In Australia there is a Do Not Call list to which it is easy to submit your phones numbers. Telemarketers can be fined up to AUS$2.2 million in court for each day on which infringements occurred. I can't remember ever receiving an unsolicited call in the last 10 years. It's not that hard if there is a will for it.
Presumably there is some sort of machine learning being done here to predict re-offending. It would be straight forward for the creators to publish cross validation rates. I.e. Train their algorithm on 4/5 of the data, keeping 1/5 separate, and then seeing how accurate the predictions are on the 1/5. Repeat for each of the different fifths, and record the average accuracy overall. If the accuracy in predicting reoffending is say, 75% (I'll be that's higher than the real rate) then it'll be wrong one time in four, and the person being judged, as well as the judge, should have a right to know that. You would also want to look closely at the false positive and false negative rates.
It's easy to create a predictor, it's hard to create an accurate predictor.
Even if it does turn out to be true, what is Lawrence Krauss doing giving the game away on other scientists discoveries before they are published? This would be one of the discoveries of the decade and he has not done the work and has no right to announce it. Further, it could cause problems if the researchers do have a result and try to publish. High impact journals often have rules about not disclosing results before they appear in print.
I don't know that we Australians were "unconcerned with this level of scrutiny of their lives" so much as constantly distracted by horror at the continual appalling actions, stuff ups and general inability to govern of the Abbott government. Given a few moments to think about things other than government officials chartering helicopters to go to party functions, rape and other abuses of asylum speakers in our care, blackmailing of the academic community to support legislation, an incompetent Minister for Defence amongst many others ministers, bashing of the Muslim community, awarding Prince Philip a knighthood, abuse of the Royal Commission system to go after political adversaries, attacks on the state broadcaster for not towing the line, and on and on every week for 2 years, then perhaps we'd have had time to kick up a fuss about data retention. Now that Abbott has been kicked out by his own party we'll have a chance to have a proper think about data retention and what it means, though it's probably too late.
As someone who reviews papers (by humans) for conferences and regularly says "reject this crap" (politely, and with reasons) only to see the paper accepted, I'm not too surprised.
As everyone has noted, Ardour is great for recording. Another really useful tool is Guitarix which is a fantastic guitar amp and effects modelling piece of open source software. Plug your electric guitar directly into your computer via a USB interface (I use my Rocksmith connector) and you can amp/effect model in Guitarix and record as you play in Ardour. Add the Hydrogen and you've also got your drums playing and sync'ed as you record. As well recording, these make a great set of tools for guitar practice.
The more likely explanation is granting bodies. To apply for substantial funding you need to have a project that has clearly defined outcomes that have a high probability for success. The kind of project that has these properties is "the obvious". The short term is very important too. You need to have something you can publish and report in the first year of publication to ensure the grant bodies stay happy and don't become concerned they have wasted their money, again "the obvious" is a good one. Long term or speculative research is strongly discouraged by the current system and interests of granting bodies world-wide. It is almost inevitable that this happen as the granting bodies want something to report to government (in the short term) to show what a good job they are doing. It's a shame as much better research could be done if it were not for having to think in such short and clearly defined time frames.
Why on earth would they be expected to "improve at a faster pace than their peers"? Does reading off a screen somehow enter and remain in your brain better than a printed page? The only 'advantage' over the printed page in the project would appear that they get to watch videos on the iPads. But passively watching a video is unlikely to improve outcomes.
I predict they'll actually do worse than the other students. The iPad is an environment full of distractions and passive consumption of media. The students will spend most of their time mucking about with apps like the rest of us.
Having taught myself to program on a Sinclair ZX81 (1K RAM, Z80 chip) it's primary virtue was that there was nothing to do with it but program it. On startup you had a command prompt: there were no games, no internet,no facebook, nothing but an editor for BASIC programs which were then interpreted. So the first question was always, what am I going to make you do today? Programs written in BASIC were a little slow, so I then learnt Z80 machine code which speeded things up and forced me to learn about registers and memory and so on. 1K of memory wasn't a lot to use, so I then got a book which gave the line by line Z80 for the ROM so I could exploit the routines in ROM in my programs, so I learnt about a (very very simple) operating system. While I'd never give up my current linux laptop, I cant help but feel I wouldn't understand 1/10th of the little I do understand if it wasn't for that ZX81. Thanks Mr Sinclair!
As someone who as published around 45 papers, the idea that you'd have to repeat an experiment rather than reference the original work is bollocks. This is a "I had a friend whose cousin heard that" type story.
The point is that the journal may have copyright on the text of the article as it is published the journal, but that is about all. They do not own the results of the experiment, and they would not want to. For a journal today, the most important number is impact factor, the average number of times a journal is cited by other articles. They spend considerable amounts of their time working out how they improve impact factor. The last thing in the world they would do is introduce any mechanism that stop researchers citing their papers.
While in some cases it would breach copyright to have the pdf of your article on your web site, there is no reason no to link to the pdf on the journal website. This might restrict access in that the person wishing to view the article may need to have a subscription (usually through their university library) to access the content. But many of the journals now are either open access, or just restrict access for 6 months then make it open.
