The report only shows how many machines were running each browser or OS on the infected machines. They don't report how many machines in total had those browsers or OSes. So it may be that 100% of the Win98, Win2k and Win2003 installations were infected but they represent such a small subset of the total userbase that the percentages in the pie charts are also relatively small.

Additionally, the browser report doesn't break out different versions of IE and Firefox. The fact is a lot of people are still using IE7 and maybe even IE6. IE8 is an improvement and IE9 even more so. Likewise, I still see a number of FF3 users and FF4 users. I would lump FF5 through FF7 together because, really, wth not. Practically the same anyway. But FF5+ represents an increase in safety over FF4.

I would have liked to have seen relative infection rates within each browser and OS version. That is, it's nice to know the percentage of infections that involved Windows XP, but I would also like to know what % of Windows XP users became infected. Even then you aren't controlling for varying levels of user experience and ability to avoid infection, or anti-malware installations, but I suppose there are limits to all data collection.

Do you seriously think this article is going to have a significant effect on Netflix at all? Positive or negative? I imagine most people have already made up their minds about Netflix and those that haven't might want to know that Netflix is actually doing something to make their product more enticing. If the post was entirely one long "SQUEE" of jubilation over the wonder that is the Netflix experience, extolling the corporate virtues and bashing anyone who opposed them, then maybe you would have a point. As it is, this is a potential coup for a major company attempting to shift how we view video programming further toward an online streaming experience, which is to say 'News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters'.

I don't know that you would have the problem you're referring to, being unable to distinguish from every instance of having parked your car in the parking lot. If you had perfect recall, surely you would begin to record EVERY detail of every instance and then when attempting to recall today's specific instance, I imagine your brain's capability for pattern recognition would sort through the most relevant results to pull up the correct one. We do that all the time really. There are any number of things which we repeat daily but with minute differences in each case, and we manage to filter out the least relevant results in order to be able to focus on what's most important to the matter at hand. Sometimes, yes, it fails, and we end up chasing a dead end. But the human brain seems a remarkably potent tool for filtering out the noise to reach the signal in many cases.

No. Netflix has a lot of name recognition. Moreover, they've already sent clear signals they were ready to make streaming their major source of operations going forward. So they want to use the already present name recognition for the operations they intend to move forward with. As for the pain to the consumers, DVD rentals were dropping in big markets and were only growing marginally in outlying areas (flyover country). The big markets are where you're more likely to have a higher concentration of high bandwidth customers willing to make use of streaming. And the flyover areas are less likely to have that bandwidth, and so probably weren't making as much use of the streaming to begin with.

So I imagine what they were seeing momentum wise was a silo effect for most customers, where they used either DVD or streaming but not always both. Yes, there was clearly an uproar for those users who used both streaming and DVD, but while the loss of 4% of their user base was significant, it clearly wasn't a death blow. And now if the DVD business starts to dry up as high speed access is made available in more areas and as more content is available for streaming, it won't suck the life out of their brand because it's off in another company altogether.

I wrote about it on my blog, if you're interested.

Ah, I see. I figured anyone capable of creating something this sophisticated would have been able to target more platforms due to the relative accessibility of PC parts. But perhaps I'm overestimating just how accessible parts are from outside China.

Furthering your analogy, your version of the flu would have been tailored to only attack individuals with chromosomal characteristics common to the Asiatic region.

It's not just that it was first discovered by a Chinese security firm. It also appears to be targeted at Chinese PCs. From the original post:

The infection is clearly focused on Chinese users, because the dropper is carefully checking if the system it’s going to infect is protected by Chinese security software Rising Antivirus and Jiangmin KV Antivirus.

Makes one wonder who developed it and what the intent was.

Best bring a nice portable A/C unit. Here ya go... got a good sturdy one to sell ya right here. Cash only. No refunds.

An oversexed trapeze artist?

Yeah... those damned chickens absolutely REFUSE to alter their method of timekeeping. Always checking the clock, looking over calendars... makes one wonder if maybe chickens built Stonehenge or something... damned chickens...

Actually, with regard to shortened holidays, research indicates that continued academic effort (reading in the linked case) positively impacts academic performance in the subsequent semester. Granted in this case the study was performed on students who continued to read during summer vacation and checked their performance when they came back, which is different from concentrated classroom study. Furthermore, according to the wiki there is a measured "summer learning loss" attributed to summer holidays where students do not perform any notable academic tasks, suggesting that the inverse would hold true as well, that real academic tasks throughout the long summer holiday might help stave off the worst effects of this "learning loss".

When looking at a 4 day school week, I don't think the loss of one day would in itself negative impact education. Obviously cutting it much further would probably tend to have negative consequences. I think keeping the kids in class longer hours during those 4 days will actually have a more negative effect, especially among younger students who don't tend to have the mental stamina for longer sessions of concentrated focus. The problem is I think they added the hours into the remaining days in order to be able say they are still covering the entire curriculum, but the focus problem may come into play and the kids won't be able to pick up the material as readily as before. Tacking on extra weeks at the end of the year would simply bring the financial problem back into play. What kids need are a regular steady diet of learning time, not huge gobs with vast periods of time between.

Regarding a payoff in 100 years, I think that's the GP's point. Private investors won't touch it because they have to think in the much shorter term. Even governments have historically not planned 100 years out. No one really has. And in this context, I shouldn't say 'planned' but rather 'executed'. Plenty of folks "sit on their ass and day dream". Few actually put anything into action with a view to things paying off well after they are dead.

That said, we (as a species) need to be thinking in these terms. Right now, the entirety of our species is tied up into the ongoing balanced existence on this one rock. Any number of cosmic events could wipe us out. For all we know, there's something heading toward us on an approach or in a manner that we can't detect and that will destroy all life on our planet.

While there have been other endeavors undertaken which weren't expected to reach fruition within the lifetime of the original actors, they were usually within a generation of completion. Speaking of social revolution, various technologies, etc. Full on independent existence of humans in a self sustaining manner on another planet is, I believe, going to be a multi-generational effort, something that if we start now in earnest, we won't see, our children won't see, our grandchildren won't see.

And that's the problem, as others have pointed out. We're, most of us, self-interested. That extends to our interest in our loved ones, those who are alive now or that we can imagine (kids or grandkids possibly). But few people are far-sighted enough and focused enough on the long haul to take these sorts of causes up. And the further down the line the payoffs are, the less tangible they become for those who would have to start acting now and the less likely any such effort is to get started.

The carbon footprint of insomnia is pretty high too, as you produce more CO2 in a waking cycle than in a sleep cycle, not to mention your likely increased activity levels on electronics or other equipment while you are awake. You're pretty much hosing us all. Get a Humvee, burn a bunch of gas going to the mall, but for heaven's sake, calm down and sleep at night!

Demand will go up, but it's also possible that production efficiency will go up too which coupled with competition from other manufacturers would cause prices to go back down.

Then it seems as though we need a consumer grade model is in order. As always it comes down to money though. I wonder how well it would sell.