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Gadgets For The Elimination Of Dogs is a division of ECFA (Euthenasia for Canus Familourous Association). The GFTEOD/ECFA would like you to do one thing - KILL A DOG. By KILLING A DOG, you will ELIMINATE one USELESSLY RESPIRATING animal from this planet. Are you TIRED of having your TAXES increased? Humane Societies cost our country over $100 million annually. By eliminating DOGS, this money can EDUCATE OUR KIDS. OVERPOPULATION of DOGS is RAPANT in this country. Take a stand! Help rid this INFESTATION. KILL A DOG TODAY!!!!

Have you ever stepped in DOG DOO-DOO

Are you MAD?

Do you KILL DOGS?

Are you a MAD DOG KILLER?

If you answered "YES" to any of the above questions the ECFA (Euthenasia for Canus Familourous Association) is for you! Why change your sexual lifestyle or change your skin color to join an EVIL ORGANIZATION when you can simply INCREASE OUR SUPPLY OF O2! Did you know that DOGS turn BENEFICIAL O2 into CO2 simply to gain their energy to bark, drool, and howl? They ACTUALLY BOND their carbon TO OUR OXYGEN SUPPLY!!! One dog can waste 2 moles of O2 PER HOUR! This country has MANY UNWANTED, ABANDONED DOGS that WE ARE PAYING MONEY TO KEEP ALIVE. We are FEEDING them our food supply while making the homeless STARVE! By using a Dog Killing Gadget, a dog can be turned into beneficial food, helping us all. We let children go hungry yet feed our **UNWANTED** dogs like royalty.

Do you own a dog? Are you tired of its mess? Then get it euthanized. Euthanasia is a painless way for a dog to... terminate. However, it can be too expensive to buy these drugs for the LARGE NUMBER of DOGS in the HUMANE SOCIETIES. It is thus proposed that these dogs be turned into food for the homeless.

WANT TO SUPPORT THE ECFA? Simply form picket lines around your nearest humane society or gain a FIRST POST on /. to join our club. If you have MOD POINTS and would like to support the ECFA, moderate this post UP.

==This post brought to you by proud dog killer PickaBu on EFNET.

This message brought to you by the National Association for Humane Action for

Dogs and the Euthenasia for Canus Familourous Association. Gadgets For The

Elimination Of Dogs is announcing a BRAND NEW product designed to exterminate

canine pests of all sizes. Our economical K9Zap product retails for just

$49.95 and takes only 2 seconds for a 60 lb dog. Our $5 bakers chocolate

will kill up to 500 lbs of dog per package!

Gadgets For The Elimination Of Dogs is a division of ECFA (Euthenasia for Canus Familourous Association). The GFTEOD/ECFA would like you to do one thing - KILL A DOG. By KILLING A DOG, you will ELIMINATE one USELESSLY RESPIRATING animal from this planet. Are you TIRED of having your TAXES increased? Humane Societies cost our country over $100 million annually. By eliminating DOGS, this money can EDUCATE OUR KIDS. OVERPOPULATION of DOGS is RAPANT in this country. Take a stand! Help rid this INFESTATION. KILL A DOG

TODAY!!!!

Have you ever stepped in DOG DOO-DOO

Are you MAD?

Do you KILL DOGS?

Are you a MAD DOG KILLER?

If you answered "YES" to any of the above questions the ECFA (Euthenasia for Canus Familourous Association) is for you! Why change your sexual lifestyle or change your skin color to join an EVIL ORGANIZATION when you can simply INCREASE OUR SUPPLY OF O2! Did you know that DOGS turn BENEFICIAL O2 into CO2 simply to gain their energy to bark, drool, and howl? They ACTUALLY BOND their carbon TO OUR OXYGEN SUPPLY!!! One dog can waste 2 moles of O2 PER HOUR! This country has MANY UNWANTED, ABANDONED DOGS that WE ARE PAYING MONEY TO KEEP ALIVE. We are FEEDING them our food supply while making the homeless STARVE! By using a Dog Killing Gadget, a dog can be turned into beneficial food, helping us all. We let children go hungry yet feed our **UNWANTED** dogs like royalty.

