Gee, coinciding with the *Industrial Revolution* I bet. So you wouldn't be living in a cave without IP, you'd be living in a straw-roofed shack without electricity, plumbing, and certainly without the internet.
Do you have even the foggiest idea of how product development occurs? Do you realize that companies aren't willing to do years of R&D work if their competitors can all steal the result as soon as they go to market?
I guarantee you Intel and Apple wouldn't. So without IP, you are already without computers. You sure as hell wouldn't have any pharmaceuticals, I don't even want to start with how much R&D costs and how cheap production is in the drug industry.
So without patents, we'd all have polio, we'd all still be using antibiotics for which bacteria are immune, we wouldn't have any painkillers, no TV, no internet, no computers...do I need to keep going?
Really. Analog is fine. Who cares if the crap on TV is sharper?
Pretty much all of us. Otherwise, you could say, hey, as long as I have one pixel, that's good enough. Increasing resolution would be nice. Particularly since TV is (I believe) 320x200. That's just ridiculous. People don't even tolerate 640x480 from their monitors, why should 320x200 be ok for TV?
Not to mention it's explicitly forbidden in the Constitution.
Naturally. I'm even granting that they'll find a way around that, but it's a stretch. Perhaps the Feds will do the collecting, taking an amount from each purchase that is coincidentally what is required from the locality of the purchaser, then reimbursing the states?
Of course, the Court's not obtuse, so the question is how much latitude they'll grant the Feds in doing something like that.
Even outside when one of the dog lays down a pile it's rank... even from 25 feet away (they length of the leash)
See, that's why ya gotta guage windspeed and direction before letting your dog lay cable. You get downwind of a St. Bernard you fed chili to last night...you're begging for a slow miserable death there.
If I drive across the border into the next state, can I pick up a plasma TV at Circuit City and not pay sales tax on it, if I show them my out-of-state driver's license?
No, and you know what I meant. Amended, they can't collect taxes *in* other states. Present location of buyer is jurisdiction of tax.
It isn't that simple. If a license is squashed by a court, the court can basically rewrite the terms.
In certain circimstances, yes. But recall what SCO is arguing here - they're arguing that the GPL is null and unenforceable. And if they argue that, then there is no license, particularly when the GPL does say, specifically, that you can't distribute the software if you don't agree to all terms. The GPL is in parts, but that part has to stand up.
Absent GPL, as many others have pointed out repeatedly, SCO has *no* right to use Linux code. Either SCO has violated the GPL, or failing that, copyright law in general. They can pick.
There are more rigorous arguments they could make - specifically a due diligence argument that they didn't know (although they'll fail since they didn't suspend distribution).
I'll put it this way - there's no judge in the world who will say "This contract is unenforceable - therefore, one party gets *everything* they were granted under the null contract, and the other side gets nothing." That won't happen.
So a law taxing interstate sales ON THE INTERNET (whereas they are not taxed on any other medium) would be covered by the law.
That's covered by the Interstate Commerce Act and is illegal anyway. Now if they tried to tax internet without also doing catalog sales, maybe...but presumably, if they have a system for one, it will work for the other.
"I always wondered what the "multiple or discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce" part of the law included. It kinda sounds like "we won't tax electronic commerce" to me.
Nope. I did a debate case on this in '98 or '99. The "discriminatory" bit means a tax that is applied to something on the internet that wouldn't be to the same thing not on the internet. For example, if someone made a 3% blanket tax on internet transactions IN ADDITION TO sales tax, that would be illegal. Or, if I made a 2% tax on internet flight reservations, in addition to any other tax, that would be illegal. Or, if I taxed internet access, that would be illegal (under the other part of the law).
In other words, if you specifically have to say "on the internet" in a law, that fee/tax would be illegal. If it were covered under a blanket law, that would be legal.
No one really ever has understood the law passed in 1998, evidently including the person who submitted the article. The tax ban was on internet *access*, not on internet sales tax collection. Ever notice that you DO pay sales tax if you buy something in the state you live? There's no ban, obviously - the problem is a jurisdictional one (interstate commerce, namely). In short - there has NEVER been a Congressional ban on collecting sales tax over the internet.
