I hope this isn't a troll as I'll respond as though it's not.
IMO, brushing off those whom are trying to warn you of the dangers of freely giving up your privacy is a slippery slope. Sure, YOU may not care that ABC Company has individually identifiable information on you. This, however, is not to say that someone else does not. Now let us say that ABC Company gets bought out by XYZ Company. Each has seperate data on you. After the acquisition, Now *1* company has twice as much data. Who is to say that THEY will be as responsible with your information?
Increasingly a disturbing trend (IMO) among corporations is to guide (force) their customers to do things they way THEY want, not the way the market wants. A recent notable example of this include grocery stores and the "Plus Customer" cards. At first, it was only one store. So I exercised my freedom to shop elsewhere. Now, EVERY grocery store (in my area at least) has such a system in place. Now by default, I must submit to their will. Yes, I realize that it is entirely possible to give false information, but I find the entire situation that I have to LIE to a grocery store to buy goods or pay ENORMOUSLY (sometimes 2x as much) inflated prices frightful.
I value my privacy very much. Having worked at a bank for many years, I can tell you the amount of "trivial" data life-altering (mortgages, loans, close your acct, etc) decisions are made off of, you should concerned to.
So before spouting off about everyone not being out to get you, please consider hard what you are giving up as you can NEVER reclaim it.
I was pointing out the other day that US support of Israel would be but much less if we had an equal amount of Arab lobbyists
---- I think the flaw in that statement lies in the fact that it was not stated as a POSSIBILITY but a definite. In general, people will become defensive if they are told something will happen as opposed to suggesting.:)
Off-topic and as a side note: I do agree with you that violence retaliating violence does not help resolve the problem.
First things first. Stay home one afternoon, write down some of those number of the TV lawyers. Why? Most of them have free consultation. Tell them your story and see what happens...now, onto the non-redundant part.;)
Are you absolutely sure that the CEO did all of these things? I used to work at a company where the CEO was probably the *BIGGEST* asshole. Harassing, egotistical, narcissistic, self-righteous and most importantly a VERY big bullshitter. He would threaten and claim to have done or to do XYZ (i.e., fire people, etc) only to find out later that it never happened.
From your story, it appears (imo) that your boss is the same sort of person. If so, take a sigh of relief and then ask yourself if you really want to work for someone like that. Now, you will probably do 1 of 2 things. Either milk this for everything it's worth or shrug it off. I tolerated being with that company for longer than I should have. Eventually I changed industries while initially having to take less $$, I'm much happier with the people work with.
side note - what state is this in? I believe that we could all probably give more directed advice knowing this.:)
I have an example for you. I do a lot of promoting for various production companies / clubs (read: d&b warehouse parties and such) around town. Now, since the 9/11 attacks the police (local, county AND storm^H^H^H^H^H state troopers) have used various recent terrorist related legislation to prevent/shut down/stop the event. Usually citing how we "support drug dealers and terrorists". In the past, it has always been fire code violations, permit "problems". All of which are bogus, but we would have to argue in court to allow it but by then the event date has already passed and it becomes a moot point. Recently a bunch of promoters were "invited" by the DEA and basically they tried bullied them around into "helping" them shutdown various events and crackdown on various (un-named) people THOUGHT to be drug dealers. This invitation was backed up by a friendly letter that said they would be investigated for "supporing terrorist related activities" under the USA PATRIOT Act.
I (as well as my friends / others that were working at these events have been threatened with arrest if we did not comply with their orders. Some of my friends chose to be arrested and a couple are currently suing. I chose, and continue to choose to comply and pursue a different means of protest. The scary part is that when we do shut down and tell the people WHY we had to shut down an alarming amount of them just accept it as "Well, if it stops the terrorists..."
Now please explain to me how this "giving up liberty for security" is FUD.
side note: you shouldn't have been moderated down as a troll. This whole thread has actually revived my faith in slashdot's ability to carry on interesting/followable debates.
I live in Houston and they have been tracking traffic like this for YEARS now. They even have a website where you can go and view the current traffic condtions.
It's actually a REALLY REALLY helpful system since I normally have to drive about an hour to get to work, and this system often keeps me from being stuck in traffic. Also, they have webcams where you can view the current traffic live.
Cooperation is usually analysed in game theory by means of a non-zero-sum game called the "Prisoner's Dilemma" (Axelrod, 1984). The two players in the game can choose between two moves, either "cooperate" or "defect". The idea is that each player gains when both cooperate, but if only one of them cooperates, the other one, who defects, will gain more. If both defect, both lose (or gain very little) but not as much as the "cheated" cooperator whose cooperation is not returned. The whole game situation and its different outcomes can be summarized by table 1, where hypothetical "points" are given as an example of how the differences in result might be quantified.
[ Action of A/Action of B | Cooperate | Defect ] [ Cooperate Fairly |good[+ 5] |Bad[- 10 ] [ Defect |Good[+ 10] |Mediocre 0]
Table 1: outcomes for actor A (in words, and in hypothetical "points") depending on the combination of A's action and B's action, in the "prisoner's dilemma" game situation. A similar scheme applies to the outcomes for B.
