Can anyone give a brief rundown on what HDR is? I know it stands for "high dynamic range", but as someone who knows nothing about photography, it means nothing to me. What it has to do with overexposure/underexposure (to which the video refers)? Why is it harder to do with video than still images?
We're talking about professional software engineering here, not hiring some guy to "write a program" for you.
That you didn't have any processes in place for quality assurance says a lot more than anything else in your little anecdote.
I'm not saying we shouldn't test. I'm certainly not saying our code shouldn't be independently reviewed. I am saying that having your programmer run manual tests of his code after writing it is a waste of his time and your money. He should have tested it before he wrote it!
We can't possibly test as well as a professional tester. We develop systems based on our imperfect understanding of the requirements. There are massive classes of bugs that we simply can't find, otherwise we wouldn't have written it like that to begin with.
Does anyone have any tips on how I can make non-automated testing a little bit more stimulating so I can at least begin to form a habit of doing so?
No, I don't. I strongly think you're directing your effort the wrong way, and duplicating work if you're spending too much time on non-automated testing.
Software Engineers are not good at poking holes in their own work, so you should have someone else doing the bulk of that kind of testing anyway. You obviously need to do some cursory testing to avoid wasting someone else's time, but there are much better ways of directing your testing effort.
Focus on developing unit tests both before and during the development effort. Avoid developing your unit tests after writing the code though - your mind will be tainted with your approach, and you'll miss the obvious stuff. Not only do unit tests reveal bugs, the act of writing them will also help you get interfaces right, and help ensure a better overall design for your code.
Nice idea, but I can break it trivially with my Android phone: Open "goggles", point at screen, click, and "Similar Images" gives me the answer (or a multi-word answer containing the answer you're looking for).
I have to keep my hand really still as I take the shots though, so perhaps a bit of image distortion would be enough to work around that.
As a number of others have stated, the reCAPTCHA server only knows the answer to one of the words it's giving you. You only need to get the "easy" one right to be passed as a human. Getting the "hard" word right makes no difference in terms of passing the test.
If this were getting 30% accuracy on the hard words, then that would be *real* news.
I suspect this is getting slightly lower success than they're reporting, as that 38% figure is assuming they're only getting the easy words right, but in actual fact they're bound to get only the hard one right every now and then.
> Until they invent a machine that can travel back in time and compare the suspect's claims against the facts, there can be no lie detectors
You're talking about a "truth detector". A perfect lie detector would just need to be able to direct read access to a person's memory. While Atomicdevice has some really good points about manipulation of memory, that shouldn't discount a perfect lie detector (if one ever existed) being used in all cases. The manipulating memory thing is a problem with witnesses, not with a hypothetical perfect lie detector.
If such a detector existed, and I were accused of something I hadn't done, I'd expect to be able to use it to show that I had no recollection of commiting the act, and that I remember being somewhere else. At least I only have to worry about a jury questioning the quality of my memory rather than questioning if I'm just protecting myself. Of course, if such a thing existed, juries might start questioning why some people weren't using them...
Probabilities are a bit like temperatures. Would you say that the weather on a 60F day is twice as warm as a 30F day?
By your logic, a perfect system would only be "twice as good as guessing". What does that even mean? "50% better" starts to sound pretty good when you look at it like that!
The only law I've ever had to deal with similar to this (see my nick for a caveat here) says that for certain things to pass, you need "not less than a two thirds majority". That's pretty cut and dried. Two thirds of 206 is 412 / 3. 136 is 408 / 3. Seems pretty clear to me.
You bring up the example of children not being able to move from Texas. That contrasts really well with the Walmart example people have been throwing around. If you can't buy a CD in Walmart, then you can just get it from somewhere else.
Here though, if you want to install an App that Apple has arbitrarily banned, most people can't just whip out their Android. People with iPhone's have already spent a bundle of money on a phone, and can't be expected to fork out another $500. People bought the iPhone on mass, not realising the implications of Apples rules. With the price of phones, voting with one's feet is not as simple as walking a few hundred metres down the road.
Yes, you can just read the site in Safari, but Apple is putting barriers in place based solely on the fact they don't like the content. And here's the rub - Apple could concievably block content through the browser, and you'd have no recourse but to throw your phone away. Sure, it's not very likely, but the taste seems kind of familiar, doesn't it?
The sample size was really small in this - 200. So 5 people out of 200 showed no deterioration in driving skill with improved memory performance.
I'd love to see how their driving metrics compared to everyone else though. Is it that the keep driving well while on the phone, or are they just crap drivers who don't concentrate on the road even when they're not on the phone?
+1. I really think the editors jumped the gun putting this through. Most worthwhile stories get submitted to the fire-hose multiple times, so why not wait for a submission that actually gives a bit of background, rather than just linking to a twitter post that was obviously written in the heat of the moment?
