Yes, it is. Even very small biases can invalidate a statistical analysis. Very different sample size (20 vs. a million for example) isn't necessarily a bias, but it certainly can be. You've got to be especially careful when you're not using a random sample.
"Journalism" is telling stories. Journalists are good at that. Determining how dangerous something is, or how beneficial it is, is called "science." Journalists have always been bad at science. For some reason people think journalists should be good at science. Also talk show hosts. And physicians.
People aren't bad at understanding statistics. They don't even get that far. They look at headlines. Tesla catches fire! Toyota accelerates out of control! Woman who ate tomatoes got cancer! Russian meteor strikes lake!
Most people have exceptionally poor scientific educations.
Of course. It's their most valuable asset. Their entire business is built on gathering data about you and selling products based on it. They're not going to let it get out.
Credit card numbers? Pff. Only credit card companies have any interest in keeping those safe (and they're pretty good at not leaking them, aren't they?).
So what you're saying is that on Android if I pop open the default maps app and ask it where I am, it pops up a dialog asking if it can use the GPS. I say yes, it tells me where I am, and then it tracks me.
Alternately, on iOS I open the default maps app and ask it where I am, it pops up a dialog asking if it can use the GPS (yes it does). I say yes, it tells me where I am, and then it doesn't track me.
For third party apps, if one DOES track me on Android no problem. If one tracks me on iOS and gets caught, scandal.
I can connect the terminals of a 1.5 V AA battery through a 10 megohm resistor but I don't get millions of watts. If that worked I could just disconnect the circuit entirely and have the most powerful powerplant in the world! Until someone didn't connect the terminals on a 9 volt, that is.
Measuring voltage drop across a resistor can give you a measurement of power, but I seriously doubt that's where that 7.3 V comes from. As another poster pointed out, you can't get more than a few tens of milliwatts from a wifi signal if you're sitting on top of the transmitter under ideal circumstances.
"They run Windows but none of them buy the device without OS X and virtually all of them either dual boot or run VMware or Parallels. They are buying the software and just adding Windows to it. HUGE difference between that and buying a barebones mac with just Windows loaded on it."
No. I know a couple of people and I've heard about several more, who buy a MBP because it's a nice notebook, but run Windows on it. Exclusively. I know another who bought an Air and runs Linux on it. Exclusively. That's apparently somewhat common with open source developers.
"Correct. However the ONLY piece of that puzzle that is meaningfully different from their competitors is the software. A Macbook frankly is little different than a laptop from Dell or HP."
Apple makes luxury computers, putting considerable resources into both hardware and software. Johnny Ive got knighted for industrial design of the hardware, not the software. Apple spends money making things like unibody aluminum cases and buying up chip design companies to design A-series processors. Going further back, Apple was a founding member of the PowerPC group and also worked with Acorn to develop ARM.
And yet you replied to the original post quibbling about the name (in the process committing a hilarious geographical error), perpetuating all the quibbling. You have a choice, you can see it as a an irrelevant but funny light conversation or as a irrelevant and useless argument that you not only actively participated in, but lost. Those who acquired the skills taught to 10 year olds usually choose the former. Internet nerds who missed out on those (perhaps they were home schooled?) seem to choose the latter.
I'm not going to censure you for not acquiring the skills taught to 10 year olds, but getting huffy because a bunch of random people made irrelevant fun of your silly mistakes does bring to mind the image of a toddler stamping his foot and sticking out his lip.
Oh, and in Canada we learn that BC and Newfoundland (as well as California and New York, France and Russia, etc.) are on opposite sides of their continents when we're younger than 10.
Ha ha, feeling a little defensive? Apparently my reading skills (and geography) are better than yours....
I just thought it was funny that you happened to pick the very farthest possible place from BC that's still in Canada. It's also kind of funny that you picked a province that calls their child social services branch something close, but not quite, the same as the US version when the province right next door to BC (Alberta) calls it the same thing (see, I can read!). The only way that would be more amusing is if BC itself had a Child Protective Services agency.
You really shouldn't let Slashdot commenters get your blood pressure up. It will shorten your life and make you enjoy it less.
I do think Apple has more of an interest in protecting customers' privacy than other technology companies because their customers pay them. Having a plain language privacy policy is impressive. I'd still add the word "ever" into that last sentence, though.
That's not really a good statistic. You're comparing a very small number of children who have parents who are rich enough for at least one of them to stay home and teach all day to the general school age, most of whom, in the US, do not have parents rich enough for one to say home and teach. Socioeconomic status is by far the most important determinant of learning success so the comparison is biased.
Biased and unfair, but not necessarily wrong. The US education system is apparently pretty crappy.
Office holders should speak their minds. If a majority of their constituents don't like it, they get voted out. The current politically correct, lobbyist pandering attitude not only gives lobbyists disproportionate power but is dishonest to the people you've been hired to represent. To suggest that a private individual should adopt that approach, or worse, stop voting, is a direct attack on democracy.