Do you own a dog? Are you tired of its mess? Then get it euthanized. Euthanasia is a painless way for a dog to... terminate. However, it can be too expensive to buy these drugs for the LARGE NUMBER of DOGS in the HUMANE

SOCIETIES. It is thus proposed that these dogs be turned into food for the homeless.

WANT TO SUPPORT THE ECFA? Simply form picket lines around your nearest humane society or gain a FIRST POST on /. to join our club. If you have MOD POINTS and would like to support the ECFA, moderate this post UP.

==This post brought to you by proud dog killer PickaBu on EFNET.

Unless he's one of those incomptetent people who have no idea how incomptetent they really are

Ah, time to trot out one of my favorite links:

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessment - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, December 1999 Vol. 77, No. 6, 1121-1134

An entertaining read.

The sucess rate for so called "talking cures" is ~30% the sucess rate for drugs is ~60%.
I call bullshit - I'm pretty positive you're making those numbers up on the spot. This is an article about the efficacy of drugs versus therapy. What's more useful is the two therapies (drugs and psychotherapy) combined.

Also "talking cures can take years to reach that sucess rate, most drugs take weeks. Also "talking cures" are billed at $100 per hour, drugs, even expense ones are far far cheaper.

That might be true, about the drugs having an effect sooner - however, most psychotherapy is time-limited. Drugs often are prescribed for a lifetime. 24 weeks of psychotherapy once a week for an hour at $100 an hour begins to sound like a bargain in comparison to a lifetime of drugs. And more importantly, drugs have significant side effects.

Somehow, the concept of multiplying odds by result values is something average people just can't comprehend because emotions get in the way of cold logic...

Bzzt! Wrong.

They can't comprehend it for a totally different reason - most of them being retarded and illiterate morons. Seriously, I would estimate that just a few percent of American adults understand what a weighted average is. I don't have a direct evidence for that, but consider that according to National Science Foundation only 9% of 2,000 people surveyed in the USA could define a molecule, according to VDI Nachrichten, a representative survey showed that 25% of Germans do not know that Earth revolves around the Sun, and in several developed countries surveyed (sorry, forgot the source) about 70-90% of people do not know what a star actually is.

You, my friend, would benefit much from reading an Ignobel prize winning Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. One of the findings was (simply put and doesn't necessarily apply to all fields) that people generally believe others know as much as they do about a given subject. Thus your ability to calculate probabilities disturbs your judgement about other people...

This illustrates some of the fundamental problems of designing user interfaces. Namely, lots of users and developers have suggestions, but they aren't exports. They are good at telling what works and what doesn't, but their mounds of opinions are worth the same as so many mounds of shit.

Another thing GNOME has is a strong pursuit of consistency and perfection. Well, that's great, except that it doesn't always work very well. Putting "shut down" functionality in the "start" menu is an example of this: Microsoft did it because that was where people were most likely to look for it. GNOME doesn't like that because it isn't consistent, and makes things more complicated and confusing instead. (Yes, I know you CAN put it there if you want to, but most users won't change the default configuration.)

The much-trumpeted file selection dialog is another example. It does cleanly combine all the elements you'd want in there, but it isn't in the least intuitive.

To improve, GNOME *MUST* abandon the pursuit of perfection at the cost of usability and test interfaces extensively. If GNOME wants to get better than Windows or Mac OS, it must also get people doing research into interfaces, and proposing and testing new facilities. Users and developers just don't know how bad they are at it.

I guess no one else picked up on it, but 66 small targa files decoded per second is dead slow. His only possible hope for vindication is if random access to his hard drive took up most of the time. The author seems a prime example of this.

Well, we all know how well DARE worked out. The similarity between DARE and this RIAA supported program makes me think that this will quite possibly result in no change in downloading behavior at all. Before DARE, kids already knew drugs were illegal, just like kids already know that downloading music usually (at least most music with RIAA sources) is illegal. One of DARE's big failings was that it exaggerated and oversimplified the dangers and evilness of drug use. All drugs were portrayed as being equally bad and equally likely to completely ruin your life, which was not really true (ie, heroin is much more likely to ruin your life than pot). At some point, most former participants figured out how much DARE exaggerated and then promptly dismissed everything they were taught there.

