I'm not familiar with the design of the replacement for the Canadian long-form Census so I'm not going to address that in particular. I do want to address your assertion that a voluntary survey is the same as a self selected survey. In a self-selected survey any member of your universe may choose to become a respondent and you typically will not have any non-response followup (the people that come and bug you if you don't answer the survey.) Now a voluntary survey simply means that you are not required, by law, to answer. So you can have self selected voluntary surveys, non-self selected voluntary surveys, and non-self selected involuntary surveys. I don't believe that the concept of a self-selected involuntary survey really makes any sense, so a it's probably safe to say that a self selected survey must be voluntary but the converse does not hold.
In both voluntary and involuntary surveys you will experience non-response. This is a problem since you now have a portion of your universe which you are unable to measure. There are various ways to adjust estimates to try and reduce the non-response bias, but the best is to go back out and try to convince people to respond. I don't know about Canada, but the only difference the legal requirement has in this process in the US is that if response is required by law, we add a line along the lines of 'Your response is mandated by law.' There are fines and jail time that go along with them, but to the best of my knowledge they're never used. In fact, at least for business surveys, the fine never even is mentioned since many businesses would rather simply pay the fine than spend the time to respond. Really, the only way you'll have an additional problem with a voluntary survey is if the people who only respond because we say they must are different from the people that will not respond regardless.
I'm a little surprised that they made it voluntary, but that alone isn't sufficient to destroy the quality of the survey. If nothing else, I'm curious to find out what exactly they did. Fortunately I've got this wonderful Internet thing to help.
I've given serious thought giving the mod martyrs exactly what they ask for. I haven't decided to make the plunge just yet, usually aside from asking to be modded flamebait the post doesn't deserve it at all, but it's very tempting to smack people for the behavior.
Have you ever used binoculars? Why do you trust what you see, if you haven't been there to see it yourself?
I have to be content to just trusting what I see through binoculars. The last time I tried to go there in person, I got slapped and handed a restraining order.
Okay, this is certainly going off into off-topic land but son of a bitch? I was disappointed about the EeePC line picking up a Windows version but, hey, ASUS is just another company. Shipping a Windows version does make sense after all, considering the hardware seems to run it just fine.
This news about the OLPC however makes me feel horribly dirty for buying into their G1G1 program. Aside from the Flash issue mentioned in the Computer World article (and even that's a stretch) I don't see what the advantage is in running Windows on these things. It's not like the kids need Photoshop or Unreal III FFS. I'm not so sure about other areas, but I know math and stats have some pretty solid open source offerings that can be used if anyone put some effort into taking a small subset of features and putting on a kid-friendly interface.
They aren't necessarily switching to Windows only, although it sounds like a Windows option is going to be a reality, but it really does sound like Negropronte is (to mix stories further) pulling a CDDB move here.
Even more offtopic: I just realized that while reading or hearing 'maths' drives me absolutely bonkers, 'stats' is just fine. Heh.
Despite having all of that information available, the Census is mandated by the Constitution so we're going to have it unless we pass an amendment getting rid of it. There was an attempt to replace the Decennial Census with a survey-based estimate of the population but Congress did not allow it.
1) Response is required by law. The Census Bureau has a responsiblity to collect a complete count.
2) This would introduce additional non-response bias into any estimates based on these data unless respondents and non-respondents were fairly similar.
This would almost certainly invite fraud, as well as introduce additional error into the count. There are fines for not responding but they are either not used or rarely used.
The cost comes from non-respondents. If you return your form you're cheap to count. If someone has to call you 3 ti es and knock on your door twice, you can get awfully expensive to count. The paper and postage is relatively cheap (although 300 million letters are of course expensive in an absolute sEnse) This is why reminder letters are sent out. It's much cheaper to try to contact you by mail than it is to visit you in person.
They did indeed test this tech out. During the 2006 Census Test in Austin and (I assume) during the 2008 Dress Rehearsal. That is how they know about the problems with the system.
Bugger that common language crap, here in the UK we're generally far more permissive than folk in the US./sweeping generalisation. Except for Nunchuks and Ninjas. Thus the cartoon "Teenage... There aren't any ninjas in the UK? Hot damn. I know where I'm going to start training my pirate army now!
