The iBooks format isn't encrypted. They didn't even make a pretense of protecting the contents. It's more likely they extended epub3 because they wanted some extra features. I'm sure calibre will have a converter for you in no time.
The 400 years is facebook without growth. Although those might be next to last year profits.
As others have pointed out, it's hard to see how Facebook can grow to justify its self-valuation. Companies with P/E ratios of 30 have clear growth strategies and good track records. Facebook is potentially unstable, as you point out is already very mature in their market and doesn't make much money, at least compared to their valuation.
I'm not sure how making your money back in 40 years is close to the rate of inflation, but good luck finding investors who think inflation is a good rate of return for a Facebook sized risk. And that's with your rosy prediction of growth from their current earnings.
It seems to be very uncertain how much Facebook actually made in 2011, but it was about 633 million in 2009. 1 billion is probably reasonable. That puts the P/E of their stock offering somewhere around 100. For a little, aggressive, high risk company with huge growth potential, maybe. An established market leader in a trend sensitive market and just facing their first serious new rival? Nuh uh.
That sounds great, but Facebook is a web page. They already take a lot of flak for privacy violations. Push it too far and they will lose their subscribers to other sites. Or be indicted.
Simple answer, you don't. Except in bubbles. Houses are places to live. It is possible to get paid investing in a house if you rent it out, but otherwise, in general, you'll "make" just about enough to keep up with inflation long term.
Facebook seems to have the problem that their IPO valuation is incredibly high relative to the amount of money they make. So if they just keep plugging away making the same amount, their stock won't go up (it'll go down, a lot) because investors will realize that Facebook is going to take something like 400 years to actually make as much money as the IPO buyers guessed it would. So to justify that price, never mind a HIGHER price that you eventually hope to sell the stock for, Facebook has to grow. A lot. How? They could charge a monthly fee (suicide), increase advertising by orders of magnitude (suicide)... it's hard to see how they could possibly do it.
"Here's what I've done on Facebook just today over the last eight hours:"
Hm... not one of those things involve buying things. In fact, your only commercial interaction was blocking an advertisement. I think I'll go with the GP on this one - Facebook is not worth 75 billion.
It's the Internet version of "Telephone." Except with the Internet you can actually follow the links back and see how the message changed with each hop. Fascinating, isn't it?
1. You start up a company (or buy into a private stock offering) 2. Build it into something that looks reasonably valuable 3. Hype it to death 4. Do an IPO. 5. Profit!
I'm sure Facebook's (current) shareholders will come out of this very nicely.
I teach baby neuroscientists some physics, engineering and math. Neuroscientists in particular sometimes turn to the dark side, getting ahead of themselves, and inventing all kinds of weird woo in their heads. Not all of them, but it does seem to be an occupational hazard almost as dangerous as getting a Nobel prize.
You are seriously confused about science. Science most certainly does have (lots of) mechanisms for saying "we don't know." Your predictions not working out is a pretty good clue. The scientific method is based on trying to prove you don't know!
"as according to it at any time the most likely theory is true."
You've got that backwards. The theory that fits the data best and is simplest is most likely to be closest to the truth, or at least closest to the practical truth. NOT most likely to be true. The scientific method doesn't actually have a mechanism for telling you whether you've arrived at the truth or not since the next observation might falsify your theory.
"but in cases where we don't stuff like dark matter or dark energy theories arise because scientists are not permitted to say "we don't know at the moment why our observations don't match our model"."
Again your misunderstanding of science and a particular issue are causing you to twist things. Dark energy and matter are hypotheses or theories, not truth. They're ideas that can explain observations or predictions based on those ideas. As we gather evidence we weed out the bad ideas and reinforce the good ones. At some point we may have an idea that seems to work much better than the others that we might regard as a workable theory. Still not truth.
"The scientific method wouldn't allow the use of a contradictory theory"
Of course it does. Google "domain of applicability." Physicists aren't particularly happy with having multiple theories with mostly non-overlapping domains of applicability because there's an idea that the fundamental laws of physics should be universal. That's not to say they are, but we'll keep looking for consistent laws until we find them or find some solid indication they really don't exist. Also, there are problems where QM and relativity overlap and we cannot make correct predictions using either theory.
Such "failures" are measured in billions of dollars of lost potential revenue. And it's not science failing. It's science succeeding in showing that a drug companies product doesn't work as it should.
