The two main things I liked about the IE google toolbar, quick access to the Google cache of the visited page, and a list of referring links to the current page, aren't in the Firefox toolbar. Without those, it provides no benefit to me -- I could already search Google from the Firefox search tool. Uninstalling.
And I KNOW I suffer a lot less when I start to get a cold and load myself up with vitamin C and zinc.
Recent studies indicate that there is no beneficial effect of vitamin C supplementation with respect to the common cold. They conclude that regular doses of at least 200 milligrams of vitamin C do not reduce the risk of a cold in the general population.
Why do people keep on repeating this trope that inclusion of a GPL work in another work automatically makes it GPL?
There are only two options here:
Either the author of the embedding work has agreed to the terms of the GPL, in which case the embedding work must also be under the GPL. That seems pretty unlikely in the case of someone simply writing a document with a GPL font.
Or, the GPL work has been copied unlawfully (not under the terms of the GPL). This is going the case where someone has inadventently used a GPL font in a document. And since it is clearly inadvertent, the remedy (in the unlikely event of the font author and copyright holder choosing to sue) would most likely simply to switch to a non-GPL font.
But all your documents are NOT suddenly going to be distributed under the terms of the GPL, OK?
... it's been thoroughly discredited. Just like the Belfast study will be soon enough
Why be so sure? I for one hope this is investigated further. The fact that we can't explain the results yet -- for any of the 13 examples from TFA, not just the homeopathy one -- doesn't mean science is wrong: such "problems" are the glory of science. It is by investigating these "unexplainable" phenomena that Science expands and grows and deepens our understanding of the universe. It is in exactly this regard that Science differs from religion and superstition -- that which is unexplained is the kernel of further discovery, not an unquestionable tenet of faith.
Homeopathy, which absent any evidence to the contrary I had always placed firmly in the "bunkum" column, appears to have reproducible benefits in scientific experiments according to the article. Now, this is interesting! Of course, it doesn't prove that "imprinted" water molecules exist as homeopaths claim -- yet something is providing that benefit. We just don't know what it is yet. And who knows what fruitful science may result from finding out what that something actually is.
Thinking that theories like UFOs or telepathy or homeopathy are bunkum (and I do, BTW) isn't the same thing as having a closed mind. It's just that absent any concrete evidence -- extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof -- one should continue to assume there are explanations within known science. But when science can rule out known explanations and we're forced to turn to the unknown, well, that's when science gets really interesting.
Can't see any reference to Victoria on the CBC page now, but are you sure you weren't confusing Vancouver, Washington (right next to Portland Ore, and about 50 miles from Mt St Helens) with Vancouver, British Columbia?
I think they do build in a fairly large margin, then under-promise and over-deliver.
Actually, it's probably more to do with fact that the requirement of a high probabibility of mission success implies that most things will be over-engineered. This post (in reference to the Mars Rovers, but the principle is the same here) explains in more detail.
One of the participants, Daniel Gilbert, agrees with you:
In the not too distant future, we will be able to construct artificial systems that give every appearance of consciousness--systems that act like us in every way. These systems will talk, walk, wink, lie, and appear distressed by close elections. They will swear up and down that they are conscious and they will demand their civil rights. But we will have no way
to know whether their behavior is more than a clever trick--more than the pecking of a pigeon that has been trained to type "I am, I am!"
and FWIW, I agree with him too. Consciousness, to coin a phrase in paradox, is just a trick of the mind if you ask me. Just as we can look at a crystal or a leaf and see intricate design and construction where there are really only chemical reactions, I think the same is true with personality, and that we interpret -- and are compelled to interpret, by evolution -- the complex yet essentially mechanical process of neurons firing as a thinking consciousness. And if you believe that you really have to accept that it can be emulated -- it's just a matter of getting to a high enough level of complexity. I don't think it will take very long. I'm betting less than 20 years.
If you look at the video, near the end you can see Sam Rockwell running into shot. As he hits his mark, he tilts his head oddly to the side. Looks to me like he's anticipating a CG head to be filled in on his right shoulder...
Also 130,000 to 260,000 is a large gap for a statistical study.
This is, simply put, a stupid statement and shows that the poster has not idea what a "statistical study" is.
The size in the error of the prediction can be "large" or "small" in any statistical study. It simply depends on the sampling error and the amount of error explained by the covariates. To say that the error is "large" here is simply stating this fact. I'm making no judgement about whether this study is good or not, but simply noting that the error is large is no basis for making that judgement.
