This is a very good point. I would also point out that CableCo has most likely been granted advantaged access to a large pool of customers (if it isn't actually a legally-mandated regional monopoly). What it's trying to do is leverage its "ownership" of this customer base to extort money from service providers (like your example.com).
This significantly distorts the market, since example.com can't just go elsewhere to access these customers. If CableCo is the only way to reach them, it basically has to pony up whatever CableCo asks for, or just give up that section of its customer base. And ultimately it's CableCo's customers who wind up paying for it, since--- to stay in business--- example.com will just past the additional costs along to its customers (e.g., the cost of premium services gets boosted so that CableCo can make its competition-free profit.)
If you were to consider an alternative model where CableCo offers tiered services, but the end-customer foots the bill for using these resources, you'd have a much healthier situation. If CableCo charges too much, then there's pressure on it (via regulation or competition) to lower its prices. In either case, the customer has an accurate perception of how much their ISP is charging them, and they're not subject to all of the hidden charges.
Which is, of course, exactly why companies like CableCo want to do things this way. It's much better to extract a rent from your customers without their knowing it.
I don't think it really matters what the IT community thinks. I hate to say it, but for the most part we're a bunch of sheltered and politically naive dummies.
The really interesting story in this election is which candidates have most successfully embraced the Internet in order to collect money and run their campaigns. It's no guarantee, but I'll bet that a candidate that achieves success due to grassroots Internet fundraising is a candidate who is much more likely to push for a free, open Internet. Or at least, to oppose some of the really blatant attempts by corporations, ICANN, etc. to limit individual's access. In addition, a candidate supported by grassroots donations is much less beholden to industry and to the political party's institutional fundraising/organization leverage.
If you're wondering which candidate is doing best in this area, by the way, it's Obama. Who has managed to overcome the institutional advantage Hillary Clinton came in with, organize and win dozens of caucuses, and raise an absolutely absurd amount of money--- mostly in the form of small Internet donations.
If McCain had associated with a minister who was a white supremacist and KKK supporter, he would have been kicked out, just like that.
Have you heard of John Hagee? He's a Protestant-supremacist whackbag who things that Catholics are "the great whore" and the Jews in Israel exist to be wiped out in the coming armageddon. When the guy isn't out promoting religious intolerance or genocide, he's John McCain's "spiritual guide" (whatever that means). The funny thing is that McCain doesn't feel any need to distance himself from the guy, he's/proud/ of it. Of course, all of the column inches are being devoted to Obama, but the McCain/Hagee thing is way, way creepier. For one thing, this guy will be influential on McCain if he wins the presidency, and the last thing we need is anyone else promoting stupid incendiary anti-muslim "Crusade" rhetoric within 500 miles of the White House.
[McCain] is the only one who's proven his courage and loyalty under fire. The others are just talking heads.
That was decades ago, and has very little to do with running a country. Since entering the Senate, he's been a pretty mediocre Senator. He's already denounced his most famous accomplishment, the McCain/Feingold election law. He knows nothing about the economy or domestic policy. He's a part of the Republican machine, which is corrupt as hell and seems to basically exist to deficit spend and pump money into the defence sector (which then pumps it back in the form of campaign contributions, aka bribes). Plus he's old and his politics seems to have more to do with personal vendettas than actually advancing America's interest. God help us all if he wins. And god help the Republican party if they manage to "pull off" 12 years of mismanagement. They may con America into giving them one more shot at the presidency, but their long-term relevance to this country's politics is what's at stake.
Right, fair enough. I guess what I'm saying is that although I've never seen the pricing, my hearsay impression is that it's high enough to make physically separate machines worth it even in very large installations. So either there isn't that much of a cost savings, OR there is, but you're handing a lot of it back to IBM. I've also heard that the platform isn't quite as flexible (i.e., runs enough applications/OSes) to easily migrate existing clusters to it (i.e., the way you could if you were just switching from Dell 2U rackmount servers to some other equivalent brand of 2U rackmount server.)
