So what’s there to do? On the macro level, well, who the hell knows? There are a lot of interesting ideas out there, but this is not the place to get into them.
So where is the place to get into that sort of brainstorming?
... the smug assholes who ran labels, who’d want a system where a handful of corporate overlords shove crap down our throats?
Ah, that's where it will be decided. I have low expectations for what comes out of that.
I also don't understand why he thinks that artists 'need' record labels. What they 'need' is to grow organically to the point of extreme popularity and along the way you are the one deciding the terms of contracts and you are 'the boss' whose accountant and manager work for you and pay everyone up the chain. If you need an advance, you go to a real bank and get an advancement. I personally think that Ok Go are talented enough to sit down in a barn somewhere with basic recording equipment and I'd buy it. Their music video with them on treadmills fly them to success, not EMI. The obvious answer is that's a harder route for the big acts. It takes more work, like you actually have a job forty hours a week. And the attitude toward that option is:
We're a rock band, and it’s a great gig. Not just because we get to snort drugs off the Queen of England (we do), but because the only thing we are expected to do is make cool stuff.
But in the end we all suffer from bands 'selling out' to labels. I personally think no one suffers more than the bands. Some fans can comply with the ridiculous terms but you lose a lot. I would point to this small milestone in Ok Go's career as something of note to new musicians. If you believe in yourself, don't rely on a label to grow. If it doesn't work at least you weren't artificially installed singing someone else's music putting together an executive's vision.
If only Ok Go could decide that their new video is embeddable, most would have watched it on Slashdot right now instead of the 1/2 of us that clicked on the link. Unfortunately they already sold their soul to the devil so it doesn't matter what they think is good for them now. The funny thing about this is that I'm vacationing in Grand Cayman right now and while I own every single album and EP and even vinyl records from Ok Go, I can't see this video on account of what they wrote in their post:
This video contains content from EMI. It is no longer available in your country.
Good luck guys. I think you traded early growth that would have came naturally for some control over what you love. It's sad but it's the way it is now.
I am and I apologize for my haste in looking for an annual income and reporting a monthly income. I had no ill intentions of misrepresentation or denouncing the Taiwanese people. I get five free minutes here and there in my day and just wanted to point out that the memory in all our computers probably come from workers earning less than our minimum wage. That has nothing to do with the rest of my argument.
If the average US person can't figure out the difference between years and months, or have poor reading comprehension, or can't be bothered to check stuff properly, it's no surprise US bosses are outsourcing to other countries.
Please do not attribute my own ignorance to the entire populace of the United States of America.
You've made your point, an ad hominem attack. Fine. But please I do not represent the average American in my posts! They are quick and disposable and if you read my signature, they may even cause death!
I'm saddened that instead of addressing the rest of my argument you began inferring that I meant '3rd world' (a phrase I didn't use) equated to crap. I'm also saddened that you think what you are seeing in that video is quality when it is the horrible product of over worked and underpaid individuals losing a childhood to low wage slavery and never being given a chance at a university like I was fortunate enough to have. So many wasted minds.
[1] FWIW, I'm a cheap worker (relative to the USA) in a 3rd world country. But hey at least I can read, spell and do basic math (with help from Google:) ).
How quick we are to denounce the American superiority only to replace it with our own. Let me know when you're ready to stop trying to take me off my imaginary pedestal and ready to step off of yours. We'll have a nice long chat over a few beers then.
If you thought I meant anything negative about the work in other countries, I did not. In fact, I am saddened they don't make more for their work and hope one day they make as much as I do for equivalent work. I am saddened that we think this 'outsourcing' is a negative thing when it is actually a great equalizer and makes the "fat lazy ill equipped American (me)" work harder and produce better software.
Do you know that the servers the government purchased to run these have memor that's... made in Taiwan! Where the average annual income for a factory worker is a paltry US$1,150.00 annually! And don't even get me started on where the plastic casings came for the keyboards, servers and mice that comprise these servers!
I have this weird feeling that had they gone with American services for building these websites at 10x the cost of using IdeaScale, the Slashdot summary would have read about the absurdly high spending that the Department of Labor is wasting our tax dollars on and would have something about a cursory glance finding tons of companies willing to fullfill the work order for 1/10 what they spent. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. They picked the route that most CEOs today are picking and they saved us from more tax dollar expenditures. Pick your poison.
And don't tell anybody but I think Obama's coffee mugs are... MADE IN CHINA! Just like yours and mine! The horror!
BTW, an earlier White House-sponsored, IdeaScale-powered Open Government Brainstorm identified legalizing marijuana as one of the best ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness.
So because IdeaScale built an application to spec for the White House (who shouldn't have paid for it if it didn't meet requirements) and a bunch of pothead hippies turned up in full force to get their message out loud and clear on it, it's IdeaScale's fault? I think you'd be better off blaming the concept of democracy or the buzzword 'crowd-sourcing' as this is just kind of evidence of a technology-based bias of the voices.
You criticize the White House for doing something we all do then you blame the wonderful effects of democracy on a web application?
Am I the only one who picked up on his visual cues that indicate this is the first time he's been out of his lab in over a year? Look at how tired and emaciated he is. Also, I think there's bar code tattoo on his inner arm that -- if you lift the image and scan it -- reads "HUMAN 00001" which is kind of disconcerting. The part at the end where he holds up the captcha that reads "HELP, PLEASE HELP ME" was a dead giveaway. While his voice and text was overly positive towards the proliferation of his "sleek metal masters" I believe his body language indicated otherwise.
I can't get it to work when I copy paste from Wired (must be something with my setup and javascript) but I will make the unpopular statement of saying that 1) you are copying and pasting Wired's content and 2) as early as high school I was taught that if I was copying information verbatim, I had better have some sort of reference (MLA preferred).
Now, on Slashdot I drop in a link on some text like just did up there. But if I'm quoting it, I'll throw in a quote block and lead up to who said it and call it a day. Now, let's imagine a world where all that was automated when you copied something and the text you copied came with XML metadata saying all the things like where you got it, when you got it, who wrote it, etc. That could potentially be pretty useful. If you think of the web as actual works belonging to people then you can start to see how legitimately referencing other works could be made a lot easier with stuff like this. And maybe text editors could have plugins to digest it?
Unfortunately the submitter and editor of this site seem to cry privacy violation at any attempt to move past the wild wild west anything goes attitude of the world wide web. That's fine as this has an element of privacy concerns what with the phoning home. But please consider the issue from Wired's side, from the side of the author and content creators. They might just trying to help us with what we were taught in school.
Lastly, I would like to point out that another solution aside from Ghostery or Noscript is just to not use Wired's site at all. Vote with your feet and bring your eyeballs elsewhere for pageviews and adclicks. I'm sure Wired's not losing a whole lot of adclicks if you do.
It couldn't be them. China would never do anything wrong.
That... or they'll just blame it on their status as a "developing nation" and that they shouldn't be held to the same standards as everyone else.
The original official notification of this from Google's Chief Legal Officer where he mentioned human rights advocates and human rights issues causes this to seem above the average security breach:
Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
I can understand how "We can't enforce copyright on software and music when we're busy lifting hundreds of millions of citizens out of poverty as a developing nation" works but I can't understand how "We need to arrest and persecute human rights activists because we're a developing nation" works.
I just had a psychic vision of the future. In my vision, this test ended up either producing negative or inconclusive results--once again disappointing the millions of believers who just cannot accept that, for all practical intents and purposes, we here on earth are all alone in the great big dark. I also see myself posting a link this this very post, a year or so from now, in yet another similar thread that has the believers once again futilely hoping that the discovery of life out there is "very, very close."
I think what you're witnessing isn't some X-Files Want to Believe style cult assembly or circle jerk but instead the simple fact that should this be confirmed, it changes everything. From not only a scientific point of view with the near complete annihilation of Drake's equation but also from a philosophical and -- perhaps most importantly -- theological point of view. Since the gravity of a decision in the positive direction is so great, the tiniest disturbances in the canon of thought surrounding extraterrestrial life gets close attention by the nerd world. Even the minuscule announcement that in a certain amount of time we will know with 100% certainty one way or the other on these fossils is actually newsworthy.
