I bought the itunes pass for daily show and colbert report - paid $20
wanted to show my support for legal downloads of shows
the overall quality was poor, the download was slow, there were bugs, the player in mac itunes was AWFUL compared to VLC (mouth and sound were out of sync in 2 mins), the system forced me to reboot for the video to play correctly, and there was no one to contact about the problems - no human in the loop at all who would address my concerns... overall an experience I will not repeat for some time.
the alternative downloads are more reliable, free (beer and speech), illegal, but a hell of a lot better option
I'd rather download the illegal version - better on all my metrics - and send the $10 a month straight to John and Steven. Anyone got an address? I figure it would get me in more trouble if I started sending them checks:(
if it is stolen, someone turns it on, plugs it in or picks a wifi network
and it starts reporting it's IP address and a traceroute to it's location (plus some other stuff) and uses scp to copy the log to a remote server I'd be able to give the police an exact location as long as they didn't wipe out the OS or discover and disable the logging.
I had my laptop stolen out of my car in SF about 1.5y ago.
Not that any of this would do much good if I got stabbed though:(
stories like that make me think more people should carry guns in public
I'm not sure if you're trolling or if you really mean this. I wouldn't go so far as to say any refined data can't be analyzed. It's just that typically, the reasons you get outliers in distributions are often diverse, so averaging over a subset that includes just outliers (power users) will group together disparate factors and can give skewed interpretations. There are many kinds of data refinements that make statistical analysis MORE interesting, like throwing out the outliers.
After reading TFA and reading about CNR, all I can say is... great. I had written off Linspire when I first read about it - the wine stuff that I knew was impossible and buggy... etc. But the philosophy is a good one: bring Linnux under the hood on a polished, housewife/housewide audience - not just the hackers.
I wish him all the best. Now I'll get back to trying to my dkpg-reconfigure and apt-get'ing the latest Ruby Gem from unstable while not upgrading my Standord C libs.
"Why would it be good for shareholder value for google not to protect your privacy, or stand for what is right or fair?"
With this statement you are either incredibly naive or simply trying to flamebait. Google is an entity in competition with many others in the world, and they will cross whatever lines they can (need) to succeed in that competition. As a business entity, the rules are very clear: you make money first, and factors that affect making that revenue are weighed only with regard to how much they affect your ability to take money. The choices a company makes are limited only by what the market demands economically - not a rational evaluation of standards or morals. As such Google cares about these higher ideals to the extent that their bottom lines are changed if they break them. As we all know, most people do not evaluate the services they choose or the companies they visit based on idealistic principles, but rather marketing and whim.
As for the recent media flap - Google was hardly excoriated, and no one really cared.
As for when my ISP gets a subpoena - I'll know about it if they go into my machine. I'll know if they log into the console, or try to pull my private keys off the machine. I recognize that email is sent in the clear, and when someone wanted to, computers deep in the ground outside DC will have a log of all the email in and out.
BUT -- there is a big difference between knowing what is happening and not knowing when anyone (including the governement) decides to try and fsck you over.
Re:trust and control
on
Gmail vs Pine
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Instead of simply stating my view is false without support, please do enlighten us all with your views on corporations, and the legal pressures they face concerning profits vs. the quality of the services they offer.
As for topical relevance in this discussion, the choices that Google makes and the motivations behind them are a central part of the choice to use Pine or Gmail.
did you mean expansive or expensive? It certaining *is* expansive, but I don't think that's what you meant.
I would say that of the big four: cpu, drives, network bandwidth, and memory the only one that wis going to be really interesting moving forward is memory. cpu power and drives are not the limiting factor for most of the interesting things I see people trying to do.
I'm not a professional in this area, but I've read some. I think that different people process information in funamentally different ways. My point regarding this whole "IQ testing" idea is that one test cannot (does not/ should not) apply to all people in the same way. It's like developing one system for determining the breed of an animal, and applying to both dogs and horses the same way. They are very different.
