How Can I Make Testing Software More Stimulating? 396
Google Android Interface For the Chevy Volt 132
How Neuros Built Their Nearly Silent HTPC 199
Submission + - Cold War Warrantless Wiretapping (politicsdaily.com)
High Fructose Corn Syrup Causes Bigger Weight Gain In Rats 542
Comment Re:Starsiege: Tribes and Possibly Achron (Score 1) 325
Pretty sure the size was 64. And my favorite trivia about tribes was that skiing was entirely unintended by the devs; it's made possible by a bug in the physics engine. But people had so much fun with it, and it became such a core part of gameplay, that when the (disastrous) sequels were written (Tribes 2 and Tribes: Vengeance) it was preserved intentionally.
Zeus Botnet Dealt a Blow As ISPs Troyak, Group 3 Knocked Out 156
Comment Re:Human deterrent (Score 0, Troll) 678
Don't have mod points atm, or I'd do it myself, but mod parent up for interesting. I like the idea; I wish there were any way it would ever happen, but (whether you're joking or not) it's a cool thing to think.
Comment Re:Freedom of speech .. (Score 2, Interesting) 187
It's ContentID. They do have humans who go through and review (they absolutely refuse to say how many), but ContentID does 90% of it these days. I spoke with one of the developers working on the system last fall, and they essentially consider it to be the Holy Grail of not having to waste time on DMCA notices. What's most likely is that in your case, the owner of the content hasn't asked YouTube to do anything about it, so they're merely flagging it, informing you, and not taking anything down. Compare to the big labels, which have YouTube take down flagged videos or, in some cases, give the labels a cut of the advertising revenue alongside them.
Submission + - Grimmelman on Google Books Summit Fairness Hearing (laboratorium.net)
I was at the courthouse from 8:30 onwards, with the team of New York Law School students who’ve been working on the Public Index. We didn’t want to take any chances that we might not make it in. (Last time, we were among the very last people seated.) No worries there; we got great seats in the overflow room, and in the afternoon, in the courtroom itself. I’m very glad I had the student team along with me. Their observations and insights about the arguments and the lawyers were invaluable in helping me write up this post. Other than my conversation with them, I’ve avoided reading the press coverage; I wanted to provide a direct account of how I saw the day’s events, without being influenced by others’ takes.
Comment Re:Monopoly (Score 1) 439
Whoever was quoted on the 12GB storage savings per student was making up information. I would like an explanation of how 2GB email quota per student -- not measured usage -- becomes 12GB of storage; even including tape backups. If this statistic is true, the storage architecture for Yale email has been designed by an incompetent idiot. Explains why Yale has to outsource email.
I can provide you that explanation without compromising my contract; disclaimer, I'm a senior working for Yale ITS. Yale provides 2GB email inboxes, but keeps 7 days worth of daily (I believe midnight) backups. That way when someone goes over their 2GB quota and corrupts their inbox, and loses their mail, they've got 7 days to let us know and we can still restore 95% of their email. Better if our webmail service could simply bounce the excess email rather than corrupting the inbox, but c'est la vie. The 12GB of storage, I'm assuming, is the average; 7 times the average inbox size per student. Uncertain if the number is made up, or was discussed in the one meeting I wasn't present for, but it's a reasonable number either way. I suspect it came from the other meeting, because the people who originally spoke to the news aren't creative or intelligent enough to make it up.
Comment Re:Amazing really (Score 1) 439
(We didn't, incidentally. Google edu is free.)
Comment Re:I could have told you that. (Score 1) 938
Just a word of warning, ability-based tracking isn't a good idea without damn good aptitude tests (which don't exist). My girlfriend teaches in a piss-poor, underperforming elementary school, where the students are aggressively tracked (her 3rd-6th graders are all segregated into low- and high-performing classes). The high-aptitude kids benefit, there's no question; but all of the school's measurements for high-performing children heap poorly-behaved kids in with poorly-achieving ones. The result is that all of the unmotivated, bad-behavior students reinforce each other, so all the low-performing classes are behavioral train wrecks, and in a given day, the teacher's liable to waste anywhere between one- and three-quarters of the day on simple classroom management, every day. My girlfriend is one of the few teachers that moves around and sees all the kids, and half the time she gets so frustrated with the low-aptitude classes that she doesn't have the patience to do well with the good ones.
Ability-based education, like most education, only works when the students want to learn. And separating out a child's desire to learn from his ability to learn is damn near impossible, and something that aptitude tests just can't do.