Being reminded of exactly what the birthday paradox was, I wish to retract the claim that it applies in this situation.
The probabllity is STILL a lot higher than a naive estimate, but that's not the reason.
P.S.: Another reason that it's high is the lab will be under pressure to find a match. And it's not unknown for labs to fudge their results, or even make mistakes. There are other reasons.
They *AREN'T* doing a complete match. Not even when they have their suspect identified. (Well, maybe the Dutch do. The price has dropped enough to make that reasonable.)
So you DO get birthday paradoxes. Now if, once you get your suspect, you do a complete match, then you eliminate the problem. (Unless he has an identical twin, in which case you need to test for epigenetic modifications...only guess what, not all of the cells in your body have the same epigenetic modifications. If they're testing sperm, this comes with additional sets of problems that I'm not up on, as I'm not a biologist.)
For which among which reasons a DNA test should never be construced as proof of guilt, not even in rape. You also need other evidence. (It is, however, a strong indication. And should enable you to focus your investigations in a way that's usually useful.)
I don't know about currently, but past investigations have found a VERY high error rate in the reports from sequencing labs. High enough that I don't know whether it's carlessness, sloppy technique, or just not caring what answer they give.
It's true that in an ideal situation, DNA would be very good evidence, particularly in a case of rape. I'm not sure, however, that I would trust the evidence given what previous studies of lab error rates have shown. (That said, this IS a different lab, and this IS several years later. Maybe things aren't as bad as they used to be. But what I'm talking about was NEVER technical limitations...though those are present, too.)
That said, the requirement for an absolute majority is VERY desireable. It's still true that you can't trust anyone with power, but it's much worse if a plurality is sufficient.
FWIW, an absolute majority is one of the benefits of both Instant Runoff Voting and Condorcet. I personally perfer Condorcet voting, but because it's not sufficiently better than Instant Runoff, and Instant Runoff Voting is easier to explain, IRV may be the better system.
You still shouldn't trust the government, but with a requirement for an absolute majoirty, it's reasonable to distrust it less.
IIUC, current consumer CDs and DVDs write using a phase transition process that changes the reflectivity of the metallic layer written upon. Over time this relaxes back into the low energy configuration. It may be good for a decade or two, but I doubt that it's even good over a century.
What you say is just, but in this case I believe that his accusation is just.
The US has been very unwilling to curtail CO2 emissions in any significant way. China has been attempting to do so. (Not consistently, but they've been trying.)
However, it's also worth noting that the original impetus for limiting CO2 emissions came from the US. (Not, perhaps, from the government, but still from the US.) The US is even less monolithic than most other countries, but, as with all countries, the government pretends to speak for the country...and as with many countries, it has sufficient power to shout down those opposed to it.
The way that should actually be done is to have the acceptance of responsibility for "so much" CO2 be included as a part of the price of the merchandise. So when you buy a new car, you take on as a part of the purchase, the responsibility of the CO2 created in the process of creating the car. How you could possibly discharge that obligation is not, however, clear to me.
It's irrelevant to the control of global warming, but it *is* relevant to the fairness of the regulations. There are, however, other factors. Enough other factors, that I'm dubious that people could come to an agreement on what was fair even in the absence of strong economic incentives to argue.
99% sounds suspicious to me, too. But it's definitely true that a LOT of oil is refiend in the US. I don't have any reliable facts to back this up, though. (And I suspect that the figures change a lot from decade to decade...not quite from year to year, as new plants aren't built that often, but when the changes come, they come as sudden large jumps.)
I think that what he's actually saying is that ALL externalities should be added to the cost for everyone. If it were possible, this would be a reasonable approach. Attempting to do it would be a more reasonable approach than ANYTHING that I have heard proposed by ANY government.
If this were done as proposed, then the "Tragedy of the Commons" would not apply. I have doubts that it can be done. If this were approached, then the effect of the "Tragedy of the Commons" would be minimized. Nobody powerful seems to be interested...except to prohibit it.
