Slashdot Mirror


User: brownerthanu

brownerthanu's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
20
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 20

  1. Re:I wish I could do this! on Lessig's Mayday PAC Scrambling To Cross Crowd Funding Finish Line · · Score: 4, Informative

    it has to at least have the appearance of being a continual stream

    Yes I think you are right. I, personally, am willing to support the fund year after year. I hope others will too.

  2. Re:Creative Commons on Lessig's Mayday PAC Scrambling To Cross Crowd Funding Finish Line · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes. He has a long history of general badassery. There are only a few people who I can think of who have the reputation and intelligence to properly navigate a project of this scale, and he is certainly one of them. I really hope that the fund makes it through to the next stage. It looks like it will.

  3. Re:I checked The Onion... on State Rep. Says Biking Is Not Earth Friendly Because Breathing Produces CO2 · · Score: 1
  4. Antisocial on Ask Slashdot: Software To Help Stay On Task? · · Score: 1

    Any time I start to waste time randomly surfing I turn it on for 40 minutes. It helps to keep the habit from gaining a foothold. http://anti-social.cc/

  5. Re:WRONG! Guess again. on Pink Floyd Give In To Digital Downloads · · Score: 1

    Lol. Okay. I don't know if you've seen Roger Waters recently, but he's come a long way from the bitter man he was in his youth. People change and mellow with age, thankfully.

  6. Give the old guys a break on Pink Floyd Give In To Digital Downloads · · Score: 1

    They are allowed to roll with the times.

  7. Re:Nothing personal on Avoiding DMCA Woes As an Indy Game Developer? · · Score: 2

    Agreed. That game is Pacman. Time to drop the charade of technicalities.

  8. Re:really? on 200 Students Admit Cheating After Professor's Online Rant · · Score: 1

    I agree that for some excellent students, it will be hard to claim that they cheated, but for a large portion of the cheaters, it will be easy. Remember, I'm not claiming that the only data used would be the scores from this test. Other sources of data: The fact that it's known there was a test bank, which allows us to claim that cheating occurred. Getting people to confess (see 'the prisoner's dilemma'). Analysis of friend groups. Past grades.

  9. Re:really? on 200 Students Admit Cheating After Professor's Online Rant · · Score: 1
    Less useful, yes. Students with better records will have better cases. Students who decided to change their lives, do better in school and started with that test are screwed, though they might show different patterns of proficiency than the cheaters. Factors such as position on the tests bank pages, or overall order of test bank questions will influence the patterns of correct questions for the cheaters.

    Once you have your 'suspects' are identified you work on the stronger cases via social pressure. As people confess, your algorithm gets more refined. The beauty of the problem is there are a large number of subjects, and a large number of cheaters. It would be fun detective work, except for the fact that that the situation is ethically depressing.

  10. Re:really? on 200 Students Admit Cheating After Professor's Online Rant · · Score: 1

    Nice correction, but you should know that when the pattern is spread across hundreds of students, the probability of that the outside factor is not cheating goes to zero. Take a statistics class. You'll get it.

  11. Re:really? on 200 Students Admit Cheating After Professor's Online Rant · · Score: 1

    On every test there are sets of questions that large amount of students get wrong, because of lack of emphasis in the classroom, or they are less obvious to study for. If there is an outside factor, like a test key, the students with the key will get these right. The more of these outlier questions they get right, the more likely it is that they cheated.

  12. Re:really? on 200 Students Admit Cheating After Professor's Online Rant · · Score: 1

    There are a number of statistical approaches to determine who cheated. For instance, find people whose midterm grade is an anomaly compared to the rest of their grades. Next, look for particular patterns of questions that the cheaters got right, compared to those who didn't. Use a pattern matching algorithm to find to tease apart the bimodality of the grade distribution. There would be some students for which it is nearly certain that they cheated, and other for which it would be more uncertain. The students with higher average grades would have a better shot at arguing against having cheated, but the poor students would be sniffed out immediately.

  13. Re:Not the TSP on Bees Beat Machines At 'Traveling Salesman' Problem · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Daylight is not what a bee is trying to conserve, it's flight distance. Bees minimize the distance flown to minimize the amount of energy they expend. The ratio they try to minimize is (energy expended)/(pollen collected). Pollen is turned into energy. When bees leave the hive they have a certain amount of energy they can expend. If a bee gets blown too far off track, or expends to much energy in some other way, it will run out of gas and die. But, it's better to see the problem from the perspective of the hive. The hive wants to gain as much energy as possible, while expending as little as possible.

    So, actually the problem is fundamentally the same as TSP. It's a distance minimization problem. And just because they use a 'heuristic' doesn't mean that they don't have a solution to the TSP problem. An biologically-based genetic algorithm is no less valid than a computer algorithm.

  14. The true reality distortion field on Survey Says Most iPhone Users Love AT&T · · Score: 1

    ...is getting worked up over a cell phone. It's not a religion, people. Folks buy things, and then they enjoy them. I'm happy that people are happy with their purchases. They worked at their job. They made money. The spent it on something they wanted. Nobody was killed or injured. Done.

  15. Re:If you can't handle calculus, science isnt for on Help Me Get My Math Back? · · Score: 1

    Depends on your field. In mine I use statistics far more than calculus.

  16. "The Calculus Lifesaver" on Help Me Get My Math Back? · · Score: 1

    I was pretty much in the same boat you are. This book, and the accompanying videos, helped me to 'get my math back' after 15 years away. However, you might have to take a pre-calc refresher. It's amazing how much gets away from you after that much time.

  17. Brownerthanu on Habitual Multitaskers Do It Badly · · Score: 1
    There are two other things I would test for:
    1. Generalization. There is experimental evidence which suggests that occupying perceptual resources creates a greater ability to generalize.
    2. Awareness of the distractor data. Who does better at gathering info from the distractor objects?
  18. chess AI on Believable Stupidity In Game AI · · Score: 1

    would something like this work? instead of crippling the AI, do enough move calculations so that the AI is guaranteed to blow almost any human opponent out of the water. rank the possible moves, and have the AI play one of the "less optimal" moves, depending on the chosen difficulty level.

  19. Re:Precious Snowflakes on Narcissistic College Graduates In the Workplace? · · Score: 1

    You are partly right. Narcissistic people are definitely trying to hide low self esteem through a grandiose front and flashy accomplishments. But it's not true that it's incurable. I can say through experience that I, and a lot of friends of mine, entered the workplace as self-centered hyper-achievers. We were narcissistic to the max and thought it was awesome. As time passed we mellowed out quite a bit, and realized that trying to look cool was a poor substitute for true peace of mind (which I still haven't completely found btw).

    I think a more interesting question to ask is, why do do these kids have such low self esteem and why do they have such a burning need to look cool? I disagree with the linked article. It is not because of self esteem boosts that students are narcissistic, it's because they are scared, scared of not being as cool as they feel they should. It's a self defense mechanism to protect a fragile ego.

    Personally, I just feel sympathy for these kids. They've been programmed to feel they are not sufficient, and have to put on a front to make others believe they are more badass than they actually are.

  20. Re:Wait a minute... on Could Global Warming Make Life on Earth Better? · · Score: 1

    actually, there will be far more heat deaths prevented cold deaths. the people who end up suffering the most will those least equipped to adapt. study of the last "hot" period in history reveals massive deaths along the equator from drought. it's ironic that the people who will pay most dearly for global warming are the ones who have barely contributed to it.