Similar to the anti-global warming decision. Huge consequences mean massive attention.
And they should be easier to manufacture too, since they don't have a backplane of transistors like LCD screens: the image is generated by a laser beam that sweeps across phosphor stripes under the control of a scanning mirror.
Of all the information I can find, no one is addressing the thickness of the display unit. I'm not saying it can't be done in close quarters but I'm basically inquiring how thick the unit must be in order for a laser beam to sweep across the phospher stripes that comprise the screen? Are we talking about moving back towards the sizes of back projector displays? Because it might not matter how efficient or awesome the picture display is to the consumer.
I guess that might explain why they're targeting airports and malls and not your living room.
Prysm's founders (Amit Jain and Roger Hajjar) have had their names on quite a few display related patents since 2005. I'm excited a small startup can enter this market but I'm skeptical of the marketability due to the one drawback: a step backwards in compactness and style.
It's probably taken a while to report because of Google's ranking system.
I don't understand how this explains it. The searches shown have very low results for the offensive images? I don't think Google would be foolish enough to remove values from their page ranking system or fiddle with those numbers. Rather it would seem much more intuitive to build an interface that filters designated problem links and images. It's probably even automated for some bullshit arm of the Chinese government (who the devil is it these days? The Ministry of Culture?) that can go into a web portal and just add images and domains and pages to a list of restrictions. Maybe even the government is savvy enough to have an feed or service that gives this information out to companies to assure compliance and ease of compliance? A simpler answer is that a few new sites popped up and the government just hasn't added them to the no-no list yet. If you look at the URLs in the images, they are from blogspot.com which means they're probably new blogs that need to be individually blocked by the Chinese government and/or Google. What you're probably seeing is lazy censorship or the latency of an adequate solution for censorship -- which is pretty much as defective by design as it gets. I don't think "lifts" censorship is what's going on here or else Google would be looking at losing business to one sixths of the world's population. While Google professes 'do no evil' they still have shareholders to satisfy.
Monsanto did the research in 2000 and 2001, and obviously knew the outcome.
You can't say "and obviously knew the outcome" unless you're Monsanto. I believe that GMO crops undergo far fewer tests for safety than pesticides. From the Wikipedia page on one of the three crops in question (MON 863):
In 1989 a 90-day rat-feeding trial done by the FDA, 40 rats that were fed the Bt corn developed multiple reactions typically found in response to allergies, infections, toxins and diseases. Gilles-Eric Seralini reviewed the study as part of the French Commission for Biomolecular Genetics and said that the response by the rats were similar to reactions caused by pesticides. Although the Bt-toxin is a pesticide, he points out that animal research on pesticide-producing corn is nowhere as thorough as that required for approval of pesticides. Follow-up studies on these serious findings were demanded from organisations worldwide. None were conducted and the corn was approved.
MON 863 is even approved for use in the EU which is surprising considering the long history of European countries denying crops imported from other countries like the US where GMO crops are allowed on the off chance that said crops were cross pollinated with GMO plants in other fields. Very recently I believe Germany banned cultivation of GMO plants. If you want your data don't look toward Monsanto or even the underfunded FDA. Look to the European Union, I hope more studies follow in the path of this research but unfortunately it's hard to think of a source for major funding if it's not our tax dollars.
(AP) SHANGHAI - While the Iranian Cyber Army stymied Baidu engineers early Tuesday morning, a Chinese government official reportedly praised the Iranian Cyber Army and it's successful attempts at further curbing the dangers away from Chinese citizens. After forcing Baidu to remove the ability to find porn or dissidant materials via searches, the Chinese government noted that the Iranian Cyber Army had finally successfully achieved that with absolutely no infractions.
Cai Wu of The Ministry of Culture in China said, "We are impressed with preliminary reports of zero searches returning offensive materials while the Iranian Cyber Army improved the search page." Wu also pointed out that nowhere in the Tao Te Ching is a reference to Baidu made and therefore it is one of the major factors in China losing its sense of nationality and pride. Wu held up an image of Laozi and said, "Does this happy citizen look like he needed Baidu? No. All he needed was his government's ability to protect him from himself." Wu's only criticism of the 'attack' was simply that he expressed lament "it was not a group of loyal Chinese citizens who made children friendly adjustments to the search engine." Wu showed that the static page replacing the search page loaded on average 33% faster and required no user interaction to facilitate.
The Chinese government and the Iranian government have exchanged notes on how to keep their people from finding materials and lies that erode their ability to protect the cultures and citizens of their respective countries. But with the recent cross country attacks, it appears as though a group in Iran has one-upped the Chinese and shown them the beautiful results of hacking in comparison to the oafish and ugly heavy handed government shutdowns. This means, of course, that a stark internet censorship gap exists widely between the US and China. And other world powers trail far behind Iran and China -- shining examples of the firm yet gentle hand of internet censorship. Rest assured, this reporter has an inkling that a nationalistic competition could take hold similar to the space race or peace race. If there's one sport the winter Olympics might add next, certainly it's the sport of suppressing information.
China is not sitting idly by though, as strategic and selective abortions have left 24 million men without mates. The Chinese government believes this strategy will put them in solid first for socially awkward sexually frustrated males that must argue on internet forums while coding day and night taking breaks only for World of Warcraft (the most demanding mistress of them all). An army of hackers angry at everyone else will undoubtedly arise form this group willing to stop the flow of information worldwide.
Perhaps Raimi is too busy working on other projects.
Now, keep in mind that directors often have multiple projects that are in some form of production -- either stalled or pending development or in full swing -- but Raimi's up there with the busiest. If you consider him as both a producer and director (from IMDB):
In Development: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Shadow, The Familiars, Anguish, Untitled Sam Raimi Project, The Substitute, Sleeper, Evil Dead IV, Panic Attack, ArchEnemies, No Man's Land, The Transplants, Just Another Love Story, Burst 3D, Refuge, Monkey's Paw, The Given Day, The Dorm, Monster Zoo, The Wee Free Men and "The Taking"
And for what he's actually got in production includes The Evil Dead (2010), Dibbuk Box (2010), Warcraft (2011) and Priest (2010) where he's directing Warcraft and The Evil Dead -- two movies in sequential years. Yeah, I'd say he's staring down a rather full plate. I wish he would tackle some more original movies though like he did with Drag Me to Hell last year even though it wasn't the greatest, I'd rather see some originality and am happy he's washing his hands of a series that's run its course. But of course Sony wants to milk that cash cow...
Before you hop all over this like we love to, keep in mind that the article does a pretty good job of representing the skeptical side of this study:
Though the study, released Monday, does not provide a definitive correlation, Twenge and mental health professionals speculate that a popular culture increasingly focused on the external - from wealth to looks and status - has contributed to the uptick in mental health issues.
And also:
The study is not without its skeptics, among them Richard Shadick, a psychologist who directs the counsellingcentre at Pace University in New York. He says, for instance, that the sample data weren't necessarily representative of all college students. (Many who answered the MMPI questionnaire were students in introductory psychology courses at four-year institutions.)
I have a cute anecdote about a friend who graduated with a psychology degree and left her job as an assistant to become a grade school teacher because most of the psychologists at the Manhattan practice had more psychological problems than their patients.
"Generation Me" inspired a slew of articles in the popular press with headlines like "It’s all about me," "Superflagilistic, Extra Egotistic" and "Big Babies: Think the Boomers are self-absorbed? Wait until you meet their kids."
Ms. Twenge is working on another book with W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, this one tentatively called "The Narcissism Epidemic."
However, some scholars argue that a spike in selfishness among young people is, like the story of Narcissus, a myth.
"It’s like a cottage industry of putting them down and complaining about them and whining about why they don’t grow up," said Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a developmental psychologist, referring to young Americans. Mr. Arnett, the author of "Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens through the Twenties" (2004, Oxford University Press), has written a critique of Ms. Twenge’s book, which is to be published in the American Journal of Psychology.
Granted you could claim that this is just one example of two camps infighting in a field that plagues even physics and hard sciences but I think it's important to realize that this study might be a little self serving. Personally I share two concerns. The first being similar to Shadick's in that I'm not sure how these two studies were normalized samples and the second questioning if we have any idea what the 'norm' is for these 'diseases.' How subjective is this test and would a variance of 1% to 6% for depression be unrealistic if we knew that it's been as high as 10% at other points in time between 1938 and 2007?
