It's not just a wheel. The wheel is just the physical interface. There's also the way it scrolls through long lists quickly, and the way it interacts with the other buttons, that make it such a great and unique piece of interface design.
All the best interface designs are obvious... in retrospect. You can't just say "It's a wheel!" without recognizing the enormous amount of effort and care that went into its design and engineering.
The wheel is what makes the iPod unique, and it deserves its success because of it. This is one of the good uses of patents, in the sense that it gives a manufacturer a temporary monopoly as a reward for innovative design, and will hopefully spur other innovative designs in the iPod comptetitors. Seems like a good thing to me.
A bit off topic, but I just came across a chart today which is the closest thing I've seen which gives a sense of the Total Perspective Vortex as Adams described it. All it needs is the "You are here". See it here.
My point, dimwit, was that EVEN IF WE HAD KNOWN THE EXACT INTENTIONS OF ALL 13,000 voters INCLUDING the 134 that somehow didn't get their vote registered, the votes for the two candidates would STILL have been within 1.5% of each other: (12+134)/13000*100=1.123.
What I'm saying is that when an election is THAT close, the person who gets elected is basically down to random chance. A difference of 146 votes at most can not possibly express the will of the voters as a whole. I'm simply suggesting that maybe it might be a good idea to so something other than electing the candidate who just happened to get the "most" votes in this case -- a runoff perhaps.
This is totally independent of the method of voting, touchscreens or otherwise.
Exactly. The article didn't mention how many people did vote, but I'd be willing to wager not everyone voted and so 134 votes is well within sampling error.
Election law really needs to do something else -- a runoff perhaps, or a default to the incumbent -- when an election is this close but the turnout is much less than 100%. You may as well just flip a coin when the vote counts are not significantly different with respect to sampling error.
It's like saying, "we've discovered that Canadians, Americans, and Mexicans have a much higher chance of living in North America than any other people on Earth!" See... your tax dollars at work.
It's nothing of the kind. This is a serious epidemiological study, and them scientists are actually pretty smart, y'know. Problems like these were formally recognised about a century ago, and there are ways to (mostly) avoid them.
True, this is an observational study rather than an intervention study or controlled experiment, but most large epidemiological studies like this do correct for things like age, sex, deprivation, health, etc. to reduce the effect of such biases.
That's not to say there isn't some selection effect that isn't controlled for which is causing the effect and has nothing to do with coffee. But the next step is that some pharmaceutical company will try and isolate the compound which has the preventative qualities and run a double-blind clinical trial to verify it's efficacy. Then we'll really know. This study is just the start.
All that said, you've got a much better chance of reducing your risk of type II diabetes by reducing your weight and exercising than by running a 12-cup-a-day lifestyle.
And Moore has published a response to these and other criticisms. Of course, it's still a case of he-said/she-said, but he does cite some pretty reliable sources for his facts. And, as he points out, he hasn't been sued by the NRA. I think they might have sued if they could prove falsehood.
Of course the ideal setup (LCD projector for slides, 2nd screen for presenter showing notes view) would eliminate this problem, but I've never been lucky enough to use such a system. (Do they exist?)
It's easy to do this with a modern laptop -- slides on the projector, notes on the laptop screen. Here's how.
A large number of countries have proportional representation... this sort of gerrymandering is totally impossible - the one (person/party) with the most votes wins
Not true. Australia has Proportional Representation (and compulsory voting!) and gerrymandering certainly occurs. Most elections are decided by first preferences, which can be imputed from demographics just as they can elsewhere. Gerrymandering was a big issue in Queensland in the 80's as I recall.
This didn't change anything. Yahoo notified its users months ago about the messaging preferences page, and if you opted out then you *still* won't get emails from them. I don't think I've ever had a commercial email from Yahoo (at least, one identifiable as such) in all that time, and I did have one category enabled (for travel offers).
As I understand it, if you hadn't yet opted out, they plan to start emailing next year. (This explains why I haven't had any travel offers yet.) You've had at least SIX MONTHS to opt out, so don't start whining now. For a free service, this seems perfectly fair to me. If you don't like it, don't use their services.
But since the flare originated at the Sun's limb, the ejection was directed about 90 degrees away from us in the plane of the ecliptic. Most of the impact missed us here on earth.
