I think I can generalize this. If you're doing a startup in the tech community, there's often something that's your bread and butter. There's gotta be something that sets you apart from a big guy clone otherwise you're not a startup, you're just another business trying to do business. This bread and butter is often complex otherwise someone else would already be doing this. If you're the leadership on a startup, the less you know about this core element of your startup, the riskier your venture is going to be.
Coding is a common one because it's powerful. But your startup could just as easily depend on some hardware thing, like, say Fusion IO cards. And if the leaders of the startup don't understand the power and limitations of those cards, then you're in trouble. I think most of the time what I've seen ruin things inside a Fortune 500 company that does R&D that is supposed to mimic startups is that the leaders don't understand statistics and P-values and recall rates. Software is basically complex math so I guess you could say that was their misunderstanding of what software and "algorithms" could do but... yeah I've been involved with rule based systems projects where it was pretty clear the people in charge of me didn't know the limitations of rule based systems. Back then, I'd draw out a functional flow block diagram for this system and show them the black box and explain to them why this was going to be trouble.
If I started up a new drywall startup and claimed I had a new mixture of gypsum and lime pressed between two special kinds of paper done in a certain manner at a certain temperature making it more resistant to moisture, more durable, comparable in price, etc than the crap coming out of China... but in the end I don't understand the science or the chemistry behind that process, it's probably going to die on the vine. Sure, software is a common misunderstanding for tech startups but it could just as easily be the frequency limits of modern RAM accesses or why a 700 Mhz ARM processor isn't gonna get the job done or how many points a resistive touch display can track at once accurately etc etc.
Basically if you don't understand the core concepts that your startup depends on and offers, you're gonna have a bad time.
A lot of my friends had similar experiences with their 401K plans.
401k Operator: Hello there welcome to your 401k how can I help you today? Customer: Well, I was calling about my Vanguard mutual funds that I had a diversified portfolio in but with the recent housing and financial crisis I... 401k Operator: AAAAAAND IT'S GONE! Customer: What? No, actually, I mean the worth is very low at this point -- not even a third of what it was before the crisis but I'm logged into your site right now and I still have the same number of stocks in this mutual fund. 401k Operator: There must be something wrong, sir, all of your money is supposed to be gone. Customer: Well, I mean actually I was thinking about taking another $10,000 I have of liquid assets and investing in a post tax fund of these same stocks since they're so low right now. 401k Operator: Why on Earth would you do that? These are worthless and your money is all gone. Customer: No, I mean, I haven't realized these losses yet, the number of shares is still the same and I'd like to buy more of them with some of my savings. I mean, if these things are truly worthless -- they represent huge cross sections of the biggest companies and industries in America. If these things are worthless, this $10,000 isn't going to be of any value to me anyway. Price anarchy will take hold and the economy will grind to a halt. The only people this is really bad for are those that are retiring between now and when/if the price rebounds. 401k Operator: Listen sir, if you're not going to let me say AAAAAAND IT'S GONE, I'm going to use your address here to find you and... Customer: Okay okay, jeez, um, oh, I just drank the last of my coffee and... and... 401k Operator: *long sigh* It's not the same. I need to be alone now, goodbye.
BitFloor Operator: Good morning sir welcome to BitFloor how can I help you today? Customer: Well, I had heard a lot about this new currency called BitCoin and I was hoping to transfer this $100 in my account to... BitFloor Operator: Oh I completely understand, sir, in today's economy one can't rely solely on the faulty fiat currencies backed by governments like the United States dollar AAAAAAND IT'S GONE! Please log out of this site sir, this is for customers with a positive balance in their accounts. Customer: What?! BitFloor Operator: It's gone, it's all gone, sir, our system's been compromised, you now have zero dollars in your account please log off or deposit more money, thank you!
Bitcoinica Operator: Good afternoon sir, welcome to Bitcoinica! How can I help you today? Customer: Well, uh, I don't know how to, uh, say this but... this is all anonymous, right? Bitcoinica Operator: Oh completely sir, we don't have any logs or even backups for that matter! Customer: Good, good, well, uh, you see I have this "sickness" and I need to transfer this $5,500 for this stuff from this silk road retailer and I... Bitcoinica Operator: Woah woah woah, that's more than enough information to get us started here. So let's see you now have $5,500 in BitCoin balance on your account and the wallet is being updated and written to our single hard drive on a Windows 98 computer connected to the internet with no firewall AAAAAAND IT'S GONE! Please leave this site sir, your account has no balance in it! Customer: ??? Um, what? Bitcoinica Operator: It's gone, it's all gone. All of it, something happened, we were hacked or that 8 year old spinning disk crashed or something but it's all gone, thank you sir, thank you for using Bitcoinica now please leave this site or put more money into your account. Customer: But you don't understand... I... I've already received the "product" and they're GOING TO TAKE MY THUMBS if I don't get this money to them now. Bitcoinica Operator: That's wonderful sir, we here at Bitcoinica like to keep our transactions anonymous so please stop relaying me identifying details of this account. Now you have a nice day, sir!
Not too surprisingly, when it comes to revolutionizing student learning, teachers are bullish on teachers.
Is the purpose of this to revolutionize student learning or augment it? It's important because I think some people are thinking that students will not have to go to school anymore and instead just log into Khan Academy whereas I think the appropriate spot is as an aid or augmenting tool for educators everywhere -- parents, teachers, professors, you name it.
Also in that blog article:
While we don’t have official study results yet, great things are happening in our district for students and some of them are directly related to our use of Khan Academy. Teachers who have used Khan Academy as an instructional tool, have rethought their use of instructional time and are spending more time in math class on less traditional teaching methods effectively changing the student experience. Students are excited about the use of Khan Academy for several reasons: They get direct feedback when they are working a set of problems, they are able to visually see areas where they have excelled in math, and they are able to take some ownership of their own learning. Students are motivated in math and are excited to take on new challenges.
Which sounds pretty positive -- like the teachers are learning from the videos on how to more effectively teach math. They also say:
It is no secret that Khan Academy videos have come under fire in recent weeks. As educators in the Los Altos School District where Salman Khan’s free product was initially piloted and implemented, we would like to share our experiences utilizing Khan Academy as an instructional tool in a blended learning environment. By sharing our experiences, we hope to provide accurate information on how Khan Academy can be effectively used, clear up a few misconceptions, and share some of the lessons we have learned on our journey thus far.
The whole blog posting sounds like a departure from what the summary lead me to believe. I don't think anyone would be shocked or surprised to hear that teachers are using this as an augmenting tool and as for them being "bullish" I don't really see it. They are cautiously optimistic about this pilot program and say that it has resulted in good things inside the classroom.
Reviewer here and yes, yes I did read the book. I guess you are suspicious that I made all that up on the spot and submitted it to Slashdot so I'll try to make my reviews a little lengthier next time:-)
It seems to me to be a huge exercise in intellectual masturbation...
Hmmm, well, I think that some of the topics covered in the book have great worth to society. If you think that Roger Penrose and Steven Weinberg amount to intellectual masturbation then I guess we would find ourselves at odds. Nevertheless, the subject of this book has troubled a great many people and providing a completely sound answer to this question would at the very least make our world a little better in providing knowledge to people who yearn for this answer.
The worth of this book is best measured by the amount of groundwork that is laid and examined by the author without having to read tome after tome in encyclopedias of philosophy. This particular topic interests me and so I purchased this book.
I for one will not finance the lifestyle of the author. Too many people are still hungry around the world to invest in this.
Too many people are still hungry around the world for you to be writing on Slashdot instead of helping them! Burst forth! Run to your nearest soup kitchen and volunteer! Do you own a TV, computer or pay for an internet connection?! Why are you not fencing your unnecessary belongings and helping the poor starving people? Your argument could be used to halt any sort of hobby or interest -- is that a valid position?
I think we need a prequel, where the question itself is studied, and reasons provided for why it is a sensible question to even ask.
I grew up with the mindset that all questions are valid although some are more pragmatic than others. Surely such a question that has caused so much discussion and elicited statements from so many of our greatest thinkers has some value in being asked?
