You can call that "torturing" the data I suppose, especially by a non-technical person. It certainly shows he had problems with his methods, although I would doubt it was intentional.
More likely, he wrote the code according to an algorithm he may not have understood completely, or not understood the code anyway, then while implementing it did the sort of half assed development cycle you would expect from a non-coder: run the code, if does what you want, it must be right.
The fact that in this case it was to show global warming is really not important, it could have been any bit of code that manipulates data and gets judged by it looking "right" to the amateur coder.
Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
Here is the actual article that caused the stir. You will notice Styrn brings up someone else's accuation, but does not accuse the man of anything himself, he even says he would not make the metaphor.
In the wake of Louis Freeh’s report on Penn State’s complicity in serial rape, Rand Simberg writes of Unhappy Valley’s other scandal:
I’m referring to another cover up and whitewash that occurred there two years ago, before we learned how rotten and corrupt the culture at the university was. But now that we know how bad it was, perhaps it’s time that we revisit the Michael Mann affair, particularly given how much we’ve also learned about his and others’ hockey-stick deceptions since. Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.
Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr Simberg does, but he has a point. Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to “investigate” Professor Mann. Graham Spanier, the Penn State president forced to resign over Sandusky, was the same cove who investigated Mann. And, as with Sandusky and Paterno, the college declined to find one of its star names guilty of any wrongdoing.
If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.
Consider the lowly x3550 m4, a box we sell in large quantities. It costs around 3K basic and $22K nicely decked out to handle quite a few virtual images with 384GB of memory (you can double that).
Figure a nice 40% margin, less if you are buying more of them. Say 20%. Buy a service contract we might even take a significant loss.
Now, if you have us support that device in a datacenter, I can tell you that we will make many more times that in basic sysadmin services. Of course, it includes everything, fixes, backups, growth (replaced in 3 years) 24hr monitoring, rackspace and networking.
But still, we don't make money off the server itself, so why make them? The only hardware that makes money is PureFlex (x86 + RS6000 racks) RS600, AS400 and mainframe. Even then, they tend to give away the hardware as part of the service.
The "they" is not the government, who does not have to report incidents by law, but the private companies in the post I was responding to ARE required to report.
One would expect the numbers to be higher if the government was required to report.
We once failed to prove we destroyed 3 drives of a 15 drive RAID array (someone did not take pictures of the drive before shredding) that was encrypted at rest. Did not matter, there was confidential information, so we had to indemnify "potential" identity theft losses for clients that might have been compromised.
So sayth the non-technical government arbitrator, so shall it be done...
Pretty unlikely, but I guess someone could decrypt blocks and those blocks might have PHI on it.
According to the article, the government is not REQUIRED to tell you about hacking attempts. HIPPA and other laws require that they disclose "hacks"
Second, as Sysadmin for a major healthcare company for 9 years, every single "hack" was the loss of a laptop or hard drive. No one ever "hacked" into the systems for access to data beyond the one account they hacked.
I work directly with potential clients, where "telling the truth" is as disastrous as doing so on a first date. Sometimes you have to answer diplomatically, but I won't lie, because I am terrible liar.
"What happens if X goes wrong?"
I could be truthful, and say "We figure out how to blame each other for the failure."
Or
"Full and frank understanding about all of the aspects of your system before we relocate is the best way to avoid failures. Often, what you don't know about your own environment is what causes failures, so discovery and application interviews try to dig out those answers. If there is a failure, we will work together to resolve the problem." - and figure out how to blame each other.
Specialist - highest level "individual contributor" Architect - I started managing matrix-ed teams Senior Technical Staff Member - I have a staff budget, it is like a technical Director, has same authority as Director, but less signing authority. Distinguished Engineer - Usually have a portfolio of products, services, or business lines Sr. Distinguished Engineer - More of the above IBM Fellow and I forget the title of the IBM Fellow that sits on the board. Sr IBM Fellow?
Never do you "have" to cut over to line management to advance, unless you really want to be CEO, like Ginni Rometti. I manage teams for short time periods for specific goals, who in turn have "line managers" that are usually more like HR managers: vacation, advancement, timecards, reviews, etc, are done by line management. I can focus on getting problems solved and more strategic planning without worrying about timecards, budget or that kind of nonsense. The business orientated line manager does that.
Assuming there is no pressing issues sooner, like a micro manager, then every five years or so I evaluate if I want to stay where I am or if there is more interesting and rewarding work to be done elsewhere.
So, what kind of company is this? One where I stay because the work is interesting and rewarding, or one where I decide it is time to examine my option?
Slashdot Mirror
But his code has been shown to fail the Monte Carlo test, or feeding it random data to see if random results come out:
http://www.technologyreview.co...
You can call that "torturing" the data I suppose, especially by a non-technical person. It certainly shows he had problems with his methods, although I would doubt it was intentional.
More likely, he wrote the code according to an algorithm he may not have understood completely, or not understood the code anyway, then while implementing it did the sort of half assed development cycle you would expect from a non-coder: run the code, if does what you want, it must be right.
The fact that in this case it was to show global warming is really not important, it could have been any bit of code that manipulates data and gets judged by it looking "right" to the amateur coder.
Considering the Hockey Stick is the only thing discussed, I think Steyn is in the clear here.
Canadian researchers found random data fed to the code results in a hockey stick
http://www.technologyreview.co...
Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
Here is the actual article that caused the stir. You will notice Styrn brings up someone else's accuation, but does not accuse the man of anything himself, he even says he would not make the metaphor.
