Actually, next to TrueCrypt, I think Tor is a good candidate for shutdown because it utilizes open proxy servers to help you obfuscate your http: requests as you surf the web. I would be more likely to think that shutting down open proxy servers would be the easier legislation to both pass and enforce, which would mean projects like Tor would become largely useless, but maybe not quite as useless as legislation banning digital encryption mechanisms by citizens. We already have the DMCA to ban breaking encryption by private citizens... I doubt that banning using encryption by private citizens is far behind.
Just think of the children!
I couldn't agree more with this nomination... with TrueCrypt no one can check my USB key-drive for illegal Britney Spears mp3s, terrorisms, and civil disobedience manuals of TERROR! It must certainly be banned before the terrorists win.
Add in a bunch of name-dropping of middle-managers from a bunch of random, well-known fast-food companies, and you could submit your post for consideration to be published in the next FastfoodWorld.com article!
I have actually been impressed by the Drupal forum support for web developers and admins doing what you describe with handling multiple sites and domains under one "Drupal install umbrella" or similar types of quick roll-outs for small businesses. I've considered doing this with my install for a couple of other sites I want to build, but I haven't tried to tackle doing so just yet.
And yes, I was saying it would seem too much of a learning curve for the original poster to work through setting up Drupal for the one small business site only because a small business typically is more interested in having a Yellow Pages ad on the Internet than a full-featured community type site - which is where Drupal excels, IMO. Sure, Drupal can be used as a simple ad brochure type site, but that could quite possibly be overkill if you're only dealing with only one small business site.
I was hoping this book review would have been a rave review for the additional insights about how to do some of the more esoteric stuff with Drupal, but it sounds like it was written poorly and not focused on information for the experienced web developer. Too bad, because I'm struggling right now with how to map caveserv.com AND adamstechconsultants.com/drupal to the same Drupal site without having cookies and nodes get all jacked up with mod_rewrite and other hosting nuances.
Initial learning curve would be way too much, and wouldn't serve a purpose if you don't plan on having a highly active community. For my personal "blog" I use Drupal 6, but I don't know that I would use something so fancy for a small business site if I were a web developer. Seems like more work than it's worth. (You can see what my Drupal site looks like in my homepage link)
This post reads like a troll, but I'll bite just in case it isn't. Yes, it's easy to install Ubuntu on a two-drive, non-RAID, NTFS Windows machine. Ubuntu will prompt you on how to make sure your drives are setup correctly for dual-boot and all of that. I run Windows XP and Ubuntu in exactly the same setup as what you're describing and everything works just fine.
In fact, Ubuntu works so well that I only reboot to Windows to play the occasional video game, but I haven't even done that in months due to how annoyed I get with the crash-proneness of Windows XP. (besides, Wii, PS2, and a Mac keep me entertained enough as it is)
I recall seeing someone post to/. some time ago that "loose" was the correct British spelling of "lose". Whether it's right or wrong, I'm specifically appealing to the/. grammar police, not the general English grammar police. So even IF someone from Britain chooses to argue on/. that "loose" is the correct form of writing the dang word, or they're just a noob to the/. grammar police and haven't been heavily criticized for screwing up the spelling yet, it doesn't matter to me. I just want it changed to "luse" at first on/. (where it's easy to get it accepted as a new cultural meme) and then eventually - Webster's.
All of this is of course a merely pedantic rant which has no bearing on the discussion at hand, but apparently appealing to pedantic grammar issues on/. is a sure-fire way to generate additional off-topic commentary.;)
You read slashdot, which means you're already well ahead of your peers in the workplace if you do end up going into programming. I was a stupid 18yr old and wanted the best programming degree and best school money could buy for me at the time for the direction I wanted to go - at that time. Bad idea.
As so many people have already stated, you will get the more well-rounded education at a "liberal arts" type university or college than at a purely "technical" college/university. Also, don't be too impressed by anything you read about which school is more highly rated or whether both schools are in fact highly rated in the media, amongst your peers, or even amongst the slashdot crowd. All of that goes right out the window in the real world.
Besides, you need to focus on getting the most out of your time in college, not just the academic aspect of it. I'm 31, and if I had to do it over again I would have spent 2 years at a community college to get the stupid pre-req courses out of the way for dirt cheap OR lived in dorms for 2 years in a row at a medium-sized college, and NOT HAVE PLANNED BEYOND THAT AMOUNT OF TIME!!!
You absolutely will change your attitude towards college, life, work, who you are, and just about everything else that you know right now within those first 2 years - if you don't live at home - so try not to worry about the full-time work world for now. STOP PLANNING - I wish my parents had been more forceful with me when I was 18 to get me to understand that I needed to live more in the moment at 18. Alas, I think they were a bit afraid that they hadn't trained me well enough to make it on my own, and were therefore reluctant to let me leave the nest. (I was the firstborn - it happens a lot with us firstborns.)
