Yes, I know. But AFAICT you are basically in agreement with me that corporate litigation exists to force corporations to behave ethically. I mean, punitive damages are awarded by a court when a company has been, you know, sued. Or have I missed something?
It's a familiar argument against suing companies. However, what is you alternative scenario?
Here's one:
1. Company makes product 2. People buy product, and some are hurt when it malfunctions 3. No one sues company because we all hate lawyers, right? 4. Profit!!!
The sad truth is, the corporate entity under US law has *one* mandate: to enrich its stockholders. Therefore, applying financial pressure is the only viable tool for making them behave ethically when ethics and profits diverge.
Did you ever see Fight Club? Remember the car company's formula for doing a recall or not? If the cost of settling a class-action suit would be less than the cost of the recall, then they don't do one. So, if they are never sued, they'd never even think about doing a recall.
As others have said, this is not correct. The reason HST cannot come down in a Shuttle is simple: only one Shuttle had a cargo bay big enough to contain HST, and that one was destroyed on re-entry in 2003. (all of the other Shuttles have an exterior airlock sticking into the cargo bay).
I have a 15 year old car that I'm rather fond of due to all the good times I've been through with it, but when the next major repair becomes necessary, it's going to the dump.
Of course, you might feel differently if your 15-year old car was the only car in the world. Or if dropping it at the dump was still going to cost you about half the repair price.
You don't see the boom mic in the fullscreen version because DVD's are created in the same way TV versions are: by scaling the widescreen version up and then panning around it.
Yes, pan-and-scan is how fullscreen is often done. However, in this case, fullscreen was done by removing the matte. So, in fact, you would see parts of the image that weren't intended to be seen, and these sometimes contain boom mics and other "spoilers". See the link provided by the grandparent poster in another reply.
Great, that's perfect. In fact, A Fish Called Wanda is the only DVD in my collection from the list of "affected" DVDs in the article. Good to see that there's nothing at all wrong with my widescreen Wanda:)
Wait, so you're saying that the films were origially shot with a 1.33:1 aspect, but with the intention of matting it to 1.85:1 (or 1.66:1) for theatrical release, and that MGM's "fullscreen" DVDs involve simply removing the matte? Wouldn't that mean the fullscreen DVDs have shots where the boom mic is visible?
That's interesting, I've never heard that films are actually shot with 1.33:1. Do you have a link for this?
In a free-market society, surely the only real yardstick of difficulty is the pricetag attached. In these terms, a repair mission is only about twice as difficult as the de-orbit mission (and with much greater return on investment, obviously).
Yeah, but it still makes no sense. Since we don't all owe the same amount of money, or experience the same weather, or quit our attempts at the same time, or have the same motivational levels, or have the same need to take action (and how the hell do you quantify that anyway?): How the can Jan 24th be the worst day for everybody?
This is utter hooey, and I'm shocked and chagrined to see it in the mighty beeb...
Well, guess what? We live in a politically secular society! It was designed that way by the founding fathers. Separation of church and state was no accident, it is important for several reasons, not the least of which being that it keeps all religions on an equal footing, so that none may be persecuted for following a faith different from others.
As if the $11,000/yr/child taxpayers pay in my county for secular education doesn't inhibit religion.
Yes, that's right. It doesn't. You can still send your children to Sunday School and to Church, and instruct them to read the Bible/Koran/Torah daily after school, can you not? You can choose to enroll your child in a religious school, can you not?
Religion is culture; it should be transmitted through the family and the church. What could the motive for trying to insert religious teachings into our public institutions be, other than an attempt to theocracize our society, and to marginalize minority religions?
So, did this guy get screwed or is it a victory for him? Sounds like the company's making a killing off his invention, so he should get a cut, but why wasn't this spelled out in his contract? (heck, maybe it was, i didn't R the FA...)
Just have to say, these things are gratuitously bright. I built a new computer a few months ago, and got an Antec Sonata case, because I heard on Ars and elsewhere that it was a very solid, very quiet case. Well, I love it, except it has one of these blue LEDs on the front. It projects a bright blue smear across my living room floor, and up the opposite wall, which is about 12 feet away. I'm almost worried it's going to blind the cat! I guess I should just yank the wire to the damned thing.
