by the public. It doesn't mean it is true. If you want to see some of the real motivations for US foreign policy, go to www.stratfor.com (private intellgience agency) or if you want to read a more radical critique try reading the Noam Chomsky archive at www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm.
So - going back a bit in history just to show the obvious flaw in your argument - Nazi Germany should have been left alone - they would clearly have stopped after some natural amount of time, after killing/gasing everybody not of arjan descent (including most of Russia). At that time this ment something on the order of a few 100 million people, and a vast array of unique cultural heritage would have been destroyed in an irreparable way by the nazis. So your opinion is that this should have happened, instead of Britain/USSR/US getting involved in a 'naturally unfolding' conflict?
--Coke
The Word feature to turn off is Fast Saves - this means that when you save a new version on top of the file (e.g. having deleted agents' names), Word simply adds the changed data to the end, to speed things up, rather than rewriting the whole file. So if you ever send a Fast Saved file to someone else electronically, you can be fairly sure to leak some information.
The Risks forum should be read by:
- Anyone who uses or depends on computers in their daily lives
- Anyone who programs computers
- Anyone who makes policy decisions involving computers or software
- Anyone who ever depends on the correct functioning of computers for their lives or safety (flown on a modern airplane lately?)
- Anyone who operates computers that affect safety (piloted one?)
I think that includes most readers of Slashdot.You might think such spy stuff as this article is about is out of your realm, but consider this example which likely could have affected most of us:
Peter G. Neumann, moderator of the Risks forum, wrote a book called Computer Related Risks that draws on material from the forum and discusses it in more depth. It has ISBN 020155805X and you can purchase it from:- http://www.fatbrain.com
- http://www.barnesandnoble.com
- http://www.amazon.com
- http://www.chapters.ca - in Canada
If you teach a course on programming, I suggest adding this to the recommended reading, and if you teach a course on fault tolerant or embedded computing, I urge you to include it in the required reading.-- Could you use my software consulting serv
You seem to think that the NY Times is both legally liable and under an obligation to the government to report information on what their sources are. Neither is true.
Perhaps another basic civic lesson is needed. Do you know who Deep Throat was? He brought down the Nixon government. He changed the face of US politics. Nobody knows who he was.
The press has an obligation for full disclosure to the public and privacy for their sources. Beyond the need to reveal enough to let people check what they have to say, they have zero obligation to indicate who gave them the tip.
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I first read it with the "strings" command and if I care I ask for it in text because I don't like to open Word documents due to viruses.
You would be amazed at how well people react to being told that you are concerned about viruses...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
If you weren't a complete idiot you would know that every single family in the USA at that time was touched by WWII. Many lost their sons to the war, others lost their neighbors.
Poor Americans -- lost their neighbors! What about being invaded by Nazi and losing 1/4 of population (Belorussia)? Compared to all other nations involved in WWII US suffered the least, unnoticeable compared to anyone else.
We'd probably have spent another 6 months to a year fighting our way north up the island. Russia would've invaded from the North from Mongolia and we would've ended up meeting somewhere in the middle.
Great knowledge of geography here -- probably a result of famous American education. I knew, there is something special about those maps with US in the center instead of Greenwich meridian, and my home city misspelled.
It would've been the same thing that happened with Germany.. North and South Japan. No, I'm sorry, thanks for playing. 2 A-Bombs were the best way to end an already too-bloody war. What was it.. 50 million people dead? It is pissant people like you who can sit back in your comfortable chair behind your computer 50 years later and monday night quarterback the whole war that really piss me off.
Great political thinking here -- we are afraid of Russians, let's first demand help from Russians, then kill more Japanese than there are Russians there. I hope, actual american generals didn't base their decisions on that idea -- otherwise I would be embarrassed to belong to the human race.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
What the Times did is perfectly legal. Doesn't matter how much the government doesn't like it.
If you think that this is bad, read the thoughts 20 years later of the man who published the design of an H-bomb.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
... and so should the CIA operatives engaged in the overthrow of an elected foreign government. Some of them may even now hold high government positions, or have influence with current or future administrations. The New York Times is overdue opening the books on dark ops like these, shameful episodes in American history.
... unless they elect a government we don't like.
It's actions like this that make me question the deepest principles of our nation. In The Falcon and the Snowman spy case, a loyal American from a military family became disenchanted when his security clearance allowed him to see that the CIA was conspiring to overthrow a liberal government in a foreign country, including fake demonstrations and planted violence in the trade unions. The country in question was Australia. Yes, this is true. A loyal ally
I have nothing but disgust for an operation supported by the United States that stole democracy from Iran for the next thirty years and handed it to, of all things, a king. How antithetical to American values is that?
Did you ever stop to think why the Iranians hated us so much they'd hold our people hostage for 444 days?
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
What lives are endangered by releasing a report from a covert operation which happened *47 years ago*?
The guys who were spying for us then are almost certainly dead by now: we're only protecting their tombs.
(The federal government has a serious problem with overclassifying documents; hell, there are still classified documents from *the spanish american war*. The whining by the CIA over the dangers of releasing this information is like the whining of the little boy who cried wolf).
I'm not arguing that Word is inferior to Wordperfect, only that the whole lump of thick GUI wordprocessors are deceptively intuative -- Word moreso than Wordperfect. It is purely subjective as to whether or not that is an advantage.
I would rather that we had ultra-simple wordprocessors, stripped throughly, people could then send their docs off to the local Word or Wordperfect expert in their group.
When I mentioned bloat it was in reference to data bloat from OLE. The problem I encounter in the field is end-users who cut and paste, only to have objects inserted in their documents... All they really want is CGMs. Most are happy after I explain to them what has happened to their document, and the difference between embedded objects and pasted graphics.
IMHO you are absolutely correct that you cannot pick particular features to remove from a wordprocessor in order to simplify things. But not everybody needs to have a wordprocessor.
I suppose my ideal would be a complex viewer alongside a simple wordprocessor. People could collaborate by sending people gently formatted rich text and in-line graphics (without layout information). For the mostpart simple rich text environments such as Lotus Notes are perfect for this sort of thing. People don't have to worry about page formatting, or even files.
The end result would hopefully be a workforce which respects that Word and Wordperfect are complicated programs and should not be used for hundred-page customer proposals by people who just "figure it out as they go". To stay on topic, they might even respect that erasing super-confidential information from a document might not be as intuative as it seems.
