It doesn't do anything of the sort and there is nothing new in the Schneier article. Why would your average non-IT journo understand about PGP? If the journo was told it was a temporary password then they are very unlikely to say, "oh no you are wrong you IT people, I know about stuff and this can't be temporary". I've been reading Slashdot for well over a decade and if someone I thought knew what they were talking about told me they had stuff encrypted with a temporary key, I would believe them (although I'd be wondering just how it was done).

The other angle is that why would the Guardian publish the key if they new it would unlock everything for everyone? It isn't in their interest (selling newspapers), plus there are plenty of reports of other media outlets being offered the data more than a year ago, so it has hardly just got out there.

I think the real story is it is all a screw up, journo knows nothing about IT, is bullsh*tted by Assange and believes what they are told. Assange isn't doing the security by the Wikileaks protocol, everything goes to crap.

Sorry, the first part was meant to be funny... As for the second, according to the Guardian at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/01/unredacted-us-embassy-cables-online

"The embassy cables were shared with the Guardian through a secure server for a period of hours, after which the server was taken offline and all files removed, as was previously agreed by both parties. This is considered a basic security precaution when handling sensitive files. But unknown to anyone at the Guardian, the same file with the same password was republished later on BitTorrent, a network typically used to distribute films and music. This file's contents were never publicised, nor was it linked online to WikiLeaks in any way.

"Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours.

So 1) WikiLeaks knew the password was out there many months ago, 2) if they were TOLD the password was temporary they didn't misunderstand anything...

...can someone who illegally obtained classified documents and released them into the public domain then sue someone else for stealing their illegally obtained documents and releasing them into the public domain.

For what it's worth it seems much more likely to me that someone within WikiLeaks who was disaffected them stole the data/password and release them than the Guardian did it. Just because it was the (supposedly) time limited password given to the Guardian doesn't mean no one else had access to it.

What? Stone is mostly silicon dioxide, how does something made out of silicon not sound stone like?

Same here, but I think the problem is that we won't be able to run the KDE 3.5 version of Quanta in a KDE 5.0 environment, we'd have to install the KDE 3.5 environment and swap between that and KDE 5.0 to use it. It really amazes me that Quanta has yet to be ported to KDE 4 as there really isn't an equivalent web development environment on Linux. I've tried several others and for me as a home user with a couple of small family websites none of the other free (in both senses) web development environments have the combination of ease of use and features that Quanta has.

Awww..... It is almost heartwarming that someone still believes we live in a meritocracy.

If only I didn't find that statement so offensive and, of course, not based on any evidence. I would contend that wealth is largely based on opportunity. For instance, almost all members of the wealthy European aristocracy are dumb as a bag of spanners due to inbreeding (look at Prince Charles and his offspring), also various studies have demonstrated that most (but by no means all) of top income earners come from a high income family background.

I'd like to see the time spent on the IQ test factored in. ie people running IE6 may be in some crummy corporate cube farm with little time to play around and a lower IQ score may represent a rushed test rather than actual IQ.

Not really, each distro heavily patches the kernel, Mandriva included, and not necessarily with the same patches. Plus as the distros tend not to come out on the same day they also often have different kernel versions. On top of that the userland tools to detect and set up hardware are not the same and things like automating ndiswrapper wifi driver installs tend to be better on Mandriva

I second Mandriva, I've been using it for close to a decade and it is definitely easier to set up than Ubuntu, plus being KDE based will be a bit easier for a Windows user to get used to.

However, there is one caveat, in the last month I have started converting my PCs to OpenSUSE as Mandriva seems to be slowly dying with take-over after take-over and the current 2010.2 version is somewhat long in the tooth.

Mandriva do a live CD which can be also run from a USB disk, why not try that first?

Who's making extraordinary claims? Me because I can hear the difference between FLAC and most MP3s (which I strongly suspect most people can) or you because you claim no one can tell the difference between lossy and lossless formats and that apparently no one can tell the difference between one hi-fi and another? Now they are extraordinary claims, not to mention you being unnecessarily abusive to boot.

Incidentally, I know what difference testing is and how it is done properly (e.g. duo-trio tests), I suspect you don't. I also suspect you don't know what normalise means. If you normalise 16 bit and 24 bit music you are by definition giving them the same dynamic range and removing the very aspect you say you are testing. What you are describing seems to be an offset (and would be more appropriate). Plus I didn't even comment on the 24 vs 16 bit argument and certainly didn't claim to be an expert.

Though why I'm replying to an AC I really don't know...

Indeed, I have never understood why Slashdot is so keen to bag 'audiophiles', particularly as the majority of readers have probably never heard a high-end hi-fi, let alone good recordings of classical music on such equipment. I have no idea whether 24bit will sound better than 16 bit, but I can tell you that going from MP3 (lossy) to FLAC (lossless) has a large and obvious effect on sound quality even on my $50 PC speakers (and I'm talking indie-rock here, classical music is unlistenable on my PC). Most MP3s sound just awful on my hi-fi (which is in the same category as the parent comment and about 50% of which was second hand).

The point of 'audiophile' equipment is exactly not to listen to the equipment, but to get the best out of the source, whether it be a high quality modern recording or a poor quality 78. If you enjoy classical music (high dynamic range in almost any piece and symphonic music typically having a very complex sound) then you pretty much have to buy a decent hi-fi as the cheap ones sound so bl**dy awful. I am proud to be an 'audiophile' in the (almost) literal sense, in that I love music. I would rather hear poor recordings of good music on crap equipment than most of the dross that is released on high-end hi-fi, but I'd much rather hear good recordings of good music on good equipment.