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Pentagon Plan: Buying Books to Keep Secrets
WASHINGTON — Defense Department officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets, according to two people familiar with the dispute.
The publication of “Operation Dark Heart,” by Anthony A. Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agencyofficer and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has divided military security reviewers and highlighted the uncertainty about what information poses a genuine threat to security.
Disputes between the government and former intelligence officials over whether their books reveal too much have become commonplace. But veterans of the publishing industry and intelligence agencies could not recall another case in which an agency sought to dispose of a book that had already been printed.
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How GM Made $30 Billion Appear Out of Thin Air
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Sometimes the wackiest accounting results are the ones driven by the accounting rules themselves. Consider this: How could it be that one of GM’s most valuable assets, listed at $30.2 billion, is the intangible asset known as goodwill, when it’s been only a little more than a year since the company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection?
That’s the amount GM said its goodwill was worth on the June 30 balance sheet it filed last month as part of the registration statement for its planned initial public offering. By comparison, GM said its total equity was $23.9 billion. So without the goodwill, which isn’t saleable, the company’s equity would be negative. This is hardly a sign of robust financial strength.
GM listed its goodwill at zero a year earlier. It’s as if a $30.2 billion asset suddenly materialized out of thin air. In the upside-down world that is GM’s balance sheet, that’s exactly what happened.
Indeed, the company’s goodwill supposedly is worth more than its property, plant and equipment, which GM listed at $18.1 billion. The amount is about eight times the $3.5 billion GM is paying to buy AmeriCredit Corp., the subprime auto lender. Another twist: GM said its goodwill would have been worth less had its creditworthiness been better. Talk about a head- scratcher.
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Twitter / Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
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I like to retaliate by burning a book that you Americans hold dear, but the only book you care about is Facebook.
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Girl Scouts breed “pro-abortion” lesbians, says Republican
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Sometimes you can actually hear Republicans think to themselves, “Fuck it, I’m going to go for it.” That’s what Hans Zeiger, a Republican who hopes to join Washington State’s House of Representatives, must have been thinking when he claimed that the Girl Scouts are godless, baby-murdering lesbians.
How an Anti-Piracy Firm Became Banned In Its Own Country
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A notorious Switzerland-based anti-piracy tracking company has to stop harvesting the IP addresses of citizens using P2P networks. The Swiss High Court ruled that IP addresses constitute personal information and when Logistep collected them without the owner’s knowledge, that amounted to a breach of privacy laws.
This company only cleans ladderless windows
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BMW plans for tomorrow’s older workforce today
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Productivity went up seven percent, absenteeism fell below the plant average and the defect rate for the line dropped to zero. Sounds amazing, but it was surprisingly easy to accomplish. BMW asked these workers what they needed to be more comfortable on the job, then actually listened to the answers.
Temperature check please
So… a judge rules the military ban on gays is unconstitutional, Obama refuses to extend the Bush tax cuts, the US appeals court lifts the ban on embryonic stem cell research, Apple relaxes developer restrictions on the iOS development, the Supreme Court won’t order California to defend Prop 8, and Mexico debates drug legalization.
Is hell freezing over already?
Android Is As Open As The Clenched Fist I’d Like To Punch The Carriers With
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In the post, I posed a question: if it’s not the iPhone/AT&T deal, why do you choose Android? Nearly 1,000 people responded, and a large percentage focused on the same idea: the idea of “openness.”
You’ll forgive me, but I have to say it: what a load of crap.
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I bet the Monty Python team had a good laugh. Thank goodness they didn’t release Life of Ahmed…