I just gave it a go with every wish for it to be good, but it didn't seem to recognise my test artists (some mildly obscure drum & bass). I then tried "Metallica" to cover the opposite end of the spectrum, but got a 500 internal server error - an easter egg perhaps?
Finally I tried US noise metal band "Lightning Bolt" but it returned an Enya song as a reccomendation. That's when I decided it wasn't built for my tastes! Nice design though.
The first example is good, but if you are searching for "The Police", it's unlikely any algorithm, or human observer would think you were searching for the band. If you searched for "The Police Band" (without quotes obviously) then I would say fair enough.
Otherwise it would be like searching for "big black cock" and being surprised that the results and ads were not about poultry.
The new ideas the article talks about with subsets are a great idea - if you could identify groups of users who might not have heard Pink Floyd, like teens or people who died before 1970, you could recommend it based on tastes among their peers just to them. Though I feel using such metrics is risky - leaving little room for non-conformism, or resting in peace for that matter.
Every recommendation algorithm I've seen does one or both of two things. The first being staying extremely close to things I have already expressed an interest in - never broadening my horizons.
That, or it suggests really popular things, for example with music always getting a string of well known, popular bands and artists like Radiohead or Pink Floyd suggested as bands I might like - because many people who like similar sorts of music to me like Radiohead, the algorithm thinks I would like Radiohead too - they can't seem to figure that I would already know if I liked Radiohead or not at this point. I've never found a way to tell a recommendation algorithm that Pink Floyd is OK but I want something less popular...
True, except it's not down to figuring it out most of the time.
The reason we see so many dumb people running successful businesses and wonder how they managed to pull it off - they have the right instincts, or the right contacts, to get things off the ground, and sometimes that's all you need. The successful restaurant may have many under the surface reasons for it's success, or it could have appeal to other people in a way that you might not pick up on being significant - a lot of people underestimate details, or have an unsuitable target market, or the wrong idea of what that target market wants - a lot of businesses fail like this and the owner may never fully understand why, and would have trouble accepting the truth if they knew the real reasons that held them from success - eg "some people thought the restauarant looked dark and dingy from the outside", "all the waiting staff were ugly" "your taste in background music put a lot of people off from dining more than once"
While people who live in the North East of England would probably say the wind "were a bit chilly" most of the year, the nearest glaciers to Billingham would be in Norway, not exactly close enough to influence weather patterns...
When methodology that could be compared to this is used in other fields of science, like geology, it is almost never questioned.
When a soil core from Manhattan Island shows layers of sand deposited by beach over-topping during hurricanes, no one says "That's not proof that hurricanes could hit New York - all it proves is that sand was deposited here in the past". No one says "This is just an invented result by those looking to make money out of building tidal barrages".
The whole idea of a "religion of science" is ridiculous. There is good science, and pseudo science. There are incompetent or corrupt or biased people in every profession and every field, suggesting that scientists are like gods is bordering on trolling.
Shameful that the 'researchers' thought this information worthy of release - anyone with brain cells would revise their metrics after their data showed results like this.
Shameful that the NY Times didn't discard it as self-promotional garbage from UCSD.
Shameful that it made it to the front page of Slashdot.
Thing is, most people don't realise how much closer they sit to a laptop screen than a monitor screen on a desk. A 26" screen the same distance away as a laptop screen on your lap would appear too large. My 17" has a 1920x1200 and it has never caused me to squint, even with the default font size. Sure, I can't put it on the ground a few feet away and still read things like if it was lower res, but on my lap or on a table top it's great and I'd hate to have to use a lower res again. It's particularly good for photo editing and design work.
I would recommend trying to find a screen with a 16:10 ratio rather than 16:9 if it's going to be used to any sort of work - You need all the screen height you can get. Though laptop makers seem to be mostly moving to 16:9, I heard that these panels are cheaper to produce (maybe because they can be shared with TVs?).
One thing that I wish someone had told me about, if you work with web stuff, changing font DPIs in windows settings also affects the way Internet Explorer renders web pages - I tore my hair out trying to discover why sites I was working on showed bigger text in Internet Explorer than any other browsers. I had only increased the DPI setting by a couple of points and at default it doesn't really make any difference to readability so I have just left it there.
