mental_floss Blog » 10 Latin Phrases You Pretend to Understand

mental_floss Blog » 10 Latin Phrases You Pretend to Understand: "5. E Pluribus Unum
(EE PLUR-uh-buhs OOH-nuhm): “Out of many, one”Less unique than it sounds, America’s original national motto, e pluribus unum, was plagiarized from an ancient recipe for salad dressing. In the 18th century, haughty intellectuals were fond of this phrase. It was the kind of thing gentlemen’s magazines would use to describe their year-end editions. But the term made its first appearance in Virgil’s poem “Moretum” to describe salad dressing. The ingredients, he wrote, would surrender their individual aesthetic when mixed with others to form one unique, homogenous, harmonious, and tasty concoction. As a slogan, it really nailed that whole cultural melting pot thing we were going for. And while it continues to appear on U.S. coins, “In God We Trust” came along later (officially in 1956) to share the motto spotlight."

Nvidia CEO: Netbooks and Tablets to Meld, Hints at Tegra-Powered webOS Devices

Nvidia CEO: Netbooks and Tablets to Meld, Hints at Tegra-Powered webOS Devices: "What’s your take on Intel’s Z6 Moorestown chip? Will they be competitive?
No. It’s not possible. You could give an elephant a diet but it’s still an elephant."

Google's CEO: 'The Laws Are Written by Lobbyists' - Derek Thompson - Technology - The Atlantic

Google's CEO: 'The Laws Are Written by Lobbyists' - Derek Thompson - Technology - The Atlantic:

'The average American doesn't realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists' to protect incumbent interests, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Atlantic editor James Bennet at the Washington Ideas Forum. 'It's shocking how the system actually works.'

Third_Way_Idea_Brief_-_A_Taxpayer_Receipt.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Third_Way_Idea_Brief_-_A_Taxpayer_Receipt.pdf (application/pdf Object):
What You Paid For
2009 tax receipt for a taxpayer earning $34,140 and paying
$5,400 in federal income tax and FICA (selected items)
4

Social Security $ 1,040.70
Medicare $ 625.51
Medicaid $ 385.28
Interest on the National Debt $ 287.03
Combat Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan $229.17
Military Personnel $192.79
Veteran’s Benefits $74.65
National Parks $ 69.36
Federal Highways $ 63.89
Health care research (NIH) $ 46.54

PolitiFact | Tim Pawlenty says the U.S. is not undertaxed compared to its competitors

PolitiFact | Tim Pawlenty says the U.S. is not undertaxed compared to its competitors: "Actually,' Marcus wrote, 'the United States is on the low end in terms of the overall tax burden -- 28 percent of gross domestic product in 2007, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, compared with an average of 36 percent in the 30 OECD countries. Only South Korea, Mexico and Turkey were lower.'

By locating the OECD chart -- which is exactly what we would have done -- Marcus ably did much of our work for us. But we still wanted to check with a few tax experts to make sure that she didn't miss anything in her analysis.

Three experts we queried -- Daniel J. Mitchell, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, William Ahern, the director of policy and communications at the Tax Foundation, a tax research group, and Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research -- all agreed with Marcus's conclusion, though Ahern and Mitchell took the opportunity to add some additional context.

Ahern said that tax-burden-to-GDP ratios -- the data that underlies the OECD chart -- should be used carefully because they can obscure deficits. A country with a low tax-to-GDP ratio may have a substantial deficit, and in time, that deficit will put upward pressure on taxes. So nations with low tax-to-GDP ratios may not find those ratios sustainable over the long term.

Mitchell, for his part, agreed with Marcus' point about the overall tax burden, but he noted that in the U.S., the burden from different types of taxes varies. Some types of taxes, such as corporate taxes, are among the highest of the OECD nations. Others are closer to average, such as the top income tax rate and the capital gains tax rate.

'The big reason the U.S. has a lower aggregate tax burden when measured as a share of GDP is that we don't -- yet -- have a value-added tax,' Mitchell said. 'Our payroll taxes also tend to be lower than average.'

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How Popular Is the iPhone, Really? [INFOGRAPHIC]

How Popular Is the iPhone, Really? [INFOGRAPHIC]: "nifty infographic that puts many facts about the iPhone into perspective

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Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money - Politics - GOOD

Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money - Politics - GOOD: "The richest 20 percent, represented by that blue line, has about 85 percent of the wealth. The next richest 20 percent, represented by that red line, has about 10 percent of the wealth. And the remaining three-fifths of America shares a tiny sliver of the country's wealth.

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Security Lessons Learned From The Diaspora Launch: MicroISV on a Shoestring

Security Lessons Learned From The Diaspora Launch: MicroISV on a Shoestring: "This is what kills most encryption systems in real life. You don’t have to beat encryption to beat the system, you just have to beat the weakest link in the chain around it. That almost certainly isn’t the encryption algorithm — it is some inadequacy in the larger system added by a developer who barely understands crypto but who trusts that sprinkling it in magically makes it better. Crypto is not soy sauce for security.

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Support Certificates In Your Apps with the .NET Framework 2.0

Support Certificates In Your Apps with the .NET Framework 2.0
SSL Support
The SSL authentication protocol relies on certificates. Support for SSL in the .NET Framework consists of two parts. The special (but most widely used) case of SSL over HTTP is implemented by the HttpWebRequest class (this is also ultimately used for Web service client proxies). To enable SSL, you don't have to do anything special besides specify a URL that uses the https: protocol.
When connecting to an SSL secured endpoint, the server certificate is validated on the client. If validation fails, by default the connection is immediately closed. You can override this behavior by providing a callback to a class called ServicePointManager. Whenever the HTTP client stack does certificate validation, it first checks if a callback is provided-if that's the case, it executes your code. To hook up the callback, you have to provide a delegate of type RemoteCertificateValidationCallback: Copy Code // override default certificate policy
// (for example, for testing purposes)
ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback =
new RemoteCertificateValidationCallback(VerifyServerCertificate);

Intel's upgradable processor: good sense or utter catastrophe?

Intel's upgradable processor: good sense or utter catastrophe?: "Intel is about to experiment with a new concept in mass-market processors with its forthcoming Pentium G6951 CPU: upgradability."


Instead, the company designs a few processors that can do everything ("real" variations include core count, presence of QPI connections, number of memory channels, and a few other things), and then selectively disables features. Sometimes the decision is made for Intel—a chip might have a manufacturing defect that limits the amount of cache it can use, and not all chips can run at the same frequency within a given power envelope—but a lot of the time, the company is disabling functional hardware. For example, every Pentium G6950 processor has the hardware to do hyperthreading. It's just that it's been permanently disabled at the factory, because Intel's bean-counters have decided that that particular grade of processor won't have hyperthreading

eWeek

eWeek: ". “Oracle is an extremely micromanaged company. So myself and my peers in the Java area were not allowed to decide anything. All of our authority to decide anything evaporated.”
That bent Gosling’s resolve like a wishbone in the hands of two eager siblings in mid-pull after Thanksgiving dinner, but even that didn’t break it. What ultimately snapped the wishbone and made Gosling want to holler and throw up his hands Marvin-Gaye style was that “My job seemed to be to get up on stage and be a public presence for Java for Oracle. I’m from the wrong Myers-Briggs quadrant for that,” he said."