I bought the book and, obviously, I enjoyed the book so I think it's a sensible question. I also think that the beginning of the book does a decent job for setting the stage for the question and driving the question without need for a prequel that looks at whether or not it is valid to study.
I guess I would answer your statement with the following (found throughout the book): Is Nothing simple? Would ours be a simpler universe if nothing existed? Then why doesn't the Law of Parsimony (alias Occam's Razor) dictate that a Nothing be in our place instead of our something?
That line of thought doesn't pique your interest in the least?
I'm quite sure Steve Jobs would have given everyone as much access to their own content
I think Apple does give people access to their "own content" as much as they want. If you write a song and record it in garage band, you're pretty much free to do whatever you want with it. The problem here is that Willis has purchased songs digitally (probably a lot of them) and now in his mind this is equivalent to him buying vinyl records and compact discs. The problem now is that this license for listening to music was sold to him and the enforcement of this license is quite unfavorable to the consumer -- there is no second sale, there is no inheritance, there is no transferability period.
as they wanted, but that it is actually the record labels and/or RIAA demanding these rules.
You are more than correct but what you fail to understand is that the RIAA did not do business with Willis. The RIAA did business with Apple and Apple did business with Willis. Willis is going after the correct party here because something was sold to him and he had misunderstood the agreement that he signed -- the same one everyone has to "sign" every time the iTunes software is even updated. I've bitched about this so many times on Slashdot but I think that Willis is going to lose when it comes to down to the ToS. Although, I do not remove the blame entirely from Apple because their sales technique and the public understanding of their 'product' is largely misguided if not lying. The public thinks they are purchasing the same thing they did when they bought a CD but now it's digital, it's smaller, compact, more elegant, etc. But that's not true, you're missing a whole bunch of rights that came with buying a CD including the ability to pass a single copy of the CD on to your daughter or liquidate it in the estate sale. At anytime Apple can revoke your right to listen to this CD and I still buy physical copies of music for many reasons -- this being one of them.
I'm the sure the RIAA would have loved to dispatch a gestapo to your estate sale and destroy your vinyl and cassettes when someone died but they didn't. And that meant that these things retained value. Now that they're on the "iCloud" or whatever, they can do that without looking like Nazis so they definitely will and Apple won't have any say in the matter. Don't give Apple a free pass though, they're laughing all the way to the bank as you sign a ToS explaining how your rights are diminutive compared to physical media yet you spend like you're buying a physical entity.
Buy physical media, extract it to your computer and then shelve it. Otherwise you need to understand that what you're "buying" from Apple or Amazon or whomever is non-transferable and at the very least temporary in that you are mortal.
President Obama: *sits down to breakfast and starts to cut into his waffle but notices it's dry* Michelle, would you please pass the syrup. First Lady: Get it yourself. Secret Service Agent: *leans down and whispers into the President's ear* Um, sir, we're out of syrup, would you like me to dispatch an agent to pick you up from some the store? President Obama: No, Allen, that won't be necessary. *pauses dramatically and announces loudly* Get me Seal Team mother fuckin' Six on the horn! First Lady: Barry! Do NOT swear around our children! And for the love of god, you cannot use Seal Team Six to solve all of your problems! Remember when you told them to "take care of my mother" for an afternoon and she ended up floating face down in the Potomac!? President Obama: Clearly an unintended -- VERY UNINTENDED -- miscommunication and we're not having that fight again! Now, I want all the intelligence we have on Canada stat... some very syrupy shit is about to go down.
Re:I Guess This Is What Happens When I Don't Watch
on
The Case Against DNA
·
· Score: 0
Why is an unrealistic American television show being referenced about a case in Liverpool by a UK news source? Is horrible American television that prevalent?
Because you're being an intentionally obtuse pedant.
Thanks! I value your counterpoint and would like to propose a converse suggestion although unlike you I don't have to resort to name-calling in the process to get my point across. It is my suspicion that when something goes wrong the rest of the world likes to blame it on Americans -- even when it's more accurately an international blame. A great example of this is from your post:
First of all, the statement said 'shows like CSI' and if you think international crime shows don't use DNA evidence the same way you're quite naive.
So what you're saying is that all modern crime drama use DNA evidence... but when those dramas are negatively influencing rational thought, it's those stupid Americans and their television that are causing Liverpudlian court cases to go awry. Yep, those Yanks sure are thick. And we are, but it does get tiresome when everything is our fault.
That this is somehow news to you is hilarious.
Well I'm glad you find such great humor in my lack of watching British television.
Also, theynare easily misled by DNA evodence
And now you know what I find hilarious.
Re:I Guess This Is What Happens When I Don't Watch
on
The Case Against DNA
·
· Score: 1
It doesn't claim to be even remotely factual.
And CSI does? Here's a proposed sentence for you: "Modern television like The Mighty Boosh has a lot of people thinking that smoking marijuana is spiritual, fun, cool and without any repercussion." It doesn't have to be factual for a news source to cite it as evidence of its influence on public perception.
By "it" I mean TMB, though if the cap fits...
Wow, I bet The New York Times is just seething after that burn. I'll get Will Shortz on the phone right now and see if he can write crosswords for a more reputable news source like The New York Post. I used The New York Times as an equivalently average news source for Americans as the Telegraph is for the UK. The New York Times is more than due for criticism but "you can do better" like getting some actual examples of them publishing lies.
5/10. You can do better.
Yeah well, you've marked me as a foe so don't expect me to care about your baseless rating system or even try to "do better" in whatever dimension you define as better.
I Guess This Is What Happens When I Don't Watch TV
on
The Case Against DNA
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Thanks to fast-paced television crime shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, we have come to regard DNA evidence as uncontestable.
Why is an unrealistic American television show being referenced about a case in Liverpool by a UK news source? Is horrible American television that prevalent? I'm not seeing The Mighty Boosh referenced in The New York Times in regards to the legalization of marijuana. And who cares if a television show makes the public think DNA evidence is incontestable? That xenophobic vapid televisions series 24 appears to be proof positive justification for torture and Judge Dread style murder but that should not alter the way our courts rule.
The prosecution in Liverpool Crown Court has no other proof that ties Butler to the murder — showing just how much store they place in the science.
Okay, congratulations, that has to be the most jaw dropping thing I've read in quite sometime about justice in the UK. Are you serious? DNA should be used as one piece of a very large puzzle used to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this person was present at some point in time. It is a flawed process and should be used as one piece of many pieces of evidence against someone. If you put that much weight on it, framing someone just became a one step process. Hopefully it will improve but just as hopefully it will always remain as one supporting piece of evidence requiring many other avenues of evidence before a conviction.
You're being too nice. Isn't it time to shut down this bitcoin experiment already?
But wouldn't an effort to do that (which is impossible) be just more validation of the currency? On top of that, who is going to shut it down? There is no central authority to this currency! That's one of the major new features, not a bug!
Call it all off, make a memorial/historical bitcoin page on Wikipedia, and everyone who used it can just say, "Yeah, we were dumb then."
The legal citizens will no doubt say that, the criminals on the other hand will say "good times while it lasted."
It might be the case that this Ponzi scheme couldn't have been conducted using (say) US$ because of financial regulation. Lack of financial regulation attracts some people to Bitcoin -- but look how it can bite.
No, your C to Bitcoin analogy is a bit flawed. If C had a unique trait that was unique from all other computing languages that made it insulated and without consequences for virus writers (and this is impossible) than it would be a valid analogy. The problem is that all other currencies have some entity backing them that has a motive to or already does instituted financial regulation -- like stopping ponzi schemes. And the logic for this is quite simple. If you don't protect idiots, then idiots can't use your currency. Since much of the population is idiots, you need to protect them from the really bad stuff that comes along with capitalism -- otherwise your system starts to look really shitty and third world really fast.
So, there's no way to fix this with BitCoin because that's the great thing about BitCoin: no government regulation or government backing. I suspect you're going to start to hear more and more stories like: lack of security in major BitCoin trading systems (with no repercussions), more ponzi-like activity (with no repercussions) and more child porn/drugs/etc bought with BitCoin (with no repercussions). And then once it becomes evident that there are no repercussions? Just watch the copycats copy.
