It will just change security. More isolation in systems. Simpler programs only designed to do the job they need to do and absolutely nothing else. More appliances with completely stripped down or even no operating system.
Basically if you use M$ windows in what is meant to be a completely secure system, than you are a bloody idiot.
I think the two year setback is also likely wildly optimistic, even including the time already lost, unless of course Iran chooses to stick with M$ Windows.
The best hacks are still in hardware, chips built into capacitors, resistors etc. just waiting for that encoded signal to come in via their power feed to initiate intermittent power fluctuations (better than burn out, far harder to fix) and, really destructive when all spares will suffer from the same fault.
In democratic countries to adhere to the principles of democracy it should be a democratic choice as to whether a government can keep secrets, the nature of the secrets they can keep and for how long they can keep them. The underlying principle of a democracy is that the people are the government not their elected representative, whom just represent the people at the public venues government.
Point of fact, no government should ever keep a secret from the people if that secret whether alone or in conjunction with other secrets would have a material impact upon the public choice of their next elected representatives.
Take for example nonsense like Russia and Georgia, the interpretation that one report from an unreliable and biased source (Georgia) is considered unreliable but 10 reports from the same unreliable and biased source is now reliable because there are more reports, so simply bending the facts of the case with crazy logic to suit political masters at home in their election campaigns, obviously should have been made public because it would have a material impact upon elections.
Keyboard, mouse, game controllers, touch screens, graphic tablets, even the individual keyboard can be deemed as individual devices (who can forget ctrl alt del as the default control keys for windows). So basically a greed driven attempt to patent what already exists because no one else has attempted to patent it yet.
No central command is required, all that needs to happen, is the type of hardware that can directly connect to the internet needs to be defined. So instead of a modem, a firewall router that can detect DDosing and block it whether incoming or more importantly outgoing. So if a bot attempts to join a DDos attack it is blocked at it's connection. Also it will do a lot more to protect all poorly configured and administered computers out there on the internet. A global treaty, as distributed protection always works much better than central and with many brands of firewall routers, attack is made far more complicated (plus most of them already run Linux sure to PO M$).
It seems they are having trouble adapting to the idea of parallel networks and keeping their high durability field notebooks connected. The problem with the US military is the focus on feeding high profits to the military industrial complex and strangling the money spent on personal, so an extreme lack of highly qualified reliable personal, end results privates gain full access to secure networks.
They need to employ non-combat computer security personal, how ever they are blocked from doing so by a demand from lobbyists to pass off that work in high profit contracts to corporations, which limits the number they can employ. You reckon they would have woken up to the billions they threw away on Halliburton et al no bid contacts but of course that was the whole idea, really crazy stuff.
The Navy seems to have the highest level of competence but that is because the Republicans have not yet been able to force no bid corporate contracts with civilians filling all non-combat roles on naval vessels.
The defence is you do not have control over who can administer the machine, as such any attacks coming from it are not automatically yours. Everyone who has equal access to the machine is also liable, especially when taking into account script kiddie software.
The main reason for this is not so much the prosecution nut search warrants extending to your own home and confiscation of all your personal digital assets whilst they are investigated, often taking months, all down to incompetent manipulations of the company hardware by the PHB and their preferred butt polishers.
There are real liability questions which need to be covered to ensure you as the system administrator a not legally liable for all criminal activity originating from the computer system you manage.
If you are going to indulge in this activity unprotected by real anonymity make sure you have a dysfunctional Trojan client installed on your hardware and feign ignorance, funnily enough very likely to be true if you are foolish enough to to attempt these kind of activities as a amateur, not a dysfunctional one of course.
So at a minimum hack your desktop wirelessly using a notebook with a boot from USB OS and software and have no computer books on the premises, also helps to have Tea party posters and Republican literature http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/12/science (the ignorance is more believable).
Only one conditional on that. In the event that the equipment owned by the Point Haired Boss is used to commit a criminal act, a release must be signed by said PHB that the network administrator is not legally liable for any criminal activity originating from said equipment.
When the police come looking for someone for criminal activity sourced to the equipment you are managing the first person they will question is you, the network administrator, you are then required to prove your innocence, a hard thing to do with wandering root passwords.
