Peter: (at the International House of Haggis) Hey...this haggis stuff is great! Say, how come no one comes here, anyway? (takes a big bite of haggis) Jim: Because haggis is made from the heart, lungs and liver of a sheep boiled in its own stomach. Peter: (looks absolutely repulsed)
I think that I have learned more about things that I already knew about by watching this generic report than I usually learn about things that I've never known about when watching real news.
By your logic, rage murders should go unpunished. The murderers were only acting out of normal and fairly standard psychological patterns, ie. they caught their wife cheating, got mad, then shot her and the guy. Is the guy likely to kill again? Not really, unless he catches his next wife cheating on him.
I imagine the Bystander effect is a lot like the concept of fate. If you don't know your fate, you're bound to it. If you do know your fate, however, you have the opportunity to change your behavior. I think calling attention to this effect could actually help to prevent it from happening in the future.
Do you have insurance? If so, then you certainly expect others to pay for your medical bills. That's what insurance is. You expect others to pick up the tab if something goes catastrophically wrong. So if you cancel your insurance and pay all of your medical bills out of pocket, then don't draw government disability insurance if you do get injured, I will accept your argument. Until then, you're just a hypocrite.
Why do government bureaucrats need to decide who qualifies for lifesaving procedures in order to have socialized medicine? Assuming that the two are one in the same is the very definition of ignorance, my friend.
The calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature.
I believe that Sea Shepherd meets all of these criteria.
The only part that may be questionable is the "violence" aspect, but in the TV show they've used several tactics that should constitute violence. Just off the top of my head, they've used chemical weapons that caused vomiting. They've boarded an "enemy" ship. They've intentionally destroyed property. I think at least one of these has to constitute violence, even if they are attempting to stay within the technical limits of the law.
I disagree. Terrorism isn't just using bombs on a religious crusade. Terrorism is causing the threat of harm in order to get what you want. Sea Shepherds is a group of terrorists. I watched 3 episodes of their show and and was completely disgusted by the way that they operate. By engaging in the type of aggressive (and in several cases, stupid and dangerous) tactics that they have shown on TV, they give all legitimate activists a bad name.
I wouldn't expect you to have read the article, but at least read the summary.
A study published in PLoS One by Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University used closely cropped greyscale photos of people's faces, standardized for size.
The article explained further:
Each photo was cropped to the extremes of the targets' heads (top of head, bottom of chin, sides of hair or ears), converted to grayscale, and standardized for size. To avoid race-based stereotypes, racial minority candidates were excluded from the study.
In the first study, they took photos from politicians websites and eliminated any responses that recognized said politicians. In the second study, they took random photos of college seniors from 2000-2008 and no participants recognized any of the photos.
So no, the way in which individuals carried themselves or their dress should not have had much affect, if any, on the way the photos were categorized. Certainly it should not have accounted for a 10% increase in accuracy over random assignment, especially in a study with such a large sample size.
Nielsen also has their people meter that measures what you watch electronically. These don't use DVR data, but are generally more accurate than self reporting, although I'm sure that if you tried, you could fool them pretty easily.
Actually, many television shows are moving towards product placement instead of traditional advertising. Most companies understand that the normal TV model is a thing of the past, considering that many people have DVRs and now stream TV online.
If you have ever seen the show "Chuck" on NBC, you would see quite a bit of this. For one, part of the show often takes place in an electronics retail store which allows considerable ads to be placed around the store in the form of cardboard cutouts and product displays. Video games are often topics for conversation, including major promotions from Call of Duty and Madden NFL 10 being incorporated (extremely cleverly, I might add) into the storyline. In addition to video games and cars (which have been doing product placement for years), Subway has stated that their product placement with Chuck was one of their most successful ad partnerships ever.
Now, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter whether Nielsen includes steaming content in their ratings. Any network that streams its own shows should have access to their data without a problem, and if Hulu doesn't already provide this data back to the networks, I doubt it would make much for them to do so. Any ad exec that still bases his decisions solely on Nielsen ratings at this point doesn't deserve his job.
PS. Watch Chuck. It's a fantastically done spy comedy that always finds its way to cleverly tell a story, even if its premise is a bit old. (Unwitting everyman accidentally gains "superpowers" and must learn to become a hero.)
Those on Google aren't even reading article summaries, just headlines. I'm seeing a whole new trend in journalism. Just post one sentence, unsubstantiated statements and you have news! Hurrah!
Wait, what's that you say? This is already going on? It's called Twitter? I guess I'll have to check it out.
I think there's a big difference between "knowing" that you're going to die and "understanding" that you're going to die. Every one of us knows that our time is ticking down and that we will, some day, die. Most of us have had no reason to really grapple with our own mortality, and as such, don't really "believe" that we're going to die.