... you'll loose your job.... OK, you're either British or a/. noob. This incorrect use of the word "loose" when it should be "lose" just drives me freakin' crazy. Can we all agree to just turn it into "luse" as the past-tense verb form of "to lose"? This new spelling would be totally 1337 (yes, I'm "old"!) for all the new little kiddies on the interweb tubes. Heck, we could probably even get it admitted as the new form of spelling to Webster's Dictionary.
True, IPs can't be used to definitively ID one particular user, but they are still useful for indefinitely banning known evil-doers from causing more havoc on a system. Sure the Feds are being stupid with their scheme, but I can see how this is advantageous for the time being to the EVE dbas... stop the hemorraghing fast, then worry about open-heart surgery once the patient is stabilized.
Agreed, twitter is a somewhat pointless service in my limited experience with it. It's text messaging linked to the web, but who cares? Podcasting on the other hand... a "sidelined" web thing??? No way! I listen to probably 5+ hours of podcasts every week. It's a great way to pass the time on some of my more mundane tasks at work without listening to the same album on my iPod for the twentieth time in one day. Podcasting to me is Tivo for talk radio.. on steroids.
I tend to agree that augmenting data helps improve the model if the model is not yet overwhelmed with data, but you have to have a decent model to begin with or it won't work. Additionally, the payoff of additional data added to the model is a diminishing return as the amount of data available begins to overwhelm any given model. In other words, the more data you collect and put into your model, the more expensive, time consuming, and difficult it becomes to continue to rely on the original model.
In linear regression models for forecasting there is what's known as a "variable inflation factor". This factor helps a statistician know when their linear regression model is beginning to perform poorly when too much data is in the equation because different variables (containing different, but inter-related data) will eventually begin to conflict with one another.
For the Netflix thing, this could show up as a problem if the model is trying to recommend which movie you should rent next based on actors/actresses in previous movies you've watched, which movies you rated higher than others, which genres those highly rated movies were in, which actors/actresses you had rated highly, and which movies those highly rated actors/actresses had been in that you hadn't seen yet. It's quite likely that someone like Kevin Bacon has been in some romantic comedy with another one of your favorite actors or actresses, but you absolutely hate horror movies and he's in a "horror" film with that same actor or actress. The recommendation model would likely try to recommend a movie to you based on three positives (a favorite film and two separate favorite actors) because there's only one negative in the equation. (your hatred for horror movies) This is a very simplistic example, but that's the problem of too much data with too simplistic of an algorithm. A linear regression might have this problem, but if one were to build in an additional bit of algorithm magic that made sure horror movies were "filtered out" or severely punished for being in the horror genre before looking for other factors like favorite actors/actresses in movies then the algorithm would perform better. But then, of course, additional types of data would be needed to adequately "fill in the gaps" for the new monster algorithm that you've created.
Bingo. You are exactly correct, which is what I was attempting to extract from my line of questioning. The fact IS that "fanatical environmentalism" when taken to its logical conclusion is an untenable position to put humanity in at this stage of development. I certainly think we should be good stewards of our resources by recycling when it is economically and environmentally beneficial, not wantonly destroying things purely for monetary, selfish profit, and not slash-and-burning environments simply because one cannot be bothered to think about the long-term consequences of their actions; however, it is also not possible to be pure green and in so-called 'harmony' with the planet. We are not gods, and cannot in any way manage the "health" of entire planet - so why waste resources trying.
Let's expend our resources searching for ever better ways of doing things, but let's not start lawsuits against half the world because we're pissed off that we can't continue on our merry old ways of doing things because we are resistant to change. (even when that change is environmental!)
"The earth can support 6 billion modern people. It already does. It cannot support 6 billion cave-men."
My question: Why not? If carbon emissions and people's impact on their environment in the modern age is having such a disastrous impact on the earth, wouldn't it actually be MORE sustainable to have 6.8 billion people worldwide living a subsistence style of living like some of the native peoples of Alaska? Or to put my questions another way, how are you determining that it is necessary for modern man to require the vast resource usages of today when all a caveman (like myself - hehe) would need is some flint, some spears, and some agriculture to get along in life? After all, all we really need to simply stay alive is food, water, clothing, and shelter - and only at a very basic level at that.
I don't think this level of illogical fanaticism about environmentalism by this Alaskan town has been well thought out. I would postulate that indeed the earth COULD provide for 6.8 billion cavemen even better than "modern" man because the resource demands on it would be LESS, not more.
I agree that The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird is a good general web design book for just this type of issue: a developer moonlighting in the realm of design. Because I have been interested in exactly the same thing lately - the visual design of computer based information - I stumbled upon a book about typography at my local library that I would also highly recommend: The Non-Designers Type Book by Robin Williams. My library had the 1st edition which was written in 1998, but all of the principles are still so true today. Another thing that Jason's book (mentioned earlier in my post) recommends is looking into sIFR which is a flash-based open source technology that allows you to use better fonts on your website. I have been using it on my site for about a week and I think it does look a lot better, but it can slow a site down.
These things should get you started on the road to better design in your websites. Another great resource is a href="http://websitesthatsuck.com">websitesthatsuck.com. The guy that runs that site has also written some books on the topic of good web design, and I highly recommend that you read the books - the books are a lot better than the website, for some strange reason.
