The idea was that everyone can be identified with only the birth date, gender and ZIP code? So... err... There is, in fact, not even one ZIP code that has two people living there of the same gender that happen to share a birthday? Sure, to have the year coincide would take a bit more than just the date itself but it's hard for me to imagine that this could be true.
Well, there is some collision, 13% of the people have one. But 87% don't. You pass the 87% likelihood that there will be at least one pair (assuming equal birthdates over the last 80 years and equal gender ratios) at 58,438 people in a zip code. Since there are ~300,000,000 people in the US, this would require 5,134 zip codes (if people were distributed evenly). There are over 40,000 zip codes, so even taking into account underpopulated zip codes, that seems pretty reasonable to me.
Yeah, I liked travelling to the US better when all I had to do was check the correct boxes on the amusing green form
Well, lying on that form is a crime. So if you come into the country under false pretenses, they can legally arrest you, whereas I'm not sure what legal standing the US has to prosecute, say war crimes committed in Bosnia.
So, despite the Birthday Paradox, they can still identify 87% of Americans? For some reason I'm under the impression that there are a lot more zip codes with more than 366 people (heck, even 1000 to call upon 3 or 4 duplicates that should cover gender differences) than there are zip codes under that amount.
Well, as other people have pointed out, adding the year limits the number of collisions. So factor in year and maybe you need 80x the people to get the same obscurity. And you said 366 people. That enough to ensure that at least one birthday (not date) coincides (apparently ignoring Feb 29th). If that was true, and there was exactly one collision, than 364/366 of them could be uniquely identified by birthdate and zip code.
If you do the math on birthdates (assuming that every date over the last 80 years is equally likely), you end up with 29,219 people being necessary to get below the 87% threshold. Double that (again, rough maths) to account for two genders and you get 58,438. There are ~300 Million people in the US, so you would need to have at least 5,134 zip codes to divide people into these is small enough chunks. There are over 40,000 zip codes in the US. So it seems quite reasonable to assume that level of specificity once you take into account the oversimplifications I made in the back of the envelope math.
Seeing as the caller specifically said AK-47, the cop's response should have been "AK-47's are perfectly legal to carry in the open."
Or the cops act like the caller probably doesn't know the difference between an AK-47 and any other type of gun. And the caller didn't, or the description would have been different.
In debugging, make the user repeat steps, because their analysis is likely off. Distrust (and verify) any statements that rquire specialized knowledge/judgement calls.
Also, even if it was an AK-47, the cops should drive by and talk to the guy. The guy was scaring the neighbors, and while what he's doing is perfectly legal, it may be worth being close by in case of an incident/talking to the guy to let him know the police are close by/insuring that everything is okay. I have no objections to a cop asking someone what he's doing in that situation -- as long as it's a question not a demand. Defusing situations is part of the reason we have cops.
It's funny that they are in a constant fight to stop stuff that contributes so much to the value of what they're selling to us.
It's only because you misunderstand what Nintendo is selling. They're giving you subsidized hardware, and selling the rights to you as a consumer to big companies.
The only reason they care if you own a DS/Wii is because you then buy games; they lose money on the actual system. So obviously they only want the system to be used for games they get a cut of. And obviously, in their mind, homebrew is as evil as piracy. Because it's not the violation of copyright X Y or Z that hurts their profits, it's not buying X Y or Z.
Five million dollars in bail, actually. And bail is based not only on the crime, but also on the person's resources and ability to leave. It's a discouragement to skip out on the trial.
W....T....F....? "Well he hasn't beat any other customers so we're not going to do anything" Verizon said. Are you frickin' kidding me? Not only did this guy get no jail or even a fine, but he kept his job?
Hey, labor is hard to come by. It's not like there are a lot of overqualified people all out looking for whatever jobs they can get.
You mean completely useless and pointless things around the content like favorite & history menus and tabs too, right?
No, it should have this basic features of browsers. The ones I've used for the better part of a decade.