Intel + DRM: a crippled processor that you have to pay extra to unlock - Boing Boing

Intel + DRM: a crippled processor that you have to pay extra to unlock - Boing Boing: "This idea, which Siva Vaidhyanathan calls 'If value, then right,' sounds reasonable on its face. But it's a principle that flies in the face of the entire human history of innovation. By this reasoning, the company that makes big tins of juice should be able to charge you extra for the right to use the empty cans to store lugnuts; the company that makes your living room TV should be able to charge more when you retire it to the cottage; the company that makes your coat-hanger should be able to charge more when you unbend it to fish something out from under the dryer.
Moreover, it's an idea that is fundamentally anti-private-property. Under the 'If value, then right' theory, you don't own anything you buy. You are a mere licensor, entitled to extract only the value that your vendor has deigned to provide you with. The matchbook is to light birthday candles, not to fix a wobbly table. The toilet roll is to hold the paper, not to use in a craft project. 'If value, then right,' is a business model that relies on all the innovation taking place in large corporate labs, with none of it happening at the lab in your kitchen, or in your skull. It's a business model that says only companies can have the absolute right of property, and the rest of us are mere tenants."

The truth about iPad: It's only good for two things | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com

The truth about iPad: It's only good for two things Tech Sanity Check TechRepublic.com: "I’ve often said, “The iPad is only good for two things: Reading and Scrabble.”"

Official Google Enterprise Blog: A more secure cloud for millions of Google Apps users

Official Google Enterprise Blog: A more secure cloud for millions of Google Apps users: "After entering your password, a verification code is sent to your mobile phone via SMS, voice calls, or generated on an application you can install on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device"

IBM to acquire Netezza for $1.7 billion | Business Tech - CNET News

IBM to acquire Netezza for $1.7 billion Business Tech - CNET News: "The field is one that has grabbed IBM's attention in a big way. The company said that in the last four years it has invested more than $12 billion in 23 analytics-related acquisitions"

Pharyngula

Pharyngula: "I really like that last line of hers. This is why she doesn't like masturbation.

If he already knows what pleases him and can please himself, then why am I in the picture?

Because, apparently, her only purpose in the relationship is to provide a little friction, and the only way she can improve on her man's experience is by keeping him ignorant. So yes, why is she in the picture?

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FarmVillains - Page 1 - News - San Francisco - SF Weekly

FarmVillains - Page 1 - News - San Francisco - SF Weekly: "'I don't fucking want innovation,' the ex-employee recalls Pincus saying. 'You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.'

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Apple Continued To Lose U.S. Marketshare Despite Spike From iPhone 4 Sales | mocoNews

Apple Continued To Lose U.S. Marketshare Despite Spike From iPhone 4 Sales | mocoNews: "Apple’s iPhone 4 did not give the company the bump in sales it needed to put Android’s momentum in check. Instead, Apple’s smartphone marketshare in the U.S. dropped by 1.3 percent in the three months ended in July while Android’s share grew by an impressive five percentage points"

Controlling a PC, Straight from an iPad - NYTimes.com

Controlling a PC, Straight from an iPad - NYTimes.com: "You can, for $6.99. Splashtop Remote is an iPad app that pairs with a free Windows application to display your PC screen on your iPad, provided both are on the same wireless network. Splashtop is the name of a small quick-boot program that comes pre-installed on many PCs. You may know it as Lenovo Quick Start, Asus ExpressGate, or HP QuickWeb. Splashtop Remote is made by the same company, Device VM."

Criminals 'go cloud' with attacks-as-a-service | Malware - InfoWorld

Criminals 'go cloud' with attacks-as-a-service | Malware - InfoWorld: "Attacks-as-a-service"

Intel investing $30 million in software companies - Yahoo! News

Intel investing $30 million in software companies - Yahoo! News: "The investment arm of chip maker Intel is investing more than $30 million total into four different software developers.
Three of the companies, Adaptive Computing, Joyent and Nexant provide 'cloud computing' technology, which allows computer users or companies to access software and data storage space over the Web"

Boxee Box goes Intel, gets priced for preorder

Boxee Box goes Intel, gets priced for preorder: "Boxee and D-Link have announced that the upcoming Boxee Box set-top box is now available for preorder from Amazon and set to ship in November. The long-awaited device for accessing a variety of online video and content directly from a television is also ditching Tegra2 for Atom."

The Man Who Makes Your iPhone - BusinessWeek

The Man Who Makes Your iPhone - BusinessWeek: "The suicides introduced Foxconn to much of the world in the worst terms imaginable—as an industrial monster that treats its workers like machines, leveraging masses of cheap labor, mainly 18-to-25-year-olds from rural areas, to make products like the iPhone at seemingly impossible prices"

Gartner Says Android to Become No. 2 Worldwide Mobile Operating System in 2010 and Challenge Symbian for No. 1 Position by 2014

Gartner Says Android to Become No. 2 Worldwide Mobile Operating System in 2010 and Challenge Symbian for No. 1 Position by 2014: "Forecast: Mobile Communications Device Open OS Sales to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units)
OS2009201020112014
Symbian80,876.3107,662.4141,278.6264,351.8
Market Share (%)46.940.134.230.2
Android6,798.447,462.191,937.7259,306.4
Market Share (%)3.917.722.229.6
Research In Motion34,346.846,922.962,198.2102,579.5
Market Share (%)19.917.515.011.7
iOS24,889.841,461.870,740.0130,393.0
Market Share (%)14.415.417.114.9
Windows Phone15,031.112,686.521,308.834,490.2
Market Share (%)8.74.75.23.9
Other Operating Systems10,431.912,588.126,017.384,452.9
Market Share (%)6.14.76.39.6
Total Market172,374.3268,783.7413,480.5875,573.8"

"Here You Have" Virus Demonstrates Need to Improve Malware Security - PCWorld Business Center

"Here You Have" Virus Demonstrates Need to Improve Malware Security - PCWorld Business Center: "The Anna Kournikova virus that spread around the world in 2001 used the exact same subject line. Here we are nearly a decade later and essentially the same attack that worked in 2001 is once again compromising tens of thousands of machines around the globe."

Avivah Litan — A Member of the Gartner Blog Network

Avivah Litan — A Member of the Gartner Blog Network
Well sorry to say, at least from a fraud detection perspective, that tagging machines and linking the machines to a user’s identity works well for identifying good guys but does nothing to help identify the bad ones. Bad guys know how to take over good-guy user machines and launch their stealth attacks from them, masquerading their true identities under the cloak of a ‘good’ PC or mobile computing device.

Of course, hardware level machine identification is a good way to tag a PC, but there are other options available that are in fact more effective at catching the crooks. One thing is obvious – fraudsters won’t let the computing devices they use to perpetrate their crimes be tagged as ‘bad.’ They will just delete the tags, if they can, or use a different PC that is either not tagged or tagged as ‘good.’

In sum, hardware level tagging of users’ computing devices is a good way to tag good users and is a good way to track them. But good security means we need to identify the bad users, not just the good ones. And this approach, on its own, does nothing to stop a bad user from taking over a good machine.

