Nothing hasty about my criticism. I took quite some time compiling it, and this is not the first time I've run across this paper, which is why I already knew what to cite. The authors' intent in the paper (regardless of whatever unpublished re-direct shows up later) was to exclude ACLU data that would portray them as conservative *opposite of perception*, and include outlier information on RAND that portrayed them as liberal *opposite of perception*.
My criticism was well-thought out. That the authors would want to skew institutions toward the left shows a bias toward the right. Otherwise they would have left the data alone and included it all in the final graphs and conclusions. That is why this paper is merely entertainment. It doesn't mean the data is any less interesting, just that more work needs to be done before a serious conclusion can be reached.
You also failed to produce this second link at the time you published the link to the original report. If you want the corrections to be considered when someone criticizes the paper, you must include such links ahead of time and not bash the critic for what you left out.
That study's conclusions are flawed and it even says so.
1) Right-wing bias of the study's authors including or excluding data: Wanting to make sure the ACLU appears left-leaning by excluding data:
While most of these averages closely agree with the conventional wisdom, two cases seem somewhat anomalous. The first is the ACLU. The average score of legislators citing it was 49.8. Later, we shall provide reasons why it makes sense to define the political center at 50.1. This suggests that the ACLU, if anything is a right-leaning organization. The reason the ACLU has such a low score is that it opposed the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance bill, and conservatives in Congress cited this often. In fact, slightly more than one-eight of all ACLU citations in Congress were due to one person alone, Mitch McConnell (R.-Kt.), perhaps the chief critic of McCain-Feingold. If we omit McConnell's citations, the ACLU's average score increases to 55.9. Because of this anomaly, in the Appendix we report the results when we repeat all of our analyses but omit the ACLU data.
Wanting to make sure that RAND appears left-leaning by including data:
The second apparent anomaly is the RAND Corporation, which has a fairly liberal average score, 60.4. We mentioned this finding to some employees of RAND, who told us they were not surprised. While RAND strives to be middle-of-the-road ideologically, the more conservative scholars at RAND tend to work on military studies, while the more liberal scholars tend to work on domestic studies. Because the military studies are sometimes classified and often more technocratic than the domestic studies, the media and members of Congress tend to cite the domestic studies disproportionately. As a consequence, RAND appears liberal when judged by these citations. It is important to note that this fact--that the research at RAND is more conservative than the numbers in Table 1 suggest--will not bias our results. To see this, think of RAND as two think tanks: RAND I, the left-leaning think tank which produces the research that the media and members of Congress tend to cite, and RAND II, the conservative think tank which produces the research that they tend not to cite. Our results exclude RAND II from the analysis. This causes no more bias than excluding any other think tank that is rarely cited in Congress or the media.
You can't pick and choose. Either include all of this type of data or exclude it -- don't just pick what supports your beliefs.
2) Right-wing bias in algorithm selection Study admits that Fox News is way off in right-field if the actual average of Congress is taken:
Table 3: Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume 6/1/98 - 6/26/03 39.7 1.9
Figure 2 shows Fox and Washington Times far right of every other news outlet.
3) Study authors omit outright lies.
Citation 21: Like us, Mullainathan and Shleifer (2003) define bias as an instance where a journalist fails to report a relevant fact, rather than chooses to report a false fact.
4) Different measures of center would seem to nullify any bias other than Fox and Wash. Times due to wide variances Citation 34... "Since this number is 1.7 points les than the mean-based measure of the centrist voter (50.1), if one believes that it is the more appropriate measure, then our main conclusions (based on the mean-based measure) are biased rightward--that is, the more appropriate conclusion would assert that the media are an additional 1.7 points to the left of the centrist voter." "Yet another measure..." " The midpoint is 49.4, which is 0.7 points more conservative than our mean-based measure."
Citation 35 "If instead we use medians, the figure is 54.9"
The results are muddled at best. The authors clearly massage data to their liking (at least they admitted it), but this only serves to shoot down the whole paper. The study is fun to look at for entertainment, but its conclusions can hardly be taken seriously due to all the cherry picking, massaging, questionable data gathering, and just plain inconclusive data.