Banning CD's and thumb drives is just so yesterday in terms of security. All computers secure locations should not have the facility to download or upload data. All data uploaded or downloaded should only by down at the security office by authorised officers. Hard copies are actually less of an issue because of course a printer spitting out 200,000 pages is pretty noticeable and of course a PFC pushing a wheelbarrow out of a building should raise some security issues but, perhaps not for the US.
The next lot of leaks will of course be paid for by foreign governments using higher ranked no hope of promotion types (really hard to track) just to further embarrass the US government. Although the PFC did it for free, how much do you really think it would cost to buy off some dead end no hope of promotion captain.
No, to imply linking is publishing is to imply responsibility for the content at the website published by somebody else. Also the link must divine the future as you would would also deemed to have published all future changes to the web site after having published the link to that site.
Also the judge would have to be clairvoyant in an ruling with regard to your intent when linking to the site and how carefully you perused the contents of the site you linked to.
Publishing a link is publishing the description to that link and the link itself, nothing more nothing less. Any judgement to the contrary represents a corrupt bias to achieve political change whether as a result of corporate of government intervention.
An example a 'hyperlink description' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink, I read the first paragraph so that it was loosely be on topic and take no responsibility beyond that, not for the remaining content nor any future changes to that content, for any judge to say that I published the content referred to in the link would be a sure sign of corruption on the part of that judge.
Interesting thing is latest word is there is now division in the Australian government with regards to the treatment of Julian. One side is leaning to the US and putting some blame on Julian and the other side is for defending Julian and putting the leak down to incompetence within the US security system. There was a public reminder given that the Australian Consular system was available to provide Julian with 'full' assistance. The information being released about Australia is seen as valuable and the political battle that is sure to surround any extradition attempt from Australia is seen as advantageous to some and in a parliamentary system that means quite a lot.
Please do not confuse Chinese and China. There are many democratic Chinese people living elsewhere in the world that want nothing to do with the corporo-fascist government of China. You can not even call it a Chinese government as the majority of Chinese living in China have little on no influence over the Government of China.
Personally this is a diplomatic mistake as it points out exactly which countries China has financial influence over, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Russia is the interesting one, although it is likely they don't care one way or the other about China's opinion and stayed away for their own reasons. As for Iraq and Colombia, hmm, perhaps they are trying to get out from under the US and looking to build relations with China or more likely Russia. In fact quite a few more likely stayed away to align with Russia rather than China.
In fact it would be interesting to find out why Russia did not attend.
Stop picking on the pseudo conservative Republicans, it must be embarrassing enough for them to know the Ferringi Rules of Acquisition are modelled upon their behaviour, even the gullible poor Republicans who chase the delusion of being rich, they don't want to end the exploitation they want to become the exploiters.
Reason people pirate; They choked on the B$ marketing, you know greatest singer, greatest band, greatest single, greatest album, greatest hits (many performers all at the same time). Too many one hit wonders. The same music rehashed over and over again. The stage show no longer looks great, just looks like a bunch of ego driven clowns ham-ing it up. They no longer give a rats about a bunch of drunken drugged up minstrels. They care more their friends offline and online than a bunch of psychopathic publishing executives and narcissistic lip sinkers. Music has become boring, really really boring, hence the listen and throw away and listen to something new (no worthwhile investment in buying). Music has become nothing but background to other activities, too few people actually create their own music, so they don't see any value in it.
Well if you are going to call up the border rule, sorry but then the inspection needs to be done at the border. When boarding a plane you do not cross a border. I saw a stream of what goes on at a US domestic airport, honestly if you schmucks put up with that kind of shite, than you are bloody idiots, get half undressed, take off shoes, get scanned and groped, if you protest any of it no matter how politely you get ganged up on threatened and assaulted, it's a joke. I've seen videos of sheep being better treated at a ship dip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udGjOsD844M at least they weren't xrayed or groped (better not let the TSA see this it will give them ideas);).
It is called insurance. When you home is robbed the insurance company pays. In this case the tenant has damaged the home via impregnating it with explosive residues, now requiring a government managed clean up. The insurance company would be liable for the cost of rebuilding the home and the clean up. No insurance and the owner is screwed. No different to a stolen car, your insurance pays for the damage to your car not the police after an aggressive police chase.
