Book of Odds - Are You A Believer?

Book of Odds - Are You A Believer?
A Harris poll the following November found the odds a person believes there is a God are 1 in 1.35 (74%), down from 1 in 1.27 (79%) in 2003.

Schneier on Security: Fun with Secret Questions

Schneier on Security: Fun with Secret Questions

Fun with Secret Questions

Ally Bank wants its customers to invent their own personal secret questions and answers; the idea is that an operator will read the question over the phone and listen for an answer. Ignoring for the moment the problem of the operator now knowing the question/answer pair, what are some good pairs? Some suggestions:

Q: Do you know why I think you're so sexy?
A: Probably because you're totally in love with me.

Q: Need any weed? Grass? Kind bud? Shrooms?
A: No thanks hippie, I'd just like to do some banking.

Q: The Penis shoots Seeds, and makes new Life to poison the Earth with a plague of men.
A: Go forth, and kill. Zardoz has spoken.

Q: What the hell is your fucking problem, sir?
A: This is completely inappropriate and I'd like to speak to your supervisor.

Q: I've been embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from my employer, and I don't care who knows it.
A: It's a good thing they're recording this call, because I'm going to have to report you.

Q: Are you really who you say you are?
A: No, I am a Russian identity thief.

National_ID_Card.pdf (application/pdf Object)

National_ID_Card.pdf (application/pdf Object)
The Constitution does not explicitly provide a right to privacy, but in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965),
the Supreme Court held that “various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association
contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment,” and the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth
Amendments were held to give people a right to privacy, and this doctrine has been used in many cases
since. However, there has been some debate over whether the constitutional right to privacy includes
the right to anonymity. Alan Dershowitz, for example, makes the argument that the right to privacy is
solely the right to control one’s personal information and its dissemination, not hide one’s identity. He
said, “American taxpayers, voters, and drivers long ago gave up any right of anonymity without loss of
our right to engage in lawful conduct within zones of privacy.”13 However, the Supreme Court has at
least intimated to a right to anonymous political speech under the First Amendment in a number of
cases.

Microsoft's Windows Monopoly Now At Risk As Tablet Market Sprouts Without It

Microsoft's Windows Monopoly Now At Risk As Tablet Market Sprouts Without It
HP was dissatisfied with Windows as a tablet operating system

, according to TechCrunch. Instead it will look at using Google Android, as well as its newly acquired WebOS. And the Courier just wasn't up to snuff. The era of touch devices that use styluses has long passed.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-tablets-2010-4#ixzz0mbFIvpZk

CHART OF THE DAY: Has Any Company Lost As Much Money On The Internet As Microsoft?

CHART OF THE DAY: Has Any Company Lost As Much Money On The Internet As Microsoft?
Last night Microsoft revealed that its Online Services Division lost $711 million in the first three months of this year. That's a jaw-dropping $2.8 billion loss annual run rate.

Q&A: HP's strategy chief on the Palm acquisition - Big Tech - Fortune Brainstorm Tech

Q&A: HP's strategy chief on the Palm acquisition - Big Tech - Fortune Brainstorm Tech
is is about the webOS and app development kits and the app space that they’re building up. It gives us a chance to really grow in a market that, standalone, is more than $120 billion and has grown 20% annually. We think it’s where a lot of the action is going to be in the next generation. The webOS is a modern, very capable operating system that is nicely differentiated

Symantec to Offer Broadest Data Protection Capabilities with Acquisition of PGP Corporation and GuardianEdge

Symantec to Offer Broadest Data Protection Capabilities with Acquisition of PGP Corporation and GuardianEdge

The Sarcasmist - The World, brought to you by the Sarcasm Society

The Sarcasmist - The World, brought to you by the Sarcasm Society: "An immigrant rights group has convinced all immigrants to give back the jobs that were so ruthlessly ripped away from the bosom of Americans.

“We will be organizing the first ever Job Transfer Fair this summer. The way the fair will work is that a list of jobs currently held by immigrants will be posted in the auditorium, from which unemployed non-immigrants will be able to pick their new careers. The job lists will be broken down based on industry and the number of positions available in each.” said a representative of the immigrants’ rights group.

