Our most brilliant citizens are pulled into Wall Street as "quants" or traders or corporate lawyers, and are often paid six and seven figure remuneration per year. And to do what? To game the system in favor of their wealthy masters at the expense of the middle classes.
The steps that these scientists would have us make involve trillions of dollars. It's not enough that they are confident of their numbers. They must offer proof. The word "proof" obviously involves a more rigorous standard than that to which you are accustomed, at least in the financial case.
And in this case of climatology the word "proof" implies an impossible standard.
This research has been going on for 30 years, yes it could be better, any research could be better, but at some point we need to take action on the information we do have.
Btw, the only part of the report I saw that actually implied some issue with the quality of the results was the part where they could use professional statisticians.
The Panel was not concerned with the question of whether the conclusions of the published research were correct. Rather it was asked to come to a view on the integrity of the Unit's research and whether as far as could be determined the conclusions represented an honest and scientifically justified interpretation of the data. The Panel worked by examining representative publications by members of the Unit and subsequently by making two visits to the University and interviewing and questioning members of the Unit. Not all the panel were present on both occasions but two members were present on both occasions to maintain continuity. About fifteen person/days were spent at the University discussing the Unit's work.
So... we didn't look into whether their numbers were right. We looked over their published papers and chatted with them a couple of times and they seem like forthright folks. We won't tell you who was there each time - that would be too much disclosure.
No whitewash here. Oh, no. Further:
Yeah, they were supposed to redo the peer review process on everything that was published...
We have not exhaustively reviewed the external criticism of the dendroclimatological work, but it seems that some of these criticisms show a rather selective and uncharitable approach to information made available by CRU.
So people who want hard numbers, underlying datasets and provenance of data are being "uncharitable".
No it means that all those things were already available in all but a small handful of instances. And when you excluded that small amount of unpublished data it made absolutely no difference in the conclusions.
So these people are screaming fraud and conspiracy over unreleased data that doesn't actually change the conclusions. Calling them "uncharitable" is actually pretty charitable.
In the latter part of the 20th century CRU pioneered the methods for taking into account a wide range of local influences that can make instrumental records from different locations hard to compare. These methods were very labour intensive and were somewhat subjective.
The methods were subjective? This is science? Maybe it's me. Maybe I don't understand the term "science".
I have a feeling your definition of "subjective" is a lot different than their definition of "subjective".
We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians.
Here we go. That's an axe to the groin there.
Research like this isn't binary right or wrong. They got good results, but the could have gotten better with professional statisticians.
We agree with the CRU view that the authority for releasing unpublished raw data to third parties should stay with those who collected it.
Ah, but then they don't need to provide provenance or data. That's so comforting.
I am so mollified by this report I'm left without speech. It seems perfectly reasonable, rational and diligent to me. Let's close this case and begin the Cap&Trade.
This is basic copyright law.
I (company owning weather stations) give you access to my data for your research. You can use my data to make your conclusions stronger, but I intend to sell my data to make money so you better not release my data to the public.
Now the fun thing with this "controversy" is it's completely irrelevant!
Using the unpublished station data makes the error bars smaller, but the conclusions don't change!! So how does unpublished data that doesn't change the conclusions amount to a conspiracy?!
Actually it's more of... well I can't think of a good metaphor.
But to say "Go around the long way. It's harder, but if we had known about this shit we'd be going that way too" is pretty disingenuous since we got rich going the easy way and still don't show any signs of being serious about going the hard way.
It's hypocritical of the developed nations who got rich filling the atmosphere with carbon to tell the developing nations they can't do the same while we're still filling the atmosphere with carbon.
In practice, the Java community only uses two or three JVMs (IBM's, JRockit, and OpenJDK from Sun), while others are research efforts or smaller-scale open-source projects, said author and consultant Ted Neward. "Virtual machines are not something the open-source community seems to want to experiment with."
gcj, ecj, GNU Classpath, Kaffe, Jikes, etc.
Now many of these merged, and much of the development has stopped altogether since Sun went GPL, but it's pretty misleading to claim "Virtual machines are not something the open-source community seems to want to experiment with." Before Java was open-sourced there were many free JVMs in active development, they didn't have the entire API implemented and debugged, but I was able to run Eclipse on a free software stack before OpenJDK.
Now most of these projects are no longer really developed since the developers went onto OpenJDK, because it is GPL and the standard, but there was a pretty impressive development effort before then.
Actually open source isn't a democracy, it's a meritocracy.
In a democracy everyone gets the same vote, in a meritocracy the power is wielded by those who do the best work.
Meritocracies, at least with open source, actually work better than democracy. In a democracy it's mob rule because most people are making decisions based on very incomplete information. In a meritocracy it's the people who have the knowledge and the ability who decide the direction while the users have very little direct power. Now with a country this could lead to autocracy because the people are trapped in the landmass, but with open source there's no lock-in, thus the leaders can't abuse their power and you get a highly functional political system.
There's a reason people call Linus the benevolent dictator for life, he can do whatever he wants with the source tree, but he makes very good decisions with that power and that's why people follow him.
...that should be the title. Take the airbag that deploys in a car to help prevent death or serious injury in an automobile accident. The airbag is patented.
If a car company manufactures an automobile, and there is a production error, and the airbags aren't installed, they will be liable for damages suffered by the owners of the car who suffer accidents. They sold a product without standard safety features. It has nothing to do with a patent.
From the article
Then, suddenly, the hubbub fell silent. In 2002, Ryobi, which initially signed a contract with SawStop, pulled out. Manufacturers, interested at first, refused to license their device.
Gass remembered they told him, "Safety doesn't sell." So, the trio decided to design their own line of saws, raising about $3 million from friends, family members and strangers.
The only company using this "standard safety feature" is the company that the inventor started.
