Not only is it astounding that this isn't done, it's old hat. Where I grew up, the main arteries were all set up so that if you traveled at the speed limit, you'd hit all green lights in one direction in the morning, and all green lights going the other direction in the evening. It saved gas, dramatically reduced average travel times and kept everyone going at the speed limit.
Instead, the main arteries where I live now are all set up to turn red when a car triggers a sensor on a cross street. The end result of that is that a 5 lane thoroughfare stops 15 cars every 50-100 yards because one care on a tiny side street is making a right turn onto the thoroughfare. A 2 mile drive can easily take 5-10 minutes with no traffic, just because the lights are setup so stupidly. And god help us if there's traffic (like, say on Black Friday or something like that): going half a mile to get on the freeway easily takes me 15 minutes, just because there's a light every 50 yards, they're not coordinated, and only 2-3 cars are actually able to cross the intersection at a time.
I'm always wondering if I should go to the city council meeting and ask why they're supporting terrorists with this inane system. The loss in gas mileage is atrocious, and the reason for it is just plain stupidity.
Not sure where you got your quote from, but it wasn't from the link you gave, and the entire site doesn't hold a single reference to Yukos. Not completely surprising, because it is the webpage for International Continental Scientific Drilling Program - nothing to do with Yukos. Not to mention that drilling a super-deep well has nothing to do with whether the drill probe found an economically viable field.
Why is is it that every time there's a weird theory floating around, someone comes up and says "The Russians did it/are using it, so it must be true", without there ever being a shred of evidence for the Russians either having used or done it?
Is it because it is so far away, or because some people can see it from their houses?
I can't tell from the article what grade they're including this topic for, but unless their schools are a lot better than US schools, I doubt that any high school student is equipped well enough to determine the validity of an assertion such as Intelligent Design.
WTF? Scientific theory is something that can be taught at the 8th grade. A 6-year old can understand the difference between"magic" and "here's how you test it".
Start expecting more from kids, and you will get more from them. Expect less, and you will get exactly that.
Scientists are people as well - "choose not to accept scientific data because it conflicts with their predefined beliefs". They can have the same problem, and I would bet it happens a lot once careers, huge grants and academic prestige and huge egos get into play. A white lab coat does not make you a super-people, a god, infallible, incapable of being wrong, or corrupt, or bribe-able, or blackmail-able, or otherwise influenced adversely.
Correct.
The "scientific community" has been seriously wrong down through the ages on any number of subjects, the "consensus", the predetermined "beliefs" lead to rote conformity, a herd mentality, and the inability to admit facts and data that where staring them in the face.
You know who's been even more wrong than scientists, and who has actually killed people for disagreeing with them? Everyone else.
Here's the fallacy that's not only pissing me off, but making me incredibly concerned about the future of the US: the idea because scientists are people and are sometimes wrong, their opinions on topics in their field of study are worth exactly the same as that of a huckster on the street. No, they're worth more for the same reason you go to a doctor when you're sick, an accountant when you have tax problems and an attorney when you have legal problems: specialists, while occasionally wrong and human, still know more about their subject than you do.
End of story. Yes, it's your obligation to double-check what someone tells you. But equating what an expert says with what the first idiot of the street says - and yes, that includes your own opinion - is idiotic beyond belief. If you disagree, let me ask you this: what's your reaction when the next end-user comes to you and tells you that you're full of crap when you tell him that his visits to www.whores-r-us.com infected his computer?
And I can ignore the dumb shit who thinks that yelling Nigger is somehow interesting. Which is what the -1 Mod is for. And if you think denying someone a job because they're black is somehow in any way similar to being modded on Slashdot... well, you'd have a ton of company here. Idiotic company, but company nonetheless.
It has been shown, in multiple studies, that pornography leads to sexual deviancy and inconsistent expectations of sex -- and that individuals will seek out to attempt these acts.
You keep saying that, but merely saying that won't make it so. Then we can discuss whether they're as horribly misconstrued as the studies that demonstrate that videogames lead to violence, or whether there's something to them.
