True, but actually that was intended as sarcasm. After all, this is Slashdot.
Here's a wild hypothesis for you: smell is a trigger for our flight or fight response. Flight was never a serious option given they volunteered for the study and therefore had some degree of a sense of social obligation to stay. So they fought with the only means they had: with the money; which may explain why those in the scented room voluntarily gave back more than those in the unscented room.
That, of course, is pure conjecture. But how terribly unscientific is it from their predetermined sought-after conclusion?
No. I'm saying they didn't do the "this room smells bad" part at all. And because the outcome of that test can't be anticipated we know that one, they only got part of the potential answer; and two, because there's the possibility that the "this room smells bad" test may produce even better results, that both their premise and conclusions are biased.
Read my reply above, then go read Dr. Richard Feynman's speech entitled "CARGO CULT SCIENCE" and then tell me if you still think there didn't need to be a third group. Because the point isn't what they wanted to test, the point is they weren't testing all the relevant aspects of the situation in order to have a meaningful conclusion.
No, their premise was "scent vs. nothing", with the presumption that the orange scent was something that everyone would find pleasant. The actual statefulness of smell for people is pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral (or nothing); and that's what the study should have covered in order to make any meaningful conclusion on smell vs. happiness driven ethics. There's no way to derive from their study results what effect an unpleasant smell would have on behavior. It may well be that it's the perception of smell aside from the norm that drives the ethical behavior, not the relative pleasantness of the smell at all.
Essentially, they only tested for the single side of the equation that supported their pre-study bias, which make their post-study conclusions rather worthless.
There's no link to the original study, but it was clear from the article that there was no control group. They had a scented room vs. an unscented room, when what they should have had was a "pleasantly" scented room vs. an "unpleasantly" scented room with a third, unscented room as the control. Then they should have done some feedback questionnaires at the conclusion, in which they could have buried a question or two regarding the participant's scent preferences to see how well the participants' evaluation of the smell of the rooms lined-up with the premise of the study.
This study was actually just a subset of the premise that happy people are more likely to be grateful and donate their time and/or money than unhappy people, and that environmental factors can influence a person's relative happiness. And a demonstration that an attractive woman can get money and resources from a major university to run a useless study.
A lot of the supposed ambiguity can be eliminated if you first look at the code as not being computer programs, but just being another written work, then evaluate any potential "derivative works" from that perspective, and let existing copyright law and case law guide the evaluation. Once you've done that, then look at the license-specific terms of the GPL regarding what it says constitutes distribution, as well as what it says triggers the requirement for distribution, and I think you'll find it's not nearly as convoluted as these two jokers are making it out to be.
Find a new agency and go talk to a lawyer. Depending upon the law in your state, you may have grounds to sue the headhunting firm--and not just for money, but for a written apology and retraction to the company that you interviewed with. Your reputation in the market is crucial, and they just screwed yours.
from here: http://www.benbest.com/science/standard.html
"A free neutron (a neutron not in an atomic nucleus) has a mean lifetime of about 15 minutes, typically decaying into a proton, an electron and an electron antineutrino"
The 10^49 years accounts for the time it takes for all the stars in all the Universe to reach whichever final state they are destined for, based upon their size, and then go through neutron decay. I got this from an essay done in the 60's by physicist whose name I cannot recall right now, from the book "The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics"
That's not an equivalent comparison. The documents in PACER are presumptively open and a available to the public. All of them. All of the time. What he did was certainly unanticipated, and perhaps rude, but hardly wrong.
Read the article. PACER was specifically giving the documents out for free via the library. He didn't circumvent anything, just made very efficient use of a perfectly legal process using perfectly legal means.
Not being an Ubuntu fan, I usually don't pay much attention to Shuttleworth; however, the stfu protocol has potential. Of the registered TCP ports, port 8 is currently unassigned. 7 belongs to echo, so 8 being assigned to stfup provides a certain sense of symmetry.
Seriously though, as a method of testing, this would go along way toward producing software that has intuitively obvious interfaces instead of the software-engineered perspective. The SE has the advantage of knowing what's in the blackbox because he put it there, which leads to the bias where everything seems intuitive, even if it is not.
The term interception means to secretly hear, secretly record, or aid another to secretly hear or secretly record the contents of any wire or oral communication through the use of any intercepting device by any person other than a person given prior authority by all parties to such communication; provided that it shall not constitute an interception for an investigative or law enforcement officer, as defined in this section, to record or transmit a wire or oral communication if the officer is a party to such communication or has been given prior authorization to record or transmit the communication by such a party and if recorded or transmitted in the course of an investigation of a designated offense as defined herein."
I'd bet on option 4: Disney is going to change the marketing to go through adults to get to preteens and grade school kids for certain titles in order to leverage the parents' spending power directly and thereby be able to raise the prices without lowering circulation.