I personally believe that all articles should be open access and publishable without expensive page charges, particularly to allow access to researchers in less developed countries, but making wild claims about "someone" not being able to cite your own results is only going to damage the cause.
I'm sure Cory is right that, at the moment, electronic versions entice more readers. However, that's because currently there aren't so many electronic versions of popular recent books. So if you're reading e-books, you're quite likely to find Cory's work, and perhaps start reading more of his stuff.
But what happens when the market is flooded with e-books? You read your favourite authors and Cory gets nothing if you haven't already found, liked and are prepared to pay for his writing.
I cant recommend scratch enough. I downloaded it for my just turned 8 year old. Within 5 minutes he'd figured out the basics. Within an hour we had a simple game with a dalek and a cat we'd drawn chasing each other around, shooting energy bolts and cat spit at each other, complete with a scoring system. I hung back and let him do it, just to see how he'd go and he had not trouble.
With a couple more hours he'd recreated his school with multiple rooms you could move between, and a principle who chased you if you entered his office.
Scratch is well motivated in that is has sprites, sound events, mouse control, all easily useable, so kids get positive results very quickly. As with any language, the best way to learn it is to have a problem you want to solve, and scratch makes you want to do things. There are also lots of examples to learn from, as well a large user community sharing examples.
It's also a proper programming language in that it has loops, flow control, boolean expressions, events and so on. I've had lots of interesting conversations with my boy about structure and flow control to get the results he's after. His depth of thinking in this area surprised me... and was also almost as quick as me (programming since 11 when I learnt Basic on a ZX81).
He prefers Scratch to his Wii! Can there be a better recommendation for anything?
Having just read all of the 'for younger persons' Pratchett to my 8 year old boy, Maurice and his educated rodents is IMHO by far the best, followed by the Tiffany Aching series (Hat full...). It's probably the funniest, but also has really interesting themes such as how do you represent knowledge when you're a rat; for a being that finds itself conscious, what are its right and responsibilities and so on. Being Pratchett, it's not done in a heavy handed way, but breakfast has been much more interesting around our place since we read it. It's perfect for any child with a slightly philosophical bent.
Slashdot Mirror
In Australia there is a Do Not Call list to which it is easy to submit your phones numbers. Telemarketers can be fined up to AUS$2.2 million in court for each day on which infringements occurred. I can't remember ever receiving an unsolicited call in the last 10 years. It's not that hard if there is a will for it.
Given there have only been around 4.3 x 10^17 seconds since the big bang, it seems unlikely that they actually sorted through 10^120 options.
Presumably there is some sort of machine learning being done here to predict re-offending. It would be straight forward for the creators to publish cross validation rates. I.e. Train their algorithm on 4/5 of the data, keeping 1/5 separate, and then seeing how accurate the predictions are on the 1/5. Repeat for each of the different fifths, and record the average accuracy overall. If the accuracy in predicting reoffending is say, 75% (I'll be that's higher than the real rate) then it'll be wrong one time in four, and the person being judged, as well as the judge, should have a right to know that. You would also want to look closely at the false positive and false negative rates. It's easy to create a predictor, it's hard to create an accurate predictor.
would have been a more fun choice. When Samuel L. Jackson says it's time to go to bed, you go to bed.
Currently my utility bills are debited directly from my bank account. I'm fine with that.
But I thought they'd managed to recover the code from its burial in the desert, dammit.
It sounds like it could have Ice 9 like problems. Will it eat our civilisation?
Even if it does turn out to be true, what is Lawrence Krauss doing giving the game away on other scientists discoveries before they are published? This would be one of the discoveries of the decade and he has not done the work and has no right to announce it. Further, it could cause problems if the researchers do have a result and try to publish. High impact journals often have rules about not disclosing results before they appear in print.
I don't know that we Australians were "unconcerned with this level of scrutiny of their lives" so much as constantly distracted by horror at the continual appalling actions, stuff ups and general inability to govern of the Abbott government. Given a few moments to think about things other than government officials chartering helicopters to go to party functions, rape and other abuses of asylum speakers in our care, blackmailing of the academic community to support legislation, an incompetent Minister for Defence amongst many others ministers, bashing of the Muslim community, awarding Prince Philip a knighthood, abuse of the Royal Commission system to go after political adversaries, attacks on the state broadcaster for not towing the line, and on and on every week for 2 years, then perhaps we'd have had time to kick up a fuss about data retention. Now that Abbott has been kicked out by his own party we'll have a chance to have a proper think about data retention and what it means, though it's probably too late.
Is nobody going to mention Godzilla?
As someone who reviews papers (by humans) for conferences and regularly says "reject this crap" (politely, and with reasons) only to see the paper accepted, I'm not too surprised.
