Think about the situations in which people are likely to develop superstitions and its a clue to what's going on.
Two of the most notorious groups of superstitious people are athletes and gamblers. You hit a home run with your shoes tied a certain way, and the association is made - never changing those shoes again! I know a guy who dropped a penny before playing the slots. He hit big, and now drops a penny before every pull.
I think these circumstances have the following important characteristics: lack of control or partial control over outcomes; high potential for reward. I think this combination of factors leads us to pay extra attention to the relationship between our actions and their outcomes and we are therefore more likely to draw spurious associations.
Isn't an improvement in accuracy is better than no improvement, or a decrease?
The summary is mistaken. This study found no statistically significant difference between accuracy in reading the two table types. A "slight improvement" is no improvement when it is not larger than what is expected by chance.
Basically this particular task (the "flankers task") is so easy that people only make errors when they stop paying attention. You see something like SSSHHSSS or HHHSSHHH and you have to respond to the central letters while filtering out the outside letters. So what is essentially happening is they are measuring when people's attention wanes and errors happen to be reliably associated with this.
Keep in mind that in this study errors are not actually predicted before they happen in real time. That's virtually impossible with fMRI. What's happening is that after the subject completes the task, the experimenters find data which comes from before the button press and reliably predicts subsequent errors. This happens in post-processing, so the experimenters do not actually know what is going to happen before it happens.
As the owner of a jailbroken iPhone I can tell you that in addition to being a phone, email & web device, camera and iPod, mine is also:
- a guitar tuner
- a scientific instrument. I can ssh into my office computer and start, stop, keep track of my data analysis from wherever.
- a remote control. using a variant of VNC I use my phone as a remote touchpad to control the media PC hooked up to my television.
- an IRC client
- a musical device. The multitouch piano (iAno) is actually quite good and can be used for working out melodies if not more.
This is obviously just the tip of the iceberg of what is possible considering all this was made without the SDK.
Optimism, however wonderful and necessary, can be unrealistic. (I'm not a pessimist - just a realist!)
Optimism is by definition "unrealistic". The whole point of optimism is to envision a reality which is better than the current one. What lies under optimism is the understanding that we can bend reality to our vision, rather than having to conform our visions to how reality is.
And this is where Apple may have blundered, at least in the US.
Blundered? They have 20% of the smartphone market, second only to RIM, having sold over 4 million phones in 200 days. Apple's fourth quarter earnings for 2007 were its highest ever, due largely to iPhone sales and shared ATT revenues. I don't see how this can be considered a blunder.
This is really a godsend. Three out of the last 4 times I have been in a supermarket I have gotten lost. The last time, I was unable to find the exit before closing time and was trapped until morning. One time I lost my girlfriend in there and she had to take a cab home later when she finally made her way out the international foods section. I mean the layout of these places in parallel aisles is just mind-boggling, it might as well be a hedge maze. Now, with these robots, I might be able to enter the supermarket without so much anxiety.
2) I found it hilarious when Tufte showed how he would redesign the Weather program to show more information. He said something on the order of, the only bad information design is that which leaves out important information. Sorry, holmes, I don't need to see a time lapse of cloud patterns. The Apple weather design is elegant and succinct, yours is crowded, ugly and excessive.
I totally agree with this, I had a similar reaction. He seems to be concerned with the representation of information without regard to the how the device is being used - the purpose of that information. Most people use the stock app to see if their stock is up or down today and how much. They don't need yearly graphs with min and max's, this isnt a tool for that kind of analysis. With weather, we want to know if its going to rain tomorrow, we don't go to this app to examine the cloud forms and come to our own meteorological conclusions.
For several months the device was about as useful as a brick.
It wasn't a matter of just trying the firmware update again; for those who bricked there were no options available to bring the device back to functionality --until now.
I think people splitting hairs about the use of the term "brick" are missing the point.
The issue issue is not one of emulating something you see others doing. It's a question of what happens when you pretend to do something yourself. Repeatedly.
