Arbitrary coherence is an oxymoron. It is either coherence or it's arbitrary. Decisions we make are never arbitrary, not even when we try to make a random choice. Ariely's experiment found an interesting correlation in the decisions made by the test subjects. However, the experiment was not designed to determine the reasons behind the decisions. Just because you don't understand the motivation behind someone's decisions, does not make these decisions arbitrary. And, obviously, they are not arbitrary since the experiment established a strong pattern to the subjects' actions.
Ariely's findings are not exactly new either. Open just about any product catalog and you will notice the same pattern: common, "on-sale", moderately-priced items are tucked at the end of the page containing expensive products that often are not even in the same category. Clearly, we assign value by association in the absence of relevant facts. However, this does not make our decisions arbitrary. What results did Ariely expect his experiment to produce? True randomness from a human brain? I don't think so.
Your economic diversity is another word for desperation. I would imagine it is not easy to become a computer expert without a computer. This is a problem that requires particular ingenuity.
I don't know the mechanism behind India's IT education system, but I am well familiar with the results. They rarely fail to disappoint.
Why is this not the case for Chinese IT specialists? This is a country with similar economic diversity with Communist ideology on top of it. And yet, most Chinese computer engineers I worked with were at the very least adequate.
I already watched Slumdog Millionaire, so I don't think I will be visiting India any time soon. I also watched Borat and I think I'd rather visit Kazakhstan. Besides, I don't need to see how "it is done": I am already well familiar with the results.
It is about outsourcing. Remote support is not a bad thing in itself. I've been supporting most of my systems remotely for almost four years now. But when there is a hardware problem, I can be at the site in under an hour. Our operators are also remote and are not much help.
Those of you with experience supporting Linux clusters know that hardware problems are much more common with these systems than with enterprise-class Unix servers. I keep a record of all the failed parts and let them pile up for a couple of weeks, so I don't have to drive to work every day. We do have a designated touch labor guy for onsite support, but he was dropped on his head when he was a child.
Aside from keeping the servers running, my other duty is to throw sand in our management's dreams of outsourcing everything to India. I have nothing against Indians - they need jobs like everybody else. However, most computer specialists from India I had a chance to work with over the years were grossly incompetent. Perhaps it's just my bad luck. Or, maybe, it is very silly of us to expect a country with one of the lowest numbers of computers per capita in the world to produce so many qualified computer engineers.
It's a bit unclear if he really "hacked" anything. The lawyers allege he "circumvented the technical measures", aka the "Zoomify" applet. However, "Zoomify" is intended to make it easier to view hi-res photos - not to prevent you from viewing them. From their site: "Zoomify makes high-quality images zoom-and-pan for fast, interactive viewing on the web". This application was not designed to protect copyright work: a fact to which its creators, no doubt, will readily attest.
Security is a process - not a state. Computer security is like a horizon - an imaginary line that seems to move farther away as you move toward it. The only way any network and systems on that network can be reasonably protected is if there is a recurring yearly budget. In most companies computer security is an afterthought in the IT budget. Sort of, like, if there's money left, we'll spend it on security. Or save it. The bottom line is that most companies simply can't afford meaningful security measures and most of those that can, choose not to spend the money. This entire IT security business is usually just good enough to keep the amateurs out.
The smaller number of exploits targeting Mac does make it a more secure platform, even if a big reason for that is a smaller user base. As far as I am aware, there are only three Macs in existence: a laptop owned by my boss, my idiot cousin's G5, and the one I've seen on House. I am sure there a few I am missing.
But I agree with your point regarding targeted attacks. If you ask the so-called Unix geeks on Slashdot if Unix platforms are susceptible to, say, Internet worms or other malware, I am certain a high percentage will be quite literally foaming at the mouth trying to convince you that Unix is invulnerable to such attacks.
I had a Win 98 system like that. It was sitting under my desk at work and I used it as a foot rest. The uptime that thing had - you wouldn't believe. Granted, the only thing that computer did was keep my legs elevated and my feet warm. But still, it was up 24/7 for well over a year. Maybe Microsoft will use my story in one of their commercials.
If directing behavior of citizens is not the primary role of a government, then what is? Delivering mail? The government is there to create and enforce laws that, in an ideal democratic society, are the government's best interpretation of the people's will. And what are laws if not ways of controlling behavior of the citizens?
