That's the same bullshit excuse used to justify nuking Japan. Most Americans are completely stupid. They claim that nuclear weapons are terrible and should never be used and anyone who uses it is evil, but the minute someone brings up the fact that America is the only country to use it, they suddenly backtrack and claim that it was used to "save lives" based on military estimates.
Back then, they smoked for health reasons (relieving stress)! And now they say smoking is bad for your health? Hypocrites!
Yeah, you've got a idealogical lunatic running the country (I think we've heard that joke before) but he'd be gone by now if the mass media didn't think that MJ's funeral was more important than protestors being gunned down by the Iranian goverment.
Right. Because the US being all concerned about politics in Iran will bring about political change in Iran? Doesn't everyone get all antsy when the US takes interest in foreign politics? And isn't Iran among the least likely to take political cues from the US (or the rest of the MJ-living world, for that matter)?
Seriously, wanting to persue peaceful nuclear power isn't an issue. Hell, if they wanted warheads they could just BUY them.
Really now. And who's going to sell them to Iran? Always better to have your own means rather than be dependent on others. The idea that this is all about peaceful application is still very suspect.
"The edited video removes a lot of the imagery of armed individuals"
Which ones?
Go back and look at the edited vs. the "raw" video. It is much more apparent that there are weapons in the raw footage. Just for giggles, note that the Wikileaks folks don't put little labels and arrows to those weapons like they do for the reporters with their cameras.
"and makes a big deal about which individuals are reporters and their cameras. It then replays the part where vehicles run over bodies and troops chuckle."
So? The problem is exactly in the attitude of the US military. We all know that shit happens, especially in the war zone.
So how do you think they deal with that? Gallows humor attempts to deal with bad situations though what would seem to be inappropriate humor.
Back in the day, we used to sit around pondering over the best way to attack our living area at the time. That doesn't mean I was all joyful when Khobar Towers was bombed (I stayed in one of the buildings although the last time was a couple years before the bombing).
There's a joke that's a part of military lore; I saw a cartoon of it being faxed around the region. Navy guy on his ship; "Boy it must suck over there." Air Force pilot; "Boy it must suck down there." Army grunt; "Boy it sucks around here." Marine grunt; "Boy, I wish it'd suck more!"
I understand the concern that this attitude can lead to callous behavior. And thats why incidents like this can't be simply classified and squirreled away for historians to deal with centuries from now. The military must operate with oversight willing to prosecute callous disregard and be honest when innocent people are killed.
But that's not going to make war any more pretty. And it's not going to alter the aggressive and somewhat cavalier attitude you see ground troops have to adopt to deal with the stress of killing others and seeing their friends killed.
One side note. I remember a couple years ago seeing this edited CNN footage of US troops shooting up a body and laughing. What was removed from the footage was the fact that the body was one of an armed group that was getting in place to ambush the patrol when the patrol suprised them. A gunfight ensued and the patrol killed the ambushers and were quite happy about it. Later on, one of the troops reflected on the fact that he had killed someone's brother or father; there was much less hooping and adrenaline-packed hollering. But that didn't make the cut. I suspect it didn't do a sufficient job at painting US soldiers as bloodthirsty killers.
I'm sorry, but I must call BS on this one. I, too, saw the vid, heard the radio chatter, and I got news for you, the group pictured did NOT appear to be armed.
Go look at the unedited video. You can clearly see weapons. At least an AK-47 and something that appeared to be a RPG. Like you noted, resolution isn't very good so it's hard to tell. In the edited piece, all you get is the gunship crew mistaking cameras for weapons.
Did THIS particular group of alleged insurgents recently attack THAT Apache? Not during the course of THAT video, they spent alot of their time either oblivious to the gunship before being attacked, or sustaining injury and casualties afterward. Not exactly the behavior of someone who'd recently engaged in hostile combat action, is it?
That's one of the things that's misleading about this video. There's ground-forces coming down the road towards this location. The group is looking around the corner at them - I suspect that's what the photographer with the mis-identified telephoto lens is interested in. The gunship isn't there to make war fair. It's there to find threats and take them out well before those threats can act on ground forces. So once they think there's a threat, they open up.
