The biggest fallacy in this argument when applied to global warming is that in most of the cases listed, the majority of the culture agreed with the scientific establishment. That is, when the scientists said "Don't listen to those crazy people, fevers can't be prevented," most of the people listened and agreed. In contrast, in the case of global warming, the entire scientific establishment is warning people of global warming, and the general cultural response is to say "Don't listen to those crazy scientists, we can keep up our ever-rising standard of living without consequences."
When everyone agrees with the conventional wisdom, it is possible for a revolutionary thought to come along and change our understanding of a phenomenon. In this case, it is the entire scientific establishment that is advocating the "revolutionary" thought of global warming, and it seems that the people who dismiss the issue are almost exclusively the ones who are not well-educated in environmental science (I don't mean that in a snide or elitist way -- I honestly think that peer-reviewed journals are a fair way to gauge the opinions of "highly educated" people in a certain subject). This situation isn't really parallel to the Crichton examples at all.
Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.
An interesting point, since in this case "consensus" isn't being invoked as an argument in any actual research -- the research itself seems instead to simply provide information showing human effects on global warming. The "consensus" argument only needs to be invoked because, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, huge numbers of people who are not willing to thoroughly investigate or inform themselves on the issue are still willing to question 100% of the people who actually do the research. What about the polls that show that a significant fraction of the US population believes in UFOs? Does scientific consensus against them prove that UFOs exist? Of course not. Though there are exceptions, most of the time consensus in the scientific community is based on solid research results.
Show why peer reviewed journals are a valid source.
I doubt this will satisfy you, but -- the people who run and are published in peer reviewed journals for a given subject are almost exclusively the most educated people in that subject, and typically devote the majority of their lives to studying it. If you are going to trust anyone to do major research in this area, it almost by definition has to be these people. And they seem, so far, pretty unanimous.
I should emphasize that I'm not saying there is never bias in peer-reviewed journals, or that political concerns never prevent publication of valid research. Certainly political issues, professional rivalries, and funding can affect the peer review process. The notion I reject is that there is a strong case to be made against human impact on global warming, but that every single paper that talks about it has been rejected. Bias in individual instances, yes, or even bias against papers reaching an unpopular conclusion -- but bias so strong that there is not even a single exception?
You've also concluded that article reviewers have no personal stake. What's the basis for that conclusion? Lack of imagination?
No, personal experience and statistics. I don't work in environmental science, but I know many people who work in academia (and expect to end up there myself), and while funding and politics certainly matter, the vast majority of these people are voluntarily doing work for less pay than they could get elsewhere because they love the work, and want to learn more about their field of expertise. The notion that not only the majority of these researchers, but virtually all of them (in any way that can be measured) are deliberately suppressing valid research because of some personal stake in it seems very implausible to me. As I said above, in some cases, sure, but every single time? In every single journal, by every single review committee?
Because the government is much more likely to fund research into something that's "no big deal" than something that's a crisis.
My point was that right now it is to much of the elected government's advantage if people believe that global warming is not a serious issue. In that light, it seems that they should discourage doomsaying, especially if they thought it was inaccurate. Yes, exaggerating the importance of your research may get you more funding in the short term, but reaching the conclusion that our entire country needs to spend uber-billions of dollars cleaning up our act hardly seems like the sort of thing that would make the government happier about your research.
Okay, this shows such a poor understanding of the concept of a peer reviewed journal that I'm not even sure how to respond.
For starters, how many papers were rejected from the peer review process is almost entirely irrelevant. The peer review process is in place for a reason, and the reason is to ensure that bad science (not politically unpleasant conclusions) are not published in major journals. Unless you have a strong reason to believe that most peer reviewers have a strong personal stake in suppressing legitimate research because they don't like the conclusions, then this objection is bunk. We aren't talking about a 60-40 split on a controversial subject -- no papers that contradicted human involvement in global warming made it through the process. What possible benefit would it be to any of those reviewers to suppress opposing opinions? They have no personal stake one way or the other, except arguably their reputations, and that presupposes that there is not a single scientist that has done enough legitimate research to be a peer reviewer and yet still thinks global warming isn't a human issue (or at most, no more than a handful) -- a strong argument for thinking global warming is a significant issue, as far as I'm concerned.
