In what way is the argument for untested deployment of stem cell therapies different from the argument for untested deployment of any other new drug or treatment?
There is always a balance to be struck between safety and delay. The procedures exist for exactly this reason: to guide us in balancing risk and potential reward.
And so do I. Thanks for a great run Joss. I'll be looking forward to whatever's next.
----------- (Seriously, guys, give it up already. Firefly/Serenity is over. Joss had a chance to wrap up the big mysteries for us. Let's be greatful for that and move on.)
There is no way to portray the character of Ender properly by having him pull a half assed beating on Bonzo, or that first bully, that lets them live.
Why is it not sufficient to have him break a limb or two, then deliver a blow that renders his foe unconscious? (And actually dead, but unconfirmed.) It would be brutal, sure, but not prolonged or gorey. As I recall the scenes, Ender didn't know for sure they were dead until later. The key seems to be to film the 'personal' combats as extremely short fights preceeded by long, suspenseful build-ups. By contrast, the 'game' combats would be elaborately long fights preceded by almost no buildup.
What seems harder to me is to show Ender's motivation for these acts in the film, given that exposition of his thoughts must be limited.
If you read TFA (what heresy!), you may note that the entire discussion of buyers being ripped off is anecdotal. By contrast, the section on counterfeiting claims that there are 12000x40%=4800 counterfeit Adidas auctions per day in Britain alone.
I submit that this article is being driven by the corporate interests. Absent some actual statistics on the volume of ripoffs, why should we believe they're a widespread problem? Anecdotal evidence is decried for a reason.
Consumer Reports is written FOR consumers. It is not written for servicers, repairers, experts, or resellers. Readers who have such skills should be reading an industry-specific magazine, or better yet, a trade journal or a techinical specification.
In addition, CR almost always 'rates' a product on multiple aspects and explains how those aspects are combined to arrive at any overall ranking. They make it quite easy for a reader to focus on whichever criterion is most important to him.
CR is best used to gain a quick, current look at a market segment you don't follow well enough to know the manufacturers, the current models, or even the publications. If the purchase you're making merits more info that CR provides, then by all means go get it.
as I've grown older I have reluctantly acknowledged how other kinds of smarts -- notably, common sense and street smarts -- are really more important.
People often say: play to your strengths. Why is this good advice? Because one trait can be used to compensate for another. Some examples:
While actual social skills are the easiest way to get what you want from people (including bosses, employees, children, and objects of sexual desire), you can use high amounts of book smarts to manipulate people with varying degrees of success. Around here, we call it "social engineering".
Actual self-awareness and control of one's emotions is the best way to maintain stable relationships (e.g. at work), but again, a smart person can get by just on weighing the odds and chosing an action calculated to acheive the best outcome.
Intelligence is probably the best tool for managing finances, but a dummy who is a great judge of people can find some smart guy to trust with that task.
Self-discipline and persistence can substitute for many other gifts, including lack of smarts. Few of the problems that we have to solve to lead comfortable lives require genius-level flashes of insight. Those who can force themselves to work hard at unfun tasks can pull ahead in the race when swifter competitors get distracted.
To reduce this to a computing metaphor, a blazing fast processor will not get you through life if your other components (especially your operating software) suck.
Do we really need the fancy labels (Abstract, Social, Practical, Emotional, Aesthetic, and Kinesthetic Intelligence)? One can call these things "6 dimensions of intelligence" if one wants to, but why is such labeling better than taking the position that there are other traits/virtues that are worth having but that are not "intelligence"?
Abstract Intelligence (AKA intelligence/smarts): Conceptual reasoning, manipulating verbal, mathematical & symbolic information. Social Intelligence (AKA people skills/charisma): Interacting successfully with others in various contexts. Practical Intelligence (AKA common sense): "Common sense" capabilities; the ability to solve problems & get things done. Emotional Intelligence (AKA self-awareness/self-control): Self-insight & the ability to regulate or manage one's reactions to experience. Aesthetic Intelligence (AKA artistic insight): Appreciation of form, design and relationships. Kinesthetic Intelligence (AKA athleticism): Whole-body competence, e.g. singing, dancing, flying an airplane.
To put it another way, what insight does calling these traits "intelligence" give us?
FTFA: I believe the system should default automatically in favour of protecting our children...
"Quite right! The Senator's proposal is clearly insufficient. After all, it would be safer if all get()s were routed to a government agency for approval of content first. Otherwise, by filtering just the p0rn, we would do nothing to prevent...drrumrrrolllll... TERRORISM. "
[It was at this point that the debate collapsed in what can best be described as a Godwin's Law Event.]