It's very likely this group had nothing to do with the hostilities that were going on around this time (though if that was a RPG, does a neighborhood watch really carry that kind of gear?). Most likely they were in the wrong place looking like a possible threat - partly due to their actions but mostly due to bad identification by the gunship crew.
The atrocity is what happened once the recon team arrived to inspect casualties. The radio chatter bears this out plainly, the team requested to take two child casualties to the nearest medical facility, which happened to be a military med unit. Their superiors REFUSED, instead, after a cursory debate, decided to send them to an Iraqi med facility further away. The expectation of killing two witnesses, kids, no less, via refusal of medical services to treat injuries inflicted by OUR servicemen, is painfully apparent. THIS is why this was covered up.
Wikileaks' treatment of the video pointed this out as well. I'm curious as to why this was done. I doubt it was with the intent to kill children (who tend to make bad witnesses). I'd expect that it was either a military issue (endangering or tying up emergency medical resources) or a turf war over jurisdiction. I'd be skeptical that command thought the best care was available at a local civilian facility.
The edited video removes a lot of the imagery of armed individuals and makes a big deal about which individuals are reporters and their cameras. It then replays the part where vehicles run over bodies and troops chuckle. While the gallows humor is shocking, that's all it is and Wikileaks is clearly going for shock value. Next we have commentary critical of sending the wounded children to local Iraqi facilities. And then we get to re-play the part where Wikileaks points out the children in the van - it takes some labels on blurry spots and zooming to frame the view properly so that the eye isn't distracted by everything else going on.
This is not a neutral or completely honest account of what's going on. It has been edited for emotional and political impact.
Don't get me wrong here - the US military screwed up. They killed people that shouldn't have been killed. And while there were apparently weapons at the scene, there are times that they are identifying camera equipment as weapons.
Even if one can dismiss this as mis-identification (and I've experienced how perception bias can make a cameraman look like a gunman), what can't be dismissed is the final report. It does have the over-tones of white-washing. And, ignoring the loss of human life, that's the mistake the military has made in this case.
But like I noted - that gets overshadowed by Wikileaks' own actions. Instead of shedding light on the situation, they generate this additional cloud of anti-war propaganda that will distract from the very reasonable demand for accountability.
So what? It IS a propaganda. It shows that US routinely commits criminal acts and then covers it up. So it's a good propaganda.
Exactly. That's the propaganda part. The edited video reads in a lot of what was going on and ignores other things that doesn't fit with the anti-US / anti-war message.
As for interpretations... Well, let's say that we can also 'interpret' 9/11. Like, saying that it's a valid act of war, and not terrorism. You see, twin towers were economically significant buildings. So it was OK to bomb them. See?
And with that, you've done a great job at making my point. The same treatment was done with the video.
Really? Where in that document does it outline anything similar to what Assange is claiming here? The piece that I keep seeing is:
(S//NF) Web sites such as Wikileaks.org have trust as their most important center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insider, leaker, or whistleblower. Successful identification, prosecution, termination of employment, and exposure of persons leaking the information by the governments and businesses affected by information posted to Wikileaks.org would damage and potentially destroy this center of gravity and deter others from taking similar actions.
And indeed - if a potential whistleblower doesn't believe they can maintain the anonymity Wikileaks promises, then that would damage Wikileaks' operation. The analysis seems spot-on to me. And while one might be a fan of Wikileaks and opposed to anything that sees Wikileaks as a threat, there's nothing insidious in the analysis Wikileaks has published. Certainly nothing that even hints at all the spookery Assange keeps claiming he's being warned about.
That's not to say such things couldn't happen. I'm sure Assange and Wikileaks has pissed off people who command the resources to do these sorts of things. But at the same time, it's awfully convenient to dismiss any criticisms one might have as the nefarious plot of shadowed enemies. Which is what we get sort of annoyed with when our own governments do the same thing.
Way to work that weasel. Back in the dial-up days, I signed up with a ISP for an "unlimited" account. I had my account terminated because I was connected too long. It was then explained to me that "unlimited" meant that they didn't restrict where you could browse.
