Wait... I'm really tired, and I can't tell if I'm missing another joke, so forgive me if I am.
I used to live in Florida, and used the radio transponder thingie for toll roads. I know the owners were tracking me, because I could view all the gates I'd gone through in the past month. I think you're drawing the line between knowledgeable and paranoid a bit off the mark.
Excellent, so there are people who understand the point. I was worried after I put that on a sign on my door on 9/11/06 and my roommate tore it down 5 minutes later.
If I'm really so tinfoil-hat that I'm worried about my browser cache betraying what I'm up to, I probably need some medication and/or an air-gap between me and the Internet(s).
You're right, you didn't say paranoid, you said tinfoil-hat. And my imagination has been systematically sterilized by the American school system, so there's no danger of me imagining things.
What? How is it paranoid if a method is demonstrated to allow you to be tracked through your cache? You think people won't use this? Do you think only people with tinfoil hats think advertising companies have been tracking people on the web for over a decade? I'm honestly confused, please explain yourself.
By the way, if you clear your cache and cookies often, you CAN have both anonymity and functionality.
A lot of cheating is in a gray area. For example, getting help from other students could be considered cheating by some and not by others. I know it sounds corny, but the person who is hurt most by cheating is that student. Even in a curved class, most professors are a bit flexible with grading so other students are not too affected by cheating.
True. At Duke University, if several people ask a TA for help and he puts four lines of code on the board to demonstrate a concept, he's in danger of losing his position. The company they send computer code to for analysis will flag every student who read those four lines as being 80 or 90 percent likely to have copied from the same source, and will be called in to find out who the hell taught them to write proper computer code. When it's revealed that the TA wrote four lines of code on a blackboard, he will be chastised heavily and interrogated about why he's helping students cheat. I swear on my left nut this is all true.
At Caltech, exams are take-home and students are encouraged to collaborate on homework.
Which do you think is the better college?
Why shouldn't the lost money be paid for by the scammed? It was their money, lost by their stupidity. If I slip up and become one of the stupid (which seems very unlikely), I won't go bitching at my bank to give me money if it was my fault.
You're right, I forgot about ATF. I had an ATF visit my history class last year - I don't think he appreciated the daggers I glared through him. Man I hate the ATF.
He replied above, apparently he's more scared of the IRS than the DEA or ATF. Logical, but I'd be more scared of the DEA - if you piss them off, you're dead in the water. With the IRS you can probably just pay up your taxes and a heavy fine and you'll be free. The DEA will throw your lawless ass in jail for a year and fine you the amount of their boat payment that month, just for possession of 2 ounces of weed.
A good Party member shouldn't have to be told when information is doubleplusungood. With a small mental effort all the appropriate attitudes for knowing what is good and ungood can be easily attained.
When I fly home in 3 weeks for fall break, I'm probably not going to be allowed to take a water bottle on the plane. I'll have to stand, in the line for the security booth for up to half an hour, and I'll have to get to the airport 2 or 3 hours early just so stupid people can get the impression of safety.
In a high school class a few months ago, my friends and I were talking about a teacher that had pissed 7 of the 10 smart people in the school, and how we couldn't do anything about it. The conversation ENDED, and we moved on, talking about an Alfred Hitchcock murder story. The teacher connected the two conversations, because she doesn't have room in her brain for two different conversations, and reported me to the dean of students for threatening a teacher. He said (approximately) "what if you said 'bomb' in an airport??? huh??? not so smart now, are you???" The culture of fear had directly caused the dean of students at a private Catholic to feel he was in the right terrorizing students (that's not the only occasion).
The next time Bush comes around to give a speech (mispronouncing words so people criticize that instead of the speech's content), I won't be allowed to hold up a sign that disagrees with him. I will be forced, at gunpoint if I try to assert my basic rights, to a free speech zone, out of sight and hearing range of the cretins up front.
If I fly to Washington DC, and I have to crap in the last half-hour of the flight, I will almost definitely have to crap my pants.
So, we live in a country where convenience of the stupid takes precedence over the right to drink water, discuss literature in school, protest, and crap in a toilet. And you're right, I can't even read a newspaper anymore without people talking about 9/11 because they already forgot about the 3200 people who died on 9/11/01 of heart disease or cancer. In fact, I think I'll make that my sig.
