Slashdot Mirror

https://nrcgt.uconn.edu/newsle...
https://tspace.library.utoront...
https://www.tandfonline.com/do...

The last one is the most directly applicable but requires access to the journal to read it.

In essence, having been asked to choose the child more likely to be gifted from two profiles, a teacher will, in statistically significant degree select the male student.

In most school districts the selection criteria for choosing a student for further testing is that the teacher refers the student, and then a screening test is administered (e.g. CCAT) to confirm the teacher's initial assessment. Then a full spectrum IQ test is administered - typically a WISC V at the moment.

If you pre-select at the first gate, your overall statistics will be skewed at the last gate.

Add onto this the social issues cited in the other two papers, (e.g. a social predisposition away from competitive activities (I'll leave nature vs nature discussions aside as 1) they're not germane to the discussion, and 2) I'm unaware of any well regarded research on the matter) influencing the result of most(*) testing situations.

(* This can be reduced through a testing environment divorced from the classroom environment with an appropriately trained test administer, but these aren't available to most parents as typically such testing is provided through the school system)

If you have appropriate evidence to support your implied position, I'd be interested in reading them.

Thanks/Min

This also brings another very difficult question: how do we know if we are the same person when we wake up in the morning or after we were put under during general anesthesia?

The simple answer is there's no way to know that your memories are real. There's also no way to know that other people really exist. All that you can know for sure is that you exist, "I think therefore I am". Go read "Meditations on First Philosophy" by Rene Descartes.

Vaping by itself is completely harmless with nicotine being on par with caffeine in terms of harm and effects.

No
it's
not

This is nothing more than the anti cigarette brigade getting their panties in a wad over the fact that people flat out love nicotine and want to enjoy it without the bad effects of cigarettes (which are bad).

If that's what you think then maybe you should actually read the article... or the summary.

Better the young'ins be vaping rather than smoke cigarettes.

Did you bother even reading those studies before you posted them?

And if that is where it stopped we wouldn't be commenting on this story.

Study 1 only had 42 participants. Wow, I bet we're supposed to assume 42 people equal the whole of humanity right?

Study 2 claims nicotine causes damage to DNA. You know what else causes damage to DNA? Everything from food to the sun dingus. That's why our bodies developed a way to work against that with antioxidants.
http://www.whydontyoutrythis.c...

Study 3: a complete duplicate of study 2 hosted on a different server.

Did you even bother reading these studies before you posted to my reply or were you just anxiously looking around on Google for weak proof that all things nicotine are bad?

The anti smoking brigade are almost as bad as the temperence twats.

Vaping by itself is completely harmless with nicotine being on par with caffeine in terms of harm and effects.

No
it's
not

This is nothing more than the anti cigarette brigade getting their panties in a wad over the fact that people flat out love nicotine and want to enjoy it without the bad effects of cigarettes (which are bad).

If that's what you think then maybe you should actually read the article... or the summary.

Better the young'ins be vaping rather than smoke cigarettes.

And if that is where it stopped we wouldn't be commenting on this story.

American AC in Paris noted:

This is *really* cool science, but "paradigm shifting" may be a touch over the top--this isn't the first paper or study to come to the conclusion that Toxo plays a role in neurological disorders, and there are labs around the globe that have been working on this topic for years.

Yep:

• Bermoy, Webster, and Macdonald from 2000.
• Webster, from 2001.
• Webster again, from 2007.

and those are just the top three scholarly articles for a google search for "toxplasmosis rat behavior". The parent page for each of those articles links to other, related studies, as well - but the Bermoy, Webster, and Macdonald study from 2000 appears to be the first. So, no, not exactly ground-breaking, and definitely not a paradigm changer, either.

Anybody remember Stanley Prusiner (hint: he won pretty much every award there is to win in medicine - including the Nobel - for his work establishing the existence, transmissibility, and neurodegenerative impact of prions)? Remember how respected authorities in medicine laughed at him ... ?

