[silk] Cafe Coffee Day scam alert
Well since we have discussed coffee here - just want to relate my experience. I saw a Coffee day temporary outlet at the golf club serving free tasteless coffee but was attracted by a lovely looking dark brown tin labelled "Dark Forest" coffee - pure coffee powder from the Baba Budanagiri hills of Karnataka. I bought a tin of 200 grams at the daylight robbery price of Rs 150. Tried it this morning. It is rubbish. Do not buy the stuff. Not only does it make very light coffeee - with the "yield" being 3/4ths of the usual powder - the freshly unsealed pack did not even smell of coffee. Its a scam. Yuck shiv
[silk] another scam (yahoo)
If I remember well, one of the threads in silk a while ago was about yahoo being up to some mischief. Here is another example. In a recent review of one of my books (in case anyone is interested... it's "The Power of Stupidity") there are links to my website. But one of them doesn't work - it goes to a totally unrelated yahoo page. I've checked the code in the original htlm file and, as far as I can see, it's correct. I've seen, here and there, over he years, other cases of such things happening, leading to all sorts of silly places. My ignoramus question to tech wizards is: how do they do it? Thanks Giancarlo
Re: [silk] another scam (yahoo)
Giancarlo Livraghi wrote, [on 9/21/2009 4:33 PM]: > If I remember well, one of the threads in silk a while ago was about > yahoo being up to some mischief. > > Here is another example. In a recent review of one of my books (in case > anyone is interested... it's "The Power of Stupidity") there are links > to my website. But one of them doesn't work - it goes to a totally > unrelated yahoo page. > > I've checked the code in the original htlm file and, as far as I can > see, it's correct. Can you post the URL? I can't comment without looking at it. Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
[silk] An Operating System for the Mind
Very cogent, but my thoughts in response to this are somewhat jumbled. Do folks here have any responses? Udhay http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2009/09/operating-system-for-mind.html Saturday, September 19, 2009 An Operating System for the Mind The core of the opposition to what are being called "21st century skills" is contained in the following argument: "Cognitive science teaches us that skills and knowledge are interdependent and that possessing a base of knowledge is necessary to the acquisition not only of more knowledge, but also of skills. Skills can neither be taught nor applied effectively without prior knowledge of a wide array of subjects." In response, I pose this question to the defenders of this 'base of knowledge', "why is a common core necessary for the teaching of skills, and why is testing of that core necessary." And specifically, "the question isn't whether skills can be taught in isolation, but rather whether they must be taught in the context of some common base of knowledge and whether students ought to be tested on the basis of that knowledge. The point I am making may seem difficult to understand intuitively, because it seems to suggest that you don`t need deep knowledge of any discipline. A commenter, for example, says, "we want them to think critically, to criticize, analyze, and apply. So we say, draw on the theories of developmental psychology, in particular Erikson and Arens to learn more about individuals in their early twenties. A Based on this understanding, develop a plan to deal with risk taking behavior in junior colleges. Don't they need to first have a 'base of knowledge' in who these theorists are?" The argument - and it's a reasonable argument - is basically, "you need to know psychology to do psychology; 21st century skills don't give you some kind of short-cut to being able to do psychology without some sort of deep understanding of the subject." And the 'core knowledge' people can take their argument a step further: you can't learn psychology without first learning various other things - the knowledge of psychology builds on these things, and that's why we need a grounding in core knowledge. This form of argument is very common, and you'll find it repeated over and over - people need to know about bones to study medicine, people need to know about the elements to study chemistry, people need to know about history to study politics. Stated this way, the argument seems plausible, and the people promoting 21st century skills look like shysters, promoting something that will leave people unable to work in any discipline, let alone become psychologists, scientists and engineers. In response to this line of reasoning, let me be upfront about saying a few things: First, it isn't impossible to teach people facts. Quite the opposite is the case - we understand, and can prove (and have proved, over and over) that we can teach facts very simply and easily, through repetition, rote, memorization, practice examples, worked examples, and more. People can memorize the alphabet, the multiplication tables, the Koran, whatever. A great deal of our education today in fact turns on this very proposition: it consists of the teaching of facts, and the testing for recall of those facts. Second, it isn't wrong to teach facts. Or (perhaps more accurately) to learn facts. Having an easy memory recall of a body