Apple PR failed to remove a lot of the misconceptions about the little location file on the device, so let me take a crack. The location information on the iPhone is not YOUR location, but rather a collection of location data points that includes the cell towers in the local vicinity, some of which could be up to 100 miles away. As a result, the phone is not storing your location, but instead just downloading a bit of cache data so it can look up your location faster when you want it to. That responds to the 'storing' part of your post. With respect to tracking, if you know a way for a navigation app to give you directions and locate you, but not track you, I'd like to hear it. In the meantime, if you would like the phone to NOT know where you are, period, just switch off 'location services', which, as of 4.2.3, also deletes the local cache database.
Meanwhile, all sorts of information about your location is leaked by all the devices you use. One trivial example is your IP address, which, while not a precise locator, gives the other end some idea about where you are (assuming no proxies, etc etc)
Right, until comcast runs out of addresses for customers and has to pay $1000 on the open market per address. No home user is going to pay $1000 to get connected when some other ISP has gone IPv6 and can connect them for $35.
The vast majority for me is defense and health care. Even though I am exempt from medicare taxes, 25% goes to that category. Anyone who thinks we don't need health care reform is crazy!
Second, if we stop funding health care people die. If we stop funding defense, what happens? Seriously. If the defense budget is cut in half, in what ways is my life or way of life threatened? I can intellectually measure the value ofnthe rest of my tax dollars in the other categories, but, for defense, it's hard to imagine what I get after spending as much per capita as, say, Japan, on defense.
-reduce the number of ads by an order of magnitude and increase the relevance of the remaining by the same factor. Some weekend movies have 8 minute commercial breaks for Christ sake! No wonder we hate them so much -allow me to watch the content whenever I want, wherever I want. None of this 5 most recent episodes crap. None of this web only, no mobile viewing either. -make the fee 10x less than cable, the fees for which are out of control.
-I'd also like to see a try at a crowd sourced patronage system for TV. I'd pay a lot more if I knew I was paying the director and cast directly, and then they could release the content under creative commons or something. Don't know if enough people would pay though.
Other comments have taken to clearing up some of the misconceptions regarding first-to-file versus first-to-invent so I won't duplicate them. However, one thing not yet pointed out is that the vast (VAST) majority of the rest of the world uses a first-to-file system.
By switching our system, it reduces the burden on an inventor (and thus the legal cost) of obtaining a world wide patent as the systems become closer to the same. And note that Europe has not considered switching to first-to-invent as a way to combat patent trolls, which says something about how much the USA switching will help/hurt trolls.
"... If this is successful, it should allow the handset to recover its original firmware and resume operation. But not everyone can get this to work, indicating that the devices are truly bricked, with the only option being to return them to the network operator and have them replaced under warranty."
The article has more details; the problems appear to be restricted to a few samsung firmware versions. Given how religious MS is about testing every combination of everything come patch time (how many times have we bitched about the slowness of a patch), I'm going to speculate the source of the cock-up is a miscommunication regarding which firmware versions are out there (MS didn't know they existed) or what the differences between them are (MS thought the differences were irrelevant come patch time) and at least half the blame lies with Samsung.
The people I want to hear most from are not the IP intellectual discussions about moot points of IP policy, but from actual patent holders who have innovative technologies that have been blocked from innovating by the patent system.
I used to be against most forms of US IP, but now in a position where I may be able to actually capitalise on some of my own IP, I find the system much more friendly than I thought. While I still find my own knowledge lacking, here are the two things I wish were reformed:
-A patent does not give freedom to operate, it only gives the right to exclude. For example if you patent A, and then I patent B, but B is a subset or derivative of A, I can't actually bring B to market because A blocks me, but the holder of A can't do it either because B blocks it. This ends up stifling innovation. To correct this problem requires an entire re-think of the rights given to patent holders.
Second, patent holders get the standard term to block others, regardless whether the holder intends to or ever does bring the innovation to the market. I wish we had a system that gave 22 years of protection, but only if the holder uses the patent within 2 years of granting (with an appeals process that allows extensions if reasonable work is still being done on it). Essentially, eliminate defensive patent library weapons of mass destruction.
I have been a comcast customer for 8 straight years now (give or take a few months)
Had the announcement broken 3 years ago, I would have agreed with you, but Comcast is on a long, upward trend in technical competitiveness.
