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User: dr_blurb

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Comments · 89

  1. Re:The question on TorrentFreak Blocked By British ISP Sky's Porn Filter · · Score: 3

    Obscene and Tasteless - This category will block sites that offer advice on how to commit illegal or criminal activities, or to avoid detection.

    The trick is to combine things that parents will obviously want
    to block (in that category: "how to commit murder, build
    bombs, " and "gruesome or even frightening content such as
    shocking depictions of blood or wounds, or cruel animal
    treatment.") with stuff that the MPAA/government etc. want to
    block: "Sites with information about illegal manipulation of
    electronic devices, hacking, fraud and illegal distribution of
    software will be blocked along with ..."

    ... in the same category!

    "Illegal manipulation of electronic devices, hacking" is nice and
    broad as well, so plenty of sites to block.

    Why is hacking "obscene and tasteless" anyway?

  2. Mac mini on Ask Slashdot: How Would You Secure Your Parents' PC? · · Score: 1

    Got my parents a Mac mini years ago, never looked back :)

  3. bitcoin tweets available for analysis on Cyprus University Accepts Bitcoin For Tuition Fee Payments · · Score: 1

    I've posted a (torrent of a) 6 month archive of tweets about bitcoin at bitcoinscope.com

    To be precise, it's 50% of all tweets (every other tweet), so it can be used as a training set, with the other 50% to be used as a test set later (for your sentiment tracker / price predictor, etc.)

  4. Re:Where's the torrent file? on Britain's Conservatives Scrub Speeches from the Internet · · Score: 1

    I'm surprised there isn't already a copy out there somewhere.

    Freedom of Information request first?

  5. BT's "cease charge" on The Ridiculous Tech Fees You're Still Paying · · Score: 1

    Another example: I've been trying for months now
    to get BT's (British Telecom's) "cease charge" refunded:
    they charge you 30 pounds for closing a broadband account (!)

    No luck so far :-(

  6. usage stats on Fedora 19 Released · · Score: 1

    The endless Gnome 3 vs 2 discussions are all very well (I ditched Fedora because of it), but in the end let the voters decide:

    Apparently in 2010 Fedora was the 2nd most used distro (from http://www.pcworld.com/article/2021273/another-year-another-totally-different-top-10-linux-distros.html).

    In 2011 it was 3rd. In 2012 it was 4th.

    And looking at the latest Distrowatch page hit rankings (which is what that article was using):
    http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity,
    it now is 5th.

  7. Re:I assume... on Ask Slashdot: When Is the User Experience Too Good? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have begun to doubt my position and wonder if we don't have some responsibility to artificially 'cripple' the solution and in doing so protect the user from themselves

    That tells me he should consider working for Apple.

    It tells me that at the moment he's on the Gnome 3 dev team.

  8. Re:You lost me at... on Fedora 19 Alpha Released · · Score: 1

    after about 12 years of Red Hat then Fedora,
    I switched to Fuduntu, and very pleased about it.

    gnome 2, bottom panel the way I want it :)

    (only thing still missing is the netspeed applet)

  9. same story as 20 years ago on Antivirus Software Performs Poorly Against New Threats · · Score: 1

    Back in 1992 I wrote a report called "Virus Detection Alternatives",
    already describing all this "new" knowledge.
    (problems with signature scanning, polymorphic viruses,
    heuristical scanning, etc.)

    The main conclusion at the time (of DOS 5.0 (!)) was that the
    security of the operating system had to be improved.

    Get a copy of the report at
    http://ftp.sac.sk/pub/sac/text/virusdet.zip
    (printed to text using WP5.1 :-)

  10. Re:vBulletin on Ask Slashdot: What Is the Best Way To Add Forums To a Website? · · Score: 1

    My captcha (I'm running phpBB) has proven to be "spam-bot secure" as well: users have to solve about 3-10 smaller sized Calcudoku puzzles (i.e. score 10 points) before they can post.

