Nearly 85% of the district had ended up with a new start time, and "In the end, the school start time quandary was more political than technical... This was a fundamentally human conflict, and all the computing power in the world couldn't solve it."
No, it wasn't 'political'. The algorithm successfully computed an optimal schedule for the students with regards to bus transport, but did not include any data at all about the optimal schedule for the parents.
Yes, I definitely agree that it wasn't "political" on the parents' part. To have described it so is a real slant at the genuine troubles parents of young children would have faced in terms of their own livelihoods had the new startup times gone into effect.
Rather, it became political by definition at the very *beginning* when Boston told MIT they wanted to reduce costs and have a later start basically just for the high schools — in particular, the highly desirous Boston Latin school.
Backing up: Boston is one of the rare (or maybe only?) school districts forced by law to desegregate their schools by randomizing school assignments. Recent reports show it is *dramatically* failing even so, mostly because the lottery system was so stressful for parents that many (mostly white) families ended up moving out of Boston or putting their kids in parochial schools.
Many of these same families then send their kids to Boston Latin exam school (if they get in), sometimes by "re-establishing residence" in Boston. Consequently, these families only care about the Boston public school system for its high schools, which are consequently far more wealthy and white than the lower grades.
So you see: Boston never asked MIT to see what they could have done better with the *existing* budget. They didn't ask MIT to watch out for parents' work schedules when daycare figured heavily into their children's lives — when so much of the student population are from low-income families.
They basically only listened to a certain slice of taxpayers (I speak euphemistically). It was political from the start, in the worst possible way.
---
Part of the reason the lottery was stressful — the other is rank racism — is because a bus route could theoretically put a young child on a 1hr+ bus ride to the other side of town. To make randomized school assignment work requires dedicated bus lanes and a lot more buses and drivers. So we should not only be spending MORE money on busing, but we should be MORE EFFICIENT with the money we have allocated to it.
---
Final word: it's perhaps a perfect stereotype that MIT engineers were oblivious to the human element. They did have the sincerity and grace of accepting that they missed that crucial aspect in their calculations. They made a terrible mistake (by not seeing the basic flaw in their results without having it pointed out to them), but they didn't become defensive. Rather, I feel the city itself failed its people.
"37 Swedish Women Learn About Statistics For The First Time".
I once had a friend and colleague who would point out the window and ask "does *that* look like 30% chance of rain to you?!" Not sure whether he ever planned to start a family or not, but my guess is he's ripe for an "accident".
Just as Apple's indirect presence at CES was never relevant, so is anyone else's. For example, I still have yet to encounter someone who uses voice control as the dominant control for *any* activity. I know many people who own Echos, Echo Dots, Ecobee with Alexa, Sonos One, etc yet none of them have admitted using Alexa other than for amusement purposes, and then only if they're situationally forced to (e.g. calling someone in a car).
Similarly, the vast majority of Apple users I know don't use any accessories on a mandatory basis except for cases and apps. Neither of those are very interesting anymore, although they remain dominant members of the Apple ecosystem.
That ghostly sound you might hear is just the volume of the crowd trying to hawk their wares. Pay them as much or as little mind as you like — just like you might have in the past.
Yes, if you got REALLY lucky, you might save money in the long term.
The history of government technology overhauls should indicate quite vividly that you not only spend tear-jerking amounts of money to upgrade your systems, you also spend a lot of time thereafter fixing it or throwing it all away and starting over again.
So I can't decide whether Mr. "The Cybers" man doesn't understand anything about technology, or he understands it so well that he is willing to lie to the American taxpayer about savings when what he actually means is to pump money into the (already wildly successful) technology sector. Either way, I wonder what his blue-collar supporters think about that....
> Even worse, the tool claimed to not store the passwords, but an acute observer found they were actually being inputted into a Google Docs spreadsheet.
As an agnostic, the popularity of Francis seemed quite justifiable thanks to his relatively liberal stances (for a pope, I mean). In fact, I was quite surprised at how far he was willing push his establishment. But I see no difference between his "expectation of violence if you say disrespectful things" and "women should expect to be raped if they dress provocatively".
Nothing new under the sun, sadly. If this is the best the Catholic church can offer, there's no hope for any religion to be even remotely progressive (euphemism for "rational"). It's no wonder they get made fun of constantly....
I love the arts, and in fact have been to see their excellent plays... but whoever Huntington Theater Company hire to run their calling campaign (for donations) needs to learn about the law. They've turned this liberal into an avid hater of one of the best theater companies in Boston!
Most Americans say they are Christians because they think itâ(TM)s the âoerightâ thing to say.... The truth is that most people are basically agnostic.
Americans believe that saying they're Christian is the right thing to say? In this day and age? Wow.