of facts will serve a person well in life. Knowing the multiplication tables, knowing the capital of France, knowing that carbon and hydrogen are elements (and that plastic is not) will be useful in a wide range of areas. Teaching children facts is a great shortcut, the great shortcut, in human development. Third, we need facts to do stuff. We need to know about psychology, about Freud and Jung and maybe Erikson and Arens, in order to do the job. We need to know about navigation and aerodynamics and where the brake lever is in order to fly an airplane. As anyone who drive knows, you need to know the rules of the road, the meaning of signs, the location of the steering wheel, in order to drive. To do anything, you need to know stuff. Not only do I make these statements, I would say that any person who is an advocate of 21st century learning also makes these statements. I can't imagine anyone seriously proposing any sort of educational reform who does not agree with these statements. This is important, because it means it isn't sufficient to respond to advocates of 21st century skills by saying 'we need facts'. Everybody has already agreed with that. That's why I pose my question, above, more precisely: do we need these specific facts? Do we need a common core? The reason I pose these questions in particular is that, while it is necessary (and possible) to teach facts to people, it comes with a price. And the price is this: facts learned in this way, and especially by rote, and especially at a younger age, take a direct route into the mind, and bypass a person's critical a
Re: [silk] another scam (yahoo)
Udhay Shankar wrote: > Can you post the URL? I can't comment without looking at it. Here it is http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2186713/book_review_the_power_of_stupidity.html?cat=9 The link that gets de-routed is in the third (and last) line of the first paragraph of the review, where it says: "I must recommend Giancarlo Livraghi's The Power of Stupidity". Maybe from where you are it works properly? What happens when I click on it is that (instead of http://gandalf.it/stupid/book.htm) it goes to http://it.yahoo.com/?p=us I hope you can figure out how this scam works. Or is it a coding error? In that case, why doesn't it just say "file not found"? (I wrote to the associatedcontent.com webmaster - but, so far, no reply) Thanks Giancarlo
Re: [silk] another scam (yahoo)
2009/9/21 Giancarlo Livraghi > If I remember well, one of the threads in silk a while ago was about yahoo > being up to some mischief. > > Here is another example. In a recent review of one of my books (in case > anyone is interested... it's "The Power of Stupidity") there are links to my > website. But one of them doesn't work - it goes to a totally unrelated yahoo > page. > > I've checked the code in the original htlm file and, as far as I can see, > it's correct. > > I've seen, here and there, over he years, other cases of such things > happening, leading to all sorts of silly places. My ignoramus question to > tech wizards is: how do they do it? > Do you have yahoo toolbar or any other addon/plugin supplied by yahoo installed on your browser? If so, disable that and see if it works fine. It seems to work fine for me. Kiran
Re: [silk] another scam (yahoo)
2009/9/21 Kiran K Karthikeyan > 2009/9/21 Giancarlo Livraghi > > If I remember well, one of the threads in silk a while ago was about yahoo >> being up to some mischief. >> >> Here is another example. In a recent review of one of my books (in case >> anyone is interested... it's "The Power of Stupidity") there are links to my >> website. But one of them doesn't work - it goes to a totally unrelated yahoo >> page. >> >> I've checked the code in the original htlm file and, as far as I can see, >> it's correct. >> >> I've seen, here and there, over he years, other cases of such things >> happening, leading to all sorts of silly places. My ignoramus question to >> tech wizards is: how do they do it? >> > > Do you have yahoo toolbar or any other addon/plugin supplied by yahoo > installed on your browser? > > If so, disable that and see if it works fine. It seems to work fine for me. > Nope. I see what the problem is. The url is malformed. It redirects to http://www/gandalf.it/stupid/book.htm instead of http://www.gandalf.it/stupid/book.htm The yahoo redirect is due to addon/plugin/toolbar you have installed. Either that or your default search engine is yahoo. Kiran
Re: [silk] another scam (yahoo)
On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 7:30 AM, Kiran K Karthikeyan wrote: >> Do you have yahoo toolbar or any other addon/plugin supplied by yahoo >> installed on your browser? >> >> If so, disable that and see if it works fine. It seems to work fine for me. >> > > Nope. I see what the problem is. The url is malformed. It redirects to > http://www/gandalf.it/stupid/book.htm instead of > http://www.gandalf.it/stupid/book.htm FWIW, Searching for [www] in Google shows Yahoo as the first hit (i.e. the "I'm Feeling Lucky" hit). This may not be the yahoo toolbar in action, but the browser trying to be intelligent. Thaths -- Homer: Look at these low, low prices on famous brand-name electronics! Bart: Don't be a sap, Dad. These are just crappy knockoffs. Homer: Pfft. I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there's a Magnetbox and Sorny.