I tried to get details about Norway's committee structures from the news articles and various other linked texts, but a lot of it is in Norwegian, which I can't read. In the US, there can be two committees, one technical and the other with oversight. Everybody attends the technical committee, but not many stay the extra day to be part of the oversight committee. However, the technical committee only votes on a recommendation to give to the oversight committee. Then the oversight committee can (if it wants) choose to disregard the recommendation. Why members would not want to be part of the more powerful committee, I don't really know, but it really removes the right to complain when your recommendation is overturned or modified.
I'm not sure if that happened in Norway, but it seems possible. If that's true in this case, the yes vote will likely stand.
So it should be ho surprise at all that is what happens in unrestricted games. Perhaps if some great leaders played the game they could inspire the masses to band together and overthrow the griefers. A George Washington of the gaming world. However, that isn't real likely since the masses can simply take their money to another game. There's no reason to put up with crap and try to make it better, there's other companies who'll be happy to do that.
With unrestricted games, it's the "griefers" who suffer no consequence for their actions. The original MUDs used to have a little bit of built-in protection for this that dynamically rated players at good and evil, and this was used to keep players out of certain areas. However, most of the areas had no restrictions, which frustrated those who didn't like PvP. A long-term casual player wants to be Good, spends a lot of time, then gets offed by a griefer or a band of griefers, and is thus reset at a great loss to that player. A griefer doesn't care about the game, but about causing misery to other people, so getting killed and reset every now and then doesn't matter. They're sociopaths. Having "leaders" won't matter without some type of justice system and enforcement.
If there were a game that allowed PvP but also allowed players to jail and execute the in-game characters, that might be better, assuming you could actually ban the real person. But, disallowing PvP is just so much simpler.
People don't like real life. That's why there are games. And if the games start emulating the harshness of real life, people will stop playing those games.
Sorry, I was beaten by 2 minutes (several times). No other posts showed up when I was double-checking Zonk's links. Of course, it looks like a bunch of me-toos if the time-stamps aren't looked at, rather than a chorus.
The surprising thing is that 30 minutes later, Zonk still hasn't noticed the mistake.:)
They may not have violated the letter of the standard in implementing AD, but I would certainly argue that they violated the spirit of the standard, and did so for arguable malevolent reasons. What they did wasn't just to put optional, vendor-specific data in the vendor specific fields, but they also require that that vendor-specific data be present in their client implementation.
If what you say about the implementation is true, then requiring an optional field for it to work correctly does indeed violate the letter of the standard.
Most of my past projects I had adapted or rewritten to use threads. Keeping data coherent when one thread or process can interrupt another is hard -- maybe that's why it's not done more?
And what about seti@home, folding@home, and all the other massively parallel projects out there? Surely you're not saying that doesn't apply to multi-core either. I think that if you stop and look around you'll see it. But if you're only basing your opinion on your book sales, then maybe there's another problem.
or do you really want to pay $35 for an apple pie made from imported apples because there's no longer a viable fruit industry in the US because nobody picks the fruit... I'm all for low prices, but if fruit growers would stop getting away with paying under minimum wage to illegal and even legal workers, maybe we would have more incentive to invent decent fruit picking machines? Maybe they could be assembled in Mexico? And our locals would maintain them? Win-win?
California is huge with NASA and aerospace, and have you looked at whom it sends to Congress? Just because the space shuttle doesn't launch from there doesn't mean the state isn't cleaning up. Moffett Field, JPL, Vandenberg AFB, Skunk Works, Edwards AFB... to name a few. The state is also big on the military, which you won't see in the national news these days either.
Maybe the cuts in NASA are designed to hurt California. Guess where the Mars rovers are controlled from.
What about the FISA extension that Congress left unvoted on for weeks?
Oh, you mean the bill that President Bush promised to veto if it did not reach his desk without retroactive immunity for AT&T and other telecom companies that broke the law?
How do you tell the difference between a redshifted flash of light and a stationary light that is red to begin with?
Because a particular object or event such as a GRB has a known "color" to compare it with. How do they know? Through combining what they know about physics and observational data.
