As long as/advert.php gets executed and such, the ad company is able to keep track of your browsing habits. That is more valuable on the long run than someone actually punching the monkey and buying after that.
So, I think the ad companies aren't too worried about it.
Most of the standard numerical methods, finite difference/finite element methods, don't seem to work very well in the case of variable wave speed at different points in the domain, which is exactly the case that I need.
In what ways does it not work well for you? It doesn't converge, takes too long to converge? What is the problem?
A numerical algorithm would give you the assumptions that guarantee convergence and you should be able to figure out under what conditions it would "not work well". Just look up the assumptions and see what assumption your variable wave speed violates to not give you convergence.
You see, it's not the details of the mathematics really matters at this early stage but an appreciation how the solution is arrived at. It's seeing that we take a fundamental postulate, which they would establish by experiment in class, and run with it and here's the physics that we come up with. In short, it's showing them that with rigorous application of the scientific method and a few years of training on the mathematics, that all of this interesting stuff can be arrived at with nothing more than a pencil and paper.
That, my friends, is how you really inspire! You do not inspire anybody by making a intellectual Mount Everest in to a word-search.
That is not how you inspire - that is how you scare people away from science.
Sure, you could have them derive formulas and pore over mathematical oddities but that's not Physics.
Deriving the equations etc are skills not inspiration.
Do you see any mechanics inspired because they liked how the bolts and screws moved? They liked cars and then they went ahead and acquired the necessary skills of working with various parts to make the cars work. Similarly, students should find a problem and then acquire all the tools and skills needed to solve the problem. Having them go through something without there being a problem and a reward for the solution does not make any sense.
I would be glued to the derivation of the equations of circular motion if I was working on a problem with circular motion whereby solving it mean I would finish my device or my theorem. If I'm not working on something like that, it would just be a major pain to go through it.
What is even more scary is that how little we know in the science of human learning and teaching in the education level - not the working memory model of 7 + 2 items.
BTW, I did the A-levels in Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics and preparing and working for it were the best days of my life. We have past exam questions from the past 20 years or so. It always seemed that the further back you went, the harder the questions got. I remember when I took my A-levels there was a reduction in difficulty started by the exam board. I had to double check all the questions to make sure I wasn't reading them wrong because they seemed just too easy.
Not to offend, but perhaps they realize that college isn't the place that you learn about new things. Why would I pay several thousand a year to learn something that I can learn on the internet?
It's because of professors or TAs, and the education system. You get to ask them questions if something isn't clear, and they grade your work and give you feedback. Most of the time one never asks any questions and all HW/tests are treated as a pain. Most computer science programs are glorified associate degrees from a community college - no theoretical computer science, a lot of adapting to commercial software: if it's under the sciences department then it should work as Physics, Chemistry which are just treated as paths to research and not as a professional degree. Computer Science as a degree is messed up.
In my workplace (a programming environment), we've learned to not place any value on a degree.
Yeah, most schools will give out degrees after you pay a certain sum and do a little work. I doubt you will be not placing any values on an MIT degree though.
I've personally had to teach someone with a Ph.D. in IT how to use getters and setters.
PhD is not about learning everything about a subject. It's about doing research on a very narrow field.
If I go to college again, it'll be to get the degree and get out of there, because I honestly doubt that they'll be able to teach me anything interesting that I haven't already learned from another source.
You got it backwards. You go to college because you're interested in something and figure out what it takes to understand the field and solve problems in that field. You don't go to college and expect to learn wonderful things because you're there. I know a lot of people are there for a degree which is really sad because it makes a lot of class dumbed down.
This is similar to when the DMV says that driving is a privilege. Well, it's not much of a privilege if I have to drive to get food, groceries, work etc. They want to stick with that line since tickets and fees are a major source of income. Last time I checked, nobody said walking or riding a bike was a privilege.
If you step out of the house and as soon as you do that every move is being tracked and recorded for eternity, then it's not same as not expecting privacy when you go outside.
Besides, there are laws where sound cannot be recorded in public, conversations cannot be recorded etc. It's not like outside your house, everything is open game.
And car thieves will just make/acquire fake license plates that are valid that won't trigger any alarms. The only people who it will be used against will be regular people - possibly to boost income from tickets.