For those of us who don't have a premium subscription and don't want to watch an ad:
Or rather, for the ethically challenged who would rather commit a copyright violation than support the business model of a legitimate online magazine. That's what you meant, right?
My computer stopped working after 6 months... what did I do? I sent it in to get it repaired... for FREE because of a warranty
This is such a stupid statement, but I see it all the time. Warranty repairs are NOT free. The cost of supporting the warranty is already factored into the price you pay at purchase. And this doesn't even count the indirect costs of making a warranty claim: the time you are without the product for which you've paid, the time spend to ship it and fill in the forms, the cost of interim replacements, etc. etc.
When I buy a car, I generally look for the one that has the highest reliability rating, and NOT the one that offers the longest warranty (all other things being equal, which they never are, of course). I'd rather have a product I can depend on, rather that one the manufacture is implicitly stating is likely to fail.
Remember kid: there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
It seems like some of the Bush campaign staffers have accidentally sent emails to colleagues at name@georgewbush.ORG instead of the correct name@georgewbush.COM. Fortunately, the georgewbush.org mailserver had a "catch-all" mailbox in place, and you can read the contents of this "Dead Letter Office". There are some gems in there, like memos intended for Karl Rove, a weekly report from "Pennsylvania Evangelical Outreach", and even apparent evidence of illegal suppression of black votes (check out Caging1.xls).
According to the Kerrys' own tax records, and they have not released all of them, the couple had a combined income of $6.8 million in income last year and paid $725,000 in income taxes. That means their effective tax rate was a whopping 12.8%...
the average federal tax rate -- combined payroll and income tax -- for a middle-class family is closer to 20%
Well, that's not exactly a fair comparison, is it? Payroll tax is paid by the employer, not the employee, and so doesn't count towards income. Granted, any payroll tax paid by Kerry's employer (does the US govt even pay payroll tax?) isn't going to make a big dent in Kerry's effective taxation rate even if you did count it, but still...
Here's a page with the A and B squares cut out in detail side-by-side:
Outside the context of the checkerboard it's much easier to see they are the same color. Interestingly, even the color of the letters A and B looks different out of context.
Re:Anagram-drilling Unix program
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Word Up
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· Score: 1
A Scrabble program isn't as trivial as you might think, though. Simply going for the move which gets you the highest score from any given rack isn't the optimal strategy. Especially when all your options are low-scoring, holding back certain letters or getting rid of troublesome ones, at the expense of a few points this round, can pay big dividends next turn.
On the other hand, a program has the advantage of being able to remember which tiles have been played and which are in the bag without having to worry about the clock...
Re:Big point scrabble words...
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Word Up
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My best play (and I really, truly, got to play this), was CONQUERS for (IIRC) 311 points. The C and S were on triple-word-score tiles and the Q on a double-letter-score tile. Score 29 for letters (with Q counting double at 20), multiply by nine (for two triple-words), and add 50 for the bingo. (I think I had a blank, so maybe knock off 9 points.)
I've never come close since. It was a *very* lucky play, since it relied on my opponent laying the E at the right time and place. She's never forgiven me for that move.:)
Re:Er, most scrabble freaks ARE girls
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Word Up
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Women tend to like word games more than men do. Scrabble competitions are mainly composed of housewives reinvigorated after a life of raising kids by this game.
Actually, according to the documentary Word Wars, competitive Scrabble players are 90% male. The speaker claimed it was because Scrabble is in fact an analytical "math/puzzle"-like game, rather than a creative "writing"-like game, and better suited to the competitive nature of men.
Here's a great example of that "slop" in action. Take a look at this image. The two squares A and B appear almost white and black, respectively, but are in fact composed of pixels of exactly the same shade of grey.
... most foreigners don't underestimate the size of Australia (it's pretty evident by looking at a globe)...
Unfortunately, most people don't learn about other contries by looking at a globe (when was the last time you looked at one?) -- they look at a map. World maps in 2-D can be pretty misleading. Many people see the Mercator projection, which does make the US look bigger than Australia (especially if country borders are not included). Compare the difference in an equal-area projection map.
Mod this guy up, he's hit the nail on the head.
The relevant text from the GPL is:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) (does not apply here)
You have to be conservative if you want a high probability of mission success.