Everyone here seems to be strongly opposed to the idea that video game violence may be related to violent behavior.
However, it seems pretty clear to me that it must in some form. Play throughout the animal kingdom is basically simulation training. We play
to unintentionally practice skills. Video games that involve explicit simulation of violence must be exercising something related to violent behavior. I'm not saying a video game "causes" a kid to do something violent or that parenting and personality don't interact, but it seems inconceivable to me that it has no effect.
We have magnet-compatible goggles with LCD screens in them, because we use the MRI for cognitive psychology experiments where you often want to present visual stimuli. Having these goggles on with something to look at, even if its just a screen saver, really helps a lot.
Apple has already announced an exclusive deal in France with Orange (France telecom), and it's this deal that is in danger because of the law. Apple is partnered with T-mobile in Germany and O2 in Britain, so this really isn't about any worldwide exclusivity for AT&T.
* I can "tune" the guitar arbitrarily. If I want to tune to 438 instead of 440, that needs to be allowed. If I want to tune everything down a half step, that needs to be possible without fighting or complaint. If I want open D, same notion
It seems from TFA that you can do all of this. It comes with several preset tunings and you can program your own.
* The guitar needs to be locked in a tuning. One thing you do NOT want is the guitar trying to retune itself while you're playing. This will create awkward sounds, and will also have disasterous results if you try and bend a note or (god help you) play slide.
It has a knob that you pull out to turn the tuning mechanism on, then you turn it off while you are playing so it's not trying to adjust.
I found this part of the technology to be especially clever:
As the strings are played, the Powertune processor compares their actual frequencies with the desired notes and sends instructions--tighten the string this much, loosen the string by that much--to tuning pegs equipped with strong, tiny servo motors mounted on the back of the guitar's head. Because onstage interference could potentially degrade a wireless signal, the system uses the strings themselves to send the signal.
Yes, this is exactly it in my opinion. Was going to write the same thing. They have said they don't care about 3rd party app development, and I believe it. The new firmware puts the iPhone in jail with some stronger locks than before to prevent SIM unlocking, for sure.
The Touch is locked as well because it is essentially the same device. The firmware appears to be encrypted using the same key.
That is basically all it does, minus the hendrix music (which it would play if it were working! heh). Until it is fixable (and whether it will be we cannot be sure), it is a brick.
Please people, let's quit talking like newbies.
If you drop your iPhone in the toilet, or if you microwave it, it will become bricked.
If you simply fudge it up, to the point where it needs to be restored, it is not bricked. Especially if all the other functions on it function.
I know that there are a lot of Apple haters out here, but we don't need to be confusing tech term
You're missing the point. These phones *are* actually bricked. If you get the invalid SIM card error you can't restore the phone and replacing the original SIM doesn't clear things up. It reverts to the state its in before it is activated -- you cannot access any of the functions: ipod, wifi, etc. -- you can't get past the splash screen.
Slashdot Mirror
Think about the situations in which people are likely to develop superstitions and its a clue to what's going on.
Two of the most notorious groups of superstitious people are athletes and gamblers. You hit a home run with your shoes tied a certain way, and the association is made - never changing those shoes again! I know a guy who dropped a penny before playing the slots. He hit big, and now drops a penny before every pull.
I think these circumstances have the following important characteristics: lack of control or partial control over outcomes; high potential for reward. I think this combination of factors leads us to pay extra attention to the relationship between our actions and their outcomes and we are therefore more likely to draw spurious associations.
Hmmm... Plague... Cats... Plague... Cats.... I'll take plague.
Don't you still have to decrypt it, violating the DMCA to copy it? Or is DeCSS legal nowadays, I haven't been following this....
Basically this particular task (the "flankers task") is so easy that people only make errors when they stop paying attention. You see something like SSSHHSSS or HHHSSHHH and you have to respond to the central letters while filtering out the outside letters. So what is essentially happening is they are measuring when people's attention wanes and errors happen to be reliably associated with this.
