Year: 2011

Calling #Rstats lovers and bloggers – to work together on “The R Programming wikibook”

so you think u like R, huh. Well it is time to pay it forward.

Message from a dear R blogger, Tal G from Tel Aviv (creator of R-bloggers.com and SAS-X.com)

———————————————————————————————————-
Calling R lovers and bloggers – to work together on “The R Programming wikibook”
Posted: 20 Jun 2011 07:05 AM PDT

This post is a call for both R community members and R-bloggers, to come and help make The R Programming wikibook be amazing:

Dear R community member – please consider giving a visit to The R Programming wikibook. If you wish to contribute your knowledge and editing skills to the project, then you could learn how to write in wiki-markup here, and how to edit a wikibook here (you can even use R syntax highlighting in the wikibook). You could take information into the site from the (soon to be) growing list of available R resources for harvesting.

Dear R blogger, you can help The R Programming wikibook by doing the following:

Write to your readers about the project and invite them to join.
Add your blog’s R content as an available resource for other editors to use for the wikibook. Here is how to do that:
First, make a clear indication on your blog that your content is licensed under cc-by-sa copyrights (*see what it means at the end of the post). You can do this by adding it to the footer of your blog, or by writing a post that clearly states that this is the case (what a great opportunity to write to your readers about the project…).
Next, go and add a link, to where all of your R content is located on your site, to the resource page (also with a link to the license post, if you wrote one). For example, since I write about other things besides R, I would give a link to my R category page, and will also give a link to this post. If you do not know how to add it to the wiki, just e-mail me about it (tal.galili@gmail.com).
If you are an R blogger, besides living up to the spirit of the R community, you will benefit from joining this project in that every time someone will use your content on the wikibook, they will add your post as a resource. In the long run, this is likely to help visitors of the site get to know about you and strengthen your site’s SEO ranking. Which reminds me, if you write about this, I always appreciate a link back to my blog

* Having a cc-by-sa copyrights means that you will agree that anyone may copy, distribute, display, and make derivative works based on your content, only if they give the author (you) the credits in the manner specified by you. And also that the user may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.

———-

Three more points:

1) This post is a result of being contacted by Paul (a.k.a: PAC2), asking if I could help promote “The R Programming wikibook” among R-bloggers and their readers. Paul has made many contributions to the book so far. So thank you Paul for both reaching out and helping all of us with your work on this free open source project.

2) I should also mention that the R wiki exists and is open for contribution. And naturally, every thing that will help the R wikibook will help the R wiki as well.

3) Copyright notice: I hereby release all of the writing material content that is categoriesed in the R category page, under the cc-by-sa copyrights (date: 20.06.2011). Now it’s your turn!

———-

List of R bloggers who have joined: (This list will get updated as this “group writing” project will progress)

R-statistics blog (that’s Tal…)
Decisionstats.com (That’s me)
……………………………………………………………………………….
3) Copyright notice: I hereby release all of the writing material content of this website, under the cc-by-sa copyrights (date: 21.06.2011). Now it’s your turn!

https://decisionstats.com/privacy-3/

Content Licensing-
This website has all content licensed under
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
You are free:
to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to Remix — to adapt the work

Tools for Hackers:Beginners

How to disguise your IP Address from your most wonderful glorious leaders-

From

 

https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en

Tor Browser Bundle

The Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access sites which are blocked.

The Tor Browser Bundle lets you use Tor on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux without needing to install any software. It can run off a USB flash drive, comes with a pre-configured web browser, and is self-contained. The Tor IM Browser Bundleadditionally allows instant messaging and chat over Tor. If you would prefer to use your existing web browser, install Tor permanently, or if you don’t use Windows, see the other ways to download Tor.

Freedom House has produced a video on how to find and use the Tor Browser Bundle. If you don’t see a video below, view it at Youtube . Know of a better video or one translated into your language? Let us know!