I wouldn't call it silly. Calling Comcast and complaining can have effects, both for you as an individual, and for everyone in the long run. You need to come back out of the conspiracy cave, and realize that the bandwidth limiting decisions are probably being made higher up the management chain, while the day-to-day call center work is being made at the supervisor or maybe manager level at best. If you keep calling in every day complaining, eventually some call center manager is going to get annoyed that you are messing up their daily call statistics which get reported to their boss, and tell some low-level tech jockey in some second-tier support group to just uncap you. Or at worst, they'll offer to give you discounts on your service or something that they can do just to get you to quit upping their call volumes and handle times.
Of course there's no guarantee that such a strategy will work, and it may take you a lot of personal time to get to this stage, but then again that's why not everyone is wasting their time doing such things, now isn't it? Besides, consider this issue from Comcast's perspective: There ARE computers downloading and consequently serving up torrents, spyware, and spam email because those computers have been compromised by crackers or bots or trojans sometime in the past./.'ers have been screaming for years that ISPs should remove such users from the Internet by cutting their connections... well, you got what you asked for in one sense, even if it isn't exactly what you were expecting.
He wasn't insulting you; he was insulting the "little rural hick town" politicians that like to keep their rural towns little, and hick. Of course it's a generalization, but this new law doesn't forbid other companies from also offering services in those little towns. If the other companies are better at negotiating with the "little rural hick town" politicians to allow them to begin providing service to that town, then more power to them!! Both Time Warner and those other companies will start trying to out-do one another with lower prices, which is good for you, the consumer. Or maybe you just enjoy driving the type of truck I saw one time in rural, northwest Ohio? You know, the one that has a Calvin peeing with the words "City folk" just below the puddle?
... don't always like Ohio politics and the stupidity of certain people in this state, but generally it's not as bad as you're making it out to be in this particular situation. C'mon, the kid that lost all the SSNs was a DeVry student working for an incompetent fool. The guy that needed the royal beatdown was his supervisor, but obviously that never happened because of politics. Or maybe I'm just jaded on the incredibly poor general leadership of the state that we've had for the past 8 years... hopefully Strickland will be different.
In any case, this order looks like it simply gives the state the authority to approve and regulate Time Warner's operations state-wide, which IS good for prices because Time Warner won't have to pay as much in attorney fees going before every freakin' municipality's commerce boards. Sure the risk is there for a crushing blow to open competition in the Cable TV marketplace, but I just wrote on my blog (see my/. bio, above) about the lack of choices in Cable TV + Internet services due to pricing and terms of service that are ALL expensive, regardless of which provider you want to have service through.
P.S. Keep in mind that Time Warner still operates largely as a bunch of independent franchises (hence the "win" for them to be regulated state-wide as one entity) which means potentially less quality of service because each franchise will operate differently. (In Columbus, for instance, installation appointments with Time Warner would have made me wait 2 weeks to get service - back in Jan. 2005, but with Wide Open West I had a next-day appointment.)
Imeem is missing the point, but not because it doesn't understand the money to be made in representing the indie bands and singers who don't get recognized by the RIAA companies. In fact, their terms of service state that you have to have legal permissions to upload ANY content. In other words, unless you're an artist or the recording company, you can't upload music (legally, according to them) to their site. So yes, their site is crap compared to the ability of a true social network with the viral ability to promote any given indie music/video artist based on a small minority of rabid fans, but they do at least get the concept of allowing indie artists to promote their stuff via the Imeem site. Unfortunately, I don't think Imeem has the clout or the right following to act as a psuedo-bittorrent or -IRC service, which is what most college kids seem to be using these days to share their music and video content with one another. And here's the key reason that Imeem may not be very successful: the marketplace for recorded music has set its price for digital music and video: free.
Sure, we'll pay big bucks to also get cable, HD, DVRs, movie tickets, concert tickets, and swag from our favorite entertainers, but we (the consumers) are simply not willing to pay money to perform an activity that we can perform for ourselves with little to no additional investment. (burning a CD or DVD on our computers) iTunes is obviously an anamoly in the world of digital, online music, but that's because it is worth it to consumers to have not just the music, but also the DEVICE that makes listening to digital music ON THE GO easier than we could otherwise do for ourselves. And Apple has the iPod nice and locked up, unlike our computers which cannot be easily locked up by DRM - there are too many workarounds that don't require soddering teeny tiny parts together to do so.
Yes, but the author also noted that the "Fair Use" doctrine was murky water at times, and that the examples used were done so in the theoretical vein of exploring the maximum of copyright infringements that the "John" character undertook during his hypothetical day. There have been numerous "Fair Use" claims by music artists against other music artists which have consequently forced the secondary "mixing" music artist to rearrange their music and/or pay fines to take care of the problem they supposedly created by using another's copyrighted works without permission. So it's still a valid thing to contemplate. Granted, not a likely conclusion given that it's just a tattoo, but a theoretically important topic none-the-less.