Gartner: Days Of Easy Tagging Of User PCs With Flash Local Storage Drawing To An End - DarkReading

Gartner: Days Of Easy Tagging Of User PCs With Flash Local Storage Drawing To An End - DarkReading: "PC inspection software provides richer information than server-based clientless CDI software. It can read information from the operating system registry, serial numbers off a hard drive or the Media Access Control ID from an Ethernet card."

Online service providers, such as online banks and e-commerce sites, should start planning to phase out their reliance on Flash local storage (also referred to as local shared objects and Flash cookies) for device identification-based fraud detection, according to Gartner, Inc. Mounting global regulatory concerns over consumer privacy, and Adobe's responses with new privacy settings in its Flash player, are driving this transition.


"The days of tagging customer PCs to identify 'good' customers logging into user accounts are numbered, as regulatory privacy concerns and privacy settings in Adobe Flash Player 10.1 give end users explicit control over information downloaded to their PCs using Flash Player," said Avivah Litan, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "Service providers who depend on Flash to identify client devices — such as PCs — in order to prevent fraud should evaluate and implement alternative technologies."

Gartner: Days Of Easy Tagging Of User PCs With Flash Local Storage Drawing To An End - DarkReading

Gartner: Days Of Easy Tagging Of User PCs With Flash Local Storage Drawing To An End - DarkReading
Online service providers, such as online banks and e-commerce sites, should start planning to phase out their reliance on Flash local storage (also referred to as local shared objects and Flash cookies) for device identification-based fraud detection, according to Gartner, Inc. Mounting global regulatory concerns over consumer privacy, and Adobe's responses with new privacy settings in its Flash player, are driving this transition.


"The days of tagging customer PCs to identify 'good' customers logging into user accounts are numbered, as regulatory privacy concerns and privacy settings in Adobe Flash Player 10.1 give end users explicit control over information downloaded to their PCs using Flash Player," said Avivah Litan, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "Service providers who depend on Flash to identify client devices — such as PCs — in order to prevent fraud should evaluate and implement alternative technologies."

Greg Brown -- Lyrics for FURTHER IN

Greg Brown -- Lyrics for FURTHER IN: "I got two little feet to get me across the mountain two little feet to carry me away into the woods two little feet big mountain and a cloud comin' down cloud comin' down cloud comin' down

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Apple Music Event Heavy on Metrics | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

Apple Music Event Heavy on Metrics | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD: "300 Apple Stores in 10 countries (soon to be 11)
More than 1 million visitors to those stores on some days
120 million iOS devices sold since the first iPhone debuted
230,000 iOS devices activated each day
6.5 billion apps downloaded from the App Store to date
200 apps downloaded from the App Store each second
1.5 billion games and entertainment downloads to the iPod touch alone
250,000 apps currently available in the App Store
25,000 of those are iPad apps
275 million iPods sold to date
160 million active iTunes accounts
12 million songs in the iTunes store
11.7 billion songs downloaded from iTunes
450 million TV episodes downloaded via iTunes
100 million movies downloaded via iTunes
35 million books downloaded via iTunes
The iPod touch is the No. 1 mobile gaming device worldwide, outselling the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP combined
Apple’s share of the portable gaming market: 50 percent"

AMD's Chip Architect Brad Burgess on Mobile Computing's Future | Fast Company

AMD's Chip Architect Brad Burgess on Mobile Computing's Future | Fast Company: "AMD is in a prime position to capitalize on this as it's got expertise in designing both types of processor (unlike Intel, as pretty much anyone who's ever had to rely on Intel's 'integrated graphics' solutions will attest)."

Ouch!

Scientist at Work - Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier - Debunking Myths of the Medical World - NYTimes.com

Scientist at Work - Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier - Debunking Myths of the Medical World - NYTimes.com: "While Dr. Redelmeier enjoys his patient interactions, he appears incapable of resisting the lure of a good research topic. Several years ago he compared medical school class presidents to a control group of others in the class and found that the presidents died an average 2.5 years earlier than those in the control group. The type who would run for class president, he concluded in the resulting paper, “may also be the type who fails to look after their health or is otherwise prone to early mortality.”

The idea came to him one day in a hallway at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine, where he had stopped to admire a century’s worth of class photos showing mostly white men.

“Some people might say, ‘What an old boys’ network,’ ” Dr. Redelmeier said. “But I thought, ‘My goodness, what a homogeneous population, akin to identical white mice, which thereby controls for all sorts of differences.’ ” Thus was born another Redelmeier classic.

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My Way News - Arizona governor stumbles during debate

My Way News - Arizona governor stumbles during debate: "'We have, uh, did what was right for Arizona,'
AZ Governor Jan Brewer showing her true intellectual prowess

A Syllabus and Book List for Novice Students of Science Fiction Literature | Underwire | Wired.com

A Syllabus and Book List for Novice Students of Science Fiction Literature | Underwire | Wired.com: "Anathem, Neal Stephenson
Not only is this novel a celebration of the monastic life of scholars, but it is also a series of lessons about science, math and philosophy. A group of young researchers first discover, then analyze, an object that has arrived in orbit around their planet, and we learn with them about the most rational way to approach that which is truly alien. Theories of mind and matter are the subjects of entire chapters in this story about the struggle between logic and superstition

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The U.S. Electronic Passport Frequently Asked Questions

The U.S. Electronic Passport Frequently Asked Questions: "An Electronic Passport is the same as a traditional passport with the addition of a small integrated circuit (or “chip”) embedded in the back cover. The chip stores:
The same data visually displayed on the data page of the passport;
A biometric identifier in the form of a digital image of the passport photograph, which will facilitate the use of face recognition technology at ports-of-entry;
The unique chip identification number; and
A digital signature to protect the stored data from alteration"

Memorable Quotes from Alt.Sysadmin.Recovery

Memorable Quotes from Alt.Sysadmin.Recovery: "I never really understood how there could be things that would drive you insane just because you knew them until I ran into Windows.

Peter da Silva

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Intel’s McAfee Deal: A National Security Nightmare - The Firewall - the world of security - Forbes

Intel’s McAfee Deal: A National Security Nightmare - The Firewall - the world of security - Forbes: "When I read the news Thursday that Intel is buying McAfee for $7.68 billion, I was stunned by its national security implications.

Intel has had a cozy relationship with the Russian government and its Federal Security Service (FSB) since 2002 with its sponsorship of a laboratory on wireless technology at Nizhny Novgorod State University (NNGU).

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There's something about macro

There's something about macro: "Finally, sticky prices play a crucial role in converting this into a theory of real economic fluctuations; while I regard the evidence for such stickiness as overwhelming, the assumption of at least temporarily rigid nominal prices is one of those things that works beautifully in practice but very badly in theory.

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Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes - WSJ.com

Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes - WSJ.com: "Austrian school of economics that opposes government intervention in markets and decries federal spending to prop up demand during times of crisis

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Sailing faster than the wind - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sailing faster than the wind - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "On July 2, 2010, the propeller-powered land yacht Blackbird set the world's first certified record for going directly downwind, faster than the wind, using only power from the wind. The yacht achieved a dead downwind speed of about 2.8 times the speed of the wind.[46][47][48]

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Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age

Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age: "The harsh reality is that in the tech world, companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced, engineers. And engineering is an “up or out” profession: you either move up the ladder or face unemployment. This is not something that tech executives publicly admit, because they fear being sued for age discrimination, but everyone knows that this is the way things are.

