Verify that the email address is deliverable. It makes no sense to keep a bad email address in your database of spam targets.
That's the reason for them.
2) Seed statistical spam filters with bogus data.
I can't speak to what spammers are thinking, but this would be entirely counterproductive. If someone sends an email with just random words with the intent of "seeding" bogus data, that message will be reported as spam. If they later send a message with any of those seeded words in it it's just that much more likely it'll be caught as spam.
So long after Paul Graham's article on Bayesian filtering, it's amazing how many people on both sides--the spammers as well as antispammers--truly don't understand how it works. The fact that people think that these filters can be "seeded" or confused by inserting random text just goes to show how robust the approach is. People don't even understand how it works much less are they anywhere close to being able to launch a viable countermeasure.
But I do enjoy seeing spammers "spinning their wheels" sending me spam with parts of the Constitution embedded in it... as if it mattered. Still caught with a spam score of 90%+.
Is it just me, or is something wrong with BestBuy.com? I tried visiting their site once about a week or two ago and again tonight... Both times I got:
"Thanks for Stopping By. BestBuy.com is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please come back soon to shop our biggest store. To check the status of an existing order, call Customer Care at 1-888-BESTBUY (237-8289)."
It also seems like a silly patent to me. It's a patent on how to circumvent obsolete spam technologies. I don't see anything in the patent that would effect my Bayesian filter.
AT&T, spammers, whatever. What this trademark covers won't effect me one way or the other.
I haven't gotten any "spim" (nice word!) since I switched to Linux and started using Kopete and later Gaim. I guess the defaults just ignore anyone not on your buddy list--makes sense.
I'm just waiting for ICQ authorization spam, though. With ICQ you send a "greeting" message in your authorization, presumably so you can tell the other person, "I'm Tom, authorize me please!" since the ICQ number itself is pretty cryptic. How long will it be before spammers start sending authorization messages that have their spam embedded in the initial authorization request? Or have they already started? I for one haven't received any ICQ authorization spam.
There used to be a tagline around here that read "Slashdot. News for birds. Stuff that splatters." The insinuation being that the news is really BS and, as such, splatters. I just went with that.
It is very on-topic that these Electronic Voting proponents are connected to the Republicans. The Republicans who many people believe both cheated and unfairly took advantage of errors in the Florida election.
And this has to do with technology... how, exactly?
The fact is that these companies publicly support the Republicans, and that the Republicans are the largest proponents of using these machines. The conclusions are your own, but an article that mention how one political party seems to be embracing flawed technology (which has been discussed here) seems on-topic.
This is a political aspect of the business relations of companies working in the field. It has nothing to do with the technology when the technology clearly can be made to work and free of influences. What is being said is that something is wrong because the owners of these companies have donated to the Republican party. The implication being that if the people making voting machines happen to support Bush then OBVIOUSLY there is something fishy and illegal going on. The conclusion being that Bush is corrupt and trying to steal elections and the correlary being that Democrats are pure as the wind-driven snow and the voting machines would be accurate if they were made by Democrats.
This is all just idle speculation of a conspiracy. There's no proof whatsoever. Until there's proof it's just dirty, nasty political mudslinging of the worst kind and has no reason being on a website that is supposedly technical in nature.
Bush isn't my conservative hero, but it gets tiring seeing constant Bush bashing here on Slashdot. It's like the liberals here don't have anything better to do. Bush bashing is about the only thing more constant on Slashdot than anti-SCO and anti-Microsoft comments.
Bush bashing wouldn't bother me so much if it was on a political site. But on a technology site? Yet it constantly happens. Which leads me once again to the conclusion that Slashdot is more a liberal blog than it is a site to discuss technology.
"Slashdot. News for Liberals. Stuff that splatters."
The point being the man is making a political attack on Bush based on his agenda. Yet because he makes a passing comment about electronic voting to further his political attack it is somehow worthy of being posted on a "technology" site.
There is no technology news in his commentary whatsoever. Why is it here at Slashdot instead of some liberal blog? Oh, I forgot! Slashdot IS a liberal blog.:)
It would be preferable, IMO, to prevent those involved in such sensitive projects from contributing to [i]any[/i] political party.
I agree. Or keep ANY organization or company from contributing to political parties.
Wow, I got modded off-topic above. What kind of BS is that? I can see being a troll or flamebait given the liberal bias on Slashdot, but off-topic? What was that moderator smoking?
