It wasn't so much the data that was tampered with. I can almost guarantee you that Merck was not unblinded during the trial, and therefore wouldn't know which data to change. This article is talking about a scientific publication based on the study results, there are usually many publications resulting from any study. At this point, several institutions, including Merck, a data safety board, and an independent statistical data center would complete copies of the original data, so any changes at Merck would be caught by these people (in theory).
What the Journal found, was that someone at Merck had included a table on CV events in an early version of the manuscript, and then deleted it. So this isn't really tampering with data, it's not including all the data in your conclusions. It's not including data that shows potential harm to patients. It could be argued that this is tantamount to the same thing, which I'm not disagreeing with. Merck's defense is that the events in question occured after some pre-specified cut off date for analysis, who knows if that is true or not.
Whether you "know" or not is always up for debate, but that's usually for epistemology class. In classical hypothesis testing in statistics, you make a distributional assumption about your data, and then calculate a probability from the data you observed (the p-value) given your initial assumption. If this probability is very low (also an interpretation), you assume your initial distributional assumption was incorrect. There are finer points to it of course, but classical hypothesis testing in statistics is pretty much a reductio ad absurdem in logic.
I'm not sure what that comment meant either. I can do set theory without thinking about group theory. I can't do group theory (can't even define a group) without using sets. So I don't know what the poster meant by that.
There are countless (obviously not really) books on group theory at all different levels. If you're not a math major and want to learn a bit about group theory (and rings, too) from a book that makes it interesting, historical, and gives motivation for the theory, check out Galian's "Contemporary Abstract Algebra". This book clearly isn't meant to prepare you for graduate level algebra, but that's not what many of us are going for of course. It introduces the theory with LOTS of examples, and even relates most of the theory to ways you can use it in practice to solve all sorts of different problems in "real life". Check it out!
To paraphrase my favorite math quote (which I believe a physicist said): There are only two kinds of math books, those you can't read past the first page, and those you can't read past the first sentence.
I still remember the first time I logged on to a TCP/IP Quake 1 server on my 33.6 modem. I knew it would be something special. I played Quake quite a bit, and always tried the new versions, but they never seemed to be as good as the original. Thinking back, it's seems amazing that I was able to have a quality online game experience over a dial-up connection with a game as intense as Quake. The new versions of Quake, they looked good, but none of them *felt* like Quake. The weapons weren't as devastating, the movement was all wrong, it just didn't feel right. I haven't tried Quake IV yet, but I'm expecting more of the same. Does anyone else feel the same way? Quake to me was one of the first games to have a real online presence, and I'll always remember it fondly. It was also a time where you could find servers not overrun with high school boys, since most of the good connections were only at universities back in those days.
What are you talking about? The word standard has many definitions. One (the one the article is talking about) means something like "a set of rules that software developers adhere to so that different implementations work together." I made this definition up right now, so it may be lacking in some ways. Things that fit this definition of standard include (in my mind) FTP, HTTP, TCP/IP, the C programming language, etc. Now these things which I'm talking about, simply put, have absolutely nothing to do with probability distributions. Probability distributions, roughly speaking, are mathematical ideas used to model outcomes from experiments where there is variability in the outcome. To do this, you need to define a sample space, set up measurable functions on that space, etc. I really don't see how these two ideas get could confused this badly! "What is the probability distribution of an RFC?" really makes no sense!
"We did a math exercise and the answer was 300 years," Schmidt said in response to an audience question asking for a projection of how long the company's mission will take. "The answer is it's going to be a very long time."
Since this was in response to an audience member's question, does anyone else think he was joking? Because it is such an outlandish question from an information theory and modeling point of view, perhaps he was mocking it? "Ah yes, we just came up with an equation and it should take 294.59 years." I think this also makes sense in light of his next comment, which was made on a more serious note. I interpret it, "We really didn't use an equation, it will obviously take a long time though." This is how I understod his comments, and I may be wrong, but it wouldn't surprise me if some reporter picked up on this "joke" and put it up as "news".
I didn't say ignorant...I just meant to express my frustration at the general lack of understanding of the history of Microsoft and the implications that lack of understanding brings.
From the dictionary...
ignorant
adj.
