The Lone Star Secret | The Big Money

The Lone Star Secret | The Big Money: "But not in Texas. There, cash-outs and home-equity loans can’t total more than 80 percent of a home’s appraised value. There’s a 12-day cooling-off period after an application, during which the borrower can pull out. And when a borrower refinances a mortgage, it’s illegal to get even $1 back. Texas really means it: All these protections, and more, are in the state constitution."

Keynes for Today | The Progressive

Keynes for Today | The Progressive: "From the smoking rubble of Wall Street and its market fundamentalism in the 1930s, a genteel English economist clambered, brushed the dust from his suit, and totally remade the way we understand economics. John Maynard Keynes discarded the old myth that the market is pure and rational and operates best when government does least. In its place, he built the intellectual foundations for a very different world—one where democratic governments intervene every day to regulate big business, prevent extreme inequality, ensure full employment, and stimulate the economy when it sags"

Forbes.com - Magazine Article

Forbes.com - Magazine Article: "Tea Partyers were asked how much the federal government gets in taxes as a percentage of the gross domestic product. According to Congressional Budget Office data, acceptable answers would be 6.4%, which is the percentage for federal income taxes; 12.7%, which would be for both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes; or 14.8%, which would represent all federal taxes as a share of GDP in 2009."

Breaking the chain: The antitrust case against Wal-Mart, By Barry C. Lynn (Harper's Magazine)

Breaking the chain: The antitrust case against Wal-Mart, By Barry C. Lynn (Harper's Magazine): "the tendency within most of the systems we rely on for manufactured goods, processed commodities, and basic services has been toward ever more extreme consolidation. Consider raw materials: three firms control almost 75 percent of the global market in iron ore. Consider manufacturing services: Owens Illinois has rolled up roughly half the global capacity to supply glass containers. We see extreme consolidation in heavy equipment; General Electric builds 60 percent of large gas turbines as well as 60 percent of large wind turbines. In processed materials; Corning produces 60 percent of the glass for flat-screen televisions. Even in sneakers; Nike and Adidas split a 60-percent share of the global market. Consolidation reigns in banking, meatpacking, oil refining, and grains. It holds even in eyeglasses, a field in which the Italian firm Luxottica has captured control over five of the six national outlets in the U.S. market."

Going down in the downturn - Pinched: Tales from an Economic Downturn - Salon.com

Going down in the downturn - Pinched: Tales from an Economic Downturn - Salon.com: "'A blow job is better than no job.'"

Our Founding Father's Socialized Healthcare System - Paul J. O'Rourke - Open Salon

Our Founding Father's Socialized Healthcare System - Paul J. O'Rourke - Open Salon: "Our Founders realized that a healthy work force was essential to our economic health and growth. It was for this reason that, in July of 1798, Congress passed, and President John Adams signed into law an act “For the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen,” establishing the Marine Hospital Service.

This Federal government socialized healthcare insurance was funded by a tax that was withheld from the sailor’s pay, and then turned over to the government by the ship’s owner. This first payroll tax amounted to slightly over 1% of the sailor’s wages. An injured or sick sailor would make a claim, his record of payments would be confirmed, and he would be given a “chit” for admission to the local hospital. Some of these healthcare facilities were private, but in the larger ports Federal maritime hospitals were built."

Op-Ed Columnist - The Rage Is Not About Health Care - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - The Rage Is Not About Health Care - NYTimes.com: "No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a big deal, all right, so much so it doesn’t need Joe Biden’s adjective to hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page observed last week, the bill’s prototype is the health care legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas"

More Texas Humor...

Dear Texas: Please shut up. Sincerely, History - SFGate

VaccineEthics.org: The Arrival of the Salk Polio Vaccine: Documents from the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

VaccineEthics.org: The Arrival of the Salk Polio Vaccine: Documents from the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library: "By the late 1940s, researchers around the country were supported by the National Foundation, studying the virus and testing strategies that might lead to a safe and effective vaccine against polio. Among these researchers were Drs. John Enders, Frederick Robbins and Thomas Weller at Harvard University, who would share the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work growing polio in culture. Also studying the virus were Dr. Albert Sabin at the University of Cincinnati and Dr. Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh."

Depleted Cranium » Words Of Wisdom

Depleted Cranium » Words Of Wisdom: "“Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training.”
~Michael Shermer"

PolitiFact | Dewhurst says state's health care tab is $2.4 billion per year

PolitiFact | Dewhurst says state's health care tab is $2.4 billion per year: "There is a cost to extending health coverage to as many as 32 million uninsured Americans — and with 6.1 million people lacking health insurance, Texas has the nation's largest share (25.1 percent) of uninsured residents."

Texas state budget - Sunshine Review

Texas state budget - Sunshine Review: "'The state is likely to face severe budget constraints, not just today, but for a long time into tomorrow,' said Dale Craymer, chief economist for the business-backed Texas Taxpayers and Research Association. Stimulus money 'allowed us to buy time and to push the problem a little farther out,' said Craymer, who served as budget chief for the late Gov. Ann Richards. 'Next session (2011), we're going to have severe challenges.' Indeed, lawmakers are spending slightly less in state money than they did in the budget they wrote two years ago, but the federal money staved off drastic cuts"

New health insurance requirement ... was GOP idea - Yahoo! News

New health insurance requirement ... was GOP idea - Yahoo! News: "'The idea of an individual mandate as an alternative to single-payer was a Republican idea,' said health economist Mark Pauly of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. In 1991, he published a paper that explained how a mandate could be combined with tax credits — two ideas that are now part of Obama's law. Pauly's paper was well-received — by the George H.W. Bush administration."