Me: That's the kind of small that when you try to put it in your fingernail player in your car it falls on the floor and gets lost with the other pieces of dirt and leaves.
You: Dude, if you cleaned your car regularly, this wouldn't be a problem.
Yeah, I would... But I didn't have time since I was looking for my other fingernail music container in the sand on the beach!:)
Hopefully none. He's already gotten too much by being posted on Slashdot. He's obviously an old, bitter man with an agenda.
What I'd really like to know is whether the owners of those companies also contributed to the Democrats. It's standard operating procedure to donate to both parties so you're in business whoever is elected. And with something as delicate as voting equipment I can't imagine they'd donate to one and not the other.
This article has once again confirmed by belief that Slashdot is as much political as it is technological. Dozens of paragraphs of Bush-bashing and it gets on Slashdot for a passing (politically biased) comment about electronic voting? Can we be any more liberal, please???
It deprives people of the income that such an item would generate if actually paid for.
Assuming that the person would have actually paid for it. That's a big assumption.
If you found yourself unemployed because employers could get what you do for free, I bet you'd be crying foul over that.
No, I'd find another job. I have no right to demand an employer pay me for something they can get for free. If what I do is now worth zero I need to find a new job or career.
Nah, I'd have to say CD's will be here for at least ten more years. We do need something smaller, though.
Maybe. But not as small as the size of fingernail.
I can't really imagine them releasing something that small. That's the kind of small that when you try to put it in your fingernail player in your car it falls on the floor and gets lost with the other pieces of dirt and leaves. It's the kind of small that you take to the beach to listen to, it falls in the sand and is never seen again. It's the kind of small that there's no way to easily identify it because you can't even print the name of a band on something that small, let alone the name of the album. This is the kind of small that's going to get stuffed in pants pockets and thrown away with lint or thrown in the washing machine with the nickels and quarters.
I have to assume they mean the memory storage area is the size of a fingernail but would be packaged in something somewhat larger to make it practical to deal with.
Personally, I'm hard pressed to need something beyond CDs. Give me a CD player that takes a standard computer CD-ROM filled with MP3s and I'm good to go.
But did you ever run Linux on your desktop? For 99% of the people to "go back" they have to use Linux on the desktop first.
I switched to RedHat Linux back in March--a few months after buying a brand new laptop that had hardware specs that would have made it 3 times faster than my previous laptop but it actually ran the same apps SLOW (i.e., I had Office 2000 on my old laptop and installed Office 2000 on my new laptop and it was slower). Yes, the old laptop ran Win98 and the new one ran XP.
I had been running a Linux desktop on my home office server and used it as my file/print server and my stereo system. I'd thought about trying to installing it on my laptop but was sure it would fail miserably. Finally, after months of frustration of my new laptop running slower than my old laptop I ordered a brand new hard drive for my laptop. I yanked the pre-installed XP hard drive, installed the new hard drive and installed RedHat on it. Worked perfectly. It was no harder to install than Win98 (can't speak to WinXP, I've never installed that). Detected everything fine including my USB keyboard and mouse and inserted LinkSys 802.11b PCMCIA card. For my legacy Windows apps I bought Win4Lin so I can run Windows under Linux. The few Windows apps that I actually still use actually run faster under Win4Lin under Linux than they did under WinXP! And I still ahve the original XP hard drive in case anything ever goes wrong with the laptop hardware--I'll just stick the XP HD back in before I take it in for warranty work so they don't freak out.
Now, about 8 months later, I'm still on Linux on my desktop. Yes, I do miss being able to go to BestBuy and buy any old piece of hardware without checking first to make sure it's supported by Linux.
Sometimes I even think, "What the heck... I'll just go back to Windows." Then I think about the speed hit I'll take. I think about the crashing problems (I had more crashes under XP in the 3 months I had XP on my new machine than in the 2 years I had 98 on my previous laptop). I think about having to worry again about Microsoft's latest DRM plan and whether they'll let me continue to use my computer in the way I want [I used the DVD player on my laptop twice under XP, one with a region 4 DVD and once with a region 1 DVD. Windows told me I could only "switch" regions 4 more times and that was it. No such problem under Linux]. I think about the viruses that used to be a threat and all the security problems of last summer that I totally was able to ignore. I think about the fact that I'm 100% legit on my licenses and can safely tell the BSA or anyone else to take a leap. I think about the fact that my Linux install came with OpenOffice that does MORE than MS Office [at least more useful. I'm sure MS Office has some features I don't use or care about, but OpenOffice came with a PDF converter built in... no need to buy a PDF converter or Destiller... and every Word document I've opened has only required minor pagination adjustments and has saved to a file that is 10% as large as the original Word document].
