I think that in your signature you are making the claim that just as mutants are persecuted in the X-Men universe, Arabs are in our universe. But let's consider the Marvel universe for a moment. Some of the mutants running around loose have vast powers that could end the world quite easily or at least bring forth destruction that could kill many, many people. A single human being cannot kill all the people on a given continent; even leaders with nuclear weapons are given this power by the people around them who support them (in the case of dictators, who have bodyguards that support them) or freely elected officials. Thus, mutant registration and, in the case of mutants with far too much power, Sentinel intervention is not neccescarily a bad thing. I know that in the X-Men universe, the X-Men fight against this and so mutant registration and the ilk are considered bad since the good guys don't like it but think about it a little bit. People aren't generally allowed to walk around a mall with swords or flamethrowers so why should Psylocke, Wolverine, or Pyro be allowed to do the same? You say that because they were born this way, they have no choice and therefore you can't stop them. I say that because they were born this way, I have no choice. It's all about the common good.
So, bringing this around to Arabs - I'm not proposing a round up BUT systems where immigrants from the Middle East are monitored are not a bad thing. Screening based on race and origin are also not a bad thing. Your signature isn't very verbose about exactly what you mean so this is all I will write for now.
I don't believe you. There is no way you measured the temperature of your coffee. And if you did...well, that says something about you.
And what you fail to mention is that she ordered McDonald's coffee from a different McDonalds previously. She had never been to the McDonalds where the incident took place. It's fun leaving out important details, isn't it?
Not having a law prohibiting a behavior means that that behavior is legal. I don't know what you mean by "supporting" through law, because that idea doesn't really make any sense whatsoever. A behavior is either legal or it is not legal. If there exists legislation which dicates how slave populations should be counted, that seems like a pretty obvious sign that slavery is allowed.
Now, your trite little comment about "looking like a blowhard" is petty nonsense. What prevents you from having a reasonable discussion? The poster made an attempt at comparing this situation to another one - much more critical - in order to better understand the current situation.
Finally, your postulation (why don't you just call it a shot at the parent?), is taking a shot at you as well. He cares one way. You care another way. In your eyes, you're both wasting your time, right? Shouldn't you be rallying for peace or helping the homeless instead of posting on Slashdot? Come on, get a sense of perspective.
Spoken like someone who has pirated Windows. I don't want to have to pay for an operating system from Microsoft. I want to have a proper Open Source Operating System in my hard drive and that is the way it will be. I will not buy from Microsoft just to play games but I also won't steal from Microsoft. I am not a thieft.
From the article, "Third, RFID tags should be placed on the product's packaging instead of on the product when possible. Fourth, RFID tags should be readily visible and easily removable."
Now pardon me if I don't have the sort of camel-looking face that the guy who wrote the article does but doesn't this defeat the stated purpose of the tags? Retailers are saying that these tags will cut down on theft from stores because all packages can be easily tracked. If the tags are easily removed and on the packaging, what's to stop me from just taking the product I want for free out of the package and walking out of the store? I don't think this guy thought out his four little demands too well. Probably he just likes the number four, I know I do.
I remember playing the demo of the original Disciples, a game that emerged as a sleeper hit in a genre that had been dominated by the Heroes of Might & Magic series. I found Disciples easier to get into than HOMM, and thus I thought it had great potential. So when the Disciples II demo was released, I immediately downloaded it and began playing. I wasn't disappointed. I played and experimented for hours on end. Suddenly forgotten were all of the other games I'd been playing for weeks: Battle Realms, Galactic Battlegrounds, Throne of Darkness.
Disciples II: Dark Prophecy is a fine, addictive turn-based strategy game that will have you up all hours of the night, unable to tear yourself away from the computer.
After immersing myself in the demo for two weeks and alienating myself from my family, I was compelled to purchase the game. Unfortunately, CompUSA did not have the collector's edition on the shelf, so I settled for the regular edition.
I haven't been able to stop playing since I bought it.
