While I will assume your math is correct, it somewhat overstates the effect of the birthday paradox.
Note that while it only takes 23 people in a room for a 50% chance that any two people to share any birthday, it takes 253 people in the room for there to be a 50% chance of there being any one person whose birthday is today.
In the case of the authorities wrongly matching someone to a genetic fingerprint, not only must two people have coincidentally matching fingerprints, but they must both match the "offending" fingerprint. My guess is that those odds are pretty damn low.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all in favor of this proposal, quite the opposite. And, generally, I am all in favor in pointing out these kinds of statistical paradoxes; for instance, how Bayes' theorem shows how a "99% accurate" drug test can actually produce more false than true positives. However, I think the birthday paradox is incorrectly applied here.
So, if you have a twin, you need to off them in case they commit a crime.
Unless your twin offs you first.
I have to say...of all of the potential unintended consequences of such a poorly considered proposal, I didn't think of the "internecine identical twin" angle.
I run foobar2000 on my home machine and love it. As for Rockbox, my biggest disappoint when I bought my 80gb iPod Classic was that Rockbox won't run on it, and likely never will due to Apple's hardware restrictions. Too bad no one else matches the storage capacity of an iPod; it's the best player hardware out there, IMO, but I could do without the "Apple's way or no way at all" design.
A good point, certainly. A way to flag sets of songs as 'linked' would be another way to do it. That said, I don't find as irritating when something starts on broken segue as when it ends with one, but as you say, we're all different. The reason I suggested the "Continue On..." is that it would be dead simple to implement, and wouldn't require manually flagging your playlists.
Also, my foobar2000 player on my home computer has a feature which is close...when in Shuffle mode, if I highlight any other track than the one that is playing, it will play that song next then continue on its shuffle, which also works for the preceding as well if desired.
You missed my point entirely. My point was not that one should brandish a gun without any intent to use it, but that in many more cases than not, one does not actually end up having to fire it as the threat itself is very powerful indeed. Think of the police, just the very fact that they carry guns gives them considerable authority without having to use or even draw them. Or, since you appear to be a gun enthusiast, maybe you have one of those "These premises are protected by Smith & Wesson" signs...or accept the reasoning that conceal-carry laws reduce crime just by making the odds worse for predatory criminals. These are cases where simply the threat of a firearm has an effect when it is not fired or even brandished, or for that matter, might not even actually exist.
I'd take that one step further, I wish mp3 players were designed with a easy "Continue on to next track" feature for random play. I love having my iPod on shuffle, except when playing things that segue like Dark Side of The Moon or Abbey Road or Frank Zappa's Apostrophe. When a tune like "Brain Damage" comes on, it would be nice to have an one-push feature that will continue to "Eclipse", as opposed to Floydus Interruptus.
A gun isn't intended to do anything but push a projectile out of a barrel.
Yes, and that projectile isn't intended do do anything that strike another object with enough force to damage or destroy it. When was the last time you pointed a gun at an object you didn't intend to obliterate? When was the last time a gun was used for any other purpose that to violently penetrate a target?
Its default (hell, only) mode of operation is lethal. Can you say that about a car, a stove, an iron, a knife? I can't slide a tomato with a gun.
In discussions like these, I always like to make a snide point: certainly you can slice a tomato with a gun; point it at someone else and say "Slice that tomato!"
There is a serious point there. The main use of guns against humans is not to kill or maim them, but to threaten them. I say this not as a pro-gun or anti-gun point, but just as something many people seem to entirely miss...that the gun has a powerful function without it ever being fired at all.
Well put. I recall reading an article some time back where some major executive was arrogantly dismissing the necessity of email and text messaging because *he* never used it, though he did acknowledge that his assistants did all his electronic communication. It was like someone claiming driving was unnecessary because they have a chauffeur.
Some people don't seem to get that just because they don't use personally use a specific innovation like the internet or evolutionary biology that they may still benefit from it or even be dependent on it.
As long as you're unwilling to admit that the better employees should earn as much as, if not more than, their boss, you will always be under the union's heel, and rightfully so.
