650 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2017
  2. Nov 2017
    1. an environment unlike anything they will encounter outside of school

      Hm? Aren’t they likely to encounter Content Management Systems, Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Intranets, etc.? Granted, these aren’t precisely the same think as LMS. But there’s quite a bit of continuity between Drupal, Oracle, Moodle, Sharepoint, and Salesforce.

  3. Oct 2017
    1. What is this again? What Google Drive should be. What Dropbox should be. What file systems can be. The way we unify our data access across companies, services, programs, and people. The way I want to live and work.

      I think that this is interesting, but idealistic. The code repo on GitHub is quite active, but how does a technology like this gain traction?

    1. The absence of a need for co-signaling through CD28 for these BiTEs might also be explained by the observation that among all T cell subtypes, CD8+ effector memory cells CD45RO+ (TEM) and CD8+ effector memory CD45RA+ (TEMRA) contribute the most to BiTE activity, whereas naïve T cells do not contribute at all to the killing efficiency.50 It is believed that memory T cells do not require CD28 costimulation for expansion during secondary responses, which could explain the efficiency of BiTEs. However, this dogma has recently been challenged.5

      absence of need for cosignal effector memory cells contribute most to bite activity memory T ells dont require cd28 costimulation for expansion?

  4. Sep 2017
    1. NixOS is a Linux distribution with a unique approach to package and configuration management.

      This is another approach to systems management and software as a services. I don't really understand in detail the difference between NixOS and docker, but googling NixOS vs Docker shows that its a topic that is ripe for a bunfight.

  5. Aug 2017
  6. May 2017
    1. Multi-party Conversational Systems are systems with natural language interactionbetween one or more people or systems. From the moment that an utterance is sent toa group, to the moment that it is replied in the group by a member, several activitiesmust be done by the system: utterance understanding, information search, reasoning,among others. In this paper we present the challenges of designing and building multi-party conversational systems, the state of the art, our proposed hybrid architectureusing both norms and machine learning and some insights after implementing andevaluating one on the finance domain.

      Conversational Systems

  7. Apr 2017
    1. This is why people can play the piano with their fingers but not with their toes.

      That does not really explain why there are very talented musicians that have limb defects, but I suppose that similar to a blind person being able to hear better, their brains adjust (like complex-adaptive systems do) and reassign a new input-element (e.g. the feet) to a left-over motoric system(e.g. the hands).

  8. Mar 2017
    1. There may well be a dominant reading, but this can erode over time if the “interpretive community” (Fish 1980) to which it speaks changes or the message lost entirely if that com-munity is decisively disrupted or displaced.14
  9. Jan 2017
  10. Jul 2016
    1. The average number of articles published was 31 per year with 74% publishing 0–30 articles, and 9% 60 or more. The study also contains interesting data about the workload done, revenues etc.

      Average numbers of articles in OJS journals: 31

      • 74% publish 0-30
      • 9% 60 or more
  11. Jun 2016
    1. And now we’re besties again.

      I can relate. I have deep respect for AK but often find myself flipping back and forth between strong agreement and feeling somewhat off-put by what he writes. That seems like a healthier relationship to have with any public intellectual though than 100% agreement 100% of the time. I'm so glad his writing exists in the world and I'm glad yours does too. Seems like this kind of layered relationship is just part of dealing with complex systems. :-)

  12. May 2016
  13. Apr 2016
  14. Jan 2016
    1. Today, we’re announcing the end of Chrome’s support for Windows XP, as well as Windows Vista, and Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8, since these platforms are no longer actively supported by Microsoft and Apple. Starting April 2016, Chrome will continue to function on these platforms but will no longer receive updates and security fixes.

      Google announcement from 10 Nov 2015.

      Estimate of operating system usage.

      Microsoft security updates for Windows Vista are scheduled to continue until 11 April, 2017.