The Sarcasmist was able to obtain a short list of some of the lucrative jobs that will be available.

- Lawn trimmer
- Fruit picker
- Dish washer
- Housekeeping attendant
- Busboy"

GM's Phony Bailout Payback - Reason Magazine

GM's Phony Bailout Payback - Reason Magazine: "he Obama administration put $13.4 billion of the aid money as 'working capital' in an escrow account when the company was in bankruptcy. The company is using this escrow money—government money—to pay back the government loan.

GM claims that the fact that it is even using the escrow money to pay back the loan instead of using it all to shore itself up shows that it is on the road to recovery. That actually would be a positive development—although hardly one worth hyping in ads and columns—if it were not for a further plot twist.

Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research, points out that the company has applied to the Department of Energy for $10 billion in low (5 percent) interest loan to retool its plants to meet the government's tougher new CAFÉ (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. However, giving GM more taxpayer money on top of the existing bailout would have been a political disaster for the Obama administration and a PR debacle for the company. Paying back the small bailout loan makes the new—and bigger—DOE loan much more feasible."

Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War - PowerPoint - NYTimes.com

Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War - PowerPoint - NYTimes.com
“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.
“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

Breathing While Undocumented - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com

Breathing While Undocumented - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com: "“A person is guilty of trespassing,” the law provides, by being “present on any public or private land in this state” while lacking authorization to be in the United States — a new crime of breathing while undocumented"

Libertarian socialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Libertarian socialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "A key difference between libertarian socialism and free-market libertarianism is that advocates of the former generally believe that one's degree of freedom is affected by one's economic and social status, whereas advocates of the latter focus on freedom of choice. This is sometimes characterized as a desire to maximize 'free creativity' in a society in preference to 'free enterprise.'[24]

Libertarian socialists believe if freedom is valued, then society must work towards a system in which individuals have the power to decide economic issues along with political issues. Libertarian socialists seek to replace unjustified authority with direct democracy, voluntary federation, and popular autonomy in all aspects of life,[25] including physical communities and economic enterprises.

Many libertarian socialists argue that large-scale voluntary associations should manage industrial manufacture, while workers retain rights to the individual products of their labor.[26] As such, they see a distinction between the concepts of 'private property' and 'personal possession'. Whereas 'private property' grants an individual exclusive control over a thing whether it is in use or not, and regardless of its productive capacity, 'possession' grants no rights to things that are not in use.[27]"

Format Document

Format Document: "13-2412. Refusing to provide truthful name when lawfully detained; classification

A. It is unlawful for a person, after being advised that the person's refusal to answer is unlawful, to fail or refuse to state the person's true full name on request of a peace officer who has lawfully detained the person based on reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime. A person detained under this section shall state the person's true full name, but shall not be compelled to answer any other inquiry of a peace officer."

Bill Gates and Chad Holliday - Energy sector poised for innovation -- with the right spark

Bill Gates and Chad Holliday - Energy sector poised for innovation -- with the right spark: "And despite talk about the need for '21st-century' energy sources, federal spending on clean energy research -- less than $3 billion -- is also relatively small. Compare that with roughly $30 billion that the U.S. government annually spends on health research and $80 billion on defense research and development."

The Stones and the true story of Exile on Main St | Music | The Observer

The Stones and the true story of Exile on Main St | Music | The Observer: "the original version of Exile on Main St, in all its ragged, full-on, rock'n'roll swagger, is all we need. 'This is just a tree of life,' said Tom Waits, when he selected it as one of his all-time favourite records a few years back. 'This record is a watering hole.'"

The Piranha Brothers

The Piranha Brothers: "They would select a victim and then threaten to beat him up if he paid the so-called protection money. Four months later they started another operation which the called 'The Other Operation'. In this racket they selected another victim and threatened not to beat him up if he didn't pay them. One month later they hit upon 'The Other Other Operation'. In this the victim was threatened that if he didn't pay them, they would beat him up. This for the Piranha brothers was the turning point."

