Re:I call foul: CENSORSHIP
on
Google Suggest
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· Score: 1
I am actually extremely liberal about the internet and its various uses. I was only making sure to balance my point with an opinion that validates my objectiveness in this situation.
Re:I call foul: CENSORSHIP
on
Google Suggest
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· Score: 1
Yes, those are short words. Nonetheless, "dog" is available in the autocomplete list. If you can make the searches with vanilla Google, why not include these popular terms?
Maybe this can be combined with the Google Labs Profiling system to better accommodate people who wish to make socially-taboo searches more efficient. Also, imagine the political implications. Forget about sex, that's not what concerns me.
GoogleSuggest filters lewd words from its autocomplete term pool, it appears. How exactly is "sex" not autocompleted? Not that I condone it, but there are millions who would prefer to query that term with one hand.
Regardless, I think that Google is going to hit a snag with this technology. They seem to have filtered out personal sites, as my name does not appear (although it is indexed by Google). This is fair. It could have been scary, seeing what others searched for in conjuction with your name. However, filtering out "sex", which many juvenilles might search for to increase awareness of STDs or personal development is dangerous. No, it's not filtering it from the search index, but it is restricting access to the 343,000,000 results the word provides. Why not allow any query, but default to safesearch: filtered searching with a cookie-out option. Right now, changing safesearch changes nothing.
receiving free goods in exchange for promoting them. If you do a bad job promoting, you're considered less of an "insider", so you don't get the free merchandize or prize points. Due to this, there is a huge incentive to promote the product even if it is terrible (see my 20Q story in response to another poster).
It's not as if buy an iPod, happen to like it, and decide to spread the word. It's more along the lines of Apple saying "Psst, here's a free iPod. You're cool now, but you can't tell anybody about this little secret of ours. Make Apple known and you'll be really 1337, yeah. You screw this up, then no more free stuff, and we make you a buffoon in a tutu." While you are still the one promoting it, your friends cannot trust trust your word, knowing that Bzzing remains at large. It's really despicable. One woman in the article mentioned convincing her father to buy a quantity of suasages. She also convinced somebody to change a recipe to suit them. I'd say that's downright manipulative. Still trust her?
Thank you for clarifying this. Even though it is somewhat beyond my current level of understanding, I now have some terms to research myself. ..Blasted "can't post in and mod same thread" rule.
I appreciate your concern for grammar, but I said what I intended to say. "Their kids" refers to the kids of the various mothers, not each individual mother's children. When one mother is a celebrity, her friends' children become less enthralled by their own respective mothers. In response, these mothers might launch an "I treat my kids just as well or better" counter-assault. This is a very common dynamic between parents of the same child and, in a tightly knight school community like the one mentioned, the parents of different children.
It's comparable to the clichéd old-women/apartment-building/lawn-chair effect.
I realize what a significant development this technology is, but I still do not see what this particular research added to the field's canon of knowledge.
The BrainGate device is the one mentioned in the conference in a past article.
"The development of the BrainGate program is the culmination of 10 years of research in my academic laboratory at Brown University. .."
About the BrainGate device
The BrainGate Neural Interface Device is a proprietary brain-computer interface that consists of an internal neural signal sensor and external processors that convert neural signals into an output signal under the users own control. The sensor consists of a tiny chip smaller than a baby aspirin, with one hundred electrode sensors each thinner than a hair that detect brain cell electrical activity.
The BrainGate technology platform was designed to take advantage of the fact that many patients with motor impairment have an intact brain that can produce movement commands. This may allow the BrainGate system to create an output signal directly from the brain, bypassing the route through the nerves to the muscles that cannot be used in paralysed people.
The chip is implanted on the surface of the brain in the motor cortex area that controls movement. In the pilot version of the device, a cable connects the sensor to an external signal processor in a cart that contains computers. The computers translate brain activity and create the communication output using custom decoding software. Importantly, the entire BrainGate system was specifically designed for clinical use in humans and thus, its manufacture, assembly and testing are intended to meet human safety requirements. Five quadriplegics patients in all are enrolled in the pilot study, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Here, it clearly states that the electrodes are on the surface of the brain. Therefore, the use of surface electrodes in this new article (about the WU, experiment this time) is not new. So, where's the development?