The reality is that the marketing folks really like "unlimited" even when they can't actually deliver. So they won't be truthful and call it the "200GB Plan" or such. Instead, they'll slip in restrictions (or not even document restrictions as in my case) and begin playing linguistic limbo as soon as you run in to them.
There's a lot of trust given to Assange when he claims that governments are pulling strings in a personal vendetta. That's the part that bugs me.
As for the video...
The US military should have been much more forthcoming about that particular incident. I'm assuming that the video is of the reporter in question and that the military knew that after the fact. If that's the case, it would have been better for everyone involved if that had come to light well before someone felt they had to leak evidence of the event.
Having said that... what we got to see was a nicely edited piece of propaganda. Yes, sure... there's also raw video. However, the edited version is just as much a part of the record and involves plenty of interpretations of what's going on while it glazes over other issues. I've always thought the leaking of this video was important but unfortunately overshadowed by the way it was turned in to a propaganda piece.
As for the pilots "laughing" about it... watch the video again. There's nobody laughing. There's a lot of chatter right up to the point that they discover that there's children in the van. Then there's stunned silence. That's when one of the gunship crew says "Well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle."
Note how this differs from your quote. What the heck did you quote? Wikileaks provides a transcript. They provide video. Yet what you've got you in your mind is very different than actual events. Ponder that over a bit. We all bring our biases to the table. You hear US troops jeering over the death of a child. I heard US troops being shocked and then pulling themselves together with bravado.
I think you're putting far too much thought in to it. What we're dealing with looks like sensitive but not highly classified information. Information that a lot of individuals have access to as part of their normal duties. So one (or more) individual(s) releases classified information to people that aren't authorized to have that information. The Government tends to get upset about that kind of thing. It doesn't matter what the level of classification is - once it's classified it becomes a Big Deal if you intentionally hand it out (there are claims that Manning went to some effort and subterfuge to hide his alleged actions). Wikileaks makes a big deal out of the information they have. Everyone wants to know more about it. The Government now gets to explain where the information came from, who did it, and why they're prosecuting individual(s) suspected of being involved.
Well, yes. If you want to ignore that this creates a price point scale that's favorable to Intel and not consumers, then sure. It's good for consumers too.
I like how you hand-wave off the PSN issue also. Very well done.
I really don't understand how some people see the world.
Some folks get a bit punchy when they feel like they're being manipulated. And this is manipulation.
This is a method for Intel to simplify logistics for themselves and their partners without abandoning their long-standing business of carefully guiding their technology through price-point gates. If anything, it might even make it easier to set up more gates as a single unit could potentially cover many price points designated by licensing tiers. That's great for Intel. It's probably just as good for OEMs and retailers as this is a chance for them to "up-sell" every unit. They can get their foot in the door with a bargain price and then either push for the "better deal" right there or collect on the "modest upgrade fee" later on.
However, as consumers, it'd be better for us for them to run in to logistical walls where they simply have to move their price points up to the next better-performing product.
Hint 1: "one-time pad" means a little bit of paper with a key printed on it. You probably mean "one-time key", which is a rather more general concept that is easier to implement in silicon.
Isn't a one-time pad a stack of said little pieces of paper - usually bound in some way?
What was being used in the 1940s was considerably different than what Coanda created in 1910. And that's being gracious in accepting the claim that Coanda's aircraft actually flew and what happened to it.
To clarify: I find it a bit sad that humanity just isn't capable of building on pre-existing accomplishments, solutions and ideas. The Trieste has already achieved this goal 50 years ago, as the summary states, so why would this be such a difficult challenge? We had the technology half a century ago, and it worked perfectly well.
Sure. And take aeronautics. Clearly we should have stopped in the 1800s with functional gliders. Or maybe the early 1900s with powered flight. I mean... surely the Wright Brothers should have just put away their wind tunnels and called it a day before doing all this testing. By the mid-1900's it was just getting silly. The 1940's saw jet engines - as if that wasn't just coat-tail riding in it's fullest. And as if this hasn't all Been Done by world Governments, private commercial aviation has to get in to the mix. What the heck were these guys thinking?
