LHommeQuiMent comments

Kurt Weill.

Too late, too little.

Google only announced that they will use TSL/SSL when exchanging data between Gmail data centers. This will make MITM (man-in-the-middle) attacks a bit difficult. That's all.

It's a well-known fact that GCHQ intercepts Google and Yahoo Cloud data hosted in U.K. and sends it to NSA data centers. Encrypted data are decrypted in Utah Data Center powered by the "Code-Breaking Supercomputer Platform".

http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/

NSA should already have all Google encryption keys in their massive databases (Key Provisioning Service data). If they are missing any key they can always get it with a warrant.

NTT Data Corp. will do the manual work actually. They have the state of the art scanning equipment and huge human resources. This digitization step requires quite a lot of detailed painstaking work and Japanese technicians excel in that department.

Data storage will be handled by storage giant EMC company and they are donating 2.8 petabytes of storage location for this project. (1 petabyte = 10^3 terabytes)

It's another major Third Platform (Big Data, Cloud computing, mobiles devices) project actually.

Most probably fake news.

The man is over 60 and that's the only thing that fits to the original profile.

Coding style analysis of the original code released in 2009 revealed that the creator should be someone with a strong knowledge of cryptography and P2P protocol but who is not a practicing programmer. The code was old-style (great bit twiddling hacks but weak at general design, mainly procedural code, tightly coupled classes, no nice Interfaces, Hungarian naming convention,etc.. ) and hard to maintain. Bit-coin development team needed to rewrite most of it.

From now on, it would not be wrong to claim that Germany (and not EU) has replaced Russia as the dominant power in eastern Europe.

After Poland and Ukraine, next is Belarus.

The lost of Ukraine will have huge economic and political implications for Putin's Russia.

Cynical timing indeed, but I believe Cate Blanchett may still get the Oscar.

Japan's comic tradition has always favored farce over satire, and stereotyping has always been a key element in Japanese farce. Japanese basically laugh at buffoonery, slapstick and puns, sophisticated humor and political satire are rare birds in Japanese cultural history.

This commercial may not be politically correct but it is very Japanese.

By Asian standards, Japan today is unusually rich in surnames. There are some 100,000 altogether, as against a few thousand in China (whose population is 10 times Japan’s)

Also known as Galton-Watson Process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galton-Watson_process

A graphical explanation can be found here:

https://neil.fraser.name/news/2012/11/23/

Hitleresque? Yes.

Third Reich school textbooks were rewritten to reflect Nazi version of history and biology. They have even reworked mathematics problems.

"A bomber aircraft on take-off carries 12 dozen bombs, each weighing 10 kilos. The aircraft takes off for Warsaw the international center for Jewry. It bombs the town. On take-off with all bombs on board and a fuel tank containing 100 kilos of fuel, the aircraft weighed about 8 tons. When it returns from the crusade, there are still 230 kilos left. What is the weight of the aircraft when empty?"

It all started like this.

They are just afraid of Zaha Hadid. She is a genius and they are not.

Resistance against Hadid's projects is well-known. Different countries, different projects but the same bunch of old male architects who are afraid that her creations will eclipse their works.

Here are the finalists and winners for the new national stadium design competition. You can decide for yourself.

http://www.jpnsport.go.jp/newstadium/Portals/0/NNSJ/en/finalists.html

http://www.jpnsport.go.jp/newstadium/Portals/0/NNSJ/en/winners.html

According to the competition results published at ICDAR 2013 site, the system developed by Fujitsu's Beijing R&D center yielded the most accurate results in 1 of 5 tasks only. This task was "offline (image-based) recognition of isolated characters" and the system developed by The Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA), Switzerland achieved almost same accuracy. The School of Software at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) was the leader in 2 of 5 tasks.

http://www.nlpr.ia.ac.cn/events/CHRcompetition2013/competition/ICDAR%202013%20CHR%20competition.pdf

Quoting from this paper: "The performance of Fujitsu and IDSIAnn ... are by far inferior to human recognition performance."

There are two constants in Swiss politics; neutrality and xenophobia.

Swiss People's Party, the most popular party in Switzerland, is famous for their controversial "Sicherheit schaffen" poster showing white sheep kicking a black sheep out of the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spp-poster.jpg

>There will not be gun carrying Japanese citizens.

Yes, Japanese citizens carry knives and blades to attack primary school children. A popular pastime for stressed out Tokyoites.

>Tokyo will not have bomb threatening to any sport arenas.

They are more experienced with Sarin gas.

>Other two countries do not have comfortable accomodations [sic] to athletes but Japan has. Then, their families can have sight seeing safely.

They don't have capsule hotels there. Also compared with Madrid and Istanbul, Tokyo has a multitude of sightseeing spots like Tokyo Sky Tree and ... did I already say Tokyo Sky Tree?

or even uses the indefensible N-word.

"The indefensible N-word" has a very interesting history indeed. Martin Luther King, Jr. never had a problem with it. The word suddenly fell from grace after 1970's but it still lives in some place names such as Negro Creek (US and Canada).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro

A very important trial indeed. They will try to convict the five defendants as fast as possible, without asking many questions, without going into details. They will not question the role of the German state in those serial murders at all.

