When I was a very young - okay, not that young, but young - sysadmin, we had a secretary who was constantly asking me over to help her out with something in MS Word or Powerpoint. [Story about how secretary doesn't know Office]
Hmm, did she smile when you helped her? Flick her hair back? Give out hints about movies she'd like to go to, but doesn't have anyone to go with? Mention nice places to get coffee at?
If so, then perhaps constantly calling you over to 'help with Word' may be what normal people call 'flirting'. I don't know anything about that, personally, you'd need to ask someone else for more details. I just read about it somewhere.
There is a movement towards unencumbered mp3s in the digital music sales world and apple itunes store is the strongest force against this.
I see no evidence whatsoever that Apple is 'pressuring' the RIAA into using DRM. On the contrary, the RIAA constantly campaign for DRM, they need no incentive but their own. However, TFA's thesis makes theoretical sense - Apple have a lot to gain from the current DRMed music world. So they might want it to continue, and they might do something to keep it that way. Yet I don't see them doing that. So TFA is right in theory, wrong in practice.
As pointed out in the previous Sealand article, you have to connect to someone. So you get your fiber run out to.... who? England? France? India? Look what the Russians are doing with their oil.
Pirate Bay would get cut off in a heart beat.
Cutting some cables might not fix the problem, though, since there are other options (satellite communications; connecting through a proxy, say a ship in international waters; etc.). So, if this went through, most likely the young nation would quickly be 'liberated'.
(But we all know it won't succeed, it's just a publicity stunt by TPB, and an amusing one at that; they do know their PR, those people)
Just downloaded and installed it. Works OK, will try Office 2003. However, it still has done nothing for international keyboard support:(. Pretty much unusable for me as I use 3 different layouts.
+1.
This is a major problem for me as well: in other layouts than English all I get are "?" symbols when I type. (However, amusingly if I write something in another window and copy&paste it, things work ok.) If they fixed this issue they might get a lot of international interest in their product. But I don't know how hard it is to fix, perhaps it's pretty complex.
There is one problem with your argument here. Yes, the Windows monopoly is the biggest thing standing in the way of Linux desktop adoption, and yes, software and hardware support are the crucial issues. But Linux alternatives may do better than Linux is getting around these things. For example, ReactOS intends to be binary-compatible with Windows, both for device drivers and for applications. If they achieve that goal, it would make them a far better candidate to replace Windows than Linux, for the vast majority of users.
Linux isn't taking that approach because of FOSS principles, which I agree with personally, but that doesn't stop me from admitting that other approaches may work better in some ways.
Does anyone know why the institution that has the MIT License named after it felt the need to use a NonCommercial license?
Well, I can't speak on behalf of MIT, but I did take part in writing a series of lecture notes and (partially) converting them into a textbook. The professor who was teaching the course was fairly apprehensive about just releasing it 'freely' on the internet, for various reasons. One reason, which is relevant here, is that the whole field of online teaching material is in its infancy, and no one really understands it yet. Perhaps it'll take off and become almost as important as the universities themselves? Perhaps some unknown "University of Northwestern Boston" or such will take all of MIT's material and claim that, while they don't have the same lecturers, they do have the exact same courses and course material? And if they do so but the results are poor (as probably will be), may that not have a bad influence on MIT's reputation? Perhaps, I don't know.
With free software licenses I think we understand a lot more how the whole ecosystem works; we have much more experience with it. What MIT and others are doing here is testing unknown waters, and doing it carefully makes sense. Therefore I applaud their willingness to release this material, even under a 'mostly-free' license.
No one will have "Won" or "Lost" until sometime in 2008 but (as far as I know) no company has recovered from a poor start when there was strong competition. The fact is that Publishers look at system sales to determine which system will get exclusive games, which system will get games ported to it, and which system to ignore; if the PS3 is selling poorly while the Wii/XBox 360 is selling well publishers will devote most of their resources towards development on the Wii/XBox 360 which will reduce the number of PS3 systems sold (because people buy systems to play particular games).
Very true, yes. However, it is too early to say whether the PS3 has a 'poor start': while in the US the XBOX 360 is far ahead, in Japan it isn't doing so well. The Japanese market, while not as large as the US of course, is still very large, and if the PS3 becomes the dominant console over there, that will be more than enough incentive for developers to target it. Of course, besides the XBOX there is the Wii, which may turn out to be very serious competition for the PS3 in Japan... time will tell.
Really, this is a great step towards "Cyberspace" á la Snow Crash. Open Source and, eventually, Open [Standards] will vastly spur development of this technology.
Indeed. This is part of a much larger momentum, however. Generally speaking, writing proprietary MMORPGs or any massive online world is very hard and time-consuming, making it a natural area for open-source collaboration to thrive (no need to reinvent the wheel, and all that). Here are some current highlights of open-source in this area: there are at least two major, useful 3D engines, Ogre and Crystal Space (the latter also does lots of other stuff); there is a good physics engine, ODE; there is 3D model generating software, Blender; there is server-side code, Arianne and NEL (I didn't use either though, no idea how good they are); there is at least one serious MMORPG, PlaneShift (although the content isn't open, just the code), which uses Crystal Space and I believe wrote its own server-side code; there is plenty of free content (3D models, bitmaps, etc.); and there are many projects using these tools and extending them.
