By "learn to code, learn awsome things" I presume you mean they thought they were going to be building commercial-level games after a single programming course. Yeah, I have known a number of such kids too. Had no clue about the amount of knowledge and effort building any significant software system takes. Thought that playing computer games is almost the same as building them. Gave up as soon as they found programming required some work and thinking.
Sounds like someone couldn't hack the math/theory aspect of CS so decided that the things he was able to do were the only ones with "real" value. Fairly common for students that don't have the mental skills to master CS. I have known lots of such people.
So clearly a very trusted source, with extensive expertise in science. Hah! The WSJ is full of right-wingers repeating what other right wingers want to hear. Useless to even bother looking at it or at anyone that would rely on it to learn anything factual.
I want a remote that I can continuously hold easily in my hand and that I can learn to use common functions on (e.g., volume up) without looking at. This requires real physical buttons at this point. I would never ever buy a TV that could be controlled only with a relative large and heavy control that I had to look at every time I wanted to even bump the volume up or down a touch. I would consider such a control to have hideously poor usability.
I teach Computer Science at a public university in the US. Support for students using Linux from university IT is virtually non-existent. However, IT does now provide a Linux VPN client (Juniper), which is required to make use of the university-wide wireless network. This is a big step up from when the wireless network was first deployed, when they had a Linux client that basically said: "here's some software we found on the web that may or may not work for you--good luck!" One reason for the change is that most of the university's computing infrastructure is now Linux based, and many of the IT personnel have Linux laptops that must function around the university. So IT here supports Linux for itself and to a lesser extent for faculty, but effectively not at all for students. From what I have seen looking at other universities in the US (since my daughter was applying to colleges this year), this is the norm.
I have taught our CS 2 class (in Java) and our third programming course (C and Linux/UNIX system programming).
While it is reasonable to think that perhaps "the problem" is that some people just need more than 15 weeks to pick up basic programming, I have seen absolutely no evidence that this is true. For example, I have never become aware of even a single student at our school that has gotten a C in the CS1 class, but then by the CS3 class ended up with even a B let alone an A. What typically happens is that those that make it through CS1 with a C, will fail the CS3 class (two semesters later). The requirements to pass the CS1 class are frankly extremely minimal these days (due to enrollment issues). If you cannot end up with even a C in that class after 15 weeks, I believe there is effectively no hope that you can ever be taught how to program well enough to make it through a CS program. Even if it might be possible for some such people to gain these skills, it would probably require a level of intense, personal instruction that universities do not pay faculty for (and students do not pay universities for).
I certainly agree there are multiple causes, but the effects of religion are profound. When my daughter took freshman level honors biology in high school a few years back, the teacher asked the class how many of them "believed in evolution." Only two out of the twenty plus kids raised their hands. They get to HS and they are already indoctrinated by religion to disbelieve one of the cornerstones of modern biology. Yes, you can argue that a "good" science teacher should be able to convince them they are wrong, but I have had plenty of discussions with people raised in religion from birth, and it is clear to me that facts and logic generally have no effect on what these people believe.
So you apparently believe things would be better for US citizens with an "intelligent" dictator or a few wise men. Can you provide me some examples in history of where that has worked out well for a population? Democracy means government is "directed by the whims of the majority" to a very large extent.
First off, the way the term hypocrisy is typically defined these days does not limit its application to purely moral issues, rather it simply means espousing beliefs one does not actually hold. Now generally I would consider somebody who claims that, say, open source and Linux is great because it is reliable and saves money (as Netflix does claim), would believe that Linux should be more widely used. This does not appear to be the case with Netflix, though, since not only have they not done anything to support Linux desktop use, they have in fact actively inhibited its use by their failure to provide a Linux client (I say this knowing several people that have specifically avoided using Linux on their machines due to the lack of a Netflix client). So, yes, I guess you are correct that they are not being "hypocritical." Rather, they apparently believe Linux use is great for corporations to have more reliable and cheaper computers, but they do not care at all about helping to extend these benefits for most computer users. Not exactly an untypical corporate position, obviously. Not in any way a noble one either though.
I certainly see hypocrisy in companies using Linux for their servers and talking about how great it is, but then making it impossible for many people to use Linux for their desktops because they refuse to provide Linux client software.
I've never understood the people who praise KDE for doing absolutely batty things with their UI because they're "innovating", but when Microsoft does something a bit different they proceed to excrete a brick because they're "messing with established ui standards".