As everyone has noted, Ardour is great for recording. Another really useful tool is Guitarix which is a fantastic guitar amp and effects modelling piece of open source software. Plug your electric guitar directly into your computer via a USB interface (I use my Rocksmith connector) and you can amp/effect model in Guitarix and record as you play in Ardour. Add the Hydrogen and you've also got your drums playing and sync'ed as you record. As well recording, these make a great set of tools for guitar practice.
The more likely explanation is granting bodies. To apply for substantial funding you need to have a project that has clearly defined outcomes that have a high probability for success. The kind of project that has these properties is "the obvious". The short term is very important too. You need to have something you can publish and report in the first year of publication to ensure the grant bodies stay happy and don't become concerned they have wasted their money, again "the obvious" is a good one. Long term or speculative research is strongly discouraged by the current system and interests of granting bodies world-wide. It is almost inevitable that this happen as the granting bodies want something to report to government (in the short term) to show what a good job they are doing. It's a shame as much better research could be done if it were not for having to think in such short and clearly defined time frames.
Why on earth would they be expected to "improve at a faster pace than their peers"? Does reading off a screen somehow enter and remain in your brain better than a printed page? The only 'advantage' over the printed page in the project would appear that they get to watch videos on the iPads. But passively watching a video is unlikely to improve outcomes.
I predict they'll actually do worse than the other students. The iPad is an environment full of distractions and passive consumption of media. The students will spend most of their time mucking about with apps like the rest of us.
Having taught myself to program on a Sinclair ZX81 (1K RAM, Z80 chip) it's primary virtue was that there was nothing to do with it but program it. On startup you had a command prompt: there were no games, no internet,no facebook, nothing but an editor for BASIC programs which were then interpreted. So the first question was always, what am I going to make you do today? Programs written in BASIC were a little slow, so I then learnt Z80 machine code which speeded things up and forced me to learn about registers and memory and so on. 1K of memory wasn't a lot to use, so I then got a book which gave the line by line Z80 for the ROM so I could exploit the routines in ROM in my programs, so I learnt about a (very very simple) operating system. While I'd never give up my current linux laptop, I cant help but feel I wouldn't understand 1/10th of the little I do understand if it wasn't for that ZX81. Thanks Mr Sinclair!
As someone who as published around 45 papers, the idea that you'd have to repeat an experiment rather than reference the original work is bollocks. This is a "I had a friend whose cousin heard that" type story. The point is that the journal may have copyright on the text of the article as it is published the journal, but that is about all. They do not own the results of the experiment, and they would not want to. For a journal today, the most important number is impact factor, the average number of times a journal is cited by other articles. They spend considerable amounts of their time working out how they improve impact factor. The last thing in the world they would do is introduce any mechanism that stop researchers citing their papers. While in some cases it would breach copyright to have the pdf of your article on your web site, there is no reason no to link to the pdf on the journal website. This might restrict access in that the person wishing to view the article may need to have a subscription (usually through their university library) to access the content. But many of the journals now are either open access, or just restrict access for 6 months then make it open. I personally believe that all articles should be open access and publishable without expensive page charges, particularly to allow access to researchers in less developed countries, but making wild claims about "someone" not being able to cite your own results is only going to damage the cause.
I'm sure Cory is right that, at the moment, electronic versions entice more readers. However, that's because currently there aren't so many electronic versions of popular recent books. So if you're reading e-books, you're quite likely to find Cory's work, and perhaps start reading more of his stuff. But what happens when the market is flooded with e-books? You read your favourite authors and Cory gets nothing if you haven't already found, liked and are prepared to pay for his writing.
I cant recommend scratch enough. I downloaded it for my just turned 8 year old. Within 5 minutes he'd figured out the basics. Within an hour we had a simple game with a dalek and a cat we'd drawn chasing each other around, shooting energy bolts and cat spit at each other, complete with a scoring system. I hung back and let him do it, just to see how he'd go and he had not trouble. With a couple more hours he'd recreated his school with multiple rooms you could move between, and a principle who chased you if you entered his office. Scratch is well motivated in that is has sprites, sound events, mouse control, all easily useable, so kids get positive results very quickly. As with any language, the best way to learn it is to have a problem you want to solve, and scratch makes you want to do things. There are also lots of examples to learn from, as well a large user community sharing examples. It's also a proper programming language in that it has loops, flow control, boolean expressions, events and so on. I've had lots of interesting conversations with my boy about structure and flow control to get the results he's after. His depth of thinking in this area surprised me ... and was also almost as quick as me (programming since 11 when I learnt Basic on a ZX81).
He prefers Scratch to his Wii! Can there be a better recommendation for anything?
Having just read all of the 'for younger persons' Pratchett to my 8 year old boy, Maurice and his educated rodents is IMHO by far the best, followed by the Tiffany Aching series (Hat full ...). It's probably the funniest, but also has really interesting themes such as how do you represent knowledge when you're a rat; for a being that finds itself conscious, what are its right and responsibilities and so on. Being Pratchett, it's not done in a heavy handed way, but breakfast has been much more interesting around our place since we read it. It's perfect for any child with a slightly philosophical bent.