The WikiLeaks, from what we have seen so far, detail power, interest and reality as we have known it. They do not reveal a new reality. Much will be made about the shocking truth that has been shown, which, as mentioned above, shocks only those who wish to be shocked. The Afghan war is about an insufficient American and allied force fighting a capable enemy on its home ground and a Pakistan positioning itself for the inevitable outcome. The WikiLeaks contain all the details.

Stratfor strongly implies that the US intentionally "leaked" all this information in order to influence the political debate over the war and help build the case for withdrawl.

At some point, the U.S. Government is going to have to sell the American people on withdrawing from Afghanistan without Bin Lauden and letting the Taliban come back into power. I don't know how they hell are going to accomplish that.

This also raises the question of what the hell is going on with Bradley Manning? Its interesting that Manning appears to be responsible for all the leaks *except* this one, which is the important one.

WikiLeaks and the Afghan War | STRATFOR

Certainly worth the price of admission. Extremely intense intellectual scifi.

YouTube - INCEPTION Trailer 3 - Official HD

Finally, we are happy to announce that WikiTrust works on the English Wikipedia!
Just install the WikiTrust Firefox extension and visit any page.

Finally! After so many years since my wikipedia paper it is awesome to actually see this! Big ups to the Wikitrust team for making this a reality. Looking at their algorithm page it appears they decided on an approach that is different from my original suggestion:

It is possible to compute text trust also based on a mix of text age, and number of revisions for which the text has been present; in fact, it is straightforward to modify WikiTrust to do so. The reason WikiTrust uses also the reputation of authors is to prevent a well-organized set of new users from cheating the system, creating content that gains full trust due to their coordinated revisions. Since new users have low reputation, this type of attack cannot be carried out.

Great work!

WikiTrust: The English Wikipedia is up!

How media sensationalism targets young people.

YouTube - Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics Warning Parents About I-Dosing

Despite what appears to be a big-budget lobbying effort by the pro-patent fraternity, Hon Simon Power announced today that he wouldn't be modifying the proposed Patents Bill hence software will be unpatentable once the Bill passes into law.

As we've previously pointed out software patents aren't black and white, and there are certainly pros and cons.

I agree, but I don't beleive you. I'd believe that if you didn't turn around and say things like this in the same article:

The very nature of software should preclude it from patentability in our view.

Sounds like you think its pretty black and white, to me.

Eliminating all patents of software because the issue is "complicated" is similar to eliminating all copyrights because of fair use issues. There is a lack of serious intellectual exploration of the patent issue.

NZ ends software patents?

Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars (as passengers or as drivers) had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less. What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised.

What a counter-intuitive result...you can't sit for hours at a time even if you exercise regularly.

Its hopeless...

Phys Ed: The Men Who Stare at Screens - Well Blog - NYTimes.com

Ron Griess of the Chart Store shows this chart of the 3 secular bear markets of the 20th Century, plus the current Bear market, which began at the beginning of the present century.

The end of the bear market and most likely the bottom of the market will occur sometime between 5 to 10 years from now.

4 Secular Bear Markets | The Big Picture

Judge Nancy Gertner knows that Joel Tenenbaum did it. Tenenbaum, the second US target of the RIAA's five-year litigation campaign to complete a trial, eventually admitted his music-sharing liability on the stand—and Judge Gertner issued a directed verdict against him. But when the jury returned a $675,000 damage award, they went too far. Way too far.

In fact, according to Gertner, they trampled the Constitution's "Due Process" clause. In a ruling today, the judge slashed the $675,000 award by a factor of 10, to $67,500.

Judge slams, slashes "unconstitutional" $675,000 P2P award

The U.S. military’s new Cyber Command is headquartered at Ft. Meade, Maryland, one of the military’s most secretive and secure facilities. Its mission is largely opaque, even inside the armed forces. But the there’s another mystery surrounding the emerging unit. It’s embedded in the Cyber Command logo.

On the logo’s inner gold ring is a code: 9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a

Crack the Code in Cyber Command’s Logo | Danger Room | Wired.com

Repost...

Muppet Patriotism