"At least five large studies in recent years have found that vertical inter-generational mobility is lower in America than in comparable nations, belief in America as a land of opportunity not withstanding." - Socio-economic mobility in the United States
People think that America is the land of opportunity. That doesn't make it so.
The problem with refuting stuff like this is that it feels much like arguing against Hitler's rants... and, no matter how much time you spend, you will never convince the supporters that they are wrong to judge people through the prism of race.
1) "What you must call “the ‘N’ word” is used freely among blacks but is taboo to nonblacks."
An absolute claim requires only a single instance to disprove. Do you really believe that Barack Obama, Neil deGrasse Tysone etc. "freely use the N word". Do you really believe that the N word is taboo to Eminem? If not, claim 1 is disproven.
2) Here the author claims that American blacks are mostly decended from West African populations; the linked paper states 22% of the ancestry of their sample is European, and ~10% have >50% European ancestors. The paper goes on to say that, although interbreeding did happen (Malcolm X’s grandfather was white), most of it was recent. These offspring would be referred to as mixed race elsewhere but are classed as "black" in U.S. due to the white Southern paradigm of hypodescent".
I have no idea why the author included this point. It actually invalidates his entire thesis. Since the rest of his points are arguing that black people are somehow "different", this point - that the "black" population is to a large extent of white / mixed race / European descent goes against his main hypothesis. And it's not exactly a surprise that some "black" people are mixed race - Barack Obama's mixed race parentage is common knowledge.
3) "Your own ancestry is mixed north-European and northeast-Asian, but blacks will take you to be white."
If someone looks white, then yes, people will take you to be white. But why single out blacks as being guilty of not recognising visual genetic diversity? He is already guilty of exactly the same "crime" - in point 2 he notes the wide genetic diversity of the black population, but then lumps them all together as "blacks" in the very following paragraph.
4) "any individual black is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen... In some unusual circumstances, however—e.g., paragraph (10h) below—this default principle should be overridden by considerations of personal safety."
Why bother dividing this by race? Why not just say "be couteous to everyone"? And, regarding personal safety, it is ridiculous to suggest that you should be afraid of black people but not white. There are white muggers and rapists - why isn't he mentioning the dangers of associating with white people? In fact, the vast majority (>90%) of violent offenders, rapists etc. are men - obviously, being male is a much better indicator of a potential criminal, if he is going to speak in such generalisations, then why isn't he lecturing his children to beware of men?
5) "There are black geniuses... Only at the far, far extremes of certain traits are there absences. There are, for example, no black Fields Medal winners."
WTF? The author states that there are black geniuses, but then goes on to imply that blacks can't be exceptional at maths. And let's not forget point 2 - where he has already pointed out that many "blacks" are of equal European descent! So people that are 80% European can't be good at maths? How European do you have to be, exactly, to qualify? For over 200 years, there was no black President of the U.S. - clearly, by this logic, black people are not clever enough to be President. Oh, wait... could there possibly be any other relevant factors?
6) "You will observe that the means—the averages—of many traits are very different for black and white Americans, as has been confirmed by methodical inquiries in the human sciences."
"methodical inquiries in the human sciences" - you might think that the author is going to link to an exhaustive analysis of peer-reviewed literature. But no - instead, he links to the personal web site o
It does seem more likely that a black on white killing would have led to the arrest of the black perpetrator, but it's worth pointing out that the "Stand your ground" law of Florida makes it much easier to avoid a prosecution than elsewhere in the world, as this editorial suggests, police officials and state prosecutors were not particularly happy with the law:
As interim Palm Beach County State Attorney Peter Antonacci told The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board on Tuesday, the law has taken an "executive function" - the decision to bring charges - from prosecutors and given it to judges. "That should be revisited," said Mr. Antonacci, a former deputy state attorney general and statewide prosecutor. He does not advocate repeal, but says the law cannot turn public space "into a free-fire zone." He also believes that the law has "inhibited murder prosecutions" in Palm Beach County. In one, a judge dismissed charges against a man who shot and killed two men during a dispute over tickets for boating violations. In another, a jury acquitted a man who shot another man prosecutors said was swimming away after a fistfight between the two.
...