I think this is part of the reason that funerals are so hard on so many people. They come that much closer to the understanding how fragile life is and to the fact that their life can be taken at any time.
Sorry for the misuse of quotes above. I wanted it to be known that the concepts that I was leaning on weren't exactly the definition of those words, but my limited vocabulary couldn't allow me to find anything better.
Don't forget, the US already shot a satellite out of the sky. They tried to rationalize an attempt to get the satellite to hit water instead of land, but if you think it was anything less than a weapons test, you're being a bit naive. I was quite disappointed that this angle didn't get more play in the news.
When I went to college, we had very nice single-occupancy apartments built into many of our dorms. They usually weren't anything special compared to "normal" apartments, but they were cheap and had a good location within the city.
A 50 year old female goes out on her moped during flash flood, gets drunk, tries to drive home and gets washed into creek. Cop saves her, but she jumps back in to save moped. Dies.
20-something male has to pee and gets out of car. Jumps over side embankment, only to find out that he's on an overpass elevated 65 feet above the ground. Falls. Dies.
Two bank robbers use way to much dynamite in attempt to rob an ATM. Take out entire building. Die.
Priest does a "Lawn-chair Larry" for charity. Winds change and blow him towards water. Doesn't parachute over dry land even though this is the situation for which he has the chute. When over the water, calls for help. Can't figure out how to use the GPS he brought along. Disappears. Dies. Is found later.
Overall, pretty weak. Two of them do not belong as they contain members of our species that were likely not going to reproduce anyway. (priest and 50 year old woman)
I think you're being incredibly short-sighted. Did you forget about the intense amounts of peer pressure that can be placed on a teenager? People can be convinced to do things well outside of their normal purview, simply by convincing them that it is the only way to be socially accepted. Teenagers have been shown to have very limited reasoning skills and not to be able to see all of the possible consequences of their actions.
While I do believe that in most cases, sexting is probably a victimless crime, there are indeed many instances in which the victims are very real. Skeazy boyfriend convinces girlfriend to give him nudes only to turn around and show his friends. Scheming girl gets boy to give her nudes so she can publicly embarrass him. We could continue to play this game for a long time, but I'm sure you get the point.
The other main problem that I have is the transition from this being a private issue between two consenting people and being very public between one teenager and a much larger audience. If taking nude photos of yourself and distributing them is perfectly legal for teenagers to do, what happens to child pornography laws? Do pervy adults start convincing teenagers to take pictures based on all of the money that they can make on the internet? If they take the pictures themselves, they'd be legal, in Vermont anyway.
So many times, people here on Slashdot like to make things black and white, when in reality, the situation is almost entirely gray.
Not surprising at all. Astronomy is still a field where there is a lot of "discovery" going on. In many other sciences, we basically know what everything does, and we are trying to find out how those things happen, whereas in astronomy, we're still trying to discover what's out there. When you don't know what you're looking for, the only way that you can find it is luck.
They tend to skew towards the young, tech savvy, and vocal. I'm sure many slashdotters have voted in polls on sites that they didn't frequent because someone told them it was a good idea, and we all know how vocal Apple Fanboys are.
That aside, Jobs was very important this decade. He helped bring about a credible threat to the Windows OS (causing Microsoft to make many positive changes), he helped to reform the music industry, bringing the aging RIAA and record companies to their knees, and he has shown the direction that telcos must move in as far as mobile computing by causing AT&T's 3G network to buckle. He was very influential, especially in the field of computing, and more deserving than most.
Now, personally I would have said that GW Bush was the most influential person of the decade. He was the most powerful man in the world for 8 (technically 7, whatever) years. He made an enormous power grab for the executive branch, changed how the country views terrorism (be scared, very scared), and brought several countries into two wars, one of which is hopefully mostly over, and the other with no end in sight. Also, under his watch, the worldwide economy took an enormous tumble due to his lax policies, with considerable help from previous presidents, especially Clinton and Reagan. To me, his influence was far greater than anything Jobs has done.
I meant that the "other mechanisms" were abused, namely the government. I know way too many people who were welfare lifers before welfare reform went through. Then there are people who claim unemployment even though they don't need it, who quit their jobs but find a loophole to receive unemployment, and, my personal favorite: those who sell foodstamps for booze and cigarettes.
I'm not disagreeing with you on your point, it is valid; I just wanted to clarify mine.
Slashdot Mirror
From Earthworm Jim
Peter: (at the International House of Haggis) Hey...this haggis stuff is great! Say, how come no one comes here, anyway? (takes a big bite of haggis)
Jim: Because haggis is made from the heart, lungs and liver of a sheep boiled in its own stomach.
Peter: (looks absolutely repulsed)
I think that I have learned more about things that I already knew about by watching this generic report than I usually learn about things that I've never known about when watching real news.
