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Creating a Report using JasperReport

Angga Lingga — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:09:11 +0000

Now for this session I want to make a post about JasperReport. Before you create a report using Jasp

New Media Warfare: Tweeting on the Front Lines

JK Fowler — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 18:38:26 +0000

“The most effective propaganda is that which is prepared in the guerilla zone.”[1]

“The military is still adapting to operating in an increasingly interconnected and integrated global media environment, where anyone armed with a hundred dollar digital camera and access to the internet can become an ‘information warrior’”.[2]

“How can a man in a cave out-communicate the world’s leading communications society?”[3]

Whether Hezbollah in the Israeli-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006, Hamas in the Battle of Jenin in 2002, or the ongoing expansion of the “insurgency” across the internet, new media has opened up traditional warfare to that of the virtual and information (and the management and control thereof) has become absolutely paramount for those engaged in new media warfare. Stated succinctly, new media are the tools of the guerrilla information warfare of the 21^st century. Often the discussion around new media and its effects are relegated to civil society or business but there is an arena of interest often overlooked: warfare. While broadly we may think of new media as, “that combustible mix of 24/7 cable news, call-in radio and television programs, internet bloggers and online websites, cell phones and iPods,”[4] perhaps a more timeless definition is that which is offered by Dennis M. Murphy, a Professor of Information Operations and Information in Warfare at the U.S. Army War College: “Any capability that empowers a broad range of actors (individuals through nation states) to create and disseminate near-real time or real time information with the ability to affect a broad (regional or worldwide) audience using global standardized communications technologies such as the internet as unifying platforms.”[5] With such definitions in mind, this paper will attempt to accomplish three things: firstly, it will outline the ways in which the U.S. military has begun utilizing social media to put a more human face on its divisions as well as open up communications between soldiers, families, and friends. Secondly, it will outline how the military has come to perceive new media as a weapon to be used in, as British military expert John McKinley dubs it, the “virtual arena of war”, and information operations as essential to winning the “war of ideas” which the Global War on Terrorism has become.[6] Lastly, this paper shall explore the ways in which the “insurgencies” have begun utilizing new media to fight the lumbering bureaucracies of Western powers, pulling primarily on the cases of the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006, the Battle of Jenin in 2002, as well as the ever-expanding presence of the “insurgency” across the web. This paper will conclude by stating that while the U.S. military is attempting to adapt to the guerilla warfare of the new media “insurgencies”, its long-standing culture of rigid hierarchies and vertical lines of power structures will have to speedily give way to the horizontal fluidity of its aggressors or it will find itself quickly defeated and madly outpaced in the “war of ideas”.

The presence of the U.S. military in social media outlets has expanded rapidly in just this year and it is worth briefly outlining how far the Department of Defense, US Army and US Air Force have gone in just a short time.[7] As of April 16^th, 2009, the U.S. Army launched its own Facebook page, currently followed by 111,617 fans[8]. The US Air Force has garnered a presence on Facebook that currently has close to 51,000 fans and the Department of Defense (DOD) also has a Facebook page, currently with a mere 1,309 fans. However, in addition to their organizational Facebook pages, each have allowed for, and in many cases encouraged, individuals in the military to create pages and link to the overall organization’s page. This has resulted in the DOD having over 70 Facebook pages linked to it, 30 for the US Air Force, and 86 for the US Army. The DOD’s social media coverage does not stop there though. In addition to Facebook, one can find the DOD presence on Blog Talk Radio (2 channels), Blogs (the DOD Live blog plus links to 44 other blogs), Delicious (4 links), Flickr (the DOD Flickr page plus 25 other links including one to Space, Missile and Defense Command), iReport (2 links), Linkedin (2 links), MySpace (6 links), NowPublic (1 link), Twitter (the DOD Twitter site plus 68 other links), Vimeo (3 links), and YouTube (the DOD YouTube page plus 40 other links).[9] The story for the US Air Force and Army are not much different. The US Air Force boasts of over 12 YouTube links in addition to Air Force Blue Tube (the official YouTube site of the US Air Force), 36 Twitter links in addition to the official US Air Force Twitter page, an official page on Flickr as well as an official blog called Air Force Live.[10] The US Army has 76 Flickr sites in addition to its official site at soldiersmediacenter, 78 Twitter sites in addition to its official site at USArmy and over 40 YouTube sites in addition to its official site at soldiersmediacenter.[11] Add to these the fact that each department has its own webpage with multimedia interactivity (the US Army site even has a link to a video game called America’s Army 3[12]) as well as the fact that the Pentagon has recently released a new website called the Pentagon Channel which features live, streaming video feeds from inside the Pentagon as well as links to the Pentagon Channel on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and iTunes and a partial, yet staggering, picture of the US military presence in social media forums arises. With such widespread coverage, what guidelines are in place to protect information sensitive to the U.S. military and its operations and service members and what are the purposes of such a presence?

As of December 19^th, 2009, there is no official social-networking policy for the Department of Defense and all of its affiliates. Although DOD officials have stated that a, “review weighing the benefits and risks of using social-networking technology was expected to be released months ago,”[13] no such policy has yet to be released and it is not expected to be released any time soon. While this may seem extremely troubling to those fearful of breaches of security, individual divisions such as the US Army, Air Force and Navy have issued brief social-networking policies internally to their members. As of early 2009, the Air Force Public Affairs Agency Emerging Technology Division released a 23-page document entitled, New Media and the Air Force which amongst other things arduously outlines guidance and guidelines with respect to the differing forms of new media usage. While stating that, “the Air Force views personal websites and blogs positively, and it respects the rights of Airmen to use them as a medium of expression,” it quickly follows by stating that all Airmen, “are on duty 24-hours a day, 365-days a year and all actions are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).”[14] While underlining the appreciation the Air Force has for self-expression it states that all Airmen must still represent the core values of the Air Force, even on the web: “integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all that is done.”[15] This paradox arises across the DOD when it comes to guidance and guidelines of new media usage and the DOD’s unease with the huge cultural shift that new media is inducing from a traditional, vertical communication hierarchy to a more horizontal, atomized and fluid form is abundantly apparent. The reasons for instituting such a change are many, however, and are akin to many of the challenges traditional hierarchical media outlets are facing today.

As Jim Stanton in his article entitled, “The New Media and the US Military” states, “From the front lines of Iraq, where Army Gen. Ray Odierno posts daily updates to his Facebook page, to Fort Huachucha in Sierra Vista, AZ, which posts video greetings to deployed troops, America’s military is infiltrating the world of online social networking.”[16] But why? One perhaps obvious benefit is the leverage it gives friends and families to converse with the deployed soldiers overseas and hear their stories of day-to-day life. As Bonnie Sanders, a mother of two whose husband was deployed, states, “It felt good knowing that he would know we were thinking of him.”[17] Major Samuel House, a public affairs officer for the National Guard, kept track of his three boys when he was in Afghanistan with Skype[18]: “It’s really important…being able to see your children and have your children see you on the other side. It makes everything much easier.”[19] Such social networking sites put a human face on the Army, Air Force, and DOD that people might not otherwise see. At MILBlogging.com[20], a site boasting of over 2,500 military blogs in 43 countries with 8,236 registered members, visitors are given a snapshot of the top miliblogs as well as links to all others aggregated by country.[21] On the right hand side, constantly updated tweets from the miliblogging account at Twitter are featured where family and friends can communicate in real time with friends and relatives based overseas. But as Defense Deputy Chief Information Officer Dave Wennergren states, “We need to look at this as internet-based capabilities rather than just social networking. This is more than just for ‘quality of life’ [for deployed soldiers]. These tools are for a broader use than people realize.”[22] As Wennergren outlines, the successful modernization of federal operations in the digital age hinges on six key points: a) sharing information relentlessly and securely; b) keeping up with technical advances; c) changing the existing model for information sharing; d) recognizing that the future has happened and making full use of the technologies; e) behaving like an enterprise; and f) doing everything possible to be transparent.[23] Such points offer insight into the fact that the military has strategically engaged new media to maintain a presence in the information domain with the goal of horizontally informing the media, the public and each other. But behind such a strategic engagement is a very specific way in which the military has come to perceive new media as a weapon to be used in the virtual arena of war, the war of ideas, or the information battle space. As the last sentence of the introduction to New Media and the Air Force states, “If the Air Force does not tell its story, someone else will.”[24]

“Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department of Defense will fight the net as it would an enemy weapons system.”[25]

The proliferation of information through multiple sources (computers, cell phones, cameras, radios, et al) has, after some trepidation, been fully recognized by the US military as a problem of control and management but also one of great opportunity. The war is now fought on multiple fronts, one of which is the information front. As the Joint Doctrine of Information Operations states, “Information is an instrument of national power and has complex components with no single center of control. Information itself is a strategic resource vital to national security and allows communicators to shape the information battlefield.”[26] Information, it is recognized, has long been an obsession of any nation’s military waging (or thinking of waging) war and to point out this quote is not to presume that something is new about using information for national power. It is, however, to point out that from the Cold War to today, something has changed with regards to how information is viewed and the speed by which it is transmitted and consumed. The technology is smaller, faster, and cheaper and the, “ability to control and verify information is much more limited than in the recent past.”[27] As Dennis M. Murphy states, “The current information environment has leveled the playing field for not only nation states, but non-state actors, multinational corporations and even individuals to affect strategic outcomes with minimal information infrastructure and little capital expenditure.”[28] Recognizing the bureaucratic and legal constraints so endemic to the military, much of the literature being produced by the military or those associated with it has within it a deep unease and recognition that cultural change is absolutely necessary to compete in the ever-changing landscape of information production and consumption. Such recognition is met with resistance from senior war fighters who, “certainly understand its [new media’s] importance but lack the cultural upbringing to see it in the context of current military operations.”[29] Murphy refers to this as the generation gap between “digital immigrants” and “digital natives” and underlines the importance of closing the gap as quickly as possible to manage the information environment most effectively.[30]

In a piece entitled, “Blogs and Military Information Strategy”, James Kinniburgh and Dorothy Denning examine how blogging may be incorporated into military information strategy primarily as a tool for influence operations, a subset of information operations (IO). In their concluding remarks, they stress the need for military use of the blogosphere to focus on foreign blogs, bloggers and audiences and emphasize that it will require a truly integrated inter-agency approach on a national level.[31] Key then, to how the military views information and new media capabilities, is the concept of “Information Operations” (IO). Stated succinctly, information operations involve, “actions taken to affect adversary information and information systems while defending one’s own information and information systems…IO capitalizes on the growing sophistication, connectivity, and reliance on information technology.”[32] Quoting such people as Sun Tzu, Mikhail Frunze, Herodotus, and Niccolo Machiavelli and offering images such as the “Increasing Access to Information” figure[33], the “Joint Doctrine for Information Operations” reads eerily like documents similar to the 90-page Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare manual written for the Nicaraguan Contras in 1984 by the CIA. Stated in April of 1992 in the “Conduct of the Persian Gulf War Final Report to Congress”, “…the effective use of information operations by the Coalition to defend against Saddam’s information strategy ensured that Iraq was not only beaten, but also failed to ever seize the initiative.”[34] A key primary goal of the focus on information operations is to not only offensively utilize them as they did in the Persian Gulf War but to defensively use them by knocking down walls between intelligence agencies and increasing the ease of access to information for agents attempting to counter terrorist threats and gather intelligence on the “enemy”.