Windows is a drug. It's easy to be tempted to use it. But I'm on Linux and am not going back to Windows. At some point I'll need a new laptop (I have an HP laptop so, of course, it's not eternal)--but I'll be installing Linux on that too. Or maybe go to a Mac... But Windows? Nah, I've had enough.
9) Pilots for major airlines. If the plane hits inclement weather or other serious issues arise do you really care if the people behind the cockpit doors are making ~250K a year?
Pilots are overpaid. There is a huge number of private pilots with sufficient experience that would love to get one of the few pilot positions available. Piloting is a weird career where there are a huge number of potential candidates and yet, somehow, the position commands a high salary. Usually the high supply of qualified workers would drive salaries down.
I'm a pilot. I'm not qualified to be a commercial airline pilot, but I know many who are. And all of them would be overjoyed at having such a job for even less than $100k.
And, no, you're not giving up experience or quality by having a lower salary. Pilots are like true artists--they do it because they LIKE it. You aren't going to have any lack of qualified pilots even if the salary was $50k-$100k instead of $250k.
Just out of curiosity, is anyone keeping a "Real Genius" references count for/. ? I mean, there has been some reference to it in at least one article per week since I joined. Perhaps google can build an engine for this singular purpose!
You ARE a real genius! You've just explained how Google is going to justify a $15 - $20 billion IPO.:)
No kidding. A friend and I went to Ghostbusters 2 on the afternoon of opening day. What a crock! Couldn't believe how much they biffed that.
The original Ghostbusters is excellent. I can still watch that whenever I happen to see it on TV. Full of great and memerable lines. Ghostbusters 2 was an insult.
Why are Shrek and Finding Nemo the exceptions, rather than the rule?
I never have understood what the big deal about Finding Nemo was. Seems to me it was completely overrated. We liked Shrek--it was fun. And we liked Beauty and the Beast back in the 90's. Those are about the only two animated films my wife and I are willing to watch more than once.
But Finding Nemo? We left the theater asking ourselves, "So what was the big deal?" Perhaps someone can tell me... what WAS the big deal about Finding Nemo???
I haven't heard of any recent plans to make all illegal immigrants legal, but why should it come as a surprise? Republicans are only anti-immigrant racists if you listen to and believe what the Democrats tell you. I believe the only general amnesty for illegal aliens was under the Reagan (Republican) administration.
.. In other words, you can draw some conclusions about the number of murderers being held in prison, but you cannot extrapolate that to the number of murderers that are in the population outside of prisons... Likewise, NPD cannot use the results of their sample of 5000 online PC users and draw conclusions about the behavior of the general population that are not online or that do not use PCs.
What you are suggesting is that the prison population and the general population are significantly different in terms of the number of murderers and how many of them will respond honestly. I agree. The prison population is not representative of the general population.
Where we disagree is that you seem to think that the behavior of NPD's sample of people who willingly admit to engaging in an illegal act that is being cracked down on by the RIAA is representative of the behavior of the anonymous masses who would never participate in that such a survey. I believe that these two populations are very different--maybe not quite as different as the prison/general population example, but certainly different enough that the results are inherently skewed.
In NPD's study, the population is that of online PC users.
The population is that of online PC users that are willing to answer a survey about their illegal online activities and trust that their responses will not get into the hands of the RIAA. I submit that a small percentage of those that are participating in an illegal behavior subject to an ongoing crackdown are going to participate in such a survey and are bound to lie about their behavior if they actually do participate.
But, time and time again, research has shown that a properly crafted study will return accurate results.
Agreed, and I don't deny this. But we don't know how this survey was crafted and times have changed. How much research has been done regarding the response of participants to a question when an active witch-hunt is in progress and has even hit 12 year olds with $2000 fines?
As we all know, statistics can be made to say whatever the statistician or interviewer wants them to say. And as technology increases and it becomes easier and easier to tie people to their supposedly-anonymous survey responses I think you will find that some of those old studies need to be revisited--primarily where there is potential jeapordy on the part of the participant.
