"This is dumb and doesn't belong here" bubbles up to the surface here all the time. I'm turning in my sig. Slashdot, you're too into yourself. I no longer identify with what has become a community where easy criticism is consistently considered insightful. The tone is ugly and the signal to noise ratio has, for me, crossed a waste-of-time threshold on a scale much larger than single-silly-article. The whole community seems to exist (largely) in order to congratulate itself for its own cleverness. Bye bye.
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads"
Really? Doubt it. The smartest people I know want nothing to do with the profit motive. I bet you've got a bunch of very bright 700-math SAT types out there, but that's not saying much. The best minds of any generation have the confidence to embark upon unconventional lives.
So the motive (and I'm not arguing, just curious) is to try to get some cred with the open source crowd (with whom they probably know they have an PR problem) without actually giving anything useful away?
I'm saddened by how common this error is. We are constantly faced with "what's best on a population basis" Vs "what I want for me" questions. Logic has nothing to do with it. It's about values.
Otherwise thoughtful people seem to like to think that they have a "rational perspective", whatever that means. You might be better than "the masses" (whoever they are) at logically solving problems once you have a *goal*, but you can't reason your way to ends. You will end up chasing your ends to a plurality of mutually defensible and mutually assailable assumptions. If that weren't the case, moral philosophy would actually be useful, and used.
If you're proud of your work, a business card is a great way to give your contact info to someone whom you might want to date. I do it and it.......has... never worked. Must be the business card is dead. Can't be my game.
But, as you know, many people aren't participating. And I'm not just talking about microphone geeks recording Mozart for the 18,000th time.
I find the Age of Adz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_Of_Adz to be a great example of how some artists are embracing the latest production techniques, yet employing them with careful compositional intent. Such work deserves to be delivered with the temporal and amplitude resolution with which it was created, says me.
As you probably know, *these* are the ones that really kick your ass: http://www.nachi.org/images10/oneWayScrew.png
Of course, they are only used for things like bathroom stalls because they would kick the Authorized Service Person's ass, too.
I have often thought of the one way screw (as shown in that image) coupled with a left-handed thread as somehow deep in its uselessness...
My *hypothesis*, (note "I believe") is that users themselves can serve this function by rating comments. Pretty simple, really. You can imagine any number of integration schemes that connect these ratings to a reputation value.
Sure, you can be pessimistic and say "never work", but the sociology of online communities is a young science. An anarchical web is important to me, so these questions are worth my energy and optimism.
Giant waste of time, bittorrents benefit is from the community bitching about bad torrents, you cant do that without a web of trust or a trusted third party.
But torrent search sites are neither webs of trust nor trusted third parties, right? They assist in separating the wheat from the chaff simply by allowing the wisdom of crowds to accumulate through posts linked to a torrent file.
Seems to me that this "what are people saying about this torrent?" functionality is consistent with complete decentralization; the community can in principle be built around the client instead of some site. Who hosts the discussions? Everyone who participates in them. Seems as cloud-able as anything else. Mods *can* be replaced by user ratings and associated karma, I believe.
Trolling sucks and our IP system is broken, yada yada, but...
That patent contains a lot of information about *how*, not just what. Of course, the language is vague and leaves you with no idea where they are with implementation; that's the lawyers' job!
I mean, this probably means *something*, right? Right?...
The system as claimed in claim 28 further comprising circuitry for determining an angle of a normal of the surface function that is correct for aiming a reflected beam into an eye of the observer using the equation:.delta..function..delta..delta..function..function..times..func- tion..pi. ##EQU00007## wherein:.delta..sub.OP is the angle of the normal of the surface function;.delta..sub.O is the angle of the reflected light beam measured from the plane of the projection screen;.delta..sub.P is the angle of a projected light beam measured from the plane of the projection screen; L.sub.P is the horizontal displacement of the projector; L.sub.PS is the vertical displacement of the projector; L.sub.O is the horizontal displacement of the observer; L.sub.OS is the vertical displacement of the observer; Z.sub.O is the average thickness of the projection screen; Z.sub.0 is the difference between the average thickness and the maximum thickness of the projection screen, x is the horizontal displacement along the surface of the projection screen; and k.sub.0=2/.lamda..sub.P wherein.lamda..sub.P is the length of a pixel that is to be projected to and from the normal location.