There may also be some of option 1 going on; it would be interesting to see the breakdown by title of subscription sales vs. retail to confirm that. The subscriptions are so heavily discounted--and I'm assuming to get under certain psychological price points--one of the immediate questions that arises is if the difference between the retail and subscription price entirely the retail vendor's mark-up, or not?
Software is the means by which we use ourcomputers to do word processing, send email and
surf the Web; it enables our cellphones to connect to wireless networks; it allows air traffic controllers to safely schedule the arrival and departure of flights; and it permits physicians to diagnose and treat illnesses. Software is, in short, a fundamental, and
increasingly indispensable, technological innovation.
Not quite. Software may assist, expedite, or allow, but it certainly does not "permit" a physician to do his job, as he already had that permission prior to the use of any software-driven medical device. Also, if my cell phone bricks, it may be an inconvenience, but it's not indispensable, as I still have other means and methods of communication available to me.
And that's just from the introduction. The rest of it is just a slanted and over-blown, and ultimately, misleading.
In the months since the Federal Circuit issued its opinion, and to IBMâ(TM)s great concern, a number of administrative and judicial decisions have rigidly applied the âoemachine or transformationâ test to questionâ"in some cases explicitlyâ"the patentability of software per se. Software technology is vital in addressing societyâ(TM)s most pressing challenges. IBM is committed to ensuring that such technology is and remains patentable.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
The spammers and the cybersquaters and those taking advantage of misspelled search parameters will simply get a little more creative to end-run the Swedes.
If you look at U.S. statistics, you discover that most of the people in the bottom quarter of wealth in the population ten years ago, aren't in the bottom quarter today.
That's because they are probably either dead or in prison.
From the Terms of Use:
"PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE LIMITATION.
Unless otherwise specified, the Services are for your personal and non-commercial use. You may not modify, copy, distribute, transmit, display, perform, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any information, software, products or services obtained from the Services. "
Anything from MS that will be used to generate revenue for the user is not free, and has a non-trivial price tag on it.
Expensive is a relative thing. And according to Microsoft, it's $199 for an upgrade and $299 to buy, which for many represents about half the cost of their computer.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you know how long it takes an illiterate kid to type a text message while driving?
That my friend is sexism.
True, but actually that was intended as sarcasm. After all, this is Slashdot.
Here's a wild hypothesis for you: smell is a trigger for our flight or fight response. Flight was never a serious option given they volunteered for the study and therefore had some degree of a sense of social obligation to stay. So they fought with the only means they had: with the money; which may explain why those in the scented room voluntarily gave back more than those in the unscented room.
That, of course, is pure conjecture. But how terribly unscientific is it from their predetermined sought-after conclusion?
No. I'm saying they didn't do the "this room smells bad" part at all. And because the outcome of that test can't be anticipated we know that one, they only got part of the potential answer; and two, because there's the possibility that the "this room smells bad" test may produce even better results, that both their premise and conclusions are biased.
Hypothesis: smell makes a difference.
The article specifically states "clean smell", and does so in a way that implies the study does too. Hence the bias.
I'm therefore highly dubious about your last conclusion.
Does it help to point out that your sarcasm detector may be broken?
Read my reply above, then go read Dr. Richard Feynman's speech entitled "CARGO CULT SCIENCE" and then tell me if you still think there didn't need to be a third group. Because the point isn't what they wanted to test, the point is they weren't testing all the relevant aspects of the situation in order to have a meaningful conclusion.
No, their premise was "scent vs. nothing", with the presumption that the orange scent was something that everyone would find pleasant. The actual statefulness of smell for people is pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral (or nothing); and that's what the study should have covered in order to make any meaningful conclusion on smell vs. happiness driven ethics. There's no way to derive from their study results what effect an unpleasant smell would have on behavior. It may well be that it's the perception of smell aside from the norm that drives the ethical behavior, not the relative pleasantness of the smell at all.
Essentially, they only tested for the single side of the equation that supported their pre-study bias, which make their post-study conclusions rather worthless.
There's no link to the original study, but it was clear from the article that there was no control group. They had a scented room vs. an unscented room, when what they should have had was a "pleasantly" scented room vs. an "unpleasantly" scented room with a third, unscented room as the control. Then they should have done some feedback questionnaires at the conclusion, in which they could have buried a question or two regarding the participant's scent preferences to see how well the participants' evaluation of the smell of the rooms lined-up with the premise of the study.
This study was actually just a subset of the premise that happy people are more likely to be grateful and donate their time and/or money than unhappy people, and that environmental factors can influence a person's relative happiness. And a demonstration that an attractive woman can get money and resources from a major university to run a useless study.
A lot of the supposed ambiguity can be eliminated if you first look at the code as not being computer programs, but just being another written work, then evaluate any potential "derivative works" from that perspective, and let existing copyright law and case law guide the evaluation. Once you've done that, then look at the license-specific terms of the GPL regarding what it says constitutes distribution, as well as what it says triggers the requirement for distribution, and I think you'll find it's not nearly as convoluted as these two jokers are making it out to be.