You speak of moderation as if it was an inherent ability in humans. Look at the advertising imagery used by the fast food industry. Who do you think all these kings and clowns target? Are they after rational adults? No. They are after people who don't know the first thing about the value of good health, diet, exercise, or moderation. They target children. And, if the only way for a child to learn moderation is by turning into a diabetic fatass, then I will gladly support any law that will rid our society of the scourge that is fast food industry.
I am running 50,000 virtual servers on my three Dell laptops! Why am I not on the list? Seriously, are we counting physical machines or virtual ones? One system I support is a cluster of 80 HP 585s, each running eight virtual servers. So that's like 640 "servers" in just ten racks. It would be interesting to know who has the most servers in, say, kilograms as opposed to imaginary filesystems.
Here in the real world I prefer not to generalize and to see shades of gray. Do we sell cigarettes and alcohol to minors? No. If certain fast food is that bad for the kids, make it illegal to market or sell it to minors.
It is a well-established medical fact that cardiovascular deceases are more common in blacks than in whites. I propose a "black tax" on barbecue grills, chicken wings, and Hennessy cognac. This would make at least as much sense and will be just as constitutional as the proposed "fat tax".
It would seem there is no simple answer. Coming from Russia and having a wider basis for comparison, it would seem to me schools are holding on to bad teachers for two reasons: lack of of desire to deal with teacher unions and lack of qualified replacements. The latter seems to be the bigger problem. Indeed, replacing one bumbling idiot with another hardly justifies the effort. In my humble opinion, the US education system is even more screwed up than the health care system. Just like it is not worth the effort firing bad teachers (or bad college professors, for that matter), I believe its a waste of time trying to fix the system. Just keep doing what we were doing: create conditions for more European-educated teachers and professors to come to this country. Not a very patriotic approach, but probably a more practical one.
Don't blame the lawyers for this. The fault is entirely with the idiots hiring them. Some people are just too thick to realize that their actions lead to one inevitable outcome: taxes. Sooner or later (and in the current economic circumstances probably sooner) the government will realize that there is a whole lot of "real estate" and other "property" it forgot to tax. There will be an avatar tax, the Web site tax, the blog tax and so on.
But property that's viewable from public streets isn't THAT private.
It is a common misconception that privacy laws don't apply to places and people viewable from a public location. You also seem to confuse Google's satellite imagery with their Street View service.
What's reasonable is people not wishing to have photographic records of their private moments and private properties posted on Google without their permission. What is the purpose of Street View? Is the purpose to have a photo of every front door and every backyard posted on the Internet? No, the goal - according to Google anyway - is to provide driving directions. Now, who in the world needs to see a photo of me sunbathing on my deck to get from point "A" to point "B"? Street View is unnecessarily detailed for the stated purpose. Thus, Google is either throwing money to the wind collecting useless information, or it has reasons other than those it made public. Take your pick.
What is this - the bad analogy day? Did you invite Google management for a barbecue in your backyard and they just happened to bring cameras? Google takes a photo of your house and publishes it online along with the address and driving directions. Google does this without asking or telling you. I remember reading not so long ago a story in the news about a couple of enterprising burglars who used StreetView to see which homes in the neighborhood of their choice did not have those home security signs on their front lawns. Sure, that in itself was not a huge deal, but it did save them a lot of driving. I wonder if your view of this issue would have changed if your house was cleaned out by these two guys.
It is an entirely legitimate desire not to have your home's photo on Google. Streetview is a convenient tool for burglars to scope out neighborhoods, since Google has already done all the legwork for them. The residents' concerns in this case are perfectly valid. There is absolutely nothing wrong with stopping the googlemobil. Why should anyone waste their time asking Google to remove the photos, when they can stop Google from taking the photos in the first place? As if Google asked them for permission to take the photos in the first place. In many communities it is actually Google that is breaking local law by engaging in unlawful surveillance. But Google's size and deep pockets protect it from lawsuits. I wonder how long I would stay out of court (or jail, for that matter) if I would photograph random private residences and post the photos online, accompanied by location details.