    1. Stupid models are extremely useful. They are usefulbecause humans are boundedly rational and because language is imprecise. It is often only by formalizing a complex system that we can make progress in understanding it. Formal models should be a necessary component of the behavioral scientist’s toolkit. Models are stupid, and we need more of them.

      Formal models are explicit in the assumptions they make about how the parts of a system work and interact, and moreover are explicit in the aspects of reality they omit.

      -- Paul Smaldino

    2. Microeconomic models based on rational choice theory are useful for developing intuition, and may even approximate reality in a fewspecial cases, but the history of behavioral economics shows that standard economic theory has also provided a smorgasbord of null hypotheses to be struck down by empirical observation.
    3. Where differences between conditions are indicated, avoid the mistake of running statistical analyses as if you were sampling from a larger population.

      You already have a generating model for your data – it’s your model. Statistical analyses on model data often involve modeling your model with a stupider model. Don’t do this. Instead, run enough simulations to obtain limiting distributions.

    4. A model’s strength stemsfromits precision.

      I have come across too many modeling papers in which the model – that is, the parts, all their components, the relationships between them, and mechanisms for change – is not clearly expressed. This is most common with computational models (such as agent-based models), which can be quite complicated, but also exists in cases of purely mathematical models.

    5. However, I want to be careful not to elevate modelers above those scientists who employ other methods.

      This is important for at least two reasons, the first and foremost of which is that science absolutely requires empirical data. Those data are often painstaking to collect, requiring clever, meticulous, and occasionally tedious labor. There is a certain kind of laziness inherent in the professional modeler, who builds entire worlds from his or her desk using only pen, paper, and computer. Relatedly, many scientists are truly fantastic communicators, and present extremely clear theories that advance scientific understanding without a formal model in sight. Charles Darwin, to give an extreme example, laid almost all the foundations of modern evolutionary biology without writing down a single equation.

    6. Ultimately,the theory has been shown to be incorrect, and has been epistemically replaced by the theory of General Relativity. Nevertheless, the theory is able to make exceptionally good approximations of gravitational forces –so good that NASA’s moon missions have relied upon them.

      General Relativity may also turn out to be a "dumb model". https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/672957979545571329

    7. Table 1.Twelve functions served by false models. Adapted with permissionfrom Wimsatt

      Twelve good uses for dumb models, William Wimsatt (1987).

    8. To paraphrase Gunawardena (2014), a model is a logical engine for turning assumptions into conclusions.

      By making our assumptions explicit, we can clearly assess their implied conclusions. These conclusions will inevitably be flawed, because the assumptions are ultimately incorrect or at least incomplete. By examining how they differ from reality, we can refine our models, and thereby refine our theories and so gradually we might become less wrong.

    9. the stupidity of a model is often its strength. By focusing on some key aspects of a real-world system(i.e., those aspectsinstantiated in the model), we can investigate how such a system would work if, in principle, we really couldignore everything we are ignoring. This only sounds absurd until one recognizes that, in our theorizing about the nature of reality –both as scientists and as quotidianhumans hopelessly entangled in myriad webs of connection and conflict –weignore thingsall the time.
    10. The generalized linear model, the work horse ofthe social sciences, models data as being randomly drawn from a distribution whose mean varies according to some parameter. The linear model is so obviously wrong yet so useful that the mathematical anthropologist Richard McElreathhas dubbed it “the geocentric model of applied statistics,”in reference to the Ptolemaic model of the solar system that erroneously placed the earth rather than the sun at the center but nevertheless produced accurate predictions of planetary motion as they appeared in the night sky(McElreath 2015).

      A model that approximates some aspect of reality can be very useful, even if the model itself is flat-out wrong.

      But on the other hand, we can't accept approximation of reality as hard proof that a model is correct.

    11. Unfortunately, my own experience working with complex systems and working among complexity scientistssuggests that we are hardly immune to such stupidity. Consider the case of Marilyn Vos Savantand the Monty Hall problem.