I wish, but I doubt it. Understanding between all peoples is the last barrier to world government - communication, travel, currency, and others have all been taken care of. That's the worst thing I see in the War on the Middle East - even more than the tens of thousands of dead civilians, I fear the complete subjugation or destruction of the entire third world, after which cultural cooperation among the Western world will be a very small step. If all governments are the same, who's going to object to combining them? Tell people it'll be more efficient and save them 5 cents on their annual taxes, and who's going to object?
A world government terrifies me. All large-scale governments inevitably become police states, and France 217 years ago is the only time I know of where a police state was brought down from within. They're always taken down by another government, and with a world government there is no other government.
Yes. Every infringement you can quantify is another warm fuzzy feeling among the masses. Since fear is about the only thing they're in danger of from terrorism, they're safer.
Oh shut up. Your kids are only going to be hit by cars if you made them too stupid to watch for cars when they go into the street. Nobody's born that stupid, so if you find that they are, it's your fault. And guess how many bullets your supervision will be able to stop? That's right, none. If you try to protect your kids, you'll do the opposite. Overprotective parents are the second-worst kind (after drug-addicted).
And in the future, remember that if you see one newspaper article per week about a kid randomly getting killed somewhere in America, that means your child's chances of dying if you let them out of their cage is 1/42,000,000 per week.
The items? All absolutely equal? Same for the descriptions? All from the same seller? Or all had equal feedback and stats? Locations sold from? Will a heavy, untested Sun Ultra 80 with 21" monitor sold in Texas get the same price that it would when sold in New York? Given that the postage might cost more than the unit itself and that some people prefer to pick-up only? I think it would be difficult to get good numbers out of something as chaotic as eBay auctions.
That's the wonderful part about statistics - all those are taken care of by the simple arithmetic mean. The researchers didn't conclude that ALL auctions closed higher with a lower starting price, just that on average you'll get a higher price if you start the bids lower. All those factors you mentioned average out - even if their data was incomplete, a random sample will provide an excellent representation of geographical distribution, feedback, description, weight, shipping cost, and item value.
Did you know PhD's often have trouble finding work? They often hide the fact that they have PhD's, so as to get a chance in job interviews. Over the years I've had regular taxi drivers who take me to work, who tell me they have PhD's in electrical engineering and computer science. Be careful you don't specialize in career suicide.
I've heard that, and I don't plan on getting a PhD. Even if I was, the Simpsons would have convinced me not to.
Bart: I stole the ponytail off the guy in front of us. "Ooh! Look at me, I'm a grad student! I'm 30 and I made $600 last year!"
Marge: Bart! Don't make fun of grad students! They just made a terrible life choice.
It's too bad the apes never evolved more intelligence, so they'd know that they have opposable thumbs too. If they had, they'd realize our intelligence is our advantage.
You mean people who come in to something they don't work with every day and then miss some key data because they are less familiar with the issues than the people who have had a lot of time and financial motivation to consider the factors?
OK, you tell me what they missed then. It seems to me they've taken aution lengths, ending times, starting bids, reseve prices, and final prices into consideration. What else would have affected the particular statistics they gave?
I thought it was pretty obvious by what was said, that the point being made was that PhD's sometimes "can't see the forest for the trees". They are brilliant in key areas but can get focused a little too close in when the problem needs to be looked at further back.
Hm. That's probably more accurate than my assesment.
Do you think that all the military have, are push-up men and PhD's and nothing in-between? There are technicians who are civilians, contractors, etc and then there are also brilliant millitary people who also happen to do push-ups as a matter of requirement to keep fit for serving their country. Just because someone signs up to serve in the DoD, does not automatically make them dim.
Sorry. I just got out of high school, so I tend to think of physically fit people as dumbass jocks.
You have such black and white views.
Yeah, it's a problem. Makes discussions more interesting, though.
Of course they're human too. Who would you trust, a human working with his unreliable memory (or his sporadically-collected experiences), or a group of humans using statistical methods on exact, representative data?
And his post referred to PhDs as "complete and utter fuckups". He didn't say they were human too. He said they wre useless and couldn't fix things because those dumbasses know thermodynamics. He also seems to think that sensitive elecromechanical devices are designed by people who spend their time doing pushups, and PhDs should be taken to the top of their ivory towers and thrown off to save oxygen.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait... I'm really tired, and I can't tell if I'm missing another joke, so forgive me if I am.
I used to live in Florida, and used the radio transponder thingie for toll roads. I know the owners were tracking me, because I could view all the gates I'd gone through in the past month. I think you're drawing the line between knowledgeable and paranoid a bit off the mark.
