Until there are regulations requiring companies to publish what they know about their actual (measured, not predicted) signal strengths, consumers cannot base their purchasing decisions on the single most-important criterion: will the phone work.
Sure, Verizon knows if I can hear them now, but they won't show me the map.
This is a load of crap. This just 10 extremely heavily populated places!!!!!
Exactly. Mod parent up.
The only thing this survey is good for is generating a list of loctions in Chicago for conducting a real survey like this. For each of the following locations, please rate:
a. How often do you make/recieve calls in this location? (1=never, 2=less than other locations, 3=same as other locations, 4=more than other locations, 5=daily)
b. How often do your calls drop in this location? (1=never dropped, 2=less than other locations, 3=same as other locations, 4=more than other locations, 5=almost always dropped)
Obligatory Wrath of Kahn quote: "Logic? My god, the man's talking about logic! We're talking about universal armageddon! You green-blooded, inhuman--"
Paper sizes aren't logical. They're like any other unit of measurement: they just happen. What kind of person would "design" a unit of measurement?! Next thing, you'll be telling me that I have to align the length of my wagon axel to 1,650,763.73 wave-lengths of the orange-red spectrum of krypton-86.
Well they have the right to use whatever misleading numbers they want. Um, no they don't. It's called fraud. People are free to try to deceive me by half-truths. I am free to distrust them, ridicule them, deride them, refuse them my assistance, and to work to convince others (friends, congressmen, etc.) to do the same.
It's an amazing mindset: "I deserve to enjoy my past revenues plus a growth rate -- if for any reason I don't receive that, then some one must be stealing from me."
This time, they didn't get their revenues because their retailers learned not to purchase inventory in excess of (rising) demand. Last time, people decreased entertainment spending and bought less in a bad economy. Next time, online download sales (for which they're paid) will have risen so high that they visibly reduce CD sales.
No matter what happens, they blame "piracy". They might as well just call it "witchcraft" and start trying people for practicing black magic. Oh wait, . . .
That might be true for a small number of of obsessed geeks but the majority of people dont give a monkeys about who controls software. To them its just another product and their interest ends as soon as they have finished reading their email or their computer controlled car tells them it needs an oil change.
The narod cares about the results. They care:
When their car records their driving habits and they get sued after an accident.
When they can't skip the previews/ads at the beginning of their DVDs.
When they can't afford a new computer (due to licensing fees).
When they can't get their TV hooked up right. (That is, their TV, DVD player, stereo, VCR, PVR, and computer refuse to cooperate with each other even when a 14-year-old with a PhD properly cables them together.)
When the music they bought online won't let itself be played on their portable player.
When their email provider starts putting ads in their email.
When their office administrator locks down their desktop.
When the library's SurfNanny blocks their access to a heath website or political website.
When their new "audio disc" (not CD) locks their iMac shut.
When they're forced to use Powerpoint for their presentation at a conference.
etc.
They know that they don't like some one else controlling their lives. Thing is, they usually don't get that the control of their lives is being exercised through control of software.
If the article had asked any trained researcher how they would find an answer, the response would have been something like this:
1. Try a free topic-specific database if you know one (or a book if it's sitting next to you). 2. Try a free general purpose search engine (e.g. Google). 3. Try a pay version of 1 or 2 (e.g. Lexis-Nexis). 4. Call an expert or person with access to references. 5. Go find a free reference (e.g. at a library). 6. Go buy a reference (e.g. at a bookstore). 7. Commission a report / hire an expert. 8. Perform independent research yourself.
Doing research is just one more instance of finding the traditional balance between fast, accurate, and cheap -- choose two. Of course you start with Google or something like it. (Free search engines have the bonus of being usable almost untrained.) A more interesting question than the one the article asked is: How often can Google get you a sufficient answer?
20 minutes to get to the library, plus other miscountings. For example, Question 3 reports a library time of 1min 45sec to search newspapers and a dictionary of quotations for the quote. Not possible. Likewise, the 1:20 library time reported for Question 6 is highly unlikely; even trained researchers don't know where the library keeps a 20-year history of the olymipcs.
