From TFA, and the linked lawsuit: - She was required to keep the phone on her person (and turned on) 24/7 to handle customer calls. - Her manager was using the app to track her location during personal time.
Even if it was a company owned phone, and even if she were allowed to turn it off, don't you find that second point significantly creepy enough to warrant a lawsuit?!?! IMHO, it's creepy enough to warrant criminal charges.
They should be allowed to know where their property is. She has no case.
Even if that is the case, that is not what they were using the functionality for.
From the article: "Management never made mention of mileage. They would tell her co-workers and her of their driving speed, roads taken, and time spent at customer locations. Her manager made it clear that he was using the program to continuously monitor her, during company as well as personal time." (emphasis mine)
They were not using the GPS functionality to track the phone. They were using it to track employees both on and off-work.
This is creepy as heck. IMHO, there should be criminal laws against this sort of behavior. This should be a criminal case her manager, not a civil one against the company.
Did you even study statistics? If you want to prove it's not a warp drive you need to do an experiment where it being a warp drive is the null hypothesis.
You are mistaken about what the null hypothesis is. The null hypothesis says there is no relationship between two phenomena. i.e. in this case, that the "device" has no relationship to thrust
You would never try to prove that the thing is NOT a warp drive. You cannot prove a negative assertion. The proper experiment would be to prove it is a warp drive (i.e. to reject the null hypothesis).
Plenty of good science has been done, it's not conclusive yet, you must imagine good science does everything in one fell swoop and takes no time or budget. I guess you didn't study science either.
No, good science will have been "done" when they actually publish their results, including experimental setup, raw data, statistical analysis, etc. and these results are peer reviewed.
What they have done so far is take some very initial observations that are currently unexplained, and decide to go ahead and release these results to the media. That is not "good" science, especially given that every single person in that lab knows damn well it is extremely unlikely this is some magical new form of propulsion.
Wake me up when you don't summarize your position with an appeal to authority.
That is not what "appeal to authority" means. An appeal to authority would be "Dan McCleese says this thing is a warp drive, and he's really smart! It must be a warp drive!"
My appeal is to have someone else independently verify their results. Requiring JPL was just a bit of facetiousness. What I would really want is independent verification by a number of other labs/researchers.
Good science takes time and proper diligence. Releasing unverified "observations" to the media for hype does science a disservice.
No. These tests prove that the device is real, and that it produces force.
No, they didn't.
The tests so far have proven that in certain experimental circumstances readings are observed that might indicate a micro-force being generated by the device
They have not yet proven: 1) The device is actually causing the force 2) The readings are correct (e.g. measuring devices calibrated correctly) 3) The readings are not the result of some other factor they are failing to take account of (e.g. Earth's magnetic field).
To establish these things they first need to: a) Publish their experimental setup, testing methodology and analysis b) Have someone else replicate that setup "cleanly" (No, the Chinese experiment does not count)
Dozens of additional experiments from numerous labs will be required to verify this. As it is, I would be extremely surprised if this turned out to be something other than: a) Experimental error or b) Fraud
The "results" they have "released" so far are extremely preliminary. They have not yet been published, nor peer reviewed. Claiming that this device is real is similar to the scientific rigour of claiming Bigfoot is real on the basis of some fuzzy photographs.
Better would be: Eagleworks is like a really boring X-Files version of scientific investigation. They investigate very fringe science, test it under controlled condition, but alas, it never turns out to be something extraordinary.
My issue with them isn't that they do bad science as much as that they keep releasing this crazy fringe stuff to the media before finalizing experimental testing/peer review. This gets the public all hot and bothered about how NASA is going to solve interstellar travel shortly...but then nothing.
Unfortunately, this also gets in the way of other scientific results as the media/public start seeing Science as the boy who cries wolf but never sees a wolf.
Yes, this probably has to do with continued funding / publicity / etc, but even so, I believe it does more harm than good. Publish actual results. Don't publish "we're not sure what this is (or even if it's not just experimental error), so it might be a warp drive!"
They haven't even completed the first round of formal experiments. You know, the kind with scientific write-ups and peer review of experimental setup and such.
So far there have been some tiny anomalous observations that may or may not be due to a force we don't understand. They are far more likely due to a force that we understand perfectly, but have failed to take into account while making the observations.
NASA hasn't published anything definitive on this. The have (quite stupidly, IMHO) given some of their initial results to the press, who (of course) blew the story up beyond any sensible measure.