Second Life being open-sourced is a huge push forward in this area, and Linden Labs are making the smartest move they ever made here. Especially since waiting much more would be too late, since open-source projects would have soon overtaken them anyhow.
"Selfish selection of peers can lead to cliques of clients on the same network. Tit-for-tat has been proven as a highly effective strategy in games resembling the iterated prisoner's dilemna, but it can be defeated when a large enough group of of agents cooperate"
Indeed. To put things in a practical way for bittorrent, it is possible to make a client that 'cheats' by favoring other people using the same client, thus forming a cooperative group, that if large enough can have a lot of impact (mainly in convincing other people to start using said client). In fact, any closed-source client can already be doing this today; utorrent certainly has a big-enough user base to do so, BitComet is another suspect. It done carefully enough by the client, it would be VERY hard to discover this by just testing it on a private network or similar methods.
I'm unaware of any valid experimental design that uses a sample size of 1.
True, and a good point - although the sample size isn't 1, in what I described, just one of the groups is of that size. But your argument is still strong (more on this later).
From the false positive and false negative rates you have to compute the positive (and negative) predictive value -- that is, the probability that somebody who tests positive (or negative) really has (or does not have) what the test shows. To compute positive predictive value you need to know the prevalance in the population being tested. Suppose the prevalance is 1 in 1000 and you test at random. That means that for every true positive you'll get ten false positives. That is, the positive predictive value is 9%. A far cry from 99%!
Yes, of course. I was referring to this issue when I mentioned the "prior for the Null Hypothesis" and the use of Bayes' theorem. Obviously without a prior, you can't calculate the probability that you want.
The only thing different from the standard testing protocol is what you correctly pointed out, mentioned above, that there is only a single case in one of the groups. I must now confess to believing my statistics Professor a little too quickly when he described this - it does demand some thought. I'll have to get back to you on this one.
I don't believe there is any physiological test of truthfulness that has shown anything even resembling a statistically significant result
Well, again, "truthfulness" isn't the issue here. What we are testing for is mental content. The Stroop Effect which I mentioned is a great example for this, it is an highly accurate test which is very hard to fool. By a Stoop-type test you can check if someone knows a language; by Priming-type tests you can test whether someone is familiar with a particular stimulus (although in that one, familiarity means you react faster, so it is easier to fool - just slow down). In summary: "Truth" - no test for it (a problematic concept anyhow); objective measures of cognitive content (saw stimulus X before or not, etc.) - yes, we can test for (some) things like this.
The controlled experiments for polygraphs have shown between 40% and 70% false positive and false negative rates which, for the sample sizes used, are indistinguishable from chance.
Once more I must point out, that we are in 100% agreement about the commonly-used polygraph. I am not defending it. I am against it. Arguments against the polygraph are not arguments against what I am defending, since I am defending something different.
If 1 in 100 people shows a response, it definitely does *not* mean that person is associated with the crime
Well, of course it doesn't, it is just evidence in that direction.
How is this different from a randomized drug test? Give a drug, which you think makes people sick, to 1 person at random out of 100, and a placebo to the rest. After a week, you find that the single person given the drug is sick, and all the rest are fine. This is standard hypothesis testing: assuming the Null Hypothesis, the chance that a single person gets sick, and that that person is the one given the pill, is less than 1/100 (less, because of the chance of more than one getting sick, etc.). You can then uses Bayes' equation to figure out the other probabilities, given an explicit prior chance for the Null Hypothesis and the alternative to be true, and so forth - and yes, there is scientific controversy about these things (what is a suitable prior for the Null Hypothesis?), but this should not stop drug testing or scientific investigation about drug testing.
Obviously all the usual methodological issues must be dealt with - randomization, blindness of the experimenters, control of possible artifacts, etc. etc. - many of these are mentioned in the link you gave to the "Prosecutor's Fallacy". But, just like with a scientific experiment such as the drug trial mentioned before, this can be done with an experiment that tests for reactions to crime-related information.
What I believe is the issue here, and on what I think we can agree, is on the justifiably bad name the polygraph has. It is, as I said before, useless or worse, and used in an irresponsible and unethical manner. However, I don't think this should deter us from considering the whole concept of using physiological responses to determine mental content. While it is true that 'brain scans' like in Sci-Fi movies are far from reality, there are some interesting areas that have been scientifically investigated. For example, the Stroop Effect is one way to test a person's knowledge of a language (if A says he can't speak German, then the Stroop Effect shouldn't affect him when the words are in German).
TFA: "We've heard a lot of rumblings about Apple making partnerships with other companies such as Google and Disney. Expect more partnerships, possibly a collaboration with Google."
This comment might be true and accurate. Additionally, it might be true.
No, polygraphs are just bullshit, period. There is no scientific way to employ them because they make a fatally flawed assumption: that lying causes increases in vital measurements.
Common polygraph use assumes that lying causes increases in vital measurements, yes. But notice that what I mentioned in my post was a difference in vital measurements. If you get enough randomized trials, you can conduct a statistical test just like of every other scientific hypothesis.
