Despite the fact that the odds of anybody actually making it to this post are slim to none, I'll throw a quick lesson on the psychology of persusion.
There are basically two forms of persuasion, as pertains to the political arena. You can either:
a) Use logic, reason, facts, etc., also known as the central route to persuasion. This tends to work best when the persuadees have time to mull over the information, and requires that they be making active strides towards making a decision. You'll therefore see these types of ads (actually focusing on issues), around this time of the year.
or
b) Use emotional appeal, scare tactics, weak arguments, etc., also known as the peripheral route to persuasion. This is highly effective when a decision has to be made very soon, without sufficient time to mull over the facts. Thus, you will most likely see this type of ad (often seen as "dirty") right before the election.
Pay attention to the way the ads change as the election approaches, and you'll see my point.
Obviously, F911 could be classified as either form of persuasion (probably depending on your political party...), but it most certainly is designed to have a highly emotional impact, thus will be very effective in persuading folks right before the election.
Ok, that's my 2 cents. Guess that psych major came in handy after all.
"The Club" is about as secure as putting a Post-It note saying "Please don't steal me:)" on your dashboard.
I am by no means a security expert, but have dabbled in lock-picking at a very amateur level, and even I can pick one of these in about a minute. A friend of mine who is more practiced in the art can pick it in about 15-20 seconds.
I realize that most theives can't pick locks, but you would think that a product designed to be used to protect a piece of property worth tens of thousands of dollars would have more than a single sided three pin lock...
To be fair, there have been several studies which have correlated scores on visual sensory registry and STM tests with scores on the standard SB intelligence test.
In other words, it is not "quite wrong" to say that visuospatial working memory is related to intelligence, at least in the terms that we choose to define intelligence by. People who perform well on these tasks also tend to perform better on intelligence tasks.
And yes, there are almost certainly third variable problems here, but that's a discussion for another day.
BTW, they can actually localize quite well (w/in.5mm) using a 128 lead ERP.
The problem is the record execs must've failed this class in college.
Demand is at an all time low. What do you do? Well, if you're a record exec, you RAISE the price!
The problem is that the price is set artificially high by the monopolistic tactics of the record industry (been proven in court). However, MP3s broke their monopoly, thus leaving them with a price above the market clearing price that would exist if the market were allowed to correct itself.
Folks, this is such a non-story. These people have been left without power for less that 24 hours.
I'm sure very few people realize this, but a very bitching storm came through Memphis two weeks ago and ripped it a new asshole. There were still people without power two weeks after the storm. TWO WEEKS. I personally was without power for over a week. Thank God I work at a hospital and was able to get my/. fix there.
So to all you damned spoiled Yanks, quit yer bitchin'.
For an example of "potential", you only need to look at the current Parkinson's research. They are incredibly close to being able to reliably differentiate stem cells into the dopamine producing neurons of the basal ganglia which are killed off in Parkinson's, thus throwing off the feedback loop which allows for coordinated movements. As soon as they find out how to reliably implant these new cells into the basal ganglia of a Parkinson's sufferer, they will have this disease beat.
You know, for all the stink everybody makes about how the "ban" on stem cell research will hinder progress, I for one haven't noticed any change in my research practices since the "ban".
I work in the Developmental Neurobiology Dept. of a large children's cancer research hospital (which shall remain nameless, but let's say it rhymes with "paint food"). I use stem cells on a regular basis (human embryonic kidney 293 cells (or HEK-293 for short)). And ya know what? I've never had the guv'ment come take my cells away.
Any legitimate researcher can get stem cells with little or no effort. Thus, all the fuss is quite pointless.
That being said, the "ban" is fairly pointless as well (although most researchers regard it as the purely political move that it was). There is a lot of potential to be had in this field, and the government shouldn't be stepping on any toes.
You just ignorant or uninformed? Diamonds are one of the hardest and strongest materials on earth. Making a comparison to glass is just plain retarded. Glass is silicon based. Diamonds are pure carbon.
Pure diamonds have a tensile stength (good measure of "fragility") in the range of gigapascals, while, for comparisons sake, titanium has a tensile strength of around 1-2 megapascals. We're talking three orders of magnitude stronger here.
You could cut through an engine block with a diamond knife if you had the urge to.
Cheap, readily manufacturable diamonds will revolutionize a lot of things, cookware being the least of them.
IAB (I am a biologist(ok, neurologist, actually)), and quite frankly, your DNA testing info is just plain wrong.
Any court appointed expert worth his salt will give the jury a detailed, precise p-value for the probability that the DNA came from some other person. A simple t-test is all that is needed for this.