By the way, you're mistaken about the "whatever metric you choose" part. All you need is a factor-able parameter in your numerator that converges to zero over time and where is your metric headed?
If all you were trying to say was "shit gets superseded", I imagine you would have used fewer words in the OP.
My interest is not in the obvious. (Like, for example, the fact that systems don't run away to infinity on metrics that are monotonic with energy/resources required, or the fact that R.K. if a profit-motivated blowhard).
My interest is in specific examples of phenomena that have been advertised as being a big deal in the future because of some exponential fit to a small data set, later to be found to reasonably obey a sigmoid function.
Perhaps I didn't make that clear, but in any event, your entertaining reply does not address my point, and I imagine you would have used data instead of sarcasm if you had it.
the data set is too small to draw any real conclusions
There are *so* many examples like this where there is a sound investigative idea and not a shred of methodological rigor.
Just a refresher for many of you:
1. Choose your outcome
2. Choose a threshold that will count as an important effect size
3. Power your study (choose how many units will be tested) based on #2
4. Document 1 - 3 before you do the study so we know you didn't go fishing for spurious correlations after the fact
5. Run the study
6. Inferential statistics!
7. Profit! Except, not really.
Those who think #6 is more about obscuring things than revealing them don't know much about #6.
Our best hope for the desired outcome (keep the status quo: no one controls the web) is that legislators like the web the way it works now.
I recall that when DVRs were new, there was doubt about whether or not the FCC would get involved and make things suck.
The chairman of the FCC at the time was quoted as saying "I just got one of these Tivo things and it's great!"
As far as I could tell, that was that.
It's not a perfect analogy because corruption *could* have influenced that attitude, whereas anarchy on the Web benefits everyone in general and no one in particular.
Still, I suspect that our legislators know that the Web is a beautiful thing and wish to leave it the way it is.
This is all off-topic for TFA, but the provocative headline leads us towards this more (most?) important topic.
And before we judge if that seems too harsh a punishment, I would ask if anyone knows what the Chinese government would do to an American engineer who did the same thing to a Chinese company.
It seems to me that what some other country would do to a similar criminal is irrelevant. If North Korea were involved, would that justify a still harsher punishment?
How about this: the punishment is fair because the guy is a crook and the crime wasn't petty (though as an automotive engineer in R&D I would agree that it was less consequential than advertised).
Here here. The arrogance-to-usefulness ratio around here is getting tough to stomach. The more focused one is on scoring cleverness points, the fewer available cycles there are to actually get things done. Now, back to work... for the underprivileged.
Forgive me if I'm parroting someone else here, but no one seems to have mentioned the fucking DAZZLING array of free services that Google offers to the whole world for free. A sane debate on this topic would be more about whether the costs (and risks) associated with Google's dominance are worth the benefits of, to name a few: andoid, docs, gmail, google calendars, groups, code hosting, scholar, maps...
Is the ad clutter worth it? So far, HELL yes.
And stop talking about adbl*ck. That shit gets too popular and this all falls apart.
YOU, sir or madam, have the idea. I'm disappointed by the modded-up comments on this one. Of course the idea as implemented is pretty much a disease vector with no utility. The interesting question is what would happen if we had local public wifi darknets sitting around. Of course they would be plagued by malware as well, but/. starts to sound like The Man when it wants to shoot down a nice anarchical idea because it's obviously not secure. Net neutrality goes away, your precious torrents become unavailable, and all of a sudden we have good reasons to go local and dark. "But how would you know that you're actually connecting to..."...I know, but let's not be too safe, here. There is such a thing.
Slashdot Mirror
"This is dumb and doesn't belong here" bubbles up to the surface here all the time. I'm turning in my sig. Slashdot, you're too into yourself. I no longer identify with what has become a community where easy criticism is consistently considered insightful. The tone is ugly and the signal to noise ratio has, for me, crossed a waste-of-time threshold on a scale much larger than single-silly-article. The whole community seems to exist (largely) in order to congratulate itself for its own cleverness. Bye bye.
