"When, oh when, will we be able to use what we paid for for what we want, within the limits of the law, without asking permission. Sheesh."
The day has arrived!
Microsoft has a market cap of slightly under $300 billion. All you have to do is buy up all the stock, take MS private, and... well you know the rest. But this time it doesn't end with... Profit!
Yes, despite all the previous posts relating this to Time Machine, no one seemed to have observed that the article summary is actually the opposite of what happens in T.M.
Oh well, the article itself seems to contradict itself in this sense. It says the "better" class will grow more intelligent, but also warns of becoming more stupid due to dependence on technology. I'll bet on the latter.
Because in Germany, bugs don't leave their excrement in the middle of a nice clean field like that?
Ok, I admit it. You got modded both +1 Funny and +1 Informative, and I'm left very confused. Not by the usual random moderation, mind you, but by what I'm supposed to be thinking right now....
"Vegas cheats come in all shapes and sizes: hardcore mechanics who devise gadgets to manipulate slots and mathematical geniuses who count cards in blackjack."
Aaarrrggghh! Card-counting is not cheating! It is using your brain to make decisions. I know, in this day and age, brain-use is rare enough to be considered cheating, but it is not. It astounds me how often I still see this association in the media.
For that matter, one needn't be a genius to do it, either. Two points off for the History Channel.
"With these suppositions, then the probability that people are terrorists given that NSA's system of surveillance identifies them as terrorists is only p=0.2308"
Gee, "only" 23%?
Suppose you're hunting for a needle in a gigantic haystack (essentially no chance of success), when someone hands you a little fistful of hay, and says "Actually there's a 23% chance the needle's in here." You should be thrilled.
Granted they were using liberal numbers to arrive at that (high!) 23%. But given their assumptions, the "useless" conclusion is ridiculous.
OTOH, apply Bayes' rule to the numbers on this biometric system, and you'll find some entrepreneur laughing all the way to the bank.
"Round where I live we still have to deal with witches and their pagan rituals.
Here is a recient story (last week) of a witch torturing her lover and dumping his body in the sea."
"Maybe this will provide some legal leverage to go after people who spam blogs and forums with adds for online poker, etc?"
Maybe this will provide some legal salaries for lawyers, DA's, politicians, who go after people, knowing there's not a snowball's chance in hell the law will hold up in the end.
"Are we getting slashdot articles for each verion bump of the mozilla products? I tought freshmeat was created for that"
Please read the summary again. It clearly states "Firefox has just notified me that Firefox version 1.5.0.4 has just been released". The news isn't Firefox; it's the fact that KrayzieKyd got his notification.
Now it would have been nice to know exactly how he was notified. Was it an email? A personal phone call? I heard Western Union finally stopped the telegram thing, so it wasn't that. Discuss.
"If you're being mugged, you probably cant use a cell phone. But with this when a sudden elevated heart rate is detected, you may auto activate GPS and mics/video. Maybe even alert nearby people or police. Good for protecting kids etc."
You've enlightened me to make some predictions:
In 50 years, NYC junior high gym classes will be cancelled when parents complain that kids would have to remove "smart-shirts" during gym class.
Decision will be reversed three years later when Hanes smart-jockeys finally get smart enough to distinguish between the "Help, I'm getting mugged in gym class!" heart rate and the "Look, Stacy finally hit puberty!" heart rate.
"As long as a flash mob/stunt doesn't injure innocent bystanders and cause undue distress to officials I don't see the harm."
I'm not bent out of shape by this kind of thing, but let me point out "Agent Ciletti's" statement of events, in TFA. Did you get that far in TFA? Her writeup is near the bottom.
When she was taking part in the stunt, someone asked her for help finding a USB device (or something), assuming she was an employee. She was intentionally unhelpful, and the customer started to leave. Do you think it's ok to piss off a Best Buy customer?
I agree people need to lighten up. But there are always participants in these things that want to see how far they can push it, so they can be "cooler" than the next guy.
I don't care how much one thinks Best Buy sucks; that part wasn't cool.
"To be fair, the Ferrari probably had to refuel after the run, too. Just like the electric car didn't carry more charge (batteries) than it needed for the run, IC cars don't carry more fuel than they need, either."