Now if the insurance company doesn't want to pay then likely the state will up the pressure and threaten them with the full cost of the disposal action and other penalties. Of course no insurance then the owners only recourse is against the tenant no different to a car theft.
Tricky as the charges were not filed until days later and then dropped and then refiled, one would suspect under outside influence. It is likely that extradition will fail due to lack of evidence and a period of expressed consent, no charge filed for a period after the activity, one days and the other over a week.
This seems more like an attempt to further tie up the issue of wikileaks. Julian needs to take a step back from wikileaks allow others to run it in the interim and to take then pressure of himself.
The principle is, Julian did not release the information, the person who obtained chose to release it via wikileaks and that wikileaks simply made the resource available. He has put himself under the gun by excessively putting himself in the spotlight and not publicly sharing the management and responsibility of wikileaks around.
In this case it is pretty obvious what they are trying to hide.
The use of inflammatory language in message after message to inflate the importance of that diplomatic posting and the person creating the report. The majority of messages show an alarming trend to language that will exaggerate the situation all to enhance the promotion prospect of the message creator.
This is all done without any regard for the consequences, for the real diplomatic harm that can be done and the real harm in terms of human lives that can be caused by some of the worst abuses of positions of great importance.
Some of the inflammatory language is so bad, one is left to wonder whether the diplomatic agents are under the influence of outside forces seeking to stir up conflict, seeking to fuel antagonism between the country being reported on and the US.
The best reason for incoming recruits not to read those transcripts is because they will learn some shocking bad habits. First and foremost stick to the facts no opinions, the on place for opinions is in the final conclusion nowhere else. When quoting number use numbers, forget 'thousands' bullshit so 920 plus or minus 50. Keep all language flat and neutral, it is up to the reader to put weight upon the facts provided. Your job is not to get promoted it is to provided valid reports upon various elements of diplomatic status between the host nation and the US. Do not create information to inflate the value of the posting, if you can not substantiate it do not include it.
The most important thing to do with those transcripts is to analyse the writers tendencies and habits and, based upon those decide whether they should be removed and placed in some janitorial role instead. Any politicians who acts upon some of those crap reports without failing to see 'distortions for promotions' inherent in them deserves to get canned, up to and including secretaries of state who have betrayed their own principles.
A open mind that seeks learning also sees a greater universe. In a universe of galaxies lasting billions of years it is hard to get really worried about one's insignificant monkey existence. You and every generation you can track in either direction are noting but the most insignificant blip imaginable.
Of course all life has value being a critter with a greater degree of choice (the greater degree of choice based upon greater understanding) does not deny any creatures with lessor choice lessor value, they just have lessor responsibility for their choice not a lessor value of life.
So fearing a negative life balance, where you have taken more than you have contributed, rather than death itself (excluding extended painful, still rather insignificant considering billions of years), seem to have more realistic import over extended existence.
Fixed rates set the ceiling for charges, the plaintiff and the defendant can spend as much as they wish, however the default 'loser pays' is limited to the defined set rates.
It doesn't seem likely that the intent is to damage IBM so much as a opportunity to build up a series of legal cases against IBM to be used in negotiation with IBM over something like Linux patents. So IBM produces an OS that they sell with their hardware and they want to control licensing of that OS ie if you run it on other hardware you must be pirating it as they only sell it with their hardware, this case nor the other one doesn't really seem to have any depth.
So M$ just seems to be temporarily propping up those companies whilst the spend money on legal challenges against IBM, to put pressure on IBM. The current biggest OS threat to windows is of course Android and M$ seems to be playing the game of circling their legal wagons to build up a monopolist defence.
How free information is, seems much more tied in reality to how much its costs to copy and distribute it more than anything else. What happens when the $5 1 terabyte thumb drive turns up and people start filling it full of content and just give them away for fun, simple party favours (inflation will also have done it's bit). How much 'free' content will be available then and there is nothing that anyone can to track it and just about everyone will a bowl full of 'free' content, which they filter and upload to their media server and of course swap around.
PS the idea with GPL is that pigopolist asshats don't steal the code and claimed that we pirated it and try to charge us for using it, the producers of copyrighted content are 'free' to use it so long as they don't try to claim that they own it and attempt to 'deny' others the opportunity to use it, including any changes they made to it.