Basically this is a puff piece for IBM, talking up how their Blue Gene SMP systems can run Apache and Linux, so big clients should all run out and buy those rather than clustering inexpensive hardware. The "one computer, running the Internet as an application" thing is a meaningless hook to draw readers in (and get a little bit of attention on places like Slashdot).
In real life there may be a case to be made for IBM's solution. But making that case has more to do with actually convincing large customers that IBM is substantially cheaper (and runs the software people need). Since that doesn't seem to be happening on a massive scale, I tend to doubt IBM's hype.
Giving a government run by politicians who are in the back pockets of these same corporations the power to regulate is not going to achieve what those who want regulation want to achieve.
Don't be naive. These ISPs are already regulated, and the politicians are already operating in their best interests. Many are state- and municipal-backed regulated monopolies--- in other words, they're already being guaranteed preferred access to their customer base and high barriers of entry to competitors.
What the parent poster is saying is not "we should regulate them", but instead "we should adjust the existing regulations so that they serve the customers to some extent, instead of only serving the ISPs' interest". And political pressure can actually bring that about, however unlikely it is. The alternative strategy you propose, i.e., pretend that they're not already regulated, or that you can turn the situation around without addressing the regulatory problem--- that strategy is guaranteed to fail.
Then, when we realized it was a problem, we went totally arse over teakettle: banned the stuff completely and pressured other countries to do the same, rather than realizing that it was the irresponsible use that was really to blame, and that there were parts of the world where any rational cost/benefit analysis still called for it.
DDT is not banned in most of the developing world; it can be obtained, and rather cheaply. Nobody has cut off supplies. What has actually happened is that--- due to massive overuse for agricultural spraying--- many species of Malaria-carrying mosquito have developed immunity. Simultaneously, other more effective pesticides have dropped in price to the point where DDT is just one of many tools in the arsenal (and an ineffective one in most cases). To counter the notion that DDT has been banned everywhere, it's informative to note that a number of countries still use some quantity of DDT in their anti-malaria programs, but these efforts have only limited success and only in certain regions where DDT immunity has not been fully established.
The argument "for" DDT is mostly political, and carried along by people who aren't familiar with the facts. Some people are tempted by the notion that DDT is some kind of panacea for Malaria, but that evil environmentalist hippies are using their awesome power to prevent it. Of course, there's usually very little evidence supporting the latter notion, but it's tempting to believe because it sounds like a "free lunch" solution to a hard problem (one that happens to reinforce some folks' pre-conceived political notions). Unfortunately, the idea founders on, well, just about every basic fact of the story--- including the very important one that many of the nations that would ostensibly be "saved" by DDT use have chosen not to use it because it doesn't work anymore.
There's still a mechanical lock preventing the ignition from being engaged, and they would also have a steering wheel lock to work around. This is effectively bypassing the imobilizer that comes equipt on most modern cars. If someone wants your car bad enough now-a-days, they just take your keys from you.
I just purchased a new car that doesn't have a mechanical ignition system. There's an place to attach the key (doesn't have metal teeth or anything), and a big "Start/Stop" button. The steering wheel lock is also electronic, and is controlled by the electronic signal from the key. I have no idea if my car uses KeyLoq--- I sure hope not.
Mechanical locks are on their way out, largely because they're ineffective against even moderately sophisticated criminals. That's the whole reason Immobilizer systems were rolled out in the first place. This attack effectively stips the immobilizer out of the car and rolls the security back to pre-Immobilizer levels. You only need to look at theft rates among models with and without immobilizers to see what impact that has.
Finally, for those who say that 1-hr access to the key is unreasonable: remember that the attack here is _key copying_, not theft. The immobilizer systems are designed to prevent copying, so that your valet or repair person can't make a copy of your key and steal it later. This attack takes a lot longer than other attacks which are out there (example), but it's still not out of the question.
The basic lesson of all these attacks is that manufacturers need to use strong cryptography rather than custom, homebrewed ciphers. Hopefully with fabrication prices dropping, this will be the last generation of truly ridiculous authentication systems.