They were the first major ISP to go DNSSEC, I believe, and have done DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts in most of their markets (we get cheap 20/4 service here, with a 50 down option available. Some parts of the service area have 100mbps down.) They also rolled out a bunch of 6to4 servers recently. While 6to4 is not a great technology, it is useful to have ISP servers, since my IPv6 traffic (auto tunneled via an Airport Extreme) goes through my local NOC and not first to wisconsin and then back to silicon valley as was the case before.
They still lag when it comes to technical support via phone, as they assume all of their customers are techno-illiterate, but I have to give them a lot of credit for being on the leading edge when it comes to their network and network technologies.
As soon as someone connects our fork to the existing fork of the internet, we'll be reduced to a connected network and not a true fork. You could decide that anyone who connects to the old internet will be blacklisted, but then we'll be reduced to controllers in the same form as those we currently deride. It's a beautiful irony built in to the design of the internet in the first place.
This seems like an issue for which representative democracy was created. We get the laws we ask for, and the reason we're having a debate is because the telecom companies are currently much louder than we are. It's because your average person doesn't give two shits about net neutrality right now, they just want a broadband connection good enough to do what they're used to doing. But, anyone I sit down for 30 minutes and to whom I explain what the underlying debate is out always comes out pissed we haven't forced net neutrality down the throats of all involved already.
You are conflating "Scientist" and "Professor". Aside from the academic track, as a Ph.D. scientist, you can work in industry, especially if you have a background in organic chemistry, biochemistry, physics or materials science. You could also skip to DC and work in public policy and education. Or you could join a law firm as a patent agent, work a few years, and have a J.D. from a top-tier law school paid by your employer while making top dollars as patent attorney. Or maybe you'd like to work VC as a scientific advisor, as you have knowledge and skills your average MBA graduate does not. Or perhaps you have an idea for a new technology you'd like to bring to market and know you've just spent 6 years working dilligently on one thing to have it succeed, so it's not like you don't have the drive. Or maybe you'd like to...
Well, I'm a scientist now and am so for two reasons:
1. Bill Nye. Because, honestly, who wouldn't want to have your own theme song that repeats your name 'BILL BILL Bill bill bill!' (And, really, the guy was legitimately cool)
2. Weird Science. It was always going to be way easier for me to synthesize the girl of my dreams than win her.
As a buy-and-hold investor, why do you care whether high-frequency trading exists at all? The flash crash was largely erased shortly thereafter, so it wasn't like it artificially destroyed your wealth. As a person who believes that a core value of our moral system should be those things that do not impinge on the rights of others should be allowed (with notable and obvious exception), I find banning high value trading simply because we are afraid the market will do strange things is silly.
When it comes down to it, the flash crash was a boon for the buy and hold investor, since you got an opportunity to buy things at great prices. And, when it comes times to sell, having a bazillion automated trades in the system ensures your trade will get lost in the liquidity, practically guaranteeing a fair price. Wipe out market liquidity and you are suddenly at the mercy of whoever happens to want to buy that day.
Consider an extinction-level event, such as an asteroid collision with earth. Presume that we cannot deflect the asteroid because we detect it too late, or some other reason you can imagine.
In that case I would bet that humanity, although scattered to the wind all over the planet, would survive in some form. But, who will maintain the internet? Who will preserve all of the data? And, even with that data, we still have to find all of the necessary components to read it (SATA controller, display board, connectors, etc). And our future fractured selves are going to have a hell of a time finding the meaningful and important data, since hard drives do not look remotely unique.
Books do not have any of those problems. The entire OED is not exactly portable, but once you have re-created infrastructure enough to used wheeled transportation, it should be carry-able.
Putting more and more records online is a good thing because it increases access to that information for everyone. But perhaps some records, such as the definitive history of the words in our language, should be designated cultural artifacts worth saving and preserving in hard copy form, lest the unthinkable happens and we lose several centuries of our historical record. And the longer we continue to put stuff only online, the worst the results will be.
Of course, everyone will think planning for this eventuality is ridiculous until we HAVE to plan for the eventuality. I hope we have enough warning to preserve what we need to.
Easiest way to make a sure buck ever: just convince the professor to fix your grades and give him/her part of the profit.
You don't even have to be that pernicious-- just ask the professor how many points you'd have to lose to get a sure B or C, and then ensure you get a B or C.