You asked me why obesity in general has risen, and I answered. Statistically, an aging population is still a contributing factor to that. Of course, the things I mentioned about food products and manual labor apply to other age groups as well, but you're apparently too caught up in your own alleged cleverness to notice that I answered your objection before you stated it.
And, that is my point I'm trying to make.
Obesity is cultural and not genetic.
Food has changed, lifestyle has changed - both cultural elements and not genetic. That is responsible for rising obesity levels - can't blame it on genetics.
I might as well ask you the same question. Unfortunately for you, I have a good answer, and you don't: over the past 20 years, the average age of the US population has risen due to aging baby boomers and plummeting birth rates. (Slower metabolism, and by extension weight gain, is a symptom of aging.) Food has changed, with high fructose corn syrup replacing cane sugar in many food products throughout the 1980's, and with bovine growth hormone being used more, among other things. There are fewer manual laborers due to robotics. This makes it more difficult for more people living a normal lifestyle to avoid gaining weight, and for many of them, it makes it not worth the effort. Honestly, you're taking the joy out of this by asking easy questions.
Nice try but obesity in every age group has been increasing. There have been many studies on childhood obesity rising very sharply. CDC has studies published about increasing average weight in each age group over the years.
You've watched representative samples of the TV output from every other TV-producing country in the world and come to this conclusion? Or you can cite me a study of researchers who have? Or you're talking out of your ass?
I'm just speaking from general observations and comments from foreign students. It's OK if you choose not to believe it. I'm just saying what I think and what other people from foreign countries have told me. It could be wrong but as you said unless there is a study to prove or disprove it, it's not a statement I can use in a journal paper.
That's nice, but if I need to eat x calories in order to get all the nutrients I need (and to avoid the discomfort of actual hunger), while my body only burns.6x calories during a normal day of normal activity and.1x extra calories per every hour of exercise, I would have to exercise over 4 hours per day, on average, to lose weight. Given the 8 hours of sleep and 8 hours of work necessary to maintain a healthy brain and full-time employment, that means I have to spend half of what's left over working out--leaving only 4 hours a day, total, for eating, reading, playing with my kids (if any), commuting to work, grocery shopping, watching movies, doing laundry (if any), chasing women, or any of the other things I have to do. Maybe it's worthwhile if exercising is my favorite leisure activity, but otherwise it's just a waste of life just so self-righteous people who want to mess with my life feel satisfied about my body.
Of course, the numbers all change with body weight. Eventually they converge at an equilibrium point, where the amount of energy expended equals the amount eaten, but for many people the best convergence point places them at calorie equilibrium with a little bit of fat on their bodies. The numbers also change depending upon what foods are available and with genetics.
That's nice too but if that was true then why are obesity rates rising? If the above were true, the percentage of obese people would remain constant throughout the decades but obesity rates have risen over 15% in the US in the past 20 years.
Depends on what you watch--most actors and (especially) actresses in lead roles aren't very fat at all. Also, American TV spreads Hollywood's (if not America's) anti-fat cultural biases around, influencing pro-fat cultures. This is especially true for programs that are exported and shown overseas.
The TV programs from overseas are insanely cruel to fat people. Fat women are always typecast as horny comic reliefs whereas fat men are typecast as idiot comic reliefs.
First, you only need one greater-than/less-than sign, and second, yours is pointing the wrong way. Third, genetics can effect both--maybe if you put together the minimum amount of calories needed to ingest all the nutrients you want or need, that'll be more than you end up burning in the average time period. Maybe your body is massively efficient and you can run for miles while burning comparatively fewer calories. Or maybe your resting metabolism burns so few calories you'd have to become a full-time marathon runner to expend all the calories you normally intake.
Still you can't get if calorie intake is less than calorie ingested. Period. Sure, there might clorophyll in the hair and being out in the sun creates calories but if use more calories than eaten, it's not possible to get fat! Period.
People are getting fatter and fatter and there hasn't been any genetic change in the last 30 years.
They're far more common than the other examples you name, although becoming far less common due to the influence of American TV.
There are more fat people in American TV than in any other TV.
Have you ever seen a Samoan?