And then, just recently I got a Braun electric razor...and this thing has the same LED on it, to let me know that it's seated in the charging cradle. I guess they *really* want to make sure I am aware of this datum, because I can practically see it through closed eyelids.
I could land planes by the light of the two LEDs my razor's charging station and computer case. It's pretty ridiculous.
I can understand if someone gives an exact figure on the accuracy of a measurement. For example, if i measure 1cm with a normal ruler (with 1mm markings), i can say that my measurement was accurate upto 1mm. However, can i really say that i'm 90% sure of my ruler measurement? It doesn't make sense because a figure like 90% signifies probability and not accuracy.
Yes, you can say "I am 90% sure of my measurement", because when you say a measurement has a precision of 1 mm, that's really a shorthand for something more complex. It is not as if the "true" length of the object can be anything within +/- 1 mm and cannot possibly ever be outside that interval; rather, a distribution of repeated measurements would follow a Gaussian curve (centered on the true length) whose characteristic width is 1 mm. You cannot ever measure something to infinite precision, and so measurement is inherently probabilistic.
I'll illustrate with your example. Let's say you have a theoretical hypothesis that you'd like to test by making a measurement. The hypothesis is: "these two pieces of string are exactly the same length".
You have a ruler which you can calibrate by repeatedly measuring some object whose length is known, and doing so demonstrates that the ruler has a precision of +/- 1 mm. However, as I said, this doesn't mean that you will *always* measure within 1 mm of the "true" length, nor does it mean that it is equally likely to measure any value within +/- 1 mm.
The +/- precision value means that if you measure an object to be X mm long, the probability that the true length is within the interval (X-1, X+1) is 68%. The probability that the true length is within (X-2, X+2) is 95%. The probability that the true length is within (X-3, X+3) is 99%. That's the definition of the "+/-" values attached to all measurements (including M.o.E. on polls and surveys).
So, you measure the length of the first string to be 12 mm, and the length of the second string to be 14 mm. They differ by 2 mm, which is twice the measurement precision, which means we have excluded the hypothesis that they are the same length at the 95% confidence level (which means that if you repeatedly measured the length of two strings which really did have exactly the same length, you would find a 2 mm difference only 5% of the time).
There is no internal physical process in stars that can produce such a lightcurve. Some stars can vary in brightness by pulsating, but the lightcurve in this case is sinusoidal, and it oscillates in color as well as brightness (because the surface temperature changes as the star "breathes").
We understand stars well enough that we know which ones oscillate, and which ones should have a rock-steady lightcurve. When you see a square-shaped, periodic, achromatic dip in the lightcurve of a star that has no business varying its luminosity, the most (only?!) reasonable hypothesis is that "something" is orbiting the star and eclipsing it. The fraction of light blocked during ingress gives you a limit on the size of the eclipsing body (relative to the known size of the star), which will tell you if the eclipsing body is a planet (small) or brown dwarf (big).
So, we've found an object in space that's unlike any other planet we've seen, so we assume it's a planet?
(1) Actually, most of the extrasolar planets we've discovered so far are much more massive than Jupiter. So, of the known planets, Earth-like planets are rather the exception, not the rule. (Of course, this is pretty meaningless, since we can't yet detect earth-sized bodies outside the solar system; still, to say that this object is "unlike any other planet we've seen" is far off the mark).
(2) It has far too little mass to be a brown dwarf, and it is far too big to be an asteroid. It is therefore a "planet", by definition (unless it's an Imperial battle station).
This is the kind of silliness that results when astronomers talk to the press.
Among ourselves, astronomers will talk about how many "sigma" a detection is, referring to how far above the Gaussian noise the signal is. A 1-sigma detection is real 68% of the time. 2-sigma detections are real 95% of the time, 3-sigma data are 99.7% sure, etc. So, Glenn is just saying that the hypothesis that the brown dwarf and its candidate companion are actually moving together in space is supported by the data above the errors by about 2.5 sigma or so. With further observations, the errors will shrink, and it will then be above three sigma (assuming the hypothesis is correct).