Given the known variability of the population of DNA, it is not uncommon to have a p-value of 1E-8. That means there's a 1 in 100,000,000 chance that someone else committed the crime. In other words, there's about 3 people in the U.S. who match that DNA. Reasonable doubt? Your call.
Now admittedly, if you have p-values of anything less that 1E-3 or 4 being admitted into court, you should laugh the "expert" out of the courtroom.
Face it folks. We live in the "Information Age" (TM). Any information about you can be abused should it fall into the wrong hands. I, for one, don't want my boss to find out I sit on the computer all day reading/. But do I have a right to make sure he doesn't find out? No.
Besides, this service already exists in different forms. There are a number of companies who provide GPS tracking for company car fleets, trucking lines, etc. This is just the next logical step.
It does, however, scare me that these devices could be used as surrogate parents. Instead of actually talking to their kids and asking about their whereabouts, Joe Lazy-Parent can just fire up the tracker and find out where Little Johnny is.
Fraid that won't hold water. The Aimster ruling (sorry, too lazy to find the link), basically said that if a company enables illicit activity to occur, and knowingly prevents itself from finding out about said illicit activity, that company is guilty of contributory infringement.
In other words, if this company makes it so its users are completely anonymous, even to the company itself, and illegal activity is occurring on its network, its guilty. No "plausible deniability".
Is this a case of guilty until proven innocent? Dunno, but I, for one, won't be putting up any venture capital into this company...
Is this really news to anyone? Everybody knows that these guys have to make money, otherwise they simply would not exist.
Just because we happen to be the percentage of the world that is tech-savvy/intelligent/cynical enough (is there a difference?) to see spam for what it is, don't think that for every one of us, there's not 100 Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokels out there just thrilled to death that they finally hit the jackpot, thanks so some guy over in Nigeria.
The bottom line? Never underestimate the stupidity of the average human being.
20 years from now, huh? I'm pissed off. 20 years ago they were promising flying cars, teleporters, interplanetary flight, Armageddon... all by the turn of the century.
Where's all the cool stuff? If you really stop to think about it, nothing that signifigant has been invented in the last 20 years.
Sure, we've got the Internet, and computing power has increased by about 2^40 times, but still no cure for cancer?
Yeah, we've got DVDs and terabyte hard drives the size of my hand, but where's my immersive virutal reality games?
I guarantee you that almost all "innovations" of the last 20 years are just logical extensions of existing technology. Have we reached our intellectual capacity?
Before I get modded down as a troll, here's my point. Slashdot 20 years from now probably won't be that much different than it is today. Newer, cooler, faster technology? Sure.
Since we're talking about my parents, I'll go ahead and correct you:
RIAA: "Mam, we are suing your pants off because your daughter downloaded protected intellectual property in violation of its digital rights clauses, as pressed into a binary digital watermark and tracked through various network nodes by our virtual TCP/IP packet monitors."
I tihnk I just came up with the "Next Big Thing (c)"
With as litigious as our society is becoming today, your odds of getting sued increase by the minute. Whether it be the RIAA, the MPAA, SCO, or just Joe Blow from next door, you're sure to get BOARed (tm)(Bent over and rammed) any day now.
We have just what you need.
Lawsuit insurance. Yes. That's right, for only $100 a day, we will CYA from any civil suit that may be brought against you. And isn't a mere hundred dollars worth your piece of mind?
This just goes to show you that this has nothing to do with "intellectual property" and everything to do with money. Of course they can't go after kids, so they're going to go after their parents, who, in most cases, have no idea what their kids are doing on the Internet.
I'll offer up my family as an example. My parents are fairly clueless when it comes to anything remotely technological. My youngest sister, on the other hand, can find damned near any song she wants online. (Note: I'm not implying that this equals any level of computer competency, but not bad for a nine-year-old).
Last time I went home, my lil' sis had about 500 songs shared on Kazaa til I un-sharified them. I can guaran-damn-tee you that my parents have absolutely no idea about this, and now the R*AA is going to be suing folks like my parents?
The way I see it, there are two possible outcomes here:
1) Linux is brought into the spotlight, even if it is for a (temporarily) negative purpose. SCO gets sent packing by a court, then quasi-techie execs start asking about this whole "Linux" thing they've been hearing about. Linux market share increases.
2) Court battles wage for entirely too long, and, regardless of outcome, Linux is crippled because companies, in the interim, decided that W2K3 is their best bet. Linux market share decreases.
In the case of a malfunction of the legal system and a long-shot victory by SCO in court, all bets are null and void.
Actually, we are incredibly bad at remembering faces, contrary to popular opinion. This is the reason why lineups are so flawed.