Texas state budget (2008-2009) - Sunshine Review

Texas state budget (2008-2009) - Sunshine Review: "However, on February 3, 2009, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Straus signaled the need to reduce stated spending by $500 million by the end of the fiscal year citing “uncertain economic conditions” and the need to leave a “reasonable reserve in the rainy day fund” to avoid facing a deficit in 2011.[22] Anticipated incoming revenues included in the $80.1 billion budget for the year included federal funds, which the state has not yet received and could depend on the outcome of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act being currently debated in Congress.[23] The 2008-9 budget was also burdened by $2 billion in expenses related to hurricanes Ike, Dolly and Gustav.[24] The federal government is expected to reimburse the state for 75% of its costs related to the hurricane, but Governor Perry is seeking an 100% reimbursement.[25]"

Lantana camara.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Lantana camara.pdf (application/pdf Object)
In herbal medicine, infusions of the
leaves and other plant parts are used as an
antiinflammatory (Oyedapo and others 1999), a
tonic and expectorant, and added to baths as an
antirhumatic. Lantana extracts have also been
shown to be a powerful febrifuge (Liogier 1990).
Because the leaves and some other parts of lantana
are poisonous, care must be taken when it is used
medicinally. The ripe fruit is benign and heavily
consumed by birds and frequently eaten by
humans in some countries (Herzog and others
1994). Extracts of lantana leaves have shown
strong insecticidal and antimicrobial activity in
numerous experiments. Storing potatoes with
lantana leaves nearly eliminates damage by
Phthorimaea operculella Zeller, the potato tuber
moth (Lal 1987)

But: http://www.floridata.com/ref/l/lant_c.cfm
WARNING: Pets have reportedly become ill after ingesting lantana. The unripe berries are known to be very toxic and the foliage toxic to livestock.

Malaria in the Ohio Valley

Chapter 5.1: Elias Samuel Cooper and 19th Century Medicine: "Although present as a devastating pestilence throughout Eurasia and Africa from the earliest historic times, the New World was free of malaria until around 1500. At about this time it was brought to the Americas from Europe and Africa by the Spaniards and their slaves whose red blood cells, infected with the malarial parasite, were taken up by the bite of the ubiquitous Anopheles mosquitoes and transmitted thereby to an endless chain of human carriers. [13] The disease was unknown among the Indians in the Ohio Valley and the Northwest until after the arrival there of European immigrants. In Illinois, the incidence of malaria was at a low level from the first settlements in about 1700 until 1760 when it rose within a decade to epidemico-endemic proportions and held that position for about 80 years. It then began a slow decline in the 1850's, and virtually disappeared from the state by 1900."

Official Google Blog: A new approach to China: an update

Official Google Blog: A new approach to China: an update
earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong....We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement.
-- David Drummond, Google, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

So Now Google Thinks Everyone Should Care About Chinese Censorship?

So Now Google Thinks Everyone Should Care About Chinese Censorship?
Brin’s comments came in an interview with the Guardian. On the US government, as well as businesses in general, he said:
Human rights issues deserve equal time to the trade issues that are high priority now … I hope this gets taken seriously.
As for Microsoft, which has a tiny search presence in China, Brin’s “disappointed” that Microsoft oddly suggested that if you operate in a country, you should obey its laws. Oddly given that’s exactly what Google itself was doing for the past four years. He also said:
As I understand, they have effectively no market share – so they essentially spoke against freedom of speech and human rights simply in order to contradict Google.

JazzOasis.com - Pat Metheny on Kenny G

JazzOasis.com - Pat Metheny on Kenny G: "He had major rhythmic problems and his harmonic and melodic vocabulary was extremely limited, mostly to pentatonic based and blues-lick derived patterns, and he basically exhibited only a rudimentary understanding of how to function as a professional soloist in an ensemble - Lorber was basically playing him off the bandstand in terms of actual music."

Odds Are, It's Wrong - Science News

Odds Are, It's Wrong - Science News: "Correctly phrased, experimental data yielding a P value of .05 means that there is only a 5 percent chance of obtaining the observed (or more extreme) result if no real effect exists (that is, if the no-difference hypothesis is correct)."

Op-Ed Contributor - P.S.A. prostate screening is inaccurate and a waste of money. - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor - P.S.A. prostate screening is inaccurate and a waste of money. - NYTimes.com: "In approving the procedure, the Food and Drug Administration relied heavily on a study that showed testing could detect 3.8 percent of prostate cancers, which was a better rate than the standard method, a digital rectal exam."

Think Progress » Rockefeller: ‘The health insurance industry is the shark that sits right below the water.’

Think Progress » Rockefeller: ‘The health insurance industry is the shark that sits right below the water.’: "The health insurance industry is the shark that swims just below the water and you don’t see that shark until you feel the teeth of that shark."

Alice in Wonderland Review | Pajiba - Scathing Reviews for Bitchy People

Alice in Wonderland Review | Pajiba - Scathing Reviews for Bitchy People: "That’s Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland: Pretty on the outside, but soulless on the inside. Like Ann Coulter, if Anne Coulter was pretty on the outside."

Dell Rolls Out High-Performance, 'Alternative' PCs - Reviews by PC Magazine

Dell Rolls Out High-Performance, 'Alternative' PCs - Reviews by PC Magazine
The new Dell Flexible Computing Solution uses the FX100 as a terminal to a VMware View 4.0 environment running on a server. The VMware View environment hosts virtual desktops on a centralized server, which clients can access from any IP-connected client running on a desktop, laptop, or on Dell's FX100 Zero Client. VMWare View gives the IT manager a centrally managed system, yet it looks and feels like a traditional "desktop" to the end user. The FX100 does this using the PC over IP protocol, so 3D graphics, video, and audio are supported.

SiliconRepublic.com: In three years desktops will be irrelevant - Google sales chief - Business

SiliconRepublic.com: In three years desktops will be irrelevant - Google sales chief - Business
Google believes that in three years or so desktops will give way to mobile as the primary screen from which most people will consume information and entertainment. That’s according to Google Europe boss John Herlihy who said that smart phones enhance Google’s mission to make information universal.

Quick Fact: Wall Street Journal editorial ignores effective tax rate to claim U.S. corporate tax rate "is among the highest in the world" | Media Matters for America

Quick Fact: Wall Street Journal editorial ignores effective tax rate to claim U.S. corporate tax rate "is among the highest in the world" Media Matters for America

Fact: World Bank study found U.S. effective corporate lower than those of several industrialized nations, including China
In its Paying Taxes 2009 publication, based on its 2009 Doing Business report, the World Bank-International Finance Corporation estimated that the United States has a lower effective rate of current corporate tax than that of several other nations, including Germany, Canada, India, China, Brazil, Japan, and Italy. The publication also included a figure that compared effective and statutory corporate tax rates for several G8 and BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India, China] countries

Intel Updates Fourth-Quarter Financial Expectations

Intel Updates Fourth-Quarter Financial Expectations
In addition, the effective tax rate is expected to be approximately 20 percent, down from 26 percent.