I have been reading and posting to Slashdot since at least 2001. I've posted 1,376 comments during those years. Slashdot mods have both lauded my postings and bitch-slapped them for complaining about the "rules" on Slashdot, ranting on Creationism vs. Evolution, the MS vs. Linux debate, and probably hundreds of other somewhat random topics. Sep. 11, 2001 was particularly memorable as this is where I too first learned about the awful events of that day. But it's also funny that this is the one site, that despite all the other newer and shinier sites out there (Digg) that come along from time to time, keeps me coming back for more. There IS discussion on this site, not just adolescent e-penis boasting like you find on sites like Kuroshin or Digg. Why? Because this site found its nitch early on, and never strayed. I have found over these past 6 years, that all of my favorite brick-and-mortar entities, be they church, shopping, or entertainment, also do the same: they cater to exactly their nitch and never stray from it. So keep up the hard work, gang, and don't stray!
BTW, corporate entities: many if not all of my favorite technology things that I have bought over the years were in one way or another promoted by others on Slashdot at some point in time, I looked into their recommendations, and decided to buy the technology for myself. By no means does this mean that I WANT comment spam from corporate shills - I most certainly will see such fraudulent shilling and resent all the more your product... but if you produce a good product and your customers appreciate your efforts enough to mention the product on Slashdot, WITHOUT compensation for doing so, then you're doing the RIGHT THINGS and should keep it up! A short list of things I've used based on customer recommendations on Slashdot:
Godaddy Fastmail nVidia graphics cards Linux - Mandrake first, and now Ubuntu (love it!) O'Reilly books Edward R. Tufte's books Firefox iPods and a host of other stuff that I've recommended to friends and family as well
The point is that after paying so much money for doing something so stupid, they'll be less inclined to do stupid things in the future.
In theory, yes, but in reality, no. The real point is to knock a tooth or two out of a giant in the industry with expensive, time-wasting resources defending a lawsuit which basically enhances the competition's position in the industry since they are not a part of the expensive legal proceedings. That's probably not a written rule, or maybe not even an intention of the laws that allow class-action lawsuits (IANAL so I don't really know), but it still hurts Comcast. And no, there won't be much learning going on from such lawsuits, but at least Comcast won't get to continue to use their buying power as effectively to squash competitors (including municipalities) who decide to NOT filter the bandwidth they offer to their customers.
And if such a lawsuit were to be brought and get heard and the little guy wins, then that would be a warning shot over the bow of the other mega-corps like Verizon and AT&T to not overstep their bounds with their anti-net-neutrality schemes. It would be nice to see this go to a class-action lawsuit that begins making its way through the courts just as the net-neutrality legislation is getting discussed... muddy waters are good for the Internet sometimes.
You're certainly not the only Christian playing violent video games and reading Slashdot. But here is my concern with using this as a "tool" to reach today's youth as part of a church's outreach program:
In rural Minnesota, Mr. Drexler said, the church needs something powerful to compete against the lure of less healthy behaviors. "We have to find something that these kids are interested in doing that doesn't involve drugs or alcohol or premarital sex."
OK, so the Bible is pretty clear on "unhealthy behavior", i.e. 'sin' - don't do it. But what this 'Mr. Drexler' from rural Minnesota is neglecting is the fact that it's not those three things that constitute the greatest sins. There is no greatest sin according to the Bible, because all sin is simply that: sin. If playing Halo leads a child (or adult) to increased narcissistic behavior in which their life is centered around pleasing themselves outside of the 4 walls of the church building - even if through video games instead of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll - then it's still sin. And is this really offering the same kind of "community" and "fellowship" that Christ offers to us? I don't think so. Christ's message was one of love and one singular way to experience His love - believe in His gift of eternal salvation through His death on the cross and love Him above all else. Are these kids getting loved, or just marketed to by playing Halo at the church building? Yes, I'm sure some of that is going on, but you don't NEED Halo in order to show a kid, or an adult, true love and caring for them as a person. In fact, they don't even need to be at a church building because the community of Christ should not be centered around showing up to events at some building; it should be about every single day of our lives having others who share in our daily struggles and love Christ and others and are actively seeking to show that love daily - not just at the church building!
Using a video game that is 1) rated 'M', and 2) is being used as marketing to get kids just to show up at church is in my mind a dubious justification for allowing it in church - ESPECIALLY when the parents (as clueless as they may be) are unaware of the rating of the game. As one of the other points made in the article pointed out: lots of teenage boys would show up to church if alcohol and pr0n were easily available, but that doesn't make it right or even legal in most states!
In summary, catering to the narcissism of today's youth just to get them through the doors of a church is not helping anyone - especially churches. It's only further exasperating the problem of kids (and adults!) becoming more and more closed off and selfish individuals in our society.
I speak as a Christian who plays CSS:Source from time to time (in the comfort of my own home), enjoys playing video games in general, reads slashdot semi-regularly, and still thinks it's every individual's and every individual parent's right to decide what types of video games they should and should not be playing, but thinks that fellow Christians should not be helping children dangle their feet in the world of violent video games just to show that they're "cool" too.
