A stupid joke, then right back on topic!
on
Share The Pi!
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· Score: 1
Ok, there's a joke-telling club who tell each other jokes at their weekly meeting, but because all their jokes are known by heart and listed in an index, they spare themselves the trouble of actually telling the joke and refer to it by its number. So they say "549" and start cracking up... and then another guy says "wait... 133!" and they laugh hysterically, except for one guy. They ask him why he's not laughing and he says "I didn't think it was very funny."
Don't you see that since every string appears somewhere in pi, this would make a great standardized naming scheme for every string? So the current US population (284,804,918) occurs at position 68768290872 in pi. The point is, all possible strings are in pi, and in many other irrational numbers, apparently.
Super Encryption:
Your key would be some irrational number, and the encrypted message would be a position value in that number (plus a value about how many digits are relevant after that position). Decryption works like this: you write out the irrational number which is the key, go to the position indicated, and start reading the message! Simple! But literally impossible without the key, because then you wouldn't know what irrational number to look at (and there are aleph-one many); it's not like this would ever be crackable; no quantity of CPU power would help.
(There are practical concerns; it's pretty computer-intensive to write out binary-expansions of irrational numbers, so if the messages were long, you'd have to go pretty far out to find the position, which is impractical. But this might be a neat and practical way to encrypt the decoding key for a file!)
Quick, patent this before Rambus people read this far!
One thing I don't get is why something that's very intelligent would be inherently unpredictable. Should Christians think that because the God they believe in is supposed to be supremely intelligent His actions are totally unpredictable by us? Might he send the pious to hell and the wicked to heaven? I don't see much of a relationship between intelligence and predictability. The most unpredictable people I know are dumb.
Another thing has to do with this "let's fear AI" genre of SciFi in general. Why does no one challenge the assumption that when artificial creatures develop intelligence and a personality, that personality will inevitably be indifferent, power-hungry and cold? Isn't it just as easy to imagine that artificially intelligent creatures/machines will strike us as being neurotically cautious, or maybe friendly to the point of being creepy? Maybe they'll become obsessed with comedy or math or music. Or video games.
Realistically, I think the first machines which we take to be intelligent will be very good at means-to-ends reasoning, but will not be able to deliberate about ends (i.e. why should one sort of outcome be preferrable to another). I would argue that even we humans can't really deliberate about ends. At some point we hit some hard-wired instincts. Why, for example, is it better that people are happy rather than suffering? The answer is just a knee-jerk reaction by us, not some sort of a reasoned conclusion.
When we create AI we will have the luxury of hard-wiring these instincts into intelligent machines (without some parameters specifying basic goals, nothing could be intelligent, not even we). Humans and animals are basically built with a set of instincts designed make them survive and fuck and make sure the offspring survive. There is no reason to think AI creatures would necessarily have these instructions as basic. I'm sure we could think of much more interesting ones. The consequence is that AI creatures might be more intelligent than we are, but in no way sinister.
I don't even know if there are
any Ph.D. students on the team!
Then you obviously don't know much, not even the stuff that's printed in the articles. And if your Ph.D. students blow off dissertation work (remember, several are writing their THESIS about this... wait, of course you don't remember... you didn't read the article!) and $1M in funds because they have better things to do, I'd love to see those better things.
The poster was obviously against the current patent practices, but made the point that unless you have leftist leanings, it's hard to make sense why one should have a problem with them.
Do you seriously think that there would be patents after a Communist Revolution? Patents are an anachronism of the capitalistic society, designed by corporations to line their own pockets.
Re: your first point--I have no reson to think Intel's own lawyers refuse, on moral principles, to defend spurious and other ill-begotten patents, and I have no doubt Intel has many of these. If they want us have sympathy for them when they whine about extorsion, this would be a pre-requisite.
Re: your second point: Look, chances are you live in a country where the innovators aren't always rich and the rich aren't always innovators--or competent in any dimension whatsoever. If you're like most of the people who post here, you have no problem with that. So why get on your meritocratic high-horse now? When it doesn't bother you that people get rich from being lucky on the stock market or in real estate (remember: these people are innovating nothing), why should it bother you when they get lucky with a lucrative patent?