About a year ago, I ran an experiment as part of my thesis where I showed subjects twenty faces in random order (think criminals). The next day, and on seven consecutive days thereafter, I showed 100 faces in random order, 20 of which were the original "criminals". Anybody wanna fashion I guess as to how many were remembered by day 7?
Less than five were accurately recalled after one week.
So all I have to do to win the Microsoft Lottery is sell my soul? Sign me up!!
"There's no such thing as a soul. It's just something they made up to scare kids, like the boogieman or Michael Jackson"
...from Microsoft.
It's only a matter of time til they go after folks who bought XBox mod chips, assuming DirectTV doesn't get a massive counter-suit.
On a side note, this article just spurred me to become a member of the EFF. Way to go DirectTV!
Slashdot Mirror
There are basically two forms of persuasion, as pertains to the political arena. You can either:
a) Use logic, reason, facts, etc., also known as the central route to persuasion. This tends to work best when the persuadees have time to mull over the information, and requires that they be making active strides towards making a decision. You'll therefore see these types of ads (actually focusing on issues), around this time of the year.
or
b) Use emotional appeal, scare tactics, weak arguments, etc., also known as the peripheral route to persuasion. This is highly effective when a decision has to be made very soon, without sufficient time to mull over the facts. Thus, you will most likely see this type of ad (often seen as "dirty") right before the election.
Pay attention to the way the ads change as the election approaches, and you'll see my point.
Obviously, F911 could be classified as either form of persuasion (probably depending on your political party...), but it most certainly is designed to have a highly emotional impact, thus will be very effective in persuading folks right before the election.
Ok, that's my 2 cents. Guess that psych major came in handy after all.
I am by no means a security expert, but have dabbled in lock-picking at a very amateur level, and even I can pick one of these in about a minute. A friend of mine who is more practiced in the art can pick it in about 15-20 seconds.
I realize that most theives can't pick locks, but you would think that a product designed to be used to protect a piece of property worth tens of thousands of dollars would have more than a single sided three pin lock...
In other words, it is not "quite wrong" to say that visuospatial working memory is related to intelligence, at least in the terms that we choose to define intelligence by. People who perform well on these tasks also tend to perform better on intelligence tasks.
And yes, there are almost certainly third variable problems here, but that's a discussion for another day.
BTW, they can actually localize quite well (w/in .5mm) using a 128 lead ERP.
The problem is the record execs must've failed this class in college.
Demand is at an all time low. What do you do? Well, if you're a record exec, you RAISE the price!
The problem is that the price is set artificially high by the monopolistic tactics of the record industry (been proven in court). However, MP3s broke their monopoly, thus leaving them with a price above the market clearing price that would exist if the market were allowed to correct itself.
Ergo, there is a surplus.
Basic friggin' economics.
I'm sure very few people realize this, but a very bitching storm came through Memphis two weeks ago and ripped it a new asshole. There were still people without power two weeks after the storm. TWO WEEKS. I personally was without power for over a week. Thank God I work at a hospital and was able to get my /. fix there.
So to all you damned spoiled Yanks, quit yer bitchin'.
Anybody up for a Austin Powers-esque bad SCO joke contest? Keep it in this thread. My first humble submission:
Wow, these guys are really SCOre losers! (I never said they had to be funny....)
Within ten years there will be no Parkinson's.
And you think we don't get government funding? Ha!
I work in the Developmental Neurobiology Dept. of a large children's cancer research hospital (which shall remain nameless, but let's say it rhymes with "paint food"). I use stem cells on a regular basis (human embryonic kidney 293 cells (or HEK-293 for short)). And ya know what? I've never had the guv'ment come take my cells away.
Any legitimate researcher can get stem cells with little or no effort. Thus, all the fuss is quite pointless.
That being said, the "ban" is fairly pointless as well (although most researchers regard it as the purely political move that it was). There is a lot of potential to be had in this field, and the government shouldn't be stepping on any toes.
Pure diamonds have a tensile stength (good measure of "fragility") in the range of gigapascals, while, for comparisons sake, titanium has a tensile strength of around 1-2 megapascals. We're talking three orders of magnitude stronger here.
You could cut through an engine block with a diamond knife if you had the urge to.
Cheap, readily manufacturable diamonds will revolutionize a lot of things, cookware being the least of them.
Any court appointed expert worth his salt will give the jury a detailed, precise p-value for the probability that the DNA came from some other person. A simple t-test is all that is needed for this.
Given the known variability of the population of DNA, it is not uncommon to have a p-value of 1E-8. That means there's a 1 in 100,000,000 chance that someone else committed the crime. In other words, there's about 3 people in the U.S. who match that DNA. Reasonable doubt? Your call.
Now admittedly, if you have p-values of anything less that 1E-3 or 4 being admitted into court, you should laugh the "expert" out of the courtroom.
