i. R's base graphics
ii. The lattice package
iii. The ggplot2 package
iv. Packages that create interesting classes tend to create plot methods for them (really a special
case of item i, above)
Most environments/languages would be absolutely thrilled to have options ii or iii, and option i/iv is pretty good, too. The ggplot2 package in particular has a different (but very nice) approach to plotting.
I mean how many programs/environments with adequate graphics spawn multiple graphics packages, each of which is well-maintained and good?
2. I like named parameters, and while it may not be the neatest programming practice in the world, the "..." parameter is very clever. It stands for all the parameters you have not specified in your function. For example:
foo - function (x, y=13,...) { x - bar (x, y) ; baz (x,...) }
The code here is silly, but the idea is that you are passing x to baz, plus all of the arguments to foo that were not x or y (i.e. all of the arguments that you did not specifically list as parameters for foo).
It's a poor-man's OO tool, I guess, but it gets used a lot in plotting, in particular.
3. Documentation. I've seen complaints about the documentation for R packages, but when I've dipped my toe in the Matlab and Sage worlds, I've found package documentation that looks more like notes scribbled on a sticky note than R documentation. R packages have documentation that includes a nice TeX'd output, and usually good explanations and bibliographies. Larger packages will even have vignettes that dive into specific areas of the package.
... and won millions of dollars, with which he bought the warehouse where he used to work. He got these numbers from a friend he met in a "local institution".
I'd love to figure out if this is simply in the eyes of the beholder, or if there's an environmental factor at work. I do video on a huge matte screen all day long, but when I get home and use my glossy MBP -- gotten when glossy was still just one option -- I notice no glare.
Right now, it's night and I have a ceiling-reflecting lamp on, and I have to twist all around to get the lamp reflection on the screen to notice any glare at all. During the day, I've used my laptop many places, including outdoors, and never had glare/reflections that literally distracted me.
Are glossy-haters working with huge windows directly behind them or something? Is it a matter of perhaps overall lighting and personal depth-of-field? Or concentration/focus patterns? It's puzzling how much of a love-hate thing glossy screens are.
(Now my big-screen TV is definitely glossy, as it is on a wall with windows on two other sides of the room. So you would definitely get some bad glare depending on where you sat.)
Gotta pile on the long rant about this case. You don't even have to read all of the case law examinations here, Taco. The kid accused a principal of being a sex offender. That's an extremely serious accusation, especially for someone who no doubt has to submit to background investigations in order to obtain/keep his job.
You can argue all you want that it was "obvious" that the kid was joking or being childish, but exactly how does that save the principal's skin once rumors start and googles go?
Methinks Taco has some serious authority issues. Serious.
Yeah, it's terrible when respectable professional scientists won't accept the possibility of unprovable supernatural beings as an axiom for their research papers.
Only evangelizing atheists and certain 17th-century clerics think that a scientist who believes in a supreme being will somehow have to resort to "angels pushing planets" kind of proof.
Newton, Bayes, and many other famous scientists were believers and that did not stop them from applying scientific methods. And many never-heard-of-them scientists today also believe as well, but you'll see no footnotes in their papers referencing this.
You make the basic mistake of assuming that those who stand inside of mainstream science and don't have Bible-referencing footnotes, have no faith. Not very scientific or rigorous. (Or correct.)
I've demonstrated this with The Corpse Bride DVD and Blu-ray. Show the DVD first and it looks great. The PS3 scales it up very nicely on our 42" 1080p screen.
Then pop it out, pop in the Blu-ray and point out all of the detail in the characters' skin that you can now make out. Average Joe might still say something like "looks the same to me", I guess, but for most people it's eye-opening...
It's like listening to music on a pair of professional speakers: you hear things you never heard before. You didn't miss it before, and you can live with what you've got, but it really is incredible.
Overall, I think the "news" isn't news: people who have setups that simply cannot take advantage of higher definition are not interested in higher definition. Who woulda thought?
(HDTVs will continue to get cheaper. Just as CRTs are getting pushed to the margins by various flat screen technologies, so will SDTV. And there will be more and more foot-in-the-door technologies that convince you to get HDTV: games, FIOS, media centers, AppleTV/Slingbox, etc, etc. And once you have an HDTV, you then have a reason to try Blu-ray and perhaps you will.)
I wonder if you added up all of the cheap vacuums you burned through plus the Roomba, if you could perhaps have afforded a REAL vacuum cleaner.
