non-paraphrased:

Why not release everything now?

The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.

We owe it to the people who entrusted us with the documents to ensure that there is time for them to be written about, commented on and discussed widely in public, something that is impossible if hundreds of thousands of documents are released at once. We will therefore be releasing the documents gradually over the coming weeks and months.

You don't give them your keys, you simply allow them to authenticate with their private key by adding their pubic key to your authorized keys list.

You control your server, so if you're paranoid take some precautions. Set up an account (or better yet, an accout on a new VM) specifically for this with limited permissions and access. If you're really paranoid, you obviously won't be doing this at all.

Wikileak's stated intention is to release these cables all over a period of several months because "doing them all at once would not do justice to them" (paraphrased).

Now what they could (and supposedly have) do is release all the cables in an encrypted format, continue to release them in batches as they are currently doing, and leak the key if there is ever a problem. Supposedly this is what their "insurance" file from a while ago is for.

No, he is suggesting that it is an important factor. As a male with very poor vision in my left eye, I can assure you it is quite important.

Next time you're trying to parallel park try closing one of your eyes. Will it be possible? Of course. It'll also be a shitton more difficult.

You know what works great?

Browsing the web on my Kindle 3 for freely available/public domain books from 3rd party websites, and having my unhacked Kindle download them straight into my collection for me.

Yeah, that's some real heavy lockdown there.

Not supporting Epub is nothing more than an annoyance. It's trivial to convert books to mobi, or other formats. Calibre does it for me...

Nobody is saying that a Turing machine cannot emulate the brain (or that the brain cannot emulate a Turing machine, at least with enough external "tape").

thinking about the brain as an approximation to a Turing machine is a pretty bad model.

Nevertheless, it is valid.

Turing machines represent the limit of computability as we know it. Unless you have some pretty serious and solid contributions to make to the field of mathematics, then Turing machines are far more computationally powerful than brains. Unlike brains, Turing machines have unlimited tape, otherwise they are identical.

Now, we can chose to assume that human brains are more powerful than Turing machines, with no proposed mechanism to explain it, and no evidence to back it up. It's also possible to assume that there is really a giant sky-daddy who made us all, with no proposed mechanism to explain it, and no evidence to back it up.

Such assumptions are made on faith, not science.

Barring religious mumbo-jumbo about a "soul", yes it is.

Fun fact: The US has not "been at war" since the Second World War.

Look it up.

Fiestaware is completely safe, the only real danger it could possibly present is heavy metal poisoning and even that is not terribly credible.

Let me guess, you think only trained and certified people should be allowed to change the batteries in smoke detectors too. Or did you not know they contained radioactive materials? Hell, even analogue wristwatches commonly contain radioactive materials. Do you think we should start sticking great big "DANGER: RADIOACTIVE" stickers on those too? ...wait a second. You don't happen to be employed be the State of California, do you?

kdawson writes

No, our gripe really is with kdawson.

Why do you have a problem with me using Fedex to ship somebody across the country some radioactive fiesta-ware they bought from me on eBay?

"Radioactive" doesn't automatically signify "dangerous".

khasim has a rock that repels crocodile. khasim has not been attacked by crocodiles.

You do not have this rock!

I strongly advise that you purchase a crocodile repelling rock from him, as you apparently cannot rule out the rock as preventing the crocodile attacks.

With the amount of power the lamps in projectors take, I think you could pretty easily heat a normal display to keep it operational.

You realize it still hurts like hell right? Speaking from personal experience, I can assure you that "don't lick metal poles during winter" is very sound advice.