Excellent, so there are people who understand the point. I was worried after I put that on a sign on my door on 9/11/06 and my roommate tore it down 5 minutes later.
You're right, you didn't say paranoid, you said tinfoil-hat. And my imagination has been systematically sterilized by the American school system, so there's no danger of me imagining things.
What? How is it paranoid if a method is demonstrated to allow you to be tracked through your cache? You think people won't use this? Do you think only people with tinfoil hats think advertising companies have been tracking people on the web for over a decade? I'm honestly confused, please explain yourself. By the way, if you clear your cache and cookies often, you CAN have both anonymity and functionality.
A lot of cheating is in a gray area. For example, getting help from other students could be considered cheating by some and not by others. I know it sounds corny, but the person who is hurt most by cheating is that student. Even in a curved class, most professors are a bit flexible with grading so other students are not too affected by cheating.
True. At Duke University, if several people ask a TA for help and he puts four lines of code on the board to demonstrate a concept, he's in danger of losing his position. The company they send computer code to for analysis will flag every student who read those four lines as being 80 or 90 percent likely to have copied from the same source, and will be called in to find out who the hell taught them to write proper computer code. When it's revealed that the TA wrote four lines of code on a blackboard, he will be chastised heavily and interrogated about why he's helping students cheat. I swear on my left nut this is all true. At Caltech, exams are take-home and students are encouraged to collaborate on homework. Which do you think is the better college?
What would you mod it?
Why shouldn't the lost money be paid for by the scammed? It was their money, lost by their stupidity. If I slip up and become one of the stupid (which seems very unlikely), I won't go bitching at my bank to give me money if it was my fault.
Do you like phishers, or getting their bait in your email?
I don't mind. Takes 5 seconds to delete them all.
Do you think it's OK for them to scam people, just because you don't know the victims in advance?
I wouldn't say it's OK for them to scam people, but why the hell do I care about stupid people getting what's coming to them?
You're right, I forgot about ATF. I had an ATF visit my history class last year - I don't think he appreciated the daggers I glared through him. Man I hate the ATF. He replied above, apparently he's more scared of the IRS than the DEA or ATF. Logical, but I'd be more scared of the DEA - if you piss them off, you're dead in the water. With the IRS you can probably just pay up your taxes and a heavy fine and you'll be free. The DEA will throw your lawless ass in jail for a year and fine you the amount of their boat payment that month, just for possession of 2 ounces of weed.
Comrade, your behavior plusungood. Resume doublethink doubleplusquickwise.
Nah, the DEA's gotta be one of them.
A good Party member shouldn't have to be told when information is doubleplusungood. With a small mental effort all the appropriate attitudes for knowing what is good and ungood can be easily attained.
Oh, come on. You can't even do a quick check on google or wikipedia?
When I fly home in 3 weeks for fall break, I'm probably not going to be allowed to take a water bottle on the plane. I'll have to stand, in the line for the security booth for up to half an hour, and I'll have to get to the airport 2 or 3 hours early just so stupid people can get the impression of safety.
In a high school class a few months ago, my friends and I were talking about a teacher that had pissed 7 of the 10 smart people in the school, and how we couldn't do anything about it. The conversation ENDED, and we moved on, talking about an Alfred Hitchcock murder story. The teacher connected the two conversations, because she doesn't have room in her brain for two different conversations, and reported me to the dean of students for threatening a teacher. He said (approximately) "what if you said 'bomb' in an airport??? huh??? not so smart now, are you???" The culture of fear had directly caused the dean of students at a private Catholic to feel he was in the right terrorizing students (that's not the only occasion).
The next time Bush comes around to give a speech (mispronouncing words so people criticize that instead of the speech's content), I won't be allowed to hold up a sign that disagrees with him. I will be forced, at gunpoint if I try to assert my basic rights, to a free speech zone, out of sight and hearing range of the cretins up front.
If I fly to Washington DC, and I have to crap in the last half-hour of the flight, I will almost definitely have to crap my pants.
So, we live in a country where convenience of the stupid takes precedence over the right to drink water, discuss literature in school, protest, and crap in a toilet. And you're right, I can't even read a newspaper anymore without people talking about 9/11 because they already forgot about the 3200 people who died on 9/11/01 of heart disease or cancer. In fact, I think I'll make that my sig.