Op-Ed Columnist - A Word From the Wise - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - A Word From the Wise - NYTimes.com
“The things that are not conducive to investments here are [corporate] taxes and capital equipment credits,” he said. “A new semiconductor factory at world scale built from scratch is about $4.5 billion — in the United States. If I build that factory in almost any other country in the world, where they have significant incentive programs, I could save $1 billion,” because of all the tax breaks these governments throw in.

Business Advice From Van Halen | Fast Company

Business Advice From Van Halen | Fast Company

Your source of data doesn't need to be high tech. In fact, it doesn't even need to be numerical. Consider Van Halen. (We have been waiting years for a chance to write that sentence.) In its 1980s heyday, the band became notorious for a clause in its touring contract that demanded a bowl of M&Ms backstage, but with all the brown ones removed. The story is true -- confirmed by former lead singer David Lee Roth himself -- and it became the perfect, appalling symbol of rock-star-diva behavior.

Get ready to reverse your perception. Van Halen did dozens of shows every year, and at each venue, the band would show up with nine 18-wheelers full of gear. Because of the technical complexity, the band's standard contract with venues was thick and convoluted -- Roth, in his inimitable way, said in his autobiography that it read "like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages." A typical "article" in the contract might say, "There will be 15 amperage voltage sockets at 20-foot spaces, evenly, providing 19 amperes."

Van Halen buried a special clause in the middle of the contract. It was called Article 126. It read, "There will be no brown M&Ms in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation." So when Roth would arrive at a new venue, he'd walk backstage and glance at the M&M bowl. If he saw a brown M&M, he'd demand a line check of the entire production. "Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error," he wrote. "They didn't read the contract.... Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show."

Can we avoid moralizing about the earthquake in Chile, please? - Michael Roston - Newsbroke - True/Slant

Can we avoid moralizing about the earthquake in Chile, please? - Michael Roston - Newsbroke - True/Slant: "The elderly sometimes don’t sleep very much, so it’s entirely possible that as a powerful earthquake struck Chile this morning, 8.8 magnitude on the richter scale, Pat Robertson was already awake in Virginia preparing to take to the airwaves of the Christian Broadcasting Network to explain to us how the Chileans had brought disaster and destruction on themselves."

PiCloud | FAQ

PiCloud | FAQ

What is PiCloud?

PiCloud is a fresh take on cloud computing. Our platform allows you to easily run any Python code on an auto-scaling, high-performance cluster. No server management required.

A snapshot of income disparity - latimes.com

A snapshot of income disparity - latimes.com: "'The incomes of the top 400 American households soared to a new record high in dollars and as a share of all income in 2007, while the income tax rates they paid fell to a record low.'

Between 2006 and 2007, according to the IRS, the average income of the country's 400 top taxpayers rose 31%, from $263.3 million to $344.8 million. At the same time, their effective income tax rate declined more than half a percentage point, from 17.17% in 2006 to 16.62% in 2007."

Asia Times Online :: Global Economy

Asia Times Online :: Global Economy: "And that's about when you reconcile to the inevitable future - Asia with its apparently permanent advantage on infrastructure and operating efficiency leaving Europe and North America ever further behind. Nothing appears to have the ability to reverse this trend."

White Whine - A New White Person Complaint Daily - Complaint #586

White Whine - A New White Person Complaint Daily - Complaint #586: "Ugh. The only vegetarian options at this ski resort are all so carby.

-Whine by Kelly"

Closos

Closos: "Lisp machines were promiscuous."

Joseph Stiglitz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joseph Stiglitz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stiglitz has shown (together with Bruce Greenwald) that "whenever markets are incomplete and /or information is imperfect (which are true in virtually all economies), even competitive market allocation is not constrained Pareto efficient". In other words, there almost always exists schemes of government intervention which can induce Pareto superior outcomes, thus making everyone better off.[8] Although these conclusions and the pervasiveness of market failures do not necessarily warrant the state intervening broadly in the economy, it makes clear that the "optimal" range of government recommendable interventions is definitely much larger than the traditional "market failure" school recognizes[9]

Correct use of "obnubilates"

The term "Cloud Computing" obnubilates computer science.

Reason Foundation - Where Ayn Rand Went Wrong

Reason Foundation - Where Ayn Rand Went Wrong
Adam Smith.. also recognized in the very first sentence of the Theory of Moral Sentiments—his brilliantly nuanced, richly observed study of human morality—that: "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."

Ayn Rand: engineer of souls by Anthony Daniels - The New Criterion

Ayn Rand: engineer of souls by Anthony Daniels - The New Criterion
From the correct psychological insight that the allegedly compassionate sometimes use the existence of the weak and needy as a tool for their own social ascent and attainment of power—whole political parties, in almost every country, are founded upon this principle—it does not in the least follow that there are no people in need of assistance or that compassion for them is ipso facto bogus and a cover for the will to power. From the insight that government assistance to the unfortunate increases the number of the unfortunate, often imprisoning them in their misfortune, it does not follow in the least that it is right for human beings to be utterly callous and indifferent to the fate of the unfortunate.

A Tie-Up Between Intel and TSMC Fizzles - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

A Tie-Up Between Intel and TSMC Fizzles - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
Intel confirmed this week that a lack of customer demand had put the partnership on hiatus for the short term. Which is to say, there will be no jointly developed Atoms arriving anytime soon, although Intel continues to hope for the best down the road.
“I think we had a lot of key learnings from the partnership so far,” Robert Crooke, Intel’s Atom chief, said in an interview. “We haven’t given up. These things never happen superfast.”

The Calpella Platform Update - Review Tom's Hardware : Mobile Core i7-920XM: Power Is The Price For Better Performance

The Calpella Platform Update - Review Tom's Hardware : Mobile Core i7-920XM: Power Is The Price For Better Performance
The base model, PM55, is derived from the desktop P55 you already know from our Core i5/Core i5 Lynnfield introduction. Designed to be paired with discrete graphics, it really is the foundation on which upcoming Calpella platforms will build. As a recap, it features eight of its own PCI Express 2.0 lanes, six SATA 3 Gb/s ports, Intel HD Audio, access to as many as 14 USB 2.0 ports, and Intel’s 2MB Ignition firmware (more on firmware in just a bit).
From there, we’ll see the HM55, HM57, QS57, and QM57 chipsets emerge in 2010, all with significantly more functionality than PM55.