I would never vote fro Labour or the Tories and indeed any other vote does seem wasted. In my opinion this is the main issue that spoils politics here - if there was proportional representation, politics would no longer be simply a slanging/lieing match between the two main parties. But it has been these two main parties that have prevented proportional representation in the past, and now, thanks to the likes of the BNP, there is an argument against it with actual validity (though personally I would rather see the BNP with a few seats in government and proportional representation than the current system).
I think the other issue (both in the US and the UK) is that there are too many people who know NOTHING about politics but vote for one of the main parties because it's "who they are", they were "brought up that way" - even if Labour/the Democrats had a fascist agenda and the Tories/Republicans a socialist one they would still vote for the same party, just because their "father voted for them every four years until the day he died". Note I am not saying that Labour is the UK equivalent of the Democrats.
That's fine if you have a car that's fast in a straight line, otherwise you have no option (other than not overtaking) but to get right in behind unless it's going to be a really long straight, however slow they go around corners. My old 1.3 Corolla wagon was a bitch for that
Dear Dave Mundt,
Sorry but you are wrong. Maybe where you live (I'm guessing somewhere pancake flat with straight roads) that's true, but in other parts of the world it's not. The South Island of New Zealand is full every summer with tourists in rental cars and campervans driving at half the speed limit while they peer at the scenery from behind the wheel, on twisty mountain roads where there can often be no good overtaking opportunities for 20 miles. This combined with local drivers who are probably some of the fastest in the world on said twisty roads. Keep a two second distance from the tourists and you'll be behind them for the whole length of the road, while they pootle along gazing at waterfalls and mountains in blissful ignorance of what is happening on the road around them- tailgate for a few corners/flash lights the majority of the time they will pull over quickly and let you past. Doing this can (without exaggeration) halve journey times and avoid dangerous 'desperation overtaking'.
Personally I try and avoid absolute positioning as much as possible, usually only with things like footers that need to stay at the bottom of the page. There are too many CSS coders who latch onto absolute when they are first learning CSS as it's easy to understand, and use it to lay out all their elements, with resulting browser incompatibility and javascript hacking hilarity. I even shun relative positioning for the most part - a lot can be achieved with static positioning and good usage of margins and floats.
For sure I would agree with that, the idea that life exists for a reason or purpose is to me connected to the theory of intelligent design. Life exists and that's all we can say. I think it's commonly misunderstood that natural selection is a process with a purpose. It has one only in effect, at the nuts and bolts level evolution is down to *random* genetic mutations, some of which turn out to be more advantageous than others.
What you are missing is that life is subject to limitations on the type of resources it can use. Nearly all animals directly need only biomass for food, oxygen and clean water. And with the balanced ecosystem the planet has, the plant kingdom creates the biomass and regenerates 'used' oxygen.
A grey goo would not be subject to these limitations. It would probably be able to use several different sources of energy. If animals run out of biomass to eat, they starve to death. Grey goo could foreseeably evolve to be able to, or already be adapted to deriving energy from non-organic chemical processes, literally eating the planet - or be able to proliferate purely from solar energy. It's adaptability in short time frames, instead of over millions of years as with natural life is exactly what makes it such a frightening prospect.
Yeah 7.5 isn't a huge Quake - they say the next big one to hit the Alpine Fault in South Westland or Nelson Lakes could easily be a 9.0+.
If this is intended for California I really think it should be designed to withstand an 8.0 which is supposedly about the maximum the greater Los Angeles area could be subject to, I don't think it's possible to claim anything like they have invented an "earthquake-proof house".
For sure, my 91 Nissan Avenir has been great - it's possible to fix way more things yourself than on a more modern car, and replacement parts are plentiful and cheap. For example, I can replace the brakepads myself quite easily in less than 20 mins per wheel and the cheapest brand are $25 per axle.
Having said that, I owned an 88 Corolla before that which was nothing but trouble, but I think I'd put that down to not knowing much about cars when I bought it.