I think most people are in fact not agnostic at all. It's actually quite an uncomfortable admission to say you don't know the truth either way, that in fact it may be unknowable. That's what pushes people into religion or science, after all....
(I just measured it in my office in plain sight of my colleagues, with a ruler sticking out of my head). My hands would be mere inches away from the Kinect. How's that going to work?
For one thing, I'd have to lean back to bitchslap in Duke Nukem Forever, which frankly is a bit girly.
(Stay with me: there's a point to this story) The first time I had sushi I was a guest in some sort of luxurious retreat in Japan. I think each meal cost some $200-300 per person (in grad school I ate Jack in the Box for a whole year, to give you a sense of my wonderment). Needless to say, the meal was totally, utterly wasted on me. I actually disliked it, in fact. Nowadays I love sushi, yet to this day I can't pinpoint when I had that second meal of sushi. I just remember always loving sushi, except for that first meal. Somewhere between that first and the second meal the revelation came, unforced and unannounced.
Dr. Who was the same way for me. My first episode was David Tennant's second (I love love LOVE Tennant btw) and after it was over I just sat there scratching my head in bemusement. I was with my family-in-law so you know, when in Rome.... I thought it was a bit naff, to be honest (Earth is saved thanks to... I won't give it away, but come on: a beverage?!). Now I absolutely adore Dr. Who, yet I can't remember when I watched that second episode. I just seemed to always love it, except for the first time.
So my advice is: pick the first episodes of any particular actor who plays a modern Doctor -- i.e. Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith -- and if you don't like it outright, set the other episodes aside for awhile. Come back to it when you have a particularly boring afternoon when you can't think of anything interesting to do, and then watch the next episode. You'll probably find you have come to love it already!
P.S. I happen to like Tennant and Smith, so those get my vote for a first Doctor. Actually I think Smith may be the best of the modern Doctors, but this is so highly dependent on the quality of the writing that it's safe to say that if you don't like one of the three, you won't like the other two.
P.P.S. And, if you missed it: as others have mentioned, if you're an Amazon Premier member, all the modern Doctor Whos are free to watch on Instant Video.
That's, what, 28 incorrect base pairs out of 4000? I'm not a biologist, but is this considered an acceptable error rate? Even the hopes of 99.999% accuracy seems really awful when there are about 3 billion base pairs in a human genome.
I realize that we aren't going to be trying to make a cloned copy from this data, but what uses is this "good enough" for?
More than good enough for forensic work at least, I'd wager.
From Jane Belson's perspective any negative results can be blamed solely on her, but additional books can only add to the bottom line and she is long the option in case some of the nth books turn out to be good. Where is the downside, other than the desire to place Douglas Adam on a pristine pedestal? Which he'd have some choice words for, I'm sure.
What would be also great, for those people with more than one monitor -- say, three -- is to have the option of displaying several vertical panels, one with the original images as described, one with the digital text, and one with stuff of your choice, all squished into one browser window. Then you could pull the browser window across your screens and wallah! All the information you could want in 90-degrees of neck-turning.
The impact of this will depend on how widely it is reported in the media. Although the situation is better than it was even just two years ago, most people still don't give a flying frak about HD-whatchamacallsit. Geeks wanting the most capacity (Blu-Ray) + videophiles/Black-Friday-mavens-who-somehow-ended- up-with-an-HD-set wanting HD content now (HD-DVD) = still not enough to create a fuss over a failed launch demo.
Having said that, I'll personally throttle the guy who makes the Blu-Ray launch demo, if it fails. Blu-Ray has always sounded cooler; it's the one *I'd* want, and damned if I'm personally embarrassed by a technical glitch.
Certainly they could have done this with a 32-bit CPU, as someone above mentioned with HL2. OTOH, they could also let the GPU do other more important things while passing the high dynamic range work off to a 64-bit CPU. That is, given the same GPU and similarly-spec'd 32-bit and 64-bit CPUs, the 32-bit system could only run as fast as the 64-bit one if the HDR is turned off. Carrying all the data inherent in a wide dynamic range lends itself naturally to higher-bit CPUs.
What's keeping you from creating a filter in Gmail and clicking on "Skip Inbox" to achieve the same effect as you have in Yahoo Mail? Labels are infinitely better as they allow not only folder-like functionality but also multiple labels. That way you can have messages from your mistress and wife, labeled accordingly, and also have them show under "Ass in Trouble."
Best, of course, would be some hierarchical system like in IMatch, but one step at a time, I say.
Slashdot Mirror
> Because you want to copyright it and protect your IP. Just in case.
I assume by "IP" you mean "inner planets"?
Nearly 85% of the district had ended up with a new start time, and "In the end, the school start time quandary was more political than technical... This was a fundamentally human conflict, and all the computing power in the world couldn't solve it."