Sort of like the Apollo program - almost half a century after, we are not capable to go to the moon - we simply and stupidly "forgot" how to do it. The great designers and engineers left and/or died off, and we, as humankind, went on with out collective dicks in our collective hands.
Yeah - I'm sure it's all about lost knowledge and nothing about the resources it took to accomplish these things. It's not like going to the moon is involved or anything. On a more serious note - you should go download yourself a copy of the CAIB Report and look in to the chapter that talks about funding; specifically comparing the Apollo era to today.
One of my favorite things about Flash is that it's easy to block and control. There's times when I want the functionality Flash is providing - but most times, I'd rather pretend that I don't have it installed. I was rather rudely reminded of this the other day when I installed Flash on my Android phone. I was all happy until I started browsing around. Until I get NoScript on my Android, Flash has been removed.
With this in mind, I'm wondering what level of control we might have over HTML5.
The IBM PC clone wars. And while it's true that Microsoft was the gatekeeper to the platform, the hardware was for more open than most of what was around at the time. That's what was driving sales. It was no longer about IBM.
Apple's attempt to do something similar was flawed. It was fighting about a decade of momentum (Jobs claimed that the entire clone project was too late to be effective when he canceled it). And it generated too much competition (read: confusion) in what had become a niche space. Apple themselves were putting out so many models that they were competing with themselves while they competed with the Mac clones they had licensed.
Now, I suspect I know where you're going with this. You're implying that Apple's clone program hurt Apple and therefore, being "open" hurt Apple. However, the initial licensing program actually helped Apple as it was already in financial trouble at this point and needed fast cash. So while the program may have been doomed, it wasn't itself the root of Apple's troubles.
It's a good write-up. Although... I thought it was a bit weird when the article started blaming the entire affair on the US Government. I get the author's point. However, I find the US Government being duped by a fast-talking kid with the right message at the right time to be another part of the overall story - not the core plot line.
Look, naming conventions change over time and I'm not so sure it ever meant what you seem to think it meant anyway. In this context "0 day" means there are no known fixes for the problem. In other words it has been 0 days since a fix was released.
It did mean that, at one time. Zero-day meant that it was still unpublished... still secret. You had an exploit that was going to work because "nobody" knew about it. That is, nobody but you and others who had elite access to the BBS' filez. Now the industry has shifted the term to mean that the vulnerability is unpatched. Which, I suppose, has a lot of the same general meaning. Although I think it's lost a lot of the edge; big difference between unpatched and (relatively) unknown.
But then - this is all just semantics. You kids get off my lawn. Back in my day, we had to push bits through MODEMs - both ways. We used KERMIT and we LIKED IT (unless we had ZMODEM). Etc, etc.
And then the workforce that runs the machines can be automated to the point where intensive labor isn't required. From here, it's turtles all the way down.
The point is that it's not turtles all the way down. Automation is expensive and has to counter the cost of simple manual labor. That's difficult when the competing manual labor cost isn't being increased by quality-of-life restrictions that, while humane, increase the cost of labor. And you can't entirely escape the cost of labor as, despite the material in the SciFi realm, machines still require people to maintain them. We can't simply dismiss labor cost as a competitive issue by wishing for efficiency and automation.
I'm not saying it's a haven of happy workers -- only that conditions may not be as bad as we're assuming. AS far as the report by China Business News -- I would trust that to be about as unbiased as any news source in the US. Again, I'm not claiming that there are no issues - only that we're only being shown a very small window into things.
Note that there are Chinese publications and Chinese reporters going undercover and reporting on these conditions. This isn't some US news source.
It's very possible that the view of Foxconn is somewhat distorted. It could be especially distorted by Western views of labor. But there's too much going on here to simply be dismissed. Working conditions that are "not quite as bad" could very well be far below other national standards. And let's not fool ourselves - working conditions are as much an economic factor as a quality-of-life issue.