The game got its name from the following hypothetical situation: imagine two criminals arrested under the suspicion of having committed a crime together. However, the police does not have sufficient proof in order to have them convicted. The two prisoners are isolated from each other, and the police visit each of them and offer a deal: the one who offers evidence against the other one will be freed. If none of them accepts the offer, they are in fact cooperating against the police, and both of them will get only a small punishment because of lack of proof. They both gain. However, if one of them betrays the other one, by confessing to the police, the defector will gain more, since he is freed; the one who remained silent, on the other hand, will receive the full punishment, since he did not help the police, and there is sufficient proof. If both betray, both will be punished, but less severely than if they had refused to talk. The dilemma resides in the fact that each prisoner has a choice between only two options, but cannot make a good decision without knowing what the other one will do.
Such a distribution of losses and gains seems natural for many situations, since the cooperator whose action is not returned will lose resources to the defector, without either of them being able to collect the additional gain coming from the "synergy" of their cooperation. For simplicity we might consider the Prisoner's dilemma as zero-sum insofar as there is no mutual cooperation: either each gets 0 when both defect, or when one of them cooperates, the defector gets + 10, and the cooperator - 10, in total 0. On the other hand, if both cooperate the resulting synergy creates an additional gain that makes the sum positive: each of them gets 5, in total 10.
The gain for mutual cooperation (5) in the prisoner's dilemma is kept smaller than the gain for one-sided defection (10), so that there would always be a "temptation" to defect. This assumption is not generally valid. For example, it is easy to imagine that two wolves together would be able to kill an animal that is more than twice as large as the largest one each of them might have killed on his own. Even if an altruistic wolf would kill a rabbit and give it to another wolf, and the other wolf would do nothing in return, the selfish wolf would still have less to eat than if he had helped his companion to kill a deer. Yet we will assume that the synergistic effect is smaller than the gains made by defection (i.e. letting someone help you without doing anything in return).
This is realistic if we take into account the fact that the synergy usually only gets its full power after a long term process of mutual cooperation (hunting a deer is a quite time-consuming and complicated business). The prisoner's dilemma is meant to study short term decision-making where the actors do not have any specific expectations about future interactions or collaborations (as is the case in the original situation of the jailed criminals). This is the normal situation during blind-variation-and-selective-retention evolution. Long term cooperations can only evolve after short term ones have been selected: evolution is cumulative, adding small improvements upon small improvements, but without blindly making major jumps.
The problem with the prisoner's dilemma is that if both decision-makers were purely rational, they would never cooperate. Indeed, rational decision-making means that you make the decision which is best for you whatever the other actor chooses. Suppose the other one would defect, then it is rational to defect yourself: you won't gain anything, but if you do not defect you will be stuck with a -10 loss. Suppose the other one would cooperate, then you will gain anyway, but you will gain more if you do not cooperate, so here too the rational choice is to defect. The problem is that if both actors are rational, both will decide to defect, and none of them will gain anything. However, if both would "irrationally" decide to cooperate, both would gain 5 points. This seeming paradox can be formulated more explicitly through the principle of suboptimization.
This whole thing reminds me of a joke one of my old professors told in class one day...
A newly elected president is seeing the old one out when he is handed 2 letters by the outgoing president. He tells him
"When you run into a situation where you don't know what to do, open the first letter. When you run into another problem open the second."
So the new president takes the 2 letters, and keeps them in his desk. Months go by and a crisis arises. Unsure what to do, he remembers the letter in his desk, sits down and reads it. The note reads simply:
"Blame everything on me and everything will be fine."
The new president takes his predecessor's suggestion and all goes to plan.
A few more months go by and another crisis arises. Remembering how effective the 1st letter had been, the new president eagerly opens the 2nd letter looking for wisdom. On it the note reads:
In Phase 2 of Yahoo's covert deception they take a nod from WaReZ pages that pop up 50+ windows and tell you to click the 3rd link on the 17th popup and insert the 8th word on the 9th page and divide your answer by your underwear size to get to a page you might want to get to. Unless you subscribe to .
If you're into H0T XXX g0at sex with slutty Teddy Ruxbins and nasty See-N-Say's. And after all, who isn't?
[/sarcasm off]
please take with grain of salt and 2 cups of sugar.:P
By well-equipped mugger you mean gold-diggin h0, right?
I can picture it already...
The new Nokia pLATiNUM 1097 with built-in prospect alarm. Alarm goes off anytime a potential victim/husband/boyfriend/sugardaddy has more than $1,000 cash...
Optional: False Alarm Filter- make sure that $1,000 in his wallet isn't the only money he's got! Great for deciding between that 1year suck you dry or marry and get half of everything. Works great with included "Dice" utility. Zany results guaranteed!
[sarcasm ON]
Damn! And to think, my entire life up until now I've had to wait almost 30 minutes for pr0n. What I really want to know, is when VOD will be able to skip past that long 2 minutes of boring dialogue and get right into the action. Hell, I'd pay an extra $20 just to not have to wait those 2 minutes!
[sarcasm OFF]
Deep Thoughts...
Of all the "great new innovative" things we devise every day, it's all to get porn to us quicker...