Compare what the article proposes to what it complains about.
The article proposes the following change: if a patent is valid and infringed, there will be no injunction unless the patentholder is using/selling the invention.
But, that change would do nothing to fix the things the article complains about: Too many patents are issued for "innovations" that are obvious, vague or already in wide use. Too many patent holders try to extend their claims to devices and services that weren't even contemplated when the patents were granted. And it's a difficult, costly exercise to overturn a questionable patent after it has been awarded.
So "you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. . . . No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does NOT MAKE SENSE! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!"
The issue is that 12.34.567.89 is not an example of an IP.
That's like saying (123)4567-890 or (123)456-7890 are an examples of U.S. phone numbers. They aren't. And swearing that they are makes these guys look inept.
They just as easily could have chosen 123.45.67.89 as an example, or better yet 192.0.34.163.
What has failed isn't the vision of the original techies who envisioned a system where everything was properly classified.
I'm beginning to think that the goal of classifying is exactly what is failing.
Contrast domain names with IP addresses, phone numbers, postal codes, or (to a lesser extent) street addresses. Those other types of addresses don't attempt to classify the thing they represent. For the most part, those addresses convey only location, not description.
People love to classify others, but they don't like others to classify them. They feel that being classify limits them to being just one thing, or worse, misdescribes them entirely. I'm not at all surprised that they're resisting any heirarchy. Frankly, it's a credit that the early schema held up as long as it did. There are plenty of foes who don't see a distinction between, e.g., education and commerce.
I've always thought the original categories of the schema were a useful and clean taxonomy, but if we had asked the interested parties (i.e., the non-technical people) back in the day, they never would have signed on for that scheme.
manufacturers are far better equipped than any review website to test those things. Fair enough, perhaps our friendly neighborhood review web site would compare and contrast those specs.
Durability was mentioned only to establish how different considerations are when looking into hard drives for laptops vs. hard drives for desktops. This, of course, is the point. It was a laptop drive review. Assuming (as the article itself asserts) that those buying laptop drives care about durability, some data on durability should have been presented.
Me, I'm just traulling around for an excuse to smash watermelons.
The point of domain name hierarchy, as ICANN has forgotten, was to organize information into identifyable categories to make it easier for people to find what they want. . . . It's about organizing the ip space into human-readable and human-understandable segments.
All due respect to our founding coders, but the notion that we could classify all human endeavor according to a taxomonmy based on the categories educational, government, military, commercial, network, organization, or country was naive and arrogant in the extreme. As has been demonstrated, large numbers of people don't care about those categories and many of those who do care don't like them.
Of course, classifying things according to the branding whims of corporations with money will be much, much worse, but let's not pretend that the old taxonomy has any special legitimacy. It's nothing more than "the way we used to do it".
only 4% of Internet users can flag 100% of phishing e-mails as fraudulent No. Half the examples in that test require users to identify suspect emails as Legitimate. Sure enough, few people (especially the ones who practice 'safe browsing' by default -- i.e. tell no one nothing ever) will score 100% by trusting all those suspect examples.
Users can be taught to default to "NO". They are learning.
That said, user credulousness would be a problem even if 99% of users had identified all the fraud examples as fraud. That 1% would still be a lot of victims.
The review identifies the important qualities as: Capacity, Speed, Power Consumption, Heat Generation, Noise, and Ruggedness.
Then it measures only Office DriveMark 2006, High-End DriveMark 2006, FarCry, The Sims 2, World of Warcraft, IOMeter File Server Tests, Average Read Access Time, Average Write Access Time, WB99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate, WB99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate, Idle Noise, Idle Power Dissipation, Active Power Dissipation, 12V Maximum Power Dissipation, and 5V Maximum Power Dissipation.
Where's the Mean Baggage Checks to Failure? Where is Height Droppable Without Crashing? Where is Hours Baked at 75C without Melting Something? Where is Minimum Functional Temperature? Where is Number of Times Hit on Head with Frying Pan? Where is Number of Watermelons Smashed with Working Drive?
According to Joel, it's not about pricing songs commensurate with their economic value; rather, it's about allowing the labels to manipulate public perception of value through pricing.
Promotion is much more effective than up-pricing at convincing consumers they want something. Up-pricing is something like a third-order effect. The deterrent effect of increased price is more like a second-order effect.
