The article suggests the longer you wait for the sequel, the higher the expectations. The problem is that a rushed time-table can be even worse. There is a reason some of the worst video gaames of all time are movie tie-ins. They are all on a rushed schedule to get the game out the same time as the movie. But while the movie has a lengthy pre-production process, the game isn't often green-lit until the movie starts filming because many movies never escape the pre-production development hell.
A sequel needs time to develop. KOTOR was a great game and KOTOR:2 was almost a great game, except Obsidian basically had 9 months to do the sequel. They were initially given 12 months, but then Lucasarts ran out of money and basically shipped an unfinished game.
In theory they could have taken their time with a third game and made up for the whole mess, except it looks like that will never happen now.
I haven't seen a full breakdown. But apparently under Bill Clinton, the science budget was split about 50/50 between civilian research (through universities and such) and government internal research (often military).
Under Bush, the military research jumped to 57% of the science budget. But again for a guy that was all about oil and hated the environment, he passed a Clean Water and Clean Air act in his first 100 days (despite Clinton promising for 8 years to pass them). He created tax breaks for hybrids and solar panels and penalized the auto-industry for not putting hybrids out. He increased spending on ethanol and fuel cell research. He also called for stiff requirements for increasing fuel economy that Obama supported alongside Bush. Sadly, the Democratic congress passed a much weaker version.
I think it is more fair to say that Bush didn't focus on carbon emissions (his cited reason for not signing the Kyoto Accord) but I don't know that he was against environmental research.
Conversely, Obama promised to continue funding NASA while running for office, and then cut NASA funding when in office.
I'm not saying we should all be Republicans, but the notion that Republicans hate science and Democrats fund it better isn't entirely true. There are some hard-core fundamentalists who feel that science threatens their belief in the Bible, but we haven't seen that represented in a President's budget yet.
Full disclosure, I'm neither Republican nor Democrat. I am a Christian who strongly supports science spending and doesn't feel threatened by it.
This is a bit of a fallacy. Bush increased stem cell research funding, fuel cell research funding, etc. He was in office for 8 years, and I believe 2001 was the first time he cut science spending. That was part of a larger goal to cut spending across the board.
How did he respond in 2002? He asked Congress to DOUBLE science spending.
My wife showed me a great graph during the last election that tracked science spending from administration to administration and showed that historically Republicans have spent more on science than Democrats.
It is equally possible that newer software introduces bugs as much as fixes them. But the assumption that older is always more secure and stable is flawed.
In reality, the best solution is to review changelogs and make informed decisions when upgrading. But avoiding all upgrades isn't the solution.
I'm saying the people who keep screaming the government can't keep any secrets aren't thinking things through to realize that certain things must be kept secret. That is why I said they were approaching it with a simplistic view. They insist unless you release everything you don't know if your government is abusing you.
This very Slashdot article is people acting butt-hurt that not all of the chat logs are released. They absolutely have to be released!
Well, you don't know why those portions have been held back. There can in fact be a very good reason, such as other sources being named.
As for your math skills (suspect at best) if 1 in 2000 posts in a given Slashdot thread exposes that belief, then the representative percentage is.05%..05% >.00001%.
And yes, the majority of posts have called for the completely release of all information without explaining any caveats otherwise.
I'm saying I doubt Wikileaks contacted all of them because it doesn't make sense they would all consent to have their names released if it meant needlessly putting their families in danger. What parent does that?
To top it off, Assange told Amnesty International this year it takes too much time and money to properly redact, which is why they don't always do it. Wikileaks doesn't have unlimited resources. If they don't have the time and money simply to cross off names, I doubt they have the time and money to hunt down and contact all those people.
The problem is that it is broke, you just often don't realize it. Older doesn't mean more secure or more stable inherently. New versions fix bugs discovered in old versions. If everyone did update immediately, then everyone would have had the bug fix and this outage wouldn't have happened.