I'm just simply pointing that you can have objects which are further away than the age of the universe. OK. That I agree with.
>So, you're saying it's possible that everything we see right now was somehow crammed together in the last 6000 years within a 6000 light-year radius, and then expanded at some break-neck speed to 93 billion light years across
Yes. It wouldn't violate any known physical laws that I can think of, in terms of just the expansion etc IANAP. And maybe "impossible" is slightly off since, well, according to wikipedia (which is not authoritative, I know), space itself is expanding. So I guess I was basing it more on two objects speeding away from each other at C for 6000 years and somewhat dismissing space (the void) expanding 93 billion light years in only 6000 years time. So, with space itself expanding, you can be correct there about physical laws since we don't seem to know how to describe one that gives a definitive limit to this type of expansion.
Why would it not stand 'still'? Where would it go? The Earth portion was an extension of the above assumptions in my thinking exercise. But it's moot since space itself is expanding and we don't currently have a way to describe a limit for that process.
About the joke comment, and the reason I'm responding again, is that I initially thought you were A) suggesting that the Universe could end up the same way with just 6000 years expansion, or B) there was a joke that I missed.
It boils down to this: you weren't suggesting A, so you're OK in my book.
In fact the universe is 13.73 million years old, but 93 billion light years across. Um. 13.73 Billion. That was a mistake, right?
> (after I'd pointed out that we could easily find objects in the sky well over 6k light years away, and if they were in fact several million/billion light years away, how could the light be reaching us if the universe were only 6k years old?).
Actually this could be possible if the universe expanded very rapidly.
So, you're saying it's possible that everything we see right now was somehow crammed together in the last 6000 years within a 6000 light-year radius, and then expanded at some break-neck speed to 93 billion light years across without ripping things to shreds (or simply violating physics)? Of course, that example assumes Earth stood still for 6000 years collecting that light. Which still makes your hypothesis impossible in several ways...
Or were you joking? You know, your joke up here, my head down here, big whoosh?
Blocking known residential blocks sucks as a solution as it removes some of the democracy of the net.
It's usually more nuanced than this. What is meant are dynamic IP addresses and IP blocks that are both under TOS restrictions for running a server.
I (like others I'm sure, but maybe not so many of us these days) run a mail/web server from home. I just use it for personal mail. I have SPF and rDNS set up, I play by all the rules. Why block me because I use ADSL at home with a static IP?
I've had your exact setup and have had little problem. Have you tried checking the blacklists and removing your IP? I check every few months just to make sure I'm not being listed for whatever reason.
You are not among these (you have a genuine complaint), but many others who talk about residential blocks are operating servers in violation of their TOS. You and I, on the other hand, have gone out of our way to get a connection that allows servers. While I am sure there are some people who don't have access to buy such a connection at the same reasonable price you and I pay, these people are rare. The majority just want the rock bottom pricing but all of the upper Tier benefits.
And it's not like I haven't been in these rare people's situation: where one lives a server-friendly TOS can't be had. I've found hosting at friends' houses, at work, and even a co-lo just to keep my personal server online. Yes, it's inconvenient. Yes, it costs a bit more (I've always paid my friends, or if at work, had my server provide a service). I'm not going to debate "worthiness," but I've always gone the extra mile. If there is a server-friendly TOS available to people to buy, I am not sure I can sympathize with people who choose not to upgrade/switch to it.
Actually, the nation is broken up into these small market segments. Around Los Angeles ("Southland") you never get news about San Francisco and vice versa. People barely know the name of their governor; nobody knows who governs the neighboring (U.S.) states or what their current political issues are.
It's all about this and that street corner, mugging, drive-by shooting, accident, car chase and the local weather.
The funny thing is that in L.A. I never heard about (or hardly heard about) Sacramento, S.F., the Bay Area, or any other part of California north of Wrightwood, and almost nothing about the state government. Up in the Bay Area, I hear everything about all of the state, the government, and even L.A.