"The resultant information may seem to have some statistical significance, and indeed it can possibly answer questions as to how many people with back pain have specific anomalies."
There are some clinical journals who publish case studies, but no real scientific journal will let you publish something that doesn't have a control.
"The other common error is that science is lead by 'statistically significant results'."
That's not an error. We pick a not-so-artibtrary threshold where we consider a result confident enough that we're going to accept it. Until and unless it gets disproven. A 1/20 chance of a false positive is okay since the study is going to be replicated anyway. In fields, like high energy physics, where immediate replication is unlikely, for whatever reason, they use higher standards.
"So, a study is done, and they get a lot of data. They analyse the data 20 different ways, and out pop two 'statistically significant' results. They do not publish the 18 'null' results, as those are uninteresting, only the 2 interesting ones."
There are some poor scientists who may do this occasionally. They very quickly get refuted, or just ripped to shreds by reviewers or grad students in journal clubs. For everyone else there's multiple comparison correction. There was concern that drug companies might be doing this on purpose, which is why drug trials are registered now.
"and to publish on failure too!"
No, we don't need journals filled with reports of failures. It's become trendy to complain about "positive publication bias." There is no such thing. What there is is a lack of understanding of the difference between a positive result, a negative result and an inconclusive result. What you describe is an inconclusive result, and publishing them isn't particularly useful because they are, well, inconclusive. They mean very little. A true negative result states that no effect larger than X was seen with a confidence of Y, where Y is greater than some threshold for significance. A proper negative result is significant just like a proper positive result. But it's far easier to whine that your inconclusive paper didn't get accepted because of publication bias.
Current native Americans are the result of the last of probably about three waves of immigration (some of it likely quite bloody), so they're immigrants too.
Since Frédéric Bartholdi, the sculptor of La Liberté éclairant le monde (Liberty Enlightening the World) was French, and the statue itself was a gift from France, he might have a few other reasons to be aghast at developments in the last decade or so.
Someone who works in radiation safety doesn't necessarily know much about it. Radiation safety officers in hospitals, for example, tend to be more junior people (I knew a 22 year old grad student who was rad safety) who didn't say "not it" fast enough.
In this case the hours vs. seconds probably isn't that important since it would be pretty obvious if they were actually cooking someone. Both doses are pretty low too, so the real issue is repeated exposure. Absorbed dose is the important thing, and it's very hard to measure accurately. You're right, the penetrating power of the radiation is important, but also the geometry and characteristics of the target and the beam. It's not unusual to have hot spots that get more than the expected dose simply because of where they are.
I think I'd be more worried about the apparent lack of quality control though. Medical devices that use ionizing radiation are carefully calibrated and frequently tested to make sure they're behaving as expected. And anyone who has frequent exposure (such as the tech running the machine) STILL wears a radiation badge.
Siri tries to grab the information you want (mostly Wolfram Alpha and Yelp I think) and sends it back as text and sometimes relevant graphics. It doesn't return the whole web page. If it can't find anything it might give you the option to generally search the web, but if it can find the answer itself the return is going to be tiny.
There are two basic dangers from radiation - thermal and chemical (okay, and nuclear if you want to get picky). As you point out, any kind of radiation your body absorbs at all, if intense enough, will fry you. Don't stand close to high power radio transmitters, in front of high power visible light lasers or in the beam line of a particle accelerator. Power deposition is reasonably easy to measure and safety standards are pretty conservative.
The other danger is that the radiation might create some chemical change. The normal way that happens is that it has sufficient energy to knock electrons out of their orbits, ionizing atoms in your body, which then go and create various forms of mayhem. It's also pretty easy to measure the threshold where radiation has the energy to cause ionization. This kind of damage is cumulative, but not linearly, so usually there are limits on exposure for various timeframes - yearly and hourly for example.
The are other more subtle chemical changes that radiation that wouldn't otherwise be ionizing might have, but so far nobody has found really strong evidence for them.
Slashdot Mirror
The iBooks format isn't encrypted. They didn't even make a pretense of protecting the contents. It's more likely they extended epub3 because they wanted some extra features. I'm sure calibre will have a converter for you in no time.
The 400 years is facebook without growth. Although those might be next to last year profits.
As others have pointed out, it's hard to see how Facebook can grow to justify its self-valuation. Companies with P/E ratios of 30 have clear growth strategies and good track records. Facebook is potentially unstable, as you point out is already very mature in their market and doesn't make much money, at least compared to their valuation.