I have to admit that I don't quite understand the ethical hysteria that has surrounded the issue of human cloning. It's not as if "cloning" will produce an exact replica of a person, right down to the last sub-atomic particle. All that cloning would do is produce a being that is genetically identical to the being that it was cloned from.
so does this mean that the world will finally have satan and sadam as gay lovers? i knew the south park movie was an omen....;)
The information IS free, the compiling of it into a usable form is not. Why is this such a hard concept to understand? If you want to take the time to compile a list of every city in the US and their zip code, you are welcome to do it. But if someone has ALREADY done it, I for one would be willing to pay for that.
The question isn't WOULD or even SHOULD your pay for it, but rather how MUCH should you have to pay. If dictionaries were $900, would you still buy one? At what point does charging X amount of dollars for compiling it become excessive? Does a government agency have the right to make a profit off of you?
Honestly, I don't have a problem with it this way. The government shouldn't be in the business of neatly packaging everything for anyone who asks. Deliberately hiding the truth is one thing, but they've got alot better things than being able to give any Tom, Dick, or Harry a complete, nicely pressed and indexed book of any random information they request.
I disagree. The whole point of government is to serve the people. I think this is something that has been forgotten over the years and has almost become expected that politicians be self-serving while putting on a little song and dance for "the little people". This apathy allows things such as this to happen.
If I want every zip code in America in a nice neat little package on CD-ROM, should I have to pay for it? Yes, about the price of producing the CD. Why shouldn't I pay more? Because not only is this public information, but it's information that's freely available. If the information were public but held by a company, I would understand them wanting to turn a profit for their time and devolpment. The goverment I expect to do what I (not particuarly *ME* but the majority) to do because that is why they hold a public office.
P.S. People are not lazy because they ask for free information to be released in a useable format, they're merely asking the government to do their job. What we tell them to.
I think that if he was basing the entire bussiness on the url then he had the wrong attitude to begin with.
I think you're missing the main point of the article. The point is that a person with intent on creating a web site that "HAPPENED" to use races.com , not the other way around. I'm sure that for right now, he is probably discouraged from continuing with this project because of his problems with NSI.
Also, while it is my sincere belief that the readers of slashdot are more intelligent in technical matters, the majority of the population is filled with morons. And if I can exponentially increase my business by using a generic name such as "races.com" simply because some joe schmoe aol user type races.com then guess what? I'm gonna use it, it's simply good marketing. While I don't agree with this tactic ethically, from a business standpoint, it's highly effective.
Please don't take this the wrong way. Your customers are telling you what they want. For the most part, I don't want to RTFM for EVERY program I get. I believe most software should be intuitive enough that I can preform basic functions without or having to very little documentation.
Regardless of intentions, your customers are telling you (for the most part) that they don't mind giving you information so long as they have knowledge of it and doing so otherwise is unacceptable.
Please take us seriously. Most people don't care if you collect information so long as they know what's being collected and for what purposes.
Ok, I don't mean to pick on you(nor be off topic), this is just one of my pet peeves:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SOFTWARE RAID. The RAID Advisory Board has never, nor will they probably ever support a SOFTWARE RAID. The reason for this is that software raid implementations are cpu based which makes them unreliable by nature. Sorry, it's just one of those things. Software RAID is not a fault tolerant system, and I've seen too many companies that think they're ready for a disaster because of their "RAID" implementation, only to find out their systems down so they can restore from tape.
Sorry, I really didn't mean to go off like that, and as I stated earlier; I didn't mean to single you out.
The job of the US Government is to represent the will of the people and act upon their behalf. I do not doubt that this bill was written with the highest of intentions, yet often it is hard to predict how something such as this will affect people.
Secondly, your analogy to alcohol is skewed since alcohol is known and proven to impair judgement and rational thought, while in my experience, I have yet to meet a 16 year old who has been scarred or tainted by violent video games and television.
While you are correct in saying that minors do not have the same rights as adults, it is not because merely because they do not vote, it is because the majority of society has deemed that a person under 18 years of age does not possess the maturity necessary to do so.
In light of that, recent times have proven that 14, 13, even 12 year olds are being held accountable as adults for heinous crimes. While I am not going to discuss that topic, I bring it up because I wish to use it as a basis. If children this young are deemed old enough to be given adult sentences, should they not also be given the freedoms and priveledges that go along with being an adult? (While my opinion on this matter is quite obvious, I am sincerely interested in opposing points of view)
You'll also notice many ads for white specific products, while NONE for blacks and the lower class (like hair care, make up, expensive vehicles, etc.)
Hold on a minute. I can think of a very few products that are functionally 'white-specific' (or race-specific in any sense) and they're mostly cosmetic, like creams to lighten or darken the skin of those who find their own too dark or too light respectively, and chemicals to curl or uncurl hair with the same sort of division
Just a little questionaire from a race seminar I attended:
1) Can you find Band-Aids for your skin tone?
2) When you act to speak to a supervisor, do you think they will be of your own race?
3) When buying cosmetics (female oriented question) can you easily find a base to match your skin tone?
Those are the only three I can remember, but there were like 20 questions total. If you answered YES, you took a step forward, if you had no opinion, you stood still, or if you answered NO, you took a step back. Every non-white person was at LEAST 5 steps behind the last white person. Just made me think how lucky white people have it, and take it for granted. Racism does exist, just because you're not on the recieving end doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
ASCAP is thinking about things backwards, they should be paying stores to play music since the store is,in effect, advertising the artists for free, no? The artists are not being exploited, they are being advertised. It's similar to grocery stores advertising products on the "on-air radio", IMHO.