Nautilus: Editors' advice on writing scientific papers

Nautilus: Editors' advice on writing scientific papers
Tell a story. We all love listening to a good story. And we all tell stories, but some are better at it than others, and those who tell the best stories are most able to get their points across. How you got your data is not that important—we don't need a chronology (first we did this, then we did that, etc.). Instead, now that you have the data and have interpreted them a certain way, think about how best to tell a story in light of all the previous work in the field, the question(s) you are addressing and why that question is important. How do your results advance our understanding of the question(s)? Have you discovered something new or unexpected? Consider how your findings fit into the broader context of the field, whether they are likely to change the way people in the field will think about the topic and how they will drive further experiments in the future.

Key Cloud Metric: Revenue per Server « Data Center Knowledge

Key Cloud Metric: Revenue per Server « Data Center Knowledge
Rackspace’s 56,671 servers shows an upward trend over the past four quarters from $2,899 to $2,991 (see chart above), even as net revenue per cloud customer has declined.

Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » I Have Ripped All My DVD’s to a Video Server

Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » I Have Ripped All My DVD’s to a Video Server: "The first thing I do when I buy a DVD is rip it to my video server. I have a 10TB RAID and I don’t even try to compress the disks, just copy them over in video_ts format using DVDfab6. I run SageTV on the server with the absolutely essential SageMC mod. I then can watch the video at every TV that has a Sage HD200 box. The whole system works for Bluray as well."

Swiss prostitutes armed with defibrillators • The Register

Swiss prostitutes armed with defibrillators • The Register: Safety First!

Ask the Performance Team : Windows Vista - SuperFetch & ReadyBoost

Ask the Performance Team : Windows Vista - SuperFetch & ReadyBoost: "You may have noticed that Vista tends to use a much greater percentage of system RAM than on Windows XP. It is not uncommon to view Task Manager on a Vista machine with several GB of RAM installed and less than 100MB of the RAM shows up as free"

NEW TAX LAW THREATENS HIGH-TECH CONSULTANTS - NYTimes.com

NEW TAX LAW THREATENS HIGH-TECH CONSULTANTS - NYTimes.com: "Companies whose consultants were considered independents had a competitive edge because they did not have to pay employee taxes on them. The consultant himself had tax breaks: he did not have payroll taxes taken out of his paychecks; he could invest part of his income in private pension funds that would be not be taxed for several years, and he could deduct a home office and other expenses that an employee could not."

WDP -1706 Tax Update-

WDP -1706 Tax Update-: "For many years, the IRS has been on a crusade to recharacterize workers as employees, rather than ICs. Initially, this attitude could be attributed to the circumstance that employment relationships were subject to a higher level of employment (FICA) taxes than independent contractor relationships. Although employment taxes are now effectively the same on both types of relationships (unless a worker has multiple employers), the IRS has continued to view IC relationships with hostility and suspicion. This attitude is now largely attributable to administrative convenience; it is much easier to collect taxes through payroll withholding than by relying on the workers to make estimated tax payments. The IRS also feels that ICs may be claiming inappropriate business deductions.

The IRS's crusade against IC arrangements caused many taxpayers to complain to Congress. In many cases the IRS collected taxes twice because employers were forced to pay the IRS the amount of income and FICA taxes they should have paid or withheld from the 'wages' paid to 'employees,' even though the workers paid their own income and self-employment taxes."

How the World Works - Salon.com

How the World Works - Salon.com: "the law 'made it extremely difficult for information technology professionals to work as self-employed individuals, forcing most to become company employees.'"

How a Tax Law Helps Insure a Scarcity of Programmers - NYTimes.com

How a Tax Law Helps Insure a Scarcity of Programmers - NYTimes.com: "The law generally excludes programmers from statutes giving employers some flexibility to use independent contractors. Critics say that the I.R.S. has recently stepped up its enforcement of the law in a way that effectively kills start-up programming businesses if their only employee is the founder.

The law, which was introduced by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, was estimated to raise $60 million over five years, a figure based on a belief by a staff member of the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation that employees cheat less on their taxes than independent contractors do. That was enough money to pay for a tax break, approved with Mr. Moynihan's support, that was sought by I.B.M. for its overseas operations. Under the Gramm-Rudman deficit control act of the previous year, Congress was required to pay for any tax cuts with comparable revenue increases or spending cuts."

Fabulous Adventures In Coding : A twist of lemon

Fabulous Adventures In Coding : A twist of lemon: "We considered a proposal to rename short, int, and long to short, tall, and grande. More thought on this issue is required; we will revisit this issue on Friday."

How Intel Manages 100,000 Servers « Data Center Knowledge

How Intel Manages 100,000 Servers « Data Center Knowledge
Chipmaker Intel has one of the largest data center management challenges on earth, with more than 100,000 servers housed in 97 data centers around the globe. About 70 percent of those servers support Intel staffers designing microprocessors, with the remainder dedicated to Intel’s office, IT and web operations. The company manages more than 18 petabytes of primary and secondary storage.

Context of '1947: Victim of Japanese Waterboarding Relates Story to US War Crimes Tribunal'

Context of '1947: Victim of Japanese Waterboarding Relates Story to US War Crimes Tribunal': "1947: Victim of Japanese Waterboarding Relates Story to US War Crimes Tribunal
Edit event

Japanese soldier Chinsaku Yuki is tried by the US for war crimes involving, among other offenses, waterboarding Filipino civilians. One of his victims is lawyer Ramon Navarro. During the trial, Navarro recalls being waterboarded by Yuki. “When Yuki could not get anything out of me, he wanted the interpreter to place me down below,” he tells the court. “And I was told by Yuki to take off all my clothes, so what I did was to take off my clothes as ordered. I was ordered to lay on a bench and Yuki tied my feet, hands, and neck to that bench, lying with my face upward. After I was tied to the bench, Yuki placed some cloth on my face. And then with water from the faucet, they poured on me until I became unconscious. He repeated that four or five times.” Asked if he could breathe, Navarro says: “No, I could not, and so I, for a time, lost consciousness. I found my consciousness came back again and found Yuki was sitting on my stomach. And then I vomited the water from my stomach, and the consciousness came back again for me. [The water came f]rom my mouth and all openings of my face… and then Yuki would repeat the same treatment and the same procedure to me until I became unconscious again.” Navarro recalls he was tortured like this “four or five times.” He says he lied to Yuki to end the torment: “When I was not able to endure his punishment which I received, I told a lie to Yuki.… I could not really show anything to Yuki, because I was really lying just to stop the torture.”"