 

 

 

and if you now want to see or check your own website for a Denial of Service attack , download this

http://sourceforge.net/projects/loic/

This is the software for which 32 Turkish teenagers got arrested for bringing down their govt websites. Do NOT USE it for ILLEGAL purposes,

because 1) it is hosted on a western website that due to Patriot Act would tracking downloads as well as most likely be inserting some logging code into your computer (especially if you are still on Windows)

2) Turkey being a NATO member got rather immediate notice of this – which makes it very likely that this tool is compromised in the Western Hemisphere. You can probably use this in Eastern Hemisphere country excluding Israel, Turkey, China, India ,Korea or Japan because these countries do have sophisticated hackers working for the government as well.

3) This is just a beginners tool to understand how flooding a website with requests work.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/loic/files/

Basically download, unzip the file

Enter URL and click Lock on to know IP address.

use HTTP Method. Make say 1000 threads.

Then press the IMMA CHARGING MY LAZER big button.

Note the Failed Tab tells you how good or bad this method is.

Note – it wont work on my blogs hosted on wordpress.com- but then those blogs had a root level breach some time back. It did work on both my blogspot and my tumblr blogs, and it completely shattered my son’s self hosted wordpress blog (see below)

 

 

RStudio 3- Making R as simple as possible but no simpler

From the nice shiny blog at http://blog.rstudio.org/, a shiny new upgraded software (and I used the Cobalt theme)–this is nice!

awesome coding!!!

 

http://www.rstudio.org/download/

Download RStudio v0.94

Diagram desktop

If you run R on your desktop:

Download RStudio Desktop

OR

Diagram server

If you run R on a Linux server and want to enable users to remotely access RStudio using a web browser:

Download RStudio Server

 

RStudio v0.94 — Release Notes

June 15th, 2011

 

New Features and Enhancements

Source Editor and Console

  • Run code:
    • Run all lines in source file
    • Run to current line
    • Run from current line
    • Redefine current function
    • Re-run previous region
    • Code is now run line-by-line in the console
  • Brace, paren, and quote matching
  • Improved cursor placement after newlines
  • Support for regex find and replace
  • Optional syntax highlighting for console input
  • Press F1 for help on current selection
  • Function navigation / jump to function
  • Column and line number display
  • Manually set/switch document type
  • New themes: Solarized and Solarized Dark

Plots

  • Improved image export:
    • Formats: PNG, JPEG, TIFF, SVG, BMP, Metafile, and Postscript
    • Dynamic resize with preview
    • Option to maintain aspect ratio when resizing
    • Copy to clipboard as bitmap or metafile
  • Improved PDF export:
    • Specify custom sizes
    • Preview before exporting
  • Remove individual plots from history
  • Resizable plot zoom window

History

  • History tab synced to loaded .Rhistory file
  • New commands:
    • Load and save history
    • Remove individual items from history
    • Clear all history
  • New options:
    • Load history from working directory or global history file
    • Save history always or only when saving .RData
    • Remove duplicate entries in history
  • Shortcut keys for inserting into console or source

Packages

  • Check for package updates
  • Filter displayed packages
  • Install multiple packages
  • Remove packages
  • New options:
    • Install from repository or local archive file
    • Target library
    • Install dependencies

Miscellaneous

  • Find text within help topic
  • Sort file listing by name, type, size, or modified
  • Set working directory based on source file, files pane, or browsed for directory.
  • Console titlebar button to view current working directory in files pane
  • Source file menu command
  • Replace space and dash with dot (.) in import dataset generated variable names
  • Add decimal separator preference for import dataset
  • Added .tar.gz (Linux) and .zip (Windows) distributions for non-admin installs
  • Read /etc/paths.d on OS X to ensure RStudio has the same path as terminal sessions do
  • Added manifest to rsession.exe to prevent unwanted program files and registry virtualization

Server

  • Break PAM auth into its own binary for improved compatibility with 3rd party PAM authorization modules.
  • Ensure that AppArmor profile is enforced even after reboot
  • Ability to add custom LD library path for all sessions
  • Improved R discovery:
    • Use which R then fallback to scanning for R script
    • Run R discovery unconfined then switch into restricted profile
  • Default to uncompressed save.image output if the administrator or user hasn’t specified their own options (improved suspend/resume performance)
  • Ensure all running sessions are automatically updated during server version upgrade
  • Added verify-installation command to rstudio-server utility for easily capturing configuration and startup related errors