Another point, does this mean I have to pay a licensce fee everytime I have a block party and people have to pay to get in, we have the radio on?
other dangers of using your cc# while at dinner...
dishonest employees -- i have a lot of friends that get cc#'s this way. they wait a couple of weeks and then buy tons of stuff....
forgetting your card -- this happens more than people think
my favorite are atms and those nifty checkcards (i work for a bank)
i cut up at least 10 checkcards a day by stupid people who forgot them. at least 1/3 of those are turned in by people who saw the card sticking out before it was eaten by the machine... i have NEVER had a bad experience online.
Don't let your fears control what you do or don't do. Did they tell you the odds of getting your cc# over the inet was? or was the simple fact that the possibility was there enough to make you not send it? (not trying to be rude...)
>Last night I was walking along the street around >midnight and I saw two young boys coming towards >me. One was wearing a long black coat. I have to >admit this thought crossed my mind: what if he's >planning a copycat killing?
That's called discrimination. It's your right, but it's definately NOT right.
Simply because a majority of society is scared of a group of people formerly unnoticed by them does not mean they should make them the next target because of their fears.
IMHO, if the media weren't so obsessed with every detail of the case, then the urge for others to "copycat" would be far less. Think about it like this, while I contend that what happened in Littleton was a tragedy, the way the media has handled the entire situation has done nothing but further alienate an already alienated counterculture that has seen nothing but hate from a majority of society. Now they are being persecuted for being "different". The way I see it, this leaves them with two options:
1) strike back at their aggressors (not a good idea in my opinion, but none the less, a feasable option) the benefit of this option is that it instills fear and maybe some relief from the opression they are suffering because of others.
2) convince people that simply because they are "different" does not make them evil. I think this is a more logical choice, but highly improbable since the majority of society has a hard time accepting anything "different" (in my exp.)
Lastly, to those students persecuted by school officials and local authorties: CONSULT WITH AN ATTORNEY. Look for any violation of your civil rights. Try and find anything that they may have done incorrectly. Fight with your mind, it's more effective.
That makes the assumption that the class was taken at a college. At many schools which you shell out the equivalant of a 4yr college in 6 months, you have a choice, a)suck it up and work your ass off and b) quit without a refund. I have several friends going to school (tech. school, not college) to get their MCSE. Let me give you some figures for CLC....
1: Fees for just the Classes (which last a total of 8 months) - ~ $18,000 2: Books ~ $200-400 for each SECTION of the MCSE 3: The class teaches how to pass the exam, not how to do the job of an MCSE (something you don't find out till you've shelled over the money) 4: you're promised that after recieving your MCSE, job placement with the avg. starting salary being ~$40,000 for the first year 5: they don't tell you that you need to have past computer experience (i know this b/c my friend had no previous computer experience) 6: CLC does not give the MCSE exams, you have to shell out another $100 for the exam (note on the exams: they may or may not be adaptive -- MS is not required to tell you and MS has the right to change the score required to pass at ANY time)
all this crap about y2k made me think of something. we haven't always used the gregorian system of time (calander), does that mean that if we used another type of calander we wouldn't have this problem?;)
straight from encylcopedia.com... system of reckoning time usually based on a recurrent natural cycle, such as the cycle of the sun through the seasons (see YEAR) or the moon through its phases (see MONTH). Because the solar year is 365 days 5 hr 48 min 46 sec and the lunar year (12 synodic months of 29.53 days) is 354 days 8 hr 48 min, people have been confronted from ancient times with the problem of the discrepancy. Because the year is not exactly divisible by months and days, the practice arose of making arbitrary divisions and inserting extra (intercalary) days or months. The Gregorian calendar, generally accepted today, evolved from the Roman calendar reformed (46 B.C.) by Julius CAESAR. In the Julian calendar April, June, September, and November had 30 days, February 28 days (29 days every fourth, or leap, year), and all other months 31 days. The date was computed by counting backward from the Kalends (the 1st day), the Nones (the 7th day in March, May, July, and October; the 5th day in other months), and the Ides (the 15th day in March, May, July, and October; the 13th day in other months); hence Jan. 10 was the 4th day of the Ides of January. Because the Julian year of 365 days 6 hr was too long, by the 16th cent. the vernal equinox was displaced from March 21 to March 11. Pope GREGORY XIII ordained that 10 days be dropped in 1582 and that years ending in hundreds be leap years only if divisible by 400. The non-Roman Catholic countries were slow to accept the Gregorian (New Style) calendar; it was adopted in England in 1752 and by the Eastern Church in the 20 cent. The Christian ecclesiastical calendar was based on the belief that JESUS' resurrection was on a Sunday, hence Easter should fall on Sunday. The First Council of NICAEA (325) decreed that Easter be the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal EQUINOX; today the date varies from the astronomical reckoning because certain factors of the lunar period are not considered. Other calendars include the Jewishcalendar (12 months, plus intercalary months 7 times in 19 years) and the Muslim lunar calendar. See also FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY CALENDAR.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope this isn't a troll as I'll respond as though it's not.