But it makes you worry: what would have happened if that X40 flare was directed right at us?
As the author of the corrected graphic, I feel I ought to make a rebuttal here.
Why are you splitting the top 5% into two groups?
Because that's how the original article (sadly no longer available) divided society. There were four groups: lower classes (bottom 60% quantiles) middle classes (not mentioned), upper classes (above 5%) and super-rich (above 1%). Then a graph compared income taxes paid by each. The top two groups were compared IN THE CONTEXT OF the bottom group, but the top two groups overlapped each other! This is deception. The division of quantiles into classes is indeed arbitrary, but it was the division used by the original article).
And for what it's worth, a bar chart was a poor choice for this graph. A pie chart would be preferred.
Balderdash and poppycock in the extreme! There are many studies which show that pie charts are a poor visual representation of a division of a whole. (Says Tufte in his book: "This point [regarding pie charts] is made decisively in Jaques Bertin, Graphics and Graphic information processing (1981). Bertin describes multiple pie charts as "completely useless".) The basic problem is that the human brain has difficulty comparing areas of wedge-shaped objects. If you want to compare numbers use a bar chart.
Since the entire purpose of the article was to compare how different social groups contributed to the tax pool, it makes sense to compare ratios (group A contributed twice as much as group B, for example). A bar chart is ideal for this purpose (as is a simple table with calculated ratios, in fact, but we're discussing charts here). But it doesn't make sense to compare the ratios of A+B with C, with the ratio of B with C. That's plain misleading.
Check out www.edwardtufte.com for more information about Tufte's work. The story of how he had to publish his own books to get them looking exactly how he wanted (important when your thesis is about ideal visual display!) is very interesting. The "Ask E.T." section is also well worth a read.
Despite this classic book being available for 20 years, there are still plenty of examples of bad statistical graphics to be found in the mainstream media. Here's just one example from the Seattle Times this year, along with a "non-lying" revision of the chart, but you can find plenty by flipping through just about any regional newspaper. Or any edition of USA Today. The NYT usually has good charts, though.
I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who has to produce charts for their job.
That's exactly the problem. When everything is just "corporate responsibility" no one person can be punished. Where's the deterrent in that?
In the example you cite, we just need to identify who is damaged, and who caused the damage. The latter is easy -- we can sue the person who created the "McNuggets taste like ass" campaign. Or the person who approved it -- the court can decide who is liable, and the plaintiff can decide to sue whomsoever they think the court is most likely to agree is liable. Who should sue? The CEO could sue on the basis of harm to his stock options. The shareholders could bring a class-action suit for diminished dividends. And what if you can't find a person or class who is damaged enough to bring a suit? Perfect! The suit shouldn't be brought in the first place.
The fact that corporations can behave as individuals, and be subject to individual's rights but none of an individual's responsibilities, is the single-most fucked-up thing about the US legal system today.
You miss the point entirely. Joe Sixpack is paying for all of the settings embodied in the AOL software which improves their Internet experience. Turning off the Messenger Service is part of that improvement.
The fact that it's a trivial change, at a technical level, is totally besides the point. Sure, Joe Sixpack could turn off the service himself, but the point is he doesn't know how (or even that it's the cause of the popups!). All he knows is the popups are gone and he's happy.
It reminds me of the old story about the guy who had a blocked drain. He calls a plumber, and all he does is tap on the pipe with a hammer. Presto, the problem is fixed! The plumber then hands the guy a bill for $500. "Why is this so much?" he says. "Hold on, let me itemize that bill for you" says the plumber:
For tapping on pipe: $10
For knowing that tapping would fix the problem: $490
It also has a limited range of 280 to 300 miles at 60 mph on a single charge.
What makes that limited? My car has a range of about 250 miles in the city, 300 or so on the highway. Admittedly, it is an SUV. But I don't hear anyone complaining about the limited range of SUVs...
He proposed, but did not prove
on
Happy Birthday, Atom
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· Score: 5, Informative
Dalton proposed the existence of the atom, but it took Rutherford to verify its structure and prove it existed as Dalton suggested.
But should corporations have constitutional rights? Like individuals?