The principle behind loser pays is too prevent using civil court as a psuedo fine by people who can afford to waste money in the legal system against people who can not so readily afford the legal cost. As well as reducing the number of court cases in the system as likely losers as less willing to go through the process and pay the additional court costs. The system should also be governed by 'reasonable' court costs where set rates of pay are defined for lawyers and specialist witnesses, the extent of legal representation and the extent of time spent upon the case.
Carefull with that, the 'visible' difference will be defined by screen size and distance and eyeball ability. Of course the other big thing, old content just is not going to get not better if the quality is not there to start with. All the old TV shows stored on SVHS wont automagically up quality on high definition, they already look bad enough on DVD.
Then of course there is how much time, effort and cost is put into digitising data stored in an analogue format, done cheaply the quality is no better or worse between SVHS, DVD or hi def. Hi def seems to be more about inflating data requirements to reduce piracy more than anything else and perhaps just a bit of reselling the same content again in another format with a tad of inflating content pricing. At the rate flash memory prices are collapsing waiting for content to be generally released in a usb or similar format makes more sense then hi def optical media.
Perhaps this is a solid reminder that we are becoming too reliant on 'domain names' and not doing enough to track and keep actual IP addresses. Perhaps it's time for a review of some of our habits, bookmarking, browsing history and, address finding. Whilst domain names are a convenience perhaps to protect and save an open internet it might be better to be less reliant upon that convenience and do more to independently and cooperatively track IP addresses.
Wikileaks provides a service in keeping more of the truth accessible to the general public than would otherwise be the case. Whilst politicians and their cronies, corporate controlled mass media disagree as they obviously want to keep control of the truth in order to distort in with lies and thus control public consciousness for power and profit, every effort must be made to disrupt this inherently corrupt status quo.
In reality a general review of what secrets governments can keep should be carried out and the public should be the ones to decide what should be secret and for how long it should remain a secret. Especially where those secrets would have a substantive impact upon whether existing elected representatives would be re-elected. Should Government secrets even be allowed to survive a term of office or at the very most one term after that term of office because clearly doing so is a corruption of the democratic process, as it denies the opportunity for the public to learn of the true qualities of their representatives based upon their actual actions whilst in office.
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It will just change security. More isolation in systems. Simpler programs only designed to do the job they need to do and absolutely nothing else. More appliances with completely stripped down or even no operating system.
Basically if you use M$ windows in what is meant to be a completely secure system, than you are a bloody idiot.
I think the two year setback is also likely wildly optimistic, even including the time already lost, unless of course Iran chooses to stick with M$ Windows.
The best hacks are still in hardware, chips built into capacitors, resistors etc. just waiting for that encoded signal to come in via their power feed to initiate intermittent power fluctuations (better than burn out, far harder to fix) and, really destructive when all spares will suffer from the same fault.
In democratic countries to adhere to the principles of democracy it should be a democratic choice as to whether a government can keep secrets, the nature of the secrets they can keep and for how long they can keep them. The underlying principle of a democracy is that the people are the government not their elected representative, whom just represent the people at the public venues government.
Point of fact, no government should ever keep a secret from the people if that secret whether alone or in conjunction with other secrets would have a material impact upon the public choice of their next elected representatives.
Take for example nonsense like Russia and Georgia, the interpretation that one report from an unreliable and biased source (Georgia) is considered unreliable but 10 reports from the same unreliable and biased source is now reliable because there are more reports, so simply bending the facts of the case with crazy logic to suit political masters at home in their election campaigns, obviously should have been made public because it would have a material impact upon elections.
Keyboard, mouse, game controllers, touch screens, graphic tablets, even the individual keyboard can be deemed as individual devices (who can forget ctrl alt del as the default control keys for windows). So basically a greed driven attempt to patent what already exists because no one else has attempted to patent it yet.
No central command is required, all that needs to happen, is the type of hardware that can directly connect to the internet needs to be defined. So instead of a modem, a firewall router that can detect DDosing and block it whether incoming or more importantly outgoing. So if a bot attempts to join a DDos attack it is blocked at it's connection. Also it will do a lot more to protect all poorly configured and administered computers out there on the internet. A global treaty, as distributed protection always works much better than central and with many brands of firewall routers, attack is made far more complicated (plus most of them already run Linux sure to PO M$).