Have you met Samoans? They have these huge banquets all the time and they eat very fatty meat and fatty coconut milk with everything.
What are you even asking? The GP's point is that preferences for mate size vary by culture. As he points out, in previous times when starvation was more of a threat, heavy was more attractive than skinny (within limits, of course--as you point, even in a starving society, Jabba the Hutt is going to be pretty unappealing). Conception of what's attractive is pretty fluid, though--in the early 20th century (in America, at least) the ideal woman had a body like a teenaged boy, with minimal curves. Nowadays most men would regard that as unappealing in favor of somebody with more curves. So yes, a woman considered attractive in one time might not be so in another, depending on societal preferences, which will in turn depend on environmental factors. But this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the existence or nonexistence of a genetic propensity to obesity.
Blame genetics for obesity. But, then say, oh thin people are attractive because there are so many fat people around. What if obesity is cultural and attractiveness related to obesity levels is genetic?
Obesity has increased in the past 30 years in the USA. Did we suffer massive genetic mutations or was it a cultural change?
I can look at actresses from the early days of cinema and still consider them attractive. I think what people perceive as attractive hasn't changed all that much.
With the USA becoming so much fatter, why hasn't the actresses in the movies changed that drastically?
You most certainly can if the overall thermodynamic efficiency of your digestive system is above average. I've heard figures before that the body only converts 25-35% of the available energy in food to ATP; having a body with 38% efficiency might mean being able to live on less than 1200 calories/day (equivalent to 4 2-cup bowls of cereal and milk or 1 fast-food serving of American Chinese food) yet still weigh 300 pounds.
If the body only needs 1200 calories per day, then just eating 1200 calories per day can't make you fat. That's my point.
The level of obesity is directly controlled by the calorie intake.
The body converts 25-35% to ATP. It also needs to produce heat to maintain body temperature.
Eating only one serving of fast food etc is a behavior/habit thing. If the body only needs 1200 calories per day, then eating 2400 calories per day for years and years is a bad habit.
More eurocentric bollocks from someone who probably thinks Discovery is some sort of substitute for an education.
This is just a forum to discuss ideas, not a pissing contest. Where are the good old days of forum discussions where a personal attack was understood to be an easy way out of admitting defeat? Now, replies start with personal insults.
In much of sub-Saharan Africa and in the Pacific Islands, fat (and even obesity) is traditionally considered a mark of beauty, health, wealth, fertility and status.
I know people from the Pacific islands. They are not thrilled that everyone is so fat - they are more resigned to the fact that they love to eat and eat.
As for sub-Saharan, I'm so sick of textbooks giving examples of sub-Saharan cultures that do this or that.
It was even so in Europe, not so many generations ago. Go back and look at some renaissance paintings - Botticelli is a good example. See the fat Venus? That means Venus had plenty to eat and was not in danger of starvation, which (among other things makes her a very viable mother of children. IN medieval Japan, samurai traditionally cultivated a good rotund pot. Why? Because the dominant fighting style of the day placed great utility on balance and stability, and a low centre of gravity provides this well. For the vast bulk (heh) of human history, malnutrition has been a much more significant threat to survival than obesity. The trend toward thin women and athletic men being attractive happened broadly as food supply problems lessened and has achieved its natural conclusion in the most affluent societies, where overeating is now a far greater risk than malnutrition in the usual case.
A woman transported several centuries would change from being desirable to undesirable because of the dynamics of food supply dynamics of the society? Then would a famine ridden society see a 400lb woman as the most beautiful woman they have ever seen?
You think the modern obesity aversion is genetic; it's not. It's cultural. If we faced a few hundred years of severe food shortage, you'd probably see it reverse.
If aversion to obesity isn't genetic, then why is there 'a genetic predisposition to obesity'?
Yeah, but depending on your genes and other factors, you could be overweight (even obese) without having poor nutrition, lack of exercise, etc.
If you can get fat without eating too much because of genes, then those genes are breaking the laws of thermodynamics. You can't get fat if calorie intake >> calorie expenditure.
Just like you can get a fever without having the flu, except being fat is a lot more comfortable than having a fever. Seriously, do you know what "symptom" even means?
Yeah, yeah. Attack me and my knowledge instead of saying something interesting. Typical bullshit that's dumbing down slashdot. The truth is you're mistaking what a symptom is.
