Ok... on the assumption that this "reason to keep trying" is a desirable thing (something I'm not convinced of but am willing to entertain), here's a suggestion:
Why not require that the first half of the semester can only have 15% of the total gradable work? The second half of the semester would have 85% of the total gradable work. Thus if I goof off at the start, I've lost my chance at an "A", but I can still get a passing "C" without having to be perfect for the rest of the semester. The first half of the semester could still be full of useful lectures, teaching experiences, etc, for the students who are there, but all the major exams and essays and projects are in the second half.
I think this clarifies how this can happen and it not be a case of manipulation:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122109238502221651.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahooTribune has offered details of the incident in pieces since Monday. In its latest explanation, Tribune said a single visit during a low-traffic period early Sunday morning pushed the undated story onto the list of most popular business news of its South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper's Web site.
The comparison isn't viable. In chess, a three move head start completely changes the tactical nature of the game. In three moves, a bishop could put the king into a position where it has to capture to get out of check, and now he cannot castle and the whole game falls apart. Go doesn't substantially change its tactical nature by allowing the black player to play initial stones, just makes white's job harder (black always plays first in Go and is always played by whichever opponent is believed to be the weaker player).
The big news here is that 5 years ago, no computer could take on a pro with a *25* stone handicap. That's huge progress.
Your analogy is flawed. Try this: Breaking news: snail successfully beats cheetah after cheetah is chained to 200-pound lead ball. 5 years ago, snail consistently *lost* to cheetah chained to 600-pound lead ball. We've come a long way, baby.
No, it isn't ignorance. The whole point is that Go should be trivial for computers given everything we know about symbolic logic, but for decades Go has resisted any and all attempts to make it playable by computers. There is something that the human mind is doing that we have been unable to encode in symbolic logic, something that arises from the very simple four rules of Go.
You said that computers ought to be good at this. True. But they aren't. That's significant, and is the reason why AI research has worked hard on Go -- it clearly highlights a difference between the human mind and the computer. What difference? We don't know yet. Perhaps we're just doing Monte Carlo deep searches in extreme parallel, like MoGo. Perhaps there is something more human.
The NPR radio show "This American Life" had an excellent story about the credit crisis and went in depth on the use of past data that didn't really apply to the current scenario. Here's the link if you want to listen: http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1242
It's probably the most complete report on the roots of the crisis and how it developed over time that I've heard thus far.
So, the story suggests that private insurance may be incompatible with genetic testing. Presuming that genetic testing really does give us all that it promises in the way of predictability, perhaps this is a solution: We could require insurance to be purchased prior to any genetic test. That means if parents want to genetically test their unborn child, they need insurance coverage for the child. An adult going in for testing would have to already have insurance. And then we forbid the insurance company from dropping coverage as a result of the test. Now the insurance company has to make its decision about who to cover without the GT info.
Google Sky seems to weigh in on whether Pluto still counts as a planet. If you search for "Planets", you're directed to the planets layer, which I couldn't find (and isn't found if you search Google Maps help either). But click on "The Solar System" and there's Pluto, still included, no matter how many other small round bodies may be lurking about the solar system. Way to stand up for the little guy, Google!
> "But this mechanism fails utterly if you and I have different power levels to begin with."
The argument of the transparent society, however, is that information is released to everyone. No one is exchanging only with those with less initial power (which might allow them to maintain advantage), they're also exchanging with the people of equal power, where the loss of privacy does level the playing field.
It would be a mess if you told passengers to line themselves up row-by-row, seat-by-seat. But what if after you scanned your boarding pass in line, you stepped into a series of gates that opened and closed to shift each passenger to the right section in line. Since families sitting together would tend to scan in together, you could keep them all shunting through the same set of gates. I'm imagining a sort of plinko-machine type system that sorts people to the right place in line.
Practical? Probably not. But the airline that implements it would score major geek points in my book.:-)
> Used to be, mafia guys would have no Social Security card, > driver's license, or bank accounts to avoid being traced > by law enforcement or the IRS.
