For another thing, the statement makes no logical sense. It would be perfectly conceivable to have the right against your house being searched without a warrant, without having the right to refuse to answer the question, "Did you commit the crime?" Just like you could conceivably have the First Amendment without the Second Amendment, or the Third without the Fourth. That's why they're enumerated separately.
But that was the point of the scenario I gave where the cops are using force to extract a confession. If you assume the cops are willing to use force, then even with the Fifth Amendment, they'll just beat you until you waive your Fifth Amendment rights and confess. Or, since beating suspects is illegal anyway, since the cops would have to lie in their official report about how they obtained your confession -- well if they're willing to lie, they can just lie and say that you waived your Fifth Amendment rights and confessed, regardless of what actually happened.
Again, that's why I said that any answer to the question had to consist of defining a *scenario*, and then analyzing whether the outcome in a world with the Fifth Amendment, would be different from the outcome in a world without it, if you hold all other assumptions constant.
I think there's a crucial difference between cooking and, say, shooting baskets. Shooting baskets requires practice because you can't verbally describe the hand movements necessary to get the ball through the hoop; you can only let a person practice and adjust their muscle memory accordingly.
With cooking directions, in most cases you really can describe (in words, pictures, or a video) exactly what you want the person to do. I don't think, for example, that I gained anything from attempting to make jalapeno poppers without gloves on. I would have learned just as much if the directions had been correct from the get-go.
Now, like you said, an experienced cook might not *want* all the directions spelled out, but that's different; I'm just saying that if someone wanted the directions spelled out, so that a newbie obtains a good result, it could be done. But the market doesn't incentivize authors to do that.
What I means is that nobody does this *successfully*. I've tried lots of cookbooks ostensibly "aimed at beginners", did exactly what they said, and often the result was either just barely edible, or hardly tasted better than the constituent ingredients would have tasted if I'd just eaten them separately.
Certainly the free market does reward people for *calling* their cookbook a "cookbook for beginners", as there are countless such books in that category. But the market does not reward people for actually putting directions into those books that produce good results in the hands of beginners -- because a book buyer perusing the covers at Barnes & Noble can't tell the difference. The publishers know that few people will actually do what I do, which is return the cookbook to the store if the first three recipes produce bad results.
I think I would have learned just as much generalized cooking skills if I had known from the outset about putting gloves on before slicing jalapenos, and about removing the ribs before cooking them. Yes, bad directions can teach you what happens if you do things wrong (and if the mistake hurts, you'll remember it!). But if bad directions were really all that beneficial, we'd *intentionally* give people bad directions in order to confer the benefits on them. Hardly anybody does that in situations where the quality of the directions really matters. (Consider the directions that left out the step about putting gloves on -- are those directions *worse* because they would have deprived me of a valuable learning opportunity?) I think most of the times directions are inadequate because people are just lazy.
Now it's true that my system would only optimize directions on the good-results axis. Unfortunately I can't think of a system that would optimize the directions on the long-term-benefits axis. So perhaps the easiest approach is to say: Write whatever directions you think would cover a wide range of different skills in order to confer the benefits of generalized learning, BUT we're also going to run them through our wringer to make sure they actually receive high scores on the good-results metric.
I think you're right. And I would say the way to do this is to produce a few recipes for beginners, which do spell out the techniques in detail (as vetted by the direction-quality-sorting method that I described near the end of the article), so that even the beginner cooks can produce a few edible recipes. Then that's what would give them the education they need to understand all the other less-well-written recipes.
The problem is that I've never even seen *any* recipes that come with directions that work for true beginners. Hence the direction-quality-sorting algorithm.
In any case I think my point still applies to the jalapeno popper recipes because no matter how much "general knowledge" you possess, if none of it is jalapeno-specific, you wouldn't "automatically" know that (a) you have to wear gloves or your hands will burn, and (b) when the directions say "remove the seeds", you have to remove the seeds *and* the ribs, or the finished product will be inedible. So we should use the direction-quality-sorting algorithm not just to produce a group of recipes that can be used as a kind of hacked-together basic instructional course, but also for recipes that require knowledge specific to the ingredients in that recipe.
I agree about general techniques like boiling water -- a recipe ought to be able to say "Bring water to a boil" without telling you how to do that -- but I think my complaints about the jalapeno popper recipes are still valid for two reasons:
1. Jalapenos are a specific ingredient. A "general knowledge" cookbook can't tell you the specifics about handling every individual ingredient. If there is a certain handling that is specific to one ingredient but is not part of "general knowledge", then I would argue that should appear in the recipe.
2. If you read a recipe that says "boil water" and you don't know how to do that, at least you *know* that you don't know how to do that, and you can go and look it up. By contrast, if a recipe says "slice jalapenos and remove the seeds", you don't know that you're not being told two crucial pieces of information (wear gloves, and remove the white ribs as well as the seeds).
The web would be an ideal place to write recipes that have the best of both worlds, because specific instructions can be hyperlinked to pages that tell you how to carry out that step in detail. That way, experienced cooks can breeze right through the part that says "boil water", while inexperienced cooks could click on it for the details.