Almost every time I'm in L.A. guess what's on TV? A live car-chase. The L.A. Times might have gotten better recently, but there were years I tried to find homicide statistics and community events and any type of L.A. news... it was mostly business and non-local. Sure there were fluff pieces, and some stuff about L.A.'s mayoral elections, but that's about it.
Hey, speaking of this article, what does it say to us when Wired is using an AP feed for an article that criticizes media outlets for overusing outside feeds?
Except the Bush Administration lied 935 times to the People of the USA and got us to support a war on false pretenses? Lying is not an impeachable offense now? Ha! Tell that to the Republican Congress that impeached Bill Clinton.
Hmm, another person who didn't read the link. Bush discarded the information given to him by the intelligence community and made up his own. Here's that link again: 935. I can't help you if you're not willing to read it.
Being in the miority during those years might ahve ahd something to do with it, as well as trusting what the Bush Administration had said about WMDs.
At that time, it wasn't unreasonable to believe the Bush Administration. Of course, now that we know they were wrong, they should be tried and convicted of treason.
There, made it true for ya and removed the political rhetoric.
Slashdot Mirror
None of the 5 cities listed were San Francisco.
Nothing hasty about my criticism. I took quite some time compiling it, and this is not the first time I've run across this paper, which is why I already knew what to cite. The authors' intent in the paper (regardless of whatever unpublished re-direct shows up later) was to exclude ACLU data that would portray them as conservative *opposite of perception*, and include outlier information on RAND that portrayed them as liberal *opposite of perception*.
My criticism was well-thought out. That the authors would want to skew institutions toward the left shows a bias toward the right. Otherwise they would have left the data alone and included it all in the final graphs and conclusions. That is why this paper is merely entertainment. It doesn't mean the data is any less interesting, just that more work needs to be done before a serious conclusion can be reached.
You also failed to produce this second link at the time you published the link to the original report. If you want the corrections to be considered when someone criticizes the paper, you must include such links ahead of time and not bash the critic for what you left out.
1) Right-wing bias of the study's authors including or excluding data:
Wanting to make sure the ACLU appears left-leaning by excluding data:
Wanting to make sure that RAND appears left-leaning by including data:
You can't pick and choose. Either include all of this type of data or exclude it -- don't just pick what supports your beliefs.
2) Right-wing bias in algorithm selection
Study admits that Fox News is way off in right-field if the actual average of Congress is taken:
Table 3:
Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume 6/1/98 - 6/26/03 39.7 1.9
Figure 2 shows Fox and Washington Times far right of every other news outlet.
3) Study authors omit outright lies.
Citation 21:
Like us, Mullainathan and Shleifer (2003) define bias as an instance where a journalist fails to report a relevant fact, rather than chooses to report a false fact.
4) Different measures of center would seem to nullify any bias other than Fox and Wash. Times due to wide variances
Citation 34
"Yet another measure
Citation 35 "If instead we use medians, the figure is 54.9"
The results are muddled at best. The authors clearly massage data to their liking (at least they admitted it), but this only serves to shoot down the whole paper. The study is fun to look at for entertainment, but its conclusions can hardly be taken seriously due to all the cherry picking, massaging, questionable data gathering, and just plain inconclusive data.
I tried to get details about Norway's committee structures from the news articles and various other linked texts, but a lot of it is in Norwegian, which I can't read. In the US, there can be two committees, one technical and the other with oversight. Everybody attends the technical committee, but not many stay the extra day to be part of the oversight committee. However, the technical committee only votes on a recommendation to give to the oversight committee. Then the oversight committee can (if it wants) choose to disregard the recommendation. Why members would not want to be part of the more powerful committee, I don't really know, but it really removes the right to complain when your recommendation is overturned or modified.
I'm not sure if that happened in Norway, but it seems possible. If that's true in this case, the yes vote will likely stand.
With unrestricted games, it's the "griefers" who suffer no consequence for their actions. The original MUDs used to have a little bit of built-in protection for this that dynamically rated players at good and evil, and this was used to keep players out of certain areas. However, most of the areas had no restrictions, which frustrated those who didn't like PvP. A long-term casual player wants to be Good, spends a lot of time, then gets offed by a griefer or a band of griefers, and is thus reset at a great loss to that player. A griefer doesn't care about the game, but about causing misery to other people, so getting killed and reset every now and then doesn't matter. They're sociopaths. Having "leaders" won't matter without some type of justice system and enforcement.