I'm not sure how making your money back in 40 years is close to the rate of inflation, but good luck finding investors who think inflation is a good rate of return for a Facebook sized risk. And that's with your rosy prediction of growth from their current earnings.
It seems to be very uncertain how much Facebook actually made in 2011, but it was about 633 million in 2009. 1 billion is probably reasonable. That puts the P/E of their stock offering somewhere around 100. For a little, aggressive, high risk company with huge growth potential, maybe. An established market leader in a trend sensitive market and just facing their first serious new rival? Nuh uh.
Why? Do you like bailing out rich crooks?
That sounds great, but Facebook is a web page. They already take a lot of flak for privacy violations. Push it too far and they will lose their subscribers to other sites. Or be indicted.
"How do you get paid investing in a house?"
Simple answer, you don't. Except in bubbles. Houses are places to live. It is possible to get paid investing in a house if you rent it out, but otherwise, in general, you'll "make" just about enough to keep up with inflation long term.
Facebook seems to have the problem that their IPO valuation is incredibly high relative to the amount of money they make. So if they just keep plugging away making the same amount, their stock won't go up (it'll go down, a lot) because investors will realize that Facebook is going to take something like 400 years to actually make as much money as the IPO buyers guessed it would. So to justify that price, never mind a HIGHER price that you eventually hope to sell the stock for, Facebook has to grow. A lot. How? They could charge a monthly fee (suicide), increase advertising by orders of magnitude (suicide)... it's hard to see how they could possibly do it.
"Here's what I've done on Facebook just today over the last eight hours:"
Hm... not one of those things involve buying things. In fact, your only commercial interaction was blocking an advertisement. I think I'll go with the GP on this one - Facebook is not worth 75 billion.
There are a few things that release CO2... volcanos come to mind. And some of that is CO2 recycled from limestone.
The current amount of life on the planet may be unsustainable, but it's not likely to be eliminated. It'll just die back a bit.
It's the Internet version of "Telephone." Except with the Internet you can actually follow the links back and see how the message changed with each hop. Fascinating, isn't it?
Well, here's how it works:
1. You start up a company (or buy into a private stock offering)
2. Build it into something that looks reasonably valuable
3. Hype it to death
4. Do an IPO.
5. Profit!
I'm sure Facebook's (current) shareholders will come out of this very nicely.
Credit card scams are a growth industry. Advertising on a specific site to fad-conscious teenagers is not.
Too bad you posted as AC. Mod this up. It's even funny!
I teach baby neuroscientists some physics, engineering and math. Neuroscientists in particular sometimes turn to the dark side, getting ahead of themselves, and inventing all kinds of weird woo in their heads. Not all of them, but it does seem to be an occupational hazard almost as dangerous as getting a Nobel prize.
"Science is not failing us. Apparently, the pharmaceutical companies and their correlational studies are."
Why do you say that? The article is about drug trials where the hypothesis was disproved. That seems like science worked just fine.
People who capitalize the T in truth don't think they know things. They know things.
You are seriously confused about science. Science most certainly does have (lots of) mechanisms for saying "we don't know." Your predictions not working out is a pretty good clue. The scientific method is based on trying to prove you don't know!
"as according to it at any time the most likely theory is true."
You've got that backwards. The theory that fits the data best and is simplest is most likely to be closest to the truth, or at least closest to the practical truth. NOT most likely to be true. The scientific method doesn't actually have a mechanism for telling you whether you've arrived at the truth or not since the next observation might falsify your theory.
"but in cases where we don't stuff like dark matter or dark energy theories arise because scientists are not permitted to say "we don't know at the moment why our observations don't match our model"."
Again your misunderstanding of science and a particular issue are causing you to twist things. Dark energy and matter are hypotheses or theories, not truth. They're ideas that can explain observations or predictions based on those ideas. As we gather evidence we weed out the bad ideas and reinforce the good ones. At some point we may have an idea that seems to work much better than the others that we might regard as a workable theory. Still not truth.
"The scientific method wouldn't allow the use of a contradictory theory"
Of course it does. Google "domain of applicability." Physicists aren't particularly happy with having multiple theories with mostly non-overlapping domains of applicability because there's an idea that the fundamental laws of physics should be universal. That's not to say they are, but we'll keep looking for consistent laws until we find them or find some solid indication they really don't exist. Also, there are problems where QM and relativity overlap and we cannot make correct predictions using either theory.