A serious methodology for comparing research methods? 1. Place a trained researcher in his office. 2. Select method of research and a question. 3. Present method and quetion to researcher. Start stopwatch. 4. When research presents answer, stop stopwatch. 5. Repeat steps 1-3 until all questions are exhausted. 6. Evaluate correctness of answers.
Beware of the bias introduced when the researcher is asked to answer a question by a second method; knowledge of the answer from the first method will improve the speed and accuracy of the second and result. (Using multiple researchers is better, but cost of the study rises quickly.)
Kudos to the article, however, for selecting both questions that were current and those that pre-date the web.
Article: "Scientists claim to have found the lost city of Atlantis, off the coast of Cyprus. They apparently have...
Parent: First of all "scientists..." in the parent is not accurate.... he's only one person.
I love the way news stories (maybe accidentally, but maybe not) suggest that ALL people have done something. Often, it creates something even more misleading than this article was. Consider:
"Scientists dismiss global warming theory"
"Athletes took performance-enhancing drugs"
"Politicians seek to raise taxes"
"Americans are eager for war"
"Priests..."
Couldn't they take the time to say, "A team lead by $name from $place claims to have $announcement..."? I understand the need for brevity in headlines, but...
The online banking model depends on verifying the identity of the transactor. And then recording the identity with the transaction.
Voting models separate the cast vote from the identity of the voter. Looking at a potentially fraudulent electronic vote cast over a network, how can its authenticity be verified?
Re:Wait... so you're telling me...
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 1
You don't see scientists getting up in arms about movies like The Core, or Armageddon so why are they all defensive about this one?
Climate change / global warming is a hot policy topic. This is why people care. The scenarios in Armageddon and The Core are not. Governmental energy policy and environmental policy involve big $$. Anything that can be seen as supporting or detracting from a theory of climate change gets debated.
Bruce Schneier wrote: My argument . . . centers around the notion that security must be evaluated not based on how it works, but on how it fails.
The first problem is the card itself. No matter how unforgeable we make it, it will be forged.... And even if we could guarantee that everyone who issued national ID cards couldn't be bribed, initial cardholder identity would be determined by other identity documents... all of which would be easier to forge.
Looking at the failure mode of the current hodge-podge of IDs in the U.S., we see that the current system is only as secure as the weakest state ID. This is true both as to the forgeability of the ID itself and as to the level of other documentation required to acquire it.
This situation does not provide a reason for preferring the current hodge-podge over a national ID. To the contrary, a national ID is more secure than the current system if (a) the new ID is made less forgeable than the weakest current ID and (b) the new ID requires more establishing documentation to acquire than the current weakest current ID.
The current diversity of IDs and their associated databases does not add to security because a forger need only defeat one such ID to win. That is, where a national ID would present a single point of complete failure, the current diversity presents many points of complete failure. Surely, it is easier to defend one system than dozens or hundreds.
Of course a national ID cannot be made perfectly unforgeable. However, it would be more secure. Whether the increased security costs too much in individual liberty is another question entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
Until there are regulations requiring companies to publish what they know about their actual (measured, not predicted) signal strengths, consumers cannot base their purchasing decisions on the single most-important criterion: will the phone work.
Sure, Verizon knows if I can hear them now, but they won't show me the map.
Exactly. Mod parent up.
The only thing this survey is good for is generating a list of loctions in Chicago for conducting a real survey like this. For each of the following locations, please rate:
a. How often do you make/recieve calls in this location? (1=never, 2=less than other locations, 3=same as other locations, 4=more than other locations, 5=daily)
b. How often do your calls drop in this location? (1=never dropped, 2=less than other locations, 3=same as other locations, 4=more than other locations, 5=almost always dropped)
Star Trek has been formulaic ever since TNG hit the screens.
Yes, because [sarcasm] the TOS episodes weren't formulaic at all. [/sarcasm]
Audentes Fortuna Juvat
Fortune Favors the Bold
Either would be fine, but on the same patch? No. We can either be grandiose or common, not both.