The oddest part is, I've never been a fan of turn-based strategy. I could just never get into it. Disciples II has opened my eyes to a whole new world of gaming. It's that rare game that offers a thoroughly satisfying experience.
The Disciples series has been and will continue to be compared to HOMM (which is readying for a release of its fourth installment). One of the things that jumps out as a striking difference is the graphics. While both games boast some very attractive images, Disciples is a decidedly darker game and more grounded, it seems, in the fantasy setting. And while HOMM's combat screen is moving to a more isometric and zoomed-out perspective, Disciples II adheres to a combat interface that displays large images of the units, which makes for more detailed characters and interesting animations.
The units in the game are quite varied and boast some intriguing--and even amusing--abilities. In one battle, for example, I put my Undead Hordes army, consisting of a Death Knight, Doomdrake and Fighter, up against a neutral army that included two magic-using units that could transform my units. My Doomdrake was transformed into a huge blubbery Jabba-the-Hut figure for a number of rounds and, when attempting to attack in this state, would simply fall over backwards. It was a frustrating battle, but I somehow prevailed. And beware of armies with Ghouls and Ghosts or Specters. These units can paralyze your units. You'll spend round after round watching your units be paralyzed and pummeled.
One of the great features of the game is RPG-like development of your units. Some of the most important decisions you make will be the upgrade paths you choose. The upgrade paths determine the abilities, strengths and weaknesses of your advanced units.
One of the things you'll quickly discover is that you have to build balanced parties in order to survive your battles. Units have various immunities, so if you assemble an army of units with the same kind of attack, you'll likely encounter an enemy with an immunity to it and find yourself getting thrashed. Elements like this add a lot of tactical decision making to the gameplay.
The only real complaint I can lodge about the game at this point is that the retreat feature seems to me to be rather flawed. Retreating from combat usually means death to your party. I'd really like to see a patch to improve this feature so that you can bow gracefully out of a battle when you find yourself overmatched. In a game where economy is important and resources are contested, it's just too expensive to lose a whole group of units, which occurs more often than not when you attempt to retreat.
All in all, Disciples II is a very satisfying and challenging game. I can only hope that Strategy First will continue to release add-ons and sequels to the series, because I am thoroughly hooked.
Did I have a defective Maxtor or Fujitsu drive? To tell you the truth, although you've already assumed otherwise, I have never bought a Fujitsu drive. Now, you're still missing the point. The person I was replying to was making a generalized statement about the company's record based on his limited exposure to the company. Where are you getting your.01% defect rate? I'm sure you're just making it up. Perhaps you don't know much about statistics and appropriate sample spaces but I'll try to explain this to you.
First of all, in order to say that X number of hard drives will faill out of 100, you can't just buy 1 and, if it doesn't fail, say that 0 out of 100 fail. I hope you can understand this. Now from here we see that my original point was that the poster had not bought enough drives to make such a statement. The only people that can really comment on Fujitsu defect rates are Fujitsu employees who have the data on warranty returns and people who have bought and installed thousands of hard drives ("thousands" being a number determined by the number of drives Fujitsu produces, in order to have a large enough sample space) and now how many have failed from that block. Now, the poster could have made a valid comment about Fujitsu's customer support and I would have taken that for what it was worth. I hope you can understand all this and if not do a google for basic statistics and try to brush up on your knowledge before replying. Thanks!
you just don't get it; you can't judge hard drive manufacturers based on your limited amount of purchases. you don't have enough samples to accurately comment on their failure rate. yes, your fujitsu hard drive has worked fine. does that mean that they work fine the majority of the time or is yours a minority? you don't know because you've got one purchase to comment on and that's it. i've never had a problem with betty crocker. does that mean a betty crocker hard drive is great? no! likewise, if you've never bought a seagate drive, you don't know about their work. and buying 1 is the same as buying none.
Is your statement that Netware is "a hell of a lot more stable than any 2K/NT box" based on any type of empirical study or just your personal observations from, what I assume, years of using Netware?