That's the point - if. Even though subjects would still have to think about everything from puppies to chain guns just to get the paddle to move, the results might be far less consistent for two reasons:
Electrodes on the scalp are, by definition, less precise than those implanted into or on top of the brain. When on the scalp, the signal received is from a larger area. Due to this, the thought processes involved might be too general - individual actions and thoughts might step on eachothers toes, so to speak. Although some devices utilize electrodes on the scalp as biofeedback sensors, I doubt it could be so targeted as to move a prosthetic arm. Remember, and this is a BIG overvsimplication, it would take more radical differences in thought to achieve specific movements, as anything less might result in an unintended combination of different inputs
The other concern is interference. I know that I once had difficulty with a remotely operated vehicle because of a play production in the neighboring room (think stagelights). I don't want to imagine what a similar situation would do to somebody with a prosthetic limb (think Dr. Strangelove).
As the electrodes are not targeting any particular region, as is evidenced by the subject's description of "scrinching up" and "thinking about screaming" as methods of controlling the paddle, there is no reason why they should be buried in the brain rather than adhered to the surface. Don't hold me to this as I am not qualified to make these assumptions, but I do not believe that this is particularly significant or new achievement (except that it is an extension of the previous one without fault). Until they create extremely sensitive electrodes that attach to the scalp (very, very unlikely given skin movement and interference), this still seems like quite stretch for regular patients - and an extreme one for the rest.
Maybe they should try other, less direct, interfaces - like the tongue ("Activation of visual cortex by electrotactile stimulation of the tongue in early-blind subjects").
The Bzzers don't even need to like the items they market . . . and more often than not, they don't. For example, on the Bzz site they have a testimonial from a Bzzer who was trying to promote 20Q (a great website, but a lowly toy) to other mothers at a bus stop. She mentioned that the toy was making a lot of noise because it was getting "Torah" wrong, repeatedly. Others asked where to buy it, though. So, even though it is clearly an inferior toy, she tricked them into finding it appealing. She even described her methods online.
Obviously, it was not $10 well spent for those mothers. I can't imagine that the peer pressure on the mothers, with all of their kids flocking to the little blipping, flashing, toy helped.
Anonymity is crucial to any Bzz campaign. If the word gets out that one member of a community is covertly foisting products on the rest, a general sentiment of deceit smites the social atmosphere. I feel that, although this is a perfectly legal, dare I say brilliant, marketing system, I would make it a point to rout out and publicly humiliate any Bzzers I discover.
I share your opinion on stereotyping and how to avoid it. I do occasionally succumb to partisan pressure, gleefully lashing out at prominent figures with trashy one-liners, but that is not my preferred method of political discourse. The motivation for using the phrase "liberals do X" was, ironically enough, to appeal to the very crowd you accused me of being a member of. Sometimes, one must work from within the system to garner sufficient respect and attention to be able to breed resistance against the status quo.
I take no offense. In fact, I greatly appreciate your comment, o Anonymous Coward, for the content that is so rarely purveyed by Slashdot members. The only flaw is the fact that the subject was not news to me. I had originally prefaced the term "liberal" with a disambiguating comment on the order of "A sizable bloc of partisan progressive voters have, in standard knee-jerk reflex, pounced on these cabinet level resignations as fool-proof evidence of a failed presidency." However, I removed it in an attempt to be less verbose - as well as to appeal to a wider, less politically correct, audience. Although this sentence also stereotypes, I feel that it does so to a lesser extent as it is neither all-encompassing nor targeting a defined subgroup of those who vote Democrat or Green more often than they do Republican or (arguably) Libertarian.
Now, let me say one thing on the topic of avoiding blanket political terms entirely: I cannot fully agree with you. These terms are invented, and often cast off just as quickly, because of their functionality in plebeian conversation. If you were to be stopped on the street randomly, you might be asked your party affiliation or your political leanings. In such circumstances, and I consider Slashdot to be an analogous time-sensitive circumstance, convenience often trumps accuracy. So, instead of saying "I am an ardent supporter of equality in society, including the gender/sex/race/creed blind bestowing of civil liberties upon all of humankind, who also wishes government to make greater monetary and political investments in the normalization of the standards of living in this country, eliminating the disparity between rich and poor, while still maintaining the exquisite freedom and right to individuality granted us by our constitution.", I might simply state "I would consider myself a social liberal. If you need more information, ask me now, otherwise I will tune you out, attending to my doughnut instead."