The PC World article doesn't go into a lot of detail. Here's some more. The malware itself looks pretty silly, since you have to click through a bunch of warning dialogs to even execute it.
Worms are very different than viruses. Don't mix them up! It's not that hard!
This attitude can be taken too far. There are plenty of worms which have a trojan/virus component that allows them to spread through various barriers (e.g., firewalls) that a normal worm couldn't. In fact, it's generally bad design not to include this sort of flexibility in an attack if there's even a chance that it will be helpful. So what do we call these things?
Now, you are correct that (on the bright side) none of the Mac trojans/viruses includes a worm component yet.
Re:Oh, no hot air, I see...
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The New Boom
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· Score: 1
The meaningful figure is stock price per share * number of shares.
Um, have you looked at that number? It's easily available on any finance site. For example:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=goog
Compare it to another major corporation of your choice and tell me Google's not overvalued.
Google, being full of mathematicians, refuses to do this, as a number is just a number.
Or, alternatively, Google, being run by forward thinking people, does not want to suffer the negative perceived consequences of initiating reverse-splits, when their stock price sinks to a more reasonable level.
Re:Oh, no hot air, I see...
on
The New Boom
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· Score: 1
Oh, no hot air, I see...
on
The New Boom
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· Score: 4, Insightful
So when Amazon.com was selling for hundreds of dollars a share, that was ridiculous. But when Google is selling for $434 per share, everything's just fine. Because, um, they sell advertising, or something.
Werner Heisenberg claims that he sabotaged the Nazi atomic bomb effort.
Following the war, Heisenberg was held at a British detention facility. His conversations were recorded by hidden listening devices. On the day that the news of the first atomic detonation reached him, he expressed disbelief and stated that it was impossible according to his calculations. It was only much later that he decided to adopt the convenient claim that he sabotaged the bomb. It's a convenient story, because it makes him look more decent and smarter at the same time.
For the unitiated, 2.009 at MIT is a class in course 2 (mechanical engineering), called Product Engineering Processes.
I respect the fact that MIT has its own unique course numbering system, and curricula are referred to by numbers rather than by name. However, it does bug me that MIT folks expect their bizarre internal numbering to make sense to outsiders. If one didn't know better, one might even see it as some sort of bizarre exclusionary "in group" code. But I suspect that it's just cluelessness, combined with intense isolation.
Now we should stop arresting burglers and muggers, because that would only teach them to never attempt crime without being backed by the mob, right?
No, but we should encouraging people not to leave their wallets lying around where anyone can take them. Dollar for dollar that's going to be a lot more effective than a doomed enforcement policy that ultimately has no effect on crime rates. In fact, this is one of those problems where if we deal with the root causes now, we could actually reduce the number of "burglars and muggers" who need to be arrested in the future.
Of course, the burglar/mugger analogy doesn't explain the true cost of computer crime: that the people being victimized aren't really the ones who suffer-- their stolen resources are used to launch concentrated attacks against other victims, including corporations and governments and (potentially) critical infrastructure.
The lesson for these guys is: next time you try to profit off of your computer crime, make sure that you have strong connections with organized crime, or live in a country with lax computer crime laws and have a tight financial relationship with the police. I'm glad to hear about this sort of thing, but I don't think it's going to do anything to actually reduce the number of bots out there. Rather, it'll just ensure that future botnets are run by nastier, better-protected individuals and organizations.
I wonder what it would take to convince the world that these unsecured machines are an actual security threat, rather than an annoyance?
All freedom of speech means is that the Government won't try to stop your (should be political) speech. It doesn't mean you can libel and slander people anonymously consequence free.
Hmm. In case you didn't notice, the company in question is asking the Government to penalize this blogger. This is precisely where the 1st amendment is supposed to apply. Any action that the government takes has to be consistent with its obligations to protect the 1st amendment rights of individuals.
That doesn't always mean you can say what you want, there are some important exceptions (trade secret laws, non-disclosure contracts, etc. But to say this has nothing to do with the government is just silly.
