Re:And yet they do nothing to discourage the car
on
The Fresca Rebellion
·
· Score: 1
They don't feel a need to obey speed limits
What percentage of motorised vehicle drivers don't feel a need to obey speed limits? Two thirds?80%?87%? As subgroups of vehicle operator go, cyclists are not the problem - the majority of cyclists would have difficulty breaking the limit in a 15mph zone, nevermind anything higher.
Re:And yet they do nothing to discourage the car
on
The Fresca Rebellion
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
they'll crawl along in a 45mph zone as though on a leisurely ride in the park
How on earth do you expect the average cyclist to travel at 45mph?! Even Lance Armstrong at his best is only averages 30mph. Have you ever considered that the fact you are being effortlessly propelled forward at 45mph by a motorised vehicle just might, possibly, impact your perception of speed in slower vehicles? It is perfectly legal for a cyclist to travel at 5mph, just as it's perfectly legal for a tractor to travel at 5mph. Not all vehicles you meet on the highways will be travelling at high speed, and if you can't cope with that situation calmly and safely, then you shouldn't be driving.
Or we could, you know, deny those expectations and preserve freedom.
What freedom would that preserve? You realise that people in countries with universal healthcare still have the freedom to eat and drink whatever they want? Or if you were implying that paying taxes makes you less free, does it really? Would you argue that, say, Swedish people don't have freedom because they pay taxes and have universal healthcare? Or that Afghan people are more free, because they have few taxes and no healthcare?
"Sin tax" is a politically loaded term that implies the consumer is doing something morally wrong and should therefore be punished through taxation. The term itself encourages people line up on one side or the other of an imaginary dividing line in politics and argue from those perspectives. The economics term for taxes that charge back the negative indirect costs of a transaction is externalities. Economically speaking, it is a totally legitimate thing to associate the externality costs with the original transaction - people who argue against such taxes on the basis of economics are usually motivated by a political ideology rather than a sound understanding of economics. Another common claim from the economically illiterate is "taxes don't work to lower consumption, people will just spend more!". Right, so if the tax on a packet of cigarettes were $100, everyone would just pay that, rather than switching to some other vice?
Working in the banking and finance industries is not illegal. You may think it's immoral, but there are many people who work in those industries who are decent, hard working individuals. Your analogy may be more like it would be okay to sell sex, as long the prostitute pays income tax on what he/she takes? I actually know a prostitute who insists on paying income tax because she wants to be legal, even though all of her customers pay cash in hand and it would be trivial for her to avoid taxes (prostitution in itself is not illegal here).
The repackaging of subprime mortgages into valued securities was one problem but it might not have caused a collapse had the banks not also willingly massively over leveraged - at 30 to 1 it only takes a 3% downturn in the market and your bank is insolvent...
Did we receive a share of their profits for rest of the gravy train journey?
If you live in a country with taxation of corporate profits, capital gains, and personal income, then the answer is yes - the country did receive a share of the profits.
If 2 and 3 are true, then it follows that when Chrome's renderer is used, the browser is actually more secure.
You would be right if the web site serving the potential exploit couldn't select the renderer, but that is not the case here - the attacker can turn on or off the meta tag in the HTTP Response that selects Windows or Chrome rendering in IE. So the attacker has the choice of two rather than one rendering engine.
Orthodox: Adhering to whatever is traditional, customary or generally accepted.
I really don't see how Android fits that description, given the points already raised (especially the fact that the kernel is modified with a custom IPC mechanism). But until there is a scientifically testable description of "orthodox linux", the argument is over a personal interpretation of semantics.
Most Linuxes are GNU/Linux, including such things as a standard libc. Android uses its own
Android also uses its own video driver architecture, its own window manager, its own desktop, and its own virtual machine. The statement that 'Android is "orthodox" Linux' isn't even true if you only consider "Linux" to be the kernel - Android uses its own kernel with a unique IPC mechanism. As Ars said: Android uses the Linux kernel, but it isn't really a Linux platform. It offers its own totally unique environment that is built on Google's custom Java runtime. There is no glide path for porting conventional desktop Linux applications to Android. Similarly, Java applications that are written for Android can't run in regular Java virtual machine implementations or in standard Java ME environments. This makes Android a somewhat insular platform. (source).