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That's the same bullshit excuse used to justify nuking Japan. Most Americans are completely stupid. They claim that nuclear weapons are terrible and should never be used and anyone who uses it is evil, but the minute someone brings up the fact that America is the only country to use it, they suddenly backtrack and claim that it was used to "save lives" based on military estimates.
Back then, they smoked for health reasons (relieving stress)! And now they say smoking is bad for your health? Hypocrites!
Yeah, you've got a idealogical lunatic running the country (I think we've heard that joke before) but he'd be gone by now if the mass media didn't think that MJ's funeral was more important than protestors being gunned down by the Iranian goverment.
Right. Because the US being all concerned about politics in Iran will bring about political change in Iran? Doesn't everyone get all antsy when the US takes interest in foreign politics? And isn't Iran among the least likely to take political cues from the US (or the rest of the MJ-living world, for that matter)?
Seriously, wanting to persue peaceful nuclear power isn't an issue. Hell, if they wanted warheads they could just BUY them.
Really now. And who's going to sell them to Iran? Always better to have your own means rather than be dependent on others. The idea that this is all about peaceful application is still very suspect.
"The edited video removes a lot of the imagery of armed individuals"
Which ones?
Go back and look at the edited vs. the "raw" video. It is much more apparent that there are weapons in the raw footage. Just for giggles, note that the Wikileaks folks don't put little labels and arrows to those weapons like they do for the reporters with their cameras.
"and makes a big deal about which individuals are reporters and their cameras. It then replays the part where vehicles run over bodies and troops chuckle."
So? The problem is exactly in the attitude of the US military. We all know that shit happens, especially in the war zone.
So how do you think they deal with that? Gallows humor attempts to deal with bad situations though what would seem to be inappropriate humor.
Back in the day, we used to sit around pondering over the best way to attack our living area at the time. That doesn't mean I was all joyful when Khobar Towers was bombed (I stayed in one of the buildings although the last time was a couple years before the bombing).
There's a joke that's a part of military lore; I saw a cartoon of it being faxed around the region. Navy guy on his ship; "Boy it must suck over there." Air Force pilot; "Boy it must suck down there." Army grunt; "Boy it sucks around here." Marine grunt; "Boy, I wish it'd suck more!"
I understand the concern that this attitude can lead to callous behavior. And thats why incidents like this can't be simply classified and squirreled away for historians to deal with centuries from now. The military must operate with oversight willing to prosecute callous disregard and be honest when innocent people are killed.
But that's not going to make war any more pretty. And it's not going to alter the aggressive and somewhat cavalier attitude you see ground troops have to adopt to deal with the stress of killing others and seeing their friends killed.
One side note. I remember a couple years ago seeing this edited CNN footage of US troops shooting up a body and laughing. What was removed from the footage was the fact that the body was one of an armed group that was getting in place to ambush the patrol when the patrol suprised them. A gunfight ensued and the patrol killed the ambushers and were quite happy about it. Later on, one of the troops reflected on the fact that he had killed someone's brother or father; there was much less hooping and adrenaline-packed hollering. But that didn't make the cut. I suspect it didn't do a sufficient job at painting US soldiers as bloodthirsty killers.
I'm sorry, but I must call BS on this one. I, too, saw the vid, heard the radio chatter, and I got news for you, the group pictured did NOT appear to be armed.
Go look at the unedited video. You can clearly see weapons. At least an AK-47 and something that appeared to be a RPG. Like you noted, resolution isn't very good so it's hard to tell. In the edited piece, all you get is the gunship crew mistaking cameras for weapons.
Did THIS particular group of alleged insurgents recently attack THAT Apache? Not during the course of THAT video, they spent alot of their time either oblivious to the gunship before being attacked, or sustaining injury and casualties afterward. Not exactly the behavior of someone who'd recently engaged in hostile combat action, is it?
That's one of the things that's misleading about this video. There's ground-forces coming down the road towards this location. The group is looking around the corner at them - I suspect that's what the photographer with the mis-identified telephoto lens is interested in. The gunship isn't there to make war fair. It's there to find threats and take them out well before those threats can act on ground forces. So once they think there's a threat, they open up.
