Gmail Location Data Led FBI to Uncover Petraeus Affair:
I find it almost shocking that the director of the CIA would be foolish enough to think that a pseudonymous Google account was safe enough to exchange email with his mistress.
[Unsurprised. Just because you head a scurity organization doesn’t mean you’re secure.]
Source: Daring Fireball
The truth is, what Silicon Valley still calls “Disruption” has evolved into something very sinister indeed. Or perhaps “evolved” is the wrong word: The underlying ideology — that all government intervention is bad, that the free market is the only protection the public needs, and that if weaker people get trampled underfoot in the process then, well, fuck ‘em — increasingly recalls one that has been around for decades. Almost seven decades in fact, since Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” first put her on the radar of every spoiled trust fund brat looking for an excuse to embrace his or her inner asshole. (For a delightful essay on that subject, I recommend Jason Heller’s “I Was A Teenage Randroid.”)
[Sinister indeed.]
This is becoming my hobby horse, but it bears repeating: this is the real “walled garden” effect we need to worry about. What I need to have and keep open are my data formats. I don’t need the source code for the applications that I run; I don’t need warm fuzzies from the thought that I can swap out my operating system for Ubuntu “Rabid Ratel.” Those are ways that those of sufficient nerd studliness can keep their data open, but for 99% of humanity they’re not practical ways. Open or even de facto standards like RTF, MP3, MP4 and EPUB—when kept free from DRM—are what we need to be strongly advocating for. The music industry has mostly given up on DRM; it’s time for the publishing and video industries to follow their lead. (You’d think that merely knowing the RIAA was, in any way, more progressive than you are would be enough to shame you into action, but sadly not.) Some DRM is worse than others—Apple’s tends to be better at staying out of your way than most and, as far as I know, wouldn’t let Apple do what Amazon did here even if they wanted to—but fundamentally, you need to be able to control your own data, even if that control makes the people who sold you that data twitchy.
[Here’s the original problem Outlawed by Amazon DRM. I thought only Google was this bad at this.]
Source: Coyote Tracks
It’s far less important how one author feels about the iPhone 5 than the alarming fact that Slate let this author publish a 1,200-word essay about a device he hadn’t used, nearly three months before it shipped. Why? Because shouting creates pageviews and clicks, and…well, there’s nothing more to say: shouting sells. If this author or another wants to be in the game, sooner than later, he or she will have to start shouting, louder and louder.
[snip -ed.]The un-digital camp is far from relinquishing their power. Models that can replace them aren’t here. Advertising online has been corruptive of user privacy and editorial integrity. I’m afraid it’ll be a miracle if the shouting subsides anytime soon.
[It’s a problem for sure. But it is rarely as stark as the images at the top of this article.]
Source: counternotions
Portrait of a young boy and wheels made of clay | Political Insider:
For all those reasons, Douglas intends to keep those three autographed photos of himself as a flag-draped kid. As for the one in my office, it is important to note what happened after that moment was frozen in time.
Not in Armstrong’s world, but the world of Samuel Douglas.
That photo marked him, but did not make him. Since then, his father has taken him and his brothers — he is the oldest of the trio — on charity missions to Honduras and Africa. His mother has insisted that the brothers engage in public service at home. Meals on Wheels, in particular.
Samuel Douglas is an Eagle Scout, and he’s now headed for med school. To become a pediatrician, perhaps. We need more in Georgia.
So that photo will remain in the office, in its place next to Sarah Palin. It still contains heroic possibilities — just not from the man clipped into the pedals. Samuel Douglas has promised to sign it next time he’s in town.
[It’s easy to be cynical. It’s easy to hate. And then there’s folks like Samuel Douglas.]
So what can one conclude from all of this information?
The fact that the performance of cyclists exhibits a broad peaking in the mid 1990’s is consistent with IPETs being used extensively in cycling during that period. The use of IPETs was not isolated to individuals, but appears to have been pervasive throughout professional cycling. The fact that speeds and climbing rates are reducing as a function of time points toward the success of stricter doping controls in the sport.
The reduced variability in performance indicates that natural ability, while obviously required, has been reduced in its impact upon determining success, and this appears to have been the case since the beginning of the 1990’s. (Comments about how EPO can reduce the impact of natural differences on performance among different riders, along with other discussions, can be found in Ref. [11].)
The data are consistent with Armstrong, upon his return, not doing anything obviously different from other elite cyclists in the TdF, though obviously, he just did it a little better. This is the “level playing field” scenario.
