Really? While I understand the nature of conflict of interest, on the spectrum of things that are open to interpretation, this one seems closer to "fact" than "opinion". You walk into an airport with a laptop, you walk out without one, boom... you're one of the 12,000.
Sometimes facts are facts regardless of who's spouting them. If I told you the next new Moon was August 1, would you "take that with a monstrous rock of salt" because I was in the outdoor evening lighting business?
I believe the conflict of interest was spelled out pretty clearly in TFA: "Dell used the report to support its launch of Dell ProSupport Mobility Services"
Your analogy is pretty bad, you're talking about a binary event that we not only know to the day, but to the second. The study was done by sampling, and oh btw, if you read the study it does not say "about 12,000", it says "up to 12,000". A proper analogy there would be: Human beings grow to up to 8ft 11in in height. I'm sure you can see how a company presenting that as typical needs to be taken with a monstrous rock of salt.
Or to put it another way:
It's okay for me to beat you up because you're not strong enough to defend yourself. If you didn't want to get beat up, you should spend more time learning how to defend yourself from my physical attack.
Maybe it's just me, but that sounds to me like I'm being a bully to you, which is exactly what you're doing to the school. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. In a similar way, if a store leaves their front door unlocked and you steal something, you're still guilty of stealing, even though you're not guilty of breaking & entering.
Rules & Laws are there to stop you from doing things that you may be capable of, but the powers that be have decided you shouldn't be doing.
While I abhor the idea of anyone talking on a cell phone on a commercial flight (and would never fly on one that allowed it), I think it would be okay for private charter or business jets to allow cell phone usage. The criteria being that either everyone on the plane is in a single group, or everyone says it's okay to use cell phones (to account for those semi-private jet services).
The technical hurdles will be solved soon enough, and I think this is a valid reason for solving them. I also think they need to get the ball rolling on in-plane Wi-Fi, being able to access email or IM services would be a huge boon for an otherwise relatively boring trip. I could finally catch up on all the/. goodness I'm normally too busy to read.;-)
Oh they do? I don't seem to recall seeing it in the Constitution or Bill of Rights.
Just because something is legal doesn't mean you have a right to do it. Take driving; the government makes it very clear it's not a right, it's a privilege. I suggest you pay a bit more attention to the wording of things next time.
Sounds a lot like the argument die-hard smokers make about their "right" to smoke.
Yes, you could issue earplugs to everyone, but why should they alter what they're doing because you're being offensive? If you happen to riddle your speech with profanity, and go to a grade school, the accepted solution is not for you to expect all the children to wear earplugs, it's for you to recognize the social norms of the environment you're in and modify your behavior to match.
Of course, why is the guy next to you an ass for being bothered by your behavior? He's not doing anything offense, he's reacting to something you're doing he finds offensive.
You don't have a right to talk on a cell phone, and you do have a responsibility to your fellow humans.
While I agree that two wrongs don't make a right, I think you're assuming this new technology is going to make cops more likely to retaliate against the petulant people they have to deal with.
As Rodney King showed, cops really don't need anything high tech to abuse their powers, and in a more general sense, any public servant abusing their power is nothing new. You can draw up all the cases you want about cops abusing x new technology, but if they didn't have x, they probably would have used a club or elbow to the stomach, which generally has the same effect that they're trying to produce. Don't blame the technology.
So the question you're really trying to pose is would new technology increase the number of abuses? Personally I don't think so, although I don't think they'd go down either. If that's a wash, then will it help cops in situations where they otherwise would have pulled their gun? Absolutely.
One thing that I've been noticing quite a bit is the online explosion of persistent strategy games where you start off with a small empire and try to conquer your neighbors. Most of them are basic, with bad graphics and a lot of detail-oriented info screens that aren't much fun to anyone but statisticians.
However, if they could take that same idea and put it instead in a Starcraft Universe and add RTS elements, like live multiple unit control, that would definitely be a new game for Blizzard. Sort of a hybrid of WoW and Starcraft, if you will. If you think micro-managing in previous *craft games was hard, wait until you see what your choices are at the MMOG level.
Of course, this would be a prime motivator for group and guilding, as if you're going to smash some zerg, you're going to need a lot of marines and medics. Your level could literally translate to the pop cap of units you can control (probably level+5). You'd grind faction for upgrades, and access to different troop variants (what, you don't think you'd just have marines and firebats, do you?). I mean how else do you turn an RTS game massive?
