I was nodding my head throughout most of this article until I got to this:
"the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims."
This kind of insane toeing of the official line of good vs. evil is exactly the counter-productive foolishness that allows the security services to carry on with their ridiculous "responses" to these events.
Putting our heads into the sand about the actions WE have taken and supported in the past 100 years that have motivated these attacks does no one more disservice than ourselves. Just a few weeks back there was an extremely revealing article with statistics on the number of Muslim civilians directly killed by American forces in the past 30 years and vice versa.
Even when these attackers ARE explicitly motivated by religion, it is on the basis of worldwide injustices of our government that that religious motivation is invoked. It is never a question of killing because that is all Americans are good for, as is often implied in pieces like this.
I think it should be stressed that these ideas are necessarily flexible based on the quality of the thing being disagreed with. Basically, Paul's assumed that the post being argued against is ideal, and against that has built his hierarchy. In real life, an effective argument, in fact sometimes the only possible argument, against a poorly formed thesis is a poor response.
For example, the conclusion that, "a DH2 or lower response is always unconvincing" is not true in the following case: Suppose someone posited that there is a blue species of monkey living in the basement below the U.S. Senate and the only reason he gave for us to believe him is that he is a trustworthy U.S. Senator. In disagreeing with him, if we bring an ad hominem attack against his trustworthiness it is entirely acceptable and relevant because his trustworthiness is the only proof he's brought in the first place.
I'm afraid you're comparing apples and oranges. The more analogous situation is laypeople reading scientific articles like this one. I imagine the same phenomenon would be observed.
Physicists at lectures are more analogous to other religious scholars (like from other sects). You'd find a lot more skepticism there than in religious lay-people who probably aren't very educated in theology.
There aren't more terrorist attacks, because the classification as "terrorist" is a false classification. In reality the same mindset, motives, situation, that allegedly drive "terrorists" drive the people who are committing murders of their friends/family/coworkers/random-people every day. When an act of violence is carried out by a Muslim-named individual with an ostensibly political motive, you classify that as terrorism, whereas the underlying psychosis that leads to the crime is the same as most other acts of violence. The manifestation of that psychosis has circumstances and external justification that are irrational, random, and individual to each person.
So this question is like asking, "Why aren't there more 5'7", 11 shoe size, blue sweater-ed murderers?" The fact that there are not more "terrorist attacks" is proof that the classification of "terrorist attacks" is an unnaturally narrow one, based on arbitrary features of the perpetrators.
I agree, but with the recognition that people have differing capabilities of critical thinking. As an example, I get extremely fed up with people that use computers with no understanding of even the basic principles underlying their use, to the extent that they cannot troubleshoot the smallest of unexpected behavior; but I guess the majority of people fall into that group, and that's why I spend so much time fixing computers for friends and family ;).
In Islam, there are well-defined requirements with regards to the amount of knowledge a lay-person is required to attain. On the matter of beliefs, theology, cosmology, etc. the criterion is something like, "the subject must be studied sufficiently to be able to remove the doubts that are a person is capable of understanding". So for example, an illiterate Muslim bedouin is only required to understand the analogy between footsteps in the sand that indicate on the presence of a person having walked and the wonderous creation indicating on the presence of a creator. On the other hand, a Muslim that has a Ph.D. in philosophy has the responsibility to study deeply the cosmological and other rational arguments that justify every level of belief.
The bedouin can't be faulted for not studying to the level of the Ph.D. and the Ph.D. can't be faulted for not accepting without question the reasoning that was sufficient for the bedouin.
I'm really interested to know some names. I haven't seen anything that allows you to abstract completely away from this multiple language/multiple framework nonsense that web development is mostly (at the most basic level, having to deal with html+css+javascript+frameworks).
There are a lot that do a part of it, but none I've seen that are complete and are not plugins. And what about something that comes anywhere near atlas/interface builder+nib2cib?
I'm genuinely interested. Now, I need a backup plan in case atlas never comes out alive. :)
If you prefer cheaper computers, buy a used one or two generations back model. Simple as that. Better than buying crap just for the psychological satisfaction of having something "new".
I'm guessing you need to be pretty established in order to draw the traffic for this testing to be meaningful. Otherwise how can you build traffic with no rep. and nothing concrete?
To be fair, it is using interpreted code, which is clearly not allowed. He chose to build something that clearly goes against the terms and then he's hoping for an executive-level exception to the rule because "it's so cool". But if they give him an exception, everyone else will be pointing to how the approval process is inconsistent when they reject someone else's with some form of interpreted code.