So, yeah I find your BitCoin is like C really really flawed. But of course, if anyone thinks that BitCoin is the currency of the future and there are finite BitCoins, it only makes sense to move all of your liquid assets and investments to BitCoin so put your money with your mouth is if you want to defend BitCoin and that will be the most effective way to validate this currency.
I will teach my kids whatever I want to teach them.
I don't think he ever said you can't. What we're talking about is what should be curriculum for students in the public schools. Fortunately you and I pay the taxes that fund these institutions, unfortunately that means we have to come to an agreement on what should be taught in said institutions. Furthermore, if you found Bill Nye to be a good educator with his programs and efforts then perhaps you should take his suggestions as more than telling you what to do. "Tyrant"? Please leave the hyperbole rhetoric to the politicians.
Furthermore: Belief in a creator does not negate thescientific endeavor.
No but we're getting to (well, some of us have crossed it long ago) the point where some of the things that science is teaching us blatantly contradicts several ancient doctrines. And while you can claim that believing the Earth is only 6,000 does not negate the scientific endeavor, it sure hinders an awful lot of fields. You can teach your children whatever you want in your home but in order for them to function in society or for higher learning institutions to accept them as scholars, we need to lay down some ground rules. I'll tell you what, I'll keep writing book reviews and you can tell us how much better off your child is for you teaching them creationism over evolution. Can the rest of us please move forward?
Many scientists over the years have believed in God or a god, even as they were unravelling the mystery of evolution and cosmology.
Sure they have! And some scientists have been racists, liars, bigots, adulterers, murderers, swindlers, politicians and even lawyers! But that doesn't make those actions or ways of life right. Read about the twilight years of Georg Cantor and we'll talk about how smart it is to consider everything a genius claims or believes in to be absolutely true. Unlike a cosmologist espousing about god or Georg Cantor claiming Bacon was Shakespeare, Bill Nye is talking about the scientific community's views on creationism versus evolution. And I can assure you that nobody is publishing in peer reviewed journals about creationism or intelligent design while peer reviewed journals dedicated to evolutionary biology are currently being peer reviewed the world over.
probably an Internet troll (evidence includes not being listed as a lawyer in PA, using a home address, and sending the takedown from gmail)
I guess it's possible that this is the lawyer we're talking about who has changed his name to something more official sounding like "Hank St. James" or uses that version in litigation to avoid repercussions. It's also possible that Hank James is just a really common name but Wilkes Barre and Pottsville are pretty close to each other.
I'm pretty sure this is his MO to generate revenue: 1) find registered copyrighted books on small websites. 2) make sure the site's owners don't have any money. 3) send take down notice. 4) upon failure to remove material, THEN contact the copyright holder and offer them your services for a price. 5) pretend nothing happened if site did, indeed, have the rights to host or sell copyrighted material.
Isn't that all indicated by his phrase "I have a good faith belief that..."?
I think it would have been better said "We have discovered an algorithm that ant know well."
Obviously you're a pro-Formic shill. The International Fleet will not tolerate this kind of sympathy. Your post has been reported to Commander Hyrum Graff!
The author is complaining about learning by rote but there's few other ways to accelerate young minds quickly up to the point of modern positions of each field.
But that's just it: you've done nothing for them if all they have done is learn by rote. They won't understand a thing, and everything you taught them will be easily forgettable. You do a disservice to people by making everything boring and assuming that they can't truly understand it.
Okay well somebody modded you up so let's take the example from the article:
In my first college-level biology course, I was required to memorize all of the digestive enzymes and what they do. Even today, I can't stomach those darned chemicals, and I fear the situation is scarcely much better at most universities today.
I'm not a biologist but here's how I'd teach this: 1) here's the methodology and a brief history of how they found these enzymes 2) here are the list of the all the known enzymes and their functions 3) this is why we suspect there might be more we don't know about or why we suspect we have discovered all of them. (keep in mind I have no idea which of those is reality)
So you teach that to the class and you tell them that they will be expected to know the full list of enzymes from number two. Okay so how do you propose we teach them that? Give them a cow's stomach and tell them to get to work? I mean, at the end of the day you only have so much time and you cannot give the students the opportunity to discover in a class period what took some well funded researchers many man months. You're best off to give them these enzymes "by rote" and, should they want more information, be able to approach you about this outside of class.
I'm more comfortable speaking about computer science so a comparison of this might be telling students about the evolution of memory management systems in operating systems "by rote" instead of forcing them to code each iteration of what Unix, Minix, Solaris, Linux, Windows 1, etc did to manage memory or schedule threads. There's only so much time and while this information is valuable in some context, it's not as valuable as being able to move forward to get to more pragmatic fronts of the field in question.
I'm totally open to hear how you think biology is supposed to teach enzymes. A lot of memorizing and teaching by rote in biology has to do with just coming to agreement on what you're going to call the bones of the body or tissues in the body or fragments of the skull or whatever you want to agree on with your area of focus. How do you make naming the bones of the human body fun and then expect them to read a paper on metatarsals and expect the students to have come up with a better name from metatarsals and know that that's what the paper is talking about?
As a physicist, I would like to read a book on why people outside the field consistently refer to large things as quantum. It means 'the smallest discrete amount possible,' not large, composite chunks.
I believe (although I'm not an etymologist) that the source of your frustration is the irksome fact that Scott Bakula is better known in American households than Max Planck.
Regarding the article, science would be more honest about research if we emphasized what we don't know and what we're doing to learn new things in the field. Also, I might emphasize how science has changed, so students can see that the taxonomy charts they are filling out had less useful predecessors (kind of like making your C++ class learn how to type "Hello World" in Assembly or Fortran halfway through the year).
I think the key problem is that there's only so much time. Why did you pick Assembly or Fortran? Why not force computer science students to start out on punch cards or a PDP-6? In physics better models have been developed and while I learned of the less correct models (like combining the Rutherford and Bohr models) we never truly delved into their original states or why their failings drove them to something better. I think that's great stuff to preserve but ultimately when you're teaching high school physics there's just not enough time and students only retain so much. So I think sometimes we're forced to teach it by rote rather than as a process or journey that the student embarks upon.
I guess I must have gone to a fundamentally different kind of college. Nearly every single professor I encountered wasn't excited about what was already known in their respective field but got disturbingly excited about untestable theories, suspected areas of interest and tantalizingly unknowable facts. My computer science professors would treat P=NP in an almost religious fashion -- treating that solution like the face of god. Sometimes it was just a numbers game like natural language parsing and parts of speech tagging. Here's the best-to-date accuracy, can you beat it? Ask my physics professors about entropy in space or, worse, string theory and they'd shortly be speaking in tongues. My philosophy instructors, even, loved to ask questions that had no clear answer: would you murder one person to save thousands? Why did Charles-Henri Sanson, the executioner of 3,000 lives in Paris, survive the revolution and what moral implications entailed him executing his former boss the king?
And that sort of makes sense to me because what are you going to publish about if your field is dead? What is going to drive you to keep studying your field if it's a dead field. I will say I don't remember many exciting things coming out of my advanced math courses. I know that field isn't dead but my instructors were abysmal in that field. Even the statistics professor had more fire. And I think the reason behind that is that math is a very deep field with so many before us that have pushed that field so far. In order to make original progress in that field, it appears to me that you almost have to become a hermit. You've got to become some sort of phantasmal waif like the great Grigori Perelman.
And I think that's the essence of where this article becomes misaligned. The author is complaining about learning by rote but there's few other ways to accelerate young minds quickly up to the point of modern positions of each field. I feel polymaths become much more rare as each field deepens in knowledge and that's because they are all rapidly becoming very deep rabbit holes (like mathematics). For me, grade school and high school contained the teachers that this guy is complaining about and that's because they had no choice. I wasn't ready for the real questions that remain when I was learning about derivatives and integrals in high school. I probably would not have comprehended P=NP very well at that time let alone the proof to the Poincaré conjecture.