Right, because out here in the non-unionized sector, employee compensation is based purely on merit and people commonly out-earn their bosses. Wait...what?!?
I'm no fan of unions, but don't make it out like it's some utopian meritocracy out here for the rest of us.
What's bullshit is assuming that I blame Microsoft or that I would "drone on" slagging Windows or boosting Linux. Actually, I mostly agree with you, although I will also say that, in my experience, one of the worst software vendors for having things break from doing weird stuff in APIs is Microsoft themselves.
However, it matters not one whit who's to blame. My point is that, all too often, updates can cause malfunction, and as long as that is true, automatic update means the risk of automatic failure. Whether or not the statistical risk of failure from updates is greater than the statistical risks from *not* updating, I don't know, but as was stated more eloquently upthread:
Patches breaking things is a big deal. Nothing will convince users to never allow updates faster than having one break their system when they desperately need it to be working.
No, I *didn't* give you an example of any of the hundreds of machines I've worked with since Windows 2000 introduced Windows Update, because generally, if I give a personal example, I'll get the "anecdote != data" response. At least you acknowledge that it happens, where your initial response implied otherwise.
But if you're just willing to take my word for it, spare me having to recall and type out various scenarios and let me say that I've seen Windows Update break things on dozens of occasions, from relatively minor annoying stuff like turning on the built-in firewall when it was *fully disabled* prior, to IE-only web apps breaking, to inexplicable lock-ups and BSODs after the update. It *does* happen.
And it's not just to slag MS...I've had other software bungle patches, including Linux distros.
The problem, in my opinion, is the fact that patches, particularly Windows Updates, have a track record of breaking things. This leads to a conundrum...automatically update and risk mysterious breakage, or manually update and risk falling behind and being insecure. If you want to make patching less onerous, the first step is to make it as reliable as possible, and then a larger percentage of users will trust automatic updates.
But "primarily a cover artist"...in what universe?
Of his best known records:
- "Are You Experienced?" - 17 tracks (between the US and UK releases), 16 written by Hendrix, 1 cover.
- "Axis: Bold as Love" - 13 tracks, 12 written by Hendrix, 1 written by bassist Noel Redding, no covers.
- "Electric Ladyland" - 16 tracks, 13 written by Hendrix, 1 written by bassist Noel Redding, 2 covers.
- "Band of Gypsys" - 6 tracks, 4 written by Hendrix, 2 written by drummer Buddy Miles, no covers.
- "The Cry of Love" - 10 tracks, all written by Hendrix.
Sure...a few of his better known tracks were covers ("Hey Joe", "Wild Thing", "All Along The Watchtower"), but far more were his compositions ("Purple Haze","The WInd Cries Mary", "Foxey Lady", "Fire", "Manic Depression", "Little Wing","Voodoo Child (Slight Return)", "Crosstown Traffic") Hendrix's legacy is just as great for bring an accomplished songwriter as for being a virtuoso guitarist.
Since the user is installing the software, isn't that consent? I don't know about *informed* consent, but that seems impossible to measure unless software distributors have to test the users to make sure they know what they are doing.
This seems to be an appropriate illustration of that point.
I think I would just start using the phrases they claim to "own" much more often. Maybe even in court, if it makes it that far, ending everything with one of their phrases.
Judge: "This claim is not only frivolous, it is devious, unethical, unprincipled, and I even dare say sociopathic!!"
IP Lawyer: "Your honor, I object!!"
Judge: "On what grounds?"
IP Lawyer: "On the grounds that we claim ownership of "devious", "unethical", "unprincipled" and "sociopathic". And not just the words under copyright, but we also claim patents as business processes, and the practice of being "devious", "unethical", "unprincipled" and/or "sociopathic" under trade secret protection."
Judge: "sigh....I really didn't want to have to do this, but you leave me no choice...I hereby declare martial law!! Bailiff, shoot that piece of shit in the face!!"
Bailiff: "Gladly."
