Because of this little thing called history. I'm not saying you don't have a somewhat valid point. But you don't have to go back very far in time to find women being actively discouraged, if not chased out of, scientific fields. My mother had real problems with this when she was attending college in the early 80's. A person like that may discourage her daughter from going into a technical field for fear of discrimination. When I was in college in the 2000's I didn't see any blatant discrimination, but the 20:1 ratio sure made for some interesting gender politics among the students...

Look, we don't know what happened, but it doesn't sound like either of these cases you are thinking about. He apparently had unprotected sex with these two women and for some reason, when they found out he was having sex with other people, they got upset and tried to retract their consent.

Why would anyone do that?

Are they capricious? Well, that explanation seems popular because it appeals to a female stereotype, I guess. But I think its far more likely both women inquired as to his sexual history before they had unprotected sex and he lied to them about it. This is a basic, fundamental safe thing for people to do when they are having sex with someone (especially unprotected sex) for the first time. You want to know if the person has been tested, whether they have other sex partners, and what kind of sexual history they have. If Assange lied about this to both women, well then these women just might have a case against him.

So, after Ted Stevens gets made fun of basically non-stop for years for comparing the Internet to a Series of Tubes, we get this Slashdot story.

"Automatically routed canisters could replace trucks with an Internet of things, says Foodtubes"

>Forehead Slap

Many of the comments here seem to be unaware of what Stuxnet actually is or how it works. Symantec has a great whitepaper on it that is updated as they learn more. 50 pages of technical detail. Of course you can read the executive summary and at least avoid making the kinds of uniformed comments I'm seeing here.

http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf

Just a Few:

1. "People are so stupid to connect their industrial control system to the internet!"

Stuxnet does not require internet access. It delivers its payload in various ways, and in particular, if an infected USB stick is inserted into a susceptible machine, it will find a machine on that network with the Siemens PLC development environment and infect it in such a way to insert hidden malicious code into the PLC.

2. "Just don't run Windows"

There is some validity to this idea. But the payload was not delievered to a Windows machine, just via one. How many embedded controller development environments require a Windows machine? Try coding a Xilinx FPGA without a Windows box, or just about anything out there without one.

3. "We could have seen this coming"

Most people did see this coming. But they didn't think it was actually plausible to defend against. The Stuxnet worm required a huge amount of resources and detailed knowledge to pull off. Everything from the payload to the infection method. Someone really thought this through. It is a proof of concept of what people generally believed to be only possible in theory.

The fact that government is getting involved here is a bit worrisome. I hope they at least pay attention to the existing specifications already out there to help mitigate some of these threats. NIST 800-82 is a decent read that is free (final public draft) and there are other pay ones out there as well.

The reason why I am kindof annoyed about people's ignorance about Stuxnet is because the biggest lesson learned from it is largely being ignored. 1. That "air gap" protection you think you have is not as good as you think it is. 2. The "insider threat" is worth thinking about, even if you trust your insiders. They may not know they are a threat.

I think it is important to clarify the position of the copyright office:

"Copyright law does not protect recipes that are mere listings of ingredients."

Most recipes include instructions on how to process the ingredients. This is copyrightable. All but the most elementary recipes would be.

Well, the summary is worse than the article in those respects. For something like the BBC, the audience cares less about the methods and more about the conclusions. That said, it doesn't excuse reporting of incorrect conclusions.

saw that one coming

I'm not going to quote your entire response, but I think the debatable point is in the part not focused on by the WP lawyer:

I think the FBI's point is that this image is used on actual badges and identification cards. Therefore, the law prohibits making photographs, prints, or engravings of this item. Invoking ejusdem generis on this part of the law is much less clear. The law is written to prohibit not just actual fake badges, but also photographs, prints, and engravings that could be used to manufacture fake badges. Is there really a tangible difference between print-publishing a high resolution photograph of a badge and digitally-publishing it?