It is time, therefore, to start teaching courses, giving lectures and writing books about what we don't know about biology, chemistry, geology, physics, mathematics.
I think there's a healthy balance, if you're teaching about what you don't know about then what could the students possibly be learning? Instead, I think teaching by rote and example of what we do know while using what we don't know as a carrot is the best methodology. If you can make your students excited about the unknown possibilities while at the same time conveying the boring and known but pragmatic information then you hit that sweet spot of teaching at a college level.
As to the particular field discussed in the article: Yeah, evolutionary biology is a relatively young field with a lot to be learned yet. I realized only a fraction of what I don't know when I read and reviewed The Logic of Chance.
Seriously, has anyone actually looked at these so called "dumps"? Most of them are a single field from a table, with no relational data to associate the bits. I see email addresses with nothing else. I see [email] addresses with nothing else. I see First and Last names, but nothing else. Phone numbers... the same. Then there are loads of obvious blog style records that is used to populate their "news" and such sections (which are obviously on their front page anyway). Where is the damage?
I've looked at over 20 so far and all have been absolutely worthless. Even the ones that didn't hash their passwords (BookData? what site is that, can't even find their landing page and all the logins look to be JP e-mail addresses) I can't find where I'm supposed to log in. Furthermore, some of these look like some automated testing software when I see rows like:
Those two filled in columns are username and password by the way. So I'm going to say there's three possibilities:
1) these are completely fabricated tables mixed in with (like you noticed) front page public news items and HTML to make them look authentic.
2) these are legitimate but just plain crappy sites. How is it that they only get ~1200 user records from a site unless the site is so worthless that it only has 1200 users?
3) they have everything. They have sensitive stuff but what they've done is show the targets that they have been compromised by releasing only the sensitive data that won't hurt the small users. Since they are publishing the structure of the databases and the targeted entities know that if you have access to that structure, you have/had access to all of the many user information.
I can't believe Teenfad hashed their passwords but some of these other seemingly more sensitive sites didn't. Who the hell is storing plain text passwords in a database!? Well, I guess we have a list of worthless sites that do it now.
Was Intellectual Ventures in the book "Freakanomics"?
I don't have access to that book anymore but I seem to remember that a very IV type company was in that book because of their anti-global warming idea.
Uh I think it was Superfreakonomics and they even brag about it. I would like to clarify that it's not 'anti-global warming idea' so much as a patent on how to engineer the temperature by pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to cool the planet.
You forgot to mention that two of the big founders of IV are Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung of Microsoft. So yeah when Bill Gates is trying to hook them up with a huge licensing deal or when Gates is pumping money into them, it's a sort of Old Boys network thing going on there. I'm certain that you will find the "two companies" that are spun off as being completely in bed with Microsoft.
So the other thing I'd like to bring up is the This American Life question of IV as to who they've actually helped. And they kept saying the same case: Chris Crawford. But of course, they couldn't get a hold of Crawford, they found out that IV no longer managed it and, in fact, Crawford is in litigation with IV. So basically the one thing that they offered as proof of their purpose was bunk. And then, of course, they stopped talking to This American Life.
Even if you apply the adage that one has to break a few eggs to make an omelet, they've broken tens of thousands of eggs, and made only a few omelets.
Yeah, Microsoft omelets. It's a self-serving shell company that sues the shit out of everyone and forces others into agreements or litigation. They can't even offer up one person that will sing their praises of helping them successfully manage their IP portfolio. And that, good friend, is why they're compared to the mafia.
A "step in the right direction"? You'll excuse my skepticism until I see some results for malaria, polio, and HIV... even if they can put a dent in those problems while lining their own pockets I'd be impressed. Sadly, the simpler explanation is that they have a very large portfolio and some of these tackle very serious diseases and by holding them up they can justify their lawsuits and patent trolling that is driving the industry backwards!
Unfortunately there were sentiments in your post that might have mirrored lyrics in Lynyrd Skynyrd's song "Workin' for MCA" off their double platinum album Second Helping. Warner Bros would also like to examine your use of the phrase "barren desert" and compare it to a song by the band America.
Is it possible to set up an alternative RIAA? Trade group monopoly must be broken.
Well, I'm not in the business but used to gig. After seeing people that should have some minor record deal being signed to littler labels like Afternoon Records or Asthmatic Kitty, it's my opinion that the best replacement for the RIAA is no replacement at all. The RIAA is restricting their member labels and being destructive "in the interests of their members"... sometimes this is helpful but in the instance of online radio, it's quite the opposite. Meanwhile a lot of the smaller labels affiliated with the RIAA suffer while the top executives make millions. The way I see it, by setting up an alternative RIAA, you'll inevitably fall prey to that sort of bullshit. Like the best capitalistic systems, the music industry would be healthier if the labels competed with each other and actually desired exposure (which they do) like online radio and no single entity was acting as a self-appointed policeman to how that system worked. Then and only then would you see.
Here's an example, I just purchased Headlight's latest album on vinyl and minutes later I had downloaded the MP3s. I can list tons of non-RIAA labels that do this and you can go on Bandcamp and see a third party system doing this for labels and selfpublished artists (for example, here's the album I just bought). Now, from the RIAA point of view this is super bad. I just got TWO copies of an album for one price and on top of that you can stream that album right there for free, possibly forever. Oh my god, copyright violations! Now, if you were the RIAA or a replacement for the RIAA you would find yourself in the position of making a decision about this sort of sales tactic. And that's bad whether you weigh in one way or another. Fine, let Metallica or whoever else I don't care about put up a picture of their album and ask for $20 from their fans for it before even hearing it. They can do what they want. But you'll find that if you throw your lot in with RIAA, you won't be able to upload live videos of your own concerts to YouTube, you might have ads on your music videos and you'll be restricted by this umbrella. Furthermore, no matter how forgiving you are of your fan's misdeeds, the RIAA is not. And I think a replacement is a bad thing.
Frankly put the advent of the internet and digital distribution means that artists shouldn't have to depend on the RIAA or an RIAA replacement. They should exist in hundreds of different labels acting, innovating and competing on their own terms (diversity is a good thing).
Right now it feels like an exacerbated Pareto Law inside the music industry and it doesn't have to be that way. Your attention, your ears, your money and your support should be spread around and free of restricted influence by some massive entity.
Right now, there's music out there that you like that somebody somewhere is making. But if they're not on a label that's part of the RIAA, you're most likely never going to hear it. That's why internet radio stations are so important to upending the RIAA, self-published groups from Portland can be heard by Brooklynites and vice versa. That's why I think the RIAA is trying to impose arcane radio royalty fees.
Nadler's bill would effectively make sure that no one else in that market would be profitable either. The end result? Many of these services don't exist or never get started.
I think that's quite the desired effect by the RIAA, to repress technologies and services. This is a deep rooted mentality that has been "proven" in their eyes by cassette tapes (remember when people were duping records and recording radio plays and that was destroying everything?) and Napster and Bittorrent -- all new technologies that they attribute with the decline of their iron grip on their "consumers." Internet radio is just the latest demon and, of course, if their profits slide it will be the new scapegoat. The article notices this as well:
“Congressman Nadler’s discussion draft would only perpetuate this hypocrisy and worsen an already flawed legislative mistake that is discriminating against new technology and hampering innovation,"
I do slightly object to this statement:
t's almost as if he has no concept of price elasticity. Lower prices can create higher total income.
No, I disagree with you there. I think services like Amazon and iTunes have shown them this and they reject that concept anyway. They built up their empires by reducing the diversity of music and creating a single song that everyone had to have. Radio jockeys play it 24/7, the Billboard Top 100 tells you what it is and it's basically slammed down your throat everywhere. This strategy payed off very well for them for quite some time. They wanted to reduce the amount of music you wanted or desired and price it out at $18 for the album. Everybody had to buy it and that's why you can pick up New Kids on the Block or Brittany Spears albums at your local thrift store for pennies now. And that's the best way the RIAA could have it since everyone got sick of that music, burned out on it and had to have the next $18 album that they were told to buy. Since everyone had to buy it that was $18 * tons of money.