Yes, perhaps some people react more to "shotgun", and some respond less. If, out of 100 people, the suspected killer reacts in a not-statistically-significantly-different manner, then that is one thing. But if, on the other hand, he reacts in a unique way, then the odds of that occurring were he not privy to information about the shotgun would be 1% (i.e. the Null Hypothesis is that all 100 people tested are the same, so the chance that a single person has a different result by chance, and that that person is our suspect, is at most 1 in 100 - speaking in general terms).
Increases in vitals like body temperature, perspiration and heart rate correlate with nervousness, not deception.
Agreed, which is why an increase in these vitals in a single individual is not enough, by itself, to show anything.
Furthermore, a suspect reacting to the word "shotgun" is not informative in the slightest. The shotgun from Doom might've just been his favorite weapon in that game. Or he might have some other past traumatic experience with a shotgun. It means nothing.
As I said above, this is possible, yes - it can occur by chance. But by a correct statistical test, you can check whether the reaction is explainable by coincidence or not. This is exactly the same way surveys are done or experiments in medicine or the social sciences. (Of course it isn't perfect, but then nothing is 100% perfect; the law can convict above a reasonable doubt.)
Polygraphs are just another interrogation tool to make the suspect feel more powerless and make the interrogator look more powerful.
Agreed. Polygraphs, as they are commonly used, are useless or worse than useless (dishonest, easily abused, etc.). But what I wrote in the post you are responding to is something completely different.
A note about the basic science behind this stuff: there is plenty of evidence of bodily responses to familiar stimuli (for example the cognitive psychology literature on 'priming', also electrophysiology, etc.). However, the commonly-used polygraph may not use the measures proven to work. If all it does is test blood pressure and GSR (galvanic skin response), then we may be right to be skeptical (although perhaps research on GSR has improved in recent years - I don't know). However, things like EEG are also non-invasive and easy to test, and research has shown them to be informative about various things. So: even if the commonly-used polygraph is a sham, correct use of science and statistics can be used to devise a better method, and hopefully things will continue to progress in that direction.
Polygraphs work--sorta [...] The idea is to convince people to *believe* that the polygraph machine is scientific and will detect their lies so that they're more likely to not lie, or are nervous while questioning, or even don't take the test at all and just spill it beforehand.
1) Relying on people believing a lie is bad policy. Especially if some of those aware of the truth (that it's a lie) refuse to take it, and are then fired.
2) And this 'sorta working' is very unreliable. Even if you know it's a lie, you can still get nervous while taking the test - just because you know that all they are doing is checking how nervous you are. So the tester can't know what a person acting nervous during the polygraph means - could be guilty, could be innocent.
3) Actually, polygraphs can be used in a scientifically correct manner, but nearly never are. The WRONG way is to ask questions like 'did you kill Mike?' - which make anyone nervous, guilty or innocent. The RIGHT way is to do a randomized statistical test, as follows: say Mike was killed by a shotgun, a fact which only the police know. You can then ask the suspect the following questions: "was Mike killed by a rifle?" "[...] a shotgun?" "[...] a handgun?" "[...] a knife?" etc. etc. Only the killer would know the true weapon, so if your suspect reacts differently to the 'shotgun' question, that would be informative. Of course other elements would also have to be statistically accounted for: you'd need to ask several controls the same questions (just to see that "shotgun" isn't a word that evokes special responses in general); to randomize the order of the questions; to have the person asking the questions not know the answers; and so forth. Basically, to do the same things you'd do in a scientific experiment.
But this is (a) hard and time-consuming, and (b) not always possible (you need information only the killer would know).
>> I've asked a thousand times and never had answered very well: [where is a list of] wireless cards, vendors, and prices that I can obtain today, which do work with Linux.
> [Detailed list of some compatible cards, and some general guidelines]
But this is exactly the problem! When people ask this question, they get details, and perhaps a link to a list or two. But there is no single up-to-date reliable hardware list that a Linux-user can really rely on. This should be a simple URL of a website that answers all hardware questions: enter a chipset or a product name, and get a list of distros on which it works. Sounds obvious, and necessary, but we still don't have it. Even such a website for a specific distro doesn't exist, to my knowledge - for example the Ubuntu wiki has lists of compatible hardware, but it isn't very convenient or accessible, I've spent a lot of wasted time on it. Also, if a particular model isn't listed, I don't know if that means it wasn't tested, or doesn't work (although some models are marked as not working). And the basic problem is that the Ubuntu wiki could be wrong - I am not aware of anyone doing serious quality control there.
I guess for most people knowledgeable about Linux, this isn't a big issue - they know the answers or know where to get them. Still, a better solution would make things more convenient for them. And newcomers would certainly be much happier.
From my perspective the PC becomes more and more a closed platform, which makes it more and more difficult to compete with Windows. The reverse-engineering effort required becomes larger and larger
Sadly, yes. Speaking about the desktop, fact is, 99% of hardware is already made particularly to run Windows; the fact that the Linux community got nearly all of it to run - well, that just means we were lucky I guess. Microsoft seems bent on continuing the trend of closing the hardware more and more, knowing full well that this is a sore spot for open-source. If they are successful at this - and I see no reason why they won't - then eventually we will have 'Windows hardware' and 'other hardware' - the latter being Linux-compatible, but more expensive and less-capable. (The former will, of course, only run if a special 'Trusted Computing'-style binary driver, signed by Microsoft, is present - or something along those lines.)