But, Glenn can't talk about "sigmas" to the press, because, sadly, not everyone knows the wonders of the Gaussian normal distribution. So he does a quick conversion to probabilities for the press release. BTW, it is indeed possible to characterize errors to the tenth of a percent, especially when you are close to 100% confidence.
Get ready for more astronomy-related news this week; our annual society meeting (AAS) is taking place in San Diego.
Ah, the Scapegoat. Is there any figure more welcome to the mind of the citizen who sees his country going down the crapper?
The reality is that we've won China over to our vision of global capitalism. No fair crying "foul" if they kick our ass at our own game.
Yes, there are some pretty disturbing human rights/social justice issues over there. But today's China is radically different from the China of just 5 years ago. In my opinion, their expanding middle class will eventually cross a threshhold where the current political structure will become unsustainable, and then their laws will rapidly catch up with their booming economic progress. Well, maybe I'm an optimist, but that's how I see it.
Your analysis assumes that the probability density is uniform throughout the cross-section of the cylinder of likely paths. In reality, there is a most likely path where the probability density peaks, and the probability falls off as you deviate from that most-likely path.
So, if the Earth is currently near the edge of the cylinder of likely paths, then as the orbit is refined, the probability density at Earth will decrease, not increase. This will be the case fo the majority of potential Earth-crossing events (just because if you choose a location at random within the cylinder cross-section, it will probably not be near the probability peak).
Slashdot Mirror
It's a movie; it is not real.
Yes, I know. But AFAICT you are basically in agreement with me that corporate litigation exists to force corporations to behave ethically. I mean, punitive damages are awarded by a court when a company has been, you know, sued. Or have I missed something?
It's a familiar argument against suing companies. However, what is you alternative scenario?
Here's one:
1. Company makes product
2. People buy product, and some are hurt when it malfunctions
3. No one sues company because we all hate lawyers, right?
4. Profit!!!
The sad truth is, the corporate entity under US law has *one* mandate: to enrich its stockholders. Therefore, applying financial pressure is the only viable tool for making them behave ethically when ethics and profits diverge.
Did you ever see Fight Club? Remember the car company's formula for doing a recall or not? If the cost of settling a class-action suit would be less than the cost of the recall, then they don't do one. So, if they are never sued, they'd never even think about doing a recall.
As others have said, this is not correct. The reason HST cannot come down in a Shuttle is simple: only one Shuttle had a cargo bay big enough to contain HST, and that one was destroyed on re-entry in 2003. (all of the other Shuttles have an exterior airlock sticking into the cargo bay).
I have a 15 year old car that I'm rather fond of due to all the good times I've been through with it, but when the next major repair becomes necessary, it's going to the dump.
Of course, you might feel differently if your 15-year old car was the only car in the world. Or if dropping it at the dump was still going to cost you about half the repair price.
Clearly, by your logic, Ferrari is a failed car brand, because there are not nearly as many Ferraris sold as Hondas, or Toyotas, or Fords.
You don't see the boom mic in the fullscreen version because DVD's are created in the same way TV versions are: by scaling the widescreen version up and then panning around it.
Yes, pan-and-scan is how fullscreen is often done. However, in this case, fullscreen was done by removing the matte. So, in fact, you would see parts of the image that weren't intended to be seen, and these sometimes contain boom mics and other "spoilers". See the link provided by the grandparent poster in another reply.
Great, that's perfect. In fact, A Fish Called Wanda is the only DVD in my collection from the list of "affected" DVDs in the article. Good to see that there's nothing at all wrong with my widescreen Wanda :)
Seems like a pretty frivolous lawsuit.
Wait, so you're saying that the films were origially shot with a 1.33:1 aspect, but with the intention of matting it to 1.85:1 (or 1.66:1) for theatrical release, and that MGM's "fullscreen" DVDs involve simply removing the matte? Wouldn't that mean the fullscreen DVDs have shots where the boom mic is visible?
That's interesting, I've never heard that films are actually shot with 1.33:1. Do you have a link for this?