According to this chart, it does indeed take 3 drinks to hit .08, unless you weigh under 140 pounds, which I don't consider "quite large". You'd have to be under 110 lbs for 2 drinks to do it, and if you're over 160 lbs (I'd call that average, still not "quite large"), it takes 4 or more. That's all at once, without food.

http://rageonthesamepage.uconn...

That is for men. Of course women get hit harder, and will weigh less on average. But being slashdot, I think using men is reasonable.

source: http://www.ropercenter.uconn.e...

Yes you can. There are many types of cryptographic weakness (Eg: an attack that reduces the effective key space) but specifically regarding RC4, there are weaknesses which make it difficult to use properly in common scenarios.

NO.

That was a stupid idea of Dr. Edward Teller and others. This paper is a fascinating look at how stupid of a plan it was and although they didn't do full scale nuclear testing, they did import fallout into Alaska from Nevada.

Edward Teller toured the territory of Alaska in the summer of 1958 to promote his dream of "engaging in the great art of geographic engineering, to reshape the earth to your pleasure." He told the curious Alaskans that they were "the most reasonable people," that the atomic scientists had "looked at the whole world" for just the right location to test their technology. He flattered them, saying that "Anything new that is big needs big people in order to get going..., and big people are found in big states ." He boasted that the Atomic Energy Commission (the predecessor to the Energy Research and Development Administration, and now the Department of Energy) could "dig a harbor in the shape of a polar bear, if required." He further boasted that "If your mountain is not in the right place, just drop us a card." (Coates, 1989).

It's no small wonder that Kubrik patterned Dr. Strangelove after Teller. One quote sums it up by Isador Rabi about Teller as well:

"He is a danger to all that is important. I do think it would have been a better world without Teller. I think he is an enemy of humanity."

We did have the Sedan shot which was part of Plowshare but it made a nice big hole in Nevada.

The Soviets with their Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (PNE) did do geoscaping with nukes. They did create a lake but it's still radioactive like most sites.

I see the date on your poll is May 20 2013.

Fox News poll: Obama ratings dip, voters say government 'out of control' - Published May 21

After a week of revelations about government spying on reporters and the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservatives, most voters feel “like the federal government has gotten out of control and is threatening the basic civil liberties of Americans.”

At the same time, a new Fox News poll finds disapproval of President Obama’s job performance is above 50 percent for the first time in a year, his honesty rating is at a new low and half of voters already think he’s a lame-duck.

More than two-thirds of voters -- 68 percent -- feel the government is out of control and threatening their civil liberties. About one quarter disagree (26 percent).

Nearly half of Democrats (47 percent), as well as large numbers of independents (76 percent) and Republicans (87 percent) feel Uncle Sam is taking liberties with their liberties.

Those who identify with the Tea Party movement, one of the groups targeted by the IRS, are among those most likely to say things are out of control and civil liberties are being threatened: 92 percent of Tea Partiers feel that way.

I would like to think that you value civil liberties enough that you wouldn't stand behind this sort of behavior even if it does have popular support. After all, Nixon enjoyed considerable popular support well into Watergate. What kind of government do you have when the government can select significant segments of the population to disadvantage and harass them based solely on their views regarding the policy they wish to see enacted by peaceful means at the ballot? Normally that sort of behavior is going to come from a country with a different style for the leader, such as Il Duce, El Presidente, or El Caudillo, or perhaps Generalissimo. I'd prefer to not have that sort of language applied to the President of the United States.

Since you enjoy music I was going to have a bit of fun with you by linking this earlier in the post, but I'll play it straight. I enjoyed this:
Arthur Prysock - What a difference a day makes
Salud

This solution actually has scientific backing. Research has shown that third party punishment to reinforce social norms actually works. In fact, dishonesty invites costly third party punishment in the real world. The OP's solution will in fact put the onus on the telephone company to solve the problem -- at the source, where it *should* be solved -- as it will remove the incentive for *not* solving it. Hey AC, go ahead and submit this to the FCC -- it's ultimately the simplest and best solution!

why do you think you can "know for sure" an actual vote count?

