...is that we have well-financed and extremely organized groups deliberately spreading misinformation in order to promote a certain viewpoint that is inconvenienced by empirical evidence. Evolution, global warming, and the lack of a link between autism and vaccines is misunderstood by the public because groups are actively working to keep the public misinformed.
While scientists probably should do a better job of communicating with the public, it's awfully hard when the other side of the argument is using a multibillion dollar propaganda machine to pump out bad information and bad arguments at an incredible rate.
A while back I excitedly jumped on the LGA1366 bandwagon. I bought a motherboard from MSI that was close to $300 because I had good experiences with MSI boards in the past. This particular board turned out to have a manufacturing flaw that resulted in one of the motherboard chips overheating due to a bad choice in either what thermal grease was used or in how it was applied. MSI's response to the resulting outcry? "It's fine because the temps are still below 100 degrees C." Then they mysteriously pulled the product from the shelves.
...the truth is that neither Mac OS nor Windows would be half as good if not for BeOS. A lot of the technologies we now take for granted first appeared in a desktop OS with BeOS (e.g. journaled file system).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that all the engineers who tested this were using a special case designed to make the iPhone 4 look like something else. While the primary purpose of the case was disguise, it would have also masked this problem from testing.
Any interrogator will tell you that torture produces bad information. The purpose of torture is not to get a particular piece of information out of a particular individual, what you want is to torture large numbers of people in a particular population in order to cow them and make them afraid of standing up to a particular government.
With torture the target is not the person tortured, it is everyone who knows the person who was tortured. They see a broken man and are afraid of becoming the same way.
Most of the time that argument is used, it is to imply that ALL data that involves statistical analysis must be false (unless they happen to agree with whatever swill FOX News is pushing), and that we should only trust in anecdotal evidence provided it comes from a sufficiently extremist right wing blowhard.
Statistical analysis is the more reliable means of getting at the truth precisely because it is possible to uncover misleading and inappropriate things like what happened with this Kos pollster. That's why science relies on statistical analysis instead of "'cause Rush said so".
If someone provides you an answer that is the result of statistical analysis but refused to provide enough information for you to verify their conclusions (data, analysis methods used, etc.), then you can assume the conclusion is bad.
While I am deeply disappointed in Kos over this, to argue that both sides are just as bad in this regard is fatuous just on the face of it. Call me back when MSNBC argues in a court of law that it is their constitutional right to fire reporters for refusing to lie.
It never fails. No matter how many times Dave Barry does the Mr. Language Person schtick, some idiot always stands up and finds something wrong with Mr. Language Person's responses. The whole joke is that Mr. Language Person is clearly incompetent at English and every response is chock full of blatant errors, yet there is always some self-absorbed nitwit who manages to find only one or two things wrong with it, and then launch on a massive rant about those one or two things.
If you suspect the problem is coming from another Wi-Fi signal, you can download and install the app "WiFi Analyzer" to turn your phone into a handy little tool for seeing just how many networks are in range and the relative signal strength of each one. You can even use it to pick the best channel for avoiding interference, and the app is free.
Whoa. Thanks for the heads up on that! I was under the impression that they were only putting a pause on a few new oil rigs, but they're planning on shutting down all the oil rigs in the Gulf? That's big, big news!
Or maybe you're getting a little carried away with the hyperbole there.
Besides, the whole "corporations are people" as a legal concept is based on a lie. The courts kept ruling against the "corporations are people" argument, so some corporations paid some clerk to modify the summary/abstract of a case to say exactly the opposite. Because people were too lazy to read the whole case instead of just the summary, people assumed the result of the case was the opposite of what really happened, made rulings based on this assumption, and voi la! Corporations are now people!
Since bribes are now considered "free speech", I guess this was a perfectly legitimate way of changing the law to suit your own tastes.
If the pipe between Australia and the rest of the world is still shit, what exactly is improved by laying fiber all over the place? Quicker access to the web site of a local plumber?
...it still doesn't mean diddly to the average Afghan. They just have to look at Africa to know that none of them will see any benefit from this. To the average Joe on the street, all this means is that the local street thugs who make their lives miserable will have better weapons.
I personally doubt they're going to find a link, but to claim that a negative has been conclusively demonstrated is pretty far off base. It is way to early in the game to declare with any certainty one conclusion over the other.
Cell phones became cheap enough for prolonged use by large numbers of people relatively recently. We're decades out from having the sort of data necessary to really say "Yeah, there's definitely no link" or "Yeah, there's definitely a link".
...some NASA scientists commented on global warming, which many conservolibertarians believe is an international conspiracy by 90% of the planet's scientists, so from their point of view, NASA has been "political" in the past, and you're not going to be able to dissuade them from that conclusion.
Just look at mineral-rich African nations. The mineral wealth will make a handful of Afghans ludicrously wealthy, and other than that will almost exclusively benefit foreign corporations. From the perspective of the average Afghan, this means nothing except that the local thugs who make their lives miserable will be armed with more modern weapons.