It wouldn't be that hard to do this. The larger point I was making is that nobody does this -- and in general, nobody writes good newbie directions -- because the free market in general, and Google in particular, does not reward it. If Google (or eHow, or wikihow, or about.com, or anybody else with a large built-in test audience) were to implement the system I described (for sorting instructions by the quality of results, so that the best ones would bubble up to the top), then maybe people would find it worthwhile to write those kinds of directions with built-in hyperlinks for more detail on specific steps. Or they might find some other way of writing good directions. My tenet was that good directions are the ones that produce good results, and it doesn't matter *how* you achieve it.
This was not intended as a "review" of the book. I submitted it under the title "Better Cooking Through Algorithms", intended as an essay expanding on *one* point made in the book (which is why the second paragraph says, "I'll have a full review of the book when it's released, but I think many of Morozov's argument are interesting enough to deserve an article in their own right"). An editor accidentally changed the title to "Book Review: Better Cooking Through Algorithms", which didn't make much sense.
I have no idea what proportion of the population has fingers too sensitive to capsaicin, but it is the active ingredient in pepper spray, which seems to have an effect on most people.
Actually it wasn't supposed to be a book review. I submitted the article with the title "Better Cooking Through Algorithms", and was intended to be an essay expanding only on *one* point made in the book. (See second paragraph, "I'll have a full review of the book when it's released, but I think many of Morozov's argument are interesting enough to deserve an article in their own right.")
An editor accidentally changed the title to "Book Review: To Save Everything, Click Here", which didn't make much sense.
Maybe I'll check out "I'm just here for the food", thanks for the recommendation. (Although you did precede that with "After years of failure", which pretty much makes my point for me about *most* written directions:) )
I'm posting this urgently without reading more than a handful the comments that people have posted. This article WAS NOT intended as a "review" of the whole book, and I submitted the article with the title "Better Cooking Through Algorithms". This was intended as a preliminary commentary on one point made in the book, to be followed later by a review of the full book. (Note that the second paragraph ends with, "I'll have a full review of the book when it's released, but I think many of Morozov's argument are interesting enough to deserve an article in their own right.") An editor changed the title to "Book Review: To Save Everything, Click Here", which, as multiple commenters have pointed out, makes no sense for an article that only comments on one small point.
(As of the moment I'm posting this comment, the title on the article is "Book Review: To Save Everything, Click Here". I'll try to get the title changed. If you're reading this after the article title has been fixed, that's what happened.)
Where have you seen an external battery pack that's more compact than spare batteries? Another reader did post a link to an external charger: http://www.amazon.com/5600mAh-External-Battery-Charger-Flashlight/dp/B005K7192G/
however it's still listed at 3.7 x 1.7 x 0.9 inches, compared to about 1 x 1 x 0.15 inches for a spare battery.
That's a good find that looks like it might work, thanks. One possible limitation though: according to the photos it looks like the tablet has to be positioned right up against the microphone stand or whatever you're using to hold it. That means that if some part of your treadmill/elliptical extends too far out in front of where your body is positioned, the stand and the tablet will have to be held that far out as well, at which point the tablet screen might become harder to watch. (The advantage of my setup is that the gooseneck can be extended out to hold the tablet closer to you.)
Good idea, but I tried clamping the tablet holder to a piece of furniture that was right next to the edge of the bed (which I guess would give me about the same reach as a headboard), and it didn't work -- the gooseneck didn't extend far enough over the mattress. (Unless you position your head close to the edge of the mattress, but that's uncomfortable, because of the way most mattresses are made. If you have a memory foam mattress or something fancy, it might not make much difference.)
The Amazon product listing says 3.7 x 1.7 x 0.9 inches. Not bad for something so useful, but still several times bigger than a spare phone battery, which is about 1 x 1 x 0.15 inches.
I actually keep the fully charged batteries and the depleted batteries in separate pockets, for precisely the reason you listed.
Of course the portable charger is still a good option for people who prefer that (or for iPhone users who have no choice).
Hack #1: I did mention having portable chargers as an option. I just said I preferred not to use that option because (a) you have to keep them attached to the phone while they're recharging, and (b) they actually take up more space in your pocket than spare batteries. Of course your solution is also an option (esp. if your phone doesn't have changeable batteries).
Hack #2: I tried using regular gooseneck holders without a shelf extending out over the mattress, but they didn't reach far enough. You would have to watch the movie by lying close to the edge of the mattress (which, due to the way most mattresses are made, is a lot less comfortable). As for reading a book, you still have to crane your neck and/or back to sit up. I'd rather use my setup to read an e-book on the tablet. (And so that you don't have to keep reaching up to the tablet screen to scroll through the text, I'd probably have a bluetooth keyboard next to me on the mattress with my finger on the "down" button, so you can scroll without lifting your arm up.)
Hack #3: I had tried audiobooks and music. I just like watching movies and TV shows better. (And I had tried putting the tablet on the console, but you have to crane your neck downward, which is uncomfortable and bad for your posture.)
The sheet music holder is a neat idea, but I don't think it would be able tilt the tablet *toward* me and hold it in securely. In my setup, the tablet is held at an altitude above my head, which means that to see a non-distorted view of it, it has to be tilted at a slight downward angle. I don't think a sheet music holder could hold it in that position (even if I strapped it to the sheet music holder so it wouldn't fall out).