3 months early. So if there were no nuclear wapons the war would have ended months ealier. Dropping nukes on Japan saved no allied lives, what so ever. It actually cost allied lives as the allies rejected the Nips peace offerring & extended the war by 3 months, plus there were allied prisoners of wars in both those cities, that died because of those nukes. Let me explain Arround August '95, the British Home Office & Foreign office, released many 1000s' of documents (classified under the official secrets act),pertaining to the war, as their 50 year status had expired - There maybe many other secrets about the war, we have yet to find out about, as apparently there are many other documents that were classified for 100 years. Basically it was all Poland's fault that Hiroshima & Nagasaki were nuked...... What happened was that when the Germans invaded Poland, the Russians moved in & took the Eastern half - Mad Adulf & Uncle Joe had got Ribbentrop & Molotov to work this senario out, when they were together signing their little non-agression pact, earlier on. After the invasion the Poles formed a 'Goverment in Exile' in France, which later moved to the UK. The Western allies recognised them as the official Polish goverment. Meanwhile the Russians had made their own Polish Communist cronies form their own Polish Goverment in Eastern Poland, which they had intergrated into USSR as another Soviet Republic (well what was left of Eastern Poland after they gave a bit to the Belarus SSR, & another bit to the Ukrainian SSR). Well after Operation Barbarossa (the German invasion of Russia), these Polish communists were forced to run back to Uncle Joe in Moscow, & form their own Polish 'Goverment in Exile' in Russia proper. So now we had 2 Polish Goverments in exile. Well any way, during their many pow-wows together, FDR, Winnie & Uncle Joe finally agreed that the post war Polish Goverment should include representitives from both Polish pretenders, in London & Lublin. By arround the Summer of '44 Hitler's panzers were in full retreat & there were already Soviet T34s' rolling into the suburbs of Warsaw, across the Vistula from Warsaw proper. The Russian radio stations were beaming across the frontier telling the Poles to revolt, to speed up their liberation from the Nasis'. The Polish exiles in London saw their chance & ordered the Home Army in Poland to revolt against the German occupiers. A funny thing then happen, the Red Army all of a sudden ground to a halt at the Vistula, thereby giving the Germans a free hand to crush the Warsaw Uprising. Once the Uprising was over the Russian T34 tanks then moved forward again & 'liberated' Warsaw. Stalin then 'forgot' about his agreament, & had his Lublin exiles form a goverment on their own. When some of the London exiles flew over to join them, having no Home Army to protect them, they promptly dissappeared. Winnie & FDR (& later Truman) were enraged. Meanwhile in the Pacific, things weren't going well for the Japanese, & by the early Summer of '45 & the German defeat, they knew there time was up. So the Imperial Goverment started to send out surrender feelers to the allies, via the Russian & Swiss Embassies (Russian did not enter the war with Japan till August) - this was 3 months before Hiroshima. They included only one condition amongst their surrender terms - that they be aloud to keep their Emporer. These were rejected, even though (as the secret war ministry documents show) the US had already decided that the Japanese could keep their Emporer after the war; as it would then be less likely for a communist Goverment to form there. Seeing as Stalin had agreed years earlier, that he would enter the war against Japan, 3 months after Germany surrended, you can see why Truman & Churchill were so concern. Especially when you considered what happened with Poland. Well any way beacause of what Stalin did to Poland, Churchill & Truman decided to show that they had 'Mojo' to equal Stalins red Army 'Mojo' (you got to remember that the Western Armies were nothing compared to the Red Army then - to every German Soldier fighting the Western allies, there were another 10 fighting on the Eastern front - there was no way even D-Day would have been successful if the Russians werent tying down so many German men. Plus the allies had nothing to compare with the 1000s' of Russian T34, KV & JS tanks, other than almost obsolete Shermans, & much smaller numbers too.). So Churchill obliterated Dresden with his 'Mojo' - RAF's Bomber Command, & Truman was advised by Stimson or paterson (I forget which) to reject Japans surrender feelers, so he could demenstrate his 'Mojo', through nuking Hiroshima & Nagasaki. The War Ministry papers also show that the nukes, were not even the main reason for their unconditional surrender to the US, but just a face saving way out, as the Russians had by now entered the war against Japan & Marshal Zukhov's Red armies had just Blitzkreiged the whole of Manchuria & Korea, & also crossed over & taken Sakhalin & the Kuril Islands, so were now within sight of Japan itself. After taking 2 million Japanese prisoners, including over 150 generals & 'liberating' more land from Japanese occupation than the Americans, Australians & British had in the previous 4 years of war. There was one thing the Japanese top brass feared more than unconditional surrender to the Americans, & that was an invasion by the Red Army. Another swaying facter in the droping of the bomb was that it cost 2 billion to develop, & Truman was worried what the publics reaction would be if the secret of the bomb (& its cost) ever came out, without him actually using it. Afterall news of the Baatam death march, etc, had just filtered through to the American public in the preceeding months. War is war, & the reality is there's no rules in war but the rules of the victors. Afterall Dresden, Hiroshima & Nagasaki was just as bad as any of the 'war crimes' of the Nasis or the Nips - mind you, revenge is sweet. Thats why I dont beleive Japan should have to pay compensation for war crimes (such as what the British veterans & the Korean woman want), otherwise the US should have to pay compensation for the nukes, & the Brits for Dresden etc. Also it was up to the goverments of the day to set reparation claims when Japans signed formal peace traeties with the 48 allied nations in '52. In other words the Korean Women & the British veterans etc should really be now sueing their own goverments now & not Japan.
Presentation should be separate from content.
But in Word they are combined. You are thinking of things such as LaTeX in which presentation is separated from content. You can take the same LaTeX document and present it in any number of ways, simply by changing the style files you use it with. Most people who use Word do not use styles, and even if they did they view their documents with those styles applied; AFAIK there is no `view as plain text' option. One should not be concerned with the look of a document; mark it up properly and use a well-written set of styles; this guarantees excellent output.
Why do we need autoformatting? We convert plain text to...plain text.
Embedding? Why should a document need anything but pictures in it? Like it or not, the vast majority of documents will be printed, not viewed on-screen. If they are to be viewed on-screen, then use a computer-specific tool, not something which was designed to output printed text. Use the right tool for the right job.
Spell checker? This is the greatest nuisance in Word. I happen to use the (correct) British spellings for most words, and since the versions of Word at work do not have the International English dictionaries I am stuck. I turn it off. Spelling is not something which everyone agrees on; that's fine and IMHO as it should be. The idea that spellings should be standardised is very modern, dating as recently as the introduction of the printing press.
Master document? Most every text layout program I know of allows one to include other files within the main one.
Your problem is that you are looking for personal computer, WYSIWYG-type software when Unix has something far, far better, and has had for quite some time now.
I used LaTeX for all my papers my final year of college, and I noted that my grades were rather significantly better. People appreciate well-laid out text, not the ugly stuff spat out by Word.
So - going back a bit in history just to show the obvious flaw in your argument - Nazi Germany should have been left alone - they would clearly have stopped after some natural amount of time, after killing/gasing everybody not of arjan descent (including most of Russia).
First, US was an ally with Britain, France and Russia -- as opposed to KLA that was no one's ally -- formally was and remains a terrorist organization.
Second, Nazi Germany was left alone even though it invaded US allies, so actually US extremely poorly performed its own obligations as an ally. US participated in insignificant fighting in Africa, and other things that didn't significantly affect the events in Europe until it became absolutely clear that Russia will not be destroyed (all USSR territory was back in Soviets' hands), and Germany will be defeated, this way or another. Not until that happened, US started pulling its shit together to actually attack Germany in any meaningful way.
As I have said it many times, US behavior in WWII in Europe was extremely selfish, bordering on being a traitor to other allies.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
But that's not behind the refusal of many people to read Microsoft Word documents they receive. The reason is much simpler: it's a nuisance and it's expensive.
At work, we have a site license for Word, but maintaining a separate computer just to read mail containing Word files is a lot of work and money. For private correspondence, I would have to buy my own copy of Word, which is more expensive than my whole computer. In addition to all that, I would have to spend time learning how to use Word, and I would have to live with the risk of computer viruses.
I consider sending Word documents around a sign of bad manners or ignorance on the part of the sender. It's roughly the equivalent of giving me a set of Porsche hub cabs for my birthday and expecting me to buy the Porsche to go with it.
I respond to such messages politely that I am sorry, but I cannot read them. Nothing more needs to be said; it's none of the sender's business why I can't read them, nor do I lecture them on Microsoft, Linux, or open source. I suggest plain text, HTML, or uncompressed PDF as alternatives that I can read. It's then up to the sender to decide whether they want to resend the message or not. If they don't, it can't have been that important.
What is the New York Times being blamed for? Not being effective enough in their self-censorship? The New York Times is a newspaper; they publish the news. So they get some news, and they are going to publish it. But the CIA says, "wait! we didn't intend to give you that information." So the NYT graciously agrees to censor the information, but they screw it up. BFD. The New York Times is not in the business of censoring information. The New York Times is in the business of publishing information. You don't give documents to a newspaper without checking that you can safely release them first. It was the CIA that screwed up. The moment the information left the CIA's control, it should be assumed that "the enemy" (whoever they might be) has the information. If the New York Times knows how to keep secrets, why doesn't the military hand over all the records from Area 51, and ask them to only publish the parts that should be printed?
If Jim Young hadn't published the information without the redactions, the information would still be there. Determined parties would still have that information. The only difference is that people would have (incorrectly) believed that the information was secure.
The argument is identical to disclosure of security holes. Someone (Jim Young) finds a vulnerability. He notifies the vendor (NYT) so that they can take action. When it becomes apparent that the hole is being exploited (others are publishing the names), secrecy becomes irrelevant, and the only issue is making sure everyone is aware of the hole ASAP, so Young published the names.
Does anyone think that if Jim Young hadn't published the names, Iranian intelligence wouldn't be able to get them out of the file?
Does anyone think that if it hadn't been widely publicized, Iranian intelligence wouldn't have eventually found out about the problem?
Blaming the NYT or Jim Young is like blaming Cult of the Dead Cow for the lack of security in Microsoft products.
tracking revisions are a different thing. word essentially saves diffs of files. using the standard unix utility called strings to read word documents you'll see that word files are frequently saved as diffs.
how to turn off that "feature"? turn off "quick save."
kevin
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
This is not a flame.
It's amazing how many people are rushing to condemn the man who published the un-redacted file, and how many people are screaming to investigate the New York Times because they published the redacted file without understanding the file format, and how many people are crying foul because the CIA leaked the document in the first place.
Isn't this SLASHDOT?!
People here don't holler if Microsoft leaks proprietary technical specs... they laugh. People here don't whine if DeCSS circumvents runtime-redaction, they propagate the utility. People here don't find it immoral to expose CyberPatrol blacklists... they find it immoral to blacklist at all.
"Information wants to be free," they chime.
