Obligatory jokes aside, the experimental methodology was borked.
Participants then worked on a "learning task" in which one complex sequence of keypresses was followed by an angry face on the screen, another sequence was followed by a neutral face, and a third sequence was followed by no face.
Note the face alternatives: angry, neutral, or none at all. No happy faces, puzzled faces, or any face showing any emotion other than anger. Most people -- testosterone or not -- prefer some kind of facial expression to a totally neutral one. (It indicates some recognition of their presence.)
Participants who were high in testosterone relative to other members of their sex learned the sequence that was followed by an emotional face better than the other sequences, while participants low in testosterone did not show this learning advantage for sequences that were reinforced by an emotional face.
[s/angry/emotional/ from the original]
That's all this experiment shows. Which probably really just means that high-testosterone folks learn this particular kind of task faster. Testosterone is known to have an effect on brain development, so it may just be that high-T levels are just an indicator for people whose brains are already geared to learning this kind of task faster.
Sheesh.
(Doesn't surprise me though. It's been my experience -- and I worked for several years at a university doing, among other things, statistics support for grad students and profs in the social sciences -- that psychologists tend not to be very good at experiment design. Maybe not enough testosterone;-)
Yeah, a number of companies bought licenses when they got the threatening letters, because it was cheaper than fighting. And yes, FOSS came up with PNG, but because it was the Right Thing To Do, not because of a lawsuit.
Where has this article gotten such detailed figures?
The figures were probably pulled out of their a...er, just made up. They violate Benford's Law. That's not definitive proof, but it is suggestive (especially given how many of them have a last digit of 0 or 5).
first to file means nothing if the invention is already PUBLISHED.
Exactly, thank you! Even with a first-to-file system (as proposed for the US), the filer has to swear that he is also the inventor. If that turns out not to be the case, the patent is void.
The only real difference is that filing dates are a lot easier to prove; the "first to invent" system is what leads to carefully page-numbered, signed-and-dated, notarized lab notebooks. (Does anyone do that in the software world I wonder? It's standard practice in "real world" sciences.) It makes it easier (but not easy) to prove date of invention.
The 32-bit Flash plugin works just fine with 32-bit Firefox on a 64-bit (x86-64) system.
That's what I've got here. (Suse 10.1 distro, not Ubuntu, which may or may not make a difference. If Ubuntu is installing a 64-bit browser, they may want to rethink that. I've only tried Ubuntu briefly, and passed on it because I didn't like their init system, I'm too used to Suse and RedHat.)
are not enough of a geek to open it up, remove the offending item and replace it with one which isn't so bright/is a less offensive colour?
Well, the true test of geekdom is to replace them all with infrared LEDs. The circuit won't know the difference, and you'll have to use night vision goggles (or an IR-sensitive camera, as most digital cameras are) to see if they're lit.
one large system vendor would cause the LEDs on the drives in their arrays to blink somewhat in unison
Back in the middle ages, we had a Burroughs mainframe (B6700) on campus. The main panel had an array of lights 12x16, representing the top two double-words (48 bits/word) of the stack (stack architecture). When the CPUs were otherwise idle, they'd fill that with a bit pattern producing the Burroughs' stylized 'B' logo. Kind of neat to watch random blinking with the 'B' occasionally flickering in and out.
It was a long sought after hack by some of us to find a way to put some other image up there, but we never quite managed.
they couldn't generally collect from everyone involved because that would be double or triple dipping. For example, if the manufacturer settles, then that makes the patent owner whole and absolves the others.
That depends entirely on the nature of the settlement. There was a case few years ago where Timeline settled with Microsoft (some database technology issue), then announced that the deal with Microsoft did not cover end users -- and the courts agreed.
Yes, when you're flying instrument flight rules (we'll pretend than non-IFR pilots never push the envelope by flying through the occasional overcast, ahem) you watch the instruments and ignore what you think you're feeling about the plane.
However, you're using more than just one instrument, and one of the aspects of learning instrument flight is learning how to cross check the different instruments in case one or more of them start lying to you (eg if the static pressure port gets plugged it's going to affect instruments like altimeter and airspeed, etc). Another part of learning instruments is learning to fly "partial panel", simulating partial instrument failure (the instructor covers up the dials). It basically comes down to "trust the instruments more than yourself -- but don't trust them completely, check them against each other" (dare I say "trust, but verify").
