Look, how "most" computer users store their data is completely irrelevant to how you should store your data.
Let us, for the sake of argument, posit that "most" people buy a Ford Escort as their means of transportation. So you come to me as a transportation expert and ask what sort of vehicle you should buy and I say "Well, most people buy a Ford Escort."
Which does you no good if you intend to haul shit or want to get some exercise while you travel, or ever exercise while hauling shit.
You see, I, as the data "expert," am the one who is ignorant and must get things going by asking questions. Before I can tell you anything or begin presenting you with options, I need my own ignorance eliminated.
"How should I organize my data?"
"Gee. I really don't know anything about that. Tell, me, what is it you do, and how do you go about doing it?"
Like that.
This is much better than:
"How can I organize my stuff?"
"Well, some people use dressers. Some people use index card file boxes, but some people use desks."
... people have been doing houses for several thousand years. We've got the basic idea down pretty well.
No, we don't. Most houses, as they are, are completely braindead. Get thee hence and read "Your Engineered House" by Rex Roberts for some of the ways and reasons.
And computers, how long have we had those?
How long have we had mathematics and physical ways of representing it?
Most software sucks because the people who write it ignore principles that are prefectly well understood and in some cases even provable.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Games might be an exception, but then Ed doesn't deal with games, having come to the conclusion that having a bad UI experience must be part of the game, for some reason or other. Beats me why.
And here lies the root of problem. People think this is true, and it's arrant nonsense. Computers are absolutely worthless at organizing data. All they can do it process instructions for organization.
The organization itself derives from, and can only derive from a human mind. Thinking "the computer organizes the data" is the main reason why virtually all databases are giant Mongolian cluster fucks.
When you run a program that "organizes the data for you" what you are really doing is imposing someone else's idea of how your data should be organized on your data.
When people ask me how they should organize their data I like to answer honestly:
"How the hell should I know?"
Until know about their data, what it is, what it "means" and how it is expected to used I can reorganize it a billion different ways without in any way organizing it in any useful fashion.
Organization is a state of mind and for a database to be useful you must transfer the state of your mind to the "business model" of database managment system.
Just like you do when you arrange your folders in a heirarchy.
But at least the people so arrested will still be subjected to the due process of law, with representation and fair public trial by a jury of their peers.
Oh, wait. Nevermind.
Well hell, I've always wanted to go to Cuba, but faced government sanction if I did so. Now it's government sanction that will get me there.
Richard Feynman had an ability to metally model probably surpassed only by Stephan Hawking. He had a measured IQ of only 120, hence his humorous brag that his Nobel Prize was the only special one.
Stephan Hawking's ability to mentally model is largely due to practice enforced by environmental issues. Skill rather than intelligence, and he's the first to admit it.
IQ tests are also statistical in nature, comparitive. The degree to which they measure whatever it is that they measure is dependant on having a large enough sample for comparison. At the low and high ends they break down statistically.
They also break down in cases with special environmental factors, as in the case of Stephan Hawking or dyslexics, where the people being tested diverge radically from the "norm" assumed by the test, and all of the tests are biased to one degree or another by such assumptions.
As an extreme example the test may assume you have the "intelligence" to speak Urdu at a secondary school level, to which you have never been exposed before. You will test poorly, even though you may well be a liguistic genius who could learn to speak Urdu like a native by simply hanging out on a street corner in Pakistan for a couple months. You do not fit the statistical model of the test.
Such a test would certainly be a predictive measure of how well you would perform if thrust into an secondary academic setting where only Urdu is spoken and written, but it would say nothing about your ability to mentally model, let alone about your "intelligence."
And of course there is the underlying assumption that performance in academic settings is a valid measurment of "intelligence" or mental modeling; and such will only be the case to the degree you are near the norm assumed in that setting.
I have been called upon from time to time to examine and critque tests for error and bias. One question in particular sticks in my mind after decades.
It was a "which one of these things doesn't belong" question. Well, it was obvious to me which one didn't belong. The list was a bunch of astronomical objects, one of which did not fit the rest of the group.
