That I finally got first post. And cool! I don't care for Nascar, but I like big useless monuments to entertainment that have a tech spin. I'd like to see this in action (though I'm indifferent to the car race gong on below.)

Last time I checked (a few years ago), Al-Jazeera was a shining example of independent journalism that reports all sides of a story, and is criticized in the West for being too pro-Islam, and very harshly criticized in the Islamic world for being too anti-Islam. Have things changed? Can you please cite me an example of Al-Jazeera having an agenda (other than "the truth", which is what Al-Jazeera means)?

Al-Jazeera receives funding from the government of Qatar (and is based in Qatar). The government of Qatar is a pretty big ally of the government of the United States. The government of the United State is a pretty big supporter of the Government of Israel. You make of that what you will when you see them report on news that is not taken well in Israel, the United State, or Qatar.

And if the company refuses to sell, because they are, literally, sitting on a goldmine (of black gold)?

My first thought (if this claim is true) was how soon until the engineers, scientists and owners of this company start disappearing, dying in car accidents or having cancer............

Instead of funny this comment should be modded deeply insightful.

This creeps me the fuck out on a base level.

I agree with you and hate to be a nitpicker, but the Declaration of Independence is not part of US law. It is a statement of principles and reasons for the thirteen colonies rebelling against the British Empire. Legal rights start at and derive from the US Constitution. The Declaration of Independence was and is tremendously influential towards US political philosophy, so maybe what you meant to say is that "clearly the rights enshrined in US government philosophy are intended to apply to all humans." And yes, we have never fully lived up to our principles, and have done many things completely counter to them throughout history and up until now, and that it is the job, the duty of the citizens of the country, to keep the government continually in check, even when it means inconveniencing our lives.

Knowingly exposing sensitive government information is a crime. Anyone with a security clearance knows that (or should know that) because it is beaten into you when you get a government clearance.

Subpoenaing Private Manning in this case is not unusual. He is involved in a criminal investigation.

I am not familiar with all of the other names on that short list. The ones I am familiar with are not US citizens. Non US citizens outside of the territory of the US do not have any of the same rights that US citizens have. (Non US citizens inside the territory of the United States have very many rights). Subpoenaing the records of non-US citizens that are currently not located inside of a US territory is not against any law I know of. IANAL, please someone that has more knowledge clarify that issue.

Also, the US government does do things I do not agree with. Bringing up a list of bad things the government does/has done and tying it into this, when there is little relation, does not help your cause.

There is a catch-22 situation of exposing government bad stuff. Most (but not all) government bad stuff is classified, not necessarily to hide the government doing bad stuff, but for other security reasons. If you really want more of this to come to light, support more political candidates that support greater government transparency. Texas Senator Ron Paul comes to mind, but before you blindly support him because his views on say US foreign policy and the economy align with yours, investigate the whole man and all his beliefs (he is extremely conservative. More so than any other Republican conservative).

Also you say "your country" so I assume you mean that you are not a US citizen. The problems of the US are best solved by US citizens, but unfortunately most of us can't be bothered to stop and think about our government.

They should just tell the students who don't pay attention not to even bother showing up, and save the students a walk or a drive and save the teacher a half classroom full of teaching-energy suckers.

Whoosh

Name three countries please that the US has attacked that have oil, that don't have nukes, and that refuse to play ball.

This is a very common misconception. It is not true. Until about the beginning of the 20th century (1900 ad) Jews lived in the Middle East and in other Muslim countries in the area in relative peace.

Animosity between Arab and Muslim countries (Iran is a Muslim country but IS NOT an Arab country) increased greatly in the last century for a variety of reasons. The creation of the state of Israel and the handling of some of the non-Jews living in that reason prior is one of the issues. Israel has done what it thinks is best* to ensure the continued existence of the state of Israel, and as they still exist 60 years later, they have been successful so far. Israel puts its own interests above the interests of the region. Why should they do anything else? Why should any nation state do anything else?

*This includes maintaining a very strong military, which they have used to defend themselves from foreign aggression as well as to be aggressors in preemptive wars and doing preemptive military strikes that they felt were in the interests of Israel. Includes using assassination as one of their options. Includes developing strong alliances with countries that can help them (most notably the USA). Includes expanding their borders into areas that are strategically significant.

Which browser was? I say this honestly, which was the first widely available and useful browser to have tabs or something like it? From my dim memory, I was using FF as my default browser and sometime in 2005 or 2006 (I could be wrong with my years here) I downloaded Opera and it had tabs and ran better and was more useful to *me* (which is all I ever care about when it comes to software). I switched to Opera as my default browser with FF as the backup. Since my latest OS wipe and reinstall, I've been getting along fine with Opera as the default and Chrome as the backup browser, no FF on my system yet.

I continue to maintain that I like Opera more than any other web browser I have tried. Everyone else's opinions are free to differ.

Whoah, it does! For a browser known for its lack of features compared to other browsers (which is partly true and partly false) it hasn't ceased to surprise me with the features it does have and that I have continued to discover since I started using it back in 2006.

To be completely honest, taking you to slashdot when you type /. in the link bar isn't really a feature as much as a Whoah! Thats pretty nifty! type of a thing.

I take it back, this is new but related stuff. The old stuff was a hack to gain control of a NIC and then the host computer over the network (only affected 1 model of NIC that they knew of). There new stuff is firmware that would require them to first have root level access on the target system so that they could flash the attached network card. The upside to this is that they could remove all tools on the system itself and traces that they had been there, and be very very stealthy.