Hackers or Criminals

In response to the most excellent writer Nick Bilton of NY Times and his splendid though cautious article here

Please consider these points

  •  jail breaking phones was once illegal , then became legal, and now is questionable again. Rooting your Android tablet is now frowned upon. The question is how do you teach the next generation of hackers to explore hardware and software and yet respect laws in their own self interest. Exploring means pushing the boundaries of what can be done and what can not be done. Inter racial marriage was illegal too, once.
  • what damage have hackers caused to society in past 5 years  (lost revenues in Digital content) versus what benefits have they brought about ( Arab Spring catalyst)
  • Consider the past history of hackers who turned entrepreneurs because they didn’t go to jail and were mentored into diverting their energy to startups that created jobs.

No hackers, bam, no Apple, no Microsoft, no Google, and yes no Facebook because the founders would be too busy in a court of law.Probably not much NASA, DARPA or NSA given that almost everyone tests the limits of exploration in young age.

  • Consider the historic legality of protests as done by Gandhi, Martin Luther King , and the legal treatment of hacker activists recently. Civic rights in 60s and cyber rights in the 2010s. Do they have something in common?
  • Is law enforcement adequately trained to understand hacking , and what steps are being done for enhancing cyber law training and jurisprudence. I don’t think the cyber law enforcement is adequately manned with resources. When law enforcement is denied resources, it takes short cuts and questionable tactics including intimidation and making examples of people.

My father , a decorated police officer , always said that , if you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem.As a technical writer , I sometimes know how to solve technical problems but these laws create fear in the minds of future problem solvers.

  • Who is a hacker. Who is a criminal .Is a hacker ~= a criminal or Is a hacker == a criminal ?

Lets get some common sense back in the game before we turn more kids int rebels without a cause, or without a case.

(continued from the series)

 

Shiny 0.3 released . New era for #rstats

Message from Winston Cheng of R Studio.

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We’ve released Shiny 0.3.0, and it’s available on CRAN now. Glimmer will be updated with the latest version of Shiny some time later today.
To update your installation of Shiny, run:
  install.packages(‘shiny’)
Highlights of the new version include:
* Some bugs were fixed in `reactivePrint()` and `reactiveText()`, so that they have slightly different rules for collecting the output. Please be aware that some changes to your apps’ text output is possible. The help pages for these functions explain the behavior.
* New `runGitHub()` function, which can run apps directly from a repository on GitHub
* New `runUrl()` function, which can run apps stored as zip or tar files on a remote web server.
* New `isolate()` function, which allows you to access reactive values (from input) without making the function dependent on them.
* Improved scheduling of evaluation of reactive functions, which should reduce the number of “extra” times a reactive function is called.

SAS gets awesome revenues

There are 2.87 billion reasons SAS is not going away anywhere in the Big Data Analytics space. Yes , thats the revenue figures declared by them-http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/2012financials.html

Of course I have always wondered how much they earn from SAS Federal LLC ( which is a subsidary that caters to the lucrative and not very competitive analytics in Intelligence) and their revenue breakdown by Product ( how much did they earn by Base SAS licenses versus how much they earned by Cyber Security  http://www.sas.com/industry/government/cybersecurity/index.html )

I wonder how many other analytics companies have even realized that they can help cut down the federal government costs ( or even have something close to this http://www.sas.com/industry/government/national-security/intelligence-management.html )

This year revenue breakdown was-

The Americas generated 47 percent of SAS’ total revenue; Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) 41 percent; and Asia Pacific 12 percent.

but last year

The Americas accounted for 46 percent of total revenue; Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) 42 percent; and Asia Pacific 12 percent

So Americas revenue grew faster than Europe revenues!Okay

Continue reading “SAS gets awesome revenues”

Data Visualization for R packages at Github #rstats

I noticed this article sometime back by the most excellent hacker, John Myles White ( author Machine learning for Hackers)

http://www.johnmyleswhite.com/notebook/2012/08/12/the-social-dynamics-of-the-r-core-team/

Professor John Fox, whom we have interviewed here as the creator of R Commander, talked on this at  User 2008 http://www.statistik.uni-dortmund.de/useR-2008/slides/Fox.pdf

I also noticed that R Project is stuck on SVN ( yes or no??, comment please) while some part of the rest of the World has moved on to Git. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28software%29

Is Git really that good compared to SVN http://stackoverflow.com/questions/871/why-is-git-better-than-subversion

Maybe, I think with 5000 packages and more , R -project needs to have more presence on Github and atleast consider Git for the distributed and international project R is becoming.

