I fear that if the technosphere continues to use "privacy" and "freedom of expression" as fig leaves to protest any kind of anti-IP-theft laws, the public will eventually get disenchanted and we'll end up with even worse laws than ACTA & SOPA/PIPA. It's like pro-lifers who extend their disdain for abortion to claim that any kind of birth control is murder.
Plus in the case of ACTA, it is transparently self-serving of Poland and other Eastern European non-ACTA-signatories to oppose ACTA. Those countries, after all, are net consumers of IP.
The Public seems to be fairly on the side of pirates, if the numbers flaunted by MPAA and RIAA etc, are to be believed. by those lobby accounts,piracy is exploding all over, so I would bet the public is concerned with privacy. their own.
All the laws currently debated are either negotiated in secret, or have significant dangers of overreach. As such, "Privacy" and "freedom of expression" are not fig leaves yet.
Perhaps when the conversation is not completely hijacked by MPAA and their ilk. and politicians stop masking these laws as functions of "protecting our children" from online predators (the fig leave du jour for any politician seeking online legislation) We might have a sensible conversation.
In the meantime, many people face the dilemma so comically illustrated by the oatmeal http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones It is ridiculous to expect the public to have continued patience with an industry that insist on playing by rules that only benefit them. If they change, they will get a foothold in the public mind, not before.
"Those countries are (...) net consumers of IP". Seriously.
Only if you discount the entire human history before the last two centuries. Because beyond that, the biggest net consumer of IP in history is the US, and they got it all for free. Now think they have the right to charge the rest of the world for the little bit they added in the past few decades.
This is the great swindle of all IP-laws: it assigns ownership to whoever added the last little piece. Or rather: those few with the money to buy the rights from whoever added the latest piece in the puzzle.
What a surprise it mostly benefits the country that was on the rise just as IP legislation was massively expanded. The same country that is now trying to force draconian IP-protection measures on the rest of the world.
I guess by certain measures every country is a „net consumer of IP” if you just consider Hollywood movies. But I don't like this sweeping generalization. I don't think it serves any purpose. Even the phrase „consumer of IP” doesn't make much sense. What does it mean to „consume IP”? Is China a „consumer of IP” when your product gets cloned?
These kinds of generalizations are a real problem and I'd suggest avoiding them. ACTA creators used them well, by the way — after all, ACTA is officially about „Anti-Counterfeiting”.
Yet one must then ask how it is that Western European countries have joined in with the same concerns about censorship (not just their people but their politicians too).
This seems like an odd attempt to distract from the fundamentally deeper concerns by imagining a horde of pirates ready to gorge on our Western wealth.
Here's a fun fact for our "self-serving non-signatory" colleague: Poland signed ACTA on Jan 26th, while Germany hasn't until now.
Also, you might be interested to know that Poland isn't merely killing ACTA with the use of fig leaves, like US did with SOPA and PIPA. Poland has actually started a public debate - and a loud and mainstream one - not only about ACTA, but about the current IP regime and the sense of existing copyright protections.
(For instance, during the 7-hour meeting mentioned in the article, a govt minister actually suggested that perhaps we should roll back some of the current IP protections, because they don't fit the social media sharing reality.)
So we're not putting the issue to rest, so that it resurfaces later under a different disguise. We're actively taking it apart.
You're right -- HIPAA et al only cover data that could be traced back to the individual, and this set clearly cannot.
Interestingly, there was a similar dataset presented at PSB (pacific symposium on biocomputing) of colocalizations of symptoms together with drugs in Bing queries attempting to find novel drug side effects. They too had no problem releasing the data.
I have one, and it's OK -- you can notice broad differences with different activities or different mental states. The video game that comes with it is supposed to allow you to control a character, and that didn't work for me or other people who tried it at all. Also the plastic casing is really bad and broke quickly on mine. All in all neat but overpriced.
The two things missing from Cascalog that would take it from great to godlike are 1) an easy way to use the distributed cache and 2) a way to run Cascalog jobs on the cluster without the compilation/hadoop jar cycle. I don't know if #2 is even possible but it would be ridiculously powerful.
Could you elaborate on #1 please? Wouldn't a distributed cache defeat the purpose of data locality of Hadoop? Regardless, I guess one could write a tap to Avout to enable this?