The next thing we will likely see is a better experimental setup at higher power, which will likely explain the completely conventional reasons we see these results. These will be published, and not picked up by the press (cause it's "boring"), and in a few years people will wonder "whatever happened to that EmDrive thing?" Conspiracy nuts will claim government cover-up, illuminati, stolen by bigfoot, etc.
it's definitely premature to declare the device to not be a warp drive.
No it isn't premature. That's the null hypothesis.
Your argument is like saying "it's definitely premature to declare the pen sitting on my desk to not be a warp drive."
It is premature to declare that this device does anything. Once some good science has been done and shown some relevant results, then we can start thinking about changing our opinion of this device. So far, no good science has been done.
Eagleworks is hardly the bastion of scientific accuracy and non-hypebole. Wake me up when JPL duplicates their results.
You can only socialize production, which means the generation of value
By that argument, you can't socialize medicine either.
You could claim that medicine produces value by preventing disease, but someone could similarly claim that a strong military produces value by preventing foreign aggression.
I'm not saying I would argue that way, just that valid arguments exist in favor of that position.
For Tim Cook she compares completely different circumstances (doing business with a company that has poor human rights vs enacting legislation to restrict human rights).
For Clinton, she gives no evidence whatsoever that receiving money from these countries has influenced the Clinton Foundation's policies in any detrimental way towards women.
This is just typical political grandstanding and nonsense.
So working for a regulatory agency is now a Men in Black sort of thing? "This is the last suit you'll ever wear"
So if they are ever laid off / fired / quit the regulatory job, then what? Go work flipping burgers?
IMHO, the heads of regulatory organizations should be elected officials with a minimum qualification requirement. That way they are more beholden to voters than to either government pressure or corporate lobbyists (in theory).
Humans have been phase-locked to the mean solar day for just over 200 out of the last 6 million years.
Given that human-like species only evolved ~3 million years ago, and modern homo sapiens ~100,000 years ago, your choice of timeline seems strange. Not that it has anything to do with DST, just sayin'
Majority of what population? People living north of the 49th? I doubt it.
I live in Canada, and most of the Canadians I know also think DST is a bad idea.
Bruce's thesis is that if spy agencies deliberately allow for weakened security infrastructure so they can monitor communications, then the enemy can make use of those weak points. That there is no way to just let the "good guys hack".
"the NSA has two missions...To secure the computing infrastructure of the US against foreign espionage, and to provide espionage on foreign communication." If they allow hacks to propagate so they can spy, then communication is not secure. (i.e. they fail the first part of their mission) If communication is secure, then they cannot spy (i.e. they fail the second part of their mission)
The difference between this issue and military/sports metaphors is that in this case both sides make use of the exact same defensive tools, and those tools could be perfected such that it becomes unreasonably difficult to mount any sort of offense.
There is so much wrong with the study, I can hardly decide where to begin...
1) They used a single project of 4500 lines of code. That's quite small. The project may have been fairly easy to analyze/debug/maintain even if the code quality is crap.
2) No objective measure was given of the "bad code smells" identified in the selected project.
3) It is possible they did a very bad job refactoring the code base. In addition to refactoring, they should have had other software professionals evaluate whether the "refactored" code was more maintainable in order to control for this.
4) There is no indication that they controlled for variability in the student's skill sets. The students who worked on the original code may have been much better students than those that worked on the refactored code.
5) The student group sizes were far too small to get meaningful results.
6) The "quiz" to determine analyzability consisted of 15 questions. This is far too small a size to determine how analyzable the code is.
7) The mean analyzability scores were 7 vs 6.63. This suggests the student's in both sets may have poor understanding of the code bases.
8) 10 refactoring techniques were not chosen based on applicability to the system in question, but were instead chosen based on previous studies that ranked the impact of refactoring on code quality. i.e. they treated refactoring as a "silver bullet" rather than deciding what types of refactoring were most applicable to the project in question.
There are so many flaws in the methodology that the results are meaningless. The only reason to waste time with this sort of nonsense is publicity.
Why are they not allowed to charge for their work when the baker can?
Nobody is saying they shouldn't be allowed to. Heck, the licensing of most open source stuff explicitly allows you to charge for distribution.
What people are saying is they are being hypocrites for doing so.
Basically, to use your analogy: The coal miner mined the coal for free The generator generated electricity for free The water gatherer filtered the water for free The farmer grew the grain for free The baker baked the bread for free The waiter served the bread for free
Now these asshats spread a bit of butter on the bread and feel they should be compensated for their efforts, even though everyone else did most of the work for free. They don't seem to have felt any There is also no indication that the Elementary OS group intend to share any funds they receive with the people who did most of the work to provide their product.