Continue reading “Data Visualization for R packages at Github #rstats”

How to be a Happy Hacker

I write on and off on hackers (see http://bit.ly/VWxSvP) and even some poetry on them (http://bit.ly/11RznQl) . During meetups, conferences, online discussions I run into them, I have interviewed them , and I have trained some of them (in analytics). Based on this decade long experience of observing hackers, and two decade long experience of hanging out with them- some thoughts on making you a better hacker, and a happier hacker even if you are a hacker activist or a hacker in enterprise software.

1) Everybody can be a hacker, but you need to know the basic attitude first.  Not every Python or Java coder is a hacker. Coding is not hacking. More details here- https://decisionstats.com/2012/02/12/how-to-learn-to-be-a-hacker-easily/

2) Use tools like Coursera, Udacity, Codeacdemy to learn new languages. Even if you dont have the natural gift for memorizing syntax, some of it helps. (I forget syntax quite often. I google)

3) Learn tools like Metasploit if you want to learn the lucrative and romantic art of exploits hacking (http://www.offensive-security.com/metasploit-unleashed/Main_Page). The demand for information security is going to be huge. hackers with jobs are happy hackers.

4) Develop a serious downtime hobby.

Lets face it- your body was not designed to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours. But being a hacker will mean that commitment and maybe more.

Continue reading “How to be a Happy Hacker”

Funny Stuff on Book Resellers and Dynamic Pricing at Amazon

I have been keeping an eye on the pricing figure of R for Business Analytics at Amazon.com and have watched it fluctuate between 49$ to 59$ while it is currently at 50$. (Incidentally- Per Capita GDP of India is 3700$ per year or ~$10 per day)

My point is

  1. why should a used book reseller offer to sell the same book at a HIGHER price,
  2. while a new book reseller offers to sell the same book that Amazon is selling (in stock) at a higher price.
  3. On top of that, these resellers have hundreds of thousands of ratings from delighted book buyers (of other books) who were very happy at buying the same book (used or new) at higher prices including upto twice the price.

Funny Stuff , huh!

Continue reading “Funny Stuff on Book Resellers and Dynamic Pricing at Amazon”

Eric Siegel’s Book

Message from Founder of Predictive Analytics Conference, Eric Siegel whom we have interviewed here –

To drive early orders for my about-to-launch book, “Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die” (published by Wiley Feb 18), we’re providing this offer:

PREORDER NOW ($15 on Amazon, currently) and receive:

1) FREE ACCESS to the first of four modules of my online training program, “Predictive Analytics Applied”

2) A 40% DISCOUNT CODE off the full online training ($495), or its in-person version, “Predictive Analytics for Business, Marketing and Web” ($1,495 – April 25-26 in NYC)

 

DETAILS ON THIS OFFER: http://www.pawcon.com/blog/?p=855

– – – – – – – – – – – –

5 REASONS THIS BOOK MATTERS TO EXPERTS: http://www.pawcon.com/patimes/january13

FULL PREFACE: http://www.pawcon.com/patimes/december12

39 COLLEAGUES WHO LOVED THIS BOOK: http://www.pawcon.com/book/praise.php

MORE INFO: http://www.thepredictionbook.com

– – – – – – – – – – – –

“Exciting and engaging – reads like a thriller!”
– Marianna Dizik, Statistician, Google

In this rich, entertaining primer, former Columbia University professor and Predictive Analytics World founder Eric Siegel reveals the power and perils of prediction.

“What Nate Silver did for poker and politics, this does for everything else. A broad, well-written book easily accessible to non-nerd readers.”

—David Leinweber, author, Nerds on Wall Street: & Math, Machines and Wired Markets

“This book is an operating manual for 21st century life. Drawing predictions from big data is at the heart of nearly everything, whether it’s in science, business, finance, sports, or politics. And Eric Siegel is the ideal guide.”

—Stephen Baker, author, The Numerati and Final Jeopardy: Man vs Machine and the Quest to Know Everything

With a foreword from Thomas H. Davenport, coauthor of Competing on Analytics.

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Blog Disclaimer-Eric is founder of PAW Conferences , which is a Blog Sponsor here.