Of course linking is the same as publishing. Just like when a journalist reports on a crime, he is an accessory after the fact and punished accordingly. They are the same thing, aren't they?

Jesting or not, that sure seems to have happened to Assange.

"Hey guys, I got some documents that one of your enlisted men leaked to me illegally. Hey, why are you calling for my head?!"

And likewise. Of course we always consider that which we agree with insightful, do we not? ;)

Almost all the time, yes, although I do have a number of Slashdotters on my friends list with whom I seldom agree but have a history of making interesting, insightful, or generally useful posts. I use the list mostly for quality control rather than necessarily agreement. It is much more important to me for someone to respectfully disagree, and offer their views in such a manner as to present information that I find genuinely interesting (even if I disagree). However, I suspect I am in the minority. (Aside: Those whom I disagree with whose responses are inflammatory, I often won't bother replying to for obvious reasons--but that can be attributed to lack of quality in addition to the disagreement itself.)

Obama had a very slick image. I know next to nothing about his career in Chicago and he seemed to come out of nowhere to me, but Bloody Hell, did he tick all the right election campaign boxes! I actually recall Mike Huckabee as probably being my preferred candidate. There are many issues I disagreed with him on, but these are mainly issues that he had in common with other mainstream candidates and so mathematically could be cancelled out. What I liked was that he had a clear and positive position on campaign finance reform.

Wikipedia and the resources it links to are also rather sparse about Obama's history. Aside from "community organizer," it's next to impossible to find anything else about him. That he was able to organize a campaign that propelled a relative unknown as well as it did was most impressive. Although, in spite of what the media reported in '08, his victory against McCain was within approximately the same margin or less in most age groups (including young people) as was Bush's against Kerry in '04. I have some relatives overseas in the UK who believed it was a landslide and were rather surprised the the actual results were vastly different from what their media had reported. I suspect part of this may have been due in part to the world's general dislike of the American right (though mostly Bush).

You do raise a good point about Huckabee that I forgot about. He does have some strong views, and I suppose if all else were equal I wouldn't necessarily mind him as a candidate. Being how important image is to the American public, I'm afraid he would be seen as weak and soft handed. I don't dislike the man, and I don't agree with some of the things he has done during his stint as governor. He does have some good ideas, though.

I really hope Romney doesn't make it particularly far. I see him as the principal individual responsible for the mess that is the Affordable Healthcare and Patient Protection Act.

I'm British, btw. I view the country from the outside which has advantages of perspective, but costs me some depth of information. I think I would fare badly in US politics.

I suspected but wasn't about to hazard a guess unless I heard the accent. It's possible to derive one's origin based on their use of language, but sometimes you encounter transplants who may still retain ties or citizenship of one country but live in or identify more with another locale. Likewise, as you undoubtedly may have deduced from my spelling, I'm American. I do have the distinct advantage of having family in both Australia and England, so I would like to believe that I have had at least a small bit more exposure to these cultures than the average American. It's certainly amazing how slang terms can differ between various parts of the UK, the US, and Western/Eastern Australia. Apologies for the grossly tangential thought!

Regardless, I would have suspected that you were a British transplant to the US, and I'm not sure whether I should laugh or cry over the fact that you demonstrate a much greater breadth of knowledge than the vast majority of US citizens do about their own country. I suppose it boils down to being informed: Those who are informed or wish to be informed can learn a great deal more about foreign nations than the residents of those nations themselves know by comparison. Consequently, I suspect your modesty is partially to blame for your overt feelings--you'd do our political system a huge favor. :)

Unless, of course, you mean to imply that you wouldn't do well in US politics because of the prerequisite that you'd have to be a liar, a thief, a cheat, or a lawyer. Mark Twain once wrote that (and I'm paraphrasing here) the "[US] has the best politicians money can buy." I think that speaks volumes, especially now.

I like socialism in several areas of society, and find the health care reforms from the Democrats to be nearly utter trash - the worst of both worlds. I'm not a Christian and am fine with gay marriage and other irrelevancies, but anti-abortion in almost all cases. I think anyone who forms their own opinions (not necessarily ones that are the same as mine, but merely individually arrived at whatever they may be), is hamstrung in US politics: you can't choose a faction without getting a whole lot you don't want with it, and you can't vote for an issue because the system works against that. A few sensible policies / stances that don't impact their backers, are shared out between the two main parties so that people will pick one or the other. And the issues that do concern the parties' backers are held in common by both parties and ignored by the media.