It seems they are having trouble adapting to the idea of parallel networks and keeping their high durability field notebooks connected. The problem with the US military is the focus on feeding high profits to the military industrial complex and strangling the money spent on personal, so an extreme lack of highly qualified reliable personal, end results privates gain full access to secure networks.
They need to employ non-combat computer security personal, how ever they are blocked from doing so by a demand from lobbyists to pass off that work in high profit contracts to corporations, which limits the number they can employ. You reckon they would have woken up to the billions they threw away on Halliburton et al no bid contacts but of course that was the whole idea, really crazy stuff.
The Navy seems to have the highest level of competence but that is because the Republicans have not yet been able to force no bid corporate contracts with civilians filling all non-combat roles on naval vessels.
The defence is you do not have control over who can administer the machine, as such any attacks coming from it are not automatically yours. Everyone who has equal access to the machine is also liable, especially when taking into account script kiddie software.
The main reason for this is not so much the prosecution nut search warrants extending to your own home and confiscation of all your personal digital assets whilst they are investigated, often taking months, all down to incompetent manipulations of the company hardware by the PHB and their preferred butt polishers.
There are real liability questions which need to be covered to ensure you as the system administrator a not legally liable for all criminal activity originating from the computer system you manage.
If you are going to indulge in this activity unprotected by real anonymity make sure you have a dysfunctional Trojan client installed on your hardware and feign ignorance, funnily enough very likely to be true if you are foolish enough to to attempt these kind of activities as a amateur, not a dysfunctional one of course.
So at a minimum hack your desktop wirelessly using a notebook with a boot from USB OS and software and have no computer books on the premises, also helps to have Tea party posters and Republican literature http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/12/science (the ignorance is more believable).
Only one conditional on that. In the event that the equipment owned by the Point Haired Boss is used to commit a criminal act, a release must be signed by said PHB that the network administrator is not legally liable for any criminal activity originating from said equipment.
When the police come looking for someone for criminal activity sourced to the equipment you are managing the first person they will question is you, the network administrator, you are then required to prove your innocence, a hard thing to do with wandering root passwords.
Banning CD's and thumb drives is just so yesterday in terms of security. All computers secure locations should not have the facility to download or upload data. All data uploaded or downloaded should only by down at the security office by authorised officers. Hard copies are actually less of an issue because of course a printer spitting out 200,000 pages is pretty noticeable and of course a PFC pushing a wheelbarrow out of a building should raise some security issues but, perhaps not for the US.
The next lot of leaks will of course be paid for by foreign governments using higher ranked no hope of promotion types (really hard to track) just to further embarrass the US government. Although the PFC did it for free, how much do you really think it would cost to buy off some dead end no hope of promotion captain.
No, to imply linking is publishing is to imply responsibility for the content at the website published by somebody else. Also the link must divine the future as you would would also deemed to have published all future changes to the web site after having published the link to that site.
Also the judge would have to be clairvoyant in an ruling with regard to your intent when linking to the site and how carefully you perused the contents of the site you linked to.
Publishing a link is publishing the description to that link and the link itself, nothing more nothing less. Any judgement to the contrary represents a corrupt bias to achieve political change whether as a result of corporate of government intervention.
An example a 'hyperlink description' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink, I read the first paragraph so that it was loosely be on topic and take no responsibility beyond that, not for the remaining content nor any future changes to that content, for any judge to say that I published the content referred to in the link would be a sure sign of corruption on the part of that judge.
Interesting thing is latest word is there is now division in the Australian government with regards to the treatment of Julian. One side is leaning to the US and putting some blame on Julian and the other side is for defending Julian and putting the leak down to incompetence within the US security system. There was a public reminder given that the Australian Consular system was available to provide Julian with 'full' assistance. The information being released about Australia is seen as valuable and the political battle that is sure to surround any extradition attempt from Australia is seen as advantageous to some and in a parliamentary system that means quite a lot.
Please do not confuse Chinese and China. There are many democratic Chinese people living elsewhere in the world that want nothing to do with the corporo-fascist government of China. You can not even call it a Chinese government as the majority of Chinese living in China have little on no influence over the Government of China.
Personally this is a diplomatic mistake as it points out exactly which countries China has financial influence over, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Russia is the interesting one, although it is likely they don't care one way or the other about China's opinion and stayed away for their own reasons. As for Iraq and Colombia, hmm, perhaps they are trying to get out from under the US and looking to build relations with China or more likely Russia. In fact quite a few more likely stayed away to align with Russia rather than China.