As far as the intent to deceive, I think its arguable that it doesn't matter if WP has intent to deceive. The law is written to prevent materials from being available to people with the intent to deceive. And the WP image is certainly a great thing to have if you wanted to fake an FBI insignia, and is arguably covered by the letter of the law.

Well you know what they say, the grade C lawyers work for the government while the grade A lawyers work for everyone else. As someone remarked about on another site, you almost had to wonder why the FBI picked this little fights, and if someone mistakenly thought Wikipedia was somehow related to the now infamous Wikileaks. Even just reading the FBI's correspondence you can tell they're seriously out of their depth.

I'm just curious if you read the law. Because it sure reads to me like Wikipedia is in violation of the letter of the law.

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 33 > § 701
§ 701. Official badges, identification cards, other insignia
Whoever manufactures, sells, or possesses any badge, identification card, or other insignia, of the design prescribed by the head of any department or agency of the United States for use by any officer or employee thereof, or any colorable imitation thereof, or photographs, prints, or in any other manner makes or executes any engraving, photograph, print, or impression in the likeness of any such badge, identification card, or other insignia, or any colorable imitation thereof, except as authorized under regulations made pursuant to law, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

The fact is that Wikipedia has a super high resolution print quality and SVG image of the seal which could be used to manufacture fake credentials. This fact might explain why they are going after Wikipedia and not other places. In fact the FBI letters suggests this much.

I guess its easy to just unsubstantiatedly bash our government. At least you didn't start invoking conspiracy theories about this being some first step in the invokation of some quasi martial law state, like some other people have commented.

The reason you should care is because BP has been pretending to be a credible source of information for this event while they have been diong things to block public access and government oversight. Here is a copy of some photojournalistic ethics rules that they really should be following, if they are going to pretent to be reporters: (http://www.nppa.org/professional_development/business_practices/ethics.html)

1. Be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects.
2. Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities.
3. Be complete and provide context when photographing or recording subjects. Avoid stereotyping individuals and groups. Recognize and work to avoid presenting one's own biases in the work.
4. Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy. Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see.
5. While photographing subjects do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events.
6. Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images' content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.
7. Do not pay sources or subjects or reward them materially for information or participation.
8. Do not accept gifts, favors, or compensation from those who might seek to influence coverage.
9. Do not intentionally sabotage the efforts of other journalists.

Everyone who is a photojournalist know this. It permeates every aspect of the job. Cropping, exposure, white balance, and modest curves adjustments, and that's it. This is to maintain integrity of the image.

Yeah, BP is not a news organization. We should be taking everything they say with a grain of salt. Fine. Except that's not how the perss are treating them. The press and the government are treating them as subject matter experts who are reporting on the status of the oil spill. If nothing else, this should be a stark and public reminder that they have a conflict of interests, and they are acting on that conflict all of the time.

This is it. There have been some very high profile cases of Linux kernel developers acting like complete assholes and basically getting away with it, too. Anyone remember Con Kolivas or Hans Reiser?*

* Yeah, Hans Reiser obviously had some serious problems. But his ideas were sound. Probably why many devs were hungry to discredit him and obtain the credit. This kind of behavior is more common in the F/OSS community than people like to admit, by the way.

There is so much wrong with this whole post, I don't even know where to start. First of all, you come off as extremely arrogant. Second of all, you put forth the hypothesis that the smartest people on the planet are all on Slashdot watching porn (except you, who apparently gets to have sex, unlike the rest of us). I hate to burst your bubble, but the IT industry is full of people like you who are basically tech janitors with an overly exaggerated view of their own self-importance.

Trust me, there are plenty of people out there who are smart, happy, capabable, social human beings. They just aren't hanging around with you.

exceedingly harsh? severe?

might a word in the English language evolve beyond its etymological roots? could it be?

I don't like the way this reads. Apple does need to exert some control over their device in order to preserve their branding, but IMHO some of the draconian shit in here goes way to far.