Right, most cell phones *have* replaceable batteries. I'm just saying that most people don't seem to carry around fully charged spares to swap out, even when they frequently complain about their phone's battery being about to die.
I agree that the spare batteries might not come in handy for most people in their regular routine; on a normal day I spend enough time either at my desk or in my car, and I can charge the phone in both places. It's mainly for infrequent occurrences like flying on a plane (and wanting to watch a movie on my phone), or being at the conference and constantly moving from room to room. I think for a one-time expense of $10 it was definitely worth it never to have to worry about battery life on those rare occasions.
When I said "If there is a specific difference in the laws that someone can point to, which implies that it is more incumbent on rental car agencies to turn over their customer information in the event of a subpoena, than is incumbent on ISPs..." by "laws" I was implicitly also referring to caselaw, legal precedents, etc. You still, of course, have to actually point to something that answers the question.
Not all "popularity contests" are wrong. If you asked 10 different doctors what that rash on your arm probably was, and they all (independently of each other) gave the same answer, would you dismiss the results as a "popularity contest"?
There is a difference in getting 10 second opinions about a diagnosis and 10 opinions about whether a math major wrote something or whether a judge wrote it.
As for point #3 -- well, that's my point exactly. It shouldn't matter who made which statement. So if 90% of lawyers say I'm wrong when they know that argument A is being made by the judge and argument B is made by me, but the number changes to 50/50 when you poll a different group of lawyers and you don't tell them who made which argument, that just means the lawyers in the first group weren't evaluating the arguments objectively.
The question which you dance around but don't clearly make is whether you are right. Getting 10 lawyers to judge whether they can tell the origin of a piece is silly. The question is whether the positions you presented is legally correct not who wrote the words. It is unclear why you place so much emphasis on lawyers being able to discern the origin of words.
I'm not talking about testing whether the lawyers can tell who wrote the argument.
I'm talking about having lawyers vote on which argument -- the point or the counter-point -- is correct. The reason I'm saying that I would remove the identifying information from the argument (not telling the voters which one was written by the judge, and which was written by the layperson) is because I might expect that lawyers would bias their answer in favor of voting that the judge was correct, if they knew which argument was made by the judge. But their objective would still be to vote for which argument is correct, not vote on which argument was written by the judge.
Stop it, you're making no sense. LOGIC is not about STATISTICS. The two are completely different. Logic is deductive, while Statistics is inferential.
OK, that's true -- certainly even if 9 out of 10 people think you're right (or wrong), that's not logically the same as actually *being* right (or wrong).
The reason I was referring to the hypothetical panel of experts is because their results would be highly correlated with who is logically right and who is logically wrong. If 9 out of 10 mathematicians independently tell me that a specific statement is wrong or that a step in my logical reasoning is invalid, I'd be inclined to think they were right.
Otherwise, how would you arbitrate whether someone had made a logical error or not? I don't want you to be the final arbiter of whether some step in my reasoning was invalid:)
Your car analogy makes no sense either. As a math major, you should realize that if there's a road accident, then there are a number of physical factors which enter into that event. There's the road, the two cars, the two drivers, any pedestrians who happen to be there etc. Just make a list of the interactions.
All of these are potentially relevant to resolving the legal issues, so a priori the potential participants to a lawsuit for this event will be the owners of the road, the owners of the cars, the drivers of the cars, the pedestrians, etc.
But you haven't shown why this means it is justified to subpoena the car rental agency in the case of an accident, but not to supboena the ISP in the case of a crime committed by one of their customers. The ISP is a potential "participant" in the lawsuit, in the sense of being subpoenaed, even if they're not named as a defendant.
However, the actual written laws must be used to filter this potential list down into an actual list of complainants and defendants. No amount of arguing on your part can replace your lack of knowledge of written laws. Either you know the filtering rules in a particular case, or you don't.
I'm quite sure there is no law exempting ISPs from subpoenas about their customer information, since if there were, they would have brought out the law immediately and the case would have been over. (Shield laws, where they apply, would exempt the ISP from being *sued*, not from being subpoenaed.) If you think I'm wrong, fine, you tell me: Is there a law that shields ISPs from being subpoenaed (but not car rental agencies)?
Finally, your call for consistency makes no sense either. The laws that apply in an IP address lawsuit are completely different from the laws that apply in a road accident lawsuit. It's like two different filters. There's a reason why car analogies are a standing joke on slashdot. Sit down and and let it go.
If there is a specific difference in the laws that someone can point to, which implies that it is more incumbent on rental car agencies to turn over their customer information in the event of a subpoena, than is incumbent on ISPs, then that's relevant. If someone can point to that.
Like I said in the article: If we were to poll 10 lawyers, and show them my argument and your argument, and we didn't tell them which one was made by the math major and which argument was made in defense of an argument made by a federal judge, how confident are you that most of the 10 lawyers would vote you were right?
(1) Being a math major doesn't mean you understand law. (2) A decision is not a popularity contest. (3) Who made what statement is meaningless and besides the point.