The problem is that to most of the outside world, the differences between how people's minds work are not nearly as obvious as the difference between dogs and horses. Yet I would argue that the differences are significant (in the scientific sense), and there are some people who are extremely good at recognizing and measuring the differences.
In regard to your statement above about success at "work"... People work in so many different ways in so many different environments. How can one possibly lump the daily efforts of a performance ballet artist in with a software program manager? Both are jobs... I would guess what people call IQ will apply more to the manager than the dancer.
trust and control
on
Gmail vs Pine
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I use mutt and I run my own mail server on hardware I own. It's not that hard. I have given gmail a fair shot, and for a time, was using it to archive my mail. It's a great product but I will not use it.
WHY?
Because I don't trust the corporate motivation and the corporate mentality that lurks behind Google, or the people who implement their policies.
Google a company and its officers are legally obligated to increase shareholder value, not protect my privacy, or stand for what is right or fair. When the governement comes knocking with an illegal search, they will roll over. Those emails I sent to my friends bitching about some politician... may not be so private. Google's policies give them the right to change the rules in the future, and they have all my communication. Given the trajectory of world events - who knows where things will go.
The other problem is one of people. People can be weak, especially one who need money. When then market is really hot for some other person to buy or sell information, some person will be tempted to take my mail from the Google datacenter, burn a DVD and mail it off to Madison. I wouldn't even know.
Before you say that "I have nothing to hide" - consider printing every email and text message you write and posting them on your office/cubicle or (home) front door. Think about a world where there was a public repository of everyone's phone calls and anyone could go back and listen. Would you feel like you could really express yourself? Everybody has private stuff - lots of it. If you still disagree, mail me your ssn, name, and birthdate.
Communication is too important to blindly trust that someone else will be responsible and look out for your interests.
IQ as a measure of ability is reductive and almost useless. People are good at different things, and many many skills are not measured by "IQ" that are highly correlated with success in the world. Leadership, confidence, self-image, creativity, organizing the external world, etc. etc. etc. Jung and other have made extremely good models that provide better measures for people's abilities and skills.
I don't see how the platform godaddy uses for parked domains is much of an issue at all. Parked domain get extremely low traffic, they have no content... why all the fuss?
I'm a godaddy customer - I have simply stayed with them over the last 4-5 years after poor expereinces at buydomains and registrar.com. While I would have issue if there were real services that they provided that went to an OS that had security issues, for example if I was using their blog software or if they had my on a virtual hosting platform... but most everyone that does serious web work hosts themselves or with a professional hosting service, no a registrar like godaddy.
yes -- fine. I was not using the scientific definition monkey, but rather the colloquial, or slang version referring to somone who makes mistakes and is mocked or teased, you know, acting like a 'monkey'?
for those interested - the text of the article - I'll take it down in a day
it's really a great review of a now central question in science - does it make a difference if you are looking for a hypothesis or you have one when you look at your data
Informatics is the word I would use to describe the scholarly pursuit of how we manage information. Virologist, Physicist, Chemist, Mathematician, Informatician ( <-- I'm one of these)
The combination of your complete ignorance with the arrogance of the way you state your beliefs as fact defies comprehension.
I simultaneously feel sad for your state while also frustrated that people like you are allowed to persist for so long in life without someone putting in the effort to educate you. It's sad state when someone who can read and write and converse was not first taught how to think and observe, but instead parrot absurd stories from centuries ago motivated to control others and instill fear. (and no, that is not flamebait - this is what most religious stories really do to drive their adoption).
Many people talk of "religous tolerance"... that somehow we are supposed to be tolerant of these views. Tolerant of people who clearly state as fact beliefs that are not accurate and do not coincide with observation. To me the statements above in the parent post are simply lies. This is open deception and tolerance of this behavior enables and promotes the deception of others. *sigh*
Wow, I don't know you, but your post seems..., well, underinformed. First of all, you are ARE a monkey, all humans are. We are animals like all the rest on this rock. God is a story created by fearful and ignorant men. Belief in a sentient creator flys in the face of all rational observation. I would welcome the opportunity to talk to a God if it existed, but all evidence says it does not.