In fact, according to that article, Android doesn't even use a standard kernel: Android's sophisticated interprocess communication system, which is called Binder, requires a special kernel driver in order to run properly. The driver is in the kernel staging tree and is not enabled - a problematic impediment for the Android execution environment developers. Their current prototype is using a temporary workaround to bypass Binder, but they hope that the necessary patches can be enabled in the kernel for the next Ubuntu release so that the execution environment can work properly.
taxing people on what they spend instead of what they earn encourages savings.
Increasing sales tax just means that people get less stuff for their money. Most people will spend a fixed amount of whatever income level they have. So a 10% sales tax means exactly that - they spend the same, but get 10% less stuff in return than they would have when compared to a 0% sales tax. That does not necessarily encourage saving, which would be subject to (in various jurisdictions) savings tax, capital gains tax, and associated investment and management costs. What encourages saving is a legal way of protecting those savings from the associated costs and taxes (e.g. an ISA type scheme).
Who should be taxed more? A businessman (lets call him Warren) who earns a huge amount of money, but invests it back (creating more jobs), and lives a normal life; or a rich heiress (lets call her Paris) who earns a moderate amount, but spends a huge amount on consumer goods?
I've read several economics books that propose the most efficient way to tax people is to rarely, and at unpredictable times, assess their income or worth, and tax it as a percentage. This way you don't tax trade, which is presumably good. Making the precise time period of taxation random(ish) and unannounced means that there is no way to game the system by temporarily giving your wealth or income away. It sounds like an economists dream though, the reality of implementing such a system would be rather difficult.
It's not clear that a porn magazine would be covered by this law, but adverts would be. We already have disclaimers in the UK for cosmetics adverts. They are actually quite informative. I saw one recently advertising some kind of shampoo and stating that it "enhanced vibrancy" and the models had ultra-bouncy curled hair, meanwhile the disclaimer at the bottom of the screen actually said something like "note: models did not use the advertised product. Models hair was formed by makeup expert." That kind of information makes a huge difference in how people perceive the advert. I've seen similar disclaimers for skin cream adverts, while the voiceover is saying how amazing the product is, the disclaimer says something like "In independent tests 28% of test subjects reported some improvement"; so now we know that 72% of test subjects reported no improvement with this product! I think the honesty in advertising laws are great, certainly a lot more amusing than the adverts we used to have a few years ago.
Most people have no idea how how much touching up goes on. In the documentary Bigger, Faster, Stronger a photographer from the "protein shake" market is interviewed. He states that he has actually done photoshoots of the "before" (weakling) and "after" (muscleman) photos in the same day. That's right, what the advertiser claims to be some amazing muscle growth effect is actually just photo manipulation. It's completely dishonest. Oh, and the models admit using steroids. They say that if people are stupid enough to actually believe the photos, then they deserve to lose their money. Given the choice between this blatant corruption, where the uneducated and trusting are lied to and exploited for financial gain, and a regulated market, I'll choose regulation.
Going automatic is a scary proposition, fraught with traps.
Not if the system works. In Europe the Direct Debit system can be used to pay for most utilities and phone, internet services. There is a guarantee that any money taken from your account will be refunded within 24 hours if you dispute it. As far as I know, in the UK direct debit payments now account for the majority of such transactions. In fact, there are many service providers that only accept payment by direct debit, since the processing fees are so much lower than anything else.
I switched to paying everything - all utility bills, internet, phone, TV - by direct debit over a decade ago, and have never had a single problem with the system.
Well, they do have some moral fiber: '100 drums were secretly buried somewhere in the southern Italian region of Basilicata. Clan members avoided burying the waste in neighbouring Calabria, said the turncoat, because of their "love for their home region"'. link Nice of them, eh?
Presumably the Mafia boss thought that dumping the waste in the sea would be noticed. And likely to land a very long sentence if prosecuted. But arranging with officials in Somalia to let them dispose of the waste there is perfectly legal. Shipping to Somalia doesn't cost much, and nobody is going to complain, so why not?
The book McMafia has some interesting views on the protection rackets that appeared in the former Soviet Union countries in the 1990s. One common theme is that the protection money charged by these organisations was actually quite reasonable - around 7.5% - lower than corporate taxation in the West (there was no corporation tax, or functioning government in the Western sense, in these countries). The protection rackets would also negotiate and arbitrate on your behalf with other businesses, and produce an agreed upon contractual solution to any conflicts. If there were a later dispute over terms, the Mafia-type group would judge it, and make sure the judgement were enforced.
