It's not even statistics, which is typically introduced at the college level. It's basic reasoning, at the level of middle school and high school science. The worst part is that people who seem to have poor reasoning skills are the ones who are asking for more "critical thinking" introduced in schools, so topics such as evolution and anthropogenic global warming can be "questioned". In other words, they want their faulty reasoning to be presented as if it's valid.
Well, it makes as much sense to blame water for crime as it does to blame craigslist, doesn't it? That is, unless you can demonstrate a causal relationship and not just a correlation. Remember kids, correlation does not imply causation!
Bingo. The study was done by AIM Group, "Consulting services for interactive media and classified advertising". It's probably in their best interest to shut down craigslist, because craigslist doesn't employ their services. One way is to start spreading FUD about craigslist with fancy-sounding studies that aren't based on any kind of sound reasoning at all.
The point I was making (it looks like you missed it) is that the size of the classified section of the local paper and the amount of crime in an area is roughly proportional to the population of the area. It's the size of the population that causes both effects. In your example, you're stating a correlation that has nothing to do with causation at all.
The amount of crime in a city has always been highly correlated with the size of the classified section of the local newspaper. Coincidence? I think not!
What about latencies? Those can be as important or even more important than download & upload speeds. Try doing VoIP over a 300 ms latency satellite connection.
What they're missing is that all of these criminals ingested significant quantities dihydrogen monoxide in the 48 hours before each of these crimes was committed. When will people learn?
Because people who like to download free music and movies make themselves feel comfortable by demonizing the industry they are ripping off to make themselves feel better. It's called cognitive dissonance. Accepting my explanation as valid would lead to uncomfortable feelings, so you'll see many posters make lame arguments about my very simple and valid explanation. You can see it all the time in arguments against evolution and anthropogenic global warming and other science that people don't want to believe.
Mozart's works were generally commissioned by the wealthy. Without copyright, we'd likely go back to a patronage system, and as a result we'd have significantly fewer books and movies. We'd have theater and music, because actors and musicians could charge audiences to see shows. We'd likely have television because broadcasters could keep shows from being copied until they were shown with ads. Books and movies, however, could be copied and distributed without money going back to the people who produced them.
How do you copy original works of art? Besides, I never said nothing of value would be created any more. I said there would be fewer things of value produced if works could be copied freely without the people who did the work getting paid. Perhaps some works would be commissioned by people who wouldn't need to make their money back, but I don't think any Hollywood type movies would be made if any theater could legally make a copy and show the film without paying the film company.
I would have to agree that the copyright and patent systems could be better. But abolishing them altogether could be disastrous. They do serve a purpose.
Perhaps the car analogy is that thousands are killed by cars every year, but abolishing cars could be a disaster. Just because you can think of a disadvantage of something doesn't mean it's all bad and should be abolished. Too many times what I say is reduced to "X is all good" or "X is all bad". There are tradeoffs. Life isn't black and white.
Okay... I'll tell you again. If there was no copyright, then everyone could simply copy the works of authors and they may not end up being paid for their work. If authors might not be paid for their work, there would be fewer authors. Copyright and patent law are all about making sure the people who did the work are compensated for their work and not ripped off. This helps ensure they will do the work.
I never realized that religious wars over differing programs were like sports until now. I've never understand how people can argue over vi vs. emacs or Firefox vs. Chrome vs. Opera. I've never been into sports, either. Is it some sort of territorial thing?
You'll want fast JavaScript when HTML5 matures and applications that use Canvas become popular. If browsers don't work on making JavaScript fast now, those applications won't materialize later.
You missed my point. I'd rather we start working on alternative energy now so it will more economical than fossil fuels sooner. Oh, wait, we already are. We now have solar panels that cost $1 per watt of electricity they generate. I'm glad we're working on making alternative energy cheaper and scaling it up before it is economical to do so. We should probably put more money into these projects, because we'll recoup our money and more later by having cheaper energy sooner.
No, it isn't what liberals think. Are you so desperate to make liberals look bad that you're going to take an obviously uninformed and ridiculous viewpoint and try to make it seem representative of what members of a political party think? I suppose that's one way to make an excuse for Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and the like.
There are technological barriers to things like AI and fusion. We simply don't know how to do them. On the other hand, we know exactly how to build solar energy plants and wind farms. There is no technological barrier to alternative energy, as the article points out.
Double whatever I'm paying now? I'll take it over tripling or quadrupling whatever I'm paying now as oil gets more scarce. At some point, it will be economical to switch to alternative energy. The sooner we start working on scaling it up, the earlier that will be, and the less we'll have to pay for energy. If we don't work on the technological challenges with scaling it up until it's already economical to do so, it will take decades to make the switch and we'll be stuck paying through the nose or even fighting over the fossil fuels that are left.
The Chinese population is continuing to rise because the one child policy has been in place for only several decades, and improvements in health have increased the average lifespan. The Chinese population will go down when people born before the one child policy die of old age, in a few decades.
I think "no economic barriers" is different from "more profitable". There were no economic barriers to going to the moon, but it was not profitable. Because there was no profit in it, we wouldn't expect companies to do it without public backing.
Actually, it can be easy to predict technological progress. The most popular technological prediction is Moore's Law. What's more interesting is whether we would be following Moore's Law if we didn't believe we could. If we had politicians saying we couldn't do it, and trying would destroy our economy, perhaps we'd be stuck with 20 MHz 32-bit processors.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you need to learn the old punctuation before you make up new punctuation.