As for the cost
SawStop asks for licensing fees of 3 percent of the saw's wholesale price to start. As the device becomes more widespread, the fees could increase to 8 percent. The price of table saws range from $200 to several thousand dollars.
If I was buying a saw I'd probably pay an extra %3 for this feature, but then again I'm not buying a saw.
What obligations do manufactures have to include safety devices that are an economic loss?
so little is sketched by tolkien of them and the world to the east of mordor they went too, that it could make for some great lotr-type stories without stepping on any middle earth toes or the fanboys who guard the mythology's continuity
it could have an east asian or russian mythology theme, keeping in touch with all those maps that overlay mordor with either germany, transylvania, or the middle east
and maybe we would get more oliphants!;-P
I've always felt that the Blue Wizards were a great example of what made Tolkien so great. Virtually nothing is said about the Blue Wizards, but we know they came along with Gandalf and Saruman (and Radagast) then went off to the east, which is about half of Middle-Earth world we know virtually nothing about (other than the fact Sauron apparently had allies there).
That's part of why I love LOTR, LOTR is huge, but the world its set in feels so much larger.
That being said I'm not sure how I feel about that part of the mystery being explored, particularly if it's done so in a poor manner. However, they might do it well and introduce even more mystery, and if they do really blow it I can just pretend it never existed.
How do you write code to do PR/create docs? Please, be my hero.
Simple, you obviously just need to write a program capable of passing the Turing Test.
Of course when you finish you probably want to give it some interesting tasks besides just PR/documentation, last thing you want is for it to get pissed off and go all Skynet.
If not idling reduces their job satisfaction that much than fewer people will drive trucks, and eventually they'll have to raise wages to attract more drivers.
This assumes that "fewer people" is still not all the companies need. It's a bad economy, with few jobs, and even when there were more jobs I'd imagine the supply of truck jobs was limited. The more truckers there are compared to the number of truck jobs, the worse they can make the working conditions; if there are only enough jobs for half of them they can make the working conditions so bad that 50% of them would rather starve than work under those conditions, without raising wages at all.
Well the goods have to get there somehow. Now in a bad economy maybe some employers do try to exploit their employees to a greater degree than usual. But the moment the economy is strong again those employees might be looking for greener pastures and that boss will suddenly regret the fact that all their best most experienced employees are leaving.
I'm not a super right wing libertarian of anything, and in the employer-employee relationship I do think that the employer does have an advantage.
But I also think that people tend to forget that employees have minds of their own and aren't helpless slaves. If they are getting screwed they can, and will, leave for something better. If there isn't anything better, well maybe they weren't getting screwed after all.
As our information collection gets better, hidden income sources get eliminated. Then the question becomes- does the "honest" rate really need to be raised?
Yes.
If the "honest" rate is too low, and the only way to make money is by being dishonest, than only the dishonest will work in that field. That's a situation I'd rather discourage than encourage.
For example- truck drivers used to be expected to make 8 stops and were paid 8x dollars.
Once GPS came in, suddenly they are being expected to make 11 stops (because the gps showed they were sitting around for 20 minutes) and work 100% while on. But the pay is still 8x dollars.
I wonder if there is a correlation between how much the out of town rate was activated and how slow a day the driver was having?
Our drivers in Houston are certainly not retiring wealthy (unlike some of our police sergeants). Cab driving should provide a decent living and with government intervention in rates, that can be tricky at times.
If not idling reduces their job satisfaction that much than fewer people will drive trucks, and eventually they'll have to raise wages to attract more drivers.
If not idling didn't actually reduce their job satisfaction... Well then what's the problem? More work is getting done and no one is any less happy, it's good for everyone!
Note the cab drivers aren't idiots, if they can't make a living at the given rates than they simply won't drive cabs.
Well in the case of evolution and ID it is pretty clear which is BS, but the average student doesn't necessarily have the background to see the problems in the ID argument.
That's what the teacher is for.
I was taught about various creation myths in religious studies lessons. The Christianity lesson went something like this. The only mention of ID in science lessons was when the teacher ridiculed a school board in Kansas one day. (It'd been in the news.)
But I don't see why you couldn't mention it in a textbook as well, particularly as not all teachers may have the knowledge to debunk it. (note I think it's a bad idea to mention ID in class at all because it's more distraction than it's worth).
A lot of these bad systems
I think you're bringing your own politics into this.
There's no problem teaching about communism, or reading stuff by Marx. If you want to show it's a bad idea pick some other sources. I'd suggest photographs and first-hand accounts from any European communist country in the mid-late 20th century. I'd also suggest looking some American media from that time, it'll probably be good practise for spotting bias.
I've posted this elsewhere in this discussion, but it's more relevant here: analysing sources.
You actually just kind of made my point (which suggests I didn't communicate very well since you felt you had to make it!)
If you're giving students primary sources, which are heavily biased, than your selection of sources becomes absolutely critical.
That was the original origin of the discussion, the OP saying to use original sources so they make up their own mind and me pointing out that there's a ton of bias in this.
I don't argue that it's good to use some primary sources, including some biased ones to learn about analysing sources. But I was trying to point out that the idea of a course as a reading list of primary sources is a bad idea.
It's much much tougher to eliminate bias in your selection of primary sources than it is to write a bias free textbook.
Show me one. Throughout all my education I have not found a bias-free textbook.
I should have phrased that better, you obviously can't omit bias completely, but it's easier to give a balanced synopsis or overview than to choose a selection of primary sources in a fair manner.
Do you really expect them to have the expertise to tell which one is science and which is BS?
