I'd like to see the formal business case you made for posting on Slashdot.
Well, it was originally a 78 page densely-written scenario analysis document circulated four weeks ago to more than 20 executives and managers. They liked it, so I was authorized to spend a week making 45 slides to reinforce the case, and these were presented two weeks ago to a specially selected focus group of at least 30 managers and engineers. We discussed it for a whole day at the meeting. There were lots of fancy headings, beautiful fonts, pie charts, animations, etc., and I got excited and did a lot of arm-waving which helped persuade the focus group to pass the business case onwards. I'm not sure which team they passed it to, but our processes must be streamlined, because it already got approved today, which was pretty fast.
Anyway here it is, reduced disgracefully down to a single paragraph:
"By encouraging all businesses to waste effort making business cases to justify every decision (including trivial ones), we can cripple our competitors in terms of costs (their management overheads skyrocket), reaction time (all their decisions get delayed), and flexibility (they must omit/neglect some possible decisions). Posting as an AC on Slashdot will advance this goal."
And for damaged reputation and lost customers, due to those went to one of the seized sites, freaked out, then never visited again. Definitely damage was done to Puerto80 Projects (their owner), but can the the DOJ escape liability by claiming the seizure was not unlawful?
The "innovation" word has certainly been abused in business contexts. However, to assert that it is the most abused word is less clear. After all, competition for that accolade (in a manner of speaking) is fairly stiff. There are many words from the MBA lexicon with even greater claim, such as leverage, incentivize, and similar linguistic horrors.
The newest XFCE + Compiz on Ubuntu 12.04 doesn't seem to be stable enough for me, though. Not sure which of them is to blame (or if it's NVidia's drivers, something else...)
Probably an issue with the Nvidia... the maker of graphics interface hardwareand/or drivers that really suck. The only one of our PCs that we don't run Compiz on is a laptop with Nvidia graphics (it uses xfce OK, just not Compiz). We're unlikely to ever buy another PC crippled by Nvidia graphics. The other laptop and both of our desktop PCs have ATI/AMD graphics, and run Compiz just fine on xfce.
Gnome 3 and Unity collaborated on it (did some MS/Apple plant steer them into uselessness?). A pox on both of them, anyway.
All of our home PCs have migrated to Xubuntu, because xfce gives an actual working desktop. And with compiz, it's snazzier than OSX or Win7.
It might be easier just to make everyone wear transparent clothing and live in glass houses.
Why bother with the clothing at all? The global warming is at our doorstep and will remove the need for this useless artifact.
Sounds attractive, and I'd vote for it, but only in some parts of the world. Consider a place like Finland, instead.
In summer, there are mosquitoes, midges, blackfly, horse fly, deer ked, and other blood-sucking and/or biting horrors. The insect-repellent sprays, lotions, and suchlike which allegedly deter those buggers don't work very well (and might be unpleasant on one's delicate bits). I'll take the transparent clothing for summer.
In winter, there are just about no insects to be found (at least, not outside). However, when it's around -40C, the transparent clothing would need a good insulation value, and would likely be layered and thick so its transparency would be somewhat debatable. And have you seen the boots we have to wear outside in winter?
Capitalism has nothing to do with this. Greed, corruption, monopol, and cronyism are not part of capitalism. Not even close. In fact, real capitalism cannot exist in an atmosphere that is so rife with these things.
Ahem, greed is central to capitalism. On the other hand, corruption and cronyism are indicative of a failure of regulation rather than of the economic system (whether capitalist or not), and monopoly is potentially but not necessarily an evil.
Dear Nigerian citizen. I am the son of the late US President Ronald Reagan. I have recently come into the possession of the sum of FIVE US DOLLARS which I need your help in hiding from the US Internal Revenue Service...
Try for MINUS ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND American Dollars instead. Maybe you'll get lucky...
The article quotes a Microsoft spokesperson as saying: "We don’t use this data to identify, contact or target advertising to our users and we don’t share it with third parties."
Now, if they had said "don't and won't", then that would mean something. Just saying "don't" means they don't do it today with no guarantee about what they might do with all that data at some future date. Color me unimpressed.