Nowadays the mafia guys have multiple SS cards, drivers licenses and bank accounts -- all belonging to other people.:-)
That sounds very much like the basis for Vantage Point (IMDB link), a movie whose trailer I saw just last night for the first time. 8 different witnesses from different places in the crowd each have a different bit of knowledge contributing to figuring out who shot the US president. I thought it looked worth seeing, if only for the multiple vantage point concept that you describe.
> I'm currently going round and round with the local city > council over the same issue, ie photographs of historical > city landmarks which the city seems to think they have > the rights to limit photographs of. They even have that > printed on the landmark info posts. Sigh. Can anyone > point me to relevant cases?
Check out the case law and history on the University of Texas Tower in Austin, TX. The building's image is a trademark of the University of Texas and there are limits to what you can do with any photo that includes the tower. I don't know all the ins and outs, but I know that it has been an issue for many photos.
In this case, though, the default was intended by the WIFI owner. The coffee shop created an open, public access point -- they don't want a security requirement for any of their patrons who are actually inside the coffee shop. This case seems to be an instance of a social requirement for access that is undefined in the technology protocol -- "I want free and open access to anyone within the walls of my shop, and a security barrier for anyone outside." How can a shop owner create such a boundary? All the posts on this forum use the "it's wide open" as an argument that the people outside the shop can just connect freely. But the law argues that it isn't the router that you have to ask for permission -- it's the router's human owner. The law actually appears to cover a situation that the protocol does not take into account.
> I've actually heard of kids in middle and high school who use > SMS and IM so much that they legitimately don't know how to > spell words like "you", "your/you're", and will use internet > abbreviations (lol, idk, etc.) in school papers.
That suggests an interesting punishment... install a spellcheck on the cell phone and only allow text messages that conform to standard rules of spelling and grammer. For one thing, it'll cut down on the number of messages since they have to type more ("laughing out loud" takes longer than "lol"). For another, the kid will actually get some experience with the language they'll need in other venues.
Of course, I suggest this only after a complete ban on all text messages until the kid pays the bill him/herself.
Google purports to find information on the web. They aren't a directory where you have to pay to be listed. It doesn't matter that they offer their service for free. If they post misleading information or omit information that people should expect to be there, they could be in trouble.
raoul666 makes a good point. I want to add that Google removed the BMW site *because* it was misleading. You can't fault them for providing misleading results when the whole reason they delisted the site was because it was causing misleading results.
"Desirability by others" is *exactly* what a search engine should be doing. Basically a search engine tries to answer the question: "If the user knew about this site, would he/she expect the site to be associated with the keywords he/she just requested?" To answer this, they compare with a bijillion other users to see whether those other users thought that this site should be associated with those keywords, and if the answer is "yes" then they display that site in the search results.
It is not unfair to give the customer exactly what the customer wants. If you are a search engine, then you cater to your customers by giving them the search results they're hoping for. A content provider is *not* a customer of the search engine. I tried to think of a traditional business role that a content provider plays with respect to a search engine, and I can't think of one. The closest is "lobbyist", where Google is a government passing laws and searchers are people governed by those laws. You don't want the lobbyists having the upper hand over the masses getting what they need.
Thus, I think you're wrong. Google is a democratic system -- or at least a republic -- and it does a damn better job of representing its constituents than a lot of other systems I can think of.
Suppose that moderating an article only allowed for down-moderation, never up-moderation? The editors would pick a set of stories that are on topic and down moderation would filter the set further, but the set as a whole would never drift off-topic. Editors could even designate 3 stories that are all the same article, written by different submitters. Article moderators would then be able to push down the lesser-quality duplicates, but they wouldn't be able to up-mod any off-topic article. That might help compensate for topic-drift.
It is high-grade, precision engineeered plastic. The LEGO robotics sets are made from lots of pieces of various shapes, not just one shape replicated thousands of times. Compare up against some of the LEGO knock-offs that are much cheaper. They hold together when you're building a static building, but if you try to build something that moves, they fall to pieces. You need plastic that fits *exactly* so that gears don't grind against each other and torque doesn't tear the robot apart. Personally, I'm impressed with the price -- it's asking a lot to get this kind of resource down to the point where kids can ever get ahold of it.
