This isn't as easy as it sounds - you have to be able to trace who the spy/mal/adware sells to. And then who they sell to. And so on. Following the trail so that you NEVER patronize these is pretty tough.
But this is how activist groups work. Follow the money trail; it's not private information. I'm sure that whomever does this will be very popular (at least with a lot of ppl I know).
Its not hard for folks that know what they are doing to max out certain rating models on the upper or lower end. If above or below, a human *WILL* read it. For instance, one of the early models had a student quoting several lines of Haiku. That gave all but the creativity conglomerate nightmares and scored lower to the point a human had to look at it (don't even ask about the Poetry / Prose identifier that one of our collegues ended up writting in regards to these situations).
There are safe guards in place for educators of all ilk in their grading methods. Like anything, some will ignore these and get away with it. Students will cheat on tests, educators will skim papers and the world will be as it is. You can't provide a system that will catch everything, nor should you try.
Well, I'll agree that you probably know much more about teacher accountability than I, and your response is adequate. I guess I was mistaken in thinking (from the/. article as well as the news article) that this would FULLY replace human grading (gee, overstatements in/. story sumbissions? I'm shocked!).
By trying to build a system that tries to catch gaming of the system, you only encourage it to happen and you put the idea out that one might be able to out think the computer.
I will disagree with you on this; I think that you want to prevent gaming to a large enough degree that you can deal with the "fallout" (ie, no security method is perfect, but some are good enough). Having safeguards in place doesn't neccessarily make people complacent, it's the reliance on those safeguards that create complaceny. Whether your product is game-proof enough is a question that will only be answered after the paint dries, so to speak.
Do you stay awake at night fearing the misuse of hammers?
I'll say this: Hammers have been around for a long time; software based grading has not. I have concerns about anything that is new and complex enough that most people don't understand or are aware of it.
In the end, your description of the software/process has me more interested than scared in seeing it's implementation, but you'll have to excuse my scepticism for now.
The problem isn't getting students to write more, its getting educators to grade more. There isn't enough hours in the day. So this is where this type of software comes into play -- you assign 2x the work you can normally handle, and let the computers handle half of it. You don't tell the students which assignments will be computer rated. Thus the students grades got better. Not much better, but they were better than the students not using the system in the same types of classes.
I think the general problem is in implementation. If it works as you describe, that'd be great (and impressive). The problem is where the teacher assigns 2x the workload, then has the software grade ALL of it.... consistently.
Life has shown me that people are lazy. What kind of safeguards are in place? Is there process (hard-coded) that will eliminate this pathological use case I presented? If not, then I do think that even providing teachers/schools this service is going to cause more harm in the long term than good.
That being said, I do appreciate and admire the amount of work to get an AI (expert system, perhaps?) that achieves this work... but I fear the misuse.
Wouldn't the speed of the search be influenced mostly be the capabilities of your own computer?
Actually, the speed of the searches are usually influenced by the speed of the Algorithm. You can take a pretty basic full file/text search (ie, windows search) and run it on a 2ghz+ dual-opteron beast with superfast HD, and it will still lose to a 500mhz laptop doing search with a proper index and metadata lookup.
Add in AI stuff like predictive/speculative lookup and search/result cacheing, and the difference becomes night and day.
Re:Perhaps Google ought to consider this...
on
Google IPO Swami
·
· Score: 1
In short, it sounds like they believe Google will not be worth as much unless they take steps to make the management more "accountable" to the public.
Hint: the article linked to above is NON-NEWS. Why?
Google is using a auction based system to determine price, so if the investors think it's not worth much, they won't bid that high.
Google is only doing this to satisfy regulations about private companies that make over a certain amount (and to reward employees).
I trust Google more than TIAA-CREF...
Google is gaming the system, basically. They are using an auction to make sure that only they (and their initial investors) get rich off their fame and hard work, and the non-control thing is to prevent the "market" from screwing them. Imagine if Microsoft got ahold of a large portion of the shares... Google knows it'd be doomed at that point.
I do believe, however, that Americans tend to see technology as the solution for every problem in the world... and they trust technology to do just that!
Disclaimer: IAAA (I am an American). The problem is not that Americans tend to see tech solutions for everything, but instead that Americans are very "faith-based" which is a euphemism for "not logically rigorous". In this case, they "trust" computers and technology in general, like they "trust" Microsoft and the Government.
Being fed a healthy diet of misinformation [google cache]is no doubt part of the problem, I'm sure, but root causes also have to do with rampant consumerism, and a fairly apathetic voting public (probably due to a poorly implemented voting system).
If Apple caves (as I assume it will have to), then perhaps they will keep the $.99 pricing for at least the indie artists, which would create a pricing difference to show off some "value" artists, etc.
