... which is so awesome, even, because that's already down the slippery slope: Piratebay and Demonoid don't have TV shows/movies either, they only link it themselves (torrents are just oversized links). So that means there is now someone in jail for linking to a site linking to pirated bits. Can one even argue there's a difference between: https://thepiratebay.se/ https://www.google.com/search?q=thepiratebay https://www.google.com/ seatch for "thepiratebay" and click the first link ?
It's nice to see that people have bought into a media manufactured issue so strongly...
If I could trade a proper evolution based origin of the species for any one change in the education system I would do it in a heartbeat. There are a lot of things wrong with education and evolution is seriously low on the list. I would so much rather see teachers able to teach to the students than be forced to teach to a national politicized test. I'm really surprised that people would rather see every kid shoved though the same one-size-fit-all program if it means their 'side' wins. Such is the power of us-vs-them debates; 'they' must be crushed at all costs. Hell, have you seen the so called evolution curriculum taught in these schools (prior to all this, even)? It's usually just about as science-y as creationism anyways. Not at all worth keeping if it means having all the other science fields follow the 'shut up; don't think' plan as well.
Cool achievement, to be sure, but for data storage? There are a great many ways of achieving ultra high density data storage that have been performed in the lab and are 'only 10 years away'. The trouble always is the engineering: how expensive, how fast, how much, how reliable? One strand isn't too big a deal, but it'll only store maybe 1GB. Now you need thousands of strands and a way to page through them. And maybe a way to seek within them. Etc. Again, really cool accomplishment, but I can't see it being practical for anything but an organic computer as I have to think organic tech will outpace organic at pretty much every step. (For example, see racetrack memory as a sort of alternative that is already much more viable.)
The flash runtime is really only a cost for them: they have to maintain it ('cause it's so secure!), optimize it, and port it to a lot of platforms.
What they make money on is the flash toolkit. Adobe has decided that maintaining the runtime isn't worth is and instead moving their toolkit over to HTML 5 (and continuing along with being able to export video, etc). Really, it's mostly a win for them. They kept going along with the runtime because it did afford them certain benefits, the install base (which they monopolize) in particular... I think I hear it was something like 90% which probably beats HTML 5 by a wide margin. However, they see the writing on the wall: HTML 5 is getting more common and flash player less. They have a mature toolkit and it's time they compete on that alone and stop wasting (excess) resources working on a costly* side project that really only made sense half a decade ago.
> The patent system was used by the King of England to reward his friends with monopolies
And so the founders included it in the constitution, because they were total fans of the King of England and his was of doing things.
> I mean, just look at the arguments of patent system fans. Half the time they'll say > > Patents are required, because otherwise everyone will keep everything secret and all knowledge will be lost. > The other half of the time they say > > Patents are required, because otherwise everyone will immediately duplicate every innovation without the original > > inventor being able to get any money out of it. > While both statements can't be right at the same time, they sure can be wrong at the same time.
Sure, because everything written in absolutes is always intended as such. Let me clarify those for you then: Patents are required, because otherwise everyone will try to keep everything secret and all [that] knowledge will be lost. Patents are required, because otherwise everyone will try to immediately duplicate every innovation without the original inventor being able to get any money out of it.
So by not writing these statement as absolute rules that somehow must govern behavior, but rather as expected strategies people will follow we can see not only how they can both be true, but how they are actually both accurate as they are already partially in play today (see trade secrets and GPL issues). The only difference is that we presently have an additional strategy of 'get a patent' which changes the game.
The patent system was quite literally designed for that. Patent thickets, licensing companies and the ilk were extremely common during the rise of the industrial age from things like loom technology, to sewing machines, to industrial controllers.
No, it was not set up for that. It was designed for protecting the little guy who is inventing and producing tangible goods from big companies copying him and driving him out of business. The patent thicket you speak of hinders innovation; it does not promote development of useful arts and sciences.
Okay, so you're a tinkerer and invent, taking from the GP's example, a fancy new loom in your basement and get a patent. It's not really much faster to run, but it doesn't break down nearly as often and thus reduces downtime and required maintenance staff. So to be rewarded for your ingenuity, you uh... start a large factory using your invention and are successful in the marketplace because you can cut production costs by 10% which is totally enough to compete against existing companies because you clearly have the experience to start a business and capitol is free and finding a plant and workers and setting up trade agreements and all kinds of overhead don't matter because you can trim a bit off nominal production costs?
The point is, while the "little guy who is inventing and producing tangible goods" can exist in some cases, many times it doesn't. Often, the inventor is a scientist/engineer/etc (e.g. Tesla) that wants nothing to do with actual production but wants to / should earn income from their invention to fund further efforts. Or, in the case above, the field is such that even important innovations can really only be used by a fairly large producer, and the burden on the inventor to become one exceeds the value offered by the invention. Would you consider a system that forced you to use your invention or bust as helpful to "promote development of useful arts and sciences"?
The GP had it right: The problem isn't patent licensing in general, it's the worthless patents.
> I think that's a bit ridiculous, to think that a company like Microsoft would intentionally want one of their products to > fail, putting their market share in danger as it might cause long-time Windows users to jump ship to another platform.
Sure, it you put it like that in black and white. But if we add some particulars...... A company like Microsoft would intentionally want one of their products to fail on the desktop, because otherwise they'd be putting their market share on the tablet in danger as it might cause long-time Windows users to jump ship to another platform.