The military is a function of the government, just as the post office is, or the IRS. The vast majority of government employees are not elected officials.
On top of that, Wikileaks exposes government secrets and military secrets alike.
That being said, I'm sure when the Taliban was threatening to hunt down and murder the families of named by Wikileaks as civilians assisting NATO, all those civilians consented to have their names released. And I'm sure Wikileaks contacted all of them.
The US government is trying to kill a terrorist leader living in Yemen who is tied to several terrorist attacks. He is also an active leader of an organization which has declared war on the United States.
That being said, the CIA and FBI have lists of wanted terrorists, and when possible they arrest them as opposed to kill them.
If you make zero distinction between al-Quaeda leaders actively at war with the United States and the average citizen, then you don't have the capacity for a reasonable dicussion.
The moral of the movie seemed to encourage enlisted men to think for themselves and stand up for what they felt was right, regardless of an order by a commanding officer, while at the same time I was trained to immediately and willfully obey all orders.
Treason and espionage are both possible becuase the leaked documents did include troop movements, strategies, etc.
Wikileaks did thankfully redact some of that.
And the Taliban has threatened to hunt down and murder familiies of civilians assisting NATO that were named in the Afghan documents.
It is a stretch, but you can argue that he aided the Taliban with the leak.
I was in the Marine Corp 10 years ago, so policies and training could have changed. But I was taught quite clearly that wars are won and lost when the opponent no longer has the will to fight. Wars are fought with propoganda as much as they are with bullets.
I believe he will be executed because the military can't afford the precedent to allow Manning to get off light. And again, while this seems extremely harsh to others, Manning never was forced to sign up for the military.
When was section 793 thrown out? Wait, it never has been.
And in 1971 a federal judge ruled that Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo could be tried for releasing the Pentagon Papers under the same Espionage Act.
And Wikipedia mentions that the constitutionality of the law has been questioned in the courts "although none of these decisions directly overruled it".
The law is largely unconstitutional and should be thrown out, but it hasn't.
The point of the parent article is that Wikileaks could force the government to start enforcing the law that they've largely ignored in the past 80 years.
There have been a number of Wikileaks threads on Slashdot the past few weeks and the overwhelming majority of posts I've read have supported this notion that the goverment must be completely transparent at all times. And yet you suggest that view is 0.00001% of the people.
If literally one person on Slashdot had posted that view today, they'd be well above the 0.00001% threshold.
Not everyone who hates Wikileaks is willing to kill over it.
Russia has called for Assange's death, but Australia has not. Rather they have suggested Assange should be tried for breaking Australian laws and endangering the lives of NATO troops.
Again, no lives were endangered with the Pentagon Papers. Amnesty International doesn't endanger lives.
You can fight for government accountability and transparency in a responsible fashion. Wikileaks doesn't seem interested in that.
And some government secrecy is a necessity. Should the government publish the location of nuclear materials? What about launch codes? Or the location of witnesses in protection?
Diplomatic cable releases aren't likely to show actual abuse or "fucking over" so much as just piss people off that individuals are being called names behind closed doors.
What good can come from that? It will only strain diplomatic relations and lead to more conflict.
I'm of the opinion that free speech and free press are absolutes. If they are infringed in any way, then they mean nothing.
The New York Times did in fact get away with publishing supposed state secrets with the Pentagon Papers.
But the Constitution does get ignored from time to time, and the point of the parent article is to suggest that the uproar over Wikileaks could cause the government to try and enforce the Espionage Act at the cost of the 1st Ammendment, literally punishing newspapers/journlists who report on state secrets.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started with reporters embedded with all the troops to report on everything. And there was a daily briefing where the press could ask top brass about the wars. For all this uproar over secrecy in Afghanistan, it has been a very open war.
These leaks might are likely going to create a situation of less transparency rather than more transparency.
The Taliban threatened to hunt down and kill all the civilians helping with NATO efforts that Assange named publicly.