Contrary Brin: Distinguishing Climate "Deniers" From "Skeptics"

Contrary Brin: Distinguishing Climate "Deniers" From "Skeptics": "Several claimed to be rational, educated fellows who regret the shrill anti-intellectualism of Fox News. Yet, they still defend the core notion underlying the anti-HGCC (human generated Climate change) movement -- the premise that virtually 100% of the thousands of scientists in a given field can be suborned, corrupted, or intimidated simultaneously into supporting a nonsensical, baseless theory.

A baseless theory that thousands of 'skeptics' happen to be able to see through, all at the same time.

'We skeptics just want to get our questions answered,' one person wrote. 'Until then, of course, society should do nothing rash.'

That sounds so reasonable, who could refuse?

Well, in fact, after two decades of seeing 'let's not do anything rash' used as a talking point excuse for doing nothing at all? No, it doesn't sound reasonable."

I'm a Global Warming skeptic, and I invite you to change my mind. : science

I'm a Global Warming skeptic, and I invite you to change my mind. : science: "Here are some sources that might help,

1.

NASA http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_warming_worldbook.html http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarmingQandA/ http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif (The graph)
2.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Climatic Data Center http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
3.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) http://www.wmo.ch/pages/about/wmo50/e/world/climate_pages/global_warming_e.html
4.

American Meteorological Society http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html
5.

National Center for Atmospheric Research “How do we know Earth is warming now?” http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/research/climate/now.php
6.

Earth System Research Laboratory - Global Monitoring Division “Climate Forcing” http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/about/climate.html
7.

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/warming.jsp
8.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory - California Institute of Technology “Global Climate Change” “How do we know?” http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/evidence/
9.

American Geophysical Union (world's largest scientific society of Earth and space scientists) “Human Impacts on Climate” http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/climate_change_position.html
10.

American Association for the Advancement of Science “The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now” http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climate_change/mtg_200702/aaas_climate_statement.pdf http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climate_change/
11.

The United States Energy Information Administration “Greenhouse Gases, Climate Change, and Energy” http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/greenhouse/Chapter1.htm
12.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Report: Human activity fuels global warming” http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/climate.html
13.

California Institute of Technology “How We Know Global Warming is Real” “The science behind human-induced climate change” http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tapio/papers/skeptic_2008.pdf
14.

Atmospheric Sciences - University of Illinois - Champaign “Evidence continues to mount that human activities are altering the Earth’s climate on a global scale.” http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu/research/01climate.html
15.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution “Global Warming” http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12457
16.

The UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre “Climate change - the big picture” http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/index.html http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/
17.

The UK’s Royal Society “Climate change controversies: a simple guide” http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=6229
18.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Based in Switzerland) “Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report” http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf
19.

Japan Meteorological Agency “Global Warming Projection Vol.7” http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/gwp7/index-e.html
20.

The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society “Our climate has changed substantially.” “Global climate change and global warming are real and observable.” http://www.amos.org.au/publications/cid/3/t/publications
21.

Royal Society of New Zealand “The globe is warming because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.” http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/Site/news/media_releases/2008/clim0708.aspx
22.

National Geographic Magazine http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/
23.

Scientific American Magazine http://www.sciam.com/topic.cfm?id=global-warming-and-climate-change"

Dick Cheney Admits to Torture Conspiracy | | AlterNet

Dick Cheney Admits to Torture Conspiracy | | AlterNet:


On Sunday, Cheney pronounced himself 'a big supporter of waterboarding,' a near-drowning technique that has been regarded as torture back to the Spanish Inquisition and that has long been treated by U.S. authorities as a serious war crime, such as when Japanese commanders were prosecuted for using it on American prisoners during World War II."

Mark's Blog : The Machine SID Duplication Myth

Mark's Blog : The Machine SID Duplication Myth: "The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that machine SID duplication – having multiple computers with the same machine SID – doesn’t pose any problem, security or otherwise."

Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in r... [J Pers Soc Psychol. 1999] - PubMed result

Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in r... [J Pers Soc Psychol. 1999] - PubMed result: "Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities"

Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do | Psychology Today

Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do Psychology Today
One of my all-time favorites among all the scientific papers that I have ever read in my life is “Why your friends have more friends than you do,” published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1991 by my old sociology friend Scott L. Feld, who is now Professor of Sociology at Purdue University

ProtectKeyWithTPM Method of the Win32_EncryptableVolume Class (Windows)

ProtectKeyWithTPM Method of the Win32_EncryptableVolume Class (Windows)
A platform validation profile consists of a set of Platform Configuration Register (PCR) indices ranging from 0 to 23, inclusive. Repeat values in the parameter are ignored. Each PCR index is associated with components that run when the operating system starts. Each time the computer starts, the TPM will check that the components you specified in the platform validation profile have not changed. If any of these components change while BitLocker Drive Encryption (BDE) protection remains on, the TPM will not release the encryption key to unlock the disk volume and the computer will enter into recovery mode.
If this parameter is specified while the corresponding Group Policy setting has been enabled, it must match the Group Policy setting.
If this parameter is not specified, the default of 0, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, and 11 is used. The default platform validation profile secures the encryption key against changes to the Core Root of Trust of Measurement (CRTM), BIOS, and Platform Extensions (PCR 0), Option ROM Code (PCR 2), the Master Boot Record (MBR) Code (PCR 4), the Master Boot Record (MBR) Partition Table (PCR 5), the NTFS Boot Sector (PCR 8), the NTFS Boot Code (PCR 9), the Boot Manager (PCR 10), and the BitLocker Drive Encryption Access Control (PCR 11). For the security of your computer, we recommend the default profile. For additional protection against early startup configuration changes, use a profile of PCRs 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11.

Clean smells promote generosity and fair play; dark rooms and sunglasses promote deceit and selfishness : Not Exactly Rocket Science

Clean smells promote generosity and fair play; dark rooms and sunglasses promote deceit and selfishness : Not Exactly Rocket Science: "Now, Zhong, together with Katie Liljenquist and Adam Galinsky, have expanded on these studies by showing that clean smells can make people behave more virtuously. They ushered 28 volunteers into a room that was either unscented or that had been lightly sprayed with a citrus air freshener. In either case, they had to play a trust game, where a 'sender' has a pot of money and chooses how much they want to invest with a 'receiver'. The investment is tripled and the receiver decides how much to give back.