Perhaps because you don't fly airplanes much... personally, I think of the TSA. But it applies to any large gov't agency, and it just matters which you deal with most.
Here's how the argument typically goes: A person who commits a crime is free of further penalty once the court imposed sentence is fulfilled. If the court imposes a sentence of jail time, then once the jail time is done, the person suffers no further penalty. In the case of the sex offenders, many states include jail time and the further penalty that they be listed in such registries. This makes their set of rights the same size as any one else's since being in the registry is simply part of their punishment... part of "serving their time," just as community service or any other form of restitution might be considered "serving time."
Might be worth it for medical reasons... a completely separate instantiation of Life might have developed unique solutions to various issues. From a science standpoint, as previously stated, there's likely a lot to learn. From an economic standpoint, they're toast.
Sorry, but I don't see access to porn and surfing the Internet as inalienable human rights. At a stretch, you might say that accurate news of local and world events is a human right. I think there are some valid arguments there.
And as for equality under the law, the Great Firewall of China -- based on what I've read, not experience -- is pretty much a blanket absolute for every place but Hong Kong.
There's a difference between freedom and enforced cultural standards of behavior. Unless you're a member of a given culture, it can be very difficult to distinguish. Example: Talk to some folks from India. In college, I was always surprised at how many of them speak positively of arranged marriages. Now at work, co-workers sometimes come back from a two week vacation in India and they're married to a person they'd never met before, but that their family had found for them. And they're happy with it, whereas any American I know would absolutely chaffe.
Personally, I think that the USA government is much less controlling than the Chinese government. But I've met folks from Europe who are astounded that our government controls our lives so much ("21 years old?? TO DRINK BEER?!?!").
I say again: Unless you're a part of the culture, you're probably not qualified to judge what is oppression and what is simply cultural norm.
An irony of your statement is that in this case -- which you cite as a laudable instance of free software -- is that these guys were working illegally... it was illegal for them to be in on the Apple campus writing this code. Perhaps you should choose a better example.:-)
By the way... to Avitzur and Robbins... Good work, guys!
Slashdot Mirror
Ok... on the assumption that this "reason to keep trying" is a desirable thing (something I'm not convinced of but am willing to entertain), here's a suggestion:
Why not require that the first half of the semester can only have 15% of the total gradable work? The second half of the semester would have 85% of the total gradable work. Thus if I goof off at the start, I've lost my chance at an "A", but I can still get a passing "C" without having to be perfect for the rest of the semester. The first half of the semester could still be full of useful lectures, teaching experiences, etc, for the students who are there, but all the major exams and essays and projects are in the second half.
I think this clarifies how this can happen and it not be a case of manipulation: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122109238502221651.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo Tribune has offered details of the incident in pieces since Monday. In its latest explanation, Tribune said a single visit during a low-traffic period early Sunday morning pushed the undated story onto the list of most popular business news of its South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper's Web site.
The comparison isn't viable. In chess, a three move head start completely changes the tactical nature of the game. In three moves, a bishop could put the king into a position where it has to capture to get out of check, and now he cannot castle and the whole game falls apart. Go doesn't substantially change its tactical nature by allowing the black player to play initial stones, just makes white's job harder (black always plays first in Go and is always played by whichever opponent is believed to be the weaker player).
The big news here is that 5 years ago, no computer could take on a pro with a *25* stone handicap. That's huge progress.
Your analogy is flawed. Try this:
Breaking news: snail successfully beats cheetah after cheetah is chained to 200-pound lead ball. 5 years ago, snail consistently *lost* to cheetah chained to 600-pound lead ball. We've come a long way, baby.
No, it isn't ignorance. The whole point is that Go should be trivial for computers given everything we know about symbolic logic, but for decades Go has resisted any and all attempts to make it playable by computers. There is something that the human mind is doing that we have been unable to encode in symbolic logic, something that arises from the very simple four rules of Go.
You said that computers ought to be good at this. True. But they aren't. That's significant, and is the reason why AI research has worked hard on Go -- it clearly highlights a difference between the human mind and the computer. What difference? We don't know yet. Perhaps we're just doing Monte Carlo deep searches in extreme parallel, like MoGo. Perhaps there is something more human.