It's not even statistics, which is typically introduced at the college level. It's basic reasoning, at the level of middle school and high school science. The worst part is that people who seem to have poor reasoning skills are the ones who are asking for more "critical thinking" introduced in schools, so topics such as evolution and anthropogenic global warming can be "questioned". In other words, they want their faulty reasoning to be presented as if it's valid.
Well, it makes as much sense to blame water for crime as it does to blame craigslist, doesn't it? That is, unless you can demonstrate a causal relationship and not just a correlation. Remember kids, correlation does not imply causation!
Bingo. The study was done by AIM Group, "Consulting services for interactive media and classified advertising". It's probably in their best interest to shut down craigslist, because craigslist doesn't employ their services. One way is to start spreading FUD about craigslist with fancy-sounding studies that aren't based on any kind of sound reasoning at all.
The point I was making (it looks like you missed it) is that the size of the classified section of the local paper and the amount of crime in an area is roughly proportional to the population of the area. It's the size of the population that causes both effects. In your example, you're stating a correlation that has nothing to do with causation at all.
The amount of crime in a city has always been highly correlated with the size of the classified section of the local newspaper. Coincidence? I think not!
What about latencies? Those can be as important or even more important than download & upload speeds. Try doing VoIP over a 300 ms latency satellite connection.
What they're missing is that all of these criminals ingested significant quantities dihydrogen monoxide in the 48 hours before each of these crimes was committed. When will people learn?
You let me know when copies of Picasso sell for millions of dollars.
Because people who like to download free music and movies make themselves feel comfortable by demonizing the industry they are ripping off to make themselves feel better. It's called cognitive dissonance. Accepting my explanation as valid would lead to uncomfortable feelings, so you'll see many posters make lame arguments about my very simple and valid explanation. You can see it all the time in arguments against evolution and anthropogenic global warming and other science that people don't want to believe.
Mozart's works were generally commissioned by the wealthy. Without copyright, we'd likely go back to a patronage system, and as a result we'd have significantly fewer books and movies. We'd have theater and music, because actors and musicians could charge audiences to see shows. We'd likely have television because broadcasters could keep shows from being copied until they were shown with ads. Books and movies, however, could be copied and distributed without money going back to the people who produced them.
How do you copy original works of art? Besides, I never said nothing of value would be created any more. I said there would be fewer things of value produced if works could be copied freely without the people who did the work getting paid. Perhaps some works would be commissioned by people who wouldn't need to make their money back, but I don't think any Hollywood type movies would be made if any theater could legally make a copy and show the film without paying the film company.
I would have to agree that the copyright and patent systems could be better. But abolishing them altogether could be disastrous. They do serve a purpose.
Perhaps the car analogy is that thousands are killed by cars every year, but abolishing cars could be a disaster. Just because you can think of a disadvantage of something doesn't mean it's all bad and should be abolished. Too many times what I say is reduced to "X is all good" or "X is all bad". There are tradeoffs. Life isn't black and white.
Okay... I'll tell you again. If there was no copyright, then everyone could simply copy the works of authors and they may not end up being paid for their work. If authors might not be paid for their work, there would be fewer authors. Copyright and patent law are all about making sure the people who did the work are compensated for their work and not ripped off. This helps ensure they will do the work.
I never realized that religious wars over differing programs were like sports until now. I've never understand how people can argue over vi vs. emacs or Firefox vs. Chrome vs. Opera. I've never been into sports, either. Is it some sort of territorial thing?
You'll want fast JavaScript when HTML5 matures and applications that use Canvas become popular. If browsers don't work on making JavaScript fast now, those applications won't materialize later.
You missed my point. I'd rather we start working on alternative energy now so it will more economical than fossil fuels sooner. Oh, wait, we already are. We now have solar panels that cost $1 per watt of electricity they generate. I'm glad we're working on making alternative energy cheaper and scaling it up before it is economical to do so. We should probably put more money into these projects, because we'll recoup our money and more later by having cheaper energy sooner.
No, it isn't what liberals think. Are you so desperate to make liberals look bad that you're going to take an obviously uninformed and ridiculous viewpoint and try to make it seem representative of what members of a political party think? I suppose that's one way to make an excuse for Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and the like.
There are technological barriers to things like AI and fusion. We simply don't know how to do them. On the other hand, we know exactly how to build solar energy plants and wind farms. There is no technological barrier to alternative energy, as the article points out.
Double whatever I'm paying now? I'll take it over tripling or quadrupling whatever I'm paying now as oil gets more scarce. At some point, it will be economical to switch to alternative energy. The sooner we start working on scaling it up, the earlier that will be, and the less we'll have to pay for energy. If we don't work on the technological challenges with scaling it up until it's already economical to do so, it will take decades to make the switch and we'll be stuck paying through the nose or even fighting over the fossil fuels that are left.
The Chinese population is continuing to rise because the one child policy has been in place for only several decades, and improvements in health have increased the average lifespan. The Chinese population will go down when people born before the one child policy die of old age, in a few decades.
I think "no economic barriers" is different from "more profitable". There were no economic barriers to going to the moon, but it was not profitable. Because there was no profit in it, we wouldn't expect companies to do it without public backing.
Actually, it can be easy to predict technological progress. The most popular technological prediction is Moore's Law. What's more interesting is whether we would be following Moore's Law if we didn't believe we could. If we had politicians saying we couldn't do it, and trying would destroy our economy, perhaps we'd be stuck with 20 MHz 32-bit processors.
Ah, The perfect is the enemy of the good. Could there possibly exist some things that are useful despite the fact that they are not perfect?
You can use Mozilla's Plugin Check. No installation required.