Really - what did anyone think would happen?

So, lets assume that Wikileaks kept it to things pretty much anyone would consider to be a violation of basic human rights. That would probably have resulted in an attempt to kept stuff secret (for instance no removable devices and such), but for the most part life would have went on. But no, they had to simply release everything in a slow process to maximize publicity.

They didn't stop at embarrassing things said (much of which needs to be expressed but doesn't really need to be broadcast - two diplomats really need to confer that someone is a douchbag but it is best that it isn't publicised) to things that just are internal communications and could be used against us but really do not have embarrassing information (some of the procedural discussions and such). These communications are vital to *any* govt operating and are best not really being talked about (anyone think the US is the only one doing the UN spy stuff? I have some ocean front property in Arizona I'll sell cheap - yet it is best left unsaid and just implied). Heck, you can't even have a working negotiation over your salary if you have that level of transparency let alone if the diplomatic channels did.

Given this they *are* going to lock down on the whole thing and, as many have pointed out that is difficult to do. Therefore the lock down is going to be harsh to limit it as much as possible. If they can still function and only have half the documents leak-able that is a win from that point of view. Further Wikileaks lost a great deal of its support in the last release because of that too. There is nothing that really had a burning need to be told and a lot that was only going to give concrete ammunition to people who would truly oppress your rights in major way. One can talk about all the vetting done before the release, yet the vast majority of people can see the information released and make up their own minds (and regardless of how much you call them "sheople"it turns out most do just that - see the last US election for how well running with that idea worked out, heck see the last three or four ones for everyone involved to see how well that idea worked out - turns out reality doesn't give a flip about how much you believe your fantasy).

But hey, lets all DDOS everyone that thinks this way and it will solve the worlds problems!!!! If you want to win then embrace a similar idea - until then you will, at best, get short periods of time where enough give you the benefit of the doubt. Love them, hate them. be indifferent but this is precisely why both Clinton and Bush did as they wanted for eight years each no matter who ran Congress and is why Obama is totally lost after 2 (even though Bush and Clinton were VERY different governing styles they each ran circles around the other side of the political isle).

Ahh, but you see - the context is your own. I'm certain that a few thousand people in New York on 9/11 certainly felt repressed for the short while they were alive after the plane hit the tower - one could even argue that their oppression is more significant than yours (after all death is pretty much the single biggest removal of civil rights one can think of). It was certainly injustice.

Indeed, it isn't hard to find situations across the world where this happens - lets say if you were a non-Baathist in Iraq. There was some true injustice - so you were for that? After all you weren't even neutral, you were *against* the action to halt it so that means you were siding with the the Baathists. Or how about Darfur - didn't see people championing that one - you like those Africans getting killed and support it? I would call that situation "injustice" - MUCH more than anything happening with Wikileaks.

Let me guess, you thought it was wrong but that we should leave it alone? OK, I think the harassment of Wikileaks is wrong is too - if I campaign to leave it alone and let the govt do whatever it wants are you going to support me as a True Friend of Justice? Bet not. The primary difference is this is one *you* care about.

Lots of injustice out there like that - lots of it you only care enough to half shed a single tear and move on, much of it you oppose any measure to try and stop. Lots of it you get all nice and worked up over the "with us or against us" meme but more than willing to trot it out in defense of your own cause.

Note *none* of those cases were "terrorists" but pure injustice of the type feared our govt will come to (but not there yet).

Personally I find both sets to be laughable propaganda. Not sure which is sadder if you truly believe what you write or do not but think that it is persuasive.

Truth is somewhere in between - terrorist exist and there has to be some form of action against them and our govt is running amok and needs reeled in. Just because someone wants a line drawn someplace where I do not want it doesn't necessarily mean they are "against me", though I will have to say attitudes like yours are so. All they will do is swap one set of people trying to force me to do something with another and *that* is injustice.

So, you are either with us or against us?

I thought that attitude was totally wrong? Or does adding more words make it a nice and proper thing to think and act on?

It largely depends on yoru definition of a PC. I'm too lazy to look it up, nor is it an original idea (many of us thought this *well* before it was wrote) but ESR has a great article about the future of computing and how it is converging on a single small device.

So, we are going away from the PC to the Tablet - OK, what makes it a tablet vs a PC? The interface? There is no reason whatsoever that I can not get a PC with a touchscreen and get that interface with all the versatility of the PC. The form factor? Well I can't certainly get that PC performance and nice touch screen in a tablet yet but heck, we are close to it.