Your views sound a bit like mine. I self-identify as a rightwinger (in terms of US politics, not necessarily that of abroad), but my views are generally not in strong agreement with others of my kin. But you're absolutely right, US politics severely punishes anyone with a "go it alone" mindset, and the abject failure of third parties to succeed in anything other than winning a few seats in the House is a consequence of that. For instance, and this is bouncing a bit off of your examples, while I agree more with the Republicans on most issues, I find that they're far too weak on many of the ones that I find important. I find national defense to be of importance, but I find the TSA and Homeland security at large to be too intrusive (intelligence is the best defense, in my opinion, after all the TSA did nothing to stop the toner bombing--intelligence did!). I believe that the government should have some safety net for those who cannot afford healthcare, and while I don't agree that socialized medicine is the best solution, I can see circumstances where some form of it is a good thing for society. I don't support gay marriage (I'm religious) because I view marriage as a religious institution, but I feel that some compromise ought to be made. For example, I would suggest that couples living together (be it single sex or otherwise) that intend to stay together for a long term relationship should be afforded the economic benefits of a married couple. Of course, my idea of a comproimse would never work--those on the right would proclaim that economic benefits encourage married couples to have kids and that those benefits shouldn't be extended to anyone else, and those on the left would claim that it discriminates against those single sex couples who want to share a "real" marriage.

I also think that it's worth mentioning that I have angered some of my religious peers by stating to be both religious and explaining to them why the earth is 2+ billion years old and that the universe was not created 6,000 years ago. That never goes over particularly well, especially when you retort that parallax measurements of nearby stars indicate that it would be impossible for the Earth to be less than, say, *ten* thousand years old, and subsequently explain that anyone who believes in the 6,000 year old Earth must also either believe Satan has as much or greater control over God's creation that God does, or that God has intentionally deceived everyone by creating the light--in transit--to appear as though it came from much farther away. My mum did always say that I was easily amused as a child... I guess that explains it!

There's a popular interpretation of Science concluding that a theory must be falsifiable. The theory that the US is a democratic nation would be falsifiable only by the US people attempting to really change things. I would like to see that experiment tried. Reading the news usually makes me cynical about that nation. But talking to American friends always gives me hope. The dichotomy between the honesty and optimism of the US people and the dishonesty and selfishness of its government and media, are one of the great wonders of our time, to me.

That's an interesting point. To nitpick slightly (and I apologize if you are already well aware of this but were simply simplifying to save on typing--no harm there), the US is a democratic republic which complicates matters of that sort slightly. The general idea, of course, being that a direct democracy would have been much too difficult to put into practice and that it is much easier to instead elect a small number of representatives to represent the wishes of the people. While this system does have its advantages, I think recent times have illustrated that these advantages become much smaller when public opinion (and that of the representatives) because so fiercely divided over every little issue. Worse, when you have a legal system that will put various activities on freeze because of the hundreds of small special interest groups that may disagree with public funds being used to, say, put up a Christmas tree, I think it goes from "majority rules with minority rights" to "minority rules, majority be damned." Nevertheless, you do offer an interesting suggestion of a falisification test of the US' governmental structure.

There's a saying that I've offered to some of my family overseas that might amuse you: Do not blame me for my government or my media. I probably didn't vote for them, and I sure as hell don't watch them.

Unfortunately, the general dislike of Americans abroad has been so terribly strong as of late that it almost isn't worth the breath, and it's often much easier to simply keep my mouth shut (or rather, my fingers off my keyboard) than to bother sharing my views. After all, when one espouses views that are wrong by no other fault than that of his or her own nationality, there isn't much of a point to debate!

And it appears I have written a small dissertation. My apologies for being about one week late in offering three encyclopaedic volumes in a single post--I encountered some crunch time with a project last week and spent the majority of this weekend working.

Are you truly this deluded about the effects of policies like eating up GM or buying up a few banks ? This leads to less power for the people, and more centralized in wall street and washington.

Well said, because in the case of GM, the board of directors needn't be accountable to anyone for their own failure. They get to stay where they are, the government gains control over what they can and cannot produce, and it becomes a win-win for GM and the government. The only people who lose out are the average citizens.

To be fair, a lot of right-wingers want government control of the Internet also. They just differ on what they want controlled. The religious right would love it if everything "harmful to children" (read: anything inappropriate for a 5 year old to read) was taken off the Internet. They've tried multiple times to get laws passed enforcing this but it has always been struck down in the courts. (This coming from the father of a 7 year old and a 3 year old... I'll police how my kids use the Internet, I don't need the government to do my job for me!)