Not all "popularity contests" are wrong. If you asked 10 different doctors what that rash on your arm probably was, and they all (independently of each other) gave the same answer, would you dismiss the results as a "popularity contest"?
As for point #3 -- well, that's my point exactly. It shouldn't matter who made which statement. So if 90% of lawyers say I'm wrong when they know that argument A is being made by the judge and argument B is made by me, but the number changes to 50/50 when you poll a different group of lawyers and you don't tell them who made which argument, that just means the lawyers in the first group weren't evaluating the arguments objectively.
Well, you could analogously say that the ISP is the true owner of the IP address (merely having leased it to the homeowner), so they are "potentially" a defendant too. (There may even be cases where they are partly at fault, for example, if they had received previous complaints about a particular user, and did nothing . ..
If you have a point here, you have not made it clear or succinctly. In fact you seem to be agreeing with the judge yet saying he made a logical error.
My statement is showing a way in which the ISP situation is analogous to the rental car situation. So it's in opposition to the judge's statement that the two are not analogous. I'm not sure in what way you think I'm "agreeing with the judge".
Now, you could come up with an argument as to why they should be treated differently, but my point was that you would have to make that argument, and the judge didn't. He simply said, "It's different, because you could sue the rental car agency", without saying why you would be justified in suing the rental car agency, but not the ISP.
Because the judge knows about the DMCA and the Safe Harbor position and how ISPs are different than rental agencies. He also probably knows the different liabilities associated when it comes to 3rd parties and defendants (and the lawyers would know it too).
OK, so what I should have said is that the judge didn't say why you would be justified in subpoenaing the rental car agency for their customer's identity, but not the ISP. ISP have safe harbor provisions against being sued for their customer's actions, but not against being subpoenaed.
if you subpoena the ISP, you'll [...] probably get the right party... if you subpoena the ISP to find the homeowner of record that an IP was assigned to, then even if that homeowner was not the infringer you were looking for, you could subpoena them and there would be a good chance they would know who the infringer was.
And if 4 people were home at the time the supposed infringement occurred and all of them had access to the computer, how are you supposed to figure out which of them did it? There's no "probably" about it; there's very little chance of you successfully proving who the downloader was. And even if they knew who had done it, in all likelihood that would make them a collaborator which would be justification to not reveal that to you.
You'd basically be on a fishing trip to try to bully them into ratting on whoever it was. And if they had guests who could have used the computer there's a good chance they'd have no idea who had done it, or quite possibly react to your bullying by finally pinning the blame falsely on one of the family members.
OK, so even accepting that, the plaintiff could still say, "Fine, let's at least see if the IP address is traceable to one specific person. If there were two or more people in the house, we'll give up and leave, and concentrate only one the cases where there was just one person in the house." That will still leave a lot of cases where the IP is traceable to a specific person (e.g. if a corporation has assigned the IP to a specific user on their network). So it doesn't seem a sufficient reason to throw out all the subpoenas.
My real point was that the judge didn't make this argument, or any other good argument, to say why the car rental agency was not analogous to an ISP. He basically said, "It's not the same because if a car rental customer hits you, you could sue the car rental agency as well", without saying why there was a greater justification for including the rental car agency as a defendant, than for including the ISP as a defendant.
ISPs have special legal protections that make them non-liable for their users' actions.
But even then, how would it follow that it shouldn't be possible to subpoena them for the identity of users who did something illegal? Immunity from being sued is not the same as immunity from being subpoenaed. ISPs have legal protection to make them non-liable, but unless there's a law specifically saying that they can't be subpoenaed for information (like the lawyer-client confidentiality law), why shouldn't they still have to turn over the identity of their customers if subpoenaed?
Nevertheless, perhaps you could make an argument in favor of subpoenaing rental car companies but not ISPs. My point was that the judge didn't give any such argument -- he simply said, "It's not analogous because you could sue the rental car company" -- but a party can be subpoenaed even if they're not being sued, so that by itself isn't a reason why the ISP can't be subpoenaed.
Still, at least you're arguing at the level of logic and analogies, which is better than the commenters who are saying, "I'm a lawyer therefore I'm right and you're wrong!"
Like I said in the article: If we were to poll 10 lawyers, and show them my argument and your argument, and we didn't tell them which one was made by the math major and which argument was made in defense of an argument made by a federal judge, how confident are you that most of the 10 lawyers would vote you were right?
To take one popular point of contention: " An owner of property whether it is a car, home, etc. is potentially a defendant. The owner can however prove to the court why they should not be included." Well, you could analogously say that the ISP is the true owner of the IP address (merely having leased it to the homeowner), so they are "potentially" a defendant too. (There may even be cases where they are partly at fault, for example, if they had received previous complaints about a particular user, and did nothing.)
Now, you could come up with an argument as to why they should be treated differently, but my point was that you would have to make that argument, and the judge didn't. He simply said, "It's different, because you could sue the rental car agency", without saying why you would be justified in suing the rental car agency, but not the ISP.
Slashdot Mirror
For one thing, FAIL0, no scenario given.
