In a little bit of irony, Pixar was originally part of ILM -- 1/3 of the Computer Graphics division. 26 years later, the two companies are back under the same umbrella.

If Anonymous has material evidence that points to the guilt of a particular individual, they should turn that evidence over to the responsible law enforcement agency, not go public and taint both the investigation and public opinion. The detectives may have had the opportunity to seize evidence before the person knew he was under suspicion, or set up a sting operation. They'd also have the chance to clear the individual if he's innocent without the mess of threats of violence I presume this guy is now going to get.

Presuming this person is eventually charged and tried, Anonymous releasing this information can complicate the job of the prosecutor, having the opposite effect intended.

On the other hand, if this person is innocent, Anonymous just released a shitstorm on this poor guy that's going to be nearly impossible to get rid of until the police charge someone else.

I don't see any situations where Anonymous' action result in a more positive outcome than would have come about through other choices.

Markets are not fully efficient.

One potential negative outcome of the system as structured is that the most talented and brilliant astronomers choose not to enter the field because of the poor job prospects, leaving nothing but a bunch of mediocre astronomers who, admittedly, are committed, but still aren't going to have the same sorts of breakthroughs.

This can happen in reverse too, where one profession becomes so attractive (due to salary, e.g.) it sucks people away from fields they'd otherwise prefer and be great at. This happened in investment banking. We need some non-zero number of them, but certainly not as many as we did. I think we can agree that sending all of the best and brightest minds to investment banking is not the most productive or beneficial outcome for the rest of society.

We cannot bring about utopian outcomes by sheer force of law and regulation. But we can tilt the incentives away from unwanted metastable states and undesired positive feedback loops.

A bunch of Vietnamese, Iraqis, and Afghanis would like to disagree with you.

There was a verdict in Korea today that slanted heavily toward Samsung given the relative strengths of the patents.

This is not even close to over, and has no end in sight as far as I can tell.

The problem with that idea is that sometimes these high frequency traders also cause volatility spikes in the market, triggering other computer programs, and, sometimes, humans, to react as though the spurious trades were intentional.

While I also loathe HFT as a scourge on the market, I think the NYSE's overall response is a good one: when abnormal trades occur as a secondary effect of other's mistakes, abort them.

Note that the ca. $440 million loss Knight took was BECAUSE they couldn't unwind the bad positions they bought into. Goldman Sachs bought the entire block from them at a discount. Knight didn't get any kind of parachute.

My understanding is that this was entered into evidence to show a pattern and Samsung's state of mind. As in, moving a button isn't infringement, but if they were already being so blatant, it's easier to believe they also ripped off what is patented.

I come from a family of teachers, so I know all about internal politics. Unless she no longer wants to teach under any circumstances, change schools first before giving up. Try private if you've only done public, etc. If it is truly her passion, she'll find the school for her.

Or, do what my college roommate did and specialize in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Make $120,000 a year and hate yourself.

One explanation of the results, should they hold up is that Alice, Bob, and Victor's actions were predetermined before the photons were generated and thus had to correlate.

You could say that the actors then had no free will, or you could imagine a scenario where somehow the actions of all three were entangled via an earlier free will choice.

Not like I love the Nature Publishing Group (NPG) very much, but let's link to the source to help give the original authors credit. (Which, as far as I can tell, the medical daily article doesn't even do!)

Here is a link to the original paper

For those who aren't molecular biologists or geneticists, here is a link to the Nature news article on the scientific paper

Just yesterday, we had a story about the FBI seizing servers in virginia and most of the comments were negative. Of course, in this thread, most of the comments are positive.

One difference is we know the purpose of the seizures in this case, which makes it seem less fly-by-night, but I wonder how the hosting providers felt when the servers were first seized. Not that we should let the FBI seize whatever, whenever, but sometimes quick action to seize evidence is necessary, even if it inconveniences others.

I looked at the terms linked in the article. It appears these terms are attached to special purchases from Apple solely for promotional purposes. (i.e., you contact Apple beforehand about buying some for a promotion and they give you a discount). In that case, you are accepting the contract. And it's not like they'd sell you 249 iPods then get pissy because you had fewer than 250.

But, I believe that if I buy an iPad at retail, I can use it in whatever promotional capacity I see fit as long as I do not violate Apple's IP.

In short: nothing to see here, move along

How did you see my password? I thought it only came up as ***s?

Oh, I get it, to you it shows up as ***s but to me it shows up as hunter2

Well, if it is a phishing scheme like google believes, it's not quite the same thing as a data breach like we typically use the term.

Sort of like the difference between me being tricked into giving away my ATM PIN and a hacker breaking into the bank system and taking money from my account.

One of the hallmarks of cancer cells are mutations that make them divide like crazy and never stop. The baseline division rate before they became cancerous doesn't really matter much by that point.