Re: [silk] another scam (yahoo)
Kiran wrote: > Do you have yahoo toolbar or any other addon/plugin > supplied by yahoo installed on your browser? and also: > The yahoo redirect is due to addon/plugin/toolbar > you have installed. Either that or your default > search engine is yahoo. No. I use Firefox and I don't have any yahoo addon, plugin, toolbar or whatever. I dont' have any default search engine set as such - and I generally use google. I very rarely use yahoo... but (strange as that may be) I shall check if something has installed itself without my knowing. > I see what the problem is. The url is malformed. > It redirects to http://www/gandalf.it/stupid/book.htm > instead of http://www.gandalf.it/stupid/book.htm Yes, I had noticed that. But faulty code should lead to "file not found", not to an unrelated page. I have tried with another browser. It still redirects to an unrelated page, but it's a different one (and it isn't yahoo). So, after all, it doesn't seem to be a yahoo scam, only malfunction caused by bad code. But it's irritating that the key link is the one that doesn't work. I guess I shall have to give up... or keep chasing the associatedcontent.com webmaster. Anyhow... thank you. :) Giancarlo
[silk] [info] Project ‘Gaydar’
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/20/project_gaydar_an_mit_experiment_raises_new_questions_about_online_privacy/?page=full The Boston Globe Project ‘Gaydar’ At MIT, an experiment identifies which students are gay, raising new questions about online privacy By Carolyn Y. Johnson Globe Staff / September 20, 2009 It started as a simple term project for an MIT class on ethics and law on the electronic frontier. Two students partnered up to take on the latest Internet fad: the online social networks that were exploding into the mainstream. With people signing up in droves to reconnect with classmates and old crushes from high school, and even becoming online “friends” with their family members, the two wondered what the online masses were unknowingly telling the world about themselves. The pair weren’t interested in the embarrassing photos or overripe profiles that attract so much consternation from parents and potential employers. Instead, they wondered whether the basic currency of interactions on a social network - the simple act of “friending” someone online - might reveal something a person might rather keep hidden. Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction. The two students had no way of checking all of their predictions, but based on their own knowledge outside the Facebook world, their computer program appeared quite accurate for men, they said. People may be effectively “outing” themselves just by the virtual company they keep. “When they first did it, it was absolutely striking - we said, ‘Oh my God - you can actually put some computation behind that,’ ” said Hal Abelson, a computer science professor at MIT who co-taught the course. “That pulls the rug out from a whole policy and technology perspective that the point is to give you control over your information - because you don’t have control over your information.” The work has not been published in a scientific journal, but it provides a provocative warning note about privacy. Discussions of privacy often focus on how to best keep things secret, whether it is making sure online financial transactions are secure from intruders, or telling people to think twice before opening their lives too widely on blogs or online profiles. But this work shows that people may reveal information about themselves in another way, and without knowing they are making it public. Who we are can be revealed by, and even defined by, who our friends are: if all your friends are over 45, you’re probably not a teenager; if they all belong to a particular religion, it’s a decent bet that you do, too. The ability to connect with other people who have something in common is part of the power of social networks, but also a possible pitfall. If our friends reveal who we are, that challenges a conception of privacy built on the notion that there are things we tell, and things we don’t. “Even if you don’t affirmatively post revealing information, simply publishing your friends’ list may reveal sensitive information about you, or it may lead people to make assumptions about you that are incorrect,” said Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights organization in San Francisco. “Certainly if most or many of your friends are of a particular religious or political or sexual category, others may conclude you are part of the same category - even if you haven’t said so yourself.” The project, given the name “Gaydar” by the students, Carter Jernigan and Behram Mistree, is part of the fast-moving field of social network analysis, which examines what the connections between people can tell us. The applications run the gamut, from predicting who might be a terrorist to the likelihood a person is happy or fat. The idea of making assumptions about people by looking at their relationships is not new, but the sudden