It's very likely this group had nothing to do with the hostilities that were going on around this time (though if that was a RPG, does a neighborhood watch really carry that kind of gear?). Most likely they were in the wrong place looking like a possible threat - partly due to their actions but mostly due to bad identification by the gunship crew.
The atrocity is what happened once the recon team arrived to inspect casualties. The radio chatter bears this out plainly, the team requested to take two child casualties to the nearest medical facility, which happened to be a military med unit. Their superiors REFUSED, instead, after a cursory debate, decided to send them to an Iraqi med facility further away. The expectation of killing two witnesses, kids, no less, via refusal of medical services to treat injuries inflicted by OUR servicemen, is painfully apparent. THIS is why this was covered up.
Wikileaks' treatment of the video pointed this out as well. I'm curious as to why this was done. I doubt it was with the intent to kill children (who tend to make bad witnesses). I'd expect that it was either a military issue (endangering or tying up emergency medical resources) or a turf war over jurisdiction. I'd be skeptical that command thought the best care was available at a local civilian facility.
The edited video removes a lot of the imagery of armed individuals and makes a big deal about which individuals are reporters and their cameras. It then replays the part where vehicles run over bodies and troops chuckle. While the gallows humor is shocking, that's all it is and Wikileaks is clearly going for shock value. Next we have commentary critical of sending the wounded children to local Iraqi facilities. And then we get to re-play the part where Wikileaks points out the children in the van - it takes some labels on blurry spots and zooming to frame the view properly so that the eye isn't distracted by everything else going on.
This is not a neutral or completely honest account of what's going on. It has been edited for emotional and political impact.
Don't get me wrong here - the US military screwed up. They killed people that shouldn't have been killed. And while there were apparently weapons at the scene, there are times that they are identifying camera equipment as weapons.
Even if one can dismiss this as mis-identification (and I've experienced how perception bias can make a cameraman look like a gunman), what can't be dismissed is the final report. It does have the over-tones of white-washing. And, ignoring the loss of human life, that's the mistake the military has made in this case.
But like I noted - that gets overshadowed by Wikileaks' own actions. Instead of shedding light on the situation, they generate this additional cloud of anti-war propaganda that will distract from the very reasonable demand for accountability.
So what? It IS a propaganda. It shows that US routinely commits criminal acts and then covers it up. So it's a good propaganda.
Exactly. That's the propaganda part. The edited video reads in a lot of what was going on and ignores other things that doesn't fit with the anti-US / anti-war message.
As for interpretations... Well, let's say that we can also 'interpret' 9/11. Like, saying that it's a valid act of war, and not terrorism. You see, twin towers were economically significant buildings. So it was OK to bomb them. See?
And with that, you've done a great job at making my point. The same treatment was done with the video.
Really? Where in that document does it outline anything similar to what Assange is claiming here? The piece that I keep seeing is:
And indeed - if a potential whistleblower doesn't believe they can maintain the anonymity Wikileaks promises, then that would damage Wikileaks' operation. The analysis seems spot-on to me. And while one might be a fan of Wikileaks and opposed to anything that sees Wikileaks as a threat, there's nothing insidious in the analysis Wikileaks has published. Certainly nothing that even hints at all the spookery Assange keeps claiming he's being warned about.
That's not to say such things couldn't happen. I'm sure Assange and Wikileaks has pissed off people who command the resources to do these sorts of things. But at the same time, it's awfully convenient to dismiss any criticisms one might have as the nefarious plot of shadowed enemies. Which is what we get sort of annoyed with when our own governments do the same thing.
Yeah that means "unlimited time".
Way to work that weasel. Back in the dial-up days, I signed up with a ISP for an "unlimited" account. I had my account terminated because I was connected too long. It was then explained to me that "unlimited" meant that they didn't restrict where you could browse.
The reality is that the marketing folks really like "unlimited" even when they can't actually deliver. So they won't be truthful and call it the "200GB Plan" or such. Instead, they'll slip in restrictions (or not even document restrictions as in my case) and begin playing linguistic limbo as soon as you run in to them.
There's a lot of trust given to Assange when he claims that governments are pulling strings in a personal vendetta. That's the part that bugs me.