I fully support embryonic stem cell research. We have embryos that are and will continue to be destroyed today, that could absolutely be harvested for research. However, to ignore any ethical debate on such issues is just as ignorant as some would paint the opposition.
This is a line I see frequently from people who really should know better. As if nobody was having this debate anyway, as if it wouldn't happened without the President f*ing up research for years.
What's particularly aggravating about it is that iit basically means "sure maybe it was a bad call, but it's all good because we had this good debate". Or in other words: "yes, the position is probably wrong", but at least I made us kill a few years talking about it. I would almost rather people be firmly on the other side than to offer such a lame justification for bad decisionmaking.
Worse, instead of giving us something to debate, the President tried to have it both ways with a poorly thought-out "compromise" that looked good, but really wasn't-- and he then ignored the issue for years. So while most people were figuring out that the President had not actually offered a reasonable compromise at all, years of progress slid away. Meanwhile the public has discussed these issues ad nauseum (for years!) and come to a broad consensus in favor of research. Yet the President and many members of Congress have made it clear that there's still no room in their philosophy (or their constituents' checkbooks) for digression on this issue. So that's not much to smile about.
If any "side" of this argument has the right to be aggrieved, it's the pro-research folks, and the scientists who have had their work shut down for reasons inadequately explained, and inadequately justified. Not the people who can't even justify the decision on its merits, but hide behind the notion that scientists were just looking to chop up embryos without "debate".
I think if there's anything that anti- stem-cell research folks should glean from this, it's that scientists are knocking themselves out looking for alternatives to embryonic stem cell research. These aren't just a few "good guys" or religiously motivated researchers bucking the trend, they're mainstream scientists who are much more concerned with continuing this promising research than they are with winning any sort of debate. This should seem obvious to most people, but listening to the rhetoric on the other side, you might get a very different impression.
Unfortunately, a lot of this research gets picked up by the anti- side and used as evidence for the (false) view that scientists are just "lazy" or politically motivated, and there are lots of alternatives to embryonic stem cells just lying around if they were willing to use them. Unfortunately, most of these alternatives are not ready for prime time, and won't be for years, maybe decades-- if ever (in fact, you'll see many of them melt away, never to be heard from again once science proves them dangerous or unsatisfactory). Most scientists would like to see this research happening now, because even if it takes decades to result in a cure, a five year head start could mean useable treatments a few years earlier than if we wait. And in some cases, that could save thousands of lives.
You'll also notice that most of the embryonic stem cell research plans currently being proposed make use of excess embryos from IVF clinics, and only after effort has been expended to reduce over-production and boost embryo adoption (which currently is not very successful, but might take off with enough encouragement). Surprisingly few mainstream politicians and scientists are strongly advocating therapeutic cloning, although that technology has even more promise.
Security as a Business Liability issue
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VoIP Security
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· Score: 1
POTS is wide open to MIM attacks.. in fact anyone with a cheap earpiece can do it - no need for a PC even.
Try telling this to a judge. In the event that a security breach does take place (resulting in, for instance, loss of customer data), businesses don't want to be in the position of saying "but you could have sniffed that traffic just as easily on a POTS network, your Honor." Using POTS is the standard for security, and as bad as it is, you don't unduly expose yourself to liability by using traditional telephone lines.
If you run a business and dicuss sensitive information over the phone, you're exposing yourself to an unncessary risk by using VoIP. The addition of encryption would make VoIP more appealing to businesses, and (done properly, ideally with end-to-end capability) would even be a significant selling point.
More or less says it all. It has some weaknesses-- the aerial photography isn't as good as Google's satellite photos, and it's missing altogether at the highest zoom level. Also some of the image tiles don't load, leaving me with big holes in the map. I'm sure that's something they'll smooth out. Perhaps the only improvement I see is the inclusion of street names on the aerial photography, which is pretty cool.
Otherwise it is Google maps. I'm really surprised they didn't make some kind of effort to distinguish themselves. It wouldn't have been that hard to borrow the nice features of Google without copying it so transparently. The downside of this approach is that it invites immediate and direct comparisons to Google, which is a more polished and cleaner product. Also, it hardly supports Microsoft's claims of constant innovation. (I can envision this being used against them next time MS makes an appeal to the public about how innovative they are.)