Similarly, the RIAA will exaggerate the ethical issues (ie, saying downloading is a heinous crime) as well as oversimplify the legal issues by saying all free music is illegal. Then, kids will possibly discard it just like with DARE because at some point they'll realize it was all overblown.

I just found a 10-year followup with the same conclusion, that DARE is not effective.

I can give you the reason why MySQL is so popular: practitioners are ignorant of data management fundamentals (perennial links: Unskilled and Unaware of it and Database Debunkings).

If you don't understand or know the necessity of things like constraints and tying business logic close to the data then you don't care that MySQL can't do them. It's obvious that MySQL developers do not have a clear understanding of the relational model, either.

And how is this elitist? Is it elitist to require that engineers who build bridges know the physics behind bridge building? Would you go to a doctor that didn't know the science of human physiology? Why do we not expect the same level of competence from people who build databases?

As computer professionals we need to hold ourselves to the same standards that we require other professionals. I'm not suggesting, or even think it's a good idea, to license developers but we need to get out of the mindset that it's acceptable to eschew formal ideas (predicate logic/set theory and the Relational Model) for ad hoc junk science (XML, UML, virtually every SQL DBMS product, etc.) all in the nebulous name of 'performance'.

I noticed this as well. I reported it to them via their Contact Us link. But the really weird thing is if you Google for it you get a good number of results. And Intel's site isn't the only one!

Check out this page. There's a professor who apparently went to this university! And here's another professor.

Finally I consulted the umsystem web site it's self and proved me correct. But it's really odd that there's so many people refering to it as Columbus. I lived there for apx. 2 years (and went to college for 1 semester - after Rolla for 2 1/2 years. Incidentally Rolla was lower which is funny given that Rolla has the better Comp. Sci. department) and NEVER heard ANYONE refer to it as Columbus. Anyway, I don't live in Missouri any more, but I was born and raised there: and went to Parkway North high school, just incase anyone feels the need to ask :).

This is the kind of science that can easily get hurt by controversy. The press release doesn't say, but what if these neurological differences translate to significant behavioral differences? The implications for humanity would be for nothing so trite as "the future of learning." How about the disparities between social classes and ethnic groups? Do impoverished mothers get enough choline? Are there ethnic diets that include more or less choline, and is it reflected in their average intellectual abilities? (And how to quantify that is a whole other subject for debate!) These are important questions that may go unanswered if the wrong kinds of people get a chance to put their spin on this. Heaven forbid we find out there's a biological reason why the underpriveleged can't seem to get ahead, even if it's brought on by social conditions rather than something intrinsic. Just watch... if the reasearchers get too close to implying something like that, their funding will get cut and the whole thing will be swept under the rug. Remember how the media roasted Herrnstein and Murray?

I think humbleness is sorely lacking amongst people with talent.

Bullshit. This is your own experience in a fucked up "gifted class". I was a "gifted" kid since I was 3 years old. My grandpa always called me a genius. I was the smartest kid in my school(s) till the 7th grade. Then I moved to a phisics and math school (arguably the best in the country) where I was in the best class and for a while I was the best in math and always one of the smartest overall (I'd say THE smartest).

And so what? I don't give a shit about praise, I was always too humble (I was able to overcome this deficiency, though) and I was always concerned about criticism. Kinda different from what you experienced...

An Ignobel prise was given for research that demonstrated negative correlation between ability and self-assesment. At least in some areas gifted people overestimate the capabilities of others and underestimate their own.

"Programming is easy! Programming is easy!"

If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that from someone who then proceeds to create the most atrocious mass of spaghetti-code...

Here's an article for you. You may want to remember that there's a large degree of difference between mere competence and mastery.

