What you mean is: "Get a business model that allows me to get free content, without advertisement and even if there are ads, do not target them in order to maximize your profits". I also do not like being tracked online. OTOH, I understand that in order for me to get so much for no money, I have to pay with something else. For me, the price is right. I agree to give up some privacy in order to be able to use a browser, web e-mail, encyclopedia and many more resources for no money. It is not really free, because I give something in return (personal info), but I am willing to pay this price. If you are unwilling to pay this price (which is your right), then be ready to cough up the dough.
Everytime we talk about pirating copyright material, people on this site go up in arms about how we are now in the digital age and companies should learn to catch up with the times. "What was fine for older mediums, is no necessarily adequate for the digital age," we say, "Companies should changes their business models accordingly." Given that, your comparison to older mediums and their inability to track users is irrelevant. I do not say I agree to all this tracking, but comparison to "older business models" is incorrect, by our own standard. And we wouldn't want people to say we practice double-standards here on/., don't we?:)
If you put such a claim in a summery, it is your task to provide a citation. If you do that, then it is my task to search for a counter-argument, if necessary. If you don't provide a source, then I consider it Flamebait.
He wrote an entire post about the duration of patents and to contrast it with copyrights he took a random example - a pop song, and you nitpick over that? Whats wrong with you? He might as well have said: "They couldn't care less about your new movie/computer game/software/book". It was just an example to show that in patents there is industry pressure not to extend the duration of patents and in copyright there is no such pressure. He never said this was the most important thing protected under copyright laws. Yeah, he is totally afraid to admit he is wrong...
You mean you need to implement a barcode at the embryo stage in order to have a unique identifier to each member of society? Aren't fingerprints, ear lobes, facial features and even the DNA itself unique enough? I won't go into the whole tin foil hat argument, but in order for your predictions to succeed, you don't need this new high tech.
BTW, how many predictions from 50 years ago did not pan out? Oh, and while on the subject: Did anyone give out a prediction about the scenarios you pointed out 50 years ago? I mean, you take something that happens now and then use a hypothetical prediction from 50 years ago to prove your point. That doesn't make sense. Give me real predictions that panned out, and we have something to talk about. And even then I bet that for every prediction, we can find a hundred others that turned out to be nothing more than kiddie horror stories.
Shame on me, I did go into the tin foil hat argument. Sorry, folks.
Sorry, I'm not too much informed in the HFCS debate, but something caught my eye: You say corn syrup has HFCS 42, i.e. 42% fructose. OTOH, regular sugar (AKA sucrose) is actually HFCS 50 (50% fructose). So in fact it has more fructose than HFCS! As far as I remember from my physiology classes, virtually all the sucrose we digest is broken down and absorbed in the GI tract It would seem that all the arguments about the cons of fructose would suggest that sucrose is worse than HFCS.
You are totally correct. In another post to another story, I used a different example from his book, but in that case I remember to reference him. Sorry.
I will quote from a previous post of mine: "Of course a locked door doesn't catch a terrorist, but contrary to popular notion, the pat-down is not about catching terrorists. It's about deterring them. I mean, do you see a scenario where a terrorist is carrying a bomb and sees the security guy scanning people and "feeling" them up and he just stands in line to await his turn? Of course not. The purpose of all those security measures is to prevent the terrorist from even approaching the plane in the first place." Remember, the pat-down (or the scanners, for that matter) isn't a surprise measure. People know about it beforehand. Still, don't get me wrong, I don't think the new procedures and the new scanners are OK - i do think they are infringing on people's privacy - but asking TSA to show people that have been caught as a measure of their effectiveness is not logical, IMHO.
In my original post I said that I am against the new scanners and I do believe them to be a gross infringement on people's privacy. I was just making the point that when trying to assess the effectiveness of any measure the TSA does, "terrorist caught" and probably any other statistic will not be sufficient. We will probably have to resort to... *gasp* Common Sense (which, as you hinted, is not so common).
Actually he meant that the wiki page is wrong and, unlike MIPS, the 's' in FLOPS does not mean "second". I don't know enough about the subject. A quick Google search for "FLOPS floating" found both interpretations, although it seems there are more "per second" pages than those without it. I don't know...