The curmudgeon in me wants to chalk this up to kids having it too good these days. No polio to worry about, no eight hour shifts to support the family and more information swarming them. A lot of today's youth have the luxury of being diagnosed with hypomania. Now I know that there are serious cases of depression and always have been... but sometimes I encounter a youth who says, "My boyfriend just broke up with me and now I sit in my room and listen to depressing music." And they (or their over protective parents) think they need medication for that. They don't. Sounds to me like they need to be picking rock and bailing hay to help take their mind off that. We're overmedicated as it is. If Ms. Twenge continues to push this idea it might just get worse. How many people read news of this study and though "maybe my kid needs to see a psychologist for depression?" It's hard to look past this and assume the motives for this study are pure.
That makes a lot more sense.
Doesn't explain how you can have a probability of 214, though. And a probability of 2^14 would just be worse.
Uh yeah, that's the funniest error of them all. If you read the summary on the paper that I linked it's two raised to the power of negative fourteen which copy pastes to 214 but should be something like 2^(-14).
The technique enables them to recover a full key by using a tactic known as a related-hey attack...
Certainly you meant related-key attack since the paper by and large discusses related key attacks before explaining their sandwich attack.
These complexities are so small that we have actually simulated the attack in less than two hours on a single PC, and experimentally verified its correctness and complexity.
To give you more specific numbers from the conclusion of the paper:
By using this distinguisher and analyzing the single remaining round, we can derive the complete 128 bit key of the full KASUMI by using only 4 related keys, 226 data, 230 bytes of memory, and 232 time.
Er, I believe you meant to say 4 related keys, 2^26 data, 2^30 bytes of memory and 2^32 time. As you will see in the conclusion of the paper:
In this paper we develop a new sandwich attack on iterated block ciphers, and use
it to reduce the time complexity of the best known attack on the full KASUMI
from an impractical 2^76 to the very practical 2^32.
After all a time complexity of 232 should take any computer at most a few seconds while 2^32 approaches the two hour-ish mark.
Commercial building permit values — down 72 percent.
Passengers at McCarran International Airport — down 14 percent.
Gross gaming revenue — down 18 percent.
Visitor volume — down 10.9 percent.
Convention attendance — down 4.9 percent.
Gallons of gasoline used — down 5.3 percent. That is an indicator of out-of-state visitors and transportation of goods.
Never mind that with those adjustments their revenues are still well above average. See, when growth slows, people scream like Vegas is dying.
Yet I was there in November and was a single one of the casinos closed? Nope. Oh well, they have to put off plans to demo the older ones... why are they doing that? To build tons of newer ones, of course. The casinos and restaurants were still bustling but by news reports, you'd think the economy was tanking. So what happened? Who went under? What closed? Oh, decadent plans to demolish and rebuild were put off? I feel horrible for poor Vegas.
Vegas is STARVING, akin to what Dubai just endured
Well, I'm no economist but I know enough that comparing Vegas -- something that has been a cash cow for decades -- to the relatively recent startup of Dubai is not a prudent analogy to attempt by anyone.
I mean I'm not a show vendor and I even know that doing such things is not ok with hotel management.
A lot of the vendors claim they had informal conversations with management who said it was okay:
More importantly, the vendor's chief representative reports that they had contacted the hotel management before the show and asked if there were any limitations on showing product in the suites. The hotel management at The Venetian reportedly said there were not.
But then someone at the hotel said:
A security guard at The Venetian confirmed these reports further, saying he had been involved with "solving" a "lot of problems" at CES. When we inquired what these "problems" were, he stated, "The problems aren't with CES itself, but with people who didn't go through the proper channels to display the products and hold their business meetings."
So there's your news, it's a he said/he said sort of thing at this point unless you can find the rules to CES that explicitly address this. You know, it could be spun one way saying that the hotel management knew it wasn't going to fly but wanted the moneys and so they lied and kicked them out only after they had the money in their pocket. Should have got it in writing if that was the case. The other way to spin it is that these guys did more than they asked was okay and that bothered management.
I particularly enjoyed this statement:
If the vendors can't pay, they can't pay. One smaller company was already kicked out we witnessed today, likely more have been or will be as well. Is this really good for CES, an industry flagbearer? And is it really good for the Las Vegas economy, so dependent on the show?
It's pretty obvious to me that if you're paying a premium for showing your product at that show, you don't want 2 bit operations setting up in the hotel rooms above you trying to swindle your viewers up to their private quarters. You're there for those people to see your flashy setup. That's why you pay, isn't it? Management and CES could very well have been protecting the interests and quality of the show. Also, I don't think if CES moved it would hurt Vegas all that much. They have some other industries around there that do pretty well despite recessions or any sort of economic downturn.
And even if it is, why wasn't the CEA and hotel management more clear about restrictions on exhibits and meetings in Las Vegas hotels this week?
Agreed, brace yourself for a forty page contract written in legal speak to be signed next year before your exhibit and hotel room is inspected and okayed for entrance into the hotel and showroom floor.
An American journalist would've rephrased the marketing blurb on the phone, not tried it out, and welcomed our new invincible mobile overlords, only to be made fun of by Jon Stewart later that night.
It's a bit offtopic but I just heard something about this on NPR recently:
For decades, young reporters would ask themselves, "What would Walter think?" Nowadays, it's not the memory of Walter Cronkite or even Edward R. Murrow that motivates some reporters — it's more often the fear that the stories they put out today might get picked apart by Jon Stewart tomorrow.
Prominent among the wary: NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, who recently explained in a magazine essay that The Daily Show host "has gone from optional to indispensable" in just a few short years.
I found it odd yet telling that keeping anchors in check is not regulated by role models today but rather the court jester. Indeed, my opinions of both Fox News and CNN have dropped significantly from watching a few shows of Stewarts where he systematically picks apart their idiocy with a montage or just pointing out the obvious. It's like an MST3K recap of the day's news... except with a bizarre twist: the truth.
"ten years from now we the consumers might be enjoying a price war between wind power fields generating electricity on equipment that has been paid for and now just needs maintenance fees."
Same argument for nuclear power in the 60s. 'too cheap to meter'. I predict the same results for windpewer.
Everything's got problems. And wind power isn't going to be our only solution. T. Boone Pickens demonstrated someone getting in too far over their head too fast in this market. I really wish he would explain to everyone what went wrong with his plans. Who knows? The cement for the bases could get too expensive? The farmers in Iowa that selling small plots of land for what looks like a lot of money to have a wind mill in the corner of your field might wise up, form a coalition and start gouging. The copper prices and turbines could explode in price with an immediate high demand. I don't know, but there's the obvious problem we now know about nuclear power and wind mills have lesser problems with wildlife, growing pains and natural elements causing maintenance headaches. We're a lot smarter than we were in the 60s.
"slowly amortized back up to very profitable and freaking awesome for ma and pa corn grower. The economy would go nuts if you could alleviate energy costs for everyone."
Price has little to do with cost. It is the market. If oil- and coal-generated electicity is sold for 14/kwh, nuclear power can sell for the same, no problem. Why would windpower outfits sell for less than, say, 11/kwh? They are leaving money on the table. Not many corporations do that.
This leads to the second point of why I don't like vertical integration. If these wind fields remain independent of each other and owned and operated by different folks, they will at some point stop competing with coal and gas and start competing with themselves. That's distant but that's what I was talking about. After they pay for their equipment they'll take it down as low as they can go to undercut the other wind farm. Just like it should be with coal even though it's not.
"industries that will be negatively affected (coal, gas, etc) by these price wars will have the time to realize and change or better yet invest in their own wind farms"
Or different petroleum supplies. Or nuclear. Or something else. Don't think they will choose for any other reason than profits.
Ask someone from Iowa what they'd prefer: a nuclear power plant or a field of wind mills in their backyard. Unfounded fears do affect the markets. The petroleum process is as big and cut down to as cheap as possible as it is. More supplies ain't going to change much.