Now new technology comes along and offers a more diverse music repertoire and the possibility of buying that single song and *GASP* radio jockeys that aren't yoked into playing the same goddamn song over and over again. And this frightens the music executives. They know about price elasticity, they just don't want the profits they should be making and instead wish to return to a simpler time when they told you what to pay and everyone paid that because there was no other option and society was shoving it down their throats. Lower prices CAN create higher profits but the way the RIAA has been running the show means it probably will not.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I can generalize this. If you're doing a startup in the tech community, there's often something that's your bread and butter. There's gotta be something that sets you apart from a big guy clone otherwise you're not a startup, you're just another business trying to do business. This bread and butter is often complex otherwise someone else would already be doing this. If you're the leadership on a startup, the less you know about this core element of your startup, the riskier your venture is going to be.
... yeah I've been involved with rule based systems projects where it was pretty clear the people in charge of me didn't know the limitations of rule based systems. Back then, I'd draw out a functional flow block diagram for this system and show them the black box and explain to them why this was going to be trouble.
... but in the end I don't understand the science or the chemistry behind that process, it's probably going to die on the vine. Sure, software is a common misunderstanding for tech startups but it could just as easily be the frequency limits of modern RAM accesses or why a 700 Mhz ARM processor isn't gonna get the job done or how many points a resistive touch display can track at once accurately etc etc.
Coding is a common one because it's powerful. But your startup could just as easily depend on some hardware thing, like, say Fusion IO cards. And if the leaders of the startup don't understand the power and limitations of those cards, then you're in trouble. I think most of the time what I've seen ruin things inside a Fortune 500 company that does R&D that is supposed to mimic startups is that the leaders don't understand statistics and P-values and recall rates. Software is basically complex math so I guess you could say that was their misunderstanding of what software and "algorithms" could do but
If I started up a new drywall startup and claimed I had a new mixture of gypsum and lime pressed between two special kinds of paper done in a certain manner at a certain temperature making it more resistant to moisture, more durable, comparable in price, etc than the crap coming out of China
Basically if you don't understand the core concepts that your startup depends on and offers, you're gonna have a bad time.
A lot of my friends had similar experiences with their 401K plans.
401k Operator: Hello there welcome to your 401k how can I help you today? ... ... ... and ...
Customer: Well, I was calling about my Vanguard mutual funds that I had a diversified portfolio in but with the recent housing and financial crisis I
401k Operator: AAAAAAND IT'S GONE!
Customer: What? No, actually, I mean the worth is very low at this point -- not even a third of what it was before the crisis but I'm logged into your site right now and I still have the same number of stocks in this mutual fund.
401k Operator: There must be something wrong, sir, all of your money is supposed to be gone.
Customer: Well, I mean actually I was thinking about taking another $10,000 I have of liquid assets and investing in a post tax fund of these same stocks since they're so low right now.
401k Operator: Why on Earth would you do that? These are worthless and your money is all gone.
Customer: No, I mean, I haven't realized these losses yet, the number of shares is still the same and I'd like to buy more of them with some of my savings. I mean, if these things are truly worthless -- they represent huge cross sections of the biggest companies and industries in America. If these things are worthless, this $10,000 isn't going to be of any value to me anyway. Price anarchy will take hold and the economy will grind to a halt. The only people this is really bad for are those that are retiring between now and when/if the price rebounds.
401k Operator: Listen sir, if you're not going to let me say AAAAAAND IT'S GONE, I'm going to use your address here to find you and
Customer: Okay okay, jeez, um, oh, I just drank the last of my coffee and
401k Operator: *long sigh* It's not the same. I need to be alone now, goodbye.
BitFloor Operator: Good morning sir welcome to BitFloor how can I help you today? ...
... this is all anonymous, right? ... ... I ... I've already received the "product" and they're GOING TO TAKE MY THUMBS if I don't get this money to them now.
Customer: Well, I had heard a lot about this new currency called BitCoin and I was hoping to transfer this $100 in my account to
BitFloor Operator: Oh I completely understand, sir, in today's economy one can't rely solely on the faulty fiat currencies backed by governments like the United States dollar AAAAAAND IT'S GONE! Please log out of this site sir, this is for customers with a positive balance in their accounts.
Customer: What?!
BitFloor Operator: It's gone, it's all gone, sir, our system's been compromised, you now have zero dollars in your account please log off or deposit more money, thank you!
Bitcoinica Operator: Good afternoon sir, welcome to Bitcoinica! How can I help you today?
Customer: Well, uh, I don't know how to, uh, say this but
Bitcoinica Operator: Oh completely sir, we don't have any logs or even backups for that matter!
Customer: Good, good, well, uh, you see I have this "sickness" and I need to transfer this $5,500 for this stuff from this silk road retailer and I
Bitcoinica Operator: Woah woah woah, that's more than enough information to get us started here. So let's see you now have $5,500 in BitCoin balance on your account and the wallet is being updated and written to our single hard drive on a Windows 98 computer connected to the internet with no firewall AAAAAAND IT'S GONE! Please leave this site sir, your account has no balance in it!
Customer: ??? Um, what?
Bitcoinica Operator: It's gone, it's all gone. All of it, something happened, we were hacked or that 8 year old spinning disk crashed or something but it's all gone, thank you sir, thank you for using Bitcoinica now please leave this site or put more money into your account.
Customer: But you don't understand
Bitcoinica Operator: That's wonderful sir, we here at Bitcoinica like to keep our transactions anonymous so please stop relaying me identifying details of this account. Now you have a nice day, sir!
Not too surprisingly, when it comes to revolutionizing student learning, teachers are bullish on teachers.
Is the purpose of this to revolutionize student learning or augment it? It's important because I think some people are thinking that students will not have to go to school anymore and instead just log into Khan Academy whereas I think the appropriate spot is as an aid or augmenting tool for educators everywhere -- parents, teachers, professors, you name it.
Also in that blog article:
While we don’t have official study results yet, great things are happening in our district for students and some of them are directly related to our use of Khan Academy. Teachers who have used Khan Academy as an instructional tool, have rethought their use of instructional time and are spending more time in math class on less traditional teaching methods effectively changing the student experience. Students are excited about the use of Khan Academy for several reasons: They get direct feedback when they are working a set of problems, they are able to visually see areas where they have excelled in math, and they are able to take some ownership of their own learning. Students are motivated in math and are excited to take on new challenges.
Which sounds pretty positive -- like the teachers are learning from the videos on how to more effectively teach math. They also say:
It is no secret that Khan Academy videos have come under fire in recent weeks. As educators in the Los Altos School District where Salman Khan’s free product was initially piloted and implemented, we would like to share our experiences utilizing Khan Academy as an instructional tool in a blended learning environment. By sharing our experiences, we hope to provide accurate information on how Khan Academy can be effectively used, clear up a few misconceptions, and share some of the lessons we have learned on our journey thus far.
The whole blog posting sounds like a departure from what the summary lead me to believe. I don't think anyone would be shocked or surprised to hear that teachers are using this as an augmenting tool and as for them being "bullish" I don't really see it. They are cautiously optimistic about this pilot program and say that it has resulted in good things inside the classroom.
Did anyone read the book yet?
Reviewer here and yes, yes I did read the book. I guess you are suspicious that I made all that up on the spot and submitted it to Slashdot so I'll try to make my reviews a little lengthier next time :-)
It seems to me to be a huge exercise in intellectual masturbation...
Hmmm, well, I think that some of the topics covered in the book have great worth to society. If you think that Roger Penrose and Steven Weinberg amount to intellectual masturbation then I guess we would find ourselves at odds. Nevertheless, the subject of this book has troubled a great many people and providing a completely sound answer to this question would at the very least make our world a little better in providing knowledge to people who yearn for this answer.
The worth of this book is best measured by the amount of groundwork that is laid and examined by the author without having to read tome after tome in encyclopedias of philosophy. This particular topic interests me and so I purchased this book.
I for one will not finance the lifestyle of the author. Too many people are still hungry around the world to invest in this.