IMO, brushing off those whom are trying to warn you of the dangers of freely giving up your privacy is a slippery slope. Sure, YOU may not care that ABC Company has individually identifiable information on you. This, however, is not to say that someone else does not. Now let us say that ABC Company gets bought out by XYZ Company. Each has seperate data on you. After the acquisition, Now *1* company has twice as much data. Who is to say that THEY will be as responsible with your information?
Increasingly a disturbing trend (IMO) among corporations is to guide (force) their customers to do things they way THEY want, not the way the market wants. A recent notable example of this include grocery stores and the "Plus Customer" cards. At first, it was only one store. So I exercised my freedom to shop elsewhere. Now, EVERY grocery store (in my area at least) has such a system in place. Now by default, I must submit to their will. Yes, I realize that it is entirely possible to give false information, but I find the entire situation that I have to LIE to a grocery store to buy goods or pay ENORMOUSLY (sometimes 2x as much) inflated prices frightful.
I value my privacy very much. Having worked at a bank for many years, I can tell you the amount of "trivial" data life-altering (mortgages, loans, close your acct, etc) decisions are made off of, you should concerned to.
So before spouting off about everyone not being out to get you, please consider hard what you are giving up as you can NEVER reclaim it.
I was pointing out the other day that US support of Israel would be but much less if we had an equal amount of Arab lobbyists
:)
----
I think the flaw in that statement lies in the fact that it was not stated as a POSSIBILITY but a definite. In general, people will become defensive if they are told something will happen as opposed to suggesting.
Off-topic and as a side note: I do agree with you that violence retaliating violence does not help resolve the problem.
First things first. Stay home one afternoon, write down some of those number of the TV lawyers. Why? Most of them have free consultation. Tell them your story and see what happens...now, onto the non-redundant part. ;)
:)
Are you absolutely sure that the CEO did all of these things? I used to work at a company where the CEO was probably the *BIGGEST* asshole. Harassing, egotistical, narcissistic, self-righteous and most importantly a VERY big bullshitter. He would threaten and claim to have done or to do XYZ (i.e., fire people, etc) only to find out later that it never happened.
From your story, it appears (imo) that your boss is the same sort of person. If so, take a sigh of relief and then ask yourself if you really want to work for someone like that. Now, you will probably do 1 of 2 things. Either milk this for everything it's worth or shrug it off. I tolerated being with that company for longer than I should have. Eventually I changed industries while initially having to take less $$, I'm much happier with the people work with.
side note - what state is this in? I believe that we could all probably give more directed advice knowing this.
I have an example for you. I do a lot of promoting for various production companies / clubs (read: d&b warehouse parties and such) around town. Now, since the 9/11 attacks the police (local, county AND storm^H^H^H^H^H state troopers) have used various recent terrorist related legislation to prevent/shut down/stop the event. Usually citing how we "support drug dealers and terrorists". In the past, it has always been fire code violations, permit "problems". All of which are bogus, but we would have to argue in court to allow it but by then the event date has already passed and it becomes a moot point. Recently a bunch of promoters were "invited" by the DEA and basically they tried bullied them around into "helping" them shutdown various events and crackdown on various (un-named) people THOUGHT to be drug dealers. This invitation was backed up by a friendly letter that said they would be investigated for "supporing terrorist related activities" under the USA PATRIOT Act.
I (as well as my friends / others that were working at these events have been threatened with arrest if we did not comply with their orders. Some of my friends chose to be arrested and a couple are currently suing. I chose, and continue to choose to comply and pursue a different means of protest. The scary part is that when we do shut down and tell the people WHY we had to shut down an alarming amount of them just accept it as "Well, if it stops the terrorists..."
Now please explain to me how this "giving up liberty for security" is FUD.
side note: you shouldn't have been moderated down as a troll. This whole thread has actually revived my faith in slashdot's ability to carry on interesting/followable debates.
I live in Houston and they have been tracking traffic like this for YEARS now. They even have a website where you can go and view the current traffic condtions. It's actually a REALLY REALLY helpful system since I normally have to drive about an hour to get to work, and this system often keeps me from being stuck in traffic. Also, they have webcams where you can view the current traffic live.
Cooperation is usually analysed in game theory by means of a non-zero-sum game called the "Prisoner's Dilemma" (Axelrod, 1984). The two players in the game can choose between two moves, either "cooperate" or "defect". The idea is that each player gains when both cooperate, but if only one of them cooperates, the other one, who defects, will gain more. If both defect, both lose (or gain very little) but not as much as the "cheated" cooperator whose cooperation is not returned. The whole game situation and its different outcomes can be summarized by table 1, where hypothetical "points" are given as an example of how the differences in result might be quantified.
[ Action of A/Action of B | Cooperate | Defect ]
[ Cooperate Fairly |good[+ 5] |Bad[- 10 ]
[ Defect |Good[+ 10] |Mediocre 0]
Table 1: outcomes for actor A (in words, and in hypothetical "points") depending on the combination of A's action and B's action, in the "prisoner's dilemma" game situation. A similar scheme applies to the outcomes for B.