Slashdot Mirror
Arbitrary coherence is an oxymoron. It is either coherence or it's arbitrary. Decisions we make are never arbitrary, not even when we try to make a random choice. Ariely's experiment found an interesting correlation in the decisions made by the test subjects. However, the experiment was not designed to determine the reasons behind the decisions. Just because you don't understand the motivation behind someone's decisions, does not make these decisions arbitrary. And, obviously, they are not arbitrary since the experiment established a strong pattern to the subjects' actions. Ariely's findings are not exactly new either. Open just about any product catalog and you will notice the same pattern: common, "on-sale", moderately-priced items are tucked at the end of the page containing expensive products that often are not even in the same category. Clearly, we assign value by association in the absence of relevant facts. However, this does not make our decisions arbitrary. What results did Ariely expect his experiment to produce? True randomness from a human brain? I don't think so.
At first I thought you made a joke. But this is Slashdot, so, who knows, you may be telling the truth...
If repairing the roof in my house gets too expensive, I just might follow your line of reasoning and move back into a cave.
Your economic diversity is another word for desperation. I would imagine it is not easy to become a computer expert without a computer. This is a problem that requires particular ingenuity. I don't know the mechanism behind India's IT education system, but I am well familiar with the results. They rarely fail to disappoint. Why is this not the case for Chinese IT specialists? This is a country with similar economic diversity with Communist ideology on top of it. And yet, most Chinese computer engineers I worked with were at the very least adequate.
I already watched Slumdog Millionaire, so I don't think I will be visiting India any time soon. I also watched Borat and I think I'd rather visit Kazakhstan. Besides, I don't need to see how "it is done": I am already well familiar with the results.
It is about outsourcing. Remote support is not a bad thing in itself. I've been supporting most of my systems remotely for almost four years now. But when there is a hardware problem, I can be at the site in under an hour. Our operators are also remote and are not much help. Those of you with experience supporting Linux clusters know that hardware problems are much more common with these systems than with enterprise-class Unix servers. I keep a record of all the failed parts and let them pile up for a couple of weeks, so I don't have to drive to work every day. We do have a designated touch labor guy for onsite support, but he was dropped on his head when he was a child. Aside from keeping the servers running, my other duty is to throw sand in our management's dreams of outsourcing everything to India. I have nothing against Indians - they need jobs like everybody else. However, most computer specialists from India I had a chance to work with over the years were grossly incompetent. Perhaps it's just my bad luck. Or, maybe, it is very silly of us to expect a country with one of the lowest numbers of computers per capita in the world to produce so many qualified computer engineers.
Considering the last point we'll probably see mass produced flying cars when we see flying pigs.
I am sure you missed the news: the V-22 Osprey is already in service.
It's a bit unclear if he really "hacked" anything. The lawyers allege he "circumvented the technical measures", aka the "Zoomify" applet. However, "Zoomify" is intended to make it easier to view hi-res photos - not to prevent you from viewing them. From their site: "Zoomify makes high-quality images zoom-and-pan for fast, interactive viewing on the web". This application was not designed to protect copyright work: a fact to which its creators, no doubt, will readily attest.
Security is a process - not a state. Computer security is like a horizon - an imaginary line that seems to move farther away as you move toward it. The only way any network and systems on that network can be reasonably protected is if there is a recurring yearly budget. In most companies computer security is an afterthought in the IT budget. Sort of, like, if there's money left, we'll spend it on security. Or save it. The bottom line is that most companies simply can't afford meaningful security measures and most of those that can, choose not to spend the money. This entire IT security business is usually just good enough to keep the amateurs out.
The smaller number of exploits targeting Mac does make it a more secure platform, even if a big reason for that is a smaller user base. As far as I am aware, there are only three Macs in existence: a laptop owned by my boss, my idiot cousin's G5, and the one I've seen on House. I am sure there a few I am missing.
But I agree with your point regarding targeted attacks. If you ask the so-called Unix geeks on Slashdot if Unix platforms are susceptible to, say, Internet worms or other malware, I am certain a high percentage will be quite literally foaming at the mouth trying to convince you that Unix is invulnerable to such attacks.
I had a Win 98 system like that. It was sitting under my desk at work and I used it as a foot rest. The uptime that thing had - you wouldn't believe. Granted, the only thing that computer did was keep my legs elevated and my feet warm. But still, it was up 24/7 for well over a year. Maybe Microsoft will use my story in one of their commercials.
They have cars in the UK?
If directing behavior of citizens is not the primary role of a government, then what is? Delivering mail? The government is there to create and enforce laws that, in an ideal democratic society, are the government's best interpretation of the people's will. And what are laws if not ways of controlling behavior of the citizens?