In the minds of the test writers this would have been a "wrong" answer. They thought the group consisted of models of American cars, something which they assumed every teenager would be familiar with and themselves failed to perceive that the group could be modeled in multiple ways.
Those alternative models did not fit their statistical base.
Nah. I've read the book and seen the previous movie version and didn't want to spoil them, both particular favorites of mine.
The book is one of those rare works that stands alone. There was nothing quite like it before, and there has been nothing quite like it since either. Quite extraordinary when you consider it was a first novel knocked out in a matter of weeks. And the key to the whole thing is the way Forsyth makes the bad guy the protagonist, without ever in any way making him an empathic character, makes it work, and all with a gritty, matter of fact realism. Quite remarkable.
If you haven't read it, do so. Soon. Then watch the '73 movie version and marvel at how a difficult book really can be translated to the screen if the people involved give a shit to do so.
"Excuse me sir, but would you please give me all your dough, or I shall shoot. Ummmm, if you'll just stand over here. No, a bit more to the left. Too much, come back just a hair. Now, step closer, closer, closer. ..Hey! Where ya goin'?"
We aren't even up to licensed software use yet. Copyright covers copying, not use. Many of the provisions of most EULAs are actually well known to have no legal standing, and none of the rest have been tested to any degree. The whole thing relies on people thinking it's a contract (that's the function of the stupid "I Accept" button), and it isn't, it's license, a grant of copying, not a restriction of use.
It's all a big con job done with the waving of hands, smoke and mirrors to take in the credulous.
The "S" people are a special case because they are well known for using "extra legal" means for getting what they want. Extortion isn't law, no precedent has been set that "Guido" hasn't already established.
And the device is just a stupid dowsing rod thingy anyway, you'd have to be a moron to buy one.
Yeah, well, the way I figure it I'll live till I die, just like everybody else. Hey, I could even "get lucky" and just get creamed by a bus or something.
Life is uncertain. Death isn't. Today the weather was lovely.
CF is the biggy (you'll find it on the Wikipedia list of diseases correlated with Ashkenazi heritage)that'll kill me sooner or later, either directly or through some complication (like catching a common cold or something).
Ironically it isn't the one that causes me trouble on a day to day basis, that would be Celiac Sprue Disease, no longer actually considered fatal, although it was when I was born, but carries the ever present risk of anaphylactic shock if I'm not very, very careful about everything I eat. Even if I don't go into shock a grain or two of flour consumed through cross contamination can mess me up pretty good for months at a time.
You seem to have missed that I consider it obvious that the universe is teeming with life, some of which is no doubt intelligent; and that I am the founder of the "They Weren't Idiots" school of paleoanthropology.
My comments were directed strictly at the idea of a government coverup of interplanetary beings visiting us.
These people can't keep their own weenies covered up, little alone little green men and the idea that there are other intelligent beings in the universe is an entirely seperate one from whether they're flying around New Hampshire.
Yeah, and insanity plea. Doen't mean he shouldn't do serious time, just that he should do it where they have nice soft walls, milk and cookies.
Ummmm, the round kind, with little bits of chocolate in them. The other kind are part of the alien plot to enslave us, but don't tell anyone or the MIBs will come for you.
Of course, you might be talking about the ceiling effects of individual IQ tests. Some lose accuracy above 140, but some are quite good up to around 180-200.
Yes, that's what I'm talking about, above 200 where the smart numbers become stupid.
But I'll back up OP's point as well, stupid numbers don't necessarily mean you aren't smart.
But before you go around claiming "accuracy" of measurement I think you have to be able to accurately tell me what is being measured.
And I defy you to do that without begging the question.
But IQ tests in particular suffer from no end of problems, especially on the lower end of the scale. Did person X score low because they lack intelligence, or because they lack education (not the same thing) or because of other factors.
They suffer from all sorts of problems at the high end as well, losing all real meaning once the score gets above a certain point. Basically, whatever it that they are measuring, and I'm not at all sure what that really is, is some degree of variance from the mean; and the further from the mean you get the less meaningful the measurement is.