If there were a game that allowed PvP but also allowed players to jail and execute the in-game characters, that might be better, assuming you could actually ban the real person. But, disallowing PvP is just so much simpler.
People don't like real life. That's why there are games. And if the games start emulating the harshness of real life, people will stop playing those games.
Read the original version of the Constitution. There are provisions for fractional people.
Sorry, I was beaten by 2 minutes (several times). No other posts showed up when I was double-checking Zonk's links. Of course, it looks like a bunch of me-toos if the time-stamps aren't looked at, rather than a chorus.
:)
The surprising thing is that 30 minutes later, Zonk still hasn't noticed the mistake.
Zonk writes: "Update: 03/26 21:21 GMT by Z : Safari is now at 100%, apparently, with Safari close behind at 98%."
The first "Safari" was linked to Opera, but unless you mouse over it, it's definitely confusing.
They may not have violated the letter of the standard in implementing AD, but I would certainly argue that they violated the spirit of the standard, and did so for arguable malevolent reasons. What they did wasn't just to put optional, vendor-specific data in the vendor specific fields, but they also require that that vendor-specific data be present in their client implementation.
If what you say about the implementation is true, then requiring an optional field for it to work correctly does indeed violate the letter of the standard.
They should have been keeping ORDB management in Porches and million dollar homes at the least.
You tell 'em! Those porches should have a swing, mahogany tables, and a Jacuzzi too.
Sorry, I couldn't resist...
Most of my past projects I had adapted or rewritten to use threads. Keeping data coherent when one thread or process can interrupt another is hard -- maybe that's why it's not done more?
And what about seti@home, folding@home, and all the other massively parallel projects out there? Surely you're not saying that doesn't apply to multi-core either. I think that if you stop and look around you'll see it. But if you're only basing your opinion on your book sales, then maybe there's another problem.
or do you really want to pay $35 for an apple pie made from imported apples because there's no longer a viable fruit industry in the US because nobody picks the fruit...
I'm all for low prices, but if fruit growers would stop getting away with paying under minimum wage to illegal and even legal workers, maybe we would have more incentive to invent decent fruit picking machines? Maybe they could be assembled in Mexico? And our locals would maintain them? Win-win?
Although, we already import fruit out of season.
Pick another reason (and there are plenty).
California is huge with NASA and aerospace, and have you looked at whom it sends to Congress? Just because the space shuttle doesn't launch from there doesn't mean the state isn't cleaning up. Moffett Field, JPL, Vandenberg AFB, Skunk Works, Edwards AFB... to name a few. The state is also big on the military, which you won't see in the national news these days either.
Maybe the cuts in NASA are designed to hurt California. Guess where the Mars rovers are controlled from.
What about the FISA extension that Congress left unvoted on for weeks?
/. or the news. But you sure love to spread the FUD.
Oh, you mean the bill that President Bush promised to veto if it did not reach his desk without retroactive immunity for AT&T and other telecom companies that broke the law?
You mean this pointless bill?
FISA allows for warrantless wiretaps already. Nothing changed by making the FBI seek a judge's approval in 3 days after the wiretap rather than never.
Who modded you up? You obviously don't read
How do you tell the difference between a redshifted flash of light and a stationary light that is red to begin with?
Because a particular object or event such as a GRB has a known "color" to compare it with. How do they know? Through combining what they know about physics and observational data.
I'm just simply pointing that you can have objects which are further away than the age of the universe.
OK. That I agree with.
>So, you're saying it's possible that everything we see right now was somehow crammed together in the last 6000 years within a 6000 light-year radius, and then expanded at some break-neck speed to 93 billion light years across
Yes. It wouldn't violate any known physical laws that I can think of, in terms of just the expansion etc
IANAP. And maybe "impossible" is slightly off since, well, according to wikipedia (which is not authoritative, I know), space itself is expanding. So I guess I was basing it more on two objects speeding away from each other at C for 6000 years and somewhat dismissing space (the void) expanding 93 billion light years in only 6000 years time. So, with space itself expanding, you can be correct there about physical laws since we don't seem to know how to describe one that gives a definitive limit to this type of expansion.