Rep. Baxley and former Sen. Durell Peadon, R-Crestview, the other sponsor of "stand your ground," insist that the Trayvon Martin case has no bearing on their legislation because George Zimmerman armed himself unnecessarily for someone in such a role and pursued the teenager even after a police dispatcher told him not to do so. In fact, sheriffs, police chiefs and prosecutors opposed this law out of fears that it could cause crimes, not prevent them. Whatever happens in Sanford, Gov. Scott's review should lead at least to changes in the law and, with luck, repeal.
The basic problem seems to be that the law, as it stands, allows for both parties in a dispute to completely legally escalate the level of violence. Both parties in a dispute have the right to "stand their ground" and use lethal force to protect themselves from each other; either could kill the other and then claim a legitimate legal defense under the law if they felt that the other person was a threat to their safety. In this particular case, Treyvon could have claimed a right to stand his ground (as he may have felt he was being stalked by an armed mentally unstable man and his life was at risk) and Zimmerman also could claim the same right (as he may have felt his life was at risk from a tough young criminal in his neighbourhood). Either one could kill the other and then argue that they had the legal right to do so, and the only other witness is dead.
It is easy to imagine some contrived situations where this law would enable more targeted killing. Consider a situation where you have armed neo-Nazis in a black city block, acting in a legal way, but being extremely provocative, say handing out racist literature, or perhaps handing out anti-Semitic Holocaust literature in a Jewish neighborhood. This would be completely legal activity covered by the First Amendment. But it would also be extremely provocative. The moment that this activity turns in to a fight, the armed neo-Nazis can now legally kill the unarmed men and claim they "stood their ground". Or consider the situation if someone decides to "stand their ground" against Zimmerman...
Since its passage in 2005, the "stand your ground'' law has protected people who have pursued another, initiated a confrontation and then used deadly force to defend themselves. Citing the law, judges have granted immunity to killers who put themselves in danger, so long as their pursuit was not criminal, so long as the person using force had a right to be there, and so long as he could convince the judge he was in fear of great danger or death.
You do realise that exactly the same problems occur in poor areas with ethnically homogenous populations? Teenage males are prone to commit violence, moreso if they grow up badly educated in overpopulated poor slums. Look at any city in the world which has a large population and poor underclass - do you think that children in the schools of these cities are free from violence because they all share an ethnicity? Do you think that gang violence anywhere in the world is stopped for this reason? Of course it isn't. The gangs of Mexico kill fellow hispanics. For decades, the gangs of Northern Ireland killed fellow whites - thousands and thousands dead, many more crippled. The Russian mafia had no qualms about killing other whites. The Italian mafia frequently went to war against other Italians.
As a white person, you should try walking around the rough area of an ethnically white poor city some day... you will quickly learn that these teenage gangs don't care that you share the same race, they will beat you and take all of your stuff just the same.
You mean the "race riots" where black and white people came together to loot and steal from local shops, regardless of the ethnicities of the owners of those shops? Where the race of the offenders to a large degree matched the local communities (e.g. in Manchester 94% of the rioters were white).
If you really want to generalise: 90% of the rioters were Men. Being male was a much more important factor than being black or white.
Downloading things from backwater websites has a higher risk of malware being present than downloading from reputable sources
how does the Android marketplace (and I mean this generally) define and validate a "reputable source'?
The same way you defined and validated a "reputable source" before - we have had personal computers for several decades now, and this problem has always existed, and yet we managed to cope.
There is no magic bullet solution - the Apple app store has exactly the same problem, in that you are allowing a random unknown developer somewhere in the world to run his code on your device. The only difference is that, with Apple's store, the developer has to pay some money to register. It's a slightly higher financial barrier, but it's not going to be a deterrent for serious criminals.
I suspect the real reason that the iPhone has seen less malware targetting it is that the majority of the mobile malware out there is "premium rate SMS" fraud. If Android apps just blocked, or required user confirmation for, premium rate numbers and SMS texts, then this particular financial motive would disappear.
If you want to crow about your openness, you can't downplay the existence and risk of malware like this.
That's like saying that if people have the freedom to choose their own sexual partners, then you can't downplay the existence and risk of sexually transmitted infections. It is a true statement, but the probability of contracting an STI is much higher if you have lots of sex with random strangers that you meet over the internet, than if you have sex with a single known long term partner. And, for many people, the freedom of being able to choose a sexual partner is more important than being protected from the risk of choosing the wrong partner.