Corporations have all the same constitutional rights and responsibilities under the law as individuals. Of course, while it's easy for a corporation to benefit from the rights (e.g. freedom of speech) there is no one person to bear the responsibility (e.g. punishment for murder). This follows an 1886 Supreme Court ruling, so this isn't news. More info here.
This technology will be rolling out much sooner than next summer. Coca-Cola will be running the same promotion in Australia in conjunction with November's Rugby World Cup. Here's an article on the forthcoming Thrill Seeker promotion. Australia is a big, empty place -- I wonder what happens if someone in Mt Isa or Kalgoorlie picks up a winning can? It's gonna be hard for them to instantly find the winner then...
Except that as far as I can tell, deregulation introduced no competition whatsoever. I recently moved house: my old place was served by Comcast, and I wanted to take my service to the new place. What I found out was that Comcast doesn't serve my new place (though this took 2 weeks before Comcast let me know!); instead I'm served by Millennium Digital, and I go with them or nobody.
How can deregulation improve competition when no one persion has a choice about the provider to use?
Slashdot Mirror
All the best interface designs are obvious ... in retrospect. You can't just say "It's a wheel!" without recognizing the enormous amount of effort and care that went into its design and engineering.
The wheel is what makes the iPod unique, and it deserves its success because of it. This is one of the good uses of patents, in the sense that it gives a manufacturer a temporary monopoly as a reward for innovative design, and will hopefully spur other innovative designs in the iPod comptetitors. Seems like a good thing to me.
A bit off topic, but I just came across a chart today which is the closest thing I've seen which gives a sense of the Total Perspective Vortex as Adams described it. All it needs is the "You are here". See it here.
My point, dimwit, was that EVEN IF WE HAD KNOWN THE EXACT INTENTIONS OF ALL 13,000 voters INCLUDING the 134 that somehow didn't get their vote registered, the votes for the two candidates would STILL have been within 1.5% of each other: (12+134)/13000*100=1.123.
What I'm saying is that when an election is THAT close, the person who gets elected is basically down to random chance. A difference of 146 votes at most can not possibly express the will of the voters as a whole. I'm simply suggesting that maybe it might be a good idea to so something other than electing the candidate who just happened to get the "most" votes in this case -- a runoff perhaps.
This is totally independent of the method of voting, touchscreens or otherwise.
Election law really needs to do something else -- a runoff perhaps, or a default to the incumbent -- when an election is this close but the turnout is much less than 100%. You may as well just flip a coin when the vote counts are not significantly different with respect to sampling error.
It's nothing of the kind. This is a serious epidemiological study, and them scientists are actually pretty smart, y'know. Problems like these were formally recognised about a century ago, and there are ways to (mostly) avoid them.
True, this is an observational study rather than an intervention study or controlled experiment, but most large epidemiological studies like this do correct for things like age, sex, deprivation, health, etc. to reduce the effect of such biases.
That's not to say there isn't some selection effect that isn't controlled for which is causing the effect and has nothing to do with coffee. But the next step is that some pharmaceutical company will try and isolate the compound which has the preventative qualities and run a double-blind clinical trial to verify it's efficacy. Then we'll really know. This study is just the start. All that said, you've got a much better chance of reducing your risk of type II diabetes by reducing your weight and exercising than by running a 12-cup-a-day lifestyle.
There's also an interesting third-party discussion of Moore's response on kuro5hin.
They had to bribe or otherwise persuade drunken clubbers emerging into the light at 5AM on a Sunday not to interfere with the zombies :)
It's easy to do this with a modern laptop -- slides on the projector, notes on the laptop screen. Here's how.
Not true. Australia has Proportional Representation (and compulsory voting!) and gerrymandering certainly occurs. Most elections are decided by first preferences, which can be imputed from demographics just as they can elsewhere. Gerrymandering was a big issue in Queensland in the 80's as I recall.
Thanks for the example, which is frightening in its clarity. This is a truly serious issue.
As I understand it, if you hadn't yet opted out, they plan to start emailing next year. (This explains why I haven't had any travel offers yet.) You've had at least SIX MONTHS to opt out, so don't start whining now. For a free service, this seems perfectly fair to me. If you don't like it, don't use their services.
There were a few really funny IT postings in Australia recently. Depending on how you react to them you could also consider them the worst!