Funny how this "genetic programming" breaks down in different cultures, where (for instance) telling a woman "you've put on weight!" is a compliment because it suggests they're healthy and well-fed. Morbid obesity might be unattractive, but so is anorexia.
Oh yeah, these mystical cultures where fat people are beautiful. Fits along very nicely with the culture that has reverse polygamy or the one where the women hunt/gather.
Funny also how this `genetics made me fat' theory breaks down in other cultures as well.
I believe it's a statistical correlation. Measuring your body fat percentage accurately entails submerging in water, completely taking air out of your lungs etc.
Diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems...they're all from poor nutrition, lack of exercise, and genetics, NOT from being "overweight."
You're saying obesity is a symptom of poor nutrition, lack of exercise etc. Might as well say obesity is a symptom of spoon overuse.
Just eat healthier, get some exercise, and learn to love your body, no matter how it looks. It's not about inches or pounds, it's about the crap INSIDE your body working the way it should.
It's good in theory and all but fat people are unattractive - we are genetically programmed to think fat people are ugly. Since we are genetically predisposed to not like fat people, I think people should try to be thin and attractive and let go and become comfortable with being fat.
To wit - if Amazon is allowed to know what sort of books I buy, doesn't that make it, in a way, more powerful than the government? And I haven't even mentioned Walmart, who lives and dies by it.
No, no.
Data mining does not necessarily mean that each and every data must be exact. Data mining is creating probability relationships in large populations.
There are mathematical and statistical methods where data can be obscured whilst the data mining still be accurate. Look up the field of privacy preserving data mining.
My point is that it is possible to data mine whilst preserving privacy. Privacy and benefits of data mining and not mutually exclusive.
An expert told me, "You can tell the shoplifters because they are watching you, not their shopping." Now does everyone that looks at the night manager a shoplifter? Of course not, and only a fool would believe it, and only a bigger fool would suggest it. But the idea that you can detect shoplifters by seeing what they are watching is still extremely useful. It's the unusual-ness that makes it suspicious. It's a judgment call in the grocery business, and I imagine it is in the industrial counter-espionage business as well.
I remember in some statistics class that for a test to be useful there is a certain criteria (like significant enough percentage) of false positive and false negatives. Otherwise the test is useless as randomly stopping people would probably fare equally or better. So, at least probability that the test is positive and the student is a spy must be higher than a randomly selected student is a spy. I'm not sure how that is factors in but the probability that the test is negative and the student is a spy also comes into play.
Also, given student is a spy and what are the probabilities that he/she is positive or negative on the test.
Are you serious? This is how they catch people. These are the very first things the FBI (for example) looks into when granting security clearance. It's like saying, "Since when is a high heart-rate bad for you? I work out all the time and have a high heart-rate every day!" and getting pissed when the nurse takes your pulse as soon as you walk into the clinic!
That is where vagueness comes in. The probabilities of such things would be insignificant to conclude anything.
However, it probably works on one level - that is psychologically. It's like saying certain thing is guarded on a sign - like casinos. It makes a potential spy think twice.
The best part is that Microsoft has now become the single best reason *to* embrace the GPL3. And to think I ever had doubted.
Maybe it's a double bluff.
Maybe they want you to embrace it by emotionally being attached to it rather than logically evaluating it on it's merits. Maybe GPL3 is bad for open source and Microsoft would like nothing more than illogical and fanatical support for it from the community since Microsoft is against it.
it would take about 20 minutes to write a bot that would browse at random for you and render this useless. Sounds like a great way to look anonymous. Or really, really weird, depending on where your bot runs off to.....
Except that the bot would generate random values while you would still generate values that identifies you. So, you'd have to balance how many visits the bot makes. Too much and your habits will see through as the bot visits turn into noise. Too little and your habits will dominate.
I think writing the bot isn't the whole process... optimizing the parameters is also necessary.
And, of course, your bot would have to find sites randomly - which is quite hard to do.
What's really funny is the people who assume all this stuff matters for digital signals (as I saw in a few of the "reviews" on the Monster website). Unless you're stringing really long cables or your no-name stuff is really, really bad, there won't be a difference. Bits are bits, and small amounts of analog noise will be ignored.