Given this strange behavior to this story, I have to ask. Is it "information wants to be free, except when lives are at stake"? Is it "information wants to be free, especially since beer isn't free"? Is it "information wants to be free, because I can't afford to pay programmers"? Or is it "information wants to be free, because Courtney Love teaches us how we gotta stick it to the man"?
Principles are principles.
If you don't believe "information wants to be free", then get off the pot and stop crusading. If you do believe it, then why are we worried here? The guy who finally published this unredacted form basically said he had two reasons,
force the hand of the State Department, letting these families know they may be in danger
force the review of critical information management within our own intelligence community
Both of these reasons focus on exposing more information than just this document. His tactics also demonstrate that information wants to be free. He also showed that releasing information was a powerful proactive strategy, not a secret reactive strategy. Releasing information doesn't mean giving up all your control. He took control when he showed his hand.
He was doing you a favor.
[
If US wouldn't interfere, Serbs would defeat KLA (killing some but mostly frightening the rest, causing them to disband), keep the control over Kosovo, and would be forced to give some semi-autonomy to Kosovo, letting some Albanians into local governmental structures.
... there's *no* evidence at all that I can detect that the Milosevic government would have done *anything at all* to bring the Kosovars back into the government or give them back the autonomy which they had had until his government came to power.
Do you have any evidence for this, or is it just blather? Since the Serbs had essentially forced all Albanians out of government structures *ten years before the war*, and had denied the peopel living there *the right to teach in their own language*, and had gone to great extents to drive non-Serbs out of the parts of Croatia and Bosnia under their control, I think the outcome you paint is unlikely.
More likely --- and what we were afraid of --- was the Serbs driving the Albanians out, causing a massive refugee crisis in Albania (a country which is *awash* in guns because of a brief civil war a couple of years ago which followed on the heels of the collapse of a popular pyramid scheme) and Macedonia, and destablizing both countries.
Yes, this is a modern-day domino effect. And it's reasonable to question if it would have happened that way --- certainly the refugee crisis which *did* happen failed to destabilize either country. But
"They are interested in getting work done, and you are preventing them from getting work done."
I am also interested in getting work done. Having to reboot into Windows to read something that turns out to be a macro-virus prevents me from working, too.
"Even if/when the office suites under Unix catch up with MS/Office..."
Name one useful feature that Word has that can't be done on Unix.
"...people will still remember that "arrogant Unix asshole" who told them that Unix couldn't read their Word docs."
Ah, the old straw-man argument. Who said anything about "arrogant" and "asshole"? When I get Word documents (or requests for Word documents) and say "I'm sorry, I don't have access to Microsoft Word." Depending on the situation, I give a list of alternatives (plain text, html, etc). I am polite but firm. If asked why I can't read (or supply) a Word file, I use the (completely applicable) word "proprietary".
Besides, what am I *supposed* to do? Ignore the document?
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
From reading John Young's dialog with the NYT, it seems his reasoning was twofold:
1) Since other people were unmasking the names, the information was no longer known to only him and the NYT, and was therefore in the public domain.
2) In the interest of security, he decided that by publishing the names, everyone would be on an even playing field, and any people involved in the operation would know that they had been exposed. (Rather than not knowing if they were named and if so, who had uncovered the names already.)
He had a hard decision to make, and I think he did the right thing. The moral questions of full disclosure get a lot hairier when it's potentially peoples' lives on the line, not just RealServer remote DoS attacks.
Does anyone use any formats other than .doc universally? No.
Bzzzt. Thanks for playing. Dan, show our contestant the consolation prize...
There is one format which is universally used, which everyone connected to the Internet can read. That format is text. Over the last thirty years the text format has grown to encompass conventions for the enclosure of every form of content imaginable. Most users have multiple text readers on their machines: cat, less, more, Notepad, SimpleText, Eudora, MailSmith, Emailer, Netscape, IE, Opera, slrn, strn, NewsWatcher &c. ad infinitum.
There is no question that there is a benefit to a universal document exchange format that everyone understands.
You're right. We had one: text. It was used to exchange information--you know: data, useful stuff, what is needed. Now we have .doc, which is used for the interchange of data covered in dressing, gravy and all the fixins. Why? What is added by allowing every second-rate secretary to use seven fonts in a purchase order?
to the tune of Oh Give Me a Home... Oh give me the days
Of the ASCII term haze
Where seldom was heard
A proprietary word
And the data flew swiftly all day!
It may be worse -- it may indicate that New York Times journalists actually had clearance for things like that. But for what purpose simple journalists would have it?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Depends. If you're in business, what you are supposed to do is get Office for Windows or the Mac. The business world has standardized on Word format. Resent it all you want, but welcome to the real world.
Everything that happend in the real world changes what the "real world" is. Even this message where I call you a Microsoft sheep and one of major causes of the bullshit "proprietary standards" dominance, changes the "real world" toward more widespread understanding of it.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
From a user perspective, printer independent printing can't be done on Unix in any practical sense.
That's odd, since for years the computer world exchanged, on Unix systems (and others), documents in a true printer-independent format: PostScript. Remember the days when we cursed our personal computers because we could just cat doc.ps > /dev/lpr? And for those of us with non-PS printers, there were all sorts of transparent filters. We were able to transfer documents, with layout and everything, exactly as written, if we needed to. Which was precious seldom...
It's like the example of one's root password. That is information which must remain privileged. Same with spies, military plans &c.
I think it's just incorrect to say we're :"universally hated"
...
My experience says otherwise.
Could you share your experience with us? I've spent a significant portion of my life overseas, in just about every country in western and central europe (including Croatia); while I have percieved a great deal of frustration with American *arrogance*, I have met only one person that I thought blindly hated this country and its people. From what I can tell, it's *not* universal.
All countries invaded by US in its history except Japan were weaker than US -- and only Japan happened to actually start a war with US.
Arguably Germany started a war with the US; it declared war as soon as we declared war on Japan.
Considering that Cuba, the most US-hating country in the world, has a US military base on its territory
Are you aware of the conditions under which that base came into existence? We fought a (probably unnecessary) war with Spain -- as a result of which we ended up with control of Cuba. Instead of turning it into a colony (which Spain had done), we made it an independant country, and leased the base from them --- and that government was quite happy about the arrangement.
It wasn't until after the government was overthrown that the base became an issue.
Do you have any evidence for this, or is it just blather? Since the Serbs had essentially forced all Albanians out of government structures *ten years before the war*, and had denied the peopel living there *the right to teach in their own language*, and had gone to great extents to drive non-Serbs out of the parts of Croatia and Bosnia under their control, I think the outcome you paint is unlikely.
That was going on-and-off over decades after WWII -- never reaching the extent of open war before Milosevic/KLA.
More likely --- and what we were afraid of --- was the Serbs driving the Albanians out, causing a massive refugee crisis in Albania (a country which is *awash* in guns because of a brief civil war a couple of years ago which followed on the heels of the collapse of a popular pyramid scheme) and Macedonia, and destablizing both countries.
That mostly started after US interfered. BTW, Albania was the worst place in Europe even in the time of peace.
Yes, this is a modern-day domino effect. And it's reasonable to question if it would have happened that way --- certainly the refugee crisis which *did* happen failed to destabilize either country. But ... there's *no* evidence at all that I can detect that the Milosevic government would have done *anything at all* to bring the Kosovars back into the government or give them back the autonomy which they had had until his government came to power.
US interfered at the time in the middle of civil war. Definitely Yugoslavian government was not in a position to do anything meaningful in Kosovo at the time. Common sense indicates that no country ever benefits from foreign involvement in its civil war.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Of course, Word had done a partial save. And since my lecturer had made the mock exam by taking the real exam and modifying it, he had a heart attack when the student showed him his printout of the mock exam and said "this is different to another copy someone else printed."
The absolutely laughable thing is, my lecturer then experimented with the 'Fast Save' feature in his version of Word and discovered it did fast saves even when he told it not to.
As a result, nobody on campus spreads stuff around in Word documents anymore. Especially when they're sending their (judiciously censored) letter to the Vice-Chancellor...
All the while Word uses a cryptic, closed and proprietary document format. That is a huge negative. In the real world, I've seen hundred-page documents crash and burn because somebody tried to embed an object. Funny, Word was able to save the document, it's a shame it wasn't able to load it again.
Other things to consider is that the vast majority of end users only use a minority of features. Most of the people in the real world whom I deal with barely know a tab from an indent from a clump of spaces. They're confused when they change printers and their documents reformat on them.
I would so very much rather give them something like Abiword or even Wordpad and let them write their docs and prepare their graphics, then have somebody who knows what they're doing sit down with the person for an hour and slam everything together.
I've seen sooo much wasted time from lousy features which are half-implemented.