In essence, for 7.5% tax the Mafia groups provided a functioning corporate security service, arbitration and legal system. Another interesting view is that this whole system actually worked - if your car was stolen, and you had it insured with the mob, there was a >90% chance that it would be returned to you. Business contracts would actually be quickly enforced (once the Mafia said "this is the way we understood the contract", that was that). The problems only began to arise once groups began to fight over the drugs and sex trade, which led to many assassinations, and instability in the business world.
According to previous reports in 2007, the mafia had managed to corrupt/bribe/threaten officials at the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment: An Enea manager is said to have paid the clan to get rid of 600 drums of toxic and radioactive waste from Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, and the US, the turncoat claimed, with Somalia as the destination lined up by the traffickers.
Worryingly, the arrested ENEA officials were also accused of seeking 'clandestine production of plutonium' on behalf of the Mafia. The countries or organisations the plutonium was destined for have not been named.
From the previous story on male juvenile delinquent behaviour being contagious people made the same "correlation is not causation" statement. I think that at this point the majority of Slashdot readers are well aware that correlation is not causation, so I'll just copy/paste (again) an appropriate response:
"correlationdoesnnotnecessarilymeancausation
Indeed, which is why the vast majority of studies that get tagged by the moronic "correlationisnotcausation" involve some application of Mill's Methods and/or statistical and theoretical inference to demonstrate causation based on the observed correlations.
What gets reported is the correlation, because reporters are even dumber than/. taggers, but the researchers generally have thought a little bit about elementary logical errors somewhere along the path of their experiment design.
The tag is particularly idiotic when you consider that every correlation is caused by something, so the OP here is absolutely correct: if you really believe that there is no relationship whatsoever between correlation and causation, such that you can reflexively dismiss every reported correlation with this little snippet of nonsense, then you're pretty much committed to nothing being caused by anything.
Tagging stories this way is completely vacuous. All it tells us is that you haven't read the study or considered whether the usual methods have been employed to properly infer causation from correlation. It would be as useful and relevant to tag all stories with "theskyisblue", which is true in one sense (although the sky happens to be overcast where I am right now) but is only true in a way that is a) known by everyone and b) adds nothing of value to the discussion."
From the previous story on male juvenile delinquent behaviour being contagious people made the same "correlation is not causation" statement. I think that at this point the majority of Slashdot readers are well aware that correlation is not causation, so I'll just copy/paste an appropriate response:
"correlationdoesnnotnecessarilymeancausation
Indeed, which is why the vast majority of studies that get tagged by the moronic "correlationisnotcausation" involve some application of Mill's Methods and/or statistical and theoretical inference to demonstrate causation based on the observed correlations.
What gets reported is the correlation, because reporters are even dumber than/. taggers, but the researchers generally have thought a little bit about elementary logical errors somewhere along the path of their experiment design.
The tag is particularly idiotic when you consider that every correlation is caused by something, so the OP here is absolutely correct: if you really believe that there is no relationship whatsoever between correlation and causation, such that you can reflexively dismiss every reported correlation with this little snippet of nonsense, then you're pretty much committed to nothing being caused by anything.
Tagging stories this way is completely vacuous. All it tells us is that you haven't read the study or considered whether the usual methods have been employed to properly infer causation from correlation. It would be as useful and relevant to tag all stories with "theskyisblue", which is true in one sense (although the sky happens to be overcast where I am right now) but is only true in a way that is a) known by everyone and b) adds nothing of value to the discussion."
Wouldn't it be more likely that these people that are happy, athletic, and don't smoke tend to make friends with other people like them, as opposed to this suggestion of viral happiness?
Your point is brought up in the article: One is âoehomophily,â the tendency of people to gravitate toward others who are like them. People who are gaining weight might well prefer to hang out with others who are also gaining weight, just as people who are happy might seek out others who are happy.Christakis and Fowler argue that they have stripped out the confounding effect of homophily from their statistics, although some other researchers have disagreed.
I mean it seems pretty obvious that people who don't smoke are going to have a higher percentage of friends that don't smoke than those who do smoke. It's called a "lifestyle."