But, for sure, the most exciting thing will be that special Blizzard touch that turns a concept into a masterpiece.
You can easily spend $100k on a good computer and of course science is driving these massive supercomputing clusters that probably cost $10k/day to operate
While I admire your attempt to side-step admitting you're the slow ass driver everyone hates because of the traffic jams you cause, your logic is faulty once again.
First, 20m is no where near far enough to come to a complete stop at 80mph, even if you've got fully heated racing brakes. Second, you don't need to come to a complete stop unless the car in front of you comes to a complete stop, so the only gap you need is to account for your reaction time and the difference in braking between your car and the one in front of it.
Of course, if selfish people didn't cut in front of faster moving traffic, we wouldn't have to use our brakes at all.
If he is really going 100mph, how is he slowing anyone down?
If he's tailgating you, that's because you're slowing down at least him, and typically by a significant amount (btw, 5m is a full car length, it's hardly tailgating until you get down to 2m). So if the vehicle in front of you is going -10mph, that's costing you 4.5m/s. If you slow down a car going +20mph, you're costing them 9m/s. Even if you just slow down a single fast driver, how are they the ones being selfish?
Basically if you read the cure page he advocates doing what Germany has done on their freeways... slow down traffic before it enters a stoppage. The Germans do it via variable speed limits (the autobahn no longer is unlimited speed throughout) that gradually bring down the speed of traffic approaching a blockage, and alert drivers of blockages ahead, so no one, even tailgaters, have to panic stop. They also legislated that during heavy traffic (rush hour) heavy trucks may not pass each other, and are restricted to the right-most lane.
Wonder what it'd be like if their ideas were more broadly adopted
Well said, and far more informative that the original flamebait article.
Being the aggressive driver of a sports car, I certainly have the capability to cut in front of people at any point. However one thing I will never do is cut in front of someone who would have to slow down because I cut in front of them. If I'm joining someone else's lane, it's my responsibility to match their speed, not the other way around. Certainly owning a sports car gives me more opportunity to switch lanes, but it also means I'm less likely to be the one causing the backup. Of course, like the (biased) article says, anyone no matter what kind of vehicle they drive, can start a braking wave if they fail to notice a car before changing lanes.
Of course, being that I typically drive faster than most other cars on the road, I spend a lot of time slowing down (I generally am aware enough that I don't need to use the brakes, and can do it purely by taking my foot off the accelerator) due to other drivers who don't seem to take in account the difference in speed between themselves and other cars. I've got a theory, and it's that people who grew up playing sports are better able to judge the relative speeds, as it's often the least athletic who make these (bad) decisions... try it for yourself.
My other theory is that brake wear (use) is directly related to driving skill. I've seen plenty of people who can't judge the distance between them and the car in front of them, and will constantly speed up and then brake back... matching speed is a difficult task for them, and thus they wear their brakes out rapidly (I'm finally replacing mine after 4 years, which includes about a year of SCCA on them). Another type are the tail-gaters, who often don't look past the car they are directly following, and are surprised when that car slow, causing them to have to use their brakes to make up for the space they lost due their reaction time. Of course, not being able to judge curves is part of this, meaning they're deaccelerating much more with the brakes than by drag when they come into turns that are too sharp for their vehicle.
And as a lot of people seem to think that aggressive drivers are necessarily bad drivers, I'd like to challenge that assumption and prompt them to define the specific habits that they dislike (such as cutting people off) and then see if that's only associated with aggressive drivers or just bad ones. Personally, I've been cut off by way too many people driving the speed limit to listen to that.
I think the most ironic thing is in his day, Darwin was recognized as the church as a great scientist, and is one of the few to have the honor of being buried in Westminster Abbey.
I used to be a Mac gamer, until I realized that was an oxymoron and so I went out and bought myself a Windows box to play all the games I had been dreaming of playing only to find... they sucked. Just because a platform has 10x the number of games doesn't mean there are 10x the number of games I want to play. In fact, after a few years of it, I realized I'd really only been missing 1 or 2 quality games each year by being a Mac gamer.
