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Comment Re:Burners (Score 1) 76

If anonymity with a cell phone was important you'd be spending that subscription fee on a new burner every week.

Don't they do this with SIM cards? You buy a SIM card with x number of minutes with cash and then burn it in a week and pop in another one.

Or leave the phone at home but have it call you in your new sim and relay the call.

Comment Re:Congratulations, India ! (Score 1) 67

I can teach you: pay people smaller salaries. Compare average income in India and The West to see why cost of building stuff is different. The cost of a potato is the income of the person who grew it.

Total BS. With high tech projects, countries with lower per capita cannot compete because they cannot afford to buy the component pieces. Even if you have lots of people with low salaries in a warehouse, they can't just create the parts needed in a short time. Even if you have the components, you cannot just train people in a short time to integrate components that nobody in the country has used before.

You say the cost of potato is the income of the person who grew it. But, what about oil? The price is about the same throughout the world. Even making parts would cost a lot more since the even the raw materials are a larger portion of the budget.

I'm not an expert on India but what seems like a out of nowhere thing is usually a project started decades ago with lots of vision, leadership and direction. It's not just a lower salary so cheaper product thing.

Comment Compete with Google? (Score 4, Informative) 83

Google tracks a large portion of the websites you visit, including slashdot. They have a more detailed browsing history. If you use gmail, they probably have all your purchasing history as well (including Amazon). Not to mention your search history. So, Amazon has a fraction of the data that Google would have on a person.

The only thing that Amazon has over Google is that you use Amazon ads and if a visitor buys something, you get a nice 4% commission. But, I don't know if big money will come from that - it's just blogs.

Comment Re:Why only on iPad ? (Score 1) 16

There was a previous blog entry on that topic that claims to explain why it is currently only on iPad.

FTFY. In short, that post says that they'd lose a lot if they made a pdf instead of their magazine app, and thus they only make it for the iPad because... well, just because. Personally, I'm going to assume they chose to use some platform specific toolset(s) and either lack the time or expertise to port to other platforms or do cross platform development... of a magazine.

The interactive features they'd lose is the ability to click on a title and have it go directly to the app store on your device and have you playing with minimal interruption (according to their post). I don't see why that'd be lost. Just have different links in each platform specific version and leave the content the same, so the iPad version links to the app store; the windows version links to the homepage; the android version links to the google play store; etc etc.

Whatever. It's their business decision. No real reason they don't support other platforms.

Isn't the common understanding that iPad and iOS device owners are richer?

By limiting the experience on only one platform, they probably make their product more attractive.

Imagine their shiny and gaudy product being used on a cruddy cheap Chinese Android tablet. That would ruin an appetite.

This isn't the stuff for the common masses. It is for refined tastes only.

Comment Re:Still not adding up (Score 1) 243

Not equal, just dependent on other things, like definition of "success" for one. Intelligent but sleazy gets you further than intelligent but honest.

Also, depends on the environment. Sleazy will get you further if you are playing a zero sum game. If not, co-operation and honest will get you further.

For example, in software development where a lot of people need to contribute, sleazy and selfish will have a negative impact. Honest and team-players will enable lots of code and features to be written to the common goal of making a good product.

However, when the number of promotions in the office are fixed, then sleazy will get you that promotion. Here, honesty won't work because everyone is competing for a common prize.

Comment Re:Still not adding up (Score 2) 243

If this is true, why do psychologists continue to focus so much on IQ? Why do they insist there is a strong, undeniable link between IQ and success that must be catered to? Why has funding for students who, as they say, "are merely bright, but not gifted" entirely disappeared in favor of a fully mainstream approach? Why are the hard working students who achieve but who are not obvious savants lumped in with the merely average, and worst, the probably hopeless (whatever the reason)?

Psychologists said that over 50 years ago but they do not say that all anymore. There was a famous experiment where the kid's IQs were tested and later on after 20-30 years their success measured. The higher IQ were no better off than the average IQ. In fact, a randomly selected group of kids were as successful as the high IQ group.

Psychologists actually say there isn't a strong link between IQ and success. There is a minimum IQ (which is fairly low) and above that IQ everyone has an equal chance. The most used analogy to this is height in basketball. There is a certain height after which height is not an advantage. Basketball is not full of the tallest people and successful people are not the people with the highest IQs.