Too many people are still hungry around the world for you to be writing on Slashdot instead of helping them! Burst forth! Run to your nearest soup kitchen and volunteer! Do you own a TV, computer or pay for an internet connection?! Why are you not fencing your unnecessary belongings and helping the poor starving people? Your argument could be used to halt any sort of hobby or interest -- is that a valid position?
I think we need a prequel, where the question itself is studied, and reasons provided for why it is a sensible question to even ask.
I grew up with the mindset that all questions are valid although some are more pragmatic than others. Surely such a question that has caused so much discussion and elicited statements from so many of our greatest thinkers has some value in being asked?
I bought the book and, obviously, I enjoyed the book so I think it's a sensible question. I also think that the beginning of the book does a decent job for setting the stage for the question and driving the question without need for a prequel that looks at whether or not it is valid to study.
I guess I would answer your statement with the following (found throughout the book): Is Nothing simple? Would ours be a simpler universe if nothing existed? Then why doesn't the Law of Parsimony (alias Occam's Razor) dictate that a Nothing be in our place instead of our something?
That line of thought doesn't pique your interest in the least?
I'm quite sure Steve Jobs would have given everyone as much access to their own content
I think Apple does give people access to their "own content" as much as they want. If you write a song and record it in garage band, you're pretty much free to do whatever you want with it. The problem here is that Willis has purchased songs digitally (probably a lot of them) and now in his mind this is equivalent to him buying vinyl records and compact discs. The problem now is that this license for listening to music was sold to him and the enforcement of this license is quite unfavorable to the consumer -- there is no second sale, there is no inheritance, there is no transferability period.
as they wanted, but that it is actually the record labels and/or RIAA demanding these rules.
You are more than correct but what you fail to understand is that the RIAA did not do business with Willis. The RIAA did business with Apple and Apple did business with Willis. Willis is going after the correct party here because something was sold to him and he had misunderstood the agreement that he signed -- the same one everyone has to "sign" every time the iTunes software is even updated. I've bitched about this so many times on Slashdot but I think that Willis is going to lose when it comes to down to the ToS. Although, I do not remove the blame entirely from Apple because their sales technique and the public understanding of their 'product' is largely misguided if not lying. The public thinks they are purchasing the same thing they did when they bought a CD but now it's digital, it's smaller, compact, more elegant, etc. But that's not true, you're missing a whole bunch of rights that came with buying a CD including the ability to pass a single copy of the CD on to your daughter or liquidate it in the estate sale. At anytime Apple can revoke your right to listen to this CD and I still buy physical copies of music for many reasons -- this being one of them.
I'm the sure the RIAA would have loved to dispatch a gestapo to your estate sale and destroy your vinyl and cassettes when someone died but they didn't. And that meant that these things retained value. Now that they're on the "iCloud" or whatever, they can do that without looking like Nazis so they definitely will and Apple won't have any say in the matter. Don't give Apple a free pass though, they're laughing all the way to the bank as you sign a ToS explaining how your rights are diminutive compared to physical media yet you spend like you're buying a physical entity.
Buy physical media, extract it to your computer and then shelve it. Otherwise you need to understand that what you're "buying" from Apple or Amazon or whomever is non-transferable and at the very least temporary in that you are mortal.
President Obama: *sits down to breakfast and starts to cut into his waffle but notices it's dry* Michelle, would you please pass the syrup. ... some very syrupy shit is about to go down.
First Lady: Get it yourself.
Secret Service Agent: *leans down and whispers into the President's ear* Um, sir, we're out of syrup, would you like me to dispatch an agent to pick you up from some the store?
President Obama: No, Allen, that won't be necessary. *pauses dramatically and announces loudly* Get me Seal Team mother fuckin' Six on the horn!
First Lady: Barry! Do NOT swear around our children! And for the love of god, you cannot use Seal Team Six to solve all of your problems! Remember when you told them to "take care of my mother" for an afternoon and she ended up floating face down in the Potomac!?
President Obama: Clearly an unintended -- VERY UNINTENDED -- miscommunication and we're not having that fight again! Now, I want all the intelligence we have on Canada stat
Why is an unrealistic American television show being referenced about a case in Liverpool by a UK news source? Is horrible American television that prevalent?
Because you're being an intentionally obtuse pedant.
Thanks! I value your counterpoint and would like to propose a converse suggestion although unlike you I don't have to resort to name-calling in the process to get my point across. It is my suspicion that when something goes wrong the rest of the world likes to blame it on Americans -- even when it's more accurately an international blame. A great example of this is from your post:
First of all, the statement said 'shows like CSI' and if you think international crime shows don't use DNA evidence the same way you're quite naive.
So what you're saying is that all modern crime drama use DNA evidence ... but when those dramas are negatively influencing rational thought, it's those stupid Americans and their television that are causing Liverpudlian court cases to go awry. Yep, those Yanks sure are thick. And we are, but it does get tiresome when everything is our fault.
That this is somehow news to you is hilarious.
Well I'm glad you find such great humor in my lack of watching British television.
Also, theynare easily misled by DNA evodence
And now you know what I find hilarious.
It doesn't claim to be even remotely factual.
And CSI does? Here's a proposed sentence for you: "Modern television like The Mighty Boosh has a lot of people thinking that smoking marijuana is spiritual, fun, cool and without any repercussion." It doesn't have to be factual for a news source to cite it as evidence of its influence on public perception.
By "it" I mean TMB, though if the cap fits...
Wow, I bet The New York Times is just seething after that burn. I'll get Will Shortz on the phone right now and see if he can write crosswords for a more reputable news source like The New York Post. I used The New York Times as an equivalently average news source for Americans as the Telegraph is for the UK. The New York Times is more than due for criticism but "you can do better" like getting some actual examples of them publishing lies.
5/10. You can do better.
Yeah well, you've marked me as a foe so don't expect me to care about your baseless rating system or even try to "do better" in whatever dimension you define as better.
Thanks to fast-paced television crime shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, we have come to regard DNA evidence as uncontestable.
Why is an unrealistic American television show being referenced about a case in Liverpool by a UK news source? Is horrible American television that prevalent? I'm not seeing The Mighty Boosh referenced in The New York Times in regards to the legalization of marijuana. And who cares if a television show makes the public think DNA evidence is incontestable? That xenophobic vapid televisions series 24 appears to be proof positive justification for torture and Judge Dread style murder but that should not alter the way our courts rule.
The prosecution in Liverpool Crown Court has no other proof that ties Butler to the murder — showing just how much store they place in the science.
Okay, congratulations, that has to be the most jaw dropping thing I've read in quite sometime about justice in the UK. Are you serious? DNA should be used as one piece of a very large puzzle used to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this person was present at some point in time. It is a flawed process and should be used as one piece of many pieces of evidence against someone. If you put that much weight on it, framing someone just became a one step process. Hopefully it will improve but just as hopefully it will always remain as one supporting piece of evidence requiring many other avenues of evidence before a conviction.
You're being too nice. Isn't it time to shut down this bitcoin experiment already?
But wouldn't an effort to do that (which is impossible) be just more validation of the currency? On top of that, who is going to shut it down? There is no central authority to this currency! That's one of the major new features, not a bug!
Call it all off, make a memorial/historical bitcoin page on Wikipedia, and everyone who used it can just say, "Yeah, we were dumb then."
The legal citizens will no doubt say that, the criminals on the other hand will say "good times while it lasted."
It might be the case that this Ponzi scheme couldn't have been conducted using (say) US$ because of financial regulation. Lack of financial regulation attracts some people to Bitcoin -- but look how it can bite.
No, your C to Bitcoin analogy is a bit flawed. If C had a unique trait that was unique from all other computing languages that made it insulated and without consequences for virus writers (and this is impossible) than it would be a valid analogy. The problem is that all other currencies have some entity backing them that has a motive to or already does instituted financial regulation -- like stopping ponzi schemes. And the logic for this is quite simple. If you don't protect idiots, then idiots can't use your currency. Since much of the population is idiots, you need to protect them from the really bad stuff that comes along with capitalism -- otherwise your system starts to look really shitty and third world really fast.