For another thing, the statement makes no logical sense. It would be perfectly conceivable to have the right against your house being searched without a warrant, without having the right to refuse to answer the question, "Did you commit the crime?" Just like you could conceivably have the First Amendment without the Second Amendment, or the Third without the Fourth. That's why they're enumerated separately.
But that was the point of the scenario I gave where the cops are using force to extract a confession. If you assume the cops are willing to use force, then even with the Fifth Amendment, they'll just beat you until you waive your Fifth Amendment rights and confess. Or, since beating suspects is illegal anyway, since the cops would have to lie in their official report about how they obtained your confession -- well if they're willing to lie, they can just lie and say that you waived your Fifth Amendment rights and confessed, regardless of what actually happened.
Again, that's why I said that any answer to the question had to consist of defining a *scenario*, and then analyzing whether the outcome in a world with the Fifth Amendment, would be different from the outcome in a world without it, if you hold all other assumptions constant.
I think there's a crucial difference between cooking and, say, shooting baskets. Shooting baskets requires practice because you can't verbally describe the hand movements necessary to get the ball through the hoop; you can only let a person practice and adjust their muscle memory accordingly.
With cooking directions, in most cases you really can describe (in words, pictures, or a video) exactly what you want the person to do. I don't think, for example, that I gained anything from attempting to make jalapeno poppers without gloves on. I would have learned just as much if the directions had been correct from the get-go.
Now, like you said, an experienced cook might not *want* all the directions spelled out, but that's different; I'm just saying that if someone wanted the directions spelled out, so that a newbie obtains a good result, it could be done. But the market doesn't incentivize authors to do that.
What I means is that nobody does this *successfully*. I've tried lots of cookbooks ostensibly "aimed at beginners", did exactly what they said, and often the result was either just barely edible, or hardly tasted better than the constituent ingredients would have tasted if I'd just eaten them separately.
Certainly the free market does reward people for *calling* their cookbook a "cookbook for beginners", as there are countless such books in that category. But the market does not reward people for actually putting directions into those books that produce good results in the hands of beginners -- because a book buyer perusing the covers at Barnes & Noble can't tell the difference. The publishers know that few people will actually do what I do, which is return the cookbook to the store if the first three recipes produce bad results.
I think I would have learned just as much generalized cooking skills if I had known from the outset about putting gloves on before slicing jalapenos, and about removing the ribs before cooking them. Yes, bad directions can teach you what happens if you do things wrong (and if the mistake hurts, you'll remember it!). But if bad directions were really all that beneficial, we'd *intentionally* give people bad directions in order to confer the benefits on them. Hardly anybody does that in situations where the quality of the directions really matters. (Consider the directions that left out the step about putting gloves on -- are those directions *worse* because they would have deprived me of a valuable learning opportunity?) I think most of the times directions are inadequate because people are just lazy.
Now it's true that my system would only optimize directions on the good-results axis. Unfortunately I can't think of a system that would optimize the directions on the long-term-benefits axis. So perhaps the easiest approach is to say: Write whatever directions you think would cover a wide range of different skills in order to confer the benefits of generalized learning, BUT we're also going to run them through our wringer to make sure they actually receive high scores on the good-results metric.
I think you're right. And I would say the way to do this is to produce a few recipes for beginners, which do spell out the techniques in detail (as vetted by the direction-quality-sorting method that I described near the end of the article), so that even the beginner cooks can produce a few edible recipes. Then that's what would give them the education they need to understand all the other less-well-written recipes.
The problem is that I've never even seen *any* recipes that come with directions that work for true beginners. Hence the direction-quality-sorting algorithm.
In any case I think my point still applies to the jalapeno popper recipes because no matter how much "general knowledge" you possess, if none of it is jalapeno-specific, you wouldn't "automatically" know that (a) you have to wear gloves or your hands will burn, and (b) when the directions say "remove the seeds", you have to remove the seeds *and* the ribs, or the finished product will be inedible. So we should use the direction-quality-sorting algorithm not just to produce a group of recipes that can be used as a kind of hacked-together basic instructional course, but also for recipes that require knowledge specific to the ingredients in that recipe.
I agree about general techniques like boiling water -- a recipe ought to be able to say "Bring water to a boil" without telling you how to do that -- but I think my complaints about the jalapeno popper recipes are still valid for two reasons:
1. Jalapenos are a specific ingredient. A "general knowledge" cookbook can't tell you the specifics about handling every individual ingredient. If there is a certain handling that is specific to one ingredient but is not part of "general knowledge", then I would argue that should appear in the recipe.
2. If you read a recipe that says "boil water" and you don't know how to do that, at least you *know* that you don't know how to do that, and you can go and look it up. By contrast, if a recipe says "slice jalapenos and remove the seeds", you don't know that you're not being told two crucial pieces of information (wear gloves, and remove the white ribs as well as the seeds).
The web would be an ideal place to write recipes that have the best of both worlds, because specific instructions can be hyperlinked to pages that tell you how to carry out that step in detail. That way, experienced cooks can breeze right through the part that says "boil water", while inexperienced cooks could click on it for the details.