This is true, although I would classify most of them as the ignorant knee-jerkers that both sides of the political spectrum have (the left has their uninformed lunatics, too). You know the sort--it's good until it's something that offends them, then it's bad.

Personally, I self-identify as a right-winger, and I see any form of government control over the Internet as a necessarily bad thing. Although, you could probably convince me otherwise if it were an argument for increasing broadband penetration in areas that aren't well services (my only concern being who would pay for it). So, just to clarify: I believe there are those on either side of the fence who demand control for their own pet reasons, and many of them are largely quite clueless. I don't really see Internet censorship and/or control as a right/left issue as much as I see it as an informed versus uninformed issue.

I doubt you'll be modded down for it. I think people are gradually coming round to the realisation that Republican / Democrat is a lose-lose proposition.

This is a good point--Slashdot tends more toward the left (largely), but I think your assertion is fair and even handed. Although I've seen a great deal more dissent recently by American liberals against Obama (and company), I still sometimes bite my tongue for fear of verbal lashings. It's probably quite silly...

Whilst Obama, at the time he received the reward had done bugger all to earn it, he also hadn't had much time yet to do much harm. I don't know whether he was given the award as an inducement, due to corruption behind the scenes or worst, staggering political naivete on the part of the Nobel Committee.

Hmm. Chicago politics aside--though it's certainly fun for individuals on the American right such as myself to jest about--I wouldn't necessarily ascribe the decision to corruption alone. I think you're correct and that the greatest deciding factor was a culmination of a few things: The historic importance of Obama's election, the excitement worldwide related to Obama and his campaign, and his tremendous success. For many of his supporters, it seemed that the world's opinion would finally begin to swing the pendulum the other way, and other nations might start to like us again. To some extent, I think some of that expectation may have rubbed off on the Nobel Committee as well. Then again, I could be talking completely out of my arse and there's an apolitical, lengthy decision-making process. Given other examples like Kissinger, as you pointed out, I doubt it's a fancy unbiased algorithm...

(Disclosure: I didn't vote for Obama, I disagree with his politics, and I would most certainly be the last person who'd support someone on his side of the fence. That said, I was greatly impressed by the president's campaign and what they were able to accomplish in a very short period of time. I do think he deserves a great deal of credit there, and that's part of my motivation for agreeing with your latter speculation that perhaps it was simply a naive decision on the Committee's behalf. I can't fault them for sharing in the excitement, but it is nevertheless a great shame that very rarely do the truly deserving receive the prize.)

To this day, I'm stunned by the number of people who take as an axiom that he is a good person / force for good and rationalise every action or inaction around that. During the election, I had intelligent people telling me how he would be a great change for good, yet who couldn't talk for a second about the actual policies the Democrats were putting forward.

Definitely. I realize I'm repeating myself here (sorry!), but I sincerely think that sentiment started with the campaign and has been extrapolated by the media and fed to the masses at large as gospel. As a candidate, he looked good. Furthermore, as we Americans are concerned, any candidate that looks good must, by extension, be good. It's absurd.

Admittedly, I had a hard time voting in 2008. I couldn't stand McCain, either! We're consistently presented two choices, and neither happens to be any good.

Before I close this rather lengthy reply, I have an anecdotal example that may help support your last statement, but it may humor you instead to read. During 2008, I was in my last year of college and not one of my peers could explain why they liked Obama more than McCain. Yet they were immensely excited to be voting for Obama because of what everyone else was saying about him. To hell with his policies! He was a guy we could picture playing basketball with. Frighteningly enough, it is that sort of depth that comprises the vast majority of American political thought outside the very small population of individuals who pay some attention to the goings on in Washington. (Overhearing two environmentalists arguing with each other over the Democratic candidates pre-primaries was slightly more entertaining--but only because the one that "lost" the argument was riding a bike and the conversational riposte delivered to him was based on his consumption of a device that required far more pollution to create than simply walking everywhere would.)

Thank you for the insightful reply. It's good to have a cordial discussion on Slashdot with someone who is willing to share their views rather than the usual drivel encountered here!

I agree. The Nobel Peace Prize is essentially nothing more than a joke, although the deserving do very rarely receive it (like this year).

I'll likely get modded down for pointing this out, but another such example of questionable winners is Barack Obama. He won it for what has largely been demonstrated to be campaign promises, and I find it hard to believe that no one else was nominated who accomplished more for the world and for peace in general in 2009. Of course, we won't know the answer until 2059 or later. Perhaps 2009 was just simply a bad year for nominees, but I can't shake the fact that the picks are very often highly politically motivated (Obama was the 4th US president to receive the award--and the 3rd to receive it while in office; some could rightly observe that the prize seems biased in favor of US presidents).

