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Comments · 20,258
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Re:Not again?
They're working on a 98 MW expansion. Local wastewater is reinjected. Looking for 'Geysers geothermal superfund' about all I find is Wiki on the Sulphur Bank Mine, with a 2009 quote referring to plans to send its wastewater to the Geysers, meaning it's still only a notion. Perhaps you have your Superfunds mixed up? I don't doubt there's a bit of mess involved in geothermal. Powering up Newberry would have to mean stringing a bunch of HVDC lines to get the juice to where it's needed. No doubt this would mean a lot of pissing and moaning, witness the uproar in recent years over bringing in LNG to the mouth of Columbia and piping the gas to destinations south. There are no end of signs here in the Willamette Valley saying "NEVER LNG" etc which haven't been taken down in over a decade. Although perhaps they could strategically direct the lines around highways, behind those bits of forest they don't bother to cut down, to maintain that illusion of the pristine...
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Re:You realise it's already too late?
US national debt is over 100% of GDP. It's banana republic time from this point on.
Given that they don't even have the same dimensions, I fail to see why some arbitrary and suspiciously round (in decimal) value of their ratio has such magical significance.
You're right to be sceptical about this. All these debt limit numbers, whether it's the GP's 100%, or the Maastricht treaty 60% for the Eurozone are really just pulled out of thin air. There is no solid research to substantiate them. For a bit of perspective, consider that Japan has been running with a debt level of way more than 100% of GDP for over a decade, and they haven't fared worse than most Western countries.
The key thing that people need to understand in this debate is how currencies even work. This is amazingly badly understood, even by academic economists (this is very slowly changing, but as they say, progress in the sciences happens one funeral at a time). If you have some time, you may be interested in this Modern Money Primer, or the somewhat shorter article of PragCap.
The tl;dr version is this: monetary sovereignty matters. The US federal government, being a currency issuer, simply cannot be reasoned about in the same way as we reason about our own personal, currency user, finances. In particular, the US federal government will never be unable to make US$ payments, and it will never be unable to service its debt obligations. In fact, it could start deficit spending immediately without even issuing matching treasury bonds, and nothing much at all would happen.
Most honest people accept that after a while, but the implications always take a while to sink in. There are no free lunches, but the current austerity obsession is needlessly throwing away lots of food that's on the table. It's also an uphill battle because there are so many misconceptions on how inflation works. Food for thought: the highest rate of inflation in the US in the last 80 or so years was in a year when the government ran a surplus!
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Re:Monitoring is fine
Where it becomes bad is if they harass or in any way mistreat people who aren't threatening violence.
Where it becomes bad is that they harass or in any way mistreat people who aren't threatening violence.
FTFY
Is there any evidence that they're doing that?
It's called "Flying"
I envy you for not having to do so at all in the past decade, I truly wish I could say the same.
Since you haven't been there to see first hand, nor seen the news and stories of what's going on, here is the evidence you requested:http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=europe-bans-x-ray-body-scanners
http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/tsa-pat-down-search-abuse
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Re:BIND alternatives
Last time I looked at DNS curve, it has absolutely no traction. None of the five DNS servers I listed above -- not even djbdns -- come with DNScurve support.
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Re:Automate it
You should try this new eclipse plugin from IBM.
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Kombet
hi, this is a great posting about this virus, i never know this virus before..
Century 21 Broker Properti Jual Beli Sewa Rumah Indonesia -
Re:The nice thing about our bloated legal system..
No, this is slashdot. All lawyers are evil. Get with the times man.
O RLY? Slashdot's own NewYorkCountyLawyer is considered "good"!
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Re:The path of least resistance?
The Excel loading speed will be a lot better in 3.5, which should be out next month.