In addition to your questions, I'd like to know what PayPal has told them, if anything. It's all well and good to scream, "censorship!", but if this is just a bureaucracy stuff up, then this is not really news - PayPal does this all the time.
Aside from the usual arguments surrounding the average age of game players and my right to choose my entertainment (within reason), and shoehorning games into less restricted categories (GTA-IV, anyone?), I believe outright banning R18+ games probably increasing the availability of these games to minors.
For games that are available in stores, children are the least likely to be able to afford the games. Relative to adults, your average minor is probably going to pirate a game rather than buy it (regardless of legality and classification).
If you ban R18+ games, then adults are going to pirate the game too - if I want to play a game I can't buy in the store, I know I will. In the day of BitTorrent, more people downloading an item in a geographic area, the more accessible that item becomes in that area.
All they're doing by banning R18+ games, is giving minors more seeders when they go ahead and download it anyway.
Contrary to popular belief, comments on Slashdot are written by multiple users just like yourself (but different!).
As it actually happens, the set of people who feel compelled to comment and moderate on "Pirate Bay" stories may not be exactly the same set of people that comment and moderate on GPL licensing stories.
Of the users who comment or moderate on both kinds of stories, some might have what appear to you to be contradicting viewpoints, but you may need to stop looking at everything as black and white - maybe you'll learn something.
I understand how "RIAA should not be destroying people's lives for downloading songs" could be interpreted by you to mean "Copyright sucks, and anyone should have the right to copy anything they want." But there's actually a not-so-subtle difference between those two viewpoints.
I also understand how you might interpret "Corporations need to comply with the terms under which they licensed others' software by releasing their source code or remove the copyright software from their product" as "Burn the evil corporations at the stake", but again, these arguments are not the same thing.
I hope this helps resolve at least some of your confusion.
I notice these guys have "live support" from their page. It's not that much effort for us to waste a lot of their time, and make it impossible for them to tell the difference between us and the real queries.
Slashdot Mirror
Can anyone give a brief rundown on what HDR is? I know it stands for "high dynamic range", but as someone who knows nothing about photography, it means nothing to me. What it has to do with overexposure/underexposure (to which the video refers)? Why is it harder to do with video than still images?
Yes, you're absolutely right. According to Wikipedia, the non-registered one's are called "common law marks" in the US.
IANAL either, AFAIK.
Is there any way in which this is not a textbook correct application of trademarks?
Don't trademarks needed to be registered to be enforced?
We're talking about professional software engineering here, not hiring some guy to "write a program" for you.
That you didn't have any processes in place for quality assurance says a lot more than anything else in your little anecdote.
I'm not saying we shouldn't test. I'm certainly not saying our code shouldn't be independently reviewed. I am saying that having your programmer run manual tests of his code after writing it is a waste of his time and your money. He should have tested it before he wrote it!
We can't possibly test as well as a professional tester. We develop systems based on our imperfect understanding of the requirements. There are massive classes of bugs that we simply can't find, otherwise we wouldn't have written it like that to begin with.
Does anyone have any tips on how I can make non-automated testing a little bit more stimulating so I can at least begin to form a habit of doing so?
No, I don't. I strongly think you're directing your effort the wrong way, and duplicating work if you're spending too much time on non-automated testing.
Software Engineers are not good at poking holes in their own work, so you should have someone else doing the bulk of that kind of testing anyway. You obviously need to do some cursory testing to avoid wasting someone else's time, but there are much better ways of directing your testing effort.
Focus on developing unit tests both before and during the development effort. Avoid developing your unit tests after writing the code though - your mind will be tainted with your approach, and you'll miss the obvious stuff. Not only do unit tests reveal bugs, the act of writing them will also help you get interfaces right, and help ensure a better overall design for your code.
Nice idea, but I can break it trivially with my Android phone: Open "goggles", point at screen, click, and "Similar Images" gives me the answer (or a multi-word answer containing the answer you're looking for).
I have to keep my hand really still as I take the shots though, so perhaps a bit of image distortion would be enough to work around that.
As a number of others have stated, the reCAPTCHA server only knows the answer to one of the words it's giving you. You only need to get the "easy" one right to be passed as a human. Getting the "hard" word right makes no difference in terms of passing the test.
If this were getting 30% accuracy on the hard words, then that would be *real* news.
I suspect this is getting slightly lower success than they're reporting, as that 38% figure is assuming they're only getting the easy words right, but in actual fact they're bound to get only the hard one right every now and then.
> everyone would think it was cool and stuff
You mean, just like Uranus?
Flamebait? Has a mod been smoking crack again, or does this comment have some other level I'm not getting?
> Until they invent a machine that can travel back in time and compare the suspect's claims against the facts, there can be no lie detectors
You're talking about a "truth detector". A perfect lie detector would just need to be able to direct read access to a person's memory. While Atomicdevice has some really good points about manipulation of memory, that shouldn't discount a perfect lie detector (if one ever existed) being used in all cases. The manipulating memory thing is a problem with witnesses, not with a hypothetical perfect lie detector.
If such a detector existed, and I were accused of something I hadn't done, I'd expect to be able to use it to show that I had no recollection of commiting the act, and that I remember being somewhere else. At least I only have to worry about a jury questioning the quality of my memory rather than questioning if I'm just protecting myself. Of course, if such a thing existed, juries might start questioning why some people weren't using them...
Probabilities are a bit like temperatures. Would you say that the weather on a 60F day is twice as warm as a 30F day?
By your logic, a perfect system would only be "twice as good as guessing". What does that even mean? "50% better" starts to sound pretty good when you look at it like that!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic
The only law I've ever had to deal with similar to this (see my nick for a caveat here) says that for certain things to pass, you need "not less than a two thirds majority". That's pretty cut and dried. Two thirds of 206 is 412 / 3. 136 is 408 / 3. Seems pretty clear to me.
Actually, I think this is greyer than that.
You bring up the example of children not being able to move from Texas. That contrasts really well with the Walmart example people have been throwing around. If you can't buy a CD in Walmart, then you can just get it from somewhere else.
Here though, if you want to install an App that Apple has arbitrarily banned, most people can't just whip out their Android. People with iPhone's have already spent a bundle of money on a phone, and can't be expected to fork out another $500. People bought the iPhone on mass, not realising the implications of Apples rules. With the price of phones, voting with one's feet is not as simple as walking a few hundred metres down the road.
Yes, you can just read the site in Safari, but Apple is putting barriers in place based solely on the fact they don't like the content. And here's the rub - Apple could concievably block content through the browser, and you'd have no recourse but to throw your phone away. Sure, it's not very likely, but the taste seems kind of familiar, doesn't it?
The sample size was really small in this - 200. So 5 people out of 200 showed no deterioration in driving skill with improved memory performance.
I'd love to see how their driving metrics compared to everyone else though. Is it that the keep driving well while on the phone, or are they just crap drivers who don't concentrate on the road even when they're not on the phone?
+1. I really think the editors jumped the gun putting this through. Most worthwhile stories get submitted to the fire-hose multiple times, so why not wait for a submission that actually gives a bit of background, rather than just linking to a twitter post that was obviously written in the heat of the moment?
In addition to your questions, I'd like to know what PayPal has told them, if anything. It's all well and good to scream, "censorship!", but if this is just a bureaucracy stuff up, then this is not really news - PayPal does this all the time.
You know how big a millimeter is, right?
He's American, you insensitive clod.
What kind of a shithead moderates this tripe as Insightful? Troll ACs I can handle. But do we need to put up with troll moderators?
The first sentence is both factually incorrect and irrelevant. I won't even go near the second.
I have a similar problem with my girlfriend. Well, except she's a prostitute.
If ever there were an opportunity for mods to put Informative points on a humorous post, this was it.
Aside from the usual arguments surrounding the average age of game players and my right to choose my entertainment (within reason), and shoehorning games into less restricted categories (GTA-IV, anyone?), I believe outright banning R18+ games probably increasing the availability of these games to minors.
For games that are available in stores, children are the least likely to be able to afford the games. Relative to adults, your average minor is probably going to pirate a game rather than buy it (regardless of legality and classification).
If you ban R18+ games, then adults are going to pirate the game too - if I want to play a game I can't buy in the store, I know I will. In the day of BitTorrent, more people downloading an item in a geographic area, the more accessible that item becomes in that area.
All they're doing by banning R18+ games, is giving minors more seeders when they go ahead and download it anyway.
Contrary to popular belief, comments on Slashdot are written by multiple users just like yourself (but different!).
As it actually happens, the set of people who feel compelled to comment and moderate on "Pirate Bay" stories may not be exactly the same set of people that comment and moderate on GPL licensing stories.
Of the users who comment or moderate on both kinds of stories, some might have what appear to you to be contradicting viewpoints, but you may need to stop looking at everything as black and white - maybe you'll learn something.
I understand how "RIAA should not be destroying people's lives for downloading songs" could be interpreted by you to mean "Copyright sucks, and anyone should have the right to copy anything they want." But there's actually a not-so-subtle difference between those two viewpoints.
I also understand how you might interpret "Corporations need to comply with the terms under which they licensed others' software by releasing their source code or remove the copyright software from their product" as "Burn the evil corporations at the stake", but again, these arguments are not the same thing.
I hope this helps resolve at least some of your confusion.
I'm 95% certain it's not, otherwise it wouldn't block me once it knew I was wasting its time.
I've recorded a few tips on wasting their time in my journal here: http://slashdot.org/journal/241542/Coolstuffonline-spam.
Get to it, people! Remember, the more neurotic you sound, the more fun you can have.
I notice these guys have "live support" from their page. It's not that much effort for us to waste a lot of their time, and make it impossible for them to tell the difference between us and the real queries.