Just because it's true for the group doesn't mean it's true for the individual.
Improving search results is about aggregates -- returning the best results for the most queries. Individuals don't matter. Google has used this fact to their advantage to show many links to many people while keeping their interface clean: each user only sees three links at the bottom of the main page, for example, but each of n>>3 links displayed in that spot is viewed many times.
If Yahoo can move relevant links higher in the result list for 15 percent of queries, the only concern is about the quantity of queries for which relevant links have moved lower. If stereotypes do in fact represent the majority of a demographic, then it doesn't really matter to a search provider whether you or I as individuals represent our respective stereotypes.
Last, what if you want to know what other people not from your demographic group are seeing?
Why would you want to know? SEO? The goal of search engine optimization is completely at odds with the goal of improving search results: higher rankings of a site in spite of its relevance to the user, versus higher rankings for a site based on its relevance to the user.
Oh gheeze. A philosophical rant. That wasn't my intention. It really wasn't.
Would you rather that the phone company not itemize these and hide what the charges are for?
Sure, and why don't they break down what portion of your monthly fee goes towards payroll, rent, electricity and such. Those are unfunded mandates too (payroll mandated by the employees, rent mandated by property owner, electricity mandated by designers of office equipment).
The bitch of these fees isn't so much that they're charged, but that they aren't quoted. $29.99 per month? Not really, but that's what we're quoted.
In other words, it was written with no regard for memory, performance, or elegance.
This is like tearing down a city's last historic building to make way for new construction. Sure, the new building is large, comfortable, and has a clean look and feel, and more easily accommodates modern conveniences, but it will cost an order of magnitude more to build, people will use the extra space for crap they don't need, the look and feel is really a cheap facade, and it will have about as much character as an Andy Warhol painting.
Sounds an awful lot like breach of contract -- he agreed to pay a certain amount of money in exchange for the university's services, but now the university is refusing to deliver those services unless he pays more than originally agreed upon.
Successful? It would never get off the ground -- participants would be labeled "terrorists" by federal and state governments, and the rest of our society would concur to avoid being labeled "terrorists" themselves. And the irony of a national aversion to revolution in the US would be completely ignored.
Such a configuration (called master keying in the US) reduces security. See Matt Blaze's paper on the subject at http://www.crypto.com/papers/mk.pdf (Abloy is mentioned by name as being vulnerable to the described attack).
It's one thing to promote open source (I think it's great myself), but I'll never understand disdain for closed source. If someone wants to spend their time or money producing code, what they do with it is up to them. If you don't like it, don't use it -- but at least respect the freedom of choice of the person or organization that wrote it.
That's what the lazy kids called those of us who made an effort in college. Claimed it affected their grades, too. But the fact is that if I want to go the extra mile on a project (whether for school or work), it's my prerogative. If you don't want to do the same, don't blame me because you look bad -- aiming below the status quo is your prerogative.
The slippery-slope fallacy is a fallacy. If I wanted to knock you down without a sudden jolt, I'd push you down a slippery slope. If I wanted to rise up without immediate notice, I'd use the thin edge of a wedge. It's a perfectly valid argument.
So by your logic, I shouldn't type because I make typos, despite the fact that I "get away with" with typing properly most of the time? The fact that it so often happens without consequence is evidence enough that people can do it.
I have a 6 figure salary and you know what: I hate paying so little in taxes
At 6 figures you're paying what, about one-third of your income in Federal taxes? Would you care to enlighten us as to what would be a more appropriate distribution of the fruits of your labor between yourself and the United States? What should the extra money pay for, exactly? You mention telecom and healthcare, but paying more in taxes so we can pay less for government-subsidized phones and doctors seems like a wash to me. Either way we have to shell out.
Politicians have a fire lit under their ass to make sure that taxes are spent efficiently. The Republicans got their asses handed to them in 2006 and 2008 because of it...
Catching a lot of flak from the public and the news media is hardly the same fire-under-the-ass faced by those who run a for-profit entity. How many of these Republicans from 2006 and 2008 lost elections because of spending? Voters are apathetic; shareholders, not so much.
He's not blaming the series of tubes, he's blaming the ISPs for harboring spammers, botnets, etc.
GP's not blaming I95, he's blaming states that manage a big chunk of it for harboring crack dealers, distributors, etc.
Neither states nor ISPs should be complacent about mischief within their borders, but the more traffic that passes though a state/ISP, the bigger that state/ISPs share of the problem will be.
If you lock non-ABS brakes on snow, it turns the car into a snowplow and you stop extremely quickly
Huh? Locking (non-ABS) brakes on snow turns the car into a sled. The point of pumping the brakes, whether manually or with ABS, is to to avoid overcoming the friction force between the tire and the road (i.e., skidding). There's more friction between rubber and asphalt than between rubber and snow, so if locking the (non-ABS) brakes causes a skid on asphalt, it will most certainly cause a skid on snow.
Sorry, didn't RTFA. Somewhat and significantly are not lumped together in the survey breakdown linked by eldavojohn. Still, providing only three options ('significantly', 'somewhat', and 'not at all') doesn't allow for much precision.
Not everyone needs a livable wage. The convenience store I worked at in high school employed mostly high school kids living at home and spouses of primary wage earners. For most of them, it was disposable income.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because it's true for the group doesn't mean it's true for the individual.
Improving search results is about aggregates -- returning the best results for the most queries. Individuals don't matter. Google has used this fact to their advantage to show many links to many people while keeping their interface clean: each user only sees three links at the bottom of the main page, for example, but each of n>>3 links displayed in that spot is viewed many times.
