Haha. xkcd does a really good job with satirizing current events.
I just discovered this amazing series of music videos, created by running catchy quotations from notable scientists through Auto-Tune. They seem like a new generation of religious art.
The Symphony of Science is a musical project headed by John Boswell designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.
With Carl Sagan, David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins among many, these inspiring videos communicate the value of science.
Beautiful.
Just like “unlimited” really means subject to limits, the marketing guys at Rogers seem to communicate that “any” doesn’t mean any.
Any tier
Yesterday, I got an ad in the mail from them for their digital cable service, offering a free HD receiver. On the reverse side of the ad, it says that I can sign up for “any tier” of their high speed Internet or phone service to get an HD personal video recorder for free.
Sign up for any tier ... get an HD PVR for free.
Apparently, the fine print specifies that “any tier” really means “Rogers Hi-Speed Internet Lite and above”, which excludes the Ultra-Lite tier valued at $27.99/month.
Hi-Speed Internet Lite tier or above also required
I don’t think I’m the only one who would find this a little bit misleading.
While it doesn’t really look good on paper to say “sign up for Lite or above” in the big bullet, it would be a lot more honest than defining “any tier” as “not any tier but this one and above”.
And while I would certainly die of broadband withdrawal if I had the Ultra-Lite package, I still think there are people who will probably sign up for the cheapest tier and discover that they do not, in fact, get a free HD PVR.
Here’s the entire scan; click on the image to view in full size.
Get a free HD PVR!
(As of more than a year ago, I no longer use Rogers cable Internet because there’s something cheaper out there.)
What are the tiers?
On a semi-related note, Rogers seems to be doing a great job at market segmentation. Instead of providing consumers with economical plans comparable to those in France (20-30Mbps connections, VoIP service, and HDTV with a DVR included for just $45 a month), Rogers Communications has decided to split a service as important as cable Internet into… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 different plans.
- Ultra-lite @ $27.99/month; 500 kbps down, 2 GB limit
- Lite @ $35.99/month; 3 Mbps down, 25 GB limit
- Express @ $46.99/month; 10 Mbps down, 60 GB limit
This used to be the highest plan back when it was only 5 Mbps. - Extreme @ $59.99/month; 10 Mbps down, 95 GB limit
This means $13 extra for 35 GB of transfer. - (new) Extreme Plus @ $69.99/month; 25 Mbps down, 125 GB limit
- (new) Ultimate @ $99.99/month; 50 Mbps down, 175 GB limit
(all plan information current as of April 7, 2010)
Theoretically, creating these tiers of service maximizes revenue by differentiating between groups of consumers with dissimilar willingness to pay for Internet. (There’s also a supposed benefit to charging more for faster speeds and more bandwidth: curb torrenting and illegal file sharing. That’s a more reasonable justification.)
In reality, it just makes consumers jealous of users who can afford $100/month Internet. In addition, I’m rather wary of a company that has the capability to offer faster speeds overall to match the top countries (South Korea has average broadband of 14.6 Mbps, and Japan has an average of 7.9 Mbps), but which suppresses broadband for its corporate gain at the cost of consumer benefit.
This is probably one of many reasons why consumers, particularly Canadian iPhone users (albeit not for cable Internet), despise Rogers. It plays like it dominates the market. After all, broadband Internet in Canada is an oligopoly; Bell, Rogers, and Shaw are essentially the only big players in the market (and Shaw isn’t even available here). We don’t have much choice.
My conclusion
My personal perspective of Rogers, from a consumer view, is that they don’t deserve most of our business.
I don’t understand how any (supposedly) responsible news organization could do the things that FOX has done. Furthermore, I don’t see how they could honestly call themselves “fair and balanced” — their slogan — after all the stupid things they’ve done and continue to do.
I’m gonna focus on one thing in particular (and hopefully destroy them on it): biased polls and a horrifying abuse of statistics.
If there’s anything that you learn in a basic data management or statistics course, it’s that surveys can be easily engineered to be biased; to produce intentionally skewed results.
That’s what FOX does.
Anger poll
Questions
Take the following poll question as an example:
Does the ‘Reconciliation’ Gambit Make You Angry?
What does that question do, in terms of data collection?