Is this real science, or feel good "also-ran" science for the ignorant and unspecial, as one might be led to believe if one actually believed psychology was anything like actual science? We all want to believe articles like this are true, IQ is a bitter pill to swallow and one that seems even murkier the more one reads about it, however it represents our cultures mindset towards success. No company wants a merely bright hard-working person, they want a genius, they worship that genius. Give an academic institution a test, and they will run off with the truly exceptional students (the SATs allegedly correlate to IQ at 0.82, so they actually DO this). Give a corporation that test and they'll probably rather do without than hire anyone with an IQ below 120, which of course, represents the majority of people.

Companies do not want geniuses, they want people who are team players and will fit in the company culture. Even Google has published reports that they cannot correlate the success of an employee to any measurable metric like GPA, or how good they were at the brain teasers. It has been well known that the highest IQ, GPA or what-not employees are not the most successful.

I prefer to believe what is in this article in the same way that I prefer to believe in Free Will, but, however disappointing this may be, this does not reflect the prevailing attitudes of people that matter. Nothing in this article is substantial enough to use as a weapon to change education, and ultimately it's just feel good drivel, much like I think the IQ studies to date are, although sadly they represent the established convention. From a magazine like Scientific American I want something I can USE to make change.

If you have a really low IQ, you're too dumb to care. If you have a medium or high IQ, it does not affect your chance of success.

Another analogy is that IQ is like speed. A higher IQ can person can get somewhere faster than a person of lower IQ. It does not mean a higher IQ person can get to places that a lower IQ person cannot. So, what is more important is the direction that you go rather than the speed.

Comment Re:Some people are too stupid (Score 1) 131

It is a good thing that intelligence is not determined by genetics.

Citation needed --- and not to a stupid failed experiment that drew the wrong conclusion.

Yes. I know. It's politically incorrect to think that intelligence does have a genetic component. My anecdotal examples certainly leads my belief that there is a causal relationship.

And no. I'm not saying that genetics is everything; nor am I saying that all children of two intelligent people are intelligent. Anyone who has even the simplest understanding of genetics knows that not all children of brown haired parents have brown hair. But only someone who has baked their brain in a politically correct stew would think there is no genetic component.

IQ has some heritability. However, intelligence can mean anything. If you measure intelligence by IQ, you are right. If you measure intelligence by achievements, then the original poster is right.

Comment Re:Not going to work (Score 1) 167

I do not want to be negative, but networks being based on "trust" and "people you know" work only to a certain size, then it breaks down under the own weight. So this sounds like a pretty good thing while it's small, but it cannt be a big alternative or solution.

Networks based on "trust" and "people you know"? Works for facebook and makes billions of it.

Hell, even works for human society.

Comment Meh. the time limit is still there (Score 1) 174

So they removed the mileage limit but they still have the time limit of 8 years.

It's not like people are going to use a Tesla car to go cross-country driving. They have to charge the car after use and so has to remain near a viable charge station. So, the removing the mileage limit seems pointless.

If they removed the time limit of 8 years, then it would be something.

I don't see this as a big deal. Sure sounds good but the service centers probably realized that the mileage of the cars coming in for service was nowhere close to getting to warranty mileage and just dropped them.

Comment Re:Separate Testing and Education (Score 1) 81

Remote education such as the internet is very good at distributing materials and information. However, it is very bad at testing individuals' comprehension and understanding for a variety of reasons. Currently, Universities do both and they bundle the costs together in one large tuition package. I think a good solution going forward would be one that offers these two services separately.

If you mean testing at the end of the semester, then the school will still have to test students during the semester to give them feedback.

If yo mean weekly testing or testing after each lecture, then what is the point of decoupling education with testing at this point? There is no way all universities are going to agree on a weekly or daily course guideline. It makes every curriculum the same.

Comment Re:Are You Kidding? (Score 4, Insightful) 541

It's an extremely sensitive topic, for obvious historical reasons. Despite the mountains of hard scientific evidence to the contrary, the political dogma, at least where I live, is that we are all born as blank slates and any measurable difference between individuals is due to environment. We would all be as good as Tiger Woods at golf if we lived his life. This includes differences between the sexes, and isn't hyperbole or an exaggeration.

It's a nice thought, and if it were true governments could mold the behavior of its citizens to be exactly what they wanted.

It's easy to accept physical differences, like skin tone, height, and facial features are genetically determined, but to suggest that there might also be differences across individuals and races in the brain, and therefore behavior, is so politically incorrect most scientists will not touch it with a ten foot pole. I'm not suggesting that any particular race is "better" than any other, but I don't see how you can claim that there are no genetic differences between races that effect behavior if you accept the current model of evolution. I mean, why wouldn't there be? How do you justify that claim?