The House legislation will also have to be reconciled with whatever emerges from the Senate.
This is true. Or it used to be. Whatever the Senate passes must be reconciled with the House version by a conference committee. In theory, this should ensure that the House and Senate bills are fairly blended. The Senate is a more moderate and bipartisan place, so a moderate version of the bill in the Senate might help to temper the bill that just passed in the House.
Unfortunately, conference committees have become another avenue for abuse of power over the past several years. With one party dominating both the House and Senate, the other party can be shut out of committee. The same goes for any moderate members of the majority party who don't go along with the party line. So any compromises in the Senate bill that don't please the majority leaders can be conveniently wiped out at that point. It's politically difficult for a Senator to turn around and vote against a bill they've already "passed", so these changed bills typically sail through a final vote and become law, no matter how unrecognizable they become.
Look for this process to conveniently erase any improvements or checks on the power of law enforcement that find their way into a Senate bill.
Ethanol production will make only serve to tighten oil supplies even more than they already are and drive up the cost of energy for all of us.
You assume that oil is the only source of energy for making Ethanol. This is not necessarily the case. Most electricity in the US is produced from non-oil sources, including natural gas and coal. In fact, oil represents a relatively small minority. Obviously a spike in oil prices would result in greater demand for other energy sources, but the differential could still be large.
Secondly, a substantial increase in gas prices could result from refinery problems-- an increasing percentage of our gas comes from a small number of critical refineries which are working at near capacity. This spike could affect gasoline prices without necessarily affecting the cost of oil used to manufacture Ethanol.
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This significantly distorts the market, since example.com can't just go elsewhere to access these customers. If CableCo is the only way to reach them, it basically has to pony up whatever CableCo asks for, or just give up that section of its customer base. And ultimately it's CableCo's customers who wind up paying for it, since--- to stay in business--- example.com will just past the additional costs along to its customers (e.g., the cost of premium services gets boosted so that CableCo can make its competition-free profit.)
If you were to consider an alternative model where CableCo offers tiered services, but the end-customer foots the bill for using these resources, you'd have a much healthier situation. If CableCo charges too much, then there's pressure on it (via regulation or competition) to lower its prices. In either case, the customer has an accurate perception of how much their ISP is charging them, and they're not subject to all of the hidden charges.
Which is, of course, exactly why companies like CableCo want to do things this way. It's much better to extract a rent from your customers without their knowing it.
The really interesting story in this election is which candidates have most successfully embraced the Internet in order to collect money and run their campaigns. It's no guarantee, but I'll bet that a candidate that achieves success due to grassroots Internet fundraising is a candidate who is much more likely to push for a free, open Internet. Or at least, to oppose some of the really blatant attempts by corporations, ICANN, etc. to limit individual's access. In addition, a candidate supported by grassroots donations is much less beholden to industry and to the political party's institutional fundraising/organization leverage.
If you're wondering which candidate is doing best in this area, by the way, it's Obama. Who has managed to overcome the institutional advantage Hillary Clinton came in with, organize and win dozens of caucuses, and raise an absolutely absurd amount of money--- mostly in the form of small Internet donations.
Have you heard of John Hagee? He's a Protestant-supremacist whackbag who things that Catholics are "the great whore" and the Jews in Israel exist to be wiped out in the coming armageddon. When the guy isn't out promoting religious intolerance or genocide, he's John McCain's "spiritual guide" (whatever that means). The funny thing is that McCain doesn't feel any need to distance himself from the guy, he's /proud/ of it. Of course, all of the column inches are being devoted to Obama, but the McCain/Hagee thing is way, way creepier. For one thing, this guy will be influential on McCain if he wins the presidency, and the last thing we need is anyone else promoting stupid incendiary anti-muslim "Crusade" rhetoric within 500 miles of the White House.
