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Submission + - NASA to Catalog and Release Its Open Source Codes

An anonymous reader writes: By the end of next week, NASA will release a master catalog of over 1,000 software projects it has conducted over the years and will provide instructions on how the public can obtain copies of the source codes. NASA's goal is to eventually 'host the actual software code in its own online repository, a kind of GitHub for astronauts.' Since these are open source codes, anyone can use them for private or commercial purposes without having to pay royalties or copyright fees. Scientists not affiliated with NASA have already adapted some of NASA's software. 'In 2005, marine biologists adapted the Hubble Space Telescope’s star-mapping algorithm to track and identify endangered whale sharks. That software has now been adapted to track polar bears in the arctic and sunfish in the Galapagos Islands.' The Hubble Space Telescope's scheduling software has reportedly also been used to schedule MRIs at hospitals and as control algorithms for online dating services. The possibilities could be endless.
Education

Submission + - Cyber Corps program trains spies for the digital age (latimes.com)

David Hume writes: "The Los Angeles Times has a story entitled Cyber Corps program trains spies for the digital age, about the two-year University of Tulsa Cyber Corps Program. About "85% of the 260 graduates since 2003 have gone to the NSA, which students call "the fraternity," or the CIA, which they call "the sorority."" "Other graduates have taken positions with the FBI, NASA and the Department of Homeland Security." According to the University of Tulsa website, two programs — the National Science Foundation's Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service and the Department of Defense's (DOD's) Information Assurance Scholarship Program — provide scholarships to Cyber Corps students."

Comment Re:Who would have thought... (Score 5, Insightful) 252

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, has a book chapter coming out that addresses this danger. Prof. Teleb's draft chapter on Medicine, Convexity, and Opacity from his upcoming book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, can be found at:

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/medicine.pdf

While the entire chapter is worth a read, at page 389 he observes:

The “do you have evidence” fallacy, mistaking evidence of no harm for no evidence of harm, is similar to the one of misinterpreting NED (no evidence of disease) for evidence of no disease. This is the same error as mistaking absence of evidence for evidence of absence, the one that tends to affect smart and educated people, as if education made people more confirmatory in their responses and more liable to fall into simple logical errors.

That may have been the case here. That is, for years no evidence of harm was mistaken for evidence of no harm.

More generally, Prof. Taleb argues at page 376:

Simple, quite simple decision rules and heuristics emerge from this chapter. Via negativa, of course (by removal of the unnatural): resort to medical techniques when the health payoff is very large (say, saving a life) and visibly exceeds its potential harm, such as incontrovertibly needed surgery or lifesaving medicine (penicillin). It is the same as with government intervention. This is squarely Thalesian, not Aristotelian (that is, decision making based on payoffs, not knowledge). For in these cases medicine has positive asymmetries —convexity effects— and the outcome will be less likely to produce fragility. Otherwise, in situations in which the benefits of a particular medicine, procedure, or nutritional or lifestyle modification appear small—say, those aiming for comfort—we have a large potential sucker problem (hence putting us on the wrong side of convexity effects).

Comment Anonymous Iran (Score 1) 333

It seems to me that helping them communicate (setting up proxies, opening more tor exit nodes, etc) is helpful, but not particularly open to cries of puppetry. Plenty of people are doing exactly that, and I think it's wonderful that there are simple things a quiet geek can do to help out a bit. Of course, detractors can always claim that open communication is a Western ideal, but it's become quite clear that a lot of Iranians want it as well.

Agreed.

See Anonymous Iran.
http://iran.whyweprotest.net/

Interesting video:
Anonymous Message to Iranian Government.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hUFv5c4lFg&

Censorship

Submission + - Man attacked in Ohio for providing Iran proxies (dailykos.com) 1

David Hume writes: electronicmaji is reporting on the Daily Kos that the individual known as ProtesterHelp (see also here) was attacked in Ohio for providing network security for Twitterers in Iran, setting up private networks to provide secure proxies, calling for media networks to remove the Iranians Twiterers information from their broadcast, and providing counter-intelligence services (including Basiji and Army Locations) within the Twitter community. ProtesterHelp was allegedly attacked by a group of men while walking to class in Ohio. The men, who appeared to ProtesterHelp to be either Iranian or Lebanese, drove up besides him and threw rocks at him while shouting, "Mousavi Fraud." ProtesterHelp further reported that his personal information has been leaked, and is currently being spread both online and inside of Iran amongst the government. For updates see #iranelection.

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