Why is it obvious? At one time it was "obvious" that smokers were the cool socialites that everyone wanted to emulate.
They also studied drinking: When it came to drinking, Christakis and Fowler found a different kind of gender effect. Framingham women were considerably more influential than Framingham men. A woman who began drinking heavily increased the heavy-drinking risk of those around her, whereas heavy-drinking men had less effect on other people. Why? In the age of frat-party binge drinking, you might imagine that hard-partying men are the most risky people to be around. But Fowler says he suspects women are more influential precisely because they tend to drink less. When a woman starts drinking heavily, he says, it sends a strong signal to those around her that it's O.K. to start boozing too.
Very often attacks are attempted at night, but that's a bad time, since load is often low. One would need to wait until mid afternoon on a very high load day (even more ideally when some major lines are down for maintenance) - that takes advanced planning and good luck.
From TFA: "To their surprise, under particular loading conditions, taking out a lightly loaded subnetwork first caused more of the grid to trip out than starting with a highly loaded one. An attack on the nodes with the lowest loads can be a more effective way to destroy the electrical power grid of the western US due to cascading failures,"
From what I understand, the lifestyle of Aborigines was essentially unchanged for over 40,000 years. In the last 5,000 years things did change. The link from Wired supports this:
"Aborigines arrived 45,000 years ago, spreading across the continent with startling rapidity. Then, in anthropological terms, they cooled their heels for the next 40,000 years: no significant population expansion. No fundamental changes in lifestyle. That changed 5,000 years ago. Populations shot up. Settlements increased in number, and their inhabitants grew more sedentary. Scientists can't explain it."
The Wikipedia article is talking about innovation in the last 3,000 years which is compatible with this view.
What is your point? Of course people want all the advantages of modern living. But it is all built around the easy availability of energy from fossil and nuclear fuels and precious metals from the ground. Unless we discover some new source of energy, the supplies we currently have will run out, and then the modern lifestyle will end.
It is possible to appreciate the benefits of modern living, but at the same time acknowledge that a lifestyle based on consumption of finite resources will end when those resources are used up. It does not follow logically that acknowledging the latter implies the former can not be true, so your argument makes no sense.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't feel a need to obey speed limits
What percentage of motorised vehicle drivers don't feel a need to obey speed limits? Two thirds? 80%? 87%? As subgroups of vehicle operator go, cyclists are not the problem - the majority of cyclists would have difficulty breaking the limit in a 15mph zone, nevermind anything higher.
they'll crawl along in a 45mph zone as though on a leisurely ride in the park
How on earth do you expect the average cyclist to travel at 45mph?! Even Lance Armstrong at his best is only averages 30mph. Have you ever considered that the fact you are being effortlessly propelled forward at 45mph by a motorised vehicle just might, possibly, impact your perception of speed in slower vehicles? It is perfectly legal for a cyclist to travel at 5mph, just as it's perfectly legal for a tractor to travel at 5mph. Not all vehicles you meet on the highways will be travelling at high speed, and if you can't cope with that situation calmly and safely, then you shouldn't be driving.
Or we could, you know, deny those expectations and preserve freedom.
What freedom would that preserve? You realise that people in countries with universal healthcare still have the freedom to eat and drink whatever they want? Or if you were implying that paying taxes makes you less free, does it really? Would you argue that, say, Swedish people don't have freedom because they pay taxes and have universal healthcare? Or that Afghan people are more free, because they have few taxes and no healthcare?
"Sin tax" is a politically loaded term that implies the consumer is doing something morally wrong and should therefore be punished through taxation. The term itself encourages people line up on one side or the other of an imaginary dividing line in politics and argue from those perspectives. The economics term for taxes that charge back the negative indirect costs of a transaction is externalities. Economically speaking, it is a totally legitimate thing to associate the externality costs with the original transaction - people who argue against such taxes on the basis of economics are usually motivated by a political ideology rather than a sound understanding of economics. Another common claim from the economically illiterate is "taxes don't work to lower consumption, people will just spend more!". Right, so if the tax on a packet of cigarettes were $100, everyone would just pay that, rather than switching to some other vice?
