What the Hell is it with Wikileaks?

So, I know that this was supposed to be a revision of a previous blog post. However, this is a blog post I have been meaning to write for a while. So let us consider this a revision of the half-formed morasses from my mind.

I think the title line sums it up quite well; what the hell is it with Wikileaks? The whistleblower site has released at least three large caches of government papers. In April 2010, WikiLeaks posted video from a 2007 incident in which Iraqi civilians and journalists were killed by U.S. forces, on a website called Collateral Murder. In July, WikiLeaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about the War in Afghanistan not previously available for public review. In October, the group released a package of almost 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs in coordination with major commercial media organisations. In November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing U.S. State department diplomatic cables.

None of this, in my opinion, should have been done. This is a huge ethical wrong, even though it’s showing the horrible atrocities that the US has committed in these wars, and the secrets that it conceals. And yet, they are secrets for a reason. The release of the documents is a crushing blow to the image of the US, and prevents the success that much of the world seeks in the two crucial wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. The release of these war documents makes the attempt of winning the hearts and minds of the civilians in the two war-torn countries completely uncredible.

Not only this, but as these leaks claim to be a humanitarian gift from God, they are anything but that. These documents are absolutely insensitive to the lives of the people on our side, the collaborators and our own soldiers, while protecting our enemies. The documents name a lot of collaborators, who can now expect a bloody and brutal retribution; a fine way to be repaid, and an excellent way to prevent others from helping us. Many also contain detailed operation plans; this is worse than when Confederate plans were found in a cigar box before Anteitam, which let McClellan drive Lee out of the Union. The insurgents now know our every move, and can efficiently counter anything that was already planned, putting the lives of countless of our soldiers in danger. Ultimately, one wonders if Wikileaks should be considered another insurgent group.

Wikileaks claims to be exercising their freedom of speech, and insist upon not being censored. However, there is legal precedent against this type of free speech. There is a difference between the black arm bands of the Tinkers, which were ruled constitutional, and these leaks. Charles T Schenck, in 1917, was put on trial for disseminating pamphlets that opposed draft for WWI. The landmark court case decided that there is a limit to free speech, and established censorship in times of “clear and present danger.” This is the case of shouting fire in a crowded theater. While the intentions may be good, ultimately it ends in thousands trampled. Wikileaks, take a good look at what you’re doing.

Reflection on Week 11

Two day week, the week of Turkey and rest...except not.
First off, all three of the laptops in my possession (my netbook, my big laptop that actually has processing capabilities, and the really old laptop which the new one replaced) managed to have major problems in the same week. One got a broken screen, one found over 200 articles of spyware (dunno how that happened), and one had a sporadic power cord. Overall, not the best electronics week.
That extends into class too. I am so far behind, in a residual effect from Harvard. I am on the last of my while/doWhile labs, which is proving horrendous. I find very interesting, and not the least slightly frustrating, the almost exponential increase in the difficulty of these labs. I'm accustomed to not having to think too much on the labs, taking it instead as an opportunity to practice concepts. But now, instead of practicing, we are applying concepts. This is, in my opinion, an excellent thing, except for the fact that it is frustrating because you have no clue what the heck you're going to do.

Beijing's notorious air

China's always been known for its horrible air. Beijing especially is known as a metropolis coated in smog and soot and other nasty things. On an index where about 200 is unhealthy, Beijing's air recently hit 500, a level that prompted the US Embassy in Beijing, which conducts its own meteorological surveys, to call the air in Beijing "crazy bad," something which they promptly retracted as "incorrect."
That episode makes me laugh. Chinese air is so notorious, "crazy bad" isn't even incorrect anymore. I feel really sorry for people who live in Beijing; they're probably getting an hour cut off of their lives for every day they live in that smog hellhole. I mean, really? Just cause China has such a large population doesn't mean it can not care about the health of its people. It really should make an effort.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131440157
from slashdot.

Reflection on Week 10

Ooph, those labs just increased in difficulty by 10 fold. I refer to the lab where we are trying to convert any given binary number to base 10. It is by far the hardest lab I have encountered, and I took all of one of the two days this week figuring out how to get it to work, and it's still not done! And I still have to do the one after this, which is even harder! And then work on while loop labs! I'm so far behind, it's ridiculous. And the same extracurriculars that got me into this mess occupy my lunches (I sucked on Saturday, in an aside, and so I really need to work during lunch on SciO, and QB was kinda mandatory anyways). So, there also goes my main time to work on my labs and make them up...I'll need to work really hard in class.

Reflection on Week 9

This is another week where I was in class for only one day of the week, missing Monday because I was cleaning up after the Faculty-Student Quiz Bowl match (and then hanging out in Flowers' room), and then missing Friday because I was on a plane to Boston for HFT/Delta Burke. I have fallen miserably behind in labs, sadly.
I did manage to take a quiz and 100 it, though, on that one day that I was there, and I managed to finish my if/else labs and get one for loop lab done. So now I only need to do three more for loop labs, and then the while loops. Ooh, boy, I need to get working.