Futurama - Christopher Tyng
Right you are. Elfman = Simpsons, of course.
WTF is wrong with "awfully vague?" It seems to work for . . . bogus legislation.
Judges are less than fond of "vague". Some variant of "start making sense or get out" is heard fairly often.
Legislators OTOH find "vague" to be highly useful in trying to please more of the peopl^H^H^H^H^H contributors more of the time.
Raistlin looked down at her. In the gully dwarf's hand was a dead, very dead rat.
--Way too many RPGs.
The Enterprise theme song is nice, to be sure, but my vote goes to Firefly.
Babylon 5 - Christopher Franke
Battlestar Galactica - Stu Phillips
Buck Rogers - Stu Phillips
Doctor Who - Ron Grainer
Farscape - SubVision
Firefly - Josh Whedon
Futurama - Danny Elfman
Red Dwarf - Howard Goodall
ST:DS9 - Dennis McCarthy
ST:Enterprise - Diane Warren
ST:TOS - Alexander Courage
Stargate - David Arnold & Joel Goldsmith
I Wanna Be a Cowboy Neal - Boys Don't Cry
Obligatory Wrath of Kahn quote: "Logic? My god, the man's talking about logic! We're talking about universal armageddon! You green-blooded, inhuman--"
Paper sizes aren't logical. They're like any other unit of measurement: they just happen. What kind of person would "design" a unit of measurement?! Next thing, you'll be telling me that I have to align the length of my wagon axel to 1,650,763.73 wave-lengths of the orange-red spectrum of krypton-86.
Well they have the right to use whatever misleading numbers they want.
Um, no they don't. It's called fraud.
People are free to try to deceive me by half-truths. I am free to distrust them, ridicule them, deride them, refuse them my assistance, and to work to convince others (friends, congressmen, etc.) to do the same.
It's an amazing mindset: "I deserve to enjoy my past revenues plus a growth rate -- if for any reason I don't receive that, then some one must be stealing from me."
This time, they didn't get their revenues because their retailers learned not to purchase inventory in excess of (rising) demand. Last time, people decreased entertainment spending and bought less in a bad economy. Next time, online download sales (for which they're paid) will have risen so high that they visibly reduce CD sales.
No matter what happens, they blame "piracy". They might as well just call it "witchcraft" and start trying people for practicing black magic. Oh wait, . . .
> There are 2 ways to get music, buy and and steal it
No, there are 3 ways: Buy it, Steal It or Copy It
Where along the line did we forget Make It?
For a second there, I was under the impression that this was a study on the intelligence of humans.
It is.
1. Procedure: place humans in garden; give humans knowledge.
2. Observation: humans obscure sunlight.
3. Conclusion: ??
4. Profit!!
...DMCA originator Orrin Hatch [] so far this year has taken over $157,000 from the TV/Music/Movies industry
And that's when it starts to get really wierd. Guess who contributed $4500 to Mr. Boucher?
The narod cares about the results. They care:
When their car records their driving habits and they get sued after an accident.
When they can't skip the previews/ads at the beginning of their DVDs.
When they can't afford a new computer (due to licensing fees).
When they can't get their TV hooked up right. (That is, their TV, DVD player, stereo, VCR, PVR, and computer refuse to cooperate with each other even when a 14-year-old with a PhD properly cables them together.)
When the music they bought online won't let itself be played on their portable player.
When their email provider starts putting ads in their email.
When their office administrator locks down their desktop.
When the library's SurfNanny blocks their access to a heath website or political website.
When their new "audio disc" (not CD) locks their iMac shut.
When they're forced to use Powerpoint for their presentation at a conference.
etc.
They know that they don't like some one else controlling their lives. Thing is, they usually don't get that the control of their lives is being exercised through control of software.