Re: your point about the patent gold-diggers doing no research: I didn't mean they actually do lab work, but I bet you they have to shuffle more papers and use more wit than your average day-trader gazilionare (who just basically gambles).
Like I said before, I do have a problem with capitalism. (I think your social contributions, i.e. labor, etc., are what entitle you to benefits.) If these patent cases present a moral problem, though, then it's a moral problem for capitalism in general.
I don't want to defend the ridiculous patents that are being awarded, nor do I think the courts are acting correctly in upholding them. But still, this story doesn't describe some sort of corporate tragedy in my opinion.
Sure, Intel might lose a bit of money each year from settlements with holders of dubious patents--but don't think for a second they're in the red in the patents war. I didn't find any figures about how much Intel pulls in each year from just enforcing their own patents (are we sure none of those are spurious?). IBM pulls in $1 billion just from this. I doubt Intel is far behind. As far as I'm concerned, Intel's patent trolls are nowhere close to balancing out Intel's patent-karma. (Remember the 90's?)
It sounds to me like patent money just circulates among the big patent-holding companies, except some of it leaks out to the patent prospectors. Yes, so they are profiting unjustly, and because I have Communist leanings, I don't like it. But for the rest of you, how's this morally different from getting rich off the stock market? Their offense consists of buying a piece of paper, sitting on it, and raking in dough. At least it sounds like they did some research.
Well, if this is all that was to it, I wouldn't be very moved. But then I read that the lawyers who prosecute these cases sometimes ask for 45% of the claim. Now, if you've got an ethos according to which that's not bad, I don't want to hear about it. I know I'd rather the companies keep that 45% sell me gear for less.
Yeah, I'd have to agree that MS will have a hard time selling themselves as leaders of fun. Let's face it, they're about as much fun as Al Gore, with all the evil and megalomania of the Republicans. I'd call that an image problem!
Here is my vision: Compaq/AOL/IBM/Kodak/ whoever else hates MS but uses them puts a tiny fraction of their considerable resources to quickly write a slick configuration application. Then they can be a concilliatory as they like to MS icon demands, as long as the icon to this application is visible. It should be labeled "set up your computer" and be placad in such a way that it's the first thing a new user would think to click on.
When they do this would activate a script that would, by default, remove all of the stupid stuff in XP (desktop icons, IE, etc.) and replace it with programs that the OEM judges to be better. (my vision: it would prompt you to insert the "Compaq Value Added Applications" cd that comes with your computer, which has AOL, RealPlayer, Netscape, CDCreator, etc.) Of course, there would be an "advanced" tab which would give you the options to keep all the old MS crap, but you'd have to be a relatively savvy user to find it.
This way, MS could stick any icons on the default desktop that they like. MS never contested the right of users to remove those icons, and so what's the difference if this removing is done by a user-friendly, OEM-supplied app? I'm not saying that MS will be happy, and they'll probably claim that the app "breaks" XP, but the OEMs need to stand firm and say "no, it doesn't." MS will probably say that uninstalling stuff which they never meant to have uninstalled voids the warranty that comes with XP, but this will affect no one, because the OEMs, not MS, are responsible for supporting the software installed on new computers.
This is a better solution because it's easy to implement (there are already great "windows customizing apps" that can safely do all sorts of wonders like removing the media player and system restore from ME), it's easy for the user (just two or three clicks and a reboot), and it requires no compromises with MS. Should the OEM choose, they can replace everything bundeled by MS: the media player, the CD-burning software, the stupid photo-printing ads, etc.
This would be much easier than forcing users to clean-install XP, a non-solution anyway, since the clean install would set up the desktop exactly the way MS wants.
In any case, it makes sense that those free AOL cds you get in the mall should auto-run this program. Hey, this is a war, so MS enemies should stand up and fight!
