Cap'n Refsmmat

In any case, Wikileaks has routed around the issue. They'd be wise to use several independent DNS providers, like SFN does -- we host our own DNS, and it's also mirrored by a third party in case we have issues.

That's because the first leaks got almost no media attention, which negates their purpose. http://slatest.slate.com/id/2276690/ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/world/europe/19assange.html If he's correct about the warrant being improper and Swedish prosecutors breaking the rules, then yes, he should fight. But I'm not a lawyer. Also, this is irrelevant. No. His arrest will cause everyone to say "ha! we got him! now the evil leaker is gone!" Releasing a new document will point out that Assange is not all of Wikileaks, and that stopping one person does not change the fact that secrets are far more easily revealed today than ever before.

Inline notifications are the ones that appear in the drop-down at the top right of each page, and in the box on the right of the forum index.

Hi again, caninintheforest. Gotten bored? Also, plagiarism is against the rules. At least take the time to write your own posts. Or do you not know enough about the subject to try? (incidentally, you've been banned for the profile-message spamming)

insane_alien hasn't updated the how-to since we moved to IPB. Looks like a bit of reorganization is in order. I'll see if I can do that soon.

Sure. But earlier you claimed he doesn't release all info, and that his releases are influenced by his bias. Are you backing away from that now? What exactly does this have to do with what you quoted? Whether he's accused of rape has nothing to do with redaction or release of documents. Assange is not all of Wikileaks. The organization has finite resources. Incidentally, what I have read suggests the charges are related to Assange not using a condom, allegedly after beginning consensual relations with the women. He's fighting extradition because he claims he has not been served with the proper documents to make him aware of any details of the investigation, which is apparently required by law. Recent news articles also suggest that he is not on the run -- he is hiding in England, and authorities know exactly where he is, since he gave them contact details when he entered the country. I suspect his arrest will only serve Wikileaks' purposes. If I were running Wikileaks, I'd make sure they had a few juicy documents to leak immediately after news of my arrest breaks, just to make a point. I wonder if he's planned ahead.

He doesn't have magical access to all the documents he can get, nor does he have infinite amounts of time to sift through every document he receives. Unless he discloses just what documents he's received, we can't decide what he's withholding for ideological purposes. With the recent shift to a media-based strategy of releasing documents to news agencies, he'll have to wait for one controversy to make its way through the media before releasing evidence of the next. Also, the legislative branch is arguably more open already, with sites like OpenSecrets: http://www.opensecrets.org/ Relevant: http://www.theonion....pentagon,18572/

The refractive index, despite its name, is defined in terms of the speed of light. I am not sure if you can explain the change of light's speed between mediums without a wave theory of light; the classical explanation is that each photon is absorbed and re-emitted by atoms in the medium, but I think that has a certain dependence on quantum mechanics. I'm not sure.

The index of refraction does relate angles of a light ray as it passes between two media, but its direct physical significance is a relative speed. As I said before, it is defined to be: [math] n = \frac{\mbox{velocity of light in vacuum}}{\mbox{velocity of light in medium}} [/math] ...but it appears in Snell's law to relate angles as well. You might look into the earliest determinations of the speed of light to see how it was done. It's not dependent on wave mechanics. http://en.wikipedia...._speed_of_light http://en.wikipedia....cault_apparatus

Science will have the full article shortly, and they have a press release that goes into great detail: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6009/1302.full

I suppose that depends on if it appears this life arose independently, or if it's just ordinary life that encountered a freak nuclear accident and ended up with arsenic. I mean, if it's suspected to have a completely different origin than life as we know it, that'd be fascinating. I await the details with interest. Press release is out: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html Looks like it's a conventional bacterium that was able to grow using arsenic, rather than an entirely new life form that survives on arsenic all the time. Still fascinating, though. The possibilities for life are far greater than we think.

I don't think the public is equipped to decide just how beneficial nuclear magnetic resonance force microscopy will be in their everyday lives. From what I've heard, scientists already go to great lengths to claim their research will somehow result in a cure for cancer, and this'll only encourage that even more.