Do you realize how easy it is to set up an FTP server on a compromised computer? Load it up with CP (or stuff that looks close enough to CP), point a few boards to it, and presto - Distribution.
Private networks can be infiltrated, especially when they go beyond personal connections. But if a child pornographer ever gets a hold of a botnet, god help whoever gets their computer infected. They're done.
If you must rely on anonimity to have free soeech, then you already don't have much of it.
True. However, anonymity is the last guard against complete loss of free speech, and it is the easiest one to protect via legal means. Someone is either anonymous or isn't - this doesn't depend on local customs of anonymity, or on what is acceptable anonymity or not.
This is why the ability to say things anonymously is so important. Even if assholes run the show and try to use stupid laws to silence you, if they can't find you, they can't silence you.
It's pretty clear either way that neither the guy nor any of the people advising him have any idea about the way the new technologies work.
Do not underestimate him. I'm pretty sure he has a very good understanding of technology, even if it is on the level of "the internet is a series of tubes". What he's aiming for is help from legislators who understand little of the newspaper business and even less of the internet, but who understand that he is a successful bigwig who is contributing lots of money to their campaigns and local economy.
The endgame here is full and complete control over information, in the vein of the hot news ruling regarding stock recommendations by the big investment houses. I.e., liability for copyright infringement would be so high for news aggregators that no one would do it - including Google, and where news organizations like BBC and PBS are forced behind a paywall through laws designed to "level the playing field."
The guy is the epitome of the corporate sociopath - he will ruin the world if it nets him a few more millions.
You also have a right to a free press, which is not possible when government controls the funds (as is the case with pro-government-leaning PBS).
You make it sound like the entire funding of PBS comes from the government. It's $800K a year through a government grant. I'll ignore your pro-government dig, because it is clear you haven't listened to Public Radio stations, and are more interested in engaging in flaming than rational debate.
Re:in other news, cementing the BP CEO has started
on
Gulf Oil Leak Plugged?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So you hold the CEO personally responsible for this mishap? If that's the case, then I don't think anyone gets to complain about how much money CEOs make.
Well, uh, yes? Fact: CEO's make about a bajillion dollars a year, give or take a few million. The job is so cushy that they can run a company into the ground in 6 months, and still retire in luxury after getting fired. Right now, the risk is exclusively carried by worker bees who actually do stuff - they're the ones who get hauled in front of a jury when something goes wrong, regardless of what idiotic policies were put into place by the CEO.
I mean, what if that BP truck driver falls asleep at the wheel and kills a family of 4? That's on me, right?
If you put in a policy that mandates overtime, no break on overnight gas trucking and 24 hour driving shifts, then yes, it is on you.
At the very least what needs to happen is that everyone in a position to make executive decisions about how the well is drilled and how the equipment is maintained and monitored needs to be hauled in front of a grand jury to investigate whether there was criminal negligence anywhere, or if there was a knowing disregard of standard safety and accident mitigation procedures. The spill has a chance to cause $1 trillion in damages over its lifetime of existence (the economy tied to the Gulf of Mexico is estimated at $250B), and you're damn straight that I want people in jail for that. They all have the right to due process, but they don't get to cause that much damage and then simply get off by saying "shit happens". No it doesn't, especially not if numbers like that are involved.
I've done a bit of googling, but nothing else comes up. What did come up, however, was David Li and his copula function. I can barely follow the copula function, and set theory is completely beyond me. However, what I will believe in a heartbeat is that hedge funds will throw million-dollar salaries at people to come up with a mathematical function that will tell them whether to sell or buy or something, regardless of whether they have any clue what the function actually means or does.
Again, I can't tell if this particular story is true or even makes sense. But the basic premise has already been proven.
Also, the user who is testing their download and upload speeds does not have to be very tech savvy.
And how many people know of the existence of such a site? I work with a few web developers who haven't heard of speedtest.net. The tech savviness comes from knowing that this technology exists, and where to go to use it.