Philosophy, et cetera: Libertarian vs. Utilitarian Justice

Philosophy, et cetera: Libertarian vs. Utilitarian Justice: "Libertarian and utilitarian theories of justice are, in many respects, diametrically opposed. Libertarians hold that the free market is inherently just, and redistributive taxation violates people’s property rights.[1] Utilitarians, by contrast, are fundamentally concerned with the promotion of human welfare. They hold that society ought to be organized in whatever fashion would best achieve this end – potentially justifying massive redistribution of wealth to the needy. The two theories also differ significantly in their temporal perspectives. Libertarian ‘entitlement theory’ understands justice to be a purely historical matter: “whether a distribution is just depends on how it came about.”[2] Utilitarianism, on the other hand, is purely forward-looking: justice is determined by what would have the best consequences for all concerned."

Newsvine - You Might Be A Teabagger if...

Newsvine - You Might Be A Teabagger if...: "If you are currently on Medicare and you're holding a sign that reads, 'I oppose government run healthcare', you might be a tea bagger."

Don't ignore the Tea Party's toxic take on history. - By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine

Don't ignore the Tea Party's toxic take on history. - By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine: "The muddled Tea Party version of history is more than wrong and fraudulent. It's offensive. Calling Obama a tyrant, a communist, or a fascist is deeply offensive to all the real victims of tyranny, the real victims of communism and fascism. The tens of millions murdered. It trivializes such suffering inexcusably for the T.P.ers to claim that they are suffering from similar oppression because they might have their taxes raised or be subject to demonic 'federal regulation"

McAfee Security Insights Blog » Blog Archive » An Update on False Positive Remediation

McAfee Security Insights Blog » Blog Archive » An Update on False Positive Remediation: "Of course many of you are asking how the faulty DAT made it past our quality assurance checks. The problem arose during the testing process for this DAT file. We recently made a change to our QA environment that resulted in a faulty DAT making its way out of our test environment and onto customer systems.

To prevent this from happening again, we are implementing additional QA protocols for any releases that directly impact critical system files. In addition, we plan to add capabilities to our cloud-based Artemis system that will provide an additional level of protection against false positives by leveraging an expansive whitelist of critical system files. (More details are available in an FAQ that was published Thursday night.)"

Technology Review: Q&A: Paul Otellini

Technology Review: Q&A: Paul Otellini
Governments are best positioned to fund basic research. But there's been a decade-long erosion in the amount of that funding. It's now on a path to grow, and eventually the goal is to double it. But it takes a long time to do that. Secondly, we would like to see the R&D tax credit made permanent and returned to levels that are competitive with the rest of the world. Lastly, we have corporate tax rates that today are the second highest in the industrialized world.

AlterNet: We're Living in a Kleptocracy: Fears of Socialism and Fascism Are a Distraction from the Naked Theft of Trillions

AlterNet: We're Living in a Kleptocracy: Fears of Socialism and Fascism Are a Distraction from the Naked Theft of Trillions: "If we were to take an honest look at America’s blasted landscape of “losers” and the far shinier, spiffier world of “winners,” we’d have to admit that it wasn’t signs of onrushing socialism or fascism that stood out, but of staggeringly self-aggrandizing greed and theft right in the here and now. We’d notice our public coffers being emptied to benefit major corporations and financial institutions working in close alliance with, and passing on remarkable sums of money to, the representatives of “the people.”"

Economic Scene - Yes, 47% of Households Owe No Taxes. Look Closer. - NYTimes.com

Economic Scene - Yes, 47% of Households Owe No Taxes. Look Closer. - NYTimes.com
Focusing on the statistical middle class — the middle 20 percent of households, as ranked by income — underlines this point. Households in this group made $35,400 to $52,100 in 2006, the last year for which the Congressional Budget Office has released data. That would describe a household with one full-time worker earning about $17 to $25 an hour. Such hourly pay is typical for firefighters, preschool teachers, computer support specialists, farmers, members of the clergy, mail carriers, secretaries and truck drivers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Taking into account both taxes and tax credits, the average household in this group paid a total income tax rate of just 3 percent. A good number of people, in fact, paid no net income taxes. They are among the alleged free riders.
But the picture starts to change when you look not just at income taxes but at all taxes. This average household would have paid 0.8 percent of its income in corporate taxes (through the stocks it owned), 0.9 percent in gas and other federal excise taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. Add these up, and the family’s total federal tax rate was 14.2 percent.