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_mccainhagee_connection_1.php
[McCain] is the only one who's proven his courage and loyalty under fire. The others are just talking heads.
That was decades ago, and has very little to do with running a country. Since entering the Senate, he's been a pretty mediocre Senator. He's already denounced his most famous accomplishment, the McCain/Feingold election law. He knows nothing about the economy or domestic policy. He's a part of the Republican machine, which is corrupt as hell and seems to basically exist to deficit spend and pump money into the defence sector (which then pumps it back in the form of campaign contributions, aka bribes). Plus he's old and his politics seems to have more to do with personal vendettas than actually advancing America's interest. God help us all if he wins. And god help the Republican party if they manage to "pull off" 12 years of mismanagement. They may con America into giving them one more shot at the presidency, but their long-term relevance to this country's politics is what's at stake.
Right, fair enough. I guess what I'm saying is that although I've never seen the pricing, my hearsay impression is that it's high enough to make physically separate machines worth it even in very large installations. So either there isn't that much of a cost savings, OR there is, but you're handing a lot of it back to IBM. I've also heard that the platform isn't quite as flexible (i.e., runs enough applications/OSes) to easily migrate existing clusters to it (i.e., the way you could if you were just switching from Dell 2U rackmount servers to some other equivalent brand of 2U rackmount server.)
In real life there may be a case to be made for IBM's solution. But making that case has more to do with actually convincing large customers that IBM is substantially cheaper (and runs the software people need). Since that doesn't seem to be happening on a massive scale, I tend to doubt IBM's hype.
Don't be naive. These ISPs are already regulated, and the politicians are already operating in their best interests. Many are state- and municipal-backed regulated monopolies--- in other words, they're already being guaranteed preferred access to their customer base and high barriers of entry to competitors.
What the parent poster is saying is not "we should regulate them", but instead "we should adjust the existing regulations so that they serve the customers to some extent, instead of only serving the ISPs' interest". And political pressure can actually bring that about, however unlikely it is. The alternative strategy you propose, i.e., pretend that they're not already regulated, or that you can turn the situation around without addressing the regulatory problem--- that strategy is guaranteed to fail.
DDT is not banned in most of the developing world; it can be obtained, and rather cheaply. Nobody has cut off supplies. What has actually happened is that--- due to massive overuse for agricultural spraying--- many species of Malaria-carrying mosquito have developed immunity. Simultaneously, other more effective pesticides have dropped in price to the point where DDT is just one of many tools in the arsenal (and an ineffective one in most cases). To counter the notion that DDT has been banned everywhere, it's informative to note that a number of countries still use some quantity of DDT in their anti-malaria programs, but these efforts have only limited success and only in certain regions where DDT immunity has not been fully established.
The argument "for" DDT is mostly political, and carried along by people who aren't familiar with the facts. Some people are tempted by the notion that DDT is some kind of panacea for Malaria, but that evil environmentalist hippies are using their awesome power to prevent it. Of course, there's usually very little evidence supporting the latter notion, but it's tempting to believe because it sounds like a "free lunch" solution to a hard problem (one that happens to reinforce some folks' pre-conceived political notions). Unfortunately, the idea founders on, well, just about every basic fact of the story--- including the very important one that many of the nations that would ostensibly be "saved" by DDT use have chosen not to use it because it doesn't work anymore.
http://info-pollution.com/ddtban.htm
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/05/who_put_out_the_contract_on_ra.php#more
I just purchased a new car that doesn't have a mechanical ignition system. There's an place to attach the key (doesn't have metal teeth or anything), and a big "Start/Stop" button. The steering wheel lock is also electronic, and is controlled by the electronic signal from the key. I have no idea if my car uses KeyLoq--- I sure hope not.
Mechanical locks are on their way out, largely because they're ineffective against even moderately sophisticated criminals. That's the whole reason Immobilizer systems were rolled out in the first place. This attack effectively stips the immobilizer out of the car and rolls the security back to pre-Immobilizer levels. You only need to look at theft rates among models with and without immobilizers to see what impact that has.