If Congress wants to allow taxing of internet access by the states, they will now have the ability, though they probably won't. If they want to allow taxing of internet sales, they'll have to get around Supreme Court decisions that say states can't collect taxes on residents in other states. But the issues are NOT related, despite the frequency with which people screw this up.
As the article says, these things are currently perfectly legal. They are reviewing whether or not they can pass a suitable law about them.
Just kidding. I hope.
So one goes in a pocket. They are not going to know their location within inches anyway.
No, but statistically it would be easy to tell if the pattern were consistent with two people, or two tags consistently too close to each other. Put it this way, I could easily write the algorithm to tell the difference.
Big deal, they have 2 classes together. Unless you're talking about a really big school I think you'll find that most students have a few friends in just about all of their classes. Also what is to stop them from trading between classes?
Doesn't matter. Walking down the hall for about 50m would be enough to tell one person with two tags from two people with two tags. I don't need all day.
Let's say we have three students, A, B, and C. Student A skips class, giving tag to student B. Between periods 1 and 2, tags A and B correlate very highly with position. To attempt to fool the algorithm, student B gives student A's tag to student C during 2nd period. Between periods 2 and 3, tags A and C correlate too highly. Assuming an extremely high degree of correlation is flagged, you'd see student A's tag correlating too highly with a few different tags throughout the day. This could be automated, would be fairly easy to write, and the system could spit out a list of potential anomalies that could be checked on.
Honestly, it wouldn't be that hard to implement, although again I couldn't guarantee they'd do it right. But they could.
XFree-cygwin is definitely not propping the project up, nor are they the primary users.
Isn't that laughable? As if the switching of the Cyg-win userbase would cripple X. Why is it that GNU sees the need to fork *everything*? Is their problem with X that they don't release under the GPL? And who are these myriad other developers that have been turned off by the X group?
I can see arguments that X is unwieldy and archaic, fine - but why the general "I'm taking my toys and going home" attitude here?
Workaround: "Hey Sandy, if you carry my tag to English today, I'll carry yours on Thursday."
Presumably if they're going to the trouble of determining all those other parameters, they'll also determine if the average distance between any two tags remains two low (ie, within two inches of each other because they're both around the same student's neck) or if the correlation between the positions of any two tags is too high (ie, because one's around a student's neck and the other is in his pocket for two straight hours).
Maybe the school is too obtuse, but if I were the principal and I was an RFID-phile, that's what I'd do.
Is methanol as clean to use as H2? Can you generate electricity from it, creating only water as the waste product? That's a massive advantage that H2 has, as you can take end-users out of the pollution equation.
But since methanol is potentially renewable, the by-products don't much matter. And believe it or not, water is worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas (God, imagine the humidity from a ton of H2-powered cars!). Also, H2 wouldn't be renewable unles they acquired the H2 from splitting water, and I doubt they would.
but regardless of the process you use (be it a methanol reformer prior to the fuel cell, or a direct methanol fuel cell) you end up with carbon dioxide. Since one of the big motives for going to fuel cells is a reduction of green house gases (in a lot of people's minds), it isn't surprising that few are excited about using methanol.
True. What you may not know is that, on a per-molecule basis, water is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2. We know the H2 is coming from coal. At that point, even if the methanol comes from coal, we're better off with methanol.
Additionally, I contend that the methanol will come from renewable resources (as ethanol does now), but I have no way to prove it. I will say that if it's possible to do on a cost basis, we'll use renewable simply because of the strength of farm lobbies.
This isn't AOL looking for passwords--this is the rough equivalent of them updating the AOL software.
I disagree - Windows messenger is part of windows, not AOL's software.
If you want an ISP that just gives you a modem dial-in and e-mail box, then AOL simply isn't your choice.
Clearly, which is why I'd use AOL after every other provider dropped off the face of the earth. But I still think changing the OS without prompting the user is a poor choice.