Assange's response was to suggest it would cost $700,000 to redact those names and that Amnesty International should foot the bill if they were so concerned.
They sometimes redact names, but they are irresponsible to say the least.
I shouldn't bother replying to an AC relying solely on ad hominem attacks, but someone may actually require an explanation.
There is a distinct difference.
The Pentagon Papers were intentionally withheld to protect diplomatic interests. Releasing those portions wouldn't do any good.
The portion of cables already released already show pointless diplomatic posturing that will only harm relations between countries without revealing any major wrong doing, which begs the question. What was the point of the current release?
And while portions of the Pentagon Papers were intentionally withheld for 12 years, Wikileaks is promising a full release of the entirety of the cables, and they have already released it in its entirety to certain news outlets.
Surely, if anyone knew the location of Assange he would be bombed then, right?
Oh wait, your logic doesn't hold water.
During the 9/11 Comission, several senators asked Rice why we didn't just assassinate guys like Saddam or Bin Laden ages ago. Rice said government ordered assassinations ended in the 80's. You can believe it or not, but we know where Assange is and no one has killed him.
In time of war, if you refuse one direct order from a commanding officer, you can be shot on the spot without a trial.
Manning will likely be convicted of treason and executed. And while some will find this barbaric, Manning wasn't forced to join the military. He volunteered to join the military and in doing so he fell under the perview of the UCMJ.
Slashdot Mirror
The article suggests the longer you wait for the sequel, the higher the expectations. The problem is that a rushed time-table can be even worse. There is a reason some of the worst video gaames of all time are movie tie-ins. They are all on a rushed schedule to get the game out the same time as the movie. But while the movie has a lengthy pre-production process, the game isn't often green-lit until the movie starts filming because many movies never escape the pre-production development hell.
A sequel needs time to develop. KOTOR was a great game and KOTOR:2 was almost a great game, except Obsidian basically had 9 months to do the sequel. They were initially given 12 months, but then Lucasarts ran out of money and basically shipped an unfinished game.
In theory they could have taken their time with a third game and made up for the whole mess, except it looks like that will never happen now.
I haven't seen a full breakdown. But apparently under Bill Clinton, the science budget was split about 50/50 between civilian research (through universities and such) and government internal research (often military).
Under Bush, the military research jumped to 57% of the science budget. But again for a guy that was all about oil and hated the environment, he passed a Clean Water and Clean Air act in his first 100 days (despite Clinton promising for 8 years to pass them). He created tax breaks for hybrids and solar panels and penalized the auto-industry for not putting hybrids out. He increased spending on ethanol and fuel cell research. He also called for stiff requirements for increasing fuel economy that Obama supported alongside Bush. Sadly, the Democratic congress passed a much weaker version.
I think it is more fair to say that Bush didn't focus on carbon emissions (his cited reason for not signing the Kyoto Accord) but I don't know that he was against environmental research.
Conversely, Obama promised to continue funding NASA while running for office, and then cut NASA funding when in office.
I'm not saying we should all be Republicans, but the notion that Republicans hate science and Democrats fund it better isn't entirely true. There are some hard-core fundamentalists who feel that science threatens their belief in the Bible, but we haven't seen that represented in a President's budget yet.
Full disclosure, I'm neither Republican nor Democrat. I am a Christian who strongly supports science spending and doesn't feel threatened by it.
This is a bit of a fallacy. Bush increased stem cell research funding, fuel cell research funding, etc. He was in office for 8 years, and I believe 2001 was the first time he cut science spending. That was part of a larger goal to cut spending across the board.
How did he respond in 2002? He asked Congress to DOUBLE science spending.
http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/01/bush-asks-congress-to-double-science-spending/
My wife showed me a great graph during the last election that tracked science spending from administration to administration and showed that historically Republicans have spent more on science than Democrats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Q8UvJ1wvk
It is equally possible that newer software introduces bugs as much as fixes them. But the assumption that older is always more secure and stable is flawed.