Intelligence quotient is supposed to be your intellectual functioning divided by the normal intellectual functioning for someone of your age and background, times a hundred and fiddled further so the standard deviation is normalized. The distribution is assumed to be normal (which means the mean and median are in the same place) and this is a fair assumption for groups that don't deviate too much from the centre.
Even reading the fine print is pretty much useless. Most of it amounts to essentially "all rights reserved, including the right to change this agreement at any time." I doubt Google's agreement says they're going to read your e-mail, just that they may use anything you send them, however they want. Apple's probably says essentially the same thing.
If it's a fixed line the telcos better not be giving out your address. I suppose it's possible, but that would be a major privacy violation and would be very illegal here in Canada.
It's most likely the OP had his wifi on (possibly he was even connected via it) and his mac used wifi localization to get his estimated position. The accuracy ("my balcony") was either an exaggeration or a coincidence. Wifi positioning gets my position pretty close (the apartment across the hall) but it puts you there no matter where in the building you are.
The ones with lots of services who connect things are an issue, but there's something far more proximate. When I give some basic information when I sign up for something I expect that information to be kept by whomever I'm giving it to. When I transfer some information to a company by using their service, such as by sending an e-mail through Google or Apple, I expect that they will NOT use that information for their own gain, or sell it to someone else. I don't know if Apple reads e-mails sent through iCloud (probably not, since it's in their interest not to piss of paying customers) but Google definitely does. That's not okay.
I don't know for sure if Apple maps sends my location to Apple, but it probably doesn't, again because it's in Apple's best interests not to piss off paying customers. Google maps nags me constantly to sign in and disables quite a bit of useful functionality because I don't. That's a pretty sure sign that Google IS trying to keep track of my location.
Apple doesn't (or didn't). They buy the data from other companies like Skyhook that go around and get it. They also don't have MAC addresses. They have SSIDs, which are broadcast to the world.
Google went around collecting SSIDs, which is fine, but they managed to get rather a lot of other information (which they kept) in the trawl, which was judged to be not okay.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it is. Even very small biases can invalidate a statistical analysis. Very different sample size (20 vs. a million for example) isn't necessarily a bias, but it certainly can be. You've got to be especially careful when you're not using a random sample.
"Journalism" is telling stories. Journalists are good at that. Determining how dangerous something is, or how beneficial it is, is called "science." Journalists have always been bad at science. For some reason people think journalists should be good at science. Also talk show hosts. And physicians.
Oh please. The mainstream media (no, it's not a proper noun) skews reporting to get ratings, which gets them advertising income.
"Every single night I see murders and stabbings on TV news,"
Exactly. You're a slave to the media hype machine and don't have a good enough education to realize you're being hoodwinked for advertising profit.
People aren't bad at understanding statistics. They don't even get that far. They look at headlines. Tesla catches fire! Toyota accelerates out of control! Woman who ate tomatoes got cancer! Russian meteor strikes lake!
Most people have exceptionally poor scientific educations.
Um, yes. Did you interpret my ridiculous scenario as serious?
Of course. It's their most valuable asset. Their entire business is built on gathering data about you and selling products based on it. They're not going to let it get out.
Credit card numbers? Pff. Only credit card companies have any interest in keeping those safe (and they're pretty good at not leaking them, aren't they?).
So what you're saying is that on Android if I pop open the default maps app and ask it where I am, it pops up a dialog asking if it can use the GPS. I say yes, it tells me where I am, and then it tracks me.
Alternately, on iOS I open the default maps app and ask it where I am, it pops up a dialog asking if it can use the GPS (yes it does). I say yes, it tells me where I am, and then it doesn't track me.
For third party apps, if one DOES track me on Android no problem. If one tracks me on iOS and gets caught, scandal.
Hm... tough choice that.
That technology was invented a long time ago. It's called "water." It's kind of inconvenient to use for most of your applications though.
The Army wants to be able to charge their cell phones when the North Koreans fire their EMPs.
I can connect the terminals of a 1.5 V AA battery through a 10 megohm resistor but I don't get millions of watts. If that worked I could just disconnect the circuit entirely and have the most powerful powerplant in the world! Until someone didn't connect the terminals on a 9 volt, that is.
Measuring voltage drop across a resistor can give you a measurement of power, but I seriously doubt that's where that 7.3 V comes from. As another poster pointed out, you can't get more than a few tens of milliwatts from a wifi signal if you're sitting on top of the transmitter under ideal circumstances.
My university (and my former one) has the press office e-mail the article to the researcher for editing, comment and approval. It's not that hard.
"They run Windows but none of them buy the device without OS X and virtually all of them either dual boot or run VMware or Parallels. They are buying the software and just adding Windows to it. HUGE difference between that and buying a barebones mac with just Windows loaded on it."
No. I know a couple of people and I've heard about several more, who buy a MBP because it's a nice notebook, but run Windows on it. Exclusively. I know another who bought an Air and runs Linux on it. Exclusively. That's apparently somewhat common with open source developers.