This is a good thing. Windows messenger is not used by the bulk of the AOL userbase except to receive spam. Disabling something that should have been off by default already and enabled in a true lan/office environment will provide them a better user experience. It will also close one more possible way their possibly unpatched machines will become compromised.
Yeah, but the idea of your ISP fuX0ring your computer isn't so cool. But at the point where you use an OS that *lets* your ISP do that shit, AOL isn't the greater evil.
Better, but methanol would be better yet
on
The End of the Oil Age
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The article mentions hydrogen fuel cells as a way to break big oil. But last I heard, the most effecient way to make hydrogen is from coal, which is a dirty nasty process. (Or so I hear). Am I wrong on this?
First, it would at least be better than now. First, the process of making H2 from coal isn't as bad as burning it. Second, coal is a resource that is a bit, ah, more evenly distributed in the world. For America, this would be a good way to get the hell out of the Middle East, for good or bad.
Ultimately, it would be better to go to Methanol fuel cells, and I have yet to understand why they're not getting more press. First, methanol's a renewable resourse - as close to solar energy as we're likely to get. Also, it would be a resource that every country could take care of on their own - just farming.
There are also engineering advantages to methanol over H2.
Even if there is, let's say, a 3% risk of all this stuff to be true, what is the point in taking this risk?
While that makes sense in individual cases, it becomes folly when extended to everything in your life. What if I said that whatever you're having for dinner has a 3% chance of givnig you cancer if you keep eating it? What if I said your specific model of car has a 3% chance of having a rather dangerous, undiscovered defect?
The problem is that there are very few things in life that have been tested safe to within the 97% confidence threshold, particularly when one considers that there's at least a 3% chance that we didn't know how to properly test something.
If you let a 3% chance of danger with regard to something keep you from using it, you might as well be fitted for your bubble now.
Why should this surprise anyone? But it's illegal anyway. You buy something, you own it and you have the right to use it, abuse it, enjoy it and destroy it. It is yours, the receipt says so, and the person who sold it to you has given up all their rights in respect of it. A licence like that will never stand up in court. It would be a total and utter violation of the Sale of Goods Act.
Aside from applying laws from the wrong damned country, you seem to have no grasp of contract law. Transactions are frequently made in which the usual rights of the purchaser are abridged.
While the mean and median for the population of everyone could be the same, because it is a gaussian distribution, my original comment (great great grandparent?) was disagreeing with someone's statement that mean and median IQ are by definition the same.
Sure, but that's a matter not of a different *sample* but of a different *population*. The distinction is subtle but incredibly important. Even then, the question is what parametric form one would fit the sample data to for the sub-populations. If that is Gaussian, then the means and medians of those populations are taken to be the same. If not, then the subpop medians and means may be different, but relatable functionally.
A relationship established between a given variable and a population can never be assumed to be valid when applied to a separate population unless one has good reason to believe it does.
Clearly, my prior comments are intended as relevant for the population, as any model breaks down when one analyzes sub-populations or subsets.
The only way to do this would be to arbitrarily weight certain ranges of raw scores in order to get a fit. You would have to change the arbitrary adjustments every time your sample was different in order to retain this relationship.
Which is actually done, but it's more in response to the estimated population rather than a small sample. You can estimate an uncertainty for population parameters (mean, std) from that of a sample, but it's a tad too complicated for me to go into. As it happens, for LARGE sample sizes, it's not generally necessary, and any differences are noise. Also, if they fit the data to a consistent parametric form (Gaussian), the estimated mean and median may change, but they'll always equal each other.
If this is true, IQ scores have no relevance, because you are redefining the standard for each different sample.
That's just not really the correct way to think about it. The sample is used as a means of estimating the population. Sampling methods are never perfect. The goal isn't to try to use the sample and assume it's the population. The sample is used as a tool to estimate the parameters of an assumed functional form.
certainly any GIVEN sample would not have that work out.
Which is irrelevant. No one cares about the median or mean of ten guys sitting home watching football. There's a difference between sample, population, and functional statistics. Sample statistics are used to determine a function that is used to model the population, which is too large to sample.