I wish, but I doubt it. Understanding between all peoples is the last barrier to world government - communication, travel, currency, and others have all been taken care of. That's the worst thing I see in the War on the Middle East - even more than the tens of thousands of dead civilians, I fear the complete subjugation or destruction of the entire third world, after which cultural cooperation among the Western world will be a very small step. If all governments are the same, who's going to object to combining them? Tell people it'll be more efficient and save them 5 cents on their annual taxes, and who's going to object?
A world government terrifies me. All large-scale governments inevitably become police states, and France 217 years ago is the only time I know of where a police state was brought down from within. They're always taken down by another government, and with a world government there is no other government.
can you quantify how much safer we are?
Yes. Every infringement you can quantify is another warm fuzzy feeling among the masses. Since fear is about the only thing they're in danger of from terrorism, they're safer.
The US GOVERNMENT is warning other governments against too much regulation?
Oh shut up. Your kids are only going to be hit by cars if you made them too stupid to watch for cars when they go into the street. Nobody's born that stupid, so if you find that they are, it's your fault. And guess how many bullets your supervision will be able to stop? That's right, none. If you try to protect your kids, you'll do the opposite. Overprotective parents are the second-worst kind (after drug-addicted). And in the future, remember that if you see one newspaper article per week about a kid randomly getting killed somewhere in America, that means your child's chances of dying if you let them out of their cage is 1/42,000,000 per week.
The items? All absolutely equal? Same for the descriptions? All from the same seller? Or all had equal feedback and stats? Locations sold from? Will a heavy, untested Sun Ultra 80 with 21" monitor sold in Texas get the same price that it would when sold in New York? Given that the postage might cost more than the unit itself and that some people prefer to pick-up only? I think it would be difficult to get good numbers out of something as chaotic as eBay auctions.
That's the wonderful part about statistics - all those are taken care of by the simple arithmetic mean. The researchers didn't conclude that ALL auctions closed higher with a lower starting price, just that on average you'll get a higher price if you start the bids lower. All those factors you mentioned average out - even if their data was incomplete, a random sample will provide an excellent representation of geographical distribution, feedback, description, weight, shipping cost, and item value.
Did you know PhD's often have trouble finding work? They often hide the fact that they have PhD's, so as to get a chance in job interviews. Over the years I've had regular taxi drivers who take me to work, who tell me they have PhD's in electrical engineering and computer science. Be careful you don't specialize in career suicide.
I've heard that, and I don't plan on getting a PhD. Even if I was, the Simpsons would have convinced me not to.
Bart: I stole the ponytail off the guy in front of us. "Ooh! Look at me, I'm a grad student! I'm 30 and I made $600 last year!"
Marge: Bart! Don't make fun of grad students! They just made a terrible life choice.
He said it was _more_ in the field of signals processing than acoustics, not that it had nothing to do with acoustics. And he was perfectly correct.
You're right. It's too bad the Dartmouth professor didn't ask the ACs on slashdot about his work; they obviously know more about it than him.
It's too bad the apes never evolved more intelligence, so they'd know that they have opposable thumbs too. If they had, they'd realize our intelligence is our advantage.
You mean people who come in to something they don't work with every day and then miss some key data because they are less familiar with the issues than the people who have had a lot of time and financial motivation to consider the factors?
OK, you tell me what they missed then. It seems to me they've taken aution lengths, ending times, starting bids, reseve prices, and final prices into consideration. What else would have affected the particular statistics they gave?
I thought it was pretty obvious by what was said, that the point being made was that PhD's sometimes "can't see the forest for the trees". They are brilliant in key areas but can get focused a little too close in when the problem needs to be looked at further back.
Hm. That's probably more accurate than my assesment.
Do you think that all the military have, are push-up men and PhD's and nothing in-between? There are technicians who are civilians, contractors, etc and then there are also brilliant millitary people who also happen to do push-ups as a matter of requirement to keep fit for serving their country. Just because someone signs up to serve in the DoD, does not automatically make them dim.
Sorry. I just got out of high school, so I tend to think of physically fit people as dumbass jocks.
You have such black and white views.
Yeah, it's a problem. Makes discussions more interesting, though.
Of course they're human too. Who would you trust, a human working with his unreliable memory (or his sporadically-collected experiences), or a group of humans using statistical methods on exact, representative data? And his post referred to PhDs as "complete and utter fuckups". He didn't say they were human too. He said they wre useless and couldn't fix things because those dumbasses know thermodynamics. He also seems to think that sensitive elecromechanical devices are designed by people who spend their time doing pushups, and PhDs should be taken to the top of their ivory towers and thrown off to save oxygen.