I doubt that much of that 700 lbs would *not* be riddled with rust long before that lease would run out.
If you RTA you'll see that the bodywork is made from carbon composite. I don't think it's that unreallistic for a car to still be going after 20 years - how many cars are there around on the roads from 1989/1990? Still quite a few (esp. Japanese made), in some parts of the world the majority of cars are that old or older.
But this post is a great illustration of how many people view cars as throwaway, disposable products, good for only 10 years. Cars don't just impact the environment with CO2 emissions, the material and energy cost of production, maintenance and disposal have to be taken into account, and it's about time seeing a manufacturer taking responsibility in this regard, rather than cashing in on the easy profits of throwaway consumerism
I never even noticed there was an "I'm feeling lucky" button until I read about it in an article a couple of years ago and went and checked to see if they were having me on. And I'd been using google for years. Probably because I always press return with things like that rather than clicking on buttons with the mouse.
Yes, but it's devalued. You have it for free, I worked hard to create it. You can also steal from my bank account. I still have my bank account, it's just been devalued.
That's exactly like saying "You can steal the money and credit cards out of the wallet sitting on my desk, but I still have the wallet, it's just devalued"
You sir, are an idiot, and a prize one for being so sure of yourself.
Why is this modded funny? Some retards with modpoints around. This is one of the most insightful posts I've ever read on Slashdot and some brainless skim-reader modded it funny?
People don't realise, because it rains so often, that the total average annual rainfall in the UK (at least in the south and east of England) is actually very low on a global scale - this misleading impression comes from the frequency of times when it's drizzling/spitting or just damp and overcast, it is, compared to other countries, very rare to get heavy monsoon style rain which can put down a months worth of drizzling rain in one day. In fact the average annual rainfall in Eastern England is similar to that found in a lot of desert areas, just those areas are closer to the equator and the rain falls more heavily on less occasions. When you realise this, it's not so hard to understand why we have hosepipe bans etc.
For comparison, where I am living now on the South Island of New Zealand has six times the average rainfall of where I am from in the UK, but it actually seems less rainy here (much higher sunshine hours).
Slashdot Mirror
I just gave it a go with every wish for it to be good, but it didn't seem to recognise my test artists (some mildly obscure drum & bass). I then tried "Metallica" to cover the opposite end of the spectrum, but got a 500 internal server error - an easter egg perhaps? Finally I tried US noise metal band "Lightning Bolt" but it returned an Enya song as a reccomendation. That's when I decided it wasn't built for my tastes! Nice design though.
The first example is good, but if you are searching for "The Police", it's unlikely any algorithm, or human observer would think you were searching for the band. If you searched for "The Police Band" (without quotes obviously) then I would say fair enough.
Otherwise it would be like searching for "big black cock" and being surprised that the results and ads were not about poultry.
For sure, it's a crappy way to do it.
The new ideas the article talks about with subsets are a great idea - if you could identify groups of users who might not have heard Pink Floyd, like teens or people who died before 1970, you could recommend it based on tastes among their peers just to them. Though I feel using such metrics is risky - leaving little room for non-conformism, or resting in peace for that matter.
Every recommendation algorithm I've seen does one or both of two things. The first being staying extremely close to things I have already expressed an interest in - never broadening my horizons.
That, or it suggests really popular things, for example with music always getting a string of well known, popular bands and artists like Radiohead or Pink Floyd suggested as bands I might like - because many people who like similar sorts of music to me like Radiohead, the algorithm thinks I would like Radiohead too - they can't seem to figure that I would already know if I liked Radiohead or not at this point. I've never found a way to tell a recommendation algorithm that Pink Floyd is OK but I want something less popular...
Can you elaborate on the fairy liquid/sea water incident?
True, except it's not down to figuring it out most of the time.