- Sampling bias. The question is clearly targeted at those who feel strongly about the issue, because those are the vocal minorities interested in persuading others of their view. Now, since FOXNews.com is a clearly conservative news source, the visitors to the site will, logically, not include many liberals who would have voted negative to this poll question. As a result, the sample is not representative of the population, producing skewed results.
Choices
What did that question look like on their site?
How biased are the choices?
“You decide”: are the choices biased?
- Yes, yes of course.
- Unsure, but if you’re asking, doesn’t that mean it’s biased?
- No, but maybe it’s biased.
Obviously I’m satirizing their choices. If you read the wording of each option, TWO of the options support the data that FOX wants to collect.
Since when did unsure agree with yes?
Moreover, since when did no contradict no?! “No, it doesn’t make me angry, but they’re still using a loophole.” That’s definitely a biased choice.
The “Other” Choice
All right, so this is probably the choice that someone would pick if they, like me, disagree with all the options and their wording. What if I think “it doesn’t make me angry because it’s not a loophole, it’s a procedure?”
The problem with that is, other is substantially underrepresented when FOX airs results or makes a big deal of them. Right now, 94% say it makes them angry, and that’s the only data they care about when they’re publicizing the results.
Who cares that some extremist decided to write a lengthy explanation of their choice under “other”? That’s not a statistic that matters.
So the “other” choice is just there to give the poll a guise of fairness.
The Extraneous Text
Everything they’ve posted in front of the poll question is designed to steer voters towards one option. For the question above, they asked:
President Obama unveiled his revised health care reform plan on Wednesday. The buzz word is “reconciliation,’ a rarely used legislative maneuver designed to resolve budget differences but one that could also be used to push through the Democrats’ health agenda by a simple majority vote. Are you angry that Obama and the Dems are resorting to using “reconciliation”?
I added emphasis to the key manipulating words above.
I think it’s plainly obvious that words like “maneuver”, “resorting to”, “agenda” (as in hidden agenda) have subtle connotations that the voter’s subconscious mind picks up on.
UPDATE: How could I have forgotten to analyze the word “gambit”? The concise Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “an action or remark calculated to gain an advantage.” You tell me that isn’t a loaded question.
In Short…
That particular poll was biased. Let’s briefly critique another one.
Victory poll
Statisticians would shoot them for this one. Well, not as much as for the previous one.
The question is fine here (except for the ambiguous definition of the term victory), but the choices are terrible. Again, there’s the issue with the “Other (post a comment)” choice because it is far easier for someone to pick another option than to take the effort to write a comment — that choice basically means nothing.
Irresponsible or is it just me?
The “No” option is an exaggeration. 2700 pages, apparently, is a lie (or a gross exaggeration). The official H.R. 4872 (reconciliation) bill is 2310 pages, and the Senate bill previously passed by the Senate weighed in at around 2400.
Sampling bias
Again, this poll will not yield accurate results for three reasons (I’ll admit that they overlap):
- The visitor demographic of FOXNews.com is largely conservative. This may not be the same proportion as in all of the United States.
- Furthermore, through the efforts of liberals who are attempting to get their voice heard, young Twitter users are flocking to this poll to vote “Yes”. THESE votes will, again, fail to reflect the population, which is perhaps why this is labelled “not a scientific poll” by their own admission.
- Lastly, the unsure option is quite unimportant in this poll because those who are unsure, generally, are not the vocal participants in these kinds of forums. A lot of Americans are unsure because they don’t know all of the facts, and this poll simply cannot deal with that part of the population that is underrepresented.
How to spin the results
Currently, “Yes” and “No” are nearly tied at 47% and 49% respectably. What would happen if “Yes” had the majority vote?
Given the wording of the choice, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to claim that “over 95% of respondents believe that the bill is flawed”.
After all, even the “Yes” voters have to concede that it’s “not perfect”.
What is this. Yes, I’ll readily concede that it’s not perfect, but that’s because I like the Canadian system better. There might only be one way to be perfect but infinite ways to be wrong or imperfect, and putting that there doesn’t help anyone determine how to get better health care reform. Moreover, it deprives voters of the chance to vote “Yes, it’s awesome.”
What can we do about this?
Nothing. If “freedom of the press” and “freedom of expression” are interpreted in such an unlimited way, any of these ugly tactics can be defended as their view on things.