The Real Bozo Attempts to Atone: Why the DDWFTW Car Works : Good Math, Bad Math

The Real Bozo Attempts to Atone: Why the DDWFTW Car Works : Good Math, Bad Math: "And the answer to that is 'Yes'. This thing does do it. It's not magic, it's not perpetual motion. In fact, it's really astonishingly simple, once you realize that the behavior of things moving through air is quite different from the simple rigid system that it appears to be equivalent to"

Internet2: IDEA Award Winners 2010

Internet2: IDEA Award Winners 2010: "Shibboleth
Shibboleth® Federated Single Sign-On Software is developed and supported by a growing international community. Nominated by Jack Suess, Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, an institutional user of the software, Shibboleth is a standards-based, open-source solution for Web-based single sign-on across and within organizational boundaries. Implementing widely used federated identity standards, principally OASIS' Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), Shibboleth simplifies the management of identity and permissions by allowing sites to make informed authorization decisions for individual access of protected online resources in a privacy-preserving manner."

Beware the smart phone data plan con - Technology & science - Tech and gadgets - Back to School - msnbc.com

Beware the smart phone data plan con - Technology & science - Tech and gadgets - Back to School - msnbc.com: "So, how much will your smart phone cost? Forget that number between $0 and $299 that you pay up front. The number you should focus on is the total cost of ownership, which for smart phones is usually around $2,000. (Regular 'dumb' phones with unlimited text messages generally cost half that over the same period.)"

Unlocking Apple's iPhone is legal, ethical, and just plain fun. - By Tim Wu - Slate Magazine

Unlocking Apple's iPhone is legal, ethical, and just plain fun. - By Tim Wu - Slate Magazine
Part of the copyright code, Section 1201 of the famous Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, makes it illegal to break digital locks to get at copyrighted works. But that doesn't make unlockers criminals. The reason is an explicit exemption for personal unlocking issued by the librarian of Congress in 2006. As the librarian wrote, the locks "are used by wireless carriers to limit the ability of subscribers to switch to other carriers, a business decision that has nothing whatsoever to do with the interests protected by copyright." If that's good enough for the librarian of Congress, that's good enough for me

Some more comments... : On a New Road

Some more comments... : On a New Road
It's not so much that the game favors evil, but that the definition of "good" is really twisted:
Good adj: anything which increases the stock price.
Considerations about employees, products, customers and community are all secondary. They only enter the equation as ways to achieve goal 1. Morality or high principles have no place in the corporate discourse. They maximize the stock price, within the bounds of the law. Corporations like Oracle and Exxon tend to be perfectly rational. They "buy laws" because it's perfectly legal to spend money on lobbyists and political campaigns. While you and I might think that it is morally reprehensible to buy elections, like the recent case with Target, it is nonetheless totally legal. Given the rules of the game, it would be bad for a corporation to not buy an election, if failing to do so would negatively impact their stock price. I could rant for a long time on this one, but not today… The whole modern concept of a public company is deeply flawed. But the game is what it is.

Windows DLL-loading security flaw puts Microsoft in a bind

Windows DLL-loading security flaw puts Microsoft in a bind: "The peculiar thing about all this is that this vulnerability has been known for a long time. The order in which directories are searched is documented, and has been documented for many years (that documentation dates back to 1998, and there are likely references that are older still, if one has any decade-old developer documents handy), and the dangers of using the current directory for loading libraries were explicitly highlighted a decade ago. As well as warning in the documentation about the dangers, Microsoft bloggers have also written about the issue in the past, telling developers how to avoid the problem"

3-sat phase and hardness

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1002/1002.0217v1.pdf

It was observed early [4, 17] that plotting P[UNSAT]
against shows a sharp threshold behavior at some critical c. Furthermore,
around this c it also takes various algorithms the longest time to solve random
3-SAT problems, i.e., the problems are hard. To quantify the hardness, either
the number of distinct steps of the solving algorithm is counted, or simply the
time measured until the problem is solved. The divergence of the hardness together
with the sudden jump of P[UNSAT] at some critical resembles a phase
transition-like behavior [9, 21]. The numerical analysis of this sharp threshold
behavior resulted in c = 4.15 ± 0.05 [10].

The Daily Mash - OUTRAGE OVER PLANS TO BUILD LIBRARY NEXT TO SARAH PALIN

The Daily Mash - OUTRAGE OVER PLANS TO BUILD LIBRARY NEXT TO SARAH PALIN: "PLANS to build a state-of-the-art library next to Republican catastrophe Sarah Palin are causing outrage across mainstream America.

Intel-McAfee: Horseless Carriage Vendor Buys Buggy-Whips | Forrester Blogs

Intel-McAfee: Horseless Carriage Vendor Buys Buggy-Whips Forrester Blogs: "Intel doesn’t understand software. Perhaps the most troubling part of the McAfee deal is the prospect that they will mismanage their new division into irrelevance. Intel’s track record with deals further up the stack are patchy at best. In 2005, Intel bought Sarvega, a hardware-and-software play in the XML processing segment. Today, it is irrelevant. In 1991, Intel bought LANDesk as the centerpiece of its DMTF strategy. Remember what DMTF stood for? (No penalty for not remembering: it stands for Desktop Management Task Force.) LANDesk was sold at the height of the dot-com boom, and it has been bought, spun off or sold three times again. Now Intel wants to get back in the software game again. Again, how will this be any different?"
....

Contrast that with the highly sandboxed, compartmentalized, digitally signed “apps” model of the BlackBerry OS and Apple’s iOS. With these two operating systems, you don’t need on-board anti-virus, or HIPS, or anything else — and if you do, it is because Apple or RIM have screwed up. Both of these vendors are taking responsibility for their platforms in totality in ways that Microsoft never did, or could have. Neither iOS or BlackBerry OS depend in any way on hardware capabilities Intel or anybody else could bring to the table, other than the root-of-trust embedded in the handset. All of the security differentiation is in the OS. And that, frankly, is where it belongs.

Intel Plans to Acquire McAfee for $7.68 Billion - NYTimes.com

Intel Plans to Acquire McAfee for $7.68 Billion - NYTimes.com: "McAfee’s revenue rose 20 percent last year to $1.93 billion. Intel’s revenue fell 7 percent to $35.1 billion. At 80 percent, McAfee’s gross margins surpass Intel’s, which tend to be around 65 percent."