So the question of Apple being at fault for not having "clear, comprehensive guidelines" can't really be raised.( In this particular case.)
I thought he made it pretty clear that he made some effort to get his software approved by exception through talking to execs, etc. So obviously that explains the "limbo". Presumably, he recognized it would just get rejected through the ordinary channels.
And with respect to the other thing, your bringing that up kinda proves what I said, doesn't it? :P
huh. I wish my advisor had been told about this. Before I dropped out, I'm pretty sure the problems I was having in my Ph.D. were mostly because of not doing 1, 2, 3, and 10. And my prof. pretty much pushed us towards 5 (the too soon one) exclusively. Although, to be fair, I was also an expert at 4 and 8. :)
Okay, so I thought back to my physics days some more, and the real understanding of the problem lies in understanding the definition of tension. The scale is actually measuring tension in the rope.
An informal definition of tension: cut the rope at any point, and determine what force needs to be applied to the one of the cut ends to keep that part of the rope in equilibrium. That force is the tension in the rope.
So in the second example, just measure the tension in the rope.
At least for Muslims, there is an obvious flaw since Islam forbids dating. So people that self-identified as "very serious" are pretty much by-definition not that. And since it is, among all the practices of Muslims, one that is popularly known and probably even overemphasized (relative to other practices), a large population of those that self-identified as "somewhat serious" are probably guilty of being a bit generous with themselves.
At the end of the day, of course, correlation does not imply causation. If either religious people get their panties in a bunch and overly-defensive or irreligious people start gloating, both are simply demonstrating that their dogma is overriding their intelligence.
He's saying that if you consider the race results as a control of sorts, and you operate under the assumption that there is nothing inherent in race that would create the results shown, it is obvious that the variable being measured is not well controlled, and there is plenty of noise in the results.
hmm... haven't I read somewhere about building something people want and releasing quickly, and then iterating on it when you hear from people what they want differently?
Also addressing the point by ergo98 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1744151, a single anecdote does not a convincing argument make. iOS's approval process has a number of explicitly stated goals, one of which is preventing what is happening in this case. So mentioning one app that happened to sneak by the approval process for a short amount of time is meaningless for drawing any real conclusions.
In general, having all the permissions of an app determined at install time seems very flawed to me (whether or not those permissions are optional). Why not ask for permission, when necessary, during the app use, so the user knows exactly what is requiring those permissions? That model is used by desktop apps, and it is the way I would implement it. The up-front permissions model is like sites that ask for your email first before they allow you to read their content- generally scams.
If I understand your point correctly, it can be summarized as "Applications are probably doing whatever the heck they want on iOS too, we just don't know about it." If that's not your general idea, please correct me. There are at least two problems with this statement:
1) You are contending that Apple is in an equally powerless position to prevent apps from deviating from stated purposes. Yet even the app in the anecdote you brought as an illustrative example has been removed by Apple. If any other iOS app was found to be in violation by anyone, and Apple found out about it, it could be removed immediately. In contrast, the apps tested in this research paper will likely still be in the Android marketplace one year from now, and because people don't read the news, they will likely be as popular.
2) I don't think it's really that difficult to do similar analysis on the iOS market at all. Just connect to the internet via a router with some kind of packet sniffing. Obviously, until someone actually does it, we're just guessing- you're guessing that apps on iOS are just as bad, and I'm guessing otherwise- but to blame the lack of information on iOS not being transparent enough for researchers doesn't seem accurate.
I really think the comparison with politicians is (probably unintentionally) disingenuous. The thing that would make reframing an argument in different terms dishonest is (a) when it is done without telling you- politicians don't say, look we don't like such and such term, we're going to call it this instead and (b) when the terms that it is reframed in have undue intrinsic positive or negative value.
When Steve did it, he clearly stated what he was doing and justified reframing the argument in that way. In that case, reframing a debate using more appropriate terms to really approach the core of what is different is an honest tactic that is often necessary to really compare two things objectively.
Secondly, the terms fragmented vs. integrated appear to have less intrinsic value than open (good) and closed (bad).
As such, you can argue with which is the most relevant framework to compare the two systems (and actually, this is going to be different for different user groups- manufacturers care about different things than developers, or end users), but I don't like the implicit characterization of his reframing the argument as somehow dishonest. That seems close-minded.
I'm thinking because it's not using AIM or any chat server, seems like the backend is new, run by Apple, and dedicated solely to this.
If I were to predict the future, I'd say iChat will probably stagnate feature-wise, and the features that they want to keep will be migrated to facetime.