It wouldn't be that hard to do this. The larger point I was making is that nobody does this -- and in general, nobody writes good newbie directions -- because the free market in general, and Google in particular, does not reward it. If Google (or eHow, or wikihow, or about.com, or anybody else with a large built-in test audience) were to implement the system I described (for sorting instructions by the quality of results, so that the best ones would bubble up to the top), then maybe people would find it worthwhile to write those kinds of directions with built-in hyperlinks for more detail on specific steps. Or they might find some other way of writing good directions. My tenet was that good directions are the ones that produce good results, and it doesn't matter *how* you achieve it.
This was not intended as a "review" of the book. I submitted it under the title "Better Cooking Through Algorithms", intended as an essay expanding on *one* point made in the book (which is why the second paragraph says, "I'll have a full review of the book when it's released, but I think many of Morozov's argument are interesting enough to deserve an article in their own right"). An editor accidentally changed the title to "Book Review: Better Cooking Through Algorithms", which didn't make much sense.
I have no idea what proportion of the population has fingers too sensitive to capsaicin, but it is the active ingredient in pepper spray, which seems to have an effect on most people.
Actually it wasn't supposed to be a book review. I submitted the article with the title "Better Cooking Through Algorithms", and was intended to be an essay expanding only on *one* point made in the book. (See second paragraph, "I'll have a full review of the book when it's released, but I think many of Morozov's argument are interesting enough to deserve an article in their own right.")
:) )
An editor accidentally changed the title to "Book Review: To Save Everything, Click Here", which didn't make much sense.
Maybe I'll check out "I'm just here for the food", thanks for the recommendation. (Although you did precede that with "After years of failure", which pretty much makes my point for me about *most* written directions
I'm posting this urgently without reading more than a handful the comments that people have posted. This article WAS NOT intended as a "review" of the whole book, and I submitted the article with the title "Better Cooking Through Algorithms". This was intended as a preliminary commentary on one point made in the book, to be followed later by a review of the full book. (Note that the second paragraph ends with, "I'll have a full review of the book when it's released, but I think many of Morozov's argument are interesting enough to deserve an article in their own right.") An editor changed the title to "Book Review: To Save Everything, Click Here", which, as multiple commenters have pointed out, makes no sense for an article that only comments on one small point.
(As of the moment I'm posting this comment, the title on the article is "Book Review: To Save Everything, Click Here". I'll try to get the title changed. If you're reading this after the article title has been fixed, that's what happened.)
Where have you seen an external battery pack that's more compact than spare batteries? Another reader did post a link to an external charger:
http://www.amazon.com/5600mAh-External-Battery-Charger-Flashlight/dp/B005K7192G/
however it's still listed at 3.7 x 1.7 x 0.9 inches, compared to about 1 x 1 x 0.15 inches for a spare battery.
That's a good find that looks like it might work, thanks. One possible limitation though: according to the photos it looks like the tablet has to be positioned right up against the microphone stand or whatever you're using to hold it. That means that if some part of your treadmill/elliptical extends too far out in front of where your body is positioned, the stand and the tablet will have to be held that far out as well, at which point the tablet screen might become harder to watch. (The advantage of my setup is that the gooseneck can be extended out to hold the tablet closer to you.)
For the furniture hacks, how would you have done it differently?
Good idea, but I tried clamping the tablet holder to a piece of furniture that was right next to the edge of the bed (which I guess would give me about the same reach as a headboard), and it didn't work -- the gooseneck didn't extend far enough over the mattress. (Unless you position your head close to the edge of the mattress, but that's uncomfortable, because of the way most mattresses are made. If you have a memory foam mattress or something fancy, it might not make much difference.)
The Amazon product listing says 3.7 x 1.7 x 0.9 inches. Not bad for something so useful, but still several times bigger than a spare phone battery, which is about 1 x 1 x 0.15 inches.
I actually keep the fully charged batteries and the depleted batteries in separate pockets, for precisely the reason you listed.
Of course the portable charger is still a good option for people who prefer that (or for iPhone users who have no choice).
Hack #1: I did mention having portable chargers as an option. I just said I preferred not to use that option because (a) you have to keep them attached to the phone while they're recharging, and (b) they actually take up more space in your pocket than spare batteries. Of course your solution is also an option (esp. if your phone doesn't have changeable batteries).
Hack #2: I tried using regular gooseneck holders without a shelf extending out over the mattress, but they didn't reach far enough. You would have to watch the movie by lying close to the edge of the mattress (which, due to the way most mattresses are made, is a lot less comfortable). As for reading a book, you still have to crane your neck and/or back to sit up. I'd rather use my setup to read an e-book on the tablet. (And so that you don't have to keep reaching up to the tablet screen to scroll through the text, I'd probably have a bluetooth keyboard next to me on the mattress with my finger on the "down" button, so you can scroll without lifting your arm up.)
Hack #3: I had tried audiobooks and music. I just like watching movies and TV shows better. (And I had tried putting the tablet on the console, but you have to crane your neck downward, which is uncomfortable and bad for your posture.)
The sheet music holder is a neat idea, but I don't think it would be able tilt the tablet *toward* me and hold it in securely. In my setup, the tablet is held at an altitude above my head, which means that to see a non-distorted view of it, it has to be tilted at a slight downward angle. I don't think a sheet music holder could hold it in that position (even if I strapped it to the sheet music holder so it wouldn't fall out).