Another difference is that the XO uses software that quite literally has the source available at the touch of a button. I can't confirm this, but I genuinely doubt that Microsoft has made the source to Windows available on the Classmate. As an educational tool, having the source code available really is a meaningful difference. It's a meaningful difference to me at least.
She'll continue to consult with OLPC and provide product to OLPC at cost. I think, I may be overlooking something, I'd love to see all of the OLPC tech released into the commercial market this way. It could help drive the manufacturing costs down and get the XO back down to the original $100US per unit goal. I participated in the Buy One, Get One program because I thought the hardware sounded damn handy, despite being configured for children.
I am all for anything that brings us closer to a similar commercial unit at a reasonable price as long as it isn't directly detrimental to the OLPC project. This does seem like this could go in a similar direction to the Classmate PC, but that would be the decision of the final manufacturer/distributor and would presumably require price breaks to be competitive. Honestly I haven't looked into the Classmate much, but I may have to spend a little time looking into it. I disliked having Windows on such a project, but I really don't know enough about the hardware to feel strongly about it.
I haven't had a chance to play around with this yet, but if it's as good a replacement for Mat* as R is for S+ and SAS, I'm quite happy to see it. I'm sad that I'll probably never be able to touch it unless I change my job as I've been told it would, quite literally, require an act of Congress to allow us to use anything other than SAS for our work. It will still be great to have access to a (hopefully) well documented library of algorithms that I can tear into, instead of trying to cobble together things that seem good to me at the time. Huzzah, hip hip, and all those fun things.
Well, it took them long enough to make the store available to people without a PS3, but I'm glad they're finally offering this content without the $400-600 access point. I was very, very excited when I heard about being able to play PS1 games on the PSP around a year ago, less excited when I found out you needed a PS3, and completely disappointed when I saw the title selection.
I would be thrilled if they would put a reasonably complete selection of old PS1 titles up on this store. I doubt it will ever happen, but I would gladly spend $5 to download an old PS1 game I enjoyed rather than have to balance my ability to play old games on my PSP without (any new) risk with the ability to play the new games and once again risking a a brick. A boy can dream, right?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not familiar with the design of the replacement for the Canadian long-form Census so I'm not going to address that in particular. I do want to address your assertion that a voluntary survey is the same as a self selected survey. In a self-selected survey any member of your universe may choose to become a respondent and you typically will not have any non-response followup (the people that come and bug you if you don't answer the survey.) Now a voluntary survey simply means that you are not required, by law, to answer. So you can have self selected voluntary surveys, non-self selected voluntary surveys, and non-self selected involuntary surveys. I don't believe that the concept of a self-selected involuntary survey really makes any sense, so a it's probably safe to say that a self selected survey must be voluntary but the converse does not hold.
In both voluntary and involuntary surveys you will experience non-response. This is a problem since you now have a portion of your universe which you are unable to measure. There are various ways to adjust estimates to try and reduce the non-response bias, but the best is to go back out and try to convince people to respond. I don't know about Canada, but the only difference the legal requirement has in this process in the US is that if response is required by law, we add a line along the lines of 'Your response is mandated by law.' There are fines and jail time that go along with them, but to the best of my knowledge they're never used. In fact, at least for business surveys, the fine never even is mentioned since many businesses would rather simply pay the fine than spend the time to respond. Really, the only way you'll have an additional problem with a voluntary survey is if the people who only respond because we say they must are different from the people that will not respond regardless.
I'm a little surprised that they made it voluntary, but that alone isn't sufficient to destroy the quality of the survey. If nothing else, I'm curious to find out what exactly they did. Fortunately I've got this wonderful Internet thing to help.
Well, I for one would enjoy getting to celebrate e Day instead of that pompous show off Pi Day.
I've given serious thought giving the mod martyrs exactly what they ask for. I haven't decided to make the plunge just yet, usually aside from asking to be modded flamebait the post doesn't deserve it at all, but it's very tempting to smack people for the behavior.
Have you ever used binoculars? Why do you trust what you see, if you haven't been there to see it yourself?
I have to be content to just trusting what I see through binoculars. The last time I tried to go there in person, I got slapped and handed a restraining order.
So, what you're saying is that there are a lot of POS POS systems out there?
I've been working on killer tomatoes for years now. Is killer produce close enough for you?
What happens if you, say, post as an AC to undo accidental modding?