However, due to the vastly increased number of mods & add-ons available only for Windows for the games I like to play, I still keep a Windows gaming rig, even though I do everything else on my Mac. But, I still only buy games that are released for Mac, for two reasons: 1) the last vestiges of my Mac zealotry 2) the games which are popular enough to justify a Mac port typically mean they're better. I mean, you can read all the reviews you want, but a developer knows if they have a quality game which is going to sell enough to make it worthwhile, and that's generally good enough for me.
So, while my purchase of a game might ring up under their Windows flavor, the only reason they got any revenue from me is because of their porting effort. But I doubt that shows in the numbers.
Oh, and don't flame me because I'm not supporting non-Windows gaming, my gaming box is very impractical for general use, and my Mac doesn't even have a real graphics card (it's an iBook). If you missed my explanation of the irony of my situation, read my post again.
Before DVRs were even a twinkle in their mother's eye, I didn't watch commercials. Ya know how? I was an old-fashioned channel surfer... an ad came on, I changed the channel. If the show was good enough for me to come back to, I'd try to remember, but honestly tv shows have such thin plots it didn't matter if I missed an entire segment, I could still pick up whenever I came back to it.
So now that I have a DVR I actually watch the entirety of shows, but measuring the number of commercials I skip is pointless because I never saw them to begin with... the advertisers aren't losing any money, they just now have a scape goat (well, they really should blame the remote) and a reason to lower how much they're paying for commercials.
This is about as dumb as the attempts on copy protection for CDs, why does having new technology make widely used practices (making dupes or mix tapes) suddenly a bad thing?
Even if your tastes are more main-stream (as mine are), the stations in my area play the same 5 songs (seemingly) on repeat all day long.
I can't even stand listening to radio for my 15-minute commute, because it'll almost always be the same songs I heard yesterday.
It's not a technology problem... Satellite is winning because of it's diversified (ie, not 90% ClearChannel) stations that play diverse music. And yes, they even have the "same 5 songs on repeat" station.
Hrm, what about the idea of adding level caps to the amount of wealth you can have? I mean, it's the same idea with having level requirements for weapons/armor: so you don't give your uber sword to your level 3 alt to go cruising through the game with.
And notice I said "wealth", so even top level players won't be allowed to hoard 5 different sets of the best armor in the game. Perhaps the best implementation is to make the limit a soft one, where players are taxed 1% of their net worth for each RW day that goes by where they are above the wealth cap. Those who play every day should have no problem coming up with that, but it would mean for the less serious player who pays the goldfarmers to get that epic mount, they're going to have to keep investing in order to maintain that mount and their gear... making the epic mounts truly reserved for those that are on WoW every day and much more of indicative of their status in WoW than in RL.
It'd also solve the hoarding problem of Ultima Online, because as an item becomes scarce and it's value increases, your hoard of 30 of them could start costing you a lot very quickly. Hrm, might even be effective enough to re-introduce fixed wealth per PC.
An Example: I used to be a consultant, one client was a friend of a friend and I gave her a super sweetheart deal, $35/hr where the going rates were $100-$150. I was basically loosing money working for her... I was working a long term contract, and she calls up and asks if I'm avaliable and I tell her no, and to call my friend whose rate is only $150/hr. She pleads poor and could I please come out and help her, so I do the stupid thing and take pitty.
Why would she pay anyone when there are plenty of horny geeks who will do it for free (or discounted) if she bats her eye and flirts a bit? She's obviously willing to plunk down a lot of money, but why would she when she's got you? She didn't feel the need to pay more because you didn't make it seem like you were worth more. Especially for something with no fixed cost, your sales ability is really what determines how much people value your repairs.
The story I heard was: that is your cell phone synching with the tower... you know, the "I'm here, what time is it?" message. I also heard that it only sends that message when switching zones, so if you're getting it every 15 minutes your phone may be between two towers and it's alternating between them. I only get the buzz when someone calls me or another GSM around me.
Sampling error has nothing to do do with this, you're the one who's introducing bad statistics here.
Quoting eight million users against roughly 200 million gives maybe 4%.
What you're comparing is a few examples to the total number. It's like having a quote saying "CmdrTaco and Zonk are administrators of Slashdot", and then saying "with almost a million registered users of Slashdot, only two are moderators!" That's obviously not true, and neither is your statement you're getting so worked up about.