A quibbler might also note that the spokesperson only mentioned the data itself, not results extracted from it. Color me unimpressed yet again.
when my 8-year-old laptop no longer runs adequately with Xubuntu.
This day may very well never come.
Sooner or later, it will come. The laptop won't last forever, and if it fails, it won't run much of anything adequately. Alternatively, the support for the Mobility Radeon 9600 might some day be dropped from the graphics driver, which would be an annoyance. BTW, the barely legible sticker on the laptop says it's got a 9700, but diagnostics say it's actually a 9600; just one of the pitfalls of getting an early model...
Exactly. In fact, there's even a law which says so. Betteridge's Law of Headlines states that any headline which asks a question can be answered with "no". The headline of TFS provides a perfect example.
But even if you use those opt outs on your new computer you still pay the Microsoft tax.
Not necessarily. I got a euro100 rebate on each of the PCs I bought a couple of years ago, as compensation for getting them without Windows. Actually, they came without any OS, just blank disks on which Ubuntu was promptly installed (later converted to Xubuntu to avoid Unity).
For laptops, it's trickier, but supposedly still possible. I'll cross that bridge also, when my 8-year-old laptop no longer runs adequately with Xubuntu.
If that comes in the form of a graduate degree, so be it.
Exactly. But make sure your boss is on-side before trying to convert learning into academic letters while working.
My learning on the job (at the R end of R&D) was producing so much in academic results (I've published quite a lot of it also) that I was easily able to regurgitate some of my personal work as a MSc thesis. Later, a bigger chunk in another area became a PhD thesis. Doing this on-the-job, however, required support from my boss, as I also had to do a load of courses and sit exams to get the required credits. Scheduling your work around class timetables can be tricky, even if you keep the work hours balanced.
Our Mercedes cars have a system which uses a knob which you twist/push in the center armrest. It's far superior to a touch interface for the GPS navigator, and mp3/radio control (even video once the car is stopped).
I think GP meant rubber hose cryptanalysis. Professional opinion is divided as to whether decryption can be even faster if baseball bat cryptanalysis or high voltage cryptanalysis is used instead.
TFA and TFS should be modded +5 Funny.
One suspects that there are back doors all over the iPhone, in addition to the various apps that have access to remarkable amounts of stored material and regularly send it home (or elsewhere). Otherwise its alleged impenetrability would hardly be promoted by law enforcement. It's like Brer Rabbit pleading "please don't throw me in the briar patch".
TFS and TFA state that the "White House unexpectedly cut short the time period for the petition", and indeed, the petition's page now says "The petition you are trying to access has expired, because it failed to meet the signature threshold."
It would be nice if EPIC provided information on (i) how long a petition normally gets before it expires, and (ii) how old this petition was when it was abruptly terminated. We know that it had garnered 22500 out of the 25000 signatures required, but how much time was taken away by the early termination of the petition?
It's a pity neither of those editorial articles mentions what the false positive rate is. This is critical.
Actually, they don't even mention whether the algorithm identifies negatives as well as positives (i.e. those who can be ruled out of any follow-up investigations etc.), and if so, what the false negative rate is. This is also critical.
The article itself in Phys. Rev. Lett. is behind a paywall. Maybe it addresses the false positive issue, and the positive vs negative issue.
A 15% success rate isn't anything to be crowing about, unless the false positive rate is near zero.
After reading TFS and the articles linked therein, I could find no mention of false positives. This is a critical issue for any classification system which is attempting to identify a small subset of a large population, especially when there are serious consequences for those identified. In fact, the articles did not even mention whether the classification was into positive-vs-unclassified, or positive-vs-unclassified-vs-negative. In the latter case, the rate of false negatives would also be of interest.
Slashdot Mirror
Everything we do has a business case attached
I'd like to see the formal business case you made for posting on Slashdot.
Well, it was originally a 78 page densely-written scenario analysis document circulated four weeks ago to more than 20 executives and managers. They liked it, so I was authorized to spend a week making 45 slides to reinforce the case, and these were presented two weeks ago to a specially selected focus group of at least 30 managers and engineers. We discussed it for a whole day at the meeting. There were lots of fancy headings, beautiful fonts, pie charts, animations, etc., and I got excited and did a lot of arm-waving which helped persuade the focus group to pass the business case onwards. I'm not sure which team they passed it to, but our processes must be streamlined, because it already got approved today, which was pretty fast.