Right, most cell phones *have* replaceable batteries. I'm just saying that most people don't seem to carry around fully charged spares to swap out, even when they frequently complain about their phone's battery being about to die.
Do you ever hear friends saying that their phones are about to die? Did they carry spare batteries? Did you suggest it to them if they didn't?
I agree that the spare batteries might not come in handy for most people in their regular routine; on a normal day I spend enough time either at my desk or in my car, and I can charge the phone in both places. It's mainly for infrequent occurrences like flying on a plane (and wanting to watch a movie on my phone), or being at the conference and constantly moving from room to room. I think for a one-time expense of $10 it was definitely worth it never to have to worry about battery life on those rare occasions.
When I said "If there is a specific difference in the laws that someone can point to, which implies that it is more incumbent on rental car agencies to turn over their customer information in the event of a subpoena, than is incumbent on ISPs..." by "laws" I was implicitly also referring to caselaw, legal precedents, etc. You still, of course, have to actually point to something that answers the question.
Not all "popularity contests" are wrong. If you asked 10 different doctors what that rash on your arm probably was, and they all (independently of each other) gave the same answer, would you dismiss the results as a "popularity contest"?
There is a difference in getting 10 second opinions about a diagnosis and 10 opinions about whether a math major wrote something or whether a judge wrote it.
As for point #3 -- well, that's my point exactly. It shouldn't matter who made which statement. So if 90% of lawyers say I'm wrong when they know that argument A is being made by the judge and argument B is made by me, but the number changes to 50/50 when you poll a different group of lawyers and you don't tell them who made which argument, that just means the lawyers in the first group weren't evaluating the arguments objectively.
The question which you dance around but don't clearly make is whether you are right. Getting 10 lawyers to judge whether they can tell the origin of a piece is silly. The question is whether the positions you presented is legally correct not who wrote the words. It is unclear why you place so much emphasis on lawyers being able to discern the origin of words.
I'm not talking about testing whether the lawyers can tell who wrote the argument.
I'm talking about having lawyers vote on which argument -- the point or the counter-point -- is correct. The reason I'm saying that I would remove the identifying information from the argument (not telling the voters which one was written by the judge, and which was written by the layperson) is because I might expect that lawyers would bias their answer in favor of voting that the judge was correct, if they knew which argument was made by the judge. But their objective would still be to vote for which argument is correct, not vote on which argument was written by the judge.
Stop it, you're making no sense. LOGIC is not about STATISTICS. The two are completely different. Logic is deductive, while Statistics is inferential.
OK, that's true -- certainly even if 9 out of 10 people think you're right (or wrong), that's not logically the same as actually *being* right (or wrong).
:)
The reason I was referring to the hypothetical panel of experts is because their results would be highly correlated with who is logically right and who is logically wrong. If 9 out of 10 mathematicians independently tell me that a specific statement is wrong or that a step in my logical reasoning is invalid, I'd be inclined to think they were right.
Otherwise, how would you arbitrate whether someone had made a logical error or not? I don't want you to be the final arbiter of whether some step in my reasoning was invalid
Your car analogy makes no sense either. As a math major, you should realize that if there's a road accident, then there are a number of physical factors which enter into that event. There's the road, the two cars, the two drivers, any pedestrians who happen to be there etc. Just make a list of the interactions.
All of these are potentially relevant to resolving the legal issues, so a priori the potential participants to a lawsuit for this event will be the owners of the road, the owners of the cars, the drivers of the cars, the pedestrians, etc.
But you haven't shown why this means it is justified to subpoena the car rental agency in the case of an accident, but not to supboena the ISP in the case of a crime committed by one of their customers. The ISP is a potential "participant" in the lawsuit, in the sense of being subpoenaed, even if they're not named as a defendant.
However, the actual written laws must be used to filter this potential list down into an actual list of complainants and defendants. No amount of arguing on your part can replace your lack of knowledge of written laws. Either you know the filtering rules in a particular case, or you don't.
I'm quite sure there is no law exempting ISPs from subpoenas about their customer information, since if there were, they would have brought out the law immediately and the case would have been over. (Shield laws, where they apply, would exempt the ISP from being *sued*, not from being subpoenaed.) If you think I'm wrong, fine, you tell me: Is there a law that shields ISPs from being subpoenaed (but not car rental agencies)?
Finally, your call for consistency makes no sense either. The laws that apply in an IP address lawsuit are completely different from the laws that apply in a road accident lawsuit. It's like two different filters. There's a reason why car analogies are a standing joke on slashdot. Sit down and and let it go.
If there is a specific difference in the laws that someone can point to, which implies that it is more incumbent on rental car agencies to turn over their customer information in the event of a subpoena, than is incumbent on ISPs, then that's relevant. If someone can point to that.
Like I said in the article: If we were to poll 10 lawyers, and show them my argument and your argument, and we didn't tell them which one was made by the math major and which argument was made in defense of an argument made by a federal judge, how confident are you that most of the 10 lawyers would vote you were right?