I already do that, pretty much. Haven't had cable or satellite in years, but regularly buy the boxed season DVD sets of Smallville, Stargate (both), Battlestar Galactica, etc and a few shows that aired years ago. Price works out to a bit under $2/episode, in commercial-free occasional bonus feature goodness. Sure, I have to wait a while for the current season, but so what? I've got more stuff than I have time to watch anyway.
And I can watch on the main TV in the livingroom, on my computer, laptop, or the portable player in the car.
Back when I was in the Canadian Military, it was just crosscut shredders. One of my tasks at a certain posting was to gather up the bags of shredded classified waste, take them out to the incinerator, and have a little bonfire. And to make sure the ashes were thoroughly stirred when done.
Mind, these days the "secret" underground base where I did that is now a tourist attraction (the "Diefenbunker", near Carp north of Ottawa).
EPO, no. But one place I worked, the data centre had this big overhead 'T'-shaped metal pull handle, conveniently near the operators' consoles (old mainframe days). The Director had a habit of leaning on whatever was handy when he was talking to people. This time he reached up to hang on the convenient handle -- which happend to be the activation handle for the Halon system. That was exciting.
He claimed later that it was a deliberate test of the system. Uh, right.
I lost all respect for Greenpeace when they came out opposing nuclear power.
My moment of truth with them was when I found out they were against pollution...
Well, no. Being against nuclear power implies you're for pollution, as all other means of producing energy on that scale are far more polluting.
Either that, or they're for de-industrialisation (which indeed some of them claim to be, just don't come for their creature comforts) -- which would effectively mean sentencing well over five billion people to death, far outdoing anything that Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler et al combined ever accomplished.
If you know you're going on a long trip, and you have a pure-electric car, just tow a trailer-mounted generator. Yeah it burns gas (or diesel, or whatever), but for most people the most frequent use of their car is not thousand-mile road trips. I can see a market for rental of such, just as there is for renting cargo trailers.
Yeah, I was including collection costs. Clearly copper and the more precious metals are also worth recycling (to the extent that I've seen old mainframe computer gear bought and sold for the scrap value of the gold etc. in the circuit boards), but as you point out, those metals usually aren't casually discarded.
There are two things that distinguish frequencies as different sounds; one is the wave shape (sinusoidal, sawtooth, square, etc) which is indeed (by Fourier) determined by harmonics, the other - which is much more significant when comparing two stringed instruments like piano and violin - is the envelope, the curve of amplitude over time (ie attack, sustain, delay, release).
Now, since the human ear perceives sound by, essentially, doing a mechanical Fourier analysis on the wave (the hair cells in the narrowing spiral cochlea of the inner ear respond to different frequencies), and since the highest frequencies those hair cells can respond to is not much above 20kHz (higher in younger kids, but the high-frequency-sensitive cells die off/get damaged first as we get older, they're more delicate), harmonics much above 20kHz aren't going to do a thing for you. (Hint, if you can't hear the 17kHz whine of the flyback transformer from an old CRT-type TV, they'll do absolutely nothing for you.)
Analog equipment responds best at the natural resonant frequencies of the mechanical components (mikes) and circuitry in the equipment; it takes a lot of expensive gear to counter the natural tendency of analog gear to introduce its own artificial harmonics.
Of course, some people like that distorted sound, so they convince themselves - and try to convince others - that it is somehow more true, accurate, and 'real'-sounding.
There are more trees today than there has ever been, and the simple reason is because we use a lot of paper.
That's not the only reason (although I'll grant it's a significant one -- I've seen Abitibi's tree plantations in Northern Ontario/Quebec). Another significant reason is the efficiency of modern agriculture, and in particular on larger farms. In total we need less cleared land for agriculture. The old smaller farms (particularly in the eastern states) are no longer profitable and are left to revert back to the forest they were before the land was cleared a couple of centuries ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Note the face alternatives: angry, neutral, or none at all. No happy faces, puzzled faces, or any face showing any emotion other than anger. Most people -- testosterone or not -- prefer some kind of facial expression to a totally neutral one. (It indicates some recognition of their presence.) [s/angry/emotional/ from the original]
That's all this experiment shows. Which probably really just means that high-testosterone folks learn this particular kind of task faster. Testosterone is known to have an effect on brain development, so it may just be that high-T levels are just an indicator for people whose brains are already geared to learning this kind of task faster.