It is much more likely that the studios simply want to cash in on the high initial demand for new releases and the high continuing demand for popular old ones. In one way it is like movies: they want to be able to spend money on promotion and generate increased revenue thereby.
I expect that if they could up-price new movies, they'd do that, too. Notice that special passes, discounts, etc. often don't apply to new release movies (so-called "special engagements").
Sure, when the studios talk up this plan, they talk about lowering the price on tracks no one will pay $1 for. Theoretically, there may be some low-level demand there that they could capture at the lowered price point, but I'll believe that when I see it.
Why don't we just call Roger's actions what they really are, a cost saving measure. They aren't doing it to protect the children, they are doing it to save a few cents per customer.
Not to mention to make a few cents per customer. Usenet has always, always suffered from not generating any revenue for the hosts that carry it. How much better if for the company if they can move their users over to a paid or advertising-supported forum! Yekch!
Patents are not a shield. They are a sword. When a competitor tries to stab you with his patent, you draw out your own and, all else being more or less equal, he may agree to leave you be rather than risk you killing his business.
Patent "trolls" are not competitors. They are file-drawer companies that don't make anything and don't sell anything. You cannot kill a troll's business with your patent sword because they have no business.
Patent pools are no defense against trolls. Linux companies are no safer than anyone else when the troll demands a piece of their profits.
Could the stated goals not be acheived more cheaply simply by fitting each vehicle with a transponder? Anything that must be installed every quarter mile of every road will necessarily be ungodly expensive.
Vehicles operating without a transponder would be fined steeply. A few random checks would ensure compliance.
It's one thing to be an evil overlord, but there's no excuse for being an expensive and incompetent evil overlord.
Patents are not a shield. They are a sword. When a competitor tries to stab you with his patent, you draw out your own and, all else being more or less equal, he may agree to leave you be rather than risk you killing his business.
Patent "trolls" are not competitors. They are file-drawer companies that don't make anything and don't sell anything. You cannot kill a troll's business with your patent sword because they have no business.
OIN is a fine idea, but it is no defense against trolls.
Slashdot Mirror
In what way is the argument for untested deployment of stem cell therapies different from the argument for untested deployment of any other new drug or treatment?
There is always a balance to be struck between safety and delay. The procedures exist for exactly this reason: to guide us in balancing risk and potential reward.
As for Serenity, ''I have closure,'' he says.
And so do I. Thanks for a great run Joss.
I'll be looking forward to whatever's next.
-----------
(Seriously, guys, give it up already. Firefly/Serenity is over. Joss had a chance to wrap up the big mysteries for us. Let's be greatful for that and move on.)
There is no way to portray the character of Ender properly by having him pull a half assed beating on Bonzo, or that first bully, that lets them live.
Why is it not sufficient to have him break a limb or two, then deliver a blow that renders his foe unconscious? (And actually dead, but unconfirmed.) It would be brutal, sure, but not prolonged or gorey. As I recall the scenes, Ender didn't know for sure they were dead until later. The key seems to be to film the 'personal' combats as extremely short fights preceeded by long, suspenseful build-ups. By contrast, the 'game' combats would be elaborately long fights preceded by almost no buildup.
What seems harder to me is to show Ender's motivation for these acts in the film, given that exposition of his thoughts must be limited.
If you read TFA (what heresy!), you may note that the entire discussion of buyers being ripped off is anecdotal. By contrast, the section on counterfeiting claims that there are 12000x40%=4800 counterfeit Adidas auctions per day in Britain alone.
I submit that this article is being driven by the corporate interests. Absent some actual statistics on the volume of ripoffs, why should we believe they're a widespread problem? Anecdotal evidence is decried for a reason.
Consumer Reports is written FOR consumers. It is not written for servicers, repairers, experts, or resellers. Readers who have such skills should be reading an industry-specific magazine, or better yet, a trade journal or a techinical specification.
In addition, CR almost always 'rates' a product on multiple aspects and explains how those aspects are combined to arrive at any overall ranking. They make it quite easy for a reader to focus on whichever criterion is most important to him.
CR is best used to gain a quick, current look at a market segment you don't follow well enough to know the manufacturers, the current models, or even the publications. If the purchase you're making merits more info that CR provides, then by all means go get it.
as I've grown older I have reluctantly acknowledged how other kinds of smarts -- notably, common sense and street smarts -- are really more important.