      Many people, including some with training in advanced mathematics, contradicted her smugly. But a simple computer program that models the situation can demonstrate her point.

      2/3 times, your first pick will be wrong. Every time that happens, the door Monty didn't open is the winner. So switching wins 2/3 times.

      http://marilynvossavant.com/game-show-problem/

    12. Mitch Resnick, in his book Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams, details his experiences teaching gifted high school students about the dynamics of complex systems using artificial life models (Resnick 1994). He showed them how organized behavior could emerge when individualsresponded only to local stimuli using simple rules, without the need for a central coordinating authority. Resnick reports that even after weeks spent demonstrating the principles of emergence,using computer simulations that the students programmed themselves, many students still refused to believe that what they were seeing could really work without central leadership.
  15. Dec 2015
    1. Mozilla's Firefox OS is just the latest in a long list of mobile operating systems that have struggled to get the attention of consumers, who have typically shied away from upstarts often characterized by a weak selection of apps available. That hard-luck list includes Microsoft's Windows Phone, Samsung's Tizen, Jolla's Sailfish OS, Canonical's Ubuntu, Hewlett-Packard's WebOS and BlackBerry's BlackBerry OS.
    2. "We are definitely working with a good number of partners who desire a non-Android OS to power their mobile devices," Acadine founder and Chief Executive Li Gong told CNET. He declined to detail discussions but said, "We are now the frontrunner in terms of choice in this space."

      Hong Kong-based startup Acadine Technologies may take over development of Firefox OS, as H5OS.

  16. Nov 2015
    1. a study by Stephen Schueller, published last year in the Journal of Positive Psychology, found that people assigned to a happiness activity similar to one for which they previously expressed a preference showed significantly greater increases in happiness than people assigned to an activity not based on a prior preference. This, writes Schueller, is “a model for positive psychology exercises similar to Netflix for movies or Amazon for books and other products.”
    1. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google will be merging Chrome OS into Android, to be released sometime in 2017. Chrome OS runs on netbooks and provides most of its applications through the Web browser. As a result, it is a very secure system -- unlike Android, which has been quite vulnerable. Chrome OS will continue to exist as open source software, but Google will focus on extending Android to run on laptops.

    1. Placing the system at the center of analysis decenters a focus on technology and offers a moresynthetic perspective, bringing into our conception of machines all sorts of nontechnological ele-ments.

      So it is not really about the technology, but more about how we are implementing the use of it throughout the different areas where these systems are constructed.

  17. Oct 2015
    1. 6 But friendship can also form a kind of moral community, whose power should not be underestimated in its reach- ing across.

      If you have a strong enough support system pushing for the same goals (and influenced and tied together by similar morals), you can do anything

    1. Blacks were herded into the sights of unscrupulous lenders who took them for money and for sport.

      These lenders think this is all a game... It sickens me that another human would knowingly exploit someone's inability to establish a legitimate position in the credit system.

    1. Ultimately, Information Systems make connections between people, pieces of information, or events in time. In the best case, the IS does this in a way that is somehow better than a non-digital version of this.

  18. Jun 2015
    1. In my exuberance about all the awesome tweets I was reading, I didn’t think about the thousands of men out there who would be reading the same tweets and feel incensed at the injustice of this one poor man being pilloried for a single comment he made in bad taste. If you don’t look at the situation from the perspective of millions of women who work everyday in a world where unconscious bias against women in science and technology is pervasive, you see only this one man and what happened to him. I hope some people out there, men in particular, who have only been looking at this situation from Tim Hunt’s perspective, will try to open their minds to the way systemic bias impacts your female colleagues and see the whole event from that lens.

      Really interesting point about "blindness" to systemic problems or scenarios!