,quote>If we have a nation of geeks who were supposed to be getting "up to 1/3/6 Mbps down" who are all going to this site and are never seeing those max speeds in testing, what will it say about the need for truth in advertising?
Speedtest.net has always been a great personal test to verify if you have the bandwidth that you expect. My concern is that this is being peddled by Ookla as some sort of representative data set that can tell you something about geographical bandwith averages - which it can't possibly do. This means that anyone using the Net Index as a source of regional bandwidth data is going to get garbage. Watch this being used by telecoms and legislators to argue that the US is doing great in terms of offering competitive bandwidth.
And I don't even trust the San Jose numbers. 15 Mbit average download speed? There are a ton of people with that kind of speed in San Jose, and that's because they're computer geeks who *NEED* that speed (to play WoW lagfree - right). However, there's an even bigger number of people who don't give a rats ass about download speed, as long as they can check their email and play Farmville. And they don't check their bandwidth.
Not to mention that I don't even know if Ookla distinguishes between IT people testing out their corporate bandwidth (I know I've done it a few times for legitimate reasons, and a few times to see just how much bandwidth speedtest.net had) and people testing their residential bandwidth. Yes, I know that IP addresses are allocated in blocks and can be traced back to specific ISPs, but I'm wondering if Ookla is doing the work to know that a test coming out of an ATT location in Redwood City is coming out of a datacenter with a 100Mbit pipe connected directly to ATT's backbone, or if it's coming from a residence using ATT's DSL service.
Yes, it is kinda weird to see Slovenia top the US, but as said - I don't trust the numbers. Not to mention that smaller places can skew the averages by simply running speedtests repeatedly from various locations. How much do you want to bet that some hacker will create a botnet just to skew these "official" numbers, or that a local LUG decides to break their city into the top ten by running their speed tests from places that they know have fat bandwidth?
I'm pretty sure this study wildly and unpredictably overestimates the average available broandband speed. Not too many people know how to test their download bandwidth, and only people with specific need to check their bandwidth will do so. It also doesn't differentiate between mobile and fixed broadband speeds, which should affect the numbers significantly.
All in all, I really don't think this means anything. It could be possible to use it as a comparative tool by assuming that the proportion of internet savvy geeks is the same across the world, but I have no idea if that assumption is correct.
I just hope that no politician is going to use this data for anything serious.
Alexander Peter Kowalski (since you insist on people using your full name), thank you for that morning of entertainment. Your level of delusion and OCD-ness is both side-splittingly hilarious and saddening. It's like watching a train-wreck. I know I shouldn't laugh, but the self-inflicted nature of the wreck is what makes it so damn funny.
"My Name is Ozymandias: King of Kings - Look upon my works, ye mighty, & DESPAIR..."
Oh the bold lettering, the all-caps, the irony that is the quote... Your post wouldn't be nearly so hilarious without it. Thanks again for a good laugh.
By the way Andrew, let me know when you get a citation for an article in a peer-reviewed journal that is at least semi-recent. It'll make the copy-pasting of your minimal accomplishments that much more entertaining.
Slashdot's altering scamdetect's post is doing EXACTLY WHAT YOU ACCUSE SCAMDETECT OF
Ah.... the moral relativism argument. How do I miss thee.... wait, I don't. It's guaranteed to be brought up by some nincompoop who missed Logic and Philosophy in his education. Krebsonsecurity is better, if for no other reason that it is better known.
All in all though, this was one of the most entertaining AC trolls I've read in a long time. I don't know if it is the foaming-at-the-mouth superiority complex, the irony of his bitching about the English skills of the editors, the complete incoherence of the entire post, or the double-bracketed, full-paragraph, single sentence diatribe about his irrelevant qualifications, but this AC kept me reading right to the end. I was actually kinda disappointed it ended.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only is it astounding that this isn't done, it's old hat. Where I grew up, the main arteries were all set up so that if you traveled at the speed limit, you'd hit all green lights in one direction in the morning, and all green lights going the other direction in the evening. It saved gas, dramatically reduced average travel times and kept everyone going at the speed limit.