No, it wasn't 'political'. The algorithm successfully computed an optimal schedule for the students with regards to bus transport, but did not include any data at all about the optimal schedule for the parents.
Yes, I definitely agree that it wasn't "political" on the parents' part. To have described it so is a real slant at the genuine troubles parents of young children would have faced in terms of their own livelihoods had the new startup times gone into effect.
Rather, it became political by definition at the very *beginning* when Boston told MIT they wanted to reduce costs and have a later start basically just for the high schools — in particular, the highly desirous Boston Latin school.
Backing up: Boston is one of the rare (or maybe only?) school districts forced by law to desegregate their schools by randomizing school assignments. Recent reports show it is *dramatically* failing even so, mostly because the lottery system was so stressful for parents that many (mostly white) families ended up moving out of Boston or putting their kids in parochial schools.
Many of these same families then send their kids to Boston Latin exam school (if they get in), sometimes by "re-establishing residence" in Boston. Consequently, these families only care about the Boston public school system for its high schools, which are consequently far more wealthy and white than the lower grades.
So you see: Boston never asked MIT to see what they could have done better with the *existing* budget. They didn't ask MIT to watch out for parents' work schedules when daycare figured heavily into their children's lives — when so much of the student population are from low-income families.
They basically only listened to a certain slice of taxpayers (I speak euphemistically). It was political from the start, in the worst possible way.
---
Part of the reason the lottery was stressful — the other is rank racism — is because a bus route could theoretically put a young child on a 1hr+ bus ride to the other side of town. To make randomized school assignment work requires dedicated bus lanes and a lot more buses and drivers. So we should not only be spending MORE money on busing, but we should be MORE EFFICIENT with the money we have allocated to it.
---
Final word: it's perhaps a perfect stereotype that MIT engineers were oblivious to the human element. They did have the sincerity and grace of accepting that they missed that crucial aspect in their calculations. They made a terrible mistake (by not seeing the basic flaw in their results without having it pointed out to them), but they didn't become defensive. Rather, I feel the city itself failed its people.
"37 Swedish Women Learn About Statistics For The First Time".
I once had a friend and colleague who would point out the window and ask "does *that* look like 30% chance of rain to you?!" Not sure whether he ever planned to start a family or not, but my guess is he's ripe for an "accident".
Just as Apple's indirect presence at CES was never relevant, so is anyone else's. For example, I still have yet to encounter someone who uses voice control as the dominant control for *any* activity. I know many people who own Echos, Echo Dots, Ecobee with Alexa, Sonos One, etc yet none of them have admitted using Alexa other than for amusement purposes, and then only if they're situationally forced to (e.g. calling someone in a car).
Similarly, the vast majority of Apple users I know don't use any accessories on a mandatory basis except for cases and apps. Neither of those are very interesting anymore, although they remain dominant members of the Apple ecosystem.
That ghostly sound you might hear is just the volume of the crowd trying to hawk their wares. Pay them as much or as little mind as you like — just like you might have in the past.
The Russians are total amateurs. This is how you do world-class incompetence.
Yes, if you got REALLY lucky, you might save money in the long term.
The history of government technology overhauls should indicate quite vividly that you not only spend tear-jerking amounts of money to upgrade your systems, you also spend a lot of time thereafter fixing it or throwing it all away and starting over again.
So I can't decide whether Mr. "The Cybers" man doesn't understand anything about technology, or he understands it so well that he is willing to lie to the American taxpayer about savings when what he actually means is to pump money into the (already wildly successful) technology sector. Either way, I wonder what his blue-collar supporters think about that ....
Why is it being reported as news now?
If "the IRS" called me up and said I owed thousands of dollars in taxes, the first thing I'd do would be to call my accountant ...
I dare say the ones who fall hardest for this scam are the ones who definitely don't have an accountant. Don't be ludicrous.
> Even worse, the tool claimed to not store the passwords, but an acute observer found they were actually being inputted into a Google Docs spreadsheet.
I dunno, I thought he was kind of ugly.
Ohhhh, you mean *obtuse*? Sorry.
As an agnostic, the popularity of Francis seemed quite justifiable thanks to his relatively liberal stances (for a pope, I mean). In fact, I was quite surprised at how far he was willing push his establishment. But I see no difference between his "expectation of violence if you say disrespectful things" and "women should expect to be raped if they dress provocatively".
Nothing new under the sun, sadly. If this is the best the Catholic church can offer, there's no hope for any religion to be even remotely progressive (euphemism for "rational"). It's no wonder they get made fun of constantly ....
Oh wait, that's not a picture of the village. Kinda weirds me out.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0196229/quotes
I love the arts, and in fact have been to see their excellent plays ... but whoever Huntington Theater Company hire to run their calling campaign (for donations) needs to learn about the law. They've turned this liberal into an avid hater of one of the best theater companies in Boston!