I pity you... Here, have another link. You seem to lack logic and reasoning skills and that causes an inability to realise that deficiency - a truly miserable sight. I, on the other hand, have higher than average reasoning skills, which, according to this paper, makes me overestimate the abilities of others and causes me to behave in such a way as if you were an intelligent person, capable of rational thought. Thus I will have another shot at explaining this to you.

According to Section 15 of Title I of Lanham (Trademark) Act (paragraph 1065 of Title 15 of the United States Code), the trademark used for 5 years is incontestable, except when

• Microsoft stops using the trademark
• someone at Microsoft screws up (miriads of irrelevant formalities, wrong registration, etc.)
• it becomes generic name for a product or service

First case is unlikely, second case is completely irrelevant to Mike Rowe's case (you have to believe me, because I've actually read that law and because I am smarter than you), third case is completely unrealistic, because Microsoft does not describe any product in the first place, it's the name of the company. The dilution of the trademark has nothing whatsoever with losing it, in this case it only means that since Microsoft doesn't want anyone using names vaguely resembling its own and has a "famous" trademark, it must stop others from doing it. If they allow Mike to keep his domain name, they might have to allow "Nike Cross Soft" shoes, etc. In no case will they lose

1. the rights to the trademark
2. the right to prevent competitors from using it (even Mike, if he starts to compete)
3. the right to prevent anybody from using it if there is a likelihood of confusion

So to sum it up, the only reason for MS to attack Mike is that they keep the right to attack someone else next time without any compelling reason. Which is pretty pathetic and morally corrupt, if you ask me.

And just in case you can find the Trademark Act yourself, here is the link: http://www.bitlaw.com/source/15usc/index.html

Please note that it is from the US Code and not the first page of some half-assed Google search.

I neither insulted you nor hinted that you don't know what you are talking about.

Surely not, since this is the first I've posted to the thread.

"You're wrong, you're talking nonsense, and you don't even know it" isn't condenscending if it's true.

If it's possible, then we can do it.

So what? Penetrating the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle isn't possible, even in principle.

I'm more a student of humanity than science. And I've seen it more than once, the common belief that we can't do something, only to find out later ( days, years, centuries ) that it is possible.

Unfortunately, your misconception is not neutral, which is why I post. (And remember, you're not the only reader; I realize I don't stand a chance in hell of convincing you, because you're so certain you're right you have the confidence to post on the topic. Yes, the equivalent logic applies equally to me.) Unrealistic expectations fuel Luddite tendencies and fuel unrealistic extrapolations into the future.

Unfortunately, when acted on, these cause suboptimal results, sometimes even killing people. Consider the effects of unrealistic expectations on the environmentalism issues; what if we act as if you're right and always assume there's a way to clean up our environmental messes before they kill us, when the science says we're wrong?

And I've seen it more than once, the common belief that we can't do something, only to find out later ( days, years, centuries ) that it is possible.

Somewhat ironically, it shows that you're a student of ancient history but have not been keeping up to date on recent history. History doesn't support the idea that we're going to find a way past the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. History has in fact shown the increasing understanding and refinement of boundaries and limits, ever since the first ones were discovered.

You should not be surprised when people don't buy your Argument from Ignorance, or call it for what it is. The arrogance lies in your thinking that your knowlege, despite its nonexistance (I note you could not possibly have studied the Halting Problem or Godel's Incompleteness Theorum in the time period since your last post), is so much greater then scientists and mathematicians that you can contradict them on the fundamentals of the universe. That is arrogance, that is inflated self-assessment.

Of course that doesn't mean they're always right; but they don't have to be to still be right about certain limits.

This is your cue (especially due to my previous parenthetical note) to now go find some cursory overview of Godel's Theorem, read it in two minutes, and explain why one of the greatest mathematical acheivements in the history of man that proves certain things are impossible doesn't prove that certain things are impossible. Here, let me help with that first part. OK, this is a little condenscending, but can I just say "been here, done this?" Have fun.

Lie detectors are not effective. This is just being used to scare people into thinking they can't lie. I really wish more people knew more about psychology....

Beleive it or not but use of gendered language is actually quite influencial on how we perceive attributes and sterotypes of technology to be. Quite alot of people have commented on the use of blatant sexual metaphors in egineering sciences, this is an old issue.

