Posts by Kyle Matthews
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What's the bit between "url" and "link text" ? Could someone please e-mail me and explain how to post a link, it'd be appreciated?
It's the vertical line, typically above the \.
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90 billion spams a day would imply the existence of 9 billion email accounts to be consistent with the MAAWG figures. Does everyone on earth really have 1.5 email addresses?
I dunno, but I have... umm 8. No, 9 really. And there are another three or four that I've created out there on the internet but never really used and don't check anymore. So I'm covering 12.
I'm in the IT biz (in case you hadn't guessed) and used to work for one of the bigger email security players. I'm of the view that a professionally operated telecoms business (which needn't have the scale of Google) doesn't need to have much trouble with spam. Unfortunately, a lot of companies want to run an ISP out of a garage on the smell of a wet rag - and then expect the government to help them out in doing so.
I don't have a problem with someone running an ISP out of a garage. If that works for them and works for their customers, why not? Why should the barrier to getting into the business be raised by having to buy a server that can process half a million spam emails a day?
And why should we all be trusting some algorithm to ensure that we get every real email that's sent to us? It'd be nice if 90% of your email was real, and 10% junk, which is about the ratio that comes through my letterbox. Then I could decide which ones I want to trash without looking at, rather than sophos, ihug, google etc etc having to do it for me.
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I like what Chris Anderson at Wired did when he couldn't stop the PR spam coming: published all the source addresses.
I did that for a while, before spam software stopped sending it through. At one stage I had a web page which had a list of about 200 email addresses, solely there so they could pick each other up.
After a while the job of adding to it go to be too much.
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AUS: 185/3 (36 overs)
Dammit. Ever since PA stopped blogging specifically on sports, I've forgotten to keep up. 'Scuse me.
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Can we have his email & snail mail addresses? I think that would be nice.
That Andrew Llewellyn. Sends a Christmas card to anyone, full of holiday greetings. What a great guy! Feel the love.
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That sounds like an argument from authority. When you're thinking about bold claims like psychic abilities, it's more important than ever to hang onto the rules of sound argument.
I wasn't making an argument at all, just pulling up a vague memory which I wasn't sure was true, hence the question mark. You didn't really answer it either.
I'm not saying that psychic abilities will be proven at some point in the future - I think that's rather unlikely. But if, as Stephen said, "I would rather discount things that can't be proved." then if my vague memory about Einstein is correct, then we'd have closed the box a little early.
I've previously... not commented, but raised questions on PAS about the colonial nature of the term/box/brand 'science'. I haven't looked into it any further since, but I still think it's an interesting question.
I'm not a scientist by trade, I'm a historian if anything. So I'm always interested in people standing on a particular moment in time and claiming the infallibility of a method like 'science', when as you point out, at various moments in human history, people have stood on moments in time and claimed infallibility of similar or other methods and have been proven wrong.
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Out of curiosity I went and found out a bit more about the show:
http://sensingmurder.co.nz/index.html
The investigators who follow up on it are from this place, which seems to be legit at a glance:
http://www.totalpropertyservices.co.nz/risk_management.htm
Some ex police officers and I presume some people who couldn't make the police (why the ex- ones are ex, I don't know).
The programme is made by Ninox TV:
They do a bunch of other 'reality' shows - cops ones, hospital ones, rescue helicopters and whatnot.
If it was a TV show made by some sort of psychics collective, I'd be sitting over next to Stephen. On the basis on that 2 minutes of looking I'll keep it in the 'curious, I wonder how that works' file with a healthy dose of skepticism.
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"Unless it can be disproved it can't be discounted."
That's a recipe for gullibility. I would rather discount things that can't be proved.
Didn't Einstein have a couple of theories which weren't proven until decades later?
Personally I'm happy to have an "I don't know" box. I'll put earth going around the sun in 'yes', God in 'no', and keep stuff in the middle until more light gets shed on them. I suspect Galileo would have wanted a few theologians to have an "I don't know" box too.
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Kyle, I don't think it's a safe assumption that it's not a complete fraud. That is how psychics work.
Well I said 'suspect', not 'assume'. It's possible that it is a fraud. Just that my second-hand experience with being on the show, is that it's not.
I don't know how the show is made, but I presume it's made by a TV production company who brings in the psychics by themselves. So the producers, directors, sound people, camera people, researchers I would guess aren't psychic believers, but just people making a TV show. I'd be interested if anyone knew anything different - it could be very shonky.
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One very obvious answer is that they WERE told. Or that there were multiple takes, and all the takes with bad guesses were left on the floor. Or that many of the participants are actors working to a script.
Those are the obvious answers. Assuming it's not a complete fraud, and the psychics aren't 1. told, or 2. actors (I suspect that would get out if it were, but who knows) or 3. already knew about the case, then the editing would be the primary factor in moving it from how it was filmed to how it appeared on tv.
But editing can't cover everything - my father didn't have an explanation as to how the psychic was able to point to the place that the victim lived on a map, and referred to it by the name that the victim would have used, not the name that an adult would have used, first time. That was just weird, and he's not exactly lining up to get his palm read. He was interviewed on camera for the show, and while he wasn't involved with the psychics at all, he didn't get any impression that the show was a complete crock of shit, or he wouldn't have agreed to do it. 35 years in the police force and CEO of a large organisation, he's got a fairly strong bullshit detector and doesn't put his face on TV for larks.
I don't believe in psychics, and I certainly don't believe in edited TV shows getting family's hopes up with information that's no good for the police. The mother in this case was angry with the police for not following it up, and the show didn't provide the police's valid reasoning for not doing so.