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gobbo writes "The buzz amongst my Muslim acquaintances is that the al-Jazeera site is under "cyber-attack." Shortly after posting photos of mangled Iraqi children the server became unavailable. I don't have satellite TV to see if they are reporting anything on al-Jazeera itself, but pinging their name servers fails too. For those who don't already know, the al-Jazeera channel is a pan-Arabic satellite TV channel out of Qatar." While I am certain many h4x0rs are political, I can't help thinking that script kiddies are like moths to the flame of rising page views. (this was initially posted incorrectly, and has been moved to the proper date)

Comments

Military targets?

[twemperor]

I think this raises some new interesting questions.

For example, the US military claimed that Iraqi TV, as it was providing information and instruction to Iraqi troops, was a legitimate military command and control target. Would similar online media outlets be similarly classified?

More importantly, would hackers, even script kiddies, be considered combatants if they attack such a military target in a time of war?

I don't think this has any practical implications, just philosophical...

Re:Military targets?

[sould]

Does AJ show pics and video of Iraqi troops hiding among civilians and using them as shields? No

Has this been independantly corroborated? No.

Does AJ show report on the Iraqi troops using a hospital for a weapons cache? No

Has this been independantly corroborated? No.

Does AJ report on the use of explosives at the oil well heads? No.

Yes. Yes they do

Does AJ report on the ecological disaster of lighting oil filled trenches on fire? No

Yes. Yes they do.

Who modded this retard and her/his americentric point of view up?

Few people think al-Jazeera is unbiased, to compare it to CNN is frankly laughable.

Slashdot effect on a global scale?

[alienmole]

According to an Infoworld article, Al Jazeera had just published photos of the U.S. soldiers who were allegedly executed. In the U.S., these pictures have effectively been censored - the major media don't want to touch them. Mightn't Al-Jazeera simply be suffering from a large-scale Slashdot effect, as people around the world try to download photos?

While consulting, I've come across companies doing all sorts of dumb or just lazy things which make their sites slow and not very scalable. Then they get a big burst of unusual activity for whatever reason, their site crashes, and they like to claim conspiracy because it means it's not their fault.

I'll believe this is a DDOS when I see the IRC transcripts from the people claiming to be the perpetrators (if that's not proof, I don't know what is :) Till then, this is Al-Jazeera crying because their site couldn't handle sudden worldwide interest.

Freenet?

[gfilion]

Would it be a good idea for Al-jazeera to publish their content on freenet? Their articles would then be immune to any kind of censorship like they claim they are victim of.

Re:Weird

[Chacham]

I don't have a problem with bias, as long as it's known. Everyone knows CNN is extremely liberal. Everyone knows Fox News is somewhat conservative. Everyone knows that the BBC is pro-Arab and anti-Israel. Everyone knows that Al-Jazeera is mostly pro-arab. Who cares? If anyone reported just facts, there'd either be too many bits or no connection in between them. In order to get a true picture of what is going on, you need to read news that is slanted both ways. So, read an American news source, and then ArabicNews.com (a pretty decent source). Or check Lebanon's Daily Star for a very much Arab slant.

Everyone thinks that they are centrist. Anyone right of them is conservative, anyone left is them is liberal. Which is why Democrats call ABC, CBS, and NBC conservative news, yet Republicans call it liberal news. That is also why Democrats call Fox News very conservative, and Republicans call in "balanced". But, the important thing is, that both the liberal and the conservative views are legitamite.

In order to report the news in an unbiased way, the reporter must assume an equidistant view from both warring sides. That is, the American news sources would have to decide that the Americans aren't automatically correct, and that Saddam isn't automatically wrong. The problem is, that legitamizes Saddam's regime to many who think it illegitamite, and that is something many do not want to do.

Also, unbiased reporting (which I don't believe exists) wouldn't have the flare behind it the biased reporting does. When people are biased, they go the extra mile to prove their point. I like that a lot better.