Working in the banking and finance industries is not illegal. You may think it's immoral, but there are many people who work in those industries who are decent, hard working individuals. Your analogy may be more like it would be okay to sell sex, as long the prostitute pays income tax on what he/she takes? I actually know a prostitute who insists on paying income tax because she wants to be legal, even though all of her customers pay cash in hand and it would be trivial for her to avoid taxes (prostitution in itself is not illegal here).
The repackaging of subprime mortgages into valued securities was one problem but it might not have caused a collapse had the banks not also willingly massively over leveraged - at 30 to 1 it only takes a 3% downturn in the market and your bank is insolvent...
Did we receive a share of their profits for rest of the gravy train journey?
If you live in a country with taxation of corporate profits, capital gains, and personal income, then the answer is yes - the country did receive a share of the profits.
If 2 and 3 are true, then it follows that when Chrome's renderer is used, the browser is actually more secure.
You would be right if the web site serving the potential exploit couldn't select the renderer, but that is not the case here - the attacker can turn on or off the meta tag in the HTTP Response that selects Windows or Chrome rendering in IE. So the attacker has the choice of two rather than one rendering engine.
Orthodox: Adhering to whatever is traditional, customary or generally accepted.
I really don't see how Android fits that description, given the points already raised (especially the fact that the kernel is modified with a custom IPC mechanism). But until there is a scientifically testable description of "orthodox linux", the argument is over a personal interpretation of semantics.
Most Linuxes are GNU/Linux, including such things as a standard libc. Android uses its own
Android also uses its own video driver architecture, its own window manager, its own desktop, and its own virtual machine. The statement that 'Android is "orthodox" Linux' isn't even true if you only consider "Linux" to be the kernel - Android uses its own kernel with a unique IPC mechanism. As Ars said: Android uses the Linux kernel, but it isn't really a Linux platform. It offers its own totally unique environment that is built on Google's custom Java runtime. There is no glide path for porting conventional desktop Linux applications to Android. Similarly, Java applications that are written for Android can't run in regular Java virtual machine implementations or in standard Java ME environments. This makes Android a somewhat insular platform. (source).
In fact, according to that article, Android doesn't even use a standard kernel: Android's sophisticated interprocess communication system, which is called Binder, requires a special kernel driver in order to run properly. The driver is in the kernel staging tree and is not enabled - a problematic impediment for the Android execution environment developers. Their current prototype is using a temporary workaround to bypass Binder, but they hope that the necessary patches can be enabled in the kernel for the next Ubuntu release so that the execution environment can work properly.
taxing people on what they spend instead of what they earn encourages savings.
Increasing sales tax just means that people get less stuff for their money. Most people will spend a fixed amount of whatever income level they have. So a 10% sales tax means exactly that - they spend the same, but get 10% less stuff in return than they would have when compared to a 0% sales tax. That does not necessarily encourage saving, which would be subject to (in various jurisdictions) savings tax, capital gains tax, and associated investment and management costs. What encourages saving is a legal way of protecting those savings from the associated costs and taxes (e.g. an ISA type scheme).
Who should be taxed more? A businessman (lets call him Warren) who earns a huge amount of money, but invests it back (creating more jobs), and lives a normal life; or a rich heiress (lets call her Paris) who earns a moderate amount, but spends a huge amount on consumer goods?
I've read several economics books that propose the most efficient way to tax people is to rarely, and at unpredictable times, assess their income or worth, and tax it as a percentage. This way you don't tax trade, which is presumably good. Making the precise time period of taxation random(ish) and unannounced means that there is no way to game the system by temporarily giving your wealth or income away. It sounds like an economists dream though, the reality of implementing such a system would be rather difficult.
It's not clear that a porn magazine would be covered by this law, but adverts would be. We already have disclaimers in the UK for cosmetics adverts. They are actually quite informative. I saw one recently advertising some kind of shampoo and stating that it "enhanced vibrancy" and the models had ultra-bouncy curled hair, meanwhile the disclaimer at the bottom of the screen actually said something like "note: models did not use the advertised product. Models hair was formed by makeup expert." That kind of information makes a huge difference in how people perceive the advert. I've seen similar disclaimers for skin cream adverts, while the voiceover is saying how amazing the product is, the disclaimer says something like "In independent tests 28% of test subjects reported some improvement"; so now we know that 72% of test subjects reported no improvement with this product! I think the honesty in advertising laws are great, certainly a lot more amusing than the adverts we used to have a few years ago.