As for the video...
The US military should have been much more forthcoming about that particular incident. I'm assuming that the video is of the reporter in question and that the military knew that after the fact. If that's the case, it would have been better for everyone involved if that had come to light well before someone felt they had to leak evidence of the event.
Having said that... what we got to see was a nicely edited piece of propaganda. Yes, sure... there's also raw video. However, the edited version is just as much a part of the record and involves plenty of interpretations of what's going on while it glazes over other issues. I've always thought the leaking of this video was important but unfortunately overshadowed by the way it was turned in to a propaganda piece.
As for the pilots "laughing" about it... watch the video again. There's nobody laughing. There's a lot of chatter right up to the point that they discover that there's children in the van. Then there's stunned silence. That's when one of the gunship crew says "Well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle."
Note how this differs from your quote. What the heck did you quote? Wikileaks provides a transcript. They provide video. Yet what you've got you in your mind is very different than actual events. Ponder that over a bit. We all bring our biases to the table. You hear US troops jeering over the death of a child. I heard US troops being shocked and then pulling themselves together with bravado.
It's past tiime that we looked past charm, respectability and authority as indicators of truthfulness...
I completely agree. And that's why I'm really suspicious of Assange trotting out the specter of Government spooks any time criticisms rise.
I think you're putting far too much thought in to it. What we're dealing with looks like sensitive but not highly classified information. Information that a lot of individuals have access to as part of their normal duties. So one (or more) individual(s) releases classified information to people that aren't authorized to have that information. The Government tends to get upset about that kind of thing. It doesn't matter what the level of classification is - once it's classified it becomes a Big Deal if you intentionally hand it out (there are claims that Manning went to some effort and subterfuge to hide his alleged actions). Wikileaks makes a big deal out of the information they have. Everyone wants to know more about it. The Government now gets to explain where the information came from, who did it, and why they're prosecuting individual(s) suspected of being involved.
There's no great mystery here.
Well, yes. If you want to ignore that this creates a price point scale that's favorable to Intel and not consumers, then sure. It's good for consumers too.
I like how you hand-wave off the PSN issue also. Very well done.
Some folks get a bit punchy when they feel like they're being manipulated. And this is manipulation.
This is a method for Intel to simplify logistics for themselves and their partners without abandoning their long-standing business of carefully guiding their technology through price-point gates. If anything, it might even make it easier to set up more gates as a single unit could potentially cover many price points designated by licensing tiers. That's great for Intel. It's probably just as good for OEMs and retailers as this is a chance for them to "up-sell" every unit. They can get their foot in the door with a bargain price and then either push for the "better deal" right there or collect on the "modest upgrade fee" later on.
However, as consumers, it'd be better for us for them to run in to logistical walls where they simply have to move their price points up to the next better-performing product.
Is there nothing that can't have cryptography applied to it?
Hint 1: "one-time pad" means a little bit of paper with a key printed on it. You probably mean "one-time key", which is a rather more general concept that is easier to implement in silicon.
Isn't a one-time pad a stack of said little pieces of paper - usually bound in some way?
What was being used in the 1940s was considerably different than what Coanda created in 1910. And that's being gracious in accepting the claim that Coanda's aircraft actually flew and what happened to it.
Interesting point. Though he did use footage of the Titanic in the movie Titanic where he did much the same thing.
To clarify: I find it a bit sad that humanity just isn't capable of building on pre-existing accomplishments, solutions and ideas. The Trieste has already achieved this goal 50 years ago, as the summary states, so why would this be such a difficult challenge? We had the technology half a century ago, and it worked perfectly well.
Sure. And take aeronautics. Clearly we should have stopped in the 1800s with functional gliders. Or maybe the early 1900s with powered flight. I mean... surely the Wright Brothers should have just put away their wind tunnels and called it a day before doing all this testing. By the mid-1900's it was just getting silly. The 1940's saw jet engines - as if that wasn't just coat-tail riding in it's fullest. And as if this hasn't all Been Done by world Governments, private commercial aviation has to get in to the mix. What the heck were these guys thinking?