In reality, the best solution is to review changelogs and make informed decisions when upgrading. But avoiding all upgrades isn't the solution.
I'm saying the people who keep screaming the government can't keep any secrets aren't thinking things through to realize that certain things must be kept secret. That is why I said they were approaching it with a simplistic view. They insist unless you release everything you don't know if your government is abusing you.
This very Slashdot article is people acting butt-hurt that not all of the chat logs are released. They absolutely have to be released!
Well, you don't know why those portions have been held back. There can in fact be a very good reason, such as other sources being named.
As for your math skills (suspect at best) if 1 in 2000 posts in a given Slashdot thread exposes that belief, then the representative percentage is .05%. .05% > .00001%.
And yes, the majority of posts have called for the completely release of all information without explaining any caveats otherwise.
I'm saying I doubt Wikileaks contacted all of them because it doesn't make sense they would all consent to have their names released if it meant needlessly putting their families in danger. What parent does that?
To top it off, Assange told Amnesty International this year it takes too much time and money to properly redact, which is why they don't always do it. Wikileaks doesn't have unlimited resources. If they don't have the time and money simply to cross off names, I doubt they have the time and money to hunt down and contact all those people.
It isn't bias. It is simple logic.
You can bitch they didn't QA the release. You can bitch that you don't like a P2P topology. But it is nice to see a public post-mortem.
The problem is that it is broke, you just often don't realize it. Older doesn't mean more secure or more stable inherently. New versions fix bugs discovered in old versions. If everyone did update immediately, then everyone would have had the bug fix and this outage wouldn't have happened.
The military is a function of the government, just as the post office is, or the IRS. The vast majority of government employees are not elected officials.
On top of that, Wikileaks exposes government secrets and military secrets alike.
That being said, I'm sure when the Taliban was threatening to hunt down and murder the families of named by Wikileaks as civilians assisting NATO, all those civilians consented to have their names released. And I'm sure Wikileaks contacted all of them.
The US government is trying to kill a terrorist leader living in Yemen who is tied to several terrorist attacks. He is also an active leader of an organization which has declared war on the United States.
That being said, the CIA and FBI have lists of wanted terrorists, and when possible they arrest them as opposed to kill them.
If you make zero distinction between al-Quaeda leaders actively at war with the United States and the average citizen, then you don't have the capacity for a reasonable dicussion.
You must not have read the parent article, where large portions of the Pentagon Papers were held back for over a decade.
There is a double-standard here.
Lives depend on military members immediately and willfully obeying orders. But Nuremberg did determine that obeying illegal orders is itself illegal.
Individual military members aren't really afforded the freedom to make that distinction, but can be held accountable regardless.
When I was in the Marine Corps, we watched films like this one:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074695/plotsummary
The moral of the movie seemed to encourage enlisted men to think for themselves and stand up for what they felt was right, regardless of an order by a commanding officer, while at the same time I was trained to immediately and willfully obey all orders.
Treason and espionage are both possible becuase the leaked documents did include troop movements, strategies, etc.
Wikileaks did thankfully redact some of that.
And the Taliban has threatened to hunt down and murder familiies of civilians assisting NATO that were named in the Afghan documents.
It is a stretch, but you can argue that he aided the Taliban with the leak.
I was in the Marine Corp 10 years ago, so policies and training could have changed. But I was taught quite clearly that wars are won and lost when the opponent no longer has the will to fight. Wars are fought with propoganda as much as they are with bullets.
I believe he will be executed because the military can't afford the precedent to allow Manning to get off light. And again, while this seems extremely harsh to others, Manning never was forced to sign up for the military.
When was section 793 thrown out? Wait, it never has been.
And in 1971 a federal judge ruled that Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo could be tried for releasing the Pentagon Papers under the same Espionage Act.
And Wikipedia mentions that the constitutionality of the law has been questioned in the courts "although none of these decisions directly overruled it".