I fear that between local corruption/oppression and foreign exploitation will only serve to provide even more fuel for the recruiting efforts of religious extremists. If we could find a way to use this wealth to help lift all Afghans out of poverty and into a comfortable standard of living, Afghan-operated terrorist groups would dry up overnight, but we all know that the corporations who control the American government would never allow such a thing to happen.
Your statement may be true of other people who signed the letter as I know nothing about them (yeah, I didn't RTFA), but Bill Gates? In the past decade or so he's been far more interested in matters of philanthropy and legacy than with making even more ludicrously large piles of money.
How can you not see the obvious advantage the Republicans gain from having such an unfit candidate to run against? Practically anyone with a pulse could beat this idiot in a fair election.
If you want to drill someplace dangerous in Canada, the evil socialist nannystate requires you to drill a relief well at the same time you drill the main well. If the American government had the same requirement on drilling done in very deep places, then this problem would have been solved a long time ago. No engineering degree is needed to understand this.
Unfortunately, our government doesn't require such precautions, because our government counts on the "magic of the free market" and "rational self interest" to motivate oil companies to do these things on their own. Thus, such precautions were not taken, and now we have to wait until August for the first attempt at a relief well (keep in mind that the first attempt is rarely successful).
Sure, there is more that the federal government could be doing (e.g. containment booms, sandbars, etc.), but the main question we should be asking is not whether the government is doing enough, but why the government is spending taxpayer resources on things that do more to serve BP's PR problem than to serve the interests of citizens whose livelihoods have been affected by the ecological and economic damage.
For instance, government resources are being used to keep reporters from taking pictures of wildlife damaged by the oil spill. No democratic government has any business doing such a thing, and it most certainly serves BP's PR needs more than it serves the needs of the public. Why were government/military C-130s being used to distribute dispersants when coagulants would have made removing the oil easier? The only purpose served by dispersants is to reduce the appearance of that oil slick on damning satellite photos. Again: government resources are being used to serve BP's PR needs instead of the citizens' ecological/economic needs.
Getting angry at Obama for not personally swimming down there and plugging the leak with his thumb is stupid. Getting angry at Obama for not getting angry enough is stupid. People making these complaints are asking the wrong questions and complaining about the wrong things. Government should serve us first, and large multinational corporations only when doing so also serves our interests.
Slashdot Mirror
...is that we have well-financed and extremely organized groups deliberately spreading misinformation in order to promote a certain viewpoint that is inconvenienced by empirical evidence. Evolution, global warming, and the lack of a link between autism and vaccines is misunderstood by the public because groups are actively working to keep the public misinformed.
While scientists probably should do a better job of communicating with the public, it's awfully hard when the other side of the argument is using a multibillion dollar propaganda machine to pump out bad information and bad arguments at an incredible rate.
A while back I excitedly jumped on the LGA1366 bandwagon. I bought a motherboard from MSI that was close to $300 because I had good experiences with MSI boards in the past. This particular board turned out to have a manufacturing flaw that resulted in one of the motherboard chips overheating due to a bad choice in either what thermal grease was used or in how it was applied. MSI's response to the resulting outcry? "It's fine because the temps are still below 100 degrees C." Then they mysteriously pulled the product from the shelves.
Try something that difficult and there is always the risk of failure. I hope they try again!
It wasn't that long ago that the cops shut down Boston over a Lite Brite.
...the truth is that neither Mac OS nor Windows would be half as good if not for BeOS. A lot of the technologies we now take for granted first appeared in a desktop OS with BeOS (e.g. journaled file system).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that all the engineers who tested this were using a special case designed to make the iPhone 4 look like something else. While the primary purpose of the case was disguise, it would have also masked this problem from testing.
Even if it is true that all politicians do this, that does not make this right. Archiving and disclosure laws are there for a reason.
Any interrogator will tell you that torture produces bad information. The purpose of torture is not to get a particular piece of information out of a particular individual, what you want is to torture large numbers of people in a particular population in order to cow them and make them afraid of standing up to a particular government.
With torture the target is not the person tortured, it is everyone who knows the person who was tortured. They see a broken man and are afraid of becoming the same way.
Most of the time that argument is used, it is to imply that ALL data that involves statistical analysis must be false (unless they happen to agree with whatever swill FOX News is pushing), and that we should only trust in anecdotal evidence provided it comes from a sufficiently extremist right wing blowhard.
Statistical analysis is the more reliable means of getting at the truth precisely because it is possible to uncover misleading and inappropriate things like what happened with this Kos pollster. That's why science relies on statistical analysis instead of "'cause Rush said so".
If someone provides you an answer that is the result of statistical analysis but refused to provide enough information for you to verify their conclusions (data, analysis methods used, etc.), then you can assume the conclusion is bad.
While I am deeply disappointed in Kos over this, to argue that both sides are just as bad in this regard is fatuous just on the face of it. Call me back when MSNBC argues in a court of law that it is their constitutional right to fire reporters for refusing to lie.
