From the story: Each one of the infrared beams represents one of the four buttons on a conventional Playstation joypad controller. Breaking a beam is the same as pressing a button.
As some of you may remember, the original NES came with two game pads, a light gun and a Robotic Operating Buddy (ROB) (Seen Here with the powerglove).
ROB was an interesting device, it had sensors which recieved signals from the screen, and it could move it's hands left or right and pick up or drop two gyroscopes. The gyroscopes could be dropped into a little motorized thing that spun them or they could be dropped onto two buttons. When playing a game that used ROB you'd put the second controller in a little holder on ROB that would translate those gyros that were dropped on the buttons into controller button presses.
So, during ROB enabled games, you'd hold the first controller, and issue commands to the game that would be translated into light signals that would be sent to ROB, who would pick up, turn, or drop gyros at your command. In the end it was a lot of work to simply push one of two buttons, and the ROB games inevitably sucked. Eventually, players would become so annoyed that they'd simply grab the second controller and push the buttons on their own, completely ignoring cute little ROB.
The moral? Well, making it a hassle to push one or two (or four) buttons doesn't a cool controller make.
Second, this thing is using a decent amount of technology to detect body movements, but it will inevitably make some mistakes. Think about the difference between typing and using speech recognition software... With typing, errors are your own fault, but they are often associated with the motor feedback associated with a miskey. With speech, you can say the word properly but the machine may misinterpret your speech. Unfortunately, this occurs un a probabilistic fashion, and is not easy to detect. Imagine if 1 percent of the time that you pressed a key on your keyboard it would be mapped to another key. It would be infuriating. Relying on a probabilistic detector is bound to lead to frustration.
Check out this PDF file for more on speech recognition errors.
IAAP (I am a Psychologist). Here's the deal with the MMPI.
One of the neat things about the MMPI is that it has low face validity. This means, essentially, that it is difficult to determine what any particular question is getting at. The advantage to this is that it is hard to "beat" the test by giving answers that will result in an uncorrect assessment. There are a number of questions designed to check to see if you are trying to appear crazy or too normal. In addition, there are a number of subscales that are combined to provide a psychological profile of the test taker.
Most surprising, however, is the fact that statistical techniques utilizing the MMPI have been shown to be MORE effective than trained clinicians at diagnosing psychological disorders.[1]
Of course, none of this says anything about GAC taking the MMPI.
First off, the "article" is a lame PR ploy (go back and read the description of the MMPI administrator, they make him out to be some Nobel-worthy genius).
Second, GAC was designed by having individuals provide facts, not by providing judgments or preferences, therefore this exercise will be a test in the relative overlap of mismatching domains.
Third any pattern of responses to the MMPI will lead to some result. Most likely it will be barely interpretable, but not particularly deviant in any sense (since GAC input is moderated by lots of people)
[1] Meehl, P. E. (1959) A comparison of clinicians with five statistical methods of identifying psychotic MMPI profiles. _Journal of Counseling Psychology,6_, 102-109.
Slashdot Mirror
As some of you may remember, the original NES came with two game pads, a light gun and a Robotic Operating Buddy (ROB) (Seen Here with the powerglove).
ROB was an interesting device, it had sensors which recieved signals from the screen, and it could move it's hands left or right and pick up or drop two gyroscopes. The gyroscopes could be dropped into a little motorized thing that spun them or they could be dropped onto two buttons. When playing a game that used ROB you'd put the second controller in a little holder on ROB that would translate those gyros that were dropped on the buttons into controller button presses.
So, during ROB enabled games, you'd hold the first controller, and issue commands to the game that would be translated into light signals that would be sent to ROB, who would pick up, turn, or drop gyros at your command. In the end it was a lot of work to simply push one of two buttons, and the ROB games inevitably sucked. Eventually, players would become so annoyed that they'd simply grab the second controller and push the buttons on their own, completely ignoring cute little ROB.
The moral? Well, making it a hassle to push one or two (or four) buttons doesn't a cool controller make.
Second, this thing is using a decent amount of technology to detect body movements, but it will inevitably make some mistakes. Think about the difference between typing and using speech recognition software... With typing, errors are your own fault, but they are often associated with the motor feedback associated with a miskey. With speech, you can say the word properly but the machine may misinterpret your speech. Unfortunately, this occurs un a probabilistic fashion, and is not easy to detect. Imagine if 1 percent of the time that you pressed a key on your keyboard it would be mapped to another key. It would be infuriating. Relying on a probabilistic detector is bound to lead to frustration.
Check out this PDF file for more on speech recognition errors.
I believe they prefer to be called "Little Refrigerator Americans"
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Of course a few ounces of dog sh*t will do the same thing, and is less straining on the back...
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One of the neat things about the MMPI is that it has low face validity. This means, essentially, that it is difficult to determine what any particular question is getting at. The advantage to this is that it is hard to "beat" the test by giving answers that will result in an uncorrect assessment. There are a number of questions designed to check to see if you are trying to appear crazy or too normal. In addition, there are a number of subscales that are combined to provide a psychological profile of the test taker.
Most surprising, however, is the fact that statistical techniques utilizing the MMPI have been shown to be MORE effective than trained clinicians at diagnosing psychological disorders.[1]
Of course, none of this says anything about GAC taking the MMPI.
[1] Meehl, P. E. (1959) A comparison of clinicians with five statistical methods of identifying psychotic MMPI profiles. _Journal of Counseling Psychology,6_, 102-109.
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The juice can antennae at the bottom of the primstar link is just the latest evolution of the old tin can telephone that I remember from my youth.
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