See where the suggestion isn't so unreasonable? Given that most people and companies probably upgraded to 7 from XP about 2 years ago (if even!), a Win 8 at this time was never going to be very appealing. Most would probably just as soon wait for Win 9 which would mean a more comfortable ~6 year cycle. I think Microsoft realized this, and that they were already losing hard in an increasingly relevant market (tablets), and figured that the only thing that mattered about Win 8 on the desktop was that it worked at all. It can fail, hard, as long as it gets them into the tablet market.
And, more to the point, the cell phone company can't put people in jail. They aren't going to be searching that data to "discover" crimes. (Collect enough data and statistically you can 'prove' almost anything). If anything, their incentive is to ignore it as much as possible: Not only because it limits their liability in case something happens that they missed, but also because people is jail aren't buying cell phones.
Well, the counter argument to this is that the, let's call them 'informational', goods don't depreciate with use like a tangible product does. A (pressed) game disk will be just as functional in 5 years, though your, say, lawn mower will probably be all gunked up with grass, rusting a bit and have some wear on the engine.
Of course, we all know this is pretty bunk. Game disks get scratched fairly easily, or the booklets/cases get lost and there are plenty of physical goods that keep their value as. Computer are such a thing: aside from a possible aging hard disk, they pretty much run just as well as when they were new. Still, there's only very limited used computer market. Why? Simple: New computers offer something more than used computers; usually they're faster and/or draw less power. Intel spends their time making better chips and exploring new markets, rather than complaining about how unfair it is that people trade used computers or don't every one released. Game companies should do the same. Offer something worth buying and people will buy it. Don't shovel out a new revision of the same old crap and complain when people are content to swap the old version and skip the new one.
> But at the same time they are absolutely correct, class action seldom really benefits anyone but the law firms.
Directly? Yes. Indirectly? Well... Perhaps not.
Class action suits are much more about seeking _punishment_ than compensation. That's why companies hate them and want to preclude them with clauses like these. Sure every member of the class might only get, say 20% returned, but the company pays out 200%. Moreover, it's quite a lot easier to join the class than it is to file suit or enter arbitration on your own. So they maybe give full 100% compensation (+ maybe 50% in court/arbitration costs) to 10% of the customers and it's a "win-win". But really it gives them a much wider margin in which to screw the end user because it basically guarantees that potential costs will not exceed the profits from doing so (this being especially true for software companies where the cost per person is basically zero so _if_ they have to return your payment it's just a wash). While the law firm may take a huge and unfair cut, ideally that money is being pulled from a gaping wound in the company, in a way they hope to avoid.
No. Gravity does not operate on mass, it operates on energy. Therefore the Higgs field is irrelevant when it comes to anti-gravity because it really just explains the linkage between mass and energy. It might help in converting energy and mass (which would be far more useful that anti-grav!!), but at the end of the day, a certain amount of energy be it kinetic, binding, chemical or simple mass is always going to weigh the same.
I find it funny how "civilized society" to you means telling your employer to go pound sand if it's not precisely the time you're supposed to be in the building. For me civilized is taking the occasional off-hours call in exchange for my employer allowing allowing me take an occasional (and, indeed, quite more frequent) bit of person time during work. Like reading and posting on slashdot, for instance. You know, like you're doing during these (ostensibly) business hours.
Regardless of why they might say they 'hate' the US (infidels, meddling, etc.) the real reason is, at the end of the day, not a whole lot different from why the US 'hates' the terrorists: They want an enemy.
They have a lot of social and political problems, and because they cannot fix them (and really, do not want to because that would require advocating their control) they create a war. It lets the leaders accumulate more power while giving the people someone to blame for their problems other than their leaders.
Why the US? As the 'most powerful' country it's easy to come up with reasons (and not necessarily inaccurate ones!) that it could have negatively impacted people (e.g. selling arms to Israel, trade stuff, cultural influence, etc). That also means that you are expected to lose your war, which is nice because it means you don't really have to try that hard because you can also blame your failings on them being too powerful. This gives a bonus of making you then underdog and any small victory huge. The are also a few other things like being non-islamic and well known and all that. (As you'll note, the basic ideas here are what makes terrorists, in turn, a great enemy for the US: far away, impossible to actually defeat, and different(==bad).)
Wow, so sorry to have used a recent, well known example. Maybe next time I talk about how things are changing I'll pick something obscure from 30 years ago. At least then I won't have crazy people going off on rants almost completely unrelated to my post...
So not only did the vote change from approx 90% to 97% democrat, but the turnout among the population increased by 5% (2 million) as well. The African American vote as a proportion of the overall vote increase by 1.1 percentage points. As a result, in 2004 the D vote was 88% * 11% = 9.7%, while in 2008 it was 97% * 12.1% = 11.7%. So overall, the African Americans gave Obama by 2 percentage points vs Kerry, which is pretty comparable to the amount of discrimination found in this survey (especially if you adjust for the population sizes of white/black!)
How much it _actually_ influenced the election, or course, is anybody's guess: How did turnout change amongst demographics are results were reported, how did race map to the electoral college, etc. FYI, North Carolina (15 electors) and Indiana (12) were determined by.33% and ~1.05% respectively, while Florida(27) and Ohio(20) were 2.82% and 4.59%.
Your view is quite outdated, and these days the American president very nearly has the powers of a dictator.