Most Android phones will, without rooting, happily allow you to load an.apk archive from the web, or over USB (with debugging enabled in settings), or to add a new app store (enable "unknown sources" in settings). The only carrier I heard of that blocked third party app stores was AT&T, and they caved when their customers started demanding access to the Amazon Appstore. There are millions of people using the Amazon Appstore, and the vast majority have not jailbroken their phones. Even the Amazon specific Kindle Fire allows adding alternative app stores.
That depends on whether you consider a constant term to be part of a model. Which, I think, comes down to whether you are talking about changing values in a small way that corrects some small error - it would be hard to argue that a small, almost meaningless variation constitutes a different model - or changing values in a big way, to generate very different results, in which case you may well say that the model is different.
it wasn't a real (limited) internet service until 1989.
Yes, very limited... If I remember correctly, Compuserve didn't start offering direct internet access over PPP until 1995. That was an amazing feeling, having a computer that was actually on the internet, as opposed to some dumb terminal communicating with a BBS.
I downloaded Linux when it was ca. 40 floppy disks
Indeed. My first Linux was Slackware 3, I had to download 40 or so disks at 2400bps. It took several days, and the download was constantly being interrupted by people picking up the phone... Kids these days will never know how lucky they are to have ADSL....
You forgot the driving part. How is that going to be done? Just getting to the locked door is, in many ways, harder than the autonomous car challenge - the control and sensing has to be done completely from and by the humanoid robot, with limited power supply and (I would guess) not enough power/cpu/physical space to integrate as the advanced numerous sensors that the cars had. And instead of having the software wired in to the hardware control, the humanoid robot is going to have to drive using its limbs. That's a hard problem.
I'm just speculating reasons for the distribution, based on the assumption that the Dr Web figures are accurate (we have no reason to think they aren't). In a BBC article, Dr Web suggest that the uneven national distribution may be due to the original attacks being targeted at English speaking countries ("The largest amounts of bots - based on the IP addresses we identified - are in the US, Canada, UK and Australia, so it appears to have targeted English-speaking people.") Maybe they used email spam attacks and prioritised.uk.us etc. addresses. It is not clear whether Dr Web have control of the botnet now or not - they say they only got a segment, but then say "we have never seen any malicious activity since we hijacked the botnet to take it out of criminals' hands."
Do you think this as big as Conficker
Maybe in percent of targeted systems infected, but Windows global desktop market share is estimated at 15-20 times bigger than Mac, so in absolute terms, no.
A practicing entity - a real company - has an incentive to not troll with its patents.
That disincentive only works for large companies with similar patent warchests. Small companies, end users etc. can get just as screwed by a practicing entity, since they have no or few patents. What are you going to do when someone sues you for patent infringement if you use Facebook? What are you going to do if you really do invent some new technology, say a new graphics pipeline rendering technology? Do you think that Nvidia would hesitate to take you down with their patent warchest to take you down if your new technology posed a direct threat to their profits? And how would you stop non-practicing entities creating trivial examples of their patents - would they need to have some level of market share or product revenue before qualifying as practicing? What if they license out the patent, but don't directly sell a product?
F-Secure say that each infection uses the MAC address as a unique User-Agent, so it's easy to count individual infections.
I'm more than a little skeptical about the distribution of infections.
Yes, that is interesting. The register reports that Dr. Web only managed to compromise and "sinkhole" one of the Command and Control servers, so they are only seeing one segment of the network (600k is therefore the lowest bound). Dr. Web say "Over 550 000 infected machines running Mac OS X have been a part of the botnet on April 4. These only comprise a segment of the botnet".
Flashback uses some function to generate C&C addresses and then tries to connect to them. So the question is - is the C&C address generation function dependent on some aspect of the source IP, or geography, or reliant on network topology? Dr. Web do say "It should be noted that the malware utilizes a very peculiar routine for generating such addresses." If so, then it is possible that the Irish infections are connecting to a different C&C server than UK infections.
The UK has a population ten times bigger than Ireland
Actually it's 14x bigger.
Some tweets from Mikko Hypponen of F-Secure:
mikko : Assuming there are about 45 million Macs out there, Flashback would now have infected more than 1% of them.
mikko: That would make Flashback roughly as common for Mac as Conficker was for Windows.
Occupation does not necessarily mean "stuff you are doing right now". It can also be used in context to mean the same as "career", "profession", "vocation" etc.
e.g. You could be unemployed, and when asked your occupation, answer "software developer" and it would be a valid response, particularly when your occupation involves prolonged training and a formal qualification.
So why would someone enter their Discover information on an Xbox anyway?