    I'll be impressed with the bot that manages that :-)

  11. Re:And that will also mark on GNOME 3.8 To Scrap Fallback Mode · · Score: 1

    Man, there are a lot of bitter people on /. If you don't like Gnome, you'll be using XFCE or KDE or Mate or Cinnamon or something

    No bitterness involved: the point is that now I can no longer simply upgrade to the latest Fedora: after every upgrade, I have to go through #!#@! uninstalling/installing steps to get a functional desktop back and restore my productivity.

  12. how many slashdotters are left-handed? on Confessions of a Left-Handed Technology User · · Score: 1

    has there every been a poll?

    I'd be interested in finding out if there are significantly more lefties among slashdot readers.

  13. Re:Not Gaps on UK License Plate Cameras Have "Gaps In Coverage" · · Score: 1

    There is no national plan to cover the whole road network in these cameras yet

    The gaps are great: roads can be categorized as "approved" (with cameras) and "dark".
    Law-abiding citizens will use the approved roads.
    People won't use the dark roads unless they have something to hide. So it'll be easier to catch the bad guys.
    Sounds like a win-win to me.

  14. Re:Stats from a non-technical website on Internet Explorer Market Share Drops To Almost 15% · · Score: 1

    IE 34.19%
    Firefox 22.52%
    Safari 21.38%
    Chrome 14.80%
    Android Browser 4.42%

    Here are my numbers for a number puzzle site:

    Chrome 30.67%
    Firefox 25.36%
    IE 23.94%
    Safari 15.87%
    Android 1.45%
    Opera 1.21%

    (also over the whole of 2012 so far, 443,255 visits, the site is http://www.calcudoku.org/

    So quite different obviously. Maybe a set of ~ 10-50 "representative" sites should be picked (e.g. a few news sites, a few tech sites, popular blogs, etc.), and the numbers averaged over those?

    And I'd be interested in the numbers of Fox News vs. the New York Times for example..

  15. Re:Cool tech, but on LG Aims To Beat Apple's Retina Display · · Score: 1

    If the Apple Retina display is already beyond the point a human eye can resolve - what's more resolution going to get you?

    Larger filesizes, longer download times, shorter battery life, worse performance?

  16. not all visits are through search anyway on Chrome Browser Usage Artificially Boosted, Says Microsoft · · Score: 1

    When a user enters a search in Chrome, the browser preloads an invisible tab not shown to the user, and these were being counted by StatCounter. Net Applications, another usage tracking group, ignores these invisible tabs and reports IE at 54%, Firefox at 20.20%, and Chrome at 18.85%."

    Is this a slashvertisement for Net Applications? 54% for IE?? Did they grab their data from 2009?

    Also, not all traffic is search traffic. The stats for the last two months at http://www.calcudoku.org/ (which has < 35% search traffic):

    1. Chrome: 31%
    2. Firefox: 25%
    3. IE: 24%
    4. Safari: 17%
    5. Opera: 1%
    6. Android: 1%
  17. Re:There was nothing in the comment to censor on Facebook Says It's Filtering Comments For Spam, Not Censoring Them · · Score: 5, Funny

    There's nothing worth censoring in that comment, a guy made a post,

    Well, he did mention Google+

  18. Re:Regression to the mean ? on Chrome Users Are Best With Numbers, IE Users Worst · · Score: 1

    Doesn't this more likely mean that there are just a lot more people using IE than Chrome and so their average is going to be closer to the mean of the greater population?

    From the paper, these were the browser shares by the end of 2011:

    At the end of 2011, browser shares were 39% for IE, 38% for Firefox, 27% for Chrome,
    and 11% for Safari (the version breakdown for IE was 1% for IE 6.0, 13% for 7.0,
    53% for 8.0, and 33% for 9.0).

  19. Re:Correlation, casuation, etc... on Chrome Users Are Best With Numbers, IE Users Worst · · Score: 1

    The causation probably is: More educated or intelligent people have learned about Chrome and have switched. The default browser on the most widespread system is always the one that will have the least sophisticated users.

