As someone with a bit of experience in Big Data and medical technology...

A test that falsely indicated HIV 9 times out of 10 is absolutely wonderful, if it actually catches that one correct positive reliably. A false negative is far more dangerous, and it's the job of the doctor to try multiple tests to confirm a diagnosis. If the initial screening comes back positive, the patient can be warned off intercourse for a while or start some initial therapy while another test is tried, without significant risk to the patient's health.

Similarly, Big Data is just a term for a particular approach to model design. Having huge amounts of data doesn't magically improve your analysis algorithm, and you still need to have a properly-skilled expert testing your algorithm to make sure that it's correct before it's used for business decision.

NASA has a 68% approval rating, according to TFA.

TFA is actually covering opinion polls relating to several government agencies, but in typical Slashdot form, TFS only focuses on the NSA section, because that will be more inflammatory.

Ah, yes, of course a well-respected research center doesn't know how to run a simple opinion poll...

Don't worry. I'm sure the majority of Slashdot will ever-so-helpfully explain exactly how to run the survey to get the results that Slashdot expects, validity be damned.

Are your findings the results of a properly-controlled survey, or are they the results of talking among your technologist peers and subject to confirmation bias?

It's poorly worded above, but perhaps a better way to say it is that the time-dependent churn in a particular model is negligible (to a statistical irrelevance) if you can get enough data quickly enough. Effectively, once your data stream outpaces the time-dependent effects, those effects may no longer be relevant variables in your calculations.

For example, I'd expect that Google can collect enough data in an hour to determine if a UI improvement is helpful, or if a particular change to PageRank results in more accurate results. Because Google has such a high volume of data collection all of the time, a very short sampling duration all but eliminates the variation due to the time of day, day of the week, or season of the year.

I'm not suggesting that a Big Data solution is somehow magically independent of time. Rather, what I'm saying is that the "store first, ask questions later" approach that is central to Big Data lends itself readily to collecting useful samples quickly enough that delta-t is negligible.

This pretty much sums up the entirety of Big Data.

Data analysis can highlight the correlations that would otherwise go unnoticed, and the "big" data sets involved help to ensure that the noticed correlations are statistically significant. With a large enough sample size, the effects of time can be eliminated from the statistics, supporting analysis of even highly-dynamic models. To a statistician, this is all trivial, given a large enough data set.

Once correlations are discovered, interpreting them in the business context is a different matter for which computers are not well-suited. As the phrase goes, correlation is not causation. A business expert must analyse the observations and figure out what it all means. There may be a correlation indicating a causal relationship, or there may be a hidden cause not covered by the available data.

Even if a causal relationship can be identified, the management may not want to act on it. Sure, the company might make more money by changing their behavior in a particular market segment, but if that segment is dying, it may not be worth the expense to change now. That's also not a task for computers, yet.

Big Data techniques are effectively just a tool. It does one job particularly well, and does a few other jobs well enough to be useful. It is still up to humans to determine if Big Data is the best tool for a particular situation.

They don't produce any offspring that live long enough to breed, making them effectively sterile for generational purposes.

Eventually the first-generation males will die, as well, leaving just the greatly-reduced next-generation population.

Not really.

With a suitable search warrant, the police can tear your house apart to find your stash. You cannot legally prohibit them from opening your house, and you cannot stop them from executing the search warrant to the full extent of its authorization.

And likewise, you cannot prohibit them from opening the encrypted volume.

Then it's a decision for a judge to make. The judge would be the one to decide if, by not providing a password, you are violating the court orders. You can provide evidence for your story, and the police can provide their own evidence. If you claim that somehow you had a 50-gig corrupt file, and the police show encryption software and logs of file access on volumes that don't exist, you're going to have a hard time convincing a judge of your story.

A better analogy would be evidence locked in a safe. The police can see the safe and can infer that it holds evidence, but you can claim to have forgotten the combination, or claim it's an antique to which you never knew the combination, or claim that it broke. If you can make a convincing case, you have a shot. If the police have evidence that you opened the safe a day earlier, you're pretty much screwed.

If the court orders you to teach the police how to read your language, then yes, you are in fact required to do so.

You could try teaching them incorrectly, but that's effectively obstruction of justice and/or perjury, depending on how it's handled.

Well, yeah. Remember that the Constitution's version of "due process" is not supposed to actually restrict the government, so much as it protects the people from the historical (at the time) abuses governments had commonly employed.

The 5th Amendment protects against defendants being forced to create evidence against themselves. Remember the fun of the Inquisition, where the accused would be tortured or killed if they didn't confess? The 5th Amendment is a counter to that, and not much more. It's not a magic wand that allows you to hide crimes you actually committed. Notably, it does not allow you to hide evidence that already exists.

Once you put information into anything except your own head, it's fair game for a subpoena or search warrant. Period. Encryption doesn't matter. You can be compelled to provide keys or passwords, because the keys and passwords themselves aren't evidence against you. They just unlock the evidence that already exists.

Jokes aside, that's about it. The case in question is a bog-standard investigation and prosecution. The only notable twist is the guy's political connections. There's really no reason for widespread coverage.

This stunt may as we'll be Operation Our Favorite Crime, spreading awareness of Anonymous' obsession with this particular flavor of felony. We'll put it up next to the neckbeard ranting about his favorite video game, and the fat guy touting the virtues of his favorite food. Just like the armchair art critic and the armchair gourmet critic (and the nerd typing Slashdot comments when he should be sleeping) this will accomplish nothing to make the world a better place, but it will give a few individuals a few moments of pride in their hollow awareness campaign.

So in other words, justice is being served, and a sentence is being delivered that the judge (within the guidelines set by legislators) feels is appropriate to the crime committed.

There's nothing left for Anonymous to do, except to remind the world that this guy did something bad, and by so doing, perpetuate the shame and embarrassment his friends and family are subjected to. It won't affect the perpetrator himself, because he'll be in prison for the entire life of this "operation".

Harassing innocent bystanders is what Anonymous does best.

I seem to recall tales of trade cities that were quite paranoid about outsiders learning their craft, some of which predated industrialized Great Britain or Germany by a rather large number of years.

Perhaps the most well-known example is Murano, whose artistic glassblowing techniques were held in high esteem by the region. An older example would be Damascus metalworking, and I have vague recollections of similar industrial pride dating back to Egypt.

I'm afraid my memory is not a particularly reliable source, but I believe there were often stiff penalties for trying to export the local expertise. Perhaps someone with a more complete knowledge of history can fill in the details...

There is a risk, calculated or otherwise, that you are Pierre Mohammed Finklestein III of Bychawa, Poland.

I have determined this based on my keen understanding of the information I have about you. With a little more information I could reduce the uncertainty...