The thing is, no one knows exactly. The great thing is you encourage -thinking- if you only read the Diary of Anne Frank you are using an unreliable, biased source. Same thing with only reading Mein Kampf. If you read Mein Kampf you quickly realize Hitler was a terrible author and really outlines his arguments poorly. But, if you don't teach both sides to a story you can lead to things like the Neo-Nazi movement where in the propaganda movement of post-WWII you have things being exaggerated and the entire German army being vilified, which naturally, leads to sympathizers. If we teach both sides its easy to tell which side has the more outlandish arguments. For example, take this strange argument that quite honestly doesn't hold up.
Well in the case of evolution and ID it is pretty clear which is BS, but the average student doesn't necessarily have the background to see the problems in the ID argument.
As for teaching both sides I have no problem with that, nor do I have a problem reading excerpts of certain books or perhaps an editorial penned by a Nazi.
But not all bad ideas are poorly presented. Marx managed to convince several nations that communism worked on the basis of his writing, and there are probably people here who would vigorously defend Ayn Rand's vision. I think Rand is a great example because I believe we make arguments by telling stories. I tell my story of how reality works, than give a solution that fits my story, you do the same.
A lot of these bad systems fall apart not because they're internally inconsistent, but because the stories they tell don't conform to reality. Communism fails not because it's poorly designed, but because people are a lot less altruistic and a lot more self-motivated than the people in its story. Ayn Rand's vision falls apart because people are more altruistic and less self-motivated than her characters. The problem with children in particular is that they don't have the life experience to know that a story is wrong, so they don't see why the argument is bad.
If today all further Aryan influence on Japan should stop, assuming that Europe and America should perish, Japan's present rise in science and technology might continue for a short time; but even in a few years the well would dry up, the Japanese special character would gain, but the present culture would freeze and sink back into the slumber from which it was awakened seven decades ago by the wave of Aryan culture.
Even a basic student would look at this statement and wonder how this would hold up, considering that Japan is doing quite well without the instruction of Hitler's Aryan race of blond haired, blue eyed Nordic people.
The point being, its impossible to write a bias free textbook, and by reading primary sources it is quite easy to figure out which ideology is better.
If that's the case why didn't the German's figure it out until they lost the war?
Why did the USSR last for so long? Sure there was a dictatorship effect, but there were also a lot of Russians who saw both sides of the argument and still though communism worked better, and there were a lot of dedicated Nazi's who thought Hitler was the good guy.
Going to have them read Mein Kampf when they learn about Nazism? What about the diaries of Ann Frank?
My guess is everyone reading Mein Kampf may create some Nazi sympathizers, everyone reading Ann Frank will de-convert some Nazi sympathizers.
Have them read the Selfish Gene in biology? What about an ID book? Do you really expect them to have the expertise to tell which one is science and which is BS?
Primary sources work when you have a lot of time to perform a thorough survey and become an expert in the subject. For HS students they only have time to read one, maybe two primary sources, and they don't have the background to evaluate anything complicated.
It's much much tougher to eliminate bias in your selection of primary sources than it is to write a bias free textbook.
using the same password for their email account as they do with their social networking sites then people should expect to be compromised.
I suggest you use 4 types of passwords, one for accounts that wouldnt effect u much, one for email, one for social sites and IM, and one for bank accounts; with none of the passwords having anything to do with each other, e.g redball, orangeball,greenball... or whiteball, soccer, redflag... as this limits the guess work.
Supposedly they did,
"Here's how Mark described his hack to a friend:
Mark used his site, TheFacebook.com, to look up members of the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson. Then he examined a log of failed logins to see if any of the Crimson members had ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com. If the cases in which they had entered failed logins, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts. He successfully accessed two of them."
this "hack" was probably just stupid curiosity which will probably get him arrested, and once that happens he will loose a lot of control of the company.
I have no idea whether this stuff it true or provable, but if the article is accurate this wasn't curiosity. This was some seriously immoral/dishonest stuff.
"Youths" don't stay young forever. Before very long they'll be adults, with legitimate reasons to be at stores and train stations and bus stops, but they still won't like the music. Any place that continues to play it will be driving away a whole lot of customers.
Just pick a new genre every 5-10 years:)
However I'm guessing that it's only the repeat troublemakers who would actually hear enough Mozart to develop an aversion.
And those repeat troublemakers probably end up forming most of the adult troublemakers too. Those stores and train stations may find it advantageous to keep the music blaring when they grow up (noting they'll lose the business of a few good adults who were troublemakers as kids).
Note I think the article is also a lot of hype. I doubt there's many students developing a pathological fear of Mozart, though they may be learning to associate it with discipline and authority which could make them uncomfortable. However I think the best explanation of the youth deterrent came from the article "It's pretty uncool to be seen hanging around somewhere when Mozart is playing."
I'm actually pretty impressed, I didn't expect they'd be this successful getting a development community and a working driver going. I'm curious as to the stability, I noticed there was one issue with the fonts in the review. Personally stability would be the big selling point for me, I've had issues with the proprietary drivers in the past and it would be great if there was a highly dependable open source driver I could count on.
On a related topic does anyone know the state of the open source ATI driver? I saw a phoronix article claiming it was more popular than the proprietary one but other than that I don't know what it has for performance or features. It would be interesting to compare since the ATI made the specs available.
(1) Based on the standard rules of statistical acceptance, a study only has to reach requires a 95% confidence level. That means that 1 in every 20 identical studies will produce a false positive merely by chance. When you have an area of study in which thousands of studies have been done over decades you end up with hundreds of studies reporting positive results just by chance.
(2) Statistical meta analysis of studies is largely nonsense unless your talking about a field in which nearly identical studies are done over and over again. Usually, when these meta studies hit the media you find they they equally weight to every study regardless of presumed rigor of the studies. In this case, the gold standard is the Swedish study that followed tens of thousands of people over decades. How to you compare that to a study that just data mined a few hundred medical records?