1. Lacking education or knowledge.
2. Showing or arising from a lack of education or knowledge: an ignorant mistake.
3. Unaware or uninformed.
So while you might not have said the word "ignorant", you certainly implied it. To say otherwise is to refute the very definition of the word "ignorant".
Web based surveys are not scientific (not a random sample), therefore are completely worthless. Who is more likely to fill out a web based survey, those who use time at work looking at the web, or those who don't? There's the problem, and any conclusions drawn from this data about the general American population have no basis.
You really think drug companies care about your health?
Are you familar with how medical research is done in the United States and the world? Apparently not. Drug companies obviously hire bright and talented scientists from across the world to come up with new drugs and treatment methods. But have you ever thought of the logistics of trying to cover up a cure?
First of all, if your claim about the drug companies not caring for your health is true, and I don't dispute it, let's just assume it's true, then why would they be searching for a cure only to hide it? Do you realize how expensive medical research is? You haven't even defined what you mean by the word "cure", which is a very deep and important topic in and of itself. "Cures" aren't mathematical equations that are worked out and verified, or consequences of some basic axiomatic system. There is so much variability in the human biological system, that even agreeing what "cure" means is tough. Is AIDS "cured" right now? It depends on who you talk to. Most doctors would agree it is treatable, and there is nowhere near the amount of interest in it as there was say 10 or 15 years ago.
Back to cures. Let's just say that a cure is some magical pill that gets rid of some disease with no harmful side effects. That's about as good as anyone can hope for. Where was this cure developed? If at a drug company, surely they had to test this cure on humans to verify that it worked. Where are these people who had cancer, took a pill, and now have no symptoms? Where are their doctors? Are they part of the conspiracy to cover up this cure? Would patients not tell their friends and family that they took some magical pill and their woes ceased? Most clinical trials (which is how drugs are proven effective) involve thousands of patients from several centers around the world. These centers are typically at well regarded universities or other famous hospitals. Do you think all these people are involved too, and simply keeping quiet about their cures? The point is, proving a drug successful or not depends on literally thousands of people from varied walks of live, almost all of which have no economic incentive to keep quiet.
I want to also say that research as advanced as drug discovery is hardly done in isolation. It is unlikely that some private drug company has a secret lab filled with scientists who are not only so smart as to have discovered something completely different outside the research done at the world's best universities, but sinister enough to remain working at a company that would hide it. If scientist A's lab had a cure for cancer and was told to keep quiet, do you think he'd listen to his corporate overlords, or simply quit and receive accolades and awards, along with bringing down the evil drug company in the process? The point here is, the CEOS, who I admit are probably very interested in profit, aren't the ones designing cures and deeming them effective or not. It is a large team of scientists whose main interests are all probably not raising share prices, but distinction in their field. Is this too naive? Probably, but many scientists are in their fields for reasons of hopefully distinguishing themselves, so I can't imagine an entire team covering up something as important as a cure for a disease.
So I'm not saying everyone involved in drug research is in it for the good of humanity, obviously not. But to find a cure for any diease, no matter how mundane, takes millions of dollars and thousands of managers, scientists, doctors, volunteers, patients, and auditors that it's too hard to swallow that there's some secret lab producing cures, testing them on humans, and then remaining quiet about it.
At least part of the reason is that everyone needs to feel important in life. If someone isn't academically or socially accomplished, they need to identify with a group on some scale. For lots of people, this means sports teams. For others, religion. For people here, it's the 'open source group'. Many people here who are trying to convert aren't the ones who are actually coding the apps or doing research in computer science areas. They are the ones who use it to feel like they belong to a group, and what better way to justify that than by trying to convince others that their group is somehow elite or desirable?
Slashdot Mirror
The online Mario Kart DS mode is incredibly fun and addictive. That in my mind is reason enough to own a DS.
It wasn't so much the data that was tampered with. I can almost guarantee you that Merck was not unblinded during the trial, and therefore wouldn't know which data to change. This article is talking about a scientific publication based on the study results, there are usually many publications resulting from any study. At this point, several institutions, including Merck, a data safety board, and an independent statistical data center would complete copies of the original data, so any changes at Merck would be caught by these people (in theory).