The volunteers were all told that they had been randomly chosen as receivers. Their anonymous partner had invested their entire $4 pot with them, which had been tripled to $12. Their job was to decide how much to give back. On average, they returned a measly $2.81in the unscented rooms but a more equitable $5.33 in the scented ones. The single spray of citrus nearly doubled their tendency to reciprocate.

In a second experiment, the trio again ushered 99 students into either a scented or unscented room. They were given a pack of miscellaneous tasks, including a flyer requesting volunteers for a charity called Habitat for Humanity. Those in the citrus-scented rooms were more likely to be interested in volunteering, and almost four times more willing to donate money to the cause."

The Religion Virus: The Tea Party: The Sarah Palin Sycophant Party

The Religion Virus: The Tea Party: The Sarah Palin Sycophant Party: "My favorite line from Palin's speech at the Tea Party convention: When asked what she'd do to improve national security, a key point in her strategic plan was to 'pray for divine intervention.' Seriously! She actually believes that asking for magical intervention from God should be part of our military and diplomatic strategy. If she is ever elected, we'll need some magic, that's for sure."

Security chip that does encryption in PCs hacked - Yahoo! News

Security chip that does encryption in PCs hacked - Yahoo! News
Using off-the-shelf chemicals, Tarnovsky soaked chips in acid to dissolve their hard outer shells. Then he applied rust remover to help take off layers of mesh wiring, to expose the chips' cores. From there, he had to find the right communication channels to tap into using a very small needle.
The needle allowed him to set up a wiretap and eavesdrop on all the programming instructions as they are sent back and forth between the chip and the computer's memory. Those instructions hold the secrets to the computer's encryption, and he didn't find them encrypted because he was physically inside the chip.
Even once he had done all that, he said he still had to crack the "huge problem" of figuring out how to avoid traps programmed into the chip's software as an extra layer of defense.
"This chip is mean, man — it's like a ticking time bomb if you don't do something right," Tarnovsky said

Dell BIOS Flash codes

Documentation
System Flash Codes
When errors that occur during the boot routine cannot be reported on the display or on an external monitor (if attached), the Num Lock, Caps Lock, and Scroll Lock indicators (see Figure 1) may flash together in a pattern of lights (or flash code) that identifies the problem. For example, one flash, followed by a second flash, and then a burst of three flashes (code 1-1-3) means that the computer was unable to read the data in nonvolatile random-access memory (NVRAM). This information is important to the Dell support staff if you need to call for technical assistance.
The Num Lock, Caps Lock, and Scroll Lock indicators flash briefly when the computer is turned on. The flash codes, if needed, occur after the boot routine.

Denim and Tweed: Dethroning the Red Queen?

Denim and Tweed: Dethroning the Red Queen?: "This competing model should also lead to a roughly constant rate of species formation and extinction, but it predicts a different pattern of variation around that constant rate than the coevolutionary Red Queen does. If most speciation and extinction events are caused by coevolution, then the time periods between speciation events should follow a normal distribution – forming a 'bell curve' with most periods close to the average length, and symmetrical tails of longer and shorter periods of time. On the other hand, if many different, individually rare geological events are the most common cause of speciation and extinction, the periods between speciation events should follow an exponential distribution, with most periods being shorter than the average, but a long tail of longer periods as well."

Apple’s A4 chip: Engineers correct stupid journalist | VentureBeat

Apple’s A4 chip: Engineers correct stupid journalist | VentureBeat: "“With the A4 Apple has taken an ARM CPU core and married it with exactly the IP they need. They needed a memory controller, a display controller, a 3D graphics engine, a WiFi core, etc. etc. etc. There are no (well, not exaclty, but for all practical purposes) unnecessary blocks in the A4 chi"

Op-Ed Contributor - Microsoft’s Creative Destruction - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor - Microsoft’s Creative Destruction - NYTimes.com: "why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon’s Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter."

Always Sign Your PGP Public Key

Always Sign Your PGP Public Key
Here's how the attack works. I take your unsigned public key, and (using a suitably powerful editor, such as Emacs) I edit the userid string so that it still has your name but my email address on it. Then I distribute this modified key widely. Note that the modified key continues to have the same key fingerprint as the unmodified key, so it appears to be your key to all who do not know your email address

Server Processors: Chapter 2009 (Part 2)

Server Processors: Chapter 2009 (Part 2)
One possible answer is that the trend is unstoppable. Interest in non-x86 high-end processors will continue to decline until it vanishes entirely. POWER, Itanium, and SPARC will simply take their places as the final three victims in a long line of failed high-end processor architectures: Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, Clipper, the 88000, the 29000, the i960, and a host of other largely forgotten architectures that once vied for performance leadership.

On Faith Panelists Blog: The Great Tim Tebow Fallacy - Richard Dawkins

On Faith Panelists Blog: The Great Tim Tebow Fallacy - Richard Dawkins: "I gather that Tim Tebow is extremely good at football. That's just as well, for he certainly isn't very good at thinking. Perhaps the fact that he was home schooled by missionary parents is to blame.

The following is what passes for logic in the Tebow mind. His mother was advised by doctors to abort him, but she refused, which is why Tim is here. So abortion is a bad thing. Masterful conclusion."

PC Client Implementation for BIOS.pdf (application/pdf Object)

PC Client Implementation for BIOS.pdf (application/pdf Object)

The PARTIES Partition is a hidden partition on the hard drive that BIOS can use for
additional storage space and as a virtual drive. In the PARTIES Partition, there is a small
1455 section called the BEER.
-- TCG PC Client Specific
Implementation Specification
For Conventional BIOS
Version 1.20

mccunej_phd.pdf (application/pdf Object)

mccunej_phd.pdf (application/pdf Object)
reducing the TCB

Organizing for America | BarackObama.com

Organizing for America | BarackObama.com: "we need to stand up to the special interests, bring Republicans and Democrats together, and pass the Farm Bill immediately."

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - South Carolina Lt. Gov. compares poor to ’stray animals’ « - Blogs from CNN.com

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - South Carolina Lt. Gov. compares poor to ’stray animals’ « - Blogs from CNN.com: "'My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals,' Bauer told an audience in the town of Fountain Inn, according to the Greenville News. 'You know why? Because they breed.'

'You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply,' Bauer continued. 'They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better.'