With this I agree completely. In a different post I said that I do not think the new rules are OK, and I still think so. Like you said, sometimes people do prefer a high-profile fucked up job than a low-profile well-done one. Sad but true.
One of these days they will come up with a better method of identification, until then, I think it would be better for all if we could learn to start trusting each other again.
Printf ('Are you a terrorist?'); Scanf ("%s", Answer); If Answer=='Y' Goto Jail() else Goto Flight();
Easy!
P.S. It's been more than 10 years since I programmed anything. I'm sure there are syntex errors, give me a break!
What you described is the classic difference between sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV). Sensitivity is a basic characteristic of a test, in this case 99.6% (Actually the TFA mentioned accuracy, which is a bit different, but let's not nitpick). PPV tells us what is the chance that a positive result (in this case, an ear match), is a true positive. Since the equation is TP/(TP+FP) (TP True positive; FP - False positive), it is affected by how common (or rare) the trait we are looking for is in the population we are checking. Since a terrorist is a rare occurrance, the PPV is (very) low. However, if we change the test a bit we can improve the PPV. Let's say we do not use the ears as a single test, but rather as a verification for the ID. A person shows a passport and then his ears are compared to what is stored at the computer. Here the test is used just for verification and not identification and we have a much better PPV (In this case a positive is actually a mismatch between the passport and ears) and the system can be used to detect people with fake IDs. BTW, this is used in many places where fingerprints are used. I don't know about other countries, but in Israel citizens can register their fingerprints and bypass passport control by going to a booth where you pass a magnetic card (containing your ID) and then you put your fingerprints for verification. So is 99.6% good enough? depending on the application. Oh, does anyone know what is the accuracy of fingerprint recognition devices?
Thanks for the lovely reply. I will refrain from using the same adjectives you have used.
I will reply according to my original questions: 1) Of course a locked door doesn't catch a terrorist, but contrary to popular notion, the pat-down is not about catching terrorists. It's about deterring them. I mean, do you see a scenario where a terrorist is carrying a bomb and sees the security guy scanning people and "feeling" them up and he just stands in line to await his turn? Of course not. The purpose of all those security measures is to prevent the terrorist from even approaching the plane in the first place. 2) If you will read carefully you will see I wrote the word "directly". Of course a locked door will foil the 9/11 plot. This is the basic premises of my post. But for someone who does not know about 9/11 (which is the entire population before it happened), the prevention of the plot will not show up anywhere. You would not see the benefit of this directly. Not having a terrorist attack cannot be subscribed to this directive. If you have a heart attack and then the doctor gives you Baby-Aspirin for secondary prevention, how do you know if it is effective? If you didn't have a second heart attack it is either because the Aspirin worked or because you would never have had one in the first place. No way to know. You cannot see a direct benefit of a preventative measure unless you know what to look for, and I believe no one had statistics of planes used as anti-building missiles before 9/11. 3) I agree that door-locking would cause less problems than pat-downs, but still some people would be annoyed, mostly the crew, but also some people who are sure it is their "right" to see the cockpit if they want to or talk to the pilot. I have worked in customer support long enough to know that with enough people (and a 747 Jumbo Jet has enough people), you are sure to find someone who wants everything the company can or should offer. Like I said, it is not as disruptive as pat-down, but as an example it is fine, IMHO.
Please try to understand the basic idea I am trying to articulate before criticizing and insulting.
And what do you call not reading/understanding what I wrote? I did not claim that because one security measure is good, all other are the same. I just said that "a list of terrorist caught due to the new protocols" as a measure of the protocols' effectiveness is foolish, because it is not a good measure of a preventative measure, such as security. Please re-read my post and try to understand it.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like a perfect description of Minecraft.
I read it originally as "Sounds like a perfect description of Microsoft" and was laughing for a few seconds... till I realized my mistake. Oh well.
What you mean is: "Get a business model that allows me to get free content, without advertisement and even if there are ads, do not target them in order to maximize your profits".
I also do not like being tracked online. OTOH, I understand that in order for me to get so much for no money, I have to pay with something else. For me, the price is right. I agree to give up some privacy in order to be able to use a browser, web e-mail, encyclopedia and many more resources for no money. It is not really free, because I give something in return (personal info), but I am willing to pay this price.