Hey, I'm an Ashkenazi Jew, and I have two, two, two fatal genetic diseases as well as a nuerological disability. I'm also really, really smart. Smart enough to be off the meaningful high end of the scale.
And I'll be dead soon.
Somehow I don't find this study very encouraging.
"Hey, you. Yeah, the stupid person. Can you spare a lung? No? Bummer."
Ah, yes. I can see that is what he very likely meant. Perhaps I've been up too late and sniffing too much varnish (it's methanol based) and was unduly influenced by another post claiming that the ability to prove the authenticity of a scroll would be a boon to the potential buyer in his being able to know he was getting the genuine article.
Ok, here's the thing, in any handmade and/or natural material item there are always marks to distinguish them easily. In the case of a Torah it's simply that nobody has bothered to make note of those marks before.
If you bring me two violins, machine made, "identical" in every respect, I will, at a later date, be able to tell them apart with absolute certainty, so long as that's what I knew was needed before you originally showed them to me. They have "fingerprints," it's simply a matter of bothering to take them.
Not that anybody would bother with violins like that, not even the owner in all likelyhood. They aren't worth it. If it gets stolen go to the store and pop another hundred bucks on a new one "just like" it.
Two handmade violins are even more discernable. And cost more than a hundred bucks.
Violins are quite commonly stolen as a matter of opprotunity. A Strad cello was stolen from a front porch (I bet the owner doesn't leave it there again) and recovered in a dumpster. The thief stole it because it was there and because he could. When he realized what it was he ditched it because he couldn't sell it without getting arrested. He was hoping to get a few hundred from a pawn shop, not 20 years for stealing millions of unnegotiable dollars.
But the pros don't work like that. They have the buyer, who knows he is getting stolen goods, lined up ahead of time. It isn't a business done "on spec." It's to order.
And such is the case with most Torah thefts.
Now if a guy comes to me with what he claims is an old violin I can authenticate that by simple physical inspection. The same, as the article notes, is true of Torahs. The question is which violin/Torah. Provenence. It isn't a question of whether the violin/Torah is legit, it is whether the seller is legit.
But the two are tied. I already know who owns every known Strad, and multihundred year old Torahs aren't just lying around in attics by the millions like factory violins either. Some random guy comes to me with an authentic Strad and I know almost for certain that it's stolen (although in the case of a Strad I likely know from whom just by looking at it).
But if someone is willing to buy while looking the other way about the issue of provenence (and exactly where is a Torah likely to come from?) there's very little that can be done about it. The buyer is the issue if the buyer has no inclination to check it for being stolen in the first place.
If you bring my stolen violin to a dealer qualified to authenticate it (and they will all know about the theft within hours of my being aware of it myself. It's an Internet thing) you will not get it back, and stand a chance of being arrested for possesion of stolen property.
Conventional channels of authentification are not open to prospective buyers of unique stolen items, particularly if there is only one source of authentification, and they know that.
"Is this scroll stolen?"
"Why yes, yes it is. Thank you very much for returning it."
See? You only check the database if you don't want to buy a hot item, not if you specifically do. The database is part of the law enforcement system.
You only intentionally purchase stolen unique items if you, or your private expert, has the qualifications to perform the authentification "in house."
Slashdot Mirror
. . .you'd have trouble "organizing" a completely random collection.
By definition, because if it is random, it is not data.
KFG
Yer a literalist, ain'cha?
Look, how "most" computer users store their data is completely irrelevant to how you should store your data.
Let us, for the sake of argument, posit that "most" people buy a Ford Escort as their means of transportation. So you come to me as a transportation expert and ask what sort of vehicle you should buy and I say "Well, most people buy a Ford Escort."
Which does you no good if you intend to haul shit or want to get some exercise while you travel, or ever exercise while hauling shit.
You see, I, as the data "expert," am the one who is ignorant and must get things going by asking questions. Before I can tell you anything or begin presenting you with options, I need my own ignorance eliminated.