Whatever. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been largely discredited by now. The original research was fatally flawed, and it should be obvious that the Inuit, for example, likely specialized to the extent that they did about snow because they deal with it so much. Any group, especially a group focused on a technical discipline, will develop the needed terminology to get the job done.

As far as sexual metaphors go, the physical similarities are obvious, and I think the metalepsis is unavoidable. I don't see applicable sexual metaphors as offensive, myself. It's one of the basic facts about our biology and that of many other living things. I am bemused by the fact that many times it is those who assert the need for acceptance of and harmony with nature who are the very ones that complain about such terminology.

I wonder what you think about the fact that in the case of USB, for example, typically it is the cable which has male connectors on both ends, while the devices with female connectors merely use the cable (and by extension, the "male") to get the real work done, an exact role-reversal of the stereotype I assuming you are complaining about.

Engineers get their jobs done by making analogies, by figuring out ways to reuse components, and in the case of computers, often by literally inventing their own languages. Is such sapience only allowed when referring entirely to abstract and artificial constructs? Mnemonic devices are often endorsed by teachers and other authority figures; are they to be banned when one turns out to offend some random prude by its similarity to an unavoidable fact of anatomy? If this trend continues, any technical document will necessarily become a pleonastic mess.

I doubt calling an interface a trade center jack, because it contains 2 collapsable cicuits triggered, by a fast moving taliban controler, would receive the ambivilence that the master/slave connector does.

You are describing a specific event. The master-slave relationship is a concept which can apply equally to many situations. As many have pointed out, the Platonic universal of a master-slave relationship inheres perfectly in the IDE interface.

Really, this is the main problem with the proposal that we should sanitize language. Those who would be the sanitizers often suffer from a sort of ideological egotism, assuming that every term in every discipline refers to their own individual pet issues. Sorry, but they don't. Not always.

The master slave argument is bound to elicit pretty strong feeling in many subgroups, just because the majority of readers on slashdot are white males, does not mean that everyone shares the same ambivilence or distance from such issues as apartheid and racism.

I think that if you are concerned about societal effects, you would do well to concern yourself with the metonymy that children derive from existing social order at a very young age. Fix the division of labor and the social stereotypes will fix themselves. Whitewash America's tombs and they will still stink, and the odor will be represented in speech no matter how many circumlocutions are necessary (e.g., many express schadenfreude without ever knowing the word).

you've only got one week left to get a dashboard cradle and hands-free kit fitted - don't get caught out.

That's rather silly. It's a feel-good partial-solution... something which doesn't threaten cellphone business interests in any way (and only helps them sell more kits)

Studies show that the greatest danger of telephoning and driving is not from having one hand distracted with a machine (because many folks safely handle CDs and eat food while driving), but the mental load of being engaged in a conversation with somebody not in the vehicle.

But, I suppose that until we've got a few more years of fatality records as proof, the public won't believe this enough to influence law. (And even if they do believe it, prehaps talking and driving will be so important to them that safety will be voluntarily surrendered)

There's some information about that lack of feedback; a so called "stupid people don't know they're stupid" syndrome.

Seems like the very mechanism we use to "do something" is the same mechanism we use to "evaluate how well we do something."

So, if you're no good at running a business, you have no idea how to get better because (put simply) you already think you're doing a great job. Otherwise, you would have corrected the problem to begin with!

There's a better description of it here

People who voluntarily confess generally can be considered 100% guilty.

That is a dangerous assumption. There have been a number of cases of so called voluntary confessions which turned out to be (usually police-)induced false confessions; this makes one wonder how many cases of false confessions were never revealed to be so. One example is discussed here. Also see here for more pointers.

Addiction is commonly accepted to mean being so dependant on something that you just can't give it up. Addiction is normally accepted to mean that an addicted person trying to stop whatever behaviour or substance they are addicted to will suffer severe repurcussions and be unable to function during this period.

Bah!

Addicted to:

Breathing
Eating
Sh*ting
Walking
Thinking

Why aren't those illegal? =) (Obviously...)