... after running it through gzip?
Most Americans say they are Christians because they think itâ(TM)s the âoerightâ thing to say.... The truth is that most people are basically agnostic.
Americans believe that saying they're Christian is the right thing to say? In this day and age? Wow.
I think most people are in fact not agnostic at all. It's actually quite an uncomfortable admission to say you don't know the truth either way, that in fact it may be unknowable. That's what pushes people into religion or science, after all....
(I just measured it in my office in plain sight of my colleagues, with a ruler sticking out of my head). My hands would be mere inches away from the Kinect. How's that going to work?
For one thing, I'd have to lean back to bitchslap in Duke Nukem Forever, which frankly is a bit girly.
(Stay with me: there's a point to this story) The first time I had sushi I was a guest in some sort of luxurious retreat in Japan. I think each meal cost some $200-300 per person (in grad school I ate Jack in the Box for a whole year, to give you a sense of my wonderment). Needless to say, the meal was totally, utterly wasted on me. I actually disliked it, in fact. Nowadays I love sushi, yet to this day I can't pinpoint when I had that second meal of sushi. I just remember always loving sushi, except for that first meal. Somewhere between that first and the second meal the revelation came, unforced and unannounced.
Dr. Who was the same way for me. My first episode was David Tennant's second (I love love LOVE Tennant btw) and after it was over I just sat there scratching my head in bemusement. I was with my family-in-law so you know, when in Rome .... I thought it was a bit naff, to be honest (Earth is saved thanks to ... I won't give it away, but come on: a beverage?!). Now I absolutely adore Dr. Who, yet I can't remember when I watched that second episode. I just seemed to always love it, except for the first time.
So my advice is: pick the first episodes of any particular actor who plays a modern Doctor -- i.e. Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith -- and if you don't like it outright, set the other episodes aside for awhile. Come back to it when you have a particularly boring afternoon when you can't think of anything interesting to do, and then watch the next episode. You'll probably find you have come to love it already!
P.S. I happen to like Tennant and Smith, so those get my vote for a first Doctor. Actually I think Smith may be the best of the modern Doctors, but this is so highly dependent on the quality of the writing that it's safe to say that if you don't like one of the three, you won't like the other two.
P.P.S. And, if you missed it: as others have mentioned, if you're an Amazon Premier member, all the modern Doctor Whos are free to watch on Instant Video.
That's, what, 28 incorrect base pairs out of 4000? I'm not a biologist, but is this considered an acceptable error rate? Even the hopes of 99.999% accuracy seems really awful when there are about 3 billion base pairs in a human genome.
I realize that we aren't going to be trying to make a cloned copy from this data, but what uses is this "good enough" for?
More than good enough for forensic work at least, I'd wager.
From Jane Belson's perspective any negative results can be blamed solely on her, but additional books can only add to the bottom line and she is long the option in case some of the nth books turn out to be good. Where is the downside, other than the desire to place Douglas Adam on a pristine pedestal? Which he'd have some choice words for, I'm sure.
What would be also great, for those people with more than one monitor -- say, three -- is to have the option of displaying several vertical panels, one with the original images as described, one with the digital text, and one with stuff of your choice, all squished into one browser window. Then you could pull the browser window across your screens and wallah! All the information you could want in 90-degrees of neck-turning.
The impact of this will depend on how widely it is reported in the media. Although the situation is better than it was even just two years ago, most people still don't give a flying frak about HD-whatchamacallsit. Geeks wanting the most capacity (Blu-Ray) + videophiles/Black-Friday-mavens-who-somehow-ended- up-with-an-HD-set wanting HD content now (HD-DVD) = still not enough to create a fuss over a failed launch demo.
Having said that, I'll personally throttle the guy who makes the Blu-Ray launch demo, if it fails. Blu-Ray has always sounded cooler; it's the one *I'd* want, and damned if I'm personally embarrassed by a technical glitch.
Certainly they could have done this with a 32-bit CPU, as someone above mentioned with HL2. OTOH, they could also let the GPU do other more important things while passing the high dynamic range work off to a 64-bit CPU. That is, given the same GPU and similarly-spec'd 32-bit and 64-bit CPUs, the 32-bit system could only run as fast as the 64-bit one if the HDR is turned off. Carrying all the data inherent in a wide dynamic range lends itself naturally to higher-bit CPUs.
What's keeping you from creating a filter in Gmail and clicking on "Skip Inbox" to achieve the same effect as you have in Yahoo Mail? Labels are infinitely better as they allow not only folder-like functionality but also multiple labels. That way you can have messages from your mistress and wife, labeled accordingly, and also have them show under "Ass in Trouble."
Best, of course, would be some hierarchical system like in IMatch, but one step at a time, I say.