In early 1994 the CIA created Intelink that allowed any agency to publish a web page or put a document or a database online, secure from the outside world. But as Clive Thompson of The New York Times reports, the volume of material became too massive when paired with shoddy search engines far inferior to publicly available search engines like Google.[35] Over 10 years later in 2005, based largely off of Wikipedia, two members from the office of the director of national intelligence, Thomas Fingar and Mike Wertheimer, joined with CIA wiki experts to build Intellipedia, “a wiki that any intelligence employee with classified clearance could read and contribute to.”[36] By August of 2009, 3,600 members of the intelligence services had contributed a total of 28,000 pages.[37] Once the nine different intelligence agencies saw the benefit of utilizing the new media tool of the wiki, the DOD began training its analysts in the use of blog software and wikis. New media was the new buzzword and was going to be an important tool in fighting “adversaries.” But, as Clay Shirky states, “For the intelligence agencies to benefit from ‘social’ software, they need[ed] to persuade thousands of employees to begin blogging and creating wikis all at once. And that requires a cultural sea change: persuading analysts, who for years have survived by holding their cards tightly to their chests, to begin openly sharing their hands online.”[38] The military, then, faces a real dilemma: on the one hand, many of the agencies within the military have survived by secrecy; on the other, suddenly the military finds itself fighting against an enemy lacking the hierarchical bureaucracies, red tape, and vertical power structures and needs to openly share information to compete. This is a dilemma the military has yet to find a solution to. The “enemy,” however, has no such dilemma.

On November 6^th, 2008, it was revealed by the Financial Times that on multiple occasions, Chinese hackers have penetrated the White House computer network and obtained emails from government officials.[39] This is in addition to the large amount of information which was downloaded from the McCain and Obama campaigns by Chinese hackers in the summer of 2008 as well as the 2007 breach of the Pentagon where Chinese hackers breached the same system Robert Gates, the defense secretary at the time, was on.[40] On December 17^th, 2009 it was revealed that Iraq insurgents hacked US drones for under $26.00 using off the shelf software programs such as SkyGrabber and downloaded live video feeds from the Predator drones prowling the skies of Iraq.[41] In addition, US troops are continually faced with ever-improving improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan, improving because militants are able to use modern telecommunications networks to exchange info on how to improve them.[42] And as recent as December 19^th, 2009, a group calling themselves the Iranian Cyber Army hacked into the social network Twitter and diverted anyone trying to visit the site to a page which stated, “USA think [sic] they are controlling and managing internet by their access, but they don’t, we control and manage internet by our power.”[43] Such events speak to the ever-diversifying forms of power new media is allotting to non-state actors with political and social agendas, actors many of whom the US military would deem “enemy combatants.”

In Lebanon for 34 days in the summer of 2006, an asymmetrical war erupted between Israel (a state) and Hezbollah (a “state within a state”), a group which has been characterized as a, “militant, secretive, religiously fundamentalist sect or faction.”[44] And unlike any other war before[45], this war was “live”, networks projecting in real time the grim reality of advancing or retreating Israeli troops in southern Lebanon including the destroyed homes and villages, Israeli airplanes attacking Beirut airport, and Hezbollah rockets striking northern Israel and Haifa.[46] To do this, journalists utilized the camera and the computer. As Kalb and Saivetz state, “The camera and the computer have become weapons of war.”[47] New technology makes real-time coverage feasible[48]. The images had a powerful influence on public opinion and Hezbollah, a largely closed society, was able to greatly exploit the media through projecting a, “narrative that depicted a selfless movement touched by God and blessed by a religious fervor and determination to resist the enemy and achieve a ‘divine victory’”.[49] Hezbollah, like Hamas and al-Qaeda, utilized the information battlefield to control its image and sway world public opinion against Israel who, as a more “open” society, had to deal with leaked Israeli secrets, rumors and widespread misinformation. As Steve Fondacaro states, “A revolution happened without us knowing or paying attention. Perception truly now is reality and our enemies know it.”[50] After 2006, it became increasingly acceptable for journalists to be activist players in the field providing dramatic and at times, incendiary, coverage simply to garner ratings in the 24/7 cable news barrage of information. As Edward S. Herman states, “they [the media] serve mainly as a supportive arm of the state and dominant elites, focusing heavily on themes serviceable to them, and debating and exposing within accepted frames of reference.”[51] UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) had been stationed on the Lebanese border since 1976 and during the 2006 war, published information regularly on its official website about Israeli troop movements in an effort to be “impartial and objective.”[52] Because of Hezbollah’s closed nature, no information was posted about their movements and although it is unknown as to whether or not Hezbollah utilized the easily-accessible information, with a computer and internet connection they very well could have. An asymmetric guerilla information war was waged and Hezbollah won, utilizing favorable coverage from news networks such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, tightly controlling images and information (rarely was a Hezbollah guerilla shown), creating pro-Hezbollah blogs which fought for public opinion with pro-Israeli blogs and swaying hungry new media-driven, 24/7 journalists looking for a story by inviting them into the closed Hezbollah society only to feed them a well-scripted story of resistance against the Israelis. As Ivan Segal[53] recently stated in a talk given at The New School in New York City, the, “media no longer has a functional relationship to conflict; it doesn’t report on conflict anymore, it’s actually a part of it.”[54]

In the case of the Battle of Jenin in 2002, Israel attempted to root out Hamas terrorists in the West Bank of the Palestinian occupied territories, banning all media from entering the city. Due to this restriction, the information battle space was abrogated to the militants.[55] Photos quickly leaked out of homes being demolished by Israeli bulldozers and cell phones allowed for phone interviews with Jenin residents. Jenin quickly became a symbol of Israeli ruthlessness against Palestinians.[56] As Murphy states, “The lesson of Jenin is that the military may be able to dominate the information environment in a localized geographical area for a limited period of time but these wildcards, utilizing new media capabilities, become that limiting factor.”[57] The role of cell phones in movements cannot be understated. Whether it is Afghanistan or Somalia, Pakistan or Jordan, states across the globe are quickly adopting digital media. “Mobile is pervasive in the third world. 97% of Tanzanians have access to mobile phones. Mobile coverage exists throughout Uganda. There are 100 million handsets in Sub-Saharan Africa…59% of mobile phones are in the developing world—over seven million mobile subscribers in Kenya alone.”[58] Cell phones in Kenya can be used as credit cards, farmers in China can receive crop market prices from the Chinese government via text messaging, and as the recent political unrest in Iran shows, cell phones can be strategically used and exploited for great political gains.[59] As Ivan Segal points out, Pakistan (a country where 60% of the population is under 25) has roughly 100 million cell phone users quickly obtaining access to 3G networks, a boom in satellite television (50 satellite television stations, 10 of which are 24-hour news channels), and increased internet usage and radio coverage. Such statistics point to the fact that more and more people across the globe are obtaining access to real-time information.

The last case worth exploring of “enemy” combatants utilizing new media is that of the “insurgent” movement whereby the internet is used to post, “influential information items which include extremist training materials, an ideological rationale for actions, instructional manuals plus propaganda and agitation materials.”[60] Through the use of the internet and cell phones, “insurgents” are able to respond to unfolding events before coalition forces have a chance or opportunity to because of their, “lengthy chain of command approval process that takes hours or days to grant approval.”[61] Iraqi al-Qaeda leader Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi often used the internet to speak about US casualties, the Iraqi elections, Israel and other issues. Similarly, the Mujahideen Army posted a video entitled “The Sniper of al-Fallujah.” Thomas, in his piece on “Cyber Mobilization”, points to both of these examples as moments when ideological or religious fence-sitters adopt “extremist” causes.[62] The nature of war has changed. By initiating a physical action such as the detonation of an improvised explosive device (IED) in Iraq and Afghanistan and then immediately cyber responding by cell phone, internet or some other device, the message will reach a wide audience quickly and can offer such non-state individual’s or groups influence and support in their movement. US Army Col. Rob Baker offers an example of when a suicide bomber’s belt was detonated too early in Iraq and accidentally killed a number of innocent Iraqis.[63] Insurgents immediately utilized cyber devices to state that the US had launched a missile strike on the population and within minutes, an anti-American crowd had gathered.

It is worth briefly mentioning too the insurgent’s utilization of jihadi websites which, “enable insurgents to discuss their tradecraft and to exchange justifications for actions, both accomplished and planned.”[64] Websites have allowed for targeting information to be spread (for example, embassy and living quarters of US and British sites in Kuwait and Qatar) and can also serve as intelligence and reconnaissance assets to extremists, Al-Mohagar al-Islami (“The Islamic Immigrant”) recently publishing a 40-page pamphlet on the art of kidnapping online. In 2006, the Al-Rashedeen Army posted an open letter to President Bush on the internet, suggesting he think over the fact that, “God is on our side and always will be.”[65] In these ways, “insurgents” are attempting to shape and influence local and global popular opinion much like the US military is in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem is that the war has changed to a “molecular civil war,” one where the insurgents quickly adapt, move fluidly due to moveable and readily-available technologies and antiquated, fossilized bureaucracies cannot fare well in the virtual battle space of the 21^st century.