Where I vote, I have to give my name and address, receive a ballot, draw a line to connect an arrow for the candidate for whom I want to vote, and put the physical ballot in a ballot box. The people counting votes there have the actual physical pieces of paper; if someone claims that the vote count isn't correct they can do it again.

do you "know for sure" exactly how many people are in the US?

Why is that relevant? I don't know the family history of the turkey that my family has for Thanksgiving, but that doesn't prevent me from eating it.

of course not. but through statistical samples you can calculate a number that you have good faith in. fact: spend a billion dollars to hand-count every vote in the US, and here a big wooshing sound as thousand of tea-pottiers drop their "FRAUDZ!" and rail against wasteful gov't spending.

In Presidential elections from 1940 to 2008, there were a total of around 1,472,558,000 votes. Let's assume that it costs $1 to count each vote. [That's a gross overestimate I believe, but let's go with it.] That means that counting votes _for the past 68 years_ would have cost about a billion and a half dollars. For 2008, it would have cost about 130 million dollars. For comparison, looking at the summary page for the 2008 federal budget, that's approximately a third to a half of the discretionary spending requested for the Executive Office of the President. The Department of Defense probably wastes $130 million annually on the cost of paper and ink or toner printing out the covers for their TPS reports.

Black people voted for Democrats by...
+91 points in 2008
+77 points in 2004
+81 points in 2000
+72/+76 points in 1996 (depends how you count Perot)
+73/+80 points in 1992 (Perot, again)

So that's a 13-16 point bump, among a demographic that makes up ~10% of the electorate. At best, Obama would have gotten an extra 2% in the total popular vote. Meanwhile, the summary found 3-5% voting against him because he's black. So it clearly worked against him.

And that's assuming the black people voted that way because Obama was black, and not because they were sick of the racist crap that they heard throughout the election season. They lean heavily against Republicans (gee, why could that be?). Hearing endlessly about Jeremiah White, hearing Michele Obama referred to as "Obama's baby mama", hearing Rush singing "Barack the magic negro", hearing all the birther nonsense (I actually forget when exactly that started) etc., probably just made them trust Republicans even less.

But go on, keep thinking of all the black people in America as some barely sentient hive mind that just votes for people who look like them, and never consider issues on an individual basis. That's not racist at all. Nosiree.

I haven't! The NY Times review is pretty gripping, though, and it sounds like it has a lot of great anecdotes buried in it. I'll see if I can pick it up some time.

Generally I try to avoid using the word 'environment' in these sorts of discussions, because it often brings to mind images of a static forest or workplace or something—I prefer 'experience,' since that can also encompass personal revelations. Undoubtedly your "genes * environment" formula is what I'd generally endorse. Genetic factors will always necessarily impact human intelligence; as a trivial proof of this, consider that the gene HAR1F is one of the major differences between humans and chimpanzees, and is expressed in the brain. Hereditary mental disorders also attest to this.

That being said, it's almost certain that because of assortative mating, at least some of our expectations about intelligence being tied directly to the influence of genes is rubbish; people in the dating pool segregate themselves according to intelligence much like they segregate themselves according to income (and possibly with some correlation), so right there you have many confounding factors about approaches to child-rearing, social environment, and so on. Go back to the middle ages, or even just the beginning of the century (all of the participants in this study were born in the UK or Norway in the 20s and 30s—nice work, guys) and the meaningless correlation is even more prominent. Wikipedia is quick to provide a citation for 'IQ scores have been shown to be associated with [...] parental social status'.