Lets take the Apple MacBook Air - and easy target as it is currently a widely known set standard. So where does that fit in? Apple wants us to think it isn't a PC, isn't a Tablet, but something in between - yet it *is* a PC replacement we are looking at corporate wide. There isn't anything really lacking there either (well, other than application availability for Mac OS, though bootcamp and a purchase of Windows Professional would fix - but that is software and mostly irrelevant to what we are discussing). In what we call the 'PC" world (by that we mean windows based) you can for the same price as it and get a CPU two generations later, twice the ram and slightly faster, a built in DVD-writer, and a few other hardware upgrades for the same price, weight, and a one inch thick instead of .8 inches thick form factor (we just purchased a Sony VAIO at work equipped as such). So it isn't Apple has any truly special hardware there either - their advertising campaign is quite correct about where that device fits in. Give us a good port replicator (ours has yet to arrive so I can't say how it will work) and the only reason to do otherwise is cost (~1600 for the laptop plus the port replicator and whatever monitor you choose is four or more times the cost of a desktop similarly equipped, but then it doesn't weigh a few pounds and fit in a folder either). Truly that "PC's" form factor is close enough to the tablets that if it had as convenient and OS as they do it would supplant them.

Add in that phones are quickly looking at multiple core 1.5+ ghz processors and multiple ports/outputs/inputs and the line becomes really blurred hardware wise. Indeed, we are already seeing phones that can *capture* as decent quality as their optics allow 1080p video and play any 1080p video stream at full quality as well as a dedicated Blu-Ray player - those lines are blurring. With some of them add a port replicator and hardware wise you are going to be hard pressed to find a difference. Further given time and it being primarily a software issue the following statement comes to mind - once a problem is totally software anything is fixable, it just is a matter of time. So yes, these firms are correct. However one has to note they are wanting money for their advice and, while correct from a strict standpoint the hardware convergence has some time to go and the software had a great deal left. It isn't remotely time to have them the same or invest as such - but long term that is where we are very much moving.

Yea, because Verizon doesn't have any Smartphone competitors out there that are competing with AT&T and their data plans are even worse. Oh, wait a minute - Droid, unlimited data, and tethering for free? I guess only a fraction of the people out there use Android phones over iPhones. Oh, crap - that isn't true either?

I guess Apple has Magic Bits that cost more Bits than others and are thusly making AT&T's service blow for most people. Yea, it couldn't be that it blew before Apple got on there and, indeed, has improved since then. No it must be that Apple iPhones are so popular that no network on the planet could handle the data load and all others are as motes of dust compared to them.

Come one, this is *soo* early 2010's type of thinking - have you even bothered to look at sales data in the last 8 months?

AT&T had that excuse last year sometime but has lost it - they aren't the only ones with lots of streaming video and such anymore (and I would bet not even the highest as the multitude of Android Phones have come out on other carriers). Verizon has all sorts of warts - some of them just as big - but it doesn't have the crappy service AT&T delivers to most places in the US. When the iPhone was really the only Smartphone out there I could buy that - but now? Really? You want to run with you speeds suck because you have this tremedous usage other carriers do not have because your Phone does video and such? Even when we get down to Whose Phone is Better most Apple users haven't drunk *that* much of the kool-aid in a while.

If AT&T looses the majority of thier base to Verizon then you may be - at least - somewhat accurate. I can't say if their network could handle the bulk of the three most popular around (they already handle two of them - blackberry and Android) and a great deal of loss of AT&T's customers would certainly free up bandwidth. However I can't figure out how that is a win for AT&T either even if the Verizon network totally breaks down under the load (not is it any validation of your idea - that person B can lift more than Person A isn't invalidated when person B is crushed by person A dropping their weights on them at the same time they are lifting their own). It just seems a great deal of money that AT&T looses.

You either do not live in the US or have fallen for the idea that unions here express without ever having to live by them - I have *never* seen unions here work that way. In other countries I have certainly see them do that, but in those unions have to compete for your membership (and you don't even have to belong to one) *and* compete within the strictures of the people hiring them. That is a fairly decent system and is why so many non-us workers are so confused over why the US has such a backlash against unions.

I come from a mostly blue collar worker family (like many in East Tennessee - lots of high tech white collar workers but most from out of state). Of the myriad relatives I have I know many that have tried to rely on those union provided niceties and I can count the number that have had them work better than the federal provided one (say, medicare or medicaid) on one hand and have five fingers left over. That is to say none whatsoever. In every case when the time came the money was elsewhere and the union higher ups didn't know where it went or it was coming along shortly (and 30 years later after they died it was the unions to keep).