So, there's no way to fix this with BitCoin because that's the great thing about BitCoin: no government regulation or government backing. I suspect you're going to start to hear more and more stories like: lack of security in major BitCoin trading systems (with no repercussions), more ponzi-like activity (with no repercussions) and more child porn/drugs/etc bought with BitCoin (with no repercussions). And then once it becomes evident that there are no repercussions? Just watch the copycats copy.
So, yeah I find your BitCoin is like C really really flawed. But of course, if anyone thinks that BitCoin is the currency of the future and there are finite BitCoins, it only makes sense to move all of your liquid assets and investments to BitCoin so put your money with your mouth is if you want to defend BitCoin and that will be the most effective way to validate this currency.
I will teach my kids whatever I want to teach them.
I don't think he ever said you can't. What we're talking about is what should be curriculum for students in the public schools. Fortunately you and I pay the taxes that fund these institutions, unfortunately that means we have to come to an agreement on what should be taught in said institutions. Furthermore, if you found Bill Nye to be a good educator with his programs and efforts then perhaps you should take his suggestions as more than telling you what to do. "Tyrant"? Please leave the hyperbole rhetoric to the politicians.
Furthermore: Belief in a creator does not negate thescientific endeavor.
No but we're getting to (well, some of us have crossed it long ago) the point where some of the things that science is teaching us blatantly contradicts several ancient doctrines. And while you can claim that believing the Earth is only 6,000 does not negate the scientific endeavor, it sure hinders an awful lot of fields. You can teach your children whatever you want in your home but in order for them to function in society or for higher learning institutions to accept them as scholars, we need to lay down some ground rules. I'll tell you what, I'll keep writing book reviews and you can tell us how much better off your child is for you teaching them creationism over evolution. Can the rest of us please move forward?
Many scientists over the years have believed in God or a god, even as they were unravelling the mystery of evolution and cosmology.
Sure they have! And some scientists have been racists, liars, bigots, adulterers, murderers, swindlers, politicians and even lawyers! But that doesn't make those actions or ways of life right. Read about the twilight years of Georg Cantor and we'll talk about how smart it is to consider everything a genius claims or believes in to be absolutely true. Unlike a cosmologist espousing about god or Georg Cantor claiming Bacon was Shakespeare, Bill Nye is talking about the scientific community's views on creationism versus evolution. And I can assure you that nobody is publishing in peer reviewed journals about creationism or intelligent design while peer reviewed journals dedicated to evolutionary biology are currently being peer reviewed the world over.
probably an Internet troll (evidence includes not being listed as a lawyer in PA, using a home address, and sending the takedown from gmail)
I guess it's possible that this is the lawyer we're talking about who has changed his name to something more official sounding like "Hank St. James" or uses that version in litigation to avoid repercussions. It's also possible that Hank James is just a really common name but Wilkes Barre and Pottsville are pretty close to each other.
Anyway, I dug up a few other things. Here's an article sort of heralding his efforts as a "piracy exterminator for hire." Here he is leaving comments on a complaint board against infiniread.
I'm pretty sure this is his MO to generate revenue: 1) find registered copyrighted books on small websites. 2) make sure the site's owners don't have any money. 3) send take down notice. 4) upon failure to remove material, THEN contact the copyright holder and offer them your services for a price. 5) pretend nothing happened if site did, indeed, have the rights to host or sell copyrighted material.
Isn't that all indicated by his phrase "I have a good faith belief that..."?
I think it would have been better said "We have discovered an algorithm that ant know well."
Obviously you're a pro-Formic shill. The International Fleet will not tolerate this kind of sympathy. Your post has been reported to Commander Hyrum Graff!
The author is complaining about learning by rote but there's few other ways to accelerate young minds quickly up to the point of modern positions of each field.
But that's just it: you've done nothing for them if all they have done is learn by rote. They won't understand a thing, and everything you taught them will be easily forgettable. You do a disservice to people by making everything boring and assuming that they can't truly understand it.
Okay well somebody modded you up so let's take the example from the article:
In my first college-level biology course, I was required to memorize all of the digestive enzymes and what they do. Even today, I can't stomach those darned chemicals, and I fear the situation is scarcely much better at most universities today.
I'm not a biologist but here's how I'd teach this: 1) here's the methodology and a brief history of how they found these enzymes 2) here are the list of the all the known enzymes and their functions 3) this is why we suspect there might be more we don't know about or why we suspect we have discovered all of them. (keep in mind I have no idea which of those is reality)
So you teach that to the class and you tell them that they will be expected to know the full list of enzymes from number two. Okay so how do you propose we teach them that? Give them a cow's stomach and tell them to get to work? I mean, at the end of the day you only have so much time and you cannot give the students the opportunity to discover in a class period what took some well funded researchers many man months. You're best off to give them these enzymes "by rote" and, should they want more information, be able to approach you about this outside of class.
I'm more comfortable speaking about computer science so a comparison of this might be telling students about the evolution of memory management systems in operating systems "by rote" instead of forcing them to code each iteration of what Unix, Minix, Solaris, Linux, Windows 1, etc did to manage memory or schedule threads. There's only so much time and while this information is valuable in some context, it's not as valuable as being able to move forward to get to more pragmatic fronts of the field in question.
I'm totally open to hear how you think biology is supposed to teach enzymes. A lot of memorizing and teaching by rote in biology has to do with just coming to agreement on what you're going to call the bones of the body or tissues in the body or fragments of the skull or whatever you want to agree on with your area of focus. How do you make naming the bones of the human body fun and then expect them to read a paper on metatarsals and expect the students to have come up with a better name from metatarsals and know that that's what the paper is talking about?
As a physicist, I would like to read a book on why people outside the field consistently refer to large things as quantum. It means 'the smallest discrete amount possible,' not large, composite chunks.
I believe (although I'm not an etymologist) that the source of your frustration is the irksome fact that Scott Bakula is better known in American households than Max Planck.
Regarding the article, science would be more honest about research if we emphasized what we don't know and what we're doing to learn new things in the field. Also, I might emphasize how science has changed, so students can see that the taxonomy charts they are filling out had less useful predecessors (kind of like making your C++ class learn how to type "Hello World" in Assembly or Fortran halfway through the year).
I think the key problem is that there's only so much time. Why did you pick Assembly or Fortran? Why not force computer science students to start out on punch cards or a PDP-6? In physics better models have been developed and while I learned of the less correct models (like combining the Rutherford and Bohr models) we never truly delved into their original states or why their failings drove them to something better. I think that's great stuff to preserve but ultimately when you're teaching high school physics there's just not enough time and students only retain so much. So I think sometimes we're forced to teach it by rote rather than as a process or journey that the student embarks upon.
And that sort of makes sense to me because what are you going to publish about if your field is dead? What is going to drive you to keep studying your field if it's a dead field. I will say I don't remember many exciting things coming out of my advanced math courses. I know that field isn't dead but my instructors were abysmal in that field. Even the statistics professor had more fire. And I think the reason behind that is that math is a very deep field with so many before us that have pushed that field so far. In order to make original progress in that field, it appears to me that you almost have to become a hermit. You've got to become some sort of phantasmal waif like the great Grigori Perelman.
And I think that's the essence of where this article becomes misaligned. The author is complaining about learning by rote but there's few other ways to accelerate young minds quickly up to the point of modern positions of each field. I feel polymaths become much more rare as each field deepens in knowledge and that's because they are all rapidly becoming very deep rabbit holes (like mathematics). For me, grade school and high school contained the teachers that this guy is complaining about and that's because they had no choice. I wasn't ready for the real questions that remain when I was learning about derivatives and integrals in high school. I probably would not have comprehended P=NP very well at that time let alone the proof to the Poincaré conjecture.
It is time, therefore, to start teaching courses, giving lectures and writing books about what we don't know about biology, chemistry, geology, physics, mathematics.
I think there's a healthy balance, if you're teaching about what you don't know about then what could the students possibly be learning? Instead, I think teaching by rote and example of what we do know while using what we don't know as a carrot is the best methodology. If you can make your students excited about the unknown possibilities while at the same time conveying the boring and known but pragmatic information then you hit that sweet spot of teaching at a college level.
