It's even worse that that though -- it's not just that the media doesn't fact check, it's that most media members lack the ability to fact check, as do their audience. It's the game telephone on a national scale, and it's hurting everyone when a rather important but nascent study on polymers gets conflated to "scientists create new ultra-capacity battery purple monkey dishwasher".

The report itself doesn't really focus so much on this disconnect though as much as it the social dynamics of credibility; according to the article, we're trained to focus more on "friend or foe" than "true or not true", and the first challenge in communicating serious scientific advances to people is getting past the friend or foe response. The article refers to Climate Change as an example of this, and it seems true that most people cannot enter into discussions of climate change without there being a political agenda attached.

What this really comes down to is poor logical training -- it's not that people are outright illogical or that science and pure logic are the most ideal way to be (as they aren't), it's that we're just wired to have an emotional investment, and too often, the public gets hurt by this wiring. Rather than take a second to try and see if the content is or is not valid, or to separate the person speaking from the evidence presented, which admittedly can be difficult if you are very invested in a particular belief (political, religious, mystical, personal, and so on). I've always used the example of liking Burzum versus liking/approving of Varg Vikernes and his personal beliefs; you don't need to subscribe to the latter to accept the former.

However, the article just suggests that we can't really get past that friend/foe check.

I think this is really where celebrity scientists (Tyson, Nye, Sagan, Asimov, etc) can really help out everyone. I'm re-reading two of Asimov's books "A short history of [chemistry|biology]" and I think that there needs to be more of this. Asimov was an incredible writer and had a knack for telling a good story, and even better just explaining science simply. Sagan has some fairly poetic ways of describing the universe which spoke to people in an easy way, Bill Nye brought a good sense of entertainment to science and made it fun for kids. The more writing and early exposure people can get to this sort of material, the better people can begin to separate the human behind the science from the evidence presented.

(Of course, this is not to say that scientists are without their own prejudices or agendas; reading the history of chemistry has shown how sometimes a leading scientists' personal agenda stymied progress just because they were perceived as an authority. Everyone, regardless of training, is subject to this bias)

Slightly different scenario. Yahoo had the data and refused to turn it over. Apple is in effect ensuring it can never have the data that the NSA is seeking without new code. Warrants, in this instance, can't really be used to compel you to make something you wouldn't otherwise make. That's not the type of a warrant they can actually seek; there is no "do what we tell you warrant".

Apple's entire gambit is to avoid the messiness of the law aspect by just preventing their own access to the data so they have no means to actually comply with such a request. They can't get in trouble for refusal for such requests anymore than they could get in trouble for being asked have Tim Cook shit out a unicorn.

That's kind of irrelevant when US cities can't match Latvian speeds. The major ISPs can claim they can, but what is advertised is quite frankly no where close to day to day usage.

Technically, they also can just walk around and shoot organ donors to steal organs, but it doesn't really mean they are. There are a lot of nasty things the government could be doing that it isn't.

It's not unreasonable to have a very healthy distrust of government, but in this case GP is right; the current government has historically just been meticulous about their monetary demands. It is more unreasonable to assume that they'd just send out a demand for money with no explanation or reasoning than it is to assume that the GGP is just making up a story to sound cool.

If they don't want to offer up the content to those with adblockers or other DNT indicators, then they should just bite the bullet and do so.

It's not that people want their lunch for free, it's that they were provided a lunch without ever discussing the price and then hit with a price some folk didn't want to pay. It doesn't help that the price can often be a lot more than just the annoyance of an advertisement. Drive-by attacked from ads that don't get vetted are still a common reality -- scam websites are still allowed to wantonly display their advertisement and piggy-back off of the legitimacy of websites. You can say caveat emptor for anyone who may follow the ads, but that's really unacceptable; it's getting the user into really awkward, and in some cases dangerous, places when they probably didn't even care enough to really check the content in the first place.

The idea that all content is worth the advertisement cost is flawed -- if paywalled content would stop users from visiting, then it's likely that the content wasn't really worth that much to them. Apathy and laziness are the only thing that takes most people to these sites.

Interlibrary Loan can get you pretty much everything with similar transit times to Netflix DVD shipping.

This would be the future of wang measuring contests though; how many downloads did yours get this week?