The game got its name from the following hypothetical situation: imagine two criminals arrested under the suspicion of having committed a crime together. However, the police does not have sufficient proof in order to have them convicted. The two prisoners are isolated from each other, and the police visit each of them and offer a deal: the one who offers evidence against the other one will be freed. If none of them accepts the offer, they are in fact cooperating against the police, and both of them will get only a small punishment because of lack of proof. They both gain. However, if one of them betrays the other one, by confessing to the police, the defector will gain more, since he is freed; the one who remained silent, on the other hand, will receive the full punishment, since he did not help the police, and there is sufficient proof. If both betray, both will be punished, but less severely than if they had refused to talk. The dilemma resides in the fact that each prisoner has a choice between only two options, but cannot make a good decision without knowing what the other one will do.
Such a distribution of losses and gains seems natural for many situations, since the cooperator whose action is not returned will lose resources to the defector, without either of them being able to collect the additional gain coming from the "synergy" of their cooperation. For simplicity we might consider the Prisoner's dilemma as zero-sum insofar as there is no mutual cooperation: either each gets 0 when both defect, or when one of them cooperates, the defector gets + 10, and the cooperator - 10, in total 0. On the other hand, if both cooperate the resulting synergy creates an additional gain that makes the sum positive: each of them gets 5, in total 10.
The gain for mutual cooperation (5) in the prisoner's dilemma is kept smaller than the gain for one-sided defection (10), so that there would always be a "temptation" to defect. This assumption is not generally valid. For example, it is easy to imagine that two wolves together would be able to kill an animal that is more than twice as large as the largest one each of them might have killed on his own. Even if an altruistic wolf would kill a rabbit and give it to another wolf, and the other wolf would do nothing in return, the selfish wolf would still have less to eat than if he had helped his companion to kill a deer. Yet we will assume that the synergistic effect is smaller than the gains made by defection (i.e. letting someone help you without doing anything in return).
This is realistic if we take into account the fact that the synergy usually only gets its full power after a long term process of mutual cooperation (hunting a deer is a quite time-consuming and complicated business). The prisoner's dilemma is meant to study short term decision-making where the actors do not have any specific expectations about future interactions or collaborations (as is the case in the original situation of the jailed criminals). This is the normal situation during blind-variation-and-selective-retention evolution. Long term cooperations can only evolve after short term ones have been selected: evolution is cumulative, adding small improvements upon small improvements, but without blindly making major jumps.
The problem with the prisoner's dilemma is that if both decision-makers were purely rational, they would never cooperate. Indeed, rational decision-making means that you make the decision which is best for you whatever the other actor chooses. Suppose the other one would defect, then it is rational to defect yourself: you won't gain anything, but if you do not defect you will be stuck with a -10 loss. Suppose the other one would cooperate, then you will gain anyway, but you will gain more if you do not cooperate, so here too the rational choice is to defect. The problem is that if both actors are rational, both will decide to defect, and none of them will gain anything. However, if both would "irrationally" decide to cooperate, both would gain 5 points. This seeming paradox can be formulated more explicitly through the principle of suboptimization.
blatantly ripped from: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/PRISDIL.html
This whole thing reminds me of a joke one of my old professors told in class one day...
A newly elected president is seeing the old one out when he is handed 2 letters by the outgoing president. He tells him
"When you run into a situation where you don't know what to do, open the first letter. When you run into another problem open the second."
So the new president takes the 2 letters, and keeps them in his desk. Months go by and a crisis arises. Unsure what to do, he remembers the letter in his desk, sits down and reads it. The note reads simply:
"Blame everything on me and everything will be fine."
The new president takes his predecessor's suggestion and all goes to plan.
A few more months go by and another crisis arises. Remembering how effective the 1st letter had been, the new president eagerly opens the 2nd letter looking for wisdom. On it the note reads:
"Sit down and write two letters."
Slashdot Conspiracy #298745609843.beta
:P
In Phase 2 of Yahoo's covert deception they take a nod from WaReZ pages that pop up 50+ windows and tell you to click the 3rd link on the 17th popup and insert the 8th word on the 9th page and divide your answer by your underwear size to get to a page you might want to get to. Unless you subscribe to .
If you're into H0T XXX g0at sex with slutty Teddy Ruxbins and nasty See-N-Say's. And after all, who isn't?
[/sarcasm off]
please take with grain of salt and 2 cups of sugar.
By well-equipped mugger you mean gold-diggin h0, right?
I can picture it already...
The new Nokia pLATiNUM 1097 with built-in prospect alarm. Alarm goes off anytime a potential victim/husband/boyfriend/sugardaddy has more than $1,000 cash...
Optional: False Alarm Filter- make sure that $1,000 in his wallet isn't the only money he's got! Great for deciding between that 1year suck you dry or marry and get half of everything. Works great with included "Dice" utility. Zany results guaranteed!
[sarcasm ON]
Damn! And to think, my entire life up until now I've had to wait almost 30 minutes for pr0n. What I really want to know, is when VOD will be able to skip past that long 2 minutes of boring dialogue and get right into the action. Hell, I'd pay an extra $20 just to not have to wait those 2 minutes!
[sarcasm OFF]
Deep Thoughts...
Of all the "great new innovative" things we devise every day, it's all to get porn to us quicker...
I have to admit that I don't quite understand the ethical hysteria that has surrounded the issue of human cloning. It's not as if "cloning" will produce an exact replica of a person, right down to the last sub-atomic particle. All that cloning would do is produce a being that is genetically identical to the being that it was cloned from.
;)
so does this mean that the world will finally have satan and sadam as gay lovers? i knew the south park movie was an omen....