Anyway here it is, reduced disgracefully down to a single paragraph:
"By encouraging all businesses to waste effort making business cases to justify every decision (including trivial ones), we can cripple our competitors in terms of costs (their management overheads skyrocket), reaction time (all their decisions get delayed), and flexibility (they must omit/neglect some possible decisions). Posting as an AC on Slashdot will advance this goal."
What about the lost money? Time to sue.
And for damaged reputation and lost customers, due to those went to one of the seized sites, freaked out, then never visited again. Definitely damage was done to Puerto80 Projects (their owner), but can the the DOJ escape liability by claiming the seizure was not unlawful?
The "innovation" word has certainly been abused in business contexts. However, to assert that it is the most abused word is less clear. After all, competition for that accolade (in a manner of speaking) is fairly stiff. There are many words from the MBA lexicon with even greater claim, such as leverage, incentivize, and similar linguistic horrors.
The newest XFCE + Compiz on Ubuntu 12.04 doesn't seem to be stable enough for me, though. Not sure which of them is to blame (or if it's NVidia's drivers, something else...)
Probably an issue with the Nvidia... the maker of graphics interface hardwareand/or drivers that really suck. The only one of our PCs that we don't run Compiz on is a laptop with Nvidia graphics (it uses xfce OK, just not Compiz). We're unlikely to ever buy another PC crippled by Nvidia graphics. The other laptop and both of our desktop PCs have ATI/AMD graphics, and run Compiz just fine on xfce.
Gnome3 has killed the Linux Desktop. Thanks.
Gnome 3 and Unity collaborated on it (did some MS/Apple plant steer them into uselessness?). A pox on both of them, anyway.
All of our home PCs have migrated to Xubuntu, because xfce gives an actual working desktop. And with compiz, it's snazzier than OSX or Win7.
It might be easier just to make everyone wear transparent clothing and live in glass houses.
Why bother with the clothing at all? The global warming is at our doorstep and will remove the need for this useless artifact.
Sounds attractive, and I'd vote for it, but only in some parts of the world. Consider a place like Finland, instead.
In summer, there are mosquitoes, midges, blackfly, horse fly, deer ked, and other blood-sucking and/or biting horrors. The insect-repellent sprays, lotions, and suchlike which allegedly deter those buggers don't work very well (and might be unpleasant on one's delicate bits). I'll take the transparent clothing for summer.
In winter, there are just about no insects to be found (at least, not outside). However, when it's around -40C, the transparent clothing would need a good insulation value, and would likely be layered and thick so its transparency would be somewhat debatable. And have you seen the boots we have to wear outside in winter?
Capitalism has nothing to do with this. Greed, corruption, monopol, and cronyism are not part of capitalism. Not even close. In fact, real capitalism cannot exist in an atmosphere that is so rife with these things.
Ahem, greed is central to capitalism. On the other hand, corruption and cronyism are indicative of a failure of regulation rather than of the economic system (whether capitalist or not), and monopoly is potentially but not necessarily an evil.
Dear Nigerian citizen. I am the son of the late US President Ronald Reagan. I have recently come into the possession of the sum of FIVE US DOLLARS which I need your help in hiding from the US Internal Revenue Service ...
Try for MINUS ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND American Dollars instead. Maybe you'll get lucky...
From TFS and TFA:
The article quotes a Microsoft spokesperson as saying: "We don’t use this data to identify, contact or target advertising to our users and we don’t share it with third parties."
Now, if they had said "don't and won't", then that would mean something. Just saying "don't" means they don't do it today with no guarantee about what they might do with all that data at some future date. Color me unimpressed.
A quibbler might also note that the spokesperson only mentioned the data itself, not results extracted from it. Color me unimpressed yet again.
when my 8-year-old laptop no longer runs adequately with Xubuntu.
This day may very well never come.