Someone didn't realise that, tried it anyway, and the failure got logged or swapped out? Or it could be outside of the context of Live: maybe they were running a Web browser and a page got cached? Or they sent or received the card number in an email or instant message and it got saved to the disk? The string could have even been stored in a temporary file and deleted, it seems the tool they use just scans the flat binary drive data, rather than interpreting the file system.
An ASCII string, bounded by non-ASCII beginning and end values, 16 characters long, containing only values from [0-9], that passes the Luhn algorithm. What is the probability of this occurring randomly, given the other data that typically occurs on XBox 360 hard drives? Given that they only got one hit on the whole hard drive, it can't be that high. The authors say "Although this does not definitively prove there are any credit card numbers on the hard drive, it is highly probable given the results obtained.". It would be very interesting to run the algorithm on a bunch of hard disks and see what the hit rate is, and whether the matched strings represent real card numbers that once passed through the drive, to evaluate what the probability actually is...
I don't believe the CC numbers are stored on the HD either.
It might be possible that the data was written to a temporary file, or the memory was written to the swap partition, or that the number was written by a non-MS game or app.
That Xbox HD still could have your account name/email address/password.
Yes, apparently they recovered user names, gamer tags, purchase history etc.
this is just some unfounded rumor that has no basis on reality
It's more than a rumour, it's a research paper from some forensics experts that has been submitted to a conference. Of course, that does not mean that it is correct, and afaik it has not been published yet.
The relevant text shows that they just got a credit card hit from some forensics tool:
Performing a
fast scan on one of the drives resulted in a
possible credit card hit as demonstrated in
Image 10. Although this does not
definitively prove there are any credit card
numbers on the hard drive, it is highly
probable given the results obtained. The
Bank Identification Number in this hit
identifies this as a Bank of America
Discover Card [37].
The authors appeal to have credible prior experience in digital forensics:
They have published work on XBOX 360 previously, so they may have some experience in this specific area (or not): The Xbox 360 and Steganography: How Criminals and Terrorists could be Going Dark
A Practitioners Guide to the Forensic Investigation of Xbox 360 Gaming Consoles
Why is it that the only antitrust enforcement I hear about in the EU is against non-EU based companies?
Technically every enforcement action is against an EU based corporation - in order to legally do trade within the EU, you need an EU corporate presence. The European Commission regulates violations of trade law within the EU. The EU didn't levy fines against Microsoft US for antitrust violations within the borders of the United States, it levied fines against Microsoft Europe for antitrust violations within the EU borders.
I would guess that you haven't heard about other enforcement actions because you don't read the EU antitrust news? You chose to read US oriented news, which doesn't report on enforcement actions of foreign regulatory bodies against foreign companies? Also, the EU is made up of many nation states, each of which has its own antitrust regulatory body. The EU only gets involved in antitrust when the scale of the illegal activity exceeds the ability of the national courts to handle, or where the national courts have erred or require clarification. This is usually difficult cases, or those with international scope that involve large transnational corporations. EU-level enforcement actions are, by their nature, more likely to be against a large corporation trading internationally, which for tax and trade reasons may well be headquartered in the U.S. (although increasingly companies are choosing to be headquartered in Ireland or Luxembourg for tax purposes, see Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
Is it really that case that no corporations inside the EU are big enough to be anti-competitive?
That article doesn't tell the whole story, though. It leaves out the cost of actually producing the vegetables that you eat
No it doesn't. The whole point of that particular chapter of the book is to show the overall cost of producing the various food types, including the cost of oil, fertiliser etc.
Read the book if you are actually interested in this stuff - it provides a very good "physicists perspective" of energy usage, with all of the figures cited to actual published research.
Arguably vegans can be worse in this regard
Scientists have actually studied the energy cost of producing various diets, and the research shows that the vegan diet is the lowest. The energy cost of growing plants and feeding them to animals and then eating the animals exceeds the energy cost of growing and eating plants alone. There is a loss of efficiency for each stage of the path. btw, Shipping has a low energy cost in contrast to other freight transport.
Slashdot Mirror
If they are actual drug dealers (ie convicted)
A person can deal drugs without having being convicted.
"At least five large studies in recent years have found that vertical inter-generational mobility is lower in America than in comparable nations, belief in America as a land of opportunity not withstanding." - Socio-economic mobility in the United States
People think that America is the land of opportunity. That doesn't make it so.