Besides, this service already exists in different forms. There are a number of companies who provide GPS tracking for company car fleets, trucking lines, etc. This is just the next logical step.
It does, however, scare me that these devices could be used as surrogate parents. Instead of actually talking to their kids and asking about their whereabouts, Joe Lazy-Parent can just fire up the tracker and find out where Little Johnny is.
In other words, if this company makes it so its users are completely anonymous, even to the company itself, and illegal activity is occurring on its network, its guilty. No "plausible deniability".
Is this a case of guilty until proven innocent? Dunno, but I, for one, won't be putting up any venture capital into this company...
Just because we happen to be the percentage of the world that is tech-savvy/intelligent/cynical enough (is there a difference?) to see spam for what it is, don't think that for every one of us, there's not 100 Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokels out there just thrilled to death that they finally hit the jackpot, thanks so some guy over in Nigeria.
The bottom line? Never underestimate the stupidity of the average human being.
Where's all the cool stuff? If you really stop to think about it, nothing that signifigant has been invented in the last 20 years.
Sure, we've got the Internet, and computing power has increased by about 2^40 times, but still no cure for cancer?
Yeah, we've got DVDs and terabyte hard drives the size of my hand, but where's my immersive virutal reality games?
I guarantee you that almost all "innovations" of the last 20 years are just logical extensions of existing technology. Have we reached our intellectual capacity?
Before I get modded down as a troll, here's my point. Slashdot 20 years from now probably won't be that much different than it is today. Newer, cooler, faster technology? Sure.
But I bet you'll still be typing.
AOL Time Warner
British Music Rights
Universal Studios
Panasonic
And my favorite: "The Work Foundation" (a fully owned subsidiary of The Human Fund) Source: Broadband Stakeholder Group's Website
And remember, never attribute to studpidity that which can more accurately be attributed to a global conspiracy.
I'll cover the cost of any settlement or damages from any lawsuit. This is for when little folk fall through the cracks.
Mom: (Blank stare)
Dad: (Slightly blanker stare)
With as litigious as our society is becoming today, your odds of getting sued increase by the minute. Whether it be the RIAA, the MPAA, SCO, or just Joe Blow from next door, you're sure to get BOARed (tm)(Bent over and rammed) any day now.
We have just what you need.
Lawsuit insurance. Yes. That's right, for only $100 a day, we will CYA from any civil suit that may be brought against you. And isn't a mere hundred dollars worth your piece of mind?
Any takers?
This just goes to show you that this has nothing to do with "intellectual property" and everything to do with money. Of course they can't go after kids, so they're going to go after their parents, who, in most cases, have no idea what their kids are doing on the Internet.
I'll offer up my family as an example. My parents are fairly clueless when it comes to anything remotely technological. My youngest sister, on the other hand, can find damned near any song she wants online. (Note: I'm not implying that this equals any level of computer competency, but not bad for a nine-year-old).
Last time I went home, my lil' sis had about 500 songs shared on Kazaa til I un-sharified them. I can guaran-damn-tee you that my parents have absolutely no idea about this, and now the R*AA is going to be suing folks like my parents?
Let the backlash begin. We'll be the whip.
The way I see it, there are two possible outcomes here:
1) Linux is brought into the spotlight, even if it is for a (temporarily) negative purpose. SCO gets sent packing by a court, then quasi-techie execs start asking about this whole "Linux" thing they've been hearing about. Linux market share increases.
2) Court battles wage for entirely too long, and, regardless of outcome, Linux is crippled because companies, in the interim, decided that W2K3 is their best bet. Linux market share decreases.
In the case of a malfunction of the legal system and a long-shot victory by SCO in court, all bets are null and void.
Actually, we are incredibly bad at remembering faces, contrary to popular opinion. This is the reason why lineups are so flawed.
About a year ago, I ran an experiment as part of my thesis where I showed subjects twenty faces in random order (think criminals). The next day, and on seven consecutive days thereafter, I showed 100 faces in random order, 20 of which were the original "criminals". Anybody wanna fashion I guess as to how many were remembered by day 7?
Less than five were accurately recalled after one week.
Face recognition password? I'll pass...
So all I have to do to win the Microsoft Lottery is sell my soul? Sign me up!! "There's no such thing as a soul. It's just something they made up to scare kids, like the boogieman or Michael Jackson"
...President to utilize the Internet! Nobody could use it til Al Gore invented it. DUH!
...from Microsoft. It's only a matter of time til they go after folks who bought XBox mod chips, assuming DirectTV doesn't get a massive counter-suit. On a side note, this article just spurred me to become a member of the EFF. Way to go DirectTV!