I'm not trying to criticize what you've said but instead just want to get a handle on how you're measuring stability and such. I'm curious because I've found that even an old and antiquated system (i.e. my development box) runs quite stable with 2K. Granted, I don't put a tremendous server load on it and so that may be the reason I am seeing more stability in 2K than you are. This has always been the problem with trying to discuss the stability and performance of operating systems with people - everyone uses their systems differently and so you really can't compare performance without some benchmarking, a few charts, and perhaps a POWERPOINT presentation.;-) These are things I don't take to cocktail parties and thus I am forced to resort of vague hand-waving.
Thanks for any thought you might have on the subject.
I wasn't wrong. I maintain that when a URL is provided and that link leads to a 404 when copied and pasted directly, the link is dead. Ease of use will go up greatly if people would simply "Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!" And it's not a quirk of the system, it's laziness on the part of the poster that I am offended by.
Yes, it is dead. The link, as supplied, does not lead to a unique webpage and rather leads to a 404 error. Now, in case you're not quick on the uptake, that means it is a dead link. The link does not work. Now, if you're going to post links on Slashdot, preview your submission first, and confirm that everything is working correctly. Is it so hard to provide a bit of HTML to make things that much simpler?
You have no penis. I had earlier this morning confirmed that you had no brain due to the raging stupidity you've displayed in every single post you've ever fucking made but now I have discovered that you also lack a penis. This comes as little surprise to me as it was always quite evident that you were a flaming homosexual who enjoyed sucking dick (and therefore a penis is of no use to you). You are a fucktard of the worst variety - chatty. I wish that stupid fucks like yourself would just stay quiet and leave the rest of us in peace, asshole.
(Note: I will be checking your other posts to insult any further stupidity you have displayed on Slashdot, assclown.)
It is interesting the connotation behind the words "remote control." Symbolic of how we humans are in an ever-increasing battle to control the environment around us. So along comes the 'universal remote' which allows the greediest of control freaks to covet the power in one isolated unit. And I thought it was bad when my stepfater refused to release his grip from the TV remote... just imagine the power struggles taking place in the average houselhold when the remote controls not only the appliances, but lighting, temperature controls, etc... That thing better have a hidden book of matches tucked within its injection-molded body... just imagine during a power loss and the remote appears to be working, but the damn lights just aren't responding!!!
While I am basically fond of American Gods, I did have a few quarrels with it. For those of you who haven't read the book, it's in the vein of the Odyssey in that you have a protagonist who is sent from one locale to another, dealing with gods and operating at their whim. The particular gods square off in two different camps - the modern gods and the old gods. The old gods are the standard mythological gods that we all know and love. The modern gods are the modern items we all need in our lives - television, the Internet, beauty, etc. My problem with it was that Gaimain seemed, at some points, to be making up rules for his world, not because they seemed like the way things would be in such a world, but because they were useful rules for him to have in order to advance the plot. In a word, some sections felt contrived. That being said, I thought the writing was superb and that not only was it an entertaining read, it also had very comedic moments. I also really enjoyed the ending [which I will not give away] but let me just say that it was a fun little twist that really wrapped things up nicely. And while I did enjoy the ending, that may have been partially responsible for my feeling that the book was a bit contrived. Oh, also look out for the inclusion of a dead woman walking the Earth. Clive Barker had a similar character in The Damnation Game and both texts do a nice job of showing just what problems someone who is dead runs into when they're not allowed to lie in the ground. All in all, it was one of the better books I've read in the previous year and would suggest you pick it up. After all, it's in paperback now and that's nearly free!