Bailiff's Gun: BLAM!!!
IP Lawyer: THUD!!
Judge: "Martial law rescinded. Call in the janitor. Next case..."
Apart from MS Office, it has to be the most pirated bit of software in the world.
As I noted in a post upthread, I believe that one major reason for that is that up until Photoshop 7, it was probably one of the easiest programs to pirate, especially considering its price tag. If you had a copy of a disk (not requiring any specific burning technique a la CloneCD) and its key, you could install it on as many machine as you wished, no cracks needed.
From what I've seen, Photoshop 7 is somewhat of a standard, due to it being the last version that was dead easy to pirate. I was always surprised that compared to so much software of the day, much of it far less expensive than Photoshop, if you had a Photoshop (or Acrobat, Illustrator, or Premiere) disk and its CD key, you could install it on any machine without any crack, plus worked just as well from a copy of the disk without any burning/imaging tricks. Or so I've heard...;-)
Just out of curiosity, what is your opinion of a "Large" codebase then?
My first programming job was on an enterprise system that was over 7 million lines of just C++ code by the time I left, not including SQL stored procedures, web server code for the reporting system, and surely other code stuff that I can't recall. The entire development team for the system was something like 45 programmers. So to many of us, 30-40 klocs does not seem like a large codebase at all.
That said, I've also inherited code in the 10-50 kloc area of magnitude that was far more of a challenge/nightmare to decipher and maintain than that 7 million line system was. Code maintainability has more to do with good system architecture and coding standards than it has to do with the size of the code base; without those you system will likely collapse under its own bloat long before it can grow to millions of lines.
Slashdot Mirror
While I will assume your math is correct, it somewhat overstates the effect of the birthday paradox.
Note that while it only takes 23 people in a room for a 50% chance that any two people to share any birthday, it takes 253 people in the room for there to be a 50% chance of there being any one person whose birthday is today.
In the case of the authorities wrongly matching someone to a genetic fingerprint, not only must two people have coincidentally matching fingerprints, but they must both match the "offending" fingerprint. My guess is that those odds are pretty damn low.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all in favor of this proposal, quite the opposite. And, generally, I am all in favor in pointing out these kinds of statistical paradoxes; for instance, how Bayes' theorem shows how a "99% accurate" drug test can actually produce more false than true positives. However, I think the birthday paradox is incorrectly applied here.
So, if you have a twin, you need to off them in case they commit a crime.
Unless your twin offs you first.
I have to say...of all of the potential unintended consequences of such a poorly considered proposal, I didn't think of the "internecine identical twin" angle.
Sorry to be OT, but it reminds me of a joke.
Q: Who did you vote for president in 2004?
A: I voted for the rich Yale graduate who was a member of a secret society named Skull and Bones .
FTFY
I'm bringin' up all the servers we've got, Captain! If those Slashdotter's push it any harder the whole thing will blow!
Sweet! That is very good news.
I run foobar2000 on my home machine and love it. As for Rockbox, my biggest disappoint when I bought my 80gb iPod Classic was that Rockbox won't run on it, and likely never will due to Apple's hardware restrictions. Too bad no one else matches the storage capacity of an iPod; it's the best player hardware out there, IMO, but I could do without the "Apple's way or no way at all" design.
A good point, certainly. A way to flag sets of songs as 'linked' would be another way to do it. That said, I don't find as irritating when something starts on broken segue as when it ends with one, but as you say, we're all different. The reason I suggested the "Continue On..." is that it would be dead simple to implement, and wouldn't require manually flagging your playlists.
Also, my foobar2000 player on my home computer has a feature which is close...when in Shuffle mode, if I highlight any other track than the one that is playing, it will play that song next then continue on its shuffle, which also works for the preceding as well if desired.
