Not to troll, but it's still almost impossible to question the "science" behind various studies posted here on slashdot and similar sites. It's sad how gladly we will accept anything that is published as a scientific study, without question. Us nerds need to remember that science is a methodology steeped in scepticism; it's not a certification.
One concept that I've always given Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock) kudos for is realizing that pirates are not your customers. They aren't even potential customers. You then have to keep that idea in mind when you do your market research to see if the price your customers are willing to pay are enough to justify your production costs.
I suppose you can't charge $xxx/hr as a consultant or book author merely by telling the boss to set up something like a medieval blacksmithing guild, gotta come up with some new twist on the old story.
Actually, writing about such an approach would likely sell like hot-cakes. Repackaging an old idea in new marketing is an age-old formula that works surprisingly well. (See recent references to Caveman diet) Plus, the time is ripe for the next fad to replace pair-programming.
His writing sounds like it came straight out of a USA Today puff piece. I guess he hasn't yet learned to change the tone of his writing when posting informally online. (See http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)
If you ask me, this is a perfectly rational response to the current state of scientific "research". Today's science is much too expensive to be self-funded, even by a university. So you have science that is funded by grants and sponsorships. A scientist has all the freedom in the world to publish results that contradict the expectations of the sponsors, but that scientist will likely have to apply elsewhere for a grant for the next project.
The end result isn't that a scientist will deliberately doctor the results, but you will have a preponderance of research that only reaffirms original expectations.
Hate: (verb) to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest Critical: (adj) inclined to find fault or to judge with severity, often too readily
Seriously? Hate is the more appropriate word? Extreme hostility and passionate dislike?
Me thinks that people on the internet exaggerate too much...
Are we seeing the birth of a new business phrase? I can't believe that anyone would just happen throw around the phrase "eminently suitable" several times unless it's ingrained. That is, all the suits at the office and VC meetings are throwing around the term so often that he just repeats it without thinking about how awkward it is.
Speaking for myself as a geek, I don't consider myself anti-intellectual. It's just that over the years I've come to discover that a lot of conventional "wisdom" is BS. Pert of being a geek is doing things a different way, experimenting, and seeing what happens. Well guess what? Some of those experiments actually pay off and you discover how ass-backward the rest of the world is doing things. Over time, these life experiences accumulate to form a general skepticism of all authority in general.
Agreed. The one thing I haven't seen visual languages address well is what happens when you have a program with several kilo-blocks. How do you find the block that you want to link to? Do you scroll through them all? Pick from a hierarchical menu? Zoom through a 3D representation?
Inevitably, you're forced to name the blocks, which means that you type the name of the block that want to link to. Tell me then, how is all that clicking and typing any easier than simply typing "foo = bar * baz" in a text editor?
Best solution to keeping your boss out of your personal stuff? Don't do personal stuff on company time.
If only the reverse was true. That is, the company doesn't expect me to do company stuff on personal time. I can't count the number of pagers, cell phones, pda's, laptops, and smart phones that I've had to lug around with me over the years.
I think mainstream media has an irrational exuberance over twitter because it sees it as a cheap and effective marketing channel. It's like the mid-90's where having a.com web page was seen as hip and got you some extra attention. Likewise, the twitter subscribers will eventually become numb and bored with the novelty, and corporate tweets will become nothing more than shouting in the wind.
*sigh* If governments are truly concerned about child welfare, sexual abuse and exploitation are in about, oh, I don't know, 32nd place on the list of real problems. Somewhere below domestic violence, child negligence, lack of proper health care for the impoverished, undernourishment, and illiteracy.
I guess the problem is that those can't be addressed by token laws targeting internet surveillance.
Another show ruined by focus groups?
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I once heard that The Unit switched attention away from the military operations of the men to the lives of the women left behind at home, as a result of focus group studies. Soon thereafter, it tanked in ratings and was canceled.
I can't help but feel something similar must have happened to Lost somewhere within the last 6 years. When the show first started out, I got the distinct feeling that the many mysteries had meaning and rational explanations. (I believe that the writers themselves even said so.) Sure, the Dharma Initiative was a peculiar operation, but it explained some things. But this ending, I don't know... It smells as if the ending that was originally planned was scrapped because it offended too many focus groups. Perhaps the original story promoted that all mysteries are only a lack of scientific understanding? (Sufficiently advanced technology, and all that) Perhaps it promoted predestination? I don't know.
All I can say is that with this ending, something changed somewhere. The carpet doesn't match the drapes.
This "article" has all the smells of 10% sensationalist reporting. That is, the part of the story that has been reported is likely just the tip of a much larger, more rational, iceberg. I failed to find any info in the article about if this was the first offense. I suspect that it isn't. Has she been warned before? Does she have a history of knowingly sneaking in contraband? In short, how many other straws are there on the camel's back?