...ya know, it just seems like a really bad "Revenge of the Nerds" joke in disguise....
;)
--aarOn
The information IS free, the compiling of it into a usable form is not. Why is this such a hard concept to understand? If you want to take the time to compile a list of every city in the US and their zip code, you are welcome to do it. But if someone has ALREADY done it, I for one would be willing to pay for that.
The question isn't WOULD or even SHOULD your pay for it, but rather how MUCH should you have to pay. If dictionaries were $900, would you still buy one? At what point does charging X amount of dollars for compiling it become excessive? Does a government agency have the right to make a profit off of you?
Honestly, I don't have a problem with it this way. The government shouldn't be in the business of neatly packaging everything for anyone who asks. Deliberately hiding the truth is one thing, but they've got alot better things than being able to give any Tom, Dick, or Harry a complete, nicely pressed and indexed book of any random information they request.
I disagree. The whole point of government is to serve the people. I think this is something that has been forgotten over the years and has almost become expected that politicians be self-serving while putting on a little song and dance for "the little people". This apathy allows things such as this to happen.
If I want every zip code in America in a nice neat little package on CD-ROM, should I have to pay for it? Yes, about the price of producing the CD. Why shouldn't I pay more? Because not only is this public information, but it's information that's freely available. If the information were public but held by a company, I would understand them wanting to turn a profit for their time and devolpment. The goverment I expect to do what I (not particuarly *ME* but the majority) to do because that is why they hold a public office.
P.S.
People are not lazy because they ask for free information to be released in a useable format, they're merely asking the government to do their job. What we tell them to.
--Aaron
I think that if he was basing the entire bussiness on the url then he had the wrong attitude to begin with.
I think you're missing the main point of the article. The point is that a person with intent on creating a web site that "HAPPENED" to use races.com , not the other way around. I'm sure that for right now, he is probably discouraged from continuing with this project because of his problems with NSI.
Also, while it is my sincere belief that the readers of slashdot are more intelligent in technical matters, the majority of the population is filled with morons. And if I can exponentially increase my business by using a generic name such as "races.com" simply because some joe schmoe aol user type races.com then guess what? I'm gonna use it, it's simply good marketing. While I don't agree with this tactic ethically, from a business standpoint, it's highly effective.
gratzi,
aaron
Please don't take this the wrong way. Your customers are telling you what they want. For the most part, I don't want to RTFM for EVERY program I get. I believe most software should be intuitive enough that I can preform basic functions without or having to very little documentation.
Regardless of intentions, your customers are telling you (for the most part) that they don't mind giving you information so long as they have knowledge of it and doing so otherwise is unacceptable.
Please take us seriously. Most people don't care if you collect information so long as they know what's being collected and for what purposes.
Thank you.
Ok, I don't mean to pick on you(nor be off topic), this is just one of my pet peeves:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SOFTWARE RAID. The RAID Advisory Board has never, nor will they probably ever support a SOFTWARE RAID. The reason for this is that software raid implementations are cpu based which makes them unreliable by nature. Sorry, it's just one of those things. Software RAID is not a fault tolerant system, and I've seen too many companies that think they're ready for a disaster because of their "RAID" implementation, only to find out their systems down so they can restore from tape.
Sorry, I really didn't mean to go off like that, and as I stated earlier; I didn't mean to single you out.
--Aaron
The job of the US Government is to represent the will of the people and act upon their behalf. I do not doubt that this bill was written with the highest of intentions, yet often it is hard to predict how something such as this will affect people.
Secondly, your analogy to alcohol is skewed since alcohol is known and proven to impair judgement and rational thought, while in my experience, I have yet to meet a 16 year old who has been scarred or tainted by violent video games and television.
While you are correct in saying that minors do not have the same rights as adults, it is not because merely because they do not vote, it is because the majority of society has deemed that a person under 18 years of age does not possess the maturity necessary to do so.
In light of that, recent times have proven that 14, 13, even 12 year olds are being held accountable as adults for heinous crimes. While I am not going to discuss that topic, I bring it up because I wish to use it as a basis. If children this young are deemed old enough to be given adult sentences, should they not also be given the freedoms and priveledges that go along with being an adult? (While my opinion on this matter is quite obvious, I am sincerely interested in opposing points of view)
grazie,
aaron
You'll also notice many ads for white specific products, while NONE for blacks and the lower class (like hair care, make up, expensive vehicles, etc.)
Hold on a minute. I can think of a very few products that are functionally 'white-specific' (or race-specific in any sense) and they're mostly cosmetic, like creams to lighten or darken the skin of those who find their own too dark or too light respectively, and chemicals to curl or uncurl hair with the same sort of division
Just a little questionaire from a race seminar I attended:
1) Can you find Band-Aids for your skin tone?
2) When you act to speak to a supervisor, do you think they will be of your own race?
3) When buying cosmetics (female oriented question) can you easily find a base to match your skin tone?
Those are the only three I can remember, but there were like 20 questions total. If you answered YES, you took a step forward, if you had no opinion, you stood still, or if you answered NO, you took a step back. Every non-white person was at LEAST 5 steps behind the last white person. Just made me think how lucky white people have it, and take it for granted. Racism does exist, just because you're not on the recieving end doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
ASCAP is thinking about things backwards, they should be paying stores to play music since the store is,in effect, advertising the artists for free, no? The artists are not being exploited, they are being advertised. It's similar to grocery stores advertising products on the "on-air radio", IMHO.