At least on the server side, Linux (and Unix) have respectable market share; a vendor who doesn't make hardware that can run Linux will be losing out. So there are no immediate worries there. But on the desktop we may soon be heading for 'game over'.
This is tagged "fud", and yet has still been posted to the front page... It is obviously a troll post. Any reasonable person could easily discover that Vista only implements DRM for DRM protected media, not for every random file you create.
While part of what you say is true, many posts in response to this article have explained why even if DRM is only for DRMed media, it still has negative implications for non-DRMed media. I won't repeat them, a simple reading of previous posts should suffice.
Vista can revoke the rights to your editing software when they find out it allows ripping and the authors don't immediately close the hole.
Yes, this is one of the tricky aspects of so-called 'Trusted Computing'. To elaborate: one possibility in 'Trusted Computing' is to disallow certain programs from being run. So, if you use editing software that, among other things, can use DRM-ed media, then if a 'DRM hole' (a security breach) is found in that software, it - the entire program - can be 'switched off' remotely. And this will affect you even if you don't use the DRM-related features, i.e. even if all the work you do with it is on DRM-free media of your own.
I don't believe that we have all the information about the technical details in this area yet. Let's assume for a moment, for simplicity's sake, that what I described above is how it can work. Now, if a DRM hole is found in a program, then Microsoft is in the position of being able to prevent mass copyright infringement by simply pushing a 'critical update' in Windows Update (what could be more critical than upholding the law?). The RIAA/MPAA will demand it, and I don't believe Microsoft will have much choice in the matter but to comply. And this is true even though it isn't in Microsoft's interest to comply - their interest is to keep their customers happy. But just like in P2P lawsuits, the issue will be 'contributory copyright infringement' (and if you think "Microsoft is too big to be sued" - well, the content industry is pretty big too, and anyhow the bigger they are, the more reason to sue them, isn't that how it works?).
The vendor distributing the program with the DRM hole might 'fix' things by closing the hole, of course, but that might take time. They might, in theory, offer a DRM-free version for people who don't need the DRM features, and that version would always work (probably overly optimistic, I know). But all of this is speculation: we simply have no experience with such circumstances. 'Trusted Computing' is bringing in a completely new set of rules, and anybody's guess as as good as another's.
Not so fast dude! The last time I checked, no body has ever chosen to be born caucasian, black, oriental or otherwise...on the other hand, there is likely a huge probability that all these folks that do not belong to the "chosen" platform to support actually chose to use the platform. And now, they are clamoring for support! Jeez!
Nah, that misses the point. Just take the original analogy about "operating systems vs. race" and switch it to "operating systems vs. religion". Religion is something that is a choice - you want to leave yours and join another, you are free to do so - but if the EU would suddenly only 'support' 95% of religions, there would be a heck of an outrage. In modern civilization, it is legitimate to choose your religion. Is the EU saying that the only legitimate choice of operating system is Windows (or Mac)? That's quite a big commercial endorsement there.
The original analogy/argument is valid, the EU is in the wrong on this one. (Although to be fair it's probably only a few EU computer techs and their managers who even know about this decision.)
"By the end of the year the OpenSolaris community will be widely recognized as larger and more active than the Linux community."
This statement from TFA completely misses the point, but not only in the way you explain. Thing is, OpenSolaris is a kernel, just like Linux; it isn't an entire OS. The 'Linux community' is only in a small part the 'Linux kernel community'; most projects in the FOSS world are kernel-agnostic. You can run GNOME on a Linux, BSD or OpenSolaris kernel, for example. So even if OpenSolaris does become a more popular kernel than Linux, very little will change in the FOSS world. Microsoft would have a hell of a time replacing their kernel; a 'Linux distro' can fairly easily do so (for example, Nexenta is Ubuntu running on OpenSolaris).
However, even after focusing only on the kernel, I seriously doubt OpenSolaris will overtake Linux anytime soon. There is quite a lot of (code) investment in Linux, e.g. drivers, which would need to be ported (and licensing issues sorted out, but perhaps Sun will GPL OpenSolaris as rumors claim). Equally importantly, distros are used to using Linux. While OpenSolaris has some advantages, I can't see how any of them is reason enough to switch over. Still, choice is always good, perhaps both kernels have a place.
No, not necessarily. A clone isn't created by a.clone()/.duplicate() function that is, by definition, identical (assuming the compiler is trustworthy). A medical clone is created in a very messy way - poking around inside cells, tearing open membranes, transferring DNA. This doesn't always work (most cloned embryos die), and often has side effects not immediately noticed caused by damage to the DNA in the cloning process.
(Now, I'm not saying I know the answer here - it isn't my field.)
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When I was a very young - okay, not that young, but young - sysadmin, we had a secretary who was constantly asking me over to help her out with something in MS Word or Powerpoint. [Story about how secretary doesn't know Office]
Hmm, did she smile when you helped her? Flick her hair back? Give out hints about movies she'd like to go to, but doesn't have anyone to go with? Mention nice places to get coffee at?