Um, California, Iowa, and a lot of other places have more potential.
Tornado alley stretches from northern Texas up to Minnesota and is very wide. See these NREL maps. You correctly mention the problems. They will be weighed against the problems we have now and will face in the future.
Cling to your optimism. If it is all you have left, they can't take it away from you. Of course, you can give up. I just howe you don't.
My dad helped pour the foundations for 71 windmills costing $100 million on Buffalo Ridge in Minnesota near Lake Benton. It's probably not paid for yet but you can bet that it will be soon, I wish I could know more from that company. That was funded by a California company sending the energy to people in Chicago to combat brownouts. Years later my hometown of Marshall built a smaller bank of windmills to increase our energy resources. I don't just have optimism, I have proof that the change has started. Now how far will it go?
No. When I say 'vertical integration' I am referring to something more along the lines of Google depending on networks and energy for its main business. So what does it do? It starts making its own network solutions and slowly entering energy. That's vertical because they start to invest in become more of their stack. After all, when you're that big, why pay a premium so that another company can turn a profit? Just enter that market and become your own provider! It's a great idea in businesses.
To a lesser extent, I hate what you mentioned. That is horizontal integration. Where they use their money (and maybe expertise) to enter another market separate from their own (often unrelated). GE got into health care just because analysts identified it as a cash cow recently. A cash cow with no one taking advantage of it. So GE entered that market. They had lots of electronics and other applications, but nothing really in health care.
While everyone is worried about what google might do in the future, other corporations that are bigger than google are already doing worrisome things.
Companies have the right to expand. We deal with it by putting a few simple laws out there that protect a free market (please, please don't lay into me about how it's not a truly free market and I'm an idiot, I tire of that conversation) and to allow entrance by small competitors. Because these things benefit the consumer and that's what matters in the end.
It's only worrisome when it negatively affects the consumer. If GE used its weight to force their health care down our throats even though it sucked, I'd be upset. Let's wait and see, maybe they'll offer better products at lower prices? Or perhaps it will prove to be an economic folly for them -- which everyone should be entitled to make and risk.
Never forget Google's main money maker is not search, it is not ads and it is not applications. It is data and the statistics that are derived from that data. On top of those statistics they build the best search, the best targeted advertising and decent applications (because although they are good applications Google Docs doesn't really benefit from these statistics). There are people looking around for horizontal integration for data and statistics in all forms of our lives because that's largely an untapped natural resource in Google's eyes. The vertical integration we are talking about in this article is run of the mill business. The "Smart Meter" is slightly more innovative horizontal search. There might not even be obvious applications for this data and statistics but the engineers don't care, that's another arm of the company's job. Personally I could see that being very very lucrative if you incentivize people to adopt the Smart Meter. Nielson would look like amateurs if Google got that thing out.
Short disclaimer, I'm not an economist so what follows is largely my own opinion and prediction.
Google's stated aim is to be able to purchase renewable energy directly from producers at bulk rates, pursuing its goal of becoming carbon neutral.
Some quick observations about Iowa. Back in 2008, we covered Microsoft and Google opening up half billion dollar server farms in this state because energy was supposedly cheaper there and tax incentives. Now, if you look at the year end totals for Iowa's wind power capacity in MW you'll notice that through 2008 it jumped higher than any other year going from 1,273 to 2,791. It more than doubled. At the end of 2009 it was at 2,862 -- perhaps a result of the recession -- but also indicative of what's going on in the state. Put two and two together and I think it's obvious that wind power companies were looking to work with Google and were maybe even encouraged by Google.
You know, I was really glad to see this sort of thing happen. It was something that Google could spend money doing that would boost shareholder value while at the same time incentivizing companies to invest billions in wind power in Iowa with a lengthy ten year or more plan to gain that money back before they start to turn serious profits. If Google gets these wind power plants up and running, ten years from now we the consumers might be enjoying a price war between wind power fields generating electricity on equipment that has been paid for and now just needs maintenance fees. Think about it, a whole infrastructure springing up on Google's promises and investor's dimes being slowly amortized back up to very profitable and freaking awesome for ma and pa corn grower. The economy would go nuts if you could alleviate energy costs for everyone. In addition to the slow and welcomed change, the industries that will be negatively affected (coal, gas, etc) by these price wars will have the time to realize and change or better yet invest in their own wind farms. If this model is proven successful, tornado alley could in fifty years become the new middle east and we'll be fighting wind wars over South Dakota and Kansas.
Now, back to the story, this vertical integration strategy is awesome for the company but I don't like it for two reasons. 1) In my opinion it is a step down the path to a weak version of a monopoly and competition deterrent 2) If Google influences these companies too much or worse buys them out, we might never see a price war I mentioned above. These are distant fears and after the Ma Bell and Microsoft monopolies/anti-trusts/Sherman Act prosecutions, I trust the DoJ won't sit idly by if point one or two become uncomfortable truths.
Google reportedly does not have plans to actively become an energy broker, a la Enron.
That kind of reassures me.
Overly optimistic? Of course. A little unrealistic? Well, a man can dream, can't he? A man can dream.
If the netbook and smartphone markets are any indication of the potential number of sales that exist out there, then I would wager even competitors hope Apple's tablet takes off. Because it's been shown time and time again that once Apple establishes via ads and quality that it's cool to own an iPod Nano or an iPhone or i-Whatever then the competitors step in and scoop up the very large market of people that want a product like it for less. They're not even knockoffs per se but I would bet that on the whole MP3 player manufacturers like iRiver enjoyed unseen benefits from Apple popularizing the MP3 player. The same might be said of the many cheaper smartphones that followed the iPhone--they were there but not 'accepted' as a necessary commodity for a consumer.
I don't mean to sound like a fanboy but the competitors that have been waiting to market tablet PCs now have the luxury of waiting for Apple to either make a brilliant move or blunder (an expensive wager) and then step in to enjoy the market that Apple works to establish with tablet PCs. The great part is that there are so many consumers that will gladly take a second rate device for cheaper money and in their mind think that they not only got a deal but now are keeping up with Joneses who all have iSlates or iTablets or whatever the devil Apple may hold. I actually think it benefits both Microsoft and Apple for them to release their products in tandem. It adds to the rivalry and people love that. Not to mention, they're certainly going to be compatible with only their respective products so a long time Mac user isn't going to be stolen nor will a longtime Windows user go over to the iSlate.
I found these juxtaposed blocks of text interesting:
I've written some columns where I strongly believed every word but expected a lot of opposition, some where I wasn't sure if I was right and just wanted to see what people thought, and . But I rarely argue something that I think is a no-brainer. Hotmail should un-set the auto-replies for those users whose accounts are spamming for nonexistent Chinese electronics knockoffs, before those accounts send another several hundred million spams in the coming year. Am I smoking crack?
Then again, maybe expectations for Hotmail shouldn't be set too high. I use SpeakEasy for my mail provider, and on about November 19th I found that all messages sent to hotmail.com addresses from SpeakEasy's servers were being bounced with an error message rejecting them for "spam-like characteristics.
So on one hand you're advocating a no-brainer unsetting auto-replies that have Chinese knockoff sites and then to have Hotmail generated a system that automatically inhibits this for spammers. Because they'll just make another domain or make the domains dynamic so you can't just block based on a couple URLs. And the slippery slope might have a few people upset that their mom and pop business link on their signature in their away message keeps forcing Hotmail to unset their auto-reply message. Because it's probably spam. And then you go on to complain about being the victim of such a slippery slope. Someone at SpeakEasy was spamming Hotmail bad. So they threw the baby (you) out with the bath water (spam). And you suffered. Who cares? Well, obviously you did. I just caution you that auto censorship is bad... just in general. The least they could do is try to turn their Bayesian filters or whatever spam filters they have on their auto-reply messages. That's the best solution to me. No reason to go overboard at the drop of a hat and implement what you're suggesting.
Slashdot Mirror
So what’s there to do? On the macro level, well, who the hell knows? There are a lot of interesting ideas out there, but this is not the place to get into them.
So where is the place to get into that sort of brainstorming?
... the smug assholes who ran labels, who’d want a system where a handful of corporate overlords shove crap down our throats?