New media has greatly altered the landscape of warfare. Reminiscent of the guerilla warfare tactics outlined in Ernesto Che Guevara’s Guerilla Warfare and those actions practiced by the Vietcong in Vietnam, today’s “insurgents” have taken to their cell phones, their computers, and their cameras to thwart the US military in the increasingly important “war of ideas”. And while clearly the US military recognizes this, the question remains: can a traditionally hierarchical bureaucracy such as the US military adapt quickly enough to meet the fluid and ever-adapting nature of the insurgency in the information battlefield? In an organization that once prized itself on control of private information, can the DOD now adapt to the new information landscape offered by new media, one that has democratized the means to create, disseminate and consume information and made public much of the information that they once cherished as private?[66] The US military is today quickly outpaced by an increasingly complex, technologically-adept “enemy.” To catch up, the US military must institute an overhaul of its culture and ways of thinking about the world and while they may have made steps in the right direction, the rest of the world has made leaps and bounds.

[Click on links to see image files in appendixes]

Appendix 1

[67]

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

[1] Guevara, Ernesto Che. Guerilla Warfare. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998, 107.

[2] Collings, Deirdre and Rafal Rohozinski. “Shifting Fire: Information Effects in Counterinsurgency and Stability Operations”. U.S. Army War College. 2006. December 21^st, 2009, i.x. http://www.csl.army.mil/usacsl/publications/ShiftingFireMenu.pdf.

[3] Zaharna, R.S. “American Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World: A Strategic Communication Analysis”. American University. 2001. December 21^st, 2009. http://www.fpif.org/pdf/reports/communication.pdf.

[4] Kalb, Marvin and Carol Saivetz. “The Israel-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict”. U.S.-Islamic World Forum. 2007. December 21^st, 2009. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/events/2007/0217islamic%20world/2007islamforum_israel%20hezb%20war.pdf.

[5] Murphy, Dennis M. “New Media and the Warfighter: Workshop Initial Impressions”. Center for Strategic Leadership. Vol. 3 No. 8 (2008), 2.

[6] Collings and Rohozinski, 9.

[7] For some fascinating visuals on the state of new media across the world, please see Appendix 4.

[8] All statistics in this section are as of December 20th, 2009.

[9] http://www.defense.gov/Registeredsites/socialmediasites.aspx

[10] http://www.af.mil/socialmedia.asp

[11] http://www.army.mil/media/socialmedia

[12] See Appendix 1

[13] Corrin, Amber. “DOD Social-Media Policy Still in Limbo”. December 1^st, 2009. December 21^st, 2009. http://www.fcw.com/Articles/2009/12/01/DOD-social-media-policy-Wennergren-comments.aspx

[14] Air Force Public Affairs Agency Emerging Technology Division. “New Media and the Air Force”. 2009. December 21^st, 2009, 7 http://www.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-090406-036.pdf.

[15] Ibid., 7.

[16] Stanton, Jim. “The New Media and the U.S. Military”. Web 2.0 Convergence. May 11^th, 2009. December 21^st, 2009. http://www.digitalcommunitiesblogs.com/web_20_convergence/2009/05/the-new-media-and-the-us-milit.php.

[17] Ibid.

[18] http://www.skype.com/

[19] Gray, Kristy. “Technology Allows Guard Members, Families to Stay Connected”. Trib.com. November 28^th, 2009. December 21^st, 2009. http://www.trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_ef56add0-0940-5239-b019-ae3284c63e21.html.

[20] See Appendix 1

[21] Miliblogs by country: U.S. (1,747), Iraq (441), Afghanistan (90), Germany (46), Canada (25), U.K. (24), Kuwait (13), South Korea (13), et al.

[22] Corrin, Amber.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Air Force Public Affairs Agency Emerging Technology Division, 1.

[25] Brookes, Adam. “US Plans to ‘Fight the Net’ Revealed”. BBC. January 27^th, 2006. December 21^st, 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4655196.stm

[26] Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Joint Doctrine for Information Operations, Joint Pub 3-13”. October 1998. December, 21^st, 2009, 1. www.c4i.org/jp3_13.pdf

[27] Murphy, Dennis M. “Fighting Back: New Media and Military Operations”. U.S. Army War College. 2008. December 21^st, 2009, 4. http://www.carlisle.army.mil/DIME/documents/Fighting%20Back%20(Murphy).pdf

[28] Ibid., 5.

[29] Ibid., 14.

[30] Ibid., 15.

[31] Denning, Dorothy and James Kinniburgh. “Blogs and Military Information Strategy.” Joint Special Operations University. 2006. December 21^st, 2009. www.au.af.mil/info-ops/jsou/blogbook06june.pdf.

[32] Joint Chiefs of Staff, vii.

[33] See Appendix 2

[34] Joint Chiefs of Staff, vii.

[35] Thompson, Clive. “Open-Source Spying.” The New York Times. December 3^rd, 2006. December 21^st, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/magazine/03intelligence.html

[36] Ibid. Also please see Appendix 3.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Sevastopulo, Demetri. “Chinese Hack Into White House Network”. Financial Times. November 6^th, 2008. December 21^st, 2009. http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto110620081938360726&page=2

[40] Ibid.

[41] Gorman, Siobhan, Yochi J. Dreazen and August Cole. “Insurgents Hack US Drones”. Wall Street Journal. December 17^th, 2009. December 21^st, 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Stafford, Patrick. “Twitter Hacked by Iranian Protestors”. Smart Company. December 21^st, 2009. December 21^st, 2009. http://www.smartcompany.com.au/internet/20091221-twitter-hacked-by-iranian-protestors.html.

[44] Kalb, Marvin and Carol Saivetz, 3.

[45] Depending on what literature one reads, the Persian Gulf War is sometimes considered the first “live” war. For the purposes of this paper and in the viewpoint of Kalb and Saivetz and others, the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006 was the first “live” war.

[46] Kalb, Marvin and Carol Saivetz, 4.

[47] Ibid., 4.

[48] Seib, Philip. “Politics of the Fourth Estate: The Interplay of Media and Politics in Foreign Policy”. Harvard International Review. Fall (2000), 62.

[49] Kalb, Marvin and Carol Saivetz , 5.

[50] Packer, George. “Knowing the Enemy”. The New Yorker. December 18^th, 2006. December 21^st, 2009. 65-66. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/18/061218fa_fact2

[51] Herman, Edward S. “The Media’s Role in U.S. Foreign Policy”. Journal of International Affairs. Vol. 47, No. 1 (1993), 25.

[52] Kalb, Marvin and Carol Saivetz, 14.

[53] Executive Director of Global Voices http://www.globalvoices.org/.

[54] Segal, Ivan. “Digital Media in Conflict-Prone Societies”. New York City: The New School, November 12^th, 2009.

[55] Murphy, Dennis M. “Fighting Back: New Media and Military Operations”, 10.

[56] Ibid., 10.

[57] Ibid., 10.

[58] Ibid., 7.

[59] One must also think of the WTO protests in December of 1999 in Seattle WA.

[60] Thomas, Timothy L. “Cyber Mobilization: A Growing Counterinsurgency Campaign”. ISphere. 2006. December 21^st, 2009, 1. www.au.af.mil/info-ops/iosphere/iosphere_summer06_thomas.pdf.

[61] Ibid., 1.

[62] Ibid., 2.

[63] Crawley, Jeff. “Proponent Hosts Info Ops Gathering”. The Lamp. December 22^nd, 2005. December 21^st, 2009. ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/ist/docs/fet/strat-1.pdf.

[64] Thomas, Timothy L., 3.

[65] “Al-Rashedeen Army Presents”. Site Institute. March 26^th, 2005. December 21^st, 2009. http://siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=publications160306&category=publicationsandsubcategory_0

[66] Armstrong, Matt. “New Media and Persuasion, Mobilization and Facilitation”. Mountainrunner.us. August 5^th, 2008. December 21^st, 2009.

[67] http://www.americasarmy.com/

[68] iTunes Pentagon Channel page

[69] http://www.pentagonchannel.mil/

[70] http://www.milblogging.com/

[71] All figures in appendix 2 are taken from the Joint Doctrine for Information Operations 3-13 which can be found here: www.c4i.org/jp3_13.pdf

[72] This pops up every time one visits the intellipedia login screen. https://www.intelink.gov/wiki

[73] https://www.intelink.gov/wiki

[74] http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/more-truth-about-twitter/

[75] http://www.vincos.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/wmsn-12-09.png

[76] http://informationarchitects.jp/web-trend-map-4-final-beta/

[77] http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyecube/3302969531/sizes/m/

[78] http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrobest/3485574749/sizes/o/in/set-72157617478192160/

[79] http://theconversationprism.com/1024/

[80] http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/mg20227062.200/mg20227062.200-6_1000.jpg

Stream of Thoughts

Ayesha — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 18:38:50 +0000

Another rather eventful year has been inching towards an end. Some wise person said the end of one thing is the beginning of another. This year was such that I’d like to remember and forget at the same time. I never make a conscious effort of remembering things; it is just that I can’t forget. So last night I took a deep plunge (again an unconscious effort) in the ocean of memories. I don’t know why odd and strange thoughts were pouring. Let’s take a sneak peek into the absurdness of my thoughtful streamline:

Wire Microphone: What was with those old wire microphones that we would see in the PTV stage shows in 80s and 90s? I mean did you ever notice the way the host or the guest while singing or talking fiddle with it. And if the host had to come down from stage to talk with the guests they would constantly juggle with the wire. It could make anyone trip over it. Now that is what I call absurd. I have no clue how the thought of those microphones came to my mind in the middle of the night. The pop icons of 80s, Nazia & Zoheb, would play with it while singing. They had their own distinct style and since I used to watch them on TV a lot so that thing seem to be embedded in subconscious. Besides, many actors and singers gave birth to unique style while performing with microphone in hand. Some instances are: Papa Kehte Hain – Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and Ruk Ja O’ Dil – Dil Wale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge.

For years the pop singers have been using different sort of microphones in their song videos and sometimes the rock stars really go wild with it. Yes, once a rock star kicked the mike stand after ending his performance. That was his style you know!