However, since then, more crap has been spent on making it pretty. And unique. I don't want unique/clever. I want it to work the way every other window in my OS does, by looking like the OS's windows (note, I'm not running Linux). That's what they're wating their time on.
People love their colors and themes.
Not color-blind people. Nor me for that matter. I think I still have the default look to every desktop I've ever seen (with the exception of when I'm learning about a new OS and want to learn how.)
you can buy a car without a radio, or without air conditioning, but this is not a car so it is not the perfect analogy,
Also, I don't believe you can buy a car without a radio or air conditioning anymore.
PC makers should give customers what they want and if that includes selling desktops & laptops without windows or without any OS whatsoever on it then that is what they should do
Except people want their computer to work out of the box. So OEMs install an OS. Most people want Windows (judge their motivations however you like).
Personally, I hate tomatos. Tomatos are actually quite expensive. I'm sick of having to pay for tomatos when I order a hamburger. Why is there a built in tomato tax? Evil tomato producers.
That is, decreased price will always result in increased demand
Blatently untrue. Oftentimes, sure. Usually, yeah. Always, certainly not. Not only can decreaded price not increase demand, but there are some products which, when price is decreased, demand followed.
Example, if the "I'm rich" app went from $999.99 down to $900, more likely fewer people would buy it. Certainly if it went down to $999 dollars.
For very high fixed costs, the market leads to monopoly or oligopoly as economies of scale work... but a reduction in unit cost, if it allows pricing flexibility, will tend to a reduction in price.
Sure, on goods where the demand curve will give them more units. But the decrease in price will not be the same as, nor even necessarily proportional to, the decrease in costs. It could be more, but that would involve a strange demand curve. Much more likely it's significantly less.
But I asked for an example. It's hard to find one. That's because typically cost savings decrease the unit price of a good by less than the quantum in pricing (you never see goods for ****.97). To the degree to which it does decrease the price, it only decreases the wholesale price. Pricing for consumers isn't affected by a two-cent reduction.
. All of Apple's marketing and branding has changed the shape of the demand curves for their products. That's a function of their marketing success, and the gullibility of potential buyers. That does not mean that economics does not apply.
The laws of economics do not state that lower prices lead to more purchasers. Many goods work like that, but not all.
Keep in mind that in the long term, for an ideal free market, sale price approaches marginal production cost.
In a simplified world without brand names (luxery goods whose selling point is exclusivity), with infinte access to infinitly patient capital (otherwise many businesses cannot be started), without any fixed costs (otherwise selling units at marginal production cost is a money loser... and this implies no recouping/paying off of startup costs, hence no startup loans either, which means see point two), intellectual property protection (without which good luck getting R and D funding), perfectly rational actors, etc.
Wear the special glasses (small and compact, not the prototype bulky ones) and everything you look at gets a label explaining what it is, stare at it and it gives you more detail, museums, art galleries and similar can finally remove labels from exhibits and people can get the more info than those audio commentaries while they look round at random and at their own speed....
Given the human field of vision, and the ability to swivel my eyeballs around to look at different objects, how would glasses tell where I was looking?
In all those cases, you would be the author (assuming we are talking about your work in Garage Band, and ignoring the monitor display since it is uncopyrightable). Therefore you would claim the copyright.
However, in Wolfrum Alpha's case, you contribute no original content (a search string). Nor can the data that Wolfram gives back to you (facts) be considered original content eligible for copyright protection. However, their method of organizing the data IS protectable by copyright, if it's creative.
Look at this search. None of the data would be protected, and I doubt that the organization top-to-bottom would be. But the organization plus the color would be. You couldn't reproduce a close replica of the presentation.
Not legal advice. Although if yoy want my legal advice, it can be yours for a modest* fee.
My second favorite are the menus that start with "Please listen carefully as our options have changed blah blah blah..." It seems, almost invariably, that those messages just become permanent. Someone changes the system and forgets they added that message or never bothers to update it.
Hey, I programmed that system. That message is prepended to the menu anytime the menu changes. Exactly one week after the message has changed the system automatically changes the menu to remove the prepended message. There's no way that message constantly appears.