If we were to have a European version of unions I would be fine with it, most people around would too. For most of us in the US we have seen your noble ideas crash into the dust and the reality of Big Money (otherwise known as Unions in the US) come to play. I'm highly reminded of someone at my parents camp ground that ran out of savings last year - she is wondering where all her years of savings sent to the union went, why she has to strike for things she doesn't want, and what good this is going to do when they finally reach an agreement. Unless you want a long document you can find elsewhere don't ask me what I went through at Oak Ridge National Labs with the teamsters, electricians, and carpenters with changing a simple ethernet card (short version: teamsters move things, electricians plug/unplug anything electrical, and carpenters take screws in and out - and yes they are strict about that and no it doesn't matter the purpose - if your screw is holding an ethernet card you need the carpenters to remove it. Further you have to pay for two at a time for a minimum of one hour each nor could you schedule them in succession as you could only know a window of time they could come out that may or may not be fulfilled).

I'm reminded of how my mother dealt with the union when she works at a steel factory - she reminded them she also had a gun and knew how to use it. Our system blows - bringing the tech industry into it will not solve anything.

It depends - if he held her down and forced the sexual intercourse to continue, yes it is rape by any definition. Indeed, there is no reason whatsoever that consensual sex can not even turn into aggravated rape with severe trauma resulting in death. As such the defense of "But she was for it at the beginning" doesn't work very well. If she said "Please Stop", he said "Wha" and her reply was "Oh well" and they kept going no it is not.

She claims the former, he claims the latter. Lots of people rush to his defense because of who he is (recall how many many here just knew that Hans Reiser didn't kills his wife and it was some grand conspiracy primarily because someone who wrote ReiserFS wouldn't do such a thing - Assange is MUCH easier to create a case for false accusations), others rush to condemn any man accused of a rape (see the Duke Lacrosse Team a few years ago and ask them about the rush to guilt).

Since none of us here know much at all of the case and are each reading stories that are trying to further a narrative I'll hold off on saying it is right or wrong. If there is ample evidence that he forced sex upon an unwilling partner (and forensics are quite capable of showing that with bruise patterns if she went to the doctor early enough) then he should never have been allowed out of Sweden. If it is simply his word against hers then I'm not sure how you could begin to build a case (at least in any country where guilt has to be mostly proved) and ought to be dropped. As of now we now one party says it happened, another says it didn't, and then people mostly square up based on what they think if Wikileaks, not the facts of the case (which we do not really know).

Also if you *really* think that saying "it might nor be true" gets modded to a -1 troll you may want to read the responses above you. I read at +2 and *all* of them but one at the time of my posting are defending him and saying it is a hit job by the American govt. The one that wasn't defending him was simply a quote from a news paper with the paraphrasing of what the women had said with no other cometary. I don't really think that Slashdot is this hotbed of right-wing silencing types out to get Wikileaks that you seem to be seeing. At least the Apple/Android wars *do* have a substantial group on each "side".

I'm absolutely certain, beyond a shadow of doubt, that *every single weapon ever deployed in a battle field will inflict civilian casualties* - every single one. As long as there is a decision based on incomplete data that is life or death for the person making the decision and it has to be made literally in a second or two it is going to happen.

In this particular case this weapon replaces weapons that have a VERY wide kill radius - namely larger explosive devices. I'm also certain that it will happen as you say and be reported at someplace like wikileaks (and maybe even there), however this misses the fact that it *reduced* the amount of civilian deaths. Indeed, wikileaks would never disclose the amount (nor could they if they wished as it isn't really a definable number) that were saved by this because they lived to close to an actual military target and were "collateral damage" - this number will *far exceed* the one you are worried about.

Weapons such as this are an attempt by our governments to reduce civilian casualties to one primarily cased by lack of information. The ability to harm precisely the people you intend to and no one else would be a MAJOR step forward in casualties - while still a tragedy any time it happens we are MUCH better off with today's guided explosives than we were in WWII where we had to flatten and entire city with thousands of bomb to get a single factory.

Argue about going to war, that is the root cause. Weapons such as this are *vital* if your aim is to reduce civilian casualties. Even with perfect killing devices that *only* kill those that the soldier intends to are going to incur civilian casualties. Deciding if it is a war that ought to be fought is where the argument needs to be, not if a weapon that increases the ability of the soldier to hit their target may be accidentally used against a civilian.

I would suspect that it is both - if it is a very small group of rather incompetents then the intelligence agencies generally do not have a hard time finding them. Lets face it, for the most part if you are competent you are in a country that harbors you and you are sending incompetent minions out to martyr themselves (and, mostly by definition, they are incompetent). It took several tries before they got 9/11 and the large successful ones in other countries (even ones that have little to no intelligence agencies) are mostly duds - smart people rarely martyr themselves (and make no mistake - shooting into a crowd nowadays would most likely end that way) and when they do they do it in a big way.