Yes, they are within their rights to ask for money. They are still blatant hypocrites for doing so.
Interesting that "Starting a War" does not appear in that section.
That's just a perk of the $1000 reward level:
"Get all of the previous rewards and we will give you the opportunity to choose a payload to put in the drone as well (as long as the weight and size fit the constraints)!"
Just cough up $1000, and ask they drop off a copy of "The Interview" in Pyongyang. That will likely start a war.
Not because it was disrespectful towards Kim Jong Un, but because it was such a godawful terrible movie.
Showing these murders serves as a gut punch to the free world. It enables us to have a visceral reaction to this brutality,
And this is exactly why the video should not be shown or viewed. Our reaction to terrorism should NOT be an emotional one, for a number of reasons:
1) It screws with our understanding of how likely a situation is to occur. People "feel" that their children are more in danger of being abducted now than 20 years ago precisely be because there is more graphic reporting of abductions, not because more abductions occur. Similarly, graphic evidence of violence influences our perception of how likely that violence is to occur.
2) It's screws with how we respond to such incidents. Juries that are presented graphic imagery of a murder are far more likely to convict than those who are not, even if the crimes are identical. Citation
3) It gives our government far too much power. The reason so many draconian measures were easily passed post-9/11 is EXACTLY because it had a massive emotional reaction from the people. Our reaction should be based on reason, not a our "visceral reaction to brutality".
I'm not worried about Fox doing ISIS's work for them. I'm worried about them influencing the militant "let's glass the whole middle east" segment of America.
Ahhh...so you only agree with government regulation when it supports your own agenda...I see.
That's the problem I have with many Libertarians (the fucktard variety or other). Rather than just state "these are the areas we believe should be regulated, and these not", they often scream nosily about any regulation when it is something they disagree with and just remain silent if it is something they support.
It'd be nice if there was an actual position they took that described how they expect the government to function that was something other than "government bad. less regulation good. free markets good. deficits bad".
Never let facts stand in the way of demonizing your political enemies.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm guessing the joke is that he only ever logs in once since he doesn't save the private key anywhere?
In any case, needs a "not particularly funny" mod.
I have fake passwords on a post-it note stuck to my monitor.
My REAL passwords are on a post-it note stuck to the bottom of my keyboard.
You fools with your single layer of misdirection, thinking it will keep you safe!
Please RTFA before posting. Seriously.
From TFA, and the linked lawsuit:
- She was required to keep the phone on her person (and turned on) 24/7 to handle customer calls.
- Her manager was using the app to track her location during personal time.
Even if it was a company owned phone, and even if she were allowed to turn it off, don't you find that second point significantly creepy enough to warrant a lawsuit?!?! IMHO, it's creepy enough to warrant criminal charges.
Her employer required her to use the company issued phone, and to have it on 24/7 (from the lawsuit).
Your "solution" would result in the exact same thing hers did: termination.
If the allegations are true, it sounds like both her manager and CEO were douchebags. And stupid ones at that.
Even if that is the case, that is not what they were using the functionality for.
From the article:
"Management never made mention of mileage. They would tell her co-workers and her of their driving speed, roads taken, and time spent at customer locations. Her manager made it clear that he was using the program to continuously monitor her, during company as well as personal time." (emphasis mine)
They were not using the GPS functionality to track the phone. They were using it to track employees both on and off-work.
This is creepy as heck. IMHO, there should be criminal laws against this sort of behavior. This should be a criminal case her manager, not a civil one against the company.
You are mistaken about what the null hypothesis is. The null hypothesis says there is no relationship between two phenomena. i.e. in this case, that the "device" has no relationship to thrust
You would never try to prove that the thing is NOT a warp drive. You cannot prove a negative assertion. The proper experiment would be to prove it is a warp drive (i.e. to reject the null hypothesis).
A basic intro to all this can be found in the usual place.
No, good science will have been "done" when they actually publish their results, including experimental setup, raw data, statistical analysis, etc. and these results are peer reviewed.
What they have done so far is take some very initial observations that are currently unexplained, and decide to go ahead and release these results to the media. That is not "good" science, especially given that every single person in that lab knows damn well it is extremely unlikely this is some magical new form of propulsion.
That is not what "appeal to authority" means. An appeal to authority would be "Dan McCleese says this thing is a warp drive, and he's really smart! It must be a warp drive!"
My appeal is to have someone else independently verify their results. Requiring JPL was just a bit of facetiousness. What I would really want is independent verification by a number of other labs/researchers.