America's Broadband Policy

America's Broadband Policy: "Talk given at SNW 2010 about three areas of policy -- broadband, cybersecurity, and copyright, and about the corruption of the process of policy making affecting each."

Defense Spending Is Much Greater than You Think | The Beacon

Defense Spending Is Much Greater than You Think | The Beacon: "the conclusion seems inescapable: the government is currently spending at a rate well in excess of $1 trillion per year for all defense-related purposes. Owing to the financial debacle and the ongoing recession, millions are out of work, millions are losing their homes, and private earnings remain well below their previous peak, but in the military-industrial complex, the gravy train speeds along the track faster and faster."

Danny Westneat | Parsing the tea-party logic | Seattle Times Newspaper

Danny Westneat | Parsing the tea-party logic | Seattle Times Newspaper: "Did you know that total federal tax receipts, as a percentage of the size of the economy (gross domestic product), are now the lowest in 60 years?


You have to travel back to 1950 for a time when the feds sucked so little of the economy up in taxes. We now pay only 6.4 percent of GDP in individual income taxes, more than a third lower than 10 years ago. Corporate income taxes are the lowest since 1936."

Climategate Claptrap, II

Climategate Claptrap, II: "The tide of global warming denial is now rising as fast as global sea levels--and with as much credibility as Cook Little. Look at the deniers' greatest moment, Climategate, hailed by them as 'the final nail in the coffin' of 'the theory of global warming.' A patient study by the British House of Commons has pored over every e-mail from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and interviewed everyone involved. Its findings? The 'evidence patently fails to support' the idea of a fraud; the scientists have 'no case to answer'; and all their findings 'have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified' by other scientists. That's British for 'it was a crock.'

Yet a startling amount of denialism now, like Climategate, travels across the Atlantic from my country--Britain--to the United States. Yes, I know our accents make us sound instantly plausible, but it's time Americans knew who these Brideshead bull-scientists really are. Look, for example, at their doyen--a man named Christopher Monckton. He has been lauded by the Wall Street Journal, National Review and Rush Limbaugh for exposing the truth about global warming, and is used by the New York Times as a balancing voice against the claims of climate scientists. In fact, Monckton is an English aristocrat with no scientific training. He studied ancient Greece and Rome, and worked as a policy adviser for Margaret Thatcher."

Top 400 Taxpayers | The Big Picture

Top 400 Taxpayers | The Big Picture: "Some of the data is quite astonishing:

• The top 400 U.S. individual taxpayers got 1.59% of the nation’s household income in 2007 — 3X the p% they got in the 1990s.

• The top 400 paid 2.05% of all individual income taxes in 2007.

• Only 220 of the top 400 were in the top marginal tax bracket.

• Average tax rate of the 400 = 16.6% — the lowest since the IRS began tracking the 400 in 1992.

• Minimum annual income to make the top 400 = $138.8 million.

• Top 400 reported $137.9 billion in income; they paid $22.9 billion in federal income taxes.

• 81.3% of income was from capital gains, dividends or interest. Salaries and wages? Just 6.5%.

• The top 400 list changes from year to year: 1992-2007, it contained 3,472 different taxpayers (out of a maximum 6400)."

2010 Report: Global manufacturing labor rates, trends and competitiveness | VentureOutsource.com

2010 Report: Global manufacturing labor rates, trends and competitiveness VentureOutsource.com
China had highest rate of labor force participation for persons ages 25 to 54. U.S. remains leading producer of manufactured goods. Largest labor force was combined EU-15 countries. Sweden had highest social insurance costs as a percent of manufacturing hourly compensation. Republic of Korea had largest increase in manufacturing labor productivity. Spain, Portugal only European countries with lower hourly manufacturing compensation costs than U.S.