 

Bug Fixes

Source Editor

  • Undo to unedited state clears now dirty bit
  • Extract function now captures free variables used on lhs
  • Selected variable highlight now visible in all themes
  • Syncing to source file updates made outside of RStudio now happens immediately at startup and does not cause a scroll to the bottom of the document.
  • Fixed various issues related to copying and pasting into word processors
  • Fixed incorrect syntax highlighting issues in .Rd files
  • Make sure font size for printed source files matches current editor setting
  • Eliminate conflict with Ctrl+F shortcut key on OS X
  • Zoomed Google Chrome browser no longer causes cursor position to be off
  • Don’t prevent opening of unknown file types in the editor

Console

  • Fixed sporadic missing underscores (and other bottom clipping of text) in console
  • Make sure console history is never displayed offscreen
  • Page Up and Page Down now work properly in the console
  • Substantially improved console performance for both rapid output and large quantities of output

Miscellaneous

  • Install successfully on Windows with special characters in home directory name
  • make install more tolerant of configurations where it can’t write into /usr/share
  • Eliminate spurious stderr output in forked children of multicore package
  • Ensure that file modified times always update in the files pane after a save
  • Always default to installing packages into first writeable path of .libPaths()
  • Ensure that LaTeX log files are always preserved after compilePdf
  • Fix conflicts with zap function from epicalc package
  • Eliminate shortcut key conflicts with Ubuntu desktop workspace switching shortcuts
  • Always prompt when attempting to save files of the same name
  • Maximized main window now properly restored when reopening RStudio
  • PAM authorization works correctly even if account has password expiration warning
  • Correct display of manipulate panel when Plots pane is on the left

 

Previous Release Notes

 

Where to complain for internet crime?

So did you get tricked or hacked, or phished or someone broke into your system.

What to do?

Ic3 posterhttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/doc_player.swf?doc=ic3-poster-110614000132-phpapp01&stripped_title=ic3-poster-8299880&userName=0hr1

//

From

https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=190735

Impersonation

If you believe someone has created a Gmail address in an attempt to impersonate your identity, you may wish to file a report with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (www.ic3.gov), a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center.

In addition, we recommend contacting your state’s Office of Consumer Protection.

Gmail is unable to participate in mediations involving third parties regarding impersonation. To read the Gmail Terms of Use, please visit: http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/terms_of_use.html.

 

AND

 

http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx

Welcome to IC3

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between theFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA).

IC3’s mission is to serve as a vehicle to receive, develop, and refer criminal complaints regarding the rapidly expanding arena of cyber crime. The IC3 gives the victims of cyber crime a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that alerts authorities of suspected criminal or civil violations. For law enforcement and regulatory agencies at the federal, state, local and international level, IC3 provides a central referral mechanism for complaints involving Internet related crimes. read more >>

Filing a Complaint with IC3

IC3 accepts online Internet crime complaints from either the person who believes they were defrauded or from a third party to the complainant. We can best process your complaint if we receive accurate and complete information from you. Therefore, we request that you provide the following information when filing a complaint:

  • Your name
  • Your mailing address
  • Your telephone number
  • The name, address, telephone number, and Web address, if available, of the individual or organization you believe defrauded you.
  • Specific details on how, why, and when you believe you were defrauded.
  • Any other relevant information you believe is necessary to support your complaint.

File a Complaint Now>>

 

Movie Review- X Men First Class

This is a movie that restores faith in the good old art of story telling with completely realistic but not in the face Computer Generated Effects.