Most people have no idea how how much touching up goes on. In the documentary Bigger, Faster, Stronger a photographer from the "protein shake" market is interviewed. He states that he has actually done photoshoots of the "before" (weakling) and "after" (muscleman) photos in the same day. That's right, what the advertiser claims to be some amazing muscle growth effect is actually just photo manipulation. It's completely dishonest. Oh, and the models admit using steroids. They say that if people are stupid enough to actually believe the photos, then they deserve to lose their money. Given the choice between this blatant corruption, where the uneducated and trusting are lied to and exploited for financial gain, and a regulated market, I'll choose regulation.
Going automatic is a scary proposition, fraught with traps.
Not if the system works. In Europe the Direct Debit system can be used to pay for most utilities and phone, internet services. There is a guarantee that any money taken from your account will be refunded within 24 hours if you dispute it. As far as I know, in the UK direct debit payments now account for the majority of such transactions. In fact, there are many service providers that only accept payment by direct debit, since the processing fees are so much lower than anything else.
I switched to paying everything - all utility bills, internet, phone, TV - by direct debit over a decade ago, and have never had a single problem with the system.
Well, they do have some moral fiber: '100 drums were secretly buried somewhere in the southern Italian region of Basilicata. Clan members avoided burying the waste in neighbouring Calabria, said the turncoat, because of their "love for their home region"'. link Nice of them, eh?
Presumably the Mafia boss thought that dumping the waste in the sea would be noticed. And likely to land a very long sentence if prosecuted. But arranging with officials in Somalia to let them dispose of the waste there is perfectly legal. Shipping to Somalia doesn't cost much, and nobody is going to complain, so why not?
The book McMafia has some interesting views on the protection rackets that appeared in the former Soviet Union countries in the 1990s. One common theme is that the protection money charged by these organisations was actually quite reasonable - around 7.5% - lower than corporate taxation in the West (there was no corporation tax, or functioning government in the Western sense, in these countries). The protection rackets would also negotiate and arbitrate on your behalf with other businesses, and produce an agreed upon contractual solution to any conflicts. If there were a later dispute over terms, the Mafia-type group would judge it, and make sure the judgement were enforced.
In essence, for 7.5% tax the Mafia groups provided a functioning corporate security service, arbitration and legal system. Another interesting view is that this whole system actually worked - if your car was stolen, and you had it insured with the mob, there was a >90% chance that it would be returned to you. Business contracts would actually be quickly enforced (once the Mafia said "this is the way we understood the contract", that was that). The problems only began to arise once groups began to fight over the drugs and sex trade, which led to many assassinations, and instability in the business world.
It's a fascinating book.
According to previous reports in 2007, the mafia had managed to corrupt/bribe/threaten officials at the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment: An Enea manager is said to have paid the clan to get rid of 600 drums of toxic and radioactive waste from Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, and the US, the turncoat claimed, with Somalia as the destination lined up by the traffickers.
Worryingly, the arrested ENEA officials were also accused of seeking 'clandestine production of plutonium' on behalf of the Mafia. The countries or organisations the plutonium was destined for have not been named.
From the previous story on male juvenile delinquent behaviour being contagious people made the same "correlation is not causation" statement. I think that at this point the majority of Slashdot readers are well aware that correlation is not causation, so I'll just copy/paste (again) an appropriate response:
" correlationdoesnnotnecessarilymeancausation
Indeed, which is why the vast majority of studies that get tagged by the moronic "correlationisnotcausation" involve some application of Mill's Methods and/or statistical and theoretical inference to demonstrate causation based on the observed correlations.
What gets reported is the correlation, because reporters are even dumber than /. taggers, but the researchers generally have thought a little bit about elementary logical errors somewhere along the path of their experiment design.
The tag is particularly idiotic when you consider that every correlation is caused by something, so the OP here is absolutely correct: if you really believe that there is no relationship whatsoever between correlation and causation, such that you can reflexively dismiss every reported correlation with this little snippet of nonsense, then you're pretty much committed to nothing being caused by anything.