Instead, the main arteries where I live now are all set up to turn red when a car triggers a sensor on a cross street. The end result of that is that a 5 lane thoroughfare stops 15 cars every 50-100 yards because one care on a tiny side street is making a right turn onto the thoroughfare. A 2 mile drive can easily take 5-10 minutes with no traffic, just because the lights are setup so stupidly. And god help us if there's traffic (like, say on Black Friday or something like that): going half a mile to get on the freeway easily takes me 15 minutes, just because there's a light every 50 yards, they're not coordinated, and only 2-3 cars are actually able to cross the intersection at a time.
I'm always wondering if I should go to the city council meeting and ask why they're supporting terrorists with this inane system. The loss in gas mileage is atrocious, and the reason for it is just plain stupidity.
Not sure where you got your quote from, but it wasn't from the link you gave, and the entire site doesn't hold a single reference to Yukos. Not completely surprising, because it is the webpage for International Continental Scientific Drilling Program - nothing to do with Yukos. Not to mention that drilling a super-deep well has nothing to do with whether the drill probe found an economically viable field.
Why is is it that every time there's a weird theory floating around, someone comes up and says "The Russians did it/are using it, so it must be true", without there ever being a shred of evidence for the Russians either having used or done it?
Is it because it is so far away, or because some people can see it from their houses?
I can't tell from the article what grade they're including this topic for, but unless their schools are a lot better than US schools, I doubt that any high school student is equipped well enough to determine the validity of an assertion such as Intelligent Design.
WTF? Scientific theory is something that can be taught at the 8th grade. A 6-year old can understand the difference between"magic" and "here's how you test it".
Start expecting more from kids, and you will get more from them. Expect less, and you will get exactly that.
Nope. No need to retract. That is quite the well crafted propaganda I expected in reply.
And yet, you have nothing to refute it. Talk is cheap. Go prove something.
Scientists are people as well - "choose not to accept scientific data because it conflicts with their predefined beliefs". They can have the same problem, and I would bet it happens a lot once careers, huge grants and academic prestige and huge egos get into play. A white lab coat does not make you a super-people, a god, infallible, incapable of being wrong, or corrupt, or bribe-able, or blackmail-able, or otherwise influenced adversely.
Correct.
The "scientific community" has been seriously wrong down through the ages on any number of subjects, the "consensus", the predetermined "beliefs" lead to rote conformity, a herd mentality, and the inability to admit facts and data that where staring them in the face.
You know who's been even more wrong than scientists, and who has actually killed people for disagreeing with them? Everyone else.
Here's the fallacy that's not only pissing me off, but making me incredibly concerned about the future of the US: the idea because scientists are people and are sometimes wrong, their opinions on topics in their field of study are worth exactly the same as that of a huckster on the street. No, they're worth more for the same reason you go to a doctor when you're sick, an accountant when you have tax problems and an attorney when you have legal problems: specialists, while occasionally wrong and human, still know more about their subject than you do.
End of story. Yes, it's your obligation to double-check what someone tells you. But equating what an expert says with what the first idiot of the street says - and yes, that includes your own opinion - is idiotic beyond belief. If you disagree, let me ask you this: what's your reaction when the next end-user comes to you and tells you that you're full of crap when you tell him that his visits to www.whores-r-us.com infected his computer?
Yeah, I thought so.
You can also patent the wheel and how to swing on a swing set. The real question is: have gameplay patents been upheld in court? As far as I know, no.
so yeah, the first poster was rude. what of it?
Nothing. And that's why he is sitting at -1. If he wants to make a political statement, there are better ways to do than post as AC on Slashdot.
And I can ignore the dumb shit who thinks that yelling Nigger is somehow interesting. Which is what the -1 Mod is for. And if you think denying someone a job because they're black is somehow in any way similar to being modded on Slashdot... well, you'd have a ton of company here. Idiotic company, but company nonetheless.
It has been shown, in multiple studies, that pornography leads to sexual deviancy and inconsistent expectations of sex -- and that individuals will seek out to attempt these acts.