Junoonistan: I am from Junoonistan! That is how I introduce myself in the cyber world. Why is that so? Someone asked me once. Let me explain although I don’t feel obliged to be giving explanations but anyway, this is sort of interesting or at least I feel so. My dreamsville is a bizarre place because I think, I see the strangest dreams and they are like movies. Continuous. Vivid. Full of drama and emotions. I literally look forward to sleeping because I know I’d see something bizarre or amusing. I can meet people over there who aren’t with me anymore. And my dreams do trigger the ideas of several stories in my mind. So basically it is a total crazy place that I visit every night (sometimes in day time too) hence I call it Junoonistan.

My Machine: I got my present machine *pause*… my computer… in December 2006. That was my first exclusive, personal machine protected with passwords etc. I have my whole world in it. There is no world without memories. I was considering changing or switching to new one because this one, due to excessive use has been aging fast. Like the keys are acting up. You never know when the whole system conked out. But then I sort of got emotional to think that I have so many memories attached with it. I had had the most amazing conversations with friends and family on it. I typed so many stories, poems and blogs using this machine. So definitely whenever I changed it I will miss it. I hate being ‘emo’ but what can I do I am like that *sniff sniff*!

Memories: Memory is the recurring theme of my stories, poems and general blogs. There are certain memories that I like recalling because I always feel happy to think about them. Then there are some memories that are though not bad in the real sense but still suffocate me. So I try not to think about them. The opening line in Garcia’s ‘Love in the time of Cholera’ is, ‘The scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.’ I feel such suffocating memories remind me the scent of bitter almonds. Something that you want to spit out as soon they dissolve the bitterness in your mouth. My relationship with memories would always be that of love-hate!

New Year Resolution: Losers make New Year Resolutions! Have you ever noticed that successful people make assessments of their success and not resolutions? My resolutions always rot between the old pages of my diary. I hardly stick by them so I rebelled a few years ago and stopped making resolutions. Well, at least, I saved myself from imminent frustration that one is bound to face upon failing to fulfill those resolutions. Life should be uncomplicated and simple!

Camera’s Eye: Are you scared of it? Especially the video camera fitted in the four inch device that stays in everyone’s pocket. I am not a camera shy but I believe no one should be filmed without prior permission. It was for that reason the makers introduced loud default ‘click’ sound in every camera so that the person get to know whose photo has been taken. These days every news network encourage people to film the disaster, an accident or an act of terrorism and then share the footage with them. Camera, camera, it’s everywhere and sometimes I feel being living under the watchful eye of ‘big brother’. It irritates me sometimes!

Music: I am reverting back to it. I am discovering some new and interesting music these days both classic and the latest one. I think I gave enough of cold shoulder to it. Music keeps one occupied and it often gives birth to new ideas to write. It was due to this I thought of getting an iPod Shuffle. I’d get digital and my music library will become compact!

Expectations: Is it good to nurture them? What about those that are within believable, achievable limit but still fail to fulfill? I think I would never understand the complex nature of expectations. I know one thing, if you expect from a person and the expectations don’t fulfill it hurts but if you expect from God and the expectations fail it kills.

Vital Signs & Junoon: Almost everyone who grew up in 90s loves both these bands. I am no exception. I have beautiful memories of those days and I can’t believe what a music freak I used to be. They gave us some of the true evergreen songs. I kept listening to them throughout the year and most probably will do so in future!

2010: Like always is linked with one word, ‘anticipation’.

And then I dozed off… but the last thought before entering Junoonistan was that I have got visitors from all across the world on my blog. And once, that is a couple of weeks back to be precise, someone visited my blog from, Ouagadougou … I admit I had never heard of that city/country before. I admit that I can’t even pronounce that name. But I welcome the lone visitor. Hope you found on my blog what you were searching for!

Happy New Year all!

Featured Work

jeremyheslup — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 22:00:27 +0000

A recent story I did about Low-Income College Dreams made CNN’s homepage.

A series of photo’s I shot ended up on the University of Cincinnati’s Homepage, I even got a chance to sell one of them to a Magazine.

Senate reform bill passes last hurdle en route to passage

Dominic Stoughton — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:38:10 +0000

NEWS

Senate reform bill passes last hurdle en route to passage
December 23, 2009 5:14 p.m. EST

‘On the doorstep of history’ :
Sen. Harry Reid applauds the work of his Senate colleague in moving the health care bill to a final vote.

Washington (CNN) — The Senate health care bill cleared a third and final procedural hurdle Wednesday as Democrats successfully limited remaining debate time on the $871 billion measure.

The Senate voted 60-39 along party lines to set a timetable for likely passage of the bill early Thursday morning.

Democrats also turned back last-ditch motions from Republicans claiming various provisions in the bill, including a mandate that individuals purchase coverage, are unconstitutional.

“It’s long past time we declare health care a right and not a privilege,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said after the vote.

“Today is a victory … for American families,” proclaimed Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana. “Americans won.”

The expected victory for President Obama’s top domestic priority comes after nearly a year of sharply polarized deliberations on Capitol Hill. Any measure passed by the Senate, however, will still have to be merged with a $1 trillion plan approved by the House of Representatives in November.

Increasingly confident Democrats hope to have a bill ready for Obama’s signature before his State of the Union address early next year.

“Health care reform is not a matter of if,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday. “Health care reform now is a matter of when.”

If a combined House-Senate health care bill clears Congress and is signed by Obama, it would be the biggest expansion of federal health care guarantees since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid over four decades ago.

Republicans have mounted a no-holds-barred legislative campaign against the bill, using a series of procedural maneuvers to slow debate while arguing that the measure will raise taxes while doing little to slow spiraling health care costs.

They’ve also ripped Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, for garnering the 60 votes necessary to pass the bill in part by cobbling together a series of “sweetheart deals” for wavering members of the Democratic caucus.

“This bill is a grab bag of Chicago-style, backroom buyoffs,” Utah GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch said Wednesday.

Recent compromises made to win the backing of moderates such as Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut also angered many liberal Democrats and threatened to undermine support for the bill.

Democrats have now held three key procedural votes on the health care bill this week. The backing of all 60 members of the Democratic caucus was required during each vote in order to overcome a filibuster from a GOP minority united in opposition.

Final passage of the measure, in contrast, will require only a bare majority in the 100-member chamber.

Enthusiastic top Democrats argue the Senate bill would constitute a positive change of historic proportions. The legislation, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would extend health insurance to more than 30 million Americans currently lacking coverage while reducing the federal deficit.

The House and Senate bills agree on a broad range of changes that could impact every American’s coverage.

Among other things, they have agreed to subsidize insurance for a family of four making up to roughly $88,000 annually, or 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

They also have agreed to create health insurance exchanges designed to make it easier for small businesses, the self-employed and the unemployed to pool resources and purchase less-expensive coverage. Both the House plan and the Senate bill would eventually limit total out-of-pocket expenses and prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Insurers also would be barred from charging higher premiums based on a person’s gender or medical history. However, both bills allow insurance companies to charge higher premiums for older customers.

Medicaid would be significantly expanded under both proposals. The House bill would extend coverage to individuals earning up to 150 percent of the poverty line, or roughly $33,000 for a family of four; the Senate plan ensures coverage to those earning up to 133 percent of the poverty level, or just over $29,000 for a family of four.

Major differences between the bills will be the focus of the conference committee that will try to merge them. House and Senate Democrats are still divided over how to pay for their plans. They are also split on, among other things, language relating to abortion coverage and whether to include a government-run public health insurance option.

The House bill includes a public option; the more conservative Senate measure would instead create nonprofit private plans overseen by the federal government.

Senate moves health bill forward

Dominic Stoughton — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:10:54 +0000

NEWS

Senate moves health bill forward
December 22, 2009 12:34 p.m. EST
’s Ted Barrett, Dana Bash and Alan Silverleib contributed to this report.

Health care bill on track: Senate leaders on health care reform hold a news conference to discuss the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Washington (CNN) — The Senate moved closer to passing health care reform Tuesday as Democrats cleared the second of three key procedural hurdles on the sweeping $871 billion measure.

The Senate voted 60-39 along party lines to adopt changes negotiated by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada. The Senate also set a timetable for ending debate on the bill.

A third and final procedural vote is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

If Democrats clear that hurdle, the Senate will be on track to take a final vote on Christmas Eve on whether to approve the Senate’s version of the bill to overhaul health care, President Obama’s top domestic priority.

“Health care reform is not a matter of if,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “health care reform now is a matter of when.”

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, declared that “the finish line is in sight.”

“We’re not the first to attempt such reforms, but we will be the first to succeed,” Baucus said.

Any measure the Senate passes still would have to be merged with the $1 trillion House version in what could be tough negotiations

In remarks Tuesday on the Senate floor, Reid acknowledged the toxic political environment surrounding the nearly yearlong debate.

Senators should set aside “personal animosity,” he said. “There’s a lot of tension in the Senate, but I would hope everyone would go back to their gentlemanly ways. … Let’s just all try to get along.”

Republicans have mounted a fierce campaign against the bill, using procedural tactics to slow debate and casting the measure as an unnecessary government intrusion in health care that will raise costs.

“Mark my words: This legislation will reshape our nation,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said Monday. “Americans have already issued their verdict. They don’t want it. They don’t like this bill, and they don’t like lawmakers playing games with their health care to secure the votes they need to pass it.”

If a combined House-Senate health care bill wins final approval from Congress and Obama signs it, the measure would be the biggest expansion of federal health care guarantees since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid more than four decades ago.

Obama on Monday praised the Senate for “standing up to the special interests who prevented reform for decades and who are furiously lobbying against it now.”

The influential American Medical Association, a traditional opponent of overhauling health care, endorsed the Senate measure hours after a rare 1 a.m. Monday vote to start winding down debate.

Read CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s take on the health care bill

All three procedural votes require Democrats to win the backing of 60 members to break a GOP filibuster. Final passage of the measure, by contrast, will require a simple majority of 51 votes.

Back-room deals on health bill: CNN’s Dana Bash reports on Democratic leaders’ back-room deals to clinch health care reform.

To Democrats, Monday’s vote signaled eventual victory on the Senate bill.

“The die is cast. It’s done,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, said.

Compromises made to win the backing of lawmakers such as Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska, and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, enraged many liberal Democrats and threatened to undermine support for the bill.

Liberal Democrats are upset with Reid’s decision to abandon a government-run public health insurance option and an expansion of Medicare to Americans as young as 55.