Sheesh.
(Doesn't surprise me though. It's been my experience -- and I worked for several years at a university doing, among other things, statistics support for grad students and profs in the social sciences -- that psychologists tend not to be very good at experiment design. Maybe not enough testosterone
controlled by a piece of proprietary software - say Microsoft Radiation Therapy
Now there's a thought enough to give anyone nightmares.
Did anyone ever get sued over the GIF patents?
Yeah, a number of companies bought licenses when they got the threatening letters, because it was cheaper than fighting. And yes, FOSS came up with PNG, but because it was the Right Thing To Do, not because of a lawsuit.
Where has this article gotten such detailed figures?
The figures were probably pulled out of their a...er, just made up. They violate Benford's Law. That's not definitive proof, but it is suggestive (especially given how many of them have a last digit of 0 or 5).
first to file means nothing if the invention is already PUBLISHED.
Exactly, thank you! Even with a first-to-file system (as proposed for the US), the filer has to swear that he is also the inventor. If that turns out not to be the case, the patent is void.
The only real difference is that filing dates are a lot easier to prove; the "first to invent" system is what leads to carefully page-numbered, signed-and-dated, notarized lab notebooks. (Does anyone do that in the software world I wonder? It's standard practice in "real world" sciences.) It makes it easier (but not easy) to prove date of invention.
The 32-bit Flash plugin works just fine with 32-bit Firefox on a 64-bit (x86-64) system.
That's what I've got here. (Suse 10.1 distro, not Ubuntu, which may or may not make a difference. If Ubuntu is installing a 64-bit browser, they may want to rethink that. I've only tried Ubuntu briefly, and passed on it because I didn't like their init system, I'm too used to Suse and RedHat.)
are not enough of a geek to open it up, remove the offending item and replace it with one which isn't so bright/is a less offensive colour?
Well, the true test of geekdom is to replace them all with infrared LEDs. The circuit won't know the difference, and you'll have to use night vision goggles (or an IR-sensitive camera, as most digital cameras are) to see if they're lit.
one large system vendor would cause the LEDs on the drives in their arrays to blink somewhat in unison
Back in the middle ages, we had a Burroughs mainframe (B6700) on campus. The main panel had an array of lights 12x16, representing the top two double-words (48 bits/word) of the stack (stack architecture). When the CPUs were otherwise idle, they'd fill that with a bit pattern producing the Burroughs' stylized 'B' logo. Kind of neat to watch random blinking with the 'B' occasionally flickering in and out.
It was a long sought after hack by some of us to find a way to put some other image up there, but we never quite managed.
they couldn't generally collect from everyone involved because that would be double or triple dipping. For example, if the manufacturer settles, then that makes the patent owner whole and absolves the others.
That depends entirely on the nature of the settlement. There was a case few years ago where Timeline settled with Microsoft (some database technology issue), then announced that the deal with Microsoft did not cover end users -- and the courts agreed.
Yes, when you're flying instrument flight rules (we'll pretend than non-IFR pilots never push the envelope by flying through the occasional overcast, ahem) you watch the instruments and ignore what you think you're feeling about the plane.
However, you're using more than just one instrument, and one of the aspects of learning instrument flight is learning how to cross check the different instruments in case one or more of them start lying to you (eg if the static pressure port gets plugged it's going to affect instruments like altimeter and airspeed, etc). Another part of learning instruments is learning to fly "partial panel", simulating partial instrument failure (the instructor covers up the dials). It basically comes down to "trust the instruments more than yourself -- but don't trust them completely, check them against each other" (dare I say "trust, but verify").
I already do that, pretty much. Haven't had cable or satellite in years, but regularly buy the boxed season DVD sets of Smallville, Stargate (both), Battlestar Galactica, etc and a few shows that aired years ago. Price works out to a bit under $2/episode, in commercial-free occasional bonus feature goodness. Sure, I have to wait a while for the current season, but so what? I've got more stuff than I have time to watch anyway.