You keep saying that, but merely saying that won't make it so. Then we can discuss whether they're as horribly misconstrued as the studies that demonstrate that videogames lead to violence, or whether there's something to them.
In short, provide citations, or GTFO and DIAF.
Do you realize how easy it is to set up an FTP server on a compromised computer? Load it up with CP (or stuff that looks close enough to CP), point a few boards to it, and presto - Distribution.
Private networks can be infiltrated, especially when they go beyond personal connections. But if a child pornographer ever gets a hold of a botnet, god help whoever gets their computer infected. They're done.
If you must rely on anonimity to have free soeech, then you already don't have much of it.
True. However, anonymity is the last guard against complete loss of free speech, and it is the easiest one to protect via legal means. Someone is either anonymous or isn't - this doesn't depend on local customs of anonymity, or on what is acceptable anonymity or not.
This is why the ability to say things anonymously is so important. Even if assholes run the show and try to use stupid laws to silence you, if they can't find you, they can't silence you.
It's pretty clear either way that neither the guy nor any of the people advising him have any idea about the way the new technologies work.
Do not underestimate him. I'm pretty sure he has a very good understanding of technology, even if it is on the level of "the internet is a series of tubes". What he's aiming for is help from legislators who understand little of the newspaper business and even less of the internet, but who understand that he is a successful bigwig who is contributing lots of money to their campaigns and local economy.
The endgame here is full and complete control over information, in the vein of the hot news ruling regarding stock recommendations by the big investment houses. I.e., liability for copyright infringement would be so high for news aggregators that no one would do it - including Google, and where news organizations like BBC and PBS are forced behind a paywall through laws designed to "level the playing field."
The guy is the epitome of the corporate sociopath - he will ruin the world if it nets him a few more millions.
You also have a right to a free press, which is not possible when government controls the funds (as is the case with pro-government-leaning PBS).
You make it sound like the entire funding of PBS comes from the government. It's $800K a year through a government grant. I'll ignore your pro-government dig, because it is clear you haven't listened to Public Radio stations, and are more interested in engaging in flaming than rational debate.
So you hold the CEO personally responsible for this mishap? If that's the case, then I don't think anyone gets to complain about how much money CEOs make.
Well, uh, yes? Fact: CEO's make about a bajillion dollars a year, give or take a few million. The job is so cushy that they can run a company into the ground in 6 months, and still retire in luxury after getting fired. Right now, the risk is exclusively carried by worker bees who actually do stuff - they're the ones who get hauled in front of a jury when something goes wrong, regardless of what idiotic policies were put into place by the CEO.
I mean, what if that BP truck driver falls asleep at the wheel and kills a family of 4? That's on me, right?
If you put in a policy that mandates overtime, no break on overnight gas trucking and 24 hour driving shifts, then yes, it is on you.
At the very least what needs to happen is that everyone in a position to make executive decisions about how the well is drilled and how the equipment is maintained and monitored needs to be hauled in front of a grand jury to investigate whether there was criminal negligence anywhere, or if there was a knowing disregard of standard safety and accident mitigation procedures. The spill has a chance to cause $1 trillion in damages over its lifetime of existence (the economy tied to the Gulf of Mexico is estimated at $250B), and you're damn straight that I want people in jail for that. They all have the right to due process, but they don't get to cause that much damage and then simply get off by saying "shit happens". No it doesn't, especially not if numbers like that are involved.
I've done a bit of googling, but nothing else comes up. What did come up, however, was David Li and his copula function. I can barely follow the copula function, and set theory is completely beyond me. However, what I will believe in a heartbeat is that hedge funds will throw million-dollar salaries at people to come up with a mathematical function that will tell them whether to sell or buy or something, regardless of whether they have any clue what the function actually means or does.
Again, I can't tell if this particular story is true or even makes sense. But the basic premise has already been proven.
"Should be" different is the key part. Do you really want to rely on a user-modifiable string to enact complex, multi-billion dollar legislation?
Also, the user who is testing their download and upload speeds does not have to be very tech savvy.