Bauer said recipients of government assistance should undergo drug testing or be forced to attend parent-teacher conferences, or else lose their benefits."

PUT or POST: The REST of the Story « Open Sourcery

PUT or POST: The REST of the Story « Open Sourcery
After that discussion, a more realistic mapping would seem to be:
Create = PUT iff you are sending the full content of the specified resource (URL).
Create = POST if you are sending a command to the server to create a subordinate of the specified resource, using some server-side algorithm.
Retrieve = GET.
Update = PUT iff you are updating the full content of the specified resource.
Update = POST if you are requesting the server to update one or more subordinates of the specified resource.
Delete = DELETE.

Redis Virtual Memory: the story and the code

Redis Virtual Memory: the story and the code: "Using memcached in order to cache SQL queries is a well established pattern. My SQL DB is slow, so I write an application layer to take the frequently accessed data in memcached (handling invalidation by hand), so I can query this faster cache instead of the DB. The idea is to take data on disk, but to cache the hotspot in memory for fast access.

Redis + VM is exactly the reverse. You take your data in memory, but what is not the hot spot is disk-backed in order to free mem for more interesting data. In both models the frequently accessed data will stay in memory, but the process is reversed, with the following benefits:"

State of the Union 2010 « Whatever

State of the Union 2010 « Whatever: "As for the Republicans, a recent reader was distressed when I said they were “hopped-up ignorant nihilists,” but you know what, when your Senate operating strategy is “filibuster everything and let Fox News do the rest,” and the party as a whole gives it a thumbs up, guess what, you’re goddamned nihilists. There’s no actual political strategy in GOP anymore other than taking joy in defeating the Democrats. I don’t have a problem with them enjoying such a thing, but it’s not a real political philosophy, or at least shouldn’t be."

Kernel Planet

Kernel Planet: "ntelligent Power Sharing (IPS). Core i7-6xx and 7xx chips are MCP (multi-chip packages); both the CPU and GPU/MCH are in the same physical processor package, but not on the same die. This means they share a thermal and power design domain. In many cases, only one of the components will be very busy, and thus generating much heat or drawing much power, and it would be a waste to let any extra thermal or power headroom go unused. IPS allows one component to use more than its share of power or thermal budget so long as the other component is idle enough to allow it. One of the key parts of this technology is so-called “graphics turbo', in other words the capability of the GPU to exceed its default frequency (and therefore thermal and power budget) when possible."

Benlog » Don’t Hash Secrets

Benlog » Don’t Hash Secrets: "So, again, don’t hash secrets. HMAC them."

Apple A4 SOC unveiled - It's an ARM CPU and the GPU! - Bright Side Of News*

Apple A4 SOC unveiled - It's an ARM CPU and the GPU! - Bright Side Of News*
A4 is a System-on-a-Chip, or SOC, that integrates the main processor [ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore i.e. Multi-Processing Core, identical to ones used in nVidia Tegra and Qualcomm Snapdragon] with graphics silicon [ARM Mali 50-Series GPU], and other functions like the memory controller on one piece of silicon - not unlike what Intel is trying to achieve with its future "Moorestown" Atom processor that debuted inside LG's Smartphone. http://scoop.intel.com/2010/01/intel-moorestown-smartphones-at-ces.php

CommsDesign - Who's in $1 billion capex club?

CommsDesign - Who's in $1 billion capex club?
According to IC Insights, the $1 billion spenders include the following IC firms in 2010: Samsung ($6 billion), Intel ($5.3 billion), TSMC ($3 billion), Hynix ($2 billion), Toshiba ($1.95 billion), AMD/GlobalFoundries ($1.9 billion), Micron ($1.3 billion), Nanya ($1.1 billion) and Elpida ($1 billion).

SSL for free - step by step - The H Security: News and Features

SSL for free - step by step - The H Security: News and Features: "Israeli vendor StartSSL offers free SSL server certificates that are valid for a year."

Internal Memo: Sun CEO Jon Schwartz to Staff | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

Internal Memo: Sun CEO Jon Schwartz to Staff John Paczkowski Digital Daily AllThingsD
to the engineers and marketers who’ve fostered a perpetual belief that innovation creates its own opportunity – thank you. You’re right. Innovation does create its own opportunity. Like Oracle, we’re an engineering company in our heart and soul, our potential together is limitless.

Cloud Best Practices

cloudbestpractices-jvaria.pdf (application/pdf Object)
For several years, software architects have discovered and implemented several concepts and best practices to build highly scalable applications. In today’s "era of tera", these concepts are even more applicable because of ever-growing datasets, unpredictable traffic patterns, and the demand for faster response times. This paper will reinforce and reiterate some of these traditional concepts and discuss how they may evolve in the context of cloud computing. It will also discuss some unprecedented concepts such as elasticity that have emerged due to the dynamic nature of the cloud.
This paper is targeted towards cloud architects who are gearing up to move an enterprise-class application from a fixed physical environment to a virtualized cloud environment. The focus of this paper is to highlight concepts, principles and best practices in creating new cloud applications or migrating existing applications to the cloud.

Coachella - Official News

Coachella - Official News: "COACHELLA VALLEY MUSIC & ARTS FESTIVAL
ANNOUNCES 2010 LINE-UP

JAY-Z, MUSE AND GORILLAZ HEADLINE
3-DAY FESTIVAL WITH MORE THAN 130 ACTS
ROUNDING OUT LINE-UP"

Apple & LaLa

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/19/apples-secret-cloud-strategy-and-why-lala-is-critical/ "An upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user’s catalog to the net making it available from any browser or net connected ipod/touch/tablet. The Lala upload technology will be bundled into a future iTunes upgrade which will automatically be installed for the 100+ million itunes users with a simple “An upgrade is available…” notification dialog box. After installation iTunes will push in the background their entire media library to their personal mobile iTunes area. Once loaded, users will be able to navigate and play their music, videos and playlists from their personal URL using a browser based iTunes experience"

Apple Share

ShareThis: "Apple's year-over-year growth at 23%, and also put it in fifth place, behind Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer and Toshiba. Apple's new position is down one from the same quarter in 2008."