Based on the transcript, I don't think that's what Bill Nye is saying here. From the video transcript:

He's not really talking about spiritualism, religion, or any other belief systems; he's talking about a small subset of people bent on eschewing very carefully collected, studied, and reviewed data because they perceive it as an attack on their personal belief system. The Science guy is concerned that bad and irrational decisions are being made under the guise of "its my religion". His purpose is not to decry religion, but to defend science, evolution specifically as it is the target of attacks. I think the thought process is less "don't let religion get into science" and more "think rationally about scientific matters." His plea for "...scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future." and "...people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems" is less about evolution versus religion and more about ensuring that future generations are trained to think logically; to think things through instead of standing on ceremony, that is, actually try to find the best solution, not just one that someone wants.

Does this mean he's against creationism in the classroom? Probably, because it's inconsistent with pretty much every other scientific model out there. But I don't think he's intending to harp on the idea of there being a creator; just people who want to push their agenda at the expense of education

I agree with the first part, but this is about end users, not enterprise managers/users, and it's the silent manner in which it's perform that matters. This is a user instigated change that Windows decides to change without telling the user.

If Defender noted that it was making a change to the hosts file, this would not have exploded to 500+ comments (well, okay maybe there would be enough ms bashing for that), but it would be a different tune altogether.

Maybe this works differently at lower level education, but a Dean in a university setting alone isn't enough to demand specific access rights that go against the agreed upon policy. For the Universities I've done IT for, typically the technology committee has either the Provost themselves or the assistant to the provost sit in on policy meetings which are finalized by the head of IT, the Provost, and select other special interest members who are involved in policy making. While a Dean could certainly raise enough fuss to have the committee to convene, they alone would not be enough to actually move the committee to action.

(Usually) The stereotypical "loud" administrative person doesn't really have much clout in the real world, especially with legal policy. Ultimately, it comes down the what the lawyhttp://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/08/16/2229233/ask-slashdot-how-to-best-setup-a-school-internet-filter#ers say, and if the lawyers fear action, they will almost inevitably side with the perceived safest outcome.

FTFA:

Not if you give them a means to install it. As would appear to be the case based on the number of malware infections that people have willingly installed as well as all the crapware that gets put on machines, put a button that says "download" or "install" in front of them and they will do it. Which is exactly what Apple did.

Apple's position seems to be the upsell for premium storage, not so much the fact that you're taken to the website. A few users on the Dropbox forum discussing the matter even mentioned that they weren't keen on how a lot of services did this. I have to agree with an earlier post that it looks like Dropbox and Apple are already figuring things out. The dev in question is more perturbed than Dropbox seems to be over it.

I would hope the general response by tech journalists to Mac Malware is an inquisitive one. It's certainly my reaction, since it is still a fairly unique occurrence.

Macs and Malware are an annoying thing to read about because you have to dig through so much Pro/Anti Apple uselessness to figure out even the most basic information about the malware, like "what's it doing?" or "how do I know I'm infected?". I think when I read this on /. initially, it wasn't until ~ the 200th comment that someone posted the F-secure update on the malware which was really informative. The original article was a very brief description of what the malware did and then a doomsday prophecy for OS X.

Obviously, this is anecdotal, but the concerns that the users I support have are less "Pfft, My mac is invulnerable" and more "Does this affect us?". There was so little actual data on the malware that most of my users just heard second-hand from the few vocal anti-Apple folk on our campus about how the OS X sky was falling.

Apple does have some growing to do with security, but I think that the security community and the tech community in general needs to grow up a little when reporting on OS X. I get it -- Apple's old marketing is coming back to bite them in the ass, and it's an embarrassment that makes for a phenomenal opportunity to make fun of Apple. But if you're a security firm breaking a story on malware, you should probably start with just the facts, and leave the jabs to an editorial. As it stands, pretty much any Mac malware has a script:
1. Declare something has been found
2. Provide the known number of infections, strongly suggest it's far greater (without any evidence thereof)
3. Declare this a sign of the end of OS X's innocence
4. Say how OS X has enjoyed a period of invulnerability due to marketshare, and that period is now gone as we expect to see more and more malware infections just like this one.
5. Repost the same story 9 months later when another mild infection occurs, update the story to use the new infection name.

6 million is a decent number of Macs, and it's really frustrating to know that they are being targeted now. So let's change the style of reporting to something actually useful instead of the same rehashed doomsday prophecies OS X has been getting for the last 4 years.

And what if that god is inferior to another? Or the antithesis of the true god? What if the true god actually stands for many things you disagree with.

Pascal's wager is a cute little thought, but it doesn't really stand as a foundation for faith.