Bet enough and you won't even care what grades you decide to give yourself since you won't have to work.
At this point, I am not worried about incumbents as much as I am the lack of constitutionally empowered oversight of the legislative branch by the people.
There is nothing in the constitution about us (the people) changing the way senators are selected, or changing the rules by which the senate operates, which means that to do so would require a constitutional amendment. This, of course, requires a *two-thirds* majority vote by the Senate, and to change that requirement, of course, requires a constitutional amendment (ad infinitium).
You might reply that our power is to elect new senators who will act and vote in the way that we would like. Unfortunately, it seems that senators quickly lose whatever gumption they had to change the system and become a cog in it. Additionally, it's going to require a full 6 years to replace the entire incumbent bloc. It'd be better if we (the people) at least had the threat of direct action, even if the only power we were granted was some sort of last-resort nuclear option.
While California has the opposite problem and is currently overwhelmed and hogtied by too much direct constituent participation in legislation via the ballot initiative process, I still find the lack of any way for the people to override the legislative branch disturbing.
It occurred to me when looking at the charts that the stock market quote system is the perfect way to send encoded transmissions- the sender/offering entity is almost impossible to trace back and the receiver can remain entirely anonymous since almost anyone can look at stock pricing charts. Next, the patterns can be nearly impossible to detect, especially if several sources are linked together to make one transmission system, since the system is filled with lots and lots of what amounts to 'random noise' in the millions of non-encoding quotes/trades out there.
A sender would also have a significant amount of bandwidth given the number of different ticker symbols, the frequency of quotes, the rate of change between quotes, the direction of quotes, etc.
Normally, a casual observer wouldn't even notice the signals present at all. In this case, a potentially unrelated event (the flash crash) caused more scrutiny, but, supposing this are encoding signals we're witnessing, we still don't know what they mean or to whom they were sent.
The same people (person?) that make Adblock for Chrome also make Adblock for Safari (5.0+) Since the feature was ported from Webkit into Chrome, I wonder if Safari has the same ability.
From reading the physorg summary linked in the article linked in the summary on Slashdot (why we have to link to tertiary sources, I don't know) it seems that it isn't the polymer branching of the molecule that lends the mortar strength- the amylopectin doesn't even directly add strength as far as I can tell. Instead, it's that the amylopectin breaks up the crystallization of the lime in the mortar, creating micro crystals instead. I can imagine a big crystal being quite brittle with all of the possible shear planes.
So, it wasn't as obvious to me why the amylopectin made it stronger.
Are we going to get a news item every time someone farts at Apple?
Why not? We already get the daily Linus fartcast. Soon/. will be "News for terds. Farts that matter"
I see lots of comments stating that this would not have happened had admins run regular tests on the failover mechanisms. That seems a poor assumption- if the system happens to fail and then an outage occurs before the next scheduled test, one may not be aware of it.
We had this problem recently where we were testing our backup generator. Normally, we cut power to the local on-campus substation, which kicks in the generator and activates a failover mechanism, rerouting power. Well, the generator came on no problem but the failover mechanism was broken, so every server in the datacenter spontaneously lost power. Had we known the failover was broken, we would have not done the regular test. However, the last test on the failover (done directly without cutting power), a mere month prior, had shown the failover mechanism was fine.
Point being, unless you are going to literally continuously test everything, there is still some probability of an unexpected double failure.
Let me explain to you why this is not as scary and outrageous as it would first seem. The summary and article are very good ones, but don't provide enough context for a non-expert to understand how serious/non-serious it is:
As the summary indicates and RTFA seems to confirm, DSHS collected the samples for use in anonymous human medical research. This is done all of the time, as another poster commented (and gave the great example of HeLa cells). Typically, an oversight committee reviews a great many details about your research plan and ensures your collection methods are sufficiently anonymous, and your research is done in such a way as to avoid revealing the identity of the sample if at all possible. (Usually, users are separated from the database maintainers, and the users never even know the identities of the samples).
As one example, co-worker of mine receives nasal swabs of infected children in Nicaragua, under the auspices of WHO and CDC. He screens them using very expensive diagnostic assays that aren't viable in the clinic but are useful for basic research. His lab has discovered several new viruses in these samples that weren't previously discovered due to geographic bias in clinical cohorts (you sample the people most likely to be able to pay for the cure). He never knows the names of the children, just age, symptoms, and previous infections. He has to renew his certification to work with human samples once a year to ensure he knows all relevant legal and ethical regulations, and must update his research plan regularly, and receive annual approval from the oversight committee, even if he doesn't change anything. (And must stop all research if he procrastinates and certification lapses) However, without being able to use these samples, both basic research and clinically relevant research would be hampered. DSHS probably operates in the same way.