I don't think the reply you are responding to actually ever said it was impossible. I think you might want to read posts a bit closer before you issue a response. Unless of course you were trying to come off as "elite" in some strange way by demonstrating your impressive knowledge of Python. If so, bravo young man - the Slashdot hordes have been won over and love you like a rubber doll.;-)
Check out http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/cond-mat/9701074/. It's a PDF doc on what the Russians have researched. This is the abstract; "A high-temperature YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-x} bulk ceramic superconductor with composite structure has revealed weak shielding properties against gravitational force while in a levitating state at temperatures below 70 K. A toroidal disk was prepared using conventional ceramic technology in combination with melt-texture growth. Two solenoids were placed around the disk in order to initiate the current inside it and to rotate the disk about its central axis. Samples placed over the rotating disk initially demonstrated a weight loss of 0.3-0.5%. When the rotation speed was slowly reduced by changing the current in the solenoids, the shielding effect became considerably higher and reached 1.9-2.1% at maximum."
But I must be off now. I've got a YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-x} widget factory to get off the ground.:B
How about adding an IQ test to the standard login for anyone connecting to your server? Users are stupid. You should prevent the really stupid ones from getting you into trouble. In fact, if they score low enough on the IQ test - you should give them a broken television. When they ask for the keyboard, tell them it is on the "backend" (behind the "firewall") - making sure to make the quotes in the air with your fingers. I've noticed a disturbing trend lately that laypersons love the terms firewall and backend - without any understanding of said terms. It's a bit disturbing.
Timmy adds, "The BBC article's headline (and accompanying illustration) are more alarming than the story itself seems to warrant: this asteroid has been given a 0.06 on the Palermo technical scale, which means it shouldn't bump getting run over by a llama off your list of worries."
That's a bit misleading. While 0.06 isn't an incredibly high number, obviously Timmy doesn't understand it. This is the first object that has ever received a rating on the Palermo scale that is POSITIVE. That is something. (Timmy, reading the BBC article doesn't really make you an expert so why don't you be a bit more careful in the future.)
MS does not have a monopoly on writing bad code. As a teaching assistant (and holder of a BS in Computer Science) I've seen a fair share of bad coding by people other than employees of Bill Gates. You probably have never written a line of code in your life but think you're in the right at taking pathetic swipes at Microsoft.
As evidence, check out the recent and infamous Mars probe that was lost because of a calculation error.
The fact that the conference is mentioned several times leads me to believe that it is a clever advertising campaign for the conference designed by one of the organizers. I don't feel like this note had its origins within AT&T.
I don't see how releasing this note to the public (ignoring whether or not it is actually a valid AT&T release and not just a creation of someone promoting the conference) would be a criminal act. Please expound on that a bit because I certainly don't see your point. I mean, I can say that the Kwik-E-Mart employees don't wear bullet-proof vests but if you go shoot one, you're responsible - not me.
You should say "mainstream media" because clearly websites are a form of media and there has been plenty of criticism of the U.S. government's policies as of late. Furthermore, I'm not quite sure you've been keeping up on what the media has been reporting. The Times, Newsweek, MSNBC, FoxNews, and CNN have all been questioning the FBI's knowledge of a possible terrorist attack before 9/11. There is no shortage of pundits in this country who will criticize politicians.
Also, your statement that "In China it seems that the media is free and the government only controls its (sic) distribution" is just stupid. A free media that cannot inform anyone is not a free media at all. And I guess you're not aware of the "People's" Daily newspaper in China which is the official mouthpiece of the Communist government - clearly a form of media which is not "free" and entirely controlled by the government. The Chinese government has long shown that they do not share the same views of freedom that your average American will espouse. I think that this story is indicative of the fact that in this past century technology has made the world a much smaller place. The Internet, hopefully, will force a degree of honesty onto governments around the world and aid the people in removing depostic regimes. I also find it quite offensive that you're trying to defend China by comparing it to the United States government's behavior. You should read up a bit more on how the Chinese government treats her people and realize that not only is your statement out of line but it is also quite insulting to the millions of Chinese people living in oppression - when you downplay their oppression and try to compare it to Americans, you confuse people on the issue. There's a reason people are fleeing China to enter the United States and it's not because the US "controls the media."
Slashdot Mirror
So, bringing this around to Arabs - I'm not proposing a round up BUT systems where immigrants from the Middle East are monitored are not a bad thing. Screening based on race and origin are also not a bad thing. Your signature isn't very verbose about exactly what you mean so this is all I will write for now.