And I can watch on the main TV in the livingroom, on my computer, laptop, or the portable player in the car.
or Digital Cash Extraction,
or Don't Copy Enything. (Ok, that one doesn't quite work.)
or perhaps Doomed Commercial Entertainment.
Back when I was in the Canadian Military, it was just crosscut shredders. One of my tasks at a certain posting was to gather up the bags of shredded classified waste, take them out to the incinerator, and have a little bonfire. And to make sure the ashes were thoroughly stirred when done.
Mind, these days the "secret" underground base where I did that is now a tourist attraction (the "Diefenbunker", near Carp north of Ottawa).
You all are wasting your time. The NSA doesn't exist.
Exactly, there's No Such Agency.
EPO, no. But one place I worked, the data centre had this big overhead 'T'-shaped metal pull handle, conveniently near the operators' consoles (old mainframe days). The Director had a habit of leaning on whatever was handy when he was talking to people. This time he reached up to hang on the convenient handle -- which happend to be the activation handle for the Halon system. That was exciting.
He claimed later that it was a deliberate test of the system. Uh, right.
preview screening = full movie shown before it's release
Also known as "sneak preview".
You display your ignorance, sir.
I lost all respect for Greenpeace when they came out opposing nuclear power.
My moment of truth with them was when I found out they were against pollution...
Well, no. Being against nuclear power implies you're for pollution, as all other means of producing energy on that scale are far more polluting.
Either that, or they're for de-industrialisation (which indeed some of them claim to be, just don't come for their creature comforts) -- which would effectively mean sentencing well over five billion people to death, far outdoing anything that Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler et al combined ever accomplished.
If you know you're going on a long trip, and you have a pure-electric car, just tow a trailer-mounted generator. Yeah it burns gas (or diesel, or whatever), but for most people the most frequent use of their car is not thousand-mile road trips. I can see a market for rental of such, just as there is for renting cargo trailers.
Whenever you see an expression that could be a property or a field, assume it's a property.
Dangerous practise, that.
(Emphasis added.)
Didn't the Berkeley FFS do that back in the '80s?
Yes it did, as of (if I recall correctly) BSD 4.2 for VAX -- at the same time it made the jump to a 4K block size.
If they're so upset about people saying what the processing key is, then surely they'd have no problem with saying what it's not.
Nice analysis.
Yeah, I was including collection costs. Clearly copper and the more precious metals are also worth recycling (to the extent that I've seen old mainframe computer gear bought and sold for the scrap value of the gold etc. in the circuit boards), but as you point out, those metals usually aren't casually discarded.
There are two things that distinguish frequencies as different sounds; one is the wave shape (sinusoidal, sawtooth, square, etc) which is indeed (by Fourier) determined by harmonics, the other - which is much more significant when comparing two stringed instruments like piano and violin - is the envelope, the curve of amplitude over time (ie attack, sustain, delay, release).
Now, since the human ear perceives sound by, essentially, doing a mechanical Fourier analysis on the wave (the hair cells in the narrowing spiral cochlea of the inner ear respond to different frequencies), and since the highest frequencies those hair cells can respond to is not much above 20kHz (higher in younger kids, but the high-frequency-sensitive cells die off/get damaged first as we get older, they're more delicate), harmonics much above 20kHz aren't going to do a thing for you. (Hint, if you can't hear the 17kHz whine of the flyback transformer from an old CRT-type TV, they'll do absolutely nothing for you.)
Analog equipment responds best at the natural resonant frequencies of the mechanical components (mikes) and circuitry in the equipment; it takes a lot of expensive gear to counter the natural tendency of analog gear to introduce its own artificial harmonics.
Of course, some people like that distorted sound, so they convince themselves - and try to convince others - that it is somehow more true, accurate, and 'real'-sounding.
There are more trees today than there has ever been, and the simple reason is because we use a lot of paper.
That's not the only reason (although I'll grant it's a significant one -- I've seen Abitibi's tree plantations in Northern Ontario/Quebec). Another significant reason is the efficiency of modern agriculture, and in particular on larger farms. In total we need less cleared land for agriculture. The old smaller farms (particularly in the eastern states) are no longer profitable and are left to revert back to the forest they were before the land was cleared a couple of centuries ago.