Our intelligence agencies, while certainly not perfect and have room for improvement, are fairly competent, TSA isn't. Intelligence agencies live and die by what they stop (generally in secret), TSA lives and dies by its reputation and they fell to hard to the "sheople want us to look like we are doing something, their afraid and will take anything we do" meme. That's only true up to a point - people, as a whole, aren't that stupid no matter how much it makes some groups feel good tot think it. If you base your policies on it then this is what happens. The end of the Bush era was about when it started to slide and Obama seems to have thought it was all a great idea so extend more than Bush thought to do in his wildest dreams (which, sadly, seems to be the case in many areas plus adding that level of incompetence in so many others that made it through Bush).

Indeed, intelligence agencies know how to do an effective checkpoint - look to the Israelis to see how. It's not hard to do either and it is MUCH cheaper than this crap. Lots of theories as to why we do not do that and you can insert your own (this makes people money, they are training us, much of the profiling required for it is politically unpopular with certain classes, etc). I suspect that more than one is at cause too - for myself it would be a combination of knowing how much profiling gets bad press and how much money this gets flowing around to political donors. But that's me - you can fairly easily persuade me that others are reasonable too. Heck I'll even buy sheer incompetence and nothing more - having been research staff at a DoE lab I certainly know the good science produced by them is done *despite* the system (and the system produces a great deal of really bad science).

Different mediums *and* different settings. In a movie or book you are an observer, in a game you are a participant and those each have a different set of rules as to what makes them fun or enjoyable.

I suspect that a video game where you can play either the Serbs or Croats in the Bosnian conflict wouldn't be very fun or comfortable to play - there is no "bad guy" so why would I want to go shoot the other side? It may very well (and if done well certainly would) make an interesting passive form of entertainment, but in an active medium not so much. You can even have one side not really be good (say, for instance, the Protoss in the first StartCraft) but not really be evil as long as you have "Bad Guys" driving the story line.

Further being a war based game if the game gives some type of motivation (the mroe or less random shooting games where you are simply tryin to blow everything up do not really count) then it needs that "bad guy" element even more. Heck you can even play the bad guys just fine - they just have to have someone they consider the enemy and really be different. You *can* make a fun game from the Taliban's point of view if one wished it. It may be in poor taste to do so, but in the end most westerners would probably come out of the experience disliking them even more.

For an active entertainment medium you *have* to have some motivation for your character to achieve its goals. Ambiguous to an external observer (you being the external observer) just leaves mot people running around not really doing anything - after all why do you care about achieving an ambiguous plot? Its not just a matter of "rethinking it" as the medium itself doesn't lend itself well to that type of story. The closest you will get is something along the line of the first Deus Ex where your initial missions make you do some uncomfortable things and you later find out you were the "bad guy" - you still have the "bad guy" driving the plot at each stage but you do get some of the ambiguity of the participants in there (you certainly feel sorry for all those "terrorists" you went out of your way to kill earlier).

"You exhibit the same problem as those who blindly support the idea that "security by obscurity is no security at all," in that you appear to dismiss the fact that security isn't made of one thing or another, but the sum of all the efforts to make something secure."

Almost all security comes through some form of obscurity - you password, private key, pre-shared key, or heck even your one time pad are only secure because no one else knows them. In the and all security comes down to obscurity - so no, I do not think I am one that falls to that.

What you fail to understand - and searching on Apple iPhone exploits shows - is that the pre-screening Apple gives has *no bearing on the security of the phone*.

Apple screening is based on, as far as anyone can discern, other criteria. Indeed, without source code and truly rigorous testing that you couldn't afford it *has* to be that way.

Nor are the immune to the description you give of the G1's - ask anyone with any hardware before the 3G where all their shiny new updates are. My bet is since Apple has none they are sitting on the same vulnerabilities that they were when their last update was applied - well unless Apple has figured out how to update without patching.

I do not find apples "sandboxing" (which they aren't doing at all - they are simply saying you can only buy software at your local Best Buy which is *not* sandboxing - they are a walled garden, not a sandbox) to be useful from a security point of view because it gives me *nothing* that enhances that. Google really doesn't either - while the OS certainly does real sandboxing (which apple doesn't at all) installing applications generally requires you to give blanket permission that pretty much break this as a security feature too.

khchung finds the lack of flexibility to be invigorating as he/she doesn't have to worry over user interface. They somehow - as you do - equate only being able install one of three video players instead of one of five as "security". Neither one is more or less secure than the other - the space of apps you have is *not* security or sandboxing. Each trades flexibility for a smaller set of skills to learn, *not* a tradeoff in security.