Science doesn't purport to discover Truth. But it's the only method we've found that seems to produce reliable knowledge.
Such "failures" are measured in billions of dollars of lost potential revenue. And it's not science failing. It's science succeeding in showing that a drug companies product doesn't work as it should.
"The resultant information may seem to have some statistical significance, and indeed it can possibly answer questions as to how many people with back pain have specific anomalies."
There are some clinical journals who publish case studies, but no real scientific journal will let you publish something that doesn't have a control.
"The other common error is that science is lead by 'statistically significant results'."
That's not an error. We pick a not-so-artibtrary threshold where we consider a result confident enough that we're going to accept it. Until and unless it gets disproven. A 1/20 chance of a false positive is okay since the study is going to be replicated anyway. In fields, like high energy physics, where immediate replication is unlikely, for whatever reason, they use higher standards.
"So, a study is done, and they get a lot of data.
They analyse the data 20 different ways, and out pop two 'statistically significant' results.
They do not publish the 18 'null' results, as those are uninteresting, only the 2 interesting ones."
There are some poor scientists who may do this occasionally. They very quickly get refuted, or just ripped to shreds by reviewers or grad students in journal clubs. For everyone else there's multiple comparison correction. There was concern that drug companies might be doing this on purpose, which is why drug trials are registered now.
"and to publish on failure too!"
No, we don't need journals filled with reports of failures. It's become trendy to complain about "positive publication bias." There is no such thing. What there is is a lack of understanding of the difference between a positive result, a negative result and an inconclusive result. What you describe is an inconclusive result, and publishing them isn't particularly useful because they are, well, inconclusive. They mean very little. A true negative result states that no effect larger than X was seen with a confidence of Y, where Y is greater than some threshold for significance. A proper negative result is significant just like a proper positive result. But it's far easier to whine that your inconclusive paper didn't get accepted because of publication bias.
We can make cars fly. Science didn't fail. Engineering or economics or education might have, but not science.
Current native Americans are the result of the last of probably about three waves of immigration (some of it likely quite bloody), so they're immigrants too.
Since Frédéric Bartholdi, the sculptor of La Liberté éclairant le monde (Liberty Enlightening the World) was French, and the statue itself was a gift from France, he might have a few other reasons to be aghast at developments in the last decade or so.
Ah, it sounded like you actually wanted to know.
Someone who works in radiation safety doesn't necessarily know much about it. Radiation safety officers in hospitals, for example, tend to be more junior people (I knew a 22 year old grad student who was rad safety) who didn't say "not it" fast enough.
In this case the hours vs. seconds probably isn't that important since it would be pretty obvious if they were actually cooking someone. Both doses are pretty low too, so the real issue is repeated exposure. Absorbed dose is the important thing, and it's very hard to measure accurately. You're right, the penetrating power of the radiation is important, but also the geometry and characteristics of the target and the beam. It's not unusual to have hot spots that get more than the expected dose simply because of where they are.
I think I'd be more worried about the apparent lack of quality control though. Medical devices that use ionizing radiation are carefully calibrated and frequently tested to make sure they're behaving as expected. And anyone who has frequent exposure (such as the tech running the machine) STILL wears a radiation badge.
Siri tries to grab the information you want (mostly Wolfram Alpha and Yelp I think) and sends it back as text and sometimes relevant graphics. It doesn't return the whole web page. If it can't find anything it might give you the option to generally search the web, but if it can find the answer itself the return is going to be tiny.
This is my tiger repelling rock....
Deterrence does exist. Nobody has shown any evidence that body scanners at airports have any deterrent effect either.
There are two basic dangers from radiation - thermal and chemical (okay, and nuclear if you want to get picky). As you point out, any kind of radiation your body absorbs at all, if intense enough, will fry you. Don't stand close to high power radio transmitters, in front of high power visible light lasers or in the beam line of a particle accelerator. Power deposition is reasonably easy to measure and safety standards are pretty conservative.
The other danger is that the radiation might create some chemical change. The normal way that happens is that it has sufficient energy to knock electrons out of their orbits, ionizing atoms in your body, which then go and create various forms of mayhem. It's also pretty easy to measure the threshold where radiation has the energy to cause ionization. This kind of damage is cumulative, but not linearly, so usually there are limits on exposure for various timeframes - yearly and hourly for example.
The are other more subtle chemical changes that radiation that wouldn't otherwise be ionizing might have, but so far nobody has found really strong evidence for them.