The NPR radio show "This American Life" had an excellent story about the credit crisis and went in depth on the use of past data that didn't really apply to the current scenario. Here's the link if you want to listen:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1242
It's probably the most complete report on the roots of the crisis and how it developed over time that I've heard thus far.
So, the story suggests that private insurance may be incompatible with genetic testing. Presuming that genetic testing really does give us all that it promises in the way of predictability, perhaps this is a solution: We could require insurance to be purchased prior to any genetic test. That means if parents want to genetically test their unborn child, they need insurance coverage for the child. An adult going in for testing would have to already have insurance. And then we forbid the insurance company from dropping coverage as a result of the test. Now the insurance company has to make its decision about who to cover without the GT info.
Google Sky seems to weigh in on whether Pluto still counts as a planet. If you search for "Planets", you're directed to the planets layer, which I couldn't find (and isn't found if you search Google Maps help either). But click on "The Solar System" and there's Pluto, still included, no matter how many other small round bodies may be lurking about the solar system. Way to stand up for the little guy, Google!
> "But this mechanism fails utterly if you and I have different power levels to begin with."
The argument of the transparent society, however, is that information is released to everyone. No one is exchanging only with those with less initial power (which might allow them to maintain advantage), they're also exchanging with the people of equal power, where the loss of privacy does level the playing field.
It would be a mess if you told passengers to line themselves up row-by-row, seat-by-seat. But what if after you scanned your boarding pass in line, you stepped into a series of gates that opened and closed to shift each passenger to the right section in line. Since families sitting together would tend to scan in together, you could keep them all shunting through the same set of gates. I'm imagining a sort of plinko-machine type system that sorts people to the right place in line.
:-)
Practical? Probably not. But the airline that implements it would score major geek points in my book.
> Used to be, mafia guys would have no Social Security card,
:-)
> driver's license, or bank accounts to avoid being traced
> by law enforcement or the IRS.
Nowadays the mafia guys have multiple SS cards, drivers licenses and bank accounts -- all belonging to other people.
That sounds very much like the basis for Vantage Point (IMDB link), a movie whose trailer I saw just last night for the first time. 8 different witnesses from different places in the crowd each have a different bit of knowledge contributing to figuring out who shot the US president. I thought it looked worth seeing, if only for the multiple vantage point concept that you describe.
> I'm currently going round and round with the local city
> council over the same issue, ie photographs of historical
> city landmarks which the city seems to think they have
> the rights to limit photographs of. They even have that
> printed on the landmark info posts. Sigh. Can anyone
> point me to relevant cases?
Check out the case law and history on the University of Texas Tower in Austin, TX. The building's image is a trademark of the University of Texas and there are limits to what you can do with any photo that includes the tower. I don't know all the ins and outs, but I know that it has been an issue for many photos.
Although you have a point about this case, that this guy got off light, there's no guarantee that the next guy in line will be treated so easily.
In this case, though, the default was intended by the WIFI owner. The coffee shop created an open, public access point -- they don't want a security requirement for any of their patrons who are actually inside the coffee shop. This case seems to be an instance of a social requirement for access that is undefined in the technology protocol -- "I want free and open access to anyone within the walls of my shop, and a security barrier for anyone outside." How can a shop owner create such a boundary? All the posts on this forum use the "it's wide open" as an argument that the people outside the shop can just connect freely. But the law argues that it isn't the router that you have to ask for permission -- it's the router's human owner. The law actually appears to cover a situation that the protocol does not take into account.
> I've actually heard of kids in middle and high school who use
> SMS and IM so much that they legitimately don't know how to
> spell words like "you", "your/you're", and will use internet
> abbreviations (lol, idk, etc.) in school papers.
That suggests an interesting punishment... install a spellcheck on the cell phone and only allow text messages that conform to standard rules of spelling and grammer. For one thing, it'll cut down on the number of messages since they have to type more ("laughing out loud" takes longer than "lol"). For another, the kid will actually get some experience with the language they'll need in other venues.
Of course, I suggest this only after a complete ban on all text messages until the kid pays the bill him/herself.