Sooner or later, it will come. The laptop won't last forever, and if it fails, it won't run much of anything adequately. Alternatively, the support for the Mobility Radeon 9600 might some day be dropped from the graphics driver, which would be an annoyance. BTW, the barely legible sticker on the laptop says it's got a 9700, but diagnostics say it's actually a 9600; just one of the pitfalls of getting an early model...
An obvious shoe waiting to be dropped.
s/dropped/thrown/
Much more fitting...
Exactly. In fact, there's even a law which says so. Betteridge's Law of Headlines states that any headline which asks a question can be answered with "no". The headline of TFS provides a perfect example.
Does Windows 8 have an opt-out feature?
Yes, they do.
But even if you use those opt outs on your new computer you still pay the Microsoft tax.
Not necessarily. I got a euro100 rebate on each of the PCs I bought a couple of years ago, as compensation for getting them without Windows. Actually, they came without any OS, just blank disks on which Ubuntu was promptly installed (later converted to Xubuntu to avoid Unity).
For laptops, it's trickier, but supposedly still possible. I'll cross that bridge also, when my 8-year-old laptop no longer runs adequately with Xubuntu.
Linux will be ready for the desktop in 5 years time.
And Windows will still be struggling to get out of the trash can...
Well, it looks like a rectangular technicolor yawn to me.
I suggest pulling random numbers out of uranus.
But, but, ... all I get that way is some brownian numbers!
If that comes in the form of a graduate degree, so be it.
Exactly. But make sure your boss is on-side before trying to convert learning into academic letters while working.
My learning on the job (at the R end of R&D) was producing so much in academic results (I've published quite a lot of it also) that I was easily able to regurgitate some of my personal work as a MSc thesis. Later, a bigger chunk in another area became a PhD thesis. Doing this on-the-job, however, required support from my boss, as I also had to do a load of courses and sit exams to get the required credits. Scheduling your work around class timetables can be tricky, even if you keep the work hours balanced.
Our Mercedes cars have a system which uses a knob which you twist/push in the center armrest. It's far superior to a touch interface for the GPS navigator, and mp3/radio control (even video once the car is stopped).
Stuff touch interfaces for this kind of thing.
what's rubber hose cryptography?
I think GP meant rubber hose cryptanalysis. Professional opinion is divided as to whether decryption can be even faster if baseball bat cryptanalysis or high voltage cryptanalysis is used instead.
TFA and TFS should be modded +5 Funny.
One suspects that there are back doors all over the iPhone, in addition to the various apps that have access to remarkable amounts of stored material and regularly send it home (or elsewhere). Otherwise its alleged impenetrability would hardly be promoted by law enforcement. It's like Brer Rabbit pleading "please don't throw me in the briar patch".
It says they're "tied to at least" blah-blah companies.
They're asking for it, so who brought the whip?
TFS and TFA state that the "White House unexpectedly cut short the time period for the petition", and indeed, the petition's page now says "The petition you are trying to access has expired, because it failed to meet the signature threshold."
It would be nice if EPIC provided information on (i) how long a petition normally gets before it expires, and (ii) how old this petition was when it was abruptly terminated. We know that it had garnered 22500 out of the 25000 signatures required, but how much time was taken away by the early termination of the petition?
Trace me. Send me my current whereabouts ftw. Bonus points for GPS coordinates. You have 1 hour. Go.
You are directly above the center of the Earth.
This representation of your whereabouts is accurate to millimeters. Now pay up...
It's a pity neither of those editorial articles mentions what the false positive rate is. This is critical.
Actually, they don't even mention whether the algorithm identifies negatives as well as positives (i.e. those who can be ruled out of any follow-up investigations etc.), and if so, what the false negative rate is. This is also critical.
The article itself in Phys. Rev. Lett. is behind a paywall. Maybe it addresses the false positive issue, and the positive vs negative issue.
A 15% success rate isn't anything to be crowing about, unless the false positive rate is near zero.
After reading TFS and the articles linked therein, I could find no mention of false positives. This is a critical issue for any classification system which is attempting to identify a small subset of a large population, especially when there are serious consequences for those identified. In fact, the articles did not even mention whether the classification was into positive-vs-unclassified, or positive-vs-unclassified-vs-negative. In the latter case, the rate of false negatives would also be of interest.