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Actually, next to TrueCrypt, I think Tor is a good candidate for shutdown because it utilizes open proxy servers to help you obfuscate your http: requests as you surf the web. I would be more likely to think that shutting down open proxy servers would be the easier legislation to both pass and enforce, which would mean projects like Tor would become largely useless, but maybe not quite as useless as legislation banning digital encryption mechanisms by citizens. We already have the DMCA to ban breaking encryption by private citizens... I doubt that banning using encryption by private citizens is far behind. Just think of the children!
I couldn't agree more with this nomination... with TrueCrypt no one can check my USB key-drive for illegal Britney Spears mp3s, terrorisms, and civil disobedience manuals of TERROR! It must certainly be banned before the terrorists win.
It's called freenet, and yes, it's dog slow and no one uses it.
Add in a bunch of name-dropping of middle-managers from a bunch of random, well-known fast-food companies, and you could submit your post for consideration to be published in the next FastfoodWorld.com article!
I have actually been impressed by the Drupal forum support for web developers and admins doing what you describe with handling multiple sites and domains under one "Drupal install umbrella" or similar types of quick roll-outs for small businesses. I've considered doing this with my install for a couple of other sites I want to build, but I haven't tried to tackle doing so just yet.
And yes, I was saying it would seem too much of a learning curve for the original poster to work through setting up Drupal for the one small business site only because a small business typically is more interested in having a Yellow Pages ad on the Internet than a full-featured community type site - which is where Drupal excels, IMO. Sure, Drupal can be used as a simple ad brochure type site, but that could quite possibly be overkill if you're only dealing with only one small business site.
I was hoping this book review would have been a rave review for the additional insights about how to do some of the more esoteric stuff with Drupal, but it sounds like it was written poorly and not focused on information for the experienced web developer. Too bad, because I'm struggling right now with how to map caveserv.com AND adamstechconsultants.com/drupal to the same Drupal site without having cookies and nodes get all jacked up with mod_rewrite and other hosting nuances.
Initial learning curve would be way too much, and wouldn't serve a purpose if you don't plan on having a highly active community. For my personal "blog" I use Drupal 6, but I don't know that I would use something so fancy for a small business site if I were a web developer. Seems like more work than it's worth. (You can see what my Drupal site looks like in my homepage link)
This post reads like a troll, but I'll bite just in case it isn't. Yes, it's easy to install Ubuntu on a two-drive, non-RAID, NTFS Windows machine. Ubuntu will prompt you on how to make sure your drives are setup correctly for dual-boot and all of that. I run Windows XP and Ubuntu in exactly the same setup as what you're describing and everything works just fine.
In fact, Ubuntu works so well that I only reboot to Windows to play the occasional video game, but I haven't even done that in months due to how annoyed I get with the crash-proneness of Windows XP. (besides, Wii, PS2, and a Mac keep me entertained enough as it is)
I recall seeing someone post to /. some time ago that "loose" was the correct British spelling of "lose". Whether it's right or wrong, I'm specifically appealing to the /. grammar police, not the general English grammar police. So even IF someone from Britain chooses to argue on /. that "loose" is the correct form of writing the dang word, or they're just a noob to the /. grammar police and haven't been heavily criticized for screwing up the spelling yet, it doesn't matter to me. I just want it changed to "luse" at first on /. (where it's easy to get it accepted as a new cultural meme) and then eventually - Webster's.
/. is a sure-fire way to generate additional off-topic commentary. ;)
All of this is of course a merely pedantic rant which has no bearing on the discussion at hand, but apparently appealing to pedantic grammar issues on
You read slashdot, which means you're already well ahead of your peers in the workplace if you do end up going into programming. I was a stupid 18yr old and wanted the best programming degree and best school money could buy for me at the time for the direction I wanted to go - at that time. Bad idea.
As so many people have already stated, you will get the more well-rounded education at a "liberal arts" type university or college than at a purely "technical" college/university. Also, don't be too impressed by anything you read about which school is more highly rated or whether both schools are in fact highly rated in the media, amongst your peers, or even amongst the slashdot crowd. All of that goes right out the window in the real world.
Besides, you need to focus on getting the most out of your time in college, not just the academic aspect of it. I'm 31, and if I had to do it over again I would have spent 2 years at a community college to get the stupid pre-req courses out of the way for dirt cheap OR lived in dorms for 2 years in a row at a medium-sized college, and NOT HAVE PLANNED BEYOND THAT AMOUNT OF TIME!!!
You absolutely will change your attitude towards college, life, work, who you are, and just about everything else that you know right now within those first 2 years - if you don't live at home - so try not to worry about the full-time work world for now. STOP PLANNING - I wish my parents had been more forceful with me when I was 18 to get me to understand that I needed to live more in the moment at 18. Alas, I think they were a bit afraid that they hadn't trained me well enough to make it on my own, and were therefore reluctant to let me leave the nest. (I was the firstborn - it happens a lot with us firstborns.)