Sort of like the Apollo program - almost half a century after, we are not capable to go to the moon - we simply and stupidly "forgot" how to do it. The great designers and engineers left and/or died off, and we, as humankind, went on with out collective dicks in our collective hands.
Yeah - I'm sure it's all about lost knowledge and nothing about the resources it took to accomplish these things. It's not like going to the moon is involved or anything. On a more serious note - you should go download yourself a copy of the CAIB Report and look in to the chapter that talks about funding; specifically comparing the Apollo era to today.
o.O
Let's see...
Browser... settings... Enable plug-ins... on demand.
Well, I'll be.
One of my favorite things about Flash is that it's easy to block and control. There's times when I want the functionality Flash is providing - but most times, I'd rather pretend that I don't have it installed. I was rather rudely reminded of this the other day when I installed Flash on my Android phone. I was all happy until I started browsing around. Until I get NoScript on my Android, Flash has been removed.
With this in mind, I'm wondering what level of control we might have over HTML5.
Linking to the CIA (or other US Government spook outfit) is Slashdot's answer to Kevin Bacon.
The IBM PC clone wars. And while it's true that Microsoft was the gatekeeper to the platform, the hardware was for more open than most of what was around at the time. That's what was driving sales. It was no longer about IBM.
Apple's attempt to do something similar was flawed. It was fighting about a decade of momentum (Jobs claimed that the entire clone project was too late to be effective when he canceled it). And it generated too much competition (read: confusion) in what had become a niche space. Apple themselves were putting out so many models that they were competing with themselves while they competed with the Mac clones they had licensed.
Now, I suspect I know where you're going with this. You're implying that Apple's clone program hurt Apple and therefore, being "open" hurt Apple. However, the initial licensing program actually helped Apple as it was already in financial trouble at this point and needed fast cash. So while the program may have been doomed, it wasn't itself the root of Apple's troubles.
It's a good write-up. Although... I thought it was a bit weird when the article started blaming the entire affair on the US Government. I get the author's point. However, I find the US Government being duped by a fast-talking kid with the right message at the right time to be another part of the overall story - not the core plot line.
Look, naming conventions change over time and I'm not so sure it ever meant what you seem to think it meant anyway. In this context "0 day" means there are no known fixes for the problem. In other words it has been 0 days since a fix was released.
It did mean that, at one time. Zero-day meant that it was still unpublished... still secret. You had an exploit that was going to work because "nobody" knew about it. That is, nobody but you and others who had elite access to the BBS' filez. Now the industry has shifted the term to mean that the vulnerability is unpatched. Which, I suppose, has a lot of the same general meaning. Although I think it's lost a lot of the edge; big difference between unpatched and (relatively) unknown.
But then - this is all just semantics. You kids get off my lawn. Back in my day, we had to push bits through MODEMs - both ways. We used KERMIT and we LIKED IT (unless we had ZMODEM). Etc, etc.
And then the workforce that runs the machines can be automated to the point where intensive labor isn't required. From here, it's turtles all the way down.
The point is that it's not turtles all the way down. Automation is expensive and has to counter the cost of simple manual labor. That's difficult when the competing manual labor cost isn't being increased by quality-of-life restrictions that, while humane, increase the cost of labor. And you can't entirely escape the cost of labor as, despite the material in the SciFi realm, machines still require people to maintain them. We can't simply dismiss labor cost as a competitive issue by wishing for efficiency and automation.
I'm not saying it's a haven of happy workers -- only that conditions may not be as bad as we're assuming. AS far as the report by China Business News -- I would trust that to be about as unbiased as any news source in the US. Again, I'm not claiming that there are no issues - only that we're only being shown a very small window into things.
Note that there are Chinese publications and Chinese reporters going undercover and reporting on these conditions. This isn't some US news source.
It's very possible that the view of Foxconn is somewhat distorted. It could be especially distorted by Western views of labor. But there's too much going on here to simply be dismissed. Working conditions that are "not quite as bad" could very well be far below other national standards. And let's not fool ourselves - working conditions are as much an economic factor as a quality-of-life issue.