"Correct. However the ONLY piece of that puzzle that is meaningfully different from their competitors is the software. A Macbook frankly is little different than a laptop from Dell or HP."
Apple makes luxury computers, putting considerable resources into both hardware and software. Johnny Ive got knighted for industrial design of the hardware, not the software. Apple spends money making things like unibody aluminum cases and buying up chip design companies to design A-series processors. Going further back, Apple was a founding member of the PowerPC group and also worked with Acorn to develop ARM.
And yet you replied to the original post quibbling about the name (in the process committing a hilarious geographical error), perpetuating all the quibbling. You have a choice, you can see it as a an irrelevant but funny light conversation or as a irrelevant and useless argument that you not only actively participated in, but lost. Those who acquired the skills taught to 10 year olds usually choose the former. Internet nerds who missed out on those (perhaps they were home schooled?) seem to choose the latter.
I'm not going to censure you for not acquiring the skills taught to 10 year olds, but getting huffy because a bunch of random people made irrelevant fun of your silly mistakes does bring to mind the image of a toddler stamping his foot and sticking out his lip.
Oh, and in Canada we learn that BC and Newfoundland (as well as California and New York, France and Russia, etc.) are on opposite sides of their continents when we're younger than 10.
I like the signature, by the way. Very apropos.
Ha ha, feeling a little defensive? Apparently my reading skills (and geography) are better than yours....
I just thought it was funny that you happened to pick the very farthest possible place from BC that's still in Canada. It's also kind of funny that you picked a province that calls their child social services branch something close, but not quite, the same as the US version when the province right next door to BC (Alberta) calls it the same thing (see, I can read!). The only way that would be more amusing is if BC itself had a Child Protective Services agency.
You really shouldn't let Slashdot commenters get your blood pressure up. It will shorten your life and make you enjoy it less.
I do think Apple has more of an interest in protecting customers' privacy than other technology companies because their customers pay them. Having a plain language privacy policy is impressive. I'd still add the word "ever" into that last sentence, though.
That's not really a good statistic. You're comparing a very small number of children who have parents who are rich enough for at least one of them to stay home and teach all day to the general school age, most of whom, in the US, do not have parents rich enough for one to say home and teach. Socioeconomic status is by far the most important determinant of learning success so the comparison is biased.
Biased and unfair, but not necessarily wrong. The US education system is apparently pretty crappy.
Office holders should speak their minds. If a majority of their constituents don't like it, they get voted out. The current politically correct, lobbyist pandering attitude not only gives lobbyists disproportionate power but is dishonest to the people you've been hired to represent. To suggest that a private individual should adopt that approach, or worse, stop voting, is a direct attack on democracy.
You've managed to pick the Canadian province as far as possible from the place where the story is set.
BC is where they grow the pot, and also where the premiers keep getting busted for bingo scams.
Intelligence quotient is supposed to be your intellectual functioning divided by the normal intellectual functioning for someone of your age and background, times a hundred and fiddled further so the standard deviation is normalized. The distribution is assumed to be normal (which means the mean and median are in the same place) and this is a fair assumption for groups that don't deviate too much from the centre.
Even reading the fine print is pretty much useless. Most of it amounts to essentially "all rights reserved, including the right to change this agreement at any time." I doubt Google's agreement says they're going to read your e-mail, just that they may use anything you send them, however they want. Apple's probably says essentially the same thing.
If it's a fixed line the telcos better not be giving out your address. I suppose it's possible, but that would be a major privacy violation and would be very illegal here in Canada.
It's most likely the OP had his wifi on (possibly he was even connected via it) and his mac used wifi localization to get his estimated position. The accuracy ("my balcony") was either an exaggeration or a coincidence. Wifi positioning gets my position pretty close (the apartment across the hall) but it puts you there no matter where in the building you are.
The ones with lots of services who connect things are an issue, but there's something far more proximate. When I give some basic information when I sign up for something I expect that information to be kept by whomever I'm giving it to. When I transfer some information to a company by using their service, such as by sending an e-mail through Google or Apple, I expect that they will NOT use that information for their own gain, or sell it to someone else. I don't know if Apple reads e-mails sent through iCloud (probably not, since it's in their interest not to piss of paying customers) but Google definitely does. That's not okay.
I don't know for sure if Apple maps sends my location to Apple, but it probably doesn't, again because it's in Apple's best interests not to piss off paying customers. Google maps nags me constantly to sign in and disables quite a bit of useful functionality because I don't. That's a pretty sure sign that Google IS trying to keep track of my location.
Apple doesn't (or didn't). They buy the data from other companies like Skyhook that go around and get it. They also don't have MAC addresses. They have SSIDs, which are broadcast to the world.
Google went around collecting SSIDs, which is fine, but they managed to get rather a lot of other information (which they kept) in the trawl, which was judged to be not okay.