Sometimes I feel like bioinformatics is a really unintelligent field for this very reason: just as their biologist mentors once looked for a single gene that could explain everything about a chemical pathway, we now look for a set of genes that can explain everything about human behaviour. It's staggeringly irresponsible and a colossal waste of money, especially in the hands of behavioural psychologists.

...anyway.

Too little emphasis is placed on personal drive, ambition, and desire, and I'm happy to hear that Shenk focused on this. I found it a little shocking that the Times reviewer felt it was necessary to point out that many people lack the ability to motivate themselves to this extent. I think the major cause of this shortage of motivation might be a consequence of over-socialization in childhood: if you never have to think for yourself, it's going to be harder to learn how. Mob mentality seems like an easy enough scapegoat.

Another bit that's recently been ruffling things up is the discovery that the genome in brain cells is unstable. Were Shenk's book a couple of years newer, it undoubtedly would have mentioned this, at least in passing. In a strange way (that cheats the semantics of the question) the 'nature' of the brain itself may very well be able to change due to 'nurture.' The changes, however, can't be passed on, so it's not really the same thing.

The "concept of a variable" has been known since forever. In the earliest texts on mathematics, like the Babylonian sources we have, they talk about a "heap" meaning an unknown quantity which you have to solve for. Example from 2000 BC: http://www.math.uconn.edu/~leibowitz/math2720f08/RhindPapyrus.html

Consider the solution of Problem 24, which is to find heap if heap and its one-seventh added together become 19. Ahmes states a linearity or proportionality principle: "As many times as 8 must be multiplied to give 19, just as many times must 7 be multiplied to give the correct answer."

You're right that the Greeks are known more for geometry than algebra, but you are incorrect in that their type of geometry was so elevated that it is actually called algebraic geometry. They weren't just drawing shapes, they were solving abstract equations with geometric methods. The Pythagorean Theorem is a great example, actually. He didn't "prove" it with a table of examples, he proved it in generality.

What you probably meant was symbolic notation for variables, not just the "concept of a variable".. Well, hate to break it to you, but Diophantus, a Greek guy known as the father of algebra, is one of the earliest persons to extensively use symbols in mathematical statements.

Geometry (Euclidean) was developed in Greece, and had they had algebra, they would been able to develop De Cartes' "Cartesian" geometry.

That makes no sense. Someone could have invented it 1 year before Descartes, or 2 years, or any n years. But they didn't. It was such a leap of mathematical insight... man you probably have no idea. It's a new way of thinking about the world. One of the greatest mathematical advances of all time.

Because marginal cost of information is zero, competition from open source software can reduce social welfare in theory. This argument however has little to do with the argument of the Slashdot's article's British blogger, who probably should talk to some economists first. Generally creative destruction is good and efficient, but these things are a lot more complex than can be analyzed here (and not really my specialty).

"Impact of Competition from Open Source Software on Proprietary Software"
Vidyanand Choudhary and Zach Z. Zhou
http://www.citi.uconn.edu/cist07/2a.pdf

IIRC, you can't be prevented from using your own name, even if someone else has it trademarked.

UDRC, because you can be

http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/how_groups_voted/voted_08.html

Obama carried or tied with McCain in all but one income group, and the one he lost was by 1%. Easily within a margin of error.

Here is the original report: Leisure Time Spent Sitting in Relation to Total Mortality in a Prospective Cohort of US Adults

Such large sample sizes scare me. When you've got 100,000 data points, almost anything seems statistically significant.

Having a look at the abstract of the page "Leisure Time Spent Sitting in Relation to Total Mortality in a Prospective Cohort of US Adults", I am not sure about some of this... After reading that, I got more interested in it and just got the original article, though that doesn't help much, it's missing a lot of summary data, none the less...