Yes, and you CAN print it out. And you CAN print it on good paper... but what about the inks that you are using? I don't think those will survive very long. And getting better inks that will work with an existing printer is a real problem.
FWIW, I don't really have a much better answer than an improved clay tablet. And preserving anything that way is so expensive that it won't be done...except on a trivial scale. The original CDs were durable things, but that doesn't apply to the ones that you can burn at home. They use phase transition metals, which over time will relax back into the low energy configuration. Pits burned in metal foil and sandwiched between glass are much more durable. But both of those take specific technology to read. And that's pretty much guaranteed not to survive. Black and white (silver process) prints onto glass can be pretty durable, can be written as microfiche (the transfer to glass would occur as a printing process), and sandwich a sheet of glass over the image, so it won't be abraded. That would be pretty durable, fairly dense, and could be read with a decent magnifying glass. But it's not going to be done (again, except on a trivial scale). The equipment to produce the images would be very expensive, and you couldn't sell the results.
OK, it's classic MSWind I'm talking about (3.x and earlier) so it must have been something earlier than VMS...that I no longer remember the name of. I *THINK* is was running on a DEC machine, though. I never actually used it directly, but roff (ancestor of groff, troff, etc.) ran on it.
That would be a fair argument if the people who become in charge didn't always engage in "empire-building". If regulations didn't proliferate. etc. But regulations tend to have the force of law, if you want the service, without even the oversight provided by the legislative process.
So while a larger "more services" government is friendlier to live under, it's just as controlling, albeit with generally a lighter use of coertion. (But I said "control", not "coertion".)
The result is I usually vote leftish, because I'd rather live in a society that's friendlier, but I'd REALLY rather things could be scaled back to the way they were before WWII. This, however, is impractical when there is dense population, fast transport and fast communication.
Let's not forget CMS, MVT, MFT, etc. I'm not sure whether JESS was before Microsoft's "multi-tasking" or not. I know that Unix was though.
For that matter, I think I remember that MSWindows was derived from VMS, but with the security and multi-taksing deleted because "personal computers don't need that". But it could have been NT rather than MSWind.
Find two.. I haven't found even one. I've found a few right wing libertarians who usually vote Republican, but that's not the same thing.
Most people with right-wing politics claim to support a smaller government, but believe the authority figures...and support their local police. This contrasts interestingly with the people with left-wing politics who claim to support a larger government, but don't trust authority figures, and don't trust their local police.
N.B.: The policies actually favored by either the left-wing OR the right-wing would, if enacted, result in a larger government with more control of the citizenry.
For that matter, I have no idea how a dense population with good transportation and good fast communications could exist without an effective government. It's possible that that the government could be largely automated (the was other jobs are being automated), but this doesn't resolve the paradox.
Sorry, but no. The entire country has been moving to the right. This isn't a real surprise, as it's an expected result of an aging population, but it's an unfortunate one to happen just as automation is rendering more and more jobs superfluous.
That *should* be the response, however, judging by past actions, if it gets close to the point where a response is promissed, the petition will quietly disappear.
That's what's happened in other instances where he didn't want to respond.
Well, as others have pointed out this contract runs for a couple of years. Also, some of the "competitors" that Apple is throwing money at appear likely to die anyway. Sharp, perhaps?
Additionally, Samsung is selling it's own models quite well. Perhaps they figure they'll need their own fabs themselves. AND yet more additionally, setting up a fab requires lots of money and lots of expertise. And IIRC, Apple got out of the chip manufacturing business quite awhile ago. (Around the time of the Mac II?) So while they've got the cash, they may well not have the expertise to either do it themselves, or the judge the expertise of others.
*I* think that when Apple decided to antagonize Samsung, they made a very bad strategic move.
Yeah. Any particular even could be a random weather fluctuation. But that's why I mentioned three separate parts of the world as being affected. If you still want to predict that's normal weather randomness...well, we disagree.