But top Democrats argue the Senate bill still would constitute a positive change of historic proportions. The legislation would extend health insurance coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans while reducing the federal deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The House and Senate bills agree on a broad range of changes that could affect every American’s coverage.

Among other things, they have agreed to subsidize insurance for a family of four making up to roughly $88,000 annually, or 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

They also have agreed to create health insurance exchanges designed to make it easier for small businesses, the self-employed and the unemployed to pool resources and purchase less expensive coverage. Both the House plan and the Senate bill eventually would limit total out-of-pocket expenses and prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Medicaid would be significantly expanded under both proposals. The House bill would extend coverage to individuals earning up to 150 percent of the poverty level, or roughly $33,000 for a family of four; the Senate plan ensures coverage to those earning up to 133 percent of the poverty level, or just more than $29,000 for a family of four.

Major differences between the bills would be the focus of a conference committee that would try to merge them.

One of the biggest divides is over how to pay for the plans. The House package is financed through a combination of a tax surcharge on wealthy Americans and Medicare spending reductions.

Specifically, individuals with annual incomes more than $500,000 — as well as families earning more than $1 million — would face a 5.4 percent income tax surcharge.

The Senate bill also cuts Medicare by roughly $500 billion. But instead of an income tax surcharge on the wealthy, it would impose a 40 percent tax on insurance companies providing what are called “Cadillac” health plans valued at more than $8,500 for individuals and $23,000 for families.

Proponents of the tax on high-end plans argue it’s one of the most effective ways to curb medical inflation. However, House Democrats oppose taxing such policies because it would hurt union members who traded higher salaries for more generous health benefits.

The Senate bill also would hike Medicare payroll taxes on families making more than $250,000; the House bill does not.

Another key sticking point is the dispute over a public option. The House plan includes a public option; the Senate plan would instead create new nonprofit private plans overseen by the federal government.

Individuals under both plans would be required to purchase coverage, but the House bill includes more stringent penalties for most of those who fail to comply. The House bill would impose a fine of up to 2.5 percent of an individual’s income. The Senate plan would require individuals to purchase health insurance coverage or face a fine of up to $750 or 2 percent of his or her income — whichever is greater. Both versions include a hardship exemption for poorer Americans.

iReport.com: Give your thoughts on the Senate health care bill

Employers face a much stricter mandate under the House legislation, which would require companies with a payroll of more than $500,000 to provide insurance or pay a penalty of up to 8 percent of their payroll.

The Senate bill would require companies with more than 50 employees to pay a fee of up to $750 per worker if any of their employees rely on government subsidies to purchase coverage.

Abortion also has been a sticking point for both chambers. A late compromise with Catholic and other conservatives in the House led to the adoption of an amendment banning most abortion coverage from the public option. It would also prohibit abortion coverage in private policies available in the exchange to people receiving federal subsidies.

Senate provisions, made more conservative than initially drafted to satisfy Nelson, would allow states to choose whether to ban abortion coverage in plans offered in the exchanges. Individuals purchasing plans through the exchanges would have to pay for abortion coverage out of their own funds.

Nelson said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that he would withdraw his support if the final bill gets changed too much from the Senate version under consideration.

Among other things, Nelson had a provision added to the bill requiring the federal government to cover Nebraska’s costs for expanded Medicaid coverage after 2016. No other state is slated to receive such a benefit.

Obama: Health care progress a victory for American people

Dominic Stoughton — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:43:34 +0000

NEWS

Obama: Health care progress a victory for American people
December 21, 2009 12:13 p.m. EST
’s Ted Barrett, Dana Bash and Alan Silverleib contributed to this report.

President Obama rejects GOP arguments that health care reform will increase the deficit.

Washington (CNN) — President Obama on Monday called the Senate vote to end debate and move toward passing a health care bill “a big victory for the American people.”

In remarks at the White House, Obama rejected arguments by Republican opponents of the bill that it will increase the federal deficit.

“That argument that opponents are making against this bill does not hold water,” Obama said.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the Senate bill will reduce the deficit by $132 billion in the first 10 years, Obama said.

The Senate will hold more procedural votes on the health care bill this week, with a final vote scheduled for Christmas Eve. If the bill passes, as expected, the Senate version would then be merged in a conference committee with a House health care bill passed last month.

Both chambers would then have to approve the final measure before sending it to Obama to be signed into law.

The Senate vote to end debate was on strictly partisan lines, with all 60 members of the Democratic caucus uniting to overcome a filibuster attempt by the 40 Senate Republicans.

It occurred in a rare overnight session, with voting taking place at 1 a.m. Monday, in order to make it possible for the chamber’s final vote to occur before the upcoming Christmas recess.

Obama said the step brought the nation closer to health care reform that would make “a tremendous difference” to Americans by lowering health care costs and eliminating controversial practices by insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions or exceeding benefit caps.

The bill also would keep the government-run Medicare program solvent for nearly a decade longer than current projections, and help reduce the “inexorable and unsustainable rise” in health care costs.

The vote left Obama on the cusp of claiming victory on his top domestic priority and enacting the biggest expansion of federal health care guarantees since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid over four decades ago.

“Today, the Senate took another historic step toward our goal of delivering access to quality, affordable health care to all Americans,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said in a statement.

The bill will help “promote choice and competition to drive down skyrocketing health care costs for families … all across America.”

Republicans ripped the majority for passing the measure in the middle of the night and accused Democrats of ramming the bill through despite growing public opposition.

“Make no mistake: If the people who wrote this bill were proud of it, they wouldn’t be forcing this vote in the dead of night,” argued Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky.

“Mark my words: this legislation will reshape our nation. And Americans have already issued their verdict. They don’t want it. They don’t like this bill, and they don’t like lawmakers playing games with their health care to secure the votes they need to pass it.”

The unusual timing of the vote was a consequence of Senate rules, Democrats’ determination to pass the bill before adjourning for the holidays, and the GOP’s willingness to use every possible legislative tactic to slow the bill’s progress.

Unanimous Republican opposition has forced Reid to win the support of all 60 members of his traditionally fractious Democratic caucus. Compromises made to win the backing of more conservative members, such as Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, have enraged many liberal Democrats and threatened to undermine support for the bill.

Liberal Democrats are particularly upset with Reid’s decision to abandon a government-run public health insurance option and an expansion of Medicare to Americans as young as age 55 — ideas strongly opposed by Lieberman and other centrists.

Top Democrats, however, argue that the Senate bill as written would still constitute a positive change of historic proportions. The legislation, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would extend health insurance coverage to over 30 million Americans while reducing the federal deficit by $132 billion over the next decade.

The deficit would drop by another $1.3 trillion between the years 2019 and 2029, the CBO said.

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have now reached agreement on a broad range of changes that could affect every American’s coverage.

Among other things, they have agreed to subsidize insurance for a family of four making up to about $88,000 annually, or 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

They have also agreed to create health insurance exchanges designed to make it easier for small businesses, the self-employed and the unemployed to pool resources and purchase less expensive coverage. Both the House plan and the Senate bill would eventually limit total out-of-pocket expenses and prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Insurers would also be barred from charging higher premiums based on a person’s gender or medical history. Medicaid would be significantly expanded under both proposals.

There are, however, major differences between the Senate measure and the more expansive — hence expensive — House bill.

One of the biggest divides is over how to pay for the plans. The House package is financed through a combination of a tax surcharge on wealthy Americans and new Medicare spending reductions. Individuals with annual incomes over $500,000 and families earning more than $1 million would face a 5.4 percent income tax surcharge.

The Senate bill also cuts Medicare by roughly $500 billion. It does not include a tax surcharge on the wealthy, however. It would instead impose a 40 percent tax on so-called “Cadillac” health plans.

Proponents of the tax on high-end plans argue it’s one of the most effective ways to curb medical inflation. House Democrats are adamantly opposed to taxing such policies, arguing that such a move would hurt union members who traded higher salaries for more generous benefits.

Another key sticking point is the dispute over a public option. The House plan includes a public option; the more conservative Senate plan would instead create new nonprofit private plans overseen by the federal government.

iReport.com: Give your thoughts on the Senate health care bill

Under both plans, individuals would be required to purchase coverage. But the House bill includes more stringent penalties for most of those who fail to comply. Both versions include a hardship exemption for poorer Americans.

The Senate bill would require any company with more than 50 employees to pay a fee of up to $750 per worker if any of its employees relies on government subsidies to purchase coverage.

Abortion has also been a sticking point for both chambers. A late compromise with conservatives in the House led to the adoption of an amendment banning most abortion coverage from the public option.

It would also prohibit abortion coverage in private policies available in the exchange to people receiving federal subsidies.

Senate provisions, made more conservative than initially drafted in order to satisfy Nelson, would allow states to choose whether to ban abortion coverage in plans offered in the exchanges. Individuals purchasing plans through the exchanges would have to pay for abortion coverage out of their own funds.

Many observers expect the final bill will conform largely to the measure now moving through the Senate.

“Reid had to make a lot of concessions to get his entire caucus behind the Senate bill,” said CNN deputy political director Paul Steinhauser.

“He can’t afford to a lose a single vote. Every Democratic senator has the power to kill this bill, and that fact gives Senate negotiators tremendous leverage in their negotiations with the House.”

Nelson told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that he would withdraw his support if the final bill gets changed too much from the Senate version under consideration.

JasperReports XML Datasource with Inline Images

rgauss — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:57:44 +0000

We’re adding XML datasources for reports in RightsPro (currently JasperReports is supported) and needed to embed the image data directly in the XML so thought I’d expand on the solution I found here.

If your creating your XML dynamically using Java you can do:

...

import org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Base64;
// Read the byte array from DB or whatever

byte[] imageByteArray = getImageByteArray();
String base64Image = Base64.encodeBase64String(imageByteArray);

...

then write the Base64 encoded data in your XML as:

...

<image><![CDATA[ ... Base64 mess here ... ]]></image>

...

The rest comes from this JasperForge forum post which explains how to decode the Base64 into a ByteArrayInputStream that’s usable by the JasperReports image report element.

As the post says, in your JasperReport (we currently use iReport as a report editor) define a String field, let’s call it Image, for the image:

then define a variable, let’s call it ImageBytes, which uses that field:

with the Variable Expression:

new ByteArrayInputStream(new Base64().decodeBase64($F{Image}.getBytes("UTF-8")))

(don’t forget to add org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Base64 to the imports of the report properties)

and in the image element on your layout use the ImageBytes variable:

and you should see your image properly rendered in the final report.

