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United States

Submission + - Forensics Expert says Al-Qaeda Images Altered

WerewolfOfVulcan writes: Wired reports that researcher Neal Krawetz revealed some veeeeeery interesting things about the Al-Qaeda images that our government loves to show off.

From the article: "Krawetz was also able to determine that the writing on the banner behind al-Zawahiri's head was added to the image afterward. In the second picture above showing the results of the error level analysis, the light clusters on the image indicate areas of the image that were added or changed. The subtitles and logos in the upper right and lower left corners (IntelCenter is an organization that monitors terrorist activity and As-Sahab is the video production branch of al Qaeda) were all added at the same time, while the banner writing was added at a different time, likely around the same time that al-Zawahiri was added, Krawetz says." Why would Al-Qaeda add an IntelCenter logo to their video? Why would IntelCenter add an Al-Qaeda logo? Methinks we have bigger fish to fry than Gonzo and his fired attorneys... }:-) The article contains links to Krawetz's presentation and the source code he used to analyze the photos.
Software

Submission + - Open Source Software in Education (k12.ca.us)

Peter Parker writes: Jim Klein, Tech Director for Saugus School District in CA writes an interesting piece on the open source software in education, with a particularly scathing assessment of the decision making processes of education IT. Quote:

"I believe it's important to emphasize to all education technology people (or anyone else, for that matter) that they should not view open source simply as a cheap replacement for something else. There is no need or requirement to switch any core application, business process, etc., if one's organization is unprepared to do so or finds it otherwise unnecessary. However, when an opportunity or initiative is in play, then open source should absolutely be in the mix for consideration. The arguments against doing so simply don't hold up to any sort of honest evaluation."

and:

"[begin rant] largely because our technology decisions are based primarily on the needs of the IT department, rather than that of the learning environment, since, after all, the deciding factor in most ed tech decisions is what IT thinks it can do, at the expense of learning and creativity — but don't get me started down that path...[end rant, thanks for your patience]"

The Internet

Submission + - Citizendium dumps WIkipedia

twilight30 writes: Nicholas Carr reports that 'Larry Sanger has changed his mind about forking Wikipedia. As you'll recall, Sanger, who cofounded Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales, has been working on creating Citizendium, an expert-edited alternative to the motley online encyclopedia. The original plan was to "fork" Wikipedia — in other words, make a copy of Wikipedia's contents and then re-edit the articles to bring them up to snuff. The theory was that borrowing the existing articles would provide a jump-start for the fledgling knowledge base. But that hasn't worked so well. The handful of early contributors to Citizendium have, says Sanger, become "disheartened by the fact that their first obligation seems to be to edit mediocre Wikipedia articles."'

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