The issue here is that these samples were passed to the federal government and they used them to build a DNA database. People sued primarily because DNA is considered very personal information in this country and having the government track you using it is a current moral panic/boogeyman. (Partially warranted, partially not). In this case, however, they were using mitochondrial DNA, which is separate from your normal chromosomal DNA. Because sperm have no mitochrondia, all of your mitochondrial DNA is passed matrilineally (i.e. from mother to child-- sons cannot pass it on at all). Because you only have one copy, it does not undergo recombination during sperm/egg generation, and thus changes very very slowly. As a result, people like the National Geographic Society are using the information to trace human migration patterns throughout history using mitochondrial sequence information (google it). However, because it's so similar from person to person ---it is unlikely to be able to be traced directly back to you or identify you the way your chromosomal DNA is--- instead, it can tell where your mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother came from, i.e. your ethnicity. With enough samples it may even be able to tell whether you are a recent immigrant, a long term american, etc. This means that, using this database as a source, police may one day collect mtDNA from a crime scene and know they are looking for a person from Eastern Europe that is 1st-3rd generation american. That is, it can be used to narrow suspects, but can't be used to identify you directly.
So, in the end, the information (at least to me, as a molecular biologist) is relatively harmless and perhaps even good, in balance. However, given the serious objections people would likely have if they had known their information would be used in this way, the oversight committee should have required additional consent to use and collect this information for each person's sample they collected (and insured the people who gave consent gave informed consent). That would have avoided the mess entirely, and been more ethical.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple PR failed to remove a lot of the misconceptions about the little location file on the device, so let me take a crack. The location information on the iPhone is not YOUR location, but rather a collection of location data points that includes the cell towers in the local vicinity, some of which could be up to 100 miles away. As a result, the phone is not storing your location, but instead just downloading a bit of cache data so it can look up your location faster when you want it to. That responds to the 'storing' part of your post. With respect to tracking, if you know a way for a navigation app to give you directions and locate you, but not track you, I'd like to hear it. In the meantime, if you would like the phone to NOT know where you are, period, just switch off 'location services', which, as of 4.2.3, also deletes the local cache database.
Meanwhile, all sorts of information about your location is leaked by all the devices you use. One trivial example is your IP address, which, while not a precise locator, gives the other end some idea about where you are (assuming no proxies, etc etc)
Right, until comcast runs out of addresses for customers and has to pay $1000 on the open market per address. No home user is going to pay $1000 to get connected when some other ISP has gone IPv6 and can connect them for $35.
The vast majority for me is defense and health care. Even though I am exempt from medicare taxes, 25% goes to that category. Anyone who thinks we don't need health care reform is crazy!
Second, if we stop funding health care people die. If we stop funding defense, what happens? Seriously. If the defense budget is cut in half, in what ways is my life or way of life threatened? I can intellectually measure the value ofnthe rest of my tax dollars in the other categories, but, for defense, it's hard to imagine what I get after spending as much per capita as, say, Japan, on defense.
Maybe they can't. But I would suggest:
-reduce the number of ads by an order of magnitude and increase the relevance of the remaining by the same factor. Some weekend movies have 8 minute commercial breaks for Christ sake! No wonder we hate them so much
-allow me to watch the content whenever I want, wherever I want. None of this 5 most recent episodes crap. None of this web only, no mobile viewing either.
-make the fee 10x less than cable, the fees for which are out of control.
-I'd also like to see a try at a crowd sourced patronage system for TV. I'd pay a lot more if I knew I was paying the director and cast directly, and then they could release the content under creative commons or something. Don't know if enough people would pay though.
Yep, you got so screwed that you only became a billionaire instead of the richest person on earth. If only we could all be so fortunate.
Not if you contractually agree not to tether when you sign up for service.
Of course, if they change my plan to charge me for tethering and I'm NOT tethering, well, that would probably not be legal.
Thank you for marketing WP7 in a post that seems like astroturfing. How does this relate to MS v Apple's updating mechanisms, again?