What the Journal found, was that someone at Merck had included a table on CV events in an early version of the manuscript, and then deleted it. So this isn't really tampering with data, it's not including all the data in your conclusions. It's not including data that shows potential harm to patients. It could be argued that this is tantamount to the same thing, which I'm not disagreeing with. Merck's defense is that the events in question occured after some pre-specified cut off date for analysis, who knows if that is true or not.
Whether you "know" or not is always up for debate, but that's usually for epistemology class. In classical hypothesis testing in statistics, you make a distributional assumption about your data, and then calculate a probability from the data you observed (the p-value) given your initial assumption. If this probability is very low (also an interpretation), you assume your initial distributional assumption was incorrect. There are finer points to it of course, but classical hypothesis testing in statistics is pretty much a reductio ad absurdem in logic.
After the page has had time to settle down, the extra eyeballs will (on average) have improved it.
Proof?
Your comment counts double since the friend in question is a "she". Especially if this is your girlfriend, buy the damn book!
I'm not sure what that comment meant either. I can do set theory without thinking about group theory. I can't do group theory (can't even define a group) without using sets. So I don't know what the poster meant by that.
There are countless (obviously not really) books on group theory at all different levels. If you're not a math major and want to learn a bit about group theory (and rings, too) from a book that makes it interesting, historical, and gives motivation for the theory, check out Galian's "Contemporary Abstract Algebra". This book clearly isn't meant to prepare you for graduate level algebra, but that's not what many of us are going for of course. It introduces the theory with LOTS of examples, and even relates most of the theory to ways you can use it in practice to solve all sorts of different problems in "real life". Check it out!
To paraphrase my favorite math quote (which I believe a physicist said): There are only two kinds of math books, those you can't read past the first page, and those you can't read past the first sentence.
And wouldn't that second string have to be 'meaningful' in the same context as the original, like code to be run?
IP?
I still remember the first time I logged on to a TCP/IP Quake 1 server on my 33.6 modem. I knew it would be something special. I played Quake quite a bit, and always tried the new versions, but they never seemed to be as good as the original. Thinking back, it's seems amazing that I was able to have a quality online game experience over a dial-up connection with a game as intense as Quake. The new versions of Quake, they looked good, but none of them *felt* like Quake. The weapons weren't as devastating, the movement was all wrong, it just didn't feel right. I haven't tried Quake IV yet, but I'm expecting more of the same. Does anyone else feel the same way? Quake to me was one of the first games to have a real online presence, and I'll always remember it fondly. It was also a time where you could find servers not overrun with high school boys, since most of the good connections were only at universities back in those days.
A real human is wearing a shroud of anonymity and handing out the bitchslap to a total stranger.
When did the topic become the moderation system?
What are you talking about? The word standard has many definitions. One (the one the article is talking about) means something like "a set of rules that software developers adhere to so that different implementations work together." I made this definition up right now, so it may be lacking in some ways. Things that fit this definition of standard include (in my mind) FTP, HTTP, TCP/IP, the C programming language, etc. Now these things which I'm talking about, simply put, have absolutely nothing to do with probability distributions. Probability distributions, roughly speaking, are mathematical ideas used to model outcomes from experiments where there is variability in the outcome. To do this, you need to define a sample space, set up measurable functions on that space, etc. I really don't see how these two ideas get could confused this badly! "What is the probability distribution of an RFC?" really makes no sense!
"We did a math exercise and the answer was 300 years," Schmidt said in response to an audience question asking for a projection of how long the company's mission will take. "The answer is it's going to be a very long time."
Since this was in response to an audience member's question, does anyone else think he was joking? Because it is such an outlandish question from an information theory and modeling point of view, perhaps he was mocking it? "Ah yes, we just came up with an equation and it should take 294.59 years." I think this also makes sense in light of his next comment, which was made on a more serious note. I interpret it, "We really didn't use an equation, it will obviously take a long time though." This is how I understod his comments, and I may be wrong, but it wouldn't surprise me if some reporter picked up on this "joke" and put it up as "news".
I didn't say ignorant...I just meant to express my frustration at the general lack of understanding of the history of Microsoft and the implications that lack of understanding brings.
From the dictionary...
ignorant
adj.