Technically, you can count a map as a function. So in that sense, yes, a function exists that would always convert a dataset post hoc into something having a set mean and median. Such a function would completely invalidate the results, however (which I suspect as your underlying implication), so no one wanting their work taken seriously would use any non-smooth transformation on the original data. Which, for the purpose of this discussion, would not result in the mean equalling the median except by chance.
I don't want to speak for him, but I don't think that's what he meant at all. You don't have to invoke a discontinuous mapping transfer function at all, nor does one need to consider cheating or anything like that.
Consider simply a light spectrum from some given source. Let's say I'm going to rate the spectrum, and assign a score to each individual wavelength component. 100 is equivelant to the mean wavelength, and 115 is equivalent to mean+1sd. Let's imagine the source is effectively Gaussian with regard to frequency. From this standpoint, in terms of score, the "mean" frequency is equivalent to the "median" frequency. However, consider the "score" as a function of wavelength (where wavelength is equal to the speed of light/frequency), and the distribution is no longer symmetric/Gaussian, and the mean does not equal the median.
Has any cheating been done here? No! It's simply an indication that different mapping functions lead to different distributions that may have different characteristics than the parent.
In any case, IQ scores are generated exactly as g'parent suggested: they are converted into a Gaussian form from raw scores that may take an arbitrary parametric form. This is actually a very common technique, and can be completely valid if performed correctly. As Gaussian functions are symmetric, the mean is the same as the median. If you've never done anything like that, I'd question how much statistical work you're actually doing.
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Gee, coinciding with the *Industrial Revolution* I bet. So you wouldn't be living in a cave without IP, you'd be living in a straw-roofed shack without electricity, plumbing, and certainly without the internet.
Do you have even the foggiest idea of how product development occurs? Do you realize that companies aren't willing to do years of R&D work if their competitors can all steal the result as soon as they go to market?
I guarantee you Intel and Apple wouldn't. So without IP, you are already without computers. You sure as hell wouldn't have any pharmaceuticals, I don't even want to start with how much R&D costs and how cheap production is in the drug industry.
So without patents, we'd all have polio, we'd all still be using antibiotics for which bacteria are immune, we wouldn't have any painkillers, no TV, no internet, no computers...do I need to keep going?
Pretty much all of us. Otherwise, you could say, hey, as long as I have one pixel, that's good enough. Increasing resolution would be nice. Particularly since TV is (I believe) 320x200. That's just ridiculous. People don't even tolerate 640x480 from their monitors, why should 320x200 be ok for TV?
Naturally. I'm even granting that they'll find a way around that, but it's a stretch. Perhaps the Feds will do the collecting, taking an amount from each purchase that is coincidentally what is required from the locality of the purchaser, then reimbursing the states?
Of course, the Court's not obtuse, so the question is how much latitude they'll grant the Feds in doing something like that.
See, that's why ya gotta guage windspeed and direction before letting your dog lay cable. You get downwind of a St. Bernard you fed chili to last night...you're begging for a slow miserable death there.
No, and you know what I meant. Amended, they can't collect taxes *in* other states. Present location of buyer is jurisdiction of tax.
In certain circimstances, yes. But recall what SCO is arguing here - they're arguing that the GPL is null and unenforceable. And if they argue that, then there is no license, particularly when the GPL does say, specifically, that you can't distribute the software if you don't agree to all terms. The GPL is in parts, but that part has to stand up.
Absent GPL, as many others have pointed out repeatedly, SCO has *no* right to use Linux code. Either SCO has violated the GPL, or failing that, copyright law in general. They can pick.
There are more rigorous arguments they could make - specifically a due diligence argument that they didn't know (although they'll fail since they didn't suspend distribution).
I'll put it this way - there's no judge in the world who will say "This contract is unenforceable - therefore, one party gets *everything* they were granted under the null contract, and the other side gets nothing." That won't happen.