Remember all that uproar over Republicans, Catholics and birth control? That was all because Obama signed an executive order mandating the Catholic church (among others) to provide birth control.
While it once was true (and technically still is) that only congress has the power to create laws, that's no longer really meaningful. The federal government has grown, and basically all that growth occurred within the executive branch and thus under the office of the president. From the FBI to the DHS, the DOT, 'Obama Care', etc... Congress does create these with law, but with that law they also grant them (the executive branch) the ability to act with the force of law. Such actions are known as "regulations".
So, even though the office of the president technically (i.e. constitutionally) doesn't have the power to tell all organizations to, say, provide birth control, congress has, via the healthcare bill, granted it the ability to do so.
Salt is only for preventing dictionary based attacks, while this article is talking about brute force attacks. Now, we if suppose an attacker, for some bizarre reason, couldn't collect the salt value(s) alongside the password hashes the salting might increase the difficulty of brute forcing the passwords, but that situation is highly unrealistic.
Epic fail at reading comprehension. The statement says nothing of the sort. It says that conveying clear scientific information to the public, while a noble goal, does not affect those with preconceived notions. No amount of evidence, proof, etc. no matter how obvious or clearly stated will have an impact. This isn't anything new or noteworthy, and it regularly comes up on slashdot (young earther's, creationistas, etc.).
Your epic fail, and indeed the one I was pointing out in the paper*, is that it's not about "preconceived notions", but rather different outlooks and values. Which is to say, that someone can know all the facts and simply not care. You can say 'hey, if you go skydiving it's X% more likely you'll die', and I can say 'yep, but I'm okay with that'. It doesn't make me wrong. It's not "tragic". It's just my outlook.
* I put this asterisk here because the paper nearly points this out. However, it fails (maybe...?) in its conclusion. Instead of focusing on the differing outlooks and values, and suggesting that communication ought to focus on resolving those, it instead suggests that we "communicate science" differently to eliminate the "tragedy of the risk-perception commons". It's hard to say, really, whether or not the authors realize the fact the these people could actually understand the science and simply not come to the same conclusion (by which I mean plan of action rather than analysis of the science) as them.
Also, the majority of people are not really qualified to draw conclusions from complex scientific results as the majority does not have the education/training/etc. to do so. That isn't elitest or snobbish; it's just simple facts. Most people have not been exposed to advanced physical and mathematical concepts.... It would be like giving some random person on the street a paper on improving map-reduce performance for a specific problem domain and then asking whether or not they think the approach in the paper is valid.
As I've pointed out before in this thread, this is the notion that the paper set out to prove, but did the opposite. It's not about qualifications, or understanding, or education. It's about what people value and what they view proper action to be.
To use your analogy, the expectation was that the more familiar people were with algorithms, the more valuable they would perceive your map-reduce paper. Instead, what was found was that only some people considered it awesome and the others were like 'this would be the wrong solution to my problem'. The authors of the paper here would say that you aren't communicating your paper well enough because your paper was awesome and the people that don't agree are simply unwilling to use something that isn't congenial to their application; you need to convince them to change their application so they can appreciate your paper. I'm saying, instead, that you should realize that they did understand your paper and simply have no use for it, and that you should try to understand and adapt to their application before simply forcing your algorithm upon them unchanged.
Your thesis is exactly what this study set out to prove: That ignorant people that don't know or care better are the ones fighting global warming because they just want to do what's easier. And that people needed to be educated about the issues and then they would fall in line.
But, as it turns out, that the more that the right-wing types know, the less they care about global warming. And that leads to the conclusion the paper drew and I was pointing out: It's not about education at all. Education would give these people facts which would reduce their concern over climate change. Thus, the goal cannot be _education_, but rather _persuasion_. And therein lies my problem with it: there is no consideration that people with a different opinion than you might have a valid position. They take the approach that these people are fundamentally, in essence, broken and cannot be trusted to come to the 'correct' conclusion if given the facts.
As to whether or not we call it propaganda, well, here's Wikipedia's take:
As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented.
They are proposing: * Not focusing on straight facts * Using communicators targeted a specific groups to lend increased credibility * Framing information to resonate with different groups This is essentially the definition of propaganda: deprecate facts and instead use targeted messages that resonate with a group to get them on board with a cause. It is indeed propaganda per se, and if you want to call it "neuro-linguistic programming", well, I guess that's a fun new spin; it still means using artful communication to change people's minds. Probably better than "a new science of science communication" at least.
I mean, this is "science communication"? "Culturally diverse communicators"? "Information-framing techniques that... resonate congenial to diverse groups"? AVOIDING "a strategy that focuses only on transmission of sound scientific information"? That's communicating science? Can't they just be honest and say 'so it turns out that the people that disagree with us are actually the ones that understand what we're saying so maybe we need to focus on persuasion rather than education'. Haha, nope! Probably because it would require that they admit that the people that disagree with them might actually have a reason for it...
There is more to cost than money. For instance, we could just switch to nuclear power. What's the cost?
Well, if we do it in 3 years, quite a lot, as that would require multiple facilities built in tandem at an accelerated rate. That's a monetary cost. Refining the fuel might upset Russia and violate nonproliferation treaties; we might have to make concessions in some way. That's a diplomatic cost, the valuation of which is a matter of opinion. Also, radiation: for some people the cost of radiation is almost almost infinite. How do we actually value that?