The problem with refuting stuff like this is that it feels much like arguing against Hitler's rants... and, no matter how much time you spend, you will never convince the supporters that they are wrong to judge people through the prism of race.
1) "What you must call “the ‘N’ word” is used freely among blacks but is taboo to nonblacks."
An absolute claim requires only a single instance to disprove. Do you really believe that Barack Obama, Neil deGrasse Tysone etc. "freely use the N word". Do you really believe that the N word is taboo to Eminem? If not, claim 1 is disproven.
2) Here the author claims that American blacks are mostly decended from West African populations; the linked paper states 22% of the ancestry of their sample is European, and ~10% have >50% European ancestors. The paper goes on to say that, although interbreeding did happen (Malcolm X’s grandfather was white), most of it was recent. These offspring would be referred to as mixed race elsewhere but are classed as "black" in U.S. due to the white Southern paradigm of hypodescent".
I have no idea why the author included this point. It actually invalidates his entire thesis. Since the rest of his points are arguing that black people are somehow "different", this point - that the "black" population is to a large extent of white / mixed race / European descent goes against his main hypothesis. And it's not exactly a surprise that some "black" people are mixed race - Barack Obama's mixed race parentage is common knowledge.
3) "Your own ancestry is mixed north-European and northeast-Asian, but blacks will take you to be white."
If someone looks white, then yes, people will take you to be white. But why single out blacks as being guilty of not recognising visual genetic diversity? He is already guilty of exactly the same "crime" - in point 2 he notes the wide genetic diversity of the black population, but then lumps them all together as "blacks" in the very following paragraph.
4) "any individual black is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen... In some unusual circumstances, however—e.g., paragraph (10h) below—this default principle should be overridden by considerations of personal safety."
Why bother dividing this by race? Why not just say "be couteous to everyone"? And, regarding personal safety, it is ridiculous to suggest that you should be afraid of black people but not white. There are white muggers and rapists - why isn't he mentioning the dangers of associating with white people? In fact, the vast majority (>90%) of violent offenders, rapists etc. are men - obviously, being male is a much better indicator of a potential criminal, if he is going to speak in such generalisations, then why isn't he lecturing his children to beware of men?
5) "There are black geniuses... Only at the far, far extremes of certain traits are there absences. There are, for example, no black Fields Medal winners."
WTF? The author states that there are black geniuses, but then goes on to imply that blacks can't be exceptional at maths. And let's not forget point 2 - where he has already pointed out that many "blacks" are of equal European descent! So people that are 80% European can't be good at maths? How European do you have to be, exactly, to qualify? For over 200 years, there was no black President of the U.S. - clearly, by this logic, black people are not clever enough to be President. Oh, wait... could there possibly be any other relevant factors?
6) "You will observe that the means—the averages—of many traits are very different for black and white Americans, as has been confirmed by methodical inquiries in the human sciences."
"methodical inquiries in the human sciences" - you might think that the author is going to link to an exhaustive analysis of peer-reviewed literature. But no - instead, he links to the personal web site o
As interim Palm Beach County State Attorney Peter Antonacci told The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board on Tuesday, the law has taken an "executive function" - the decision to bring charges - from prosecutors and given it to judges. "That should be revisited," said Mr. Antonacci, a former deputy state attorney general and statewide prosecutor. He does not advocate repeal, but says the law cannot turn public space "into a free-fire zone." He also believes that the law has "inhibited murder prosecutions" in Palm Beach County. In one, a judge dismissed charges against a man who shot and killed two men during a dispute over tickets for boating violations. In another, a jury acquitted a man who shot another man prosecutors said was swimming away after a fistfight between the two.
...
Rep. Baxley and former Sen. Durell Peadon, R-Crestview, the other sponsor of "stand your ground," insist that the Trayvon Martin case has no bearing on their legislation because George Zimmerman armed himself unnecessarily for someone in such a role and pursued the teenager even after a police dispatcher told him not to do so. In fact, sheriffs, police chiefs and prosecutors opposed this law out of fears that it could cause crimes, not prevent them. Whatever happens in Sanford, Gov. Scott's review should lead at least to changes in the law and, with luck, repeal.