Second, we will have human-competitive reasoning engines based on silicon within 15 years. No doubt in my mind. There is no technical barrier to this now, it's simply a coding and organization task that can be accomplished by the coordinated efforts of large groups of people and a small dedicated groups of programmers.
The Internet will not be the brain, it will provide the external information source and training sets.
bio vs. IT and social change vs. science progress
on
On the Future of Science
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I think he's wrong about Biology beiung next. Not because it's not interesting (it is), but because we still have so much farther we can go with IT. Each new tech area gets overhyped and then crashes expectations, then the reality catches up with the hype. Only now, in the last 1-2 year have we seen an emergence of the real power of the Internet (and it's long-hyped power) being realized by large numbers (%'s) of people. By "real power" I mean structured data encoding for all useful information - persistent global connectivity enabling virtual organizations - and (what I call "The greatest shift") the realization by society that information is more valuble than physical goods.
The next 20 years will one of vast social change, enabled by computing and communications technology. The social change will be driven by a realization that basic physical goods to support life are of such low value compared to information that it's in the best interest of large social groups (governements) to feed and house people effectively for free - and harness their THINKING ability toward global value instead of their more classic PRODUCTION value. This will radically alter our view of work and production. Mental participation at a basic level will sustain large groups of people at minimal levels (housing,food) for the value that simple participation will generate.
In terms of biology and biotech - yes, it's exciting - but by comparison to the aboe radical changes in our society, the technology for biological change is still really really hard. We don't have the ability to probe deeply enough, the systems we measure are noisy and all unique, so while there will be advances, they will not shift our lives so much os the shift happeneing because everyone is talking. Spending 30 minutes looking at Myspace will give you an indication of the amount of energy the NEXT generation will be willing to put into connecting online.
The next BIG thing will be a social structure change, after the "big kill":
Previous NBTs: Fire, Religion, Printing Press, For-profit infinite life Incorporation, Public Health, Combustion Engine+Industrialization. Antibiotics and Vaccines, Computers, Them Thar Intarnets...
Not sure what the words will be (posthumanism?)... but it will be:
Distributerd "Mutual Benefit" mentality supported by persistent, global communication -- the free and open society outside current control strucutres of governement, religion or for-profit business. You're starting it now and don't even see it yet.
So I'm about 1.5 Y into Mac now - gota Powerbook G4.
I don't like Itunes. I think the interface is poor and it doesn't give me the control I like. I use VLC mostly for videos.
However, offering TV shows at a fair price (like 65c/episode) is enough to get me to jump in and try. 10 bucks each for 2 shows I really like.
So the interface for logging in is poor, it took me three times to realize the box with the huge AOL logo next to it on the left has the word password on the right. Two boxes , to logos - I figure the mac ID I put in te top one and hit go and then it will ask for a password. Grrr.
I put in my CC info, no problem. So I find the shows I want, I hit the buy -- all seamless.
The download happens rather quickly, like 8-10 minutes each. I click the item to play, and it starts playing in the little box in the lower left corner! It's like 1 inch square! Whoa. Not what I expected. I double click and it breaks out into a separate window, and it allows me to resize. The quality is medium, not great (PROBLEM 1). The 21 min episode is 105MB m4v file.
The second problewm is much worse. The sound doesn't sync well. (PROBLEM 2) After about 2 minutes, the mouth is >.5 sec off the sound. Stopping and starting doesn't help. Sliding the bar back helps a little. No solution to this at this time.
Overall slight frustration, but not a complete waste. If I cannot fix the audio sync then I will not buy again.