I love the Roomba from the geek perspective. Unfortunately, I don't believe it's HEPA, and to be honest I'm not sure how fine of particles it actually retains. I've generally found non-HEPA vacuum cleaners to be very efficient invokers of allergic responses.
You're right about the medicine example. It's odd that medicine has an incredibly rigorous statistical process before approval, yet many medicines are basically black boxes.
Look at statins (cholesterol medication), which are one of the most widely-prescribed medicines in the world -- and which I take. There's a legitimate question as to whether their main effect is to reduce cholesterol levels, or whether it's actually a specific kind of anti-inflammatory which happens to reduce cholesterol levels.
Or how about ulcers, which were chalked up to personality and stomach acid, and treated as such, until a "crank" pushed the medical community for decades and they finally realized that a bacteria was behind most of it. The medicines were (and are) effective, but no amount of modeling along those lines could find the actual, root cause of most ulcers.
(I also take medicine for stomach acid, and interestingly I am one of the 10% whose ulcer was not caused by bacteria.)
What you say is true, Hoplite3. The big issue I see is how people define "model". My guess is that quite a few unfortunately define it as "I got 3 asterisks in the significance test", whether the "model" (say, linear regression) makes sense or not.
I forget where I read it, but I've been studying linear regression, and there was a fascinating example were if they'd have used linear regression techniques on the early "drop the canonball and time it's fall" data, they would have come up with a nice, highly-significant linear regression for gravity.
Then there is the whole issue of explanation versus prediction. Something can be predictive while providing no explanation, and perhaps that's where the petabyte idea is going: who cares about explanation if prediction is accurate enough? (Not my philosophy, BTW.)
It hurts my brain. The person who (incompetently) redacted the document was probably just following guidelines. My guess is that there's a guideline that says that specific numbers and costs cannot be published in reference to secure systems used by an intelligence or law enforcement agency. Only aggregate costs, as necessary to inform the public and lawmakers.
No conspiracy. No corruption. No deeper meaning than a guideline that requires sticking your neck out and making a case if you want to violate it.
Makes sense, actually, as most intelligence gathering is probably not about sentences like, "John Doe is our super-secret mole in the office of the director", but rather "the phone system has 1100 switches for all of North America, and is taken down every 2 weeks at 1 am for maintenance."
And this leaves me wondering if those who are laughing or outraged at the attempted redaction (as opposed to the incompetence in implementing it) are also the same people who insist that they must have military-grade encryption and anonymous re-routing, using spread-spectrum wireless transmissions to public access facilities, in order to protect their private emails to grandmother. Sigh.
The interface is quirky. No doubt makes sense once you warp your mind around it, but it's certainly unlike the for-pay (i.e. not used by kids) software I've used. And it's not clear that its way of doing things provides any benefit.
Can someone have reverence and probe deeper? Newton did, so it is possible, but I doubt all of the I.D. proponents could.
The list is much longer than Newton. Many early scientists were "delving into the mysteries of creation" as it were. Heck, Bayes was a minister, right?
I think it depends on whether "ID proponents" simply means the "I'm not real good at math" type of person, or if it might include those who are in fact trained and skilled with the tools of science. I'm sure there were many ignorant proponents in Newton's (and Bayes', and...) day as well.
How many times do we have to say it, SCIENCE is not about BELIEF. You can believe whatever you want but in a science class (or academic institution) and officially (the government position) the thinking should be one of reason, evidence and demonstration of understanding. Belief has no place.
Actually, belief plays a much larger role in science than you want to admit... What is a hypothesis, except a belief? Yes, a hypothesis must be tested, but it starts as a belief.
And I'm beginning to notice more and more that people will use, for example, statistical methods to find something of significance, then basically propose the explanation that suits them and because what they found was (statistically) significant, their explanation is somehow more credible. But there are multiple explanations and they don't even bother to investigate others, because somehow validity leaks from the observation to the explanation.
And at what point do you accept an explanation as valid? Factor A -- significant at the 95% confidence level -- can be explained by X, Y, then Z. Yep, sounds good to me. Very clever explanation.
It might also be mentioned that Stein is not the only guy on a crusade, as it were. Look at the "evolution" of Dawkins from explainer of evolution to crusader against religion.
But you don't really illustrate the point - the OP was talking about scientists, and you illustrated the point with a story about a journalist and an environmental activist. Please explain where the meta-magical process takes place to make a Scientist... the kind that is obviously far above any journalist, activist, or the rest of us mere mortals. (Oops, I'm a scientist, too. It was part of my job title for a while, even. How could I have missed the special ceremony empowering me with absolute neutrality?)