Now that you're confident that no flame war was incited by your reply, would you mind responding to this post using your Slashdot UID? I'm curious about what else have said or have left to say.
You are correct. Liberals are quick to pounce on these cabinet level resignations as fool-proof evidence of a failed presidency. Superficially the data does not back this claim up. However, what is often ignored is how much strife has driven the process this time. Nearly half of his cabinet has quit or been "forcibly resigned" amid some rather questionable circumstances. The curious grouping of resignations (the Energy, Education, Commerce, Treasury, Homeland Defense, State, and Agriculture secretaries) seem to highlight the more deeply seated problems that Liberals have with the current administration. The "CIA Shakeup", as it has been dubbed, lends even more credibility to the claim that the administration is mishandling its duties.
There is an interesting correlation between presidents and their respective turnover rates that should also be taken into account. Please note that the data below does not account for the particulars of this administration's cabinet resignations, as I explained before.
Second term presidency cabinet member turnover rates: Harry Truman: 4 Dwight Eisenhower: 3 Lyndon Johnson: 4 Richard Nixon: 9 Ronald Reagan: 7 Bill Clinton: 7
Source: Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the Presidency
In shameless defense of Bill Clinton, his politics were rather unorthodox and, in trying to maintain the appearance of being a moderate, some resignations ought to have been expected.
I know, this story was not news-worthy, but I do appreciate it. I do not usually get sick while playing fully immersive games. With Half Life 2, though, it is another story.The games in which I do not get sick tend to be low geometry, high FOV, reflex shooters. This obvservation leads me to agree with the parent poster.
My Half Life 2 sickness may, in part, also be due to the very low FOV. Another thing that I noticed, while playing through the video test, is that the textures are not static. You may say "wha?", but I mean from the viewer's perspective. I could see the equivalent of scanlines at tricky points of geometry on a single object. This wasn't an antialiasing artifact, mind you, this was something entirely different. As I've never seen it before, I cannot do much better in describing it. However, I feel that it might account for some of the nausia that people feel in game.
Lastly, the player's perspective feels disproportionately small compared to the environment, especially at higher resolutions. As a player, I feel as though I am swimming through an environment all to large for me. This messes with my frame of reference, especially when picking up objects (which then float several feet in front of me) and completing puzzles (in which the perspective is very misleading). My biohazard suit doesn't fit me like a glove. Not even the gloves.
If you haven't invested in Pfizer yet, now might be the time. I'm predicting a 27% spike tommorow when investors realize that several million gamers are planning on buying several cases each of Dramamine for Thanksgiving weekend.
In stuttering like this, the hard drive changes nothing. If the hard drive size does make a difference, it's a sign that there's another problem. The hard drive's seek time could make a difference, seeing as to how each half of the level has to be loaded into the RAM when approached, but not the capacity. The only time that hard drive capacity comes into play is with swap files. If you run out of available system RAM, your computer treats a swap file hard drive as though it is volatile memory. Reading from and writing to the hard drive is far slower than storing level detail in RAM. Having very little space on your hard drive left could yield a worse stutter. However, as I said, having to use a swap file at all is evidence that your computer is not adequate for this game.
In most writing, I am exceedingly careful with my words. However, as Slashdot has a ruthless moderation curve (in respect to time), I must sometimes make compromises. In this case, Half Life 2 being an extremely popular topic, I decided that it would be best to post as quickly as possible. That way, I believed, I could give the truth the dominant position in the discussion it deserves.
Actually, the Source update is iffy
on
Review: Half-Life 2
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· Score: 5, Informative
Yes, Half Life 1 was updated with an integration of the Source engine. However, the geometry was not updated. You'll get the same old blocky Gordon man-hands as in the first iteration of the game. Because of this half-complete update, the HAVOK physics engine fails to chagen the game whatoever. It has almost no affect on the environemnt. For example, a barrel in Half Life 1 might be a static object in game, essentially fixed to the ground. The engine does not change any class definitions, obviously, so the game could seem a bit imbalanced to the player. It's like playing Tenebrae Quake. The graphics simply don't fit the game. They are superfluous and actually serve to break the suspension of disbelief (note that Tenebrae is working on that).