That's covered by the Interstate Commerce Act and is illegal anyway. Now if they tried to tax internet without also doing catalog sales, maybe...but presumably, if they have a system for one, it will work for the other.
Nope. I did a debate case on this in '98 or '99. The "discriminatory" bit means a tax that is applied to something on the internet that wouldn't be to the same thing not on the internet. For example, if someone made a 3% blanket tax on internet transactions IN ADDITION TO sales tax, that would be illegal. Or, if I made a 2% tax on internet flight reservations, in addition to any other tax, that would be illegal. Or, if I taxed internet access, that would be illegal (under the other part of the law).
In other words, if you specifically have to say "on the internet" in a law, that fee/tax would be illegal. If it were covered under a blanket law, that would be legal.
If Congress wants to allow taxing of internet access by the states, they will now have the ability, though they probably won't. If they want to allow taxing of internet sales, they'll have to get around Supreme Court decisions that say states can't collect taxes on residents in other states. But the issues are NOT related, despite the frequency with which people screw this up.
As the article says, these things are currently perfectly legal. They are reviewing whether or not they can pass a suitable law about them. Just kidding. I hope.
No, but statistically it would be easy to tell if the pattern were consistent with two people, or two tags consistently too close to each other. Put it this way, I could easily write the algorithm to tell the difference.
Big deal, they have 2 classes together. Unless you're talking about a really big school I think you'll find that most students have a few friends in just about all of their classes. Also what is to stop them from trading between classes?
Doesn't matter. Walking down the hall for about 50m would be enough to tell one person with two tags from two people with two tags. I don't need all day.
Let's say we have three students, A, B, and C. Student A skips class, giving tag to student B. Between periods 1 and 2, tags A and B correlate very highly with position. To attempt to fool the algorithm, student B gives student A's tag to student C during 2nd period. Between periods 2 and 3, tags A and C correlate too highly. Assuming an extremely high degree of correlation is flagged, you'd see student A's tag correlating too highly with a few different tags throughout the day. This could be automated, would be fairly easy to write, and the system could spit out a list of potential anomalies that could be checked on.
Honestly, it wouldn't be that hard to implement, although again I couldn't guarantee they'd do it right. But they could.
XFree-cygwin is definitely not propping the project up, nor are they the primary users.
Isn't that laughable? As if the switching of the Cyg-win userbase would cripple X. Why is it that GNU sees the need to fork *everything*? Is their problem with X that they don't release under the GPL? And who are these myriad other developers that have been turned off by the X group?
I can see arguments that X is unwieldy and archaic, fine - but why the general "I'm taking my toys and going home" attitude here?
And this is a legit question, not a flame.
Goddamn metrosexuals, taking over the world with your fashion sense and good hygiene.
Yeah, I think the school might want to bust them for that when they're supposed to be in class as well.
Presumably if they're going to the trouble of determining all those other parameters, they'll also determine if the average distance between any two tags remains two low (ie, within two inches of each other because they're both around the same student's neck) or if the correlation between the positions of any two tags is too high (ie, because one's around a student's neck and the other is in his pocket for two straight hours).
Maybe the school is too obtuse, but if I were the principal and I was an RFID-phile, that's what I'd do.
But since methanol is potentially renewable, the by-products don't much matter. And believe it or not, water is worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas (God, imagine the humidity from a ton of H2-powered cars!). Also, H2 wouldn't be renewable unles they acquired the H2 from splitting water, and I doubt they would.
True. What you may not know is that, on a per-molecule basis, water is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2. We know the H2 is coming from coal. At that point, even if the methanol comes from coal, we're better off with methanol.
Additionally, I contend that the methanol will come from renewable resources (as ethanol does now), but I have no way to prove it. I will say that if it's possible to do on a cost basis, we'll use renewable simply because of the strength of farm lobbies.
I disagree - Windows messenger is part of windows, not AOL's software.
If you want an ISP that just gives you a modem dial-in and e-mail box, then AOL simply isn't your choice.
Clearly, which is why I'd use AOL after every other provider dropped off the face of the earth. But I still think changing the OS without prompting the user is a poor choice.
