alex mizell -- 49% sacred, 51% profane

Microsoft’s Sidekick/Pink problems blamed on dogfooding and sabotage: …T-Mobile owns the Sidekick brand, and the cloud services failure associated with its brand will likely decimate the million active Sidekick subscribers T-Mobile maintains, despite the fact that the mobile operator did nothing wrong.

"T-Mobile has an SLA (Service Level Agreement) with Danger/Microsoft … that requires Danger/MS to reimburse T-Mobile with defined monetary penalties if the service goes down for longer than x minutes, etc. I have no clue about the details, but clearly a week-plus outage plus permanent loss of all user data stored in the cloud (leaving only the user data stored on the devices themselves, which will completely vanish if the device is shut down improperly or crashes!) is the worst possible violation of the SLA conceivable, and essentially guarantees a very nasty lawsuit against Microsoft, regardless of whatever forensic and legal investigations they are doing to try to find the culprit," one of the insiders explained.

T-Mobile: we probably lost all your Sidekick data: Well, this is shaping up to be one of the biggest disasters in the history of cloud computing, and certainly the largest blow to Danger and the Sidekick platform: T-Mobile's now reporting that personal data stored on Sidekicks has "almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger." They're still looking for a way to recover it, but they're not giving users a lot of hope — meanwhile, servers are still on the fritz and customers are being advised not to let their devices power down because anything that's still on there will be lost the next time the device is turned on. Another communique is promised from T-Mobile on Monday to give everyone a status update on the recovery efforts, but at this point, it's not looking good at all.

Gun-toting Pa. soccer mom, husband found shot dead: "I'm shocked at the whole thing," Fortna said. "I'm surprised she didn't defend herself."

Enter the Rape Tunnel, For Art: I've constructed a 22 ft tunnel out of plywood that leads into the project room. There is no way in or out of the project room except for this tunnel. As you travel through the tunnel, it gets smaller and smaller, making it so that you have to crawl and put yourself in a submissive position in order to reach the tunnel's destination. At the end of the tunnel the subject will find me waiting in the project room and I'll try to the best of my ability to overpower and rape the person who crawls through.

Toyota recalls 3.8 million cars with iffy floor mats: Toyota issued a safety recall for 3.8 million Lexus and Toyota cars because of potentially deadly floor mats.

Ants vs. worms: New computer security mimics nature: "Our idea is to deploy 3,000 different types of digital ants, each looking for evidence of a threat," Fulp says. "As they move about the network, they leave digital trails modeled after the scent trails ants in nature use to guide other ants. Each time a digital ant identifies some evidence, it is programmed to leave behind a stronger scent. Stronger scent trails attract more ants, producing the swarm that marks a potential computer infection."

sometimes it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken

Also:  the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Chrome Frame is Google’s stealth attack on Microsoft Internet Explorer: Google’s internet-browser war against Microsoft has escalated after the search engine giant unveiled Chrome Frame, a new plug-in that essentially changes Internet Explorer into Chrome.

Dialectical behavioral therapy wiki: Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a therapeutic methodology developed by Marsha M. Linehan, a psychology researcher at the University of Washington, to treat persons with borderline personality disorder (BPD).[1][2] DBT combines standard cognitive-behavioral techniques for emotion regulation and reality-testing with concepts of mindful awareness, distress tolerance, and acceptance largely derived from Buddhist meditative practice. DBT is the first therapy that has been experimentally demonstrated to be effective for treating BPD. Research indicates that DBT is also effective in treating patients who represent varied symptoms and behaviors associated with spectrum mood disorders, including self-injury.

I am supplying the choons for this shindig…

New Envion Facility Turns Plastic Waste into $10/Barrel Fuel: What if we could turn all the plastic waste we create on a daily basis into fuel to power our cars?

cardboard computer case: The cardboard case, which can be assembled without fasteners and screws, eliminates the need for those parts and the manufacturing processes used to create them.

“We don't realize how much effort it takes to do. A computer is something that will be disposed of and we'll dispose of it because of its finite life, so why do we put so much effort into producing it?” he asked.

http://www.omglasergunspewpewpew.com/

(via jwz)

Evan Handler: Have You No Decency, Sir? At Long Last, Have You No Sense of Decency?: For the life of me, and not for lack of effort, I can't wrap my mind around the logic of those against aggressive reform — including a "public option." I posted some thoughts on Facebook late last night and got response after response from people wishing a bill would bring "liability/tort reform," "oversight," or "create incentives," and "level the playing field," all followed by the demand that this not include "big government involvement." I'm sorry, but that doesn't track. All those things require government involvement. At least some opponents seem to want government to provide, without being "involved."