Are you saying you believe most people have been praising KDE4? I don't think so.
Few programmers start to write a program by designing a new OS, etc., so your analogy is simply a strawman. How about this car analogy: when designing a new car you are allowed to use only already existing auto parts; you are not allowed to custom design hardly any part on the "new" automobile. This is the real analogy with patching together existing library routines to build a new program: connecting together a set of already existing auto parts to make a "new" car. Does this better analogy still sound just fine? Obviously depends on what one is reusing and how complicated that was to engineer.
Exactly, while TFA may try to claim this is substantively different from TV advertising, the only difference is that TV advertisers do not know for certain how many people they will reach. But if they think based on their models that they are going to reach, say, 100,000, that is what they are going to be willing to pay on--no more. I know that sometimes TV networks end up having to refund money if the tracked audience is well below what was predicted. No substantive difference at all therefore.
The fact that TFA refuses to acknowledge this similarity makes their entire argument untrustworthy!
On the other hand, there have been numerous privacy snafus with the free public email services. Somebody that is worried about their physical safety but is sending extremely sensitive information via these services is frankly rather stupid at this point!
I'm afraid that the KDE brand is ruined only in the head of people who haven't bothered to look at how cool KDE4 is...
I agree that KDE4 is "cooler" looking than KDE3. Unfortunately, for many of us that actually use Linux to get work done, KDE4 is much less productive than KDE3. I was a heavy user of many of the more advanced features of Konqueror for example. However the Konqueror in KDE4 is a pale imitation of its KDE3 self. You want a simple example? Just try editing your Konqueror bookmarks in KDE4. Nearly faster to edit the bookmarks.xml file--in fact you appear to have to do that to do an obvious thing like reorder the toplevel folders. Another problem is stability. My main machines still have KDE3 on them. They routinely go 2-3mos. without rebooting *and* without having to restart KDE3. I have yet to make it more than a couple of days without something serious enough happening to KDE4 that it has to be restarted.
I am hopeful things will improve with KDE4 so that I can use it productively, but my experience so far has been very disappointing. Particularly since posts pointing out missing/unworking features are usually met with responses about some kind of unwiedy multi-step partial workaround or posts about all the great new features that the other person loves but are not useful to me. Sorry, but I will take productive and stable over "cool" looking with my desktop.
Uh, because they were the tests that were published in peer reviewed journals, and used acoustically good rooms, with careful equipment setups, trained listeners, etc., and were the tests that established the "conventional wisdom" that blind testing shows that many/most claimed audible differences in expensive equipment cannot be reliably discerned under double blind conditions.
I frankly care not one whit what some dude with unknown hearing/musical abilities finds when running tests using some PC speakers, etc. Doesn't apply to me in any way shape or form. It is meaningful for him under those conditions, but that is all.
I don't know what BS you are referring to, becase when the ABX Comparator was developed and used back in the 80's, most testing was done as I describe: playing a track straight through and comparing different time slices to each other. It was simply not possible to loop short segments. Remember that what was being compared was tape and LPs! How would one have looped 15secs from an LP?? I suggest you go back and look at "double blind testing" articles in the AES journal and popular audio magazines from the 80s.
There is no logical flaw in ABX tests that are conducted with short, repeated segments. That should have been clear from what I explained. The OP article shows that while most people could not detect differences, one person could. Of course the sample sizes were so small as to make the results completely meaningless, but this sort of result has been found frequently (most cannot distinguish but a small fraction can).
Comparing track segments that are definitely, indisputably different and deciding which are from the same source is a valid approach to you? You don't see any problems with this?? Sorry, but finding a negative result (i.e., not being able to reliably identify sources) from such a test is absolutely not meaningful. Here's why the approach is logically flawed: Because you are comparing different track segments, you are effectively comparing x to y and to z, where x!=y!=z!=x (because they are different segments and thus sound different inherently), but then you are supposed to decide whether x=y or x=z. Please explain to me why you think a negative result (i.e., not being able to reliably determine whether x=y or x=z) could possibly be meaningful when x!=y!=z!=x.
As for claiming that the only other possibility is to try to listen to two tracks at the same time, that is rubbish, and frankly shows that you aren't discussing this in good faith or with an open mind (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_excluded_middle) All that is required is to loop short (seconds) segments and switch back and forth. Humans do have some acoustic memory.