And how many people know of the existence of such a site? I work with a few web developers who haven't heard of speedtest.net. The tech savviness comes from knowing that this technology exists, and where to go to use it.
Thanks for the info. I guess you're right: it's even worse than I thought.
,quote>If we have a nation of geeks who were supposed to be getting "up to 1/3/6 Mbps down" who are all going to this site and are never seeing those max speeds in testing, what will it say about the need for truth in advertising?
Speedtest.net has always been a great personal test to verify if you have the bandwidth that you expect. My concern is that this is being peddled by Ookla as some sort of representative data set that can tell you something about geographical bandwith averages - which it can't possibly do. This means that anyone using the Net Index as a source of regional bandwidth data is going to get garbage. Watch this being used by telecoms and legislators to argue that the US is doing great in terms of offering competitive bandwidth.
And I don't even trust the San Jose numbers. 15 Mbit average download speed? There are a ton of people with that kind of speed in San Jose, and that's because they're computer geeks who *NEED* that speed (to play WoW lagfree - right). However, there's an even bigger number of people who don't give a rats ass about download speed, as long as they can check their email and play Farmville. And they don't check their bandwidth.
Not to mention that I don't even know if Ookla distinguishes between IT people testing out their corporate bandwidth (I know I've done it a few times for legitimate reasons, and a few times to see just how much bandwidth speedtest.net had) and people testing their residential bandwidth. Yes, I know that IP addresses are allocated in blocks and can be traced back to specific ISPs, but I'm wondering if Ookla is doing the work to know that a test coming out of an ATT location in Redwood City is coming out of a datacenter with a 100Mbit pipe connected directly to ATT's backbone, or if it's coming from a residence using ATT's DSL service.
Yes, it is kinda weird to see Slovenia top the US, but as said - I don't trust the numbers. Not to mention that smaller places can skew the averages by simply running speedtests repeatedly from various locations. How much do you want to bet that some hacker will create a botnet just to skew these "official" numbers, or that a local LUG decides to break their city into the top ten by running their speed tests from places that they know have fat bandwidth?
I'm pretty sure this study wildly and unpredictably overestimates the average available broandband speed. Not too many people know how to test their download bandwidth, and only people with specific need to check their bandwidth will do so. It also doesn't differentiate between mobile and fixed broadband speeds, which should affect the numbers significantly.
All in all, I really don't think this means anything. It could be possible to use it as a comparative tool by assuming that the proportion of internet savvy geeks is the same across the world, but I have no idea if that assumption is correct.
I just hope that no politician is going to use this data for anything serious.
Alexander Peter Kowalski (since you insist on people using your full name), thank you for that morning of entertainment. Your level of delusion and OCD-ness is both side-splittingly hilarious and saddening. It's like watching a train-wreck. I know I shouldn't laugh, but the self-inflicted nature of the wreck is what makes it so damn funny.
"My Name is Ozymandias: King of Kings - Look upon my works, ye mighty, & DESPAIR..."
Oh the bold lettering, the all-caps, the irony that is the quote... Your post wouldn't be nearly so hilarious without it. Thanks again for a good laugh.
By the way Andrew, let me know when you get a citation for an article in a peer-reviewed journal that is at least semi-recent. It'll make the copy-pasting of your minimal accomplishments that much more entertaining.
Slashdot's altering scamdetect's post is doing EXACTLY WHAT YOU ACCUSE SCAMDETECT OF
Ah.... the moral relativism argument. How do I miss thee.... wait, I don't. It's guaranteed to be brought up by some nincompoop who missed Logic and Philosophy in his education. Krebsonsecurity is better, if for no other reason that it is better known.
All in all though, this was one of the most entertaining AC trolls I've read in a long time. I don't know if it is the foaming-at-the-mouth superiority complex, the irony of his bitching about the English skills of the editors, the complete incoherence of the entire post, or the double-bracketed, full-paragraph, single sentence diatribe about his irrelevant qualifications, but this AC kept me reading right to the end. I was actually kinda disappointed it ended.
I'd give funny mods if I'd have them.