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16176

WorldCup Predictor / Re: FIFA World Cup Predictor 2010 - A Contest For Best Predictions?

« Last post by mouser on June 07, 2010, 06:21 AM »

Slashdot has a story today about a simple contest to predict how far countries will go in the world cup:
http://science.slash...Challenge-For-Quants

With contest page here:
http://kaggle.com/wo...010?viewtype=summary

Now i know the first question you are asking yourself is how come after having this amazing online simulator up for two tournaments, slashdot could never be bothered to show any interest in it -- are they now doing a front page story on a trivial $200 contest to predict winners that is basically a one page "send in your predictions" form.  Well I don't have a good answer for you.

However, one interesting thing would be to add a feature to the simulator to have it output a set of predictions for this contest, just for fun.

16177

Living Room / Re: New flash player vulnerability (affects Adobe Reader as well)

« Last post by mouser on June 07, 2010, 05:42 AM »

Temporary fix here:
http://community.ca....-adobe-products.aspx

16178

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR should also support alpha fade out on program exit

« Last post by mouser on June 06, 2010, 04:01 PM »

the reason it doesn't is so that the newly launched program gets focus immediately.

16179

Living Room / New cheap cell phone: Subsidized Googlephone whispers targeted ads

« Last post by mouser on June 06, 2010, 02:21 PM »

Here's a few of our future and our steady march towards free products sponsored by advertisements:

http://www.theonion....geted-ads-dir,17470/

16180

Living Room / Re: Why do we always wait for apple's stuff before making a i[blank]-killer??

« Last post by mouser on June 06, 2010, 08:52 AM »

I think it's also important to highlight how focused Apple is on providing a good experience to it's customers -- which explains partly why their is a kind of cult-ish devotion to Apple.  They have set up their stores to help people deal with problems and they make a real effort to help people feel comfortable with their products and guide them through problems when they have them.  Apple computer users know that if there is a problem they aren't going to be left alone to solve it; sure they may have to pay more for such benefits, but for them it's a price well worth paying.

Now why more companies don't go the same route as Apple.. One reason is surely that Apple already has this area of the market fairly well covered -- it's hard for other companies to make headway into it.  It's much easier to make headway in a market where customers aren't so loyal to one brand and are more objectively attracted to features, and less concerned with getting long-term support.

Apple is *very* good at what they do.. A good part of that success has to do with marketing.  The same thing could be said of google.  Maybe the common thread in all giant successful corporations is how good they are at marketing themselves and developing a cult-like reality distortion field around them.

However i think it would be a real mistake to chaulk it all up to marketing -- Apple takes very very seriously the idea of creating a complete user interface experience in ways that other companies cannot be bothered to do, and they back it up with a support system that their customers appreciate.  That's not a trivial thing.  In many ways it's a lot more rational that those of us who are more focused on squeezing out a few more cpu cycles or mb of free memory, or saving a few bucks.

16181

Living Room / Re: Why do we always wait for apple's stuff before making a i[blank]-killer??

« Last post by mouser on June 05, 2010, 11:39 PM »

one possibility is that Apple *creates* the market for their products in ways that other companies simply cannot do -- for various reasons including financial resources, brand loyalty and reputation, free publicity, chutzpah.

what apple does better than anyone else is SELL their products as being life changing -- even when they are selling something that already exists in another form.  i've made this point before but when you watch a standard pc ad, you see them advertising the specs of the pc.  when you see an apple ad, you see them selling the amazing mind blowing life changing things you can do with your apple computer, like listen to amazing music, burn amazing cds, etc.

tablets have existed for a long time.  it seems to me apple did 2 main things -- first, they put the effort into the software user interface that few other companies are willing to do.  second, they marketed the hell out of it as a life changing device, and the media decided to join them in the effort.  apple deserves all the credit for having the guts and brains to make it work.. and they benefit from some incredible advantages in terms of marketing, that very few companies if any share.

16182

General Software Discussion / Re: Automatic Printer Switcher

« Last post by mouser on June 05, 2010, 05:05 PM »

yeah i must admit that i have to take fault for not putting the program name in that thread -- that was lame.  

16183

Living Room / Re: New flash player vulnerability (affects Adobe Reader as well)

« Last post by mouser on June 05, 2010, 04:41 PM »

thanks for the heads up Jibz.

and this is a reminder to everyone:  the very best way to protect yourself against such things is to be prepared to revert your machine back to a stable safe state.
you can't anticipate everything that could go wrong, so back up your computer regularly, and keep older backups.  that's the best way to be safe.

16184

WorldCup Predictor / Re: FIFA World Cup Predictor 2010 - A Contest For Best Predictions?

« Last post by mouser on June 05, 2010, 11:11 AM »

you're right, it would make a lot of sense to combine votes of experts -- or look for the common recommended bets.  the real problem is that a site like DC doesn't get enough attention to bring in enough experts to make that worth while.

i'll tell you another idea that would make sense -- have the system observe which experts were correct after the first few games, and then weight their predictions more highly.  might give you a quick way to pick out a good set of candidate expert ratings.

16185

Living Room / Re: Kickstarter

« Last post by mouser on June 05, 2010, 06:29 AM »

I love the idea.. i think we need such things now more than ever.  maybe it's time to try to do a kickstarter-funded project.