I don't know what your "deluding" comment about photos means, as it makes no sense given what I said. I said nothing about how I would compare photos. I was describing an analogy to most ABX testing protocols. If you were asked to decide whether two versions of a photo had the same white balance by being shown just little subareas of each of the photos, wouldn't you want the subareas you were given to be from the same exact part of the photos? In fact, would this not be the *only* reliable way to be able to say anything? Suppose you were given a segment from the upper right corner of one photo and from the lower left corner of the other. You think that you could reliably determine whether the two photos had the same color balance from this information?? This is precisely the situation you are in when doing ABX tests where you just run through a track: you are given a segment from one source and a completely different segment, and you are asked whether they are from the same source of not.
You apparently did not understand my point at all, as your response has nothing to do with what I said. The point I was making was that ABX tests are normally done by running straight through a track, so as you switch back and forth between sources, you are listening to different segments of the track. Since no two segments (at different times) in a track would sound identical anyway, using these different sounding segments to compare/identify sources is logically flawed. Here's an analogy for you: suppose I want to compare two versions of a photo to see if they look the same (e.g., have the same color balance), and I am going to do it by comparing little squares from the photos. The way most ABX tests are run, I would compare squares from different parts of the photos. While this might work to detect gross differences like a major color shift, if would not necessarily work to detect subtle differences, as different parts of the photos might have radically different colors anyway. Get it? This is not a problem with the concept of ABX testing--just with how most tests have been conducted. It is an obvious logical flaw in the tests, that makes them scientifically invalid (speaking as a research scientist) for proving negative results.
The way most ABX tests are conducted makes them effectively useless. People play a track through, so they are comparing time t1 from one source to time t2 on another source to time t3, etc. This approach may detect gross differences, but not subtle differences, as they will be masked by the differences in the source at different points. The way an ABX test needs to be conducted is to loop a very short segment (since humans have a short audio memory). Any other approach is logically flawed. Unfortunately, virtually all published ABX tests are flawed in this way. Bad science!
Rubbish. Find me a liberal outside of the US Gov that supports this--under any administration. Bet you cannot. I certainly do not. However, while some right wingers will be outraged by this because of Obama, had it been Bush or another Repub doing it, they would have supported the move. This is easy to *prove* simply by going back to what was being said over the last few years by right wingers regarding warrantless wiretaps and the like.
The problem with all of the lower priced squeezebox-style systems is that they save money on components by not having the decoding hardware inside of them.
Absolutely incorrect! The Squeeze units decode most common formats in hardware--e.g., MP3 and FLAC. One advantage of the server-based format is that the server can transcode unsupported formats or bitrates, etc., so that you can play any format on them if need be.
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By "learn to code, learn awsome things" I presume you mean they thought they were going to be building commercial-level games after a single programming course. Yeah, I have known a number of such kids too. Had no clue about the amount of knowledge and effort building any significant software system takes. Thought that playing computer games is almost the same as building them. Gave up as soon as they found programming required some work and thinking.
Sounds like someone couldn't hack the math/theory aspect of CS so decided that the things he was able to do were the only ones with "real" value. Fairly common for students that don't have the mental skills to master CS. I have known lots of such people.
So clearly a very trusted source, with extensive expertise in science. Hah! The WSJ is full of right-wingers repeating what other right wingers want to hear. Useless to even bother looking at it or at anyone that would rely on it to learn anything factual.
I want a remote that I can continuously hold easily in my hand and that I can learn to use common functions on (e.g., volume up) without looking at. This requires real physical buttons at this point. I would never ever buy a TV that could be controlled only with a relative large and heavy control that I had to look at every time I wanted to even bump the volume up or down a touch. I would consider such a control to have hideously poor usability.
I teach Computer Science at a public university in the US. Support for students using Linux from university IT is virtually non-existent. However, IT does now provide a Linux VPN client (Juniper), which is required to make use of the university-wide wireless network. This is a big step up from when the wireless network was first deployed, when they had a Linux client that basically said: "here's some software we found on the web that may or may not work for you--good luck!" One reason for the change is that most of the university's computing infrastructure is now Linux based, and many of the IT personnel have Linux laptops that must function around the university. So IT here supports Linux for itself and to a lesser extent for faculty, but effectively not at all for students. From what I have seen looking at other universities in the US (since my daughter was applying to colleges this year), this is the norm.