A small counter-argument would be that all digital signals use error correcting codes. So, any errors that occur in the signal are corrected by the hardware on the receiving side. The only problem is that the error correcting procedure takes up lots of cpu cycle and energy.
So, you might end up spending money on extra electricity running an expensive error correcting algorithm on the digital signal.
Of course, I don't know about transmission of digital signals and how often bit errors happen in low quality signals.
Plus, in CD, if an error is un-recoverable, there is an algorithm to interpolate to the points where the data could not be fetched. I'm sure a similar method is specified for other forms of signals. So, this might lead to lower quality signal being displayed or played and the viewer or listen not consciously realizing it.
Another thing is the bus schedule - they are never on time.
In the college town I lived, where most students take bus, the bus schedule was every 10-15 minutes bus arrives. About half the time you'd wait 30 minutes and no bus would show up. I wanted to record a set of samples and show how unlikely their claim of 10-15 minutes is but I decided to get a car.
You just stand there in front of the bus stop sign where there is no chair, is in the open and a zillion cars drive by you.
Also, on the other hand, all buses have GPS. Why won't they release this information on the web-site so that I can check if the bus is coming and time my trip to the stop? I have sit in front of the bus stop, staring half a mile down the road waiting for a bus!
In cities where there is urban sprawl, the bus system is hopeless. But, even for compact cities where a lot of people use the bus, it is NOT in time at all.
As everyone pointed out, a trip by car to the post office would take me less than 5 mins. A trip by bus, with 1 transfer point, would take around 40 mins on average and sometimes balloon over 1 hour.
I have been to thrid world countries and their public transportation is way better than US cities (the buses are nicer but everything else sucks).
Slashdot Mirror
As long as /advert.php gets executed and such, the ad company is able to keep track of your browsing habits. That is more valuable on the long run than someone actually punching the monkey and buying after that.
So, I think the ad companies aren't too worried about it.
In what ways does it not work well for you? It doesn't converge, takes too long to converge? What is the problem?
A numerical algorithm would give you the assumptions that guarantee convergence and you should be able to figure out under what conditions it would "not work well". Just look up the assumptions and see what assumption your variable wave speed violates to not give you convergence.
That is not how you inspire - that is how you scare people away from science.
Sure, you could have them derive formulas and pore over mathematical oddities but that's not Physics.
Deriving the equations etc are skills not inspiration.
Do you see any mechanics inspired because they liked how the bolts and screws moved? They liked cars and then they went ahead and acquired the necessary skills of working with various parts to make the cars work. Similarly, students should find a problem and then acquire all the tools and skills needed to solve the problem. Having them go through something without there being a problem and a reward for the solution does not make any sense.
I would be glued to the derivation of the equations of circular motion if I was working on a problem with circular motion whereby solving it mean I would finish my device or my theorem. If I'm not working on something like that, it would just be a major pain to go through it.
What is even more scary is that how little we know in the science of human learning and teaching in the education level - not the working memory model of 7 + 2 items.
BTW, I did the A-levels in Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics and preparing and working for it were the best days of my life. We have past exam questions from the past 20 years or so. It always seemed that the further back you went, the harder the questions got. I remember when I took my A-levels there was a reduction in difficulty started by the exam board. I had to double check all the questions to make sure I wasn't reading them wrong because they seemed just too easy.
I think it means that a cloner does not copy the original software that came with the iPhone.
One word.
DRILL
It's all nice until you find that your Jaguar has the same exact parts as a Mondeo.
It's because of professors or TAs, and the education system. You get to ask them questions if something isn't clear, and they grade your work and give you feedback. Most of the time one never asks any questions and all HW/tests are treated as a pain. Most computer science programs are glorified associate degrees from a community college - no theoretical computer science, a lot of adapting to commercial software: if it's under the sciences department then it should work as Physics, Chemistry which are just treated as paths to research and not as a professional degree. Computer Science as a degree is messed up.
Yeah, most schools will give out degrees after you pay a certain sum and do a little work. I doubt you will be not placing any values on an MIT degree though.
PhD is not about learning everything about a subject. It's about doing research on a very narrow field.