And what is the cost of global warming, exactly? Over 3 years? 15 years? What's the total value to society if we go nuclear in 3 years? Or 15 years? Or push fusion to get running is 20 years? Or 50? And if it takes longer?
What is the opportunity cost of driving up taxes and energy prices switching sustainable energy? People scared that radiation will kill them hardly ever think that higher energy prices mean more expensive everything: food, medicine, etc. That means more hunger and sickness and potentially deaths from clear power simply given the cost. What's all that worth? Hell, half the time I talk to people about things like this they will literally say to me things like 'I can't even think about this' because they are unwilling to put a value on such things.
These costs are all very unclear and in many ways tied to the fundamental differences of opinion underlying such general terms like "left" and "right". The are important topics of discussion, but no one really wants to talk about them.
On that final point I will add the following quote from the paper (via the article):
One aim of science communication, we submit, should be to dispel this tragedy... A communication strategy that focuses only on transmission of sound scientific information, our results suggest, is unlikely to do that. As worthwhile as it would be, simply improving the clarity of scientific information will not dispel public conflict...
This is just amazing to me. They are literally saying that educating people about global warming will increase their skepticism, and therefore actually transmitting sound scientific information would be bad. So simply conveying accurate information and allowing people to reach their own conclusions would be bad because those aren't the conclusions you want them to draw. So you reevaluate the merits of your own conclusions, right?
Nope!
It does not follow, however, that nothing can be done... Effective strategies include use of culturally diverse communicators, whose affinity with different communities enhances their credibility, and information-framing techniques that invest policy solutions with resonances congenial to diverse groups. Perfecting such techniques through a new science of science communication is a public good of singular importance.
That's right, kids. Just communicating facts won't work, instead we need to use "information-framing techniques" delivered by "communicators" specifically chosen to "enhance their credibility" in order to convey these 'facts'. This will be a new science. And we shall call it... Propaganda.
That's not what this says at all. Really this has very little to do with influence and everything to do with perspective and values. Basically the results were:
Both populations are concerned when ignorant (leftists somewhat more so), but when more knowledge is obtained the leftists become slightly more concerned, while the rightists become significantly less so.
So unless you're arguing that somehow acquiring more knowledge also acquires and different social influence with an effect larger than that of the knowledge, and one that varies with the individual's left/right perspective, your hypothesis is not only baseless, but actually _debunked_ by this data. Between the left/right groups we see _opposite_ effects for the addition of knowledge: concern increases with knowledge for the leftists and decreases for the rightists. Now, certainly you can make the argument that (as this study seems to be a simple correlation poll, rather than educating the ignorant and measuring change) social influence changes with knowledge. Still, it's a strong stretch to claim that that effect can account this disparity.
What the results actually show is that right wing people and left wing people have different values. When they're ignorant of the facts, all they can go on is the mass media messages of "Oh noes, GW will ${bad things}", and having no real data simply default to "${bad things} = bad so GW is bad" logic. When educated as to the actually process, the risks and costs involved, they can actually evaluate the concerns of global warming against their own values. Given the general psychology of lefts/rights, I find this data entirely unsurprising (with the slight exception of the ignorant rights being "quite concerned" when I'd have expected "somewhat" or "rather").
One other thing that one could take away from this (and perhaps should, and it's the real value here), is that the hype/emergency surrounding global warming isn't _science_ but rather _opinion_. Yes, the data is the data, and there is warming. But the costs? The sacrifices that should be made to prevent it? Opinion. And that people should stop pushing the 'OMG GW' / 'OMG denier' and instead have rational conversations about the real risks and the real costs and what action is actually reasonable.
> Dihydrogenmonoxide is just not IUPAC conform. Or would you call methane with a systematic name of "Tetrahydrogen monocarbide"?
Well, it's not like it's entirely unbased: there's "dicholorine monoxide", for instance, and similar metal-free compounds tend to follow the same rules. Incidentally, the compound most like water, Hydrogen Sulfide, is also know as "Dihydrogen monosulfide". You can even have some fun with it too, and call it "Hydrooxidic acid" or something.
I would also point out that "oxiran" is already taken as a name for the epoxide functional group. In fact, the IUPAC name for ethylene oxide, an extraordinarily toxic gas, is "oxirane". That would kind of subvert the misleadingly-named safe chemical thing. Also worth noting is that "hydride" specifically means a negatively charged or metallicly bonded hydrogen. Since water is neither of these (with the covalently bonded hydrogen having a very significant partial positive charge), I'd say "Oxygen Hydride" is actually quite a bit less accurate than "Dihydrogen Monoxide".
Which in most states is illegal to record without the consent of at least one party?
And further, I'd also mention that the Supreme Court has ruled that people have an expectation of privacy with regards to their infrared emissions, which is a much better analogy. There is a huge difference between actual sensory data which you incidentally encounter, and data that you can only receive by using a specialized piece of equipment and specifically decoding it. (Mind that even unencrypted wireless is still encoded by the protocol. You cannot make sense of the data by simply 'listening', you need to actually identify the noise, devices, packets, retransmissions, etc.)
The data I cited, specifically the _real_ finding, was only published in February. So please forgive me if I only cited one recent example in my quick post, and if I consider the scientific data more interesting than the IPCC panel admission of error.
> request opening up the discussion about AGW
Oh, I'm sorry... I didn't realize we didn't want discussion or anything....
