But MS wrote the installer to allow it to be set up incorrectly, and then jerk the user around by powering off periodically. Yes, it's the phone guy's fault they got the wrong software, but it's MS' fault that the experience with it was so bad.
Then produce a real world example. I'm not convinced that f(x) is caused by x in the way that you are implying. We're talking about philiosphy and statistics here, not pure mathematics. I'd like to see a rebuttal of the logical argument I put forward rather than more examples of functions that are related to their inputs but not correlated.
They're not correlated because you've chosen to allow negative values for X. That doesn't really apply in the real world.
What it boils down to is whether or not you accept that if A causes B then A and B must be correlated. If you do then you cannot fail to accept that a lack of correlation disproves that A causes B. It may not be possible to disprove a correlation between A and B (if, as in your first example, you can't separate A from some other factor, or if A is not the sole cause of B and B is also caused by other factors), but that doesn't disprove the fundamental logic.
Here's a hypothetical: assume that helmets save lives. Specifically, if you're in an accident the helmet will "cause" you to live 90% of the time. Also assume that otherwise you live 0% of the time. (These numbers are completely made up, so just accept them for the sake of this example.) Now, also assume that people only wear a helmet when they're driving on certain roads, and that these roads have a 50% chance of resulting in an accident. Other roads have a 5% chance of resulting in an accident. So, in this purely made up example, every time you drive you have a 5% chance of death when you wear a helmet, and a 5% chance of death when you don't wear a helmet. No correlation, even on the assumption of causation.
You've failed to isolate the factor you're trying to test - in particular you've failed to account for the difference in the roads used. If your point is that flaws in methodology invalidate results then fine, I doubt anyone here will disagree. But you have not given a convincing example that a lack of correlation doesn't mean a lack of causation. Simple logic dictates that a true lack of correlation does imply a lack of causation. If A causes B then there must be a correlation between the two. If there is no correlation (meaning that A occurs whenever B occurs) then A cannot cause B.
MySpace never said they couldn't run a simple database query to match names. They said they couldn't turn those results into law enforcement. So I guess your comment is completely irrelevant to the discussion then.
When result count >0, investigate further. Now, how easy is it for MySpace? I'd say about an order of magnitude easier - they have direct access to the database.
Nice hand waving. The problem is not finding matching names. The problem is verifying that the people behind the names match with 100% accuracy. If MySpace tried this, the first time they wrongly accuse someone they'd get sued. And in all likelyhood the first time they fail to accuse someone and a crime is committed they'd also get sued.
I am a lot more productive on the 23" screen; more so than I was when I used to run two 19" monitors at home.
Using one large monitor is a lot better than using two smaller ones.
It's interesting that you feel that way, because two 19" monitors total a lot more area than one 23" - about 35% more. So you're favouring a single smaller work area over a larger work area divided into two regions. That implies what you do is not easily split between the two montiors. Of course this all assumes that the dot pitch was the same between the various monitors.
You still need the advertisers because iTunes as a venue works only when they have commercials for the shows they're selling. If the show isn't broadcast on TV, plus the myriad commercials advertising it on the other shows, they'll get far fewer downloads.
People generally don't object to watching commercials for content on whatever system they are using (tv promos, movie trailers, etc). I don't expect those types of advertising would disappear. But commercials for unrelated products are far less tolerated and that's what we're talking about here. With a direct sale model those commercials are not necessary.
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To date, only one VTVL rocket vehicle has demonstrated fully autonomous takeoff, hover, and landing (John Carmack's vehicle over at Armadillo Aerospace).
What about the DC-XA? Was that not fully autonomous?
Both of these are pretty flimsy. In both cases you've taken a regional warming trend and extrapolated it to an entire planet. You can do the same with Earth: temperatures at the south pole have been declining over recent years so by your logic we must be experiencing global cooling. There's a counterpoint to the theory that Mars is experiencing global warming here.
The new study shows that the TSI has increased by about 0.1 percent over 24 years. That is not enough to cause notable climate
change, Willson and his colleagues say, unless the rate of change were maintained for a century or more.
That's naive in the extreme. Virtually all current democracies are party-based systems which means that you are always choosing between groups of policies. There are often also very few viable choices - usually only two or three so you are often choosing the lesser of two evils.
It didn't, you misread. It made $13M on DVD and VHS rentals. Sales were much higher.
I think it was badly marketed which cost it sales but it's unlikely to have ever broke even making it a very bad risk for the studio to make sequels. I liked the movie version but it didn't even come close to seeing a profit based on the numbers you provided.