I think it might be worse than that. This flare was only a glancing blow, but even so all short-wave communications through the sunlit hemisphere of the Earth experienced complete blackout conditions.
But it makes you worry: what would have happened if that X40 flare was directed right at us?
Why are you splitting the top 5% into two groups?
Because that's how the original article (sadly no longer available) divided society. There were four groups: lower classes (bottom 60% quantiles) middle classes (not mentioned), upper classes (above 5%) and super-rich (above 1%). Then a graph compared income taxes paid by each. The top two groups were compared IN THE CONTEXT OF the bottom group, but the top two groups overlapped each other! This is deception. The division of quantiles into classes is indeed arbitrary, but it was the division used by the original article).
And for what it's worth, a bar chart was a poor choice for this graph. A pie chart would be preferred.
Balderdash and poppycock in the extreme! There are many studies which show that pie charts are a poor visual representation of a division of a whole. (Says Tufte in his book: "This point [regarding pie charts] is made decisively in Jaques Bertin, Graphics and Graphic information processing (1981). Bertin describes multiple pie charts as "completely useless".) The basic problem is that the human brain has difficulty comparing areas of wedge-shaped objects. If you want to compare numbers use a bar chart.
Since the entire purpose of the article was to compare how different social groups contributed to the tax pool, it makes sense to compare ratios (group A contributed twice as much as group B, for example). A bar chart is ideal for this purpose (as is a simple table with calculated ratios, in fact, but we're discussing charts here). But it doesn't make sense to compare the ratios of A+B with C, with the ratio of B with C. That's plain misleading.
And, for the record, IAAS (I am a statistician).
Check out www.edwardtufte.com for more information about Tufte's work. The story of how he had to publish his own books to get them looking exactly how he wanted (important when your thesis is about ideal visual display!) is very interesting. The "Ask E.T." section is also well worth a read.
I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who has to produce charts for their job.
In the example you cite, we just need to identify who is damaged, and who caused the damage. The latter is easy -- we can sue the person who created the "McNuggets taste like ass" campaign. Or the person who approved it -- the court can decide who is liable, and the plaintiff can decide to sue whomsoever they think the court is most likely to agree is liable. Who should sue? The CEO could sue on the basis of harm to his stock options. The shareholders could bring a class-action suit for diminished dividends. And what if you can't find a person or class who is damaged enough to bring a suit? Perfect! The suit shouldn't be brought in the first place.
The fact that corporations can behave as individuals, and be subject to individual's rights but none of an individual's responsibilities, is the single-most fucked-up thing about the US legal system today.
The fact that it's a trivial change, at a technical level, is totally besides the point. Sure, Joe Sixpack could turn off the service himself, but the point is he doesn't know how (or even that it's the cause of the popups!). All he knows is the popups are gone and he's happy.
It reminds me of the old story about the guy who had a blocked drain. He calls a plumber, and all he does is tap on the pipe with a hammer. Presto, the problem is fixed! The plumber then hands the guy a bill for $500. "Why is this so much?" he says. "Hold on, let me itemize that bill for you" says the plumber:
For tapping on pipe: $10
For knowing that tapping would fix the problem: $490
And that, my friends, is the moral of the story.
What makes that limited? My car has a range of about 250 miles in the city, 300 or so on the highway. Admittedly, it is an SUV. But I don't hear anyone complaining about the limited range of SUVs...
Dalton proposed the existence of the atom, but it took Rutherford to verify its structure and prove it existed as Dalton suggested.
Corporations have all the same constitutional rights and responsibilities under the law as individuals. Of course, while it's easy for a corporation to benefit from the rights (e.g. freedom of speech) there is no one person to bear the responsibility (e.g. punishment for murder). This follows an 1886 Supreme Court ruling, so this isn't news. More info here.
This technology will be rolling out much sooner than next summer. Coca-Cola will be running the same promotion in Australia in conjunction with November's Rugby World Cup. Here's an article on the forthcoming Thrill Seeker promotion. Australia is a big, empty place -- I wonder what happens if someone in Mt Isa or Kalgoorlie picks up a winning can? It's gonna be hard for them to instantly find the winner then...
Or a potato-powered one!
How can deregulation improve competition when no one persion has a choice about the provider to use?