Reflection on Week 8

I must make a confession; I was not terribly efficient with my time this week. I didn't want to code at all! We just took a test! That will hopefully change next week.
Regardless of the disinterestedness, I did manage to learn slightly about switches. If else if I already kind of knew; it was rather obvious and straightforward. Switches, however, I find harder to understand, especially with the cases. What if the case is not a nice integer but...well, a case? Is it not applicable then, and you use if else if, or can you make it that way? For instance, can you have a case >20?
Hopefully this will be addressable tomorrow.

Predicting elections with Google

So, Google says that it can predict winning candidates based on search frequency on their search engine, with small margin of error. It predicts this by looking at what is most frequently searched, like Jerry Brown wikipedia or Meg Whitman bio (in this gubernatorial race, Whitman has almost 50% more search volume, even though Brown leads in the polls).
I think that this is really interesting, because of what it could possibly entail. Could it make polls obsolete? And in this particular race, where the two results are in opposition of each other, which will be right?
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/searching-your-way-to-ballot-box.html

Keep the Labs

I will wholeheartedly and untiringly support and lobby for the institution we know as labs. I really enjoy the labs, not because they're fun, but because they're useful. I think that here, and nowhere else, we learn how to get familiar with the concepts that are introduced. I think that this works better than worksheets, because it also forces us to troubleshoot. It teaches us the different types of errors we may encounter in a code, and we learn how to correct them. You don't trouble-shoot worksheets, you only get stuff marked wrong.

NASA fail

And NASA adds one more embarrassment to its ever-growing annals. In Australia, an attempt to release a balloon carrying a telescope belonging to UC Berkeley ended with the telescope dragged over a distance of some 150 yds, eventually hitting an airport fence and a car. The gamma-ray telescope was, presumably, destroyed.
Whatever happened to NASA being reputable? Really, NASA's reputation is falling apart, with its ever-growing series of gaffes. The ISS is becoming a joke, with extremely poor maintenance; it is said that a leaky roof was dealt with by a metal overhang over a computer that redirects the water to a bucket. After working so hard, NASA is finally losing the Space Race; with the retirement of its fleet of space shuttles, the only way to get to the ISS is via Russia's Soyuz.
NASA needs to get its game going. I want to see the NASA of the Cold War, the innovative administration that got new things done, and accomplished things never done before, that some thought were impossible.
From Slashdot, but http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=31922

Reflection on Week 6

Finally, the if statements! If statements are so much fun; they're also the first time we actually get to do stuff that resembles actual programming! Sure, we got java to do stuff for us before. But programs should be able to work in multiple scenarios, which if statements enables them to do. That's when programming gets fun, and I'm really glad that we managed to get there.
Of course, I was absent the day we did if statements...pity. Lucky they're straightforward.

BPA

I find it amusing how people put almost everything after profit. It seems anything that is profitable causes harm. So, naturally, people are always harmed, because no one wants to work against convenience and actually do something. That is what I hate about corporate America; they never act preemptively. If there is no overwhelming amount of evidence, they will always find a way to get around not using it. Look at Avandia, which causes cardiovascular problems. Look at how long it took the FDA to go against it. And look at the company, still trying to prove that Avandia doesn't do anything harmful.
The same with BPA, or Bisphenol A, a compound used often in plastics. It's said to interfere with the endocrine system by mimicking the effects of estrogen, the female hormone. And so, Canada declared it toxic. Good for them. But, the American Chemist's Association immediately caused an uproar over it. Why?! They should congratulate Canada for taking action on it. Instead, they ramble on about how it will hurt industry, and how there has been no conclusive proof of BPA's harm.
The study model for harmful substances makes no sense. It is to make sure of effects before recall. And yet, by the time you finalize studies, some of which take years, how many have been affected? Shouldn't a more effective model be to recall as soon as there is a possibility of harm, and reinstate if it's shown that there is no harm. People really need to become divorced from profit. It's really annoying.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/americas/14bpa.html?_r=1 The original is from slashdot, but slashdot is a summary, so I post the real article.