You hit the nail on the head. And "Reopen all windows from last session" feeds the addiction, since you can recover from a flash-crash without losing all your tabs.
Friends and family literally have literally made a novelty of exposing safari when they come by to wonder at how many multi-tabbed windows I have open at once. :)
I would strongly doubt there'll be any difference in penetration in the short-term. You may not be able to think of common use cases, or any at all, off the top of the head, but over the course of a year, chances are you'll come across some interesting website or feature on the web that requires flash. And the barrier to viewing it (installing Flash yourself) is really not that high.
If you want to test it without actually uninstalling flash, just install ClickToFlash (for Safari) and you'll see many sites even use flash for non-dynamic things like buttons.
hmm.... I guess the "fair" thing would be for it to count as late, although I wish that wasn't the case.
I struggled to figure out what the "hack a system to your advantage" question really meant (given that I read that pg essay a while back on what "hacking" "really" means, although the question seemed to be referring to the other meaning contextually) and now I found out that I was wrong......
Could've had a pretty good answer for it, too. ho-hum.
I think (one of) the biggest difficulties is that it's not as simple as
Make your apps, websites and tools as simple as possible
There are two targets that could be aimed for- (a) some kind of inherent intuitiveness/simplicity (as in the calendar example), and (b) something the most similar to past experience (as exemplified by the "Reply" button example).
One of my lab partners in grad school didn't believe there was such a thing as inherent intuitiveness. Back when I had more free time for such things, I remember having lengthy arguments with PC-to-Mac switchers explaining how the implementation of feature X was inherently more intuitive or ergonomic on the mac although it seemed a stupid way to do it to them. Some might argue that even in the calendar example, clicking the date is not more intuitive but similar to the past experience of writing on a physical calendar.
However, I'd argue there is definitely such a thing as an interface that is inherently non-intuitive, so by contrast, there must be things that make an interface inherently more intuitive.
So, I think of (a) and (b) as competing trade-offs that must be compromised. Going too radical towards (a), especially on a product that people already have formed associations with, and you end up an awesome, but fringe, product with a small community of fanatic followers (see NeXT). If you create a radically new something, or the impression thereof, you have a lot more leeway, since people are not psychologically attached to previous experiences.
Go too radically towards (b) and you aren't adding anything different with your product.
If you're making something new to go into battle against existing, well-established products, the best approach is to start with (b) and then slowly "fix" things, one at a time, over time, starting with features that give the biggest bang for the smallest change in user behavior. This applies to user-facing front ends, only of course.
The best way to take notes is to not do it during the class. Pay full attention only to the teacher/speaker during the class/lecture and make a conscious attempt to remember everything they said. Immediately following, get together with 3-5 like-minded friends and attempt to as a group write the entire lecture from start to finish from memory. If no one can remember something, skip it.
It takes a few weeks/months to develop your focus, attention span, and memory enough to be able to get near 100% short-term retention, but you start to see benefits almost immediately. And the long-term benefits to your memory and focus can't be understated.
Also, it's really interesting how many other people are expressing that they never took notes in college. I was famous for it in my college (my advisor wrote a paragraph about it in grad school recommendations), whereas I always thought it was common sense, seeing other people who spent the whole class scribbling, but didn't really understand a bit of what was actually taught.
Ah yes, I learned to do this as well with certain professors. I always found the ME professors were impressed after the first lecture and could tell I was paying attention. But with some others, it was a different story.
hmm... There were signs at JFK and also at SFO that prohibited cameras last time I traveled internationally (about a year ago). Where is this quote from?
How far out to sea does one have to be for the TSA to not have jurisdiction? Has anyone thought of an airline that ferrys passengers out to a ship off the coast and the airplanes take off from there?
How much does an aircraft carrier cost? It seems this would be extremely expensive, but then, airplanes themselves are extremely expensive so it kind of comes with the territory. But I wonder if we're talking orders of magnitude higher costs.
Not sure how crazy of an idea this is; it came to mind and I figured I'd throw it out there. :)
Yeah, turns out the cost is also more than an order of magnitude- an aircraft carrier is somewhere in the high single digit billions of dollars, where as your jumbo jet is in the hundreds of millions....
How does this work? Do you have multiple US passports? Or passports from multiple countries? Doesn't the US care and couldn't you get in trouble for having passports from other countries and not disclosing them?