Finally, for those who say that 1-hr access to the key is unreasonable: remember that the attack here is _key copying_, not theft. The immobilizer systems are designed to prevent copying, so that your valet or repair person can't make a copy of your key and steal it later. This attack takes a lot longer than other attacks which are out there (example), but it's still not out of the question.
The basic lesson of all these attacks is that manufacturers need to use strong cryptography rather than custom, homebrewed ciphers. Hopefully with fabrication prices dropping, this will be the last generation of truly ridiculous authentication systems.
http://www.avinti.com/proforma-invoice-malware.htm l
The PC World article doesn't go into a lot of detail. Here's some more. The malware itself looks pretty silly, since you have to click through a bunch of warning dialogs to even execute it.
a ck.html
http://avinti.com/press-room/targeted-malware-att
This attitude can be taken too far. There are plenty of worms which have a trojan/virus component that allows them to spread through various barriers (e.g., firewalls) that a normal worm couldn't. In fact, it's generally bad design not to include this sort of flexibility in an attack if there's even a chance that it will be helpful. So what do we call these things?
Now, you are correct that (on the bright side) none of the Mac trojans/viruses includes a worm component yet.
Um, have you looked at that number? It's easily available on any finance site. For example: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=goog Compare it to another major corporation of your choice and tell me Google's not overvalued.
Google, being full of mathematicians, refuses to do this, as a number is just a number.
Or, alternatively, Google, being run by forward thinking people, does not want to suffer the negative perceived consequences of initiating reverse-splits, when their stock price sinks to a more reasonable level.
Google. Market cap: $128.12 billion.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ibm
For comparison, IBM. Market cap: $127.97 billion.
So when Amazon.com was selling for hundreds of dollars a share, that was ridiculous. But when Google is selling for $434 per share, everything's just fine. Because, um, they sell advertising, or something.
Following the war, Heisenberg was held at a British detention facility. His conversations were recorded by hidden listening devices. On the day that the news of the first atomic detonation reached him, he expressed disbelief and stated that it was impossible according to his calculations. It was only much later that he decided to adopt the convenient claim that he sabotaged the bomb. It's a convenient story, because it makes him look more decent and smarter at the same time.
I respect the fact that MIT has its own unique course numbering system, and curricula are referred to by numbers rather than by name. However, it does bug me that MIT folks expect their bizarre internal numbering to make sense to outsiders. If one didn't know better, one might even see it as some sort of bizarre exclusionary "in group" code. But I suspect that it's just cluelessness, combined with intense isolation.
No, but we should encouraging people not to leave their wallets lying around where anyone can take them. Dollar for dollar that's going to be a lot more effective than a doomed enforcement policy that ultimately has no effect on crime rates. In fact, this is one of those problems where if we deal with the root causes now, we could actually reduce the number of "burglars and muggers" who need to be arrested in the future.
Of course, the burglar/mugger analogy doesn't explain the true cost of computer crime: that the people being victimized aren't really the ones who suffer-- their stolen resources are used to launch concentrated attacks against other victims, including corporations and governments and (potentially) critical infrastructure.
I wonder what it would take to convince the world that these unsecured machines are an actual security threat, rather than an annoyance?
Hmm. In case you didn't notice, the company in question is asking the Government to penalize this blogger. This is precisely where the 1st amendment is supposed to apply. Any action that the government takes has to be consistent with its obligations to protect the 1st amendment rights of individuals.
That doesn't always mean you can say what you want, there are some important exceptions (trade secret laws, non-disclosure contracts, etc. But to say this has nothing to do with the government is just silly.
This is a line I see frequently from people who really should know better. As if nobody was having this debate anyway, as if it wouldn't happened without the President f*ing up research for years.
What's particularly aggravating about it is that iit basically means "sure maybe it was a bad call, but it's all good because we had this good debate". Or in other words: "yes, the position is probably wrong", but at least I made us kill a few years talking about it. I would almost rather people be firmly on the other side than to offer such a lame justification for bad decisionmaking.