You speak of moderation as if it was an inherent ability in humans. Look at the advertising imagery used by the fast food industry. Who do you think all these kings and clowns target? Are they after rational adults? No. They are after people who don't know the first thing about the value of good health, diet, exercise, or moderation. They target children. And, if the only way for a child to learn moderation is by turning into a diabetic fatass, then I will gladly support any law that will rid our society of the scourge that is fast food industry.
I am running 50,000 virtual servers on my three Dell laptops! Why am I not on the list? Seriously, are we counting physical machines or virtual ones? One system I support is a cluster of 80 HP 585s, each running eight virtual servers. So that's like 640 "servers" in just ten racks. It would be interesting to know who has the most servers in, say, kilograms as opposed to imaginary filesystems.
Here in the real world I prefer not to generalize and to see shades of gray. Do we sell cigarettes and alcohol to minors? No. If certain fast food is that bad for the kids, make it illegal to market or sell it to minors.
It is a well-established medical fact that cardiovascular deceases are more common in blacks than in whites. I propose a "black tax" on barbecue grills, chicken wings, and Hennessy cognac. This would make at least as much sense and will be just as constitutional as the proposed "fat tax".
Imagine how many Chryslers a McDonald's employee could buy on a $200/hr salary!
It would seem there is no simple answer. Coming from Russia and having a wider basis for comparison, it would seem to me schools are holding on to bad teachers for two reasons: lack of of desire to deal with teacher unions and lack of qualified replacements. The latter seems to be the bigger problem. Indeed, replacing one bumbling idiot with another hardly justifies the effort. In my humble opinion, the US education system is even more screwed up than the health care system. Just like it is not worth the effort firing bad teachers (or bad college professors, for that matter), I believe its a waste of time trying to fix the system. Just keep doing what we were doing: create conditions for more European-educated teachers and professors to come to this country. Not a very patriotic approach, but probably a more practical one.
Don't blame the lawyers for this. The fault is entirely with the idiots hiring them. Some people are just too thick to realize that their actions lead to one inevitable outcome: taxes. Sooner or later (and in the current economic circumstances probably sooner) the government will realize that there is a whole lot of "real estate" and other "property" it forgot to tax. There will be an avatar tax, the Web site tax, the blog tax and so on.
In other news: a recent study by the American Wave Mechanics Society suggests wishful thinking may explain quantum mechanics.
But property that's viewable from public streets isn't THAT private.
It is a common misconception that privacy laws don't apply to places and people viewable from a public location. You also seem to confuse Google's satellite imagery with their Street View service.
What's reasonable is people not wishing to have photographic records of their private moments and private properties posted on Google without their permission. What is the purpose of Street View? Is the purpose to have a photo of every front door and every backyard posted on the Internet? No, the goal - according to Google anyway - is to provide driving directions. Now, who in the world needs to see a photo of me sunbathing on my deck to get from point "A" to point "B"? Street View is unnecessarily detailed for the stated purpose. Thus, Google is either throwing money to the wind collecting useless information, or it has reasons other than those it made public. Take your pick.
What is this - the bad analogy day? Did you invite Google management for a barbecue in your backyard and they just happened to bring cameras? Google takes a photo of your house and publishes it online along with the address and driving directions. Google does this without asking or telling you. I remember reading not so long ago a story in the news about a couple of enterprising burglars who used StreetView to see which homes in the neighborhood of their choice did not have those home security signs on their front lawns. Sure, that in itself was not a huge deal, but it did save them a lot of driving. I wonder if your view of this issue would have changed if your house was cleaned out by these two guys.
It is an entirely legitimate desire not to have your home's photo on Google. Streetview is a convenient tool for burglars to scope out neighborhoods, since Google has already done all the legwork for them. The residents' concerns in this case are perfectly valid. There is absolutely nothing wrong with stopping the googlemobil. Why should anyone waste their time asking Google to remove the photos, when they can stop Google from taking the photos in the first place? As if Google asked them for permission to take the photos in the first place. In many communities it is actually Google that is breaking local law by engaging in unlawful surveillance. But Google's size and deep pockets protect it from lawsuits. I wonder how long I would stay out of court (or jail, for that matter) if I would photograph random private residences and post the photos online, accompanied by location details.
No, but I think I am smart enough to work with one.