People are sooo stupid!
Ya know what the problem really is?
Stupid People just don't get how little they understand things, and these mobs fall for stupid "Save the Children" and "Buying pot==terrorism" style rants, which ruins it for the rest of us. (Sigh)

Well, thats my $0.02 anyway.

-dave-

The appearance of science and statistical rigor are all over this, but just as last time, the one thing Murray never does is is meet the standards of science: publish in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. He publishes in the popular press, his own book, looking oh-so-scientific and rigorous, and conveniently never subjected to peer review.

Another interesting thing about the study linked above is that while the best performers tend to accurately judge how well they did in an absolute sense, they tend humbly to underestimate their own performance relative to everyone else.

Perhaps that is because part of becoming competent is learning from your mistakes and pushing against your limits, which probably imparts a healthy sense of your own failings. In fact, some of the most impressively competent people I have met were, while confident, at the same time oddly humble -- perhaps because, while it seemed to me that they could do just about anything, they were more keenly aware of the vast depths of their field that they had yet to plumb.

At the same time, lots of the less-guruish but merely competent technical folks I see complaining bombastically on IRC or /. and acting condescending to users turn out not to be so hot after all when it comes down to it.

Of course, the problem is that the blowhards are a lot more fun to listen to than the real gurus. Where's the fun in someone saying "emacs and vi are equally viable alternatives, and here are the cases in which each is best used"? We like people who make bold statements and who "stick to their ideals", even if it's only because they're too arrogant to consider that they might be wrong. We laugh today at "640k should be enough for anybody," but no one remembers what the other guy said.

If there were more geeks, and there such a thing as nationally-syndicated geek talk radio, those guys who hang out, start editor/distribution wars, and flame the newbies would probably get pretty high ratings, and people would probably call in and agree with them and take their turn to flame the newbies.

They'd be pretty popular, but they wouldn't necessarily be more competent. (Take /. for instance ;)

Maybe the problem isn't the spotlight or the low pay. Maybe the problem is that the world is really complicated, but we are attracted to people who see things in black-and-white. Maybe nobody wants to listen to the people who really understand things, because it's too complicated and they don't have the time. We like quick, pithy sound bites, even if they're totally off-base. Arnold is not popular because he has a firm grasp of the issues or because he's a loyal representative of his party, but because he's got some quick one-liners, and he's famous. We don't even care if some of the one-liners contradict the other ones, as long as they are funny.

When you look at it that way, coming back to the topic at hand, I can't imagine anything that would prepare you worse

It seems a likely candidate as pre-requisite reading for posting to forums.

What you don't know is always easy. (One of the many implications of the fascinating paper.) Or if you prefer, "it is scientifically verifiable that the more you know about a subject, the more you realize you don't know, true all the way up to the extreme that someone who doesn't know anything/much about a subject will think they know everything." (That's a little long for a link target, though.)

Makes you whether the industry is vastly deluded as to the actual abilities of those they hire...

Maybe, but not in Joel' Spolsky's case I wouldn't think. He's apparently a fan of Phillip Greenspun, whose writing he links to in the part about a coder needed a nicer workspace than his home.

In that same article, Greenspun links to this article from The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which addresses that very thing. Article is titled:

• Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

Here, let me help you.

"If they can build this Guardian, why don't they do it?" said Shosteck, with the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. "It's nice to put something in blueprint form, but we have to build vehicles that go on pavement."

Heh... I grew up in the South hearing all other ethnic groups look alike. Later I heard that people from other ethnic groups had just as hard a time telling white people apart, but it didn't make sense to me at the time. I mean, white people obviously had more varied facial features, skin tones, and hair colors, right?

It turns out that members of ethnic groups with less variety in those areas have other features used for telling each other apart, like overall face or head shape, height of foreheard, and other things that would likely not even be noticeable to caucasians. When you grow up and learn to distinguish faces by certain characteristics, your brain eventually doesn't bother with anything else. I would think a person raised in a really ethnically diverse area would be the most well-equipped to tell apart a wide variety of different types of faces.

Here is a somewhat relevant article on the subject. It's a little more psychological than neuroscientific, but it shows some of the ideas currently being pursued.

So if you are about to plan a city, "SimCity" would help you much better than "Age of Empires".

On a serious note, I find it sinister to think that game developers could have some hidden educational incentive. Are players of violent video games more likely to support US foreign policy?

... akin to cheating at solitaire, a source of false accomplishment and just one more instance of the fraying in society's moral fabric.

Won't work. Dumb people are incapable of a realistic self-evaluation. Here's why.

Lie detectors are not effective. This is just being used to scare people into thinking they can't lie.

Sorry I can't spoonfeed you evidence to satisfy your skepticism. Try researching the footnotes of the Please Understand Me books, or check out a psychology of personality journal.

However, if you don't view psychology as a "scientific" discipline, which I suspect is the case, it won't help.

That leads me to this.
The basic problem is that we live in a superficial society were most of us are involved in trival, non-essential work, so self-inflated egos are not a problem, since the work is not important. If this was a cold war, or even a real war, things would be different.

See Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find / They're blind to own failings, others' skills and another article here.

The original paper by David Dunning (Cornell University) and Justin Kreuger (University of Illinois), Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 (in Psychology).

Their report is a great and entertaining reading. The name says it all - basically they found that people generally tend to overestimate their skills (in certain areas) if they are actually bad and also suggested several mechanisms for that.

There is new research out dealing with ADHD and sleep:

Sleep deprivation and ADHD

Sleep deprivation effects

Sleep deprivation may be undermining teens health

Other sites from Google

There are both brilliant and useless coders at all ages.

And there is some evidence that many members of each group fail to recognize the extent of their competence or lack of it.

One of the advantages of more experienced workers is that they have a track record. But I know that when I was at the other end of it, I hated interviews where all I had was a smiling young face, a lot of energy and a degree with ink on it that was barely dry.

How can we all agree that "violent video games" don't make kids into hell-bent killers, and then turn around and say "bad parenting" does? If I go out and kill someone, I'm the murder. Not my parents, and not my Gamecube.

The parents are, arguably, the primary source of psycho-social imprinting for the child. Typically, children learn their behavior, morals, values, and identity from their parents. The more involved the parents are in the child's life life the stronger that influence. The less involved the parents are in their children's life, the less the influence; and the stronger the influence that outside sources (neighbors, peers, television, etc...)have on the child's identity.

Just because we're "minors" doesn't mean we can't be held accountable for our own behavior. You don't have to find someone else to blame. It's hard to determine exactly when a child has transitioned from ignorant to insane, but it's definitely earlier than 18. It may be that a 15-year-old kid kills his teacher because he's violent and his parents/teachers/video games/movies didn't teach him how to deal with anger properly, but he's still the violent one. If you don't think a 15-year-old realizes what the result of killing is, then perhaps it's been too long since you last spoke with one.

That is why in most cases the minor is sentenced and the parents aren't convicted as accomplice to the crime. The fact that the 15 year old may or may not understand/realize the effect of murder (although that could be the case in rare circumstances) is not relevant. It is accepted that a fifteen year old understands the concept of "dead". What is relevant is the degree to which video games, television, movies, music, etc... desensitize the youth to the effects of killing, and thereby contribute to the condition (mental) which causes the youth to kill. There is compelling evidence to correlate violent video games and aggressive behavior, though not conclusive.

One problem lies in our whole system of treating "minors" completely differently. If a 15-year-old kills his family, it's blamed on his parents and his hobbies, it makes news headlines around the world, and inspires weeks and months and years of angry discussion about what causes violence in youths. If an 18-year-old kills his family, everyone just says, "he's one sick bastard" and he goes to prison. The minor is rewarded with fame and attention, the rest are rewarded with hatred.

I am not familiar with that case, although most social scientists would examinate a killer's background for study. I would blame the media for sensationalizing a criminal act, not necessarily the social scientist.

Obviously, not everyone who plays violent games is going to go on a rampage. But don't pretend that they have no effect whatsoever...

You don't say. Do you really think everybody else is stupid?

