Actually a solid argument could be made that the data is centralized, you just don't have access to it because your insurance company makes more money by not allowing you to access it. Insurance companies have plenty of centralized data on plenty of people in this country; enough to make very solid models - particularly models for the types of people that the insurance companies are most concerned about.
If you could get the data from just one big insurance company or HMO - like perhaps the one that is advertising on this story - you could get plenty of data to build your algorithm. You just have to convince them that you are worthy of access to it (even if it has the personal identifiers removed).
I thought about doing a kickstarter project to collect $50-100K to do billboard adds in Chicago, LA, and NY with various high-profile scientists, their name, and a small snip next to their name regarding what they do (think Intel's "Our rockstars aren't your rockstars" commerical). Haven't gotten around to it though.
My only concern with that approach is that it would be like giving people who are vehemently opposed to specific research disciplines their own hit lists. I once worked near a lab where some nutjob scaled the (18 story!) building to hang a tent off of so he could camp out in protest of (his misinformation on) animal research that was (not) being done in that building. Eventually we had to get the fire department (who later proclaimed that they would have never considered his equipment safe) to lower him down safely after he had lost too much strength from his hunger strike.
Then imagine if you put up a billboard that showed a researcher and said "human stem cell research"; you would probably need to hire security for that person afterwards, or pay for them to find a new identity.
Really if we want to improve the image of a group of people, I would like to see a conscious effort to get people to look up to scientists. We try to say that we encourage great scientific research but we can't even bother putting great scientists on stamps? Mickey Mouse has been on how many stamps, yet I don't recall ever seeing an Einstein stamp.
But postage aside, we really end up - consciously or not - marginalizing scientists in our country. We don't give them the prestige they deserve, and we make them fight like American Idol contestants (to say nothing of the fact that many people can name more living Idol contestants than living scientists) for the kind of money that professional athletes would laugh at. Other countries hold their top researchers in great prestige; this may end up being just another sign of the decay of our empire here.
I recall a time when i made a hockey player at my high school look extraordinarily stupid once in class - not a difficult thing to accomplish for that particular jock - and he retaliated after class by tripping me in the hallway from behind. If similar action was taken against this robot the consequences could be costly...
They gave it to Obama, before he even did anything
In fairness, they really gave it to the idea of Obama much more so than to Obama himself. And really, the idea of Obama is what many people voted for, while in the end we have all received for president the man Obama.
Van Halen cited WikiLeaks' role in disclosing the assets of Tunisia's former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his nearest family, contributing to the protests that forced them into exile
But I'm pretty sure they don't have the credentials to nominate someone for a Nobel Prize...
If the problem is boxes which haven`t had existing patches applied, how exactly does Microsoft ceasing to release more patches make this problem worse?
I guess I thought this was pretty obvious, but perhaps you haven't had a conficker infection run wild on you yet.
If a system gets conficker, the only way to clear the infection for good is to patch the OS for the vulnerability. The infection itself will eventually force the user to take action, because after a while the infected system will reach 100% CPU utilization as the system goes nuts trying to get commands from the botnet (even if it never finds any). On top of that the system will also take as much bandwidth as it possibly can, which will of course drag down the performance of the network it is on.
But when MS stops releasing XP patches, and the conficker authors find a new exploit after that point in time, then it is game over in terms of fighting infections on that system.
The conficker worm exploits vulnerabilities on unpatched windows systems. If we were instead talking about a resurgence of the "iloveyou" virus or something of that nature, that would be a surprise. But conficker - as a worm - finds its own targets and infects on its own. And it will continue to do so as long as the writers of it find new holes to exploit in windows.
Just wait until Microsoft stops releasing security updates for Windows XP, then conficker will really have a chance to run wild.
Good thing there zero days with snow in about 30% of the Us, and less than 10 days with snow for about 60%. For those days, stay home or buy a Subaru. I plan on the latter for my next vehicle.