Slashdot Mirror
I bought the itunes pass for daily show and colbert report - paid $20
:(
wanted to show my support for legal downloads of shows
the overall quality was poor, the download was slow, there were bugs, the player in mac itunes was AWFUL compared to VLC (mouth and sound were out of sync in 2 mins), the system forced me to reboot for the video to play correctly, and there was no one to contact about the problems - no human in the loop at all who would address my concerns... overall an experience I will not repeat for some time.
the alternative downloads are more reliable, free (beer and speech), illegal, but a hell of a lot better option
I'd rather download the illegal version - better on all my metrics - and send the $10 a month straight to John and Steven. Anyone got an address? I figure it would get me in more trouble if I started sending them checks
calls home if it's online -
:(
if it is stolen, someone turns it on, plugs it in or picks a wifi network
and it starts reporting it's IP address and a traceroute to it's location (plus some other stuff) and uses scp to copy the log to a remote server
I'd be able to give the police an exact location as long as they didn't wipe out the OS or discover and disable the logging.
I had my laptop stolen out of my car in SF about 1.5y ago.
Not that any of this would do much good if I got stabbed though
stories like that make me think more people should carry guns in public
I'm not sure if you're trolling or if you really mean this. I wouldn't go so far as to say any refined data can't be analyzed. It's just that typically, the reasons you get outliers in distributions are often diverse, so averaging over a subset that includes just outliers (power users) will group together disparate factors and can give skewed interpretations. There are many kinds of data refinements that make statistical analysis MORE interesting, like throwing out the outliers.
"average power user" -- oxymoron. If you're a power user, you are not average, and taking an average of the outliers doesn't make much sense.
After reading TFA and reading about CNR, all I can say is... great. I had written off Linspire when I first read about it - the wine stuff that I knew was impossible and buggy... etc. But the philosophy is a good one: bring Linnux under the hood on a polished, housewife/housewide audience - not just the hackers.
I wish him all the best. Now I'll get back to trying to my dkpg-reconfigure and apt-get'ing the latest Ruby Gem from unstable while not upgrading my Standord C libs.
"Why would it be good for shareholder value for google not to protect your privacy, or stand for what is right or fair?"
With this statement you are either incredibly naive or simply trying to flamebait. Google is an entity in competition with many others in the world, and they will cross whatever lines they can (need) to succeed in that competition. As a business entity, the rules are very clear: you make money first, and factors that affect making that revenue are weighed only with regard to how much they affect your ability to take money. The choices a company makes are limited only by what the market demands economically - not a rational evaluation of standards or morals. As such Google cares about these higher ideals to the extent that their bottom lines are changed if they break them. As we all know, most people do not evaluate the services they choose or the companies they visit based on idealistic principles, but rather marketing and whim.
As for the recent media flap - Google was hardly excoriated, and no one really cared.
As for when my ISP gets a subpoena - I'll know about it if they go into my machine. I'll know if they log into the console, or try to pull my private keys off the machine. I recognize that email is sent in the clear, and when someone wanted to, computers deep in the ground outside DC will have a log of all the email in and out.
BUT -- there is a big difference between knowing what is happening and not knowing when anyone (including the governement) decides to try and fsck you over.
Instead of simply stating my view is false without support, please do enlighten us all with your views on corporations, and the legal pressures they face concerning profits vs. the quality of the services they offer.
As for topical relevance in this discussion, the choices that Google makes and the motivations behind them are a central part of the choice to use Pine or Gmail.
"hdd space is cheap, cpu power is expansive"
did you mean expansive or expensive? It certaining *is* expansive, but I don't think that's what you meant.
I would say that of the big four: cpu, drives, network bandwidth, and memory the only one that wis going to be really interesting moving forward is memory. cpu power and drives are not the limiting factor for most of the interesting things I see people trying to do.
sdf offers free shell accounts
or better
other great providers offer near-free (like $10/month) root on virtual/shared machines
see http://redcheckhosting.com/ as an example
or best
find someone you know personally and trust to give you a shell account
mea culpa for all the typos. I'm rushing around this afternoon.
I'm not a professional in this area, but I've read some. I think that different people process information in funamentally different ways. My point regarding this whole "IQ testing" idea is that one test cannot (does not/ should not) apply to all people in the same way. It's like developing one system for determining the breed of an animal, and applying to both dogs and horses the same way. They are very different.