"How should I organize my data?"
"Gee. I really don't know anything about that. Tell, me, what is it you do, and how do you go about doing it?"
Like that.
This is much better than:
"How can I organize my stuff?"
"Well, some people use dressers. Some people use index card file boxes, but some people use desks."
"Dude, my stuff is Jumbo Jets."
KFG
No, we don't. Most houses, as they are, are completely braindead. Get thee hence and read "Your Engineered House" by Rex Roberts for some of the ways and reasons.
And computers, how long have we had those?
How long have we had mathematics and physical ways of representing it?
Most software sucks because the people who write it ignore principles that are prefectly well understood and in some cases even provable.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Games might be an exception, but then Ed doesn't deal with games, having come to the conclusion that having a bad UI experience must be part of the game, for some reason or other. Beats me why.
KFG
Computers are good at organizing data.
And here lies the root of problem. People think this is true, and it's arrant nonsense. Computers are absolutely worthless at organizing data. All they can do it process instructions for organization.
The organization itself derives from, and can only derive from a human mind. Thinking "the computer organizes the data" is the main reason why virtually all databases are giant Mongolian cluster fucks.
When you run a program that "organizes the data for you" what you are really doing is imposing someone else's idea of how your data should be organized on your data.
When people ask me how they should organize their data I like to answer honestly:
"How the hell should I know?"
Until know about their data, what it is, what it "means" and how it is expected to used I can reorganize it a billion different ways without in any way organizing it in any useful fashion.
Organization is a state of mind and for a database to be useful you must transfer the state of your mind to the "business model" of database managment system.
Just like you do when you arrange your folders in a heirarchy.
KFG
But at least the people so arrested will still be subjected to the due process of law, with representation and fair public trial by a jury of their peers.
Oh, wait. Nevermind.
Well hell, I've always wanted to go to Cuba, but faced government sanction if I did so. Now it's government sanction that will get me there.
Isn't it ironic?
KFG
Richard Feynman had an ability to metally model probably surpassed only by Stephan Hawking. He had a measured IQ of only 120, hence his humorous brag that his Nobel Prize was the only special one.
Stephan Hawking's ability to mentally model is largely due to practice enforced by environmental issues. Skill rather than intelligence, and he's the first to admit it.
IQ tests are also statistical in nature, comparitive. The degree to which they measure whatever it is that they measure is dependant on having a large enough sample for comparison. At the low and high ends they break down statistically.
They also break down in cases with special environmental factors, as in the case of Stephan Hawking or dyslexics, where the people being tested diverge radically from the "norm" assumed by the test, and all of the tests are biased to one degree or another by such assumptions.
As an extreme example the test may assume you have the "intelligence" to speak Urdu at a secondary school level, to which you have never been exposed before. You will test poorly, even though you may well be a liguistic genius who could learn to speak Urdu like a native by simply hanging out on a street corner in Pakistan for a couple months. You do not fit the statistical model of the test.
Such a test would certainly be a predictive measure of how well you would perform if thrust into an secondary academic setting where only Urdu is spoken and written, but it would say nothing about your ability to mentally model, let alone about your "intelligence."
And of course there is the underlying assumption that performance in academic settings is a valid measurment of "intelligence" or mental modeling; and such will only be the case to the degree you are near the norm assumed in that setting.
I have been called upon from time to time to examine and critque tests for error and bias. One question in particular sticks in my mind after decades.
It was a "which one of these things doesn't belong" question. Well, it was obvious to me which one didn't belong. The list was a bunch of astronomical objects, one of which did not fit the rest of the group.
In the minds of the test writers this would have been a "wrong" answer. They thought the group consisted of models of American cars, something which they assumed every teenager would be familiar with and themselves failed to perceive that the group could be modeled in multiple ways.
Those alternative models did not fit their statistical base.
KFG
Nah. I've read the book and seen the previous movie version and didn't want to spoil them, both particular favorites of mine.