However, I doubt that's the case, as I think in general Apple wants to try to keep a "standard" price across the board.
A really great article, the only thing I wish they'd have really tested is battery life (although admitted that would be more like testing the notebooks themselves, not the processors).
Anyway, check out the comparison of the Athlon64 3200+ vs. the Banias (Pentium-M) 1400. Even scaling up the Banias's numbers by 21% (to give a 1.7Ghz max) and scaling the Athlon64's numbers down 21% (to 2700+), it looks like the A64M totally kicks ass... and this isn't even using 64bit code!
This could spell a possible problem for Intel who has held the crown of the "sweet spot": a powerful, battery conscious mobile processor (AthlonXPs don't step down well, and lets not even talk about the P4Ms)
Previously, only the VIA and Transmeta chips were in the same range of power consumption (actually much less) as the Pentium-M (which, tho I'm an AMD fan, is a pretty sweet processor). But those processors were pretty lightweight in the power department.
Now the Athlon64 mobiles, which already run at a cool 800Mhz when not taxed, combined with a voltage decrease, should create something that is at the same time powerful, yet battery-preserving.
Kicker: it's AMD64, so if you have 64bit OS and apps, it will really dominate.
Which probably indicates that AMD has resigned itself to !Dell for a decent period into the future.Note: Dell only exists where it does in the market, because they cut their costs by going all-Intel. I doubt Dell will kill their profits just to cater to a second source. Dell's agreement with Intel is kind of like Intel's agreement with Microsoft, a sort of mini-wintel, if you were. I doubt they'd do anything to sabotage that until and unless Intel either goes down in flames, or sets them up the bomb.
Wouldn't the true definition of outlier be if AMD were to sell some absurd percentage of chips (i.e. 95%)?
I think what the parent is saying is that even 51% is an "absurd" percentage.
And yes, even tho I'm an AMD fan (only buy AMD/VIA for home use), I'd say that unless we get a run of these kind of numbers, this is a statistical outlier.
I'd have to say that it's good we can show a clear example of a "good hacker"... and what's best is this is a local effort. Good will for white-hats will be best done at the grassroots level.
You can make a difference by doing good hackerly things and at the same time denouncing the draconian measures.
Great short story by Kurt Vonnegut. From the first few paragraphs:
Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
At least one of the books being reviewed is intended to be licensed under the GPL copyleft license. Also, some are released in LaTeX which is also open-source.
Which is to say, these laws are no ones fault but our own. We are really a democracy. All of us who live in the US are responsible for our country's actions and decisions.
I would totally agree for you except for Diebold and their un-auditable machines. Guess what, now even if you do vote, your vote might just be invalidated or part of a massive miscount.
Oh well, maybe I should just vote absentee ballot? Oh, did we have problems with those, too??
The seal is completely useless. $DIETY forbid these old-world dumbasses realize that physical prevention does nothing for a completely digital medium (unless they manage to infest your ID3 tag, too maybe).
I wonder if this wonderful new self-adhesive artwork will increase the price of CD/DVDs? Like oh, maybe a $1 a media? How about the Recording Industry^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCartel then decides that the Artist must pay this fee as part of the contract, also?
Downside to the airline powercord is that the only major airline to deploy the jacks throughout coach seating is USAir, and they went bankrupt (what's to happen is anyone's guess). The electrofuel's been losing some charge, but it's still rather sweet, giving me far more than I would ever need (even when I fly to europe).
Corporations ARE unnatural entities, but they have the same rights in our society as individuals. This is admittedly silly and ultimately unjust, but it is the law, until we change the law.
Hey, why don't you read the link? It's pretty clear that in our jurisprudence oriented legal system, the "law" concerning any specific thing may change at any given time based on new rulings. What the book says, probably more eloquently than me, is that the "corporations have first amendment rights" has simply been assumed, and not challenged in court. And hell, even if it is challenged and upheld, later rulings can weaken or reverse that position (ie: what pro-lifers right want to happen to RoeV.Wade). Too bad that Nike case was swept under the carpet...
What about upstream speed? That's what really matters (if we delicately avoid the whole issue of ping times). Not to mention, what's the use of 3Mbps when you're capped on a daily or monthly basis?
Here's what I think: Cable is getting their asses handed to them by DSL, and they need more marketing to "differentiate" them from DSL (ie, we're faster!!). Then they can (technically correctly) claim this, and win converts.
I tell ya, I'm about *this* much away from dropping my Comcast connection, since
I cannot get cable internet w/o "basic cable" (if I do I'll be charged $10/mo of fees)
I can't get a reasonable rate for "extended basic" cable which has channels I really want
I don't want to illegally remove their limiter on my premesis.
Would you care to list some rights that you personally used to enjoy but no longer can, due to the Patriot Act? If 'a bunch' of your rights are gone, I would think you could at least name a couple.