Researcher Throws A Wrench In IBM And HP’s Sensor Networks « Forbes.com's The Firewall

Researcher Throws A Wrench In IBM And HP’s Sensor Networks « Forbes.com's The Firewall
In a talk at the Black Hat security conference in Barcelona Thursday, Greek researcher Thanassis Giannetsos plans to present a new software tool that he and two colleagues have written that they say would allow a malicious hacker to penetrate a sensor network and change or delete data at will.
The researchers says their attack would allow an intruder to take control of a sensor network with just a laptop, an antenna, and their exploit written in Java. The tool attacks the routing layer, affecting protocols like Mint Route and MultiHopLQI to collect, redirect or delete data. "What you're trying to do is to destroy the tree of communication between sensors, to make all the nodes forward their data to you, not the base station,"

This is why he is my favorite president *joke* : funny

This is why he is my favorite president *joke* : funny: "Four U.S. presidents are caught in a tornado that hits a state funeral they're all attending and are whirled off to Oz. They finally make it to the Emerald City and come before the Great Wizard.

'What brings you before the great Wizard of Oz?'

Jimmy Carter steps forward timidly: 'I've come for some courage.' 

'No problem!' says the Wizard. 'Who is next?'

Ronald Reagan steps forward, 'Well…I…I think I need a heart.' 

'Done,' says the Wizard. 'Who comes next before the great and powerful Oz?'

Up steps George W. Bush, who says, 'I'm told by the American people that I need a brain.' 

'Not a problem!' says the Wizard. 'Consider it done.' 

There is a great silence in the hall.

Bill Clinton is just standing there, looking around, but doesn't say a word. Irritated, the Wizard finally asks, 'What do you want?' 

'Ummm,' he says quietly, 'is Dorothy around?'"

Infosys lands deal to manage Microsoft's internal IT services | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Infosys lands deal to manage Microsoft's internal IT services Between the Lines ZDNet.com
Microsoft has outsourced its internal IT services—help desk, desk-side services, infrastructure and application support—to Indian outsourcing firm Infosys.

Culinary Flags | TrendLand -> Fashion Blog & Trend Magazine

Culinary Flags | TrendLand -> Fashion Blog & Trend Magazine: "series of flags, savoring the culinary delights of each country"

Individualist anarchism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Individualist anarchism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "'If I go through life free and rich, I shall not cry because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich. Authority may (and may not) make all men equally rich in purse; it certainly will make them equally poor in all that makes life best worth living.'"

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "'La propriété, c'est le vol' ('property is theft')"

Inside Apple's automatic graphics switching

Inside Apple's automatic graphics switching: "Intel's latest stable of mobile processors—Core i3, i5, and i7—all include integrated graphics in the same package as the CPU. Dubbed Intel HD, this integrated graphics processor is designed primarily for efficiency. While its performance is far better than the previous GMA950, for instance, it still wouldn't be classified as good for 'performance' graphics in any sense of the term in common usage."

1024-bit RSA encryption cracked by carefully starving CPU of electricity -- Engadget

1024-bit RSA encryption cracked by carefully starving CPU of electricity -- Engadget
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/%7Evaleria/research/publications/DATE10RSA.pdf
claim they can break it simply by tweaking a device's power supply. By fluctuating the voltage to the CPU such that it generated a single hardware error per clock cycle, they found that they could cause the server to flip single bits of the private key at a time, allowing them to slowly piece together the password.

Our view on education: Texas school board seeks to rewrite your kids' textbooks - USATODAY.com

Our view on education: Texas school board seeks to rewrite your kids' textbooks - USATODAY.com: "Texas school board seeks to rewrite your kids' textbooks"

Nine Myths About Socialism in the United States | The Smirking Chimp

Nine Myths About Socialism in the United States The Smirking Chimp

As Senator Patrick Moynihan used to say "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But everyone is not entitled to their own facts."
The fact is that the US is not really all that generous to our working and poor people compared to other countries.

Microsoft Ushers in the Next Generation of the Social Phone With KIN, a New Windows Phone: Microsoft, Sharp, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone unveil KIN, a new Windows Phone designed for broadcasting and sharing everyday moments.

Microsoft Ushers in the Next Generation of the Social Phone With KIN, a New Windows Phone: Microsoft, Sharp, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone unveil KIN, a new Windows Phone designed for broadcasting and sharing everyday moments.
Microsoft Corp. today announced KIN, a new Windows® Phone designed specifically for people who are actively navigating their social lives. Brought to life through partnerships with Verizon Wireless, Vodafone and Sharp Corporation, KIN is designed to be the ultimate social experience that blends the phone, online services and the PC with breakthrough new experiences called the Loop, Spot and Studio. KIN will be exclusively available from Verizon Wireless in the U.S. beginning in May and from Vodafone this autumn in Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

... simple interface, which is designed to help people publish the magazine of their life by making the people and stuff they love the focus rather than menus and icons. ....