And as you mentioned, it's just complete and utter bunk. The idea that OSX was just copied over to the iPhone is absurd. "OSX" on the iPhone is to OSX on the desktop as Windows CE is on PDAs and embedded devices (which Microsoft has been doing for at least 8 years or so) to the desktop -- yeah, there's some cross branding, shared libraries (from a source-code perspective -- C is cross-platform, even in the Windows world), API similarities, but underneath it all it isn't the same, and both are best-purposed for their respective targets, which is a much better decision than any run anywhere, lowest-common-denominator approach.
A lot of claims here, and no real proof. Except I guess your experience with Windows CE that you project onto MacOS X?
Certainly the way that new OS X features have made it onto the iPhone first suggest to me that if there are two separate pipes, Apple has figured a way to span them much better than Microsoft ever did with Windows CE.
Vista is a failure not because of any sort of code maintenance problem, but rather that Microsoft aimed far too high with Vista, taking far too many risks for a big, big change.
So the failure is entirely the fault of dreaming beyond any possible technical solution, and has absolutely nothing to do with the tools, code base, and culture that they had to build on?
It's obvious that for political/legal/cultural reasons, MS went monolithic (or perhaps you might call it "virtual monolithic") in areas such as having an OS that "could not operate" without an applications program (Explorer) installed. Not to mention that many of the many years spent in getting Vista were not spent on WinFS or any of the "big risks" that you attribute their failure to. If not "big risks", then perhaps they did in fact run into problems with their code base, tools, and internal culture that delayed the richest software organization in the world so long.
So these people cannot be said to be 'selecting bluray' for any perceived merit of bluray over hddvd. They are simply selecting the best HD format player value propisition (in terms of price, features, and aesthetics), and incidentally it the HD format it happens to support is bluray.
That's what I originally said. The PS3 is an exceptional value and has everything in a single, attractive box, which makes it very appealing to NON-GAMERS who are looking for a HD player or media center that looks good and works well with their brand-new 40" LCD on the wall. And in that case, people have bought Blu-ray not because they consider it the better alternative -- personally I was technically rooting for HD-DVD -- but because of the PS3 itself. (And not just the PS3 in isolation, of course, but in the environment of alternatives like standalone players or the XBOX.)
And as I said, I don't think I'm an abberation -- as you claimed. Certainly anyone considering Blu-ray in the first place -- perhaps only slightly leaning in that direction because of a friend, or an article they read somewhere, or whatever -- that read any reviews would find that many different sources recommend a game machine as the best Blu-ray player out there, and one at the low end of the Blu-ray player price spectrum. Huh? I'm not a console gamer... but as they investigate they are persuaded. On the other hand, someone who was perhaps leaning HD-DVD or neutral but investigating both camps would also see the PS3 mentioned and would naturally look at its perceived counterpart, the XBOX, and find a solution that isn't really comparable from a price, simplicity, or esthetics viewpoint.
Of course, someone determined to play Halo would get the XBOX, and would also consider getting the accessories to bring it up to PS3 standards. Or more likely they would have gotten the XBOX with the idea that they would SOMEDAY get the other accesories. Look at the number of HD-DVD drives bought for the XBOX: it's not a large percentage. Indicating that it was not primarily bought as a HD-DVD player with lots of extra features.
So, I repeat: the PS3 has been, IMO, a powerful draw for people who are not hardcore in one camp or the other, and particularly people who are not console gamers and who look at other things like the esthetics and one-stop-shopping of the PS3. In my case, as a geek I preferred HD-DVD on technical merit, but I also felt that Blu-ray was winning the war, so I was somewhat neutral. Even if I had waited until now to purchase, so I could clearly see that Blu-ray won, I would not have bought a non-PS3 Blu-ray player. From what I've read, standalone Blu-ray players basically suck in terms of reliability (in terms of being able to play any Blu-ray disc), future-proofing (1.1, 2.0 profile), and performance (20-seconds or more to start playing a disc?) The PS3 made the difference for me, and I don't think I'm the exception.
I believe a relatively small number of HD-DVD drives were sold for the XBOX. It'd be interesting to know how many DVD-player-style controllers were sold for the PS3 (a pretty sure indicator that it was being used as a Blu-ray player, and by people who didn't want to use a game-style controller).
If you were that informed a customer and in the hddvd camp, then an xbox+accessory was an easy equivalent alternative at an equivalent price. I doubt the 'sleekness' of the ps3 would have played into the equation much for someone who was in one camp or the other.