People often say: play to your strengths. Why is this good advice? Because one trait can be used to compensate for another. Some examples:
While actual social skills are the easiest way to get what you want from people (including bosses, employees, children, and objects of sexual desire), you can use high amounts of book smarts to manipulate people with varying degrees of success. Around here, we call it "social engineering".
Actual self-awareness and control of one's emotions is the best way to maintain stable relationships (e.g. at work), but again, a smart person can get by just on weighing the odds and chosing an action calculated to acheive the best outcome.
Intelligence is probably the best tool for managing finances, but a dummy who is a great judge of people can find some smart guy to trust with that task.
Self-discipline and persistence can substitute for many other gifts, including lack of smarts. Few of the problems that we have to solve to lead comfortable lives require genius-level flashes of insight. Those who can force themselves to work hard at unfun tasks can pull ahead in the race when swifter competitors get distracted.
To reduce this to a computing metaphor, a blazing fast processor will not get you through life if your other components (especially your operating software) suck.
Do we really need the fancy labels (Abstract, Social, Practical, Emotional, Aesthetic, and Kinesthetic Intelligence)? One can call these things "6 dimensions of intelligence" if one wants to, but why is such labeling better than taking the position that there are other traits/virtues that are worth having but that are not "intelligence"?
Abstract Intelligence (AKA intelligence/smarts): Conceptual reasoning, manipulating verbal, mathematical & symbolic information.
Social Intelligence (AKA people skills/charisma): Interacting successfully with others in various contexts.
Practical Intelligence (AKA common sense): "Common sense" capabilities; the ability to solve problems & get things done.
Emotional Intelligence (AKA self-awareness/self-control): Self-insight & the ability to regulate or manage one's reactions to experience.
Aesthetic Intelligence (AKA artistic insight): Appreciation of form, design and relationships.
Kinesthetic Intelligence (AKA athleticism): Whole-body competence, e.g. singing, dancing, flying an airplane.
To put it another way, what insight does calling these traits "intelligence" give us?
FTFA: I believe the system should default automatically in favour of protecting our children ...
...drrumrrrolllll... TERRORISM. "
"Quite right! The Senator's proposal is clearly insufficient. After all, it would be safer if all get()s were routed to a government agency for approval of content first. Otherwise, by filtering just the p0rn, we would do nothing to prevent
[It was at this point that the debate collapsed in what can best be described as a Godwin's Law Event.]
Compare what the article proposes to what it complains about.
The article proposes the following change: if a patent is valid and infringed, there will be no injunction unless the patentholder is using/selling the invention.
But, that change would do nothing to fix the things the article complains about: Too many patents are issued for "innovations" that are obvious, vague or already in wide use. Too many patent holders try to extend their claims to devices and services that weren't even contemplated when the patents were granted. And it's a difficult, costly exercise to overturn a questionable patent after it has been awarded.
So "you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. . . . No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does NOT MAKE SENSE! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!"
The issue is that 12.34.567.89 is not an example of an IP.
That's like saying (123)4567-890 or (123)456-7890 are an examples of U.S. phone numbers. They aren't. And swearing that they are makes these guys look inept.
They just as easily could have chosen 123.45.67.89 as an example, or better yet 192.0.34.163.
What has failed isn't the vision of the original techies who envisioned a system where everything was properly classified.
I'm beginning to think that the goal of classifying is exactly what is failing.
Contrast domain names with IP addresses, phone numbers, postal codes, or (to a lesser extent) street addresses. Those other types of addresses don't attempt to classify the thing they represent. For the most part, those addresses convey only location, not description.
People love to classify others, but they don't like others to classify them. They feel that being classify limits them to being just one thing, or worse, misdescribes them entirely. I'm not at all surprised that they're resisting any heirarchy. Frankly, it's a credit that the early schema held up as long as it did. There are plenty of foes who don't see a distinction between, e.g., education and commerce.
I've always thought the original categories of the schema were a useful and clean taxonomy, but if we had asked the interested parties (i.e., the non-technical people) back in the day, they never would have signed on for that scheme.
manufacturers are far better equipped than any review website to test those things.
Fair enough, perhaps our friendly neighborhood review web site would compare and contrast those specs.
Durability was mentioned only to establish how different considerations are when looking into hard drives for laptops vs. hard drives for desktops.
This, of course, is the point. It was a laptop drive review. Assuming (as the article itself asserts) that those buying laptop drives care about durability, some data on durability should have been presented.
Me, I'm just traulling around for an excuse to smash watermelons.
From the Complaint: An example of an IP number might be: 12.34.567.89.