Google purports to find information on the web. They aren't a directory where you have to pay to be listed. It doesn't matter that they offer their service for free. If they post misleading information or omit information that people should expect to be there, they could be in trouble.
raoul666 makes a good point. I want to add that Google removed the BMW site *because* it was misleading. You can't fault them for providing misleading results when the whole reason they delisted the site was because it was causing misleading results.
"Desirability by others" is *exactly* what a search engine should be doing. Basically a search engine tries to answer the question: "If the user knew about this site, would he/she expect the site to be associated with the keywords he/she just requested?" To answer this, they compare with a bijillion other users to see whether those other users thought that this site should be associated with those keywords, and if the answer is "yes" then they display that site in the search results.
It is not unfair to give the customer exactly what the customer wants. If you are a search engine, then you cater to your customers by giving them the search results they're hoping for. A content provider is *not* a customer of the search engine. I tried to think of a traditional business role that a content provider plays with respect to a search engine, and I can't think of one. The closest is "lobbyist", where Google is a government passing laws and searchers are people governed by those laws. You don't want the lobbyists having the upper hand over the masses getting what they need.
Thus, I think you're wrong. Google is a democratic system -- or at least a republic -- and it does a damn better job of representing its constituents than a lot of other systems I can think of.
Suppose that moderating an article only allowed for down-moderation, never up-moderation? The editors would pick a set of stories that are on topic and down moderation would filter the set further, but the set as a whole would never drift off-topic. Editors could even designate 3 stories that are all the same article, written by different submitters. Article moderators would then be able to push down the lesser-quality duplicates, but they wouldn't be able to up-mod any off-topic article. That might help compensate for topic-drift.
It is high-grade, precision engineeered plastic. The LEGO robotics sets are made from lots of pieces of various shapes, not just one shape replicated thousands of times. Compare up against some of the LEGO knock-offs that are much cheaper. They hold together when you're building a static building, but if you try to build something that moves, they fall to pieces. You need plastic that fits *exactly* so that gears don't grind against each other and torque doesn't tear the robot apart. Personally, I'm impressed with the price -- it's asking a lot to get this kind of resource down to the point where kids can ever get ahold of it.
Perhaps because you don't fly airplanes much... personally, I think of the TSA. But it applies to any large gov't agency, and it just matters which you deal with most.
Here's how the argument typically goes:
A person who commits a crime is free of further penalty once the court imposed sentence is fulfilled. If the court imposes a sentence of jail time, then once the jail time is done, the person suffers no further penalty. In the case of the sex offenders, many states include jail time and the further penalty that they be listed in such registries. This makes their set of rights the same size as any one else's since being in the registry is simply part of their punishment... part of "serving their time," just as community service or any other form of restitution might be considered "serving time."
Might be worth it for medical reasons... a completely separate instantiation of Life might have developed unique solutions to various issues. From a science standpoint, as previously stated, there's likely a lot to learn. From an economic standpoint, they're toast.
Sorry, but I don't see access to porn and surfing the Internet as inalienable human rights. At a stretch, you might say that accurate news of local and world events is a human right. I think there are some valid arguments there.
And as for equality under the law, the Great Firewall of China -- based on what I've read, not experience -- is pretty much a blanket absolute for every place but Hong Kong.
There's a difference between freedom and enforced cultural standards of behavior. Unless you're a member of a given culture, it can be very difficult to distinguish. Example: Talk to some folks from India. In college, I was always surprised at how many of them speak positively of arranged marriages. Now at work, co-workers sometimes come back from a two week vacation in India and they're married to a person they'd never met before, but that their family had found for them. And they're happy with it, whereas any American I know would absolutely chaffe.
Personally, I think that the USA government is much less controlling than the Chinese government. But I've met folks from Europe who are astounded that our government controls our lives so much ("21 years old?? TO DRINK BEER?!?!").
I say again: Unless you're a part of the culture, you're probably not qualified to judge what is oppression and what is simply cultural norm.
An irony of your statement is that in this case -- which you cite as a laudable instance of free software -- is that these guys were working illegally... it was illegal for them to be in on the Apple campus writing this code. Perhaps you should choose a better example. :-)
By the way... to Avitzur and Robbins... Good work, guys!