Ah, that's where it will be decided. I have low expectations for what comes out of that.
I also don't understand why he thinks that artists 'need' record labels. What they 'need' is to grow organically to the point of extreme popularity and along the way you are the one deciding the terms of contracts and you are 'the boss' whose accountant and manager work for you and pay everyone up the chain. If you need an advance, you go to a real bank and get an advancement. I personally think that Ok Go are talented enough to sit down in a barn somewhere with basic recording equipment and I'd buy it. Their music video with them on treadmills fly them to success, not EMI. The obvious answer is that's a harder route for the big acts. It takes more work, like you actually have a job forty hours a week. And the attitude toward that option is:
We're a rock band, and it’s a great gig. Not just because we get to snort drugs off the Queen of England (we do), but because the only thing we are expected to do is make cool stuff.
But in the end we all suffer from bands 'selling out' to labels. I personally think no one suffers more than the bands. Some fans can comply with the ridiculous terms but you lose a lot. I would point to this small milestone in Ok Go's career as something of note to new musicians. If you believe in yourself, don't rely on a label to grow. If it doesn't work at least you weren't artificially installed singing someone else's music putting together an executive's vision.
If only Ok Go could decide that their new video is embeddable, most would have watched it on Slashdot right now instead of the 1/2 of us that clicked on the link. Unfortunately they already sold their soul to the devil so it doesn't matter what they think is good for them now. The funny thing about this is that I'm vacationing in Grand Cayman right now and while I own every single album and EP and even vinyl records from Ok Go, I can't see this video on account of what they wrote in their post:
This video contains content from EMI. It is no longer available in your country.
Good luck guys. I think you traded early growth that would have came naturally for some control over what you love. It's sad but it's the way it is now.
Uh, but he's wrong!
I am and I apologize for my haste in looking for an annual income and reporting a monthly income. I had no ill intentions of misrepresentation or denouncing the Taiwanese people. I get five free minutes here and there in my day and just wanted to point out that the memory in all our computers probably come from workers earning less than our minimum wage. That has nothing to do with the rest of my argument.
If the average US person can't figure out the difference between years and months, or have poor reading comprehension, or can't be bothered to check stuff properly, it's no surprise US bosses are outsourcing to other countries.
Please do not attribute my own ignorance to the entire populace of the United States of America.
You've made your point, an ad hominem attack. Fine. But please I do not represent the average American in my posts! They are quick and disposable and if you read my signature, they may even cause death!
I'm saddened that instead of addressing the rest of my argument you began inferring that I meant '3rd world' (a phrase I didn't use) equated to crap. I'm also saddened that you think what you are seeing in that video is quality when it is the horrible product of over worked and underpaid individuals losing a childhood to low wage slavery and never being given a chance at a university like I was fortunate enough to have. So many wasted minds.
[1] FWIW, I'm a cheap worker (relative to the USA) in a 3rd world country. But hey at least I can read, spell and do basic math (with help from Google :) ).
How quick we are to denounce the American superiority only to replace it with our own. Let me know when you're ready to stop trying to take me off my imaginary pedestal and ready to step off of yours. We'll have a nice long chat over a few beers then.
If you thought I meant anything negative about the work in other countries, I did not. In fact, I am saddened they don't make more for their work and hope one day they make as much as I do for equivalent work. I am saddened that we think this 'outsourcing' is a negative thing when it is actually a great equalizer and makes the "fat lazy ill equipped American (me)" work harder and produce better software.
I have this weird feeling that had they gone with American services for building these websites at 10x the cost of using IdeaScale, the Slashdot summary would have read about the absurdly high spending that the Department of Labor is wasting our tax dollars on and would have something about a cursory glance finding tons of companies willing to fullfill the work order for 1/10 what they spent. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. They picked the route that most CEOs today are picking and they saved us from more tax dollar expenditures. Pick your poison.
And don't tell anybody but I think Obama's coffee mugs are
BTW, an earlier White House-sponsored, IdeaScale-powered Open Government Brainstorm identified legalizing marijuana as one of the best ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness.
So because IdeaScale built an application to spec for the White House (who shouldn't have paid for it if it didn't meet requirements) and a bunch of pothead hippies turned up in full force to get their message out loud and clear on it, it's IdeaScale's fault? I think you'd be better off blaming the concept of democracy or the buzzword 'crowd-sourcing' as this is just kind of evidence of a technology-based bias of the voices.
You criticize the White House for doing something we all do then you blame the wonderful effects of democracy on a web application?
Non-Governmental Organization. Special tax status and all that apply.
Am I the only one who picked up on his visual cues that indicate this is the first time he's been out of his lab in over a year? Look at how tired and emaciated he is. Also, I think there's bar code tattoo on his inner arm that -- if you lift the image and scan it -- reads "HUMAN 00001" which is kind of disconcerting. The part at the end where he holds up the captcha that reads "HELP, PLEASE HELP ME" was a dead giveaway. While his voice and text was overly positive towards the proliferation of his "sleek metal masters" I believe his body language indicated otherwise.
I can't get it to work when I copy paste from Wired (must be something with my setup and javascript) but I will make the unpopular statement of saying that 1) you are copying and pasting Wired's content and 2) as early as high school I was taught that if I was copying information verbatim, I had better have some sort of reference (MLA preferred).
Now, on Slashdot I drop in a link on some text like just did up there. But if I'm quoting it, I'll throw in a quote block and lead up to who said it and call it a day. Now, let's imagine a world where all that was automated when you copied something and the text you copied came with XML metadata saying all the things like where you got it, when you got it, who wrote it, etc. That could potentially be pretty useful. If you think of the web as actual works belonging to people then you can start to see how legitimately referencing other works could be made a lot easier with stuff like this. And maybe text editors could have plugins to digest it?
Unfortunately the submitter and editor of this site seem to cry privacy violation at any attempt to move past the wild wild west anything goes attitude of the world wide web. That's fine as this has an element of privacy concerns what with the phoning home. But please consider the issue from Wired's side, from the side of the author and content creators. They might just trying to help us with what we were taught in school.
Lastly, I would like to point out that another solution aside from Ghostery or Noscript is just to not use Wired's site at all. Vote with your feet and bring your eyeballs elsewhere for pageviews and adclicks. I'm sure Wired's not losing a whole lot of adclicks if you do.
It couldn't be them. China would never do anything wrong.
That... or they'll just blame it on their status as a "developing nation" and that they shouldn't be held to the same standards as everyone else.
The original official notification of this from Google's Chief Legal Officer where he mentioned human rights advocates and human rights issues causes this to seem above the average security breach:
Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
I can understand how "We can't enforce copyright on software and music when we're busy lifting hundreds of millions of citizens out of poverty as a developing nation" works but I can't understand how "We need to arrest and persecute human rights activists because we're a developing nation" works.
I just had a psychic vision of the future. In my vision, this test ended up either producing negative or inconclusive results--once again disappointing the millions of believers who just cannot accept that, for all practical intents and purposes, we here on earth are all alone in the great big dark. I also see myself posting a link this this very post, a year or so from now, in yet another similar thread that has the believers once again futilely hoping that the discovery of life out there is "very, very close."
I think what you're witnessing isn't some X-Files Want to Believe style cult assembly or circle jerk but instead the simple fact that should this be confirmed, it changes everything. From not only a scientific point of view with the near complete annihilation of Drake's equation but also from a philosophical and -- perhaps most importantly -- theological point of view. Since the gravity of a decision in the positive direction is so great, the tiniest disturbances in the canon of thought surrounding extraterrestrial life gets close attention by the nerd world. Even the minuscule announcement that in a certain amount of time we will know with 100% certainty one way or the other on these fossils is actually newsworthy.
Similar to the anti-global warming decision. Huge consequences mean massive attention.
And they should be easier to manufacture too, since they don't have a backplane of transistors like LCD screens: the image is generated by a laser beam that sweeps across phosphor stripes under the control of a scanning mirror.
Of all the information I can find, no one is addressing the thickness of the display unit. I'm not saying it can't be done in close quarters but I'm basically inquiring how thick the unit must be in order for a laser beam to sweep across the phospher stripes that comprise the screen? Are we talking about moving back towards the sizes of back projector displays? Because it might not matter how efficient or awesome the picture display is to the consumer.