The Source Engine Half Life 1 update was done as a test of mod compliancy by Valve. It was just a convenient result that it proved releasable with a minimal investment by Valve. . . an extremely lucrative midnight project.
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I am actually extremely liberal about the internet and its various uses. I was only making sure to balance my point with an opinion that validates my objectiveness in this situation.
Yes, those are short words. Nonetheless, "dog" is available in the autocomplete list. If you can make the searches with vanilla Google, why not include these popular terms?
Maybe this can be combined with the Google Labs Profiling system to better accommodate people who wish to make socially-taboo searches more efficient. Also, imagine the political implications. Forget about sex, that's not what concerns me.
GoogleSuggest filters lewd words from its autocomplete term pool, it appears. How exactly is "sex" not autocompleted? Not that I condone it, but there are millions who would prefer to query that term with one hand.
Regardless, I think that Google is going to hit a snag with this technology. They seem to have filtered out personal sites, as my name does not appear (although it is indexed by Google). This is fair. It could have been scary, seeing what others searched for in conjuction with your name. However, filtering out "sex", which many juvenilles might search for to increase awareness of STDs or personal development is dangerous. No, it's not filtering it from the search index, but it is restricting access to the 343,000,000 results the word provides. Why not allow any query, but default to safesearch: filtered searching with a cookie-out option. Right now, changing safesearch changes nothing.
receiving free goods in exchange for promoting them. If you do a bad job promoting, you're considered less of an "insider", so you don't get the free merchandize or prize points. Due to this, there is a huge incentive to promote the product even if it is terrible (see my 20Q story in response to another poster).
It's not as if buy an iPod, happen to like it, and decide to spread the word. It's more along the lines of Apple saying "Psst, here's a free iPod. You're cool now, but you can't tell anybody about this little secret of ours. Make Apple known and you'll be really 1337, yeah. You screw this up, then no more free stuff, and we make you a buffoon in a tutu." While you are still the one promoting it, your friends cannot trust trust your word, knowing that Bzzing remains at large. It's really despicable. One woman in the article mentioned convincing her father to buy a quantity of suasages. She also convinced somebody to change a recipe to suit them. I'd say that's downright manipulative. Still trust her?
Thank you for clarifying this. Even though it is somewhat beyond my current level of understanding, I now have some terms to research myself. . .Blasted "can't post in and mod same thread" rule.
I forgot to include: "Because the mothers are the ones who do the ultimate pressuring (with their egos, through their wallets) it is peer pressure."
Not that I have anything against mothers. Frankly, I don't know where I'd be without one.
I appreciate your concern for grammar, but I said what I intended to say. "Their kids" refers to the kids of the various mothers, not each individual mother's children. When one mother is a celebrity, her friends' children become less enthralled by their own respective mothers. In response, these mothers might launch an "I treat my kids just as well or better" counter-assault. This is a very common dynamic between parents of the same child and, in a tightly knight school community like the one mentioned, the parents of different children.
It's comparable to the clichéd old-women/apartment-building/lawn-chair effect.
I realize what a significant development this technology is, but I still do not see what this particular research added to the field's canon of knowledge.
That's the point - if. Even though subjects would still have to think about everything from puppies to chain guns just to get the paddle to move, the results might be far less consistent for two reasons:
Electrodes on the scalp are, by definition, less precise than those implanted into or on top of the brain. When on the scalp, the signal received is from a larger area. Due to this, the thought processes involved might be too general - individual actions and thoughts might step on eachothers toes, so to speak. Although some devices utilize electrodes on the scalp as biofeedback sensors, I doubt it could be so targeted as to move a prosthetic arm. Remember, and this is a BIG overvsimplication, it would take more radical differences in thought to achieve specific movements, as anything less might result in an unintended combination of different inputs
The other concern is interference. I know that I once had difficulty with a remotely operated vehicle because of a play production in the neighboring room (think stagelights). I don't want to imagine what a similar situation would do to somebody with a prosthetic limb (think Dr. Strangelove).