• The results were via questionnaire, my guess is that people who believe they are more healthy, would underestimate the amount they sit, and people who don't, might overestimate it.
• 50% to 73% of the people who answered these questionnaires were "Retired/homemaker" with the mean age being 63.6 (standard deviation, 6) for me, and 61.9 (standard deviation, 6.5) for women. This was when they enrolled in the study in 1992, making them on average 77.6 for men, and 75.9 for women. For comparison look at the life expectancy data for people born in those years, this puts them firmly in the timespan where they were expected to die.
• Looking at the mean ages, there is a correlation between hours sat per day, and mean age. So those who are apart of the group who sits more, are also those who are oldest.
• On the mens side 52% to 57% are former smokers. On the womens side 48% to 60% never smoked, which might be correct for that generation but I am uncertain. Though they have corrected for this, I wonder how they corrected, and if that correction is legitimate.
• There appears to be an abnormally large amount of people who have NEVER consumed alcohol for women that's 44% to 47%, and for me that's 31% to 32%. This seems amazing of this sample, since I don't drink, and everyone points out how weird it is.
• This sample group was obtained from participants in the American Cancer Society's CPS-II Nutrition Cohort, as such the sample might over represent people worried about cancer and similar illnesses because they have higher instances of it in their family. They had people report their personal history to control for some of these things, but not their family history.

Additionally I would really need to get into their statistical method more, and get their original data, as it looks like there could be many more problems.

I would take this study, with a fuck load of salt.

Thirdhand is the best I can find:

Summary with offline citations

I was surprised, too.

In support of the level-headed poster who also responded to this:

Kerry in 2004 got 88% of the black vote. Source
Gore in 2000 got 90% of the black vote. Source
Clinton in 1996 got 84% of the black vote. Source
Clinton in 1992 got 83% of the black vote. Source
Dukakis in 1988 got 89% of the black vote. Source
Mondale in 1984 got 91% of the black vote. Source
Carter in 1980 got 83% of the black vote. Source

I'm not sure if the OP is sincere, but I guarantee there are people who see the 95% and immediately are sure it's all based on race. A small proportion surely was, but 95% does not massively deviate from the expected outcome.

In support of the level-headed poster who also responded to this:

Kerry in 2004 got 88% of the black vote. Source
Gore in 2000 got 90% of the black vote. Source
Clinton in 1996 got 84% of the black vote. Source
Clinton in 1992 got 83% of the black vote. Source
Dukakis in 1988 got 89% of the black vote. Source
Mondale in 1984 got 91% of the black vote. Source
Carter in 1980 got 83% of the black vote. Source

I'm not sure if the OP is sincere, but I guarantee there are people who see the 95% and immediately are sure it's all based on race. A small proportion surely was, but 95% does not massively deviate from the expected outcome.

In support of the level-headed poster who also responded to this:

Kerry in 2004 got 88% of the black vote. Source
Gore in 2000 got 90% of the black vote. Source
Clinton in 1996 got 84% of the black vote. Source
Clinton in 1992 got 83% of the black vote. Source
Dukakis in 1988 got 89% of the black vote. Source
Mondale in 1984 got 91% of the black vote. Source
Carter in 1980 got 83% of the black vote. Source

I'm not sure if the OP is sincere, but I guarantee there are people who see the 95% and immediately are sure it's all based on race. A small proportion surely was, but 95% does not massively deviate from the expected outcome.

In support of the level-headed poster who also responded to this:

Kerry in 2004 got 88% of the black vote. Source
Gore in 2000 got 90% of the black vote. Source
Clinton in 1996 got 84% of the black vote. Source
Clinton in 1992 got 83% of the black vote. Source
Dukakis in 1988 got 89% of the black vote. Source
Mondale in 1984 got 91% of the black vote. Source
Carter in 1980 got 83% of the black vote. Source

I'm not sure if the OP is sincere, but I guarantee there are people who see the 95% and immediately are sure it's all based on race. A small proportion surely was, but 95% does not massively deviate from the expected outcome.

