Links for Thursday, 1/26/2012 January 26, 2012
Ars Technica – Symantec suspected Anonymous code breach back in 2006:
"The code was indeed stolen from our network," Symantec told us. "Media reports that the code was stolen from the Indian government are based solely on the claims by Anonymous. Throughout our investigation, we have found no evidence that we ever turned over or shared any code with the Indian government. Furthermore, the documentation offered by Anonymous to back up their claims have since been shown to be faked. We're not sure how they got the code, but we've found no evidence the Indian government actually had it."
UPDATE: Symantec has sent us a further update to make clear that the original theft was not perpetrated by Anonymous, and it's not clear how Anonymous came into possession of the code. "Anonymous did NOT steal the code in 2006," Symantec tells us. "We're not sure who stole the code in 2006 and are re-investigating that incident. Furthermore, we're not sure how Anonymous came into possession of the code. They claim they stole it from the Indian government. The problem is, A) we never shared any code with the Indian government, and B), the memo Anonymous used to make the link subsequently was proven to be faked."
Comment: It was my understanding that Anonymous wasn’t even around then, so this is really not a surprise.
"The longer we wait, the higher the number of people who will have to die, so we might as well just get it over with," said Dr. Chelsea Klepper, head of agricultural studies at Purdue University, and the leading proponent of a worldwide death day in which 2.3 billion people would kill themselves en masse at the exact same time. "At this point, it's merely a question of coordination. If we can get the populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Beijing, India, Europe, and Latin America to voluntarily off themselves at 6 p.m. EST on June 1, we can kill the people that need to be killed and the planet can finally start renewing its resources."
Thus far, humanity has been presented with a great variety of death options, among them, poisoning the world's water supply with cadmium, picking one person per household to be killed in the privacy of his or her home, mass beheadings, and gathering 2.3 billion people all in one place and obliterating them with a single hydrogen bomb.
BoingBoing - Insane English copyright ruling creates ownership in the idea of a photo's composition:
Amateur Photographer quotes "photographic copyright expert Charles Swan" who warns, "The Temple Island case is likely to herald more claims of this kind."
Yeah, no shit. This creates a situation where anyone who owns a large library of photos -- a stock photography outfit -- can go through its catalog and start suing anyone with deep pockets: "We own the copyright to 'two guys drinking beer with the bottoms of the mugs aimed skyward!'" It's an apocalyptically bad ruling, and an utter disaster in the making.
LiveScience – Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice:
"We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap."
Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.
"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."
In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link.
Comment: I’d be wary of reading too much into this…
Wired – Human Nature and the Neurobiology of Conflict:
Research has already shown that, compared to liberals, conservatives display heightened responses to threatening images. Michael Dodd of the University of Nebraska wanted to explore this in finer detail: He showed 46 left- or right-leaning Nebraskans a series of images alternately disgusting (spiders on faces, open wounds) and appealing (smiling children, cute rabbits.) Dodd's team found that conservatives reacted most strongly to negative images, and liberals most strongly to positive photographs.
Then he showed them pictures of well-known politicians. The same patterns held: Conservatives displayed more distaste than liberals for politicians they disliked, while liberals felt more positive than conservatives about politicians they liked. Given these and other findings, wrote Dodd's team, "those on the political right and those on the political left may simply experience the world differently."
Comment: This is something to always keep in mind. I don’t think it, in and of itself, validates one political ideology over another (there are arguably metrics for that, but this is about causation, not effectiveness), but it is a reminder that some people may simply be inherently wired to not see your viewpoint, and vice versa. As such, sneering down your nose at them is rather stunningly uncouth, which dovetails nicely into…
Cracked - The 6 Stupidest Things We Use to Judge People We Don't Know:
Of course, we've all felt that satisfying mixture of pity and superiority that comes from seeing a stranger doing a crappy job. When we see a middle-aged woman working the McDonald's drive-through, we immediately assume she's uneducated and barely employable. She's "stuck" working a fast food job. It never occurs to us that she may be intentionally working her way up the ladder to become a manager -- a job that pays an average of $40,000 a year. Or that this isn't her only job, and she's busting her ass, doing whatever it takes to survive. Or that, of the 50 applications she put out over the last half a year, this was the only job that replied. Instead we scoff, because it makes us feel better about where we are in life. "Yeah, I may stack boxes in the dildo factory, but at least I don't flip burgers for a living." In doing that, we're justifying our own occupations to ourselves. And since it happens so often, we know for a fact that those in better careers are looking at us through that same judgmental lens. No matter what our level of employment, scoffing at others for how they make their money is our means of comforting ourselves, because at least we're not that poor bastard who picks up my trash.
The Daily What – Historic Engagement of the Day:
Rep. Barney Frank, who in 1987 became the first openly gay member of Congress, is set to become the first openly gay member of Congress to be legally married while still in office.
According to Frank’s spokesman Harry Gural, the Massachusetts rep. and longtime partner Jim Ready are preparing to tie the knot in their home state. A wedding date has not yet been set.
TruthDig – Mitch Daniels: Bombast From the Past:
“Mitch Daniels ... Isn’t he the former Bush budget director who said the Iraq War would cost $50 billion when it ended up costing $3 trillion? The bureaucrat who promoted the Bush tax cuts when we were fighting two wars? The one whose budget projections were so fraudulent that he predicted federal surpluses in 2004 and 2005? Why the hell should we listen to him criticize Obama?”
ThinkProgress – Bill Gates Calls For Increasing Taxes On The Rich: ‘That’s Just Justice’:
GATES: Well the United States has a huge budget deficit, so taxes are going to have to go up. And I certainly agree that they should go up more on the rich than everyone else. That’s just justice.
BBC HOST: Is that a message you think that works with other people as wealthy as yourself, or is it just a small circle of friends — yourself, Warren Buffet, a few others.
GATES: Well, I hope we can solve that deficit problem with a sense of shared sacrifice — where everybody would feel like they’re doing their part. And right now, I don’t feel like people like myself are paying as much as we should.