They're not measuring change in gaming habits, they're measuring change in aggression as a function of gaming habits. With a control group of children who don't play violent games, if increased aggression is natural, you'll see similar number of children in the control group become more aggressive.
They already do this. Machines that don't need Internet access don't have it, and the DoD has its own network for secure communication. Sometimes, though, you want to provide services on the public Internet, yet not have them hacked.
No, they look at the kids' behavior before the start of the study, track the behavior and video game habits for a period of time, and look at change in behavior rather than just behavior at the end of the study.
Your other comment is complaining that the study didn't answer the question you wanted answered. It's quite reasonable to want to know the effect of video games (or any other factor) on human behavior, and it's a much more tractable research problem.
Statistics are much more enlightening than anecdotal evidence.
Of course, they don't seem to link to the study, so I can't comment on its quality. I do notice, though, the article attempts to address most of the I-didn't-read-the-article Slashdot responses: * brings up the problem of causation * attempts to properly show causation, not just correlation * conclusion is advice for parents
Temperature measurements just in California are worthless anyway -- too small of an area. Do you know how many measurements they're averaging those with? How big of a temperature shift you'd expect from a misplaced thermometer? Whether the standard deviation of the global temperature average those measurements were included in shifted significantly?
No, I'll tell you what you did. You came to a conclusion, and then looked for evidence to support it. Then you had the gall to question scientists, who at least use much better reasoning.
You obviously haven't ever given a Scantron test. You might guess, incorrectly, that everyone could fill out a bubble sheet properly, but no. Worse, the scanner can't always score properly-filled-out sheets correctly all the time (and it usually fails on incorrectly-filled-out sheets).
Who is in charge of these other registrations and their standards for proving things like where you actually live differ a lot.
You mention you have to be registered with your municipality. In my municipality in the US, you do not. You don't have to have any other ID either, though I happen to have a passport and driver's license. Frequently when filling out forms for things like driver's licenses that have a higher standard of proof than a voter registration, you can at the same time register to vote with minimal additional paperwork (likewise for draft registration).
Actually, in spite of the second law, some things can, in a sense, last forever.
One of the more entertaining information-theory problems in thermodynamics is demonstrating that a thinking entity is capable of an infinite number of thoughts, even though they have access to a finite amount of energy and are facing 2nd-law heat death.
Now, that's certainly believable. But having a plan in place to apply a tap to every circuit they provide is different from having such a tap active.
I don't really think they should even have a plan in place to do such a thing, but the typical hyperbolic statement is "the government is actively monitoring all of your packets and phone conversations", which simply isn't true.
Perhaps you should clarify, for hyperbole's sake, that there is one NSA room in one major hub. It's well-known now, and the government has gotten quite a lot of crap about it.
Conspiracy theory is when you extend this, sans evidence, to "they must have one in every major hub".
No. Too obvious. They might as well just say they have a quantum computer. If they had one and didn't want anyone to know about it, they'd get this research done more quietly.
This is a "construct reasons why quantum computers should be funded". Also, if they feel that working quantum computers are on the horizon, their design may need to be influenced by their future application. (For example, Algorithm We Must Have required 192 qbits -- so make sure that first working quantum computer has at least that many.)
They're not proof of guilt, just used to streamline the investigative process.
While I agree that computing MD5 hashes constitutes searching, one of the useful properties of doing that first is that it's less invasive than looking at all the individual images on the hard drive. It's also less time-consuming.
The major motivation for MD5 hashing is that the database of known child pornography is not distributed in its entirety to every state and local investigative group. The database of hash values, however, is. If there are files on the investigated machine whose hashes match hashes for known CP files, then further investigation is done.
If you tried to convict someone based off of a hash match, and the files didn't actually match bit-for-bit, any competent defense lawyer would be able to kill the value of that "evidence".
There are already decentralized mechanisms for finding peers given a torrent -- the problem that this is trying to address is a decentralized mechanism for finding torrents.
They actually have a database of the original files. The reason for the hash list is that the hash list is distributable to investigators, but the original material is not. This way they can find images that are "known child porn" (so they don't need to go through the process of verifying that it actually is) and can relate images found on a drive to previous cases involving the same image.
No, the standard databases are all MD5/SHA1 hashes. It's well-known that they're too susceptible to minute changes. However, a hash match nearly guarantees that the files are the same.
Yes, that's the birthday paradox. I'm not sure offhand how big the NCMEC database is, which is usually what they're comparing against, but let's try some math.