As the electrodes are not targeting any particular region, as is evidenced by the subject's description of "scrinching up" and "thinking about screaming" as methods of controlling the paddle, there is no reason why they should be buried in the brain rather than adhered to the surface. Don't hold me to this as I am not qualified to make these assumptions, but I do not believe that this is particularly significant or new achievement (except that it is an extension of the previous one without fault). Until they create extremely sensitive electrodes that attach to the scalp (very, very unlikely given skin movement and interference), this still seems like quite stretch for regular patients - and an extreme one for the rest.
Maybe they should try other, less direct, interfaces - like the tongue ("Activation of visual cortex by electrotactile stimulation of the tongue in early-blind subjects").
The Bzzers don't even need to like the items they market . . . and more often than not, they don't. For example, on the Bzz site they have a testimonial from a Bzzer who was trying to promote 20Q (a great website, but a lowly toy) to other mothers at a bus stop. She mentioned that the toy was making a lot of noise because it was getting "Torah" wrong, repeatedly. Others asked where to buy it, though. So, even though it is clearly an inferior toy, she tricked them into finding it appealing. She even described her methods online.
Obviously, it was not $10 well spent for those mothers. I can't imagine that the peer pressure on the mothers, with all of their kids flocking to the little blipping, flashing, toy helped.
Anonymity is crucial to any Bzz campaign. If the word gets out that one member of a community is covertly foisting products on the rest, a general sentiment of deceit smites the social atmosphere. I feel that, although this is a perfectly legal, dare I say brilliant, marketing system, I would make it a point to rout out and publicly humiliate any Bzzers I discover.
It would have been a less traumatic failure had another poster not broken up the visual effect of the consecutive double post I had going.
The truly funny part was that I was modded "redundant" several times. . .
Agreed, but you must mean William Shatner. Please, this is Slashdot you're dealing with.
I saw a dupe post today. *Yes, this is a joke. SLASH won't let me post the same exact thing twice, but I trust you can imagine it being so.*
I saw a dupe post today.
I share your opinion on stereotyping and how to avoid it. I do occasionally succumb to partisan pressure, gleefully lashing out at prominent figures with trashy one-liners, but that is not my preferred method of political discourse. The motivation for using the phrase "liberals do X" was, ironically enough, to appeal to the very crowd you accused me of being a member of. Sometimes, one must work from within the system to garner sufficient respect and attention to be able to breed resistance against the status quo.
I take no offense. In fact, I greatly appreciate your comment, o Anonymous Coward, for the content that is so rarely purveyed by Slashdot members. The only flaw is the fact that the subject was not news to me. I had originally prefaced the term "liberal" with a disambiguating comment on the order of "A sizable bloc of partisan progressive voters have, in standard knee-jerk reflex, pounced on these cabinet level resignations as fool-proof evidence of a failed presidency." However, I removed it in an attempt to be less verbose - as well as to appeal to a wider, less politically correct, audience. Although this sentence also stereotypes, I feel that it does so to a lesser extent as it is neither all-encompassing nor targeting a defined subgroup of those who vote Democrat or Green more often than they do Republican or (arguably) Libertarian.
Now, let me say one thing on the topic of avoiding blanket political terms entirely: I cannot fully agree with you. These terms are invented, and often cast off just as quickly, because of their functionality in plebeian conversation. If you were to be stopped on the street randomly, you might be asked your party affiliation or your political leanings. In such circumstances, and I consider Slashdot to be an analogous time-sensitive circumstance, convenience often trumps accuracy. So, instead of saying "I am an ardent supporter of equality in society, including the gender/sex/race/creed blind bestowing of civil liberties upon all of humankind, who also wishes government to make greater monetary and political investments in the normalization of the standards of living in this country, eliminating the disparity between rich and poor, while still maintaining the exquisite freedom and right to individuality granted us by our constitution.", I might simply state "I would consider myself a social liberal. If you need more information, ask me now, otherwise I will tune you out, attending to my doughnut instead."
Now that you're confident that no flame war was incited by your reply, would you mind responding to this post using your Slashdot UID? I'm curious about what else have said or have left to say.