"The sky is blue, water is wet, women have secrets." -JH (1991)
The point of domain name hierarchy, as ICANN has forgotten, was to organize information into identifyable categories to make it easier for people to find what they want. . . . It's about organizing the ip space into human-readable and human-understandable segments.
All due respect to our founding coders, but the notion that we could classify all human endeavor according to a taxomonmy based on the categories educational, government, military, commercial, network, organization, or country was naive and arrogant in the extreme. As has been demonstrated, large numbers of people don't care about those categories and many of those who do care don't like them.
Of course, classifying things according to the branding whims of corporations with money will be much, much worse, but let's not pretend that the old taxonomy has any special legitimacy. It's nothing more than "the way we used to do it".
only 4% of Internet users can flag 100% of phishing e-mails as fraudulent
No. Half the examples in that test require users to identify suspect emails as Legitimate. Sure enough, few people (especially the ones who practice 'safe browsing' by default -- i.e. tell no one nothing ever) will score 100% by trusting all those suspect examples.
Users can be taught to default to "NO". They are learning.
That said, user credulousness would be a problem even if 99% of users had identified all the fraud examples as fraud. That 1% would still be a lot of victims.
The review identifies the important qualities as: Capacity, Speed, Power Consumption, Heat Generation, Noise, and Ruggedness.
Then it measures only Office DriveMark 2006, High-End DriveMark 2006, FarCry, The Sims 2, World of Warcraft, IOMeter File Server Tests, Average Read Access Time, Average Write Access Time, WB99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate, WB99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate, Idle Noise, Idle Power Dissipation, Active Power Dissipation, 12V Maximum Power Dissipation, and 5V Maximum Power Dissipation.
Where's the Mean Baggage Checks to Failure?
Where is Height Droppable Without Crashing?
Where is Hours Baked at 75C without Melting Something?
Where is Minimum Functional Temperature?
Where is Number of Times Hit on Head with Frying Pan?
Where is Number of Watermelons Smashed with Working Drive?
Has there ever been a myth you've tried to bust, but couldn't, even though you're sure it's false?
According to Joel, it's not about pricing songs commensurate with their economic value; rather, it's about allowing the labels to manipulate public perception of value through pricing.
Promotion is much more effective than up-pricing at convincing consumers they want something. Up-pricing is something like a third-order effect. The deterrent effect of increased price is more like a second-order effect.
It is much more likely that the studios simply want to cash in on the high initial demand for new releases and the high continuing demand for popular old ones. In one way it is like movies: they want to be able to spend money on promotion and generate increased revenue thereby.
I expect that if they could up-price new movies, they'd do that, too. Notice that special passes, discounts, etc. often don't apply to new release movies (so-called "special engagements").
Sure, when the studios talk up this plan, they talk about lowering the price on tracks no one will pay $1 for. Theoretically, there may be some low-level demand there that they could capture at the lowered price point, but I'll believe that when I see it.
Why don't we just call Roger's actions what they really are, a cost saving measure. They aren't doing it to protect the children, they are doing it to save a few cents per customer.
Not to mention to make a few cents per customer. Usenet has always, always suffered from not generating any revenue for the hosts that carry it. How much better if for the company if they can move their users over to a paid or advertising-supported forum! Yekch!
from TFA: Its democratic dream offers . . .
It's a democratic reality.
Patents are not a shield. They are a sword. When a competitor tries to stab you with his patent, you draw out your own and, all else being more or less equal, he may agree to leave you be rather than risk you killing his business.
Patent "trolls" are not competitors. They are file-drawer companies that don't make anything and don't sell anything. You cannot kill a troll's business with your patent sword because they have no business.
Patent pools are no defense against trolls. Linux companies are no safer than anyone else when the troll demands a piece of their profits.
Could the stated goals not be acheived more cheaply simply by fitting each vehicle with a transponder? Anything that must be installed every quarter mile of every road will necessarily be ungodly expensive.
Vehicles operating without a transponder would be fined steeply. A few random checks would ensure compliance.
It's one thing to be an evil overlord, but there's no excuse for being an expensive and incompetent evil overlord.
Patents are not a shield. They are a sword. When a competitor tries to stab you with his patent, you draw out your own and, all else being more or less equal, he may agree to leave you be rather than risk you killing his business.
Patent "trolls" are not competitors. They are file-drawer companies that don't make anything and don't sell anything. You cannot kill a troll's business with your patent sword because they have no business.
OIN is a fine idea, but it is no defense against trolls.