If Yahoo can move relevant links higher in the result list for 15 percent of queries, the only concern is about the quantity of queries for which relevant links have moved lower. If stereotypes do in fact represent the majority of a demographic, then it doesn't really matter to a search provider whether you or I as individuals represent our respective stereotypes.
Last, what if you want to know what other people not from your demographic group are seeing?
Why would you want to know? SEO? The goal of search engine optimization is completely at odds with the goal of improving search results: higher rankings of a site in spite of its relevance to the user, versus higher rankings for a site based on its relevance to the user.
Oh gheeze. A philosophical rant. That wasn't my intention. It really wasn't.
There has been between wholesalers and retailers for years, but not, unfortunately, between retailers and their customers.
http://www.google.com/search?q=X12+832
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Interchange
Would you rather that the phone company not itemize these and hide what the charges are for?
Sure, and why don't they break down what portion of your monthly fee goes towards payroll, rent, electricity and such. Those are unfunded mandates too (payroll mandated by the employees, rent mandated by property owner, electricity mandated by designers of office equipment).
The bitch of these fees isn't so much that they're charged, but that they aren't quoted. $29.99 per month? Not really, but that's what we're quoted.
Be sure to watch for my upcoming essay on the perils of being facetious in an electronic medium.
written to modern coding standards
In other words, it was written with no regard for memory, performance, or elegance.
This is like tearing down a city's last historic building to make way for new construction. Sure, the new building is large, comfortable, and has a clean look and feel, and more easily accommodates modern conveniences, but it will cost an order of magnitude more to build, people will use the extra space for crap they don't need, the look and feel is really a cheap facade, and it will have about as much character as an Andy Warhol painting.
Sounds an awful lot like breach of contract -- he agreed to pay a certain amount of money in exchange for the university's services, but now the university is refusing to deliver those services unless he pays more than originally agreed upon.
Bart, don't make fun of grad students, they just made a terrible life choice. -Marge
Successful? It would never get off the ground -- participants would be labeled "terrorists" by federal and state governments, and the rest of our society would concur to avoid being labeled "terrorists" themselves. And the irony of a national aversion to revolution in the US would be completely ignored.
Not sure, but there have been lawsuits over stolen e-goods: http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/005816.html
Such a configuration (called master keying in the US) reduces security. See Matt Blaze's paper on the subject at http://www.crypto.com/papers/mk.pdf (Abloy is mentioned by name as being vulnerable to the described attack).
It's one thing to promote open source (I think it's great myself), but I'll never understand disdain for closed source. If someone wants to spend their time or money producing code, what they do with it is up to them. If you don't like it, don't use it -- but at least respect the freedom of choice of the person or organization that wrote it.
I tried invoicing the city for my time to remove a boot from my car, but they haven't paid yet.
over eager beaver A types
That's what the lazy kids called those of us who made an effort in college. Claimed it affected their grades, too. But the fact is that if I want to go the extra mile on a project (whether for school or work), it's my prerogative. If you don't want to do the same, don't blame me because you look bad -- aiming below the status quo is your prerogative.
99 comments and no one has mentioned:
d) Fly around it
How wide is this ash cloud, anyway?
The slippery-slope fallacy is a fallacy. If I wanted to knock you down without a sudden jolt, I'd push you down a slippery slope. If I wanted to rise up without immediate notice, I'd use the thin edge of a wedge. It's a perfectly valid argument.
So by your logic, I shouldn't type because I make typos, despite the fact that I "get away with" with typing properly most of the time? The fact that it so often happens without consequence is evidence enough that people can do it.
No, we're just helpless and apathetic.
I have a 6 figure salary and you know what: I hate paying so little in taxes
At 6 figures you're paying what, about one-third of your income in Federal taxes? Would you care to enlighten us as to what would be a more appropriate distribution of the fruits of your labor between yourself and the United States? What should the extra money pay for, exactly? You mention telecom and healthcare, but paying more in taxes so we can pay less for government-subsidized phones and doctors seems like a wash to me. Either way we have to shell out.
Politicians have a fire lit under their ass to make sure that taxes are spent efficiently. The Republicans got their asses handed to them in 2006 and 2008 because of it...
Catching a lot of flak from the public and the news media is hardly the same fire-under-the-ass faced by those who run a for-profit entity. How many of these Republicans from 2006 and 2008 lost elections because of spending? Voters are apathetic; shareholders, not so much.
He's not blaming the series of tubes, he's blaming the ISPs for harboring spammers, botnets, etc.
GP's not blaming I95, he's blaming states that manage a big chunk of it for harboring crack dealers, distributors, etc.
Neither states nor ISPs should be complacent about mischief within their borders, but the more traffic that passes though a state/ISP, the bigger that state/ISPs share of the problem will be.
If you lock non-ABS brakes on snow, it turns the car into a snowplow and you stop extremely quickly
Huh? Locking (non-ABS) brakes on snow turns the car into a sled. The point of pumping the brakes, whether manually or with ABS, is to to avoid overcoming the friction force between the tire and the road (i.e., skidding). There's more friction between rubber and asphalt than between rubber and snow, so if locking the (non-ABS) brakes causes a skid on asphalt, it will most certainly cause a skid on snow.
Not everyone thinks homes are fungible.
Sorry, didn't RTFA. Somewhat and significantly are not lumped together in the survey breakdown linked by eldavojohn. Still, providing only three options ('significantly', 'somewhat', and 'not at all') doesn't allow for much precision.
More than three-quarters of scientists... say their work would be significantly hampered
84 percent said losing Google would 'somewhat or significantly' hamper their research
Typical example of a survey designed to produce the desired results.
Not everyone needs a livable wage. The convenience store I worked at in high school employed mostly high school kids living at home and spouses of primary wage earners. For most of them, it was disposable income.