Both Charles (as Prof X) and Erik (as Magneto) are awesome, but Erik steals the show as Michael FAsbbender plays the avenging Holocaust victim with complete and ruthless abandon. The use of Mad Men like costumes, and the flashback to history was awesome too, but the Russians were bad- same old chaps we have seen playing Russians in dozens of movies , slurring over their Rs. The interpolation of JFK, Cuban Missile Crisis and even the 1960’s chauvinistic humor really add on to this movie.

Watch it- good for both family and friends. Kevin Bacon is a steal, and lots of talented actors now join the Kevin Bacon game.

x1

 

Why open source companies dont dance?

I have been pondering on this seemingly logical paradox for some time now-

1) Why are open source solutions considered technically better but not customer friendly.

2) Why do startups and app creators in social media or mobile get much more press coverage than

profitable startups in enterprise software.

3) How does tech journalism differ in covering open source projects in enterprise versus retail software.

4) What are the hidden rules of the game of enterprise software.

Some observations-

1) Open source companies often focus much more on technical community management and crowd sourcing code. Traditional software companies focus much more on managing the marketing community of customers and influencers. Accordingly the balance of power is skewed in favor of techies and R and D in open source companies, and in favor of marketing and analyst relations in traditional software companies.

Traditional companies also spend much more on hiring top notch press release/public relationship agencies, while open source companies are both financially and sometimes ideologically opposed to older methods of marketing software. The reverse of this is you are much more likely to see Videos and Tutorials by an open source company than a traditional company. You can compare the websites of Cloudera, DataStax, Hadapt ,Appistry and Mapr and contrast that with Teradata or Oracle (which has a much bigger and much more different marketing strategy.

Social media for marketing is also more efficiently utilized by smaller companies (open source) while bigger companies continue to pay influential analysts for expensive white papers that help present the brand.

Lack of budgets is a major factor that limits access to influential marketing for open source companies particularly in enterprise software.

2 and 3) Retail software is priced at 2-100$ and sells by volume. Accordingly technology coverage of these software is based on volume.

Enterprise software is much more expensively priced and has much more discreet volume or sales points. Accordingly the technology coverage of enterprise software is more discreet, in terms of a white paper coming every quarter, a webinar every month and a press release every week. Retail software is covered non stop , but these journalists typically do not charge for “briefings”.

Journalists covering retail software generally earn money by ads or hosting conferences. So they have an interest in covering new stuff or interesting disruptive stuff. Journalists or analysts covering enterprise software generally earn money by white papers, webinars, attending than hosting conferences, writing books. They thus have a much stronger economic incentive to cover existing landscape and technologies than smaller startups.

4) What are the hidden rules of the game of enterprise software.

  • It is mostly a white man’s world. this can be proved by statistical demographic analysis
  • There is incestuous intermingling between influencers, marketers, and PR people. This can be proved by simple social network analysis of who talks to who and how much. A simple time series between sponsorship and analysts coverage also will prove this (I am working on quantifying this ).
  • There are much larger switching costs to enterprise software than retail software. This leads to legacy shoddy software getting much chances than would have been allowed in an efficient marketplace.
  • Enterprise software is a less efficient marketplace than retail software in all definitions of the term “efficient markets”
  • Cloud computing, and SaaS and Open source threatens to disrupt the jobs and careers of a large number of people. In the long term, they will create many more jobs, but in the short term, people used to comfortable living of enterprise software (making,selling,or writing) will actively and passively resist these changes to the  paradigms in the current software status quo.
  • Open source companies dont dance and dont play ball. They prefer to hire 4 more college grads than commission 2 more white papers.

and the following with slight changes from a comment I made on a fellow blog-

  • While the paradigm on how to create new software has evolved from primarily silo-driven R and D departments to a broader collaborative effort, the biggest drawback is software marketing has not evolved.
  • If you want your own version of the open source community editions to be more popular, some standardization is necessary for the corporate decision makers, and we need better marketing paradigms.
  • While code creation is crowdsourced, solution implementation cannot be crowdsourced. Customers want solutions to a problem not code.
  • Just as open source as a production and licensing paradigm threatens to disrupt enterprise software, it will lead to newer ways to marketing software given the hostility of existing status quo.