You also need to consider publication bias.
Find a link between cancer and cell phones? That's a publication.
Didn't find anything? Not so interesting, might not bother.
Interestingly it's not impossible to detect a publication bias, would be interesting to try that approach on these studies.
Okay, first Ad Hominem is completely valid when the messengers credibility is part of the argument.
When Dr. Wakefield says "I did a study that shows vaccines caused autism" it's completely valid to argue "But there's evidence you fabricated data and had a massive conflict of interest!"
When Jenny McCarthy says "vaccines made my son autistic" it's completely valid to say "but you have no training as a doctor, how are you qualified to make that assessment".
Those are both ad hominems and they are both very correct logic.
The truth always exists, and is always the truth. The trick is to find the truth. If you insist on believing only absolutely provable truths than you won't believe anything outside of mathematics. And if you don't use strategies like delegating some of that reasoning to trustworthy parties you won't even believe most of what we've proven in math.
I'm not saying that because the experts believe X that X becomes true. I'm saying that all the experts believe X is good evidence than X is much more likely to be true.
If every round-worlder was an idiot it would be evidence that the world is not round. If none of the intelligent experts think the world is round that's pretty convincing evidence that it isn't round to me.
Well, at least I can see what your problem is, even if you can't.
I'm sorry, would you care to elaborate?
Are you thinking that you tricked me into defending a ridiculous claim thus exposing a flaw in my logic? If so you've missed the point.
Ignoring the fact that the world isn't a perfect sphere (so the non-round statement is semi-defensible), all you did was posit an alternate reality where the expert consensus was in favour of a non-round earth, a reality that clearly isn't this one.
you suggested that the pharmaceutical industry might be engaged in a massive coverup.
They're certainly capable. Has one taken place? I don't know. They have motive. It's not enough for any kind of decision, but I'm open to the idea. I'll wait to see if anyone claims evidence.
You seem to be under the impression that this is wacky and impossible.
It's a question of scale, and of who to believe. I know of a lot of medical researchers who are very critical of the pharmaceutical industry, and they don't think there's a remote possibility of a cover-up. (and they think the anti-vaxxers are nuts)
Are they that gullible? Are they bought off? Or are these researchers, experts in their field, missing the possible cover-up for some other reason?
... an unethical doctor with massive conflicts of interest and airhead former playboy models...
Instead what I'm doing is pointing out that all the messengers are unethical, uneducated, or quacks, and can't be relied on to be right about the question in point.
Am I supposed to laugh or cry?
Oh, and it is still ad hominem. If every round-worlder were an idiot, it would make the world no less round. Attacking every messenger does not absolve you from faulty logic.
My logic is not faulty, you misunderstand Ad Hominem. It's an absolutely valid argument to attack the credibility and the expertise of the anti-vaxxers. There's a very good reason why they don't have any credible experts, it's because they're wrong!!
If every round-worlder was an idiot it would be evidence that the world is not round. If none of the intelligent experts think the world is round that's pretty convincing evidence that it isn't round to me.
If you aren't going to use credibility and expertise as evidence how are you going to make a decision on what's truth? Do you really think you have the ability to evaluate every controversial claim on the planet and come to a better conclusion than the experts? Or everytime someone comes up to you and says "I think the world is a tetrahedron!" are you going to think, "hmm, maybe NASA is wrong!"
There's way too much anecdotal evidence, even if there is no merit.
The plural of anecdote isn't data.
Get off your high horse for a moment. I didn't call it data, and I said that there may be no merit. Please refrain from strawmen arguments. I merely said that debate would continue because of it. Nothing more.
Yes you said there may be no merit, you implied that the scientific community was as deceptive in their research as the anti-vaxxers, you suggested that the pharmaceutical industry might be engaged in a massive coverup.
The problem is you're essentially using the old "there are two sides to every story and the truth lies somewhere inbetween". Well if I'm a member of the flat earth society does the planet suddenly become less round?
In this case there is a very reliable way to ascertain the truth, the scientific method, and this method has shown that vaccines are almost absolutely certain not to cause autism.
but when your movement is led...
It's not my movement. It's a movement that I watch with concern, but it's not one that I've sided with. I'm interested in the claims and facts from both sides.
Bad pronoun on my part, I meant "you" as in "say you are walking down the street", I didn't mean to imply that you were an anti-vaxxer but was talking about a hypothetical person who was.
Also, not to engage in Ad-Hominems, but...
Followed by an ad hominem. Cute.
Not quite. An ad hominem is basically attacking the messenger, not the message. Instead what I'm doing is pointing out that all the messengers are unethical, uneducated, or quacks, and can't be relied on to be right about the question in point. Ad hominems are wrong because your attack only works if you happen to find a representative who is flawed for some reason other than the message, but good representatives exist.
My attack was valid because ALL the anti-vaxxer representatives are fundamentally flawed, in a way that questions their ability to be a reliable expert on vaccines.
For instance if one teller at a bank was convicted of murder and you claim that teller means the bank is crooked, that's an ad-hominem.
If instead the entire board of the bank is being investigated for fraud, bribery, and embezzlement. Well you might have reason to think the bank isn't legit.
Slashdot Mirror
Our most brilliant citizens are pulled into Wall Street as "quants" or traders or corporate lawyers, and are often paid six and seven figure remuneration per year. And to do what? To game the system in favor of their wealthy masters at the expense of the middle classes.
Hey! What do you have against quants!
The steps that these scientists would have us make involve trillions of dollars. It's not enough that they are confident of their numbers. They must offer proof. The word "proof" obviously involves a more rigorous standard than that to which you are accustomed, at least in the financial case.
And in this case of climatology the word "proof" implies an impossible standard.