I have taught our CS 2 class (in Java) and our third programming course (C and Linux/UNIX system programming). While it is reasonable to think that perhaps "the problem" is that some people just need more than 15 weeks to pick up basic programming, I have seen absolutely no evidence that this is true. For example, I have never become aware of even a single student at our school that has gotten a C in the CS1 class, but then by the CS3 class ended up with even a B let alone an A. What typically happens is that those that make it through CS1 with a C, will fail the CS3 class (two semesters later). The requirements to pass the CS1 class are frankly extremely minimal these days (due to enrollment issues). If you cannot end up with even a C in that class after 15 weeks, I believe there is effectively no hope that you can ever be taught how to program well enough to make it through a CS program. Even if it might be possible for some such people to gain these skills, it would probably require a level of intense, personal instruction that universities do not pay faculty for (and students do not pay universities for).
I certainly agree there are multiple causes, but the effects of religion are profound. When my daughter took freshman level honors biology in high school a few years back, the teacher asked the class how many of them "believed in evolution." Only two out of the twenty plus kids raised their hands. They get to HS and they are already indoctrinated by religion to disbelieve one of the cornerstones of modern biology. Yes, you can argue that a "good" science teacher should be able to convince them they are wrong, but I have had plenty of discussions with people raised in religion from birth, and it is clear to me that facts and logic generally have no effect on what these people believe.
So you apparently believe things would be better for US citizens with an "intelligent" dictator or a few wise men. Can you provide me some examples in history of where that has worked out well for a population? Democracy means government is "directed by the whims of the majority" to a very large extent.
Politicians who wonder why the US is losing its competitiveness in science and technology need look no further than these sorts of moves.
I smell a Fox News viewer...http://www.alternet.org/story/149193/study_confirms_that_fox_news_makes_you_stupid
First off, the way the term hypocrisy is typically defined these days does not limit its application to purely moral issues, rather it simply means espousing beliefs one does not actually hold. Now generally I would consider somebody who claims that, say, open source and Linux is great because it is reliable and saves money (as Netflix does claim), would believe that Linux should be more widely used. This does not appear to be the case with Netflix, though, since not only have they not done anything to support Linux desktop use, they have in fact actively inhibited its use by their failure to provide a Linux client (I say this knowing several people that have specifically avoided using Linux on their machines due to the lack of a Netflix client). So, yes, I guess you are correct that they are not being "hypocritical." Rather, they apparently believe Linux use is great for corporations to have more reliable and cheaper computers, but they do not care at all about helping to extend these benefits for most computer users. Not exactly an untypical corporate position, obviously. Not in any way a noble one either though.
I certainly see hypocrisy in companies using Linux for their servers and talking about how great it is, but then making it impossible for many people to use Linux for their desktops because they refuse to provide Linux client software.
I've never understood the people who praise KDE for doing absolutely batty things with their UI because they're "innovating", but when Microsoft does something a bit different they proceed to excrete a brick because they're "messing with established ui standards".
Are you saying you believe most people have been praising KDE4? I don't think so.
Few programmers start to write a program by designing a new OS, etc., so your analogy is simply a strawman. How about this car analogy: when designing a new car you are allowed to use only already existing auto parts; you are not allowed to custom design hardly any part on the "new" automobile. This is the real analogy with patching together existing library routines to build a new program: connecting together a set of already existing auto parts to make a "new" car. Does this better analogy still sound just fine? Obviously depends on what one is reusing and how complicated that was to engineer.
Exactly, while TFA may try to claim this is substantively different from TV advertising, the only difference is that TV advertisers do not know for certain how many people they will reach. But if they think based on their models that they are going to reach, say, 100,000, that is what they are going to be willing to pay on--no more. I know that sometimes TV networks end up having to refund money if the tracked audience is well below what was predicted. No substantive difference at all therefore. The fact that TFA refuses to acknowledge this similarity makes their entire argument untrustworthy!
On the other hand, there have been numerous privacy snafus with the free public email services. Somebody that is worried about their physical safety but is sending extremely sensitive information via these services is frankly rather stupid at this point!
I'm afraid that the KDE brand is ruined only in the head of people who haven't bothered to look at how cool KDE4 is...
I agree that KDE4 is "cooler" looking than KDE3. Unfortunately, for many of us that actually use Linux to get work done, KDE4 is much less productive than KDE3. I was a heavy user of many of the more advanced features of Konqueror for example. However the Konqueror in KDE4 is a pale imitation of its KDE3 self. You want a simple example? Just try editing your Konqueror bookmarks in KDE4. Nearly faster to edit the bookmarks.xml file--in fact you appear to have to do that to do an obvious thing like reorder the toplevel folders. Another problem is stability. My main machines still have KDE3 on them. They routinely go 2-3mos. without rebooting *and* without having to restart KDE3. I have yet to make it more than a couple of days without something serious enough happening to KDE4 that it has to be restarted.