Reflection on Week 5

I'm tired (from 8 hours of practice in two days). And sick. Cut some slack for subpar post with lazy grammar, please.
I'm glad to say that I'm starting to get the hang of the general structure, and some of it is starting to be habit. There are still a few things that bug me, like why semicolons don't come after methods or classes, but I'll get used to that. But I put semicolons on everything now, which is good. I don't even have to think about it.
I like the labs. They're rather mundane, but what they do is give practice, let you use a new concept, and get familiar with it. I think they're the most important part of class at this moment.
<succumbs to headache>

Water as an Export

Water in the US comes rather for granted. Turn on a tap, and there you have it. Enough water for whatever your needs are. However, in many water-starved areas, it's not so easy. In the Middle East and Africa, there are thousands of communities without access to the most basic need of life. In an almost perverse opposite, the town of Sitka in Alaska sits on a 6 billion gallon lake, inventively named Blue Lake. For years, it's just been sitting there, feeding about 1000 people. But now, the water will finally be exported; to India.
On the surface, this seems a good thing, but underneath is the transformation of water as a public commodity to a private one. As a public commodity, water goes out to everyone. As a private one, it goes only to those who can pay for it.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/08/the-race-to-buy-up-the-world-s-water.html It's from slashdot, but this is the story it's based on, and it's a lot more detailed.

Reflection on Week 4

I'm starting to get to the point where there are terms that I don't quite get, and they're coming back to bite me. For instance, I never quite understood what EXACTLY a constructor is. I know it's a special type of method. I know it has to do with instantiation, which is creating...something. But it's that something that destroys my knowledge of the concept. And then there's stuff like that thing where you have %f with columns and row numbers and decimal places and all that; we never did a single lab with it, and consequently I have no clue how to work with it. I think the labs are the most important aspect of the class; that's where we take the theories and apply them. And I think that application is the most important part of understanding.

Galactic Clusters Merging

Galactic clusters are clusters of...well, galaxies. Naturally, they are huge. The result from two of them colliding is massive. So naturally, someone decides to model it.
Which is an feat as large as the clusters themselves. The reason that this is important to model, though, is to observe dark matter, which has to be observed indirectly; to find how it affects gravitational forces, you have to see it, not measure it. The simulation accounts for the mixing of both normal matter and dark matter, and basically models the mixing of two gigantic balls of gas compounds, with each different part of the compound having its own properties.
I found it interesting simply because I like astronomy.  I find deep space objects interesting (although not nearly enough to go into astronomy as a profession. Hobby, maybe).
And that's all, cause I have Great Ideas homework to finish.
http://news.discovery.com/space/us-lab-simulates-the-awesome-power-of-galactic-mergers.html

Reflection on Week 3

Well, I actually studied for this week's test, which reflects my grade, luckily. I liked this test. I liked it in that it was not horribly written. I liked it in that there were no new or untaught concepts on this test. I liked it in that it was quick and straightforward. The only thing that was not all that great about the test was that it pulled heavily from previous quizzes and that many of the questions were exactly the same. That, I felt, defeats some of the purpose of a test, which is to test how well you understand a material, and not how well you can memorize previous Q and A's. However, I got a 97, so I won't complain too much.
I think that the powerpoints are not as effective as they should be. Perhaps I was simply more interested in Balaclava than the presentation, or perhaps I simply didn't comprehend that quickly, but whatever the reason, most of that went right over my head. I had to go through the powerpoint and reread much of it before understanding. I still, however, would like for the teacher to go over the powerpoints in class; it's a good introductory.
Regardless, I would be glad indeed if there were no quiz on Monday.

Cyberscammers Steal House via Email

That's kind of a scary prospect, isn't it, to have your house stolen and sold once your email was hacked? According to Slashdot, two Nigeria-based hackers managed to steal an Australian man's credentials, and sold two of his houses through his real estate agent, a total of about $500,000. The man rushed back home and just managed to prevent the sale of his second home from being finalized. The cash from the sales were funneled into Chinese bank accounts.
How did they manage to do this? That is an amazingly complex scam to pull off. If they managed to pull it off, what else can be hacked from some mundane thing of ours? A bank account, all funneled into China? Or perhaps all of your paychecks are now transferred to some odd account not yours? And this brings up the issue of security too. Just how secure do you now have to make everything?
Something to think about.

Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes.

What is it with my quiz grades? Two 70s are not to be desired. Admittedly, I would have had a 90 on one if I had not misunderstood the question, but hypotheticals never do anyone any good, except in planning. It's interesting; I know my material. The material is not hard, by any standards. What I need to be wary of, and what screwed me over on these quizzes, are the types of dumb mistakes that make you so very angry in how so very avoidable they are.
Here's hoping I don't get those on the big test.

Reflection on the Week

Well, first off, I had a horrendous hacking cough all throughout the day on Wednesday, stayed home sick on Thursday, came back (still with coughing) on Friday to tough it out. So, all in all, not a good week for my health. However, that has nothing to do with CompSci, so here goes.
On the one day where I attended CompSci the previous week, we covered outputs and variables, I think (it feels like a long time ago). I think that the majority of what we're doing in CompSci is really easy and basic; I can do very well by simply copying what has already been written as an example. Interestingly enough, I do this a certain number of times, and I learn the material very well. At least, I know what it's used for, and I know the proper format for it.
Here's hoping I don't fall sick again this week. I already missed inputs (which I need to make up). I don't need to miss anything else.
Cheers.