Although Windows and Office have been getting better, I still have to tell people "The reason your document is 34MB, is because you were using cut and paste... that embeds objects by default. this is unreliable, unintuative, unstable and bloated. It's been that way since the feature was first implemented."
So what can Word and all other ridiculous wordprocessors do better than a feature stripped rich text editor?
For the computer literate, they let you mailmerge, save time with styles, create labels, import complex charts while producing professional looking results...
The computer illiterate however, can waste hours on unfriendly though deceptively intuative interfaces. It can also get people killed as critical information is leaked when people think something is deleted. Microsoft and the rest of the industry's philosophy towards user friendliness is inherently flawed. Precision first, user friendliness second... let people read the manual or be fired for their incompetance.
WordPerfect was great... people just had to pick up a manual. And please, don't compare Word 2000 to WordPerfect which hasn't significantly improved since version 6.0 Only recently has Word advanced to the point that I feel a little comfortable that I can trust the software to format my documents without relying upon reveal codes.
Don't kid yourself, the only reason Word is so successful is because of marketing and proprietary formats.
I personally can well imagine the US being more afraid of Josif Stalin than of Hitler, at least until 1942. Stalin has already proven that he is capable of killing millions of people. It was not at all clear until last 1943 / early 1944 that Nazi Germany started the extermination of jews.
I can well imagine the US letting the USSR alone against Nazi Germany - that would have been a shame. Nevertheless the US did send supply to the USSR, which probably tipped the balance in favor of USSR troops in the Stalingrad battle. After Stalingrad all the production facilities in western Siberia (and probably even worse, the oil in the Kaukasus) would have been exposed to the germans. Nevertheless I agree with you that the hesitation of the US to enter the war did cost millions of lives in the USSR, and that cannot be forgiven.
France's participation in WWII was mostly symbolic, given that they were occupied during the decisive stage of the war, the real participants were USSR, US and Britain, against Germany, Italy and Japan. (sure there were other countries present as well, most of which participated in heroic and important battles.)
--Coke
Bullshit. I use a PC at work and do the same damn thing. I don't have Word installed on my NT server and my boss always sends me crap that I can't open because he is too lazy to send plain text emails. I have Acrobat installed outta necessity but thats about it. All others, I end up having to go to another room or pull out my powerbook to read the attachments.
Am I keeping NT Server users down by saying this? NT Servers are useless because you can't run Word and WebServers and File Servers and thing else on the same box (errr...BillG would hae ya think ya can though...probably the reason most geeks can't run a stable NT Box is that they can't realize the limitations of the OS and install crap as they do their linux boxes...I can't kill my Linux boxes no matter how much I install, though it sure does slow things down).
Anyways, not trying to be too offensive about this, but ya got to realize it happens on the same platform as the sender is sending.
blah
clif
And also, when one gets screwed, he won't readily admit it, so they grin and bear it.
--
Here's my mirror
I frequently get sent word documents by various people, being a unix user I of course send back the usual note about proprietory formats etc etc..
.pdf for sending out messages.
But I've found is more effective to also go int othe file with a text editor and extract bits of text which they've deleted, along iwth other information the user may no t want me to see.
Recently I received such a message from someone which handled PR for my particular section of the NI govt. There was some really dodgy info in there, and afdter returning it to the sender, the govt department got sent aplaintext policy document about not using MS Word or anything more complicated that
People should go looking at these files - there's a lot of info out there to be had
What I'm trying to accomplish is to get Slashdot readers to read the risks forum.
I feel that's very important.
I think the future of society is at stake if we programmers don't take heed to what's regularly discussed in risks.
If you look at the rest of my posts, you see I have no problem getting karma. It's just a matter of posting relevant, interesting, on-topic posts.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Could you share your experience with us? I've spent a significant portion of my life overseas, in just about every country in western and central europe (including Croatia); while I have percieved a great deal of frustration with American *arrogance*, I have met only one person that I thought blindly hated this country and its people. From what I can tell, it's *not* universal.
If you are expecting irrational, cartoonish hatred, this is not what I am talking about.
Arguably Germany started a war with the US; it declared war as soon as we declared war on Japan.
I an talking about a territory of Germany in any meaningful way, not diplomatic arrangements, fighting far away from both countries, selling weapons, bombing territory without attacking it and other peripherial activities.
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2) by aphrael (burble@aphrael.org) on 11:00 AM June 25th, 2000 PDT (#262) (User Info) http://www.burble.org/aphrael I think it's just incorrect to say we're :"universally hated" My experience says otherwise. Could you share your experience with us? I've spent a significant portion of my life overseas, in just about every country in western and central europe (including Croatia); while I have percieved a great deal of frustration with American *arrogance*, I have met only one person that I thought blindly hated this country and its people. From what I can tell, it's *not* universal. All countries invaded by US in its history except Japan were weaker than US -- and only Japan happened to actually start a war with US. Arguably Germany started a war with the US; it declared war as soon as we declared war on Japan. Considering that Cuba, the most US-hating country in the world, has a US military base on its territory ... Are you aware of the conditions under which that base came into existence? We fought a (probably unnecessary) war with Spain -- as a result of which we ended up with control of Cuba. Instead of turning it into a colony (which Spain had done), we made it an independant country, and leased the base from them --- and that government was quite happy about the arrangement. It wasn't until after the government was overthrown that the base became an issue.
So, some governments deserve sovereignty, some don't, and US is free to decide, which is which depending on how they support US? The world can't run on rules like this -- at least it will never be stable that way.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
BTW, I for one agree with him posting the report on a 47-year-old event, because information wants to be free. So there.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Invasion in Normandy happened at the time when Germany was if not dead but lethally wounded -- there was no possible turn of events could end with Nazi surviving
... in 1945, the Nazis had developed:
Someone else has pointed out that there were years of planning for the invasion. But
* bombers capable of reaching New York and flying back to Germany
* guided air-to-air missiles
* short-launch helicopter planes
* stealth technology
Sure, their economy was wrecked and their infantry was lagging. But their *technology* was good enough that if the war had gone on six months longer they would have started to push back --- and if they'd been able to concentrate *all* of their military on Russia instead of dividing it on two sides, they would have been able to hold off the invasion. (Similarly, if Russia had sued for peace the way it did in 1917, and Germany had been free to concentrate all of its military on Normandy, the allies would have been pushed back into the water).
I'm aware that this contradicts what you learned in school. I've got a Russian friend (ethnic Russian, grew up in Moldova) who was *shocked* when I pointed out that Poland at one point had stretched as far east as Smolensk --- he wasn't taught *that*, either.
I'm in boston. It's now 5am. Which means 2am in California. Not sure if it's 3 or 4 where the slashdot guys are. The story says it was posted at 3:39am. Dosen't seem to me that they're "just waking up". Get over it.
The Word feature to turn off is Fast Saves
So why was it on by default?
What other security leaks do they have in there?
We know they're squirreling away in word files lots of identifying information about the people who create and those who edit the file. The whold WORLD found out after the the FBI used it to track down the author of a Word macro virus.
So obviously, if you're:
- a government functionary charged with keeping things secret,
- a businessman or office worker handling the trade secrets that give your company a competitive edge,
- a professional responsible for keeping your clients' business data, medical histories, or similar data confidential,
- a whistle-blower,
- a revolutionary writing a manefesto, or
- darn near anyone who has information to keep sectet
you should NOT be using Microsoft's tools.
I wonder how many more people will be harmed before the general public has this figured out?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Spying is one thing, leading a coup is another. Americans should realize that universal hatred for them and their government is caused by things like this, and instead of throwing billions into missile "defense" they can just spend some hours thinking how can they incorporate basic respect for sovereignty of other countries -- and yes, that includes ones that do not share any of "American Values".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
1.) Reality Master 101's comment was in no way "flamebait."
2.) One way to commit *nix advocacy is to send a reply email to the person who sent you the two megabyte Word file as follows:
"Please resend your letter of the 23rd in text format. Our mail system detected a macro virus attached to the email you sent and the antivirus program automaticallly deleted the attachment, so I got your email but the document was gone. FYI, our network manager told me that it was the particularly destructive W97M.Stand.c virus which silently installs itself in Microsoft Office and exactly two weeks later wipes out all data on infected systems all across the user's office network."
OK, so (someone will complain) that's dishonest. But it's funny too, and that's important. Anyway, in the long view, if you can help him break his habit, your little white lie could be doing a poor cruelly longsuffering MSOffice addict a big future favor. Because after all things like W97M.Stand do exist.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
If this dude publishes those names, and someone dies, he's a murderer, and I hope he gets thrown in prison.