Keep in mind that in this study errors are not actually predicted before they happen in real time. That's virtually impossible with fMRI. What's happening is that after the subject completes the task, the experimenters find data which comes from before the button press and reliably predicts subsequent errors. This happens in post-processing, so the experimenters do not actually know what is going to happen before it happens.
Couldn't agree more.
As the owner of a jailbroken iPhone I can tell you that in addition to being a phone, email & web device, camera and iPod, mine is also:
- a guitar tuner
- a scientific instrument. I can ssh into my office computer and start, stop, keep track of my data analysis from wherever.
- a remote control. using a variant of VNC I use my phone as a remote touchpad to control the media PC hooked up to my television.
- an IRC client
- a musical device. The multitouch piano (iAno) is actually quite good and can be used for working out melodies if not more.
This is obviously just the tip of the iceberg of what is possible considering all this was made without the SDK.
The truth about iPhone's sales numbers
This is really a godsend. Three out of the last 4 times I have been in a supermarket I have gotten lost. The last time, I was unable to find the exit before closing time and was trapped until morning. One time I lost my girlfriend in there and she had to take a cab home later when she finally made her way out the international foods section. I mean the layout of these places in parallel aisles is just mind-boggling, it might as well be a hedge maze. Now, with these robots, I might be able to enter the supermarket without so much anxiety.
bricked means it cannot ever be recovered by any means
But you can never be sure that a future technology won't make it recoverable.
That's what happened here.
For several months the device was about as useful as a brick.
It wasn't a matter of just trying the firmware update again; for those who bricked there were no options available to bring the device back to functionality --until now.
I think people splitting hairs about the use of the term "brick" are missing the point.
The issue issue is not one of emulating something you see others doing. It's a question of what happens when you pretend to do something yourself. Repeatedly.
Everyone here seems to be strongly opposed to the idea that video game violence may be related to violent behavior.
However, it seems pretty clear to me that it must in some form. Play throughout the animal kingdom is basically simulation training. We play to unintentionally practice skills. Video games that involve explicit simulation of violence must be exercising something related to violent behavior. I'm not saying a video game "causes" a kid to do something violent or that parenting and personality don't interact, but it seems inconceivable to me that it has no effect.
Now I see why he hid it.
We have magnet-compatible goggles with LCD screens in them, because we use the MRI for cognitive psychology experiments where you often want to present visual stimuli. Having these goggles on with something to look at, even if its just a screen saver, really helps a lot.
"All applications shipped with Leopard are signed by Apple, and third-party software developers can also sign their applications."
This has nothing to do with AT&T.
Apple has already announced an exclusive deal in France with Orange (France telecom), and it's this deal that is in danger because of the law. Apple is partnered with T-mobile in Germany and O2 in Britain, so this really isn't about any worldwide exclusivity for AT&T.
AppleInsider's report on this situation.
The system begins with an additional set of pickups mounted underneath the strings that are used specifically for the tuning process.
Sounds like they are just for the tuning mechanism.
It has a knob that you pull out to turn the tuning mechanism on, then you turn it off while you are playing so it's not trying to adjust.
I found this part of the technology to be especially clever:
As the strings are played, the Powertune processor compares their actual frequencies with the desired notes and sends instructions--tighten the string this much, loosen the string by that much--to tuning pegs equipped with strong, tiny servo motors mounted on the back of the guitar's head. Because onstage interference could potentially degrade a wireless signal, the system uses the strings themselves to send the signal.
Yes, this is exactly it in my opinion. Was going to write the same thing. They have said they don't care about 3rd party app development, and I believe it. The new firmware puts the iPhone in jail with some stronger locks than before to prevent SIM unlocking, for sure.
The Touch is locked as well because it is essentially the same device. The firmware appears to be encrypted using the same key.
For one thing it's encrypted. At this point we can't even access the disk image.
Secondly, iTunes does a checksum on it before installing. If it doesn't match, it won't install.
That is basically all it does, minus the hendrix music (which it would play if it were working! heh). Until it is fixable (and whether it will be we cannot be sure), it is a brick.