I guess that might explain why they're targeting airports and malls and not your living room.
I believe this particular patent image illustrates what I'm wondering about (Roger Hajjar is one of Prysm's founders).
CA-based Prysm came out of stealth mode yesterday
No one can fly under the radar when they need to patent their invention:
Laser displays using UV-excitable phosphors emitting visible colored light
Laser vector scanner systems with display screens having optical fluorescent materials
Optical designs for scanning beam display systems using fluorescent screens
Phosphor Compositions For Scanning Beam Displays
Prysm's founders (Amit Jain and Roger Hajjar) have had their names on quite a few display related patents since 2005. I'm excited a small startup can enter this market but I'm skeptical of the marketability due to the one drawback: a step backwards in compactness and style.
It's probably taken a while to report because of Google's ranking system.
I don't understand how this explains it. The searches shown have very low results for the offensive images? I don't think Google would be foolish enough to remove values from their page ranking system or fiddle with those numbers. Rather it would seem much more intuitive to build an interface that filters designated problem links and images. It's probably even automated for some bullshit arm of the Chinese government (who the devil is it these days? The Ministry of Culture?) that can go into a web portal and just add images and domains and pages to a list of restrictions. Maybe even the government is savvy enough to have an feed or service that gives this information out to companies to assure compliance and ease of compliance? A simpler answer is that a few new sites popped up and the government just hasn't added them to the no-no list yet. If you look at the URLs in the images, they are from blogspot.com which means they're probably new blogs that need to be individually blocked by the Chinese government and/or Google. What you're probably seeing is lazy censorship or the latency of an adequate solution for censorship -- which is pretty much as defective by design as it gets. I don't think "lifts" censorship is what's going on here or else Google would be looking at losing business to one sixths of the world's population. While Google professes 'do no evil' they still have shareholders to satisfy.
Monsanto did the research in 2000 and 2001, and obviously knew the outcome.
You can't say "and obviously knew the outcome" unless you're Monsanto. I believe that GMO crops undergo far fewer tests for safety than pesticides. From the Wikipedia page on one of the three crops in question (MON 863):
In 1989 a 90-day rat-feeding trial done by the FDA, 40 rats that were fed the Bt corn developed multiple reactions typically found in response to allergies, infections, toxins and diseases. Gilles-Eric Seralini reviewed the study as part of the French Commission for Biomolecular Genetics and said that the response by the rats were similar to reactions caused by pesticides. Although the Bt-toxin is a pesticide, he points out that animal research on pesticide-producing corn is nowhere as thorough as that required for approval of pesticides. Follow-up studies on these serious findings were demanded from organisations worldwide. None were conducted and the corn was approved.
MON 863 is even approved for use in the EU which is surprising considering the long history of European countries denying crops imported from other countries like the US where GMO crops are allowed on the off chance that said crops were cross pollinated with GMO plants in other fields. Very recently I believe Germany banned cultivation of GMO plants. If you want your data don't look toward Monsanto or even the underfunded FDA. Look to the European Union, I hope more studies follow in the path of this research but unfortunately it's hard to think of a source for major funding if it's not our tax dollars.
(AP) SHANGHAI - While the Iranian Cyber Army stymied Baidu engineers early Tuesday morning, a Chinese government official reportedly praised the Iranian Cyber Army and it's successful attempts at further curbing the dangers away from Chinese citizens. After forcing Baidu to remove the ability to find porn or dissidant materials via searches, the Chinese government noted that the Iranian Cyber Army had finally successfully achieved that with absolutely no infractions.
Cai Wu of The Ministry of Culture in China said, "We are impressed with preliminary reports of zero searches returning offensive materials while the Iranian Cyber Army improved the search page." Wu also pointed out that nowhere in the Tao Te Ching is a reference to Baidu made and therefore it is one of the major factors in China losing its sense of nationality and pride. Wu held up an image of Laozi and said, "Does this happy citizen look like he needed Baidu? No. All he needed was his government's ability to protect him from himself." Wu's only criticism of the 'attack' was simply that he expressed lament "it was not a group of loyal Chinese citizens who made children friendly adjustments to the search engine." Wu showed that the static page replacing the search page loaded on average 33% faster and required no user interaction to facilitate.
The Chinese government and the Iranian government have exchanged notes on how to keep their people from finding materials and lies that erode their ability to protect the cultures and citizens of their respective countries. But with the recent cross country attacks, it appears as though a group in Iran has one-upped the Chinese and shown them the beautiful results of hacking in comparison to the oafish and ugly heavy handed government shutdowns. This means, of course, that a stark internet censorship gap exists widely between the US and China. And other world powers trail far behind Iran and China -- shining examples of the firm yet gentle hand of internet censorship. Rest assured, this reporter has an inkling that a nationalistic competition could take hold similar to the space race or peace race. If there's one sport the winter Olympics might add next, certainly it's the sport of suppressing information.
China is not sitting idly by though, as strategic and selective abortions have left 24 million men without mates. The Chinese government believes this strategy will put them in solid first for socially awkward sexually frustrated males that must argue on internet forums while coding day and night taking breaks only for World of Warcraft (the most demanding mistress of them all). An army of hackers angry at everyone else will undoubtedly arise form this group willing to stop the flow of information worldwide.
Perhaps Raimi is too busy working on other projects.
Now, keep in mind that directors often have multiple projects that are in some form of production -- either stalled or pending development or in full swing -- but Raimi's up there with the busiest. If you consider him as both a producer and director (from IMDB):
In Development: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Shadow, The Familiars, Anguish, Untitled Sam Raimi Project, The Substitute, Sleeper, Evil Dead IV, Panic Attack, ArchEnemies, No Man's Land, The Transplants, Just Another Love Story, Burst 3D, Refuge, Monkey's Paw, The Given Day, The Dorm, Monster Zoo, The Wee Free Men and "The Taking"
And for what he's actually got in production includes The Evil Dead (2010), Dibbuk Box (2010), Warcraft (2011) and Priest (2010) where he's directing Warcraft and The Evil Dead -- two movies in sequential years. Yeah, I'd say he's staring down a rather full plate. I wish he would tackle some more original movies though like he did with Drag Me to Hell last year even though it wasn't the greatest, I'd rather see some originality and am happy he's washing his hands of a series that's run its course. But of course Sony wants to milk that cash cow ...
Though the study, released Monday, does not provide a definitive correlation, Twenge and mental health professionals speculate that a popular culture increasingly focused on the external - from wealth to looks and status - has contributed to the uptick in mental health issues.
And also:
The study is not without its skeptics, among them Richard Shadick, a psychologist who directs the counsellingcentre at Pace University in New York. He says, for instance, that the sample data weren't necessarily representative of all college students. (Many who answered the MMPI questionnaire were students in introductory psychology courses at four-year institutions.)
I have a cute anecdote about a friend who graduated with a psychology degree and left her job as an assistant to become a grade school teacher because most of the psychologists at the Manhattan practice had more psychological problems than their patients.
Emphasis mine. Now, another interesting thing about Jean Twenge is that the books she writes aren't universally accepted by her peers:
"Generation Me" inspired a slew of articles in the popular press with headlines like "It’s all about me," "Superflagilistic, Extra Egotistic" and "Big Babies: Think the Boomers are self-absorbed? Wait until you meet their kids."
Ms. Twenge is working on another book with W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, this one tentatively called "The Narcissism Epidemic."
However, some scholars argue that a spike in selfishness among young people is, like the story of Narcissus, a myth.
"It’s like a cottage industry of putting them down and complaining about them and whining about why they don’t grow up," said Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a developmental psychologist, referring to young Americans. Mr. Arnett, the author of "Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens through the Twenties" (2004, Oxford University Press), has written a critique of Ms. Twenge’s book, which is to be published in the American Journal of Psychology.
Granted you could claim that this is just one example of two camps infighting in a field that plagues even physics and hard sciences but I think it's important to realize that this study might be a little self serving. Personally I share two concerns. The first being similar to Shadick's in that I'm not sure how these two studies were normalized samples and the second questioning if we have any idea what the 'norm' is for these 'diseases.' How subjective is this test and would a variance of 1% to 6% for depression be unrealistic if we knew that it's been as high as 10% at other points in time between 1938 and 2007?