You also rant about how these papers are only published because people don't want to lose funding by being perceived as anti-environment. It seems fairly evident that the current government establishment would be most served by producing strong evidence that global warming is not a serious issue -- so why would it be more politically safe to contradict the notion that things are okay, and question the status quo? If people wanted "safe" conclusions to ensure their funding, they would be saying that global warming is no big deal. Furthermore, you seem to be implying that no funding exists for the production of honest results. Again, this isn't a 60-40 split -- if anyone, even a single person, has ever received funding to do legitimate research on this subject, and has come up with findings against human involvement, it has not been able to make it through a peer review, which probably means that it used questionable methods or was otherwise flawed. Peer reviewers are not as politically motivated as you seem to suppose.
How can a survey of peer reviewed journals be a valid source of data when people are afraid to publish "the wrong results"?
A valid question, but one that is entirely irrelevant until you have shown that this fear actually exists.
Yes, and today you can easily buy DVDs to train you in any number of subjects, from languages to musical performance to cooking to history to carpentry to mathematics to...
The TVs really let us down on that one.
The fact that TV is not always educational doesn't mean that it can't enhance education, and the same is true for computers.
Other posts have already done a good job of debunking the severity of this budget increase compared to other stupid wastes of money (proportionately, this budget for NASA is only a moderate increase, especially in light of the costs of an ongoing war and questionable government subsidies).
What I find interesting is that there are suddenly a lot of comments saying how this is silly, and a waste of money. If the comments were primarily focusing on the destructive or impractical requirements that come along with the funding, I could understand, but a surprising number seem to be complaining about the funding itself.
That's interesting to me, because if memory serves, slashdotters on average tend to bemoan the lack of funding for space-related ventures, rather than the amount of money that is being wasted on them. I don't like Bush much, and he's certainly screwed up the budget in a lot of areas, but it confuses me when people criticize him for increasing funding to NASA, or the NSF, or NIH, when similar increases would probably be praised in a candidate that people liked a little bit more -- and I'm quite certain that if Bush actually cut funding for NASA, slashdot would be in an uproar over it.
Criticize him for an unjust war, or for counterproductive goals in space research, but the funding itself is a good thing as far as I'm concerned...
I am sure to be flamed by people who went to well known schools and swear by it
Speaking as someone who just graduated from a pretty high-up CS school (Carnegie Mellon), I actually agree with most of what you say. In my case, I'm glad I went to a good school because I want to go into research and teaching, which requires graduate school, and undergraduate schools are very important there -- so if you have any interest in academia or more advanced research, then yes, consider a transfer. However, it sounds like the poster is talking more about standard computer engineering, and for that the name of a school is only important in the really big-name companies like Microsoft or Google, and even then it's only important right out of school.
The only real danger is that many people start out perfectly happy in computer engineering only to find later on that they aren't as interested anymore -- however, barring more academic pursuits, the school you went to probably won't be a major barrier to other areas once you have some real-world experience.
But your car metaphor only extends so far. Yes, computers require training, and that's fine, but what's at stake here is the particular type of training. People require training to drive the car effectively, but we don't have to train them to distinguish between legitimate road signs and fraudulent ones.
Suppose companies started putting up fake road signs everywhere -- fake street names, fake stop signs, fake construction detour signs -- and suddenly every driver had to be "trained" to get to their destination without being distracted by all this, or making any wrong turns. That's the kind of situation we have with computers. Even though laws exist, enforcement is lax.
The metaphor doesn't go much further, of course (you can't program a car to recognize fake road signs:P). My point is just that you can't blame the end-users for everything, because they are being lied to, and education as a solution will only go so far.
No, people with kids do not owe you as long as they are working hard and fulfilling their contractual obligations to the company. As another poster said, the only person who could be argued to owe you is the person who asked you to do the work (which is most likely your employer).
The reason these things seem uneven is because, while some companies will be more flexible with people who have families, they expect single people to devote themselves heart and soul to the company. This is unreasonable on the part of the companies, not the people with families. Single people also have lives, friends, hobbies, and so on, and companies should not feel free to take that away.