Yeah, I'd hate to see how much slower that electric car would've been, carrying around the extra weight of a full charge.
"However, you still need enough people compared to your population."
For some reason people think the size of the population matters. It usually doesn't. Only if you're going to survey more than roughly 10% of the total population does population size start to have any significant effect on size of the confidence interval size.
"This number need not be very large, which is why sampling around 1,000 people out of 290,000,000 is statistically accurate."
Just about as accurate as sampling 1,000 out of 290,000,000,000, for the reason I stated above. (I'll spare us the fancy equations.)
Grandparent is right; when done scientifically, a poll of size n=66 still provides some information. The so-called "margin of error" will be a little over 10 percentage points, but that's better than nothing.
The real problem here is the "informality" of the survey, or as you called it "quality over quantity." I'm still trying to figure out why this is worthy of a/. article. If I put my tinfoil hat back on, I could probably figure it out...
Slashdot Mirror
"But what really f'ed me off is that it changed my home page to windows live!!!!"
Well, the way you put it, it actually sounded kind of fun.
"When, oh when, will we be able to use what we paid for for what we want, within the limits of the law, without asking permission. Sheesh."
... Profit!
The day has arrived!
Microsoft has a market cap of slightly under $300 billion. All you have to do is buy up all the stock, take MS private, and... well you know the rest. But this time it doesn't end with
Mod Parent up!
Yes, despite all the previous posts relating this to Time Machine, no one seemed to have observed that the article summary is actually the opposite of what happens in T.M.
Oh well, the article itself seems to contradict itself in this sense. It says the "better" class will grow more intelligent, but also warns of becoming more stupid due to dependence on technology. I'll bet on the latter.
"Venture capitalist Ron Garret has posted a list of eleven (despite the title) common mistakes entrepreneurs with a technology background make."
There are 10 types of people in the world. But ten of them think base-eleven is ridiculous.
"That doesn't look anything like Germany."
Because in Germany, bugs don't leave their excrement in the middle of a nice clean field like that?
Ok, I admit it. You got modded both +1 Funny and +1 Informative, and I'm left very confused. Not by the usual random moderation, mind you, but by what I'm supposed to be thinking right now....
...Microsoft goes after record judgement.... last name "Fox".... coincidence? I think not.
Haven't folks already programmed LEGO bots to play connect four? Some can even beat kids who play against them.
OTOH tic tac toe has almost no complexity, so what's the big deal?
(Pet-peeve alert.) From your link:
"Vegas cheats come in all shapes and sizes: hardcore mechanics who devise gadgets to manipulate slots and mathematical geniuses who count cards in blackjack."
Aaarrrggghh! Card-counting is not cheating! It is using your brain to make decisions. I know, in this day and age, brain-use is rare enough to be considered cheating, but it is not. It astounds me how often I still see this association in the media.
For that matter, one needn't be a genius to do it, either. Two points off for the History Channel.
From your link (Schneier quoting someone else):
"With these suppositions, then the probability that people are terrorists given that NSA's system of surveillance identifies them as terrorists is only p=0.2308"
Gee, "only" 23%?
Suppose you're hunting for a needle in a gigantic haystack (essentially no chance of success), when someone hands you a little fistful of hay, and says "Actually there's a 23% chance the needle's in here." You should be thrilled.
Granted they were using liberal numbers to arrive at that (high!) 23%. But given their assumptions, the "useless" conclusion is ridiculous.
OTOH, apply Bayes' rule to the numbers on this biometric system, and you'll find some entrepreneur laughing all the way to the bank.
"re: "But the devil will grab you be the b...s if you show a nipple somewhere"
This is the internet - you can say "balls" here."
*Sigh* Read the sentence again... Clearly the missing word is boobs. And can you blame the devil?
"Ghosts are, by definition, already dead.
Can you really commit violence against them?"
If puppets can have sex, then ghosts can be victims. God bless this country.
"Round where I live we still have to deal with witches and their pagan rituals. Here is a recient story (last week) of a witch torturing her lover and dumping his body in the sea."
Maybe she played too much D&D.