Let's say your hard drive has N files and the database has M items (so, comparing a list of N to another list of M hashes). Your hard drive doesn't actually contain any of the files used to generate the "bad" hash list. The probability of a hash collision is approximately P = 1 - exp( -N*M / (2 * 2^128) ). Assuming the value in the exponent is small, this is approximately P = N*M/2^129. 2^129 is in the rough vicinity of 10^43. In order for you to have a one in a billion (10^9) chance of a false positive, the product N*M would have to be ~10^34. If the hash list has a billion items (I think it's smaller than that, by quite a lot), you'd need 10^25 files on your disk -- well beyond the capacity of readily-available desktop storage.
MD5 hashes are useful because they're resilient to even birthday collisions. What they're not resilient to, it turns out, is intentionally creating two files with the same MD5 hash. (Even then, it is infeasible to generate two files with the same MD5 hash and the same size.)
If I recall correctly, it's below the ionization threshold, so mostly it'll heat those parts up a bit. If those parts are particularly susceptible to electric or magnetic fields, perhaps a bit more.
Not just that it's possible, but also that it exists and is popular.
You're quite correct, though -- just because they identify it as a "potential tool used by terrorists" doesn't mean they have any intention of restricting it -- only that they need to consider all possible tools at the disposal of an enemy.
The Economics prize isn't under the control of the Nobel foundation, it just shares the name. The Peace and scientific prizes share some connection, yes, but they're clearly have different intents and standards. I don't think the politics of the Peace prize at all reflect on the scientific prizes, as the decisions are made by different groups with different criteria.
Good job confusing the Nobel Peace Prize, the Prize in Economics, and the scientific Nobel Prizes, which are selected by different groups and with different criteria.
This really requires mentioning that the prize in Economics is not one of the Nobel Prizes, though there is limited political influence on the selection. The more-often-criticized selection, the Peace Prize, has much heavier political influence, but is decided by a different committee and hosted by a different country.
The scientific Nobel Prizes are quite free of political agenda.
Slashdot Mirror
They're not measuring change in gaming habits, they're measuring change in aggression as a function of gaming habits. With a control group of children who don't play violent games, if increased aggression is natural, you'll see similar number of children in the control group become more aggressive.
"People can't access hardware they can't access."
Good tautology there.
They already do this. Machines that don't need Internet access don't have it, and the DoD has its own network for secure communication. Sometimes, though, you want to provide services on the public Internet, yet not have them hacked.
No, they look at the kids' behavior before the start of the study, track the behavior and video game habits for a period of time, and look at change in behavior rather than just behavior at the end of the study.
Your other comment is complaining that the study didn't answer the question you wanted answered. It's quite reasonable to want to know the effect of video games (or any other factor) on human behavior, and it's a much more tractable research problem.
Statistics are much more enlightening than anecdotal evidence.
Of course, they don't seem to link to the study, so I can't comment on its quality. I do notice, though, the article attempts to address most of the I-didn't-read-the-article Slashdot responses:
* brings up the problem of causation
* attempts to properly show causation, not just correlation
* conclusion is advice for parents
Convince Republicans.
Temperature measurements just in California are worthless anyway -- too small of an area. Do you know how many measurements they're averaging those with? How big of a temperature shift you'd expect from a misplaced thermometer? Whether the standard deviation of the global temperature average those measurements were included in shifted significantly?
No, I'll tell you what you did. You came to a conclusion, and then looked for evidence to support it. Then you had the gall to question scientists, who at least use much better reasoning.
You obviously haven't ever given a Scantron test. You might guess, incorrectly, that everyone could fill out a bubble sheet properly, but no. Worse, the scanner can't always score properly-filled-out sheets correctly all the time (and it usually fails on incorrectly-filled-out sheets).
Who is in charge of these other registrations and their standards for proving things like where you actually live differ a lot.
You mention you have to be registered with your municipality. In my municipality in the US, you do not. You don't have to have any other ID either, though I happen to have a passport and driver's license. Frequently when filling out forms for things like driver's licenses that have a higher standard of proof than a voter registration, you can at the same time register to vote with minimal additional paperwork (likewise for draft registration).
Actually, in spite of the second law, some things can, in a sense, last forever.
One of the more entertaining information-theory problems in thermodynamics is demonstrating that a thinking entity is capable of an infinite number of thoughts, even though they have access to a finite amount of energy and are facing 2nd-law heat death.