1. Lacking education or knowledge.
2. Showing or arising from a lack of education or knowledge: an ignorant mistake.
3. Unaware or uninformed.
So while you might not have said the word "ignorant", you certainly implied it. To say otherwise is to refute the very definition of the word "ignorant".
For once, not having a password is a good idea.
Web based surveys are not scientific (not a random sample), therefore are completely worthless. Who is more likely to fill out a web based survey, those who use time at work looking at the web, or those who don't? There's the problem, and any conclusions drawn from this data about the general American population have no basis.
Wireless.
More space than a nomad.
Sweet.
They were like, "Mike, your new research project is Cisco IOS. Go find out how to exploit bugs on Cisco IOS so we can prove these people wrong."
Like, not only speech, but even our writing has like sunk to the level of the California valley girl, like.
You obviously did not research the side effects of taking large quantities of pineapple extract.
Do shareholders actually get to vote on whether or not to release a drug proven effective at curing a disease to market?!
You really think drug companies care about your health?
Are you familar with how medical research is done in the United States and the world? Apparently not. Drug companies obviously hire bright and talented scientists from across the world to come up with new drugs and treatment methods. But have you ever thought of the logistics of trying to cover up a cure?
First of all, if your claim about the drug companies not caring for your health is true, and I don't dispute it, let's just assume it's true, then why would they be searching for a cure only to hide it? Do you realize how expensive medical research is? You haven't even defined what you mean by the word "cure", which is a very deep and important topic in and of itself. "Cures" aren't mathematical equations that are worked out and verified, or consequences of some basic axiomatic system. There is so much variability in the human biological system, that even agreeing what "cure" means is tough. Is AIDS "cured" right now? It depends on who you talk to. Most doctors would agree it is treatable, and there is nowhere near the amount of interest in it as there was say 10 or 15 years ago.
Back to cures.
Let's just say that a cure is some magical pill that gets rid of some disease with no harmful side effects. That's about as good as anyone can hope for. Where was this cure developed? If at a drug company, surely they had to test this cure on humans to verify that it worked. Where are these people who had cancer, took a pill, and now have no symptoms? Where are their doctors? Are they part of the conspiracy to cover up this cure? Would patients not tell their friends and family that they took some magical pill and their woes ceased? Most clinical trials (which is how drugs are proven effective) involve thousands of patients from several centers around the world. These centers are typically at well regarded universities or other famous hospitals. Do you think all these people are involved too, and simply keeping quiet about their cures? The point is, proving a drug successful or not depends on literally thousands of people from varied walks of live, almost all of which have no economic incentive to keep quiet.
I want to also say that research as advanced as drug discovery is hardly done in isolation. It is unlikely that some private drug company has a secret lab filled with scientists who are not only so smart as to have discovered something completely different outside the research done at the world's best universities, but sinister enough to remain working at a company that would hide it. If scientist A's lab had a cure for cancer and was told to keep quiet, do you think he'd listen to his corporate overlords, or simply quit and receive accolades and awards, along with bringing down the evil drug company in the process? The point here is, the CEOS, who I admit are probably very interested in profit, aren't the ones designing cures and deeming them effective or not. It is a large team of scientists whose main interests are all probably not raising share prices, but distinction in their field. Is this too naive? Probably, but many scientists are in their fields for reasons of hopefully distinguishing themselves, so I can't imagine an entire team covering up something as important as a cure for a disease.
So I'm not saying everyone involved in drug research is in it for the good of humanity, obviously not. But to find a cure for any diease, no matter how mundane, takes millions of dollars and thousands of managers, scientists, doctors, volunteers, patients, and auditors that it's too hard to swallow that there's some secret lab producing cures, testing them on humans, and then remaining quiet about it.
There is no other explanation for the recent series of coincidental stories and events...except coincidence.
Not only that, but his former founder position has been secured "recently".
At least part of the reason is that everyone needs to feel important in life. If someone isn't academically or socially accomplished, they need to identify with a group on some scale. For lots of people, this means sports teams. For others, religion. For people here, it's the 'open source group'. Many people here who are trying to convert aren't the ones who are actually coding the apps or doing research in computer science areas. They are the ones who use it to feel like they belong to a group, and what better way to justify that than by trying to convince others that their group is somehow elite or desirable?