Okay, this is certainly going off into off-topic land but son of a bitch? I was disappointed about the EeePC line picking up a Windows version but, hey, ASUS is just another company. Shipping a Windows version does make sense after all, considering the hardware seems to run it just fine.
This news about the OLPC however makes me feel horribly dirty for buying into their G1G1 program. Aside from the Flash issue mentioned in the Computer World article (and even that's a stretch) I don't see what the advantage is in running Windows on these things. It's not like the kids need Photoshop or Unreal III FFS. I'm not so sure about other areas, but I know math and stats have some pretty solid open source offerings that can be used if anyone put some effort into taking a small subset of features and putting on a kid-friendly interface.
They aren't necessarily switching to Windows only, although it sounds like a Windows option is going to be a reality, but it really does sound like Negropronte is (to mix stories further) pulling a CDDB move here.
Even more offtopic: I just realized that while reading or hearing 'maths' drives me absolutely bonkers, 'stats' is just fine. Heh.
Despite having all of that information available, the Census is mandated by the Constitution so we're going to have it unless we pass an amendment getting rid of it. There was an attempt to replace the Decennial Census with a survey-based estimate of the population but Congress did not allow it.
1) Response is required by law. The Census Bureau has a responsiblity to collect a complete count.
2) This would introduce additional non-response bias into any estimates based on these data unless respondents and non-respondents were fairly similar.
This would almost certainly invite fraud, as well as introduce additional error into the count. There are fines for not responding but they are either not used or rarely used.
The cost comes from non-respondents. If you return your form you're cheap to count. If someone has to call you 3 ti es and knock on your door twice, you can get awfully expensive to count. The paper and postage is relatively cheap (although 300 million letters are of course expensive in an absolute sEnse) This is why reminder letters are sent out. It's much cheaper to try to contact you by mail than it is to visit you in person.
They did indeed test this tech out. During the 2006 Census Test in Austin and (I assume) during the 2008 Dress Rehearsal. That is how they know about the problems with the system.
Another difference is that the XO uses software that quite literally has the source available at the touch of a button. I can't confirm this, but I genuinely doubt that Microsoft has made the source to Windows available on the Classmate. As an educational tool, having the source code available really is a meaningful difference. It's a meaningful difference to me at least.
This sounds similar in use, I have absolutely no clue about the pharmacology involved, to Suboxone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suboxone and antabuse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antabuse. This is fairly second hand knowledge, my fiancee is a drug and alcohol counselor, but I thought I'd share.
She'll continue to consult with OLPC and provide product to OLPC at cost. I think, I may be overlooking something, I'd love to see all of the OLPC tech released into the commercial market this way. It could help drive the manufacturing costs down and get the XO back down to the original $100US per unit goal. I participated in the Buy One, Get One program because I thought the hardware sounded damn handy, despite being configured for children.
I am all for anything that brings us closer to a similar commercial unit at a reasonable price as long as it isn't directly detrimental to the OLPC project. This does seem like this could go in a similar direction to the Classmate PC, but that would be the decision of the final manufacturer/distributor and would presumably require price breaks to be competitive. Honestly I haven't looked into the Classmate much, but I may have to spend a little time looking into it. I disliked having Windows on such a project, but I really don't know enough about the hardware to feel strongly about it.
I haven't had a chance to play around with this yet, but if it's as good a replacement for Mat* as R is for S+ and SAS, I'm quite happy to see it. I'm sad that I'll probably never be able to touch it unless I change my job as I've been told it would, quite literally, require an act of Congress to allow us to use anything other than SAS for our work. It will still be great to have access to a (hopefully) well documented library of algorithms that I can tear into, instead of trying to cobble together things that seem good to me at the time. Huzzah, hip hip, and all those fun things.
Well, it took them long enough to make the store available to people without a PS3, but I'm glad they're finally offering this content without the $400-600 access point. I was very, very excited when I heard about being able to play PS1 games on the PSP around a year ago, less excited when I found out you needed a PS3, and completely disappointed when I saw the title selection.
I would be thrilled if they would put a reasonably complete selection of old PS1 titles up on this store. I doubt it will ever happen, but I would gladly spend $5 to download an old PS1 game I enjoyed rather than have to balance my ability to play old games on my PSP without (any new) risk with the ability to play the new games and once again risking a a brick. A boy can dream, right?