That's not the same, though. The Younger Dryas is believed to have been caused when a large LAKE of already melted glacial water spilled into the North Atlantic. In comparison with that, Greenland is melting relatively slowly. So the effect might be very different. (More mixing along the gradients, e.g., leading to a less sharp boundary, leading to a thermocline that wasn't as strong.) It might be the same, but it might be very different. Then, too, that's long enough ago the the continents were in significantly different places. Perhaps that matters?
So it's an interesting analogy, but it's a long way short of proof. I'd rather trust a climate model...IF they've factored in Greenland melting.
I suspect that coffee is sufficiently valueable that it will have it's genome sequenced long before it's in real danger, and lots of GM varieties will be created. But they should STILL be labelled GM. I want to have that information available when I decide which to buy, just like I want to know how much sodium, how many grams of (non-fiber carbohydrates), etc. Maybe I'll decide it doesn't make a difference. Maybe I'll want to test and see if I can tell any difference.
Still, I suspect that I wouldn't avoid GM coffee. And I still want to know.
Well, for one thing it's hard to predict what the new weather patterns will be. It's one thing to say it will be hotter, but will it be wetter or dryer? And even hotter won't work everywhere. Sorry, but climate is complex. Saying "it's going to change!" is relatively simple. Saying precisely HOW it's going to change is much trickier.
E.g.: Will or will not global warming cause a mini-iceage in Europe? Think it's a silly question? Look up the Younger Dryas. (It's such a magnificent example that since I heard about it yesterday [well, heard in a bit of detail] I'm mentioned it more than once.) Sure it will cause a mini-ice age? Look up the Older Dryas.
Now I'll grant that one of these episodes takes awhile to start, but as Greenland has started melting, we could already be well into the start. Or maybe not. (I said it was complex. Greenland isn't melting suddenly, so it's not quite the same as a lake of glacial melt water spilling. But is that important? I sure don't know.)
Slashdot Mirror
Being reminded of exactly what the birthday paradox was, I wish to retract the claim that it applies in this situation.
The probabllity is STILL a lot higher than a naive estimate, but that's not the reason.
P.S.: Another reason that it's high is the lab will be under pressure to find a match. And it's not unknown for labs to fudge their results, or even make mistakes. There are other reasons.
They *AREN'T* doing a complete match. Not even when they have their suspect identified. (Well, maybe the Dutch do. The price has dropped enough to make that reasonable.)
So you DO get birthday paradoxes. Now if, once you get your suspect, you do a complete match, then you eliminate the problem. (Unless he has an identical twin, in which case you need to test for epigenetic modifications...only guess what, not all of the cells in your body have the same epigenetic modifications. If they're testing sperm, this comes with additional sets of problems that I'm not up on, as I'm not a biologist.)
For which among which reasons a DNA test should never be construced as proof of guilt, not even in rape. You also need other evidence. (It is, however, a strong indication. And should enable you to focus your investigations in a way that's usually useful.)
I don't know about currently, but past investigations have found a VERY high error rate in the reports from sequencing labs. High enough that I don't know whether it's carlessness, sloppy technique, or just not caring what answer they give.
It's true that in an ideal situation, DNA would be very good evidence, particularly in a case of rape. I'm not sure, however, that I would trust the evidence given what previous studies of lab error rates have shown. (That said, this IS a different lab, and this IS several years later. Maybe things aren't as bad as they used to be. But what I'm talking about was NEVER technical limitations...though those are present, too.)
That said, the requirement for an absolute majority is VERY desireable. It's still true that you can't trust anyone with power, but it's much worse if a plurality is sufficient.
FWIW, an absolute majority is one of the benefits of both Instant Runoff Voting and Condorcet. I personally perfer Condorcet voting, but because it's not sufficiently better than Instant Runoff, and Instant Runoff Voting is easier to explain, IRV may be the better system.
You still shouldn't trust the government, but with a requirement for an absolute majoirty, it's reasonable to distrust it less.