Other comments have taken to clearing up some of the misconceptions regarding first-to-file versus first-to-invent so I won't duplicate them. However, one thing not yet pointed out is that the vast (VAST) majority of the rest of the world uses a first-to-file system.
By switching our system, it reduces the burden on an inventor (and thus the legal cost) of obtaining a world wide patent as the systems become closer to the same. And note that Europe has not considered switching to first-to-invent as a way to combat patent trolls, which says something about how much the USA switching will help/hurt trolls.
It's really bricked. See here:
"... If this is successful, it should allow the handset to recover its original firmware and resume operation. But not everyone can get this to work, indicating that the devices are truly bricked, with the only option being to return them to the network operator and have them replaced under warranty."
The article has more details; the problems appear to be restricted to a few samsung firmware versions. Given how religious MS is about testing every combination of everything come patch time (how many times have we bitched about the slowness of a patch), I'm going to speculate the source of the cock-up is a miscommunication regarding which firmware versions are out there (MS didn't know they existed) or what the differences between them are (MS thought the differences were irrelevant come patch time) and at least half the blame lies with Samsung.
The people I want to hear most from are not the IP intellectual discussions about moot points of IP policy, but from actual patent holders who have innovative technologies that have been blocked from innovating by the patent system.
I used to be against most forms of US IP, but now in a position where I may be able to actually capitalise on some of my own IP, I find the system much more friendly than I thought. While I still find my own knowledge lacking, here are the two things I wish were reformed:
-A patent does not give freedom to operate, it only gives the right to exclude. For example if you patent A, and then I patent B, but B is a subset or derivative of A, I can't actually bring B to market because A blocks me, but the holder of A can't do it either because B blocks it. This ends up stifling innovation. To correct this problem requires an entire re-think of the rights given to patent holders.
Second, patent holders get the standard term to block others, regardless whether the holder intends to or ever does bring the innovation to the market. I wish we had a system that gave 22 years of protection, but only if the holder uses the patent within 2 years of granting (with an appeals process that allows extensions if reasonable work is still being done on it). Essentially, eliminate defensive patent library weapons of mass destruction.
I have been a comcast customer for 8 straight years now (give or take a few months)
Had the announcement broken 3 years ago, I would have agreed with you, but Comcast is on a long, upward trend in technical competitiveness.
They were the first major ISP to go DNSSEC, I believe, and have done DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts in most of their markets (we get cheap 20/4 service here, with a 50 down option available. Some parts of the service area have 100mbps down.) They also rolled out a bunch of 6to4 servers recently. While 6to4 is not a great technology, it is useful to have ISP servers, since my IPv6 traffic (auto tunneled via an Airport Extreme) goes through my local NOC and not first to wisconsin and then back to silicon valley as was the case before.
They still lag when it comes to technical support via phone, as they assume all of their customers are techno-illiterate, but I have to give them a lot of credit for being on the leading edge when it comes to their network and network technologies.
As soon as someone connects our fork to the existing fork of the internet, we'll be reduced to a connected network and not a true fork. You could decide that anyone who connects to the old internet will be blacklisted, but then we'll be reduced to controllers in the same form as those we currently deride. It's a beautiful irony built in to the design of the internet in the first place.
This seems like an issue for which representative democracy was created. We get the laws we ask for, and the reason we're having a debate is because the telecom companies are currently much louder than we are. It's because your average person doesn't give two shits about net neutrality right now, they just want a broadband connection good enough to do what they're used to doing. But, anyone I sit down for 30 minutes and to whom I explain what the underlying debate is out always comes out pissed we haven't forced net neutrality down the throats of all involved already.
You are conflating "Scientist" and "Professor". Aside from the academic track, as a Ph.D. scientist, you can work in industry, especially if you have a background in organic chemistry, biochemistry, physics or materials science. You could also skip to DC and work in public policy and education. Or you could join a law firm as a patent agent, work a few years, and have a J.D. from a top-tier law school paid by your employer while making top dollars as patent attorney. Or maybe you'd like to work VC as a scientific advisor, as you have knowledge and skills your average MBA graduate does not. Or perhaps you have an idea for a new technology you'd like to bring to market and know you've just spent 6 years working dilligently on one thing to have it succeed, so it's not like you don't have the drive. Or maybe you'd like to...
And the list goes on.