Find a new agency and go talk to a lawyer. Depending upon the law in your state, you may have grounds to sue the headhunting firm--and not just for money, but for a written apology and retraction to the company that you interviewed with. Your reputation in the market is crucial, and they just screwed yours.
from here: http://www.benbest.com/science/standard.html "A free neutron (a neutron not in an atomic nucleus) has a mean lifetime of about 15 minutes, typically decaying into a proton, an electron and an electron antineutrino"
The 10^49 years accounts for the time it takes for all the stars in all the Universe to reach whichever final state they are destined for, based upon their size, and then go through neutron decay. I got this from an essay done in the 60's by physicist whose name I cannot recall right now, from the book "The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics"
That's not an equivalent comparison. The documents in PACER are presumptively open and a available to the public. All of them. All of the time. What he did was certainly unanticipated, and perhaps rude, but hardly wrong.
Because of Neutron decay we've only 10^49 years anyway.
Read the article. PACER was specifically giving the documents out for free via the library. He didn't circumvent anything, just made very efficient use of a perfectly legal process using perfectly legal means.
if you really could use a Guinness right now?
Not being an Ubuntu fan, I usually don't pay much attention to Shuttleworth; however, the stfu protocol has potential. Of the registered TCP ports, port 8 is currently unassigned. 7 belongs to echo, so 8 being assigned to stfup provides a certain sense of symmetry.
Seriously though, as a method of testing, this would go along way toward producing software that has intuitively obvious interfaces instead of the software-engineered perspective. The SE has the advantage of knowing what's in the blackbox because he put it there, which leads to the bias where everything seems intuitive, even if it is not.
The law is Chapter 272: Section 99. Interception of wire and oral communications". Section B, paragraph 4 has the pertinent details:
The term interception means to secretly hear, secretly record, or aid another to secretly hear or secretly record the contents of any wire or oral communication through the use of any intercepting device by any person other than a person given prior authority by all parties to such communication; provided that it shall not constitute an interception for an investigative or law enforcement officer, as defined in this section, to record or transmit a wire or oral communication if the officer is a party to such communication or has been given prior authorization to record or transmit the communication by such a party and if recorded or transmitted in the course of an investigation of a designated offense as defined herein."
From http://www.articlesbase.com/national,-state,-local-articles/audio-recording-laws-in-the-us-431017.html: "The 12 states which definitely require all parties to a conversation to consent before it can be recorded are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington"
Possibly the weirdest mix of red, blue, coastal, and fly-over states.
I'd bet on option 4: Disney is going to change the marketing to go through adults to get to preteens and grade school kids for certain titles in order to leverage the parents' spending power directly and thereby be able to raise the prices without lowering circulation.
There may also be some of option 1 going on; it would be interesting to see the breakdown by title of subscription sales vs. retail to confirm that. The subscriptions are so heavily discounted--and I'm assuming to get under certain psychological price points--one of the immediate questions that arises is if the difference between the retail and subscription price entirely the retail vendor's mark-up, or not?
Software is the means by which we use ourcomputers to do word processing, send email and surf the Web; it enables our cellphones to connect to wireless networks; it allows air traffic controllers to safely schedule the arrival and departure of flights; and it permits physicians to diagnose and treat illnesses. Software is, in short, a fundamental, and increasingly indispensable, technological innovation.
Not quite. Software may assist, expedite, or allow, but it certainly does not "permit" a physician to do his job, as he already had that permission prior to the use of any software-driven medical device. Also, if my cell phone bricks, it may be an inconvenience, but it's not indispensable, as I still have other means and methods of communication available to me.
And that's just from the introduction. The rest of it is just a slanted and over-blown, and ultimately, misleading.
In the months since the Federal Circuit issued its opinion, and to IBMâ(TM)s great concern, a number of administrative and judicial decisions have rigidly applied the âoemachine or transformationâ test to questionâ"in some cases explicitlyâ"the patentability of software per se. Software technology is vital in addressing societyâ(TM)s most pressing challenges. IBM is committed to ensuring that such technology is and remains patentable.
(emphasis mine)
This is IBM's only real agenda here.
Thought comic books were expensive now? Wait until Disney ups the price to help recover some of that 4 billion.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
The spammers and the cybersquaters and those taking advantage of misspelled search parameters will simply get a little more creative to end-run the Swedes.
If you look at U.S. statistics, you discover that most of the people in the bottom quarter of wealth in the population ten years ago, aren't in the bottom quarter today.
That's because they are probably either dead or in prison.
From the Terms of Use: "PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE LIMITATION. Unless otherwise specified, the Services are for your personal and non-commercial use. You may not modify, copy, distribute, transmit, display, perform, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any information, software, products or services obtained from the Services. "
Anything from MS that will be used to generate revenue for the user is not free, and has a non-trivial price tag on it.
Expensive is a relative thing. And according to Microsoft, it's $199 for an upgrade and $299 to buy, which for many represents about half the cost of their computer.