Yeah, I'm a girl too and my first thought was "obviously not a poll designed by a woman, since the scale is so small", followed almost immediately by "oh, 372 women have responded to the poll, how interesting". Although, reading the comments, I suppose the real number of female responses is a bit smaller.
Also: *nice* boots. No fucking with you, maam!
See, when I go, ahem, "networking" my favorite gear is a skintight little red dress. Works like a charm every time.
And why does said discussion have to happen on the same website as the news story?
It doesn't. Unless the newspaper wants to increase clicks per news item by getting those who get caught up in a discussion to come back and check their replies (just like I did, just now for this discussion). It would perhaps increase the longevity of each news item a little.
Since newspaper sites are in the business of getting people to look at them, they cannot be counted on to create an effective moderation system, any more than you can trust the discussion system at Fox News or Huffington Post. Profit and a free and dynamic discussion may very well be incompatible.
Perhaps there are sites that want to. I would love to read my news at a site which encouraged civil and reasoned discussion even if the general consensus would sometimes tend to disagree with my own opinion. In any case, I hope you are wrong on the last point!
Comment sections for general news sites are pretty bad ideas. I don't believe developing better commenting systems is going to change that.
See, as the system is now for most newspapers, I won't disagree. But on the other hand, if the comments sections were actually decent, you could read the newspaper and discuss the news with others who also happened to be reading the newspaper and were interested in the same story you are. A decent commenting system doesn't actually have to do much beyond keeping the noise down at manageble levels and allow for back and forth discussion. There isn't any actual value in it beyond the social factor, but depending on your circumstances, that can actually be pretty big.
The measure would negatively affect consumers who have come to expect rich content and free services through the Internet,
Personally it freaks me out whenever I go on a random site and it shows me my own facebook profile picture along with a message such as "Be the first of your friends to recommend this article!!"
I'm still caving to peer pressure and keeping a FB profile, but I resent it always more and more. One thing is for sure - that's one company I'm not investing in any time soon.
This was concentrating on forgetting / ignoring, IOW what eidetics don't do. That's not the same thing as determining relevance.
Well, from the blurb with the article, that's the hypothesis:
The results bolster a hypothesis known in schizophrenia circles as the hyperlearning hypothesis, which posits that people suffering from schizophrenia have brains that lose the ability to forget or ignore as much as they normally would. Without forgetting, they lose the ability to extract what's meaningful out of the immensity of stimuli the brain encounters.
Which, presumably, is the point of this exercise, i.e. infecting computers with schizophrenia (am I the only one who feels this is horribly wrong on many levels?).
I'll go now and read tfa.
All of the comments I see here take a cynical view.
Considering that the discussion involves an insurance company, a cynical view is kind of inevitable.
You can complain about the use, but a tool (in this case a predictive model) is just a tool.
I don't think it's the tool as such which is the problem, but the many, varied, obvious ways in which it could be misused.
So, the poll should have asked "How many flesh-and-blood humans do you see with your eyes and without the aid of a camera or monitor?" or "How many people can you reach out and physically touch at this moment?". IRL, is too broad.
Well, to be fair, when you see "IRL" in an online post it is usually used to refer to someone you are physically communicating with, without the aid of a computer. Although the meaning of the actual words is quite broad, the meaning of the phrase is pretty clear.
But the line can certainly become blurry. I'm sitting next to my friend, who is also online. I just sent him an iChat message - does that mean I'm communicating with him IRL or not?
Also, I think I prefer the original poll to your suggestions. See, if I reached out to touch him I'd probably get a weird look, and if I attempted to conclusively verify that he was indeed flesh and blood I'd get something worse than just a look...
No, I've never done anything bad, officer.
It's all mine, officer.
I recently started pirating.
Until about a year ago, I didn't know how and wasn't interested to learn. Then I found a TV show I liked (haven't liked one since 'Allo 'allo originally aired, so I was pretty happy about that) but it doesn't air where I live. So I found the US based TV station website and tried to buy and download the show. When I had finally registered, given them tons of my personal information, credit card number etc, they refused to let me download anything with the message "This item doesn't ship outside the US". I tried iTunes and one or two other (legal) options with similar results. Then someone told me about torrent and I got everything I wanted pretty quickly and am not planning on looking back anytime soon, thank you very much.
Now, I realize that there may very well be ways I could legally purchase this content, and frankly I'd like to - I really like my show and would prefer it without TV station logos/promos on the screen or the occasional Swedish subtitles, not to mention the risk of low quality or viruses joining in on the download fun. But it's got to the point where it's just too much bother to try to get an American credit card or a VPN client or a full blown fake US identity or whatever it takes to do business with these guys. By the way, I've already emailed them, explained my problem and asked them nicely to please accept my money, and they didn't even deign to reply.
I understand that US TV stations have affiliates and there are contracts and other legal stuff, however, their current business model is actively encouraging their potential customers to learn piracy.
In short, those who claim they are losing by piracy are those who pushed me into learning it in the first place. Thanks guys, there's so much stuff out there I had no idea about!
You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken