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Re:C#
Indeed this is so. You can also compile Objective-C using clang/llvm . See: http://clang.llvm.org/compatibility.html#objective-c . The clang implementation is at feature parity with the Mac OS X 10.7 version of the language, and based on my limited understanding of some comments I've read in various announcements, supports some additional features as well. Use of those features requires the GNUStep Objective-C runtime (libobjc2), rather than the GCC runtime. A high degree of Cocoa compatibility is available using the GNUStep Base (Foundation) and GNUStep GUI (AppKit) libraries, for numerous Unix platforms as well as Windows. A version of CoreFoundation is also available which wraps GNUStep Base, with a rewrite coming very soon that implements CoreFoundation in plain C. Various other Cocoa and iOS-compatible libs are available in disparate states of implementation. As always, GNUStep could use more developers and more users. Companies wishing to port their MacOS software to other platforms are encouraged to investigate GNUStep; previous porting efforts have positively contributed to the project by discovering and reporting bugs and sometimes by providing direct improvements.
GNUStep was recently used to port the Mac-only racing game CoreBreach to Linux: ( http://corebreach.corecode.at/CoreBreach/About.html ). Other visible examples of Cocoa/Objective-C applications ported to Linux from MacOS include the 'eggPlant' automated testing tool from TestPlant ( http://www.testplant.com/ ), and plenty of previously Mac-only Free/Open-Source software such as Bean.app ( http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2qH5zqXu7wQ/TRi6sNiNZjI/AAAAAAAAADM/i8RwqzQ6OYE/s1600/bean-gnome-theme.png ).
The parent is correct that you do not need Apple kit to develop in Objective-C. To work with most examples you will find, you will need Cocoa-compatible development libraries and tools, though. Interesting starting points include the Windows Installers, which include all of the components you would need to get started ( http://www.gnustep.org/experience/Windows.html ), or the GNUStep Core packages ( http://www.gnustep.org/resources/downloads.php ) for other platforms. The Étoilé Project http://etoileos.com/ is also interesting. Those of you in Europe who are interested and intend on attending FOSDEM should stop by and visit the talks and devroom sponsored by these projects.
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Re:Do no evil indeed
Google in fact does sell domains and hosting, as part of the the Get <Country> Online schemes. They have it going in India, Kenya, Ireland, and I think a few other countries. Hence the reference to GKBO, or "Getting Kenyan Businesses Online" - which is a Google scheme in partnership with one or more companies.
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Re:I just got back from a job fair today
Which is why some politicians, unions, researchers and even some companies are promoting the 6 hours a day workday.
http://www.6hourday.org/ http://www.informationweek.com/news/6502155 http://www.petitiononline.com/6hourday/petition.html http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2001/0901mutari.htmlBe well rested, happy and then work more effectively for shorter time produces better end result than less effective work over longer time. Apparently. Maybe more applicable for office / knowledge workers, not so much for tollbooth attendants, truck drivers, shop keepers. But you could say a happy rested waiter gets more tips than a tired snappy one...
Although the 6h day has also been discredited by other researchers. http://www.thelocal.se/2238/20051007/
Personally I think 6 hours is not the solution. It takes a while before I find my flow, my coding happy zone, http://memeagora.blogspot.com/2008/10/code-forrest-code.html and 6 hours would mean most of day is wasted on meetings, lunch, and other interruptions. 40 hours seems a good balance.
Having just had 21 fully paid weeks off last year due to 14 weeks paternity leave and the rest as holiday I shouldn't complain about Norwegian vacation laws.
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brute force in the Slepian-Wolf social network
Brute force security needs to be evaluated under the assumption that a Russian botnet has compromised a large number of social networking sites, and gained three to five different clear-text passwords (of possibly no great importance) associated with the targeted user. They now also know--or strongly suspect--the identities of your financial institutions.
Using commonalities of the exposed password set, the botnet bastards will attempt to model your personal password generation heuristic. Since they are not stupider than bricks, they might also assume that your bank password is similar, but fortified to the next level. Gaining some experience in cracking bank passwords, they'll soon have a model for that, too.
My Thomas and Cover from 1991, which happens to be at hand, has chapters on "Jointly typical sequences", "Encoding of correlated sources", and "Source coding with side information". This last section makes reference to Slepian-Wolf encoding, which is kind of interesting. I hadn't spotted that before.
On Slepian-Wolf compression, in memory of Jack Wolf
Along with David Slepian, Wolf proved the Slepian-Wolf theorem: as long as certain conditions are met, files X and Y can be compressed to H(X,Y), even if the X server has no knowledge of file Y, and vice versa.
This might not be precisely the right theory to apply to the breaking of password clusters, but the guy doing the math on that has probably read these papers.
Way too little concern is placed on the independence of the passwords chosen, and this vulnerability increases rapidly with the proliferation of passwords used. I'm sure I have more than 100 passwords out in the wild, many held by hopelessly incompetent and untrusted internet discussion forums.
Even a single compromised site can form a model of your password heuristic if you're duped into changing it often.
It wouldn't surprise me that if everyone adopted the four word xkcd approach, that for many individuals, entropy per word is closer to seven or eight bits than eleven, where concrete nouns of five to eight letters predominate, and a further bias to concrete nouns that are visually active in the mind's eye, and 40% of all such passwords contain at least one animal word.
That's where brute force would begin: assume at least one common animal word (four to five bits; since cat/dog don't make the cut, you'll be seeing a lot of parrot/leopard/zebra/unicorn).
unicornprincesscastledragon
I've cracked one already.
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Facts, get them.
"|does google have a hosting business ?
Yes, they do. Did you not read the article?"
No they do not. You need to look a little farther the then accuser to get facts.
http://google-africa.blogspot.com/2011/09/getting-kenyan-businesses-online.html
http://www.kbo.co.ke/faqs"That’s why we’re thrilled to announce today that Google, Safaricom, Equity Bank and KENIC have come together to create Getting Kenyan Businesses Online (GKBO)"
KENIC runs the hosting busins and the operation, Google Kenya provide free access to tehir network and some services. -
No, he doesn't. No such thing a Google GKBO
No he doesn't. In fact, he has no proof Google is doing this at all.
He has proof someone on Google Keyna's network is going this.
He keeps saying Google GKBO as if GKBO is someone part of Google, It is not.
Google Kenya Provides the Network and some web building services for free. That's their involvement.http://www.kbo.co.ke/faqs
http://www.blackweb20.com/2011/09/12/google-getting-kenyan-businesses-online-with-gkbo/#.TxBmUKUS22U"That’s why we’re thrilled to announce today that Google, Safaricom, Equity Bank and KENIC have come together to create Getting Kenyan Businesses Online (GKBO),"
http://google-africa.blogspot.com/2011/09/getting-kenyan-businesses-online.htmlIt's most likely KENIC people who are doing this.
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Re:In a year?
I have a good understanding of OOP
You'd be the first. The rest of us still haven't come to any agreement on what even constitutes OOP. Even Alan Kay, who coined the term, regrets it (the mess that often passes for OOP today isn't even close to his original vision.)
Give Steve Yegee's excellent essay Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns a read.
You might also want to take a look at some of the discussions on c2 such as this one, and this one
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Re:Triple damages of 1 penny - about right
You mean these patents?
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Re:Yahoo?
I smell a marketing campaign targeted against Google. Yahoo is powered by Bing. DuckduckGoo also powered by Bing.
Technically, DuckDuckGo is powered by 32 different search engines (not just one).
And Bing is powered by Google, so it's coming full circle.
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Re:I'm honestly confused...
Why would that be the case? Wouldn't they be the same patents they've used in other cases, and have been released for public consumption?
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workout
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workout
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workout
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Nice articles
Thanks for information visit back Ultrabook Notebook Tipis Harga Murah Terbaik
software akuntansi laporan keuangan -
another way to keep diabetes under control
i give my mother cucumber,which has drastically controlled and reduces her sugar level in blood, another way is to drink curry leaves boiled in water
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here in india
here in india,all news paper have their content copyrighted times of india lead here just cause 2 !
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Re:Geek solution
Well said.