You got it backwards. You go to college because you're interested in something and figure out what it takes to understand the field and solve problems in that field. You don't go to college and expect to learn wonderful things because you're there. I know a lot of people are there for a degree which is really sad because it makes a lot of class dumbed down.
This is similar to when the DMV says that driving is a privilege. Well, it's not much of a privilege if I have to drive to get food, groceries, work etc. They want to stick with that line since tickets and fees are a major source of income. Last time I checked, nobody said walking or riding a bike was a privilege.
If you step out of the house and as soon as you do that every move is being tracked and recorded for eternity, then it's not same as not expecting privacy when you go outside.
Besides, there are laws where sound cannot be recorded in public, conversations cannot be recorded etc. It's not like outside your house, everything is open game.
And car thieves will just make/acquire fake license plates that are valid that won't trigger any alarms. The only people who it will be used against will be regular people - possibly to boost income from tickets.
And, that is my point I'm trying to make.
Obesity is cultural and not genetic.
Food has changed, lifestyle has changed - both cultural elements and not genetic. That is responsible for rising obesity levels - can't blame it on genetics.
Some consider network coding theory to be garbage as well, so maybe it's still garbage.
Nice try but obesity in every age group has been increasing. There have been many studies on childhood obesity rising very sharply. CDC has studies published about increasing average weight in each age group over the years.
I'm just speaking from general observations and comments from foreign students. It's OK if you choose not to believe it. I'm just saying what I think and what other people from foreign countries have told me. It could be wrong but as you said unless there is a study to prove or disprove it, it's not a statement I can use in a journal paper.
That's nice too but if that was true then why are obesity rates rising? If the above were true, the percentage of obese people would remain constant throughout the decades but obesity rates have risen over 15% in the US in the past 20 years.
The TV programs from overseas are insanely cruel to fat people. Fat women are always typecast as horny comic reliefs whereas fat men are typecast as idiot comic reliefs.
Still you can't get if calorie intake is less than calorie ingested. Period. Sure, there might clorophyll in the hair and being out in the sun creates calories but if use more calories than eaten, it's not possible to get fat! Period.
People are getting fatter and fatter and there hasn't been any genetic change in the last 30 years.
There are more fat people in American TV than in any other TV.
Have you met Samoans? They have these huge banquets all the time and they eat very fatty meat and fatty coconut milk with everything.
Blame genetics for obesity. But, then say, oh thin people are attractive because there are so many fat people around. What if obesity is cultural and attractiveness related to obesity levels is genetic?
Obesity has increased in the past 30 years in the USA. Did we suffer massive genetic mutations or was it a cultural change?
I can look at actresses from the early days of cinema and still consider them attractive. I think what people perceive as attractive hasn't changed all that much.
With the USA becoming so much fatter, why hasn't the actresses in the movies changed that drastically?
If the body only needs 1200 calories per day, then just eating 1200 calories per day can't make you fat. That's my point.
The level of obesity is directly controlled by the calorie intake.
The body converts 25-35% to ATP. It also needs to produce heat to maintain body temperature.
Eating only one serving of fast food etc is a behavior/habit thing. If the body only needs 1200 calories per day, then eating 2400 calories per day for years and years is a bad habit.
This is just a forum to discuss ideas, not a pissing contest. Where are the good old days of forum discussions where a personal attack was understood to be an easy way out of admitting defeat? Now, replies start with personal insults.
I know people from the Pacific islands. They are not thrilled that everyone is so fat - they are more resigned to the fact that they love to eat and eat.
As for sub-Saharan, I'm so sick of textbooks giving examples of sub-Saharan cultures that do this or that.
A woman transported several centuries would change from being desirable to undesirable because of the dynamics of food supply dynamics of the society? Then would a famine ridden society see a 400lb woman as the most beautiful woman they have ever seen?
If aversion to obesity isn't genetic, then why is there 'a genetic predisposition to obesity'?
If you can get fat without eating too much because of genes, then those genes are breaking the laws of thermodynamics. You can't get fat if calorie intake >> calorie expenditure.
Yeah, yeah. Attack me and my knowledge instead of saying something interesting. Typical bullshit that's dumbing down slashdot. The truth is you're mistaking what a symptom is.