If so, then perhaps constantly calling you over to 'help with Word' may be what normal people call 'flirting'. I don't know anything about that, personally, you'd need to ask someone else for more details. I just read about it somewhere.
There is a movement towards unencumbered mp3s in the digital music sales world and apple itunes store is the strongest force against this.
I see no evidence whatsoever that Apple is 'pressuring' the RIAA into using DRM. On the contrary, the RIAA constantly campaign for DRM, they need no incentive but their own. However, TFA's thesis makes theoretical sense - Apple have a lot to gain from the current DRMed music world. So they might want it to continue, and they might do something to keep it that way. Yet I don't see them doing that. So TFA is right in theory, wrong in practice.
As pointed out in the previous Sealand article, you have to connect to someone. So you get your fiber run out to.... who? England? France? India? Look what the Russians are doing with their oil.
Pirate Bay would get cut off in a heart beat.
Cutting some cables might not fix the problem, though, since there are other options (satellite communications; connecting through a proxy, say a ship in international waters; etc.). So, if this went through, most likely the young nation would quickly be 'liberated'.
(But we all know it won't succeed, it's just a publicity stunt by TPB, and an amusing one at that; they do know their PR, those people)
Thanks, I did read their pages though, even filed a bug. Their fix doesn't work, at least on my system, sadly.
Just downloaded and installed it. Works OK, will try Office 2003. However, it still has done nothing for international keyboard support :(. Pretty much unusable for me as I use 3 different layouts.
+1.
This is a major problem for me as well: in other layouts than English all I get are "?" symbols when I type. (However, amusingly if I write something in another window and copy&paste it, things work ok.) If they fixed this issue they might get a lot of international interest in their product. But I don't know how hard it is to fix, perhaps it's pretty complex.
There is one problem with your argument here. Yes, the Windows monopoly is the biggest thing standing in the way of Linux desktop adoption, and yes, software and hardware support are the crucial issues. But Linux alternatives may do better than Linux is getting around these things. For example, ReactOS intends to be binary-compatible with Windows, both for device drivers and for applications. If they achieve that goal, it would make them a far better candidate to replace Windows than Linux, for the vast majority of users.
Linux isn't taking that approach because of FOSS principles, which I agree with personally, but that doesn't stop me from admitting that other approaches may work better in some ways.
Does anyone know why the institution that has the MIT License named after it felt the need to use a NonCommercial license?
Well, I can't speak on behalf of MIT, but I did take part in writing a series of lecture notes and (partially) converting them into a textbook. The professor who was teaching the course was fairly apprehensive about just releasing it 'freely' on the internet, for various reasons. One reason, which is relevant here, is that the whole field of online teaching material is in its infancy, and no one really understands it yet. Perhaps it'll take off and become almost as important as the universities themselves? Perhaps some unknown "University of Northwestern Boston" or such will take all of MIT's material and claim that, while they don't have the same lecturers, they do have the exact same courses and course material? And if they do so but the results are poor (as probably will be), may that not have a bad influence on MIT's reputation? Perhaps, I don't know.
With free software licenses I think we understand a lot more how the whole ecosystem works; we have much more experience with it. What MIT and others are doing here is testing unknown waters, and doing it carefully makes sense. Therefore I applaud their willingness to release this material, even under a 'mostly-free' license.
No one will have "Won" or "Lost" until sometime in 2008 but (as far as I know) no company has recovered from a poor start when there was strong competition. The fact is that Publishers look at system sales to determine which system will get exclusive games, which system will get games ported to it, and which system to ignore; if the PS3 is selling poorly while the Wii/XBox 360 is selling well publishers will devote most of their resources towards development on the Wii/XBox 360 which will reduce the number of PS3 systems sold (because people buy systems to play particular games).
Very true, yes. However, it is too early to say whether the PS3 has a 'poor start': while in the US the XBOX 360 is far ahead, in Japan it isn't doing so well. The Japanese market, while not as large as the US of course, is still very large, and if the PS3 becomes the dominant console over there, that will be more than enough incentive for developers to target it. Of course, besides the XBOX there is the Wii, which may turn out to be very serious competition for the PS3 in Japan... time will tell.
Really, this is a great step towards "Cyberspace" á la Snow Crash. Open Source and, eventually, Open [Standards] will vastly spur development of this technology.
Indeed. This is part of a much larger momentum, however. Generally speaking, writing proprietary MMORPGs or any massive online world is very hard and time-consuming, making it a natural area for open-source collaboration to thrive (no need to reinvent the wheel, and all that). Here are some current highlights of open-source in this area: there are at least two major, useful 3D engines, Ogre and Crystal Space (the latter also does lots of other stuff); there is a good physics engine, ODE; there is 3D model generating software, Blender; there is server-side code, Arianne and NEL (I didn't use either though, no idea how good they are); there is at least one serious MMORPG, PlaneShift (although the content isn't open, just the code), which uses Crystal Space and I believe wrote its own server-side code; there is plenty of free content (3D models, bitmaps, etc.); and there are many projects using these tools and extending them.