If anything Googles real sandboxing with explicit permissions is *better* security - at least without a true OS hack they can't get at anything outside the sandbox you do not explicitly give permissions for. Sadly even a simple flashlight app generally wants internet access and all sorts of crap - Google really needs finer grained permissions.

In this particular case we are talking a patent - this means that with the full force of more than one countries judicial system *no one else is allowed to do this* without permission from the person who says they came up with the idea. So yea, if there is prior art then it is *very important*. If it had been first to market, or heck even a copyright where the *specific* implementation is protected then things would be great. But no, this is a patent wherein *how* you do it isn't near as important as *what* you are doing.

So lets say you come up with a MUCH better solution that they have - Oh well, you have to pay them royalties that they get to choose the price of (I have not seen - but who gets to use your specific idea that is copyrightable or does it sit as unusable until the patents expire?). Never mind that your solution is completely different, they have the patent on getting said message to the recipient utilizing the best methods chosen by an agent. That's *really* broad - indeed my aside is a paradox, two unmovable things collide (patent and copyright). In most other things that are patentable that doesn't occur - the idea of a perpetual motion machine is *not* patentable yet if someone found a way to break a few laws of physics it would be. Copyright and Patents do not have the same overlaps. In this case, as most software patents do, they are patenting the concept of a perpetual motion machine. Copyright already works well in that space, same thing for business model patents - the just do not make sense.

As such we have every obligation to complain about it too. I too dislike Facebook and Apple, but that still doesn't make this a Good Thing.

The iPhone *is* a general purpose computer, as such it has all the risks associated with it.

The fact that *you* are only allowed the bits they want to let you see may make you feel like it isn't, but from a security standpoint (of which I was primarily addressing) it is a general purpose computer. This limits how much *you* do, not how much a hacker/phreaker can do.

Of course, I do agree that I'm talking over most iPhone users heads (apparently yours included), but not in the way you mean. A large portion of Apple users confuse the limited distribution of the app store to be some form of security - it is not.

If you want a device that you are only allowed to do what someone else lets you do then the iPhone is a great choice in the "smart phone" market - no doubt about that. That may very well make the device simpler for you to use and there isn't much argument there - that is a personal preference (though I have yet to see any one confused by an Android phone that wasn't just as confused on an iPhone, however I have seen more than one frustrated that the iPhone will not let them do what they want and are happy when Android does). However security that is not.

As such I find no security difference and a great deal of usability difference. Most people do and find one or the other the "better" choice. The people who think and work in the way Apple wants you to find the iPhone great so stick with it (you obviously do) - no argument there - but most people either don't really care (the phone is as much a fashion statement as anything) or prefer to make the phone fit themselves instead of themselves fit the phone.

I'm not sure how that attitude is going to sink Android and have the iPhone ride the wave into the future, but oh well, that attitude and same argument sure helped the Macintosh ride the wave of the future as a dominate force in the 90's - I'm sure it will do the same this time. Apple has made good money over the years by giving that smaller market segment *exactly* what they want, no reason to figure that is going to change and if you are a part of that segment I suggest you purchase their products (as I said in my original post - there are people I would suggest them too).

Until smart phone manufacturers realize that they are making general purpose computing devices we will see this. To some there is a "war" going on between Apple and Android but that really misses the issue - in this respect trying to figure out which is the "better" on is like trying to figure out if Frosted Flakes or Fruit Loops is the better breakfast cereal - it is personal preference and there are most likely "better" solutions out there (and as a disclaimer I am an Android user - Droid One).

Until one side truly figures this out I'll stick with Android if for nothing else than I can get the functionality I want. With Apple I have to buy into their idea on how their devices fit into my life and I, well, do not. If Apple truly had this superior model than I would go for it, but as far as I can see I get the worst of both worlds - lack of specialized apps (as those are often, for unknown reasons, rejected from their app store and there are one or two I would like) along with just as many vulnerabilities (and those usually require you store that info on the phone - which until/unless they secure them I do not). So I currently see Apple as having those issues yet none of the "rewards" of going with them.

There are a handfull of people I know I would still recommend the iPhone too, but unless they already know the iPhone platform over the Android and are still asking others about it that is rare. Sadly it isn't because Android is truly better, but because if all else is equal then the flexibility of the Android system is superior and pretty much everything else is equal. Apple has remained where they are for a *long* time because they haven't figured this out too - though I also have to say they have not died because they ignore it too (their model of revenue find this irrelevant, which means they will not "win" but really can not "loose").