  19. Oct 2014
    1. IT'S ABOUT THE THINGS YOU SAY AND DO AND HOW THAT PROPAGATES A POSITIVE SOCIAL EFFECT OR A NEGATIVE SOCIAL EFFECT. BUT JUST AS HULK HAS ARGUED MANY TIMES, WE HAVE SUCH A DIFFICULT TIME SEEING OURSELVES AS ANYTHING BUT A PERSON IN A MOMENTARY INTERACTION. AND SO WE ONLY LIKE TO DEBATE THE FAIRNESS OF THAT MYOPIC INTERACTION ITSELF. WE ARE SO DAMN BAD AT SEEING OURSELVES AS PART OF A LARGER TREND / SYSTEM. WE ARE SO BAD AT SEEING WHAT WE ARE ACTUALLY ADVOCATING ON THE WHOLE.
    1. This in turn means that Redis Cluster does not have to take meta data in the data structures in order to attempt a value merge, and that the fancy commands and data structures supported by Redis are also supported by Redis Cluster. So no additional memory overhead, no API limits, no limits in the amount of elements a value can contain, but less safety during partitions.

      A solid trade-off, I think, and says a lot about the intended use cases.

  20. Mar 2014
    1. Delays that are too short cause overreaction, “chasing your tail,” oscillations amplified by the jumpiness of the response. Delays that are too long cause damped, sustained, or exploding oscillations, depending on how much too long. At the extreme they cause chaos. Overlong delays in a system with a threshold, a danger point, a range past which irreversible damage can occur, cause overshoot and collapse.
  21. Feb 2014
    1. Point 3 is almost certainly the one that still bugs Doug. All sorts of mechanisms and utilities are around and used (source code control, registries, WWW search engines, and on and on), but the problem of indexing and finding relevant information is tougher today than ever before, even on one's own hard disk, let alone the WWW.

      I would agree that "the problem of indexing and finding relevant information is tougher today than ever before" ... and especially "on one's own hard disk".

      Vannevar Bush recognized the problem of artificial systems of indexing long before McIlroy pulled this page from his typewriter in 1964, and here we are 50 years later using the same kind of filesystem indexing systems and wondering why it's harder than ever to find information on our own hard drives.

    1. The real heart of the matter of selection, however, goes deeper than a lag in the adoption of mechanisms by libraries, or a lack of development of devices for their use. Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path. The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.

      With the advent of Google Docs we're finally moving away from the archaic indexing mentioned here. The filesystem metaphor was simple and dominated how everyone manages their data-- which extended into how we developed web content, as well.

      The declaration that Hierarchical File Systems are Dead has led to better systems of tagging and search, but we're still far from where we need to be since there is still a heavy focus on the document as a whole instead of also the content within the document.

      The linearity of printed books is even more treacherously entrenched in our minds than the classification systems used by libraries to store those books.

      One day maybe we'll liberate every piece of content from every layer of its concentric cages: artificial systems of indexing, books, web pages, paragraphs, even sentences and words themselves. Only then will we be able to re-dress those thoughts automatically into those familiar and comforting forms that keep our thoughts caged.

  22. Jan 2014
    1. In all cases, one standard is clear: Each of these vendors is betting very heavily on HTML5-based applications as well as methods to make HTML5 compatibility the basis for their future. Whether made from Java or other language frameworks, HTML5 is the common thread that runs through each of these alternative mobile operating systems. Start with HTML5, and your applications’ portability is almost assured.

      Is there any other reasonable bet than HTML5?! Especially in the smartdevice realm where there is a rich set of HTML5-family features already enabled it makes less and less sense to make native applications except for special edge-cases. And any smartdevice competitors cannot possibly compete against iOS and Android on their own unique native app development format-- so HTML5 would seem the only reasonable place to focus development of new apps. Where Ubuntu succeeds is compatibility with an already well established Linux ecosystem.

  23. Nov 2013
    1. Is this also a narrative system? Narrative can be a powerful rhetorical tool and deterrence rhetoric (particularly through film) projected a certain narrative about the world. It almost seems to exist as stories that create filters or lenses through which the actors see the world; the system exists because they allow it to color their perceptions.