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16 May 2011 14:56

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Politics: John McCain is having none of this torture talk

  • I have sought further information from the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and they confirm for me that, in fact, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee… was obtained through standard, non-coercive means. … it was not torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately enabled our intelligence community to find Osama bin Laden. I hope former Attorney General Mukasey will correct his misstatement.
  • Senator John McCain • Speaking on the effort made by some — former Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey among them — to claim that “enhanced interrogation” (or torture, as it was unabashedly known and is in many quarters still known today) was vital to gaining knowledge of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. This is the sort of non-partisan candor that made him popular from the start, and it’s well-founded; the effort by some to cast torture as key to the bin Laden raid, a claim made absurdly quickly after his death, when reports of what had happened in the compound were changing by the moment, was as clear and crass an attempt at hijacking a national narrative as you can get. (note: Mukasey has responded) source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 May 2011 14:41

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World: Despite massive damage, Fukushima timetable stays the same

  • 9 months maximum needed to get Fukushima under control source
  • » That number isn’t changing: While they’ve discovered more damage than they originally anticipated — such as damage to fuel reactors — and are still dealing with meltdowns. Despite these discouraging discoveries, officials are sticking to this timetable, saying that the reactors are continuing to cool despite the more extensive damage. “The point [Japanese Prime Minister Naoto] Kan is making is that the reactor cores are being cooled down despite the apparent meltdown,” said Goshi Hosono, the prime minister’s special adviser on the issue.
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 May 2011 13:05

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World: War crimes prosecutor wants to arrest Gaddafi

  • The evidence showed that Gaddafi relied on his inner circle to implement a systematic policy of suppressing any challenge to his authority.
  • Luis Moreno-Ocampo, an international war crimes court’s chief prosecutor • He wants to have Gaddafi arrested for crimes against humanity – namely firing on unarmed civillians. He went on, talking about how Gaddafi killed people in the streets and in their homes, using people in his family to help him enforce his rule. Moreno-Ocampo has been investigating this since the Libyan revolution was only three weeks old. Now a panel of judges will have to approve this request, though it doesn’t mean that Gaddafi’s arrest will come immediately. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 May 2011 10:49

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Tech: Will Japan allow the PlayStation Network to relaunch in its country?

  • NO Japan says that the security issues are unresolved source
  • » What’s the big problem? Without breaking into major details, Japanese Ministry of Economy official Kazushige Nobutani puts it like so: “As of May 13, Sony was incomplete in exercising measures that they said they will do on the May 1 press conference.” So, in other words, Sony’s not proving they’ve actually fixed anything to Japan yet. As Sony is famously based in Japan, this is another pretty embarrassing turn of events.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 May 2011 10:36

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Tech: Lodsys: If it smells like a patent troll, it probably is one …

  • No, Lodsys is methodically selling its product (patent rights) in the most efficient means it can. … Ideally, we can sell as much as possible through direct sales, rather than having to use litigation. It’s less expensive and more efficient for both parties.
  • A message from the Lodsys blog • Discussing their reasoning for pressuring iOS developers to pay the company to pay its licensing fee to allow in-app sales on their app. Here’s the total crap part of the whole thing: Lodsys already got Apple, Google and Microsoft to pay money for the license. But instead of just leaving it at that, the company is going after small developers, saying that the license isn’t transferrable. Which means that they’ve already lost the PR war and will have a hard time winning anyone over. And also, if they’ve dared go after News Corp. (which uses in-app purchasing for The Daily and the Wall Street Journal), they should expect to get their asses handed to them by Rupert Murdoch’s auditorium full of attorneys. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 May 2011 10:18

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Culture: Comeback of the day: The New York World’s digital makeover

  • Joseph Pulitzer’s baby gets a digital makeover: The New York World, a newspaper that initially published from 1860 to 1931, is an important historical paper. And now, thanks to Columbia University, it’s making a comeback in the form of a digital news project. How so? We’ll let the university explain: “New York World will serve both as a site, where citizens can learn more about how services are allotted and tax dollars are spent, and as a news service, providing stories, data and other information to local news providers.” So in other words, kinda like an East Coast version of the Bay Area News Project. Neat.  source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 May 2011 10:04

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Tech: Let’s not lay blame for the PlayStation Network hack at Amazon’s feet

  • Bloomberg’s piece about Amazon luring hackers to its popular cloud service, which thousands of perfectly normal sites use each day, and giving them an easy way to hack servers belies a real misunderstanding of how cloud services work — to put it simply, loaning out server space on an hourly basis has benefits that far outweigh the possibility that a couple of bad eggs might do something like this. And Amazon isn’t even the only player in the game. Do you guys know who Rackspace is? Because they’re just as formidable as Amazon in this space — but fortunately for them, aren’t better-known for selling copies of “Water for Elephants” to people in their underwear at 3 a.m. in the morning. Simply put, blaming Amazon for having an unregulated cloud space is irresponsible. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

16 May 2011 00:38

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Culture: The Drudge Report: Still a juggernaut, 13 years after Lewinsky

  • I covered the Clinton White House in 1997 and 1998 and I would never have conceived that he would be an important player in the landscape 12 years later. He does one thing and he does it particularly well. The power of it comes from the community of people that read it: operatives, bookers, reporters, producers and politicians.
  • Politico co-founder John F. Harris • Expressing his disbelief that Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report is a juggernaut that reportedly drives a solid 7 percent of the overall news traffic online — far more than headline-grabbing social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit. Why’s that? Simple. “[He’s] the best wire editor on the planet,” says The Atlantic Wire’s editor, Gabriel Snyder. “He can look into a huge stream of news, find the hot story and put an irresistible headline on it.” Even considering his conservative bent, his stone-age design and his low-key demeanor, the main reason Drudge is a success? He doesn’t change what works. Even if he runs what’s pretty much the Craigslist of journalism. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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