On the other hand, I never would have read about the Grace Mugabe's involvement in illegal diamond trading had Anonymous not DDoSed the various Zimbabwe government sites and gotten in the news (well, /.) for it. The DDoS is not long-lasting, but the information spread because of the uproar is. I'm still unsure how I feel about Anonymous and the DDoS attacks, but I know exactly how I feel about diamond trading (frankly, I'm not a fan of the legal stuff, either...) and now I know better to whom to apply those feelings.

He wasn't getting subsidies, he was going to build a dual-transmission line, water+electricity. He was going to pump water from the Ogallala Aquifer and send it down to Dallas along with electricity. That gave him water district status, so he was going to be able to pull eminent domain and take all the property he needed to build his transmission line. It failed for a set of reasons: no one invested in natural gas cars (so his major investment in natural gas wasn't going to make him money), he was having trouble with selling the water, and he was having trouble getting all the land set up for the wind farm.

I'm actually glad he failed. All those turbines will now be on the market for probably less than they originally sold for, and he's not going to drain the Ogallala Aquifer to let people in Dallas run their fountains and fill their pools. Also, pre-paying for all those turbines probably helped bring down the cost for everyone else, just for economy of scale reasons.

It is kind of funny. I rail and rail against the power and might of the military-industrial complex. Then things like this happen and I am thankful for the DoD for advancing the state-of-the-art in ways that the general market is incapable/unwilling too. It's...frustrating. Why do they have to make things so complex!

I haven't seen the front page of Wikipedia in...I don't even know how long. I use the google search bar, and if the wikipedia article isn't near the top of the results, I throw "wiki" in. If that doesn't get me pretty much straight where I'm going, then I generally don't even bother looking at Wikipedia. I think their search tool is awful, personally...

I disagree. I don't think Wikileaks violated their contract. Amazon's response is here: http://aws.amazon.com/message/65348/ . Their arguments are

a) Wikileaks doesn't control the rights to the content. This is an interesting assertion. Wikileaks has as much control over the rights of the content as the New York Times did when it published the Pentagon Papers, i.e. they were publishing classified documents that were illegally obtained by a third party. However, the US Government couldn't stop the Times from publishing. This would lead to pretty strong case that they *do* have some control as to the rights of the content. The US Government certainly doesn't have a copyright over the diplomatic cables (they being produced by government officers or employees as part of their official duties are not eligible for copyright), and since Wikileaks was never under any agreement with the US Government regarding access to the cables, there is nothing stopping them from publishing, just like there was nothing stopping the Times from publishing. Yes, it was a crime for the documents to be exposed, but once exposed, there is nothing illegal about holding or distributing the documents. The documents are now public domain. To get technical, Amazon requires that you own or control all of the rights to the content you host. If they are arguing that Wikileaks doesn't own or control the content, it can only be because the content is public domain. Therefore, all public domain documents should be disallowed on Amazon AWS systems.

b) Wikileaks release of the documents could hurt people, because it is not possible for WIkileaks to have redacted the documents in such a way as to put people in jeopardy. They cite as evidence that some human rights organizations asked for Wikileaks to exercise caution in their releases. They ignore the fact that those same organizations also asked Wikileaks to continue doing what they are doing, regarding the documents. In neither of those cases are any actual specific cases where someone has been put in jeopardy cited. In fact, no cases have been reported where someone has been put in danger because of Wikileaks releases (excepting, of course, the death threats Julian Assange has received...). They are also making some pretty large leaps to say that people are being put in danger (remember, Wikileaks was booted because of the diplomatic cables, not the Afghanistan documents, which, by the way, are what those human rights organizations were referring to...Amazon is in fact using evidence from a completely separate situation and trying to pass it off as relevant...). The documents are government cables, meaning information like names and actions had to have been pretty well known to have made it as far as the people sending the cables. If they weren't known, then diplomats had to be in direct communication with the human rights activists, which leads to questions about whether they were activists or government operatives. Not that that changes much regarding whether they should be protected, but if they were operatives, it would seem that the government officials should have been protecting them even within the cables, so redaction shouldn't be that big of an issue.

Also if any content that could put people at risk should be banned, then do they ban chemistry books that explain explosives, or Dianetics (it's available on Amazon.com...)? Hell, Amazon.com sells "The Anarchist Cookbook" for goodness' sake! Search for it on Amazon and you get pages of books with bomb instructions, improvised weapon instructions, techniques to cause havoc, etc...

I simply can't take Amazon's argument seriously when it is so flimsy, if not downright fraudulent, and full of hypocrisy to begin with.

It is a business matter, but not because Wikileaks violated a TOS. It is a business matter because Amazon realized that, in a lot of other areas, remaining on Wikileaks' side here could have serious business repercussions... (remember: http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/12/11/1940252/Feds-To-Adopt-Cloud-First-IT-Policy)

And I know that's not your IP address. That's the FBI's address, according to the IRC friends I asked to look at my webserver logs.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spick-and-span

Also, from the wikipedia article on the product, someone did try boycotting it in 1999 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spic_and_Span). I think that's stupid. "Spick and Span" was first recorded in the 16th century. "Spic" has only existed since early 1900s, wasn't documented until 1910, and even then was documented as "spiggoty" as a slur against Italians. I'd say it's pretty safe to say that when "Spic and Span" was created (1933 in Ohio), "spic" being a slur wasn't even on the radar for them.

I think the situation is similar to the word "niggardly" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22). People see something that, without any context (context like the spelling of the word or idiom...), could be conceived as racist. People take offense as something because of their own ignorance.