By your logic, rage murders should go unpunished. The murderers were only acting out of normal and fairly standard psychological patterns, ie. they caught their wife cheating, got mad, then shot her and the guy. Is the guy likely to kill again? Not really, unless he catches his next wife cheating on him.
I imagine the Bystander effect is a lot like the concept of fate. If you don't know your fate, you're bound to it. If you do know your fate, however, you have the opportunity to change your behavior. I think calling attention to this effect could actually help to prevent it from happening in the future.
Do you have insurance? If so, then you certainly expect others to pay for your medical bills. That's what insurance is. You expect others to pick up the tab if something goes catastrophically wrong. So if you cancel your insurance and pay all of your medical bills out of pocket, then don't draw government disability insurance if you do get injured, I will accept your argument. Until then, you're just a hypocrite.
You're right, I forgot to add that it is for ideological reasons, whether that be religious, political, or other.
Why do government bureaucrats need to decide who qualifies for lifesaving procedures in order to have socialized medicine? Assuming that the two are one in the same is the very definition of ignorance, my friend.
From the Princeton Wordnet, Terrorism is:
The calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature.
I believe that Sea Shepherd meets all of these criteria.
The only part that may be questionable is the "violence" aspect, but in the TV show they've used several tactics that should constitute violence. Just off the top of my head, they've used chemical weapons that caused vomiting. They've boarded an "enemy" ship. They've intentionally destroyed property. I think at least one of these has to constitute violence, even if they are attempting to stay within the technical limits of the law.
I disagree. Terrorism isn't just using bombs on a religious crusade. Terrorism is causing the threat of harm in order to get what you want. Sea Shepherds is a group of terrorists. I watched 3 episodes of their show and and was completely disgusted by the way that they operate. By engaging in the type of aggressive (and in several cases, stupid and dangerous) tactics that they have shown on TV, they give all legitimate activists a bad name.
I wouldn't expect you to have read the article, but at least read the summary.
A study published in PLoS One by Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University used closely cropped greyscale photos of people's faces, standardized for size.
The article explained further:
Each photo was cropped to the extremes of the targets' heads (top of head, bottom of chin, sides of hair or ears), converted to grayscale, and standardized for size. To avoid race-based stereotypes, racial minority candidates were excluded from the study.
In the first study, they took photos from politicians websites and eliminated any responses that recognized said politicians. In the second study, they took random photos of college seniors from 2000-2008 and no participants recognized any of the photos.
So no, the way in which individuals carried themselves or their dress should not have had much affect, if any, on the way the photos were categorized. Certainly it should not have accounted for a 10% increase in accuracy over random assignment, especially in a study with such a large sample size.
Nielsen also has their people meter that measures what you watch electronically. These don't use DVR data, but are generally more accurate than self reporting, although I'm sure that if you tried, you could fool them pretty easily.
Actually, many television shows are moving towards product placement instead of traditional advertising. Most companies understand that the normal TV model is a thing of the past, considering that many people have DVRs and now stream TV online.
If you have ever seen the show "Chuck" on NBC, you would see quite a bit of this. For one, part of the show often takes place in an electronics retail store which allows considerable ads to be placed around the store in the form of cardboard cutouts and product displays. Video games are often topics for conversation, including major promotions from Call of Duty and Madden NFL 10 being incorporated (extremely cleverly, I might add) into the storyline. In addition to video games and cars (which have been doing product placement for years), Subway has stated that their product placement with Chuck was one of their most successful ad partnerships ever.
Now, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter whether Nielsen includes steaming content in their ratings. Any network that streams its own shows should have access to their data without a problem, and if Hulu doesn't already provide this data back to the networks, I doubt it would make much for them to do so. Any ad exec that still bases his decisions solely on Nielsen ratings at this point doesn't deserve his job.
PS. Watch Chuck. It's a fantastically done spy comedy that always finds its way to cleverly tell a story, even if its premise is a bit old. (Unwitting everyman accidentally gains "superpowers" and must learn to become a hero.)
Those on Google aren't even reading article summaries, just headlines. I'm seeing a whole new trend in journalism. Just post one sentence, unsubstantiated statements and you have news! Hurrah!
Wait, what's that you say? This is already going on? It's called Twitter? I guess I'll have to check it out.
Oh wait, since I haven't bought the SarcMark, you can't tell that I was being sarcastic.
Correction. That's evidence that there is no God. There is no proof, and therefore your theory is just that. Theory.
I think there's a big difference between "knowing" that you're going to die and "understanding" that you're going to die. Every one of us knows that our time is ticking down and that we will, some day, die. Most of us have had no reason to really grapple with our own mortality, and as such, don't really "believe" that we're going to die.