Think about it: when NASA says they expect a rover to last for (say) 90 days, they don't know that for sure. They can make an educated guess, but it's based on a whole bunch of uncertainties: the chance a major component will fail, the weather on Mars, the specific nature of the mission once they see what's around, you name it. So, really, when they say it will last for 90 days, they mean there is a 99% chance it will last at least 90 days... but that also means there is a 99.9% chance it will last 60 days, and a 50% chance it will last at least 200 days.
I'm making those numbers up, of course, but that's the basic process. In statistical terms, the lifetime of the rover is a random variable whose distribution NASA estimates before launch. Because mission failure is such a disaster (you can't repair the rover!), NASA has to define mission success as something they have a good chance (say, 99% or better) of achieving. That means that the stated duration of the mission is the 1% quantile of the lifetime distribution of the rover (still with me?). That's a pretty small quantile -- by definition, there's a 99% chance the rover will last longer than that, and a very good chance it will last much longer.
So, we shouldn't be surprised the rovers have lasted as well as they have, and we shouldn't accuse NASA of being overly conservative. They're being exactly as conservative as they need to be to have a good chance of mission success.
This is correct. Last year I went to a taping session at the Sony studios at Culver City, LA. They tape five shows a day. The ones I saw aired about 6 months later.
Actually, Waterworld ended up making quite a tidy profit, mainly from international and video sales. So from the point of view of the studios, it was not a flop.
Backwards compatibility has always been a paramount facet of MS's strategy. For example, read in this article how MS put special code in an early version of Windows so that Sim City -- Sim City! -- would continue to run after Windows users upgraded, despite a bug in the Sim City code. Say what you will about MS, if that's not dedication to backwards compatibility I don't know what is. That's why this break with compatibility in XPSP2 is big news, as it represents a major strategy shift.
And you can open an Office 97 document in Office XP, dumbass.
Many of the patches they offer nowadays can be installed together so you only have to reboot once
I just ran a Windows 2000 box that hadn't been patched in a year through Windows Update. Three reboots: One for a Windows 2000 Service Pack, another for IE, and a third for a whole bunch of security patches (which did all install as a unit). And that's without patching Outlook Express, which looked as though it needed its own reboot. The whole process for two machines (desktop and laptop) took about an hour (including some significant pfutzing to clear enough HD space to allow the Service Pack to install).
Slashdot Mirror
The two main things I liked about the IE google toolbar, quick access to the Google cache of the visited page, and a list of referring links to the current page, aren't in the Firefox toolbar. Without those, it provides no benefit to me -- I could already search Google from the Firefox search tool. Uninstalling.
Recent studies indicate that there is no beneficial effect of vitamin C supplementation with respect to the common cold. They conclude that regular doses of at least 200 milligrams of vitamin C do not reduce the risk of a cold in the general population.
Why do people keep on repeating this trope that inclusion of a GPL work in another work automatically makes it GPL?
There are only two options here:
Either the author of the embedding work has agreed to the terms of the GPL, in which case the embedding work must also be under the GPL. That seems pretty unlikely in the case of someone simply writing a document with a GPL font.
Or, the GPL work has been copied unlawfully (not under the terms of the GPL). This is going the case where someone has inadventently used a GPL font in a document. And since it is clearly inadvertent, the remedy (in the unlikely event of the font author and copyright holder choosing to sue) would most likely simply to switch to a non-GPL font.
But all your documents are NOT suddenly going to be distributed under the terms of the GPL, OK?
Homeopathy, which absent any evidence to the contrary I had always placed firmly in the "bunkum" column, appears to have reproducible benefits in scientific experiments according to the article. Now, this is interesting! Of course, it doesn't prove that "imprinted" water molecules exist as homeopaths claim -- yet something is providing that benefit. We just don't know what it is yet. And who knows what fruitful science may result from finding out what that something actually is.
Thinking that theories like UFOs or telepathy or homeopathy are bunkum (and I do, BTW) isn't the same thing as having a closed mind. It's just that absent any concrete evidence -- extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof -- one should continue to assume there are explanations within known science. But when science can rule out known explanations and we're forced to turn to the unknown, well, that's when science gets really interesting.
Can't see any reference to Victoria on the CBC page now, but are you sure you weren't confusing Vancouver, Washington (right next to Portland Ore, and about 50 miles from Mt St Helens) with Vancouver, British Columbia?