I would also try to contact cyclists, since the various railtrail groups would probably have volunteers who would be interested enough to add data for various trails. It may be one of those "tipping point" things. Get enough interest, and your project gets useful enough that more will volunteer, which will make it more useful, which will encourage more volunteers, which...
I think you are right on all counts. It's just getting to that tipping point.
What's needed, besides an open repository for the data, is some standardized open format for this kind of data. If you can get a standardized open format and then start getting other GPS companies to adopt it then you have a good chance at making some progress. But if I'm just a lonely Palm app I don't think I'm going to be able to get to the tipping point.:(
If you can make a go of this, I'd recommend you also record who contributed how much, so maybe you would get a little friendly competition (who can get the most miles) that would stimulate people to further the project.
If you don't like a billboard, then buy the property on which it is located and tear down the billboard. But you are hard-pressed to claim that the billboard interfered with your work or cost you money.
It's funny seeing people not complain about billboards or saying that they are ok. These are people that haven't lived in a BBRE (BillBoard Rich Environment).
As I said elsewhere in this thread, move to Mexico for awhile. There are days I literally feel claustrophobic because of the saturation of the skyline (at all levels... ground level, 30 feet, 100 fet) with advertisements. Yes, I tune them out. You HAVE to tune them out. They've gone past the point of "they don't notice it but will remember it subconsciously." There are so many that they are just a blur of color as you drive by... They're on corners, on tops of residential and commercial rooftops, on stand-alone supports that some business decided to mount in the middle of their microscopic parking lot, painted on brick walls, hanging from or mounted above pedestrian bridges, overpasses--and most of them are at least partially blocked by other billboards anyway. It's like being in Time Square but without the general coolness and flashing lights that makes Time Square cool rather than an advertising eyesore.
Really... It's something I think every politician in the U.S. should have as part of their "initiation" or "orientation." Live in Mexico for a week and truly observe how bad advertising can be if not carefully checked.
I'm not sure if there's less advertising in the U.S. than in Mexico because advertisers intentionally don't want to saturate to this level and numb everyone completely or because the local governments *DO* have a decent level of restriction that prevents it from getting this bad.
Hmmm. Try moving to Mexico and see if you can tune out the billboards. Actually, you're right... you DO tune them out. I can't tell you a single advertiser that has a billboard on the stretch of road I drive here in the city. What I *CAN* tell you is that it is very annoying even though I can tune it out. It's an eyesore, destroys what would otherwise be a nice view of the mountains that surround this city, and basically adds to your tension in an urban jungle. It's downright ugly. And it's not like a billboard every 500 feet. We're talking billboards so close to each other that the one in front actually blocks the one behind it.
So I would disagree. Advertising can be taken to extremes even if you can tune it out. At least on TV you can change channels during the commercials or go to the bathroom. Not much you can do to avoid the eyesore when they've saturated the skyline.
but when the sample is large enough (and 5000 is certainly a large sample), it is also representative of the population whose behavior is being examined. Yes, there is some bias, but if the sample is large enough then that bias is small.
... I would disagree that the bias in this case is going to be small because it seems to me that my prison analogy IS correct. Specifically, the population that is willing to be monitored and/or answer honestly about their possession of pirated music is going to be SIGNIFICANTLY differen than the population as a whole, specifically those that share music.
If you ask enough people if they speed you're going to get a pretty good statistcal answer because no-one is very concerned about the police actually coming after you and saying, "Look you confessed to speeding. Here's your ticket." But if you ask the general non-prison population "Have you ever murdered someone?" the response is going to be pretty close to zero. That doesn't mean that that answer is anywhere close to accurate--it means people are reasonably scared of telling the truth even to a survey.
With the RIAA running around threatening lawsuits and looking for multi-thousand dollar settlements I don't think very many people are going to be very honest about their activities in a survey. Even if I had a 1000 MP3s, if someone called me on the phone and said, "Do you have any MP3s or did you delete them all last month" I'd either say I didn't have any or that I deleted them. I certainly wouldn't say, "Oh yeah, I 0wn thousands of MP3s. Take that RIAA! Here's my address and phone number in case you want to sue me."
Slashdot Mirror
That's the reason for them.
2) Seed statistical spam filters with bogus data.
