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User: mattwarden

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  1. Summary fails stats101 on Among Gamers, Adult Women Vastly Outnumber Teenage Boys · · Score: 1

    Why would you compare women over 18 to men under 18 and think that means anything? You would have to know the relative size of the populations simply sliced by age to know what you would expect, and then determine if the gender variable makes any difference

  2. Re:9 Days Relative To What? on Online Tool Flagged Ebola Outbreak Before Formal WHO Announcement · · Score: 1

    that's all great, but accepts the premise that it detected anything. i could have a program that emails myself every day reporting an ebola outbreak and eventually i would have completely destroyed both the WHO's announcement speed and these clowns. of course, that is absurd, because the number of false positives is huge. and this is absurd for the same reason. there is zero information about false positive rates, and without that this "news" is saying absolutely nothing. the journalists, as usual, are complete fucking idiots who can't process basic logic, and as a result it seems like they are pretty much reprinting the press release from the group that developed the system (who should, and probably does, know better).

  3. Conspiracy theories on Aaron's Law Is Doomed and the CFAA Is Still Broken · · Score: 1

    No conspiracy required. A bill that very few people know about and far fewer would actually have affect their vote pattern or donations has very little chance of going anywhere. Every bill is an opportunity for riders and house-senate conference shenanigans, so I am pretty sure things are working correctly when this goes nowhere.

  4. Re: Bubbles on Inside the Facebook Algorithm Most Users Don't Even Know Exists · · Score: 1

    Right... and I'm saying... how is that any different than surrounding yourself with friends who all think like you? It's not. In fact, if anything, social media (even filtered) is probably more diverse than the real-life filtering that your average yokel does.

  5. Re:Tool complexity leads to learning the tool on Getting Back To Coding · · Score: 1

    Yes, version control is not a problem at all. We use git. The only problem is merging, which is not automatic like it is in most situations with "human readable" text based programming

  6. Re: Bubbles on Inside the Facebook Algorithm Most Users Don't Even Know Exists · · Score: 1

    Social media... You mean having friends with a similar worldview? Are we sure social media even makes this worse and not better? Most people interact in real life with very few people because it is expensive to do otherwise. Social media might actually reduce the problem by making it cheaper to interact with more people. Theoretically it could be just more of the same viewpoint, but as n increases, the chance that everyone agrees on everything is much less.

  7. Re:Tool complexity leads to learning the tool on Getting Back To Coding · · Score: 1

    pretty simple, and i think i and others have stated it multiple times now. you said:

    > Every IDE places everything you edit ultimately into files, text files to be precise.
    > The idea that something only runs in the IDE and otherwise no one knows how it works is just nonsense

    This is wrong. You would have never said this if you were not coming from a point of view of (admitted) ignorance in a number of technologies. You then assumed it was just ignorance due to your avoidance of Microsoft technologies. Sorry, but that is not the case. Many 4th gen languages will have this problem. Other languages that have a "visual" component for GUI editing or the like will likely have this problem.

    Bottom line: you made a blanket assertion as if you knew the universe of the topic, and it turns out you know only a subset of that universe that happens to support your assertion. It's a bit like living in America and assuming every other country is like America, since that is what you know and have experienced. I don't fault you for not having experienced it; but I do fault you for being too confident that you have already seen the world.

  8. Re:Tool complexity leads to learning the tool on Getting Back To Coding · · Score: 1

    Version control is not a problem. But I suspect you are referring to merging code, which is a problem. SSIS 2012 made this a bit better, but in most cases you have to fall back to a manual merge using the IDE. Alternatively, one person works on a particular SSIS package (unit of code) at a time. The latter is not as crazy as it sounds, so long as you follow ETL best practices that lead to very simple, small, modular packages.

    There are plenty of resources on the interwebs that can explain the value of 4th gen ETL solutions.

  9. Re:Tool complexity leads to learning the tool on Getting Back To Coding · · Score: 1

    it has nothing to do with MS vs. non-MS. it was an example that happened to be MS. you jumped to conclusions beyond that, i guess to be defensive so you don't have to admit you were just wrong.

  10. Re:Tool complexity leads to learning the tool on Getting Back To Coding · · Score: 1

    > Erm, if you want to point out that MS IDEs don't put stuff you work with into files, then say so.

    Um, I already did. That was the point of my reply. You effectively cannot edit the SSIS output except in the IDE. Theoretically, could you? Yes. But you could also theoretically manually edit binary files, too. The point is that the SSIS "text files" might as well be binary and it's really only reasonable to find a recognizeable section (like a SQL query) in the garbage and edit that. Editing beyind that sort of thing is not doable.

    Your "nonsense" claim was from a POV of limited exposure, and frankly it's not just limited by avoiding MS technologies. There are a number of IDEs, especially in the 4th gen language space, where you simply cannot edit outside of the IDE.

  11. Re:Tool complexity leads to learning the tool on Getting Back To Coding · · Score: 1

    Have you ever used VisuSQL Server Integration Services? Obviously not.