The reason we see so many dumb people running successful businesses and wonder how they managed to pull it off - they have the right instincts, or the right contacts, to get things off the ground, and sometimes that's all you need. The successful restaurant may have many under the surface reasons for it's success, or it could have appeal to other people in a way that you might not pick up on being significant - a lot of people underestimate details, or have an unsuitable target market, or the wrong idea of what that target market wants - a lot of businesses fail like this and the owner may never fully understand why, and would have trouble accepting the truth if they knew the real reasons that held them from success - eg "some people thought the restauarant looked dark and dingy from the outside", "all the waiting staff were ugly" "your taste in background music put a lot of people off from dining more than once"
While people who live in the North East of England would probably say the wind "were a bit chilly" most of the year, the nearest glaciers to Billingham would be in Norway, not exactly close enough to influence weather patterns...
When methodology that could be compared to this is used in other fields of science, like geology, it is almost never questioned. When a soil core from Manhattan Island shows layers of sand deposited by beach over-topping during hurricanes, no one says "That's not proof that hurricanes could hit New York - all it proves is that sand was deposited here in the past". No one says "This is just an invented result by those looking to make money out of building tidal barrages". The whole idea of a "religion of science" is ridiculous. There is good science, and pseudo science. There are incompetent or corrupt or biased people in every profession and every field, suggesting that scientists are like gods is bordering on trolling.
Shameful.
Shameful that the 'researchers' thought this information worthy of release - anyone with brain cells would revise their metrics after their data showed results like this.
Shameful that the NY Times didn't discard it as self-promotional garbage from UCSD.
Shameful that it made it to the front page of Slashdot.
Shameful.
Thing is, most people don't realise how much closer they sit to a laptop screen than a monitor screen on a desk. A 26" screen the same distance away as a laptop screen on your lap would appear too large. My 17" has a 1920x1200 and it has never caused me to squint, even with the default font size. Sure, I can't put it on the ground a few feet away and still read things like if it was lower res, but on my lap or on a table top it's great and I'd hate to have to use a lower res again. It's particularly good for photo editing and design work.
I would recommend trying to find a screen with a 16:10 ratio rather than 16:9 if it's going to be used to any sort of work - You need all the screen height you can get. Though laptop makers seem to be mostly moving to 16:9, I heard that these panels are cheaper to produce (maybe because they can be shared with TVs?).
One thing that I wish someone had told me about, if you work with web stuff, changing font DPIs in windows settings also affects the way Internet Explorer renders web pages - I tore my hair out trying to discover why sites I was working on showed bigger text in Internet Explorer than any other browsers. I had only increased the DPI setting by a couple of points and at default it doesn't really make any difference to readability so I have just left it there.
I would never vote fro Labour or the Tories and indeed any other vote does seem wasted. In my opinion this is the main issue that spoils politics here - if there was proportional representation, politics would no longer be simply a slanging/lieing match between the two main parties. But it has been these two main parties that have prevented proportional representation in the past, and now, thanks to the likes of the BNP, there is an argument against it with actual validity (though personally I would rather see the BNP with a few seats in government and proportional representation than the current system). I think the other issue (both in the US and the UK) is that there are too many people who know NOTHING about politics but vote for one of the main parties because it's "who they are", they were "brought up that way" - even if Labour/the Democrats had a fascist agenda and the Tories/Republicans a socialist one they would still vote for the same party, just because their "father voted for them every four years until the day he died". Note I am not saying that Labour is the UK equivalent of the Democrats.
That's fine if you have a car that's fast in a straight line, otherwise you have no option (other than not overtaking) but to get right in behind unless it's going to be a really long straight, however slow they go around corners. My old 1.3 Corolla wagon was a bitch for that
Dear Dave Mundt, Sorry but you are wrong. Maybe where you live (I'm guessing somewhere pancake flat with straight roads) that's true, but in other parts of the world it's not. The South Island of New Zealand is full every summer with tourists in rental cars and campervans driving at half the speed limit while they peer at the scenery from behind the wheel, on twisty mountain roads where there can often be no good overtaking opportunities for 20 miles. This combined with local drivers who are probably some of the fastest in the world on said twisty roads. Keep a two second distance from the tourists and you'll be behind them for the whole length of the road, while they pootle along gazing at waterfalls and mountains in blissful ignorance of what is happening on the road around them- tailgate for a few corners/flash lights the majority of the time they will pull over quickly and let you past. Doing this can (without exaggeration) halve journey times and avoid dangerous 'desperation overtaking'.