1. Okay, but this is not relevant to the story in question (see point 4).
2. Okay, but this is not relevant to the story in question (see point 4).
3. Okay, but this is not relevant to the story in question. (see point 4)
4. I'm willing to cede this and the previous 3 with regard to the parent. The question then becomes, do you believe in religious freedom enough to take the risk, or would you rather remove this threat and lose the religious freedom? The hypocrisy of subverting the constitution in order to protect the constitution is untenable. If you are truly concerned about this, it seems you should be explicitly campaigning for an amendment to the constitution to more strictly define the "acceptable" religions. If you're too ashamed to explicitly get behind that, it shouldn't be hidden by unwritten policies of arbitrary harassment of certain religions.
5. I'm embarrassed someone on Hacker News would except that video as "legitimate interpretation". The fundamental factual errors about the Qur'an and Islam would be comical if it wasn't juxtaposed by the sadness of meeting someone that actually believed that without independent research. (Nearly?) every factual statement made to support the opinions presented is factually incorrect:
(a) "The Qur'an is not full of symbolism or vague analogies-- implicitly stating that the New/Old Testament are "full" of symbolism and vague analogies and not meant to be taken literally- a self-serving, unsupportable implication.
(b) It is mostly direct commands-- false, by far, by any interpretation of "mostly"
(c) The Qur'an contains contradictory statements-- he seems to be confused about abrogated verses- actually, any statements of early Islam that were abrogated later were removed from the Qur'aan before its final compilation as a book.
(d) The Qur'an ITSELF provides a way to know what to with the "contradictions"-- ??? this simply does not exist
(e) "It's explained in the Qur'aan.... "-- Again, this does not exist. It's simply a bald-faced fabrication.
(f) The peaceful tolerant passages were "written" earlier in Muhammad's career-- again, false. The earlier passages did not deal with either peace or war, they dealt mostly with self-rectification. The later verses, after the establishment of a monolithic Islamic community with communal dealings with the outside world, added to that verses with guidance regarding both peace and war.
(g) "those passages have been abrogated..."-- see point c- if that were so, they would have been removed entirely during compilation
(h) "There is no picking and choosing" -- finally an accurate statement
That brings me to 2:54, and I'm too bored to continue answering nonsense that any 10 year old Muslim sunday schooler could have responded to.
6. See 5.
7. See 6 and 4.
Yeah, I just pulled a http://xkcd.com/386/ But you know what, it was cathartic after reading some of the embarrassing comments on this piece. I just picked the most ridiculous one and went to town.
I don't understand why people are comparing it to Swype- just because both involving swiping instead of taps? In spite of this superficial similarity, don't you see they're solving radically different problems?
This system eliminates inaccuracy and allows true no look typing! Think about what that means for a moment.
Apple execs, if you're reading this, please license this technology and iphone it.
Compare relatively low error rates to zero error rate.
And no matter how good you get, no one (very few people?) can use Swype accurately without looking.
And intuitively speaking, it seems to me that if they've truly got some science behind the placement of the letters, it could be very, very easy for motor memory to catch on to this.
Not just a bit, but a lot, IMO! Some people are comparing this to the dvorak vs. qwerty keyboard layouts.
A more apt comparison is to a keyboard laid out in alphabetical order vs. a qwerty keyboard. The adoption of qwerty keypads on touch screens is 100% based on familiarity and no ergonomic consideration in letter positions at all.
We're talking potentially major improvements in speed, assuming they have the science of letter positioning correct.
(Please let them have it correct, or we'll have the same dvorak vs qwerty nonsense all over again. Learn from history, people ;))
It doesn't really offer advantages on a computer that it does on a small device. Full size keyboards already allow no-look, potentially 100% accuracy typing, with multiple fingers at once. That spanks this system even worse than this system spanks mobile phone keypads.
It's hard for me to say intuitively regarding speed and the Swype, but I can see that Swype would probably increase accuracy by some statistically significant amount.
This device, based on my intuition, would probably offer significant increases in wpm, and definitely increase accuracy significantly.
It's not a question of being genuinely happy or not- if something better comes along, than obviously it should be adopted.
"the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims."
This kind of insane toeing of the official line of good vs. evil is exactly the counter-productive foolishness that allows the security services to carry on with their ridiculous "responses" to these events.
Putting our heads into the sand about the actions WE have taken and supported in the past 100 years that have motivated these attacks does no one more disservice than ourselves. Just a few weeks back there was an extremely revealing article with statistics on the number of Muslim civilians directly killed by American forces in the past 30 years and vice versa.
Even when these attackers ARE explicitly motivated by religion, it is on the basis of worldwide injustices of our government that that religious motivation is invoked. It is never a question of killing because that is all Americans are good for, as is often implied in pieces like this.