Good science takes time and proper diligence. Releasing unverified "observations" to the media for hype does science a disservice.
No, they didn't.
The tests so far have proven that in certain experimental circumstances readings are observed that might indicate a micro-force being generated by the device
They have not yet proven:
1) The device is actually causing the force
2) The readings are correct (e.g. measuring devices calibrated correctly)
3) The readings are not the result of some other factor they are failing to take account of (e.g. Earth's magnetic field).
To establish these things they first need to:
a) Publish their experimental setup, testing methodology and analysis
b) Have someone else replicate that setup "cleanly" (No, the Chinese experiment does not count)
Dozens of additional experiments from numerous labs will be required to verify this. As it is, I would be extremely surprised if this turned out to be something other than:
a) Experimental error
or
b) Fraud
The "results" they have "released" so far are extremely preliminary. They have not yet been published, nor peer reviewed. Claiming that this device is real is similar to the scientific rigour of claiming Bigfoot is real on the basis of some fuzzy photographs.
Actually, that last line is a little harsh.
Better would be:
Eagleworks is like a really boring X-Files version of scientific investigation. They investigate very fringe science, test it under controlled condition, but alas, it never turns out to be something extraordinary.
My issue with them isn't that they do bad science as much as that they keep releasing this crazy fringe stuff to the media before finalizing experimental testing/peer review. This gets the public all hot and bothered about how NASA is going to solve interstellar travel shortly...but then nothing.
Unfortunately, this also gets in the way of other scientific results as the media/public start seeing Science as the boy who cries wolf but never sees a wolf.
Yes, this probably has to do with continued funding / publicity / etc, but even so, I believe it does more harm than good. Publish actual results. Don't publish "we're not sure what this is (or even if it's not just experimental error), so it might be a warp drive!"
No, it won't.
They haven't even completed the first round of formal experiments. You know, the kind with scientific write-ups and peer review of experimental setup and such.
So far there have been some tiny anomalous observations that may or may not be due to a force we don't understand. They are far more likely due to a force that we understand perfectly, but have failed to take into account while making the observations.
NASA hasn't published anything definitive on this. The have (quite stupidly, IMHO) given some of their initial results to the press, who (of course) blew the story up beyond any sensible measure.
The next thing we will likely see is a better experimental setup at higher power, which will likely explain the completely conventional reasons we see these results. These will be published, and not picked up by the press (cause it's "boring"), and in a few years people will wonder "whatever happened to that EmDrive thing?" Conspiracy nuts will claim government cover-up, illuminati, stolen by bigfoot, etc.
No it isn't premature. That's the null hypothesis.
Your argument is like saying "it's definitely premature to declare the pen sitting on my desk to not be a warp drive."
It is premature to declare that this device does anything. Once some good science has been done and shown some relevant results, then we can start thinking about changing our opinion of this device. So far, no good science has been done.
Eagleworks is hardly the bastion of scientific accuracy and non-hypebole. Wake me up when JPL duplicates their results.
By that argument, you can't socialize medicine either.
You could claim that medicine produces value by preventing disease, but someone could similarly claim that a strong military produces value by preventing foreign aggression.
I'm not saying I would argue that way, just that valid arguments exist in favor of that position.
I'm from Canada...WTF is a private healthcare firm?
The Solar System is awash in water?!?!
That's the last straw. I'm gonna build an ark.
Anyone know where I can get a tape measure that measures in cubits?
Hypocrite.
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
For Tim Cook she compares completely different circumstances (doing business with a company that has poor human rights vs enacting legislation to restrict human rights).
For Clinton, she gives no evidence whatsoever that receiving money from these countries has influenced the Clinton Foundation's policies in any detrimental way towards women.
This is just typical political grandstanding and nonsense.
So working for a regulatory agency is now a Men in Black sort of thing? "This is the last suit you'll ever wear"
So if they are ever laid off / fired / quit the regulatory job, then what? Go work flipping burgers?
IMHO, the heads of regulatory organizations should be elected officials with a minimum qualification requirement. That way they are more beholden to voters than to either government pressure or corporate lobbyists (in theory).
Given that human-like species only evolved ~3 million years ago, and modern homo sapiens ~100,000 years ago, your choice of timeline seems strange. Not that it has anything to do with DST, just sayin'
I live in Canada, and most of the Canadians I know also think DST is a bad idea.
Unscientific, but still:
http://globalnews.ca/news/1868... - 79% of canadians against DST
https://www.onlineparty.ca/iss... - 60% of canadians against DST
Saskatchewan actually doesn't have DST anymore, they got rid of it in 1966, staying on Standard time year round.