I claim transporting a human to Mars is impossible.
Please point out where a human has landed on Mars.
I'll wait.
If you present 3 options, is it still a false dichotomy?
Now, that's certainly believable. But having a plan in place to apply a tap to every circuit they provide is different from having such a tap active.
I don't really think they should even have a plan in place to do such a thing, but the typical hyperbolic statement is "the government is actively monitoring all of your packets and phone conversations", which simply isn't true.
Perhaps you should clarify, for hyperbole's sake, that there is one NSA room in one major hub. It's well-known now, and the government has gotten quite a lot of crap about it.
Conspiracy theory is when you extend this, sans evidence, to "they must have one in every major hub".
No. Too obvious. They might as well just say they have a quantum computer. If they had one and didn't want anyone to know about it, they'd get this research done more quietly.
This is a "construct reasons why quantum computers should be funded". Also, if they feel that working quantum computers are on the horizon, their design may need to be influenced by their future application. (For example, Algorithm We Must Have required 192 qbits -- so make sure that first working quantum computer has at least that many.)
They're not proof of guilt, just used to streamline the investigative process.
While I agree that computing MD5 hashes constitutes searching, one of the useful properties of doing that first is that it's less invasive than looking at all the individual images on the hard drive. It's also less time-consuming.
The major motivation for MD5 hashing is that the database of known child pornography is not distributed in its entirety to every state and local investigative group. The database of hash values, however, is. If there are files on the investigated machine whose hashes match hashes for known CP files, then further investigation is done.
If you tried to convict someone based off of a hash match, and the files didn't actually match bit-for-bit, any competent defense lawyer would be able to kill the value of that "evidence".
There are already decentralized mechanisms for finding peers given a torrent -- the problem that this is trying to address is a decentralized mechanism for finding torrents.
They actually have a database of the original files. The reason for the hash list is that the hash list is distributable to investigators, but the original material is not. This way they can find images that are "known child porn" (so they don't need to go through the process of verifying that it actually is) and can relate images found on a drive to previous cases involving the same image.
No, the standard databases are all MD5/SHA1 hashes. It's well-known that they're too susceptible to minute changes. However, a hash match nearly guarantees that the files are the same.
Yes, that's the birthday paradox. I'm not sure offhand how big the NCMEC database is, which is usually what they're comparing against, but let's try some math.
Let's say your hard drive has N files and the database has M items (so, comparing a list of N to another list of M hashes). Your hard drive doesn't actually contain any of the files used to generate the "bad" hash list. The probability of a hash collision is approximately P = 1 - exp( -N*M / (2 * 2^128) ). Assuming the value in the exponent is small, this is approximately P = N*M/2^129. 2^129 is in the rough vicinity of 10^43. In order for you to have a one in a billion (10^9) chance of a false positive, the product N*M would have to be ~10^34. If the hash list has a billion items (I think it's smaller than that, by quite a lot), you'd need 10^25 files on your disk -- well beyond the capacity of readily-available desktop storage.
MD5 hashes are useful because they're resilient to even birthday collisions. What they're not resilient to, it turns out, is intentionally creating two files with the same MD5 hash. (Even then, it is infeasible to generate two files with the same MD5 hash and the same size.)
If I recall correctly, it's below the ionization threshold, so mostly it'll heat those parts up a bit. If those parts are particularly susceptible to electric or magnetic fields, perhaps a bit more.
Not just that it's possible, but also that it exists and is popular.
You're quite correct, though -- just because they identify it as a "potential tool used by terrorists" doesn't mean they have any intention of restricting it -- only that they need to consider all possible tools at the disposal of an enemy.
The Economics prize isn't under the control of the Nobel foundation, it just shares the name. The Peace and scientific prizes share some connection, yes, but they're clearly have different intents and standards. I don't think the politics of the Peace prize at all reflect on the scientific prizes, as the decisions are made by different groups with different criteria.
People can agree on one thing while disagreeing on another.
Details at 11.
Good job confusing the Nobel Peace Prize, the Prize in Economics, and the scientific Nobel Prizes, which are selected by different groups and with different criteria.
This really requires mentioning that the prize in Economics is not one of the Nobel Prizes, though there is limited political influence on the selection. The more-often-criticized selection, the Peace Prize, has much heavier political influence, but is decided by a different committee and hosted by a different country.
The scientific Nobel Prizes are quite free of political agenda.