Second Life being open-sourced is a huge push forward in this area, and Linden Labs are making the smartest move they ever made here. Especially since waiting much more would be too late, since open-source projects would have soon overtaken them anyhow.
"Selfish selection of peers can lead to cliques of clients on the same network. Tit-for-tat has been proven as a highly effective strategy in games resembling the iterated prisoner's dilemna, but it can be defeated when a large enough group of of agents cooperate"
Indeed. To put things in a practical way for bittorrent, it is possible to make a client that 'cheats' by favoring other people using the same client, thus forming a cooperative group, that if large enough can have a lot of impact (mainly in convincing other people to start using said client). In fact, any closed-source client can already be doing this today; utorrent certainly has a big-enough user base to do so, BitComet is another suspect. It done carefully enough by the client, it would be VERY hard to discover this by just testing it on a private network or similar methods.
Here is an example of the sort of research I was talking about.
(Although the idea I was getting at included other methods of control, such as additional subjects)
You are referring to the guilty knowledge test.
I also mentioned the use of human controls, etc., which generally aren't in the GKT scheme. But yeah, the basic idea is in that.
I'm unaware of any valid experimental design that uses a sample size of 1.
True, and a good point - although the sample size isn't 1, in what I described, just one of the groups is of that size. But your argument is still strong (more on this later).
From the false positive and false negative rates you have to compute the positive (and negative) predictive value -- that is, the probability that somebody who tests positive (or negative) really has (or does not have) what the test shows. To compute positive predictive value you need to know the prevalance in the population being tested. Suppose the prevalance is 1 in 1000 and you test at random. That means that for every true positive you'll get ten false positives. That is, the positive predictive value is 9%. A far cry from 99%!
Yes, of course. I was referring to this issue when I mentioned the "prior for the Null Hypothesis" and the use of Bayes' theorem. Obviously without a prior, you can't calculate the probability that you want.
The only thing different from the standard testing protocol is what you correctly pointed out, mentioned above, that there is only a single case in one of the groups. I must now confess to believing my statistics Professor a little too quickly when he described this - it does demand some thought. I'll have to get back to you on this one.
I don't believe there is any physiological test of truthfulness that has shown anything even resembling a statistically significant result
Well, again, "truthfulness" isn't the issue here. What we are testing for is mental content. The Stroop Effect which I mentioned is a great example for this, it is an highly accurate test which is very hard to fool. By a Stoop-type test you can check if someone knows a language; by Priming-type tests you can test whether someone is familiar with a particular stimulus (although in that one, familiarity means you react faster, so it is easier to fool - just slow down). In summary: "Truth" - no test for it (a problematic concept anyhow); objective measures of cognitive content (saw stimulus X before or not, etc.) - yes, we can test for (some) things like this.
The controlled experiments for polygraphs have shown between 40% and 70% false positive and false negative rates which, for the sample sizes used, are indistinguishable from chance.
Once more I must point out, that we are in 100% agreement about the commonly-used polygraph. I am not defending it. I am against it. Arguments against the polygraph are not arguments against what I am defending, since I am defending something different.
If 1 in 100 people shows a response, it definitely does *not* mean that person is associated with the crime
Well, of course it doesn't, it is just evidence in that direction.
How is this different from a randomized drug test? Give a drug, which you think makes people sick, to 1 person at random out of 100, and a placebo to the rest. After a week, you find that the single person given the drug is sick, and all the rest are fine. This is standard hypothesis testing: assuming the Null Hypothesis, the chance that a single person gets sick, and that that person is the one given the pill, is less than 1/100 (less, because of the chance of more than one getting sick, etc.). You can then uses Bayes' equation to figure out the other probabilities, given an explicit prior chance for the Null Hypothesis and the alternative to be true, and so forth - and yes, there is scientific controversy about these things (what is a suitable prior for the Null Hypothesis?), but this should not stop drug testing or scientific investigation about drug testing.
Obviously all the usual methodological issues must be dealt with - randomization, blindness of the experimenters, control of possible artifacts, etc. etc. - many of these are mentioned in the link you gave to the "Prosecutor's Fallacy". But, just like with a scientific experiment such as the drug trial mentioned before, this can be done with an experiment that tests for reactions to crime-related information.
What I believe is the issue here, and on what I think we can agree, is on the justifiably bad name the polygraph has. It is, as I said before, useless or worse, and used in an irresponsible and unethical manner. However, I don't think this should deter us from considering the whole concept of using physiological responses to determine mental content. While it is true that 'brain scans' like in Sci-Fi movies are far from reality, there are some interesting areas that have been scientifically investigated. For example, the Stroop Effect is one way to test a person's knowledge of a language (if A says he can't speak German, then the Stroop Effect shouldn't affect him when the words are in German).
TFA: "We've heard a lot of rumblings about Apple making partnerships with other companies such as Google and Disney. Expect more partnerships, possibly a collaboration with Google."
This comment might be true and accurate. Additionally, it might be true.
No, polygraphs are just bullshit, period. There is no scientific way to employ them because they make a fatally flawed assumption: that lying causes increases in vital measurements.
Common polygraph use assumes that lying causes increases in vital measurements, yes. But notice that what I mentioned in my post was a difference in vital measurements. If you get enough randomized trials, you can conduct a statistical test just like of every other scientific hypothesis.