Btw, the point of the examples were that 8 million != 0, in fact it's quite a sizeable market... thus his statement was wrong in retrospect.
P.S. If you actually understand statistics, then you'd realize the link you provided actually says 8.9% of the population has an IQ of less than 80... although on the flip-side, there are just as many people with an IQ of >120, so you really should stop pulling coincidences together and presenting them as fact.
Slashdot Mirror
what kind of moron loses their laptop while traveling? I can't imagine letting it out of my sight or even out of my reach.
I take it you haven't been to an airport in the last decade, if ever.
The study does point out about half are lost at security, where everyone (moron or not) has to put their laptop out of sight and out of reach.
Really? While I understand the nature of conflict of interest, on the spectrum of things that are open to interpretation, this one seems closer to "fact" than "opinion". You walk into an airport with a laptop, you walk out without one, boom... you're one of the 12,000.
Sometimes facts are facts regardless of who's spouting them. If I told you the next new Moon was August 1, would you "take that with a monstrous rock of salt" because I was in the outdoor evening lighting business?
I believe the conflict of interest was spelled out pretty clearly in TFA: "Dell used the report to support its launch of Dell ProSupport Mobility Services"
Your analogy is pretty bad, you're talking about a binary event that we not only know to the day, but to the second. The study was done by sampling, and oh btw, if you read the study it does not say "about 12,000", it says "up to 12,000". A proper analogy there would be: Human beings grow to up to 8ft 11in in height. I'm sure you can see how a company presenting that as typical needs to be taken with a monstrous rock of salt.
Or to put it another way:
It's okay for me to beat you up because you're not strong enough to defend yourself. If you didn't want to get beat up, you should spend more time learning how to defend yourself from my physical attack.
Maybe it's just me, but that sounds to me like I'm being a bully to you, which is exactly what you're doing to the school. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. In a similar way, if a store leaves their front door unlocked and you steal something, you're still guilty of stealing, even though you're not guilty of breaking & entering.
Rules & Laws are there to stop you from doing things that you may be capable of, but the powers that be have decided you shouldn't be doing.
While I abhor the idea of anyone talking on a cell phone on a commercial flight (and would never fly on one that allowed it), I think it would be okay for private charter or business jets to allow cell phone usage. The criteria being that either everyone on the plane is in a single group, or everyone says it's okay to use cell phones (to account for those semi-private jet services).
/. goodness I'm normally too busy to read. ;-)
The technical hurdles will be solved soon enough, and I think this is a valid reason for solving them. I also think they need to get the ball rolling on in-plane Wi-Fi, being able to access email or IM services would be a huge boon for an otherwise relatively boring trip. I could finally catch up on all the
Just because something is legal doesn't mean you have a right to do it. Take driving; the government makes it very clear it's not a right, it's a privilege. I suggest you pay a bit more attention to the wording of things next time.
Sounds a lot like the argument die-hard smokers make about their "right" to smoke.
Yes, you could issue earplugs to everyone, but why should they alter what they're doing because you're being offensive? If you happen to riddle your speech with profanity, and go to a grade school, the accepted solution is not for you to expect all the children to wear earplugs, it's for you to recognize the social norms of the environment you're in and modify your behavior to match.
Of course, why is the guy next to you an ass for being bothered by your behavior? He's not doing anything offense, he's reacting to something you're doing he finds offensive.
You don't have a right to talk on a cell phone, and you do have a responsibility to your fellow humans.
For those who don't get the reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_motion_gun
(hey, I didn't make the reference; I would have compared it to the James Bond "Golden Eye" movie)
While I agree that two wrongs don't make a right, I think you're assuming this new technology is going to make cops more likely to retaliate against the petulant people they have to deal with.
As Rodney King showed, cops really don't need anything high tech to abuse their powers, and in a more general sense, any public servant abusing their power is nothing new. You can draw up all the cases you want about cops abusing x new technology, but if they didn't have x, they probably would have used a club or elbow to the stomach, which generally has the same effect that they're trying to produce. Don't blame the technology.
So the question you're really trying to pose is would new technology increase the number of abuses? Personally I don't think so, although I don't think they'd go down either. If that's a wash, then will it help cops in situations where they otherwise would have pulled their gun? Absolutely.