Personally I try and avoid absolute positioning as much as possible, usually only with things like footers that need to stay at the bottom of the page. There are too many CSS coders who latch onto absolute when they are first learning CSS as it's easy to understand, and use it to lay out all their elements, with resulting browser incompatibility and javascript hacking hilarity. I even shun relative positioning for the most part - a lot can be achieved with static positioning and good usage of margins and floats.
For sure I would agree with that, the idea that life exists for a reason or purpose is to me connected to the theory of intelligent design. Life exists and that's all we can say. I think it's commonly misunderstood that natural selection is a process with a purpose. It has one only in effect, at the nuts and bolts level evolution is down to *random* genetic mutations, some of which turn out to be more advantageous than others.
What you are missing is that life is subject to limitations on the type of resources it can use. Nearly all animals directly need only biomass for food, oxygen and clean water. And with the balanced ecosystem the planet has, the plant kingdom creates the biomass and regenerates 'used' oxygen. A grey goo would not be subject to these limitations. It would probably be able to use several different sources of energy. If animals run out of biomass to eat, they starve to death. Grey goo could foreseeably evolve to be able to, or already be adapted to deriving energy from non-organic chemical processes, literally eating the planet - or be able to proliferate purely from solar energy. It's adaptability in short time frames, instead of over millions of years as with natural life is exactly what makes it such a frightening prospect.
I hate Rupert Murdoch and his propoganda machine, but that's no excuse for Slashdot to lower it's standards below that of his tawdry newspapers.
NZ just had a 7.8 quake that barely woke up the sheep! http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10584761 Seriously though, bugger all people live down there so the biggest report of damage I heard of was some traffic lights falling over. :-)
Yeah 7.5 isn't a huge Quake - they say the next big one to hit the Alpine Fault in South Westland or Nelson Lakes could easily be a 9.0+. If this is intended for California I really think it should be designed to withstand an 8.0 which is supposedly about the maximum the greater Los Angeles area could be subject to, I don't think it's possible to claim anything like they have invented an "earthquake-proof house".
Having said that, I owned an 88 Corolla before that which was nothing but trouble, but I think I'd put that down to not knowing much about cars when I bought it.
If you RTA you'll see that the bodywork is made from carbon composite. I don't think it's that unreallistic for a car to still be going after 20 years - how many cars are there around on the roads from 1989/1990? Still quite a few (esp. Japanese made), in some parts of the world the majority of cars are that old or older.
But this post is a great illustration of how many people view cars as throwaway, disposable products, good for only 10 years. Cars don't just impact the environment with CO2 emissions, the material and energy cost of production, maintenance and disposal have to be taken into account, and it's about time seeing a manufacturer taking responsibility in this regard, rather than cashing in on the easy profits of throwaway consumerism
I never even noticed there was an "I'm feeling lucky" button until I read about it in an article a couple of years ago and went and checked to see if they were having me on. And I'd been using google for years. Probably because I always press return with things like that rather than clicking on buttons with the mouse.
Why is this modded funny? Some retards with modpoints around. This is one of the most insightful posts I've ever read on Slashdot and some brainless skim-reader modded it funny?
People don't realise, because it rains so often, that the total average annual rainfall in the UK (at least in the south and east of England) is actually very low on a global scale - this misleading impression comes from the frequency of times when it's drizzling/spitting or just damp and overcast, it is, compared to other countries, very rare to get heavy monsoon style rain which can put down a months worth of drizzling rain in one day. In fact the average annual rainfall in Eastern England is similar to that found in a lot of desert areas, just those areas are closer to the equator and the rain falls more heavily on less occasions. When you realise this, it's not so hard to understand why we have hosepipe bans etc. For comparison, where I am living now on the South Island of New Zealand has six times the average rainfall of where I am from in the UK, but it actually seems less rainy here (much higher sunshine hours).