You missed my point entirely. My point was not that one should brandish a gun without any intent to use it, but that in many more cases than not, one does not actually end up having to fire it as the threat itself is very powerful indeed. Think of the police, just the very fact that they carry guns gives them considerable authority without having to use or even draw them. Or, since you appear to be a gun enthusiast, maybe you have one of those "These premises are protected by Smith & Wesson" signs...or accept the reasoning that conceal-carry laws reduce crime just by making the odds worse for predatory criminals. These are cases where simply the threat of a firearm has an effect when it is not fired or even brandished, or for that matter, might not even actually exist.
I'd take that one step further, I wish mp3 players were designed with a easy "Continue on to next track" feature for random play. I love having my iPod on shuffle, except when playing things that segue like Dark Side of The Moon or Abbey Road or Frank Zappa's Apostrophe. When a tune like "Brain Damage" comes on, it would be nice to have an one-push feature that will continue to "Eclipse", as opposed to Floydus Interruptus.
A gun isn't intended to do anything but push a projectile out of a barrel.
Yes, and that projectile isn't intended do do anything that strike another object with enough force to damage or destroy it. When was the last time you pointed a gun at an object you didn't intend to obliterate? When was the last time a gun was used for any other purpose that to violently penetrate a target?
Its default (hell, only) mode of operation is lethal. Can you say that about a car, a stove, an iron, a knife? I can't slide a tomato with a gun.
In discussions like these, I always like to make a snide point: certainly you can slice a tomato with a gun; point it at someone else and say "Slice that tomato!"
There is a serious point there. The main use of guns against humans is not to kill or maim them, but to threaten them. I say this not as a pro-gun or anti-gun point, but just as something many people seem to entirely miss...that the gun has a powerful function without it ever being fired at all.
Maybe GP is from a family where they don't reach child-bearing age until 67 or so.
You'll sh*t bricks!
It provides building materials, too? Wow!!
Power to the Peepoo!!
Built like a shit brick shit house.
Well put. I recall reading an article some time back where some major executive was arrogantly dismissing the necessity of email and text messaging because *he* never used it, though he did acknowledge that his assistants did all his electronic communication. It was like someone claiming driving was unnecessary because they have a chauffeur.
Some people don't seem to get that just because they don't use personally use a specific innovation like the internet or evolutionary biology that they may still benefit from it or even be dependent on it.
As long as you're unwilling to admit that the better employees should earn as much as, if not more than, their boss, you will always be under the union's heel, and rightfully so.
Right, because out here in the non-unionized sector, employee compensation is based purely on merit and people commonly out-earn their bosses. Wait...what?!?
I'm no fan of unions, but don't make it out like it's some utopian meritocracy out here for the rest of us.
What's bullshit is assuming that I blame Microsoft or that I would "drone on" slagging Windows or boosting Linux. Actually, I mostly agree with you, although I will also say that, in my experience, one of the worst software vendors for having things break from doing weird stuff in APIs is Microsoft themselves.
However, it matters not one whit who's to blame. My point is that, all too often, updates can cause malfunction, and as long as that is true, automatic update means the risk of automatic failure. Whether or not the statistical risk of failure from updates is greater than the statistical risks from *not* updating, I don't know, but as was stated more eloquently upthread:
Patches breaking things is a big deal. Nothing will convince users to never allow updates faster than having one break their system when they desperately need it to be working.
No, I *didn't* give you an example of any of the hundreds of machines I've worked with since Windows 2000 introduced Windows Update, because generally, if I give a personal example, I'll get the "anecdote != data" response. At least you acknowledge that it happens, where your initial response implied otherwise.
But if you're just willing to take my word for it, spare me having to recall and type out various scenarios and let me say that I've seen Windows Update break things on dozens of occasions, from relatively minor annoying stuff like turning on the built-in firewall when it was *fully disabled* prior, to IE-only web apps breaking, to inexplicable lock-ups and BSODs after the update. It *does* happen.
And it's not just to slag MS...I've had other software bungle patches, including Linux distros.
Have any examples of a Windows Update "breaking things"?
Sure...have at it.
The problem, in my opinion, is the fact that patches, particularly Windows Updates, have a track record of breaking things. This leads to a conundrum...automatically update and risk mysterious breakage, or manually update and risk falling behind and being insecure. If you want to make patching less onerous, the first step is to make it as reliable as possible, and then a larger percentage of users will trust automatic updates.