Sometimes at my current job, when there's a deadline but I've already finished all my work, I'll kind of hang around to make sure nothing else comes up. But as it gets later and I have no work to do, I'll sometimes ask if there's anything else I can do to help, or if I can leave. The typical response is, "Why, do you need to be somewhere?" That question always seems strange to me. Well, no, I don't have any explicitly scheduled meetings tonight, and if it's important that I be here then I'll stay, but I do have a life and I would like to go home sometime tonight. Why does the company think I should be expected to stay there indefinitely, without any work to do, just because in their eyes I "don't need to be anywhere"? If they want to say their work is important, that's okay, but it frustrates me when they dismiss my life as though it were unimportant.
Bottom line, if you don't think the work you're expected to do is fair, don't do it. Make up excuses if you have to, whatever. But the fact that companies are unfairly prejudiced against single people doesn't mean the people with families need to make it up to you. This is an issue that people need to take up with the companies themselves.
No no... it would be "socialism in Iraq" if the means of production were all controlled by the Iraqi government. When it's all controlled by the US government, it's called "free market."
You need to get up to date with your patriotic vocabulary.
I bet many of the disgruntled programmers would be less disgruntled if they received comp time, bonuses, etc in return for their work.
Not to mention their employers would be a lot less pushy about requesting overtime in the first place. Sane policies should provide incentives for employers not to be abusive (so they're less likely to demand overtime, since it costs them more) as well as incentives for employees to cooperate when something really is important (since they get paid extra for a harder push when there really is a deadline).
As long as the consumers keep buying products from them and workers keep applying for their jobs, they have absolutely no incentives to quit their practice.
In a completely free market (which the US is not), that would be true. That's why there are federal and state laws to protect workers from these sorts of situations. While we may not know conclusively for a while, it looks like there's substantial evidence that EA is violating some of those laws. By all means, boycott their products, but there should be some other way of checking this behavior (such as this lawsuit, although there may be other approaches as well).
Especially given the turnover rate, it seems like the only reason EA gets so many people who want to work for them is because they are a big name in a popular industry, and they lie to people about what the jobs entail. Hopefully the lawsuit, even if it fails, will bring more attention to EA's behavior, lowering the available pool for new hires, so that they are eventually forced to change their practices.
People are quitting, that's not the point. If you'd read the story yesterday and this one, you'd know that EA has absurdly high turnover rates. The problem isn't that people can't quit, it's that EA keeps bringing in new people by lying to them, and then running them into the ground.
The problem isn't (just) that EA was unfair to a lot of people in the past, it's that it continues to lie and manipulate new people into the same trap -- because as long as people ship a title before quitting, what does EA care? There are always more people who want to work there.
What EA is doing is illegal, and they are pursuing it as a deliberate and continuing policy. This isn't just a couple employees who are upset because they had a bad experience and want to win money with a lawsuit, and individual employees quitting won't change things, since that is already factored into EA's strategy.
Okay, this (like many of the other objections posted in the comments) is specifically addressed in the frequent concerns page linked from the post. But just for fun, here we go.
The idea is that, even if spammers used all the zombies on earth do compute stamps, it would still give a substantial reduction in the amount of spam sent (there just aren't enough zombies for the current volume of spam). Furthermore, this would bog down zombie computers substantially, leading to more awareness by end-users (since suddenly they're the ones being affected, and not just the rest of the world). The absolute worst case is that we lower total spam by an order of magnitude. The best case is that we also cut down on zombies as a consequence, thereby lowering spam volume even further.
Perhaps this isn't the only thing needed to get rid of spam, but if it gets into widespread use it could certainly help a lot, and it's hard to see how it could hurt.
Actually, according to the FA, that isn't as much of an issue as you seem to think. While it might not be quite perfect yet, the idea is that people you email are automatically added to your white-list, and it looks like more sophisticated mailing list handling will be forthcoming in future versions. If you prefer to wait until the technology handles white-lists and mailing lists even more automatically, that's fine, but it doesn't mean that white-list as a concept is fundamentally flawed.
And this really doesn't require more work for you unless you want it to. The goal of this project is not to damage the mailing system that's already in place, allowing for incremental upgrades. At whatever point you think it's worth it for you to use this technology, you can, and get some improvement in spam filtering. If you never want to, you can still use other spam filtering techniques or, as other posters point out, you can use this technology as one factor in your bayesian filters.