The AWD mentality - especially the cult of Subaru - is absurd. I am currently living in a place that averages over 100 inches of snow per winter, and I made it through 5 winters with a RWD coupe with a high-torque engine. Not once did I get that car stuck in the snow, thanks to using good snow tires. Hell I found hills that, when covered in snow, I could climb in my car with snow tires that were not climbable for a coworker in his new Subaru with all-season tires.
In short, don't buy into the cult. AWD will not exempt you from the laws of physics. Get a car you're happy with, and get appropriate tires for your climate.
Ben Heck makes his own custom portable Atari 2600 systems all the time.
I have looked at his stuff before, and it is very neat. The fact that he built portables around the original cartridges is very nice. However the Atari Flashback Portable - at least as it was previously described - was a nice old-school/modern hybrid. It was supposed to download games through a USB port to internal storage - no cartridge slot needed. Personally, I think a portable that could have all 40+ of my original Atari games on it would be very cool, especially if it was made as a commercial system with some reasonable support options.
I was looking forward to the Atari Flashback Portable that sadly never materialized. I really don't have a need or desire for a high-powered latest-generation portable console, but retro portable gaming I would pay for.
Manufacturing - and the possibility that much of it might go away for good from the US
TSA pat-downs at the airports and Obama not promising to make them go away for good
High speed wireless internet initiatives that do not explicitly include net neutrality promises from the POTUS himself
An energy policy with benchmarks over 20 years in the future
Now exactly why much of that matters to most "techies" is beyond me. Really most of it doesn't mattter to most techies.
However it does draw eyes to the website. And I noticed there was a Michele Bachmann ad here on slashdot last night, and this seems to go well with her sales pitch as well. Since president lawnchair has already caved to everything that the GOP has asked for to date, they need to find something to get excited about for the future.
Could we get a search function for slashdot that actually works, too? I would have been happy to keep the old design but have a search function here that was at least as good as infoseek was back in 1998. Some of us recall a short period a while ago when you actually allowed us to just use google to search slashdot, which was a huge improvement over the slashdot search function that came before and after that.
It's here because its about facebook. And CmdrTaco wishes that this site was as ubiquitous as facebook, so he'll cover any story that references facebook in an attempt to bring back some of the prestige (and traffic) that this site once had. Of course, Taco might also be just a little jealous over the fact that facebook kid managed to make zillions of dollars by selling snake oil through his web site, while Taco is still driving an old Geo Metro...
So this third Bush Administration term is placing more people with big corporate ties in important positions. Raise your hand if this somehow surprises you when you consider every decision they have made since the 2008 election.
Really, 5mbps is enormously faster than the 56k modems that were standard for so long. I'm not sure that a large portion of people who are currently "only" able to get up to 5 would pay for more if it were even offered, because frankly I doubt they would care or be able to notice the difference.
the MSM became so enamored with facebook that Time magazine named facebook kid "person of the year" in spite of the fact that Julian Assange had 10 times the number of votes.
Meh, *I* was person of the year before that.
Really? You're Ben Bernanke? Because I know I won it back in 2006 - but I'm generous enough to share it...
That said, the award is supposed to be for the most influential person of the year, good or bad. However I cannot think of anything of merit that facebook boy has influenced. For pretty well each individual person on the list, good or bad, I can think of at least one important event that happened directly as a result of a choice they made. I cannot say that about facebook boy, as not a single thing of merit has happened as a result of his web site.
Slashdot Mirror
the data is not centralized
Actually a solid argument could be made that the data is centralized, you just don't have access to it because your insurance company makes more money by not allowing you to access it. Insurance companies have plenty of centralized data on plenty of people in this country; enough to make very solid models - particularly models for the types of people that the insurance companies are most concerned about.
If you could get the data from just one big insurance company or HMO - like perhaps the one that is advertising on this story - you could get plenty of data to build your algorithm. You just have to convince them that you are worthy of access to it (even if it has the personal identifiers removed).