National Socialist Underground (NSU) has hundreds of members and thousand of sympathizers. They could not carry on committing those murders without any help from police and domestic intelligence. In a highly regulated country like Germany they could not survive in the underground for that long.

The cheating problem is not specific to Harvard or to any other elite American universities. It's a part of a bigger problem called "Grade Inflation".

Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield on "Grade Inflation":

There is something sick in the spectacle of mature adults showering young people with unbelievable praise, that professors who have devoted their lives to their field should be so quick to find excellence in so many students. It just doesn't make sense that 50% of a Harvard class can receive an A or A-. And yet that's what our average is. To show my contempt for the grade inflation that we have at Harvard, I decided to give my students two grades. One is the grade that goes to the registrar - that's the "ironic grade" that is based on the Harvard average. The other one is a private grade from me to them telling them what they really deserve.

On a related note, about 150 years ago, Mori Arinori, the first Minister of Education for Meiji government, advocated for adoption of English as the language of education and commerce.

By Asian standards, Japan today is unusually rich in surnames. There are some 100,000 altogether, as against a few thousand in China (whose population is 10 times Japan’s), or a mere 200 or so in Korea.

Also known as the Galton-Watson process, a random process named after the extraordinary polymath Sir Francis Galton.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_of_family_names

Quoting from Wikipedia:

There was concern amongst the Victorians that aristocratic surnames were becoming extinct. Galton originally posed the question regarding the probability of such an event in the Educational Times of 1873, and the Reverend Henry William Watson replied with a solution. Together, they then wrote an 1874 paper entitled On the probability of extinction of families.

Yamanaka joked that he was fixing his washing machine when Oslo called to say he had won the prize

He should have been fixing his car when Oslo called.

It would seem, in retrospect, that the rules for being admitted to NATO should be a little more stringent. In the case of countries within the geographically contiguous regions of Europe proper, perhaps they should be required to meet the requirements to become a member of the EU first.

??? ... Turkey joined NATO in 1952, after their involvement in Korean War. It has nothing to do with EU and EU membership requirements.

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On a related note, Monty Python's Life of Brian (a masterpiece of religious satire) was banned for decades in many westerns countries, cities and Bible Belt cinemas.

Top 50 films of "The Poll":

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time

Vertov's silent masterpiece "Man with a Movie Camera" which made the top 10 is the biggest surprise.

Nakasone was not the only one who made moves to introduce nuclear energy into Japan based on U.S. nuclear energy policy. Shoriki Matsutaro, owner of Yomiuri Shimbun and president of Nippon Television Network Corporation (NTV), was among the promoters of nuclear energy. He later became the first chair of the government's Atomic Energy Commission. Shoriki, who had an ambition to become prime minister, paid close attention to atomic energy to obtain pubic approval amid the raging public movement across the country calling for a ban on atomic and hydrogen bombs triggered by the Daigo Fukuryumaru incident. By making the maximum use of his newspaper and television network, he launched a campaign for the 'peaceful use of atomic energy.'

In May 1955, Shoriki invited President John Jay Hopkins of General Dynamics, the maker of the first U.S. nuclear-powered submarine Nautillus, and others to represent a U.S. mission for the peaceful use of atomic energy. Since November of that year, he spent a lot of money organizing expositions throughout Japan promoting the peaceful use of atomic energy under joint auspices with the U.S. State Department. He used 'all the power and influence of the Yomiuri Shimbun and NTV to have the topic reported in a favorable manner in order to drastically change public opinion (Mr. Shroiki's statement, Ten years in the development of atomic power, 1965).'

http://www.japan-press.co.jp/modules/news/index.php?id=1926

"Guy Fawkes - The Only Man Ever To Enter Parliament With Honest Intentions."

One word, three syllables: "(la) mordida".

No surprises.

Russia and China, key members of the "New Axis of Evil", will continue providing full support to Syria and Iran, the two other member states of this authoritarian bloc.

Russia also supported Milosevic in Serbia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Gaddafi in Libya. In the end, Assad will share the same fate with this three tyrants.

Syria has already apologized for shooting down the Turkish reconnaissance aircraft (not a warplane) and both countries started a joint search and rescue operation for missing pilots.

It might have been a technical accident (as Syrians claim it) or a "momentary lapse of reason".

Tests have revealed three glass beads discovered in the Fifth Century “Utsukushi” burial mound in Nagaoka, near Kyoto...

Nagaoka-kyo was the capital of Japan from 784 to 794 and merchants from China and Korea brought various Silk Road goods to Japan during Nara Period (710-794).

But the burial mound dates back to 5th century (Kofun period), so the owner of the Roman jewelry might be a Toraijin with aristocratic status; a Korean (Baekje,Goguryeo,Silla) or Chinese immigrant naturalized as Japanese.

A publishing hoax? Sadly, it's not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

Most probably this is another case of "Domoic acid poisoning" (DAP).

Domoic acid, a powerful neurotoxin, should have caused sardines to become disoriented and to swim chaotically. This is related to harmful algal blooms (HABs), which often take on a red hue (hence the name "Red tide") just like in the picture above.

The exact cause of HABs is unclear and it is ancient phenomena, even mentioned in The Bible (Exodus 7:20~21).

http://www.science-house.org/nesdis/algae/background.html

http://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/hab/habs_toxins/marine_biotoxins/da/index.html