However, what I found at this point is that while the images displayed fine in iReport in PDF preview most PDF readers were unable to display the images, resulting in just a black rectangle.

The solution was to change the ImageBytes variable class to java.awt.Image with a constructor of:

ImageIO.read(new ByteArrayInputStream(new Base64().decodeBase64($F{Image}.getBytes("UTF-8"))))

then change the expression class of the image element on the layout to java.awt.Image as well. You’ll also have to add javax.imageio.ImageIO to the imports of the report.

This technique can be useful when you need to grab the image data dynamically (not from actual files on the filesystem), you can’t get each image from a URL (perhaps due to security constraints), and don’t want to use a custom Java datasource.

Senate health care bill clears key hurdle

Dominic Stoughton — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:29:43 +0000

NEWS

Senate health care bill clears key hurdle
December 21, 2009 8:15 a.m. EST
’s Ted Barrett, Dana Bash, Alan Silverleib and Jim Acosta contributed to this report.

The Senate vote on health care reform came shortly after 1 a.m. Monday.

Health care hurdle cleared: Health care reform cleared a major hurdle in an early morning vote in the senate. CNN’s Brianna Keilar reports.

What can health bill change?: CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Karen Tumulty of Time magazine talk about what the health care bill would do.

Partisan rancor fills D.C.: A blizzard of partisanship blankets Washington in the debate over health care reform. CNN’s Jim Acosta reports.

Washington (CNN) — Democrats won a major victory in their push for health care reform early Monday morning as the Senate voted to end debate on a package of controversial revisions to a sweeping $871 billion bill.

The 60-40 party-line vote, cast shortly after 1 a.m., kept Senate Democrats on track to pass the bill on Christmas Eve. If it passes, the measure will then have to be merged with a roughly $1 trillion plan passed by the House of Representatives in November. Shortly after the vote, the Senate went into recess until noon Monday.

The vote left President Obama on the cusp of claiming victory on his top domestic priority and enacting the biggest expansion of federal health care guarantees since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid over four decades ago.

The bill will help “promote choice and competition to drive down skyrocketing health care costs for families … all across America.”

The vote was the first of three this week requiring Democrats to win the backing of 60 members — enough to break a GOP filibuster. Final passage of the measure, in contrast, will require a simple majority in the 100-member chamber.

Many political observers believe Monday’s outcome indicates a likely Democratic win on the remaining procedural hurdles and the final vote.

Inside the Senate debate: A major health care victory for Democrats as a 60-40 party line vote was reached to end a package of controversial proposals.

Conservative Dem defends deal: In a CNN Exclusive, Nebraska Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson explains his health care negotiations on ‘State of the Union.’

Obama adviser on drop in polls: Watch as a senior adviser to President Obama discusses the president’s approval rating with CNN’s John King.

“The die is cast. It’s done,” New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer proclaimed after the vote.

Republicans ripped the majority for passing the measure in the middle of the night and accused Democrats of ramming the bill through despite growing public opposition.

“Make no mistake: If the people who wrote this bill were proud of it, they wouldn’t be forcing this vote in the dead of night,” argued Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky.

The deficit would drop by another $1.3 trillion between the years 2019 and 2029, the CBO said.

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have now reached agreement on a broad range of changes that could affect every American’s coverage.

Among other things, they have agreed to subsidize insurance for a family of four making up to about $88,000 annually, or 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

Insurers would also be barred from charging higher premiums based on a person’s gender or medical history. Medicaid would be significantly expanded under both proposals.

There are, however, major differences between the Senate measure and the more expansive — hence expensive — House bill.

iReport.com: Give your thoughts on the Senate health care bill

The Senate bill would require any company with more than 50 employees to pay a fee of up to $750 per worker if any of its employees relies on government subsidies to purchase coverage.

Abortion has also been a sticking point for both chambers. A late compromise with conservatives in the House led to the adoption of an amendment banning most abortion coverage from the public option.

It would also prohibit abortion coverage in private policies available in the exchange to people receiving federal subsidies.

Many observers expect the final bill will conform largely to the measure now moving through the Senate.

“Reid had to make a lot of concessions to get his entire caucus behind the Senate bill,” said CNN deputy political director Paul Steinhauser.

Nelson told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that he would withdraw his support if the final bill gets changed too much from the Senate version under consideration.

Senate votes to give green light to health care bill

Dominic Stoughton — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:03:10 +0000

NEWS

Senate votes to give green light to health care bill
December 21, 2009 1:50 a.m. & 4:18 a.m. EST
’s Ted Barrett, Dana Bash and Alan Silverleib contributed to this report

The 60 to 40 party-line vote, cast shortly after 1 a.m., kept Senate Democrats on track to pass the bill on Christmas Eve. If it passes, the measure will then have to be merged with a roughly $1 trillion plan passed by House of Representatives in November. The Senate went into recess until noon Monday shortly after the vote.

The bill will help “promote choice and competition to drive down skyrocketing health care costs for families … all across America.”

The vote was the first of three this week requiring Democrats to win the backing of 60 members — enough to break a GOP filibuster. Final passage of the measure, in the contrast, will require a bare majority in the 100-member chamber.

Many political observers believe Monday’s outcome indicates a likely Democratic win on the remaining procedural hurdles and the final vote.

A major health care victory for Democrats as a 60-40 party line vote was reached to end a package of controversial proposals.

In a CNN Exclusive, Nebraska Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson explains his health care negotiations on ‘State of the Union.’

“The die is cast. It’s done,” New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer proclaimed after the vote.

Republicans ripped the majority for passing the measure in the middle of the night and accused Democrats of ramming the bill through despite growing public opposition.

“Make no mistake: If the people who wrote this bill were proud of it, they wouldn’t be forcing this vote in the dead of night,” argued Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky.

Top Democrats, however, argue that the Senate bill as written would still constitute a positive change of historic proportions. The legislation, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would extent health insurance coverage to over 30 million Americans while reducing the federal deficit by $132 billion over the next decade.

The deficit would drop by another $1.3 trillion between the years 2019 and 2029.

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have now reached agreement on a broad range of changes that could effect every American’s coverage.

Among other things, they have agreed to subsidize insurance for a family of four making up to roughly $88,000 annually, or 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

They have also agreed to create health insurance exchanges designed to make it easier for small businesses, the self-employed and the unemployed to pool resources and purchase less expensive coverage. Both the House plan the Senate bill would eventually limit total out-of-pocket expenses and prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Insurers would also be barred from charging higher premiums based on a person’s gender or medical history.

There are, however, major differences between the Senate measure and the more expansive — and hence expensive — House bill.

One of the biggest divides is over how to pay for the plans. The House package is financed through a combination of a tax surcharge on wealthy Americans and new Medicare spending reductions.

Specifically, individuals with annual incomes over $500,000 — as well as families earning more than $1 million — would face a 5.4 percent income tax surcharge.

The Senate bill would also hike Medicare payroll taxes on families making over $250,000; the House bill does not.

Another key sticking point: the dispute over a public option. The House plan includes a public option; the more conservative Senate plan would instead create new nonprofit private plans overseen by the federal government.

iReport.com: Give your thoughts on the Senate health care bill.

Both versions include a hardship exemption for poorer Americans.

The Senate bill would require companies with more than 50 employees to pay a fee of up to $750 per worker if any of its employees relies on government subsidies to purchase coverage.

Abortion has also been a sticking point for both chambers. A late compromise with Catholic and other conservatives in the House led to the adoption of an amendment banning most abortion coverage from the public option.

It would also prohibit abortion coverage in private policies available in the exchange to people receiving federal subsidies.

Senate provisions, made more conservative than initially drafted in order to satisfy Sen. Nelson, would allow states to choose whether to ban abortion coverage in plans offered in the exchanges. Individuals purchasing plans through the exchanges would have to pay for abortion coverage out of their own funds.

Many observers expect the final bill will conform largely to the measure now moving through the Senate.

“Reid had to make a lot of concessions to get his entire caucus behind the Senate bill,” said CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser.

Nelson told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that he would withdraw his support if the final bill gets changed too much from the Senate version under consideration.

Students struggle to afford college

jeremyheslup — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:10:30 +0000

Has the troubled economy caused college enrollment to plummet? Morgan Radford takes a look.

This package was featured on CNN’s homepage as an iReport - ireport.com/docs/DOC-369045

Videography & Editor: Jeremy Heslup
Journalist: Morgan Radford
Producer: Tia Forbes
Sound & Tech: Akevo Jenkins

An incredible journey

Henry Hanks — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:56:17 +0000

Team iReport had a special visitor last week: globe-trotting iReporter Neal Moore. He has lived in Taiwan, South Africa, Namibia and Thailand, among other places, but this time he came back to the U.S. for one of the biggest journeys of his life: a 4 1/2-month canoe trip down the Mississippi River from Lake Itasca, Minnesota, to New Orleans, Louisiana, on a mission to iReport the positive stories he found along the way.

Fresh from this extraordinary trip, Moore had a lot to tell us about this uplifting experience.

A Mark Twain fan, he said he will never forget having the rare opportunity to spend the night in Twain’s boyhood home. But one highlight of his trip took him by complete surprise: his visit to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, surrounded on all sides by the mighty Mississippi. In this prison, where many inmates stay for the rest of their days, he says was inspired by those who were making an effort at rehabilitation.

“It was sort of life-changing to go in there and to meet people who are in prison like this who are stepping up and accomplishing something through communication,” he said.

Regardless of where he went, Moore says he left feeling more positive about his home country than ever before. “From the top of the river down, I would find communities who are rallying around a central cause or theme, putting their best foot forward,” he says, “whether it be Mark Twain, literacy or fighting cancer.”

Moore says he’ll never forget this trip, and we will never forget meeting him. You can follow the path he took by map and on video in CNN’s special coverage of his journey, and watch for him on this month’s edition of “iReport for CNN” on CNN International.

CNN iReport featured: Low-Income College Dreams

jeremyheslup — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:16:01 +0000

IReport - Using main dataset parameters in subdatasets in Jasper Reports

Alex Ersenie — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:02:44 +0000

The best way to build a complex graph in IReport is definitely the MultiAxis chart. One thing that i love about it, is that every subchart you add to the main MultiAxis chart can use it’s own dataset, so you do not have to fight complex querys and joins in your main query, loosing a lot of time on processing when displaying the graph.