Thatcher can be criticized for a lot of things (Poll Tax, etc). But people forget that she was a Chemist (Scientist) before she entered politics, and has always loved a good bit of tech.
http://philosophyofscienceportal.blogspot.com/2008/07/margaret-thatcher-chemistpolitician.html
http://alicerosebell.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/thatcher-scientist/
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Re:Oracle and JavaYou failed to mention the initial email http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/judge-orders-overhaul-of-oracles.html#sovietstyle sent by Rubin in 2005 that said:
"If Sun doesn't want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language - or - 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way"
Not saying this is a smoking gun but your timeline deserves a correction:Putting together a timeline:
1) First "damning" email in 2005
2) Android released in 2008
3) Oracle purchased Sun in 2009
4) "Damning" email in 2010 -
Twit Fail
This is a distraction to get media focus back on Twitter because of the Google search plus announcement. Honestly Twitter shows me the Fail Whale about once a week and their service record is poor for such a large site - so what will they be complaining about next?
Google has been amassing tons of data and is now planning to use that to have personalized search - that is the story. I don't see how they will get around the filter bubble issue. (Never mind personal data protection and other issues.)
As a side I am still trying to wrap my head around Wolfram's blog today about using a TLD
.data in relation to the Google announcement.Bad day for the internet?
I am surprised it didn't hit Twitfail
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kjnj
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Re:Please no
Uh, the "story" comes from a the official Google Search blog, not from TechTalk: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/search-plus-your-world.html
Opening Google.com itself links to this: http://www.google.com/insidesearch/plus.html#u=suI didn't even read the Techcrunch article, because someone at Hacker News had already linked to the Google blog.
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Re:Spectacular!
Paranoia, it's not just for the fringe anymore.
Why it makes for a nice soundbite, I think that people who call it paranoia have it wrong. Remember, RMS started GNU and the FSF _after_ They came after him: http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/03/interview-with-richard-stallman.html
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Re: Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand.
Not true. Educational technology can happily reside in the classroom. "Online" does not necessarily mean "physically remote" or "after hours". Ubiquitous includes class-time.
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Illegal to experiment without a licenes
Published, peer-reviewed papers generally result from some sort of experiment. But I'm under the impression that some subjects are so tightly regulated that just doing experiments by themselves is illegal without a license. Only people who already have a degree from an incumbent accredited institution can get a license to supervise experiments in person. Case in point: the decline of chemistry sets after the strengthening of toy safety standards and the public awareness of the illicit manufacture of stimulant drugs.
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Re:The new catch phrase apparently
I just feel sorry for whomever it is that's living next door to the thieves when Israel overreacts. Israel isn't exactly known for keeping any sort of perspective on things. Kill one of their citizens and they'll kill dozens of your citizens with little to no concern for innocent civilians.
Not according to Jonathan Sacerdoti in the New Statesman (most certainly not a pro-Israel publication). In fact, during Operation Cast Lead, Israel managed a better than 1:1 ratio (that is, one civilian per combatant killed). The UN estimate for similar assymetric warfare is 3:1 - that is three civilians for each combatant killed. And since then, they have done even better. In 2011, it was either 1:10 (Jane's correspondent in Israel) or 1:3 (Elder of Zion - factoring in numbers from PCHR).
Look for the actual facts, not mass media accounts. And as a rule of thumb, I'd discount hysterical claims right after an event, until they are actually examined. (Cases in point: the whole Muhammed al-Dura story, which was later shown to be a hoax, the supposed "massacre" of hundreds or thousands in Jenin that turned out to be 52 or 53, mostly combatants).
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African-American
Slightly off-topic, but since TFS mentions it, am I the only one that finds the designation "African-American" stupid? I have heard of Native Americans, yes. But no "European-Americans", or "Caucasian-Americans". And somehow, Asians are just Asians.
This for a point: http://snarkyintuition.blogspot.com/2011/11/p-p-p-pass-mic-yo.html
It used to be simple, now I have no idea what the frak is going on.
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that is good artical.
"New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg like a business man. visit - http://islamguideline.blogspot.com/
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Other case in France going the other way
As far as I can make out, this case is making at least some headlines in France too, and the general sentiment is outrage at the company and at the court system, very similar to here. See these:
However, more interestingly, the last link points to some other case where the judgment went the other way, i.e. Google suggesting a derogatory term in their search suggestions, and the French court finding them innocent. The text in French is here (use google translate !) and shows much more common sense.
Interestingly, I do not recall seeing this well-reasoned judgment on the front page of Slashdot, much in the way of traditional news outlets not reporting good news as often as bad ones.
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From someone who knows
Here http://arcticglass.blogspot.com/2012/01/south-pole-on-bike.html is the opinion of a gal who is very familiar with cold weather endurance riding. Snow riding has become very popular sport in Minnesota. Surly, Salsa, 9:zero:7, FatBack, Moots, and others all make bikes specifically for snow. None of them look like the one that Ms Skelton will be riding.
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Re:Well...
Oh, they do. They may not care what is *right*, but they care what the people want.
If you want to get the attention of an elected official, it's much more effective to appeal to their pocketbook or need for campaign volunteers than to their sense of decency,
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A sense of scale
I have photographed the Green Bank Radiotelescope a few times, that place is *massive*, pictures don't do it justice, I mean it's really friggin' big. Best I can show is this pic I took of the area http://plaguedbethyangel.blogspot.com/2011/10/closer.html I love it made the news (the GBR, not my pics) today
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Re:Rational Religious?
Thank you for, in my research, Introducing me to feminists with a radically different point of view
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Give a homework problem
What I do when hiring is to give applicants a small homework problem, based on this essay.
The problem involves a small amount of 'design recursion'. I have them submit pseudo code so as to not obsess on syntax.
I find it gives me good insight as to their thought processes, design skills, attention to detail and craftsmanship.
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Re:Just take old cell phones to the pet dept...Might be something you can do at Wal*Mart soon...they appear to see a future of some sort in mobile platforms.
I’m excited to announce that Small Society, a highly respected mobile agency, is joining the @WalmartLabs mobile team. Small Society embodies what has made us successful in 2011 and will help us accelerate that success in 2012.
Like how I snuck this in wayyyyy down here?
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Re:Your mails *are* spam
Completely agree. Opt-out was your choice as a business, and your fault if it has negative consequences. Don't blame us "abusive" customers who really don't understand or care if your server or feelings are hurt. We've got our own interests to look after and we can throw around the word "abusive" just as easily.
Fact of the matter is that from a technical standpoint hitting the "Spam" button is far easier than unsubscribing. Safer too if I don't trust you'll actually unsubscribe me, or if someone's the type who is paranoid about the data you collect on them. Example? NewEgg unsubscribe links contain something like this: "?gLmkQSSTfd6rgbv%1DvG4GEE14GGy1xEf6beF3wfVaVUCVGf6be552W0G11Vfd6zdbv%5BvG4BOO14GGy1xEf63fQ8wfVXLX" - that's way more data than just the required email address and confirmation code.
Gmail implemented a useful unsubscription feature over two years ago. Sadly, not many businesses take advantage of it. Another option - use a professional mail service so you don't have to worry about a handful of people who find the "spam" button more convenient than searching for a URL in your message.
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Only one "human right" mattersA Republic's sole legitimate* job is to ensure the practicality of mutually consenting individuals assortatively migrating to their own ecological domains.
In that manner, all other definitions of "human rights" can be accommodated by the simple expedient of mutually consenting co-habitation.
This means "secession" must be incorporated into the foundation of all notions of "human rights" -- secession of individuals as well as groups of individuals. For what is slavery but making it impractical for an individual to secede? Denial of individual secession was the core evil of the Dred Scott decision.
Tyranny of the majority, limited only by a vague laundry list of selectively enforced human rights -- the sine qua non of "liberal democracy" -- must submit to the right to secede or it violates truth and freedom, hence all social good.
See Secession from Slavery to Free Scientific Society.
*Yes, this does mean there does not exist, at present, a legitimate government anywhere.