And what you fail to mention is that she ordered McDonald's coffee from a different McDonalds previously. She had never been to the McDonalds where the incident took place. It's fun leaving out important details, isn't it?
Now, your trite little comment about "looking like a blowhard" is petty nonsense. What prevents you from having a reasonable discussion? The poster made an attempt at comparing this situation to another one - much more critical - in order to better understand the current situation.
Finally, your postulation (why don't you just call it a shot at the parent?), is taking a shot at you as well. He cares one way. You care another way. In your eyes, you're both wasting your time, right? Shouldn't you be rallying for peace or helping the homeless instead of posting on Slashdot? Come on, get a sense of perspective.
[See the error that is your life now?]
Spoken like someone who has pirated Windows. I don't want to have to pay for an operating system from Microsoft. I want to have a proper Open Source Operating System in my hard drive and that is the way it will be. I will not buy from Microsoft just to play games but I also won't steal from Microsoft. I am not a thieft.
Now pardon me if I don't have the sort of camel-looking face that the guy who wrote the article does but doesn't this defeat the stated purpose of the tags? Retailers are saying that these tags will cut down on theft from stores because all packages can be easily tracked. If the tags are easily removed and on the packaging, what's to stop me from just taking the product I want for free out of the package and walking out of the store? I don't think this guy thought out his four little demands too well. Probably he just likes the number four, I know I do.
Disciples II: Dark Prophecy is a fine, addictive turn-based strategy game that will have you up all hours of the night, unable to tear yourself away from the computer.
After immersing myself in the demo for two weeks and alienating myself from my family, I was compelled to purchase the game. Unfortunately, CompUSA did not have the collector's edition on the shelf, so I settled for the regular edition.
I haven't been able to stop playing since I bought it.
The oddest part is, I've never been a fan of turn-based strategy. I could just never get into it. Disciples II has opened my eyes to a whole new world of gaming. It's that rare game that offers a thoroughly satisfying experience.
The Disciples series has been and will continue to be compared to HOMM (which is readying for a release of its fourth installment). One of the things that jumps out as a striking difference is the graphics. While both games boast some very attractive images, Disciples is a decidedly darker game and more grounded, it seems, in the fantasy setting. And while HOMM's combat screen is moving to a more isometric and zoomed-out perspective, Disciples II adheres to a combat interface that displays large images of the units, which makes for more detailed characters and interesting animations.
The units in the game are quite varied and boast some intriguing--and even amusing--abilities. In one battle, for example, I put my Undead Hordes army, consisting of a Death Knight, Doomdrake and Fighter, up against a neutral army that included two magic-using units that could transform my units. My Doomdrake was transformed into a huge blubbery Jabba-the-Hut figure for a number of rounds and, when attempting to attack in this state, would simply fall over backwards. It was a frustrating battle, but I somehow prevailed. And beware of armies with Ghouls and Ghosts or Specters. These units can paralyze your units. You'll spend round after round watching your units be paralyzed and pummeled.
One of the great features of the game is RPG-like development of your units. Some of the most important decisions you make will be the upgrade paths you choose. The upgrade paths determine the abilities, strengths and weaknesses of your advanced units.
One of the things you'll quickly discover is that you have to build balanced parties in order to survive your battles. Units have various immunities, so if you assemble an army of units with the same kind of attack, you'll likely encounter an enemy with an immunity to it and find yourself getting thrashed. Elements like this add a lot of tactical decision making to the gameplay.
The only real complaint I can lodge about the game at this point is that the retreat feature seems to me to be rather flawed. Retreating from combat usually means death to your party. I'd really like to see a patch to improve this feature so that you can bow gracefully out of a battle when you find yourself overmatched. In a game where economy is important and resources are contested, it's just too expensive to lose a whole group of units, which occurs more often than not when you attempt to retreat.