Slashdot Mirror
... which is so awesome, even, because that's already down the slippery slope: Piratebay and Demonoid don't have TV shows/movies either, they only link it themselves (torrents are just oversized links). So that means there is now someone in jail for linking to a site linking to pirated bits. Can one even argue there's a difference between:
https://thepiratebay.se/
https://www.google.com/search?q=thepiratebay
https://www.google.com/ seatch for "thepiratebay" and click the first link
?
Sense is really just not a player here.
It's nice to see that people have bought into a media manufactured issue so strongly...
If I could trade a proper evolution based origin of the species for any one change in the education system I would do it in a heartbeat. There are a lot of things wrong with education and evolution is seriously low on the list. I would so much rather see teachers able to teach to the students than be forced to teach to a national politicized test. I'm really surprised that people would rather see every kid shoved though the same one-size-fit-all program if it means their 'side' wins. Such is the power of us-vs-them debates; 'they' must be crushed at all costs. Hell, have you seen the so called evolution curriculum taught in these schools (prior to all this, even)? It's usually just about as science-y as creationism anyways. Not at all worth keeping if it means having all the other science fields follow the 'shut up; don't think' plan as well.
Cool achievement, to be sure, but for data storage? There are a great many ways of achieving ultra high density data storage that have been performed in the lab and are 'only 10 years away'. The trouble always is the engineering: how expensive, how fast, how much, how reliable? One strand isn't too big a deal, but it'll only store maybe 1GB. Now you need thousands of strands and a way to page through them. And maybe a way to seek within them. Etc.
Again, really cool accomplishment, but I can't see it being practical for anything but an organic computer as I have to think organic tech will outpace organic at pretty much every step. (For example, see racetrack memory as a sort of alternative that is already much more viable.)
The flash runtime is really only a cost for them: they have to maintain it ('cause it's so secure!), optimize it, and port it to a lot of platforms.
What they make money on is the flash toolkit. Adobe has decided that maintaining the runtime isn't worth is and instead moving their toolkit over to HTML 5 (and continuing along with being able to export video, etc). Really, it's mostly a win for them. They kept going along with the runtime because it did afford them certain benefits, the install base (which they monopolize) in particular... I think I hear it was something like 90% which probably beats HTML 5 by a wide margin. However, they see the writing on the wall: HTML 5 is getting more common and flash player less. They have a mature toolkit and it's time they compete on that alone and stop wasting (excess) resources working on a costly* side project that really only made sense half a decade ago.
(*I mean seriously, in terms of bad PR alone...)
> The patent system was used by the King of England to reward his friends with monopolies
And so the founders included it in the constitution, because they were total fans of the King of England and his was of doing things.
> I mean, just look at the arguments of patent system fans. Half the time they'll say
> > Patents are required, because otherwise everyone will keep everything secret and all knowledge will be lost.
> The other half of the time they say
> > Patents are required, because otherwise everyone will immediately duplicate every innovation without the original
> > inventor being able to get any money out of it.
> While both statements can't be right at the same time, they sure can be wrong at the same time.
Sure, because everything written in absolutes is always intended as such. Let me clarify those for you then:
Patents are required, because otherwise everyone will try to keep everything secret and all [that] knowledge will be lost.
Patents are required, because otherwise everyone will try to immediately duplicate every innovation without the original inventor being able to get any money out of it.
So by not writing these statement as absolute rules that somehow must govern behavior, but rather as expected strategies people will follow we can see not only how they can both be true, but how they are actually both accurate as they are already partially in play today (see trade secrets and GPL issues). The only difference is that we presently have an additional strategy of 'get a patent' which changes the game.
No, it was not set up for that. It was designed for protecting the little guy who is inventing and producing tangible goods from big companies copying him and driving him out of business. The patent thicket you speak of hinders innovation; it does not promote development of useful arts and sciences.
Okay, so you're a tinkerer and invent, taking from the GP's example, a fancy new loom in your basement and get a patent. It's not really much faster to run, but it doesn't break down nearly as often and thus reduces downtime and required maintenance staff. So to be rewarded for your ingenuity, you uh... start a large factory using your invention and are successful in the marketplace because you can cut production costs by 10% which is totally enough to compete against existing companies because you clearly have the experience to start a business and capitol is free and finding a plant and workers and setting up trade agreements and all kinds of overhead don't matter because you can trim a bit off nominal production costs?
The point is, while the "little guy who is inventing and producing tangible goods" can exist in some cases, many times it doesn't. Often, the inventor is a scientist/engineer/etc (e.g. Tesla) that wants nothing to do with actual production but wants to / should earn income from their invention to fund further efforts. Or, in the case above, the field is such that even important innovations can really only be used by a fairly large producer, and the burden on the inventor to become one exceeds the value offered by the invention. Would you consider a system that forced you to use your invention or bust as helpful to "promote development of useful arts and sciences"?
The GP had it right: The problem isn't patent licensing in general, it's the worthless patents.
> I think that's a bit ridiculous, to think that a company like Microsoft would intentionally want one of their products to
> fail, putting their market share in danger as it might cause long-time Windows users to jump ship to another platform.
Sure, it you put it like that in black and white. But if we add some particulars... ... A company like Microsoft would intentionally want one of their products to fail on the desktop, because otherwise they'd be putting their market share on the tablet in danger as it might cause long-time Windows users to jump ship to another platform.