And while we're at it, let's not call it the "remove MSN icon" icon, but instead the "set up your computer" icon, so that everyone will want to click on it.
And once you have that.exe running, why not give it the capacity to (optionally) remove all the evil from XP? (I mean: IE, media player, those nasty photo-printing ads, etc.) Then, it could check the net for a new version of Netscape or RealPlayer or non-MS CD-burning software...
Once you have your own.exe activated, there is no ceiling to the good that you could do.
There is no way Microsoft can object, because they don't deny the users the right to delete icons and customize their installation. There is no difference in principle if this removal is done by a user-friendly application.
OEM's should scrape together a few bucks/programmers to hack together a "value-added application," which will have its own icon on the desktop labeled "click here to set up your computer."
Doing this would activate a script that would, by default, remove all of the stupid stuff in XP (desktop icons, IE, etc.) and replace it with programs that the OEM judges to be better. Of course, there would be an "advanced" tab which would give you the options to keep all that crap.
This way, MS could stick any icons on the default desktop that they like. MS never contested the right of users to remove those icons, and so what's the difference if this removing is done by a user-friendly, OEM-supplied app? I'm not saying that MS will be happy, and they'll probably claim that the app "breaks" XP, but the OEMs need to stand firm and say "no, it doesn't." MS will probably say that uninstalling stuff which they never meant to have uninstalled voids the warranty that comes with XP, but this will affect no one, because the OEMs, not MS, are responsible for supporting the software installed on new computers.
This is a better solution because it's easy to implement (there are already great "windows customizing apps" that can safely do all sorts of wonders like removing the media player and system restore from ME), it's easy for the user (just two or three clicks and a reboot), and it requires no compromises with MS. Should the OEM choose, they can replace everything bundeled by MS: the media player, the CD-burning software, the stupid photo-printing ads, etc.
This would be much easier than forcing users to clean-install XP, a non-solution anyway, since the clean install would set up the desktop exactly the way MS wants.
I think passport+hailsotrm are harbingers of doom and they must die before they can gain strength. Because Microsoft apparently has no qualms about breaking the law, perhaps its enemies should consider doing the same, but in a strategic way.
I'm picturing it like this: the world wakes up and sees the credit card numbers, addresses and ID numbers from passport users plastered on a major hacked web site (A+ if it's microsoft's). THEN--all of these unfortunate early adopters start receiving credit card bills for internet porn subscriptions, international phone calls and maybe an X10 camera. Crackers thus far have been very kind with the information they gain, but this kindness has been used by the corporations to brush off security breaches and say "see, no one got hurt so all is well." Maybe if people do get hurt and have to spend hours writing petitions to their credit company to be reimbursed, passport-style authentication will be so smeared with FUD that everyone will want out.
I'm not trying to condone illegal acts here; I'm just observing that when these things happen (it's hard to imagine they wouldn't) any assosiation with.net might be the kiss of death.
Did you read the article? AMD is transitioning to.13 micron at the end of this year, and I pity the fools at Intel for having only the misconceived P4 to compete with them. Once the die shrinks, old Athlon heat problems will not crop up until we're well past 2GHz.
About motherboards: Do you know who is making the new MP chipset? AMD themselves--and according to all reports, it rocks. And it's not like Intel hasn't had its share of problems with chipsets. Sure, Athlon+VIA will always probably suck, but for the same amount of money as a P4+MB you'll always be able to buy a faster Athlon with a better MB.
I personally think the P4 is Intel's curse, and bad news for them is far from over. I would be biting my fingernails if the earnings of my company depended entirely on something as shoddy as the P4 design.
Anyone who's checked pricewatch would have to be insane to buy a P4.
Yeah, if it can run Konquerer, maybe the rest of KDE wouldn't be that far behind... Maybe the trolltech people would even help out with QT a bit. We know QT doesn't need X to run on UNIX.