Well, I'm a scientist now and am so for two reasons:
1. Bill Nye. Because, honestly, who wouldn't want to have your own theme song that repeats your name 'BILL BILL Bill bill bill!' (And, really, the guy was legitimately cool)
2. Weird Science. It was always going to be way easier for me to synthesize the girl of my dreams than win her.
And now my early-teen horrible taste and design ability will live forever in it's terrible FrontPage '97 designed glory. Hallelujah!
As a buy-and-hold investor, why do you care whether high-frequency trading exists at all? The flash crash was largely erased shortly thereafter, so it wasn't like it artificially destroyed your wealth. As a person who believes that a core value of our moral system should be those things that do not impinge on the rights of others should be allowed (with notable and obvious exception), I find banning high value trading simply because we are afraid the market will do strange things is silly.
When it comes down to it, the flash crash was a boon for the buy and hold investor, since you got an opportunity to buy things at great prices. And, when it comes times to sell, having a bazillion automated trades in the system ensures your trade will get lost in the liquidity, practically guaranteeing a fair price. Wipe out market liquidity and you are suddenly at the mercy of whoever happens to want to buy that day.
Consider an extinction-level event, such as an asteroid collision with earth. Presume that we cannot deflect the asteroid because we detect it too late, or some other reason you can imagine.
In that case I would bet that humanity, although scattered to the wind all over the planet, would survive in some form. But, who will maintain the internet? Who will preserve all of the data? And, even with that data, we still have to find all of the necessary components to read it (SATA controller, display board, connectors, etc). And our future fractured selves are going to have a hell of a time finding the meaningful and important data, since hard drives do not look remotely unique.
Books do not have any of those problems. The entire OED is not exactly portable, but once you have re-created infrastructure enough to used wheeled transportation, it should be carry-able.
Putting more and more records online is a good thing because it increases access to that information for everyone. But perhaps some records, such as the definitive history of the words in our language, should be designated cultural artifacts worth saving and preserving in hard copy form, lest the unthinkable happens and we lose several centuries of our historical record. And the longer we continue to put stuff only online, the worst the results will be.
Of course, everyone will think planning for this eventuality is ridiculous until we HAVE to plan for the eventuality. I hope we have enough warning to preserve what we need to.
Easiest way to make a sure buck ever: just convince the professor to fix your grades and give him/her part of the profit.
You don't even have to be that pernicious-- just ask the professor how many points you'd have to lose to get a sure B or C, and then ensure you get a B or C.
Bet enough and you won't even care what grades you decide to give yourself since you won't have to work.
At this point, I am not worried about incumbents as much as I am the lack of constitutionally empowered oversight of the legislative branch by the people.
There is nothing in the constitution about us (the people) changing the way senators are selected, or changing the rules by which the senate operates, which means that to do so would require a constitutional amendment. This, of course, requires a *two-thirds* majority vote by the Senate, and to change that requirement, of course, requires a constitutional amendment (ad infinitium).
You might reply that our power is to elect new senators who will act and vote in the way that we would like. Unfortunately, it seems that senators quickly lose whatever gumption they had to change the system and become a cog in it. Additionally, it's going to require a full 6 years to replace the entire incumbent bloc. It'd be better if we (the people) at least had the threat of direct action, even if the only power we were granted was some sort of last-resort nuclear option.
While California has the opposite problem and is currently overwhelmed and hogtied by too much direct constituent participation in legislation via the ballot initiative process, I still find the lack of any way for the people to override the legislative branch disturbing.
It occurred to me when looking at the charts that the stock market quote system is the perfect way to send encoded transmissions- the sender/offering entity is almost impossible to trace back and the receiver can remain entirely anonymous since almost anyone can look at stock pricing charts. Next, the patterns can be nearly impossible to detect, especially if several sources are linked together to make one transmission system, since the system is filled with lots and lots of what amounts to 'random noise' in the millions of non-encoding quotes/trades out there.
A sender would also have a significant amount of bandwidth given the number of different ticker symbols, the frequency of quotes, the rate of change between quotes, the direction of quotes, etc.
Normally, a casual observer wouldn't even notice the signals present at all. In this case, a potentially unrelated event (the flash crash) caused more scrutiny, but, supposing this are encoding signals we're witnessing, we still don't know what they mean or to whom they were sent.