If you don't like cookies, block them...
What's the problem with that?
I block cookies, javascript and all plugins (with the exception of my whitelist). The problem is that more and more sites annoyingly (and uselessly) require these to work. I'm fine not having a draggable map, but ever since GoogleMaps, every map site has become reliant on Javascript. Half the random sites bitch if I have cookies off. Etc.
Much like the "works best in [Browser X]" these annoying additions are being used in the place of, not as a suppliment to, standard webfare.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there is some collision, 13% of the people have one. But 87% don't. You pass the 87% likelihood that there will be at least one pair (assuming equal birthdates over the last 80 years and equal gender ratios) at 58,438 people in a zip code. Since there are ~300,000,000 people in the US, this would require 5,134 zip codes (if people were distributed evenly). There are over 40,000 zip codes, so even taking into account underpopulated zip codes, that seems pretty reasonable to me.
Well, lying on that form is a crime. So if you come into the country under false pretenses, they can legally arrest you, whereas I'm not sure what legal standing the US has to prosecute, say war crimes committed in Bosnia.
Well, as other people have pointed out, adding the year limits the number of collisions. So factor in year and maybe you need 80x the people to get the same obscurity. And you said 366 people. That enough to ensure that at least one birthday (not date) coincides (apparently ignoring Feb 29th). If that was true, and there was exactly one collision, than 364/366 of them could be uniquely identified by birthdate and zip code.
If you do the math on birthdates (assuming that every date over the last 80 years is equally likely), you end up with 29,219 people being necessary to get below the 87% threshold. Double that (again, rough maths) to account for two genders and you get 58,438. There are ~300 Million people in the US, so you would need to have at least 5,134 zip codes to divide people into these is small enough chunks. There are over 40,000 zip codes in the US. So it seems quite reasonable to assume that level of specificity once you take into account the oversimplifications I made in the back of the envelope math.
Or the cops act like the caller probably doesn't know the difference between an AK-47 and any other type of gun. And the caller didn't, or the description would have been different.
In debugging, make the user repeat steps, because their analysis is likely off. Distrust (and verify) any statements that rquire specialized knowledge/judgement calls.
Also, even if it was an AK-47, the cops should drive by and talk to the guy. The guy was scaring the neighbors, and while what he's doing is perfectly legal, it may be worth being close by in case of an incident/talking to the guy to let him know the police are close by/insuring that everything is okay. I have no objections to a cop asking someone what he's doing in that situation -- as long as it's a question not a demand. Defusing situations is part of the reason we have cops.
It's only because you misunderstand what Nintendo is selling. They're giving you subsidized hardware, and selling the rights to you as a consumer to big companies.
The only reason they care if you own a DS/Wii is because you then buy games; they lose money on the actual system. So obviously they only want the system to be used for games they get a cut of. And obviously, in their mind, homebrew is as evil as piracy. Because it's not the violation of copyright X Y or Z that hurts their profits, it's not buying X Y or Z.
Well, Microsoft has the Live network, that can allow Windows machines to play against 360's. See Shadowrun
Five million dollars in bail, actually. And bail is based not only on the crime, but also on the person's resources and ability to leave. It's a discouragement to skip out on the trial.
Hey, labor is hard to come by. It's not like there are a lot of overqualified people all out looking for whatever jobs they can get.
No, it should have this basic features of browsers. The ones I've used for the better part of a decade.
However, since then, more crap has been spent on making it pretty. And unique. I don't want unique/clever. I want it to work the way every other window in my OS does, by looking like the OS's windows (note, I'm not running Linux). That's what they're wating their time on.
Not color-blind people. Nor me for that matter. I think I still have the default look to every desktop I've ever seen (with the exception of when I'm learning about a new OS and want to learn how.)
Also, I don't believe you can buy a car without a radio or air conditioning anymore.
Except people want their computer to work out of the box. So OEMs install an OS. Most people want Windows (judge their motivations however you like).