availability of information online means the field’s powerful tools can now be applied to just about anyone. For example, Murat Kantarcioglu, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Dallas, found he could make decent predictions about a person’s political affiliation. He and a student - who later went to work for Facebook - took 167,000 profiles and 3 million links between people from the Dallas-Fort Worth network. They used three methods to predict a person’s political views. One prediction model used only the details in their profiles. Another used only friendship links. And the third combined the two sets of data. The researchers found that certain traits, such as knowing what groups people belonged to or their favorite music, were quite predictive of political affiliation. But t
[silk] maybe it is't a scam (was "another scam yahoo")
Thaths wrote: > FWIW, Searching for [www] in Google shows Yahoo > as the first hit (i.e.the "I'm Feeling Lucky" hit). > This may not be the yahoo toolbar in action, > but the browser trying to be intelligent. Strange as it sounds, I guess that may, indeed, be the answer. I wish software didn't "try to be intelligent" and do all sorts of stupid things that aren't always easy to tweak or override. This is becoming interesting, thank you, because I am learning things that I didn't know. (Anyhow I have checked, I have no yahoo settings in my browser, or other such plugins etc. The bug must be somewhere else. Probably this nonsense would have never started if they hadn't unnecessarily added "www" to the url). Cheers Giancarlo
Re: [silk] maybe it is't a scam (was "another scam yahoo")
Giancarlo Livraghi wrote, [on 9/21/2009 9:20 PM]: >> FWIW, Searching for [www] in Google shows Yahoo >> as the first hit (i.e.the "I'm Feeling Lucky" hit). >> This may not be the yahoo toolbar in action, >> but the browser trying to be intelligent. > > Strange as it sounds, I guess that may, indeed, be the answer. > > I wish software didn't "try to be intelligent" and do all sorts of > stupid things that aren't always easy to tweak or override. > > This is becoming interesting, thank you, because I am learning things > that I didn't know. Another example (a recursive one) of the "power of stupidity", perhaps? Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] An Operating System for the Mind
Udhay Shankar N wrote: Very cogent, but my thoughts in response to this are somewhat jumbled. Do folks here have any responses? Udhay http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2009/09/operating-system-for-mind.html Saturday, September 19, 2009 An Operating System for the Mind I tend to agree with Downes. He is articulating a fresh approach. And it seems like an empowering and flexible approach, too. My complaint with the common core view of the world is that although I value a Liberal Arts education to a certain degree, I find it expensive, poorly delivered, and lacking in practical skills to earn a living. At the other extreme I am critical of the facts/skills-only crew who pay lip service to a more common base of knowledge from which to build and grow. Both views lock you into one or another limited paradigm. Instead, the operating system view from Downes seems to be a paradigm breaker. I like it. Jim
Re: [silk] An Operating System for the Mind
On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 6:21 AM, Jim Grisanzio wrote: > > I tend to agree with Downes. He is articulating a fresh approach. And it > seems like an empowering and flexible approach, too. My complaint with the > common core view of the world is that although I value a Liberal Arts > education to a certain degree, I find it expensive, poorly delivered, and > lacking in practical skills to earn a living. At the other extreme I am > critical of the facts/skills-only crew who pay lip service to a more common > base of knowledge from which to build and grow. Both views lock you into one > or another limited paradigm. Instead, the operating system view from Downes > seems to be a paradigm breaker. I like it. > Jim...beautifully put. This was *just* what I was trying to find the words to say, you've saved me the effort! Deepa.
Re: [silk] [info] Project ‘Gaydar’
Eugen Leitl wrote, [on 9/21/2009 8:59 PM]: > http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/20/project_gaydar_an_mit_experiment_raises_new_questions_about_online_privacy/?page=full > > The Boston Globe > > Project ‘Gaydar’ > > At MIT, an experiment identifies which students are gay, raising new > questions about online privacy Yet another way in which traffic analysis [1] reveals rather more information than people might expect. I find it fascinating to speculate about possible countermeasures. A couple that come to mind: * Network as promiscuously as possible, so that traffic analysis shows you as 'belonging' to n possible networks, where n is a suitably large number. * Encourage all people in your various groups to do the same. Udhay [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_analysis -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