(1) Being a math major doesn't mean you understand law. (2) A decision is not a popularity contest. (3) Who made what statement is meaningless and besides the point.
Not all "popularity contests" are wrong. If you asked 10 different doctors what that rash on your arm probably was, and they all (independently of each other) gave the same answer, would you dismiss the results as a "popularity contest"?
As for point #3 -- well, that's my point exactly. It shouldn't matter who made which statement. So if 90% of lawyers say I'm wrong when they know that argument A is being made by the judge and argument B is made by me, but the number changes to 50/50 when you poll a different group of lawyers and you don't tell them who made which argument, that just means the lawyers in the first group weren't evaluating the arguments objectively.
Well, you could analogously say that the ISP is the true owner of the IP address (merely having leased it to the homeowner), so they are "potentially" a defendant too. (There may even be cases where they are partly at fault, for example, if they had received previous complaints about a particular user, and did nothing . . .
If you have a point here, you have not made it clear or succinctly. In fact you seem to be agreeing with the judge yet saying he made a logical error.
My statement is showing a way in which the ISP situation is analogous to the rental car situation. So it's in opposition to the judge's statement that the two are not analogous. I'm not sure in what way you think I'm "agreeing with the judge".
Now, you could come up with an argument as to why they should be treated differently, but my point was that you would have to make that argument, and the judge didn't. He simply said, "It's different, because you could sue the rental car agency", without saying why you would be justified in suing the rental car agency, but not the ISP.
Because the judge knows about the DMCA and the Safe Harbor position and how ISPs are different than rental agencies. He also probably knows the different liabilities associated when it comes to 3rd parties and defendants (and the lawyers would know it too).
OK, so what I should have said is that the judge didn't say why you would be justified in subpoenaing the rental car agency for their customer's identity, but not the ISP. ISP have safe harbor provisions against being sued for their customer's actions, but not against being subpoenaed.
if you subpoena the ISP, you'll [...] probably get the right party ... if you subpoena the ISP to find the homeowner of record that an IP was assigned to, then even if that homeowner was not the infringer you were looking for, you could subpoena them and there would be a good chance they would know who the infringer was.
And if 4 people were home at the time the supposed infringement occurred and all of them had access to the computer, how are you supposed to figure out which of them did it? There's no "probably" about it; there's very little chance of you successfully proving who the downloader was. And even if they knew who had done it, in all likelihood that would make them a collaborator which would be justification to not reveal that to you.
You'd basically be on a fishing trip to try to bully them into ratting on whoever it was. And if they had guests who could have used the computer there's a good chance they'd have no idea who had done it, or quite possibly react to your bullying by finally pinning the blame falsely on one of the family members.
OK, so even accepting that, the plaintiff could still say, "Fine, let's at least see if the IP address is traceable to one specific person. If there were two or more people in the house, we'll give up and leave, and concentrate only one the cases where there was just one person in the house." That will still leave a lot of cases where the IP is traceable to a specific person (e.g. if a corporation has assigned the IP to a specific user on their network). So it doesn't seem a sufficient reason to throw out all the subpoenas.
My real point was that the judge didn't make this argument, or any other good argument, to say why the car rental agency was not analogous to an ISP. He basically said, "It's not the same because if a car rental customer hits you, you could sue the car rental agency as well", without saying why there was a greater justification for including the rental car agency as a defendant, than for including the ISP as a defendant.
ISPs have special legal protections that make them non-liable for their users' actions.
But even then, how would it follow that it shouldn't be possible to subpoena them for the identity of users who did something illegal? Immunity from being sued is not the same as immunity from being subpoenaed. ISPs have legal protection to make them non-liable, but unless there's a law specifically saying that they can't be subpoenaed for information (like the lawyer-client confidentiality law), why shouldn't they still have to turn over the identity of their customers if subpoenaed?
Nevertheless, perhaps you could make an argument in favor of subpoenaing rental car companies but not ISPs. My point was that the judge didn't give any such argument -- he simply said, "It's not analogous because you could sue the rental car company" -- but a party can be subpoenaed even if they're not being sued, so that by itself isn't a reason why the ISP can't be subpoenaed.
Still, at least you're arguing at the level of logic and analogies, which is better than the commenters who are saying, "I'm a lawyer therefore I'm right and you're wrong!"
Like I said in the article: If we were to poll 10 lawyers, and show them my argument and your argument, and we didn't tell them which one was made by the math major and which argument was made in defense of an argument made by a federal judge, how confident are you that most of the 10 lawyers would vote you were right?
To take one popular point of contention: " An owner of property whether it is a car, home, etc. is potentially a defendant. The owner can however prove to the court why they should not be included." Well, you could analogously say that the ISP is the true owner of the IP address (merely having leased it to the homeowner), so they are "potentially" a defendant too. (There may even be cases where they are partly at fault, for example, if they had received previous complaints about a particular user, and did nothing.)
Now, you could come up with an argument as to why they should be treated differently, but my point was that you would have to make that argument, and the judge didn't. He simply said, "It's different, because you could sue the rental car agency", without saying why you would be justified in suing the rental car agency, but not the ISP.