I can't speak to what spammers are thinking, but this would be entirely counterproductive. If someone sends an email with just random words with the intent of "seeding" bogus data, that message will be reported as spam. If they later send a message with any of those seeded words in it it's just that much more likely it'll be caught as spam.
So long after Paul Graham's article on Bayesian filtering, it's amazing how many people on both sides--the spammers as well as antispammers--truly don't understand how it works. The fact that people think that these filters can be "seeded" or confused by inserting random text just goes to show how robust the approach is. People don't even understand how it works much less are they anywhere close to being able to launch a viable countermeasure.
But I do enjoy seeing spammers "spinning their wheels" sending me spam with parts of the Constitution embedded in it... as if it mattered. Still caught with a spam score of 90%+.
"Thanks for Stopping By. BestBuy.com is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please come back soon to shop our biggest store. To check the status of an existing order, call Customer Care at 1-888-BESTBUY (237-8289)."
AT&T, spammers, whatever. What this trademark covers won't effect me one way or the other.
I'm just waiting for ICQ authorization spam, though. With ICQ you send a "greeting" message in your authorization, presumably so you can tell the other person, "I'm Tom, authorize me please!" since the ICQ number itself is pretty cryptic. How long will it be before spammers start sending authorization messages that have their spam embedded in the initial authorization request? Or have they already started? I for one haven't received any ICQ authorization spam.
Sorry if it went over your heard. :)
And this has to do with technology... how, exactly?
The fact is that these companies publicly support the Republicans, and that the Republicans are the largest proponents of using these machines. The conclusions are your own, but an article that mention how one political party seems to be embracing flawed technology (which has been discussed here) seems on-topic.
This is a political aspect of the business relations of companies working in the field. It has nothing to do with the technology when the technology clearly can be made to work and free of influences. What is being said is that something is wrong because the owners of these companies have donated to the Republican party. The implication being that if the people making voting machines happen to support Bush then OBVIOUSLY there is something fishy and illegal going on. The conclusion being that Bush is corrupt and trying to steal elections and the correlary being that Democrats are pure as the wind-driven snow and the voting machines would be accurate if they were made by Democrats.
This is all just idle speculation of a conspiracy. There's no proof whatsoever. Until there's proof it's just dirty, nasty political mudslinging of the worst kind and has no reason being on a website that is supposedly technical in nature.
Bush bashing wouldn't bother me so much if it was on a political site. But on a technology site? Yet it constantly happens. Which leads me once again to the conclusion that Slashdot is more a liberal blog than it is a site to discuss technology.
"Slashdot. News for Liberals. Stuff that splatters."
There is no technology news in his commentary whatsoever. Why is it here at Slashdot instead of some liberal blog? Oh, I forgot! Slashdot IS a liberal blog. :)
I agree. Or keep ANY organization or company from contributing to political parties.
Wow, I got modded off-topic above. What kind of BS is that? I can see being a troll or flamebait given the liberal bias on Slashdot, but off-topic? What was that moderator smoking?
You: Dude, if you cleaned your car regularly, this wouldn't be a problem.
Yeah, I would... But I didn't have time since I was looking for my other fingernail music container in the sand on the beach! :)
What I'd really like to know is whether the owners of those companies also contributed to the Democrats. It's standard operating procedure to donate to both parties so you're in business whoever is elected. And with something as delicate as voting equipment I can't imagine they'd donate to one and not the other.
This article has once again confirmed by belief that Slashdot is as much political as it is technological. Dozens of paragraphs of Bush-bashing and it gets on Slashdot for a passing (politically biased) comment about electronic voting? Can we be any more liberal, please???
Assuming that the person would have actually paid for it. That's a big assumption.
If you found yourself unemployed because employers could get what you do for free, I bet you'd be crying foul over that.
No, I'd find another job. I have no right to demand an employer pay me for something they can get for free. If what I do is now worth zero I need to find a new job or career.
Maybe. But not as small as the size of fingernail.
I can't really imagine them releasing something that small. That's the kind of small that when you try to put it in your fingernail player in your car it falls on the floor and gets lost with the other pieces of dirt and leaves. It's the kind of small that you take to the beach to listen to, it falls in the sand and is never seen again. It's the kind of small that there's no way to easily identify it because you can't even print the name of a band on something that small, let alone the name of the album. This is the kind of small that's going to get stuffed in pants pockets and thrown away with lint or thrown in the washing machine with the nickels and quarters.
