LasseF - Slashdot User

Submission + - US Government Strategy To Prevent Leaks, Is Leaked 1

Submitted by Jake on Sunday January 09, 2011 @04:56AM

Jake writes: The US government's 11-page document on how to get various US government agencies to prevent future leaks has been leaked. It doesn't get any more ironic than that. After the various leaks made by WikiLeaks, the US government understandably wants to limit the number of potential leaks, but their strategy apparently isn't implemented yet. It's clear that the Obama administration is telling federal agencies to take aggressive steps to prevent further leaks. According to the document, these steps include figuring out which employees might be most inclined to leak classified documents, by using psychiatrists and sociologists to assess their trustworthiness. The memo also suggests that agencies require all their employees to report any contacts with members of the news media they may have.

Submission + - Some Wikileaks Contributions to Public Discourse 3

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Sunday January 09, 2011 @01:20AM

Hugh Pickens writes: "EFF reports that regardless of the heated debate over the propriety of Wikileaks actions, some of the cables have contributed significantly to public and political conversations around the world. The Guardian reported on a cable describing an incident in Afghanistan in which employees of DynCorp, a US military contractor, hired a "dancing boy," an underaged boy dressed as women, who dance for gatherings of men and is then prostituted — an incident that contributed important information to the debate over the use of private military contractors. A cable released by Wikileaks showed that Pfizer allegedly sought to blackmail a Nigerian regulator to stop a lawsuit against drug trials on children. A Wikileaks revelation that the United States used bullying tactics to attempt to push Spain into adopting copyright laws even more stringent than those in the US came just in time to save Spain from the kind of misguided copyright laws that cripple innovation and facilitate online censorship. An article by the New York Times analyzed cables released which indicated the US is having difficulties in fulfilling Obama's promise to close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and is now considering incentives in return for accepting detainees, including a one-on-one meeting with Obama or assistance obtaining IMF assistance. "These examples make clear that Wikileaks has brought much-needed light to government operations and private actions," writes Rainey Reitman, "which, while veiled in secrecy, profoundly affect the lives of people around the world and can play an important role in a democracy that chooses its leaders.""

Evolution of Mona Lisa Via Genetic Programming 326

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @02:07AM from the but-the-target-was-given dept.

mhelander writes "In his weblog Roger Alsing describes how he used genetic programming to arrive at a remarkably good approximation of Mona Lisa using only 50 semi-transparent polygons. His blog entry includes a set of pictures that let you see how 'Poly Lisa' evolved over roughly a million generations. Both beautiful to look at and a striking way to get a feel for the power of evolutionary algorithms."

Submission + - Three flashing red lights cost Microsoft $1bn (ft.com)

Submitted by on Friday July 06, 2007 @04:04AM

An anonymous reader writes: The Financial Times reports that Microsoft will take a charge against profits of more than $1bn as it tries to limit the potential damage to its videogames business from a design flaw in the Xbox 360 games console leading to units to fail. This is the "three flashing red lights" problem.

"Mr Bach denied that the product failures showed Microsoft had launched the console before it was ready, or that they resulted from the company's relative weakness in hardware design."

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