If you are unwilling to pay this price (which is your right), then be ready to cough up the dough.
Everytime we talk about pirating copyright material, people on this site go up in arms about how we are now in the digital age and companies should learn to catch up with the times. "What was fine for older mediums, is no necessarily adequate for the digital age," we say, "Companies should changes their business models accordingly." /., don't we? :)
Given that, your comparison to older mediums and their inability to track users is irrelevant. I do not say I agree to all this tracking, but comparison to "older business models" is incorrect, by our own standard. And we wouldn't want people to say we practice double-standards here on
Not sure if the installed OS is runnable after this, it might be but I didn't want to mess around with it, I'll wait for Alpha 2.
And you call yourself a geek... You should be ashamed of yourself. Real geeks try out Alpha 1 versions on their main machines!
Chicken!
If you put such a claim in a summery, it is your task to provide a citation. If you do that, then it is my task to search for a counter-argument, if necessary. If you don't provide a source, then I consider it Flamebait.
Brought peace?
He wrote an entire post about the duration of patents and to contrast it with copyrights he took a random example - a pop song, and you nitpick over that? Whats wrong with you? He might as well have said: "They couldn't care less about your new movie/computer game/software/book". It was just an example to show that in patents there is industry pressure not to extend the duration of patents and in copyright there is no such pressure. He never said this was the most important thing protected under copyright laws.
Yeah, he is totally afraid to admit he is wrong...
Amen!
Thanks, mate.
Well, you just gave us some corroborating evidence. Thanks.
And the next type of malware will be antibiotics? So, Norton will come out with anti-antibiotics software. That sounds sexy.
Why such a long reply? He asked if you saw the irony, just say "No". :)
You mean you need to implement a barcode at the embryo stage in order to have a unique identifier to each member of society? Aren't fingerprints, ear lobes, facial features and even the DNA itself unique enough?
I won't go into the whole tin foil hat argument, but in order for your predictions to succeed, you don't need this new high tech.
BTW, how many predictions from 50 years ago did not pan out? Oh, and while on the subject: Did anyone give out a prediction about the scenarios you pointed out 50 years ago? I mean, you take something that happens now and then use a hypothetical prediction from 50 years ago to prove your point. That doesn't make sense.
Give me real predictions that panned out, and we have something to talk about. And even then I bet that for every prediction, we can find a hundred others that turned out to be nothing more than kiddie horror stories.
Shame on me, I did go into the tin foil hat argument. Sorry, folks.
Sorry, I'm not too much informed in the HFCS debate, but something caught my eye: You say corn syrup has HFCS 42, i.e. 42% fructose. OTOH, regular sugar (AKA sucrose) is actually HFCS 50 (50% fructose). So in fact it has more fructose than HFCS!
As far as I remember from my physiology classes, virtually all the sucrose we digest is broken down and absorbed in the GI tract It would seem that all the arguments about the cons of fructose would suggest that sucrose is worse than HFCS.
Please enlighten me.
You are totally correct. In another post to another story, I used a different example from his book, but in that case I remember to reference him.
Sorry.
I will quote from a previous post of mine:
"Of course a locked door doesn't catch a terrorist, but contrary to popular notion, the pat-down is not about catching terrorists. It's about deterring them. I mean, do you see a scenario where a terrorist is carrying a bomb and sees the security guy scanning people and "feeling" them up and he just stands in line to await his turn? Of course not. The purpose of all those security measures is to prevent the terrorist from even approaching the plane in the first place."
Remember, the pat-down (or the scanners, for that matter) isn't a surprise measure. People know about it beforehand. Still, don't get me wrong, I don't think the new procedures and the new scanners are OK - i do think they are infringing on people's privacy - but asking TSA to show people that have been caught as a measure of their effectiveness is not logical, IMHO.
In my original post I said that I am against the new scanners and I do believe them to be a gross infringement on people's privacy. I was just making the point that when trying to assess the effectiveness of any measure the TSA does, "terrorist caught" and probably any other statistic will not be sufficient. We will probably have to resort to... *gasp* Common Sense (which, as you hinted, is not so common).