The book is one of those rare works that stands alone. There was nothing quite like it before, and there has been nothing quite like it since either. Quite extraordinary when you consider it was a first novel knocked out in a matter of weeks. And the key to the whole thing is the way Forsyth makes the bad guy the protagonist, without ever in any way making him an empathic character, makes it work, and all with a gritty, matter of fact realism. Quite remarkable.
If you haven't read it, do so. Soon. Then watch the '73 movie version and marvel at how a difficult book really can be translated to the screen if the people involved give a shit to do so.
KFG
"Excuse me sir, but would you please give me all your dough, or I shall shoot. Ummmm, if you'll just stand over here. No, a bit more to the left. Too much, come back just a hair. Now, step closer, closer, closer. . .Hey! Where ya goin'?"
KFG
You're arguing rhetoric here...
No, I am not, which was my point.
KFG
You need a look in the ol' legal dictionary.
MS was found liable.
KFG
I can tell 'em, but they're in the communications business, not the listening business.
KFG
We aren't even up to licensed software use yet. Copyright covers copying, not use. Many of the provisions of most EULAs are actually well known to have no legal standing, and none of the rest have been tested to any degree. The whole thing relies on people thinking it's a contract (that's the function of the stupid "I Accept" button), and it isn't, it's license, a grant of copying, not a restriction of use.
It's all a big con job done with the waving of hands, smoke and mirrors to take in the credulous.
The "S" people are a special case because they are well known for using "extra legal" means for getting what they want. Extortion isn't law, no precedent has been set that "Guido" hasn't already established.
And the device is just a stupid dowsing rod thingy anyway, you'd have to be a moron to buy one.
Hey, I wonder if Travolta's got one.
KFG
Yeah, well, the way I figure it I'll live till I die, just like everybody else. Hey, I could even "get lucky" and just get creamed by a bus or something.
Life is uncertain. Death isn't. Today the weather was lovely.
KFG
CF is the biggy (you'll find it on the Wikipedia list of diseases correlated with Ashkenazi heritage)that'll kill me sooner or later, either directly or through some complication (like catching a common cold or something).
Ironically it isn't the one that causes me trouble on a day to day basis, that would be Celiac Sprue Disease, no longer actually considered fatal, although it was when I was born, but carries the ever present risk of anaphylactic shock if I'm not very, very careful about everything I eat. Even if I don't go into shock a grain or two of flour consumed through cross contamination can mess me up pretty good for months at a time.
It's a real pain in the ass, pun intended.
KFG
You seem to have missed that I consider it obvious that the universe is teeming with life, some of which is no doubt intelligent; and that I am the founder of the "They Weren't Idiots" school of paleoanthropology.
My comments were directed strictly at the idea of a government coverup of interplanetary beings visiting us.
These people can't keep their own weenies covered up, little alone little green men and the idea that there are other intelligent beings in the universe is an entirely seperate one from whether they're flying around New Hampshire.
KFG
Hardware is not used under license. It is yours.
KFG
Come on people, think these things through!
I can't. The tin foil hat has stopped the voices in my head.
KFG
Then again, perhaps he was on to something?
Yeah, and insanity plea. Doen't mean he shouldn't do serious time, just that he should do it where they have nice soft walls, milk and cookies.
Ummmm, the round kind, with little bits of chocolate in them. The other kind are part of the alien plot to enslave us, but don't tell anyone or the MIBs will come for you.
Arrrrrrrrgh!
KFG
We'll have to come up with a clubhouse and secret handshake or something, if only to fuck with the minds of the conspiracy theorists or something.
KFG
Of course, you might be talking about the ceiling effects of individual IQ tests. Some lose accuracy above 140, but some are quite good up to around 180-200.
Yes, that's what I'm talking about, above 200 where the smart numbers become stupid.
But I'll back up OP's point as well, stupid numbers don't necessarily mean you aren't smart.
But before you go around claiming "accuracy" of measurement I think you have to be able to accurately tell me what is being measured.
And I defy you to do that without begging the question.