    Yes, that's what I'm thinking too. Here's the relevant bit from the conclusion of the paper:

    In summary, based on the findings that Chrome users solve Calcudoku number puzzles the fastest, and that IE users give up on solving them the most, it appears that Chrome users have the highest numerical intelligence, followed by Firefox users, then by Internet Explorer users. Note that it does not follow that using Chrome makes you smarter, for example ("correlation does not imply causation"). Also, we can only speculate about the causes of the differences: perhaps Chrome is the browser of choice for more technically inclined people, who tend to have better number skills. And maybe because IE is the default browser for Windows, people who do not choose a different browser possibly are less technically skilled.

  20. Re:/sigh on Chrome Users Are Best With Numbers, IE Users Worst · · Score: 1

    Well, I'm reporting on statistics of people solving number puzzles, this was not a test advertised as "please come do Calcudoku puzzles for a scientific test".

    And publishing your "paper" on your own website doesn't make it peer-reviewed either.

    I thought about submitting it somewhere, but then I'd have a couple of 2-3 paragraph reviews after 6 months, and it maybe would have been published after another 6.

    This way the Slashdot crowd are the peer-reviewers :-), and it's been helpful: I need to add actual p-values, sampling errors, look into possible problems with multiple comparisons, etc...

  21. Re:Could happen by chance on Chrome Users Are Best With Numbers, IE Users Worst · · Score: 1

    You may want to revise the paper to take into account the different use cases for each browser. If users of a certain browser are more likely to be distracted or interrupted (like at work, for instance), and similarly if users of a certain browser are more likely to be looking for an easy-to-digest diversion and abandoning some harder puzzles (like at work), this would invalidate the conclusions. Your statistics might say more about where different browsers are likely to be found rather than about the users of those browsers.

    It'll be tricky to evaluate any kind of data by asking users.

    On the site's forum, for example, there's been some back and forth about the influence of age. One user has set up a web survey to collect age data. But I can never be sure I'm getting correct numbers. At some point there'll be so much uncertainty in the source data, I can't derive anything anymore.

  22. Re:Could happen by chance on Chrome Users Are Best With Numbers, IE Users Worst · · Score: 1

    No, the problem is your entire premise and conclusion are faulty. That's not even getting into your sampling bias and other issues. Getting a statistically significant result is meaningless with poor sampling. You also provide no figures on your sampling error so your claims are even less meaningful. So sorry, but this whole "study" is total bunk just like the hoax study was despite your attempt at "HURR HURR IE users are teh dumb!" conclusion you are attempting to claim.

    Yes, I should've included sampling error, and will do so in a later version (sampling error was small).

    The fact that the average times were lowest for Chrome and highest for IE was just what it was. If it had been the other way around I would have reported that.

    An earlier poster wrote:

    There also seem to be potential problems with multiple testing [xkcd.com], but the paper doesn't go into enough detail to be sure.

    That's a good point, I need to look into that. You always prefer an interesting result to report on, so there's this risk of "hunting" for one :-(

  23. Re:Wrong conclusions on Chrome Users Are Best With Numbers, IE Users Worst · · Score: 1

    > You click the highlighted square and the first thing that
    > happens is an immovable pop-up covers most of the puzzle.
    > I left it unfinished.

    It goes away when you pick a number, or when you click
    outside the popup. Also, this would not have counted as
    an unfinished puzzle, since this is only tracked for timed puzzles.

  24. Re:Need more details on Chrome Users Are Best With Numbers, IE Users Worst · · Score: 1

    Most of this info is in fact in the paper.

    The actual p-values I can put in an updated version (they were all less than 5%).

  25. Re:Is this just a measure of browser performance? on Chrome Users Are Best With Numbers, IE Users Worst · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Possibly, but my guess is that I would have had complaints from people.

    Also note that this was data over two years, and I'm only using it from people who've successfully completed at least 10 timed puzzles of each size.