Yeah, I can't really say much about this test because it's just my anecdotal experience. I didn't even get to see my own results.
But I doubt the change would be just from a different pattern. The experiment was fairly long, and if I picked up on the first pattern, I should have picked up on the second.
Isn't it obvious that the fear of something will have an impact even on the simplest things where something relative to that fear is involved ?
I don't think it's math anxiety that caused these results. I think it's anxiety in general.
I took part in a psych study about a decade ago (conveniently at the U of Waterloo) for a similar thing. I was asked to count arcs -- line-drawn half-circles, pointed in an upwards or downwards direction placed randomly on a screen. There would be somewhere between 5 to 15 of these on the screen, and instructions were to count all the "upward arcs" or "downward arcs" as fast as possible. After a few trials, I thought myself so good at this counting that after just a flash of the screen I would hit spacebar indicating I had counted them, then count them in my head and answer. I'm pretty sure I got almost all of them right. Half way through the experiment, I got really bad at this for some reason and even had to count one arc at a time or take a wild guess if I had hit spacebar too early.
After the experiment I was told that many of the arcs were positioned to make faces. The first half of the experiment had smiling faces -- 2 arcs down for happy eyebrows and an upward arc for a smiling mouth. The second half had angry/sad faces, 2 ups for eyebrows and a down for the mouth.
Turns out, the angry faces significantly affected my ability to count.
People (even some/.ers) are somehow getting the idea that EULAs are contractual obligations. They're NOT. Once you've paid for an item, clicking "I Agree" doesn't do a single thing except let you continue using what you've paid for. This means you can do ANYTHING you want with the software/hardware provided it doesn't break existing laws (eg. copywrite).
Was going to provide? If bitmover had seen interoperability as a goal from the beginning (the very least I will accept out of proprietary software that is part of a core business process) then it would have been provided already, Tridge would never have had reason to write tools that interfaced to BitKeeper via its internal protocols (Assuming that is what is happening, which all of this strongly implies - I don't know just what was written obviously) and this whole thing never would have happened.
I'll prove that and do you one better. Here's McVoy happily stating he wants lock-in:
If you are trying to copy BK, give it up. We'll simply follow in the
footsteps of every other company faced with this sort of thing and
change the protocol every 6 months. Since you would be chasing us you can never catch up. If you managed to stay close then we'd put digital signatures into the protocol to prevent your clone from interoperating with BK.
On a side note, maybe I'm being paranoid, but if Linus has magical scripts that can get data out of BitKeeper, it might be wise to ignore them and continue reverse engineering. The reason being McVoy could, X years down the line, say "Hey, I wrote part of those scripts; the copyright belongs to me. Cease and Desist and trash your current repository."
Ok, that probably won't ever happen, though I can see McVoy turning into the next SCO.
But, what's this? Am I reading this correctly?
It "Support['s] QuantiSpeed Architecture"?
Wow! That's amazing! Maybe it does look interesting after all...
"Support 3DNow! Professional Technology (72 instructions, full SSE compatibility)"
Hmmm, it's a good thing 3DNow! is supported, cause my Athlon has 3DNow! too!
"Support Double Data Rate (DDR)"
Would you believe it? *I* have a DDR system! It's like they built this product just for me! I gotta get one of these right away!
"I am a bit concerned that the information you provided misled your readers...This might be due to the fact that TCPA was mistakenly equated to Palladium"
Then perhaps I am misled. I was under the impression TCPA and Palladium go hand-in-hand. What features does TCPA provide without Palladium or Palladium-like software? If its function is to merely check the authenticity of any arbitrary OS that I choose to install, of what use is that since I am the one to install it?
I was chatting with a robot genious MR Lowtax, who made robots like helper robots, shover robots and pusher robots. But then his shover robot started pushing his grandmother down the stairs! I said "LOOK OUT FRIEND" but he didn't listen. Next thing I know, the robot pushed him down the stairs too! I hope he is okay.
Terrorist 1: "I've got an idea, let's kidnap the president and hold him hostage"
Terrorist 2: "That's a great idea! Oh wait, no...they've got hydrogen-powered aircraft these days"
Slashdot Mirror
So they're using a video game rating scale...