The basic problem seems to be that the law, as it stands, allows for both parties in a dispute to completely legally escalate the level of violence. Both parties in a dispute have the right to "stand their ground" and use lethal force to protect themselves from each other; either could kill the other and then claim a legitimate legal defense under the law if they felt that the other person was a threat to their safety. In this particular case, Treyvon could have claimed a right to stand his ground (as he may have felt he was being stalked by an armed mentally unstable man and his life was at risk) and Zimmerman also could claim the same right (as he may have felt his life was at risk from a tough young criminal in his neighbourhood). Either one could kill the other and then argue that they had the legal right to do so, and the only other witness is dead.
It is easy to imagine some contrived situations where this law would enable more targeted killing. Consider a situation where you have armed neo-Nazis in a black city block, acting in a legal way, but being extremely provocative, say handing out racist literature, or perhaps handing out anti-Semitic Holocaust literature in a Jewish neighborhood. This would be completely legal activity covered by the First Amendment. But it would also be extremely provocative. The moment that this activity turns in to a fight, the armed neo-Nazis can now legally kill the unarmed men and claim they "stood their ground". Or consider the situation if someone decides to "stand their ground" against Zimmerman...
Since its passage in 2005, the "stand your ground'' law has protected people who have pursued another, initiated a confrontation and then used deadly force to defend themselves. Citing the law, judges have granted immunity to killers who put themselves in danger, so long as their pursuit was not criminal, so long as the person using force had a right to be there, and so long as he could convince the judge he was in fear of great danger or death.
..."If you're doing something legal, no matter what the act is, and you're attacked, it's in that moment that you have a right to stand your ground." - 'Stand your ground' law protects those who go far beyond that point
You do realise that exactly the same problems occur in poor areas with ethnically homogenous populations? Teenage males are prone to commit violence, moreso if they grow up badly educated in overpopulated poor slums. Look at any city in the world which has a large population and poor underclass - do you think that children in the schools of these cities are free from violence because they all share an ethnicity? Do you think that gang violence anywhere in the world is stopped for this reason? Of course it isn't. The gangs of Mexico kill fellow hispanics. For decades, the gangs of Northern Ireland killed fellow whites - thousands and thousands dead, many more crippled. The Russian mafia had no qualms about killing other whites. The Italian mafia frequently went to war against other Italians.
As a white person, you should try walking around the rough area of an ethnically white poor city some day... you will quickly learn that these teenage gangs don't care that you share the same race, they will beat you and take all of your stuff just the same.
You mean the "race riots" where black and white people came together to loot and steal from local shops, regardless of the ethnicities of the owners of those shops? Where the race of the offenders to a large degree matched the local communities (e.g. in Manchester 94% of the rioters were white).
If you really want to generalise: 90% of the rioters were Men. Being male was a much more important factor than being black or white.
Downloading things from backwater websites has a higher risk of malware being present than downloading from reputable sources
how does the Android marketplace (and I mean this generally) define and validate a "reputable source'?
The same way you defined and validated a "reputable source" before - we have had personal computers for several decades now, and this problem has always existed, and yet we managed to cope.
There is no magic bullet solution - the Apple app store has exactly the same problem, in that you are allowing a random unknown developer somewhere in the world to run his code on your device. The only difference is that, with Apple's store, the developer has to pay some money to register. It's a slightly higher financial barrier, but it's not going to be a deterrent for serious criminals.
I suspect the real reason that the iPhone has seen less malware targetting it is that the majority of the mobile malware out there is "premium rate SMS" fraud. If Android apps just blocked, or required user confirmation for, premium rate numbers and SMS texts, then this particular financial motive would disappear.
If you want to crow about your openness, you can't downplay the existence and risk of malware like this.
That's like saying that if people have the freedom to choose their own sexual partners, then you can't downplay the existence and risk of sexually transmitted infections. It is a true statement, but the probability of contracting an STI is much higher if you have lots of sex with random strangers that you meet over the internet, than if you have sex with a single known long term partner. And, for many people, the freedom of being able to choose a sexual partner is more important than being protected from the risk of choosing the wrong partner.
both can access others by jailbreaking (sic)
Most Android phones will, without rooting, happily allow you to load an .apk archive from the web, or over USB (with debugging enabled in settings), or to add a new app store (enable "unknown sources" in settings). The only carrier I heard of that blocked third party app stores was AT&T, and they caved when their customers started demanding access to the Amazon Appstore. There are millions of people using the Amazon Appstore, and the vast majority have not jailbroken their phones. Even the Amazon specific Kindle Fire allows adding alternative app stores.
But that is what the US government does: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101028/04265511631/nasa-once-again-auctioning-off-patents-your-tax-dollars-paid-for.shtml
in your example both models are the same!