In fact it would be interesting to find out why Russia did not attend.
Stop picking on the pseudo conservative Republicans, it must be embarrassing enough for them to know the Ferringi Rules of Acquisition are modelled upon their behaviour, even the gullible poor Republicans who chase the delusion of being rich, they don't want to end the exploitation they want to become the exploiters.
Reason people pirate; They choked on the B$ marketing, you know greatest singer, greatest band, greatest single, greatest album, greatest hits (many performers all at the same time). Too many one hit wonders. The same music rehashed over and over again. The stage show no longer looks great, just looks like a bunch of ego driven clowns ham-ing it up. They no longer give a rats about a bunch of drunken drugged up minstrels. They care more their friends offline and online than a bunch of psychopathic publishing executives and narcissistic lip sinkers. Music has become boring, really really boring, hence the listen and throw away and listen to something new (no worthwhile investment in buying). Music has become nothing but background to other activities, too few people actually create their own music, so they don't see any value in it.
Well if you are going to call up the border rule, sorry but then the inspection needs to be done at the border. When boarding a plane you do not cross a border. I saw a stream of what goes on at a US domestic airport, honestly if you schmucks put up with that kind of shite, than you are bloody idiots, get half undressed, take off shoes, get scanned and groped, if you protest any of it no matter how politely you get ganged up on threatened and assaulted, it's a joke. I've seen videos of sheep being better treated at a ship dip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udGjOsD844M at least they weren't xrayed or groped (better not let the TSA see this it will give them ideas) ;).
It is called insurance. When you home is robbed the insurance company pays. In this case the tenant has damaged the home via impregnating it with explosive residues, now requiring a government managed clean up. The insurance company would be liable for the cost of rebuilding the home and the clean up. No insurance and the owner is screwed. No different to a stolen car, your insurance pays for the damage to your car not the police after an aggressive police chase.
Now if the insurance company doesn't want to pay then likely the state will up the pressure and threaten them with the full cost of the disposal action and other penalties. Of course no insurance then the owners only recourse is against the tenant no different to a car theft.
Tricky as the charges were not filed until days later and then dropped and then refiled, one would suspect under outside influence. It is likely that extradition will fail due to lack of evidence and a period of expressed consent, no charge filed for a period after the activity, one days and the other over a week.
This seems more like an attempt to further tie up the issue of wikileaks. Julian needs to take a step back from wikileaks allow others to run it in the interim and to take then pressure of himself.
The principle is, Julian did not release the information, the person who obtained chose to release it via wikileaks and that wikileaks simply made the resource available. He has put himself under the gun by excessively putting himself in the spotlight and not publicly sharing the management and responsibility of wikileaks around.
In this case it is pretty obvious what they are trying to hide.
The use of inflammatory language in message after message to inflate the importance of that diplomatic posting and the person creating the report. The majority of messages show an alarming trend to language that will exaggerate the situation all to enhance the promotion prospect of the message creator.
This is all done without any regard for the consequences, for the real diplomatic harm that can be done and the real harm in terms of human lives that can be caused by some of the worst abuses of positions of great importance.
Some of the inflammatory language is so bad, one is left to wonder whether the diplomatic agents are under the influence of outside forces seeking to stir up conflict, seeking to fuel antagonism between the country being reported on and the US.
The best reason for incoming recruits not to read those transcripts is because they will learn some shocking bad habits. First and foremost stick to the facts no opinions, the on place for opinions is in the final conclusion nowhere else. When quoting number use numbers, forget 'thousands' bullshit so 920 plus or minus 50. Keep all language flat and neutral, it is up to the reader to put weight upon the facts provided. Your job is not to get promoted it is to provided valid reports upon various elements of diplomatic status between the host nation and the US. Do not create information to inflate the value of the posting, if you can not substantiate it do not include it.
The most important thing to do with those transcripts is to analyse the writers tendencies and habits and, based upon those decide whether they should be removed and placed in some janitorial role instead. Any politicians who acts upon some of those crap reports without failing to see 'distortions for promotions' inherent in them deserves to get canned, up to and including secretaries of state who have betrayed their own principles.