Personally, I hate tomatos. Tomatos are actually quite expensive. I'm sick of having to pay for tomatos when I order a hamburger. Why is there a built in tomato tax? Evil tomato producers.
Dear lord, you pervert.
8 should clearly be replaced by a #define. Also, the #define should come first:
if ( MAGIC_NUMBER == C )
The first time you accidentally type '=' instead of '==', you'll thank me.
Blatently untrue. Oftentimes, sure. Usually, yeah. Always, certainly not. Not only can decreaded price not increase demand, but there are some products which, when price is decreased, demand followed.
Example, if the "I'm rich" app went from $999.99 down to $900, more likely fewer people would buy it. Certainly if it went down to $999 dollars.
Sure, on goods where the demand curve will give them more units. But the decrease in price will not be the same as, nor even necessarily proportional to, the decrease in costs. It could be more, but that would involve a strange demand curve. Much more likely it's significantly less.
But I asked for an example. It's hard to find one. That's because typically cost savings decrease the unit price of a good by less than the quantum in pricing (you never see goods for ****.97). To the degree to which it does decrease the price, it only decreases the wholesale price. Pricing for consumers isn't affected by a two-cent reduction.
The laws of economics do not state that lower prices lead to more purchasers. Many goods work like that, but not all.
Example in a differentiatable product? A product with high fixed costs?
In a simplified world without brand names (luxery goods whose selling point is exclusivity), with infinte access to infinitly patient capital (otherwise many businesses cannot be started), without any fixed costs (otherwise selling units at marginal production cost is a money loser... and this implies no recouping/paying off of startup costs, hence no startup loans either, which means see point two), intellectual property protection (without which good luck getting R and D funding), perfectly rational actors, etc.
Especially that line. Most browsers include that functionality, at least via add-on. Opera supports it natively.
Useful, sure. Unique, not hardly.
Interesting site. Haven't found any gaze-tracking yet, but lots of other interesting ideas.
Given the human field of vision, and the ability to swivel my eyeballs around to look at different objects, how would glasses tell where I was looking?
The Board tells Jobs the CEO what to do. Jobs, Chairman of the Board and major stockholder, tells the Board what to do.
I wish my radio shack carried obscure electronics components. Trying to find anything more complex then wire there is futile.
Disagree all you like. The facts agree with the sentiment.
It wasn't the first mass-deletion. It was just the first mass-deletion to get a lot of attention. This effect was in large part due to work deleted.
Hell, did you even know they deleted Animal Farm at the same time?
I'm not trying to say it was okay or shouldn't have been news now. I'm just commenting that it wasn't, and should have been, news a lot earlier.
In all those cases, you would be the author (assuming we are talking about your work in Garage Band, and ignoring the monitor display since it is uncopyrightable). Therefore you would claim the copyright.
However, in Wolfrum Alpha's case, you contribute no original content (a search string). Nor can the data that Wolfram gives back to you (facts) be considered original content eligible for copyright protection. However, their method of organizing the data IS protectable by copyright, if it's creative.
Look at this search. None of the data would be protected, and I doubt that the organization top-to-bottom would be. But the organization plus the color would be. You couldn't reproduce a close replica of the presentation.
Not legal advice. Although if yoy want my legal advice, it can be yours for a modest* fee.
*Fee includes cost of sending me to law school.
That wouldn't be a creative work.
Hey, I programmed that system. That message is prepended to the menu anytime the menu changes. Exactly one week after the message has changed the system automatically changes the menu to remove the prepended message. There's no way that message constantly appears.
*checks logs*
Wait a second...
I block cookies, javascript and all plugins (with the exception of my whitelist). The problem is that more and more sites annoyingly (and uselessly) require these to work. I'm fine not having a draggable map, but ever since GoogleMaps, every map site has become reliant on Javascript. Half the random sites bitch if I have cookies off. Etc.
Much like the "works best in [Browser X]" these annoying additions are being used in the place of, not as a suppliment to, standard webfare.