Your analysis is flawed as it assumes that either you're an uninformed customer and therefore choose at random or don't even consider a game machine for playback (though it is a good value and has exceptional quality), or you're deeply in one or the other camp and superbly informed.
Go to Amazon. The second PS3 choice in the list is the $400 PS3 40GB (bundled with Blu-ray Spiderman). Note that it emphasizes Blu-ray playback and mentions things like 802.11g connectivity. Notice that everything is included in one box.
Now look at the XBOX machines. See any mention of HDDVD? How about 802.11 connectivity? Prices? Hmm, looks like for the $400 I spent on my PS3 I get no HD-DVD and no 802.11 connectivity. Certainly it's not clear.
Oh yeah, if I look on the second page, I find an external HD-DVD player and an external 802.11 adapter, which raises the package's price well out of the "equivalent" range. Not to mention this is an entertainment center going into my living room so two boxes and a dongle off the back is most definitely not attractive. The PS3 has everything bundled into a sleek package and yes, that DOES matter for someone who is not deep into one camp or the other. In fact, it's probably a large consideration for someone who is not a gamer-first and not a raving HD-DVD or Blu-ray fanatic.
And it's not just Amazon. Go to Microsoft's XBOX page. See any mention in their model table about HD-DVD? Wireless connectivity? Nope. Perhaps it was yanked yesterday or last week or... But the bottom line is the prices are NOT competitive with the PS3 once you factor in the extras you have to buy.
No, I'm not the exception. I'm a smart consumer who got a GREAT deal for the same amount of money that would have gotten me a slow Blu-ray player, or (on the XBOX side) a game machine with a cable running into the back.
I chose the PS3 because it is the fastest, most future-proof Bluray player on the market. It's reasonably priced and includes wireless internet connectivity (and a browser), media center (video, audio, photo files) capabilities, and oh yeah it also plays games if I decide I like one, and it's all in a sleek, quiet package costing $400.
I don't think I'm alone on that. The HD-DVD camp didn't really have an equivalent, unless you got the XBOX plus accessories which didn't come in the box. I'd be willing to bet that many more people bought the PS3 as a media machine than XBOX's.
First, if you've got to carry several spare batteries because you will be using your laptop for extended periods in areas that don't have power, it won't kill you to carry a few extra pounds in the form of a MacBook or MacBook Pro.
Second, exactly where will you be that power is inaccessible? Coffee shop? Plane? Train? Boat? Car? Airport? This is the 2000's and power is accessible in almost all of these places.
Third, this is a continuation of the complaints of years past where people lamented the disappearance of 5.25" floppies, then 3.5" floppies, etc. It's a wireless world now (and Apple has introduced other products to make this even more-so), and it's a world with power accessible in many places you would have never had it before. In fact, I can think of very few places that I've taken my laptop in the last couple of years where I had to run off of battery power by necessity. (Convenience, yes. I like the view here and there's no plug near, but necessity, no. There's a plug 30 feet away.)
Fourth, I return to my first point. If you want great gas mileage, don't buy a Porsche. If you maximal cargo space, don't buy a Cooper. If you want acceleration, don't buy a Prius and then complain that you can't add Nitrous Oxide and a Supercharger. The proper tool for the proper task, so if you want to work with your data with a highly portable machine with a large (for its class) screen and total wireless capability, get an Air.
We know what materials are available to us, but so what?
First, because knowing WHAT and knowing WHERE (and thus HOW MUCH) are two entirely different things. As supplies get short, prices go up, and new reserves may be found.
Second, there are other resources out there that are not currently being used because of expense or some other perception on our part... consider nuclear power. We snubbed our noses at it because of the dangers that were perceived 30 years ago, but now see that global warming is a much larger issue. If we would reverse course and build nuclear reactors, we would have quite a lot of energy available to us that does not make greenhouse gases. But we won't use nuclear power until our backs are against the wall.
Other technologies work similarly. And as the article says, extracting Helium from the atmosphere is "too expensive", but the specifics are that it's too expensive when it can be pulled out of the earth for free as a byproduct. A shortage will change what is expensive and what is not. Same thing with oil: we're now extracting it with techniques and drilling for it in places that were prohibitively expensive 20 years ago... but not now.
Third, technology of course makes a difference. We could have deforested North America or tried to get whale oil by killing every whale in the world 100 years ago. But oil came along and the technology to use it. Uranium was useful for perhaps primitive X-rays before the technology for nuclear (fusion) power. Wind power used to be able to perhaps pump some water or grind some grain. Solar power was having a bunch of windows on the south side of a house.
