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User: Attila+Dimedici

Attila+Dimedici's activity in the archive.

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Comments · 10,384

  1. Re:Radical extremists? on ASCAP War On Free Culture Escalates · · Score: 1

    You are absolutely correct that the meme "The Media has a Leberal Bias" is not true because in fact the media does not care one way or the other. However, the overwhelming majority of those who work in the media have a Democratic Party bias. The only place in the U.S. with a stronger bias to one Party or the other is Universities and Colleges, where the Administrators and the Professors overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic party candidate in every election.

  2. Re:Welcome to the USA on ASCAP War On Free Culture Escalates · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Relative to your first point, we would be better off if fewer people voted, especially if we could make sure that the ones who continued to vote were the ones who were willing to pay enough attention to know who they were voting for and why. The "motor voter" laws were a bad idea. If someone can't be bothered to take the time to figure out how to register to vote and then do so, what makes you think they will take the time to know the difference between candidate A and candidate B?

  3. Re:Only game in town and ... on Statewide Franchise Illegal? Detroit Sues Comcast · · Score: 1

    The reason that municipalities went with the force of law franchise method was because it allowed them to extort money from would be cable providers. I remember when several of the local municipal governing bodies were caught extorting personal benefits from cable providers to keep their local monopoly.
    It would have been better if they had never legislated the cable monopolies, but it is too late to change that. The question is, now that we're here, how do we fix it? Personally, I never favor giving more power to organizations that screwed things up by the misuse of their power in the first place.

  4. Re:Rasmussen on Daily Kos Pollster Made Up Numbers · · Score: 1

    And the fact that most of the polls that the Daily Kos (a website that overwhelmingly favors Democrats) shows results from tend to favor Democrats in what way demonstrates that Rasmussen is cooking their numbers?

  5. Re:Yay, Obama on SCOTUS Nominee Kagan On Free Speech Issues · · Score: 1

    Except that after the war, the North Vietnamese admitted that not only hadn't the Vietcong won by a knockout, they had lost decisively, which was the opinion of the U.S. Military at the time. After the Tet Offensive, the North Vietnamese were preparing to go entirely on the defensive, until they saw the reaction of the U.S. populace.

  6. Re:Not exactly on The Tuesday Birthday Problem · · Score: 1

    Because if you look at the stats for two child families you discover that the chance both are boys is 25.8%, that both are girls is 22%, and that it is on boy and one girl is 52.2%. This means that 78% of all two child families have at least one boy. 25.8% divided by 78% yields 33%.
    Since we are told that the children are already born, that means the chances are best drawn from real world numbers.

  7. Re:Give them credit. on Daily Kos Pollster Made Up Numbers · · Score: 1

    You seemed to be supporting the parent post for the one you replied to.

  8. Re:Ordering and Convergence on The Tuesday Birthday Problem · · Score: 1

    There are 105 boy babies born for every 100 girl babies.

  9. Re:Give them credit. on Daily Kos Pollster Made Up Numbers · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, the NYT fired Jayson Blair once they could no longer hide the fact that he made things up. The NYT had known for years that his "news" articles were fabrications before they fired him. BTW, unlike Bill Kristol, who writes opinion pieces, Jayson Blair was supposedly writing news articles.

  10. Re:Give them credit. on Daily Kos Pollster Made Up Numbers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    +1 on this.

    If Stephen Glass worked for a conservative rag like the National Review, he wouldn't have been fired, he would've been promoted.

    You mean the way that NYT promoted Jayson Blair several times even though his superiors were complaining about his inaccurate stories, until it became public knowledge that he just made things up?

  11. Re:Give them credit. on Daily Kos Pollster Made Up Numbers · · Score: 4, Informative

    The quote you gave merely says that the results that Rasmussen is getting at this time show a public more greatly favoring Republican positions not that Rasmussen is fudging the numbers to get those results. The rest of the article can be dismissed since the source for the article clearly favors Democratic policy over Republican

  12. Re:The untimely war on filesharing. on Why Google, Bing, Yahoo Should Fear ACTA · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You make a very good case, but you miss one very important point. As the record and movie companies have increased their emphasis that downloading unauthorized copies of their products is illegal I have decreased the amount that I do it to the point that I no longer do so at all. At the same time, I have also decreased the amount of their product that I buy, which has also reached zero.
    My failure to buy is not because I cannot afford to. It is not because I don't want to give my money to such jerks. It is because I just can't be bothered to find out whether the product they are selling is good enough to spend my money on.

  13. Re:Only game in town and ... on Statewide Franchise Illegal? Detroit Sues Comcast · · Score: 1

    In the current "Quarterly profit numbers are my Holy Scripture" environment, how many companies do you think will risk 3-5 years of build up and another 3-5 years to profitability without some sort of guarantees?

    I have NO idea and nobody else does either because the government bought into that idea years ago and never gave us a chance to find out. My suspicion is that where I live (in the suburbs of a major metropolitan area) I would have 5 or 6 choices. In areas where population density is much lower, I suspect that areas that do not currently have high speed Internet connection wouldn't see if it for a very long time, but then I don't expect they will get it for a very long time under current conditions either.