This research has been going on for 30 years, yes it could be better, any research could be better, but at some point we need to take action on the information we do have.
Btw, the only part of the report I saw that actually implied some issue with the quality of the results was the part where they could use professional statisticians.
The Panel was not concerned with the question of whether the conclusions of
the published research were correct. Rather it was asked to come to a view on
the integrity of the Unit's research and whether as far as could be determined
the conclusions represented an honest and scientifically justified interpretation
of the data. The Panel worked by examining representative publications by
members of the Unit and subsequently by making two visits to the University
and interviewing and questioning members of the Unit. Not all the panel were
present on both occasions but two members were present on both occasions to
maintain continuity. About fifteen person/days were spent at the University
discussing the Unit's work.
So... we didn't look into whether their numbers were right. We looked over their published papers and chatted with them a couple of times and they seem like forthright folks. We won't tell you who was there each time - that would be too much disclosure.
No whitewash here. Oh, no. Further:
Yeah, they were supposed to redo the peer review process on everything that was published...
We have not exhaustively reviewed the external criticism of the
dendroclimatological work, but it seems that some of these criticisms show a
rather selective and uncharitable approach to information made available by
CRU.
So people who want hard numbers, underlying datasets and provenance of data are being "uncharitable".
No it means that all those things were already available in all but a small handful of instances. And when you excluded that small amount of unpublished data it made absolutely no difference in the conclusions.
So these people are screaming fraud and conspiracy over unreleased data that doesn't actually change the conclusions. Calling them "uncharitable" is actually pretty charitable.
In the latter part of the 20th century CRU pioneered the methods for taking into
account a wide range of local influences that can make instrumental records
from different locations hard to compare. These methods were very labour
intensive and were somewhat subjective.
The methods were subjective? This is science? Maybe it's me. Maybe I don't understand the term "science".
I have a feeling your definition of "subjective" is a lot different than their definition of "subjective".
We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that
depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close
collaboration with professional statisticians.
Here we go. That's an axe to the groin there.
Research like this isn't binary right or wrong. They got good results, but the could have gotten better with professional statisticians.
We agree with the CRU view that the authority for releasing unpublished raw data to third parties should stay with those who collected it.
Ah, but then they don't need to provide provenance or data. That's so comforting.
I am so mollified by this report I'm left without speech. It seems perfectly reasonable, rational and diligent to me. Let's close this case and begin the Cap&Trade.
This is basic copyright law.
I (company owning weather stations) give you access to my data for your research. You can use my data to make your conclusions stronger, but I intend to sell my data to make money so you better not release my data to the public.
Now the fun thing with this "controversy" is it's completely irrelevant!
Using the unpublished station data makes the error bars smaller, but the conclusions don't change!! So how does unpublished data that doesn't change the conclusions amount to a conspiracy?!
Actually it's more of... well I can't think of a good metaphor.
But to say "Go around the long way. It's harder, but if we had known about this shit we'd be going that way too" is pretty disingenuous since we got rich going the easy way and still don't show any signs of being serious about going the hard way.
It's hypocritical of the developed nations who got rich filling the atmosphere with carbon to tell the developing nations they can't do the same while we're still filling the atmosphere with carbon.
In practice, the Java community only uses two or three JVMs (IBM's, JRockit, and OpenJDK from Sun), while others are research efforts or smaller-scale open-source projects, said author and consultant Ted Neward. "Virtual machines are not something the open-source community seems to want to experiment with."
gcj, ecj, GNU Classpath, Kaffe, Jikes, etc.
Now many of these merged, and much of the development has stopped altogether since Sun went GPL, but it's pretty misleading to claim "Virtual machines are not something the open-source community seems to want to experiment with." Before Java was open-sourced there were many free JVMs in active development, they didn't have the entire API implemented and debugged, but I was able to run Eclipse on a free software stack before OpenJDK.
Now most of these projects are no longer really developed since the developers went onto OpenJDK, because it is GPL and the standard, but there was a pretty impressive development effort before then.
Actually open source isn't a democracy, it's a meritocracy.
In a democracy everyone gets the same vote, in a meritocracy the power is wielded by those who do the best work.
Meritocracies, at least with open source, actually work better than democracy. In a democracy it's mob rule because most people are making decisions based on very incomplete information. In a meritocracy it's the people who have the knowledge and the ability who decide the direction while the users have very little direct power. Now with a country this could lead to autocracy because the people are trapped in the landmass, but with open source there's no lock-in, thus the leaders can't abuse their power and you get a highly functional political system.
There's a reason people call Linus the benevolent dictator for life, he can do whatever he wants with the source tree, but he makes very good decisions with that power and that's why people follow him.
...that should be the title. Take the airbag that deploys in a car to help prevent death or serious injury in an automobile accident. The airbag is patented.
http://www.patents.com/Airbag/US6866291/en-US/
If a car company manufactures an automobile, and there is a production error, and the airbags aren't installed, they will be liable for damages suffered by the owners of the car who suffer accidents. They sold a product without standard safety features. It has nothing to do with a patent.
From the article
Then, suddenly, the hubbub fell silent. In 2002, Ryobi, which initially signed a contract with SawStop, pulled out. Manufacturers, interested at first, refused to license their device.
Gass remembered they told him, "Safety doesn't sell." So, the trio decided to design their own line of saws, raising about $3 million from friends, family members and strangers.
The only company using this "standard safety feature" is the company that the inventor started.
As for the cost
SawStop asks for licensing fees of 3 percent of the saw's wholesale price to start. As the device becomes more widespread, the fees could increase to 8 percent. The price of table saws range from $200 to several thousand dollars.
If I was buying a saw I'd probably pay an extra %3 for this feature, but then again I'm not buying a saw.