... you'll loose your job.True, IPs can't be used to definitively ID one particular user, but they are still useful for indefinitely banning known evil-doers from causing more havoc on a system. Sure the Feds are being stupid with their scheme, but I can see how this is advantageous for the time being to the EVE dbas... stop the hemorraghing fast, then worry about open-heart surgery once the patient is stabilized.
Agreed, twitter is a somewhat pointless service in my limited experience with it. It's text messaging linked to the web, but who cares? Podcasting on the other hand... a "sidelined" web thing??? No way! I listen to probably 5+ hours of podcasts every week. It's a great way to pass the time on some of my more mundane tasks at work without listening to the same album on my iPod for the twentieth time in one day. Podcasting to me is Tivo for talk radio.. on steroids.
I tend to agree that augmenting data helps improve the model if the model is not yet overwhelmed with data, but you have to have a decent model to begin with or it won't work. Additionally, the payoff of additional data added to the model is a diminishing return as the amount of data available begins to overwhelm any given model. In other words, the more data you collect and put into your model, the more expensive, time consuming, and difficult it becomes to continue to rely on the original model.
In linear regression models for forecasting there is what's known as a "variable inflation factor". This factor helps a statistician know when their linear regression model is beginning to perform poorly when too much data is in the equation because different variables (containing different, but inter-related data) will eventually begin to conflict with one another.
For the Netflix thing, this could show up as a problem if the model is trying to recommend which movie you should rent next based on actors/actresses in previous movies you've watched, which movies you rated higher than others, which genres those highly rated movies were in, which actors/actresses you had rated highly, and which movies those highly rated actors/actresses had been in that you hadn't seen yet. It's quite likely that someone like Kevin Bacon has been in some romantic comedy with another one of your favorite actors or actresses, but you absolutely hate horror movies and he's in a "horror" film with that same actor or actress. The recommendation model would likely try to recommend a movie to you based on three positives (a favorite film and two separate favorite actors) because there's only one negative in the equation. (your hatred for horror movies) This is a very simplistic example, but that's the problem of too much data with too simplistic of an algorithm. A linear regression might have this problem, but if one were to build in an additional bit of algorithm magic that made sure horror movies were "filtered out" or severely punished for being in the horror genre before looking for other factors like favorite actors/actresses in movies then the algorithm would perform better. But then, of course, additional types of data would be needed to adequately "fill in the gaps" for the new monster algorithm that you've created.
Bingo. You are exactly correct, which is what I was attempting to extract from my line of questioning. The fact IS that "fanatical environmentalism" when taken to its logical conclusion is an untenable position to put humanity in at this stage of development. I certainly think we should be good stewards of our resources by recycling when it is economically and environmentally beneficial, not wantonly destroying things purely for monetary, selfish profit, and not slash-and-burning environments simply because one cannot be bothered to think about the long-term consequences of their actions; however, it is also not possible to be pure green and in so-called 'harmony' with the planet. We are not gods, and cannot in any way manage the "health" of entire planet - so why waste resources trying.
Let's expend our resources searching for ever better ways of doing things, but let's not start lawsuits against half the world because we're pissed off that we can't continue on our merry old ways of doing things because we are resistant to change. (even when that change is environmental!)
Well, you make an awfully large assertion here:
"The earth can support 6 billion modern people. It already does. It cannot support 6 billion cave-men."
My question: Why not? If carbon emissions and people's impact on their environment in the modern age is having such a disastrous impact on the earth, wouldn't it actually be MORE sustainable to have 6.8 billion people worldwide living a subsistence style of living like some of the native peoples of Alaska? Or to put my questions another way, how are you determining that it is necessary for modern man to require the vast resource usages of today when all a caveman (like myself - hehe) would need is some flint, some spears, and some agriculture to get along in life? After all, all we really need to simply stay alive is food, water, clothing, and shelter - and only at a very basic level at that.
I don't think this level of illogical fanaticism about environmentalism by this Alaskan town has been well thought out. I would postulate that indeed the earth COULD provide for 6.8 billion cavemen even better than "modern" man because the resource demands on it would be LESS, not more.
I agree that The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird is a good general web design book for just this type of issue: a developer moonlighting in the realm of design. Because I have been interested in exactly the same thing lately - the visual design of computer based information - I stumbled upon a book about typography at my local library that I would also highly recommend: The Non-Designers Type Book by Robin Williams. My library had the 1st edition which was written in 1998, but all of the principles are still so true today. Another thing that Jason's book (mentioned earlier in my post) recommends is looking into sIFR which is a flash-based open source technology that allows you to use better fonts on your website. I have been using it on my site for about a week and I think it does look a lot better, but it can slow a site down. These things should get you started on the road to better design in your websites. Another great resource is a href="http://websitesthatsuck.com">websitesthatsuck.com. The guy that runs that site has also written some books on the topic of good web design, and I highly recommend that you read the books - the books are a lot better than the website, for some strange reason.