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De-Duping with BTRFS
BTRFS is far from stable, but it's cow based design allows simple file-based de-duping usin cp --reflink. Some informations can be found here.
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Re:There are?
There is no real "Stradivari magic", except in the head of some people. Stradivari made quality violins, as did Guarnieri and Bergonzi, around the same period. There's nothing magical about them, just quality materials and craftsmanship. Virtually all Stradivarius in use today have been heavily modified (different neck, different bridge, etc.) to bring them up to the quality and consistency that modern listeners and violinists demand. Double-blind tests show no preference for Stradivarius over other quality brands (both old and new).
Old instruments are worth a lot because the ones that survived usually have some history attached (ex., owned and played by famous artists), not because they sound better than (top quality) modern ones. People who go on about "the acoustic qualities of old wood" are just one step away from buying this or this.
And I'm pretty sure the GP was making a joke (i.e., labelled in the sense of "thought to be" vs. labelled in the sense of "someone stuck a label on them with 'Stradivarius' written on it").
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And now add plenty of false positives, too.
I read about his work a couple of years ago. He has come up with a good way to prevent a facial recognition algorithm getting "true positives", but I think to truly mess with The Man, how about my idea for a textile pattern to also generate lots of spurious "false positives": http://shacklemore.blogspot.com/2010/04/facial-recognition-camoflage.html Hopefully, if enough people wore this fabric, any real-time facial recognition algorithm would start getting CPU bound, and limited by the speed of running hundreds of database queries against it's back-end database.
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Re:It could be worse
Only so in the western world. Buddhist countries, especially Theravada ones, lack that. That's why they're much more saner religions than western ones.
And yet, it's illegal to even criticize the Monarchy in Thailand, Myanmar is a military dictatorship, and Cambodia had some of the worst atrocities this century.
No religion (or country, or ethnic group) is above all of this crap
... granted, Buddhism doesn't have as much of a bent towards such things, but that doesn't mean that cultural attitudes don't get wrapped up in such thing.But, really, I've read stories about monks in Thailand (not to single them out) being involved in all sorts of things. I've even read stories of two sects openly fighting for control of temples because money was at stake.
I wouldn't be so quick to believe that Buddhism (even Theravada) makes one immune to this kind of thing. Human nature means it is always there.
It's easy enough to call yourself a practitioner of any religion and then proceed to all sorts of bad things in that name of that religion.
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Re:What is the real motivation?
Wait tell they figure out that they can get a guy in India to do the lecture on video for 1/2 the price. Then we will outsource the professors as well.
No, no -- when the professors figure out they can get good lecture videos for their classes for free, they won't bother each writing their own lecture slides on the same dang material. They'll be MCs and curators -- presenting others' material and spending more of the lecture time actually interacting with the class. And the world will be a much better place all round for it. (Lecturers are generally promoted for research not teaching, so the best way get them to improve their teaching is if it also saves them time.) Seriously, if you were an AI lecturer this year, would you spend another hour writing your own ten PowerPoint slides to give a basic introduction to particle filters, or would you just show your class Sebastian Thrun's videos about it from ai-class and then talk with them about it? The second option gets you a clear understandable explanation in much less preparation time, and moves your class onto more interesting more advanced discussion faster...
--
The Intelligent Book
Twitter: @wbillingsley -
Re:I use teaching methods similar to Mazur's.
The class consists basically of a bunch of multiple-choice conceptual questions. You pop up one of the questions on the screen and ask students to show you their initial opinion about which answer is right. This can be done with expensive electornic "clickers" or with cheap pieces of cardboard marked A, B, C, and D.
Or live on the lecture screen from students' phones, iPads, tablets, etc, with live discussion alongside it if you want (for the things students aren't game to say in person). As it's live, and there is an option to let students move their votes, I've found it's sometimes entertaining revealing the votes and then watching them change as the discussion happens -- for instance all flocking to a common misconception that has the most votes on first reveal, and then shifting to the right answer as the discussion happens.