What obligations do manufactures have to include safety devices that are an economic loss?
as an aside, i always thought a good jumping off point for lotr fanfiction/ hollywood exploitation would be an examination of the blue wizards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Wizards
so little is sketched by tolkien of them and the world to the east of mordor they went too, that it could make for some great lotr-type stories without stepping on any middle earth toes or the fanboys who guard the mythology's continuity
it could have an east asian or russian mythology theme, keeping in touch with all those maps that overlay mordor with either germany, transylvania, or the middle east
and maybe we would get more oliphants! ;-P
I've always felt that the Blue Wizards were a great example of what made Tolkien so great. Virtually nothing is said about the Blue Wizards, but we know they came along with Gandalf and Saruman (and Radagast) then went off to the east, which is about half of Middle-Earth world we know virtually nothing about (other than the fact Sauron apparently had allies there).
That's part of why I love LOTR, LOTR is huge, but the world its set in feels so much larger.
That being said I'm not sure how I feel about that part of the mystery being explored, particularly if it's done so in a poor manner. However, they might do it well and introduce even more mystery, and if they do really blow it I can just pretend it never existed.
Gimme your /etc/shadow too. What's the problem? It's encrypted.
Ok,
root:$bJKLH$f32829fnkcj@#FBli23fbf#@98f4Nlkf@$#kl32f$89F7823nbjkDSfdsnfjkesfejkwhgfhwkej#$f$fdskhgju:14388:0:99999:7:::
Huh? What?
How do you write code to do PR/create docs? Please, be my hero.
Simple, you obviously just need to write a program capable of passing the Turing Test.
Of course when you finish you probably want to give it some interesting tasks besides just PR/documentation, last thing you want is for it to get pissed off and go all Skynet.
If not idling reduces their job satisfaction that much than fewer people will drive trucks, and eventually they'll have to raise wages to attract more drivers.
This assumes that "fewer people" is still not all the companies need. It's a bad economy, with few jobs, and even when there were more jobs I'd imagine the supply of truck jobs was limited. The more truckers there are compared to the number of truck jobs, the worse they can make the working conditions; if there are only enough jobs for half of them they can make the working conditions so bad that 50% of them would rather starve than work under those conditions, without raising wages at all.
Well the goods have to get there somehow. Now in a bad economy maybe some employers do try to exploit their employees to a greater degree than usual. But the moment the economy is strong again those employees might be looking for greener pastures and that boss will suddenly regret the fact that all their best most experienced employees are leaving.
I'm not a super right wing libertarian of anything, and in the employer-employee relationship I do think that the employer does have an advantage.
But I also think that people tend to forget that employees have minds of their own and aren't helpless slaves. If they are getting screwed they can, and will, leave for something better. If there isn't anything better, well maybe they weren't getting screwed after all.
This is a tricky point for me.
As our information collection gets better, hidden income sources get eliminated.
Then the question becomes- does the "honest" rate really need to be raised?
Yes.
If the "honest" rate is too low, and the only way to make money is by being dishonest, than only the dishonest will work in that field. That's a situation I'd rather discourage than encourage.
For example- truck drivers used to be expected to make 8 stops and were paid 8x dollars.
Once GPS came in, suddenly they are being expected to make 11 stops (because the gps showed they were sitting around for 20 minutes) and work 100% while on. But the pay is still 8x dollars.
I wonder if there is a correlation between how much the out of town rate was activated and how slow a day the driver was having?
Our drivers in Houston are certainly not retiring wealthy (unlike some of our police sergeants). Cab driving should provide a decent living and with government intervention in rates, that can be tricky at times.
If not idling reduces their job satisfaction that much than fewer people will drive trucks, and eventually they'll have to raise wages to attract more drivers.
If not idling didn't actually reduce their job satisfaction... Well then what's the problem? More work is getting done and no one is any less happy, it's good for everyone!
Note the cab drivers aren't idiots, if they can't make a living at the given rates than they simply won't drive cabs.
Well in the case of evolution and ID it is pretty clear which is BS, but the average student doesn't necessarily have the background to see the problems in the ID argument.
That's what the teacher is for.
I was taught about various creation myths in religious studies lessons. The Christianity lesson went something like this.
The only mention of ID in science lessons was when the teacher ridiculed a school board in Kansas one day. (It'd been in the news.)
But I don't see why you couldn't mention it in a textbook as well, particularly as not all teachers may have the knowledge to debunk it. (note I think it's a bad idea to mention ID in class at all because it's more distraction than it's worth).
A lot of these bad systems
I think you're bringing your own politics into this.
There's no problem teaching about communism, or reading stuff by Marx. If you want to show it's a bad idea pick some other sources. I'd suggest photographs and first-hand accounts from any European communist country in the mid-late 20th century. I'd also suggest looking some American media from that time, it'll probably be good practise for spotting bias.
I've posted this elsewhere in this discussion, but it's more relevant here: analysing sources.
You actually just kind of made my point (which suggests I didn't communicate very well since you felt you had to make it!)
If you're giving students primary sources, which are heavily biased, than your selection of sources becomes absolutely critical.
That was the original origin of the discussion, the OP saying to use original sources so they make up their own mind and me pointing out that there's a ton of bias in this.
I don't argue that it's good to use some primary sources, including some biased ones to learn about analysing sources. But I was trying to point out that the idea of a course as a reading list of primary sources is a bad idea.
It's much much tougher to eliminate bias in your selection of primary sources than it is to write a bias free textbook.
Show me one. Throughout all my education I have not found a bias-free textbook.
I should have phrased that better, you obviously can't omit bias completely, but it's easier to give a balanced synopsis or overview than to choose a selection of primary sources in a fair manner.
Do you really expect them to have the expertise to tell which one is science and which is BS?