Ok, goatse6677...
Perhaps after you read this nice pdf, then you'll understand which of the rights have been taken away from even a good person like yourself (google HTMLized here. Take a look... maybe you'll recognize and mourn some lost rights.
I hate DRM as much as the next guy...but, to play devil's advocate, the U.S. is far and away the largest producer and exporter of the intellectual property that DRM protects.
If France was the largest exporter of movies and music, are you telling me that France would not try to protect that industry? Come on!
If you think the U.S. is the only country that acts in its own self-interest, you are either naive, ignorant or delusional.
France, after all, is the only country I know of that has a government agency dedicated to rewriting the language to prevent "foreign" influences in verbiage. With that kind of proprietary, xenophobic attitude, don't you think that if France had America's entertainment industry, they'd also take steps to protect it?
Perhaps you should examine why they don't have a situation where they "export intellectual property"... perhaps the US's concept of "intellectual property" doesn't exactly sound reasonable to the EU countries? An extreme analogy: would you still defend the US's stance if they were practicing slavery, for example?
Instead of claiming that the US is simply defending it's interests, you might want to consider the fundamental principles that differ between the US and the EU. Here are some examples:
Did you forget so quickly that Adobe does sue people/companies too?
What would they sue them for? From Adobe's web site (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/adobepdf.ht ml):
"An open file format specification, PDF is available to anyone who wants to develop tools to create, view, or manipulate PDF documents."
Slashdot Mirror
It's already happenened, and Argentina just told Monsonato to fuck off...
But this is how activist groups work. Follow the money trail; it's not private information. I'm sure that whomever does this will be very popular (at least with a lot of ppl I know).
There are safe guards in place for educators of all ilk in their grading methods. Like anything, some will ignore these and get away with it. Students will cheat on tests, educators will skim papers and the world will be as it is. You can't provide a system that will catch everything, nor should you try.
Well, I'll agree that you probably know much more about teacher accountability than I, and your response is adequate. I guess I was mistaken in thinking (from the /. article as well as the news article) that this would FULLY replace human grading (gee, overstatements in /. story sumbissions? I'm shocked!).
By trying to build a system that tries to catch gaming of the system, you only encourage it to happen and you put the idea out that one might be able to out think the computer.
I will disagree with you on this; I think that you want to prevent gaming to a large enough degree that you can deal with the "fallout" (ie, no security method is perfect, but some are good enough). Having safeguards in place doesn't neccessarily make people complacent, it's the reliance on those safeguards that create complaceny. Whether your product is game-proof enough is a question that will only be answered after the paint dries, so to speak.
Do you stay awake at night fearing the misuse of hammers?
I'll say this: Hammers have been around for a long time; software based grading has not. I have concerns about anything that is new and complex enough that most people don't understand or are aware of it.
In the end, your description of the software/process has me more interested than scared in seeing it's implementation, but you'll have to excuse my scepticism for now.
I think the general problem is in implementation. If it works as you describe, that'd be great (and impressive). The problem is where the teacher assigns 2x the workload, then has the software grade ALL of it.... consistently.
Life has shown me that people are lazy. What kind of safeguards are in place? Is there process (hard-coded) that will eliminate this pathological use case I presented? If not, then I do think that even providing teachers/schools this service is going to cause more harm in the long term than good.
That being said, I do appreciate and admire the amount of work to get an AI (expert system, perhaps?) that achieves this work... but I fear the misuse.
Actually, the speed of the searches are usually influenced by the speed of the Algorithm. You can take a pretty basic full file/text search (ie, windows search) and run it on a 2ghz+ dual-opteron beast with superfast HD, and it will still lose to a 500mhz laptop doing search with a proper index and metadata lookup.
Add in AI stuff like predictive/speculative lookup and search/result cacheing, and the difference becomes night and day.
Hint: the article linked to above is NON-NEWS. Why?
Google is gaming the system, basically. They are using an auction to make sure that only they (and their initial investors) get rich off their fame and hard work, and the non-control thing is to prevent the "market" from screwing them. Imagine if Microsoft got ahold of a large portion of the shares... Google knows it'd be doomed at that point.
...drumroll
Peta-files
Disclaimer: IAAA (I am an American).
The problem is not that Americans tend to see tech solutions for everything, but instead that Americans are very "faith-based" which is a euphemism for "not logically rigorous". In this case, they "trust" computers and technology in general, like they "trust" Microsoft and the Government.
Being fed a healthy diet of misinformation [google cache]is no doubt part of the problem, I'm sure, but root causes also have to do with rampant consumerism, and a fairly apathetic voting public (probably due to a poorly implemented voting system).
Related to previous story on science. in the US
However, I doubt that's the case, as I think in general Apple wants to try to keep a "standard" price across the board.