In a free-market society, surely the only real yardstick of difficulty is the pricetag attached. In these terms, a repair mission is only about twice as difficult as the de-orbit mission (and with much greater return on investment, obviously).
Yeah, but it still makes no sense. Since we don't all owe the same amount of money, or experience the same weather, or quit our attempts at the same time, or have the same motivational levels, or have the same need to take action (and how the hell do you quantify that anyway?): How the can Jan 24th be the worst day for everybody?
This is utter hooey, and I'm shocked and chagrined to see it in the mighty beeb...
Well, guess what? We live in a politically secular society! It was designed that way by the founding fathers. Separation of church and state was no accident, it is important for several reasons, not the least of which being that it keeps all religions on an equal footing, so that none may be persecuted for following a faith different from others.
As if the $11,000/yr/child taxpayers pay in my county for secular education doesn't inhibit religion.
Yes, that's right. It doesn't. You can still send your children to Sunday School and to Church, and instruct them to read the Bible/Koran/Torah daily after school, can you not? You can choose to enroll your child in a religious school, can you not?
Religion is culture; it should be transmitted through the family and the church. What could the motive for trying to insert religious teachings into our public institutions be, other than an attempt to theocracize our society, and to marginalize minority religions?
Wow, a Creationist with a rational mind. Shouldn't we have you bronzed or something?
That list is very preliminary and very incomplete. Notably, there are no kdelibs improvements listed...
So, did this guy get screwed or is it a victory for him? Sounds like the company's making a killing off his invention, so he should get a cut, but why wasn't this spelled out in his contract? (heck, maybe it was, i didn't R the FA...)
Just have to say, these things are gratuitously bright. I built a new computer a few months ago, and got an Antec Sonata case, because I heard on Ars and elsewhere that it was a very solid, very quiet case. Well, I love it, except it has one of these blue LEDs on the front. It projects a bright blue smear across my living room floor, and up the opposite wall, which is about 12 feet away. I'm almost worried it's going to blind the cat! I guess I should just yank the wire to the damned thing.
And then, just recently I got a Braun electric razor...and this thing has the same LED on it, to let me know that it's seated in the charging cradle. I guess they *really* want to make sure I am aware of this datum, because I can practically see it through closed eyelids.
I could land planes by the light of the two LEDs my razor's charging station and computer case. It's pretty ridiculous.
I can understand if someone gives an exact figure on the accuracy of a measurement. For example, if i measure 1cm with a normal ruler (with 1mm markings), i can say that my measurement was accurate upto 1mm. However, can i really say that i'm 90% sure of my ruler measurement? It doesn't make sense because a figure like 90% signifies probability and not accuracy.
Yes, you can say "I am 90% sure of my measurement", because when you say a measurement has a precision of 1 mm, that's really a shorthand for something more complex. It is not as if the "true" length of the object can be anything within +/- 1 mm and cannot possibly ever be outside that interval; rather, a distribution of repeated measurements would follow a Gaussian curve (centered on the true length) whose characteristic width is 1 mm. You cannot ever measure something to infinite precision, and so measurement is inherently probabilistic.
I'll illustrate with your example. Let's say you have a theoretical hypothesis that you'd like to test by making a measurement. The hypothesis is: "these two pieces of string are exactly the same length".
You have a ruler which you can calibrate by repeatedly measuring some object whose length is known, and doing so demonstrates that the ruler has a precision of +/- 1 mm. However, as I said, this doesn't mean that you will *always* measure within 1 mm of the "true" length, nor does it mean that it is equally likely to measure any value within +/- 1 mm.
The +/- precision value means that if you measure an object to be X mm long, the probability that the true length is within the interval (X-1, X+1) is 68%. The probability that the true length is within (X-2, X+2) is 95%. The probability that the true length is within (X-3, X+3) is 99%. That's the definition of the "+/-" values attached to all measurements (including M.o.E. on polls and surveys).
So, you measure the length of the first string to be 12 mm, and the length of the second string to be 14 mm. They differ by 2 mm, which is twice the measurement precision, which means we have excluded the hypothesis that they are the same length at the 95% confidence level (which means that if you repeatedly measured the length of two strings which really did have exactly the same length, you would find a 2 mm difference only 5% of the time).