I hope your sig invites us to question patriotism, not to revise our opinions of Booth. Unless I've got the wrong Booth. Help me with the subtleties.
"Pointless flamebait causes cynical reaction in brains of /.ers"
Now you can.. and it's already got 35 reviews (mixed).
Really? Doubt it. The smartest people I know want nothing to do with the profit motive. I bet you've got a bunch of very bright 700-math SAT types out there, but that's not saying much. The best minds of any generation have the confidence to embark upon unconventional lives.
So the motive (and I'm not arguing, just curious) is to try to get some cred with the open source crowd (with whom they probably know they have an PR problem) without actually giving anything useful away?
I'm looking forward to hearing how this fits into MZ's world domination plans.
I'm saddened by how common this error is. We are constantly faced with "what's best on a population basis" Vs "what I want for me" questions. Logic has nothing to do with it. It's about values.
Otherwise thoughtful people seem to like to think that they have a "rational perspective", whatever that means. You might be better than "the masses" (whoever they are) at logically solving problems once you have a *goal*, but you can't reason your way to ends. You will end up chasing your ends to a plurality of mutually defensible and mutually assailable assumptions. If that weren't the case, moral philosophy would actually be useful, and used.
If you're proud of your work, a business card is a great way to give your contact info to someone whom you might want to date. I do it and it... ....has... never worked. Must be the business card is dead. Can't be my game.
Yes, the Loudness War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war continues.
But, as you know, many people aren't participating. And I'm not just talking about microphone geeks recording Mozart for the 18,000th time.
I find the Age of Adz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_Of_Adz to be a great example of how some artists are embracing the latest production techniques, yet employing them with careful compositional intent. Such work deserves to be delivered with the temporal and amplitude resolution with which it was created, says me.
As you probably know, *these* are the ones that really kick your ass: http://www.nachi.org/images10/oneWayScrew.png
Of course, they are only used for things like bathroom stalls because they would kick the Authorized Service Person's ass, too.
I have often thought of the one way screw (as shown in that image) coupled with a left-handed thread as somehow deep in its uselessness...
My *hypothesis*, (note "I believe") is that users themselves can serve this function by rating comments. Pretty simple, really. You can imagine any number of integration schemes that connect these ratings to a reputation value.
Sure, you can be pessimistic and say "never work", but the sociology of online communities is a young science. An anarchical web is important to me, so these questions are worth my energy and optimism.
Giant waste of time, bittorrents benefit is from the community bitching about bad torrents, you cant do that without a web of trust or a trusted third party.
But torrent search sites are neither webs of trust nor trusted third parties, right? They assist in separating the wheat from the chaff simply by allowing the wisdom of crowds to accumulate through posts linked to a torrent file.
Seems to me that this "what are people saying about this torrent?" functionality is consistent with complete decentralization; the community can in principle be built around the client instead of some site. Who hosts the discussions? Everyone who participates in them. Seems as cloud-able as anything else. Mods *can* be replaced by user ratings and associated karma, I believe.
That patent contains a lot of information about *how*, not just what. Of course, the language is vague and leaves you with no idea where they are with implementation; that's the lawyers' job!
I mean, this probably means *something*, right? Right?...
The system as claimed in claim 28 further comprising circuitry for determining an angle of a normal of the surface function that is correct for aiming a reflected beam into an eye of the observer using the equation: .delta..function..delta..delta..function..function..times..func- tion..pi. ##EQU00007## wherein: .delta..sub.OP is the angle of the normal of the surface function; .delta..sub.O is the angle of the reflected light beam measured from the plane of the projection screen; .delta..sub.P is the angle of a projected light beam measured from the plane of the projection screen; L.sub.P is the horizontal displacement of the projector; L.sub.PS is the vertical displacement of the projector; L.sub.O is the horizontal displacement of the observer; L.sub.OS is the vertical displacement of the observer; Z.sub.O is the average thickness of the projection screen; Z.sub.0 is the difference between the average thickness and the maximum thickness of the projection screen, x is the horizontal displacement along the surface of the projection screen; and k.sub.0=2/.lamda..sub.P wherein .lamda..sub.P is the length of a pixel that is to be projected to and from the normal location.