Sorry, just saw this reply. Hadoop comes with a distributed cache that is generally used for small files -- a common example would be doing a large join against a small table that would fit in memory. For example if you wanted to filter out stopwords or something, the currently accepted way is to put this stopword list into the resources/ directory of your JAR, which is not really optimal for data that might change frequently.
So, after reading this account, I felt compelled to wire up my current-limited power supply at 1mA and ranges from 6-9V using saline-soaked paper towels.
Got some mild phosphenes during the first try by putting the anode too far forward -- although not in my entire visual field like the author, instead just at the top, and the phosphenes stopped once the electrode was securely connected.
OP, what duration do you use? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17940759 indicates that "short-term" is <1s and "long-term" is 10m. It's hard to say objectively, but I think after about 1m I can feel increased concentration and wakefulness.
Initially 5 min, increased to 20 min. Phosphenes are not uncommon if the anode is too far forward and if the circuit is intermittent. Ramping the current up and down is a good idea. I would only use a battery powered supply myself. The video http://www.jove.com/video/2744/electrode-positioning-and-mon... mentioned above is excellent, incidentally (wooden acting aside).
Interesting video -- watching it made me realize that my ad-hoc "electrodes" were too small (2x2 cm), explaining the mild skin irritation. I wonder if it's common also to have a temporary, very moderate blurred vision in the right eye (only during stimulation)? It would make sense considering the cathode inhibits depolarization there. I'll keep reading.
Thanks for posting, this has been an interesting experience.
for 1mA 35cm2 50uA/cm2 i use 30 min (L-DLPFC and right orbital)
for 2mA 9cm2 in higher current density work much faster efect is precivable after few second (aplication 3min) bud ther is a problem - skin iritation and is little itchi
(early expediments)
in publication is recomandet current density under 60uA/cm there was much more but still under tishue damge limit
Apparently when Apple has a unified ecosystem, the purpose is to "perfectly tailor its devices to its users" but if Google does it, it's "maniacal" and "tyrannical"?
Correct me if I'm wrong (I might have outdated knowledge since I don't really use Apple products a whole lot), but you can use a Mac or iPod/iPad without having your personal data stored with Apple.
Apple and Google are in two different businesses. When Apple has a unified ecosystem, they limit what you can install/do right out of the box (they sell hardware that's tightly integrated with their own software). When Google has a unified ecosystem, they collect more information about you through different services.
Apple makes money from selling stuff. Google makes money from ads. Who has a greater incentive to collect more of your personal information and use it to make money?
> Apple and Google are in two different businesses. When Apple has a unified ecosystem, they limit what you can install/do right out of the box (they sell hardware that's tightly integrated with their own software). When Google has a unified ecosystem, they collect more information about you through different services.
Spot on. For example Google knows my exact porn-searches the moment I make them, either through their search-engine logs or directly through Chrome. Now imagine if it were to surface that Apple somehow logs and sends back to some server in Cupertino all porn-related searches made by MacBook-owners... (I chose "porn" as an example because it's a sensitive topic, I could as well have chosen "drugs", "depression", "cancer cure", "tax evasion" and so on).
Yes, I'd agree with you that tight integration for Apple and Google provide different kinds of "systemic risk".
For Google, the risk is they control too much of your information.
For Apple, when Apple owns the entire software and hardware stack, the market price of hardware skyrockets (the opposite of the effect Microsoft had by commoditizing hardware), and by its monopoly on App Stores for iPads/iPhones, it is able to gouge content creators for ~30% of the price of books/apps.
IMO, tight integration of BOTH of these companies is bad for society, but I found the author's singling out of Google to be unwarranted.
Is the state of tech blogging so, so poor or do you just not agree with the conclusions? For instance:
"It must force Chrome and Google+ down the throats of users who are simply looking for a brilliant search engine."
Google just recently started showing Chrome 'faster internet' ads to Firefox users (before it was only displayed to IE users). This blog is a bit over the top especially with claims like "[Google] search engine that’s no better than Bing", but fundamentally I think it's right on the money.
I actually agree with the overall thesis -- Google is integrating its services in emulation of Facebook and Apple in order to become more profitable.
The "poor" parts are 1) the over-the-top sensationalist language and 2) the implication that it's okay or even beneficial for Apple and FB to integrate but that Google has "sold its soul to the capitalist devil" in doing the same.