If you look at the video, near the end you can see Sam Rockwell running into shot. As he hits his mark, he tilts his head oddly to the side. Looks to me like he's anticipating a CG head to be filled in on his right shoulder...
The size in the error of the prediction can be "large" or "small" in any statistical study. It simply depends on the sampling error and the amount of error explained by the covariates. To say that the error is "large" here is simply stating this fact. I'm making no judgement about whether this study is good or not, but simply noting that the error is large is no basis for making that judgement.
And yes, I am a statistician.
When I buy a car, I generally look for the one that has the highest reliability rating, and NOT the one that offers the longest warranty (all other things being equal, which they never are, of course). I'd rather have a product I can depend on, rather that one the manufacture is implicitly stating is likely to fail.
Remember kid: there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
It seems like some of the Bush campaign staffers have accidentally sent emails to colleagues at name@georgewbush.ORG instead of the correct name@georgewbush.COM. Fortunately, the georgewbush.org mailserver had a "catch-all" mailbox in place, and you can read the contents of this "Dead Letter Office". There are some gems in there, like memos intended for Karl Rove, a weekly report from "Pennsylvania Evangelical Outreach", and even apparent evidence of illegal suppression of black votes (check out Caging1.xls).
Interesting ... very interesting.
Here's a page with the A and B squares cut out in detail side-by-side: Outside the context of the checkerboard it's much easier to see they are the same color. Interestingly, even the color of the letters A and B looks different out of context.
A Scrabble program isn't as trivial as you might think, though. Simply going for the move which gets you the highest score from any given rack isn't the optimal strategy. Especially when all your options are low-scoring, holding back certain letters or getting rid of troublesome ones, at the expense of a few points this round, can pay big dividends next turn.
On the other hand, a program has the advantage of being able to remember which tiles have been played and which are in the bag without having to worry about the clock...
My best play (and I really, truly, got to play this), was CONQUERS for (IIRC) 311 points. The C and S were on triple-word-score tiles and the Q on a double-letter-score tile. Score 29 for letters (with Q counting double at 20), multiply by nine (for two triple-words), and add 50 for the bingo. (I think I had a blank, so maybe knock off 9 points.) I've never come close since. It was a *very* lucky play, since it relied on my opponent laying the E at the right time and place. She's never forgiven me for that move. :)
Here's a great example of that "slop" in action. Take a look at this image. The two squares A and B appear almost white and black, respectively, but are in fact composed of pixels of exactly the same shade of grey.
Think about it: when NASA says they expect a rover to last for (say) 90 days, they don't know that for sure. They can make an educated guess, but it's based on a whole bunch of uncertainties: the chance a major component will fail, the weather on Mars, the specific nature of the mission once they see what's around, you name it. So, really, when they say it will last for 90 days, they mean there is a 99% chance it will last at least 90 days ... but that also means there is a 99.9% chance it will last 60 days, and a 50% chance it will last at least 200 days.
I'm making those numbers up, of course, but that's the basic process. In statistical terms, the lifetime of the rover is a random variable whose distribution NASA estimates before launch. Because mission failure is such a disaster (you can't repair the rover!), NASA has to define mission success as something they have a good chance (say, 99% or better) of achieving. That means that the stated duration of the mission is the 1% quantile of the lifetime distribution of the rover (still with me?). That's a pretty small quantile -- by definition, there's a 99% chance the rover will last longer than that, and a very good chance it will last much longer.
So, we shouldn't be surprised the rovers have lasted as well as they have, and we shouldn't accuse NASA of being overly conservative. They're being exactly as conservative as they need to be to have a good chance of mission success.
This is correct. Last year I went to a taping session at the Sony studios at Culver City, LA. They tape five shows a day. The ones I saw aired about 6 months later.
Actually, Waterworld ended up making quite a tidy profit, mainly from international and video sales. So from the point of view of the studios, it was not a flop.
And you can open an Office 97 document in Office XP, dumbass.
I just ran a Windows 2000 box that hadn't been patched in a year through Windows Update. Three reboots: One for a Windows 2000 Service Pack, another for IE, and a third for a whole bunch of security patches (which did all install as a unit). And that's without patching Outlook Express, which looked as though it needed its own reboot. The whole process for two machines (desktop and laptop) took about an hour (including some significant pfutzing to clear enough HD space to allow the Service Pack to install).