What i needed, was to display the response times of individual HTTP Requests, grouped by second, on a timeline, and the number of transactions, grouped by second, on the same timeline of course.

Grouping by http requests, and timestamp delivered me the following results:

time_stamp     average     max     request            transactions
10:48:08     23                    24     Login                             3
10:48:08     4,1852            5       Book                              27
10:48:08     11,6667         13      Homepage                   3
10:48:09     13                     14      Join Game session   3
10:48:09     4,3704          6        Book                              27
10:48:09     24                     27     Login                             3
10:48:10     11,3333          12      Homepage                   3
10:48:10     5,2333            22      Book                            30
10:48:10     13,6667         14       Join Game session   3
10:48:11     24,3333         25      Login                             3
10:48:11     6,8333           32       Book                             30
10:48:11     11,3333          12       Homepage                  3

When printing out the chart, the response times were grouped correctly, but the number of transactions was of course wrong, because it was not the sum of all transactions, but was grouped by timestamp and classname as well

Well, one solution would have been modifying the query, and adding a join on a temporary table, comparing by the only field that could be of help, time_stamp. Starting with MySql 5.0, you are allowed to do that. Thanks to my good friend Lucke for pointing that out to me (very helpful in other scenarios) The query, in case you will ever need it, would look like this:

select
            tr.testrun_id,
            DATE_FORMAT(DATE_ADD(‘1970-01-01 00:00:00′ ,INTERVAL ts*1000 MICROSECOND),’%H:%i:%s’) as time_stamp,
            avg(t) as average,
            max(t) as maximum,
            tr.lb,
            count(tr.t) as transactions

from
             testresults tr
inner join

(

             select
                        DATE_FORMAT(DATE_ADD(‘1970-01-01 00:00:00′ ,INTERVAL ts*1000 MICROSECOND),’%H:%i:%s’) as time_stamp,
                         lb,
                         count(t)
            from testresults
            group by time_stamp) a
on tr.lb=a.lb
where
             tr.testrun_id=25646
and
             lt>0
group by
             lb,
             time_stamp
order by
             time_stamp

The problem with this query is that if you are running it agains a large number of records, you will definitely wait a LOT. But i thought it is worth mentioning it, for those still looking for “multiple selects”

So i had to find another solution. I needed an extra query only for the transactions. So i’ve built myself a subdataset in my main report, having this query associated:

select

          DATE_FORMAT(DATE_ADD(‘1970-01-01 00:00:00′ ,INTERVAL ts*1000 MICROSECOND),’%H:%i:%s’) as time_stamp,
          count(t) as userscount,
          lb

from
          testresults

where testrun_id in ( 2646 )

group by lb,time_stamp

order by time_stamp

I used a secondary line chart on my multi axis chart, and displayed the values returned by this dataset. Still….

Now was the tricky part, for which i did not find an answer without trying, failing and trying again for some time. I needed to plot those values for a specific test_run, not for all of them. So i needed to pass parameters from the main report to the sub dataset. And here is how you do it:

First of all, all parameters that you send from the main report, have to be declared (and of the same type) in your sub dataset. In our example, we would be passing the run_id parameter
Go to your multiaxis chart
Select your second chart, the one plotting the transactions count
Right click > Chart data
Make sure your subdataset is set to the one you just created
Select the “Parameters” tab
Click Add
In the upper listbox select your main report parameter ; In the lower box select the value expression by pointing to your sub dataset newly declared parameter
Now modify your query accordingly: where testrun_id in ( $P!{run_id} )

That’s it. In the end it should look something like this ( the only difference is that i am passing also the http request for further filtering, and another parameter that i need):

Sending parameters to sub dataset Jasper Report

And this is how my report looks in the end:

Performance Chart Jasper Reports

Of course, i replaced the names of the request. And it is a small scaled version of the report displaying:

On the left side the scale of transactions
On the right side the maximum time in a second and the average response times of the requests
On the bottom is a timeline: this is where the timestamps are displayed, ordered by time

This post was meant to clear how to pass parameters in datasets in IReport and Jasper Reports. I hope i will save some time for others looking for an answer in this are.

Cheers,

Alex Ersenie

Underfed, overworked Anatevka journalist

nickdimarco — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:04:19 +0000

Josh Dombroskie was the journalism student that academic advisors said other students should emulate.

He had a promising under-grad experience that earned him a position at a local newspaper right out of the gate.

But for Josh, the devotion to deadlines became too much. So he sought other, more lucrative, career options.

Photo courtesy of Josh Dombroskie

Where did you work? What was your position? What were your daily responsibilities? How long did you work there?

I worked for the Aegis newspaper in Harford County for almost four months. I was assigned as the “Crime Beat Reporter” when I started, however, my writing duties included much more than that. Features, as well as any other story the editors saw fit fell into my day to day writing.

Why did you decide to leave? What factors contributed to your decision?

There were two main reasons that I decided to leave. The first was that I was unhappy in the profession. It was incredibly stressful and I felt as though I worked all day, having no time to myself. As one of only three reporters at the newspaper, I had to generate much more content than I was comfortable with writing. This led to me believing that the quality of my writing deteriorated because of the amount of stories I needed to generate in such a short period of time. Another job offer came along, nearly doubling my salary, which was the second reason that I decided to leave.

Where do you work now? What is your job title? What are your day to day responsibilities?

I now work for the U.S. Coast Guard’s Surface Forces Logistics Center, Technical Information Management Branch. My job title is Engineering Technician, though I work more with Technical Information than I do with engineering. I am a member of the Drawing Section, in the Tech Info Branch, and we are basically a library for the Coast Guard’s naval engineering drawings. Every blueprint drawing for a cutter or ship in the Coast Guard is managed through my team. My daily responsibilities include managing the drawing traffic, i.e. making sure that drawings are accounted for, checking them out to engineers for revision, sending them to other Coast Guard commands around the country.

Are you content with your decision to leave journalism? Why or why not?

I am very content to leave journalism. As I said before, I felt as though I had no time after work to myself, I felt as though my life was my job. I wanted to be able to have that time to de-stress and unfortunately journalism did not provide that. I am getting married next summer, something I never would have been able to do working in journalism at this point in my life. Starting out in journalism you would not make enough money to support a family, and you would not have the free time you desired to spend with that family. I am grateful for my nine to five government job, as it affords me a higher salary, as well as the opportunity to start a family.

Do you ever see yourself getting back into journalism?

The only way I could see myself getting back into journalism would be to possibly write as a columnist after I retire from government service. A career in the government is just too lucrative to give up to go back to journalism.

What are you views on the industry and where it’s headed?

To tell you the truth, I was burnt out on journalism after i left the profession. I stopped reading news and was just tired of the day to day drama. I was tired of the constant badgering by members of the media on things that I felt were just covered to death. I used to read CNN daily to check out what was happening. After I left journalism, I was tired of reading so many depressing things, so I switched my internet homepage from CNN to ESPN. I haven’t checked the news in the longest time. I feel as though if something were important enough for me to know about, a close friend will tell me. It’s a shame, because I think most people are tired of the “in your face” style of news media these days as well. Things aren’t as relaxing as they were when print media was in its heyday, and that’s the type of news I enjoyed growing up. Anyone can be a journalist these days, and I don’t like that. I thought the end of journalism as I knew it occurred when CNN began their “iReport” section. I don’t think journalism is as reliable as it once was, and I don’t think many people are going to be interested in reading more than breaking news snippets of what happened in the world today. It’s a little bit sad to see what I loved about the industry dying so quickly.

Do you have any advice for students entering the field?

I loved journalism for a long time, and it’s great to be able to reach so many people on a daily basis. If it’s what you love, I’d say stick with it as long as you can. You won’t be making very much money, but if you enjoy communicating with people and bringing them the news, you’ll enjoy it.

You’ve spoken with me before regarding your decisions to leave. You’ve mentioned that it was financially smart for you to move on. Can you clarify this for me?

As I said in the question above, the salary almost doubled for me when I left journalism. I didn’t really see any potential to move up in my position as a reporter, even the editors made less money than I am currently making with the government. I have much more upward mobility working for the Coast Guard, my 25-year-old friend, who also happens to be my boss, is making $73000 a year, and he moved up to that in a pretty short period of time. There is a ceiling on the amount of money you can make in the government as compared to the private sector, but decent money can be earned, with many workers making over $90000 a year. As I also said before, I am getting married, and there is no question that I would not have been able to do that working in journalism.

Newspapers: Reporting Their Own Death

Delia Harrington — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:01:08 +0000

I wrote this post a while ago and was too annoyed/lazy to put in the appropriate links and post it,

iReport: Your thoughts on climate change

Andreas Preuss — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:27:34 +0000

The demand for answers continues as world climate-change leaders gather in Copenhagen for a summit on climate change.

On Monday, the EPA released a statement saying greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to public health and welfare.

But a new CNN poll finds that while most Americans believe that global warming is a proven fact, the number who think that climate change is due to man-made emissions has fallen below 50%. We want to hear your views on global warming.

Post your iReport video responses and we’ll show some during CNN Newsroom.

On Citizen Journalism and Confrontations

alexaizenberg — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:45:34 +0000

While working late on Sunday (after similar scenarios on Saturday, Friday, and so on) I was faced (literally) with a confrontation and a heated argument with an NYC cab driver. While I wasn’t backing down because of the rough night I was having already, my steadfastness was mainly attributed to the fact that what the cabby did was illegal – duty light on, stopped, asked where we are going, then decline and try to drive off.

To make a long story short, the situation was quickly getting out of hand with words, hands and tempers flying off the handle from both sides… it was only diffused by the quick thinking of one of my colleagues whom was there with me at the time of the flare up. What Jen did probably saved the night both for the cabby (he wouldn’t have to spend the night in jail) as well as for me (not having to staff a client’s Monday press conference with a black eye)… and here is how she did it:

A simple move of taking out her phone and starting to (pretending? attempting? fumbling?) record the situation for posterity… the cabby all of a sudden shut up, ran to his car and drove off… we got into the nearest cab and drove off downtown, in awe of and shaken by what just happened. While i thank her for her positive contribution to the situation, maybe I should also be upset that she didn’t try to use the phone for the good ol analog reason of calling the police for help, but that’s neither here nor there…

Just wanted to make sure I shared this to showcase a personal reprieve of Citizen Journalism (because I don’t really agree with the trend, but cannot deny it), because I saw it work and saw it work well. Looks like i will have to stop making fun of CNN’s iReport now, but I still can’t help to think that it is ruining investigative journalism… but on the other hand, it does now appear clear to me it has potential for diffusing confrontations on site.