Yeah, I can't really say much about this test because it's just my anecdotal experience. I didn't even get to see my own results.
But I doubt the change would be just from a different pattern. The experiment was fairly long, and if I picked up on the first pattern, I should have picked up on the second.
Isn't it obvious that the fear of something will have an impact even on the simplest things where something relative to that fear is involved ?
I don't think it's math anxiety that caused these results. I think it's anxiety in general.
I took part in a psych study about a decade ago (conveniently at the U of Waterloo) for a similar thing. I was asked to count arcs -- line-drawn half-circles, pointed in an upwards or downwards direction placed randomly on a screen. There would be somewhere between 5 to 15 of these on the screen, and instructions were to count all the "upward arcs" or "downward arcs" as fast as possible. After a few trials, I thought myself so good at this counting that after just a flash of the screen I would hit spacebar indicating I had counted them, then count them in my head and answer. I'm pretty sure I got almost all of them right. Half way through the experiment, I got really bad at this for some reason and even had to count one arc at a time or take a wild guess if I had hit spacebar too early.
After the experiment I was told that many of the arcs were positioned to make faces. The first half of the experiment had smiling faces -- 2 arcs down for happy eyebrows and an upward arc for a smiling mouth. The second half had angry/sad faces, 2 ups for eyebrows and a down for the mouth.
Turns out, the angry faces significantly affected my ability to count.
Oops, replying to negate a mistake mod. (I've heard that works, trying it out now.)
Might as well keep it on topic and mention Einstein's "biggest blunder".
People (even some /.ers) are somehow getting the idea that EULAs are contractual obligations. They're NOT. Once you've paid for an item, clicking "I Agree" doesn't do a single thing except let you continue using what you've paid for. This means you can do ANYTHING you want with the software/hardware provided it doesn't break existing laws (eg. copywrite).
If it weren't so, we'd have bigger issues at hand.
On a side note, maybe I'm being paranoid, but if Linus has magical scripts that can get data out of BitKeeper, it might be wise to ignore them and continue reverse engineering. The reason being McVoy could, X years down the line, say "Hey, I wrote part of those scripts; the copyright belongs to me. Cease and Desist and trash your current repository."
Ok, that probably won't ever happen, though I can see McVoy turning into the next SCO.
But, what's this? Am I reading this correctly?
It "Support['s] QuantiSpeed Architecture"?
Wow! That's amazing! Maybe it does look interesting after all...
"Support 3DNow! Professional Technology (72 instructions, full SSE compatibility)"
Hmmm, it's a good thing 3DNow! is supported, cause my Athlon has 3DNow! too!
"Support Double Data Rate (DDR)"
Would you believe it? *I* have a DDR system! It's like they built this product just for me! I gotta get one of these right away!
"I am a bit concerned that the information you provided misled your readers...This might be due to the fact that TCPA was mistakenly equated to Palladium"
Then perhaps I am misled. I was under the impression TCPA and Palladium go hand-in-hand. What features does TCPA provide without Palladium or Palladium-like software? If its function is to merely check the authenticity of any arbitrary OS that I choose to install, of what use is that since I am the one to install it?
Wow, fsck used to mean fsck, and not....uh...ahem
You know you read /. (and Penny Arcade) too much when you read that and think about Gabe putting a harddrive down his pants.
I was chatting with a robot genious MR Lowtax, who made robots like helper robots, shover robots and pusher robots. But then his shover robot started pushing his grandmother down the stairs! I said "LOOK OUT FRIEND" but he didn't listen. Next thing I know, the robot pushed him down the stairs too! I hope he is okay.
>Fear only the One who can factor large primes in his head
Alrighty then...
Ph33r m3!
Be honest. Who here read the first few comments, found out it was pr0n, and then decided to check out the url?
Terrorist 1: "I've got an idea, let's kidnap the president and hold him hostage"
Terrorist 2: "That's a great idea! Oh wait, no...they've got hydrogen-powered aircraft these days"