Yeah, but the idea of your ISP fuX0ring your computer isn't so cool. But at the point where you use an OS that *lets* your ISP do that shit, AOL isn't the greater evil.
First, it would at least be better than now. First, the process of making H2 from coal isn't as bad as burning it. Second, coal is a resource that is a bit, ah, more evenly distributed in the world. For America, this would be a good way to get the hell out of the Middle East, for good or bad.
Ultimately, it would be better to go to Methanol fuel cells, and I have yet to understand why they're not getting more press. First, methanol's a renewable resourse - as close to solar energy as we're likely to get. Also, it would be a resource that every country could take care of on their own - just farming.
There are also engineering advantages to methanol over H2.
While that makes sense in individual cases, it becomes folly when extended to everything in your life. What if I said that whatever you're having for dinner has a 3% chance of givnig you cancer if you keep eating it? What if I said your specific model of car has a 3% chance of having a rather dangerous, undiscovered defect?
The problem is that there are very few things in life that have been tested safe to within the 97% confidence threshold, particularly when one considers that there's at least a 3% chance that we didn't know how to properly test something.
If you let a 3% chance of danger with regard to something keep you from using it, you might as well be fitted for your bubble now.
Aside from applying laws from the wrong damned country, you seem to have no grasp of contract law. Transactions are frequently made in which the usual rights of the purchaser are abridged.
Sure, but that's a matter not of a different *sample* but of a different *population*. The distinction is subtle but incredibly important. Even then, the question is what parametric form one would fit the sample data to for the sub-populations. If that is Gaussian, then the means and medians of those populations are taken to be the same. If not, then the subpop medians and means may be different, but relatable functionally.
A relationship established between a given variable and a population can never be assumed to be valid when applied to a separate population unless one has good reason to believe it does.
Clearly, my prior comments are intended as relevant for the population, as any model breaks down when one analyzes sub-populations or subsets.
Which is actually done, but it's more in response to the estimated population rather than a small sample. You can estimate an uncertainty for population parameters (mean, std) from that of a sample, but it's a tad too complicated for me to go into. As it happens, for LARGE sample sizes, it's not generally necessary, and any differences are noise. Also, if they fit the data to a consistent parametric form (Gaussian), the estimated mean and median may change, but they'll always equal each other.
If this is true, IQ scores have no relevance, because you are redefining the standard for each different sample.
That's just not really the correct way to think about it. The sample is used as a means of estimating the population. Sampling methods are never perfect. The goal isn't to try to use the sample and assume it's the population. The sample is used as a tool to estimate the parameters of an assumed functional form.
certainly any GIVEN sample would not have that work out.
Which is irrelevant. No one cares about the median or mean of ten guys sitting home watching football. There's a difference between sample, population, and functional statistics. Sample statistics are used to determine a function that is used to model the population, which is too large to sample.
I don't want to speak for him, but I don't think that's what he meant at all. You don't have to invoke a discontinuous mapping transfer function at all, nor does one need to consider cheating or anything like that.
Consider simply a light spectrum from some given source. Let's say I'm going to rate the spectrum, and assign a score to each individual wavelength component. 100 is equivelant to the mean wavelength, and 115 is equivalent to mean+1sd. Let's imagine the source is effectively Gaussian with regard to frequency. From this standpoint, in terms of score, the "mean" frequency is equivalent to the "median" frequency. However, consider the "score" as a function of wavelength (where wavelength is equal to the speed of light/frequency), and the distribution is no longer symmetric/Gaussian, and the mean does not equal the median.
Has any cheating been done here? No! It's simply an indication that different mapping functions lead to different distributions that may have different characteristics than the parent.
In any case, IQ scores are generated exactly as g'parent suggested: they are converted into a Gaussian form from raw scores that may take an arbitrary parametric form. This is actually a very common technique, and can be completely valid if performed correctly. As Gaussian functions are symmetric, the mean is the same as the median. If you've never done anything like that, I'd question how much statistical work you're actually doing.