Yes, perhaps some people react more to "shotgun", and some respond less. If, out of 100 people, the suspected killer reacts in a not-statistically-significantly-different manner, then that is one thing. But if, on the other hand, he reacts in a unique way, then the odds of that occurring were he not privy to information about the shotgun would be 1% (i.e. the Null Hypothesis is that all 100 people tested are the same, so the chance that a single person has a different result by chance, and that that person is our suspect, is at most 1 in 100 - speaking in general terms).
Increases in vitals like body temperature, perspiration and heart rate correlate with nervousness, not deception.
Agreed, which is why an increase in these vitals in a single individual is not enough, by itself, to show anything.
Furthermore, a suspect reacting to the word "shotgun" is not informative in the slightest. The shotgun from Doom might've just been his favorite weapon in that game. Or he might have some other past traumatic experience with a shotgun. It means nothing.
As I said above, this is possible, yes - it can occur by chance. But by a correct statistical test, you can check whether the reaction is explainable by coincidence or not. This is exactly the same way surveys are done or experiments in medicine or the social sciences. (Of course it isn't perfect, but then nothing is 100% perfect; the law can convict above a reasonable doubt.)
Polygraphs are just another interrogation tool to make the suspect feel more powerless and make the interrogator look more powerful.
Agreed. Polygraphs, as they are commonly used, are useless or worse than useless (dishonest, easily abused, etc.). But what I wrote in the post you are responding to is something completely different.
A note about the basic science behind this stuff: there is plenty of evidence of bodily responses to familiar stimuli (for example the cognitive psychology literature on 'priming', also electrophysiology, etc.). However, the commonly-used polygraph may not use the measures proven to work. If all it does is test blood pressure and GSR (galvanic skin response), then we may be right to be skeptical (although perhaps research on GSR has improved in recent years - I don't know). However, things like EEG are also non-invasive and easy to test, and research has shown them to be informative about various things. So: even if the commonly-used polygraph is a sham, correct use of science and statistics can be used to devise a better method, and hopefully things will continue to progress in that direction.
Polygraphs work--sorta [...] The idea is to convince people to *believe* that the polygraph machine is scientific and will detect their lies so that they're more likely to not lie, or are nervous while questioning, or even don't take the test at all and just spill it beforehand.
1) Relying on people believing a lie is bad policy. Especially if some of those aware of the truth (that it's a lie) refuse to take it, and are then fired.
2) And this 'sorta working' is very unreliable. Even if you know it's a lie, you can still get nervous while taking the test - just because you know that all they are doing is checking how nervous you are. So the tester can't know what a person acting nervous during the polygraph means - could be guilty, could be innocent.
3) Actually, polygraphs can be used in a scientifically correct manner, but nearly never are. The WRONG way is to ask questions like 'did you kill Mike?' - which make anyone nervous, guilty or innocent. The RIGHT way is to do a randomized statistical test, as follows: say Mike was killed by a shotgun, a fact which only the police know. You can then ask the suspect the following questions: "was Mike killed by a rifle?" "[...] a shotgun?" "[...] a handgun?" "[...] a knife?" etc. etc. Only the killer would know the true weapon, so if your suspect reacts differently to the 'shotgun' question, that would be informative. Of course other elements would also have to be statistically accounted for: you'd need to ask several controls the same questions (just to see that "shotgun" isn't a word that evokes special responses in general); to randomize the order of the questions; to have the person asking the questions not know the answers; and so forth. Basically, to do the same things you'd do in a scientific experiment.
But this is (a) hard and time-consuming, and (b) not always possible (you need information only the killer would know).
>> I've asked a thousand times and never had answered very well: [where is a list of] wireless cards, vendors, and prices that I can obtain today, which do work with Linux.
> [Detailed list of some compatible cards, and some general guidelines]
But this is exactly the problem! When people ask this question, they get details, and perhaps a link to a list or two. But there is no single up-to-date reliable hardware list that a Linux-user can really rely on. This should be a simple URL of a website that answers all hardware questions: enter a chipset or a product name, and get a list of distros on which it works. Sounds obvious, and necessary, but we still don't have it. Even such a website for a specific distro doesn't exist, to my knowledge - for example the Ubuntu wiki has lists of compatible hardware, but it isn't very convenient or accessible, I've spent a lot of wasted time on it. Also, if a particular model isn't listed, I don't know if that means it wasn't tested, or doesn't work (although some models are marked as not working). And the basic problem is that the Ubuntu wiki could be wrong - I am not aware of anyone doing serious quality control there.
I guess for most people knowledgeable about Linux, this isn't a big issue - they know the answers or know where to get them. Still, a better solution would make things more convenient for them. And newcomers would certainly be much happier.
From my perspective the PC becomes more and more a closed platform, which makes it more and more difficult to compete with Windows. The reverse-engineering effort required becomes larger and larger
Sadly, yes. Speaking about the desktop, fact is, 99% of hardware is already made particularly to run Windows; the fact that the Linux community got nearly all of it to run - well, that just means we were lucky I guess. Microsoft seems bent on continuing the trend of closing the hardware more and more, knowing full well that this is a sore spot for open-source. If they are successful at this - and I see no reason why they won't - then eventually we will have 'Windows hardware' and 'other hardware' - the latter being Linux-compatible, but more expensive and less-capable. (The former will, of course, only run if a special 'Trusted Computing'-style binary driver, signed by Microsoft, is present - or something along those lines.)