Re:As the "computer guy" for a large circle of peo
on
Apple iPad Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
Twitter? Really? Joe Consumer actually uses Twitter? And here I thought it was only used for personal brand promotion...
Or did you mean that Joe Consumer wants to read Twitter?
I wish English 101 actually taught you to write this clearly.
"Advanced" writing classes in J-school will teach you to start off with an anecdote of someone affected by the story, which will get the reader to sympathize. You then bury the lead 5 paragraphs in and only get to the real point after the reader has continued on to page 5C. Pad with further anecdotes from people with similar and opposite views.
I went to college to get a comp-sci degree after I already had several years of experience in the real world. The one thing that I took away from that education that I had not stumbled upon naturally was Big-O notation. Specifically, how it describes the time and space efficiency of different data structures and algorithms. It really comes in handy when trying to optimize. There have been several where I had become focused on optimizing the crap out of an inner loop, only to realize that if I switched to a different data structure I'd get much faster O(log n) performance.
Other than that, many people only experience low-level C and assembly programming while at school. But you mention that you have C++ experience, so you're probably already well familiar with segfaults and buffer overflows.
Lastly, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) is a great read. The levels of recursion and abstraction that it employs will often blow your mind. Sadly, I can't use that kind of coding in the real world because I have to write "maintainable" code and most corporate programmers don't want to have their mind blown.
"Here he will come to a land and be engulfed in the conflict between two ancient gods... and the battle between light and darkness."
Oh dear. If ever there was a formula for an incomprehensible plot, this is it. You see, when a writer can put himself in the role of a god, it gives him free reign to make things happen for no rational reason, without any cause-and-effect, and without any character development or background.
The result is usually a random meandering with no tangible purpose.
Security systems that will let you in with nothing more than a fingerprint scan.
Gee, what's more difficult: guessing the correct password within 3 attampts, or lifting a fingerprint and making a gelatin mold?
(hint: see Mythbusters to see how difficult it isn't to create a gelatin mold)
Speaking of security theater, kids are far more likely to drown in a swimming pool or die in a car crash than to be shot by a gun. (Not that I own a gun or care to defend those that do.) Yet no one seems to be overly concerned about swimming pools or bad motorists.
Security theater works mostly due to humans' inability to grasp simple probability.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to troll, but it's still almost impossible to question the "science" behind various studies posted here on slashdot and similar sites. It's sad how gladly we will accept anything that is published as a scientific study, without question. Us nerds need to remember that science is a methodology steeped in scepticism; it's not a certification.
One concept that I've always given Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock) kudos for is realizing that pirates are not your customers. They aren't even potential customers. You then have to keep that idea in mind when you do your market research to see if the price your customers are willing to pay are enough to justify your production costs.
I suppose you can't charge $xxx/hr as a consultant or book author merely by telling the boss to set up something like a medieval blacksmithing guild, gotta come up with some new twist on the old story.
Actually, writing about such an approach would likely sell like hot-cakes. Repackaging an old idea in new marketing is an age-old formula that works surprisingly well. (See recent references to Caveman diet) Plus, the time is ripe for the next fad to replace pair-programming.
His writing sounds like it came straight out of a USA Today puff piece. I guess he hasn't yet learned to change the tone of his writing when posting informally online. (See http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)
Things would have been a lot less tense if he had clarified.
If you ask me, this is a perfectly rational response to the current state of scientific "research". Today's science is much too expensive to be self-funded, even by a university. So you have science that is funded by grants and sponsorships. A scientist has all the freedom in the world to publish results that contradict the expectations of the sponsors, but that scientist will likely have to apply elsewhere for a grant for the next project.
The end result isn't that a scientist will deliberately doctor the results, but you will have a preponderance of research that only reaffirms original expectations.
If YouTube has contract agreements that allow 3rd parties to actively monitor and approve posts, doesn't that invalidate its safe harbor status?
???
Hate: (verb) to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest
Critical: (adj) inclined to find fault or to judge with severity, often too readily
Seriously? Hate is the more appropriate word? Extreme hostility and passionate dislike?
Me thinks that people on the internet exaggerate too much...
It's been going on for several years now, but I wonder in which year did critique become "hate"? Seems to me that it happened sometime in the 90's.
Are we seeing the birth of a new business phrase? I can't believe that anyone would just happen throw around the phrase "eminently suitable" several times unless it's ingrained. That is, all the suits at the office and VC meetings are throwing around the term so often that he just repeats it without thinking about how awkward it is.
Speaking for myself as a geek, I don't consider myself anti-intellectual. It's just that over the years I've come to discover that a lot of conventional "wisdom" is BS. Pert of being a geek is doing things a different way, experimenting, and seeing what happens. Well guess what? Some of those experiments actually pay off and you discover how ass-backward the rest of the world is doing things. Over time, these life experiences accumulate to form a general skepticism of all authority in general.