All in all, Disciples II is a very satisfying and challenging game. I can only hope that Strategy First will continue to release add-ons and sequels to the series, because I am thoroughly hooked.
I disagree with your prediction.
First of all, in order to say that X number of hard drives will faill out of 100, you can't just buy 1 and, if it doesn't fail, say that 0 out of 100 fail. I hope you can understand this. Now from here we see that my original point was that the poster had not bought enough drives to make such a statement. The only people that can really comment on Fujitsu defect rates are Fujitsu employees who have the data on warranty returns and people who have bought and installed thousands of hard drives ("thousands" being a number determined by the number of drives Fujitsu produces, in order to have a large enough sample space) and now how many have failed from that block. Now, the poster could have made a valid comment about Fujitsu's customer support and I would have taken that for what it was worth. I hope you can understand all this and if not do a google for basic statistics and try to brush up on your knowledge before replying. Thanks!
you just don't get it; you can't judge hard drive manufacturers based on your limited amount of purchases. you don't have enough samples to accurately comment on their failure rate. yes, your fujitsu hard drive has worked fine. does that mean that they work fine the majority of the time or is yours a minority? you don't know because you've got one purchase to comment on and that's it. i've never had a problem with betty crocker. does that mean a betty crocker hard drive is great? no! likewise, if you've never bought a seagate drive, you don't know about their work. and buying 1 is the same as buying none.
I'm not trying to criticize what you've said but instead just want to get a handle on how you're measuring stability and such. I'm curious because I've found that even an old and antiquated system (i.e. my development box) runs quite stable with 2K. Granted, I don't put a tremendous server load on it and so that may be the reason I am seeing more stability in 2K than you are. This has always been the problem with trying to discuss the stability and performance of operating systems with people - everyone uses their systems differently and so you really can't compare performance without some benchmarking, a few charts, and perhaps a POWERPOINT presentation. ;-) These are things I don't take to cocktail parties and thus I am forced to resort of vague hand-waving.
Thanks for any thought you might have on the subject.
I wasn't wrong. I maintain that when a URL is provided and that link leads to a 404 when copied and pasted directly, the link is dead. Ease of use will go up greatly if people would simply "Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!" And it's not a quirk of the system, it's laziness on the part of the poster that I am offended by.
Yes, it is dead. The link, as supplied, does not lead to a unique webpage and rather leads to a 404 error. Now, in case you're not quick on the uptake, that means it is a dead link. The link does not work. Now, if you're going to post links on Slashdot, preview your submission first, and confirm that everything is working correctly. Is it so hard to provide a bit of HTML to make things that much simpler?
That link is dead. Is it so hard to check links before you post them?
Real Media? Yeah, there's a chance in hell that I'll install that on my system. I do wish I could see those commercials though.
(Note: I will be checking your other posts to insult any further stupidity you have displayed on Slashdot, assclown.)
It is interesting the connotation behind the words "remote control." Symbolic of how we humans are in an ever-increasing battle to control the environment around us. So along comes the 'universal remote' which allows the greediest of control freaks to covet the power in one isolated unit. And I thought it was bad when my stepfater refused to release his grip from the TV remote... just imagine the power struggles taking place in the average houselhold when the remote controls not only the appliances, but lighting, temperature controls, etc... That thing better have a hidden book of matches tucked within its injection-molded body... just imagine during a power loss and the remote appears to be working, but the damn lights just aren't responding!!!