The data are consistent with the assertions made by LeMond regarding doping in cycling.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the data analyzed in this work is but a small fraction of what could potentially be analyzed. One of the interesting features that was touched upon only in the analysis of the TdF prologue data, is the complete distribution of riders speeds in each event. If, in fact, IPETs that minimize the impact of natural ability in performance are being used, this trend should be clearly evident in the distribution of speeds in any given single event.
To close, the data that has been analyzed in this work points to the combined natural ability, race preparation and recovery of post-1999 Armstrong being consistent with, but slightly better than, other elite cyclists competing at that time. The strength of Armstrong’s performances in the collective events suggests that his preparation and recovery methods were shared with his team-mates.My Thoughts (given these observations and conclusions)
If one is convinced that IPETs were used extensive during the period from the late 1980’s forward to today, it makes little sense to remove titles from those who confess to using IPETs, as there is a high probability that the runner up, who would be awarded the title, was also using IPETs in essentially the same way. I suggest that it was a mistake to strip Riis of his 1996 TdF title because each of the 9 riders below him in the general classification (GC) were also likely using IPETs. Further, it is likely desirable to create an environment in which offenders from the past can confess to using IPETs in past events as this may help in the development of future anti-doping protocols.
Stripping Armstrong of his titles, and awarding them to the runner ups, has the same problem discussed in the previous bullet-point. Given the data as presented here, and the fact that multiple members of his teams have admitted to using IPETs, it seems that there is high likelihood that the runner’s ups (through many placings in the GC) were also using IPETs.
If titles are stripped from Armstrong, then, in fairness, similar investigations should be launched against Indurain, as his performances have similarities to those of Armstrong. This could be generalized to all TdF winners since 1990.
[Fascinating stuff if you like charts and graphs. I’m left with a bunch of questions (about the analysis and some of the data).]
Did Apple and Google really spend more on patents than R&D?Technovia:
Read the NYT piece, and you would think that the technology market has shifted from being about research and development of new products to being about acquisition of patents. Given that this is based on a single year, when some very big patent portfolios came on the market in one-off deals that aren’t likely to be repeated in the future, that’s a long way from the truth.
[I sincerely dislike when agenda is written as news.]
Why We’ll Never Stop Talking About Steve Jobs:
Jobs, like the titans of industry before him, realized that when we think about how the world works, we are actually thinking about the way people have made it to work. And that means that if you don’t like the way the world works, you are free to change it. Which is exactly what he did.
[Forgetting that in combination with Alice Walker’s “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” explains why so little is done about so much.]
Disruptions: With a 3-D Printer, Building a Gun With the Push of a Button:
But monitoring whether people make their own guns on a 3-D printer is going to be impossible, barring sticking an A.T.F. agent in every home. It’s also hopeless to try to build a technology into these printers that prevents people from printing a gun. One project mentioned in Mr. Wilson’s video, called the RepRap printer, will be capable of replicating itself by printing other 3-D printers.
After committing a crime with a printed weapon, a person could simply melt down the plastic and reprint it as something as mundane as a statue of Buddha. And guns made of plastic might not be spotted by metal detectors in airports, courthouses or other government facilities.
“This becomes scary when you consider the fact that it could be yet another opportunity for people to evade background checks and get a gun,” said Daniel Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
[First of all, this is nothing new (people building their own firearms at home.) Certainly the “IED” commonly discussed in the last couple of wars shows that guns could well be overrated by Hollywood and the Press as the best means of causing harm. But anyway, while the above scenario is bound to happen, there’s a lot more good to come of 3D printing than bad. In the meantime this only proves how poor “banning” anything works as a system. The more try and do it, the worse we get at it.]
Video of That 2007 ‘Intel Inside’ Sticker Question:
Steve Jobs at his extemporaneous best. Dumb question but such a great answer. (Phil Schiller got a good jab in too.)
Update: Changed the link from an audio recording to this YouTube clip.
[Here’s the thing, I deal with this all the time. Well, not the Intel sticker, but stores that put sticky price tags (which are now usually barcodes that tell me nothing). I don’t want to spend time peeling stickers off of the new items I purchased, and I certainly don’t want to risk harming the item by having to use either chemicals or a razor blade to remove the price tag and residual glue. I’m not alone here either, I’ve often heard from my wife “don’t order from there, I hate the stickers they use…”]
Source: Daring Fireball
turnings :: daniel berlinger 