Oh yeah, these mystical cultures where fat people are beautiful. Fits along very nicely with the culture that has reverse polygamy or the one where the women hunt/gather.
Funny also how this `genetics made me fat' theory breaks down in other cultures as well.
I believe it's a statistical correlation. Measuring your body fat percentage accurately entails submerging in water, completely taking air out of your lungs etc.
You're saying obesity is a symptom of poor nutrition, lack of exercise etc. Might as well say obesity is a symptom of spoon overuse.
It's good in theory and all but fat people are unattractive - we are genetically programmed to think fat people are ugly. Since we are genetically predisposed to not like fat people, I think people should try to be thin and attractive and let go and become comfortable with being fat.
No, no.
Data mining does not necessarily mean that each and every data must be exact. Data mining is creating probability relationships in large populations.
There are mathematical and statistical methods where data can be obscured whilst the data mining still be accurate. Look up the field of privacy preserving data mining.
My point is that it is possible to data mine whilst preserving privacy. Privacy and benefits of data mining and not mutually exclusive.
Except that we are not solitary creatures.
We have create friendship, relationships etc to survive.
Plus, most males like to stick around with the mother of their children to make sure the genetic investment survives.
Maybe at one stage, getting laid is the most important thing. But, I think the human brain is also wired for a few other things.
I remember in some statistics class that for a test to be useful there is a certain criteria (like significant enough percentage) of false positive and false negatives. Otherwise the test is useless as randomly stopping people would probably fare equally or better. So, at least probability that the test is positive and the student is a spy must be higher than a randomly selected student is a spy. I'm not sure how that is factors in but the probability that the test is negative and the student is a spy also comes into play.
Also, given student is a spy and what are the probabilities that he/she is positive or negative on the test.
That is where vagueness comes in. The probabilities of such things would be insignificant to conclude anything.
However, it probably works on one level - that is psychologically. It's like saying certain thing is guarded on a sign - like casinos. It makes a potential spy think twice.
Maybe it's a double bluff.
Maybe they want you to embrace it by emotionally being attached to it rather than logically evaluating it on it's merits. Maybe GPL3 is bad for open source and Microsoft would like nothing more than illogical and fanatical support for it from the community since Microsoft is against it.
Except that the bot would generate random values while you would still generate values that identifies you. So, you'd have to balance how many visits the bot makes. Too much and your habits will see through as the bot visits turn into noise. Too little and your habits will dominate.
I think writing the bot isn't the whole process ... optimizing the parameters is also necessary.
And, of course, your bot would have to find sites randomly - which is quite hard to do.
A small counter-argument would be that all digital signals use error correcting codes. So, any errors that occur in the signal are corrected by the hardware on the receiving side. The only problem is that the error correcting procedure takes up lots of cpu cycle and energy.
So, you might end up spending money on extra electricity running an expensive error correcting algorithm on the digital signal.
Of course, I don't know about transmission of digital signals and how often bit errors happen in low quality signals.
Plus, in CD, if an error is un-recoverable, there is an algorithm to interpolate to the points where the data could not be fetched. I'm sure a similar method is specified for other forms of signals. So, this might lead to lower quality signal being displayed or played and the viewer or listen not consciously realizing it.
Another thing is the bus schedule - they are never on time.
In the college town I lived, where most students take bus, the bus schedule was every 10-15 minutes bus arrives. About half the time you'd wait 30 minutes and no bus would show up. I wanted to record a set of samples and show how unlikely their claim of 10-15 minutes is but I decided to get a car.
You just stand there in front of the bus stop sign where there is no chair, is in the open and a zillion cars drive by you.
Also, on the other hand, all buses have GPS. Why won't they release this information on the web-site so that I can check if the bus is coming and time my trip to the stop? I have sit in front of the bus stop, staring half a mile down the road waiting for a bus!
In cities where there is urban sprawl, the bus system is hopeless. But, even for compact cities where a lot of people use the bus, it is NOT in time at all.
As everyone pointed out, a trip by car to the post office would take me less than 5 mins. A trip by bus, with 1 transfer point, would take around 40 mins on average and sometimes balloon over 1 hour.
I have been to thrid world countries and their public transportation is way better than US cities (the buses are nicer but everything else sucks).