Michael B. Thompson Profile - Forbes.com

Michael B. Thompson Profile - Forbes.com
Michael B. Thompson has served as a director of the Company since May 2004. Mr. Thompson is currently the VP of R&D and Information Technology for Kersh Risk Management in Plano, Texas. Kersh is a B2B Company focused on helping employees and dependents make behavioral changes to improve health which benefits the employee while driving significant health care cost savings for employers. In 2007 and 2008, Mr. Thompson was the COO of Mediaport Entertainment, Inc a digital media kiosk company that provides automated fulfillment and point of sale solutions for music, movies, eBooks, audio books, and other digital media. From 2003 to 2006 Mr. Thompson served as President, Chief Executive Officer and director of Setpoint Companies, an industry leader in lean automation that fully designs, assembles, tests and delivers automated assembly and test equipment. Mr. Thompson was integrally involved in Setpoint?s hub?and-spoke growth initiative starting (4) new companies while directly managing MySchedule.Net, Setpoint Spectrometers, and Rocky Mountain Testing Solutions. From 1986 to 2003, Mr. Thompson was the Vice President of the Planning and Logistics Solutions Group of Brooks? software division. Brooks Planning and Logistics Solutions Group's primary market focus is to provide simulation, scheduling and material handling automation and software controls to the semiconductor and related high technology industries. He was the President of AutoSimulations, Inc., which was acquired by Brooks in January of 2000. Mr. Thompson has been involved with automation, modeling and scheduling manufacturing systems for over 25 years. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Department of Engineering Sciences and Technology at Brigham Young University

dallasnews.com

dallasnews.com: "'As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country,' Obama told an intently listening crowd gathered at the White House Friday evening to observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

'That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,' he said. 'This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.'

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AVP - AVP suspends operations

AVP - AVP suspends operations: "The AVP Tour today announced it has closed its doors due to financial hardship, cutting short the 2010 season. AVP ownership is not funding the tour and the AVP has been unsuccessful at finding new investors.

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Traveler to the undiscovere'd country - Roger Ebert's Journal

Traveler to the undiscovere'd country - Roger Ebert's Journal: "'The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called reverend. Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishmen -- if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification?'

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Page 2 - Oracle Outlines SPARC, Solaris 11 Plans - IT Infrastructure from eWeek

Page 2 - Oracle Outlines SPARC, Solaris 11 Plans - IT Infrastructure from eWeek: "Oracle will only focus on Intel processors, which offer the best per-core performance, which is important given that Oracle licenses its software on a per-core basis, rather than a per-socket basis like Microsoft, Brookwood said"

Oracle Charges Into Desktop Virtualization With VDI 3.2 -- Virtual desktops -- InformationWeek

Oracle Charges Into Desktop Virtualization With VDI 3.2 -- Virtual desktops -- InformationWeek: "Desktop applications run on central servers under the Oracle VM hypervisor, a version of the Xen open source hypervisor"

Origin of Species: A History of O'Reilly Animals - O'Reilly Media

Origin of Species: A History of O'Reilly Animals - O'Reilly Media
When I was first approached by O'Reilly to propose new covers for their books, I was immersed in the VAX/VMS world of Digital Equipment Corporation. I had heard of UNIX, but I had a very hazy idea of what it was. I had never met a UNIX programmer or tried to edit a document using vi. All of the terms associated with vi, sed and awk, uucp, lex, yacc, curses, to name just a few, sounded to me like words that might come out of a popular game called "Dungeons and Dragons." I developed a mental picture of the UNIX programmer as a "Dungeons and Dragons" player. As I started to look for imagery for the book covers, I came across some wonderful wood engravings from the 19th century. The strange animals I found seemed to be a perfect match for all those strange-sounding UNIX terms, and were esoteric enough to appeal to what I believed the UNIX programmer type to be.

IB-InnovativeStrategies.pdf (application/pdf Object)

IB-InnovativeStrategies.pdf (application/pdf Object): "-When this second stage calculation is taken into account,
married couples may often find that it’s beneficial for
the spouse who is eligible for the lower Social Security
payments to start collecting his/her own worker benefits
early—while delaying the other spouse’s benefits

Emma Larkin | FiveBooks

Emma Larkin FiveBooks: "The first time I smelt Jap was in a deep dry riverbed in the Dry Belt, somewhere near Meiktila. I can no more describe the smell than I could describe a colour, but it was heavy and pungent and compounded of stale cooked rice and sweat and human waste and … Jap"

Chris Abbott | FiveBooks

Chris Abbott FiveBooks: "liddism. It’s basically a trend whereby Western states attempt to control threats to international security by military means, rather than understanding the nature of the threats and countering them at source. So, you can compare this to a pressure cooker where every attempt is made to keep the lid on, instead of turning down the heat."

Why Your Phone Can’t Really Replace Your Credit Card | Epicenter | Wired.com

Why Your Phone Can’t Really Replace Your Credit Card | Epicenter | Wired.com: "Meanwhile, the likelihood of an upstart disrupting the existing credit card industry is virtually nil, regardless of any switch to pay-by-phone. Instead, MacPherson says, start-ups should continue focusing on areas where they can gain ground — municipal parking systems, public transportation, vending machines and the like — because all other attempts to disrupt the credit card status quo have failed miserably.

“A lot of people from outside the payments industry have seriously underestimated how durable Visa and MasterCard’s franchise is. [America Online co-founder] Steve Case is one of them. [His] RevolutionMoney was … to be a new card network that would underprice the associations, and it totally cratered and was sold to American Express. Then you have DebitMan [a debit card network backed by merchants, rather than banks, which DebitMan's COO accused of raising rates unfairly and keeping 80-90 percent of resulting revenue]. It totally failed to take off — now, they’re Tempo Payments, and they’re selling to banks

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Judge Walker's decision to overturn Prop 8 is factual, well-reasoned, and powerful. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine

Judge Walker's decision to overturn Prop 8 is factual, well-reasoned, and powerful. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine: "'[I]t would demean a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse,' quotes Walker. ''[M]oral disapproval, without any other asserted state interest,' has never been a rational basis for legislation,' cites Walker. 'Animus towards gays and lesbians or simply a belief that a relationship between a man and a woman is inherently better than a relationship between two men or two women, this belief is not a proper basis on which to legislate,' Walker notes

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Audience Picks: Top 100 'Killer Thrillers' : NPR

Audience Picks: Top 100 'Killer Thrillers' : NPR: "* 1. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
* 2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
* 3. Kiss the Girls, by James Patterson
* 4. The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum
* 5. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
* 6. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
* 7. The Shining, by Stephen King
* 8. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
* 9. The Hunt tor Red October, by Tom Clancy
* 10. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle



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Embedded Security Subsystem - ThinkWiki

Embedded Security Subsystem - ThinkWiki: "Using the TPM in Linux
This section is very incomplete, but here are some pointers to get you started:
Compile a 2.6.23 or later kernel with the driver for the tpm chip in your ThinkPad model enabled;
You need to enable CONFIG_SECURITY to get securityfs, and CONFIG_KEYS to use eCryptfs TPM support;
You need to enable tpm_bios to access the TCPA log;"