IIUC, current consumer CDs and DVDs write using a phase transition process that changes the reflectivity of the metallic layer written upon. Over time this relaxes back into the low energy configuration. It may be good for a decade or two, but I doubt that it's even good over a century.
What you say is just, but in this case I believe that his accusation is just.
The US has been very unwilling to curtail CO2 emissions in any significant way. China has been attempting to do so. (Not consistently, but they've been trying.)
However, it's also worth noting that the original impetus for limiting CO2 emissions came from the US. (Not, perhaps, from the government, but still from the US.) The US is even less monolithic than most other countries, but, as with all countries, the government pretends to speak for the country...and as with many countries, it has sufficient power to shout down those opposed to it.
The way that should actually be done is to have the acceptance of responsibility for "so much" CO2 be included as a part of the price of the merchandise. So when you buy a new car, you take on as a part of the purchase, the responsibility of the CO2 created in the process of creating the car. How you could possibly discharge that obligation is not, however, clear to me.
It's irrelevant to the control of global warming, but it *is* relevant to the fairness of the regulations. There are, however, other factors. Enough other factors, that I'm dubious that people could come to an agreement on what was fair even in the absence of strong economic incentives to argue.
99% sounds suspicious to me, too. But it's definitely true that a LOT of oil is refiend in the US. I don't have any reliable facts to back this up, though. (And I suspect that the figures change a lot from decade to decade...not quite from year to year, as new plants aren't built that often, but when the changes come, they come as sudden large jumps.)
I think that what he's actually saying is that ALL externalities should be added to the cost for everyone. If it were possible, this would be a reasonable approach. Attempting to do it would be a more reasonable approach than ANYTHING that I have heard proposed by ANY government.
If this were done as proposed, then the "Tragedy of the Commons" would not apply. I have doubts that it can be done. If this were approached, then the effect of the "Tragedy of the Commons" would be minimized. Nobody powerful seems to be interested...except to prohibit it.
And you were right then, just as he is right now.
Yes, and you CAN print it out. And you CAN print it on good paper...
but what about the inks that you are using? I don't think those will survive very long. And getting better inks that will work with an existing printer is a real problem.
FWIW, I don't really have a much better answer than an improved clay tablet. And preserving anything that way is so expensive that it won't be done...except on a trivial scale. The original CDs were durable things, but that doesn't apply to the ones that you can burn at home. They use phase transition metals, which over time will relax back into the low energy configuration. Pits burned in metal foil and sandwiched between glass are much more durable. But both of those take specific technology to read. And that's pretty much guaranteed not to survive. Black and white (silver process) prints onto glass can be pretty durable, can be written as microfiche (the transfer to glass would occur as a printing process), and sandwich a sheet of glass over the image, so it won't be abraded. That would be pretty durable, fairly dense, and could be read with a decent magnifying glass. But it's not going to be done (again, except on a trivial scale). The equipment to produce the images would be very expensive, and you couldn't sell the results.
OK, it's classic MSWind I'm talking about (3.x and earlier) so it must have been something earlier than VMS...that I no longer remember the name of. I *THINK* is was running on a DEC machine, though. I never actually used it directly, but roff (ancestor of groff, troff, etc.) ran on it.
That would be a fair argument if the people who become in charge didn't always engage in "empire-building". If regulations didn't proliferate. etc. But regulations tend to have the force of law, if you want the service, without even the oversight provided by the legislative process.
So while a larger "more services" government is friendlier to live under, it's just as controlling, albeit with generally a lighter use of coertion. (But I said "control", not "coertion".)
The result is I usually vote leftish, because I'd rather live in a society that's friendlier, but I'd REALLY rather things could be scaled back to the way they were before WWII. This, however, is impractical when there is dense population, fast transport and fast communication.
Let's not forget CMS, MVT, MFT, etc. I'm not sure whether JESS was before Microsoft's "multi-tasking" or not. I know that Unix was though.