Actually he meant that the wiki page is wrong and, unlike MIPS, the 's' in FLOPS does not mean "second".
I don't know enough about the subject. A quick Google search for "FLOPS floating" found both interpretations, although it seems there are more "per second" pages than those without it. I don't know...
The ten years ain't so bad, but the daily corporal punishment...
Actually, flops means exactly what the OP said: Floating point operations per second.
With this I agree completely. In a different post I said that I do not think the new rules are OK, and I still think so. Like you said, sometimes people do prefer a high-profile fucked up job than a low-profile well-done one. Sad but true.
One of these days they will come up with a better method of identification, until then, I think it would be better for all if we could learn to start trusting each other again.
Printf ('Are you a terrorist?');
Scanf ("%s", Answer);
If Answer=='Y' Goto Jail() else Goto Flight();
Easy!
P.S.
It's been more than 10 years since I programmed anything. I'm sure there are syntex errors, give me a break!
It ain't so!
What you described is the classic difference between sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV). Sensitivity is a basic characteristic of a test, in this case 99.6% (Actually the TFA mentioned accuracy, which is a bit different, but let's not nitpick). PPV tells us what is the chance that a positive result (in this case, an ear match), is a true positive. Since the equation is TP/(TP+FP) (TP True positive; FP - False positive), it is affected by how common (or rare) the trait we are looking for is in the population we are checking. Since a terrorist is a rare occurrance, the PPV is (very) low.
However, if we change the test a bit we can improve the PPV. Let's say we do not use the ears as a single test, but rather as a verification for the ID. A person shows a passport and then his ears are compared to what is stored at the computer. Here the test is used just for verification and not identification and we have a much better PPV (In this case a positive is actually a mismatch between the passport and ears) and the system can be used to detect people with fake IDs.
BTW, this is used in many places where fingerprints are used. I don't know about other countries, but in Israel citizens can register their fingerprints and bypass passport control by going to a booth where you pass a magnetic card (containing your ID) and then you put your fingerprints for verification.
So is 99.6% good enough? depending on the application. Oh, does anyone know what is the accuracy of fingerprint recognition devices?
Thanks for the lovely reply. I will refrain from using the same adjectives you have used.
I will reply according to my original questions:
1) Of course a locked door doesn't catch a terrorist, but contrary to popular notion, the pat-down is not about catching terrorists. It's about deterring them. I mean, do you see a scenario where a terrorist is carrying a bomb and sees the security guy scanning people and "feeling" them up and he just stands in line to await his turn? Of course not. The purpose of all those security measures is to prevent the terrorist from even approaching the plane in the first place.
2) If you will read carefully you will see I wrote the word "directly". Of course a locked door will foil the 9/11 plot. This is the basic premises of my post. But for someone who does not know about 9/11 (which is the entire population before it happened), the prevention of the plot will not show up anywhere. You would not see the benefit of this directly. Not having a terrorist attack cannot be subscribed to this directive.
If you have a heart attack and then the doctor gives you Baby-Aspirin for secondary prevention, how do you know if it is effective? If you didn't have a second heart attack it is either because the Aspirin worked or because you would never have had one in the first place. No way to know. You cannot see a direct benefit of a preventative measure unless you know what to look for, and I believe no one had statistics of planes used as anti-building missiles before 9/11.
3) I agree that door-locking would cause less problems than pat-downs, but still some people would be annoyed, mostly the crew, but also some people who are sure it is their "right" to see the cockpit if they want to or talk to the pilot. I have worked in customer support long enough to know that with enough people (and a 747 Jumbo Jet has enough people), you are sure to find someone who wants everything the company can or should offer.
Like I said, it is not as disruptive as pat-down, but as an example it is fine, IMHO.
Please try to understand the basic idea I am trying to articulate before criticizing and insulting.
And what do you call not reading/understanding what I wrote?
I did not claim that because one security measure is good, all other are the same. I just said that "a list of terrorist caught due to the new protocols" as a measure of the protocols' effectiveness is foolish, because it is not a good measure of a preventative measure, such as security.
Please re-read my post and try to understand it.