It would really be a coup if KDE ran on AtheOS, because we'd quickly notice just how much X is holding back Free software. It would also fix the currend dearh of applications that AtheOS suffers from and make it much easier to get real work done on AtheOS. This would bring more developers, which at this stage are necessary if AtheOS is to go further.
This looks awesome! I mean, it could use some help from Tigert and some other themerz, but the fonts already look much better than anything I'm able to get in Linux (including new KDE).
Is it just one guy who did all of this, from the kernel up? The GUI? The journalled file system? The graphics? The porting of Konquerer? How come he's not everyone's hero? He seems like a uber-genius-hacker to me. Can anyone else even touch him?
I wish I could help out with the remaining programming. In any case, I want to say that I think he's got the right idea in dumping X, and I think that someone should be looking seriously at some sort of a migration path from Linux + X to this.
Hardware support will come when the community is behind this. I think we should be.
That's an awful story about CompUSA. I shouldn't be surprised, but it seems so underhanded to spread FUD this way. It reminds me of the famous cases when Nestle employees would dress up in white coats and "advise" new mothers in a hospital that they are stifling their baby if they breast feed it, and should instead buy "modern" Nestle baby formula.
Next time I'm at the mall I'll leave my girlfriend in some fitting room and go test our local CompUSA sales clerks to see if they too came to the conclusion that AMD systems have compatibility problems.
Now I'm curious.
If you are interested in an AMD system and Dell won't sell you one, shouldn't this count as a reason for thinking Dell might not be so great after all?
And if you are too busy to put together a list of components you want in your computer so a build-to-spec computer builder can make you a system (for much less than Dell), how do you find time to post to Slashdot? It seems the former takes quite a bit less time, and is (no offense to the present audience) a lot more fun.
---
"The 24-hour Dell Technical Support center is currently closed. Please call back at another time." (The recorded answer to my first ever Dell tech support call. Not a joke!)
Yeah, great...
With a budget of over $1,000,000 and a staff of Ph.D. students who are writing their dissertations on this, just how much do you think the undergraduates got to do? Club membership requirements for them probably looked like this: they either bring and share beer/chicks, or be really good at cleaning up after Ph.D. students. I bet you it was a lot more fun and instructive to work on the teams that came in 10th or so.
You guys all forget to do the math. This study tracks the lives of people who played video games when they were young kids. I don't know about the UK, but I can tell you that in California, the early 90's was not an era when video game gear spread like wildfire through the poor neigborhoods and ignored the affluent suburbs. In fact, it is absolutely irresponsible of a study like this to not compare their results with past socio-economic distibutions of game-capable hardware.
Were it to turn out that such hardware was spread across the classes evenly, their results would be interesting. But how likely is that? For all we can tell, maybe video gaming hurts your chances of getting into college and finding good work. Maybe kids in your socio-economic class, with similar talents who stayed away from video games are on average doing much better than gamers.
It reminds me of another study which shows that high school students who are casual cocaine users are more likely to go to college and get better jobs than those who never touched the stuff. Not a good reason to do coke! You can reproduce these "amazing" results by plugging in any bad upper-class habbit. I'm sure that those arrested for drunken Porsche racing are more likely to go to college than those who never tried such a thing. Drinking microbrewery beer is probably also an indicator that you are more likely to go to college and get a good job. I expect it's even better than abstinence from alcohol. (Abstinence is probably distributed more evenly over the various income levels than microbrew fetishism is.)
(This is not the first time that I found myself wishing that Katz would sit through Critical Thinking 101.)
Re:Great. I'm sure this will be covered everywhere
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Adobe Backs Down
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That's the trouble with grand, explosive gestures like that...
Wow, you must be an American to think that dropping out of USENIX as a protest was a grand, explosive gesture. The rest of the world sees it as obvious that you make personal sacrifices to stand up for what's right.
Sorry to disturb; please return to your path of least resistance now...
Slashdot Mirror
Don't you see that since every string appears somewhere in pi, this would make a great standardized naming scheme for every string? So the current US population (284,804,918) occurs at position 68768290872 in pi. The point is, all possible strings are in pi, and in many other irrational numbers, apparently.