At least on the server side, Linux (and Unix) have respectable market share; a vendor who doesn't make hardware that can run Linux will be losing out. So there are no immediate worries there. But on the desktop we may soon be heading for 'game over'.
This is tagged "fud", and yet has still been posted to the front page... It is obviously a troll post. Any reasonable person could easily discover that Vista only implements DRM for DRM protected media, not for every random file you create.
While part of what you say is true, many posts in response to this article have explained why even if DRM is only for DRMed media, it still has negative implications for non-DRMed media. I won't repeat them, a simple reading of previous posts should suffice.
Vista can revoke the rights to your editing software when they find out it allows ripping and the authors don't immediately close the hole.
Yes, this is one of the tricky aspects of so-called 'Trusted Computing'. To elaborate: one possibility in 'Trusted Computing' is to disallow certain programs from being run. So, if you use editing software that, among other things, can use DRM-ed media, then if a 'DRM hole' (a security breach) is found in that software, it - the entire program - can be 'switched off' remotely. And this will affect you even if you don't use the DRM-related features, i.e. even if all the work you do with it is on DRM-free media of your own.
I don't believe that we have all the information about the technical details in this area yet. Let's assume for a moment, for simplicity's sake, that what I described above is how it can work. Now, if a DRM hole is found in a program, then Microsoft is in the position of being able to prevent mass copyright infringement by simply pushing a 'critical update' in Windows Update (what could be more critical than upholding the law?). The RIAA/MPAA will demand it, and I don't believe Microsoft will have much choice in the matter but to comply. And this is true even though it isn't in Microsoft's interest to comply - their interest is to keep their customers happy. But just like in P2P lawsuits, the issue will be 'contributory copyright infringement' (and if you think "Microsoft is too big to be sued" - well, the content industry is pretty big too, and anyhow the bigger they are, the more reason to sue them, isn't that how it works?).
The vendor distributing the program with the DRM hole might 'fix' things by closing the hole, of course, but that might take time. They might, in theory, offer a DRM-free version for people who don't need the DRM features, and that version would always work (probably overly optimistic, I know). But all of this is speculation: we simply have no experience with such circumstances. 'Trusted Computing' is bringing in a completely new set of rules, and anybody's guess as as good as another's.
Not so fast dude! The last time I checked, no body has ever chosen to be born caucasian, black, oriental or otherwise...on the other hand, there is likely a huge probability that all these folks that do not belong to the "chosen" platform to support actually chose to use the platform. And now, they are clamoring for support! Jeez!
Nah, that misses the point. Just take the original analogy about "operating systems vs. race" and switch it to "operating systems vs. religion". Religion is something that is a choice - you want to leave yours and join another, you are free to do so - but if the EU would suddenly only 'support' 95% of religions, there would be a heck of an outrage. In modern civilization, it is legitimate to choose your religion. Is the EU saying that the only legitimate choice of operating system is Windows (or Mac)? That's quite a big commercial endorsement there.
The original analogy/argument is valid, the EU is in the wrong on this one. (Although to be fair it's probably only a few EU computer techs and their managers who even know about this decision.)
"By the end of the year the OpenSolaris community will be widely recognized as larger and more active than the Linux community."
This statement from TFA completely misses the point, but not only in the way you explain. Thing is, OpenSolaris is a kernel, just like Linux; it isn't an entire OS. The 'Linux community' is only in a small part the 'Linux kernel community'; most projects in the FOSS world are kernel-agnostic. You can run GNOME on a Linux, BSD or OpenSolaris kernel, for example. So even if OpenSolaris does become a more popular kernel than Linux, very little will change in the FOSS world. Microsoft would have a hell of a time replacing their kernel; a 'Linux distro' can fairly easily do so (for example, Nexenta is Ubuntu running on OpenSolaris).
However, even after focusing only on the kernel, I seriously doubt OpenSolaris will overtake Linux anytime soon. There is quite a lot of (code) investment in Linux, e.g. drivers, which would need to be ported (and licensing issues sorted out, but perhaps Sun will GPL OpenSolaris as rumors claim). Equally importantly, distros are used to using Linux. While OpenSolaris has some advantages, I can't see how any of them is reason enough to switch over. Still, choice is always good, perhaps both kernels have a place.
Don't you hate reading the whole thing and getting to the end and seeing SOURCE?
And even that source is somewhat dubious. It cites no references or ways to validate its claims. How are we to know any of this is true?
A clone is an identical twin.
.clone()/.duplicate() function that is, by definition, identical (assuming the compiler is trustworthy). A medical clone is created in a very messy way - poking around inside cells, tearing open membranes, transferring DNA. This doesn't always work (most cloned embryos die), and often has side effects not immediately noticed caused by damage to the DNA in the cloning process.
No, not necessarily. A clone isn't created by a
(Now, I'm not saying I know the answer here - it isn't my field.)