As far as the times criticising anyone who scans their documents for security flaws, they should be whipped. the times should be heavily criticised for this failure to adequately insure the names were removed from the document. they should be thankful someone wrote in.
but for anyone to continue publishing the names...once the problem has been exposed...if that's not a crime, it should be.
incidentally, i did not see the list published, only that the times reporter was "angry" that someone exposed their failure to safeguard the names and emailed them (?!).
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Performer Guy writes:
The CIA and the Times have already done the endangering. It seems like the Times has a lot to answer for in this. How the heck did they get the source of a 'secret' CIA document in the first place? Ultimately it has to be someone in the CIA who is responsible for this foul up.
It isn't a foul-up unless you believe that nothing the CIA has ever done is deserving of public scrutiny.
In fact, the CIA has been attempting to erase the record of its coup-related activities for several years. FOIA requests in 1997 revealed a number of "missing" documents.
[snip] This is simply amazing. I think the Times accusations have more to do with covering their own ass than concern for their unfortunate victims.
Well, it was a mistake, and clearly one they didn't intend to make. But I don't know that I consider the names in this list "victims".
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Invading a sovereign country has nothing to do with 'freedom', no matter what the invader thinks of himself
Never?
I would argue that the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia (which expelled the Khmer Rouge) was a great leap forward for freedom.
How can you possibly draw a parallel between downloading mp3's and releasing secret information by the CIA on the names of their agents? How the f*ck are the two related? They're not! The information wants to be free crowd isn't a bunch of absolutists - we recognize that there must be limits. Some information shouldn't be free - you'll note I don't publish my root password.
By and far, this mandra is related to a subconscious counter-culture and anti-authoritarian attitude which has grown on us as a result of circumstances. Circumstances like watching our rights as "consumers" and citizens be systematically stripped away while calling it a "win in the battle for personal choice". We were taunted by our peers, ejected from our school system, for wanting to know how the system worked.
Yeah, there is some history here fella, and it would do you some good to talk to people on the other side of the fence before going off and trying to label everyone - something you'll find is usually met with freezing contempt amongst geeks.
But people aren't stupid - the history of the US is marked by slavery, injustice, power grabs, and world domination, masked by a thin veneer of ideals to boost national morale and evoke patriotism among the more naive sections of the
population.
Whereas the countries they're fleeing are marked by sweetness and light. Shiny happy Socialist dictatorships.
Some even think the Gulf war wasn't about oil.
Of course it was about oil.
But when the price of oil goes up, people die. It's that plain and simple, and I'm not talking about the people killed in the Gulf War.
The areas of this country that don't have abundant supplies of Natural Gas use that oil to heat houses. Every winter, people die because they can't afford to heat their homes.
When the price of gasoline goes up, small towns lose the ability to pay for proper ambulance service. Response times go up, people die.
--
Given this strange behavior to this story, I have to ask. Is it "information wants to be free, except when lives are at stake"? Is it "information wants to be free, especially since beer isn't free"? Is it "information wants to be free, because I can't afford to pay programmers"? Or is it "information wants to be free, because Courtney Love teaches us how we gotta stick it to the man"?
I stuck a camera in your bedroom when you weren't suspecting it, and I vidcap'ed your masturbation technique. Yeah, I know--I shouldn't have tresspassed. And I'll own up to that part. But now I've digitized all this information--your hand movements, the naughty pictures you look at, the beastiality...
Digitized video images is also information. And information should be free, regardless of what that information is, right? Expect my anonymous posts to be put up on alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.masturbation for all to see.
Don't worry--there was no camera. And there was no digitized video. But the above is ment to illustrate a point, which is that there is a balance point where information should and should not be free. Sometimes one's privacy is more important than the free flow of information about a person--or are you selectively reading only the articles on Linux and skipping the ones on Doubleclick?
What we're dealing with here is an example of the latter: the desire to preserve one's privacy for something they did 30 years ago (and which could get them killed) is greater than the need for the free flow of abstract, impersonal scientific or historical information. While the consequences are greater (they're getting killed is probably worse than the imbarasment you would feel if vidcaps of your masturbation made it on the alt.sex groups), the principle is the same: the need for privacy must outweigh the need for the free flow of information.
Voyeurism is not scientific inquiry.
Maybe to report on it? Gee, I though that was what journalists in a country that prides itself on its "free press" (but really has a handful of megaconglomerates pushing their interests with their media possessions) were supposed to do.
Last time I checked, press is supposed to represent the public, not the government. Of course, adding corporations to "the public" already turns the whole idea into a farce, but having government agencies' interests secretly influencing it crosses the line.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
That's because most of the unsuccessful-at-home people who want to immigrate to the US are the most vulnerable to hollywood's propaganda machine.
Then explain why we have one of the lowest EMMIGRATION rates in the world.
They get here, and now they see for themselves how we are compared to where they were.
And they stay. Over 800,000 more per year, and they stay. Even more want in, but are kept out.
Explain how your statement fits in with that fact.
--
There are two types of information transfers: official and personal. Personal transfers are the business of the concerned parties, and hence not our concern. But official--business, gov't, educational &c.--transfers are. The purpose of these transfers is to exchange data in a usable form. It is not to be pretty or attractive. One does not dress up 30GB of atmospheric data with pictures of clouds.
The problem is that these transfers have not been computerised. Open, well-thought out formats should be proposed and used so that this information might be transferred in a comprehensible and portable fashion. Comprehensible, because if one cannot understand information, then it is garbage. Portable, because oen never knows what tomorrow may bring and what the requirements then will be.
It just so happens that we have the perfect format for data exchange of text: text. A purchase order should either be sent over a special Purchase Order Protocol ('cept POP's already taken), or sent as text. A paper--which needs formatting--should be encoded in such a way that presentation is seperated from content. A discussion among colleagues concerning the purchase of a new web server should be conducted over email, in text. Why add the useless overhead of Word? It slows things down, fills up disk space and is in many other ways sub-optimal.
Text can be made attractive as well as expressive: I can set my mail reader to use any font I desire; I can attach images in the appropriate places; I can use the ASCII notations for emphasis and the rest. But, unfortunately, that requires that my brain be engaged.
I handle the whole MS Word problem by silently throwing away Word documents I receive in my personal mail. When I send documents, they are either plain text or marked-up text; either is perfectly legible to the casual reader. Sometimes I use image files (PostScript, PDF, JPEG or PNG), if that is nec.
BTW, charts and diagrams should be images, in formats readable by anyone, or if important, they should be in the form of data, which can be easily interpreted by the user as he wishes. One of the things I hate is just getting a chart. I want the data, so I can look at it, analyse it and generate my own charts. You'd be surprised at how easy it can be to make a chart lie...
I pointed out to John that the same feat could be accomplished using a plugin for Acrobat called Pitstop.
All rental IBMs at Kinkos have this plugin, so basically the Times PDF was vulnerable from the word Go. I'm sure that uber-intelligence agenices has already figured out how to remove the redaction long before Mr. Young posted his revelations.
Just open the file in Acrobat, click, click, delete... full disclosure.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Germans developed a lot of technology (I doubt about stealth though, as it would be extremely impractical at the moment), however it was nowhere close to being ready for production, given the state of German industry by then. Also the war was in the condition when no improvement to anything that files (bombers, missiles, helicopters, spaceships, bows and arrows, slingshots -- anything) will give any advantage to them unless it massively outnumbered anything that Russian had in the air or on the ground. Tanks could help, but there was no progress there, and there was a shortage of copper to make advanced things like electric transmission practical. So they were doomed in any case.
I'm aware that this contradicts what you learned in school. I've got a Russian friend (ethnic Russian, grew up in Moldova) who was *shocked* when I pointed out that Poland at one point had stretched as far east as Smolensk --- he wasn't taught *that*, either.
I don't know where he studied -- definitely not at the place where I did. The definition of "Poland" however is rather foggy over the all time when various stuff existed at its place.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
First of all there is simply no comparison between handing out names of a few people involved in a case of past dirty pool on behalf of the CIA and handing away the technical secret behind how to get from damaging a medium city to levelling a large one. The Progressive has forever raised the stakes in controlling nuclear material. Any enemy government that could previously put together a nuclear bomb can now put together a far more powerful H-bomb. If a terrorist organization managed to deliver a nuclear bomb to New York City previously they could cause serious damage to lower Manhattan. Now they would destroy the whole thing.
That is how serious the question was yet the government could do nothing about it.
Conversely the state secrets revealed by Deep Throat were of tremendous current interest. Did Deep Throat violate national security? No question! Yet the government simply does not have the right to investigate Woodward to find out his sources.
Let me throw another item in the mix. The Pentagon Papers. The government knew that The Times had classified material. They even knew who it was from, and the approximate contents of said material. Yet they were not allowed to prevent the publication of said material, and they were not allowed to investigate which specific documents the press had.