Regarding the Chrome ads, this would be a complete non-issue in any other industry. Suppose I go to Amazon to buy a computer-related book and am there shown an ad for Amazon Web Services. Are AWS now being shoved down my throat?
The disturbing thing is that people here at news.yc -- hopefully a fairly informed bunch -- seemingly aren't able to see past the infuriatingly self-serving nature of a "Don't Be Evil Toolbar" created by "Facebook & Twitter" employees. And, Facebook, which happily used its dominance in social to lock out users from bulk-exporting contacts during the Google+ launch now complains that Google is leveraging its dominance in search?
OP: I'd be really interested to hear your take on why tech blogging is so pro-Apple/Twitter/FB and anti-Google. I have no connection to Google but it seems to me that Google is by far doing the most good in the world compared to the other 3 (Although Twitter has also done good things during e.g. the Arab Spring).
I think the problem is that people feel forced into agreeing with Google's decisions when they don't, and people don't like being forced into doing something. As an example, say you won't use Google+ because you don't like their account naming policies. That's fine, don't visit plus.google.com, don't use it, and it doesn't exist to you. But when Plus results start appearing in search, a product that you like, you are reminded of a community you can't participate in. This leads to resentment for search, because it is reminding you that you aren't getting the same service that everyone else is.
Facebook, on the other hand, is very easy to ignore. I killed my account there several years ago and haven't really thought about Facebook since, since Facebook is nothing but a social network and I'm not really a big social networking guy.
I think that's what's going on here.
(I would say, "people are worried that there will only be one provider for XXX", where XXX is mail or search or chat or whatever, but I know that's not true. People did not mind AOL or Windows or the three big banks, so I doubt they really care that Google is "the only game". Slashdot users hate monopolies, but I'm not sure the average consumer cares.)
I like Google+ and SPYW, so I can only speculate. But, since I work for Google, it's important to me to be able to understand what complaints users have about our products.
Honestly my only complaint would be that Google as a company needs a human face. And when I say that, it's important to note that it took me a couple minutes to think of it.
People frequently dislike change, and so I'm pleased that a major company such as Google has the will to change and improve it's services. But they not only improve their services, which is good for their bottom line, but also releases a lot of their work and research which helps others.
Google+ is close to blackmail. Read what Rand from seomoz has written about it [1:2] (example quote: "[...] if SPYW continues to roll out to all logged-in Google users and Google stays as aggressive as it's been in the last 10 days with pushing Google+ for even logged-out users, the service will become a necessity for search and social marketers"). Google is using their dominance in search to create side benefits for using google+: you get your picture in organic results and massively increased clickthrough, amongst other benefits, by putting your content into google+ and playing the + game. This is a step past seo: seo was optimizing for google's algo, but now google's ranking algo forces you to push and likes/pluses content into their system. So once your competitors start using it, you have to as well.
Also, as you pointed out, I dislike social and dislike that products like that continue to intrude into my search results.
How do you feel about non-social things in your search results, like maps or videos? If pictures are a big deal in SEO, it seems like everyone would be communicating via video. Ultimately, I think relevancy is what "converts" people.
Also, I don't get the big push on "SEO". Just buy an ad and now you're above all the organic results anyway.
Regarding SEO: The Facebook "Like" button for instance has been embeddable on any page for awhile now and affects results for FB searches, ads, etc. So people have been playing the "Facebook Like" game alongside generalized SEO for awhile now and have not found it terribly difficult. In fact the "+1" is pretty much a clone of the "Like" button, so what's novel here?
Anything a capitalistic company does is self-serving. I'm using, and liking, the "don't be evil" thing because it makes my search results better rather than worse.
This timeline seems to be unaware of package.el, ELPA, etc, by proposing bundling MORE packages by default in Emacs (IMO Emacs' default installation is already huge).
Also, I don't see the keybinding changes gaining any traction, because they would conflict with too many existing packages. As one of many examples, C-c (proposed for Copy) is already used for lisp compilation.
Jurafsky and Martin's Speech and Language Processing complements ESL and Introduction to IR well by focusing on 'high-level' NLP, but its downside is that it focuses perhaps too much on linguistic terminology & theories instead of algorithms & implementations.
Plus in the case of ACTA, it is transparently self-serving of Poland and other Eastern European non-ACTA-signatories to oppose ACTA. Those countries, after all, are net consumers of IP.