It never fails. No matter how many times Dave Barry does the Mr. Language Person schtick, some idiot always stands up and finds something wrong with Mr. Language Person's responses. The whole joke is that Mr. Language Person is clearly incompetent at English and every response is chock full of blatant errors, yet there is always some self-absorbed nitwit who manages to find only one or two things wrong with it, and then launch on a massive rant about those one or two things.
If you suspect the problem is coming from another Wi-Fi signal, you can download and install the app "WiFi Analyzer" to turn your phone into a handy little tool for seeing just how many networks are in range and the relative signal strength of each one. You can even use it to pick the best channel for avoiding interference, and the app is free.
At least according to our US Supreme Court.
Whoa. Thanks for the heads up on that! I was under the impression that they were only putting a pause on a few new oil rigs, but they're planning on shutting down all the oil rigs in the Gulf? That's big, big news!
Or maybe you're getting a little carried away with the hyperbole there.
Besides, the whole "corporations are people" as a legal concept is based on a lie. The courts kept ruling against the "corporations are people" argument, so some corporations paid some clerk to modify the summary/abstract of a case to say exactly the opposite. Because people were too lazy to read the whole case instead of just the summary, people assumed the result of the case was the opposite of what really happened, made rulings based on this assumption, and voi la! Corporations are now people!
Since bribes are now considered "free speech", I guess this was a perfectly legitimate way of changing the law to suit your own tastes.
If the pipe between Australia and the rest of the world is still shit, what exactly is improved by laying fiber all over the place? Quicker access to the web site of a local plumber?
...it still doesn't mean diddly to the average Afghan. They just have to look at Africa to know that none of them will see any benefit from this. To the average Joe on the street, all this means is that the local street thugs who make their lives miserable will have better weapons.
I personally doubt they're going to find a link, but to claim that a negative has been conclusively demonstrated is pretty far off base. It is way to early in the game to declare with any certainty one conclusion over the other.
Cell phones became cheap enough for prolonged use by large numbers of people relatively recently. We're decades out from having the sort of data necessary to really say "Yeah, there's definitely no link" or "Yeah, there's definitely a link".
...some NASA scientists commented on global warming, which many conservolibertarians believe is an international conspiracy by 90% of the planet's scientists, so from their point of view, NASA has been "political" in the past, and you're not going to be able to dissuade them from that conclusion.
No.
Just look at mineral-rich African nations. The mineral wealth will make a handful of Afghans ludicrously wealthy, and other than that will almost exclusively benefit foreign corporations. From the perspective of the average Afghan, this means nothing except that the local thugs who make their lives miserable will be armed with more modern weapons.
I fear that between local corruption/oppression and foreign exploitation will only serve to provide even more fuel for the recruiting efforts of religious extremists. If we could find a way to use this wealth to help lift all Afghans out of poverty and into a comfortable standard of living, Afghan-operated terrorist groups would dry up overnight, but we all know that the corporations who control the American government would never allow such a thing to happen.
Your statement may be true of other people who signed the letter as I know nothing about them (yeah, I didn't RTFA), but Bill Gates? In the past decade or so he's been far more interested in matters of philanthropy and legacy than with making even more ludicrously large piles of money.
I used to be part of the Mac community, and trust me, they're often a lot harsher about Jobs' dictatorial actions than you are.
How can you not see the obvious advantage the Republicans gain from having such an unfit candidate to run against? Practically anyone with a pulse could beat this idiot in a fair election.
If you want to drill someplace dangerous in Canada, the evil socialist nannystate requires you to drill a relief well at the same time you drill the main well. If the American government had the same requirement on drilling done in very deep places, then this problem would have been solved a long time ago. No engineering degree is needed to understand this.
Unfortunately, our government doesn't require such precautions, because our government counts on the "magic of the free market" and "rational self interest" to motivate oil companies to do these things on their own. Thus, such precautions were not taken, and now we have to wait until August for the first attempt at a relief well (keep in mind that the first attempt is rarely successful).
Sure, there is more that the federal government could be doing (e.g. containment booms, sandbars, etc.), but the main question we should be asking is not whether the government is doing enough, but why the government is spending taxpayer resources on things that do more to serve BP's PR problem than to serve the interests of citizens whose livelihoods have been affected by the ecological and economic damage.
For instance, government resources are being used to keep reporters from taking pictures of wildlife damaged by the oil spill. No democratic government has any business doing such a thing, and it most certainly serves BP's PR needs more than it serves the needs of the public. Why were government/military C-130s being used to distribute dispersants when coagulants would have made removing the oil easier? The only purpose served by dispersants is to reduce the appearance of that oil slick on damning satellite photos. Again: government resources are being used to serve BP's PR needs instead of the citizens' ecological/economic needs.
Getting angry at Obama for not personally swimming down there and plugging the leak with his thumb is stupid. Getting angry at Obama for not getting angry enough is stupid. People making these complaints are asking the wrong questions and complaining about the wrong things. Government should serve us first, and large multinational corporations only when doing so also serves our interests.