As to the particular field discussed in the article: Yeah, evolutionary biology is a relatively young field with a lot to be learned yet. I realized only a fraction of what I don't know when I read and reviewed The Logic of Chance.
Seriously, has anyone actually looked at these so called "dumps"? Most of them are a single field from a table, with no relational data to associate the bits. I see email addresses with nothing else. I see [email] addresses with nothing else. I see First and Last names, but nothing else. Phone numbers... the same. Then there are loads of obvious blog style records that is used to populate their "news" and such sections (which are obviously on their front page anyway). Where is the damage?
I've looked at over 20 so far and all have been absolutely worthless. Even the ones that didn't hash their passwords (BookData? what site is that, can't even find their landing page and all the logins look to be JP e-mail addresses) I can't find where I'm supposed to log in. Furthermore, some of these look like some automated testing software when I see rows like:
Those two filled in columns are username and password by the way. So I'm going to say there's three possibilities:
1) these are completely fabricated tables mixed in with (like you noticed) front page public news items and HTML to make them look authentic.
2) these are legitimate but just plain crappy sites. How is it that they only get ~1200 user records from a site unless the site is so worthless that it only has 1200 users?
3) they have everything. They have sensitive stuff but what they've done is show the targets that they have been compromised by releasing only the sensitive data that won't hurt the small users. Since they are publishing the structure of the databases and the targeted entities know that if you have access to that structure, you have/had access to all of the many user information.
I can't believe Teenfad hashed their passwords but some of these other seemingly more sensitive sites didn't. Who the hell is storing plain text passwords in a database!? Well, I guess we have a list of worthless sites that do it now.
Was Intellectual Ventures in the book "Freakanomics"?
I don't have access to that book anymore but I seem to remember that a very IV type company was in that book because of their anti-global warming idea.
Uh I think it was Superfreakonomics and they even brag about it. I would like to clarify that it's not 'anti-global warming idea' so much as a patent on how to engineer the temperature by pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to cool the planet.
So the other thing I'd like to bring up is the This American Life question of IV as to who they've actually helped. And they kept saying the same case: Chris Crawford. But of course, they couldn't get a hold of Crawford, they found out that IV no longer managed it and, in fact, Crawford is in litigation with IV. So basically the one thing that they offered as proof of their purpose was bunk. And then, of course, they stopped talking to This American Life.
Even if you apply the adage that one has to break a few eggs to make an omelet, they've broken tens of thousands of eggs, and made only a few omelets.
Yeah, Microsoft omelets. It's a self-serving shell company that sues the shit out of everyone and forces others into agreements or litigation. They can't even offer up one person that will sing their praises of helping them successfully manage their IP portfolio. And that, good friend, is why they're compared to the mafia.
... even if they can put a dent in those problems while lining their own pockets I'd be impressed. Sadly, the simpler explanation is that they have a very large portfolio and some of these tackle very serious diseases and by holding them up they can justify their lawsuits and patent trolling that is driving the industry backwards!
A "step in the right direction"? You'll excuse my skepticism until I see some results for malaria, polio, and HIV
left the land of honey and milk for a barren desert.
Smart move, a different ordering of those words would have put you in court with Capitol Records for copyright infringement.
Unfortunately there were sentiments in your post that might have mirrored lyrics in Lynyrd Skynyrd's song "Workin' for MCA" off their double platinum album Second Helping. Warner Bros would also like to examine your use of the phrase "barren desert" and compare it to a song by the band America.
Your summons is in the mail.
Is it possible to set up an alternative RIAA? Trade group monopoly must be broken.
Well, I'm not in the business but used to gig. After seeing people that should have some minor record deal being signed to littler labels like Afternoon Records or Asthmatic Kitty, it's my opinion that the best replacement for the RIAA is no replacement at all. The RIAA is restricting their member labels and being destructive "in the interests of their members" ... sometimes this is helpful but in the instance of online radio, it's quite the opposite. Meanwhile a lot of the smaller labels affiliated with the RIAA suffer while the top executives make millions. The way I see it, by setting up an alternative RIAA, you'll inevitably fall prey to that sort of bullshit. Like the best capitalistic systems, the music industry would be healthier if the labels competed with each other and actually desired exposure (which they do) like online radio and no single entity was acting as a self-appointed policeman to how that system worked. Then and only then would you see.
Here's an example, I just purchased Headlight's latest album on vinyl and minutes later I had downloaded the MP3s. I can list tons of non-RIAA labels that do this and you can go on Bandcamp and see a third party system doing this for labels and selfpublished artists (for example, here's the album I just bought). Now, from the RIAA point of view this is super bad. I just got TWO copies of an album for one price and on top of that you can stream that album right there for free, possibly forever. Oh my god, copyright violations! Now, if you were the RIAA or a replacement for the RIAA you would find yourself in the position of making a decision about this sort of sales tactic. And that's bad whether you weigh in one way or another. Fine, let Metallica or whoever else I don't care about put up a picture of their album and ask for $20 from their fans for it before even hearing it. They can do what they want. But you'll find that if you throw your lot in with RIAA, you won't be able to upload live videos of your own concerts to YouTube, you might have ads on your music videos and you'll be restricted by this umbrella. Furthermore, no matter how forgiving you are of your fan's misdeeds, the RIAA is not. And I think a replacement is a bad thing.
Frankly put the advent of the internet and digital distribution means that artists shouldn't have to depend on the RIAA or an RIAA replacement. They should exist in hundreds of different labels acting, innovating and competing on their own terms (diversity is a good thing).
Right now it feels like an exacerbated Pareto Law inside the music industry and it doesn't have to be that way. Your attention, your ears, your money and your support should be spread around and free of restricted influence by some massive entity.
Right now, there's music out there that you like that somebody somewhere is making. But if they're not on a label that's part of the RIAA, you're most likely never going to hear it. That's why internet radio stations are so important to upending the RIAA, self-published groups from Portland can be heard by Brooklynites and vice versa. That's why I think the RIAA is trying to impose arcane radio royalty fees.
Nadler's bill would effectively make sure that no one else in that market would be profitable either. The end result? Many of these services don't exist or never get started.
I think that's quite the desired effect by the RIAA, to repress technologies and services. This is a deep rooted mentality that has been "proven" in their eyes by cassette tapes (remember when people were duping records and recording radio plays and that was destroying everything?) and Napster and Bittorrent -- all new technologies that they attribute with the decline of their iron grip on their "consumers." Internet radio is just the latest demon and, of course, if their profits slide it will be the new scapegoat. The article notices this as well:
“Congressman Nadler’s discussion draft would only perpetuate this hypocrisy and worsen an already flawed legislative mistake that is discriminating against new technology and hampering innovation,"
I do slightly object to this statement:
t's almost as if he has no concept of price elasticity. Lower prices can create higher total income.
No, I disagree with you there. I think services like Amazon and iTunes have shown them this and they reject that concept anyway. They built up their empires by reducing the diversity of music and creating a single song that everyone had to have. Radio jockeys play it 24/7, the Billboard Top 100 tells you what it is and it's basically slammed down your throat everywhere. This strategy payed off very well for them for quite some time. They wanted to reduce the amount of music you wanted or desired and price it out at $18 for the album. Everybody had to buy it and that's why you can pick up New Kids on the Block or Brittany Spears albums at your local thrift store for pennies now. And that's the best way the RIAA could have it since everyone got sick of that music, burned out on it and had to have the next $18 album that they were told to buy. Since everyone had to buy it that was $18 * tons of money.
Now new technology comes along and offers a more diverse music repertoire and the possibility of buying that single song and *GASP* radio jockeys that aren't yoked into playing the same goddamn song over and over again. And this frightens the music executives. They know about price elasticity, they just don't want the profits they should be making and instead wish to return to a simpler time when they told you what to pay and everyone paid that because there was no other option and society was shoving it down their throats. Lower prices CAN create higher profits but the way the RIAA has been running the show means it probably will not.