Stupid? No. But the number of people who seem to think they are lawyers is very large, and not just on Slashdot either. I can't count the number of times in my real life I've discussed intellectual property issues and not only has the other person been very, very wrong, but I was not even able to get them to listen to me.

I'm not a lawyer, but I've taken a close interest in that sort of thing and I know the basics very well.

As a Slashdot example, basically, if someone is insisting that they have a "fair use" right to something, unless they are jusitifying it with reference to the four criteria used to determine if something is fair use, they're wrong.

People seem to need periodic reminding that they aren't lawyers, and other non-lawyers aren't lawyers.

For computer examples, how many times have you heard someone around you give an incredibly wrong reason for a crash... and stick by it, even after you fix it, because of course they're right?

Discussion of issues is one thing. Talking about something that could make or break a career, that's a time for a real lawyer, not hundreds of people who think they are lawyers.

Please read Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. I don't know if that's risen to "classic paper" status but as far as I'm concerned it has.

Something you might find interesting is that, while it does draw the correlations you mention, and argues convincinly in support of it's conclusions, it also notes that the shows we tend to think of as the more harmfull are not neccesarily the ones that the more aggressive people are watching. While they don't provide a breakdown or sample of shows and the way they score them, if they apply the criteria listed fairly and to all tv entertainment, then sports (especially gladitorial sports like boxing) and news would rate very high as "violent TV".

As with most studies of this nature, it's certainly not conclusive, nor should it be taken as some sort of gospel. It's an information point, nothing more.

I believe that you would be looking for this study: Unskilled and Unaware of It.

Because, you see, Bill Gates has succumbed to what those crazy shrinks call his male superiority complex. If any company outshines his own, he must react immediately to squelch any support for such a company.

Silly Gates, stupid corporate tricks are for kids!

I think it is the argument used in some places to ban violent video games but the jury is still out on whether it actually has any influence.

Or not. Despite what some might want to believe, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that there is a link between exposure to violence and violent behaviour, at least as far as children are concerned. You don't have to take my word for that though, check out the American Psychological Association and see what they have to say about it.

Plus some claim that such games actually reduce violence.

Source? You cannot make claims like that without providing some evidence to back them up.

the act if kiddie porn is in itslef an act of violence

Sure

and each transfer of that file furthers this.

Open to discussion. 60% of child abuse cases (like most other violence) happen within the family or close friends
Whether those cases are furthered or not (or the opposite) by consumption of child porn I dare not judge. The copying of a file is not child abuse (however, the child's human and personal rights are further violated)

Anime wins awards all the time. Fetish film awards, that is.

The American Psychological Association lists Anime as an officially recognized sexual fetish, treatable with medication and cognitive therapy.

Get off it, Rob. Nobody here cares about your obsession with big-eyed pumpkin headed screamers.

Cheers,

1. You play violent video games

2. You have not killed anybody yet
-----------------------

3. Conclusion: ... ? - your post says nothing at all?

I'm not sure how anyone could take any other conclusion from that.

Violent video games may play a part in contributing to violent behaviour in some people, perhaps in those who are also at risk of becoming violent offenders due to additional contributing factors.

While I don't claim that there is a strong link between violent media and violent behaviour, there are plenty of experts who do. For a summary check out this from the American Psychological Association.

The sort of illogic that you put forward in your post - and which is typical of many posters on Slashdot - only serves to make you feel better about an issue that you clearly don't have the guts to address.

You know what you want to believe.

1. You play violent video games

2. You have not killed anybody yet
-----------------------

3. Conclusion: ... ? - your post says nothing at all?

I'm not sure how anyone could take any other conclusion from that.

Violent video games may play a part in contributing to violent behaviour in some people, perhaps in those who are also at risk of becoming violent offenders due to additional contributing factors.

While I don't claim that there is a strong link between violent media and violent behaviour, there are plenty of experts who do. For a summary check out this from the American Psychological Association.

The sort of illogic that you put forward in your post - and which is typical of many posters on Slashdot - only serves to make you feel better about an issue that you clearly don't have the guts to address.

You know what you want to believe.