For that matter, I think I remember that MSWindows was derived from VMS, but with the security and multi-taksing deleted because "personal computers don't need that". But it could have been NT rather than MSWind.
Find two.. I haven't found even one. I've found a few right wing libertarians who usually vote Republican, but that's not the same thing.
Most people with right-wing politics claim to support a smaller government, but believe the authority figures...and support their local police. This contrasts interestingly with the people with left-wing politics who claim to support a larger government, but don't trust authority figures, and don't trust their local police.
N.B.: The policies actually favored by either the left-wing OR the right-wing would, if enacted, result in a larger government with more control of the citizenry.
For that matter, I have no idea how a dense population with good transportation and good fast communications could exist without an effective government. It's possible that that the government could be largely automated (the was other jobs are being automated), but this doesn't resolve the paradox.
Sorry, but no. The entire country has been moving to the right. This isn't a real surprise, as it's an expected result of an aging population, but it's an unfortunate one to happen just as automation is rendering more and more jobs superfluous.
Blazing Saddles!
That *should* be the response, however, judging by past actions, if it gets close to the point where a response is promissed, the petition will quietly disappear.
That's what's happened in other instances where he didn't want to respond.
Well, as others have pointed out this contract runs for a couple of years. Also, some of the "competitors" that Apple is throwing money at appear likely to die anyway. Sharp, perhaps?
Additionally, Samsung is selling it's own models quite well. Perhaps they figure they'll need their own fabs themselves. AND yet more additionally, setting up a fab requires lots of money and lots of expertise. And IIRC, Apple got out of the chip manufacturing business quite awhile ago. (Around the time of the Mac II?) So while they've got the cash, they may well not have the expertise to either do it themselves, or the judge the expertise of others.
*I* think that when Apple decided to antagonize Samsung, they made a very bad strategic move.
Sharp, another Apple supplier, appears to be on life support (from Apple).
Apple was not wise to antagonize Samsung.
Yeah. Any particular even could be a random weather fluctuation. But that's why I mentioned three separate parts of the world as being affected. If you still want to predict that's normal weather randomness...well, we disagree.
That's not the same, though. The Younger Dryas is believed to have been caused when a large LAKE of already melted glacial water spilled into the North Atlantic. In comparison with that, Greenland is melting relatively slowly. So the effect might be very different. (More mixing along the gradients, e.g., leading to a less sharp boundary, leading to a thermocline that wasn't as strong.) It might be the same, but it might be very different. Then, too, that's long enough ago the the continents were in significantly different places. Perhaps that matters?
So it's an interesting analogy, but it's a long way short of proof. I'd rather trust a climate model...IF they've factored in Greenland melting.
I suspect that coffee is sufficiently valueable that it will have it's genome sequenced long before it's in real danger, and lots of GM varieties will be created. But they should STILL be labelled GM. I want to have that information available when I decide which to buy, just like I want to know how much sodium, how many grams of (non-fiber carbohydrates), etc. Maybe I'll decide it doesn't make a difference. Maybe I'll want to test and see if I can tell any difference.
Still, I suspect that I wouldn't avoid GM coffee. And I still want to know.
Well, for one thing it's hard to predict what the new weather patterns will be. It's one thing to say it will be hotter, but will it be wetter or dryer? And even hotter won't work everywhere. Sorry, but climate is complex. Saying "it's going to change!" is relatively simple. Saying precisely HOW it's going to change is much trickier.
E.g.: Will or will not global warming cause a mini-iceage in Europe? Think it's a silly question? Look up the Younger Dryas. (It's such a magnificent example that since I heard about it yesterday [well, heard in a bit of detail] I'm mentioned it more than once.) Sure it will cause a mini-ice age? Look up the Older Dryas.
Now I'll grant that one of these episodes takes awhile to start, but as Greenland has started melting, we could already be well into the start. Or maybe not. (I said it was complex. Greenland isn't melting suddenly, so it's not quite the same as a lake of glacial melt water spilling. But is that important? I sure don't know.)