I'm sure one could put a pound of C4 up the ass, model a shaped charge in the toilet against the side of the plane or the floor, depending on where the tanks are.

I know you may think you were joking (or perhaps you read the article last year), but someone has actually managed to attempt an assassination (ass-ination?) using--wait for it--one pound of explosives in their colon. The target was Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, and the assassin managed to fit a pound of PETN inside his posterior.

Times like these make me wish IBM had bought Sun instead. At least they're a services company, so they know how that ecosystem works, and their existing investment in Java would've been better for us all...

But why would anyone follow his advice after he ran Sun into the ground?

Someone could hire him as an advisor then do precisely the opposite of what he suggests!

Good catch; I was hoping someone would point that out for the OP! This part always bugs me--it's as if a great many people completely (and conveniently?) forget that WebKit is a fork. Granted, it's a highly modified fork, but a fork is a fork is a fork...

I think a lot of the JRuby effort will be moving to Rubinius (which I think uses LLVM instead of JVM). Jython appears to be abandoned. NetRexx hasn't seen any development activity in several years, but is being transitioned from IBM to a foundation (RexxLA) in the hope of jump-starting it.

I don't think Jython has been abandoned. It has a low volume but still pretty active mailing list and the latest RC was released in October. Jython has traditionally had a slow development/release process as far back as I can remember.

Slow but steady development != abandoned.

Other than that, you're spot on. :)

When it comes to virtualisation, RAM is nearly always more important than either core count or speed, unless you're doing something unusual.

And when you buy a cheaper multicore processor from AMD, you can spend the difference on more RAM! :)

That reminds me of something Terry Gilliam said in his comments on the Criterion Collection edition of Brazil: that he had intended it as satire, but after September 11th, it had begun to look like reality.

What's sad is that it now appears that every "good idea" in politics started out as satire...

You sound like you think that's wikileaks fault.

Don't split hairs--read through some of my other commentary (click my name, click comments) and you'll see that I feel differently. If you're willing to instead jump to inane conclusions, I guess I can't help you out there.

That said, it wasn't my intention to make it sound like it's WikiLeak's fault; I just happen to find it much easier to refer to this particular fiasco as the "WikiLeaks fiasco," because there are so many stupid things the US government has done this year that it's almost hard to keep track of. So in that case, yes, I apologize for being specific about which fiasco I was referring to. How horrible that I would dare clarify anything in particular. Oh, the horror.

Ultimately, the responsibility of censorship falls on the shoulders of the government. It just so happens that because of this situation, there are a lot of congress critters who are no doubt thinking that they can take advantage of this to push for stricter regulations on the flow of information. That isn't WikiLeak's fault, and I'm kind of angry that you'd pin me with blaming it on them.

Okay, I know you posted this earlier and you're an AC (either to troll or to protect your identity--I'm not so bashful) so 1) you've already been lynched by a village of angry Slashdotters and 2) no one's going to bother reading my post, but I feel the need to address these for reasons that are not commonly espoused here on Slashdot. Your post happens to be an excellent one to bounce my thoughts off of to get them out there.

First, I need to get some political disclaimers out of my system (and some of you self-described American liberals will probably mod me down for my honesty):

One, I'm about as right wing, in terms of the American political system, as they come. I'm pro-Second Amendment, I'm a self-described conservative, and I generally find agreement with the majority of conservative pundits--except in some cases. This is one of them.

Two, I think it's fantastic what Assange and WikiLeaks have been doing. I see liberty, freedom of speech, and transparency as an all-or-nothing. You either have it or you don't. Yes, this may present a national security risk, but there are far, far worse things that could have happened (I'll address this in a moment).

Three, WikiLeaks has taught the US government a very important lesson about security, and it is one that I do not think our leadership has fully realized. I'm talking of course about how an enlisted man--a private--was able to gain access to so many secretive diplomatic cables. That alone is lax security, and if nothing else, I think the US government should consider hiring real security consultants to address the system (including people) as a whole. WikiLeaks has done us a favor in terms of exposing a very real flaw in national security protocol, and if we don't fix it, well, we get what we deserve.