One thing that I've been noticing quite a bit is the online explosion of persistent strategy games where you start off with a small empire and try to conquer your neighbors. Most of them are basic, with bad graphics and a lot of detail-oriented info screens that aren't much fun to anyone but statisticians.
However, if they could take that same idea and put it instead in a Starcraft Universe and add RTS elements, like live multiple unit control, that would definitely be a new game for Blizzard. Sort of a hybrid of WoW and Starcraft, if you will. If you think micro-managing in previous *craft games was hard, wait until you see what your choices are at the MMOG level.
Of course, this would be a prime motivator for group and guilding, as if you're going to smash some zerg, you're going to need a lot of marines and medics. Your level could literally translate to the pop cap of units you can control (probably level+5). You'd grind faction for upgrades, and access to different troop variants (what, you don't think you'd just have marines and firebats, do you?). I mean how else do you turn an RTS game massive?
But, for sure, the most exciting thing will be that special Blizzard touch that turns a concept into a masterpiece.
While I admire your attempt to side-step admitting you're the slow ass driver everyone hates because of the traffic jams you cause, your logic is faulty once again.
First, 20m is no where near far enough to come to a complete stop at 80mph, even if you've got fully heated racing brakes. Second, you don't need to come to a complete stop unless the car in front of you comes to a complete stop, so the only gap you need is to account for your reaction time and the difference in braking between your car and the one in front of it.
Of course, if selfish people didn't cut in front of faster moving traffic, we wouldn't have to use our brakes at all.
If he is really going 100mph, how is he slowing anyone down?
If he's tailgating you, that's because you're slowing down at least him, and typically by a significant amount (btw, 5m is a full car length, it's hardly tailgating until you get down to 2m). So if the vehicle in front of you is going -10mph, that's costing you 4.5m/s. If you slow down a car going +20mph, you're costing them 9m/s. Even if you just slow down a single fast driver, how are they the ones being selfish?
Except we don't have Skodas here, we have POS cars with Mexican plates... who are always in the left-most lane.
Basically if you read the cure page he advocates doing what Germany has done on their freeways... slow down traffic before it enters a stoppage. The Germans do it via variable speed limits (the autobahn no longer is unlimited speed throughout) that gradually bring down the speed of traffic approaching a blockage, and alert drivers of blockages ahead, so no one, even tailgaters, have to panic stop. They also legislated that during heavy traffic (rush hour) heavy trucks may not pass each other, and are restricted to the right-most lane.
Wonder what it'd be like if their ideas were more broadly adopted
Well said, and far more informative that the original flamebait article.
Being the aggressive driver of a sports car, I certainly have the capability to cut in front of people at any point. However one thing I will never do is cut in front of someone who would have to slow down because I cut in front of them. If I'm joining someone else's lane, it's my responsibility to match their speed, not the other way around. Certainly owning a sports car gives me more opportunity to switch lanes, but it also means I'm less likely to be the one causing the backup. Of course, like the (biased) article says, anyone no matter what kind of vehicle they drive, can start a braking wave if they fail to notice a car before changing lanes.
Of course, being that I typically drive faster than most other cars on the road, I spend a lot of time slowing down (I generally am aware enough that I don't need to use the brakes, and can do it purely by taking my foot off the accelerator) due to other drivers who don't seem to take in account the difference in speed between themselves and other cars. I've got a theory, and it's that people who grew up playing sports are better able to judge the relative speeds, as it's often the least athletic who make these (bad) decisions... try it for yourself.
My other theory is that brake wear (use) is directly related to driving skill. I've seen plenty of people who can't judge the distance between them and the car in front of them, and will constantly speed up and then brake back... matching speed is a difficult task for them, and thus they wear their brakes out rapidly (I'm finally replacing mine after 4 years, which includes about a year of SCCA on them). Another type are the tail-gaters, who often don't look past the car they are directly following, and are surprised when that car slow, causing them to have to use their brakes to make up for the space they lost due their reaction time. Of course, not being able to judge curves is part of this, meaning they're deaccelerating much more with the brakes than by drag when they come into turns that are too sharp for their vehicle.
And as a lot of people seem to think that aggressive drivers are necessarily bad drivers, I'd like to challenge that assumption and prompt them to define the specific habits that they dislike (such as cutting people off) and then see if that's only associated with aggressive drivers or just bad ones. Personally, I've been cut off by way too many people driving the speed limit to listen to that.