The thing is, no one knows exactly. The great thing is you encourage -thinking- if you only read the Diary of Anne Frank you are using an unreliable, biased source. Same thing with only reading Mein Kampf. If you read Mein Kampf you quickly realize Hitler was a terrible author and really outlines his arguments poorly. But, if you don't teach both sides to a story you can lead to things like the Neo-Nazi movement where in the propaganda movement of post-WWII you have things being exaggerated and the entire German army being vilified, which naturally, leads to sympathizers. If we teach both sides its easy to tell which side has the more outlandish arguments. For example, take this strange argument that quite honestly doesn't hold up.
Well in the case of evolution and ID it is pretty clear which is BS, but the average student doesn't necessarily have the background to see the problems in the ID argument.
As for teaching both sides I have no problem with that, nor do I have a problem reading excerpts of certain books or perhaps an editorial penned by a Nazi.
But not all bad ideas are poorly presented. Marx managed to convince several nations that communism worked on the basis of his writing, and there are probably people here who would vigorously defend Ayn Rand's vision. I think Rand is a great example because I believe we make arguments by telling stories. I tell my story of how reality works, than give a solution that fits my story, you do the same.
A lot of these bad systems fall apart not because they're internally inconsistent, but because the stories they tell don't conform to reality. Communism fails not because it's poorly designed, but because people are a lot less altruistic and a lot more self-motivated than the people in its story. Ayn Rand's vision falls apart because people are more altruistic and less self-motivated than her characters. The problem with children in particular is that they don't have the life experience to know that a story is wrong, so they don't see why the argument is bad.
If today all further Aryan influence on Japan should stop, assuming that Europe and America should perish, Japan's present rise in science and technology might continue for a short time; but even in a few years the well would dry up, the Japanese special character would gain, but the present culture would freeze and sink back into the slumber from which it was awakened seven decades ago by the wave of Aryan culture.
Even a basic student would look at this statement and wonder how this would hold up, considering that Japan is doing quite well without the instruction of Hitler's Aryan race of blond haired, blue eyed Nordic people.
The point being, its impossible to write a bias free textbook, and by reading primary sources it is quite easy to figure out which ideology is better.
If that's the case why didn't the German's figure it out until they lost the war?
Why did the USSR last for so long? Sure there was a dictatorship effect, but there were also a lot of Russians who saw both sides of the argument and still though communism worked better, and there were a lot of dedicated Nazi's who thought Hitler was the good guy.
Going to have them read Mein Kampf when they learn about Nazism? What about the diaries of Ann Frank?
My guess is everyone reading Mein Kampf may create some Nazi sympathizers, everyone reading Ann Frank will de-convert some Nazi sympathizers.
Have them read the Selfish Gene in biology? What about an ID book? Do you really expect them to have the expertise to tell which one is science and which is BS?
Primary sources work when you have a lot of time to perform a thorough survey and become an expert in the subject. For HS students they only have time to read one, maybe two primary sources, and they don't have the background to evaluate anything complicated.
It's much much tougher to eliminate bias in your selection of primary sources than it is to write a bias free textbook.
using the same password for their email account as they do with their social networking sites then people should expect to be compromised.
I suggest you use 4 types of passwords, one for accounts that wouldnt effect u much, one for email, one for social sites and IM, and one for bank accounts; with none of the passwords having anything to do with each other, e.g redball, orangeball,greenball... or whiteball, soccer, redflag ... as this limits the guess work.
Supposedly they did,
"Here's how Mark described his hack to a friend:
Mark used his site, TheFacebook.com, to look up members of the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson. Then he examined a log of failed logins to see if any of the Crimson members had ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com. If the cases in which they had entered failed logins, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts. He successfully accessed two of them."
this "hack" was probably just stupid curiosity which will probably get him arrested, and once that happens he will loose a lot of control of the company.
I have no idea whether this stuff it true or provable, but if the article is accurate this wasn't curiosity. This was some seriously immoral/dishonest stuff.
"Youths" don't stay young forever. Before very long they'll be adults, with legitimate reasons to be at stores and train stations and bus stops, but they still won't like the music. Any place that continues to play it will be driving away a whole lot of customers.
Just pick a new genre every 5-10 years :)
However I'm guessing that it's only the repeat troublemakers who would actually hear enough Mozart to develop an aversion.
And those repeat troublemakers probably end up forming most of the adult troublemakers too. Those stores and train stations may find it advantageous to keep the music blaring when they grow up (noting they'll lose the business of a few good adults who were troublemakers as kids).
Note I think the article is also a lot of hype. I doubt there's many students developing a pathological fear of Mozart, though they may be learning to associate it with discipline and authority which could make them uncomfortable. However I think the best explanation of the youth deterrent came from the article "It's pretty uncool to be seen hanging around somewhere when Mozart is playing."
Don't confuse two the public debate with the scientific debate.
The public debate is as screwy as any political debate.
But I'm don't think that the actual scientists are remotely as compromised as the denialists claim they are.
I'm actually pretty impressed, I didn't expect they'd be this successful getting a development community and a working driver going. I'm curious as to the stability, I noticed there was one issue with the fonts in the review. Personally stability would be the big selling point for me, I've had issues with the proprietary drivers in the past and it would be great if there was a highly dependable open source driver I could count on.
On a related topic does anyone know the state of the open source ATI driver? I saw a phoronix article claiming it was more popular than the proprietary one but other than that I don't know what it has for performance or features. It would be interesting to compare since the ATI made the specs available.
"When you have a planet with a population of nearly 7 billion"
No results found for "When you have a planet with a population of nearly 7 billion".
"who claimed that they developed ideas independently"
No results found for "who claimed that they developed ideas independently".
"If the offense is blatant copy-infringement"
No results found for "If the offense is blatant copy-infringement".