Load and Performance Reporting with JMeter, JasperServer and Pentaho BI - Part 1

Alex Ersenie — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:13:37 +0000

Building a Load and Performance Reporting solution using JMeter, MySQL, Pentaho Data Integration, JasperReports and IReport, JasperServer and Shell Scripting

The subject i think, has been going on through the testing community for a while, and i am sure everybody comes with a custom solution to the problem. My solution a couple of years ago, when i last performed a load testing project, was composed of :
OpenSTA for load testing
Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) for data import
Microsoft Excel for Pivot Tables and Graphics

I can still remember spending about 3 days on building my VBA scripts, in order to have a pseudo-automated solution of generating testreports.

Well, here i am, 2009, doing load and performance testing for a new project. This time Excel was out of the question. Why ? – someone still using it would ask…Cause it’s reports are so hard to manage, history reports do not exist, and if they do, they require a lot of maintanance, it is time consuming, and …it is so Windows platform based (no portability whatsoever)
Now, in a time where ETL (Extract Transform Load) is on everybody’s lips, i decided to go the hard way. That’s what they say, isn’t it? The hard way is always the best way.

Therefore, in the article to follow, i will describe the solution i implemented using SHELL scripts, JMeter, MySQL , Pentaho Data Integration, IReport, JasperReports, JasperServer and Hudson for a fully automated load and performance test and reporting. Sound a little bit complicated, and so many tools involved, but trust me, it is worth the time!

Here we go. Let me explain a little how i imagined this would work, and how i implemented it.

Part 1 – JMeter and Shell Scripting – WHY ?

Well, the first thing i asked myself, was …how can i build those scripts so that i can group them in “performance scenarios”. It is a question where automated tools offer an answer, by providing the test scenario functionality. But i did not have any test scenarios…i only had JMeter test plans. That was my starting point. And i needed scenarios:

I thought that the best way to control JMeter scripts is using command line interface. (1)

Simply starting a JMeter testplan from the command line was surely not enough, therefore i wanted it to be able to run JMeter testplans with arguments.(2)

I also wanted to be able of grouping multiple JMeter Testplans into a single Testscenario, so i could control the workflow (3)

Only starting one JMeter test after the other was not exactly what i had in mind. I needed to control what happens in the beginning, in between, and when the tests ended (4)

So here i was, having 4 “requirements” that were all pointing in one and single direction: SHELL SCRIPTING

Part 2 – Collection of JMeter test results – Where ?

I definitely needed a central point to store the jmeter results, in order to be able to create reports from them. But creating dynamic reports requires a database of course. So i turned to my old friend, MySQL.

Basically, i have created about 5 tables, to store the JMeter samples, JMAP samples (heap maps), but also information about the tests i have run. I wanted a full report, not a partial one.

Basically i neede one table for storing the version of the application, one table for storing information about the test scripts that i have run, one table for saving the relations between script and version, one table for storing the actual JMeter results, and last, but not least (it was the last one added, that’s true ), one table for storing the JMAP Heap statistics (number of objects in heap, and size of the objects in heap)

Five tables alltogether. That is all you need to get started.The design of the tables, specially the one for the jmeter samples, depends very much on what information you want to collect and filter.

I will get back to the subject, by detailing the structure in the post that will be related to this.

Part 3 – ETL – Extract, Transform, Load

There were several opportunities here, like creating some stored procedures that could be called from the shell, but i wanted something more… user friendly, easier to maintain, easier to design, and easier to integrate. I needed an ETL tool. And Pentaho had the solution to my problem.

Pentaho has gone truly far in this direction. They offer Business Intelligence Products of amazing quality, and i do take the time to congratulate them on their products. They offer java based tools for designing transformations, grouping them into jobs, executing them via GUI or command line, and so on.

I decided to give Pentaho Data Integration a try, and although it took me more time than expected to get it alltogether, it was worth every minute.

So using Spoon, which is the GUI for designing transformations from Pentaho Data Integration, i managed to create a Data Transformation, extracting and loading test information and test results in my database, and even more, automating it via shell scripts.

I think on a scale of complexity, this was on the highest point…, only a few points down of integrating JasperServer But, as i said, it was worth every minute

Part 4 – Creating and running the reports

Now, i had the data in a database. The querys were quite simple, so all i had to do now was to find a smart tool to generate the reports. And in a DYNAMIC WAY. Any desktop based application was out of the question, i needed this reports to be called at any time, by anyone, from everywhere… i needed WEB BASED REPORTS

So i turned to Jasper Reports and Jasper Server. And of course, IReport for designing the reports. All these, part of Jasper Server Package ( no need for the proffesional version, i used the free one)

That is all i needed to get me started. And the best part of it ? It is free, it is customizable!

To summarize, once again, this is what you need:

MySQL DB, JMeter, Shell Scripting, Jasper Server, IReport, Pentaho Data Integration

My next post will start detailing the first steps, the database structure, and importing the data using Pentaho Data Integration. I will speak about the transformation itself: how to create it, what u have to take care of, and provide a sample, for both the sql structure, and for the Pentaho Transformation

Cheers,

Alex

A day of politeness

Tyson Wheatley — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:01:45 +0000

We’re always looking for cool ways to connect you with the news and newsmakers. So when experimental journalist and author A.J. Jacobs stopped by the CNN.com newsroom recently, we asked him to get in on the fun — and be a part of a something we’ve never tried before.

In many ways, A.J. has made his life one big experiment. He once outsourced his life to India, and also spent a year living as literally as possible by the Bible. He spent another year reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z — all 44 million words of it.

In his new book, The Guinea Pig Diaries, A.J. chronicles nine of his most recent self-absorbing experiments, and now he’d like you — dear readers — to join him for a 10th.

A.J. is challenging you — and himself, of course — to live as the most polite people on Earth for one day. To brush up on your Emily Post and Miss Manners, and bring a bit of dignity and etiquette to everything you do then document what you learned on CNN iReport.

We think this is a pretty cool way for you to connect with a newsmaker – and we’re inviting you to take part in this project. So, if you’re up for a fun challenge and ready to play nice, just follow these instructions.

We can’t wait to see your creative iReports!

iReport nb 3.5.3 - data page detail tidak muncul

ivano46 — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 05:59:32 +0000

Untuk sekedar berbagi kepada teman-teman yang menggunakan jasper report untuk reporting, saya menemu

Witnesses report extraterrestrial sighting in North Carolina

thecanadianheadlines — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:59:49 +0000

Compiled by Albert Rosales, ed.

Location. Kannapolis, North Carolina
Date: January 20 2007, Time: 8:31 PM

The witnesses spotted two rectangular-shaped objects that had a reddish light resembling a spotlight. The objects were totally silent and flew at about 200 metres in the air. While the witnesses watched seven more similar objects appeared and seconds later they saw a human-like figure wearing what appeared to be a long black coat hovering near the objects.

Reference: NUFORC

About the writer:

Mr. Rosales is a veteran researcher on UFOs and Extraterrestrials. He can be contacted using email, LINK Albert Rosales coordinates Ufoinfo.com. LINK

Featured LINK. Online dating. Alternative Lifestyles Personals. Free and Anonymous Membership

UCSC Student Protest & Possible Suppression of Facts

Eric Lightborn — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:55:46 +0000

University of California Santa Cruz is often associated as a left-leaning campus and administration,

Pagan Gnostics, Manipulative Extraterrestrials and the War on Terrorism

thecanadianheadlines — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:26:48 +0000

by Peter Tremblay

The “War on Terrorism”, can be critically appreciated as a ruse to legitimate those interests that seek to destroy human rights and freedoms. John Lash, illuminates the Gnostics as seeking to warn humanity about an “artificial man” that seeks to enslave and exploit humanity. Gnostic warnings of such an artificial intelligence, seems to be consistent with the kind of prevailing intelligence which seems to be behind what is really a “War against Human Rights and Freedoms”.

John Lash illuminates Gnostic warnings, about an artificial intelligence that seeks to use human fears to execute an agenda of enslavement. The current ‘War Against Human Rights and Freedoms’ appears be a strategy that is being used to manipulate humanity into the social control agenda of an artificial intelligence. Technology from biometric based identification initiatives, to other computer-based tracking systems, could be regarded as the apparent “tentacles” of artificial intelligences, that now operate behind “human faces”.

Most people will not likely believe the possibilities of such a scenario, because they have limited their appreciation of reality, to what they have been told, by the very elite agents that have sought to conceal documented alien encounters have had among them, and with the diverse public.

It is vital that communities of human beings should begin to seek to reach a higher consciousness of empathy, peace, and wisdom, outside of prevailing dogma associated with organized religion and linear-centred science. Both organized religion, with particular emphasis on what John Lash refers to as the “doctrine of the aliens”, i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and also science, have sought subvert critical appreciation of the human identity in relation to aliens, which include Gnostic-reported artificial intelligences.

In the process of seeking to reach such a higher consciousness, humans, today would be emulating the path of the Gnostics toward social liberation. They would therefore be in the process of also theoretically being able to detect Gnostic-reported manipulative alien artificial intelligences.

If the so-called “War on Terrorism” is an alien orchestrated phenomena, then the humans who seek to return toward a path of peace, would need to initiate a path that will liberate human civilization from what John Lash refers to as “alien intrusion”.

Furthermore, the first step on that path is to liberate ourselves from an exploitation-centred and greed-dominated system of time and resource management.

Are you seeking to explore alternatives to such a prevailing context of global capitalism, that is spawning conditions of perpetuated war? Please read Quality-of-Living and Human Development, ISBN: 1897036353, and Capitalism is Not Democracy, Part I, ISBN: 1894934636.

Help support our not-for-profit Canadian Exopolitics Newspaper. Become a Member. Make a donation pledge. Donate $50.00 and we will give you free advice on how we can help get any manuscript that you have written self-published.