Super Encryption:
Your key would be some irrational number, and the encrypted message would be a position value in that number (plus a value about how many digits are relevant after that position). Decryption works like this: you write out the irrational number which is the key, go to the position indicated, and start reading the message! Simple! But literally impossible without the key, because then you wouldn't know what irrational number to look at (and there are aleph-one many); it's not like this would ever be crackable; no quantity of CPU power would help. (There are practical concerns; it's pretty computer-intensive to write out binary-expansions of irrational numbers, so if the messages were long, you'd have to go pretty far out to find the position, which is impractical. But this might be a neat and practical way to encrypt the decoding key for a file!)
Quick, patent this before Rambus people read this far!
Another thing has to do with this "let's fear AI" genre of SciFi in general. Why does no one challenge the assumption that when artificial creatures develop intelligence and a personality, that personality will inevitably be indifferent, power-hungry and cold? Isn't it just as easy to imagine that artificially intelligent creatures/machines will strike us as being neurotically cautious, or maybe friendly to the point of being creepy? Maybe they'll become obsessed with comedy or math or music. Or video games.
Realistically, I think the first machines which we take to be intelligent will be very good at means-to-ends reasoning, but will not be able to deliberate about ends (i.e. why should one sort of outcome be preferrable to another). I would argue that even we humans can't really deliberate about ends. At some point we hit some hard-wired instincts. Why, for example, is it better that people are happy rather than suffering? The answer is just a knee-jerk reaction by us, not some sort of a reasoned conclusion.
When we create AI we will have the luxury of hard-wiring these instincts into intelligent machines (without some parameters specifying basic goals, nothing could be intelligent, not even we). Humans and animals are basically built with a set of instincts designed make them survive and fuck and make sure the offspring survive. There is no reason to think AI creatures would necessarily have these instructions as basic. I'm sure we could think of much more interesting ones. The consequence is that AI creatures might be more intelligent than we are, but in no way sinister.
Then you obviously don't know much, not even the stuff that's printed in the articles. And if your Ph.D. students blow off dissertation work (remember, several are writing their THESIS about this... wait, of course you don't remember... you didn't read the article!) and $1M in funds because they have better things to do, I'd love to see those better things.
The poster was obviously against the current patent practices, but made the point that unless you have leftist leanings, it's hard to make sense why one should have a problem with them.
Do you seriously think that there would be patents after a Communist Revolution? Patents are an anachronism of the capitalistic society, designed by corporations to line their own pockets.
Re: your second point: Look, chances are you live in a country where the innovators aren't always rich and the rich aren't always innovators--or competent in any dimension whatsoever. If you're like most of the people who post here, you have no problem with that. So why get on your meritocratic high-horse now? When it doesn't bother you that people get rich from being lucky on the stock market or in real estate (remember: these people are innovating nothing), why should it bother you when they get lucky with a lucrative patent?
Re: your point about the patent gold-diggers doing no research: I didn't mean they actually do lab work, but I bet you they have to shuffle more papers and use more wit than your average day-trader gazilionare (who just basically gambles).
Like I said before, I do have a problem with capitalism. (I think your social contributions, i.e. labor, etc., are what entitle you to benefits.) If these patent cases present a moral problem, though, then it's a moral problem for capitalism in general.
Sure, Intel might lose a bit of money each year from settlements with holders of dubious patents--but don't think for a second they're in the red in the patents war. I didn't find any figures about how much Intel pulls in each year from just enforcing their own patents (are we sure none of those are spurious?). IBM pulls in $1 billion just from this. I doubt Intel is far behind. As far as I'm concerned, Intel's patent trolls are nowhere close to balancing out Intel's patent-karma. (Remember the 90's?)
It sounds to me like patent money just circulates among the big patent-holding companies, except some of it leaks out to the patent prospectors. Yes, so they are profiting unjustly, and because I have Communist leanings, I don't like it. But for the rest of you, how's this morally different from getting rich off the stock market? Their offense consists of buying a piece of paper, sitting on it, and raking in dough. At least it sounds like they did some research.