That depends on whether you consider a constant term to be part of a model. Which, I think, comes down to whether you are talking about changing values in a small way that corrects some small error - it would be hard to argue that a small, almost meaningless variation constitutes a different model - or changing values in a big way, to generate very different results, in which case you may well say that the model is different.
it wasn't a real (limited) internet service until 1989.
Yes, very limited... If I remember correctly, Compuserve didn't start offering direct internet access over PPP until 1995. That was an amazing feeling, having a computer that was actually on the internet, as opposed to some dumb terminal communicating with a BBS.
I downloaded Linux when it was ca. 40 floppy disks
Indeed. My first Linux was Slackware 3, I had to download 40 or so disks at 2400bps. It took several days, and the download was constantly being interrupted by people picking up the phone... Kids these days will never know how lucky they are to have ADSL....
You forgot the driving part. How is that going to be done? Just getting to the locked door is, in many ways, harder than the autonomous car challenge - the control and sensing has to be done completely from and by the humanoid robot, with limited power supply and (I would guess) not enough power/cpu/physical space to integrate as the advanced numerous sensors that the cars had. And instead of having the software wired in to the hardware control, the humanoid robot is going to have to drive using its limbs. That's a hard problem.
Do you think this as big as Conficker
Maybe in percent of targeted systems infected, but Windows global desktop market share is estimated at 15-20 times bigger than Mac, so in absolute terms, no.
A practicing entity - a real company - has an incentive to not troll with its patents.
That disincentive only works for large companies with similar patent warchests. Small companies, end users etc. can get just as screwed by a practicing entity, since they have no or few patents. What are you going to do when someone sues you for patent infringement if you use Facebook? What are you going to do if you really do invent some new technology, say a new graphics pipeline rendering technology? Do you think that Nvidia would hesitate to take you down with their patent warchest to take you down if your new technology posed a direct threat to their profits? And how would you stop non-practicing entities creating trivial examples of their patents - would they need to have some level of market share or product revenue before qualifying as practicing? What if they license out the patent, but don't directly sell a product?
...but not the right to marry an adult human of the gender that they are physically attracted to.
examine the claim of 600,000 infections?
F-Secure say that each infection uses the MAC address as a unique User-Agent, so it's easy to count individual infections.
I'm more than a little skeptical about the distribution of infections.
Yes, that is interesting. The register reports that Dr. Web only managed to compromise and "sinkhole" one of the Command and Control servers, so they are only seeing one segment of the network (600k is therefore the lowest bound). Dr. Web say "Over 550 000 infected machines running Mac OS X have been a part of the botnet on April 4. These only comprise a segment of the botnet".
Flashback uses some function to generate C&C addresses and then tries to connect to them. So the question is - is the C&C address generation function dependent on some aspect of the source IP, or geography, or reliant on network topology? Dr. Web do say "It should be noted that the malware utilizes a very peculiar routine for generating such addresses." If so, then it is possible that the Irish infections are connecting to a different C&C server than UK infections.
The UK has a population ten times bigger than Ireland
Actually it's 14x bigger.
Some tweets from Mikko Hypponen of F-Secure:
mikko : Assuming there are about 45 million Macs out there, Flashback would now have infected more than 1% of them.
mikko: That would make Flashback roughly as common for Mac as Conficker was for Windows.
Nope, not an order of magnitude unless you mean base 2. Mac global desktop share is 5%, Linux global desktop share is 1.5%.
Occupation does not necessarily mean "stuff you are doing right now". It can also be used in context to mean the same as "career", "profession", "vocation" etc.
e.g. You could be unemployed, and when asked your occupation, answer "software developer" and it would be a valid response, particularly when your occupation involves prolonged training and a formal qualification.
So why would someone enter their Discover information on an Xbox anyway?
Someone didn't realise that, tried it anyway, and the failure got logged or swapped out? Or it could be outside of the context of Live: maybe they were running a Web browser and a page got cached? Or they sent or received the card number in an email or instant message and it got saved to the disk? The string could have even been stored in a temporary file and deleted, it seems the tool they use just scans the flat binary drive data, rather than interpreting the file system.