Another point, does this mean I have to pay a licensce fee everytime I have a block party and people have to pay to get in, we have the radio on?
--shdragon
other dangers of using your cc# while at dinner...
dishonest employees -- i have a lot of friends that get cc#'s this way. they wait a couple of weeks and then buy tons of stuff....
forgetting your card -- this happens more than people think
my favorite are atms and those nifty checkcards (i work for a bank)
i cut up at least 10 checkcards a day by stupid people who forgot them. at least 1/3 of those are turned in by people who saw the card sticking out before it was eaten by the machine... i have NEVER had a bad experience online.
Don't let your fears control what you do or don't do. Did they tell you the odds of getting your cc# over the inet was? or was the simple fact that the possibility was there enough to make you not send it? (not trying to be rude...)
>Last night I was walking along the street around >midnight and I saw two young boys coming towards >me. One was wearing a long black coat. I have to >admit this thought crossed my mind: what if he's >planning a copycat killing?
That's called discrimination. It's your right, but it's definately NOT right.
Simply because a majority of society is scared of a group of people formerly unnoticed by them does not mean they should make them the next target because of their fears.
IMHO, if the media weren't so obsessed with every detail of the case, then the urge for others to "copycat" would be far less. Think about it like this, while I contend that what happened in Littleton was a tragedy, the way the media has handled the entire situation has done nothing but further alienate an already alienated counterculture that has seen nothing but hate from a majority of society. Now they are being persecuted for being "different". The way I see it, this leaves them with two options:
1) strike back at their aggressors (not a good idea in my opinion, but none the less, a feasable option)
the benefit of this option is that it instills fear and maybe some relief from the opression they are suffering because of others.
2) convince people that simply because they are "different" does not make them evil. I think this is a more logical choice, but highly improbable since the majority of society has a hard time accepting anything "different" (in my exp.)
Lastly, to those students persecuted by school officials and local authorties: CONSULT WITH AN ATTORNEY. Look for any violation of your civil rights. Try and find anything that they may have done incorrectly. Fight with your mind, it's more effective.
--shdragon
skeletor@twistercom.com
april fool's?
That makes the assumption that the class was taken at a college. At many schools which you shell out the equivalant of a 4yr college in 6 months, you have a choice, a)suck it up and work your ass off and b) quit without a refund. I have several friends going to school (tech. school, not college) to get their MCSE. Let me give you some figures for CLC....
1: Fees for just the Classes (which last a total of 8 months) - ~ $18,000
2: Books ~ $200-400 for each SECTION of the MCSE
3: The class teaches how to pass the exam, not how to do the job of an MCSE (something you don't find out till you've shelled over the money)
4: you're promised that after recieving your MCSE, job placement with the avg. starting salary being ~$40,000 for the first year
5: they don't tell you that you need to have past computer experience (i know this b/c my friend had no previous computer experience)
6: CLC does not give the MCSE exams, you have to shell out another $100 for the exam
(note on the exams: they may or may not be adaptive -- MS is not required to tell you and MS has the right to change the score required to pass at ANY time)
all this crap about y2k made me think of something. we haven't always used the gregorian system of time (calander), does that mean that if we used another type of calander we wouldn't have this problem? ;)
straight from encylcopedia.com...
system of reckoning time usually based on a recurrent natural cycle, such as the cycle of the sun through the seasons (see YEAR) or the moon through its phases (see MONTH). Because the solar year is 365 days 5 hr 48 min 46 sec and the lunar year (12 synodic months of 29.53 days) is 354 days 8 hr 48 min, people have been confronted from ancient times with the problem of the discrepancy. Because the year is not exactly divisible by months and days, the practice arose of making arbitrary divisions and inserting extra (intercalary) days or months. The Gregorian calendar, generally accepted today, evolved from the Roman calendar reformed (46 B.C.) by Julius CAESAR. In the Julian calendar April, June, September, and November had 30 days, February 28 days (29 days every fourth, or leap, year), and all other months 31 days. The date was computed by counting backward from the Kalends (the 1st day), the Nones (the 7th day in March, May, July, and October; the 5th day in other months), and the Ides (the 15th day in March, May, July, and October; the 13th day in other months); hence Jan. 10 was the 4th day of the Ides of January. Because the Julian year of 365 days 6 hr was too long, by the 16th cent. the vernal equinox was displaced
from March 21 to March 11. Pope GREGORY XIII ordained that 10 days be dropped in 1582 and that years ending in hundreds be leap years only if divisible by 400. The non-Roman Catholic countries were slow to accept the Gregorian (New Style) calendar; it was adopted in England in 1752 and by the Eastern Church in the 20 cent. The Christian
ecclesiastical calendar was based on the belief that JESUS' resurrection was on a Sunday, hence Easter should fall on Sunday. The First Council of NICAEA (325) decreed that Easter be the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal EQUINOX; today the date varies from the astronomical reckoning because certain factors of the lunar period are not considered. Other calendars include the Jewishcalendar (12 months, plus intercalary months 7 times in 19 years) and the Muslim lunar calendar. See also FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY CALENDAR.