I have to assume they mean the memory storage area is the size of a fingernail but would be packaged in something somewhat larger to make it practical to deal with.
Personally, I'm hard pressed to need something beyond CDs. Give me a CD player that takes a standard computer CD-ROM filled with MP3s and I'm good to go.
I switched to RedHat Linux back in March--a few months after buying a brand new laptop that had hardware specs that would have made it 3 times faster than my previous laptop but it actually ran the same apps SLOW (i.e., I had Office 2000 on my old laptop and installed Office 2000 on my new laptop and it was slower). Yes, the old laptop ran Win98 and the new one ran XP.
I had been running a Linux desktop on my home office server and used it as my file/print server and my stereo system. I'd thought about trying to installing it on my laptop but was sure it would fail miserably. Finally, after months of frustration of my new laptop running slower than my old laptop I ordered a brand new hard drive for my laptop. I yanked the pre-installed XP hard drive, installed the new hard drive and installed RedHat on it. Worked perfectly. It was no harder to install than Win98 (can't speak to WinXP, I've never installed that). Detected everything fine including my USB keyboard and mouse and inserted LinkSys 802.11b PCMCIA card. For my legacy Windows apps I bought Win4Lin so I can run Windows under Linux. The few Windows apps that I actually still use actually run faster under Win4Lin under Linux than they did under WinXP! And I still ahve the original XP hard drive in case anything ever goes wrong with the laptop hardware--I'll just stick the XP HD back in before I take it in for warranty work so they don't freak out.
Now, about 8 months later, I'm still on Linux on my desktop. Yes, I do miss being able to go to BestBuy and buy any old piece of hardware without checking first to make sure it's supported by Linux.
Sometimes I even think, "What the heck... I'll just go back to Windows." Then I think about the speed hit I'll take. I think about the crashing problems (I had more crashes under XP in the 3 months I had XP on my new machine than in the 2 years I had 98 on my previous laptop). I think about having to worry again about Microsoft's latest DRM plan and whether they'll let me continue to use my computer in the way I want [I used the DVD player on my laptop twice under XP, one with a region 4 DVD and once with a region 1 DVD. Windows told me I could only "switch" regions 4 more times and that was it. No such problem under Linux]. I think about the viruses that used to be a threat and all the security problems of last summer that I totally was able to ignore. I think about the fact that I'm 100% legit on my licenses and can safely tell the BSA or anyone else to take a leap. I think about the fact that my Linux install came with OpenOffice that does MORE than MS Office [at least more useful. I'm sure MS Office has some features I don't use or care about, but OpenOffice came with a PDF converter built in... no need to buy a PDF converter or Destiller... and every Word document I've opened has only required minor pagination adjustments and has saved to a file that is 10% as large as the original Word document].
Windows is a drug. It's easy to be tempted to use it. But I'm on Linux and am not going back to Windows. At some point I'll need a new laptop (I have an HP laptop so, of course, it's not eternal)--but I'll be installing Linux on that too. Or maybe go to a Mac... But Windows? Nah, I've had enough.
Not yet. But my understanding is we've found 300,000 buried in mass graves. At worst we did the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Pilots are overpaid. There is a huge number of private pilots with sufficient experience that would love to get one of the few pilot positions available. Piloting is a weird career where there are a huge number of potential candidates and yet, somehow, the position commands a high salary. Usually the high supply of qualified workers would drive salaries down.
I'm a pilot. I'm not qualified to be a commercial airline pilot, but I know many who are. And all of them would be overjoyed at having such a job for even less than $100k.
And, no, you're not giving up experience or quality by having a lower salary. Pilots are like true artists--they do it because they LIKE it. You aren't going to have any lack of qualified pilots even if the salary was $50k-$100k instead of $250k.
You ARE a real genius! You've just explained how Google is going to justify a $15 - $20 billion IPO. :)
The original Ghostbusters is excellent. I can still watch that whenever I happen to see it on TV. Full of great and memerable lines. Ghostbusters 2 was an insult.
I never have understood what the big deal about Finding Nemo was. Seems to me it was completely overrated. We liked Shrek--it was fun. And we liked Beauty and the Beast back in the 90's. Those are about the only two animated films my wife and I are willing to watch more than once.
But Finding Nemo? We left the theater asking ourselves, "So what was the big deal?" Perhaps someone can tell me... what WAS the big deal about Finding Nemo???