In the wake of Louis Freeh’s report on Penn State’s complicity in serial rape, Rand Simberg writes of Unhappy Valley’s other scandal:
I’m referring to another cover up and whitewash that occurred there two years ago, before we learned how rotten and corrupt the culture at the university was. But now that we know how bad it was, perhaps it’s time that we revisit the Michael Mann affair, particularly given how much we’ve also learned about his and others’ hockey-stick deceptions since. Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.
Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr Simberg does, but he has a point. Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to “investigate” Professor Mann. Graham Spanier, the Penn State president forced to resign over Sandusky, was the same cove who investigated Mann. And, as with Sandusky and Paterno, the college declined to find one of its star names guilty of any wrongdoing.
If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.
I'm betting those numbers are far lower than the places with IBM hardware.
You would lose that bet.
We manage anyone's hardware in our datacenter. Totally agnostic. You want dell? Sure. HP? Sure. SUN/Oracle? No worries.
It does not matter.
Now, we give them a good discount if they want our hardware, but they are welcome to spec any hardware they want.
Not to mention PureFlex, which is the densest x86 (and RS600) "datacenter in cabinet" blades in the business.
Moonshot might eventually beat it when they get the Atom based cards on the market.
Well, we really don't make much on the hardware.
Consider the lowly x3550 m4, a box we sell in large quantities. It costs around 3K basic and $22K nicely decked out to handle quite a few virtual images with 384GB of memory (you can double that).
Figure a nice 40% margin, less if you are buying more of them. Say 20%. Buy a service contract we might even take a significant loss.
Now, if you have us support that device in a datacenter, I can tell you that we will make many more times that in basic sysadmin services. Of course, it includes everything, fixes, backups, growth (replaced in 3 years) 24hr monitoring, rackspace and networking.
But still, we don't make money off the server itself, so why make them? The only hardware that makes money is PureFlex (x86 + RS6000 racks) RS600, AS400 and mainframe. Even then, they tend to give away the hardware as part of the service.
The "they" is not the government, who does not have to report incidents by law, but the private companies in the post I was responding to ARE required to report.
One would expect the numbers to be higher if the government was required to report.
Agreed,
but we had pretty good defenses, and were of course DOSed many times.
But taking of data? Not that we could ever detect, which is not the same as "never happened"
You are correct, but the damage is limited to the single customer hacked.
Not our dog, we are not responsible
Because we don't run hospitals, individuals wanting to get in remotely had RSA key fobs to authenticate for exactly the reasons you state.
It is, sort of.
But in the context of the law it is irrelevant
We once failed to prove we destroyed 3 drives of a 15 drive RAID array (someone did not take pictures of the drive before shredding) that was encrypted at rest. Did not matter, there was confidential information, so we had to indemnify "potential" identity theft losses for clients that might have been compromised.
So sayth the non-technical government arbitrator, so shall it be done...
Pretty unlikely, but I guess someone could decrypt blocks and those blocks might have PHI on it.
Two things:
According to the article, the government is not REQUIRED to tell you about hacking attempts. HIPPA and other laws require that they disclose "hacks"
Second, as Sysadmin for a major healthcare company for 9 years, every single "hack" was the loss of a laptop or hard drive. No one ever "hacked" into the systems for access to data beyond the one account they hacked.
I promise not to touch your Swingline improperly.
Say what again, motherfucker.
I like that answer, mostly because it is true.
I work directly with potential clients, where "telling the truth" is as disastrous as doing so on a first date. Sometimes you have to answer diplomatically, but I won't lie, because I am terrible liar.
"What happens if X goes wrong?"
I could be truthful, and say "We figure out how to blame each other for the failure."
Or
"Full and frank understanding about all of the aspects of your system before we relocate is the best way to avoid failures. Often, what you don't know about your own environment is what causes failures, so discovery and application interviews try to dig out those answers. If there is a failure, we will work together to resolve the problem." - and figure out how to blame each other.
But the first one will kill the deal.
Try to remember:
There is no spoon.
Are you allowed to use a scope when shooting at clients? I find it is less trouble.
How does the Internet work?
It works by everyone playing nice. When someone does not play nice, it does not work very well.
IBM it is (inside T&T anyway):
Specialist - highest level "individual contributor"
Architect - I started managing matrix-ed teams
Senior Technical Staff Member - I have a staff budget, it is like a technical Director, has same authority as Director, but less signing authority.
Distinguished Engineer - Usually have a portfolio of products, services, or business lines
Sr. Distinguished Engineer - More of the above
IBM Fellow
and I forget the title of the IBM Fellow that sits on the board. Sr IBM Fellow?
Never do you "have" to cut over to line management to advance, unless you really want to be CEO, like Ginni Rometti.
I manage teams for short time periods for specific goals, who in turn have "line managers" that are usually more like HR managers: vacation, advancement, timecards, reviews, etc, are done by line management.
I can focus on getting problems solved and more strategic planning without worrying about timecards, budget or that kind of nonsense. The business orientated line manager does that.
What about lizard?
My stock answer to that is:
Assuming there is no pressing issues sooner, like a micro manager, then every five years or so I evaluate if I want to stay where I am or if there is more interesting and rewarding work to be done elsewhere.
So, what kind of company is this? One where I stay because the work is interesting and rewarding, or one where I decide it is time to examine my option?
How is it any different from the HUD available on a BMW or other vehicles?
Backwards.
The police have to prove you were using them at the time, otherwise they are no different than a regular pair of glasses.
Assumed innocent until proven guilty.
Or the HUD available in BMW and other cars?
IF anything, the GG is a HUD device since it is not opaque
RMS donated a quarter.
I think the phrase you are for is "Holding hostage"
Reminds me of the scene in Blazing Saddles... Nobody moves, or the nigger gets it.