Well, if this is all that was to it, I wouldn't be very moved. But then I read that the lawyers who prosecute these cases sometimes ask for 45% of the claim. Now, if you've got an ethos according to which that's not bad, I don't want to hear about it. I know I'd rather the companies keep that 45% sell me gear for less.
Wow, now if AOL made a game machine, we could have a 4-way war of the evil multi-nationals for Xmas. I'd enjoy watching that mud fight!
Yeah, I'd have to agree that MS will have a hard time selling themselves as leaders of fun. Let's face it, they're about as much fun as Al Gore, with all the evil and megalomania of the Republicans. I'd call that an image problem!
I Infect Servers
Internet Immobile Soon
This way, MS could stick any icons on the default desktop that they like. MS never contested the right of users to remove those icons, and so what's the difference if this removing is done by a user-friendly, OEM-supplied app? I'm not saying that MS will be happy, and they'll probably claim that the app "breaks" XP, but the OEMs need to stand firm and say "no, it doesn't." MS will probably say that uninstalling stuff which they never meant to have uninstalled voids the warranty that comes with XP, but this will affect no one, because the OEMs, not MS, are responsible for supporting the software installed on new computers.
This is a better solution because it's easy to implement (there are already great "windows customizing apps" that can safely do all sorts of wonders like removing the media player and system restore from ME), it's easy for the user (just two or three clicks and a reboot), and it requires no compromises with MS. Should the OEM choose, they can replace everything bundeled by MS: the media player, the CD-burning software, the stupid photo-printing ads, etc.
This would be much easier than forcing users to clean-install XP, a non-solution anyway, since the clean install would set up the desktop exactly the way MS wants.
In any case, it makes sense that those free AOL cds you get in the mall should auto-run this program. Hey, this is a war, so MS enemies should stand up and fight!
And once you have that .exe running, why not give it the capacity to (optionally) remove all the evil from XP? (I mean: IE, media player, those nasty photo-printing ads, etc.) Then, it could check the net for a new version of Netscape or RealPlayer or non-MS CD-burning software...
Once you have your own .exe activated, there is no ceiling to the good that you could do.
There is no way Microsoft can object, because they don't deny the users the right to delete icons and customize their installation. There is no difference in principle if this removal is done by a user-friendly application.
YES! But the script should be activated with a program that gives you some options about how much of the crap you would like removed.
Doing this would activate a script that would, by default, remove all of the stupid stuff in XP (desktop icons, IE, etc.) and replace it with programs that the OEM judges to be better. Of course, there would be an "advanced" tab which would give you the options to keep all that crap.
This way, MS could stick any icons on the default desktop that they like. MS never contested the right of users to remove those icons, and so what's the difference if this removing is done by a user-friendly, OEM-supplied app? I'm not saying that MS will be happy, and they'll probably claim that the app "breaks" XP, but the OEMs need to stand firm and say "no, it doesn't." MS will probably say that uninstalling stuff which they never meant to have uninstalled voids the warranty that comes with XP, but this will affect no one, because the OEMs, not MS, are responsible for supporting the software installed on new computers.
This is a better solution because it's easy to implement (there are already great "windows customizing apps" that can safely do all sorts of wonders like removing the media player and system restore from ME), it's easy for the user (just two or three clicks and a reboot), and it requires no compromises with MS. Should the OEM choose, they can replace everything bundeled by MS: the media player, the CD-burning software, the stupid photo-printing ads, etc.
This would be much easier than forcing users to clean-install XP, a non-solution anyway, since the clean install would set up the desktop exactly the way MS wants.