I think the most ironic thing is in his day, Darwin was recognized as the church as a great scientist, and is one of the few to have the honor of being buried in Westminster Abbey.
Faith and intelligence are in no way mutually exclusive.
Well put... here's another version:
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -Aristotle
I used to be a Mac gamer, until I realized that was an oxymoron and so I went out and bought myself a Windows box to play all the games I had been dreaming of playing only to find... they sucked. Just because a platform has 10x the number of games doesn't mean there are 10x the number of games I want to play. In fact, after a few years of it, I realized I'd really only been missing 1 or 2 quality games each year by being a Mac gamer.
However, due to the vastly increased number of mods & add-ons available only for Windows for the games I like to play, I still keep a Windows gaming rig, even though I do everything else on my Mac. But, I still only buy games that are released for Mac, for two reasons: 1) the last vestiges of my Mac zealotry 2) the games which are popular enough to justify a Mac port typically mean they're better. I mean, you can read all the reviews you want, but a developer knows if they have a quality game which is going to sell enough to make it worthwhile, and that's generally good enough for me.
So, while my purchase of a game might ring up under their Windows flavor, the only reason they got any revenue from me is because of their porting effort. But I doubt that shows in the numbers.
Oh, and don't flame me because I'm not supporting non-Windows gaming, my gaming box is very impractical for general use, and my Mac doesn't even have a real graphics card (it's an iBook). If you missed my explanation of the irony of my situation, read my post again.
Before DVRs were even a twinkle in their mother's eye, I didn't watch commercials. Ya know how? I was an old-fashioned channel surfer... an ad came on, I changed the channel. If the show was good enough for me to come back to, I'd try to remember, but honestly tv shows have such thin plots it didn't matter if I missed an entire segment, I could still pick up whenever I came back to it.
So now that I have a DVR I actually watch the entirety of shows, but measuring the number of commercials I skip is pointless because I never saw them to begin with... the advertisers aren't losing any money, they just now have a scape goat (well, they really should blame the remote) and a reason to lower how much they're paying for commercials.
This is about as dumb as the attempts on copy protection for CDs, why does having new technology make widely used practices (making dupes or mix tapes) suddenly a bad thing?
Even if your tastes are more main-stream (as mine are), the stations in my area play the same 5 songs (seemingly) on repeat all day long.
I can't even stand listening to radio for my 15-minute commute, because it'll almost always be the same songs I heard yesterday.
It's not a technology problem... Satellite is winning because of it's diversified (ie, not 90% ClearChannel) stations that play diverse music. And yes, they even have the "same 5 songs on repeat" station.
Hrm, what about the idea of adding level caps to the amount of wealth you can have? I mean, it's the same idea with having level requirements for weapons/armor: so you don't give your uber sword to your level 3 alt to go cruising through the game with.
And notice I said "wealth", so even top level players won't be allowed to hoard 5 different sets of the best armor in the game. Perhaps the best implementation is to make the limit a soft one, where players are taxed 1% of their net worth for each RW day that goes by where they are above the wealth cap. Those who play every day should have no problem coming up with that, but it would mean for the less serious player who pays the goldfarmers to get that epic mount, they're going to have to keep investing in order to maintain that mount and their gear... making the epic mounts truly reserved for those that are on WoW every day and much more of indicative of their status in WoW than in RL.
It'd also solve the hoarding problem of Ultima Online, because as an item becomes scarce and it's value increases, your hoard of 30 of them could start costing you a lot very quickly. Hrm, might even be effective enough to re-introduce fixed wealth per PC.
The story I heard was: that is your cell phone synching with the tower... you know, the "I'm here, what time is it?" message. I also heard that it only sends that message when switching zones, so if you're getting it every 15 minutes your phone may be between two towers and it's alternating between them. I only get the buzz when someone calls me or another GSM around me.
Btw, the point of the examples were that 8 million != 0, in fact it's quite a sizeable market... thus his statement was wrong in retrospect.
P.S. If you actually understand statistics, then you'd realize the link you provided actually says 8.9% of the population has an IQ of less than 80... although on the flip-side, there are just as many people with an IQ of >120, so you really should stop pulling coincidences together and presenting them as fact.