Bruce's thesis is that if spy agencies deliberately allow for weakened security infrastructure so they can monitor communications, then the enemy can make use of those weak points. That there is no way to just let the "good guys hack".
"the NSA has two missions...To secure the computing infrastructure of the US against foreign espionage, and to provide espionage on foreign communication."
If they allow hacks to propagate so they can spy, then communication is not secure. (i.e. they fail the first part of their mission)
If communication is secure, then they cannot spy (i.e. they fail the second part of their mission)
The difference between this issue and military/sports metaphors is that in this case both sides make use of the exact same defensive tools, and those tools could be perfected such that it becomes unreasonably difficult to mount any sort of offense.
There is so much wrong with the study, I can hardly decide where to begin...
1) They used a single project of 4500 lines of code. That's quite small. The project may have been fairly easy to analyze/debug/maintain even if the code quality is crap.
2) No objective measure was given of the "bad code smells" identified in the selected project.
3) It is possible they did a very bad job refactoring the code base. In addition to refactoring, they should have had other software professionals evaluate whether the "refactored" code was more maintainable in order to control for this.
4) There is no indication that they controlled for variability in the student's skill sets. The students who worked on the original code may have been much better students than those that worked on the refactored code.
5) The student group sizes were far too small to get meaningful results.
6) The "quiz" to determine analyzability consisted of 15 questions. This is far too small a size to determine how analyzable the code is.
7) The mean analyzability scores were 7 vs 6.63. This suggests the student's in both sets may have poor understanding of the code bases.
8) 10 refactoring techniques were not chosen based on applicability to the system in question, but were instead chosen based on previous studies that ranked the impact of refactoring on code quality. i.e. they treated refactoring as a "silver bullet" rather than deciding what types of refactoring were most applicable to the project in question.
There are so many flaws in the methodology that the results are meaningless. The only reason to waste time with this sort of nonsense is publicity.
vive la revolution
(sorry, I couldn't help myself
Nobody is saying they shouldn't be allowed to. Heck, the licensing of most open source stuff explicitly allows you to charge for distribution.
What people are saying is they are being hypocrites for doing so.
Basically, to use your analogy:
The coal miner mined the coal for free
The generator generated electricity for free
The water gatherer filtered the water for free
The farmer grew the grain for free
The baker baked the bread for free
The waiter served the bread for free
Now these asshats spread a bit of butter on the bread and feel they should be compensated for their efforts, even though everyone else did most of the work for free. They don't seem to have felt any There is also no indication that the Elementary OS group intend to share any funds they receive with the people who did most of the work to provide their product.
Yes, they are within their rights to ask for money. They are still blatant hypocrites for doing so.
That's just a perk of the $1000 reward level:
"Get all of the previous rewards and we will give you the opportunity to choose a payload to put in the drone as well (as long as the weight and size fit the constraints)!"
Just cough up $1000, and ask they drop off a copy of "The Interview" in Pyongyang. That will likely start a war.
Not because it was disrespectful towards Kim Jong Un, but because it was such a godawful terrible movie.
And this is exactly why the video should not be shown or viewed. Our reaction to terrorism should NOT be an emotional one, for a number of reasons:
1) It screws with our understanding of how likely a situation is to occur. People "feel" that their children are more in danger of being abducted now than 20 years ago precisely be because there is more graphic reporting of abductions, not because more abductions occur. Similarly, graphic evidence of violence influences our perception of how likely that violence is to occur.
2) It's screws with how we respond to such incidents. Juries that are presented graphic imagery of a murder are far more likely to convict than those who are not, even if the crimes are identical. Citation
3) It gives our government far too much power. The reason so many draconian measures were easily passed post-9/11 is EXACTLY because it had a massive emotional reaction from the people. Our reaction should be based on reason, not a our "visceral reaction to brutality".
I'm not worried about Fox doing ISIS's work for them. I'm worried about them influencing the militant "let's glass the whole middle east" segment of America.
Hey, congressmen are expensive!
Ahhh...so you only agree with government regulation when it supports your own agenda...I see.
That's the problem I have with many Libertarians (the fucktard variety or other). Rather than just state "these are the areas we believe should be regulated, and these not", they often scream nosily about any regulation when it is something they disagree with and just remain silent if it is something they support.
It'd be nice if there was an actual position they took that described how they expect the government to function that was something other than "government bad. less regulation good. free markets good. deficits bad".
Is that intentionally ironic?
That was easy!