I bet that clown got in trouble with his Scribe Project Manager for making such redundant inscriptions.

I search my mind for a time when I looked at my Commodore VIC 20 or 64 and felt I should throw them away.. there was no such time. They just stopped working.

I think this might be the wrong crowd to call to arms to preserve the past. Most of our basements are in the running as computer museums (much to my wife's dissatisfaction).

It would be nice to think that the creators of such "classic" games would preserve the code and copies of their work so that we could revisit the past in legally. My youngest son loves to play the republished Dig-Dug on the old Playstation 2, if only he knew how many quarters I spent playing that game.

I agree that classification is often a means to avoid embarrassing exposures. In this case it can show important information to people who are OK with killing US and British troops.

If you had a meeting with 7 people and the discussion was to remain confidential, but then the information suddenly becomes public knowledge you are aware there was a leak of some sort. If you hear that "someone from accounting" told everyone then you can narrow it down to the two accounting people who were at the meeting. Or if all the meetings in conference room A are the ones where information is getting out, then you know it might be the room. When the information itself is life or death level information the stakes are much higher.

The information itself is good, and probably should be available via FOIA request (so it can be properly redacted by people in the know who can remove data which would get people killed). Having FOIA fail us in a world where it all is hopelessly classified due to terms like "recruiting tool", then wikileaks CAN provide valuable information to the public.

But this was no "leak" by a "whistle blower", this was irresponsible release of information which WILL get people killed.

This is not whistle blowing! It is divulging classified material. Yes, some of it includes "Oops, blew up 3 civilians.. my bad." But a lot of the data reveals the inner workings of military intelligence and WILL result in the people who have helped us fight the Taliban and other militant extremist DYING for their work with us. You can complain all you want about the military or the war, but if I were an Afgan villager who was sick of war and wanted a stable government, I'd like to think I'd cooperate with the US. But I'd like to think they would protect me for my help.

The person who leaked this information put a LOT of lives on the line. The blood the Taliban will spill is on the hands of this "whistle blower", the same with the blood of the US and British troops who will be killed because of this leak. They are scum. I am OK with the gunsight video, that is a story that needed telling for good of bad. But this database is too much raw intel, and it is too valuable for "bad guys".

I Received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communications from American Intercontinental University. That is a fancy term for Graphic Arts or Digital Design/Web Design. I have a very technical background but didn't want to get a technical degree ( I can code but knew the programming degree would be just "can write in C#" and didn't want a technology degree because it would be just "design a network in Visio"). I always wanted to get an art degree but since my parents were going to pay the bill when I first went they wanted something more "practical". So I showed them and flunked out of college.

Years later I wanted that degree but work and my location prevented a traditional college education. So I looked into an online degree. I found American Intercontinental University (AIU). They were pushy and expensive, but at the time everyone was pushy and expensive (lets face the fact that online schools are there to make money). University of Phoenix wanted you to buy all the books and such, AIU the books and software were free. This is a big deal for graphic arts since they sent me a copy of Adobe Creative Suite, 2 copies of Windows XP and 1 copy of Microsoft Office -- all formats they required but it didn't stop me from doing some projects in GIMP, Blender and Open Office. The AIU classes were online lectures streamed via Adobe Breeze as well as required bulletin board posts. Each week there was a participation grade for bulletin board posts and a weekly project. The projects were intense and I had to work as a designer to meet their expectations, it was like an intense internship at a graphic design house with a picky client. I loved it.

When it was all said and done I have a big student loan, a degree that confuses people on my resume (15 years as a network manager, with an Art degree). I met someone from my classes who helped me find a great job with a great company in the Washington DC area and moved to almost double my income. In the right area, the right degree and experience will open doors. You will not get an online degree that will open doors all by itself. Landing a cool job has a lot to do with luck (you in the right place at the right time doing the right thing) and desperation (you wanting badly enough to leave your present situation and the employer needing "you"). When all that comes together it is magic.

Information Security is a hot topic right now, a lot of people are getting into it (including me). Depending on what you want to do with it, learn programming (to the point where Assembly makes sense), learn web development (where you can de-obfuscate JavaScript and see SQL injections), know TCP/IP (so PCAPs make sense) and never stop reading... I am not sure about specific degrees for Information Security. If you are trying to get into the government there are a lot of Federal regulations which are required reading for IA people. I'd focus on the skills the classes teach, as well as considering taking some SANS classes as well as certifications (not just CISSP but maybe CEH or some of the newer and better certifications). Good luck! The most important part is to love what you do so you can do what you love.

I bought a Fujitsu Lifebook Tablet when Microsoft released their TabletPC edition of XP. Wacom had done the tablet component and it was fantastic. As an artist my first consideration with a tablet is how it would run with photoshop (and or GIMP) and pressure sensitivity turned on. There is a lot of talk about making giant iPhones but less about what I'd use a tablet for -- after all I was done finger painting in preschool.

I downloaded the Beta last night and installed it. A few hours to download and maybe an hour to actually install.

Part of the installation was for it to go on the internet and download patches. It quickly detected my wireless and very quickly I was watching it download and install patches (before asking me my favorite color and all the other typical setup BS).

My laptop: came with but could barely run Vista. Even after a memory upgrade I still went to XP on it.

Vista was just too interruptive(UAC) and needed a lot of tweaking to run well on the hardware it came on.. My anti-virus didn't work with Vista, my phone would not sync with it, etc...

But so far windows 7 is good. The installation was great, a departure from the in-your-face "what can windows (not) do for you" crap they have been doing since Windows 95.

International copyright law holds that copyright starts at the moment of creation and applies to the creator. This law makes it so that the Library of Congress is no longer the body for copyright but Bill Gates' Corbis and other large media houses. Basically only works registered with these places (for a cost of $5 each) will be copyrighted. ANYTHING available anywhere that is not registered with pieces of silver to these organizations is fair game (as far as the US is concerned, the rest of the world will still hold to the idea that the stuff people make belongs to them).

Imagine for a moment that a picture of some friends at a party that you took and posted to Flickr ends up in an ad for anything from beer (good) to STD treatment medication (bad). Worst is that the photo is yours, but a company paid a agency to create this ad and you don't get a cent or have any say on how they use it.

That is the gist from the previous versions of the bill.

It does not matter where you stand on software patents or intellectual property, this is about the rights of a creator to dictate where and when a work is used. If you deny Corbis it's money, the work is not yours. That is fundamentally wrong.

If the Library of Congress is so behind that they can't keep up with copyright claims or these ownership issues need a central registry then it should be a public, free registry. Not a paid registry that furthers the ideal that a MBA is the only one that can truly manage creative people and also the only one really making any money in an office of programmers/developers/designers/artists/etc.