Forgot your password?

typodupeerror

Comment: but how well does it work in the real world (Score 2) 157

by LetterRip (#39770617) Attached to: How Good Are Robo-Graders?

While it is true that you can engineer essays to be 'bad' and still score 'good' - the question is - are there natural essays that score good but are actually bad; and good essays that score bad but are actually good.

Every analysis I've seen suggests that these algorithms do have problems with good essays that are highly creative. Essay graders also have difficulties with this kind of essay - giving drastically varied scores.

However there doesn't seem to be much evidence of other issues except when an extremely knowledgable issue deliberately trys to make the algorithm fail. Any student or other individual who can do this probably knows that material well enough to 'get an A' if they were to properly apply what they know so this seems like a non issue.

Comment: Failed to take into account value of targets (Score 2) 319

Probably failing to take into account the value of the targets compromised was the biggest flaw.

Since the average apple user will be far more profitable (apples are a luxury good and thus will have a higher percentage of wealthy users) to compromise than the average pc user, he needed to adjust the numbers downward to take that into account.

Comment: Re:Spongiform cure? (Score 3, Informative) 126

by LetterRip (#39746775) Attached to: Artificial DNA Replicates and 'Evolves'

We can already tailor antibodies to particular protiens. The issue is that cancer cells, bacteria and viruses are complicated. Their populations change under selective pressure from antibodies so that the protiens that were useful targets beocome useless, etc. While we are finding highly conserved genes to target it is non trivial.

Comment: Re:Cliche, but... (Score 1) 438

by LetterRip (#39717147) Attached to: Will Write Code, Won't Sign NDA

Not quite... we have 1,000 ideas for every coder, but a 1,000 coders for every good idea (and probably about 1:1 good ideas and good coders :-D )

Completely agree - bad ideas are common as dirt, good ideas are extraordinarily rare. Those who say 'ideas are a dime a dozen' are usually wanting to get good ideas for cheap or free.

Comment: Re:Nothing but spin here. (Score 2) 161

by LetterRip (#39592197) Attached to: The Story Behind Australia's CSIRO Wi-Fi Claims

Either the WiFi standards in question use technologies that CISRO developed and patented, or they don't.

What is claimed by the article is that the patent should not have been granted because corporations already had hardware on the market that used the particular combination of algorithms recommended in the patent years before the patent was filed. No one had patented it because it was in fact 'patently obvious' since that is what was already being used.

Unfortunately I don't know enough about the technology to know if the claims of the author are accurate.

Comment: Representing this as a mistake is BS (Score 5, Insightful) 1005

by LetterRip (#39575961) Attached to: NBC Apologizes For Editing Zimmerman 911 Call

This wasn't a mistake, it was a deliberate misrepresentation on the behalf of whoever did the editing or ordered the editing done.

When the corporation claims 'oops' when it is obviously deliberate, it leads to distrust. There most definitely should have been firings over this.

Comment: Code on open source projects (Score 1) 188

You could contribute to Ogre, Crystal Space, Blender Game Engine, or Erlicht. Or physics frameworks such as Bullet; or if AI is your interest - Recast and Detour. Or sound openal. If you are interested in the 'tool' side - then write importers/exporters for Blender; add tools that make rigging; skinning; modeling; texturing; animating; etc easier. You might also try writing importers/exporters for non opensource projects - ie Maya, 3DSMax, XSI, ZBrush - one taskthat would benefit blender users and build your knowledge of scripting and APIs for commercial 3d Apps would be to expand the .bullet importer to handle a wider variety of data. (Bullet format is the .blend format with the parser rewritten to be BSD compatible but not all of blenders features are currently handled).

You can also find a volunteer team and program some actual games.

You can also use commercial frameworks (Unity, etc.).

If you are a student you could apply for 'Google Summer of Code' for one of the projects listed above and add one of the items for their wishlist if they get accepted.

Comment: Re:Google versus Apple (Score 1, Insightful) 360

by LetterRip (#38439102) Attached to: Google Working On Siri Competitor Majel

Apple intentionally implemented "attitude" in the character of Siri to make it more endearing and friendly, while Google dismisses that idea and tries to make theirs into an emotion-less Star Trek computer

The inventors of Siri, NOT Apple implemented 'attitude' for Siri, when Apple bought them out they didn't undo that decision. Also Google naming the software with a nod to the historical popularization of the idea, does not mean that the implementation will be similar in nature to popularization. You would likely have greater success in persuasion if you would check your facts and make sure that your assumptions are valid.

Comment: Re:lot of record breaking floods lately (Score 1) 203

by LetterRip (#37753822) Attached to: Flooding Takes Major Hard Drive Plant Offline; Shortages Predicted

I love that reasoning. It essentially makes global warming impossible to disprove or challenge. There is no evidence that can be used to argue against it. Have a drought? That's global warming. Have a flood? That's global warming. Have a heat wave? Global warming. Have a blizzard? Global warming. Have normal weather? Well, global warming only effects things in the LONG TERM, see...

It increases intensity and frequency of both droughts and floods - it is divergence from 'moderate' climate that is what you are looking for.

If you have a basic understanding of physics it should be obvious that increased warmth would cause more floods and droughts - increased total temperature causes faster evaporation both over land and ocean - for those areas where the clouds tend to not drift (and hence low rain fall historically) this will lead to more droughts; for areas of historical high rain fall - the greater ocean evaporation leads to more rain and hence more flooding.

The heart is not a logical organ. -- Dr. Janet Wallace, "The Deadly Years", stardate 3479.4

Working...