Interesting. I'll check it out. Thanks.
By the way, you're mistaken about the "whatever metric you choose" part. All you need is a factor-able parameter in your numerator that converges to zero over time and where is your metric headed?
If all you were trying to say was "shit gets superseded", I imagine you would have used fewer words in the OP.
My interest is not in the obvious. (Like, for example, the fact that systems don't run away to infinity on metrics that are monotonic with energy/resources required, or the fact that R.K. if a profit-motivated blowhard).
My interest is in specific examples of phenomena that have been advertised as being a big deal in the future because of some exponential fit to a small data set, later to be found to reasonably obey a sigmoid function.
Perhaps I didn't make that clear, but in any event, your entertaining reply does not address my point, and I imagine you would have used data instead of sarcasm if you had it.
Interesting, but not convincing with out examples and accompanying data.
the data set is too small to draw any real conclusions
There are *so* many examples like this where there is a sound investigative idea and not a shred of methodological rigor.
Just a refresher for many of you:
1. Choose your outcome
2. Choose a threshold that will count as an important effect size
3. Power your study (choose how many units will be tested) based on #2
4. Document 1 - 3 before you do the study so we know you didn't go fishing for spurious correlations after the fact
5. Run the study
6. Inferential statistics!
7. Profit! Except, not really.
Those who think #6 is more about obscuring things than revealing them don't know much about #6.
Our best hope for the desired outcome (keep the status quo: no one controls the web) is that legislators like the web the way it works now.
I recall that when DVRs were new, there was doubt about whether or not the FCC would get involved and make things suck.
The chairman of the FCC at the time was quoted as saying "I just got one of these Tivo things and it's great!"
As far as I could tell, that was that.
It's not a perfect analogy because corruption *could* have influenced that attitude, whereas anarchy on the Web benefits everyone in general and no one in particular.
Still, I suspect that our legislators know that the Web is a beautiful thing and wish to leave it the way it is.
This is all off-topic for TFA, but the provocative headline leads us towards this more (most?) important topic.
Why on earth would you expect their sentences to be comparable?
Some shared commonsense notion of justice?
I jest.
And before we judge if that seems too harsh a punishment, I would ask if anyone knows what the Chinese government would do to an American engineer who did the same thing to a Chinese company.
It seems to me that what some other country would do to a similar criminal is irrelevant. If North Korea were involved, would that justify a still harsher punishment?
How about this: the punishment is fair because the guy is a crook and the crime wasn't petty (though as an automotive engineer in R&D I would agree that it was less consequential than advertised).
Here here. The arrogance-to-usefulness ratio around here is getting tough to stomach. The more focused one is on scoring cleverness points, the fewer available cycles there are to actually get things done. Now, back to work... for the underprivileged.
Forgive me if I'm parroting someone else here, but no one seems to have mentioned the fucking DAZZLING array of free services that Google offers to the whole world for free. A sane debate on this topic would be more about whether the costs (and risks) associated with Google's dominance are worth the benefits of, to name a few: andoid, docs, gmail, google calendars, groups, code hosting, scholar, maps... Is the ad clutter worth it? So far, HELL yes. And stop talking about adbl*ck. That shit gets too popular and this all falls apart.
YOU, sir or madam, have the idea. I'm disappointed by the modded-up comments on this one. Of course the idea as implemented is pretty much a disease vector with no utility. The interesting question is what would happen if we had local public wifi darknets sitting around. Of course they would be plagued by malware as well, but /. starts to sound like The Man when it wants to shoot down a nice anarchical idea because it's obviously not secure. Net neutrality goes away, your precious torrents become unavailable, and all of a sudden we have good reasons to go local and dark. "But how would you know that you're actually connecting to..." ...I know, but let's not be too safe, here. There is such a thing.