The problem is that to most of the outside world, the differences between how people's minds work are not nearly as obvious as the difference between dogs and horses. Yet I would argue that the differences are significant (in the scientific sense), and there are some people who are extremely good at recognizing and measuring the differences.
In regard to your statement above about success at "work"... People work in so many different ways in so many different environments. How can one possibly lump the daily efforts of a performance ballet artist in with a software program manager? Both are jobs... I would guess what people call IQ will apply more to the manager than the dancer.
I use mutt and I run my own mail server on hardware I own. It's not that hard. I have given gmail a fair shot, and for a time, was using it to archive my mail. It's a great product but I will not use it.
WHY?
Because I don't trust the corporate motivation and the corporate mentality that lurks behind Google, or the people who implement their policies.
Google a company and its officers are legally obligated to increase shareholder value, not protect my privacy, or stand for what is right or fair. When the governement comes knocking with an illegal search, they will roll over. Those emails I sent to my friends bitching about some politician... may not be so private. Google's policies give them the right to change the rules in the future, and they have all my communication. Given the trajectory of world events - who knows where things will go.
The other problem is one of people. People can be weak, especially one who need money. When then market is really hot for some other person to buy or sell information, some person will be tempted to take my mail from the Google datacenter, burn a DVD and mail it off to Madison. I wouldn't even know.
Before you say that "I have nothing to hide" - consider printing every email and text message you write and posting them on your office/cubicle or (home) front door. Think about a world where there was a public repository of everyone's phone calls and anyone could go back and listen. Would you feel like you could really express yourself? Everybody has private stuff - lots of it. If you still disagree, mail me your ssn, name, and birthdate.
Communication is too important to blindly trust that someone else will be responsible and look out for your interests.
IQ as a measure of ability is reductive and almost useless. People are good at different things, and many many skills are not measured by "IQ" that are highly correlated with success in the world. Leadership, confidence, self-image, creativity, organizing the external world, etc. etc. etc. Jung and other have made extremely good models that provide better measures for people's abilities and skills.
I can see it now:
POPUP: I'm sorry Dave, you shouldn't have opened my case.
I don't see how the platform godaddy uses for parked domains is much of an issue at all. Parked domain get extremely low traffic, they have no content... why all the fuss?
I'm a godaddy customer - I have simply stayed with them over the last 4-5 years after poor expereinces at buydomains and registrar.com. While I would have issue if there were real services that they provided that went to an OS that had security issues, for example if I was using their blog software or if they had my on a virtual hosting platform... but most everyone that does serious web work hosts themselves or with a professional hosting service, no a registrar like godaddy.
yes -- fine. I was not using the scientific definition monkey, but rather the colloquial, or slang version referring to somone who makes mistakes and is mocked or teased, you know, acting like a 'monkey'?
for those interested - the text of the article - I'll take it down in a day
it's really a great review of a now central question in science - does it make a difference if you are looking for a hypothesis or you have one when you look at your data
http://216.218.240.161/lipton.txt
Informatics is the word I would use to describe the scholarly pursuit of how we manage information. Virologist, Physicist, Chemist, Mathematician, Informatician ( <-- I'm one of these)
wait wait -- it may be, but it wasn't MEANT as a troll...
seriously, why do you think it was a troll?
The combination of your complete ignorance with the arrogance of the way you state your beliefs as fact defies comprehension.
I simultaneously feel sad for your state while also frustrated that people like you are allowed to persist for so long in life without someone putting in the effort to educate you. It's sad state when someone who can read and write and converse was not first taught how to think and observe, but instead parrot absurd stories from centuries ago motivated to control others and instill fear. (and no, that is not flamebait - this is what most religious stories really do to drive their adoption).