Don't forget the late great Oscar Peterson.
Jimmy Hendrix was primarily a cover artist, [...]
OK..first off..it's Jimi Hendrix...
But "primarily a cover artist"...in what universe?
Of his best known records:
- "Are You Experienced?" - 17 tracks (between the US and UK releases), 16 written by Hendrix, 1 cover.
- "Axis: Bold as Love" - 13 tracks, 12 written by Hendrix, 1 written by bassist Noel Redding, no covers.
- "Electric Ladyland" - 16 tracks, 13 written by Hendrix, 1 written by bassist Noel Redding, 2 covers.
- "Band of Gypsys" - 6 tracks, 4 written by Hendrix, 2 written by drummer Buddy Miles, no covers.
- "The Cry of Love" - 10 tracks, all written by Hendrix.
Sure...a few of his better known tracks were covers ("Hey Joe", "Wild Thing", "All Along The Watchtower"), but far more were his compositions ("Purple Haze","The WInd Cries Mary", "Foxey Lady", "Fire", "Manic Depression", "Little Wing","Voodoo Child (Slight Return)", "Crosstown Traffic") Hendrix's legacy is just as great for bring an accomplished songwriter as for being a virtuoso guitarist.
Since the user is installing the software, isn't that consent? I don't know about *informed* consent, but that seems impossible to measure unless software distributors have to test the users to make sure they know what they are doing.
This seems to be an appropriate illustration of that point.
I think I would just start using the phrases they claim to "own" much more often. Maybe even in court, if it makes it that far, ending everything with one of their phrases.
Judge: "This claim is not only frivolous, it is devious, unethical, unprincipled, and I even dare say sociopathic!!"
IP Lawyer: "Your honor, I object!!"
Judge: "On what grounds?"
IP Lawyer: "On the grounds that we claim ownership of "devious", "unethical", "unprincipled" and "sociopathic". And not just the words under copyright, but we also claim patents as business processes, and the practice of being "devious", "unethical", "unprincipled" and/or "sociopathic" under trade secret protection."
Judge: "sigh....I really didn't want to have to do this, but you leave me no choice...I hereby declare martial law!! Bailiff, shoot that piece of shit in the face!!"
Bailiff: "Gladly."
Bailiff's Gun: BLAM!!!
IP Lawyer: THUD!!
Judge: "Martial law rescinded. Call in the janitor. Next case..."
...and they all lived happily ever after. The End
Thought not.
Apart from MS Office, it has to be the most pirated bit of software in the world.
As I noted in a post upthread, I believe that one major reason for that is that up until Photoshop 7, it was probably one of the easiest programs to pirate, especially considering its price tag. If you had a copy of a disk (not requiring any specific burning technique a la CloneCD) and its key, you could install it on as many machine as you wished, no cracks needed.
From what I've seen, Photoshop 7 is somewhat of a standard, due to it being the last version that was dead easy to pirate. I was always surprised that compared to so much software of the day, much of it far less expensive than Photoshop, if you had a Photoshop (or Acrobat, Illustrator, or Premiere) disk and its CD key, you could install it on any machine without any crack, plus worked just as well from a copy of the disk without any burning/imaging tricks. Or so I've heard... ;-)
Just out of curiosity, what is your opinion of a "Large" codebase then?
My first programming job was on an enterprise system that was over 7 million lines of just C++ code by the time I left, not including SQL stored procedures, web server code for the reporting system, and surely other code stuff that I can't recall. The entire development team for the system was something like 45 programmers. So to many of us, 30-40 klocs does not seem like a large codebase at all.
That said, I've also inherited code in the 10-50 kloc area of magnitude that was far more of a challenge/nightmare to decipher and maintain than that 7 million line system was. Code maintainability has more to do with good system architecture and coding standards than it has to do with the size of the code base; without those you system will likely collapse under its own bloat long before it can grow to millions of lines.