I didn't provide all the numbers. I didn't provide DVD sales, TV rights income, merchandising, foreign distributions rights etc. That is why a movie is usually considered to break even if it's ticket sales match it's production budget, because of all the extra income that is usually not mentioned specifically. As it happens people have done a fairly comprehensive analysis for Serenity: "So that's $21 million from the box office, $24 million from DVD sales, $10 million from rentals, and around $5 million from tv rights for a total of $60 million. With Serenity costing $49 million to make and advertise it's estimated that Universal has made $11 million off of the movie. Not nearly enough for Universal to invest in another movie, but there's still profit to be made."
Not great, but certainly a profit. So I stand by my statement that the article was wrong on that point.
TFA is incorrect about Serenity failing to make a profit when including DVD sales. I suspect someone forgot to include the non-US boxoffice. Serenity made $39M on a budget of $39M worldwide, and while that does include the marketing (probably around $10M), DVD sales would certainly have resulted in a profit. I believe it made about $13M on DVD and VHS rentals alone.
Technically, though, it's still only 3 axes (X, Y, Z); "rotational axes" in your comment refers to rotation around X/Y/Z, while "regular axes" refers to linear movement along X/Y/Z.
"SixDegreesOfFreedom" would have been even more cumbersome than "SixAxis", don't you think?
I hate to keep going back to it, but GTA is convenient here. You get points for killing.
This sort of statement makes me wonder if you've actually played GTA at all. It's true that many of the missions require you to kill, but in general game play there is virtually no reward for killing (just an amount of cash so small it's rarely worth the time to pick it up).
In other words, he was saying that mutually assured destruction was, after all, a good deterrent.
A good deterrent to deliberate nuclear war, maybe. But a one with a risk of catastrophic accidental war. And apparently it almost happened several times.
* Windows has a similar problem with only one Taskbar and only one Start Menu. Why not a Taskbar for each monitor and/or, even better, the ability to pop the Start Menu up directly under the cursor ?
* There's (typically) no "maximise across all screens" button.
Most video cards can be set up in "span" mode to solve these problems.
Moore's law applied to transistors. Ok, so some cameras (those with CMOS sensors, i.e. some of Canon's) have transistors. But how does Moore's law apply to cameras specifically? It's not like we need to figure out how to make to small transistors all over again from scratch.
Lot of people seem to forget about NT here. Win2000 is *not* an upgrade to 95/98/ME but to NT 4.0. M$ tossed out 95/98/ME line and introduced NT line to "home" users with XP.
In terms of technology and positioning in the market, yes. But in terms of look and feel, which is what most users care about, 2000 was more like 95/98/ME.
To be fair, Windows 2000 never released a home version, so for most consumers it was never really an option.
You're right, but my point is that WinXP was an upgrade for Win2000 too, not just 95/98/ME. To only consider the home use angle is a bit unreasonable, IMHO. How many of those 480 million installs are business installs? I'm sure it's a significant percentage.
Sure you could run windows 2000 Pro at home, and many people I know do, but it's priced a big higher than what most people are willing to pay for an operating system. Also the fact that windows 2000 never came in a "home" version means that it wasn't offered on very many home computers. Non only that, windows 2000 only came out about 20 months younger than windows XP. That leaves a pretty small window for buying windows 2k, and deciding to wait for XP to come out.
A lot of people were exposed to 2000 at work and a lot of people ran it at home. 2000 was a vast improvement over 95/98/ME and people who experienced it did not want to go back. And people who were on 2000 have tended to stay on it rather than jumping to upgrade. Personally I only upgraded about a year ago. Also, keep in mind that at the time no one knew when XP was actually going to be released (just like no one knows now when Vista will be), so I'm not sure just how many people would have held off upgraded to wait for XP.
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But MS wrote the installer to allow it to be set up incorrectly, and then jerk the user around by powering off periodically. Yes, it's the phone guy's fault they got the wrong software, but it's MS' fault that the experience with it was so bad.
What it boils down to is whether or not you accept that if A causes B then A and B must be correlated. If you do then you cannot fail to accept that a lack of correlation disproves that A causes B. It may not be possible to disprove a correlation between A and B (if, as in your first example, you can't separate A from some other factor, or if A is not the sole cause of B and B is also caused by other factors), but that doesn't disprove the fundamental logic.
MySpace never said they couldn't run a simple database query to match names. They said they couldn't turn those results into law enforcement. So I guess your comment is completely irrelevant to the discussion then.
Not great, but certainly a profit. So I stand by my statement that the article was wrong on that point.
TFA is incorrect about Serenity failing to make a profit when including DVD sales. I suspect someone forgot to include the non-US boxoffice. Serenity made $39M on a budget of $39M worldwide, and while that does include the marketing (probably around $10M), DVD sales would certainly have resulted in a profit. I believe it made about $13M on DVD and VHS rentals alone.
Moore's law applied to transistors. Ok, so some cameras (those with CMOS sensors, i.e. some of Canon's) have transistors. But how does Moore's law apply to cameras specifically? It's not like we need to figure out how to make to small transistors all over again from scratch.
You're right, I was misremembering.