While I am basically fond of American Gods, I did have a few quarrels with it. For those of you who haven't read the book, it's in the vein of the Odyssey in that you have a protagonist who is sent from one locale to another, dealing with gods and operating at their whim. The particular gods square off in two different camps - the modern gods and the old gods. The old gods are the standard mythological gods that we all know and love. The modern gods are the modern items we all need in our lives - television, the Internet, beauty, etc. My problem with it was that Gaimain seemed, at some points, to be making up rules for his world, not because they seemed like the way things would be in such a world, but because they were useful rules for him to have in order to advance the plot. In a word, some sections felt contrived. That being said, I thought the writing was superb and that not only was it an entertaining read, it also had very comedic moments. I also really enjoyed the ending [which I will not give away] but let me just say that it was a fun little twist that really wrapped things up nicely. And while I did enjoy the ending, that may have been partially responsible for my feeling that the book was a bit contrived. Oh, also look out for the inclusion of a dead woman walking the Earth. Clive Barker had a similar character in The Damnation Game and both texts do a nice job of showing just what problems someone who is dead runs into when they're not allowed to lie in the ground. All in all, it was one of the better books I've read in the previous year and would suggest you pick it up. After all, it's in paperback now and that's nearly free!
I don't think the reply you are responding to actually ever said it was impossible. I think you might want to read posts a bit closer before you issue a response. Unless of course you were trying to come off as "elite" in some strange way by demonstrating your impressive knowledge of Python. If so, bravo young man - the Slashdot hordes have been won over and love you like a rubber doll. ;-)
But I must be off now. I've got a YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-x} widget factory to get off the ground. :B
How about adding an IQ test to the standard login for anyone connecting to your server? Users are stupid. You should prevent the really stupid ones from getting you into trouble. In fact, if they score low enough on the IQ test - you should give them a broken television. When they ask for the keyboard, tell them it is on the "backend" (behind the "firewall") - making sure to make the quotes in the air with your fingers. I've noticed a disturbing trend lately that laypersons love the terms firewall and backend - without any understanding of said terms. It's a bit disturbing.
That's a bit misleading. While 0.06 isn't an incredibly high number, obviously Timmy doesn't understand it. This is the first object that has ever received a rating on the Palermo scale that is POSITIVE. That is something. (Timmy, reading the BBC article doesn't really make you an expert so why don't you be a bit more careful in the future.)
MS does not have a monopoly on writing bad code. As a teaching assistant (and holder of a BS in Computer Science) I've seen a fair share of bad coding by people other than employees of Bill Gates. You probably have never written a line of code in your life but think you're in the right at taking pathetic swipes at Microsoft.
As evidence, check out the recent and infamous Mars probe that was lost because of a calculation error.
The fact that the conference is mentioned several times leads me to believe that it is a clever advertising campaign for the conference designed by one of the organizers. I don't feel like this note had its origins within AT&T.
I don't see how releasing this note to the public (ignoring whether or not it is actually a valid AT&T release and not just a creation of someone promoting the conference) would be a criminal act. Please expound on that a bit because I certainly don't see your point. I mean, I can say that the Kwik-E-Mart employees don't wear bullet-proof vests but if you go shoot one, you're responsible - not me.
You should say "mainstream media" because clearly websites are a form of media and there has been plenty of criticism of the U.S. government's policies as of late. Furthermore, I'm not quite sure you've been keeping up on what the media has been reporting. The Times, Newsweek, MSNBC, FoxNews, and CNN have all been questioning the FBI's knowledge of a possible terrorist attack before 9/11. There is no shortage of pundits in this country who will criticize politicians.
Also, your statement that "In China it seems that the media is free and the government only controls its (sic) distribution" is just stupid. A free media that cannot inform anyone is not a free media at all. And I guess you're not aware of the "People's" Daily newspaper in China which is the official mouthpiece of the Communist government - clearly a form of media which is not "free" and entirely controlled by the government. The Chinese government has long shown that they do not share the same views of freedom that your average American will espouse. I think that this story is indicative of the fact that in this past century technology has made the world a much smaller place. The Internet, hopefully, will force a degree of honesty onto governments around the world and aid the people in removing depostic regimes. I also find it quite offensive that you're trying to defend China by comparing it to the United States government's behavior. You should read up a bit more on how the Chinese government treats her people and realize that not only is your statement out of line but it is also quite insulting to the millions of Chinese people living in oppression - when you downplay their oppression and try to compare it to Americans, you confuse people on the issue. There's a reason people are fleeing China to enter the United States and it's not because the US "controls the media."