The WikiLeaks issue is not nearly as bad as many conservative pundits are making it out to be. Don't listen to Huckabee, Palin, or any of the others. Much of the information that has been released has had identifiable information redacted. Anyone who claims this is putting a great deal of people at risk has either not read any of the releases or is falling for the fear mongering that the US media is insanely good at. (I also suspect that these same people probably feel the TSA really is keeping us safe.) And, really, there's nothing in the leaked cables that didn't surprise me or that I couldn't have already suspected based on my readings elsewhere and discussions with friends and family. The WikiLeaks stuff is interesting, but it isn't ground breaking by any stretch of the imagination. For example, we already knew the US government was insanely paranoid of everyone--the TSA groping and nude scanning pretty well proves this point--it's just enlightening to see how paranoid we are of our own allies. That kinda sucks for those of us who are citizens, because it means that we're liable to move closer toward a police state than we already are. Thank you endemic paranoia.

Secondly, and I think this is important to add, but truly secret information isn't handled in a manner that can be leaked like this. The only thing that was released here was still secret but not-so-secret-that-it-could-still-be-copied diplomatic wires and a few other things. Big deal. It's embarrassing, but I think it's well deserved.

I might also add that if you really want someone to hang for this, you should go after that army private. Going after Assange is just shooting the messenger. What would have happened if that private leaked it instead to the New York Times? To Al Qaida? That it was leaked to WikiLeaks was something of a blessing. Given the journalistic integrity of the US media, I certainly can't believe that they would have given it as much of a fair shake as it has, and I also cannot guarantee that they would have put so much effort into redacting sensitive information as WikiLeaks has. Plus, if he leaked it to the genuine enemies of the free world, all bets would have been off. (I should also add that much of this "sensitive" data is only sensitive in terms of time; WikiLeaks has sat on some of it for so long that it is no longer pertinent.)

However, I do suspect that if this had all been leaked to the NYT or some other media outlet, no one would have had a manhunt for anyone in particular. That Assange may well take the fall yet for something that wouldn't have given any of the main stream press as much as a slap on the wrist smells of double standards to me. We should all be ashamed of ourselves.

So that said, let's address your points:

Assange's actions provide aid and comfort to terrorists. He has, therefore, committed treason against those who oppose terrorism.

He's also breached the sanctity of diplomatic communications and compromised the US' intelligence-gathering capability, having, just as one example, released a cable that contains more than enough information to identify an Iranian intelligence source.

Again, no. Assange did not breach anything. The army private (Manning I believe?) did. The army private is the one who has done all of these things, and he should be punished for it. Assange did nothing of the sorts. Again, you're falling into the blame-trap the media has set for you.

I should also point out that even if Assange were guilty of any of these things, you couldn't try him for treason. He's not an American citizen. Even if he were, he'd be able to claim protection under the First Amendment anyway because he was only reporting data that was given to him by someone who was vested with the trust of the US government.

Okay, you won't buy that argument, so let's put it this way: How many times during the Iraqi war did the US media "accidentally" leak something sensitive because an embedded reporter overheard something they shouldn't have? It happened a lot more than you'd realize, and if you're going to advocate hanging Assange, you darn well better go after every single news company in the US for the exact same charges.

I wonder how the regime in Iran is going to treat that guy and his family. I wonder how many other potential sources, who could provide the US with information they could use to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, will reconsider telling the US what they know, for fear of being outed.

Total strawman argument. If someone genuinely wants to go against the ruling regime and tell a foreign country naughty things about the leadership, I don't think this is going to stop them. They're already putting themselves into a position that will potentially result in their death. Trust me, if they're willing to risk their own lives to stop something like the Iranian atomic program, I don't think they're too concerned about being outed. It's a risk they're well aware of.

And besides, if you believe what some places are reporting about Stuxnet, the Iranian weapons program is probably already crippled to the point that we won't have to worry for a few more years. North Korea on the other hand... (I find it funny that you don't mention NK at all when the situation down there is currently MUCH more dangerous.)

Bottom line: Assange is an enemy of humanity and I hope he's made an example of so that others who are thinking of following in his footsteps think again.

Bottom line: Don't believe what the press is feeding you. Read some of the cables yourself and make your own judgment. It's foolish to shoot the messenger.

The US has a lot of valuable things it could learn from these leaks, one of which is that we shouldn't be stamping our feet like a bunch of spoiled children. Oh, and maybe referring to our own allies in less demeaning language would be a good start (that little bit of nonsense really embarrasses me).

It's funny. A security exploits was found for part of our nation's intelligence system, and what do we do? Instead of plugging it and changing protocol to fix the problem, we turn around and throw a tantrum on the international theater. Even Eric Holder is calling for Assange's head (never mind Assange didn't technically violate US law)! Lesson to you guys on the left: If you thought the last administration was paranoid and terrible, it sure looks like these current clowns aren't much better, don't you think?