Worse, instead of giving us something to debate, the President tried to have it both ways with a poorly thought-out "compromise" that looked good, but really wasn't-- and he then ignored the issue for years. So while most people were figuring out that the President had not actually offered a reasonable compromise at all, years of progress slid away. Meanwhile the public has discussed these issues ad nauseum (for years!) and come to a broad consensus in favor of research. Yet the President and many members of Congress have made it clear that there's still no room in their philosophy (or their constituents' checkbooks) for digression on this issue. So that's not much to smile about.
If any "side" of this argument has the right to be aggrieved, it's the pro-research folks, and the scientists who have had their work shut down for reasons inadequately explained, and inadequately justified. Not the people who can't even justify the decision on its merits, but hide behind the notion that scientists were just looking to chop up embryos without "debate".
Unfortunately, a lot of this research gets picked up by the anti- side and used as evidence for the (false) view that scientists are just "lazy" or politically motivated, and there are lots of alternatives to embryonic stem cells just lying around if they were willing to use them. Unfortunately, most of these alternatives are not ready for prime time, and won't be for years, maybe decades-- if ever (in fact, you'll see many of them melt away, never to be heard from again once science proves them dangerous or unsatisfactory). Most scientists would like to see this research happening now, because even if it takes decades to result in a cure, a five year head start could mean useable treatments a few years earlier than if we wait. And in some cases, that could save thousands of lives.
You'll also notice that most of the embryonic stem cell research plans currently being proposed make use of excess embryos from IVF clinics, and only after effort has been expended to reduce over-production and boost embryo adoption (which currently is not very successful, but might take off with enough encouragement). Surprisingly few mainstream politicians and scientists are strongly advocating therapeutic cloning, although that technology has even more promise.
Try telling this to a judge. In the event that a security breach does take place (resulting in, for instance, loss of customer data), businesses don't want to be in the position of saying "but you could have sniffed that traffic just as easily on a POTS network, your Honor." Using POTS is the standard for security, and as bad as it is, you don't unduly expose yourself to liability by using traditional telephone lines.
If you run a business and dicuss sensitive information over the phone, you're exposing yourself to an unncessary risk by using VoIP. The addition of encryption would make VoIP more appealing to businesses, and (done properly, ideally with end-to-end capability) would even be a significant selling point.
Otherwise it is Google maps. I'm really surprised they didn't make some kind of effort to distinguish themselves. It wouldn't have been that hard to borrow the nice features of Google without copying it so transparently. The downside of this approach is that it invites immediate and direct comparisons to Google, which is a more polished and cleaner product. Also, it hardly supports Microsoft's claims of constant innovation. (I can envision this being used against them next time MS makes an appeal to the public about how innovative they are.)
This is true. Or it used to be. Whatever the Senate passes must be reconciled with the House version by a conference committee. In theory, this should ensure that the House and Senate bills are fairly blended. The Senate is a more moderate and bipartisan place, so a moderate version of the bill in the Senate might help to temper the bill that just passed in the House.
Unfortunately, conference committees have become another avenue for abuse of power over the past several years. With one party dominating both the House and Senate, the other party can be shut out of committee. The same goes for any moderate members of the majority party who don't go along with the party line. So any compromises in the Senate bill that don't please the majority leaders can be conveniently wiped out at that point. It's politically difficult for a Senator to turn around and vote against a bill they've already "passed", so these changed bills typically sail through a final vote and become law, no matter how unrecognizable they become.
Look for this process to conveniently erase any improvements or checks on the power of law enforcement that find their way into a Senate bill.
You assume that oil is the only source of energy for making Ethanol. This is not necessarily the case. Most electricity in the US is produced from non-oil sources, including natural gas and coal. In fact, oil represents a relatively small minority. Obviously a spike in oil prices would result in greater demand for other energy sources, but the differential could still be large.
Secondly, a substantial increase in gas prices could result from refinery problems-- an increasing percentage of our gas comes from a small number of critical refineries which are working at near capacity. This spike could affect gasoline prices without necessarily affecting the cost of oil used to manufacture Ethanol.