... but sometimes I encounter a youth who says, "My boyfriend just broke up with me and now I sit in my room and listen to depressing music." And they (or their over protective parents) think they need medication for that. They don't. Sounds to me like they need to be picking rock and bailing hay to help take their mind off that. We're overmedicated as it is. If Ms. Twenge continues to push this idea it might just get worse. How many people read news of this study and though "maybe my kid needs to see a psychologist for depression?" It's hard to look past this and assume the motives for this study are pure.
The curmudgeon in me wants to chalk this up to kids having it too good these days. No polio to worry about, no eight hour shifts to support the family and more information swarming them. A lot of today's youth have the luxury of being diagnosed with hypomania. Now I know that there are serious cases of depression and always have been
That makes a lot more sense. Doesn't explain how you can have a probability of 214, though. And a probability of 2^14 would just be worse.
Uh yeah, that's the funniest error of them all. If you read the summary on the paper that I linked it's two raised to the power of negative fourteen which copy pastes to 214 but should be something like 2^(-14).
The technique enables them to recover a full key by using a tactic known as a related-hey attack ...
Certainly you meant related-key attack since the paper by and large discusses related key attacks before explaining their sandwich attack.
These complexities are so small that we have actually simulated the attack in less than two hours on a single PC, and experimentally verified its correctness and complexity.
To give you more specific numbers from the conclusion of the paper:
By using this distinguisher and analyzing the single remaining round, we can derive the complete 128 bit key of the full KASUMI by using only 4 related keys, 226 data, 230 bytes of memory, and 232 time.
Er, I believe you meant to say 4 related keys, 2^26 data, 2^30 bytes of memory and 2^32 time. As you will see in the conclusion of the paper:
In this paper we develop a new sandwich attack on iterated block ciphers, and use it to reduce the time complexity of the best known attack on the full KASUMI from an impractical 2^76 to the very practical 2^32.
After all a time complexity of 232 should take any computer at most a few seconds while 2^32 approaches the two hour-ish mark.
You sir, are an idiot.
Thank you, I value your constructive input. It's statements like this that really make my day.
Vegas is STARVING
Right. Yeah, I've heard this sort of thing before too. Just look at those data points from March:
Commercial building permits — down 57 percent.
Commercial building permit values — down 72 percent.
Passengers at McCarran International Airport — down 14 percent.
Gross gaming revenue — down 18 percent.
Visitor volume — down 10.9 percent.
Convention attendance — down 4.9 percent.
Gallons of gasoline used — down 5.3 percent. That is an indicator of out-of-state visitors and transportation of goods.
Never mind that with those adjustments their revenues are still well above average. See, when growth slows, people scream like Vegas is dying.
... why are they doing that? To build tons of newer ones, of course. The casinos and restaurants were still bustling but by news reports, you'd think the economy was tanking. So what happened? Who went under? What closed? Oh, decadent plans to demolish and rebuild were put off? I feel horrible for poor Vegas.
Yet I was there in November and was a single one of the casinos closed? Nope. Oh well, they have to put off plans to demo the older ones
Vegas is STARVING, akin to what Dubai just endured
Well, I'm no economist but I know enough that comparing Vegas -- something that has been a cash cow for decades -- to the relatively recent startup of Dubai is not a prudent analogy to attempt by anyone.
I mean I'm not a show vendor and I even know that doing such things is not ok with hotel management.
A lot of the vendors claim they had informal conversations with management who said it was okay:
More importantly, the vendor's chief representative reports that they had contacted the hotel management before the show and asked if there were any limitations on showing product in the suites. The hotel management at The Venetian reportedly said there were not.
But then someone at the hotel said:
A security guard at The Venetian confirmed these reports further, saying he had been involved with "solving" a "lot of problems" at CES. When we inquired what these "problems" were, he stated, "The problems aren't with CES itself, but with people who didn't go through the proper channels to display the products and hold their business meetings."
So there's your news, it's a he said/he said sort of thing at this point unless you can find the rules to CES that explicitly address this. You know, it could be spun one way saying that the hotel management knew it wasn't going to fly but wanted the moneys and so they lied and kicked them out only after they had the money in their pocket. Should have got it in writing if that was the case. The other way to spin it is that these guys did more than they asked was okay and that bothered management.
I particularly enjoyed this statement:
If the vendors can't pay, they can't pay. One smaller company was already kicked out we witnessed today, likely more have been or will be as well. Is this really good for CES, an industry flagbearer? And is it really good for the Las Vegas economy, so dependent on the show?
It's pretty obvious to me that if you're paying a premium for showing your product at that show, you don't want 2 bit operations setting up in the hotel rooms above you trying to swindle your viewers up to their private quarters. You're there for those people to see your flashy setup. That's why you pay, isn't it? Management and CES could very well have been protecting the interests and quality of the show. Also, I don't think if CES moved it would hurt Vegas all that much. They have some other industries around there that do pretty well despite recessions or any sort of economic downturn.
And even if it is, why wasn't the CEA and hotel management more clear about restrictions on exhibits and meetings in Las Vegas hotels this week?
Agreed, brace yourself for a forty page contract written in legal speak to be signed next year before your exhibit and hotel room is inspected and okayed for entrance into the hotel and showroom floor.
An American journalist would've rephrased the marketing blurb on the phone, not tried it out, and welcomed our new invincible mobile overlords, only to be made fun of by Jon Stewart later that night.
It's a bit offtopic but I just heard something about this on NPR recently:
For decades, young reporters would ask themselves, "What would Walter think?" Nowadays, it's not the memory of Walter Cronkite or even Edward R. Murrow that motivates some reporters — it's more often the fear that the stories they put out today might get picked apart by Jon Stewart tomorrow.
Prominent among the wary: NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, who recently explained in a magazine essay that The Daily Show host "has gone from optional to indispensable" in just a few short years.
I found it odd yet telling that keeping anchors in check is not regulated by role models today but rather the court jester. Indeed, my opinions of both Fox News and CNN have dropped significantly from watching a few shows of Stewarts where he systematically picks apart their idiocy with a montage or just pointing out the obvious. It's like an MST3K recap of the day's news ... except with a bizarre twist: the truth.
"ten years from now we the consumers might be enjoying a price war between wind power fields generating electricity on equipment that has been paid for and now just needs maintenance fees."
Same argument for nuclear power in the 60s. 'too cheap to meter'. I predict the same results for windpewer.
Everything's got problems. And wind power isn't going to be our only solution. T. Boone Pickens demonstrated someone getting in too far over their head too fast in this market. I really wish he would explain to everyone what went wrong with his plans. Who knows? The cement for the bases could get too expensive? The farmers in Iowa that selling small plots of land for what looks like a lot of money to have a wind mill in the corner of your field might wise up, form a coalition and start gouging. The copper prices and turbines could explode in price with an immediate high demand. I don't know, but there's the obvious problem we now know about nuclear power and wind mills have lesser problems with wildlife, growing pains and natural elements causing maintenance headaches. We're a lot smarter than we were in the 60s.
"slowly amortized back up to very profitable and freaking awesome for ma and pa corn grower. The economy would go nuts if you could alleviate energy costs for everyone."
Price has little to do with cost. It is the market. If oil- and coal-generated electicity is sold for 14/kwh, nuclear power can sell for the same, no problem. Why would windpower outfits sell for less than, say, 11/kwh? They are leaving money on the table. Not many corporations do that.
This leads to the second point of why I don't like vertical integration. If these wind fields remain independent of each other and owned and operated by different folks, they will at some point stop competing with coal and gas and start competing with themselves. That's distant but that's what I was talking about. After they pay for their equipment they'll take it down as low as they can go to undercut the other wind farm. Just like it should be with coal even though it's not.
"industries that will be negatively affected (coal, gas, etc) by these price wars will have the time to realize and change or better yet invest in their own wind farms"
Or different petroleum supplies. Or nuclear. Or something else. Don't think they will choose for any other reason than profits.