(1) Based on the standard rules of statistical acceptance, a study only has to reach requires a 95% confidence level. That means that 1 in every 20 identical studies will produce a false positive merely by chance. When you have an area of study in which thousands of studies have been done over decades you end up with hundreds of studies reporting positive results just by chance.
(2) Statistical meta analysis of studies is largely nonsense unless your talking about a field in which nearly identical studies are done over and over again. Usually, when these meta studies hit the media you find they they equally weight to every study regardless of presumed rigor of the studies. In this case, the gold standard is the Swedish study that followed tens of thousands of people over decades. How to you compare that to a study that just data mined a few hundred medical records?
You also need to consider publication bias.
Find a link between cancer and cell phones? That's a publication.
Didn't find anything? Not so interesting, might not bother.
Interestingly it's not impossible to detect a publication bias, would be interesting to try that approach on these studies.
Okay, first Ad Hominem is completely valid when the messengers credibility is part of the argument.
When Dr. Wakefield says "I did a study that shows vaccines caused autism" it's completely valid to argue "But there's evidence you fabricated data and had a massive conflict of interest!"
When Jenny McCarthy says "vaccines made my son autistic" it's completely valid to say "but you have no training as a doctor, how are you qualified to make that assessment".
Those are both ad hominems and they are both very correct logic.
The truth always exists, and is always the truth. The trick is to find the truth. If you insist on believing only absolutely provable truths than you won't believe anything outside of mathematics. And if you don't use strategies like delegating some of that reasoning to trustworthy parties you won't even believe most of what we've proven in math.
I'm not saying that because the experts believe X that X becomes true. I'm saying that all the experts believe X is good evidence than X is much more likely to be true.
If every round-worlder was an idiot it would be evidence that the world is not round. If none of the intelligent experts think the world is round that's pretty convincing evidence that it isn't round to me.
Well, at least I can see what your problem is, even if you can't.
I'm sorry, would you care to elaborate?
Are you thinking that you tricked me into defending a ridiculous claim thus exposing a flaw in my logic? If so you've missed the point.
Ignoring the fact that the world isn't a perfect sphere (so the non-round statement is semi-defensible), all you did was posit an alternate reality where the expert consensus was in favour of a non-round earth, a reality that clearly isn't this one.
you suggested that the pharmaceutical industry might be engaged in a massive coverup.
They're certainly capable. Has one taken place? I don't know. They have motive. It's not enough for any kind of decision, but I'm open to the idea. I'll wait to see if anyone claims evidence.
You seem to be under the impression that this is wacky and impossible.
It's a question of scale, and of who to believe. I know of a lot of medical researchers who are very critical of the pharmaceutical industry, and they don't think there's a remote possibility of a cover-up. (and they think the anti-vaxxers are nuts)
Are they that gullible? Are they bought off? Or are these researchers, experts in their field, missing the possible cover-up for some other reason?
... an unethical doctor with massive conflicts of interest and airhead former playboy models...
Instead what I'm doing is pointing out that all the messengers are unethical, uneducated, or quacks, and can't be relied on to be right about the question in point.
Am I supposed to laugh or cry?
Oh, and it is still ad hominem. If every round-worlder were an idiot, it would make the world no less round. Attacking every messenger does not absolve you from faulty logic.
My logic is not faulty, you misunderstand Ad Hominem. It's an absolutely valid argument to attack the credibility and the expertise of the anti-vaxxers. There's a very good reason why they don't have any credible experts, it's because they're wrong!!
If every round-worlder was an idiot it would be evidence that the world is not round. If none of the intelligent experts think the world is round that's pretty convincing evidence that it isn't round to me.
If you aren't going to use credibility and expertise as evidence how are you going to make a decision on what's truth? Do you really think you have the ability to evaluate every controversial claim on the planet and come to a better conclusion than the experts? Or everytime someone comes up to you and says "I think the world is a tetrahedron!" are you going to think, "hmm, maybe NASA is wrong!"
There's way too much anecdotal evidence, even if there is no merit.
The plural of anecdote isn't data.
Get off your high horse for a moment. I didn't call it data, and I said that there may be no merit. Please refrain from strawmen arguments. I merely said that debate would continue because of it. Nothing more.
Yes you said there may be no merit, you implied that the scientific community was as deceptive in their research as the anti-vaxxers, you suggested that the pharmaceutical industry might be engaged in a massive coverup.
The problem is you're essentially using the old "there are two sides to every story and the truth lies somewhere inbetween". Well if I'm a member of the flat earth society does the planet suddenly become less round?
In this case there is a very reliable way to ascertain the truth, the scientific method, and this method has shown that vaccines are almost absolutely certain not to cause autism.
but when your movement is led...
It's not my movement. It's a movement that I watch with concern, but it's not one that I've sided with. I'm interested in the claims and facts from both sides.
Bad pronoun on my part, I meant "you" as in "say you are walking down the street", I didn't mean to imply that you were an anti-vaxxer but was talking about a hypothetical person who was.
Also, not to engage in Ad-Hominems, but...
Followed by an ad hominem. Cute.
Not quite. An ad hominem is basically attacking the messenger, not the message. Instead what I'm doing is pointing out that all the messengers are unethical, uneducated, or quacks, and can't be relied on to be right about the question in point. Ad hominems are wrong because your attack only works if you happen to find a representative who is flawed for some reason other than the message, but good representatives exist.
My attack was valid because ALL the anti-vaxxer representatives are fundamentally flawed, in a way that questions their ability to be a reliable expert on vaccines.
For instance if one teller at a bank was convicted of murder and you claim that teller means the bank is crooked, that's an ad-hominem.
If instead the entire board of the bank is being investigated for fraud, bribery, and embezzlement. Well you might have reason to think the bank isn't legit.