Who-T: git patches from tarballs

Who-T: git patches from tarballs
It is quite easy though to create git patches from your tarballs. Simply run the following command in the extracted directory:git init && git add --ignore-errors .; git commit -m "`basename $PWD`"

LoJack For Laptops- New York Times

LoJack for LapTops: "Intel’s newest line of notebook chipsets for 2010 have an extra security feature: They can be ordered remotely to lock up at a below-the-operating-system level, so the laptop will only boot a notice that it’s not available. It can optionally display, say, the owner’s name and email, in case it’s brought into a pawn shop. To turn it back on, it needs an extra-special password that only the user, an IT worker, or Absolute can provide."

Rethinking artificial intelligence

Rethinking artificial intelligence: "The project is being funded by the Make a Mind Company, whose chairman is Richard Wirt, an Intel Senior Fellow."

What's the Best Way to Share Files Across Multiple Home Computers? - File Sharing - Lifehacker

What's the Best Way to Share Files Across Multiple Home Computers? - File Sharing - Lifehacker: "ou could also put together your own network-attached storage (NAS); FreeNAS is an extremely popular free and open-source NAS worth checking out.

One of our absolute favorite ways to swap files is with Dropbox. For the low cost of free, you can install a folder on any Window, Mac OS X, or Linux-based computer, then just drag and drop files right into it that you want to share with others. Once you stick a file into the folder, it instantly syncs to Dropbox's server and is available to the rest of your family on their own computers in just a couple of clicks."

I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Microsoft 2010 SP1 - Cringely on technology

I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Microsoft 2010 SP1 - Cringely on technology: "For a company with 10,000 employees, setting them up to use Microsoft technology will cost you $3,360,000. Over half of that will be for Office and you’ll pay that Office tax every year."

Fabulous Adventures In Coding : First Cousins Once Removed

Fabulous Adventures In Coding : First Cousins Once Removed: "Take two different people who have a common ancestor but who are not related by direct succession (that is, neither is the mother, father, grandmother, and so on, of the other):

Degree of cousin-hood is the minimum of the numbers of generations back that you have to go to find the nearest common ancestor, minus one.

Removed-ness is the absolute difference between the numbers of generations back you have to go to find the nearest common ancestor."

A Software Insider’s Point of View » Event Report: 2009 SAP Influencer Summit - SAP Must Put Strategy To Execution In Order To Prove Clarity Of Vision

A Software Insider’s Point of View » Event Report: 2009 SAP Influencer Summit - SAP Must Put Strategy To Execution In Order To Prove Clarity Of Vision
Technology strategy: “C+”. Middleware strategy remains murky at best. SAP should revamp NetWeaver or junk it. NetWeaver is to Blackberry as Salesforce.com’s Force.com is to iPhone. It’s so much easier to build apps on Force.com and iPhone than it is for SAP’s NetWeaver and RIM’s Blackberry. The decision to emphasize the NetWeaver ABAP stack over the NetWeaver Java stack will leave customers and partners confused despite how much more efficient it is to build on ABAP. In addition, the lack of good business process orchestration at both run time and design time remains a critical hole for investment and gives vendors such as IBM and Cordys opportunities to sit on-top of SAP apps. Mobile strategy at first seems less emphasized with the rare mention of native apps development on Blackberry and other platforms. Nevertheless, SAP’s decision to leave mobile platform integration of Blackberry and others at the NetWeaver Mobile layer may prove to be the most efficient and effective approach. The move to in-Memory will help with future development, yet customers lack confidence in SAP’s execution of the Timeless Software argument, despite its best intentions. It appears that SAP will have 2 OnDemand strategies. Lighter applications will be built on Java. More complex applications to be built on the OnDemand stack.

blog.reddit -- what's new on reddit: Why did we take reddit down for 71 minutes?

blog.reddit -- what's new on reddit: Why did we take reddit down for 71 minutes?: "We use a lot of the EBS disks. All of our databases were each using one EBS. This worked really well for us up until a week or so ago. Then all of you came back from holiday and decided that work was just too boring or something, and our traffic spiked, essentially breaking the camel's back, if you will.

In response, we started upgrading some of our databases to use a software RAID of EBS disks, which gives drastically increased performance (at a higher cost of course). This worked really well, but there was still one missing piece of the puzzle.

Part of our setup uses what we call a 'permacache', which uses Memcachedb. Memcachedb is Memcached with a built-in permanent storage system using BDB. One of the 'features' of this system is that it saves up its disk writes and then bursts them to the disk. Unfortunately, the single EBS volumes they were on could not handle these bursting writes. Memcachedb also has another feature that blocks all reads while it writes to the disk. These two things together would cause the site to go down for about 30 seconds every hour or so lately."

Getting Good IO from Amazon's EBS

Getting Good IO from Amazon's EBS: "Now, I just need to take a moment to point something out. Performance testing on EBS is very hard. The disks speed up and slow down on their own. A lot. Telling when your tweak is helping vs it just being luck is not easy. It feels a bit like trying to clock the speed of passing cars with a radar gun from the back of a rampaging bull. I fully expect to find that some of my discoveries here are just a mare’s nest, but hopefully others will prove enduring."

Windows 7 RTM God Mode (GodMode) - Windows client deities are actually in short supply - Softpedia

Windows 7 RTM God Mode (GodMode) - Windows client deities are actually in short supply - Softpedia
The trick lies in a fully documented Windows 7 shell feature that developers can leverage, namely “Using File System Folders as Junction Points” according to BrandonLive. Devs have the possibility to use MyFolder.{Extension CLSID} in order to transform file system folders into junction points. This means that folders created in this manner will feature the MyFolder label in Windows Explorer, in the search box in the top right hand side corner.

Mark Nandor's Solution to the Longest Line Question

Mark Nandor's Solution to the Longest Line Question: "Our journey starts at Ocean Creek by the Makah Indian Reservation in Washington (124° 41' 38'' W, 48° 21' 44'' N), and our amazing journey ends near 1 Ocean Drive, Jupiter, Florida, 33469 (80° 4' 29'' W, 26° 57' 11'' N). The distance between these two points is an impressive 2802 miles"

FT.com / Books - Books of the year

FT.com / Books - Books of the year: "Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon
By Craig Nelson
John Murray, £18.99
This punchy, popular history focuses on the Apollo programme within the context of the space race – the US and the USSR’s contest to outdo each other in space technology. Gripping, geekily detailed accounts of what it was like to ride a Saturn V or walk on another world are interspersed with a lively take on the cold war rivalry that made it happen."

Is aviation security mostly for show? - CNN.com

Is aviation security mostly for show? - CNN.com: "Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we're doing the terrorists' job for them."