It's also interesting that some people find this statistic meaningful, given that the Democratic presidential nominee has gotten over 80% of the black vote every cycle since Carter/Ford. Here's the breakdown of Democrat vs Republican share of the black vote, according to The Roper Center at UConn (except 2008 data from CNN exit polls):

1976 - 83 to 17
1980 - 83 to 14
1984 - 91 to 9
1988 - 89 to 10
1992 - 83 to 10
1996 - 84 to 12
2000 - 90 to 9
2004 - 88 to 11
2008 - 95 to 4

Since Obama actually won in 2008, it's fair to say that it's expected that he did better than the average Democratic nominee with most demographic groups. Throw in some Obama waffles and Pat Buchanan, and you start to wonder whether they're more voting FOR the black guy, or against the Republicans. It's not like they came out in support of Michael Steele.

There is a law called, "The Lanham Act" that covers a whole range of advertising practices (trademarkes, etc.) However, Section 43(a) prohibits any use of false or misleading description or representation in commercial advertising or promotion that "misrepresents the nature, characteristics, qualities, or geographic origin of.. goods, services, or commercial activities." You can read it here: http://www.law.uconn.edu/homes/swilf/ip/statutes/lanham43.htm IANAL, but this seems like it would apply to your situation.

So the missing link, huh?

Quoted from the article:

...while many media outlets are stumbling over themselves with phrases like "missing link" and "holy grail," it's clearly a very impressive find.

so, seriously? This missing link... I must be missing something

At about the same time as part of Operation Plowshares the U.S. Military proposed using atomic bombs to dredge a harbor in Alaska. As is noted it was stopped over "concerns over the impact on the local population". Or rather the local native population's steadfast refusal to have atomic bombs detonated right next to their village.

Lest you think this is silly though, as noted on the Project Chariot page, when faced with the direct refusal of the population to have a bomb detonated next to their home the Atomic Energy Agency just went ahead and irradiated the place anyway without telling anyone.

Although the detonation never occurred, the site was radioactively contaminated by an experiment to estimate the effect on water sources of radioactive ejecta landing on tundra plants and subsequently washed down and carried away by rains. Material from a 1962 nuclear explosion at the Nevada Test Site was transported to the Chariot site in August 1962, used in several experiments, then buried. Thirty years later, the disposal was discovered in archival documents by a University of Alaska researcher. State officials immediately traveled to the site and found low levels of radioactivity at a depth of two feet (60 cm) in the burial mound. Outraged residents of the Inupiat village of Point Hope demanded the removal of the contaminated soil, which the government did at considerable expense.

Assholes.

See also here.

The 3rd please. The 1st wasn't president, but he was George Prescott Bush, making GWB a "3rd" :D

I know of no "George Prescott Bush". I know of a Prescott Sheldon Bush, father of George Herbert Walker Bush; George Herbert Walker Bush was, in turn, father of George Walker Bush.

The United States doesn't have a blasphemy law. Looks like American Rights Council is trying to use copyright law instead,-- though I doubt they'll get any further than, say, Terry Gilliam, who similarly tried to introduce foreign legal concepts into US law.

Or perhaps it's just a hamfisted attempt to harvest the names and addresses of scientology critics.

On what you learn in science class. (See question 4.)
More detail on that.

Even more impressive, while the Gallup poll shows that 31% of the Americans self-identify as literalists in those very strong terms, a 2007 Princeton Survey poll for Newsweek shows that 44% believe that the earth was created within the last 10,000 years.

Article: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/creationists_in_the_american_c.php
Dataset: http://roperweb.ropercenter.uconn.edu/cgi-bin/hsrun.exe/Roperweb/Catalog40/Catalog40.htx;start=summary_link?archno=USPSRA2007-NW05

Also, all the labs working on this are either in the psychology departments of their schools, or in consumer advocacy groups with a some kind of agenda. The psychoanalysts want you on their couch.