See where the suggestion isn't so unreasonable? Given that most people and companies probably upgraded to 7 from XP about 2 years ago (if even!), a Win 8 at this time was never going to be very appealing. Most would probably just as soon wait for Win 9 which would mean a more comfortable ~6 year cycle. I think Microsoft realized this, and that they were already losing hard in an increasingly relevant market (tablets), and figured that the only thing that mattered about Win 8 on the desktop was that it worked at all. It can fail, hard, as long as it gets them into the tablet market.
And, more to the point, the cell phone company can't put people in jail. They aren't going to be searching that data to "discover" crimes. (Collect enough data and statistically you can 'prove' almost anything). If anything, their incentive is to ignore it as much as possible: Not only because it limits their liability in case something happens that they missed, but also because people is jail aren't buying cell phones.
Well, the counter argument to this is that the, let's call them 'informational', goods don't depreciate with use like a tangible product does. A (pressed) game disk will be just as functional in 5 years, though your, say, lawn mower will probably be all gunked up with grass, rusting a bit and have some wear on the engine.
Of course, we all know this is pretty bunk. Game disks get scratched fairly easily, or the booklets/cases get lost and there are plenty of physical goods that keep their value as. Computer are such a thing: aside from a possible aging hard disk, they pretty much run just as well as when they were new. Still, there's only very limited used computer market. Why? Simple: New computers offer something more than used computers; usually they're faster and/or draw less power. Intel spends their time making better chips and exploring new markets, rather than complaining about how unfair it is that people trade used computers or don't every one released. Game companies should do the same. Offer something worth buying and people will buy it. Don't shovel out a new revision of the same old crap and complain when people are content to swap the old version and skip the new one.
> But at the same time they are absolutely correct, class action seldom really benefits anyone but the law firms.
Directly? Yes. Indirectly? Well... Perhaps not.
Class action suits are much more about seeking _punishment_ than compensation. That's why companies hate them and want to preclude them with clauses like these. Sure every member of the class might only get, say 20% returned, but the company pays out 200%. Moreover, it's quite a lot easier to join the class than it is to file suit or enter arbitration on your own. So they maybe give full 100% compensation (+ maybe 50% in court/arbitration costs) to 10% of the customers and it's a "win-win". But really it gives them a much wider margin in which to screw the end user because it basically guarantees that potential costs will not exceed the profits from doing so (this being especially true for software companies where the cost per person is basically zero so _if_ they have to return your payment it's just a wash). While the law firm may take a huge and unfair cut, ideally that money is being pulled from a gaping wound in the company, in a way they hope to avoid.
No. Gravity does not operate on mass, it operates on energy. Therefore the Higgs field is irrelevant when it comes to anti-gravity because it really just explains the linkage between mass and energy. It might help in converting energy and mass (which would be far more useful that anti-grav!!), but at the end of the day, a certain amount of energy be it kinetic, binding, chemical or simple mass is always going to weigh the same.
I find it funny how "civilized society" to you means telling your employer to go pound sand if it's not precisely the time you're supposed to be in the building.
For me civilized is taking the occasional off-hours call in exchange for my employer allowing allowing me take an occasional (and, indeed, quite more frequent) bit of person time during work. Like reading and posting on slashdot, for instance. You know, like you're doing during these (ostensibly) business hours.
Regardless of why they might say they 'hate' the US (infidels, meddling, etc.) the real reason is, at the end of the day, not a whole lot different from why the US 'hates' the terrorists: They want an enemy.
They have a lot of social and political problems, and because they cannot fix them (and really, do not want to because that would require advocating their control) they create a war. It lets the leaders accumulate more power while giving the people someone to blame for their problems other than their leaders.
Why the US? As the 'most powerful' country it's easy to come up with reasons (and not necessarily inaccurate ones!) that it could have negatively impacted people (e.g. selling arms to Israel, trade stuff, cultural influence, etc). That also means that you are expected to lose your war, which is nice because it means you don't really have to try that hard because you can also blame your failings on them being too powerful. This gives a bonus of making you then underdog and any small victory huge. The are also a few other things like being non-islamic and well known and all that.
(As you'll note, the basic ideas here are what makes terrorists, in turn, a great enemy for the US: far away, impossible to actually defeat, and different(==bad).)
Wow, so sorry to have used a recent, well known example. Maybe next time I talk about how things are changing I'll pick something obscure from 30 years ago. At least then I won't have crazy people going off on rants almost completely unrelated to my post...
That is very true. However what's not accounted for in that statistic is voter turnout:
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/voting/cb09-110.html
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1209/racial-ethnic-voters-presidential-election
So not only did the vote change from approx 90% to 97% democrat, but the turnout among the population increased by 5% (2 million) as well. The African American vote as a proportion of the overall vote increase by 1.1 percentage points. As a result, in 2004 the D vote was 88% * 11% = 9.7%, while in 2008 it was 97% * 12.1% = 11.7%. So overall, the African Americans gave Obama by 2 percentage points vs Kerry, which is pretty comparable to the amount of discrimination found in this survey (especially if you adjust for the population sizes of white/black!)
How much it _actually_ influenced the election, or course, is anybody's guess: How did turnout change amongst demographics are results were reported, how did race map to the electoral college, etc. .33% and ~1.05% respectively, while Florida(27) and Ohio(20) were 2.82% and 4.59%.
FYI, North Carolina (15 electors) and Indiana (12) were determined by
Your view is quite outdated, and these days the American president very nearly has the powers of a dictator.