16186

Living Room / Re: Kickstarter

« Last post by mouser on June 05, 2010, 05:58 AM »

one of these days we're going to add a search function to this forum so people can search for "terms" and see if there have been posts about something in the past.. that will help answer such questions 

16187

WorldCup Predictor / Re: FIFA World Cup Predictor 2010 - A Contest For Best Predictions?

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 10:33 PM »

It would be fascinating to do some sensitivity analysis on the data -- that is, to see how much differences in ratings affect the final predicted outcomes.
I suspect that changing around the scores of weak teams moderately wouldn't make much of a difference.
I could add a feature that increased the noise of weak teams.

16188

Developer's Corner / Re: JayIsGames.Com Casual Gameplay Design Competition #8

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 10:24 PM »

i just realized that the game/political-simulation/thought-experiment flash game idea that i've been nursing for a while would be perfect for this.  but i don't think i have the time to code it..

does anyone with some flash experience want to work with me on this?  you have to have some experience making flash game type thing, but i know we could get help with graphics and sound, and this isn't very complicated?

anyone interested?

16189

General Software Discussion / Re: where can I find joomla computer specs

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 09:44 PM »

no one in their right mind hosts a public website with a desktop windows OS.
if you can't afford to rent a server, then find a freely hosted service.

16190

WorldCup Predictor / Re: FIFA World Cup Predictor 2010 - A Contest For Best Predictions?

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 07:33 PM »

i'm going to bet a few hundred dollars based on your guys' predictions -- and anyone else who publicly posts on this thread, so fame and fortune await you. 

16191

WorldCup Predictor / Re: FIFA World Cup Predictor 2010 - A Contest For Best Predictions?

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 07:33 PM »

a smart thing to do, for you people creating ratings -- is to maybe do it in iterations.

that is, now that you see what bets the WCP simulator is suggesting, go back to your ratings and see if there are any games involving those teams that the simulator suggests betting on, that upon further reflection you would change your prediicted score for.

and do that iterative tweaking of your ratings until you are satisfied and the recommendations are stable.

16192

WorldCup Predictor / Re: FIFA World Cup Predictor 2010 - A Contest For Best Predictions?

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 07:29 PM »

unfortunately lj, your predictions don't make for a very appealing bet.  although there is a 9x expected payoff from a couple of bets, which is fantastic, the actual chance of those teams winning are so low that it's very unlikely you'd win.  though the honduras bet is attractive at 1000 to 1, if they really did have a 1% chance of winning.  plus it would sure be a nice story to tell if they won

i think the other example run i showed is from rgdot.  his predictions have a more attractive clear bet, on germany -- in the sense that if his predictions are right you have a pretty good chance of making a reasonable profit.

16193

WorldCup Predictor / Re: FIFA World Cup Predictor 2010 - A Contest For Best Predictions?

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 06:54 PM »

i think i ma have used an earlier version of yours in my first example, ljbirns.
btw it would be nice to crop your screenshot.

16194

General Software Discussion / Re: where can I find joomla computer specs

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 06:19 PM »

with every content management system, the question of what specs you need to run it always comes down to how much traffic you will have.
different content management systems will be more or less efficient, and may require different back-end processes to run.. so if you have a low end machine you might look for a more efficient, less-resource-intensive CMS, but you aren't going to find a simple answer, since the key factor is going to be how much traffic you have hitting your website.

16195

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor -2.82.01 - June 1st, 2010

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 03:32 PM »

it does sound like something is unhappy with red box mode, which uses a keyboard and mouse hook dll..

16196

WorldCup Predictor / Re: FIFA World Cup Predictor 2010 - A Contest For Best Predictions?

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 03:07 PM »

So has anyone made a complete set of ratings they feel good about and think are reasonable?  I ask because i'd like to place some bets using them.

16197

Developer's Corner / Re: The day before the day we've all been waiting for...OLLYDBG 2.0 ALPHA IS OUT!!!

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 11:47 AM »

OLLYDBG 2 FINAL IS OUT (!)

http://www.ollydbg.de/version2.html

16198

Screenshot Captor / Re: Blurred Captures?

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 09:35 AM »

ok so it's only when in excel or word that it's blurred?

16199

Screenshot Captor / Re: Blurred Captures?

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 09:09 AM »

the images captured by screenshot captor are not going to be blurred -- there are only 2 possibilities:
1) either SC or MS Word/Excel are blurring when displaying them at less than 100% resolution
2) the files are being blurred when saving them in a lossy format (like jpg instead of png).

SO, the first step is to find out what is going on.

If you capture a screenshot and then view it in SC, with zoom set at 100%, does it look blurry?
Double click it in the thumbnail to open it up in your default viewer program, does it look blurry?
If you are saving as a jpg, try saving it as a png -- ie set your default image save format to png if you have previously changed it from that to jpg.

16200

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: An Extremely Simple Gmail Tasks Plugin

« Last post by mouser on June 04, 2010, 07:53 AM »

drane, i'm not sure what the problem is, hopefully rufzid can help -- it sounds like maybe there is another plugin that is needed to work with this, or some missing file.