Marv's Grand Page Home

Marv's Grand Page Home

RM:0.0 - LEE'S FERRYRM:1.0 - Paria RiffleRM:8.0 - Badger Creek Rapid (5-8)RM:11.2 - Soap Creek Rapid (5-6)RM:12.0 - Salt Water WashRM:14.3 - Sheer Wall Rapid (2) Tanner WashRM:16.9 - House Rock Rapid (7-9)RM:20.5 - North Canyon Rapid (5)RM:21.5 - 21 Mile Rapid (5)RM:23.3 - 23 Mile Rapid (4-6)RM:24.2 - 24 Mile Rapid (6-8)RM:24.5 - 24 ½ Mile Rapid (5-6)RM:24.9 - 25 Mile Rapid (5-7)RM:25.3 - Cave Springs Rapid (5-6)RM:26.6 - Tiger Wash Rapid (4-5)RM:29.2 - Silver Grotto and Shinumo WashRM:30.0 - Proposed site Redwall Dam (1920s)RM:31.8 - Stanton’s CaveRM:31.9 - Vasey’s ParadiseRM:33.0 - Red Wall CavernRM:34.8 - Nautiloid CanyonRM:35.0 - The Bridge of SighsRM:37.6 - Tatahatso Wash/CampRM:43.0 - Point Hansbrough & Anasazi BridgeRM:43.7 - President Harding RapidRM:46.6 - Triple AlcovesRM:47.0 - Saddle CanyonRM:51.9 - Little Nankoweap CreekRM:52.2 - Nakoweap AreaRM:56.0 - Kwagunt Rapid (6) (Marble Canyon)RM:61.4 - Little Colorado RiverRM:64.7 - Carbon CreekRM:65.6 - Lava Canyon (Chuar) Rapid (3-5)RM:68.4 - Tanner Rapid / Furnace FlatsRM:72.3 - Unkar Delta Puebloan dwellingsRM:72.5 - Unkar Rapid (6-7)RM:74.8 - EscalanteRM:75.5 - Nevills Rapid (6)RM:76.8 - Hance Rapid (8-10)RM 77.2 - Upper Granite Gorge/ End MarbleRM:78.7 - Sockdolager Rapid(8-9)RM:81.1 - Vishnu/GrapevineRM:81.5 - Grapevine Rapid (8)RM:83.5 - 83 Mile Rapid (3-5)RM:83.8 - Lone Tree C/HRM:84.0 - Clear Creek CampRM:84.6 - Zoroaster Rapid (5-8)RM:85.0 - 85 Mile Rapid (2-6)RM:85.8 - Cremation Camp – Above PhantomRM:87.5 - Kaibab Bridge/Phantom RanchRM:87.8 - Bright Angel Rapid and BridgeRM:89.0 - Pipe Springs Rapid (4-5)RM:90.2 - Horn Creek Rapid (8-10)RM:93.5 - Granite Rapid (9)RM:95.0 - Hermit Rapid (8-9)RM:96.8 - Boucher Rapid (3-5) CRM:98.2 - Crystal Rapid (10) RM:99.2 - Tuna Creek Rapid (6)RM:101.3 - Saphire Rapid (7)RM:102.0 - Turquoise Rapid (3-6)
RM:103.9 - 104 Mile Rapid (5-7)RM:104.6 - Ruby Rapid (6-7)RM:106.0 - Serpentine Rapid (6-8)RM:107.8 - Bass Rapid (3-6)RM:108.2 - Beach and trailhead for Bass’s CampRM:108.7 - Shinumo RapidRM:112.2 - Waltenberg Rapid (6-9)RM:112.6 - 112½ Mile Rapid (1-6)RM:114.4 - Garnet CanyonRM:116.5 - Elves ChasmRM:116.9 - Stephen Aisle (End Granite)RM:119.8 - Salt DepositsRM:120.1 - Blacktail Canyon & Conquistador Aisle (Middle Granite)RM 121.7 - 122 Mile Rapid(4-6)RM 122.8 - Forster Rapid (3-6)RM 125.0 - Fossil Rapid (3-6)RM 126.6 - Middle Granite GorgeRM 128.7 - 128 Mile Rapid (3)RM 129.0 - Specter Rapid (5-6)RM 130.5 - Bedrock Rapid (6-8)RM 131.7 - Deubendorff Rapid (5-8) Stone Cr.RM 133.7 - Tapeats Creek&Thunder River(4-5)RM 135.5 - Granite Narrows CampRM 136.2 - Deer CreekRM 137.0 - Pancho’s Kitchen CampRM 139.0 - Fishtail RM 143.5 - Kanab (start of fast flow on river)RM 147.9 - Matkatamiba CanyonRM 149.9 - Upset Rapid (6)RM 151.0 - Ledges Camp Above HavasuRM 153.0 - Mt. SinyellaRM 156.7 - HavasuRM 164.5 - Tuck Up Canyon/Rapid RRM 166.0 - National Rapid/CanyonRM 168.0 - Fern Glen Canyon/Camp/FirewoodRM 171.2 - Gateway/Mohawk CanyonRM 174.0 - Cove CanyonRM 177.1 - Honga Springs Camp LRM 177.7 - Above Anvil Camp LRM 178.0 - Vulcan’s Anvil Camp RRM 178.9 - Above Lava CampRM 179.2 - Lava Rapid! (10)RM 179.3 - Lava Well (Water)RM 180.0 - Little Lava Falls CRM 188.0 - Whitmore WashRM 198.5 - Parashant Camp / Book of WormsRM 202.0 - Camp/HikeRM 205.2 - Canyon, Spring CampRM 206.6 - Indian Canyon/Camp RuinsRM 209.0 - Granite Park Canyon L ShadeRM 211.6 - Fall Canyon RRM 212.0 - Pumpkin SpringsRM 215.6 - Three Springs Canyon WaterRM 215.9 - Lower Granite GorgeRM 220.0 - Camp RM 220.4 - Granite Springs LRM 222.0 - Canyon - No Shade CampRM 226.0 - DIAMOND CREEK takeout

How to create a Balloon Tooltip in C# and Windows Forms

How to create a Balloon Tooltip in C# and Windows Forms: "To create a balloon tooltip, we just need to set IsBalloon property of ToolTip control to true. The following code snippet create a balloon tooltip and attaches it to a Button control.


ToolTip buttonToolTip = new ToolTip();
buttonToolTip.ToolTipTitle = 'Button Tooltip';
buttonToolTip.UseFading = true;
buttonToolTip.UseAnimation = true;
buttonToolTip.IsBalloon = true;

buttonToolTip.ShowAlways = true;

buttonToolTip.AutoPopDelay = 5000;
buttonToolTip.InitialDelay = 1000;
buttonToolTip.ReshowDelay = 500;

buttonToolTip.SetToolTip(button1, 'Click me to execute.');"

Mind Hacks: From on hayo

Mind Hacks: From on hayo: "24 of anthropologist Wade Davis' magical book on the ethnobotany of ceremonial chemicals, One River.

In a sacred landscape in which every plant is a manifestation of the divine, the chewing of hayo, a variety of coca only found in the mountains of Colombia, represents the most profound expression of culture. Distance in the mountains is not measured in miles but coca chews. When two men meet, they do not shake hands, they exchange leaves. Their societal ideal is to abstain from sex, eating and sleeping while staying up all night, chewing hayo and chanting the names of ancestors. Each week the men chew about a pound of dry leaves, thus absorbing as much as a third of a gram of cocaine each day of their adults lives.

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MeeGo: Meaningful or Mediocre?