Agreed. The one thing I haven't seen visual languages address well is what happens when you have a program with several kilo-blocks. How do you find the block that you want to link to? Do you scroll through them all? Pick from a hierarchical menu? Zoom through a 3D representation?
Inevitably, you're forced to name the blocks, which means that you type the name of the block that want to link to. Tell me then, how is all that clicking and typing any easier than simply typing "foo = bar * baz" in a text editor?
Now, if they can only devise a less intrusive way to do subvocal recognition, UI's will be able to practically read our minds.
Am I the only one who immediately thought of Grim Fandango and sproutella darts?
Best solution to keeping your boss out of your personal stuff? Don't do personal stuff on company time.
If only the reverse was true. That is, the company doesn't expect me to do company stuff on personal time. I can't count the number of pagers, cell phones, pda's, laptops, and smart phones that I've had to lug around with me over the years.
I think mainstream media has an irrational exuberance over twitter because it sees it as a cheap and effective marketing channel. It's like the mid-90's where having a .com web page was seen as hip and got you some extra attention. Likewise, the twitter subscribers will eventually become numb and bored with the novelty, and corporate tweets will become nothing more than shouting in the wind.
*sigh* If governments are truly concerned about child welfare, sexual abuse and exploitation are in about, oh, I don't know, 32nd place on the list of real problems. Somewhere below domestic violence, child negligence, lack of proper health care for the impoverished, undernourishment, and illiteracy.
I guess the problem is that those can't be addressed by token laws targeting internet surveillance.
I once heard that The Unit switched attention away from the military operations of the men to the lives of the women left behind at home, as a result of focus group studies. Soon thereafter, it tanked in ratings and was canceled.
I can't help but feel something similar must have happened to Lost somewhere within the last 6 years. When the show first started out, I got the distinct feeling that the many mysteries had meaning and rational explanations. (I believe that the writers themselves even said so.) Sure, the Dharma Initiative was a peculiar operation, but it explained some things. But this ending, I don't know... It smells as if the ending that was originally planned was scrapped because it offended too many focus groups. Perhaps the original story promoted that all mysteries are only a lack of scientific understanding? (Sufficiently advanced technology, and all that) Perhaps it promoted predestination? I don't know.
All I can say is that with this ending, something changed somewhere. The carpet doesn't match the drapes.
This "article" has all the smells of 10% sensationalist reporting. That is, the part of the story that has been reported is likely just the tip of a much larger, more rational, iceberg. I failed to find any info in the article about if this was the first offense. I suspect that it isn't. Has she been warned before? Does she have a history of knowingly sneaking in contraband? In short, how many other straws are there on the camel's back?
Twitter? Really? Joe Consumer actually uses Twitter? And here I thought it was only used for personal brand promotion...
Or did you mean that Joe Consumer wants to read Twitter?
I wish English 101 actually taught you to write this clearly.
"Advanced" writing classes in J-school will teach you to start off with an anecdote of someone affected by the story, which will get the reader to sympathize. You then bury the lead 5 paragraphs in and only get to the real point after the reader has continued on to page 5C. Pad with further anecdotes from people with similar and opposite views.
I went to college to get a comp-sci degree after I already had several years of experience in the real world. The one thing that I took away from that education that I had not stumbled upon naturally was Big-O notation. Specifically, how it describes the time and space efficiency of different data structures and algorithms. It really comes in handy when trying to optimize. There have been several where I had become focused on optimizing the crap out of an inner loop, only to realize that if I switched to a different data structure I'd get much faster O(log n) performance.
Other than that, many people only experience low-level C and assembly programming while at school. But you mention that you have C++ experience, so you're probably already well familiar with segfaults and buffer overflows.
Lastly, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) is a great read. The levels of recursion and abstraction that it employs will often blow your mind. Sadly, I can't use that kind of coding in the real world because I have to write "maintainable" code and most corporate programmers don't want to have their mind blown.
"Here he will come to a land and be engulfed in the conflict between two ancient gods ... and the battle between light and darkness."
Oh dear. If ever there was a formula for an incomprehensible plot, this is it. You see, when a writer can put himself in the role of a god, it gives him free reign to make things happen for no rational reason, without any cause-and-effect, and without any character development or background.
The result is usually a random meandering with no tangible purpose.
Security systems that will let you in with nothing more than a fingerprint scan. Gee, what's more difficult: guessing the correct password within 3 attampts, or lifting a fingerprint and making a gelatin mold? (hint: see Mythbusters to see how difficult it isn't to create a gelatin mold)
Speaking of security theater, kids are far more likely to drown in a swimming pool or die in a car crash than to be shot by a gun. (Not that I own a gun or care to defend those that do.) Yet no one seems to be overly concerned about swimming pools or bad motorists.
Security theater works mostly due to humans' inability to grasp simple probability.