Animals without oxygen and their implications for the evolution of life « Culturing Science – biology as relevant to us earthly beings

Animals without oxygen and their implications for the evolution of life « Culturing Science – biology as relevant to us earthly beings: "Life can survive without oxygen.

Danovaro, R., Dell’Anno, A., Pusceddu, A., Gambi, C., Heiner, I., & Kristensen, R. (2010). The first metazoa living in permanently anoxic conditions BMC Biology, 8 (1) DOI: 10.1186/1741-7007-8-30"

Human genome at ten: Life is complicated : Nature News

Human genome at ten: Life is complicated : Nature News: "For example, transcription factors encoded in the urchin embryo's genome are first activated by maternal proteins. These embryonic factors, which are active for only a short time, trigger downstream transcription factors that interact in a positive feedback circuit to switch each other on permanently. Like the sea urchin, other organisms from fruitflies to humans organize development into 'modules' of genes, the interactions of which are largely isolated from one another, allowing evolution to tweak each module without compromising the integrity of the whole process. Development, in other words, follows similar rules in different species.

'The fundamental idea that the genomic regulatory system underlies all the events of development of the body plan, and that changes in it probably underlie the evolution of body plans, is a basic principle of biology that we didn't have before,' says Davidson."

Personal genomes: The case of the missing heritability : Nature News

Personal genomes: The case of the missing heritability : Nature News: "Epigenetics, changes in gene expression that are inherited but not caused by changes in genetic sequence, confuses things further. Feeding a mouse a certain diet, for example, can alter the coat colour not only in its children, but also in its children's children11. Here, the expression of a coat-colour gene is controlled by a type of DNA modification called methylation, but it's not completely clear how that methylation pattern is 'remembered' by the next generation. The idea that grandma's environment could affect future generations is controversial — and such effects would have been included in the heritability normally attributed to genes."

US tax bite smaller than other nations' / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

US tax bite smaller than other nations' / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com: "But wage and payroll taxes are just part of the picture. Add in sales taxes, capital gains taxes, property taxes, and corporate taxes, and the US sends 28 cents of every dollar of output to the government. That still matches Japan for the lowest ratio of tax revenue to gross domestic product (GDP) among the G-7 nations. France and Italy score highest."

Palin: America does not need ‘this snake oil science stuff’ | Raw Story

Palin: America does not need ‘this snake oil science stuff’ | Raw Story: "'We should create a competitive climate for investment and for renewables and alternatives that are economical and doable and none of this snake oil science stuff that is based on this global warming, Gore-gate stuff that came down where there was revelation that the scientists, some of these scientists were playing political games.'"

If we can’t make mistakes, then we can’t do science | Serendipity

If we can’t make mistakes, then we can’t do science | Serendipity: "Science is a process that compensates for the human failings of the people who engage in it, by continually questioning evidence, re-testing ideas, replicating results, collecting more data, and so on. Mistakes are made all the time. Individual scientists screw up. If they don’t make mistakes, they’re not doing worthwhile science"

oftwominds: Tyranny of the Majority, Corporate Welfare and Complicity

oftwominds: Tyranny of the Majority, Corporate Welfare and Complicity: "Everyone earning 10%-20% of that sum loudly applauds 'sticking it to the rich' (the Tyranny of the Majority in full flower) while failing to note that the truly wealthy--the ones who don't have any earned income because they don't work in salaried jobs, the ones who own roughly half the nation's productive assets--pay nothing but a slice of their unearned income--much of which is protected by various tax breaks."

Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Mathematics Reveal Universal Properties Of Old Rope

Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Mathematics Reveal Universal Properties Of Old Rope: "Mathematics Reveal Universal Properties Of Old Rope
Mathematicians prove that a three-stranded rope is always 68% the length of its component strands, regardless of the material from which it is made."