Why would it not stand 'still'? Where would it go?
The Earth portion was an extension of the above assumptions in my thinking exercise. But it's moot since space itself is expanding and we don't currently have a way to describe a limit for that process.
About the joke comment, and the reason I'm responding again, is that I initially thought you were A) suggesting that the Universe could end up the same way with just 6000 years expansion, or B) there was a joke that I missed.
It boils down to this: you weren't suggesting A, so you're OK in my book.
In fact the universe is 13.73 million years old, but 93 billion light years across.
Um. 13.73 Billion. That was a mistake, right?
> (after I'd pointed out that we could easily find objects in the sky well over 6k light years away, and if they were in fact several million/billion light years away, how could the light be reaching us if the universe were only 6k years old?).
Actually this could be possible if the universe expanded very rapidly.
So, you're saying it's possible that everything we see right now was somehow crammed together in the last 6000 years within a 6000 light-year radius, and then expanded at some break-neck speed to 93 billion light years across without ripping things to shreds (or simply violating physics)? Of course, that example assumes Earth stood still for 6000 years collecting that light. Which still makes your hypothesis impossible in several ways...
Or were you joking? You know, your joke up here, my head down here, big whoosh?
"Good call on the mini-bat."
It's usually more nuanced than this. What is meant are dynamic IP addresses and IP blocks that are both under TOS restrictions for running a server.
I've had your exact setup and have had little problem. Have you tried checking the blacklists and removing your IP? I check every few months just to make sure I'm not being listed for whatever reason.
You are not among these (you have a genuine complaint), but many others who talk about residential blocks are operating servers in violation of their TOS. You and I, on the other hand, have gone out of our way to get a connection that allows servers. While I am sure there are some people who don't have access to buy such a connection at the same reasonable price you and I pay, these people are rare. The majority just want the rock bottom pricing but all of the upper Tier benefits.
And it's not like I haven't been in these rare people's situation: where one lives a server-friendly TOS can't be had. I've found hosting at friends' houses, at work, and even a co-lo just to keep my personal server online. Yes, it's inconvenient. Yes, it costs a bit more (I've always paid my friends, or if at work, had my server provide a service). I'm not going to debate "worthiness," but I've always gone the extra mile. If there is a server-friendly TOS available to people to buy, I am not sure I can sympathize with people who choose not to upgrade/switch to it.
The funny thing is that in L.A. I never heard about (or hardly heard about) Sacramento, S.F., the Bay Area, or any other part of California north of Wrightwood, and almost nothing about the state government. Up in the Bay Area, I hear everything about all of the state, the government, and even L.A.
Almost every time I'm in L.A. guess what's on TV? A live car-chase. The L.A. Times might have gotten better recently, but there were years I tried to find homicide statistics and community events and any type of L.A. news... it was mostly business and non-local. Sure there were fluff pieces, and some stuff about L.A.'s mayoral elections, but that's about it.
Hey, speaking of this article, what does it say to us when Wired is using an AP feed for an article that criticizes media outlets for overusing outside feeds?
They won't listen. Remember that these are the hardcore 30% that keep approving of Bush's job. Even though he and his administration have been lying and distorting the truth for some time now. They won't read the links that show his illegal activities such as unprecedented overturning of the EPA.
These same people would vote for Bush again. With all the evidence out there, it makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Except the Bush Administration lied 935 times to the People of the USA and got us to support a war on false pretenses? Lying is not an impeachable offense now? Ha! Tell that to the Republican Congress that impeached Bill Clinton.
Hmm, another person who didn't read the link. Bush discarded the information given to him by the intelligence community and made up his own. Here's that link again: 935. I can't help you if you're not willing to read it.
Meant to change that to "lied." My bad. You didn't read the link, obviously.
Fixed it for both of you. 935.