KFG
But IQ tests in particular suffer from no end of problems, especially on the lower end of the scale. Did person X score low because they lack intelligence, or because they lack education (not the same thing) or because of other factors.
They suffer from all sorts of problems at the high end as well, losing all real meaning once the score gets above a certain point. Basically, whatever it that they are measuring, and I'm not at all sure what that really is, is some degree of variance from the mean; and the further from the mean you get the less meaningful the measurement is.
Hey, I'm an Ashkenazi Jew, and I have two, two, two fatal genetic diseases as well as a nuerological disability. I'm also really, really smart. Smart enough to be off the meaningful high end of the scale.
And I'll be dead soon.
Somehow I don't find this study very encouraging.
"Hey, you. Yeah, the stupid person. Can you spare a lung? No? Bummer."
"Arrrrrrrrrrgh!"
KFG
So ya'll better get ready when the K'zinti swoop down and eat us all later this afternoon.
Hey, wasn't I right about that Sun thingy?
I'd go into the professional psychic business, if it weren't for being infested with ethics.
KFG
Ah, yes. I can see that is what he very likely meant. Perhaps I've been up too late and sniffing too much varnish (it's methanol based) and was unduly influenced by another post claiming that the ability to prove the authenticity of a scroll would be a boon to the potential buyer in his being able to know he was getting the genuine article.
Ok, here's the thing, in any handmade and/or natural material item there are always marks to distinguish them easily. In the case of a Torah it's simply that nobody has bothered to make note of those marks before.
If you bring me two violins, machine made, "identical" in every respect, I will, at a later date, be able to tell them apart with absolute certainty, so long as that's what I knew was needed before you originally showed them to me. They have "fingerprints," it's simply a matter of bothering to take them.
Not that anybody would bother with violins like that, not even the owner in all likelyhood. They aren't worth it. If it gets stolen go to the store and pop another hundred bucks on a new one "just like" it.
Two handmade violins are even more discernable. And cost more than a hundred bucks.
Violins are quite commonly stolen as a matter of opprotunity. A Strad cello was stolen from a front porch (I bet the owner doesn't leave it there again) and recovered in a dumpster. The thief stole it because it was there and because he could. When he realized what it was he ditched it because he couldn't sell it without getting arrested. He was hoping to get a few hundred from a pawn shop, not 20 years for stealing millions of unnegotiable dollars.
But the pros don't work like that. They have the buyer, who knows he is getting stolen goods, lined up ahead of time. It isn't a business done "on spec." It's to order.
And such is the case with most Torah thefts.
Now if a guy comes to me with what he claims is an old violin I can authenticate that by simple physical inspection. The same, as the article notes, is true of Torahs. The question is which violin/Torah. Provenence. It isn't a question of whether the violin/Torah is legit, it is whether the seller is legit.
But the two are tied. I already know who owns every known Strad, and multihundred year old Torahs aren't just lying around in attics by the millions like factory violins either. Some random guy comes to me with an authentic Strad and I know almost for certain that it's stolen (although in the case of a Strad I likely know from whom just by looking at it).
But if someone is willing to buy while looking the other way about the issue of provenence (and exactly where is a Torah likely to come from?) there's very little that can be done about it. The buyer is the issue if the buyer has no inclination to check it for being stolen in the first place.
KFG
If you bring my stolen violin to a dealer qualified to authenticate it (and they will all know about the theft within hours of my being aware of it myself. It's an Internet thing) you will not get it back, and stand a chance of being arrested for possesion of stolen property.
Conventional channels of authentification are not open to prospective buyers of unique stolen items, particularly if there is only one source of authentification, and they know that.
"Is this scroll stolen?"
"Why yes, yes it is. Thank you very much for returning it."
See? You only check the database if you don't want to buy a hot item, not if you specifically do. The database is part of the law enforcement system.
You only intentionally purchase stolen unique items if you, or your private expert, has the qualifications to perform the authentification "in house."
KFG
Hand write something on a piece of paper. Now scan it. Kinda like that.
KFG