I'd like to give him credit, but I see this more as a move to keep power in the executive branch. Obama has been as ferocious as Bush/Cheney to move authorities over to the executive and has challenged pretty much any legislation that would take power away from him. (ex: war power in Libya, Patriot Act extensions, civil liberties)

Someone should invent a vaccine that could go on condoms. Could call them White Hats.

Due to Netflix's recent blunders, they aren't growing as fast as they forecasted and are at risk of losing streaming customers. (I dropped my DVD account after the rate hikes and then dropped my streaming account since it wasn't very useful as a standalone service.) On top of all this, Netflix couldn't renew their contract with Starz, which is going to cause their streaming selection to be even more lame by February. If Netflix hadn't signed something of worth, more streaming customers were going to leave.

This does set an interesting precedent though for their future negotiations. Will all other movie studios consider their new releases to be worth $30 million each? Don't see how Netflix could sustain that.

There are some documents that were released in the court proceedings, but I didn't really see anything new here. The details on the backup/man-in-the-middle arrangement were already well known. The info on Michael Connell was already out there, including that he did work for Karl Rove (like the web site Swift Boat Veterans for Truth) and he still got the contract to host voting results for Ohio.

Here's a good article about the whole thing. It also includes details on the plane crash and an interview with Michael Connell's wife who thinks her husband's death may not have been an accident.

... they contain a significant amount of important information.

1) Lamo stated the he was a journalist and a priest, so the chat logs would be secret.

2) They further show Manning's intent for releasing the documents.

3) Julian Assange had very limited communications with Manning in an effort to protect his sources.

4) Manning wasn't simply a low level employee as the government has tried to portray. He had direct communications with high level officials.

5) Wired misled the public by concealing this information for a year and allowed Lamo and others to spread lies about Manning.

But yeah, besides all that, there is nothing new or revealing.

The worst part is they have allowed lies to go unchallenged for all this time. And they have lied to cover their own ass in the process. Take a look at this tweet. This is Evan Hansen, the editor in chief at Wired magazine, stating clearly that they have released all relevant portions of the chat logs concerning Manning and Wikileaks.

Now check out this portion of the chat logs.

MANNING: he (Julian Assange) knows very little about me
MANNING: he takes source protection uber-seriously
MANNING: "lie to me" he says
LAMO: Really. Interesting.
MANNING: he wont work with you if you reveal too much about yourself

This explicitly states that Manning and Assange have almost no relationship. Assange doesn't want to know the guy. Yet lies have persisted for this past year saying that Assange coaxed the documents out of Manning. The feds were trying to build a case against Manning based on that assumption. But the chat logs clearly state the opposite is true.

Wired has lied for a year on the subject and has no credibility. How Evan Hansen is still employed there is beyond my understanding.

This log file has been a known issue for at least 6 months. I'll give Apple credit and say that never purging the contents of the file is a bug, but they have know about the problem and did nothing to correct it.

On top of that, there are professional phone forensic applications that use this exploit to gather the location data off the phone. Police and private investigators have been exploiting this issue long before the recent announcement.

Here are a few articles with more detailed info on it.

Totally agreed, but Apple isn't doing that. The main reason this is an issue is Apple messed up and set up a file that never purges itself. So on everyone's iPhone is a file that has their rough gps coordinates for as long as they owned the file. This is mostly just an issue then for someone that has physical access to the phone and wants to see where the owner has been. I suppose law enforcement could use it as well, but they could probably just subpoena the cell phone companies and get the data anyways.

So like I said, the timeframe is the only important thing with this story. As soon as Apple corrects this and has the file only contain recent data, then it becomes a non-issue. Then we can go back to worrying about how apps or cell phone companies are tracking you.

The longer timeframe is the issue. iOS keeps a log of your rough location for as long as you have owned the phone. Android has a small recent snapshot. I would call that totally different.

The info on Android phones is totally different from iPhones. The infamous iPhone log file records your complete geo-location history since you started using your phone. The Android log file just records your recent coordinates and it overwrites itself regularly.

So even if you get root access on an Android phone, you only end up getting your current location. Most people allow apps to have that permission anyways.

The info on the iPhone is a huge privacy concern. The Android file is a non-issue.

From TFA, the results give an indication of how leading questions were.

What a horrible question, and also what a stranger response. First, the question makes a premise that has no substantiation in reality. When will off the shelf renewable energy technology actually meet our energy demands. Hell, I'd support renewables over nuclear if renewables would meet our needs. That doesn't mean I am against nuclear now though.

Second, why isn't the response rate 100%? Who in their right mind would support nuclear over renewables if they both had the same output? The risks may be low for nuclear disasters but there are still risks. Renewables have very few risks that I am aware of, so why on earth would someone not support this?

Stuff like this is virtually meaningless and leads to sensationalistic headlines. Reading articles like this reminds me that "a public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought."

Considering ICE just seized a Spanish domain that was deemed legal in Spain, I hope this gets more attention. The government is totally out of control here.

It sounds like you don't have a fundamental understanding of what science is. No good scientist is saying evolution is fact. Evolution is a theory that best explains the large amount of observable data we have collected. If new data were to present itself that contradicted evolution, then good scientists would propose new theories to explain it.

The thing is, there is a lot of data to support evolution. Mendel demonstrated the basics for genetics. Darwin demonstrated the concepts of natural selection. Watson and Crick helped explain some of the mechanisms for these ideas. We can directly observe things like genetic mutations, adaption, genetic drift, and phylogeny. We have fossil records to show us changes to species over time. There is tons of data that supports the theory of evolution. Once you understand these concepts, then it just starts making sense.

Apple screws you. Oh, wait...

Don't forget the US conducting military strikes in Yemen while saying we weren't. Or that we killed more Iraqi civilians than the government was admitting to. Or that the US knew about Iraqis being tortured and raped but didn't do anything to stop it. The list is huge.

Glenn Greenwald compiled a list of important issues from Wikileaks. One of the main issues is that the press wants to talk more about Julian Assange getting arrested than about world governments' illicit activities.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/24/wikileaks/index.html