To take it a step further, all those expressed cravings above would be best accomplished by the government offering an optional, only-if-you-want-it, government sponsored insurance option. That's the way to keep insurance companies honest! By offering a competent, comprehensive, affordable, and compassionate alternative they will be forced to match, or else lose customers.

Dear President Bush,: This is what Geneva’s Article 3 says: whatever the nature of the combatant, in or out of uniform, and whatever his own moral rules (or lack of them), he deserves basic respect as a human being with human rights. This principle is nonnegotiable. It is the core principle of Western civilization. Resistance to the physical force of government, especially as that force is applied to people in custody, is the core reason America exists as an independent nation.

The age of enhancement: Imagine that you order a book in a library. The book is collected from the stacks. If you read it by an open window with the sun streaming in, the book will be slightly bleached. When you return it, what is stored is a fainter copy. Propranolol operates as fierce bleaching sunlight. If subjects with PTSD are prompted to conjure up an unwelcome recurring memory while being injected with the drug then the memory is re-filed in the brain in a weakened state.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics wiki: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is part of a phrase attributed to the 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, among others, and later popularized in the United States by, among others, Mark Twain: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." The statement refers to the persuasive power of numbers, the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments, and the tendency of people to disparage statistics that do not support their positions.

Black Monday wiki: A degree of mystery is associated with the 1987 crash, and it has been labeled as a black swan event.[7] Important assumptions concerning human rationality, the efficient market hypothesis, and economic equilibrium were brought into question by the event. Debate as to the cause of the crash still continues many years after the event, with no firm conclusions reached.

Quine wiki: In computing, a quine is a computer program which produces a copy of its own source code as its only output.

Propaganda wiki: Propaganda is communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda.

Black Swan wiki: The main idea in Taleb's book is not to attempt to predict Black Swan events, but to build robustness to the negative ones, while being able to exploit positive ones. Taleb contends that banks and trading firms are very vulnerable to hazardous Black Swan events and are exposed to losses beyond that predicted by their defective models.

Taleb states that a Black Swan event depends on the observer—a Black Swan surprise for the turkey is not a Black Swan surprise for the butcher, hence his idea is to "avoid being the turkey" by finding out where one may be exposed to being a turkey and "turn the Black Swans white".

Although I’m happy to see progressives forging ahead with health care reform, I am a bit dismayed at the idea that we may pass a version of the bill that lacks the public option. In my view, the public option is the most important part of the health care reform menu and here’s why: This is the mechanism that will force insurance companies to own up to the horror that they are currently inflicting on their customers, to bring them back into line with the reality of their business models and to keep them honest once they’re there.

If Americans are offered a chance to buy into this new plan – a reasonable amount of coverage for a reasonable price, administered by people whose main motivations are public service and not stockholders’ bottom lines – then the insurance companies are going to have to directly compete with this new product.

That basically means that they will have to cut their rates and simultaneously offer a much more attractive (read: costlier) product just to avoid seeing their customers leave them en mass for the public option. It’s no wonder why they hate the idea so much – it makes their job of fleecing the public much more difficult when there’s an honest player in the game. One who can demonstrate that this function of dividing up risk among large groups of people can be done MUCH more efficiently when you’re not pocketing huge amounts of profit in the process. Fortunately for them when you DO pocket all that profit you have plenty of cash on hand to fund propaganda machines and political mouthpieces, so things tend to go your way.

There are people who will say that there’s no way the government can run anything efficiently – but that’s nonsense. The government runs the military (not the other way round). The government runs the post office, the judicial system, the interstate system, NASA, etc, etc, etc. In case you haven’t noticed, these are things that work pretty well. So why in the world would we be incapable of creating a reasonably well-run public health insurance plan and why would we trust a corporation to do it better? Don’t you realize how massively inefficient most large corporations are?

With a public administration at least we can change it if we don’t like what we see. In a corporation the decisions are going to be made behind closed doors and it’s virtually guaranteed that the motivations behind all decisions will favor private interests instead of public ones. Why does anyone think this is preferable? I’ll tell you what I think it is: simply fear of the word “government” and let’s face it head on: fear of a black president. But somebody’s got to govern, people. We don’t believe in anarchy, we’re Americans. We have a government, it’s not going anywhere. Let it do the job of helping Americans to live better, freer lives.

Code-breaking quantum algorithm run on a silicon chip: A quantum calculation able to crack one of the most common forms of data encryption has been performed on a silicon chip for the first time. (via pg)

Web-monitoring software gathers data on kid chats: Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids. (via slashdot)