I don't think you can demonstrate that to be true. For one thing, the past three leaks have all been dumped from (presumably) the same source; he has to get these colossal leaks out of the way, and then can leak the rest. It's hard to criticize him for not releasing more when we also criticize him for not carefully redacting each of the hundreds of thousands of documents being released in each War Logs and diplomatic cables dump. He has a finite amount of time, you know.

In what way do you think he's going about this? Leaking only documents that support his view? Soliciting certain kinds of documents? What?

No. Magnetic field lines are drawn to emanate from the North pole and enter into the South pole. (Or maybe the reverse -- it depends on convention.) Look at the diagram of a bar magnet's field lines and you'll see them come out of the North, go around, and re-enter the South. A magnetic monopole would be depicted as field lines coming out of a point and then going off forever, for they'd have no south pole to go to. On the other hand, a current in a wire, or a single moving charge, just makes a field line that goes around in a closed loop.

You make it sound like this is a for-profit enterprise, like he's running Wikileaks for a profit. Is that what you mean to imply? Is it? Can you give examples? Both the State Department and the Defense Department (i.e. Robert Gates directly) have stated that there will be no major consequences from these leaks, and that business will continue as usual. What information will be used against us? If a mob is indeed incited, it is incited by the truth -- by things the government really is doing, but that we didn't know about it. If those things are so terrible that they incite riots, is it really better that we let them remain secret? Either way, you have not addressed my main point. If it is not worse to try to destroy corruption, why is it bad to leak classified information that reveals it? http://wikileaks.org/about.html

A purely positive moving charge is just fine, but it'll generate a magnetic field like one in a wire: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/magnetic/magcur.html That is to say, you'd generate a circular magnetic field. It won't be a north or south pole by itself.

You can certainly make something out of pure electrons or protons, but that'll give you an electric monopole, not a magnetic monopole. Magnetic fields are caused by moving charges, and have a north and south pole regardless of whether you use electrons or protons to make them.

To add to that: it's easy to claim that the leaks so far have been inconsequential or unimportant, and endangered security for little benefit. However, the most recent batch of leaks refutes that: Cables reveal the extent of corruption in Russia -- at least, that corruption known to the diplomats The UK's foreign office conspired to allow the US to keep cluster bombs in UK territory in violation of an anti-cluster-munition treaty, while hiding the action from Parliament Diplomats suggest that the murder of Alexander Litvinenko was carried out Russian approval Diplomats agree that the Sri Lankan president was responsible for a massacre of Tamil Tigers Many of these will cause significant controversy. I suspect the news sources with access to the cables saved their best revelations, hoping to stir up the media frenzy before dropping the biggest news in. edit: I should also add that this is with 0.22% of the cables being released so far. Unsurprisingly, The Economist has my favorite take on the issue so far: http://www.economist...2/after_secrets

I don't think this will work. One way or another, your ball of magnets will have a north pole and a south pole, no matter how hard you try to arrange them.

Well, it relies on Fermat's principle, the idea that light travels the shortest possible path. This was proposed by Fermat before it was established that light is a wave, so clearly it's not dependent on a wave theory of light, but merely a treatment of light rays in general. However, one can mathematically derive Snell's law, and Fermat's principle, from a wave theory of light. Snell's law was derived long before light was proved to be a wave, though, through various arguments. They are. But only as a consequence of the fact that the refractive index is related to the speed of light inside that substance. [math]n = \frac{\mbox{velocity of light in vacuum}}{\mbox{velocity of light in medium}}[/math] Now, using a wave theory of light, one can determine that [math]n = \sqrt{\epsilon}[/math], where [math]\epsilon[/math] is the relative permittivity of the medium, which can be determined through other experimental means.

This is partially why a new competitor to Wikileaks is emerging: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,732212,00.html#ref=rss Of course, Wikileaks also plans to leak business documents, which brings up the question of whether businesses should have secrets that aren't trade secrets or patents.

Isn't this essentially geothermal energy, but using deep hot water instead of deep hot Earth?

Isn't that more like extortion or blackmail?