Remember all that uproar over Republicans, Catholics and birth control? That was all because Obama signed an executive order mandating the Catholic church (among others) to provide birth control.
While it once was true (and technically still is) that only congress has the power to create laws, that's no longer really meaningful. The federal government has grown, and basically all that growth occurred within the executive branch and thus under the office of the president. From the FBI to the DHS, the DOT, 'Obama Care', etc... Congress does create these with law, but with that law they also grant them (the executive branch) the ability to act with the force of law. Such actions are known as "regulations".
So, even though the office of the president technically (i.e. constitutionally) doesn't have the power to tell all organizations to, say, provide birth control, congress has, via the healthcare bill, granted it the ability to do so.
Salt is only for preventing dictionary based attacks, while this article is talking about brute force attacks. Now, we if suppose an attacker, for some bizarre reason, couldn't collect the salt value(s) alongside the password hashes the salting might increase the difficulty of brute forcing the passwords, but that situation is highly unrealistic.
Epic fail at reading comprehension. The statement says nothing of the sort. It says that conveying clear scientific information to the public, while a noble goal, does not affect those with preconceived notions. No amount of evidence, proof, etc. no matter how obvious or clearly stated will have an impact. This isn't anything new or noteworthy, and it regularly comes up on slashdot (young earther's, creationistas, etc.).
Your epic fail, and indeed the one I was pointing out in the paper*, is that it's not about "preconceived notions", but rather different outlooks and values. Which is to say, that someone can know all the facts and simply not care. You can say 'hey, if you go skydiving it's X% more likely you'll die', and I can say 'yep, but I'm okay with that'. It doesn't make me wrong. It's not "tragic". It's just my outlook.
* I put this asterisk here because the paper nearly points this out. However, it fails (maybe...?) in its conclusion. Instead of focusing on the differing outlooks and values, and suggesting that communication ought to focus on resolving those, it instead suggests that we "communicate science" differently to eliminate the "tragedy of the risk-perception commons". It's hard to say, really, whether or not the authors realize the fact the these people could actually understand the science and simply not come to the same conclusion (by which I mean plan of action rather than analysis of the science) as them.
Also, the majority of people are not really qualified to draw conclusions from complex scientific results as the majority does not have the education/training/etc. to do so. That isn't elitest or snobbish; it's just simple facts. Most people have not been exposed to advanced physical and mathematical concepts. ... It would be like giving some random person on the street a paper on improving map-reduce performance for a specific problem domain and then asking whether or not they think the approach in the paper is valid.
As I've pointed out before in this thread, this is the notion that the paper set out to prove, but did the opposite. It's not about qualifications, or understanding, or education. It's about what people value and what they view proper action to be.
To use your analogy, the expectation was that the more familiar people were with algorithms, the more valuable they would perceive your map-reduce paper. Instead, what was found was that only some people considered it awesome and the others were like 'this would be the wrong solution to my problem'. The authors of the paper here would say that you aren't communicating your paper well enough because your paper was awesome and the people that don't agree are simply unwilling to use something that isn't congenial to their application; you need to convince them to change their application so they can appreciate your paper. I'm saying, instead, that you should realize that they did understand your paper and simply have no use for it, and that you should try to understand and adapt to their application before simply forcing your algorithm upon them unchanged.
Your thesis is exactly what this study set out to prove: That ignorant people that don't know or care better are the ones fighting global warming because they just want to do what's easier. And that people needed to be educated about the issues and then they would fall in line.
But, as it turns out, that the more that the right-wing types know, the less they care about global warming. And that leads to the conclusion the paper drew and I was pointing out: It's not about education at all. Education would give these people facts which would reduce their concern over climate change. Thus, the goal cannot be _education_, but rather _persuasion_. And therein lies my problem with it: there is no consideration that people with a different opinion than you might have a valid position. They take the approach that these people are fundamentally, in essence, broken and cannot be trusted to come to the 'correct' conclusion if given the facts.
As to whether or not we call it propaganda, well, here's Wikipedia's take:
As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented.
They are proposing:
* Not focusing on straight facts
* Using communicators targeted a specific groups to lend increased credibility
* Framing information to resonate with different groups
This is essentially the definition of propaganda: deprecate facts and instead use targeted messages that resonate with a group to get them on board with a cause. It is indeed propaganda per se, and if you want to call it "neuro-linguistic programming", well, I guess that's a fun new spin; it still means using artful communication to change people's minds. Probably better than "a new science of science communication" at least.
I mean, this is "science communication"? "Culturally diverse communicators"? "Information-framing techniques that ... resonate congenial to diverse groups"? AVOIDING "a strategy that focuses only on transmission of sound scientific information"? That's communicating science? Can't they just be honest and say 'so it turns out that the people that disagree with us are actually the ones that understand what we're saying so maybe we need to focus on persuasion rather than education'. Haha, nope! Probably because it would require that they admit that the people that disagree with them might actually have a reason for it...
There is more to cost than money. For instance, we could just switch to nuclear power. What's the cost?
Well, if we do it in 3 years, quite a lot, as that would require multiple facilities built in tandem at an accelerated rate. That's a monetary cost. Refining the fuel might upset Russia and violate nonproliferation treaties; we might have to make concessions in some way. That's a diplomatic cost, the valuation of which is a matter of opinion. Also, radiation: for some people the cost of radiation is almost almost infinite. How do we actually value that?