What you are suggesting is that the prison population and the general population are significantly different in terms of the number of murderers and how many of them will respond honestly. I agree. The prison population is not representative of the general population.
Where we disagree is that you seem to think that the behavior of NPD's sample of people who willingly admit to engaging in an illegal act that is being cracked down on by the RIAA is representative of the behavior of the anonymous masses who would never participate in that such a survey. I believe that these two populations are very different--maybe not quite as different as the prison/general population example, but certainly different enough that the results are inherently skewed.
In NPD's study, the population is that of online PC users.
The population is that of online PC users that are willing to answer a survey about their illegal online activities and trust that their responses will not get into the hands of the RIAA. I submit that a small percentage of those that are participating in an illegal behavior subject to an ongoing crackdown are going to participate in such a survey and are bound to lie about their behavior if they actually do participate.
But, time and time again, research has shown that a properly crafted study will return accurate results.
Agreed, and I don't deny this. But we don't know how this survey was crafted and times have changed. How much research has been done regarding the response of participants to a question when an active witch-hunt is in progress and has even hit 12 year olds with $2000 fines?
As we all know, statistics can be made to say whatever the statistician or interviewer wants them to say. And as technology increases and it becomes easier and easier to tie people to their supposedly-anonymous survey responses I think you will find that some of those old studies need to be revisited--primarily where there is potential jeapordy on the part of the participant.
I think you are right on all counts. It's just getting to that tipping point.
What's needed, besides an open repository for the data, is some standardized open format for this kind of data. If you can get a standardized open format and then start getting other GPS companies to adopt it then you have a good chance at making some progress. But if I'm just a lonely Palm app I don't think I'm going to be able to get to the tipping point. :(
If you can make a go of this, I'd recommend you also record who contributed how much, so maybe you would get a little friendly competition (who can get the most miles) that would stimulate people to further the project.
That sounds like a very good idea!
So when do we start? :)
It's funny seeing people not complain about billboards or saying that they are ok. These are people that haven't lived in a BBRE (BillBoard Rich Environment).
As I said elsewhere in this thread, move to Mexico for awhile. There are days I literally feel claustrophobic because of the saturation of the skyline (at all levels... ground level, 30 feet, 100 fet) with advertisements. Yes, I tune them out. You HAVE to tune them out. They've gone past the point of "they don't notice it but will remember it subconsciously." There are so many that they are just a blur of color as you drive by... They're on corners, on tops of residential and commercial rooftops, on stand-alone supports that some business decided to mount in the middle of their microscopic parking lot, painted on brick walls, hanging from or mounted above pedestrian bridges, overpasses--and most of them are at least partially blocked by other billboards anyway. It's like being in Time Square but without the general coolness and flashing lights that makes Time Square cool rather than an advertising eyesore.
Really... It's something I think every politician in the U.S. should have as part of their "initiation" or "orientation." Live in Mexico for a week and truly observe how bad advertising can be if not carefully checked.
I'm not sure if there's less advertising in the U.S. than in Mexico because advertisers intentionally don't want to saturate to this level and numb everyone completely or because the local governments *DO* have a decent level of restriction that prevents it from getting this bad.
So I would disagree. Advertising can be taken to extremes even if you can tune it out. At least on TV you can change channels during the commercials or go to the bathroom. Not much you can do to avoid the eyesore when they've saturated the skyline.
but when the sample is large enough (and 5000 is certainly a large sample), it is also representative of the population whose behavior is being examined. Yes, there is some bias, but if the sample is large enough then that bias is small.
If you ask enough people if they speed you're going to get a pretty good statistcal answer because no-one is very concerned about the police actually coming after you and saying, "Look you confessed to speeding. Here's your ticket." But if you ask the general non-prison population "Have you ever murdered someone?" the response is going to be pretty close to zero. That doesn't mean that that answer is anywhere close to accurate--it means people are reasonably scared of telling the truth even to a survey.
With the RIAA running around threatening lawsuits and looking for multi-thousand dollar settlements I don't think very many people are going to be very honest about their activities in a survey. Even if I had a 1000 MP3s, if someone called me on the phone and said, "Do you have any MP3s or did you delete them all last month" I'd either say I didn't have any or that I deleted them. I certainly wouldn't say, "Oh yeah, I 0wn thousands of MP3s. Take that RIAA! Here's my address and phone number in case you want to sue me."