You are correct. Liberals are quick to pounce on these cabinet level resignations as fool-proof evidence of a failed presidency. Superficially the data does not back this claim up. However, what is often ignored is how much strife has driven the process this time. Nearly half of his cabinet has quit or been "forcibly resigned" amid some rather questionable circumstances. The curious grouping of resignations (the Energy, Education, Commerce, Treasury, Homeland Defense, State, and Agriculture secretaries) seem to highlight the more deeply seated problems that Liberals have with the current administration. The "CIA Shakeup", as it has been dubbed, lends even more credibility to the claim that the administration is mishandling its duties.
There is an interesting correlation between presidents and their respective turnover rates that should also be taken into account. Please note that the data below does not account for the particulars of this administration's cabinet resignations, as I explained before.
Second term presidency cabinet member turnover rates:
Harry Truman: 4
Dwight Eisenhower: 3
Lyndon Johnson: 4
Richard Nixon: 9
Ronald Reagan: 7
Bill Clinton: 7
Source: Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the Presidency
In shameless defense of Bill Clinton, his politics were rather unorthodox and, in trying to maintain the appearance of being a moderate, some resignations ought to have been expected.
Nixon vs. Turman completes the liberal argument.
I know, this story was not news-worthy, but I do appreciate it. I do not usually get sick while playing fully immersive games. With Half Life 2, though, it is another story.The games in which I do not get sick tend to be low geometry, high FOV, reflex shooters. This obvservation leads me to agree with the parent poster. My Half Life 2 sickness may, in part, also be due to the very low FOV. Another thing that I noticed, while playing through the video test, is that the textures are not static. You may say "wha?", but I mean from the viewer's perspective. I could see the equivalent of scanlines at tricky points of geometry on a single object. This wasn't an antialiasing artifact, mind you, this was something entirely different. As I've never seen it before, I cannot do much better in describing it. However, I feel that it might account for some of the nausia that people feel in game.
Lastly, the player's perspective feels disproportionately small compared to the environment, especially at higher resolutions. As a player, I feel as though I am swimming through an environment all to large for me. This messes with my frame of reference, especially when picking up objects (which then float several feet in front of me) and completing puzzles (in which the perspective is very misleading). My biohazard suit doesn't fit me like a glove. Not even the gloves.
If you haven't invested in Pfizer yet, now might be the time. I'm predicting a 27% spike tommorow when investors realize that several million gamers are planning on buying several cases each of Dramamine for Thanksgiving weekend.
In stuttering like this, the hard drive changes nothing. If the hard drive size does make a difference, it's a sign that there's another problem. The hard drive's seek time could make a difference, seeing as to how each half of the level has to be loaded into the RAM when approached, but not the capacity. The only time that hard drive capacity comes into play is with swap files. If you run out of available system RAM, your computer treats a swap file hard drive as though it is volatile memory. Reading from and writing to the hard drive is far slower than storing level detail in RAM. Having very little space on your hard drive left could yield a worse stutter. However, as I said, having to use a swap file at all is evidence that your computer is not adequate for this game.
Please accept that those of us with good records are not simply being lazy. There are reasons for our occasional lapses.
In most writing, I am exceedingly careful with my words. However, as Slashdot has a ruthless moderation curve (in respect to time), I must sometimes make compromises. In this case, Half Life 2 being an extremely popular topic, I decided that it would be best to post as quickly as possible. That way, I believed, I could give the truth the dominant position in the discussion it deserves.
Yes, Half Life 1 was updated with an integration of the Source engine. However, the geometry was not updated. You'll get the same old blocky Gordon man-hands as in the first iteration of the game. Because of this half-complete update, the HAVOK physics engine fails to chagen the game whatoever. It has almost no affect on the environemnt. For example, a barrel in Half Life 1 might be a static object in game, essentially fixed to the ground. The engine does not change any class definitions, obviously, so the game could seem a bit imbalanced to the player. It's like playing Tenebrae Quake. The graphics simply don't fit the game. They are superfluous and actually serve to break the suspension of disbelief (note that Tenebrae is working on that).
The Source Engine Half Life 1 update was done as a test of mod compliancy by Valve. It was just a convenient result that it proved releasable with a minimal investment by Valve. . . an extremely lucrative midnight project.
There was Lara Croft and a couple really big . . . um, *gesticulates a la Monty Python* tracts of land!