If the article had asked any trained researcher how they would find an answer, the response would have been something like this:
1. Try a free topic-specific database if you know one (or a book if it's sitting next to you).
2. Try a free general purpose search engine (e.g. Google).
3. Try a pay version of 1 or 2 (e.g. Lexis-Nexis).
4. Call an expert or person with access to references.
5. Go find a free reference (e.g. at a library).
6. Go buy a reference (e.g. at a bookstore).
7. Commission a report / hire an expert.
8. Perform independent research yourself.
Doing research is just one more instance of finding the traditional balance between fast, accurate, and cheap -- choose two. Of course you start with Google or something like it. (Free search engines have the bonus of being usable almost untrained.) A more interesting question than the one the article asked is:
How often can Google get you a sufficient answer?
20 minutes to get to the library, plus other miscountings. For example, Question 3 reports a library time of 1min 45sec to search newspapers and a dictionary of quotations for the quote. Not possible. Likewise, the 1:20 library time reported for Question 6 is highly unlikely; even trained researchers don't know where the library keeps a 20-year history of the olymipcs.
A serious methodology for comparing research methods?
1. Place a trained researcher in his office.
2. Select method of research and a question.
3. Present method and quetion to researcher. Start stopwatch.
4. When research presents answer, stop stopwatch.
5. Repeat steps 1-3 until all questions are exhausted.
6. Evaluate correctness of answers.
Beware of the bias introduced when the researcher is asked to answer a question by a second method; knowledge of the answer from the first method will improve the speed and accuracy of the second and result. (Using multiple researchers is better, but cost of the study rises quickly.)
Kudos to the article, however, for selecting both questions that were current and those that pre-date the web.
Gamers won't play what they don't like. They won't buy what they don't play. Publishers will obey their sales data. QED.
Parent: First of all "scientists..." in the parent is not accurate.
I love the way news stories (maybe accidentally, but maybe not) suggest that ALL people have done something. Often, it creates something even more misleading than this article was. Consider:
"Scientists dismiss global warming theory"
"Athletes took performance-enhancing drugs"
"Politicians seek to raise taxes"
"Americans are eager for war"
"Priests ..."
...
Couldn't they take the time to say, "A team lead by $name from $place claims to have $announcement..."? I understand the need for brevity in headlines, but
However, the *real* question is, what data could they turn over, if requested- i.e. what do they collect, and what pre-emptive measures do they take
The FAQ knows. What kind of logging does Slashdot do with regard to its readers? Plus, all the posted comments and moderations are retained.
The online banking model depends on verifying the identity of the transactor. And then recording the identity with the transaction.
Voting models separate the cast vote from the identity of the voter. Looking at a potentially fraudulent electronic vote cast over a network, how can its authenticity be verified?
You don't see scientists getting up in arms about movies like The Core, or Armageddon so why are they all defensive about this one?
Climate change / global warming is a hot policy topic. This is why people care. The scenarios in Armageddon and The Core are not. Governmental energy policy and environmental policy involve big $$. Anything that can be seen as supporting or detracting from a theory of climate change gets debated.
Bruce Schneier wrote: My argument . . . centers around the notion that security must be evaluated not based on how it works, but on how it fails.
... And even if we could guarantee that everyone who issued national ID cards couldn't be bribed, initial cardholder identity would be determined by other identity documents... all of which would be easier to forge.
The first problem is the card itself. No matter how unforgeable we make it, it will be forged.
Looking at the failure mode of the current hodge-podge of IDs in the U.S., we see that the current system is only as secure as the weakest state ID. This is true both as to the forgeability of the ID itself and as to the level of other documentation required to acquire it.
This situation does not provide a reason for preferring the current hodge-podge over a national ID. To the contrary, a national ID is more secure than the current system if (a) the new ID is made less forgeable than the weakest current ID and (b) the new ID requires more establishing documentation to acquire than the current weakest current ID.
The current diversity of IDs and their associated databases does not add to security because a forger need only defeat one such ID to win. That is, where a national ID would present a single point of complete failure, the current diversity presents many points of complete failure. Surely, it is easier to defend one system than dozens or hundreds.
Of course a national ID cannot be made perfectly unforgeable. However, it would be more secure. Whether the increased security costs too much in individual liberty is another question entirely.
Noooooo! It's not fair. My 2000-inch TV was installed this morning. I haven't even been home to see it yet.