MeeGo: Meaningful or Mediocre?: "Former Maemo project and application developers are timid to fully embrace MeeGo, mainly because the newer system has chosen to use Moblin's Red Hat-derived RPM package manager over the Maemo Debian apt-get software manager.

ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments Form New Company to Speed the Rollout of Linux-Based Devices

ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments Form New Company to Speed the Rollout of Linux-Based Devices: "# ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments have created the not-for-profit company, Linaro, committed to providing new resources and industry alignment for open source software developers using Linux on the world’s most sophisticated semiconductor System-on-Chips (SoCs).
# Linaro will invest resources in open source projects that can then be used by Linux-based distributions such as Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS.

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Dan Weinreb’s blog » Blog Archive » What Does the Proof of the “CAP theorem” Mean?

Dan Weinreb’s blog » Blog Archive » What Does the Proof of the “CAP theorem” Mean?: "the fact that DNS has been able to scale up so much is an huge engineering success that I feel is under-appreciated. We take DNS for granted, but it’s quite amazing how well it works! Since it went into service, the Internet has grown (in number of hosts) by a factor of roughly 50,000, and it still works. Not many other systems can say that.

5 Ads Gone Hilariously Wrong « Dream Factory Productions Blog

5 Ads Gone Hilariously Wrong « Dream Factory Productions Blog: "“We took a young woman with severe memory loss
and helped her forget she ever had it.”

Juniper buys into enterprise tablet security - Rethink Wireless

Juniper buys into enterprise tablet security - Rethink Wireless: "trend for individuals to carry high end mobile devices for combined business and personal use, replacing many of the functions of a PC - and so requiring heavier duty security.
The software runs on Android, Apple IoS, Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile, protecting devices from viruses, spyware, identity theft and other threats, and allowing the central enterprise IT department to manage the policies and settings."

Standardization comes to the Cloud? - DDJ

Standardization comes to the Cloud? - DDJ: "OpenStack is a new open source cloud computing platform, initially supported by RackSpace (the second largest cloud provider, next to Amazon) and NASA. It aims to make cloud interoperability easier than ever. To kick off the new initiative, RackSpace is open-sourcing the code behind their cloud files service and their compute provisioning technology, and donating it to the project. NASA is also contributing some of the technology behind their powerful Nebula computing platform."

The top 20 countries on the Internet, and what the future might bring | Royal Pingdom

The top 20 countries on the Internet, and what the future might bring Royal Pingdom: "Out of the top 20 countries, the five with the highest Internet penetration (not users) are: United Kingdom (82.5%), South Korea (81.1%), Germany (79.1%), Japan (78.2%), United States (76.3%)."

Northrop Grumman opens Advanced Technology Research and Development Center

Northrop Grumman opens Advanced Technology Research and Development Center: "Northrop Grumman officially opened its new Northrop Grumman Innovation Institute in Linthicum last week. The center will serve as the focal point for the sector's advanced technology development activities.

The five-story, 156,000 square foot leased office building is located on West Nursery Road in the West*Quest Technology Park where Northrop Grumman already maintains the headquarters for its Electronic Systems sector. The new facility is home to more than 450 current engineers, scientists and support personnel who had previously been housed in several nearby leased and company-owned buildings"

Donald A. Hicks - SourceWatch

Donald A. Hicks - SourceWatch: "'Prior to his appointment as USDRE, Dr. Hicks was Senior Vice President, Marketing & Technology, for Northrop Grumman. He joined Northrop in 1961 as Vice President-Technical for the company's Ventura Division. Four years later, he formed the Applied Research Department of the Nortronics Division of Northrop. In 1967, this department became a major part of the newly formed Northrop Research & Technology Center, with Dr. Hicks serving as Vice President & Manager. In 1970, Dr. Hicks was promoted to Corporate Vice President of Research & Technology, a position he held until his appointment as Senior Vice President-Technology in November 1974. This position was expanded in 1979 to include corporate marketing"

There will be blood: why Apple and Intel are destined to clash

There will be blood: why Apple and Intel are destined to clash: "There's no way that Apple is going to sit idly by while Intel builds a hardware/software platform to compete with iOS, and then gives that platform away to Apple's competitors. And there's no way that Intel is going sit idly by and watch Apple's ARM-based products rake in billions in revenue without trying to take them down."

Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” review : The New Yorker

Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” review : The New Yorker: "I would like to plant in Christopher Nolan’s head the thought that he might consider working more simply next time. His way of dodging powerful emotion is beginning to look like a grand-scale version of a puzzle-maker’s obsession with mazes and tropes.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Apple Tells Congressmen It Batches, Encrypts Location Data - Web Services Web 20 and SOA from eWeek

Apple Tells Congressmen It Batches, Encrypts Location Data - Web Services Web 20 and SOA from eWeek: "However, this only happens when users have toggled their device to turn the services on and only when the user runs an application requiring location information.
At that point the device 'intermittently and anonymously collects cell tower and WiFi access point information from the access points it can see, along with the device's GPS coordinates if available.'
Web services that leverage location such as Google Latitude, Google Buzz, Twitter Foursquare and Gowalla are becoming increasingly popular among users. Google, Yahoo and Bing are negotiating with Foursquare to use its location-based check-in data in their core search results."

Thoughts » 2010 » May

Thoughts » 2010 » May: "I reset TPM ownership data (which on my machine takes two reboot cycles, one to clear owner data and another to activate the TPM again). After this, sudo ./jtt.sh take_owner -o tpm -e ASCII succeeded.
Successfully defined an NV_RAM space using:
sudo ./jtt.sh nv_definespace --index 0x00011128 --size 20 -o tpm -e ASCIIWrote to the space using:
sudo ./jtt.sh nv_write --file rand.key --index 0x00011128 -o tpm -e ASCIIwhere rand.key is the result of:
dd bs=1 count=20 if=/dev/urandom of=rand.keyReading it back out succeeds as well, when we use:
sudo ./jtt.sh nv_decode --index 00011128 --rawit matches the output of hexdump rand.key (if you account for transposed bytes). Finally, I successfully deleted the space using:
sudo ./jtt.sh nv_releasespace --index 00011128 -o tpm -e ASCII"

RIM co-CEOs pull no punches responding to Apple's antenna statements -- Engadget

RIM co-CEOs pull no punches responding to Apple's antenna statements -- Engadget: "'Apple's attempt to draw RIM into Apple's self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple's claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public's understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple's difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM's customers don't need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple.'

A Trusted Ticket System for Kerberos « Kerberos Blog

A Trusted Ticket System for Kerberos « Kerberos Blog: "There are a number of ways that a Kerberos deployment could make use of the TPM on a Client machine or on a KDC machine. The most obvious is to seal the client-side keying material (when not in use) using the TPM, such as the keytab and the credentials cache. Note that currently these are located on the client machine hard-drive, and thus subject to various attacks. In this sealing scenario the TPM is used in its most basic usage-mode, namely a key storage device. The Kerberos client could simply command the TPM to seal its keying material using a TPM-generated internal key. The resulting (encrypted) blob is returned by the TPM/TSS, and simply placed on the hard-drive or other storage location (e.g. flash)."