Freedoms come with responsibilities, of course, and it is irresponsible for this kind of polling and the kind of news reports that FOX News airs to claim to be “fair and balanced”. Boycotting FOX News doesn’t really work, because one would be leaving FOXNews.com with all the conservatives who would love to dominate their polls.
“Fair and balanced” might well be a joke; it would be a perfect sarcastic tagline for FOX.
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I never thought the day would come when I would acknowledge that I like modern music.
A year and a bit ago, in December of 2008, I decided that I would solicit music suggestions. A week afterwards, I acknowledged that I appreciated Viva la Vida and soundtrack music.
In the time since then, I have become an aficionado of Taylor Swift’s country pop music, among other artists. (I’ve also developed a liking for Owl City’s Fireflies and Vanilla Twilight.)
Swift’s award-winning You Belong with Me deserved its prize.
It is worth acknowledging that her songs, with few exceptions, are almost exclusively about rosy romance (think Love Story, You Belong with Me) or broken hearts (e.g. Picture to Burn, White Horse). Which means that they’re about the same thing.
Love Story is quite overplayed, so I’ll leave you with Fifteen.
Watch more Taylor Swift music videos at VEVO or track my taste in music.
So. It’s been quite a while since I last posted, so I decided to put up something that’s been on my mind: coffee.
McDonald’s Canada (@McD_Canada) has been offering free coffee all day from March 1 up to March 14, and they claim it has nothing to do with Tim Horton’s Roll Up the Rim promotion.
I went to try it, but I don’t really have an opinion about the taste or quality of McDonald’s coffee. (I haven’t bought coffee at a coffee shop for more than 3 months.) Apparently “experts” say it beats Starbucks and Tim Hortons.
Free coffee? Sure, try it.
Stay awake!
I don’t like coffee. However, I can understand why people might like it, or need it. I can’t think of anyone who could be happy and energetic all day, unless they’re on drugs—and that’s my point. Coffee serves as a drug; caffeine, of course, is a narcotic. It’s a psychoactive stimulant that makes you more alert and aware. You already know that.
If not for this wonderful effect of caffeine products like coffee, the demand for coffee would probably be rather low. Continue reading »
There are so many computer features that we’ve become accustomed to. Who hasn’t used Ctrl+F to search for text on a Web page or a document? Who hasn’t used Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V to copy and paste something? (…obviously, I’m not targeting people who have never used a computer before, or who manage to use them without a keyboard)
If you could have any of these keyboard shortcuts as a real-life (super)power, which one would you want? Vote below.
So far, the results have been interesting. Looks like most people don’t want to deal with real life.
It’s the end of another year and the end of a ground-breaking decade. Let’s look back at what’s been accomplished in the years of 2000–2009, focusing on technology.
Technology
Windows has entered a new era
The decade—indeed, the century—began with Windows 2000, which I consider the first great version of the operating system. XP was the version that brought widespread success, and people just seem to refuse to upgrade; even today, almost three quarters of the computers on the net are on XP.
Despite the dismal failure of Windows Vista, it too brought change, which was followed by the enhancements of Windows 7. Compare my desktop today to the ugly screens of a decade ago:
Apple deserves an honourable mention for the ground-breaking work they’ve done on the Mac, elevating it to a newly trendy status.
Portable media players have completely changed
A decade ago, CD players and tape-based Walkmans were still the norm for ‘portable’ audio players. The iPod, launched in 2001, entirely changed the game. (I suppose this and the iPhone were the “comeback of the decade”.) It was no longer a device that played removable media. That was followed by thousands of other portable media players, to which the public generally refers inaccurately as “MP3 players”, reflecting the popularity of the 15-year-old MP3 format that has also been notorious for illegal file sharing (see below).
Cell phones and mobile devices have become ubiquitous
These devices used to be ugly, huge and heavy objects. As we move into 2010, cell phones have become more compact (usually this means thinner and lighter) and more powerful.
In China, about 739 million people have cell phones; that’s more than there are Internet users in China (which is about 360 million).
Mobile devices have become truly powerful. The iPhone, purportedly the most popular cell phone of 2009, is one of the biggest platforms for software development. And it has a touch screen. RIM’s BlackBerry, initially launched in 1999, is the most popular smartphone among business users.
Ordinary people begin to embrace ultra-portable netbooks for lightweight computing. The move to mobile is probably the most noticeable trend in end-user gadgetry in this decade. Continue reading »