That decision ultimately got the US out of Vietnam. Had it been done earlier tens of thousands of American lives (and many more Vietnamese ones) would have been saved. Conversely had it been done later, more lives would have been lost.
No, in this relatively minor case the FBI has no grounds to investigate any newspaper unless they have direct evidence that the Times was engaged in directly illegal activities such as breaking and entering. Sure, lives are at stake. Well lives were at stake when the US put a puppet regime in power, and lives were at stake when his brutal little dictatorship led to an extremist theocracy. Personally I think that the US should be turning over various people who set up other puppet regimes for war crimes. That will not happen, but don't expect me to shed tears if a few names escape the censors.
Freedom and human rights matters more than their petty dictatorships. If I felt otherwise then I would rather that the Soviet Union had won the cold war.
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I think it's just incorrect to say we're "universally hated";
My experience shows otherwise.
and as for showing basic respect for the sovereignty of other countries, you're right. To a point. We've gotten involved in some pretty shady dealings, which the Iranian incident is a perfect example of, but we also have a habit of not invading countries weaker than us, something which just about every major power in human history couldn't avoid doing.
What kind of world do you live in? All countries invaded by US in its history except Japan were weaker than US -- and only Japan happened to actually start a war with US.
Possibly one of the reasons a lot of countries don't mind hosting American military bases.
Considering that Cuba, the most US-hating counry in the world, has an US military base on its territory, I don't think that it can be considering as "not minding" American military bases. More likely treating US as "ridiculously overpowered character" in world politics.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
When you copy a range of cells from a Ecxel spreadsheet document to, for example, send in an email, you don't just copy the range of cells, you copy the whole document with the range of cells highlighted. When you look in the mail, it looks fine, but when you double click the spreadsheet object to edit it, you can scroll through the spreadsheet, move from sheet to sheet using CTRL-PAGEDOWN/PAGEUP, and etc.
We found this out in our organisation recently when accounts copied pieces out of a salaries spreadsheet to give to managers, thinking they were only sending out the details of each managers department, but in fact sending the whole spreadsheet with details of company wide salaries ! Fortunately nothing bad came of this, but yet another example of Microsoft not planning their products for privacy and security. One can easily imagine this having much more serious consequences.
My thoughts are if you have anything you want to send where leaked data may be an issue, save your Word Document or Spreadsheet as text, and then import it back in and reformat. This of course may not always be practical for 100 page documents or whatever, but you know you're safe.
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
The Central Intelligence Agency's charter is to "spy" on foreign nations and report back their findings.
Which begs a question that no-one here seems to be asking, which is "what is spying?"
In the 40's and 50's, long before the Internet and global reporting by media outlets, when even a simple road map of the highways in the Soviet Union were classified, "spying" was basically trying to go out and get an accurate picture of events in the world. It may sound odd to us, but much of that "spying" included things like making accurate road maps and getting an accurate report of events such as uprisings, troup movements, and to profile reasonably accurate psychological profiles of foreign world leaders so that we could try to second guess what these leaders would do. All stuff which we pretty much take forgranted thanks to CNN and the Internet.
By the way, I know about the road maps because my uncle's job in the 50's was to take U-2 pictures and produce accurate road maps of the Soviet Union. And yes, the very thing that we Americans take forgranted--road maps--were classified as a Soviet state secret.
Today's world is much different than the paranoid world of the cold war. With Moscow relying on tourism, maps are all over the place on the Internet. CNN's reach throughout the world is greater than the CIA in terms of reporting foreign events--why have a report from some mole suggesting troup movement when you can have live video from reporters on the field? And as far as figuring out the psychological profile of world leaders, which is more useful: second-hand guessing from people who may have never met a world leader, or an on-camera interview from a reporter from ABC News where they flat out ask the guy what he's thinking?
I've heard that today, many analysts for the CIA have CNN turned on in the background where they work. That's because more likely than not, CNN will scoop CIA's field spooks in reporting events in the field.
Obviously there are areas where the CIA's field reporting staff (or "spys") are useful: in countries who clamp down on the reporting of information (China, Libya, North Korea). And there is information that cannot be gathered by CNN that our government still needs (such as troup readiness and assessment of the current state of technology, as well as an assessment of what our allies and our enemies may be withholding from us). But by and large, the Internet, media news outlets such as CNN and the desire of closed countries such as China to open themselves to tourism will eventually make most of the spying the CIA performed in the 50's and 60's obsolete.
That's not crypto preventing printing, that's a password-protection preventing printing.
By God, I hope that the CIA doesn't rely on US media.
Unfortunately they do.
And that should go a long ways in explaining why US foreign policy is as screwed up as it is.
it's been mentioned in comp.risks numerous times - ms word files by default are saved by revisions. i got a job offer two years ago that contained the offer letters of five other people. i did quite well i found. :)
the only time i've been a fan of ms products actually.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
What I'm missing is the explanation why they changed their mind. It looks like they wanted to publish before someone else does.
I would like to know if they considered the timing of all this. For someone named in this report, a couple of hours to leave the country might make a big difference.
Don't you find this all rather comforting? I mean, isn't it rather nice to find out that rather than employing a bunch of perfect heartless humanoid clones, that the CIA actually employ regular blokes like you and me, who make mistakes?
The CIA/NSA/GCHQ aren't perfect. They're human. They are little people who have desk jobs just like you and me. They go home at the end of the day and they play bad music too loud and they go to crap parties and they go to the movies and they spill popcorn all down their t-shirt just like you and me.
While you're at it, you might want to go to:
www.open.gov.uk/search/search.htm
My pal from GCHQ (I live near Cheltenham, it's difficult to live around Cheltenham without having friends in GCHQ) laughed and laughed when he tried this. Then he searched for some other phrase that he wouldn't tell me, then he stopped laughing, then he went kind of quiet, and then he said "I think I need to have a few words with some people on Monday"...
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Sad fact is that until people won't die because some secretary doesn't know to use their tools, nobody will care neither for educating personal, nor for making tools do things right, not do things as easy as possible. And even after that not many would care too. Until all "Time"s won't realize they are playing with people's lives, these things will be more and more common.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Your name sounds Russian, and your home page confirms this as your nationality. This kind of criticism from a former inhabitant of the former aggressively expansionist Soviet Union is the pot calling the kettle black. How many times did your own nation attempt and supply things like this?
A lot -- but not nearly as often as US did it, and mostly for some understandable (even though rarely justified) reason, as opposed to just "we want it" what seems to be a translation of "US vital interests". For example, Afghanistan, a poster boy of anti-communist propaganda, actually was a neighboring country, and could represent a military threat to USSR -- this is not a good reason for messing with it, but still a reason. In any case I don't see any relationship between me and communists, whose foreign politics I never supported.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I mean, I would start worrying if the only nations that defend you are China and Cuba, both well-known flagships of democracy ;-)
--Coke
"Universal" means that it's widespread and popular everywhere, not that it's supported by absolutely everyone. For example, the knowledge of the Newton's laws is universal, yet I know a lot of people who don't have it.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
inally, the most important feature that Word has is -- Word compatibility. Face it; Word is the defacto industry standard document interchange format. The other suites are pathetic when it comes to compatibility.
Firstly, it's not so much a defacto standard as it is the unthinking choice. Sort of like calling someone in Sweden and just expecting that they speak english.
Second, Word is fairly pathetic when it comes to compatibility. It can't even interoperate fully with older versions of itself. It's easy to win a beauty contest if you convince the judges that beauty is defined by how much the contestant looks like you.
Finally, I'll bet other software would read word documents just fine if MS didn't go out of it's way to make that a problem.
If you tell someone in a company you are working with jointly, "hey, we need your specs for this product" and they send you a Word doc and you come back with "I don't have word, please send plain text," they're gonna say "these guys can't even read a word .doc, why are we working with them"?
Conversely, I could say "these guys haven't even got half a clue about interoperability, what makes me think we won't end up doing all the adapting while they play solitare? Maybe working with them isn't such a good idea."
The systematic reduction of albanian's rights within Kosovo, and the growing violence (which increased the voilence done by the KLA as well) was a clear sign. Imagine a gunman who has killed 10 people in the room and you are the last one, aiming at you and shouting 'you will die', what are you going to do? Wait until he shoots wether there would have been one more killing? How likely is it that the gunman instead apologizes to you and lets you go?
--Coke
Apparently (this is form the MS trial where the MS legal team submitted in WP format) the word count in Word is not accurate. When the case depends on a brief being less than X words, suddenly having an accurate word cound is of overwhelming importance.
So what, the US should reliniquish some power? Buahah... that's a good one.