  12. When Obama reads this in the news on CIA Director Brennan Admits He Was Lying: CIA Really Did Spy On Congress · · Score: 1

    ...he's going to be very disappointed

  13. Re:1 or 1 million on Verizon Now Throttling Top 'Unlimited' Subscribers On 4G LTE · · Score: 1

    You are splitting hairs. As with anything in law, there are exceptions. I would argue that the fact that the fruit cocktail exception is so well known is because it's an oddity. I don't think your referenced section on wikipedia would have ever been authored if it was just yet another example of the base case. But also I am not sure this is even an example of what we're talking about. We are talking about product names. You are giving examples of product categories. What you're saying is that a fruit salad cannot market itself as a member of the fruit cocktail product category unless it meets certain criteria. Could "fruit cocktail" also be in the name? Sure. But it could also not be in the name and still need to abide by the rule you cite, so it is not an issue of name. Likewise with cuts of meat and different fruits. These are not dealing with product names. They are dealing with assertions that a given thing is a member of a defined product category.

    So for your examples to apply, you would need to argue that "Verizon's unlimited data plan" is a member of a product category called "unlimited data plans" that has certain attributes. You could certainly make this argument, but it seems to have a small chance of being compelling.

  14. Re:Mod parent DOWN on Jesse Jackson: Tech Diversity Is Next Civil Rights Step · · Score: 1

    No, actually it is a little bit of an odd comment, although I don't know if it's "racism". If there are companies who are willing to hire people incapable of doing their jobs well, then obviously they will hire cheaper labor who suck over expensive labor who suck. So the only correlation here is wage requirements. Dumber developers earn less money, news at 11.

    To jump to generalizing H1Bs or Indian H1Bs is odd. I have worked with plenty of Indian H1Bs who were extremely intelligent and much better at their jobs than their peers at the company. They also were NOT cheap to employ.

  15. Re:1 or 1 million on Verizon Now Throttling Top 'Unlimited' Subscribers On 4G LTE · · Score: 1

    I have no basis to judge your claim about non-US advertising law, but I don't see how it's relevant given we are talking about US plans. Or has my ethnocentrism gotten the best of me and somehow Verizon is marketing unlimited data plans in Europe?

  16. Re:Flash panic on OKCupid Experiments on Users Too · · Score: 1

    > which means they must have looked at the photos to determine if they were attractive or not

    That is quite an assumption. I can think of a ton of ways they could have an attractiveness measure without themselves digging into people's personal profiles. In fact, I did 5 seconds of googling and found this, which clearly suggests that they are asking other members to rate attractiveness of profile pictures: http://blog.okcupid.com/index....

    > I know what people will say, they uploaded their photos to a web site and have no expectation of privacy.

    They certainly don't have an expectation of privacy from their photo being seen by other users of the site. That's why they uploaded it! So what's the beef?

  17. Re:Flash panic on OKCupid Experiments on Users Too · · Score: 1

    I think you mean de-identified data, not necessarily aggregated data. But I understand your point. I am not sure that the outrage of the interwebs turns on that, though, as there are plenty of examples of data collection that cannot be tied to a real-life identity that gets their panties in a wad.

  18. Re:1 or 1 million on Verizon Now Throttling Top 'Unlimited' Subscribers On 4G LTE · · Score: 1

    product names are not claims, so they cannot be false. if you don't understand at this point, you're either a complete moron or just goading me to continue responding

  19. business is all about experimentation on OKCupid Experiments on Users Too · · Score: 1

    very few successful businesses are doing what they were originally founded to do. business is all about experimentation. you tweak and reset and change and reset again until you see the numbers going in the right direction at the desired speed. unsuccessful businesses usually do the same thing, too; they just don't ever find a combination that works.

    see also: "Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model" http://www.amazon.com/Getting-...

    "To succeed, you must change the plan in real time as the inevitable challenges arise. In fact, studies show that entrepreneurs who stick slavishly to their Plan A stand a greater chance of failing-and that many successful businesses barely resemble their founders' original idea. ... Testing those assumptions and unearthing why the plan might not work."

  20. Re:Flash panic on OKCupid Experiments on Users Too · · Score: 2

    Do academic demographers get "informed consent" before processing census data? What about crime statistics? Network security incidents?

    Showing a page with and without images and then processing access_log is not the same as monitoring someone's eating habits and stress levels for a week. Just because you call something "an experiment" (a) doesn't mean it is one, and (b) doesn't mean it's the same as all other "experiments".

  21. Re:1 or 1 million on Verizon Now Throttling Top 'Unlimited' Subscribers On 4G LTE · · Score: 1

    i don't agree with him. he just ended up making my point for me.

  22. Re:1 or 1 million on Verizon Now Throttling Top 'Unlimited' Subscribers On 4G LTE · · Score: 1

    just because you ramble something doesn't make it so. i am free to call my fitness plan "The Immortal Plan". a name is not a claim, therefore there is no false advertising.

  23. Re:1 or 1 million on Verizon Now Throttling Top 'Unlimited' Subscribers On 4G LTE · · Score: 1

    um, i think you made my point. the clowns here are whining that there are limits in "unlimited" plans. my point is: of course that is true, you friggin nitwits. same with the autobahn. just because there are no imposed speed limits does not mean there are no limits to how fast you can go.

    > Either that, or you are an idiot.

    not realizing you're making my point perhaps makes you a better fit for that category

  24. Re:1 or 1 million on Verizon Now Throttling Top 'Unlimited' Subscribers On 4G LTE · · Score: 1

    names of plans do not constitute a contract

  25. mine bitcoin? on Ask Slashdot: What Would You Do With Half a Rack of Server Space? · · Score: 0

    mine bitcoin?