I'm picturing it like this: the world wakes up and sees the credit card numbers, addresses and ID numbers from passport users plastered on a major hacked web site (A+ if it's microsoft's). THEN--all of these unfortunate early adopters start receiving credit card bills for internet porn subscriptions, international phone calls and maybe an X10 camera. Crackers thus far have been very kind with the information they gain, but this kindness has been used by the corporations to brush off security breaches and say "see, no one got hurt so all is well." Maybe if people do get hurt and have to spend hours writing petitions to their credit company to be reimbursed, passport-style authentication will be so smeared with FUD that everyone will want out.
I'm not trying to condone illegal acts here; I'm just observing that when these things happen (it's hard to imagine they wouldn't) any assosiation with .net might be the kiss of death.
About motherboards: Do you know who is making the new MP chipset? AMD themselves--and according to all reports, it rocks. And it's not like Intel hasn't had its share of problems with chipsets. Sure, Athlon+VIA will always probably suck, but for the same amount of money as a P4+MB you'll always be able to buy a faster Athlon with a better MB.
I personally think the P4 is Intel's curse, and bad news for them is far from over. I would be biting my fingernails if the earnings of my company depended entirely on something as shoddy as the P4 design.
Anyone who's checked pricewatch would have to be insane to buy a P4.
It would really be a coup if KDE ran on AtheOS, because we'd quickly notice just how much X is holding back Free software. It would also fix the currend dearh of applications that AtheOS suffers from and make it much easier to get real work done on AtheOS. This would bring more developers, which at this stage are necessary if AtheOS is to go further.
Is it just one guy who did all of this, from the kernel up? The GUI? The journalled file system? The graphics? The porting of Konquerer? How come he's not everyone's hero? He seems like a uber-genius-hacker to me. Can anyone else even touch him?
I wish I could help out with the remaining programming. In any case, I want to say that I think he's got the right idea in dumping X, and I think that someone should be looking seriously at some sort of a migration path from Linux + X to this.
Hardware support will come when the community is behind this. I think we should be.
It seems like you've exhausted all of the possibilities I can imagine. Nice work!
Next time I'm at the mall I'll leave my girlfriend in some fitting room and go test our local CompUSA sales clerks to see if they too came to the conclusion that AMD systems have compatibility problems.
And if you are too busy to put together a list of components you want in your computer so a build-to-spec computer builder can make you a system (for much less than Dell), how do you find time to post to Slashdot? It seems the former takes quite a bit less time, and is (no offense to the present audience) a lot more fun. --- "The 24-hour Dell Technical Support center is currently closed. Please call back at another time." (The recorded answer to my first ever Dell tech support call. Not a joke!)
Yeah, great... With a budget of over $1,000,000 and a staff of Ph.D. students who are writing their dissertations on this, just how much do you think the undergraduates got to do? Club membership requirements for them probably looked like this: they either bring and share beer/chicks, or be really good at cleaning up after Ph.D. students. I bet you it was a lot more fun and instructive to work on the teams that came in 10th or so.
That struck me too when I read the article. Methodologically, this study is a nightmare.
Were it to turn out that such hardware was spread across the classes evenly, their results would be interesting. But how likely is that? For all we can tell, maybe video gaming hurts your chances of getting into college and finding good work. Maybe kids in your socio-economic class, with similar talents who stayed away from video games are on average doing much better than gamers.
It reminds me of another study which shows that high school students who are casual cocaine users are more likely to go to college and get better jobs than those who never touched the stuff. Not a good reason to do coke! You can reproduce these "amazing" results by plugging in any bad upper-class habbit. I'm sure that those arrested for drunken Porsche racing are more likely to go to college than those who never tried such a thing. Drinking microbrewery beer is probably also an indicator that you are more likely to go to college and get a good job. I expect it's even better than abstinence from alcohol. (Abstinence is probably distributed more evenly over the various income levels than microbrew fetishism is.)
(This is not the first time that I found myself wishing that Katz would sit through Critical Thinking 101.)
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Wow, you must be an American to think that dropping out of USENIX as a protest was a grand, explosive gesture. The rest of the world sees it as obvious that you make personal sacrifices to stand up for what's right.
Sorry to disturb; please return to your path of least resistance now...