rehevkor5 - Slashdot User

Wikileaks Plans To Make the Web Leakier 94

Posted by kdawson on Friday October 09, 2009 @11:39AM from the assuming-the-risk dept.

itwbennett writes "At the Hack In The Box conference in Kuala Lumpur, Wikileaks.org announced a plan to enable newspapers, human rights organizations, criminal investigators, and others to embed an 'upload a disclosure to me via Wikileaks' form onto their Web sites that would give potential whistleblowers the ability to leak sensitive documents to an organization or journalist they trust over a secure connection. The news or NGO site would then get an embargo period in which to analyze the material and write the story, after which Wikileaks would make the leaked material public. At the same time, the receiver would have greater legal protection, says Julien Assange, an advisory board member at Wikileaks 'We will take the burden of protecting the source and the legal risks associated with publishing the document,' said Assange. 'We want to get as much substantive information as possible into the historical record, keep it accessible, and provide incentives for people to turn it into something that will achieve political reform.'"

Comment Starcraft (Score 1) 463

by rehevkor5 on Tuesday July 07, 2009 @04:33PM (#28613481) Attached to: The Dilemma of Level vs. Skill In MMOs

I've been watching a lot of pro Starcraft casts lately (hooray for Cholera!), and to me it's clear that skill is a major factor.

Using a build is just like using an opening in chess. It helps you make the first, say, ten moves. After that you're in uncharted territory. In fact, Starcraft players have it harder than chess players when it comes to the opening. If the player isn't timely with a scout into the enemy base, and then skillful with microing it, the player will have no idea what build the other player is using. Chess players can just see it on the board without any effort or probe/drone/scv micro skill. If you don't have that skill, you're not going to be able to adjust your strategy to account for the other players strategy.

A lot of the game also depends on your meaningful APM (actions per minute). Pro players have an APM around 250-400. The sheer concentration and quick thinking needed to maintain such a hectic rate of play isn't something that just anyone can step up and do. Using a good build has nothing to do with it. If you don't have good APM one or both of micro and macro will suffer.

Along with APM comes micro. In Z/Z, for example, a single well-placed plague can turn the game. For protoss, micro of a shuttle/reaver combo or of high templar storms can be crucial. I can't come up with a good example for Terrans, but basically in Starcraft your units are only as good as your micro.

Personally I'd take a skill-based game like CounterStrike or Starcraft over a level-based game like WoW any day.

Comic Artist Detained For Script Containing 9/11 Type Scenarios 441

Posted by samzenpus on Monday June 29, 2009 @12:44PM from the free-from-free-speech dept.

Comics writer Mark Sable was detained by security at Los Angeles International Airport because he was carrying a script for a new issue of his comic miniseries, Unthinkable. Unthinkable follows members of a government think tank that was tasked with coming up with 9/11-type "unthinkable" terrorist scenarios that now are coming true. Sable wrote about his experience saying, "...I was flagged at the gate for 'extra screening.' I was subjected to not one, but two invasive searches of my person and belongings. TSA agents then 'discovered' the script for Unthinkable #3. They sat and read the script while I stood there, without any personal items, identification or ticket, which had all been confiscated. The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble. The first page of the Unthinkable script mentioned 9/11, terror plots, and the fact that the (fictional) world had become a police state. The TSA agents then proceeded to interrogate me, having a hard time understanding that a comic book could be about anything other than superheroes, let alone that anyone actually wrote scripts for comics. I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation. While Unthinkable blurs the line between fiction and reality, the story is based on a real-life government think tank where a writer was tasked to design worst-case terror scenarios. The fictional story of Unthinkable unfolds when the writer's scenarios come true, and he becomes a suspect in the terrorist attacks." It's too bad that the TSA can't protect us from summer blockbuster movies and not just graphic novels.

Submission + - Companies that Clean Up Bad Online Reputations

Submitted by Radon360 on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @12:20PM

Radon360 writes: As the ever-increasing amount of information available online becomes indexed and searchable, more and more people find themselves potentially at risk of having unwanted personal information revealed or their names incorrectly associated with inflammatory topics. The are several firms that now sell their services of trying to remove or bury such information that their client deems offensive or troublesome. Companies, such as ReputationDefender and DefendMyName will, for a fee, do the legwork to find content that negatively impacts your reputation and have it removed or buried deeper in search rankings. However, some of these efforts can backfire, as the act to get it taken down can sometimes draw more attention than the offending content in the first place.

Submission + - Smart little robots to help military wireless nets (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @11:48AM

coondoggie writes: "The military continues its drive to use wireless technology to develop bleeding edge robot systems to help it fight wars. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency recently announced a program to build wireless, mobile bots — known as LANdroids — that soldiers can spread over a battlefield that, once deployed, would then form a wireless mesh network capable of voice/data transmissions. DARPA says the LANdroids robots will consist of a radio, robotic platform, battery, and small processor, will be expendable. Solders' must be able to drop and go — benefiting from the infrastructure while it is in place but not being required to move back into harm's way to retrieve the robots. LANdroids aren't the first news of such devices this year. Cisco in March said it has developed a set of small smart robots, which can act as wireless communications relays, that sense when a mobile user is moving out of service range, and can follow the user to maintain connectivity. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1619 2"

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