I don't think because a star's light dims, we can assume we've found a new planet.
:)
Well, think again
The argument is not "the star's light dimmed, so there must be a planet!". The "lightcurve" (brightness as a function of time) must have particular properties that make the hypothesis of an eclipse event by a small body the most likely explanation: the lightcurve is flat except for a small interval during which it dips by a few percent, remains at that level for a short time, and then rises back up to its original level. This flat-dip feature is periodic, and achromatic (it doesn't affect the star's color).
There is no internal physical process in stars that can produce such a lightcurve. Some stars can vary in brightness by pulsating, but the lightcurve in this case is sinusoidal, and it oscillates in color as well as brightness (because the surface temperature changes as the star "breathes").
We understand stars well enough that we know which ones oscillate, and which ones should have a rock-steady lightcurve. When you see a square-shaped, periodic, achromatic dip in the lightcurve of a star that has no business varying its luminosity, the most (only?!) reasonable hypothesis is that "something" is orbiting the star and eclipsing it. The fraction of light blocked during ingress gives you a limit on the size of the eclipsing body (relative to the known size of the star), which will tell you if the eclipsing body is a planet (small) or brown dwarf (big).
So, we've found an object in space that's unlike any other planet we've seen, so we assume it's a planet?
(1) Actually, most of the extrasolar planets we've discovered so far are much more massive than Jupiter. So, of the known planets, Earth-like planets are rather the exception, not the rule. (Of course, this is pretty meaningless, since we can't yet detect earth-sized bodies outside the solar system; still, to say that this object is "unlike any other planet we've seen" is far off the mark).
(2) It has far too little mass to be a brown dwarf, and it is far too big to be an asteroid. It is therefore a "planet", by definition (unless it's an Imperial battle station).
This is the kind of silliness that results when astronomers talk to the press.
Among ourselves, astronomers will talk about how many "sigma" a detection is, referring to how far above the Gaussian noise the signal is. A 1-sigma detection is real 68% of the time. 2-sigma detections are real 95% of the time, 3-sigma data are 99.7% sure, etc. So, Glenn is just saying that the hypothesis that the brown dwarf and its candidate companion are actually moving together in space is supported by the data above the errors by about 2.5 sigma or so. With further observations, the errors will shrink, and it will then be above three sigma (assuming the hypothesis is correct).
But, Glenn can't talk about "sigmas" to the press, because, sadly, not everyone knows the wonders of the Gaussian normal distribution. So he does a quick conversion to probabilities for the press release. BTW, it is indeed possible to characterize errors to the tenth of a percent, especially when you are close to 100% confidence.
Get ready for more astronomy-related news this week; our annual society meeting (AAS) is taking place in San Diego.
Ah, the Scapegoat. Is there any figure more welcome to the mind of the citizen who sees his country going down the crapper?
The reality is that we've won China over to our vision of global capitalism. No fair crying "foul" if they kick our ass at our own game.
Yes, there are some pretty disturbing human rights/social justice issues over there. But today's China is radically different from the China of just 5 years ago. In my opinion, their expanding middle class will eventually cross a threshhold where the current political structure will become unsustainable, and then their laws will rapidly catch up with their booming economic progress. Well, maybe I'm an optimist, but that's how I see it.
Your analysis assumes that the probability density is uniform throughout the cross-section of the cylinder of likely paths. In reality, there is a most likely path where the probability density peaks, and the probability falls off as you deviate from that most-likely path.
So, if the Earth is currently near the edge of the cylinder of likely paths, then as the orbit is refined, the probability density at Earth will decrease, not increase. This will be the case fo the majority of potential Earth-crossing events (just because if you choose a location at random within the cylinder cross-section, it will probably not be near the probability peak).
Digital cameras use CCD chips (mostly). When CCDs are overexposed, they will "bleed" signal along rows or columns, not diagonally.
what makes you think this hasn't happened already?
you think that's air you're breathing?
Since when does Gmail support Konqueror?
Gmail doesn't support Konqueror, but Konqueror now supports Gmail.
But if they name it Firefox, won't it be stolen by Clint Eastwood?