How “Dirty” MP3 Files Are A Back Door Into Cloud DRM

How “Dirty” MP3 Files Are A Back Door Into Cloud DRM
A list of which music services are selling clean MP3 files without embedded personal information, and which aren’t, is here. Apple, LaLa (owned by Apple) and Walmart embed personal information. Amazon, Napster and the rest have resisted label pressure to do so.

IEBlog : A Closer Look at Internet Explorer 9 Hardware Acceleration Through Flying Images

IEBlog : A Closer Look at Internet Explorer 9 Hardware Acceleration Through Flying Images
We redesigned the core of Internet Explorer 9 to be hardware accelerated. Internet Explorer 9’s display rendering subsystem uses the GPU for all graphics and text on web pages. Internet Explorer 9 moves graphics work that has traditionally occurred on the general purpose CPU to faster, more specialized hardware. Internet Explorer 9’s JavaScript engine takes advantage of multiple-processor cores to background compile JavaScript into machine code. Internet Explorer 9 uses modern processor instruction sets across the entire product. Taken together, these changes enable computations to occur faster and in parallel, freeing the CPU to spend time performing other operations

Why does everything suck?: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

Why does everything suck?: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad
3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

AMD announces Turbo CORE for upcoming desktop CPUs

AMD announces Turbo CORE for upcoming desktop CPUs
Servers need power optimization even more than desktops, although in the server space it's more critical to underclock than it is to overclock (underutilization is a huge problem in datacenters).

Cincinnati Magazine

Cincinnati Magazine: "but what really gets to me with these tea-partiers and these Palin people is when I’m demonized for saying people should have health care. You know, Bubba in the Ku Klux Klan should not lose his house because his wife gets breast cancer. We should take better care of American people. And that makes me a communist? Well, OK. I don’t understand how that makes me a communist. I like my fellow countrymen and women. I want them to be healthy. I think it helps the country get better results. Less crime, better output at the factory, everyone gets more, you live better, so what’s the problem? “Well if the government does it, they screw up everything else.” Oh, let’s see, you know you’re ripping on the Marines, that’s interesting. So the marines suck. FDIC, that blows. SEC, doesn’t work. Medicaid, that sucks. The Air Force, NASA—awful. When people put down the government, [and say] “they can’t get anything right.” Shut up. Move. Go away. Or stop complaining, and let’s fix it. What’s your solution? “More tax cuts.” Oh, OK. Cool. “No government!” Excellent, who’s going fix the roads? Who’s my local cop. Blackwater? You know, it’s the lack of real solutions that gets to me, so when these people get mad at me it’s like OK, fine. Give me a set of solutions that’s compassionate, that takes care of my countrymen. And that gets us forward. “Well….” Right, I know. Just more anger. More unsigned letters, misspelled."

Windows Server Division WebLog : Windows Server 2008 R2 to Phase Out Itanium

Windows Server Division WebLog : Windows Server 2008 R2 to Phase Out Itanium: "Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the last version of Windows Server to support the Intel Itanium architecture. SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010 are also the last versions to support Itanium."

Let Over Lambda

Let Over Lambda: "Clearly lisp procedures are not functions. Lisp procedures can return non-static values, that is you can call them multiple times with the same arguments and receive different return values each time. As in our examples from previous chapters, lisp procedures can store state by closing over variables."

I.B.M’s Bid to Woo Software Start-Ups - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

I.B.M’s Bid to Woo Software Start-Ups - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
James Corgel, general manager for developer relations in I.B.M.’s software group, is largely to nurture a new wave of start-ups that “amplify and fit into the Smarter Planet framework.”
The I.B.M. software will be made available to the start-ups as a cloud service, which they can tap into over the Web.
Besides software, start-ups can also get one-on-one sessions with I.B.M. scientists and coaching on sales and marketing tactics. “More and more, people are asking us how to build a business,” Mr. Corgel said.

gag - Project Hosting on Google Code

gag - Project Hosting on Google Code

Remember, raptors run at 10 m/s and they do not know fear

2BL.org: Ted Chan's Blog for Business and Social Impact: Cloud Computing: Cost structure and pricing strategies

2BL.org: Ted Chan's Blog for Business and Social Impact: Cloud Computing: Cost structure and pricing strategies
According to GigaOM, wholesale bandwidth costs have fallen from 20% to 40% in the past year, continuing a trend of rapid decline