You're 65: Welcome to Medicare - Personal Finance - Health Care - SmartMoney.com

You're 65: Welcome to Medicare - Personal Finance - Health Care - SmartMoney.com: "Medicare Part B is basic medical insurance that covers services ranging from doctors' visits and outpatient hospital care to some physical and occupational therapy and even some home health care. For 2008, people who file an individual tax return with $80,000 or less ($160,000 or less for joint filers) will pay $96.50 a month, or nearly $1,160 a year, for this coverage. (You'll pay a higher premium if your income is higher.) That's a remarkably good deal: Consider that a 64-year-old woman living in New York City would pay an average of $4,425 annually for an individual policy, according to a recent quote provided by eHealthInsurance. Medicare is the best buy in the country, says Irene Card, a Medicare expert and owner of MIC Insurance Services. For $96.50 you have phenomenal coverage, she says."

Direct Anonymous Attestation (DAA) « Identity Mixer

Direct Anonymous Attestation (DAA) « Identity Mixer: "The solution first developed by TCG uses a trusted third party, the so-called privacy certification authority (Privacy CA), and works as follows. Each TPM generates an RSA key pair called Endorsement Key (EK). The Privacy CA is assumed to know the public parts of the Endorsement Keys of all (valid) TPMs. Now, whenever a TPM needs to authenticate itself to a verifier, it generates a second RSA key pair, called an Attestation Identity Key (AIK), sends the AIK public key to the Privacy CA, and authenticates this public key w.r.t. its EK. If the

In Politics, Sometimes The Facts Don't Matter : NPR

In Politics, Sometimes The Facts Don't Matter : NPR: "Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's claim that law enforcement agencies found bodies in the desert, either buried or just lying out there, that had been beheaded.
Mr. MILBANK: Yes, I think Governor Brewer lost her head on that one in particular. Now, there's a huge problem with violence on the border, but virtually all of it happens to be on the Mexican side. And what happened in the case of this claim is a news organization out there called the Arizona Guardian called all the coroner's office, the medical examiners in those border counties, and they could not think of a single instance of an immigration-related beheading."

Real World Technologies - Home Page

Real World Technologies - Home Page: "PhysX is a key application that Nvidia uses to showcase the advantages of GPU computing (GPGPU) for consumers. PhysX executing on an Nvidia GPU an improve performance by 2-4X compared to running on a CPU from Intel or AMD. We investigated and discovered that CPU PhysX exclusively uses x87 rather than the faster SSE instructions. This hobbles the performance of CPUs, calling into question the real benefits of PhysX on a GPU"

Dana Milbank - Headless bodies and other immigration tall tales in Arizona

Dana Milbank - Headless bodies and other immigration tall tales in Arizona

Two months ago, the Arizona Republic published an exhaustive report that found that, according to statistics from the FBI and Arizona police agencies, crime in Arizona border towns has been "essentially flat for the past decade." For example, "In 2000, there were 23 rapes, robberies and murders in Nogales, Ariz. Last year, despite nearly a decade of population growth, there were 19 such crimes." The Pima County sheriff reported that "the border has never been more secure."

FBI statistics show violent crime rates in all of the border states are lower than they were a decade ago

Hard Cider

Hard Cider
until the mid 1800s, hard cider, known simply as cider, was the most popular beverage in North America. In early America, cider gained popularity because -- unlike milk at that time -- it was plentiful, inexpensive to make, and stable.

CIDER: An interview with a Magners Irish Cider scientist | Bottoms Up

CIDER: An interview with a Magners Irish Cider scientist | Bottoms Up
The difference, she said, is Magners in Ireland has a carbonation level 50 percent higher. Higher carbonation in bottles sent here would put Magners in a much higher tax bracker, she said.

First replicating creature spawned in life simulator - physics-math - 16 June 2010 - New Scientist

First replicating creature spawned in life simulator - physics-math - 16 June 2010 - New Scientist: "See Gemini in action
You can run Gemini on your own computer: just follow these simple instructions.
First, install Golly, a Game of Life simulator, by downloading and unzipping this folder from SourceForge. This will give you a folder called golly-2.1-win, which contains a number of sub-folders.
Next, get a copy of Gemini by downloading and unzipping this document from Google Docs. Save the resulting file, which is called gemini.rle, inside the golly-2.1-win/Patterns"

My Way News - BP comment about 'small people' causes anger

My Way News - BP comment about 'small people' causes anger: "We care about the small people.'"

Libertarian - Wikiality, the Truthiness Encyclopedia

Libertarian - Wikiality, the Truthiness Encyclopedia
Libertarian = Republican - Jesus + pot + hot sexy gun-toting naked chicks.

infite loops

http://www-user.slac.stanford.edu/jimstan/Infinity.htm
Utilizing Infinite Loops

to Compute an Approximate Value of

Infinity

Jim Stanfield, co-founder, The Institute for Further Research

People criticize Al Gore for claiming to have invented the ‘Information Superhighway’ but we do owe him a debt of gratitude for inventing one of the most important concepts in all of computing, the Algorithm. But again, I digress.

Jesus statue fire damages estimated at $700,000

Jesus statue fire damages estimated at $700,000
“I can’t believe Jesus was struck,” said his brother, who noted the giant Hustler Hollywood sign for the adult store across the street was untouched.

MeeGo Needs Intel Investment To Succeed -- Operating Systems -- InformationWeek

MeeGo Needs Intel Investment To Succeed -- Operating Systems -- InformationWeek: 'From the perspective of most third-party developers, MeeGo remains an unknown and unproven quantity that is entering an already highly competitive and crowded landscape,' Ovum analyst Tony Cripps said in a report released Wednesday."

Distributive Justice (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Distributive Justice (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Distributive justice is not an area where we can say an idea is good in theory but not in practice. If it is not good in practice, then it is not good in theory either.

Modern History Sourcebook: The 25 Points

Modern History Sourcebook: The 25 Points

The 25 Points 1920:
An Early Nazi Program

Gov. Brewer would no doubt approve...

4. Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently no Jew can be a member of the race.

5. Whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest, and must be under the authority of legislation for foreigners.

6. The right to determine matters concerning administration and law belongs only to the citizen. Therefore we demand that every public office, of any sort whatsoever, whether in the Reich, the county or municipality, be filled only by citizens. We combat the corrupting parliamentary economy, office-holding only according to party inclinations without consideration of character or abilities.

7. We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.

Brewer tells conflicting stories about dad's war effort

Brewer tells conflicting stories about dad's war effort

Gov. Jan Brewer said in a recent interview that her father died fighting Nazis in Germany. In fact, the death of Wilford Drinkwine came 10 years after World War II had ended

Patriotism, Baseball, And An Atheist

Patriotism, Baseball, And An Atheist

Once again the conversation changed to current day when I asked how many celebrities we could name who enlisted for the current wars. Sadly, only one name could be answered by all in the room. Pat Tillman. Tillman turned down a $3.6 million contract with the Cardinals to enlist in the Army. That patriotism is so rare. He offered and eventually gave his life for his country.

Why is Pat Tillman so amazing? He was an atheist. For those of you who do not comprehend what is so special about that, he offered and gave his life, the only life that he believed he would ever have, to defend our country.