I wouldn't call it silly. Calling Comcast and complaining can have effects, both for you as an individual, and for everyone in the long run. You need to come back out of the conspiracy cave, and realize that the bandwidth limiting decisions are probably being made higher up the management chain, while the day-to-day call center work is being made at the supervisor or maybe manager level at best. If you keep calling in every day complaining, eventually some call center manager is going to get annoyed that you are messing up their daily call statistics which get reported to their boss, and tell some low-level tech jockey in some second-tier support group to just uncap you. Or at worst, they'll offer to give you discounts on your service or something that they can do just to get you to quit upping their call volumes and handle times.
/.'ers have been screaming for years that ISPs should remove such users from the Internet by cutting their connections... well, you got what you asked for in one sense, even if it isn't exactly what you were expecting.
Of course there's no guarantee that such a strategy will work, and it may take you a lot of personal time to get to this stage, but then again that's why not everyone is wasting their time doing such things, now isn't it? Besides, consider this issue from Comcast's perspective: There ARE computers downloading and consequently serving up torrents, spyware, and spam email because those computers have been compromised by crackers or bots or trojans sometime in the past.
He wasn't insulting you; he was insulting the "little rural hick town" politicians that like to keep their rural towns little, and hick. Of course it's a generalization, but this new law doesn't forbid other companies from also offering services in those little towns. If the other companies are better at negotiating with the "little rural hick town" politicians to allow them to begin providing service to that town, then more power to them!! Both Time Warner and those other companies will start trying to out-do one another with lower prices, which is good for you, the consumer. Or maybe you just enjoy driving the type of truck I saw one time in rural, northwest Ohio? You know, the one that has a Calvin peeing with the words "City folk" just below the puddle?
... don't always like Ohio politics and the stupidity of certain people in this state, but generally it's not as bad as you're making it out to be in this particular situation. C'mon, the kid that lost all the SSNs was a DeVry student working for an incompetent fool. The guy that needed the royal beatdown was his supervisor, but obviously that never happened because of politics. Or maybe I'm just jaded on the incredibly poor general leadership of the state that we've had for the past 8 years... hopefully Strickland will be different.
/. bio, above) about the lack of choices in Cable TV + Internet services due to pricing and terms of service that are ALL expensive, regardless of which provider you want to have service through.
In any case, this order looks like it simply gives the state the authority to approve and regulate Time Warner's operations state-wide, which IS good for prices because Time Warner won't have to pay as much in attorney fees going before every freakin' municipality's commerce boards. Sure the risk is there for a crushing blow to open competition in the Cable TV marketplace, but I just wrote on my blog (see my
P.S. Keep in mind that Time Warner still operates largely as a bunch of independent franchises (hence the "win" for them to be regulated state-wide as one entity) which means potentially less quality of service because each franchise will operate differently. (In Columbus, for instance, installation appointments with Time Warner would have made me wait 2 weeks to get service - back in Jan. 2005, but with Wide Open West I had a next-day appointment.)
Imeem is missing the point, but not because it doesn't understand the money to be made in representing the indie bands and singers who don't get recognized by the RIAA companies. In fact, their terms of service state that you have to have legal permissions to upload ANY content. In other words, unless you're an artist or the recording company, you can't upload music (legally, according to them) to their site. So yes, their site is crap compared to the ability of a true social network with the viral ability to promote any given indie music/video artist based on a small minority of rabid fans, but they do at least get the concept of allowing indie artists to promote their stuff via the Imeem site. Unfortunately, I don't think Imeem has the clout or the right following to act as a psuedo-bittorrent or -IRC service, which is what most college kids seem to be using these days to share their music and video content with one another. And here's the key reason that Imeem may not be very successful: the marketplace for recorded music has set its price for digital music and video: free.
Sure, we'll pay big bucks to also get cable, HD, DVRs, movie tickets, concert tickets, and swag from our favorite entertainers, but we (the consumers) are simply not willing to pay money to perform an activity that we can perform for ourselves with little to no additional investment. (burning a CD or DVD on our computers) iTunes is obviously an anamoly in the world of digital, online music, but that's because it is worth it to consumers to have not just the music, but also the DEVICE that makes listening to digital music ON THE GO easier than we could otherwise do for ourselves. And Apple has the iPod nice and locked up, unlike our computers which cannot be easily locked up by DRM - there are too many workarounds that don't require soddering teeny tiny parts together to do so.
Yes, but the author also noted that the "Fair Use" doctrine was murky water at times, and that the examples used were done so in the theoretical vein of exploring the maximum of copyright infringements that the "John" character undertook during his hypothetical day. There have been numerous "Fair Use" claims by music artists against other music artists which have consequently forced the secondary "mixing" music artist to rearrange their music and/or pay fines to take care of the problem they supposedly created by using another's copyrighted works without permission. So it's still a valid thing to contemplate. Granted, not a likely conclusion given that it's just a tattoo, but a theoretically important topic none-the-less.