The law is largely unconstitutional and should be thrown out, but it hasn't.
The point of the parent article is that Wikileaks could force the government to start enforcing the law that they've largely ignored in the past 80 years.
There have been a number of Wikileaks threads on Slashdot the past few weeks and the overwhelming majority of posts I've read have supported this notion that the goverment must be completely transparent at all times. And yet you suggest that view is 0.00001% of the people.
If literally one person on Slashdot had posted that view today, they'd be well above the 0.00001% threshold.
Hyperbole much?
Not everyone who hates Wikileaks is willing to kill over it.
Russia has called for Assange's death, but Australia has not. Rather they have suggested Assange should be tried for breaking Australian laws and endangering the lives of NATO troops.
Again, no lives were endangered with the Pentagon Papers. Amnesty International doesn't endanger lives.
You can fight for government accountability and transparency in a responsible fashion. Wikileaks doesn't seem interested in that.
And some government secrecy is a necessity. Should the government publish the location of nuclear materials? What about launch codes? Or the location of witnesses in protection?
Diplomatic cable releases aren't likely to show actual abuse or "fucking over" so much as just piss people off that individuals are being called names behind closed doors.
What good can come from that? It will only strain diplomatic relations and lead to more conflict.
I'm of the opinion that free speech and free press are absolutes. If they are infringed in any way, then they mean nothing.
The New York Times did in fact get away with publishing supposed state secrets with the Pentagon Papers.
But the Constitution does get ignored from time to time, and the point of the parent article is to suggest that the uproar over Wikileaks could cause the government to try and enforce the Espionage Act at the cost of the 1st Ammendment, literally punishing newspapers/journlists who report on state secrets.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started with reporters embedded with all the troops to report on everything. And there was a daily briefing where the press could ask top brass about the wars. For all this uproar over secrecy in Afghanistan, it has been a very open war.
These leaks might are likely going to create a situation of less transparency rather than more transparency.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/10/afghanistan-war-logs-wikileaks-human-rights-groups
The Taliban threatened to hunt down and kill all the civilians helping with NATO efforts that Assange named publicly.
Assange's response was to suggest it would cost $700,000 to redact those names and that Amnesty International should foot the bill if they were so concerned.
They sometimes redact names, but they are irresponsible to say the least.
Out of curiosity, will the UN declare that any nation who holds a prisoner in solitary confinement to be torture?
How many member UN nations would be held accountable for that?
It was suggested if you knew the location of Wikileaks employees, they would be bombed. Assange is a known Wikileaks employee whose location is known.
Please point me to reputable news outlets with proof the US Government is assassinating American citizens. I'm calling bullshit.
I shouldn't bother replying to an AC relying solely on ad hominem attacks, but someone may actually require an explanation.
There is a distinct difference.
The Pentagon Papers were intentionally withheld to protect diplomatic interests. Releasing those portions wouldn't do any good.
The portion of cables already released already show pointless diplomatic posturing that will only harm relations between countries without revealing any major wrong doing, which begs the question. What was the point of the current release?
And while portions of the Pentagon Papers were intentionally withheld for 12 years, Wikileaks is promising a full release of the entirety of the cables, and they have already released it in its entirety to certain news outlets.
Surely, if anyone knew the location of Assange he would be bombed then, right?
Oh wait, your logic doesn't hold water.
During the 9/11 Comission, several senators asked Rice why we didn't just assassinate guys like Saddam or Bin Laden ages ago. Rice said government ordered assassinations ended in the 80's. You can believe it or not, but we know where Assange is and no one has killed him.
Section 793 of the Espionage Act. Do some reading.
In time of war, if you refuse one direct order from a commanding officer, you can be shot on the spot without a trial.
Manning will likely be convicted of treason and executed. And while some will find this barbaric, Manning wasn't forced to join the military. He volunteered to join the military and in doing so he fell under the perview of the UCMJ.