Yes, if you're willing to do lots of extra work, this technology can give you complete spam protection, but it can still give partial protection with about the same amount of effort as you're using today.
the real Superman, Clark W. Kent, died in the comic books years ago. So did Bruce Wayne, the original Batman.
Actually, the Superman comics quickly brought him back to life. They're tricky that way.
Also, Bruce Wayne did not die -- his back was broken and he became a permanent cripple. However, the fan reaction was so negative that they then realized that Bruce Wayne knew some mystic healer person and that his crippling wasn't permanent after all... so both Batman and Superman are back to "normal".
That's like being pulled over by a cop for speeding, claiming you weren't, then pointing out that the cop wasn't even supposed to be there, since he was off duty...
Actually, no, if the law hasn't been passed yet then it's not like being stopped by a cop who's off duty. It's more like a city council trying to get the speed limit on the main road lowered from 45 to 35, and having a cop give you a ticket for going 45 even before the proposal goes through.
Certainly we can debate about the morality of what he did, but in saying he "admits no wrongdoing" he's just saying he doesn't think he broke the law, and if the case against him relies on anti-spyware laws that haven't been passed yet, then he's correct.
Mind you, I'm not saying that's actually the case -- it sounds like there may be a decent case against him even with the laws that already exist. But his defense that the law hasn't been passed is still logically sound, even if he ultimately turns out to be guilty of something else.
Well, obviously. In the anti-matter containment fields. But be careful, because all hell breaks loose if the containment field gets out of alignment -- your warp drive is unlikely to function at full efficiency, and if things get bad enough it can lead to a full warp core breach. But that only happens every three or four episodes, and is usually averted at the last minute anyway, so we shouldn't have anything to worry about.
If the viscosity of a fluid doesn't influence your speed through it... why can't we swim in air?
Air is a fluid? You learn something new every day...
Seriously, viscosity of a fluid is one thing, but the very definition of "fluid" means that the molecules are packed an awful lot closer together than they are in the atmosphere. That's (one of) the problem(s) with swimming in air.
On the flip side, though, 15-20% of the CS grads end up going to MS (this year, at least, and I know many of those people personally). It's not all about the free food... it's also about the money;)
Hate MS or not, they treat their employees very well. Great benefits, great pay, great hours. I turned down their job offer, but a lot of people don't, and I can understand why...
It's kind of ironic, though, complaining about how his money got his name applied to the building even though he (apparently) knows little about computer science, when this is all happening at Carnegie Mellon, an entire school named after Andrew Carnegie, a millionaire from the steel industry who was probably far from expert in many of the fields the school teaches and taught, and whose primary contribution to it was, as in the case of Gates, a pile of money.
Speaking as a recent CMU graduate, I'm not thrilled about having a Gates building on campus, either. But I think it's a little hypocritical that the school can be named after a rich guy in exchange for money, but as soon as the same thing happens to a building everyone complains. Many of the buildings at the school (and at many other schools) are named after rich guys, and people are upset about it this time not because they've suddenly reevaluated whether that's a reasonable approach, but because they dislike Bill Gates.
So sure, if you want to argue that the school shouldn't accept money from this particular billionaire, go ahead (though in that case I disagree with you, despite my personal feelings about Gates). But don't suddenly act surprised and offended that money can buy the names of buildings and schools in the academic world, because it's been that way for a long, long time.
In the end, this gives a major boost in funding to a school that has by far the lowest endowment of any school with its reputation, and that's a Good Thing in my book.
This same thing comes up in chess...
on
Is Math A Sport?
·
· Score: 1
It's a recurring theme in chess circles too -- "Chess is a sport! Chess should be in the Olympics!" I just don't see it happening. Nobody really wants it to, except for a very small subculture that, unless you want to get extremely abstract (i.e. a "sport" is a "competition involving skill"), does not conform to the traditional categories of the Olympics in any way.
Don't get me wrong, I love chess, and I love math, and it's always great to see both fields get some exposure. But I don't see any reason why they should try to impose themselves on a completely unrelated competition, merely because it's a big international competition and would get them publicity.
Slashdot Mirror
When everyone agrees with the conventional wisdom, it is possible for a revolutionary thought to come along and change our understanding of a phenomenon. In this case, it is the entire scientific establishment that is advocating the "revolutionary" thought of global warming, and it seems that the people who dismiss the issue are almost exclusively the ones who are not well-educated in environmental science (I don't mean that in a snide or elitist way -- I honestly think that peer-reviewed journals are a fair way to gauge the opinions of "highly educated" people in a certain subject). This situation isn't really parallel to the Crichton examples at all.
Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.
An interesting point, since in this case "consensus" isn't being invoked as an argument in any actual research -- the research itself seems instead to simply provide information showing human effects on global warming. The "consensus" argument only needs to be invoked because, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, huge numbers of people who are not willing to thoroughly investigate or inform themselves on the issue are still willing to question 100% of the people who actually do the research. What about the polls that show that a significant fraction of the US population believes in UFOs? Does scientific consensus against them prove that UFOs exist? Of course not. Though there are exceptions, most of the time consensus in the scientific community is based on solid research results.
I doubt this will satisfy you, but -- the people who run and are published in peer reviewed journals for a given subject are almost exclusively the most educated people in that subject, and typically devote the majority of their lives to studying it. If you are going to trust anyone to do major research in this area, it almost by definition has to be these people. And they seem, so far, pretty unanimous.
I should emphasize that I'm not saying there is never bias in peer-reviewed journals, or that political concerns never prevent publication of valid research. Certainly political issues, professional rivalries, and funding can affect the peer review process. The notion I reject is that there is a strong case to be made against human impact on global warming, but that every single paper that talks about it has been rejected. Bias in individual instances, yes, or even bias against papers reaching an unpopular conclusion -- but bias so strong that there is not even a single exception?
You've also concluded that article reviewers have no personal stake. What's the basis for that conclusion? Lack of imagination?
No, personal experience and statistics. I don't work in environmental science, but I know many people who work in academia (and expect to end up there myself), and while funding and politics certainly matter, the vast majority of these people are voluntarily doing work for less pay than they could get elsewhere because they love the work, and want to learn more about their field of expertise. The notion that not only the majority of these researchers, but virtually all of them (in any way that can be measured) are deliberately suppressing valid research because of some personal stake in it seems very implausible to me. As I said above, in some cases, sure, but every single time? In every single journal, by every single review committee?
Because the government is much more likely to fund research into something that's "no big deal" than something that's a crisis.
My point was that right now it is to much of the elected government's advantage if people believe that global warming is not a serious issue. In that light, it seems that they should discourage doomsaying, especially if they thought it was inaccurate. Yes, exaggerating the importance of your research may get you more funding in the short term, but reaching the conclusion that our entire country needs to spend uber-billions of dollars cleaning up our act hardly seems like the sort of thing that would make the government happier about your research.
For starters, how many papers were rejected from the peer review process is almost entirely irrelevant. The peer review process is in place for a reason, and the reason is to ensure that bad science (not politically unpleasant conclusions) are not published in major journals. Unless you have a strong reason to believe that most peer reviewers have a strong personal stake in suppressing legitimate research because they don't like the conclusions, then this objection is bunk. We aren't talking about a 60-40 split on a controversial subject -- no papers that contradicted human involvement in global warming made it through the process. What possible benefit would it be to any of those reviewers to suppress opposing opinions? They have no personal stake one way or the other, except arguably their reputations, and that presupposes that there is not a single scientist that has done enough legitimate research to be a peer reviewer and yet still thinks global warming isn't a human issue (or at most, no more than a handful) -- a strong argument for thinking global warming is a significant issue, as far as I'm concerned.
You also rant about how these papers are only published because people don't want to lose funding by being perceived as anti-environment. It seems fairly evident that the current government establishment would be most served by producing strong evidence that global warming is not a serious issue -- so why would it be more politically safe to contradict the notion that things are okay, and question the status quo? If people wanted "safe" conclusions to ensure their funding, they would be saying that global warming is no big deal. Furthermore, you seem to be implying that no funding exists for the production of honest results. Again, this isn't a 60-40 split -- if anyone, even a single person, has ever received funding to do legitimate research on this subject, and has come up with findings against human involvement, it has not been able to make it through a peer review, which probably means that it used questionable methods or was otherwise flawed. Peer reviewers are not as politically motivated as you seem to suppose.
How can a survey of peer reviewed journals be a valid source of data when people are afraid to publish "the wrong results"?
A valid question, but one that is entirely irrelevant until you have shown that this fear actually exists.