Hasn't Slashdot seen its fair share of annoying, dubious enforcement of copyright by abusers of copyright law during the past 10 years? I think so. That's why this little tagline is at the bottom of every single page: "All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2007 SourceForge, Inc." Personally, I understand the theoretical usefulness of copyrights, but in today's society I think the current system of copyrights in America is not working in so many ways that we need to either scrap it all together or seriously overhaul the rules. (And with all of the other problems in the world today, why not just scrap it entirely and rebuild bits and pieces of it as needed over time?)
I have been reading and posting to Slashdot since at least 2001. I've posted 1,376 comments during those years. Slashdot mods have both lauded my postings and bitch-slapped them for complaining about the "rules" on Slashdot, ranting on Creationism vs. Evolution, the MS vs. Linux debate, and probably hundreds of other somewhat random topics. Sep. 11, 2001 was particularly memorable as this is where I too first learned about the awful events of that day. But it's also funny that this is the one site, that despite all the other newer and shinier sites out there (Digg) that come along from time to time, keeps me coming back for more. There IS discussion on this site, not just adolescent e-penis boasting like you find on sites like Kuroshin or Digg. Why? Because this site found its nitch early on, and never strayed. I have found over these past 6 years, that all of my favorite brick-and-mortar entities, be they church, shopping, or entertainment, also do the same: they cater to exactly their nitch and never stray from it. So keep up the hard work, gang, and don't stray!
BTW, corporate entities: many if not all of my favorite technology things that I have bought over the years were in one way or another promoted by others on Slashdot at some point in time, I looked into their recommendations, and decided to buy the technology for myself. By no means does this mean that I WANT comment spam from corporate shills - I most certainly will see such fraudulent shilling and resent all the more your product... but if you produce a good product and your customers appreciate your efforts enough to mention the product on Slashdot, WITHOUT compensation for doing so, then you're doing the RIGHT THINGS and should keep it up! A short list of things I've used based on customer recommendations on Slashdot:
Godaddy
Fastmail
nVidia graphics cards
Linux - Mandrake first, and now Ubuntu (love it!)
O'Reilly books
Edward R. Tufte's books
Firefox
iPods
and a host of other stuff that I've recommended to friends and family as well
In theory, yes, but in reality, no. The real point is to knock a tooth or two out of a giant in the industry with expensive, time-wasting resources defending a lawsuit which basically enhances the competition's position in the industry since they are not a part of the expensive legal proceedings. That's probably not a written rule, or maybe not even an intention of the laws that allow class-action lawsuits (IANAL so I don't really know), but it still hurts Comcast. And no, there won't be much learning going on from such lawsuits, but at least Comcast won't get to continue to use their buying power as effectively to squash competitors (including municipalities) who decide to NOT filter the bandwidth they offer to their customers.
And if such a lawsuit were to be brought and get heard and the little guy wins, then that would be a warning shot over the bow of the other mega-corps like Verizon and AT&T to not overstep their bounds with their anti-net-neutrality schemes. It would be nice to see this go to a class-action lawsuit that begins making its way through the courts just as the net-neutrality legislation is getting discussed... muddy waters are good for the Internet sometimes.
OK, so the Bible is pretty clear on "unhealthy behavior", i.e. 'sin' - don't do it. But what this 'Mr. Drexler' from rural Minnesota is neglecting is the fact that it's not those three things that constitute the greatest sins. There is no greatest sin according to the Bible, because all sin is simply that: sin. If playing Halo leads a child (or adult) to increased narcissistic behavior in which their life is centered around pleasing themselves outside of the 4 walls of the church building - even if through video games instead of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll - then it's still sin. And is this really offering the same kind of "community" and "fellowship" that Christ offers to us? I don't think so. Christ's message was one of love and one singular way to experience His love - believe in His gift of eternal salvation through His death on the cross and love Him above all else. Are these kids getting loved, or just marketed to by playing Halo at the church building? Yes, I'm sure some of that is going on, but you don't NEED Halo in order to show a kid, or an adult, true love and caring for them as a person. In fact, they don't even need to be at a church building because the community of Christ should not be centered around showing up to events at some building; it should be about every single day of our lives having others who share in our daily struggles and love Christ and others and are actively seeking to show that love daily - not just at the church building!
Using a video game that is 1) rated 'M', and 2) is being used as marketing to get kids just to show up at church is in my mind a dubious justification for allowing it in church - ESPECIALLY when the parents (as clueless as they may be) are unaware of the rating of the game. As one of the other points made in the article pointed out: lots of teenage boys would show up to church if alcohol and pr0n were easily available, but that doesn't make it right or even legal in most states!
In summary, catering to the narcissism of today's youth just to get them through the doors of a church is not helping anyone - especially churches. It's only further exasperating the problem of kids (and adults!) becoming more and more closed off and selfish individuals in our society.
I speak as a Christian who plays CSS:Source from time to time (in the comfort of my own home), enjoys playing video games in general, reads slashdot semi-regularly, and still thinks it's every individual's and every individual parent's right to decide what types of video games they should and should not be playing, but thinks that fellow Christians should not be helping children dangle their feet in the world of violent video games just to show that they're "cool" too.