"Maybe this will provide some legal leverage to go after people who spam blogs and forums with adds for online poker, etc?"
Maybe this will provide some legal salaries for lawyers, DA's, politicians, who go after people, knowing there's not a snowball's chance in hell the law will hold up in the end.
"Are we getting slashdot articles for each verion bump of the mozilla products? I tought freshmeat was created for that"
Please read the summary again. It clearly states "Firefox has just notified me that Firefox version 1.5.0.4 has just been released". The news isn't Firefox; it's the fact that KrayzieKyd got his notification.
Now it would have been nice to know exactly how he was notified. Was it an email? A personal phone call? I heard Western Union finally stopped the telegram thing, so it wasn't that. Discuss.
"I'm pretty sure that write better is poor grammar, but don't hold me to it."
FYI, you'd be wrong: "Better" is both an adj. and an adv.
"the TARDIS is ... .
Graeme Williams gets several hundred bonus nerd points."
Excellent; we're finally narrowing in on that elusive exchange rate:
several hundred bonus nerd points == 5 Karma Whoring points
"Kinda cool you mentioning composites, it allows me to segway into a little known fact about them."
Don't worry, after a little practice you'll stop doing that.
"If you're being mugged, you probably cant use a cell phone. But with this when a sudden elevated heart rate is detected, you may auto activate GPS and mics/video. Maybe even alert nearby people or police. Good for protecting kids etc."
You've enlightened me to make some predictions:
In 50 years, NYC junior high gym classes will be cancelled when parents complain that kids would have to remove "smart-shirts" during gym class.
Decision will be reversed three years later when Hanes smart-jockeys finally get smart enough to distinguish between the "Help, I'm getting mugged in gym class!" heart rate and the "Look, Stacy finally hit puberty!" heart rate.
Mark my words.
----"while proprietary, are not overly so"
--"Now, that is just hilarious!"
I'll have you know that I have a friend who is pregnant, but not overly so, you insensitive clod!
"As long as a flash mob/stunt doesn't injure innocent bystanders and cause undue distress to officials I don't see the harm."
I'm not bent out of shape by this kind of thing, but let me point out "Agent Ciletti's" statement of events, in TFA. Did you get that far in TFA? Her writeup is near the bottom.
When she was taking part in the stunt, someone asked her for help finding a USB device (or something), assuming she was an employee. She was intentionally unhelpful, and the customer started to leave. Do you think it's ok to piss off a Best Buy customer?
I agree people need to lighten up. But there are always participants in these things that want to see how far they can push it, so they can be "cooler" than the next guy.
I don't care how much one thinks Best Buy sucks; that part wasn't cool.
"In California, If a security person detains you, you can Sue, and will probably win."
That's nothing. On Slashdot, you can make claims that lie somewhere between false and ambiguous, and will probably get modded +4 Interesting.
"To be fair, the Ferrari probably had to refuel after the run, too. Just like the electric car didn't carry more charge (batteries) than it needed for the run, IC cars don't carry more fuel than they need, either."
Yeah, I'd hate to see how much slower that electric car would've been, carrying around the extra weight of a full charge.
"So I see your 'Fucking retard' comment and raise you with 'stop being a total dumbass'"
"Woah. This is getting too rich for me. I fold..."
No, you're good; he gave the (binding) verbal equivalent of a string bet, so his raise is not allowed. </pokernit>
"Guess who said it?"
You did.
Is it my turn now?
"However, you still need enough people compared to your population."
/. article. If I put my tinfoil hat back on, I could probably figure it out...
For some reason people think the size of the population matters. It usually doesn't. Only if you're going to survey more than roughly 10% of the total population does population size start to have any significant effect on size of the confidence interval size.
"This number need not be very large, which is why sampling around 1,000 people out of 290,000,000 is statistically accurate."
Just about as accurate as sampling 1,000 out of 290,000,000,000, for the reason I stated above. (I'll spare us the fancy equations.)
Grandparent is right; when done scientifically, a poll of size n=66 still provides some information. The so-called "margin of error" will be a little over 10 percentage points, but that's better than nothing.
The real problem here is the "informality" of the survey, or as you called it "quality over quantity." I'm still trying to figure out why this is worthy of a