An ASCII string, bounded by non-ASCII beginning and end values, 16 characters long, containing only values from [0-9], that passes the Luhn algorithm. What is the probability of this occurring randomly, given the other data that typically occurs on XBox 360 hard drives? Given that they only got one hit on the whole hard drive, it can't be that high. The authors say "Although this does not definitively prove there are any credit card numbers on the hard drive, it is highly probable given the results obtained.". It would be very interesting to run the algorithm on a bunch of hard disks and see what the hit rate is, and whether the matched strings represent real card numbers that once passed through the drive, to evaluate what the probability actually is...
I don't believe the CC numbers are stored on the HD either.
It might be possible that the data was written to a temporary file, or the memory was written to the swap partition, or that the number was written by a non-MS game or app.
That Xbox HD still could have your account name/email address/password.
Yes, apparently they recovered user names, gamer tags, purchase history etc.
this is just some unfounded rumor that has no basis on reality
It's more than a rumour, it's a research paper from some forensics experts that has been submitted to a conference. Of course, that does not mean that it is correct, and afaik it has not been published yet.
The PDF (found via xbox-experts.com:
Identity Theft and Used Gaming Consoles: Recovering Personal Information from Xbox 360 Hard Drives
The relevant text shows that they just got a credit card hit from some forensics tool:
Performing a fast scan on one of the drives resulted in a possible credit card hit as demonstrated in Image 10. Although this does not definitively prove there are any credit card numbers on the hard drive, it is highly probable given the results obtained. The Bank Identification Number in this hit identifies this as a Bank of America Discover Card [37].
The authors appeal to have credible prior experience in digital forensics:
Dr. Asley L. Podhradsky, Drexel University
Dr. Rob D'Ovidio, Drexel University
Cindy Casey, Drexel University
They have published work on XBOX 360 previously, so they may have some experience in this specific area (or not):
The Xbox 360 and Steganography: How Criminals and Terrorists could be Going Dark
A Practitioners Guide to the Forensic Investigation of Xbox 360 Gaming Consoles
Why is it that the only antitrust enforcement I hear about in the EU is against non-EU based companies?
Technically every enforcement action is against an EU based corporation - in order to legally do trade within the EU, you need an EU corporate presence. The European Commission regulates violations of trade law within the EU. The EU didn't levy fines against Microsoft US for antitrust violations within the borders of the United States, it levied fines against Microsoft Europe for antitrust violations within the EU borders.
I would guess that you haven't heard about other enforcement actions because you don't read the EU antitrust news? You chose to read US oriented news, which doesn't report on enforcement actions of foreign regulatory bodies against foreign companies? Also, the EU is made up of many nation states, each of which has its own antitrust regulatory body. The EU only gets involved in antitrust when the scale of the illegal activity exceeds the ability of the national courts to handle, or where the national courts have erred or require clarification. This is usually difficult cases, or those with international scope that involve large transnational corporations. EU-level enforcement actions are, by their nature, more likely to be against a large corporation trading internationally, which for tax and trade reasons may well be headquartered in the U.S. (although increasingly companies are choosing to be headquartered in Ireland or Luxembourg for tax purposes, see Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
Is it really that case that no corporations inside the EU are big enough to be anti-competitive?
The EU have issued over €12 billion of fines in the last 5 years against illegal cartels. How many of those cases did you read about in the U.S. press? This is not some conspiracy - it is entirely understandable, their readers (Americans) generally don't care about the EU fining a Belgian glass manufacturer, or Frankfurt Airport. They only feel an emotional connection when the target of the fine is the subsidiary of a U.S. corporation.
2011/03/03 Siemens AG fined €397 million by EU antitrust
2012/03/29 Telefonica fined €152 million.
2011/10/25 Solvay fined €23 million
2011/06/22 Telekomunikacja Polska S.A €127 million
2008/11/12 Largest every cartel fine from the EU - over €1.3 billion against a Japanese/US/English/Belgian cartel.
That article doesn't tell the whole story, though. It leaves out the cost of actually producing the vegetables that you eat
No it doesn't. The whole point of that particular chapter of the book is to show the overall cost of producing the various food types, including the cost of oil, fertiliser etc.
Read the book if you are actually interested in this stuff - it provides a very good "physicists perspective" of energy usage, with all of the figures cited to actual published research.
Arguably vegans can be worse in this regard
Scientists have actually studied the energy cost of producing various diets, and the research shows that the vegan diet is the lowest. The energy cost of growing plants and feeding them to animals and then eating the animals exceeds the energy cost of growing and eating plants alone. There is a loss of efficiency for each stage of the path. btw, Shipping has a low energy cost in contrast to other freight transport.