The same people (person?) that make Adblock for Chrome also make Adblock for Safari (5.0+) Since the feature was ported from Webkit into Chrome, I wonder if Safari has the same ability.
From reading the physorg summary linked in the article linked in the summary on Slashdot (why we have to link to tertiary sources, I don't know) it seems that it isn't the polymer branching of the molecule that lends the mortar strength- the amylopectin doesn't even directly add strength as far as I can tell. Instead, it's that the amylopectin breaks up the crystallization of the lime in the mortar, creating micro crystals instead. I can imagine a big crystal being quite brittle with all of the possible shear planes.
So, it wasn't as obvious to me why the amylopectin made it stronger.
Are we going to get a news item every time someone farts at Apple? Why not? We already get the daily Linus fartcast. Soon /. will be "News for terds. Farts that matter"
I see lots of comments stating that this would not have happened had admins run regular tests on the failover mechanisms. That seems a poor assumption- if the system happens to fail and then an outage occurs before the next scheduled test, one may not be aware of it.
We had this problem recently where we were testing our backup generator. Normally, we cut power to the local on-campus substation, which kicks in the generator and activates a failover mechanism, rerouting power. Well, the generator came on no problem but the failover mechanism was broken, so every server in the datacenter spontaneously lost power. Had we known the failover was broken, we would have not done the regular test. However, the last test on the failover (done directly without cutting power), a mere month prior, had shown the failover mechanism was fine.
Point being, unless you are going to literally continuously test everything, there is still some probability of an unexpected double failure.
Let me explain to you why this is not as scary and outrageous as it would first seem. The summary and article are very good ones, but don't provide enough context for a non-expert to understand how serious/non-serious it is:
As the summary indicates and RTFA seems to confirm, DSHS collected the samples for use in anonymous human medical research. This is done all of the time, as another poster commented (and gave the great example of HeLa cells). Typically, an oversight committee reviews a great many details about your research plan and ensures your collection methods are sufficiently anonymous, and your research is done in such a way as to avoid revealing the identity of the sample if at all possible. (Usually, users are separated from the database maintainers, and the users never even know the identities of the samples).
As one example, co-worker of mine receives nasal swabs of infected children in Nicaragua, under the auspices of WHO and CDC. He screens them using very expensive diagnostic assays that aren't viable in the clinic but are useful for basic research. His lab has discovered several new viruses in these samples that weren't previously discovered due to geographic bias in clinical cohorts (you sample the people most likely to be able to pay for the cure). He never knows the names of the children, just age, symptoms, and previous infections. He has to renew his certification to work with human samples once a year to ensure he knows all relevant legal and ethical regulations, and must update his research plan regularly, and receive annual approval from the oversight committee, even if he doesn't change anything. (And must stop all research if he procrastinates and certification lapses) However, without being able to use these samples, both basic research and clinically relevant research would be hampered. DSHS probably operates in the same way.
The issue here is that these samples were passed to the federal government and they used them to build a DNA database. People sued primarily because DNA is considered very personal information in this country and having the government track you using it is a current moral panic/boogeyman. (Partially warranted, partially not). In this case, however, they were using mitochondrial DNA, which is separate from your normal chromosomal DNA. Because sperm have no mitochrondia, all of your mitochondrial DNA is passed matrilineally (i.e. from mother to child-- sons cannot pass it on at all). Because you only have one copy, it does not undergo recombination during sperm/egg generation, and thus changes very very slowly. As a result, people like the National Geographic Society are using the information to trace human migration patterns throughout history using mitochondrial sequence information (google it). However, because it's so similar from person to person ---it is unlikely to be able to be traced directly back to you or identify you the way your chromosomal DNA is--- instead, it can tell where your mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother came from, i.e. your ethnicity. With enough samples it may even be able to tell whether you are a recent immigrant, a long term american, etc. This means that, using this database as a source, police may one day collect mtDNA from a crime scene and know they are looking for a person from Eastern Europe that is 1st-3rd generation american. That is, it can be used to narrow suspects, but can't be used to identify you directly.
So, in the end, the information (at least to me, as a molecular biologist) is relatively harmless and perhaps even good, in balance. However, given the serious objections people would likely have if they had known their information would be used in this way, the oversight committee should have required additional consent to use and collect this information for each person's sample they collected (and insured the people who gave consent gave informed consent). That would have avoided the mess entirely, and been more ethical.