Ask someone from Iowa what they'd prefer: a nuclear power plant or a field of wind mills in their backyard. Unfounded fears do affect the markets. The petroleum process is as big and cut down to as cheap as possible as it is. More supplies ain't going to change much.
Um, California, Iowa, and a lot of other places have more potential.
Tornado alley stretches from northern Texas up to Minnesota and is very wide. See these NREL maps. You correctly mention the problems. They will be weighed against the problems we have now and will face in the future.
Cling to your optimism. If it is all you have left, they can't take it away from you. Of course, you can give up. I just howe you don't.
My dad helped pour the foundations for 71 windmills costing $100 million on Buffalo Ridge in Minnesota near Lake Benton. It's probably not paid for yet but you can bet that it will be soon, I wish I could know more from that company. That was funded by a California company sending the energy to people in Chicago to combat brownouts. Years later my hometown of Marshall built a smaller bank of windmills to increase our energy resources. I don't just have optimism, I have proof that the change has started. Now how far will it go?
i"this vertical integration strategy is awesome for the company but I don't like it for two reasons"
You mean like how a corporation such as General Electric is into
finance aviation healthcare electric power plants oil media consumer appliances military
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_General_Electric
No. When I say 'vertical integration' I am referring to something more along the lines of Google depending on networks and energy for its main business. So what does it do? It starts making its own network solutions and slowly entering energy. That's vertical because they start to invest in become more of their stack. After all, when you're that big, why pay a premium so that another company can turn a profit? Just enter that market and become your own provider! It's a great idea in businesses.
To a lesser extent, I hate what you mentioned. That is horizontal integration. Where they use their money (and maybe expertise) to enter another market separate from their own (often unrelated). GE got into health care just because analysts identified it as a cash cow recently. A cash cow with no one taking advantage of it. So GE entered that market. They had lots of electronics and other applications, but nothing really in health care.
While everyone is worried about what google might do in the future, other corporations that are bigger than google are already doing worrisome things.
Companies have the right to expand. We deal with it by putting a few simple laws out there that protect a free market (please, please don't lay into me about how it's not a truly free market and I'm an idiot, I tire of that conversation) and to allow entrance by small competitors. Because these things benefit the consumer and that's what matters in the end.
It's only worrisome when it negatively affects the consumer. If GE used its weight to force their health care down our throats even though it sucked, I'd be upset. Let's wait and see, maybe they'll offer better products at lower prices? Or perhaps it will prove to be an economic folly for them -- which everyone should be entitled to make and risk.
...about Google's "Smart Meter" for your home.
Never forget Google's main money maker is not search, it is not ads and it is not applications. It is data and the statistics that are derived from that data. On top of those statistics they build the best search, the best targeted advertising and decent applications (because although they are good applications Google Docs doesn't really benefit from these statistics). There are people looking around for horizontal integration for data and statistics in all forms of our lives because that's largely an untapped natural resource in Google's eyes. The vertical integration we are talking about in this article is run of the mill business. The "Smart Meter" is slightly more innovative horizontal search. There might not even be obvious applications for this data and statistics but the engineers don't care, that's another arm of the company's job. Personally I could see that being very very lucrative if you incentivize people to adopt the Smart Meter. Nielson would look like amateurs if Google got that thing out.
Google's stated aim is to be able to purchase renewable energy directly from producers at bulk rates, pursuing its goal of becoming carbon neutral.
Some quick observations about Iowa. Back in 2008, we covered Microsoft and Google opening up half billion dollar server farms in this state because energy was supposedly cheaper there and tax incentives. Now, if you look at the year end totals for Iowa's wind power capacity in MW you'll notice that through 2008 it jumped higher than any other year going from 1,273 to 2,791. It more than doubled. At the end of 2009 it was at 2,862 -- perhaps a result of the recession -- but also indicative of what's going on in the state. Put two and two together and I think it's obvious that wind power companies were looking to work with Google and were maybe even encouraged by Google.
You know, I was really glad to see this sort of thing happen. It was something that Google could spend money doing that would boost shareholder value while at the same time incentivizing companies to invest billions in wind power in Iowa with a lengthy ten year or more plan to gain that money back before they start to turn serious profits. If Google gets these wind power plants up and running, ten years from now we the consumers might be enjoying a price war between wind power fields generating electricity on equipment that has been paid for and now just needs maintenance fees. Think about it, a whole infrastructure springing up on Google's promises and investor's dimes being slowly amortized back up to very profitable and freaking awesome for ma and pa corn grower. The economy would go nuts if you could alleviate energy costs for everyone. In addition to the slow and welcomed change, the industries that will be negatively affected (coal, gas, etc) by these price wars will have the time to realize and change or better yet invest in their own wind farms. If this model is proven successful, tornado alley could in fifty years become the new middle east and we'll be fighting wind wars over South Dakota and Kansas.
Now, back to the story, this vertical integration strategy is awesome for the company but I don't like it for two reasons. 1) In my opinion it is a step down the path to a weak version of a monopoly and competition deterrent 2) If Google influences these companies too much or worse buys them out, we might never see a price war I mentioned above. These are distant fears and after the Ma Bell and Microsoft monopolies/anti-trusts/Sherman Act prosecutions, I trust the DoJ won't sit idly by if point one or two become uncomfortable truths.
Google reportedly does not have plans to actively become an energy broker, a la Enron.
That kind of reassures me.
Overly optimistic? Of course. A little unrealistic? Well, a man can dream, can't he? A man can dream.
If the netbook and smartphone markets are any indication of the potential number of sales that exist out there, then I would wager even competitors hope Apple's tablet takes off. Because it's been shown time and time again that once Apple establishes via ads and quality that it's cool to own an iPod Nano or an iPhone or i-Whatever then the competitors step in and scoop up the very large market of people that want a product like it for less. They're not even knockoffs per se but I would bet that on the whole MP3 player manufacturers like iRiver enjoyed unseen benefits from Apple popularizing the MP3 player. The same might be said of the many cheaper smartphones that followed the iPhone--they were there but not 'accepted' as a necessary commodity for a consumer.
I don't mean to sound like a fanboy but the competitors that have been waiting to market tablet PCs now have the luxury of waiting for Apple to either make a brilliant move or blunder (an expensive wager) and then step in to enjoy the market that Apple works to establish with tablet PCs. The great part is that there are so many consumers that will gladly take a second rate device for cheaper money and in their mind think that they not only got a deal but now are keeping up with Joneses who all have iSlates or iTablets or whatever the devil Apple may hold. I actually think it benefits both Microsoft and Apple for them to release their products in tandem. It adds to the rivalry and people love that. Not to mention, they're certainly going to be compatible with only their respective products so a long time Mac user isn't going to be stolen nor will a longtime Windows user go over to the iSlate.
I've written some columns where I strongly believed every word but expected a lot of opposition, some where I wasn't sure if I was right and just wanted to see what people thought, and . But I rarely argue something that I think is a no-brainer. Hotmail should un-set the auto-replies for those users whose accounts are spamming for nonexistent Chinese electronics knockoffs, before those accounts send another several hundred million spams in the coming year. Am I smoking crack?
Then again, maybe expectations for Hotmail shouldn't be set too high. I use SpeakEasy for my mail provider, and on about November 19th I found that all messages sent to hotmail.com addresses from SpeakEasy's servers were being bounced with an error message rejecting them for "spam-like characteristics.
So on one hand you're advocating a no-brainer unsetting auto-replies that have Chinese knockoff sites and then to have Hotmail generated a system that automatically inhibits this for spammers. Because they'll just make another domain or make the domains dynamic so you can't just block based on a couple URLs. And the slippery slope might have a few people upset that their mom and pop business link on their signature in their away message keeps forcing Hotmail to unset their auto-reply message. Because it's probably spam. And then you go on to complain about being the victim of such a slippery slope. Someone at SpeakEasy was spamming Hotmail bad. So they threw the baby (you) out with the bath water (spam). And you suffered. Who cares? Well, obviously you did. I just caution you that auto censorship is bad ... just in general. The least they could do is try to turn their Bayesian filters or whatever spam filters they have on their auto-reply messages. That's the best solution to me. No reason to go overboard at the drop of a hat and implement what you're suggesting.