A open mind that seeks learning also sees a greater universe. In a universe of galaxies lasting billions of years it is hard to get really worried about one's insignificant monkey existence. You and every generation you can track in either direction are noting but the most insignificant blip imaginable.
Of course all life has value being a critter with a greater degree of choice (the greater degree of choice based upon greater understanding) does not deny any creatures with lessor choice lessor value, they just have lessor responsibility for their choice not a lessor value of life.
So fearing a negative life balance, where you have taken more than you have contributed, rather than death itself (excluding extended painful, still rather insignificant considering billions of years), seem to have more realistic import over extended existence.
Fixed rates set the ceiling for charges, the plaintiff and the defendant can spend as much as they wish, however the default 'loser pays' is limited to the defined set rates.
It doesn't seem likely that the intent is to damage IBM so much as a opportunity to build up a series of legal cases against IBM to be used in negotiation with IBM over something like Linux patents. So IBM produces an OS that they sell with their hardware and they want to control licensing of that OS ie if you run it on other hardware you must be pirating it as they only sell it with their hardware, this case nor the other one doesn't really seem to have any depth.
So M$ just seems to be temporarily propping up those companies whilst the spend money on legal challenges against IBM, to put pressure on IBM. The current biggest OS threat to windows is of course Android and M$ seems to be playing the game of circling their legal wagons to build up a monopolist defence.
How free information is, seems much more tied in reality to how much its costs to copy and distribute it more than anything else. What happens when the $5 1 terabyte thumb drive turns up and people start filling it full of content and just give them away for fun, simple party favours (inflation will also have done it's bit). How much 'free' content will be available then and there is nothing that anyone can to track it and just about everyone will a bowl full of 'free' content, which they filter and upload to their media server and of course swap around.
PS the idea with GPL is that pigopolist asshats don't steal the code and claimed that we pirated it and try to charge us for using it, the producers of copyrighted content are 'free' to use it so long as they don't try to claim that they own it and attempt to 'deny' others the opportunity to use it, including any changes they made to it.
The principle behind loser pays is too prevent using civil court as a psuedo fine by people who can afford to waste money in the legal system against people who can not so readily afford the legal cost. As well as reducing the number of court cases in the system as likely losers as less willing to go through the process and pay the additional court costs. The system should also be governed by 'reasonable' court costs where set rates of pay are defined for lawyers and specialist witnesses, the extent of legal representation and the extent of time spent upon the case.
Carefull with that, the 'visible' difference will be defined by screen size and distance and eyeball ability. Of course the other big thing, old content just is not going to get not better if the quality is not there to start with. All the old TV shows stored on SVHS wont automagically up quality on high definition, they already look bad enough on DVD.
Then of course there is how much time, effort and cost is put into digitising data stored in an analogue format, done cheaply the quality is no better or worse between SVHS, DVD or hi def. Hi def seems to be more about inflating data requirements to reduce piracy more than anything else and perhaps just a bit of reselling the same content again in another format with a tad of inflating content pricing. At the rate flash memory prices are collapsing waiting for content to be generally released in a usb or similar format makes more sense then hi def optical media.
Perhaps this is a solid reminder that we are becoming too reliant on 'domain names' and not doing enough to track and keep actual IP addresses. Perhaps it's time for a review of some of our habits, bookmarking, browsing history and, address finding. Whilst domain names are a convenience perhaps to protect and save an open internet it might be better to be less reliant upon that convenience and do more to independently and cooperatively track IP addresses.
Wikileaks provides a service in keeping more of the truth accessible to the general public than would otherwise be the case. Whilst politicians and their cronies, corporate controlled mass media disagree as they obviously want to keep control of the truth in order to distort in with lies and thus control public consciousness for power and profit, every effort must be made to disrupt this inherently corrupt status quo.
In reality a general review of what secrets governments can keep should be carried out and the public should be the ones to decide what should be secret and for how long it should remain a secret. Especially where those secrets would have a substantive impact upon whether existing elected representatives would be re-elected. Should Government secrets even be allowed to survive a term of office or at the very most one term after that term of office because clearly doing so is a corruption of the democratic process, as it denies the opportunity for the public to learn of the true qualities of their representatives based upon their actual actions whilst in office.
7Ps Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance, until then leave things switched off.