And what is the cost of global warming, exactly? Over 3 years? 15 years? What's the total value to society if we go nuclear in 3 years? Or 15 years? Or push fusion to get running is 20 years? Or 50? And if it takes longer?
What is the opportunity cost of driving up taxes and energy prices switching sustainable energy? People scared that radiation will kill them hardly ever think that higher energy prices mean more expensive everything: food, medicine, etc. That means more hunger and sickness and potentially deaths from clear power simply given the cost. What's all that worth? Hell, half the time I talk to people about things like this they will literally say to me things like 'I can't even think about this' because they are unwilling to put a value on such things.
These costs are all very unclear and in many ways tied to the fundamental differences of opinion underlying such general terms like "left" and "right". The are important topics of discussion, but no one really wants to talk about them.
On that final point I will add the following quote from the paper (via the article):
One aim of science communication, we submit, should be to dispel this tragedy ... A communication strategy that focuses only on transmission of sound scientific information, our results suggest, is unlikely to do that. As worthwhile as it would be, simply improving the clarity of scientific information will not dispel public conflict ...
This is just amazing to me. They are literally saying that educating people about global warming will increase their skepticism, and therefore actually transmitting sound scientific information would be bad. So simply conveying accurate information and allowing people to reach their own conclusions would be bad because those aren't the conclusions you want them to draw. So you reevaluate the merits of your own conclusions, right?
Nope!
It does not follow, however, that nothing can be done ... Effective strategies include use of culturally diverse communicators, whose affinity with different communities enhances their credibility, and information-framing techniques that invest policy solutions with resonances congenial to diverse groups. Perfecting such techniques through a new science of science communication is a public good of singular importance.
That's right, kids. Just communicating facts won't work, instead we need to use "information-framing techniques" delivered by "communicators" specifically chosen to "enhance their credibility" in order to convey these 'facts'. This will be a new science. And we shall call it...
Propaganda.
That's not what this says at all. Really this has very little to do with influence and everything to do with perspective and values. Basically the results were:
Both populations are concerned when ignorant (leftists somewhat more so), but when more knowledge is obtained the leftists become slightly more concerned, while the rightists become significantly less so.
So unless you're arguing that somehow acquiring more knowledge also acquires and different social influence with an effect larger than that of the knowledge, and one that varies with the individual's left/right perspective, your hypothesis is not only baseless, but actually _debunked_ by this data. Between the left/right groups we see _opposite_ effects for the addition of knowledge: concern increases with knowledge for the leftists and decreases for the rightists. Now, certainly you can make the argument that (as this study seems to be a simple correlation poll, rather than educating the ignorant and measuring change) social influence changes with knowledge. Still, it's a strong stretch to claim that that effect can account this disparity.
What the results actually show is that right wing people and left wing people have different values. When they're ignorant of the facts, all they can go on is the mass media messages of "Oh noes, GW will ${bad things}", and having no real data simply default to "${bad things} = bad so GW is bad" logic. When educated as to the actually process, the risks and costs involved, they can actually evaluate the concerns of global warming against their own values. Given the general psychology of lefts/rights, I find this data entirely unsurprising (with the slight exception of the ignorant rights being "quite concerned" when I'd have expected "somewhat" or "rather").
One other thing that one could take away from this (and perhaps should, and it's the real value here), is that the hype/emergency surrounding global warming isn't _science_ but rather _opinion_. Yes, the data is the data, and there is warming. But the costs? The sacrifices that should be made to prevent it? Opinion. And that people should stop pushing the 'OMG GW' / 'OMG denier' and instead have rational conversations about the real risks and the real costs and what action is actually reasonable.
> Dihydrogenmonoxide is just not IUPAC conform. Or would you call methane with a systematic name of "Tetrahydrogen monocarbide"?
Well, it's not like it's entirely unbased: there's "dicholorine monoxide", for instance, and similar metal-free compounds tend to follow the same rules. Incidentally, the compound most like water, Hydrogen Sulfide, is also know as "Dihydrogen monosulfide". You can even have some fun with it too, and call it "Hydrooxidic acid" or something.
I would also point out that "oxiran" is already taken as a name for the epoxide functional group. In fact, the IUPAC name for ethylene oxide, an extraordinarily toxic gas, is "oxirane". That would kind of subvert the misleadingly-named safe chemical thing. Also worth noting is that "hydride" specifically means a negatively charged or metallicly bonded hydrogen. Since water is neither of these (with the covalently bonded hydrogen having a very significant partial positive charge), I'd say "Oxygen Hydride" is actually quite a bit less accurate than "Dihydrogen Monoxide".
> It's like sound.
Which in most states is illegal to record without the consent of at least one party?
And further, I'd also mention that the Supreme Court has ruled that people have an expectation of privacy with regards to their infrared emissions, which is a much better analogy. There is a huge difference between actual sensory data which you incidentally encounter, and data that you can only receive by using a specialized piece of equipment and specifically decoding it. (Mind that even unencrypted wireless is still encoded by the protocol. You cannot make sense of the data by simply 'listening', you need to actually identify the noise, devices, packets, retransmissions, etc.)
> You're still hanging on to that?
The data I cited, specifically the _real_ finding, was only published in February. So please forgive me if I only cited one recent example in my quick post, and if I consider the scientific data more interesting than the IPCC panel admission of error.
> request opening up the discussion about AGW
Oh, I'm sorry... I didn't realize we didn't want discussion or anything. ...
Ah well, thanks for proving my point at least.