A really great article, the only thing I wish they'd have really tested is battery life (although admitted that would be more like testing the notebooks themselves, not the processors).
Anyway, check out the comparison of the Athlon64 3200+ vs. the Banias (Pentium-M) 1400. Even scaling up the Banias's numbers by 21% (to give a 1.7Ghz max) and scaling the Athlon64's numbers down 21% (to 2700+), it looks like the A64M totally kicks ass... and this isn't even using 64bit code!
This could spell a possible problem for Intel who has held the crown of the "sweet spot": a powerful, battery conscious mobile processor (AthlonXPs don't step down well, and lets not even talk about the P4Ms)
Now the Athlon64 mobiles, which already run at a cool 800Mhz when not taxed, combined with a voltage decrease, should create something that is at the same time powerful, yet battery-preserving.
Kicker: it's AMD64, so if you have 64bit OS and apps, it will really dominate.
Amen Brotha. Take a gander at this for confirmation of APAC/EU gets goodies, we live in cell hell.
However, Motorola may do good by us with this teaser... How I wish Catherine Zeta Jones would purr to me with one of those things... :-)
Which probably indicates that AMD has resigned itself to !Dell for a decent period into the future.Note: Dell only exists where it does in the market, because they cut their costs by going all-Intel. I doubt Dell will kill their profits just to cater to a second source. Dell's agreement with Intel is kind of like Intel's agreement with Microsoft, a sort of mini-wintel, if you were. I doubt they'd do anything to sabotage that until and unless Intel either goes down in flames, or sets them up the bomb.
I think what the parent is saying is that even 51% is an "absurd" percentage.
And yes, even tho I'm an AMD fan (only buy AMD/VIA for home use), I'd say that unless we get a run of these kind of numbers, this is a statistical outlier.
You can make a difference by doing good hackerly things and at the same time denouncing the draconian measures.
Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
At least one of the books being reviewed is intended to be licensed under the GPL copyleft license. Also, some are released in LaTeX which is also open-source.
I would totally agree for you except for Diebold and their un-auditable machines. Guess what, now even if you do vote, your vote might just be invalidated or part of a massive miscount.
Oh well, maybe I should just vote absentee ballot? Oh, did we have problems with those, too??
We're fucked.
I wonder if this wonderful new self-adhesive artwork will increase the price of CD/DVDs? Like oh, maybe a $1 a media? How about the Recording Industry^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCartel then decides that the Artist must pay this fee as part of the contract, also?
or
Downside to the airline powercord is that the only major airline to deploy the jacks throughout coach seating is USAir, and they went bankrupt (what's to happen is anyone's guess). The electrofuel's been losing some charge, but it's still rather sweet, giving me far more than I would ever need (even when I fly to europe).
Hey, why don't you read the link? It's pretty clear that in our jurisprudence oriented legal system, the "law" concerning any specific thing may change at any given time based on new rulings. What the book says, probably more eloquently than me, is that the "corporations have first amendment rights" has simply been assumed, and not challenged in court. And hell, even if it is challenged and upheld, later rulings can weaken or reverse that position (ie: what pro-lifers right want to happen to RoeV.Wade). Too bad that Nike case was swept under the carpet...
Here's what I think: Cable is getting their asses handed to them by DSL, and they need more marketing to "differentiate" them from DSL (ie, we're faster!!). Then they can (technically correctly) claim this, and win converts.
I tell ya, I'm about *this* much away from dropping my Comcast connection, since
Ok, goatse6677...
Perhaps after you read this nice pdf, then you'll understand which of the rights have been taken away from even a good person like yourself (google HTMLized here. Take a look... maybe you'll recognize and mourn some lost rights.
Yeah, I know, IHBT and all...
If France was the largest exporter of movies and music, are you telling me that France would not try to protect that industry? Come on!
If you think the U.S. is the only country that acts in its own self-interest, you are either naive, ignorant or delusional.
France, after all, is the only country I know of that has a government agency dedicated to rewriting the language to prevent "foreign" influences in verbiage. With that kind of proprietary, xenophobic attitude, don't you think that if France had America's entertainment industry, they'd also take steps to protect it?
Perhaps you should examine why they don't have a situation where they "export intellectual property"... perhaps the US's concept of "intellectual property" doesn't exactly sound reasonable to the EU countries? An extreme analogy: would you still defend the US's stance if they were practicing slavery, for example?
Instead of claiming that the US is simply defending it's interests, you might want to consider the fundamental principles that differ between the US and the EU. Here are some examples:
"An open file format specification, PDF is available to anyone who wants to develop tools to create, view, or manipulate PDF documents."
How soon we all forget.... Does noone ? Sure it was the DOJ who pursued the case, but it was Adobe who offered him up.