  14. Re:Only game in town and ... on Statewide Franchise Illegal? Detroit Sues Comcast · · Score: 1

    Actually that is a slightly different use of eminent domain. One that (while the Supreme Court disagreed) I believe is a violation of what the Founders intended. In the case of eminent domain for right of way to run wires or pipes, the right of way does not take away the property owner's ability to make use of the property. Not that even here is this a power that we should support the government using lightly (as it does much too often).

  15. Re:Oh, come ON! on Facebook, Friend of Divorce Lawyers · · Score: 1

    Where did the poster you replied to say that the person who beat the person who got in their face was justified? All they said was that there are a lot of people who will beat you up if you get in their face.
    Getting in someone's face is an attempt to physically intimidate that person. Many people have learned that failure to give in to phyiscal intimidation will lead to violence (this is not necessarily true, but it is the lesson the individual learned), therefore when someone attempts to physically intimidate them, they initiate the violence that they believe is coming.

  16. Re:Only game in town and ... on Statewide Franchise Illegal? Detroit Sues Comcast · · Score: 1

    There are two ways to run wire or pipes. Method one is to go to the property owners over whose land you wish to run the pipe and negotiate a right of way to allow you to run your wire or pipe over/under their land. The other is to go to a local or state government and get them to use eminent domain to obtain the right of way for you.

  17. Re:It's easy on The Tuesday Birthday Problem · · Score: 1

    You're misreading the question. If you exclude the Tuesday part (which I still don't get, and I still doubt), the question is not what's the chance that the second child is a boy, which would be 50%. The question is what is the chance that both kids have the same sex. Since the fact that one of them is a boy doesn't bring any new information to the table about they being the same sex or not, the probability remains the same -- 1/3.

    Actually, the probabilty changes and is therefore 33% (not quite 1/3). If we do not know the sex of either child, the odds of both of them being boys is 25.8%, the odds of them being a girl and a boy is 52.2%.
    If we were to change the problem to one is a girl, the odds that the second one would be a girl would be 30%.
    The issue with this problem is that the gender of children is not truly random.

  18. Re:Not exactly on The Tuesday Birthday Problem · · Score: 1

    Your logic is very good. However, the chance that both children in a two child family are boys is 25.8%. The chance that the children in a two child family will be one boy and one girl is 52.2%. Therefore, if I know that one of the children is a boy, the probability that the other child is also a boy is 33%.
    One of the issues with this problem is that it is not a truly random chance situation. Based on real life numbers we know that there are non-random factors which play a role in determining the gender of a child. However, only a few of those factors have been identified (and none of them stated in the problem).

  19. Re:Let's try it without reading TFA on The Tuesday Birthday Problem · · Score: 1

    The problem is that unlike a coin flip, the gender of a child is not a truly random event and it is well known that the gender of the first gender effects the probability of which gender the second child will be. For example in the U.S., a two child family is 25.8% likely to consist of two boys, but only 22.0% likely to consist of two girls.

  20. Re:Ordering and Convergence on The Tuesday Birthday Problem · · Score: 1

    Actually, it is not 50% likely that a particular child is a boy. It is actually slightly higher than that. The chances that any random child is a boy are 51.2%. I actually went and looked at a site that compiles statistics. It tells us that 25.8% of two child families in the US have two boys. http://www.in-gender.com/XYU/Odds/Gender_Odds.aspx I did not check all of their information and sources, however, some of the other statistics they list matches up with things I knew from other sources.

  21. Re:Only game in town and ... on Statewide Franchise Illegal? Detroit Sues Comcast · · Score: 1

    How about we just get rid of these government granted monopolies (franchise agreements) and let whoever wants to and can get right of way permits provide cable service? Then we could maybe find out if the free market could fix the problems we have with cable tv and high speed internet service. As a bonus, we would also find out if all those people who keep talking about "natural" monopolies are right or not.

  22. Re:Before you do it on Tattoos For the Math and Science Geek? · · Score: 1

    I would argue that those are not logical reasons. Those are emotional reasons. There are many good reasons to do things that are not logical. The second one of your two is a good reason (but not a logical one) to do something that will, generally, last your lifetime.
    The first reason is not a good reason to get a tattoo. There are much better ways to get chicks (no, I am not going to tell you what they are).

  23. Re:Before you do it on Tattoos For the Math and Science Geek? · · Score: 1

    There are logical reasons to get tattoos

    Name two.

  24. Re:Yay, Obama on SCOTUS Nominee Kagan On Free Speech Issues · · Score: 1

    You mean like when he reported the Tet Offensive as a victory for the North Vietnamese?

  25. Re:Bilski doesn't invalidate even one software pat on Supreme Court Throws Out Bilski Patent · · Score: 1

    It looks to me (after only a cursory skimming of the decision and reading the comments on several blogs) like the Justices did not like software or business method patents but did not want to completely get rid of them in one fell swoop. I would also say that in all probability they believe that some of those patents are legitimate but could not think of a clear way to separate those out from those that should be overturned. They did not feel that this case provided the basis for making that distinction and so left it somewhat open until a future case more closely approaches what they percieve as the line between valid and invalid. They may additionally been signalling to Congress that patent laws should be revised to clarify what types of business method/software patents are valid.