CHIP appears to primarily do research on AIDS in Africa. http://www.chip.uconn.edu/

Consumer advocacy group: http://www.ismp.org/

It's interesting you mention mitochondria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion/) because there's this endosymbiotic theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiotic_theory/ ) that supports the "complexity over time" I mentioned before. And it keeps going on even today (http://web.uconn.edu/mcbstaff/graf/Sym.html/).

"If you're going to rely on science, then look at the math. The math doesn't support it. And then, coming to the conclusion that natural science does not support abiogenesis, I turn my attention to the supernatural. For me, this is less of a stretch."

You might find the title of this site offensive (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html/), but it goes into a deeper detail on abiogenesis. I don't think we can rule out abiogenesis yet (or ever, IMO).

Anyhow, we seem to agree to disagree.

This is a different method of time travel using circulating light to bend space-time and create time loops.

The Oxygen (O) part of the CO2 we output comes from the O we breath. The Carbon (C) comes from SUGAR. Here's a diagram of the Kreb's cycle: http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~bi107vc/images/mol/krebs_ cycle.gif. For a full overview of metabolism, go here: http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~bi107vc/fa02/terry/metabo lism.html. I think you've mistaken the law of conservation of matter with the "law of conservation of molecules" (which doesn't exist).

The Oxygen (O) part of the CO2 we output comes from the O we breath. The Carbon (C) comes from SUGAR. Here's a diagram of the Kreb's cycle: http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~bi107vc/images/mol/krebs_ cycle.gif. For a full overview of metabolism, go here: http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~bi107vc/fa02/terry/metabo lism.html. I think you've mistaken the law of conservation of matter with the "law of conservation of molecules" (which doesn't exist).

It's not enough to have a printer. The voter needs to be able to reject whatever is printed if it is not correct. Furthermore, even with paper trails, such as optical scan "bubble-sheets" there can still be problems since election officials only use the computer generated results (paper printout or electronic) for the final tally. See for example, this recent report from CT: http://voter.engr.uconn.edu/voter/Reports.html

Oh, it does. I went back to my alma mater (UConn) in 2003 to see/smell one bloom.

I walked by that greenhouse every day for 4 years to go to the engineering building, but never once stopped to smell the roses. But I drove 45 minutes to smell a flower that reminded me of dirty diapers and week-old roadkill.

I think that's pretty impressive for a plant... it didn't smell its way to survival, it stunk its way to worldwide growth and protection.

where the fuck is our War on Candy Bars and Whoppers, huh?

It's already here.

I want to say that this study says something about broccoli intake affecting caffeine metabolism, but I don't speak biologist enough to know.

Aha. Apparently this all has to do with enzyme CYP1A2, which breaks down caffeine (under "substrates") as well as many other drugs, and whose action is increased by broccoli, as well as by chargrilled meats, insulin and certain drugs such as Prilosec.

By the way, the study I was in was published as a dissertation as well as in Aviat Space Environ Med.. I hadn't had call to look it up until now. Neat!

UConn has an online version, for those who don't feel like installing and running a local program. I was crazy enough to configure it to build me an SSID (useless for security, but at least it doesn't scream "N00B" like leaving the default value) and WPA PSK.

I did RTFA, but it didn't mention how the practice violated copyright law

That's because TFA is insanely poorly written and poorly researched. The precedent is Gilliam v. ABC, which was incorporated into the 1978 Copyright Revision Act.

Why SHOULD a director have this so-called right to dictate that others view the precise film he made?

Actually, this precedent has been up and running for 30 years in the US, and was set by a 1976 case brought by the Monty Python team, fed up with US networks butchering the early series. Cited in the Slate article on this case. See also VARA.

A nuke can be used for only one thing - cause destruction. The only positive use it might have is to threaten the other person with destruction. It has been created with the specific purpose and intent of causing mass destruction, and nothing else.

That's not true. That's simply not true. You can blow up nukes for peaceful purposes. For instance, you can excavate harbors in Alaska with nukes. You can also use them to launch spaceships. Mmm, Specific Impulse... Of course, the naysayers do tend to complain about fallout...