The problem is, you're not being color-blind. You're seeing color issues where there aren't any. You're trying to get people riled up at racism that isn't even there. You're not helping to stop racism, but you are helping to chill language and communication and encourage ignorance. You have, by trying to be on the right side of something, wound up on the wrong side of everything.

And there goes my karma...

No, this should be applauded as a shining example of the 1st amendment at it's best, *AND* as if Google is trying to squash their speech. You're right, there is no government intervention, so we're fine as far as 1st Amendment going. We still are left with Google using it's business to discourage free speech. Someone has to pay for it, you're right. But there are many people who can pay for it and letting Google have a free pass just because they have the right to is wrong. Raising the alarm that Google is doing something "evil", boycotting, avoiding Google products, etc, are great examples of free speech, as well.

Yep.

Of course, if teachers have to call home, you often times wind up with "perfect child syndrome" where the parent doesn't believe the teacher. They take it up with the principal, and if they're the kind of parent who can donate a new computer or something, suddenly the teacher is just harassing them. Put it in the computer, however...the computer never lies!

Blowjobs on the way to school? Best. Security. Fail. EVER!

When I was in English class, there was no reason for me to have a computer. We did the reading at home and only did discussion in class.

When I was in Math class, we had computers, at least in Calc and DiffE. I spent most of my time making Mathematica animations. Tests were designed so that a) you could do them by hand (no calcs even) and b) putting them into Mathematica generally made them harder, as Mathematica generally didn't solve them in a useful way.

In German, we didn't need computers because we did the readings as a group. Computers would have been a distraction. Possibly, having an iPad like thing and reading in a program that let me take notes on the page itself, would have been ok, but that would have only added up to equivalent with the book. And would have been heavier...

Chemistry we didn't need a computer, as we were doing experiments half the time. Maybe a computer would have been nice when taking notes. I generally took notes on paper in college when I had a computer, though...

Computer class...was f-ing worthless. We learned to type and to use excel, and then we learned to type 3 more times. I made friends with the lab manager. He let us come in on weekends and run HL and CS tournaments.

Biology...same as chemistry.

History...I guess digital textbooks would have been nice, although it was a mix of English (read at home and discuss in class) and lectures. Again, for the most part, it would have just added up to pen+paper+letshopeitworks.

Of course, there wasn't a lot of computer based curriculum. Nowadays, that might be different. Having 2 teachers for parents, I'm gonna go with it might be different, but it isn't better. My mom teaches kindergarten. They require her to use her smartboard during class a certain amount of time, but they don't help pay for any training or anything. There are only a few pre-made courses for it (for kindergarten...), none of which work with the curriculum she is required to teach. Meaning, on her own time, she has to learn a new and proprietary programming environment (again..this is the 2nd brand of smartboards in her school in 5 years). I went to an even better school (with way more money) than the one she teaches at, and they had no idea how to integrate computers (except the math teach, but he was different in a lot of other ways).

Basically, depriving kids of computer literacy is a bad thing. Forcing computers into classes that have not yet fully adapted to them, including the distractions they bring to the kids and the teachers, is probably even worse. You can learn computer literacy at home. Many people can't afford a computer at home, so they can learn it in the library. Or the school can focus on making the computer class *actually worthwhile*. My point is, kids aren't going to be deprived of the ability to learn to use computers, especially not at a school where the choice is 2 computers per child or 1?

Your argument makes sense for kids in 3rd world countries re: the OLPC project. For kids in posh schools in developed countries, the argument is more like depriving a mechanic of one of those super expensive factory provided diagnostic tools and giving him the 3rd party one instead. At poor schools, it's more like having a couple wrenches to share, and one of those diagnostic tools for the kids that have really proved themselves.

It also helps keep WETA and WETA Digital the ILM of today. I can't imagine how much money that brings in and then spends in country (data center people, technologists, animators, craft artisans, etc.) A film getting to say it's effects were done by WETA nowadays is marketing gold like saying ILM 20 years ago, or Ray Harryhausen 50 years ago...

That's the point I was going to make.

The problem is still with the organization of corporations. The management isn't at fault, because they're just the hired guns doing the will of the owners (stockholders). The stockholders aren't at fault because there's so many of them you could never apportion blame, and they can't know the ins-and-outs of every action taken by the corporation. Basically, no one is to blame (officially...when Target donates 150k to a politician the CEO likes, everyone knows exactly who to go after...but how're you gonna fire him? If more than 50% of the stock is owned by institutional investors who only trade based on price, and he continues to make the price better, you can't get rid of him...)

I hate to say it, but they really shoulda just waited a few weeks and done this in iMovie '11 with that trailer creation thing they spent an hour discussing.

That, or like someone said earlier, just contract them out to Futurama... The Simpsons shill for Butterfinger, why can't Futurama for NASA?

Not so much "grant hunting season" as "consultancy hunting season". "The arctic mineral and fossil fuel deposits are about to be accessible...and I know where they all are..."

/jk

When I was too young to vote (think 6 years old), my parents would take me to the polling place. They had a special "learning machine" setup that had different names (I guess a default name the company made for demos?) and different colored ballots. Funny enough, I never found those "butterfly ballots" confusing, even though I was 6 and too short to easily see. You just punched the hole that the arrow pointed at (and if you had to use the little poker to slide over form the arrow cause you couldn't see perfect, well, you did). It's seemed pretty simple to me. At 6. I thought it was a clever, efficient use of paper, not to mention no one could tell who you voted for until they ran it through the machines...