The Netflix Prize was sponsored by the company who gained the most from it. In the same vein, this should then be sponsored by an HMO.
That search almost makes it worse, really. Vietnam has Einstein on a stamp, we haven't had him on a stamp since stamps were 15 cents?
I thought about doing a kickstarter project to collect $50-100K to do billboard adds in Chicago, LA, and NY with various high-profile scientists, their name, and a small snip next to their name regarding what they do (think Intel's "Our rockstars aren't your rockstars" commerical). Haven't gotten around to it though.
My only concern with that approach is that it would be like giving people who are vehemently opposed to specific research disciplines their own hit lists. I once worked near a lab where some nutjob scaled the (18 story!) building to hang a tent off of so he could camp out in protest of (his misinformation on) animal research that was (not) being done in that building. Eventually we had to get the fire department (who later proclaimed that they would have never considered his equipment safe) to lower him down safely after he had lost too much strength from his hunger strike.
Then imagine if you put up a billboard that showed a researcher and said "human stem cell research"; you would probably need to hire security for that person afterwards, or pay for them to find a new identity.
Really if we want to improve the image of a group of people, I would like to see a conscious effort to get people to look up to scientists. We try to say that we encourage great scientific research but we can't even bother putting great scientists on stamps? Mickey Mouse has been on how many stamps, yet I don't recall ever seeing an Einstein stamp.
But postage aside, we really end up - consciously or not - marginalizing scientists in our country. We don't give them the prestige they deserve, and we make them fight like American Idol contestants (to say nothing of the fact that many people can name more living Idol contestants than living scientists) for the kind of money that professional athletes would laugh at. Other countries hold their top researchers in great prestige; this may end up being just another sign of the decay of our empire here.
I recall a time when i made a hockey player at my high school look extraordinarily stupid once in class - not a difficult thing to accomplish for that particular jock - and he retaliated after class by tripping me in the hallway from behind. If similar action was taken against this robot the consequences could be costly...
You misspelled "Sheldon Cooper".
Damn! You beat me to it. However we need to figure out what Dr. Cooper is doing back in high school...
The only person dumber than a second-term Dubya voter is a first-term Obama voter.
More than a few times. You need to offer up substantive conservative rhetoric than that around here to get someone to promote you.
They gave it to Obama, before he even did anything
In fairness, they really gave it to the idea of Obama much more so than to Obama himself. And really, the idea of Obama is what many people voted for, while in the end we have all received for president the man Obama.
Van Halen cited WikiLeaks' role in disclosing the assets of Tunisia's former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his nearest family, contributing to the protests that forced them into exile
But I'm pretty sure they don't have the credentials to nominate someone for a Nobel Prize...
The internet in Egypt is still easier to read than slashdot 3.0.
If the problem is boxes which haven`t had existing patches applied, how exactly does Microsoft ceasing to release more patches make this problem worse?
I guess I thought this was pretty obvious, but perhaps you haven't had a conficker infection run wild on you yet.
If a system gets conficker, the only way to clear the infection for good is to patch the OS for the vulnerability. The infection itself will eventually force the user to take action, because after a while the infected system will reach 100% CPU utilization as the system goes nuts trying to get commands from the botnet (even if it never finds any). On top of that the system will also take as much bandwidth as it possibly can, which will of course drag down the performance of the network it is on.
But when MS stops releasing XP patches, and the conficker authors find a new exploit after that point in time, then it is game over in terms of fighting infections on that system.
The conficker worm exploits vulnerabilities on unpatched windows systems. If we were instead talking about a resurgence of the "iloveyou" virus or something of that nature, that would be a surprise. But conficker - as a worm - finds its own targets and infects on its own. And it will continue to do so as long as the writers of it find new holes to exploit in windows.
Just wait until Microsoft stops releasing security updates for Windows XP, then conficker will really have a chance to run wild.