Tagging stories this way is completely vacuous. All it tells us is that you haven't read the study or considered whether the usual methods have been employed to properly infer causation from correlation. It would be as useful and relevant to tag all stories with "theskyisblue", which is true in one sense (although the sky happens to be overcast where I am right now) but is only true in a way that is a) known by everyone and b) adds nothing of value to the discussion."
From the previous story on male juvenile delinquent behaviour being contagious people made the same "correlation is not causation" statement. I think that at this point the majority of Slashdot readers are well aware that correlation is not causation, so I'll just copy/paste an appropriate response:
"correlationdoesnnotnecessarilymeancausation
Indeed, which is why the vast majority of studies that get tagged by the moronic "correlationisnotcausation" involve some application of Mill's Methods and/or statistical and theoretical inference to demonstrate causation based on the observed correlations.
What gets reported is the correlation, because reporters are even dumber than /. taggers, but the researchers generally have thought a little bit about elementary logical errors somewhere along the path of their experiment design.
The tag is particularly idiotic when you consider that every correlation is caused by something, so the OP here is absolutely correct: if you really believe that there is no relationship whatsoever between correlation and causation, such that you can reflexively dismiss every reported correlation with this little snippet of nonsense, then you're pretty much committed to nothing being caused by anything.
Tagging stories this way is completely vacuous. All it tells us is that you haven't read the study or considered whether the usual methods have been employed to properly infer causation from correlation. It would be as useful and relevant to tag all stories with "theskyisblue", which is true in one sense (although the sky happens to be overcast where I am right now) but is only true in a way that is a) known by everyone and b) adds nothing of value to the discussion."
Wouldn't it be more likely that these people that are happy, athletic, and don't smoke tend to make friends with other people like them, as opposed to this suggestion of viral happiness?
Your point is brought up in the article: One is âoehomophily,â the tendency of people to gravitate toward others who are like them. People who are gaining weight might well prefer to hang out with others who are also gaining weight, just as people who are happy might seek out others who are happy.Christakis and Fowler argue that they have stripped out the confounding effect of homophily from their statistics, although some other researchers have disagreed.
I mean it seems pretty obvious that people who don't smoke are going to have a higher percentage of friends that don't smoke than those who do smoke. It's called a "lifestyle."
Why is it obvious? At one time it was "obvious" that smokers were the cool socialites that everyone wanted to emulate.
They also studied drinking: When it came to drinking, Christakis and Fowler found a different kind of gender effect. Framingham women were considerably more influential than Framingham men. A woman who began drinking heavily increased the heavy-drinking risk of those around her, whereas heavy-drinking men had less effect on other people. Why? In the age of frat-party binge drinking, you might imagine that hard-partying men are the most risky people to be around. But Fowler says he suspects women are more influential precisely because they tend to drink less. When a woman starts drinking heavily, he says, it sends a strong signal to those around her that it's O.K. to start boozing too.
Very often attacks are attempted at night, but that's a bad time, since load is often low. One would need to wait until mid afternoon on a very high load day (even more ideally when some major lines are down for maintenance) - that takes advanced planning and good luck.
From TFA: "To their surprise, under particular loading conditions, taking out a lightly loaded subnetwork first caused more of the grid to trip out than starting with a highly loaded one. An attack on the nodes with the lowest loads can be a more effective way to destroy the electrical power grid of the western US due to cascading failures,"
From what I understand, the lifestyle of Aborigines was essentially unchanged for over 40,000 years. In the last 5,000 years things did change. The link from Wired supports this:
"Aborigines arrived 45,000 years ago, spreading across the continent with startling rapidity. Then, in anthropological terms, they cooled their heels for the next 40,000 years: no significant population expansion. No fundamental changes in lifestyle. That changed 5,000 years ago. Populations shot up. Settlements increased in number, and their inhabitants grew more sedentary. Scientists can't explain it."
The Wikipedia article is talking about innovation in the last 3,000 years which is compatible with this view.
What is your point? Of course people want all the advantages of modern living. But it is all built around the easy availability of energy from fossil and nuclear fuels and precious metals from the ground. Unless we discover some new source of energy, the supplies we currently have will run out, and then the modern lifestyle will end.
It is possible to appreciate the benefits of modern living, but at the same time acknowledge that a lifestyle based on consumption of finite resources will end when those resources are used up. It does not follow logically that acknowledging the latter implies the former can not be true, so your argument makes no sense.