The TVs really let us down on that one.
The fact that TV is not always educational doesn't mean that it can't enhance education, and the same is true for computers.
What I find interesting is that there are suddenly a lot of comments saying how this is silly, and a waste of money. If the comments were primarily focusing on the destructive or impractical requirements that come along with the funding, I could understand, but a surprising number seem to be complaining about the funding itself.
That's interesting to me, because if memory serves, slashdotters on average tend to bemoan the lack of funding for space-related ventures, rather than the amount of money that is being wasted on them. I don't like Bush much, and he's certainly screwed up the budget in a lot of areas, but it confuses me when people criticize him for increasing funding to NASA, or the NSF, or NIH, when similar increases would probably be praised in a candidate that people liked a little bit more -- and I'm quite certain that if Bush actually cut funding for NASA, slashdot would be in an uproar over it.
Criticize him for an unjust war, or for counterproductive goals in space research, but the funding itself is a good thing as far as I'm concerned...
Speaking as someone who just graduated from a pretty high-up CS school (Carnegie Mellon), I actually agree with most of what you say. In my case, I'm glad I went to a good school because I want to go into research and teaching, which requires graduate school, and undergraduate schools are very important there -- so if you have any interest in academia or more advanced research, then yes, consider a transfer. However, it sounds like the poster is talking more about standard computer engineering, and for that the name of a school is only important in the really big-name companies like Microsoft or Google, and even then it's only important right out of school.
The only real danger is that many people start out perfectly happy in computer engineering only to find later on that they aren't as interested anymore -- however, barring more academic pursuits, the school you went to probably won't be a major barrier to other areas once you have some real-world experience.
Suppose companies started putting up fake road signs everywhere -- fake street names, fake stop signs, fake construction detour signs -- and suddenly every driver had to be "trained" to get to their destination without being distracted by all this, or making any wrong turns. That's the kind of situation we have with computers. Even though laws exist, enforcement is lax.
The metaphor doesn't go much further, of course (you can't program a car to recognize fake road signs :P). My point is just that you can't blame the end-users for everything, because they are being lied to, and education as a solution will only go so far.
The reason these things seem uneven is because, while some companies will be more flexible with people who have families, they expect single people to devote themselves heart and soul to the company. This is unreasonable on the part of the companies, not the people with families. Single people also have lives, friends, hobbies, and so on, and companies should not feel free to take that away.
Sometimes at my current job, when there's a deadline but I've already finished all my work, I'll kind of hang around to make sure nothing else comes up. But as it gets later and I have no work to do, I'll sometimes ask if there's anything else I can do to help, or if I can leave. The typical response is, "Why, do you need to be somewhere?" That question always seems strange to me. Well, no, I don't have any explicitly scheduled meetings tonight, and if it's important that I be here then I'll stay, but I do have a life and I would like to go home sometime tonight. Why does the company think I should be expected to stay there indefinitely, without any work to do, just because in their eyes I "don't need to be anywhere"? If they want to say their work is important, that's okay, but it frustrates me when they dismiss my life as though it were unimportant.
Bottom line, if you don't think the work you're expected to do is fair, don't do it. Make up excuses if you have to, whatever. But the fact that companies are unfairly prejudiced against single people doesn't mean the people with families need to make it up to you. This is an issue that people need to take up with the companies themselves.
You need to get up to date with your patriotic vocabulary.
Not to mention their employers would be a lot less pushy about requesting overtime in the first place. Sane policies should provide incentives for employers not to be abusive (so they're less likely to demand overtime, since it costs them more) as well as incentives for employees to cooperate when something really is important (since they get paid extra for a harder push when there really is a deadline).
In a completely free market (which the US is not), that would be true. That's why there are federal and state laws to protect workers from these sorts of situations. While we may not know conclusively for a while, it looks like there's substantial evidence that EA is violating some of those laws. By all means, boycott their products, but there should be some other way of checking this behavior (such as this lawsuit, although there may be other approaches as well).
Especially given the turnover rate, it seems like the only reason EA gets so many people who want to work for them is because they are a big name in a popular industry, and they lie to people about what the jobs entail. Hopefully the lawsuit, even if it fails, will bring more attention to EA's behavior, lowering the available pool for new hires, so that they are eventually forced to change their practices.