Many people talk of "religous tolerance"... that somehow we are supposed to be tolerant of these views. Tolerant of people who clearly state as fact beliefs that are not accurate and do not coincide with observation. To me the statements above in the parent post are simply lies. This is open deception and tolerance of this behavior enables and promotes the deception of others. *sigh*
Wow, I don't know you, but your post seems..., well, underinformed. First of all, you are ARE a monkey, all humans are. We are animals like all the rest on this rock. God is a story created by fearful and ignorant men. Belief in a sentient creator flys in the face of all rational observation. I would welcome the opportunity to talk to a God if it existed, but all evidence says it does not.
Second, we will have human-competitive reasoning engines based on silicon within 15 years. No doubt in my mind. There is no technical barrier to this now, it's simply a coding and organization task that can be accomplished by the coordinated efforts of large groups of people and a small dedicated groups of programmers.
The Internet will not be the brain, it will provide the external information source and training sets.
If no one knows it's happening, it's not an EXPERIMENT - it is a retrospective analysis
0 7/219
Big difference philospophically, and a terrificalyl interesting topic.
See this paper in Science -
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/307/57
I think he's wrong about Biology beiung next. Not because it's not interesting (it is), but because we still have so much farther we can go with IT. Each new tech area gets overhyped and then crashes expectations, then the reality catches up with the hype. Only now, in the last 1-2 year have we seen an emergence of the real power of the Internet (and it's long-hyped power) being realized by large numbers (%'s) of people. By "real power" I mean structured data encoding for all useful information - persistent global connectivity enabling virtual organizations - and (what I call "The greatest shift") the realization by society that information is more valuble than physical goods.
The next 20 years will one of vast social change, enabled by computing and communications technology. The social change will be driven by a realization that basic physical goods to support life are of such low value compared to information that it's in the best interest of large social groups (governements) to feed and house people effectively for free - and harness their THINKING ability toward global value instead of their more classic PRODUCTION value. This will radically alter our view of work and production. Mental participation at a basic level will sustain large groups of people at minimal levels (housing,food) for the value that simple participation will generate.
In terms of biology and biotech - yes, it's exciting - but by comparison to the aboe radical changes in our society, the technology for biological change is still really really hard. We don't have the ability to probe deeply enough, the systems we measure are noisy and all unique, so while there will be advances, they will not shift our lives so much os the shift happeneing because everyone is talking. Spending 30 minutes looking at Myspace will give you an indication of the amount of energy the NEXT generation will be willing to put into connecting online.
The next BIG thing will be a social structure change, after the "big kill":
... but it will be:
Previous NBTs:
Fire, Religion, Printing Press, For-profit infinite life Incorporation, Public Health, Combustion Engine+Industrialization. Antibiotics and Vaccines, Computers, Them Thar Intarnets...
Not sure what the words will be (posthumanism?)
Distributerd "Mutual Benefit" mentality supported by persistent, global communication -- the free and open society outside current control strucutres of governement, religion or for-profit business. You're starting it now and don't even see it yet.
So I'm about 1.5 Y into Mac now - gota Powerbook G4.
.5 sec off the sound. Stopping and starting doesn't help. Sliding the bar back helps a little. No solution to this at this time.
I don't like Itunes. I think the interface is poor and it doesn't give me the control I like. I use VLC mostly for videos.
However, offering TV shows at a fair price (like 65c/episode) is enough to get me to jump in and try. 10 bucks each for 2 shows I really like.
So the interface for logging in is poor, it took me three times to realize the box with the huge AOL logo next to it on the left has the word password on the right. Two boxes , to logos - I figure the mac ID I put in te top one and hit go and then it will ask for a password. Grrr.
I put in my CC info, no problem. So I find the shows I want, I hit the buy -- all seamless.
The download happens rather quickly, like 8-10 minutes each. I click the item to play, and it starts playing in the little box in the lower left corner! It's like 1 inch square! Whoa. Not what I expected. I double click and it breaks out into a separate window, and it allows me to resize. The quality is medium, not great (PROBLEM 1). The 21 min episode is 105MB m4v file.
The second problewm is much worse. The sound doesn't sync well. (PROBLEM 2) After about 2 minutes, the mouth is >
Overall slight frustration, but not a complete waste. If I cannot fix the audio sync then I will not buy again.