The funny thing about this is that religion is probably an evolved behavior, supported by identical twin studies showing correlated levels of religious feeling of identical twins separated at birth. There are also physiological findings that are localizing spiritual feelings in brain.

Either you're the stupidest person on Slashdot (quite an achievement) or you're playing dumb to red herring to distract from your previous dishonesty. [...] Protocols are actually all around you, and only your own narrowness of vision prevents you from seeing that.

Ad-hominem attacks do not add credibility to your arguments FYI. And as I said earlier, please avoid trying to divine my state of mind; you know nothing about me, and every personal attack you make and every strawman you propose just makes you look more ignorant and childish. You can presume I'm deliberately antagonizing you or you can presume that we're having a strictly intellectual disagreement or perhaps a misunderstanding. Personally, I prefer to stick to the facts. Your call. That's the last I'll say on the matter.

Wrong again. It cannot catch all of these sorts of bugs, and nobody has said that it could. [...] Your statement, though, was that a verifier can do nothing about such bugs.

Which bugs are "such bugs"? You are classifying "algorithmic" bugs as the superset of all types of bugs ("I'll reduce it to purely logical terms. Let X be the set of algorithmic errors, Y the subset of protocol errors"). In the Church-Turing sense of "algorithm" word your use might be correct (although some people disagree), but you're completely ignoring the constraints I placed on my original, specific use of the word. The verifier ensures the correct sequence of requests/responses via endpoints, but it says nothing about the application's internal state.

You can accuse me of "moving the goal posts" all you like, but that statement is perfectly consistent with every statement I've made then and since. That statement is still true. Now that we've agreed on what was meant by "state transitions" (ie. being specific to the protocol state machine), it is largely orthogonal to my original concerns. Or as you would say, X (my constrained "algorithmic" bugs) and Y (protocol bugs) are disjoint sets.

Returning to my original example, a web server which incorrectly dispatches to a POST handler on a GET request has performed an invalid application state transition, even though the protocol state transition was valid. My original statement, stands: the verifier can do nothing about this sort of bug. You seem to be having difficulty understanding that right from the outset we weren't quite on the same page. Hence why I asked you to define "state transition". Then you accuse me of "moving the goalposts", instead of assuming that perhaps we were talking at cross-purposes. Really, try being less hostile and adversarial in the future.

An external protocol is, quite obviously, one that is used to communicate with an external entity - i.e. on another box, running a different OS image, accessed via an external network interface.

But this distinction does not exist in the software world; there are no "external" entities, merely interfaces to "other objects". These objects can be local or remote, they can be devices, etc. Yes, everything you point out is a "protocol", and yet, you called HTTP an "external" protocol. So what distinguishes an "external" protocol from an "internal" one? Are you drawing a distinction between a "native" protocol, such as a function calling convention, and one that must be "interpreted" and is thus "non-native"? Is this the distinction you're drawing between HTTP and the native, verifiable protocol in Sing#? It's a simple question.

There is no reason why two objects on the same machine or even in the same address space cannot communicate via HTTP (and they commonly do for web services in the former case), so you're "external protocol" distinction does not make sense.

It's selective in the sense of argument by selective observation. I realize you're not fluent in English, but please at least try to understand people before you disagree with them.

Why would you assume I'm not fluent in English?

I cannot specify that my paintings can't be displayed beside someone else's. That's the prerogative of the purchasor. I also don't paint.

Clearly. Otherwise you might have a passing familiarity with the The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 Of all the analogies you could have picked...

However, the scope of general copyright does extend to derivative works. Any production of a derivative work requires a license, unless the derivative use can be shown to be fair. Copyright licenses are often very specific, and often involve the attachment of many strings. For instance, the GNU General Public License requires that derivative works be distributed with source code. The distribution of such derivative works under a different license infringes copyright.