The problem isn't (just) that EA was unfair to a lot of people in the past, it's that it continues to lie and manipulate new people into the same trap -- because as long as people ship a title before quitting, what does EA care? There are always more people who want to work there.
What EA is doing is illegal, and they are pursuing it as a deliberate and continuing policy. This isn't just a couple employees who are upset because they had a bad experience and want to win money with a lawsuit, and individual employees quitting won't change things, since that is already factored into EA's strategy.
The idea is that, even if spammers used all the zombies on earth do compute stamps, it would still give a substantial reduction in the amount of spam sent (there just aren't enough zombies for the current volume of spam). Furthermore, this would bog down zombie computers substantially, leading to more awareness by end-users (since suddenly they're the ones being affected, and not just the rest of the world). The absolute worst case is that we lower total spam by an order of magnitude. The best case is that we also cut down on zombies as a consequence, thereby lowering spam volume even further. Perhaps this isn't the only thing needed to get rid of spam, but if it gets into widespread use it could certainly help a lot, and it's hard to see how it could hurt.
And this really doesn't require more work for you unless you want it to. The goal of this project is not to damage the mailing system that's already in place, allowing for incremental upgrades. At whatever point you think it's worth it for you to use this technology, you can, and get some improvement in spam filtering. If you never want to, you can still use other spam filtering techniques or, as other posters point out, you can use this technology as one factor in your bayesian filters.
Yes, if you're willing to do lots of extra work, this technology can give you complete spam protection, but it can still give partial protection with about the same amount of effort as you're using today.
Actually, the Superman comics quickly brought him back to life. They're tricky that way.
Also, Bruce Wayne did not die -- his back was broken and he became a permanent cripple. However, the fan reaction was so negative that they then realized that Bruce Wayne knew some mystic healer person and that his crippling wasn't permanent after all... so both Batman and Superman are back to "normal".
Actually, no, if the law hasn't been passed yet then it's not like being stopped by a cop who's off duty. It's more like a city council trying to get the speed limit on the main road lowered from 45 to 35, and having a cop give you a ticket for going 45 even before the proposal goes through.
Certainly we can debate about the morality of what he did, but in saying he "admits no wrongdoing" he's just saying he doesn't think he broke the law, and if the case against him relies on anti-spyware laws that haven't been passed yet, then he's correct.
Mind you, I'm not saying that's actually the case -- it sounds like there may be a decent case against him even with the laws that already exist. But his defense that the law hasn't been passed is still logically sound, even if he ultimately turns out to be guilty of something else.
Well, obviously. In the anti-matter containment fields. But be careful, because all hell breaks loose if the containment field gets out of alignment -- your warp drive is unlikely to function at full efficiency, and if things get bad enough it can lead to a full warp core breach. But that only happens every three or four episodes, and is usually averted at the last minute anyway, so we shouldn't have anything to worry about.
Air is a fluid? You learn something new every day...
Seriously, viscosity of a fluid is one thing, but the very definition of "fluid" means that the molecules are packed an awful lot closer together than they are in the atmosphere. That's (one of) the problem(s) with swimming in air.
Hate MS or not, they treat their employees very well. Great benefits, great pay, great hours. I turned down their job offer, but a lot of people don't, and I can understand why...
Speaking as a recent CMU graduate, I'm not thrilled about having a Gates building on campus, either. But I think it's a little hypocritical that the school can be named after a rich guy in exchange for money, but as soon as the same thing happens to a building everyone complains. Many of the buildings at the school (and at many other schools) are named after rich guys, and people are upset about it this time not because they've suddenly reevaluated whether that's a reasonable approach, but because they dislike Bill Gates.
So sure, if you want to argue that the school shouldn't accept money from this particular billionaire, go ahead (though in that case I disagree with you, despite my personal feelings about Gates). But don't suddenly act surprised and offended that money can buy the names of buildings and schools in the academic world, because it's been that way for a long, long time. In the end, this gives a major boost in funding to a school that has by far the lowest endowment of any school with its reputation, and that's a Good Thing in my book.
Don't get me wrong, I love chess, and I love math, and it's always great to see both fields get some exposure. But I don't see any reason why they should try to impose themselves on a completely unrelated competition, merely because it's a big international competition and would get them publicity.
...and it looks like a big, smiling, 3-d paperclip...