Good thing there zero days with snow in about 30% of the Us, and less than 10 days with snow for about 60%. For those days, stay home or buy a Subaru. I plan on the latter for my next vehicle.
The AWD mentality - especially the cult of Subaru - is absurd. I am currently living in a place that averages over 100 inches of snow per winter, and I made it through 5 winters with a RWD coupe with a high-torque engine. Not once did I get that car stuck in the snow, thanks to using good snow tires. Hell I found hills that, when covered in snow, I could climb in my car with snow tires that were not climbable for a coworker in his new Subaru with all-season tires.
In short, don't buy into the cult. AWD will not exempt you from the laws of physics. Get a car you're happy with, and get appropriate tires for your climate.
Ben Heck makes his own custom portable Atari 2600 systems all the time.
I have looked at his stuff before, and it is very neat. The fact that he built portables around the original cartridges is very nice. However the Atari Flashback Portable - at least as it was previously described - was a nice old-school/modern hybrid. It was supposed to download games through a USB port to internal storage - no cartridge slot needed. Personally, I think a portable that could have all 40+ of my original Atari games on it would be very cool, especially if it was made as a commercial system with some reasonable support options.
I was looking forward to the Atari Flashback Portable that sadly never materialized. I really don't have a need or desire for a high-powered latest-generation portable console, but retro portable gaming I would pay for.
Now exactly why much of that matters to most "techies" is beyond me. Really most of it doesn't mattter to most techies.
However it does draw eyes to the website. And I noticed there was a Michele Bachmann ad here on slashdot last night, and this seems to go well with her sales pitch as well. Since president lawnchair has already caved to everything that the GOP has asked for to date, they need to find something to get excited about for the future.
Could we get a search function for slashdot that actually works, too? I would have been happy to keep the old design but have a search function here that was at least as good as infoseek was back in 1998. Some of us recall a short period a while ago when you actually allowed us to just use google to search slashdot, which was a huge improvement over the slashdot search function that came before and after that.
Why is it so much smaller now than before? Are you hoping we'll think we are reading a different site?
if one of this year's picks ends up as "the greatest movie ever"
I don't know what kind of crack you're smoking to come up with the possibility of that alternate reality.
It's here because its about facebook. And CmdrTaco wishes that this site was as ubiquitous as facebook, so he'll cover any story that references facebook in an attempt to bring back some of the prestige (and traffic) that this site once had. Of course, Taco might also be just a little jealous over the fact that facebook kid managed to make zillions of dollars by selling snake oil through his web site, while Taco is still driving an old Geo Metro...
So this third Bush Administration term is placing more people with big corporate ties in important positions. Raise your hand if this somehow surprises you when you consider every decision they have made since the 2008 election.
Really, 5mbps is enormously faster than the 56k modems that were standard for so long. I'm not sure that a large portion of people who are currently "only" able to get up to 5 would pay for more if it were even offered, because frankly I doubt they would care or be able to notice the difference.
the MSM became so enamored with facebook that Time magazine named facebook kid "person of the year" in spite of the fact that Julian Assange had 10 times the number of votes.
Meh, *I* was person of the year before that.
Really? You're Ben Bernanke? Because I know I won it back in 2006 - but I'm generous enough to share it...
Well, do you really want to be in a list with Hitler, Stalin, Nixon, Kissinger, Khomeini, Bush and Putin?
There are other figures on the list who are also Nobel Peace Prize Recipients - Gandhi, MLK, Carter, and Lech Wasa, to name a few.
There are certain "honors" I can well do without.
Well, regardless, you have already been selected.
That said, the award is supposed to be for the most influential person of the year, good or bad. However I cannot think of anything of merit that facebook boy has influenced. For pretty well each individual person on the list, good or bad, I can think of at least one important event that happened directly as a result of a choice they made. I cannot say that about facebook boy, as not a single thing of merit has happened as a result of his web site.