16913146
submission
bfwebster writes:
Over at the Daily Kos, Chris Bowers lays out the groundwork for Grassroots SEO, with the up-front goal "to get as many undecided voters as possible to read the most damaging news article about the Republican candidate for Congress in their district" via "search engine optimization". He lays out the plan, then says, "Once we get the articles we can start working to push them up search engine rankings. We need to launch the campaign early next week, so let’s gather these articles as quickly as we can."
14506268
submission
bfwebster writes:
Since November of 2009, I have bought three multi-core 64-bit systems with Windows Home Premium (64-bit) preinstalled: an HP Pavilion desktop (model e9237c, bought 11/09); an HP Pavilion Entertainment laptop (model dv7, bought 03/10); and a Gateway desktop (model SX2802, bought 04/10). All three were upgraded to Windows 7 Professional at the end of May. During the time I have had these systems, I have had dozens of blue-scree-of-death (BSOD) crashes on the HP desktop; hundreds of BSODs on the HP laptop (which I suspect are related to the wireless adapter, since they mostly go away if I disable it), including multiple BSODs that occur at the log-in screen with no-one touching the laptop; and exactly zero (0) BSODs on the Gateway desktop. I am curious if others have noted similar problems on HP systems or lack thereof on Gateway systems. (Yes, I'm planning a factory restore and, if necessary, a return of the laptop; I've been on the road heavily since the end of March and haven't been able to lose use of the laptop until now.) More details here.
8333340
submission
bfwebster writes:
Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor who focuses on legal issues regarding information technology (I own a copy of his book "Computer Crime Law") raises an interesting issue about a 2001 Supreme Court decision (Kyllo v. United States) that prohibited police from using a thermal imaging device on a private home without a warrant. (The police were trying to detect excess heat coming from the roof of a garage, as an indication of lamps being used to grow marijuana inside.) The Court made its decision back in 2001 because thermal imaging devices were "not in general use" and therefore represented a technology that required a warrant. However, Kerr points out that anyone can now buy such thermal imaging devices for $50 to $150 from Amazon, and that they're advertised as a means of detecting thermal leakage from your home. In light of that, Kerr asks, is the Supreme Court's ruling still sound?
8151280
submission
bfwebster writes:
Roger Sessions released a white paper in which he claims that annual IT failure costs amount to $6.2 trillion. However, his reading of information sources and his resulting estimates are profoundly flawed. For starters, he misreads the US Federal Fiscal Year 2009 Budget Analytical Perspective document from which he extrapolates so much and ends up nearly an order of magnitude off in his estimate of the percentage of the US Federal IT budget that is "at risk" (his term, not the government's). Likewise, his estimate of a 65% failure rate for government IT projects is not supported anywhere in the document he cites and is, in fact, contradicted by it. The flaws in his extrapolation from the US Federal Government to the rest of the world merely compound the errors.
7376996
submission
bfwebster writes:
Despite the fact that a Google search on 'climategate' now yields over 10 million hits, the Google autosuggest feature appears to be deliberately ignoring 'climategate'. If you type 'climategate' in, letter by letter, you never get it as a suggestion, even when you've typed in 'climategat' (or, for that matter, 'climategate'). What you get instead is "climate guatemala". Bing, by contrast, autosuggests 'climategate' as soon as you type in 'cli'.
6282807
submission
bfwebster writes:
Randall Parker, over at the always informative FuturePundit, calls attention to a study that claims that video games are a threat to support for the conservation of nature. The argument goes like this: people who play video games are less likely to be involved in outdoor activities, such as camping, hiking, and so forth; most support for conservation comes from people who are heavily involved in said outdoor activities; therefore, the more people who play video games, the fewer people who will support conservation. QED. Logical fallacies are left as an exercise to the Slashdot reader.