I am hopeful things will improve with KDE4 so that I can use it productively, but my experience so far has been very disappointing. Particularly since posts pointing out missing/unworking features are usually met with responses about some kind of unwiedy multi-step partial workaround or posts about all the great new features that the other person loves but are not useful to me. Sorry, but I will take productive and stable over "cool" looking with my desktop.
...public safety even kids wearing helmets on the bicycles. If there is no risk there is no reward but it seems we kind of forgot about it.
Please tell us what a child is losing by riding a bike with a helmet? Honestly, speaking as a heavy biker, the arguments over helmets are long over!
I guess you are big on trite sayings, so maybe you also believe "no pain, no gain" (so you think one has to get injured biking to gain anything).
I will also point out to you that "no risk implies no reward" is not logically equivalent to "taking a risk implies you get a reward."
I frankly care not one whit what some dude with unknown hearing/musical abilities finds when running tests using some PC speakers, etc. Doesn't apply to me in any way shape or form. It is meaningful for him under those conditions, but that is all.
There is no logical flaw in ABX tests that are conducted with short, repeated segments. That should have been clear from what I explained. The OP article shows that while most people could not detect differences, one person could. Of course the sample sizes were so small as to make the results completely meaningless, but this sort of result has been found frequently (most cannot distinguish but a small fraction can).
As for claiming that the only other possibility is to try to listen to two tracks at the same time, that is rubbish, and frankly shows that you aren't discussing this in good faith or with an open mind (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_excluded_middle) All that is required is to loop short (seconds) segments and switch back and forth. Humans do have some acoustic memory.
I don't know what your "deluding" comment about photos means, as it makes no sense given what I said. I said nothing about how I would compare photos. I was describing an analogy to most ABX testing protocols. If you were asked to decide whether two versions of a photo had the same white balance by being shown just little subareas of each of the photos, wouldn't you want the subareas you were given to be from the same exact part of the photos? In fact, would this not be the *only* reliable way to be able to say anything? Suppose you were given a segment from the upper right corner of one photo and from the lower left corner of the other. You think that you could reliably determine whether the two photos had the same color balance from this information?? This is precisely the situation you are in when doing ABX tests where you just run through a track: you are given a segment from one source and a completely different segment, and you are asked whether they are from the same source of not.
You apparently did not understand my point at all, as your response has nothing to do with what I said. The point I was making was that ABX tests are normally done by running straight through a track, so as you switch back and forth between sources, you are listening to different segments of the track. Since no two segments (at different times) in a track would sound identical anyway, using these different sounding segments to compare/identify sources is logically flawed. Here's an analogy for you: suppose I want to compare two versions of a photo to see if they look the same (e.g., have the same color balance), and I am going to do it by comparing little squares from the photos. The way most ABX tests are run, I would compare squares from different parts of the photos. While this might work to detect gross differences like a major color shift, if would not necessarily work to detect subtle differences, as different parts of the photos might have radically different colors anyway. Get it? This is not a problem with the concept of ABX testing--just with how most tests have been conducted. It is an obvious logical flaw in the tests, that makes them scientifically invalid (speaking as a research scientist) for proving negative results.
The way most ABX tests are conducted makes them effectively useless. People play a track through, so they are comparing time t1 from one source to time t2 on another source to time t3, etc. This approach may detect gross differences, but not subtle differences, as they will be masked by the differences in the source at different points. The way an ABX test needs to be conducted is to loop a very short segment (since humans have a short audio memory). Any other approach is logically flawed. Unfortunately, virtually all published ABX tests are flawed in this way. Bad science!
Rubbish. Find me a liberal outside of the US Gov that supports this--under any administration. Bet you cannot. I certainly do not. However, while some right wingers will be outraged by this because of Obama, had it been Bush or another Repub doing it, they would have supported the move. This is easy to *prove* simply by going back to what was being said over the last few years by right wingers regarding warrantless wiretaps and the like.
The problem with all of the lower priced squeezebox-style systems is that they save money on components by not having the decoding hardware inside of them.
Absolutely incorrect! The Squeeze units decode most common formats in hardware--e.g., MP3 and FLAC. One advantage of the server-based format is that the server can transcode unsupported formats or bitrates, etc., so that you can play any format on them if need be.