If you read the scientific consensus in the beginning of the 20th century, they had the exact same view as you are saying. They had journals which listed what characteristics what races and sub-races had, and had intricate rankings of races - with uber-mechen and under-mechen. It is the basis of eugenics and was the root of the philosophy of Nazi justifying killing of the inferior races.

Their failing was that they considered every little difference in societies to be genetic.

Perhaps you could be or could not be Tiger Woods but so far, there hasn't been an obvious genetic test to determine that. However, there is no getting around the fact that Tiger Woods is a successful professional golfer because his dad is a golf instructor and he had training when he was young as well as access to professional network that his dad had established to be successful.

The counterexample to that comes from Gladwell's example of the Canadian hockey team and the birthday phenomenon. There are almost no professional hockey players born at the end of the year. Most of them are born in the beginning of the year. The reason is that coaching is done by age and the kids who are born later in the year have 6-12 month disadvantage over kids born earlier in the year. So, in this case, access to training and coaching was more vital than the genetic component. If genetic was important, then there would be a more even distribution of birthdays.

Comment Re:Are You Kidding? (Score 2) 541

Oh, come on. Political Correctness has no place in discussions that are scientific in nature.

Northern Europeans clearly evolved to have fair skin and hair, and they evolved from ancestors who did not have fair skin and hair.

How the *BLEEP* is this racist?

In order for a Northern European to evolve fair skin and hair, there has to be something that will kill a human of dark skin and hair. Since people with dark skin can survive in Northern Europe, it is not through evolution.

It is through something called genetic drift. When a small breakway population goes to a new geographic location that is isolated from the previous location, there is limited genetic depth because of the small number of the population. However, because of abundant resources, the small population quickly grows. The genes that spread by determined completely by the small group of individuals who broke away from the main population. Here, random chance plays a huge factor to what the new population gets and not evolution.

So, it is not clearly that evolution gave Northern Europeans fair skin and hair. Genetic drift could very well have been the cause.

Comment Re:why? (Score 1) 541

what is globally accepted in animal breeding, that certain behavioral tendencies accompany accompany genetics right along with certain physical characteristics, is the worst taboo to apply to people.

which is ridiculous. populations living in specific social environments will SELECT FOR and AGAINST various physical and behavioral traits... and those traits which are successful in a specific society will then go on to build the society that those traits are best adapted to. like a feedback loop.

is there something totally crazy here?

By the method you are describing, for a trait to manifest itself in a population, there has to be selection pressure. For selection pressure to happen, over 90% of the individuals without the trait have to fail to reproduce otherwise it will still be in the population. A very mild selection pressure does not cause a selection for a trait. Each trait can have multiple locations and multiple recessive/dominant genes to make it very complicated.

However, different populations can have different traits because of genetic drift. When a population separates out from the original population, the numbers are small and the sheer randomness of the process in small numbers causes a higher prevalence of one trait over the other.

It is highly unlikely that as society we select for aggressiveness or business acumen. There is no such strong selection pressure. When there is no selection pressure in a population, we try to create as vast a gene pool as possible so that when the selection pressure that decimates the population comes along, there is enough diversity that some fraction of the population will be able to withstand the selection pressure.

Without selection pressure, the population does not change. It does not slowly evolve into something else. Without selection pressure, it will just stay as is.

The difference between the geographically segregated populations can be explained by genetic drift.

My point is that physical characteristic differences can be explained by genetic drift. It does not mean that those differences were because of selection process. Appearance differences can be highly magnified because our brains are very attuned to physical differences to recognize different humans and even small genetic differences can mean vastly different perceptual differences.

It does not mean that there is not difference between the races. All I'm saying is that the difference does not have to be based on selection pressure. It could be that certain races got certain things by the luck of the draw.

The most important thing is of course, if we take a sample of two individuals from different races, what is the probability we can predict their higher level capabilities? We can predict their skin color and other physical characteristics with high confidence perhaps 99% of the time? What percentage under confidence levels can be do to aggressiveness and business acumen? If it's not with very high accuracy, then it is not very useful and we can statistically say that there is no difference between the races.

Comment Re:All good until someone simulates biometrics... (Score 1) 383

You can change a password, you can't change your retina print. What do you do when your account is compromised? Get new eyes?

Instead of all this BS, just make an app that stores all the sub-passwords from a master password.

You can link your biometrics to the master password and even if you sub-passowrds are compromised, you can change them.

If you master password is compromised, then used a different finger or a different combination of biometric plus another password.

The biggest problem I have faced is the arbitrary password rules. Some sites require you have to choose from .\$[] character set whereas others cannot have it in the password. Some have length limits and some minimums. Some require at least two alphanumeric characters. Some allow phrases some don't.

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