This is exactly what US has to do to preserve its security, and this is what international treaties are all about. In the modern world where lives are considered valuable, the threat of terrorism and guerilla-style war is one of major reasons for limiting the offensive power -- "world leader" wouldn't gain much from the ability to destroy all its enemies 50 times if someone blows up a skyscraper in highly-populated area in "world leader" country every week, and all military power in the world can't stop that. Ill will can be a worse burden than participation in power-limiting arrangement that preserves the balance.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Chechnya is a part of Russia, and was one for centuries. And btw, there are probably 10 people there who think that Allah is not a character from not-so-local folklore. I am tired of explaining, what Chechnya is to ignorant Americans that think what CNN tells them.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Ummm, if your password doesn't have the required security rights, it disables print. Like I said, not very secure (you could always do a screen shot. I think they do disable the cut and paste.
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
And yet you speak of "universal hatred for Americans and their government" as if the two were one and the same - I am a US citizen, but have little control over my government. If you don't want to be judged by your government's actions, you shouldn't judge others by the actions of theirs.
I agree -- however US claims to be a (the?) democratic country, with politicians responsible to "The People". Russia (and most of other countries) doesn't -- in fact Soviet Constitution contained direct mentioning of Communist Party being the ruling force, what, however bad and un-democratic, at least was true. Russians' support of changing the political system of former Soviet Union into US-style democracy was largely based on mis-perception that US is an example of country that successfully lives by principles declared in its Constitution at least at the same extent as Soviet Union was based on its own (flawed) one.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
This isn't data destruction; these are people's lives.
John Young did not wave a wand and make the censored material appear out of thin air. Lets cover the facts:
Conjecture: now that the classified information is known to be comprimised, the agencies involved can take steps to mitigate potential damage.
This is the blackest-hat action I've ever seen.
Sorry, but people have, and will continue to, scrutinize the data stored on their systems. This isn't a novelty, back around 1992 or so someone examined a file called STAGE.DAT in their \PRODIGY directory, and publicly questioned why miscellaneous contents of his hard drive are appearing in Prodigy data files. I'm sure Prodigy would have loved the luxury of turning it around and using him as a scapegoat, but just like now it isn't an appropriate solution.
The purported danger was to their children and families. Family is very strong in a lot of cultures, and "Your father was a traitor" can carry a lot of 'weight'...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
They were absolutely sure that people in Iran can't type. Now they think that same people can't run od(1). And they call themselves Intelligence agency. How cool.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
The CIA and the Times have already done the endangering. It seems like the Times has a lot to answer for in this. How the heck did they get the source of a 'secret' CIA document in the first place? Ultimately it has to be someone in the CIA who is responsible for this foul up. It looks like at the very least they should review their procedures on controlling & releasing electronic versions of their documents. This isn't exactly a novel phenomenon. It also seems unlikely that it's the only pdf file out there from the master spies with this problem. I guess there will be some overtime getting worked in Langley right about now.
This is simply amazing. I think the Times accusations have more to do with covering their own ass than concern for their unfortunate victims.
Do you agree that in the last 10 years (eg. starting _after_ the Gulf War) the US foreign policy was pretty sane from a human point of view?
The US bribed^H^H^Hpayed IRA and Ulster Union leaders to stop fighting in Northern Ireland (knock on wood).
They bribed^H^H^H^Hpayed Israel to find the peace process attractive.
They brought fragile but existing peace to Bosnia, and started the same in Kosovo. If you take the preservation of human lives as a universal standard, then there were less people killed in Kosovo this year than in a month (you pick the month) two years ago.
Yes, IMO this peace was worth those innocent ~400 lives caused by the air-raids (as counted by Yugoslav propaganda - not the tens of thousands they claimed initially), if you balance this against those many kosovoans *not* being killed now. The bosnian war took an estimated 200 thousands lives, so that was the prospective. If you are forced to pick between hundreds of lives and get your hands bloody, and thousands of lives but stay clean, which one would you pick?
If there is a huge rock falling down towards 100 people and you have the option to push a button that redirects the rock to another group of 10 people, what would you do? Save 90 lives and become a killer (of those 10 people who would not have died otherwise), or let 100 people die but stay morally clean? If you have the power to actually *do something*, these are the questions you face every day.
--Coke
Well the bible may say don't hold the children responsible for the sins of the fathers, but that doesn't really cut it in Iran.
Ignoring the fact that you seem to think it's OK to abandon former allies once they hit 70 years old, what about their families? There is also a more significant contemporary credibility problem here. The CIA can't afford to look this foolish to people they need work with TODAY.
This is a pretty significant lapse, then again it's the CIA, you gotta ask yourself if it's entirely accidental too. Maybe this is a CIA plot to deliberately discredit the people named in the document. What better way to 'accidentally' leak a few names.
Wheels within wheels my friend.
I don't think the NYT is at fault for this; however, the CIA operative that let a PDF file out with soft redactions, he ought to be drawn and quartered. Since the redactions are merely annotations added to a file as an afterthought, they can be removed so long as the file has a public file format. Worse, you rely on the imaging software to do the right thing under all conditions- the whole mess is really unsuitable for anything confidential, let alone Eyes Only level Top Secret.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Good point. I had just read your comments on /.. And respect your disagreement and that of others. Still, once the insecure doc had been made public, it seemed to me that those who might be harmed by it should be aware of the threat, and that the blunder should not hidden to avoid embarrassment of the Times and CIA leaker. That coverup would be worse than openly publicizing the threat. This is comparable to trying to hide weakness in crypto, or that a security system has been cracked. Far too often the producers of those systems try to hide the weakness using accusations like the Times and others have, which only serve to conceal their self-interest at the victims' expense. Nobody who has followed the intelligence agencies' hoary "lives will be at risk" chant over the years to hide their screw-ups should believe its use this time. I'm amazed that the Times' reporters ape the disinformation con-artists. Probably due to fear of embarrassment, the nightmare of vainglorists -- who has not felt that, too. A horrifying number of lives were sacrificed by the coup, as the CIA report shows. The sideshow of the names appears to be a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the real issue of US and British abuse of power -- which the Times should distance itself from by not parroting the CIA excuse. Usually it does not, and a pity that it is now. The Times is commended for publishing the report, and it should be widely read for the truth it tells about covert war crimes by many nations, as now being revealed out around the globe. The Internet is a great tool for behaving truly responsibly to release hidden information rather than being a "responsible publisher" who does what the master leakers order. FWIW, all my personal data is on jya.com and cryptome.org, and has been there since day one of setting up a web site. Try to find that kind of info about the Times personnel much less those of the CIA and other global intel sneakers and killers. Regards, John At 07:44 AM 6/25/00 -0400, you wrote: >http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/06/25/0320 201threshold=1commentsort=0&mode=threadp id=6#97 > >Free speech works both ways... pity. > >
I see your point. And yet, in the US (as in many places and situations) the reality is rather more complex than the claim, as you (as a resident of Colorado) are probably aware.
Actually California. And being on H-1B visa (employed, taxed up the wazoo but without any voting rights) I have a dubious advantage of seeing the hypocrisy in all its glory.
My real power over my government is effectively nil without the resources to push ad campaigns.
This is one of the areas where the existence of Internet actually can improve things -- just as large companies with can't make decent web sites if they have nothing good to say about their products, so millions in campaign contributions won't give any advantage for politicians if Internet will become a significant part of election campaigns (I can imagine -- doubleclick charging millions for changing the texts of political speeches to tailor them to user's known behavior -- yeah, that will help a lot ;-). Still, it all comes down to the need of having a large percentage of people who actually want to think, and this remains a problem.
We should probably also address the issue of whether a powerful nation in conflict with another is justified in staging coups of weaker third parties as a strategic move.
My position on that is that it sucks big time, however at least it allows weaker countries to maneuver between powerful players. With one "ridiculously overpowered" player game loses any meaning, so players shift their activity into changing the rules -- and US wonders why terrorism and politicized religious bigotry are so widespread.
(As a sidelight, we could also take up the ethics of today's US actions, essentially using military superiority to enforce business rip-offs. I have the feeling this may be driving your opinions today more than what happened 50 years ago is.)
That, too -- in a big picture large corporations benefit from operating in oppressed countries with weak governments that are prone to corruption and political pressure. However it's more in IMF style -- its demands became ridiculously politicized and don't even pretend of having a goal of creating the condition where debt can be paid, and are more directed into maintaining dependency of its loans' recipients.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Damn it the more I read the worse this gets.
Jim Risen is the guy who's caused this problem now he's accusing the people who exposed his treachery of endangering the very lives his incompetence has thrown to the wolves.
I say arrest him and show him the sharp end of a 10 year stretch unless he comes up with the name of his CIA mole. Even if he hadn't screwed up like this, he'd still have advertised to all & sundry that he had the original file somewhere on his systems. How difficult would it be for a half competent agent to wander in and take his whole file system?
Now, note that the first situation applies to the 1953 act. (Still not sure I support such skulduggery, even in such a case - the long-term hostility may outweigh temporary gains. The US is hated in Iran.) The second case is more relevant today, as applies to the following paragraph.
Iran is an interesting case. After having a lot of greasy fingers of foreign powers messing in Iran's internal affairs, it ended up hating almost everyone, adopted blatantly reactionary theocracy and became one of the major reasons for turning previously mostly political unity of nearby Arab countries into the ideas of religious bigotry and "we-hate-everyone" jihad. In the end it benefited no one, and after decades of isolation and war (that, BTW, demonstrated that "ideologically powerful" Iran had an army that couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper bag) reached a condition where even in its state of completely un-democratic theocracy it had to go through a painful political reform that is in progress now. If not meddling of other countries decades ago, Iran would reach its current state much earlier and without costing lives (and limbs) of many people, without strenghtening the political position of Iraq (BTW, another "great fighter" of Middle East that was worth its long-time opponent), and without creating the current amount of religion-based isolation of Arab countries from the rest of the world, and tensions between Arabs themselves. Even Afghanistan probably wouldn't end up in its current situation, and Russian intervention there would be prevented -- at that time Communists learned how not to mess with other countries unless threat from them is evident.
No argument on both points in this paragraph. Who runs the IMF? What cross-section does it represent? (US? Others?)
Since US dollar is artificially "stabilized" and used in international trade because of the lack of usable way to deal with less powerful and more volatile currencies, IMF significantly depends on US.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
It was conquered in early 19th century, and I don't know what would be worse for it, the rule of Czarist Russia and later Communist USSR, or what it had before that -- some local customs were umm... extremely un-civilized and had really poor respect for human life, leave alone democracy.
In any case it didn't prevent Chechnya from becoming one of the most powerful centers of organized crime in Russia. The main reason for Russia to keep Chechnya as a province by all possible means was that if Chechnya succeeded, every other gang leader would declare himself a president of three nearest to his main stomping ground cities, and start a "war" with local military base.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
And this is different from any of the other fifty-googolplex obscure reasons HOW?
Also, before you start making "those people" statements. Be sure that you've got the facts. If we want to talk long-standing grudges.
The Hatfield and McCoy clans. They're so legendary that they've become virtually synonymous with "blood feud". And they were 100% American.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I understand that the mentality over there is much different. But, as I said, the government we're talking about is LONG gone. Whilst there MIGHT be some lingering 70-something Iranians still carrying on Jyhad, I seriously doubt they number more than a handful. And, likely, they're fairly quiet and uninfluential about it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Soviet Union never used military force against its own people and neither US did. USSR was for all purposes a single country, and yes, order in it was remarkable considering the diversity of nations that it contained (much more diverse than US) and relatively peaceful means that it was achieved with.
I however talk about messing with other countries -- something that USSR did rarely and with some more or less understandable reasons. It can be compared to a predator that would kill its prey only when it is hungry. OTOH, US attacked a lot of countries without being under any threat -- what can be compared to a hunter that will kill anything that moves just to prove to himself that his gun indeed is a valid extension of his penis.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I have to take issue with this. Whether or not the targets of this are Americans or not should have no influence on decisions. Though on second reading I realise you're not actually inferring this as such (unless from a legal POV), it is quite easy to draw the inference.
But were the NYT to argue (and this is getting really hypothetical) that they were immune from this as the Constitution only covers citizens, I should hope that they were very wrong, and receive a sound legal bitchslapping (since that seems to be a favourite word here these days).
But anyway :)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Have you ever considered that, in a nation where 'We the People' are sovereign, it is a blight upon that sovereignty that so many ideas and data are kept from their knowledge? If The People are supposed to determine their own destiny by making informed decisions about whom to elect and whose policies to enforce, then how are they to do so if the most critical information to those ends is kept from them? Secrecy has few places in a true democracy or republic.
And while you're at it, don't forget to run rough shod over the first amendment and freedom of the press. Yeah, that's the ticket.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Many of the arguments on here have followed the lines of "The information is very old. Therefore it cannot be of any importance anymore, and no harm can result from releasing it to the public." These arguments miss the point, however, that the U.S. press is, perhaps unintentionally, one of the single most pervasive and irresponsible agents for foreign intelligence. They routinely violate people's civil rights by interfering with their right to a fair trial, they endanger national security by releasing classified information to the public, they interfere with ongoing investigations, and they place U.S. and U.N. soldiers and their missions in jeopardy by their aggressive reporting of active military operations. This is another in a long string of security mishaps perpetrated by the press, yet the only reason it constitutes news here on /. is because of their technical naivete.
The fact remains that the document in question was classified Secret and had no business being published in the first place. (I would argue that if it indeed endangers the lives of agents or their families, as argued by the CIA, then the document should have had a higher classification). What business do they have releasing such a document without ensuring that the sanitized version is indeed sanitized? Does the NYTimes take all appropriate security measures when they deal with such classified information? Do they have a secure perimeter within their confines where classified information is kept away from those without a compelling "need to know?" And just what constitutes a compelling "need to know" among the press--the need to sell a 4x4 ad for Cambell's Chunky Soup or the latest "Big Sale" at Macy's? Am I the only one who is disturbed by how many of our national secrets could be compromised in this manner?
Where is the investigation of the leak? Is the FBI pursuing criminal charges against the NYTimes and its staff as they are with the NEST team at Los Alamos? Why does the Los Alamos National Laboratory suffer daily in the press because some hard drives were misplaced within a secure area, yet when the NYTimes mishandles classified documents (documents with the same level of classification, mind you), then so little is made of the affair?
Has lab-bashing become so fashionable that we don blinders whenever larger security issues surface in the vaunted press? Enquiring minds want to know.
Subtly but significantly: is the IMF controlled by or only dependent on the US? In other words, does it do what the US tells it to do, or what it separately believes will benefit the US or certain parts thereof?
Since it's unlikely that they will tell it by themselves (what, someone expects them to say "Since US threatened that it will decrease the supply of dollars we decided to deny loans to countries that won't duplicate the exact text of DMCA in their laws"?), I can only speculate about that. The results of their activity suggest that since they encourage loans that have no chances to be paid in a reasonable timeframe, and economy in the recipient countries doesn't improve, it's likely that they are influenced by ones who benefit from it. Who happen to be large, mostly American, companies.
Comparison with other economy reconstruction plans where the goals actually included the recovery of economy (Japanese recovery after WWII -- US had a goal of eliminating Japanese military threat in Pacific, not paving a road for American companies into Japanese economy) suggests that there is something beyond plain incompetence here.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Name one useful feature that Word has that can't be done on Unix.
"Unix" has no word processing features. Oh, you mean some of the office apps available for Unix?
Let's see... I believe StarOffice does not have revision capability. Not sure about WP.
WP does not have Styles as advanced as Word. It still forces you to have to use that lame "Reveal Codes" nonsense (yes, I know a lot you think that's a feature not a bug, but you're wrong. Presentation should be separate from content).
Other features: Autoformat (great for converting plain text docs), advanced embedding (All the suites are way behind on this, although KOffice is trying), underlining of misspelled words (why others don't copy this feature is beyond my understanding), Master Document capability (splitting of docs into multiple files), etc, etc. This is just off the top of my head. Anyone who doesn't think Word is light years ahead of any other office suite has not really explored everything it can do. A hint -- it does way more than you think, but most of it stays out of your way until you need it.
However, the biggest thing Word can do is print reliably to just about any cheap printer. Unix is way, way, way WAY WAY behind on having a comprehensive print rendering subsystem. I think the Gnome guys are working on something, but that's the part of Unix that has biggest piece of brain damage.
Finally, the most important feature that Word has is -- Word compatibility. Face it; Word is the defacto industry standard document interchange format. The other suites are pathetic when it comes to compatibility.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
....This might be a canary trap ;)
:)\n"
if ($user =~ m/shaldannon/i) {
print "\n-- $user
}
What is your Slash Rating?
Americans should realize that universal hatred for them and their government is caused by things like this, and instead of throwing billions into missile "defense" they can just spend some hours thinking how can they incorporate basic respect for sovereignty of other countries -- and yes, that includes ones that do not share any of "American Values".
If we're universally hated, how come we have the highest immigration rate in the world?
Why are one million people a year leaving their countries to come here, if we're universally hated?
The US isn't perfect, by any means; but let's not get off into these stupid "ugly American" stereotypes without examining them a little.
--