I think this is part of the reason that funerals are so hard on so many people. They come that much closer to the understanding how fragile life is and to the fact that their life can be taken at any time.
Sorry for the misuse of quotes above. I wanted it to be known that the concepts that I was leaning on weren't exactly the definition of those words, but my limited vocabulary couldn't allow me to find anything better.
Don't forget, the US already shot a satellite out of the sky. They tried to rationalize an attempt to get the satellite to hit water instead of land, but if you think it was anything less than a weapons test, you're being a bit naive. I was quite disappointed that this angle didn't get more play in the news.
Nope, that was pretty much it. I wasn't really sure what was going on. The summary was most of the article.
It is a neat idea, though. If it works, and is cheap, it could help many people in many places.
When I went to college, we had very nice single-occupancy apartments built into many of our dorms. They usually weren't anything special compared to "normal" apartments, but they were cheap and had a good location within the city.
And all this time I thought "mafia" was just a scam to get you to pay money to Zynga so that your clicks do more damage than my clicks.
Honestly, if you're shallow enough to sign up for a dating website for beautiful people only, can you really complain if you get kicked out?
I'll sum it up for you.
A 50 year old female goes out on her moped during flash flood, gets drunk, tries to drive home and gets washed into creek. Cop saves her, but she jumps back in to save moped. Dies.
20-something male has to pee and gets out of car. Jumps over side embankment, only to find out that he's on an overpass elevated 65 feet above the ground. Falls. Dies.
Two bank robbers use way to much dynamite in attempt to rob an ATM. Take out entire building. Die.
Priest does a "Lawn-chair Larry" for charity. Winds change and blow him towards water. Doesn't parachute over dry land even though this is the situation for which he has the chute. When over the water, calls for help. Can't figure out how to use the GPS he brought along. Disappears. Dies.
Is found later.
Overall, pretty weak. Two of them do not belong as they contain members of our species that were likely not going to reproduce anyway. (priest and 50 year old woman)
I think you're being incredibly short-sighted. Did you forget about the intense amounts of peer pressure that can be placed on a teenager? People can be convinced to do things well outside of their normal purview, simply by convincing them that it is the only way to be socially accepted. Teenagers have been shown to have very limited reasoning skills and not to be able to see all of the possible consequences of their actions.
While I do believe that in most cases, sexting is probably a victimless crime, there are indeed many instances in which the victims are very real. Skeazy boyfriend convinces girlfriend to give him nudes only to turn around and show his friends. Scheming girl gets boy to give her nudes so she can publicly embarrass him. We could continue to play this game for a long time, but I'm sure you get the point.
The other main problem that I have is the transition from this being a private issue between two consenting people and being very public between one teenager and a much larger audience. If taking nude photos of yourself and distributing them is perfectly legal for teenagers to do, what happens to child pornography laws? Do pervy adults start convincing teenagers to take pictures based on all of the money that they can make on the internet? If they take the pictures themselves, they'd be legal, in Vermont anyway.
So many times, people here on Slashdot like to make things black and white, when in reality, the situation is almost entirely gray.
Not surprising at all. Astronomy is still a field where there is a lot of "discovery" going on. In many other sciences, we basically know what everything does, and we are trying to find out how those things happen, whereas in astronomy, we're still trying to discover what's out there. When you don't know what you're looking for, the only way that you can find it is luck.
They tend to skew towards the young, tech savvy, and vocal. I'm sure many slashdotters have voted in polls on sites that they didn't frequent because someone told them it was a good idea, and we all know how vocal Apple Fanboys are.
That aside, Jobs was very important this decade. He helped bring about a credible threat to the Windows OS (causing Microsoft to make many positive changes), he helped to reform the music industry, bringing the aging RIAA and record companies to their knees, and he has shown the direction that telcos must move in as far as mobile computing by causing AT&T's 3G network to buckle. He was very influential, especially in the field of computing, and more deserving than most.
Now, personally I would have said that GW Bush was the most influential person of the decade. He was the most powerful man in the world for 8 (technically 7, whatever) years. He made an enormous power grab for the executive branch, changed how the country views terrorism (be scared, very scared), and brought several countries into two wars, one of which is hopefully mostly over, and the other with no end in sight. Also, under his watch, the worldwide economy took an enormous tumble due to his lax policies, with considerable help from previous presidents, especially Clinton and Reagan. To me, his influence was far greater than anything Jobs has done.
I meant that the "other mechanisms" were abused, namely the government. I know way too many people who were welfare lifers before welfare reform went through. Then there are people who claim unemployment even though they don't need it, who quit their jobs but find a loophole to receive unemployment, and, my personal favorite: those who sell foodstamps for booze and cigarettes.
I'm not disagreeing with you on your point, it is valid; I just wanted to clarify mine.