Before airplanes, flight was obviously impossible because people had tried strapping wings on themselves and it totally failed. Before modern rocketry, getting to the moon was impossible, since even a plane with an oxygen supply for its engines couldn't propel itself through the vacuum of space... etc, etc, etc.
You do have a point that technology cannot solve anything we can imagine. Technology requires knowledge plus resources to work. But the "we're about to run out of resources and collapse to the stone age" has been sounded for centuries and somehow ingenuity and the marketplace finds a way around it. Sort of like the Jurassic Park comment that life would somehow find a way and those raptors that were engineered not to reproduce would find a way.
And to add to your point, the solution may not result in a continuous trajectory... Nuclear power avoids greenhouse gases and could provide a lot of energy. But then we do have to seriously face some very dangerous waste that cannot be treated like any other industrial waste. It's a dangerous and unpleasant task that oil usage does not have. A tradeoff. But it can be managed. (Of course, it may be managed badly or corruptly in which case there can be MAJOR problems. Technology does not grant morality or competence.)
You're mistaken in two ways. First, we knew for a long time that it'd be tied to a single carrier. Second, it is the first phone where the phone manufacturer dictated design and features, not the carrier. And THAT is what will throw off our shackles as the balance of power shifts from the carriers.
First, I haven't seen a good description of the exact tests they did. The task at hand makes a HUGE difference in terms of how well corrective algorithms can do (terrible on phone numbers, URLS, and other arbitrary data, good on real text).
Second, the sample size was too small.
Third, so what if you make mistakes? Even more mistakes. Anyone who would type a message that matters and just hit "Send" as soon as they were done is an idiot. You go back, read, and correct an important message. And for my money, a click-to-correct algorithm is better than a cursor-to-correct one. So if you actually measured SENT message errors, perhaps the iPhone would score much better.
Fourth, your "experienced" users are how experienced? Do they slow down and take advantage of the visual keyboard feedback on arbitrary text? (Plus the fact that a keystroke registers on key release, not press?) And are they experienced at sending SMS, but you asked them to send a two-paragraph email? Or perhaps vice-versa?
Bah, probably shills for a competing phone technology.
The news is that measuring a device's "goodness" based on feature checklists only works as long as actual design sucks. When someone comes along and DESIGNS things to be elegant, it's a better product, even if it doesn't have all the boxes checked. And that's exactly how the iPod has kicked the butts of the iPod-killer-of-the-month for years now.
The meta-news is that Apple's competitors still do not understand this. Which is good for my stock investment.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't seen several things listed so far:
1. Plotting (graphing). You have several choices:
i. R's base graphics
ii. The lattice package
iii. The ggplot2 package
iv. Packages that create interesting classes tend to create plot methods for them (really a special
case of item i, above)
Most environments/languages would be absolutely thrilled to have options ii or iii, and option i/iv is pretty good, too. The ggplot2 package in particular has a different (but very nice) approach to plotting.
I mean how many programs/environments with adequate graphics spawn multiple graphics packages, each of which is well-maintained and good?
2. I like named parameters, and while it may not be the neatest programming practice in the world, the "..." parameter is very clever. It stands for all the parameters you have not specified in your function. For example:
foo - function (x, y=13, ...) { x - bar (x, y) ; baz (x, ...) }
The code here is silly, but the idea is that you are passing x to baz, plus all of the arguments to foo that were not x or y (i.e. all of the arguments that you did not specifically list as parameters for foo).
It's a poor-man's OO tool, I guess, but it gets used a lot in plotting, in particular.
3. Documentation. I've seen complaints about the documentation for R packages, but when I've dipped my toe in the Matlab and Sage worlds, I've found package documentation that looks more like notes scribbled on a sticky note than R documentation. R packages have documentation that includes a nice TeX'd output, and usually good explanations and bibliographies. Larger packages will even have vignettes that dive into specific areas of the package.
... and won millions of dollars, with which he bought the warehouse where he used to work. He got these numbers from a friend he met in a "local institution".
He's going to fly to Los Angeles tomorrow. ;-)
I agree, the black border contrasts with the aluminum body in a way that makes me think "Dell". I don't like the look at all.
I'd love to figure out if this is simply in the eyes of the beholder, or if there's an environmental factor at work. I do video on a huge matte screen all day long, but when I get home and use my glossy MBP -- gotten when glossy was still just one option -- I notice no glare.
Right now, it's night and I have a ceiling-reflecting lamp on, and I have to twist all around to get the lamp reflection on the screen to notice any glare at all. During the day, I've used my laptop many places, including outdoors, and never had glare/reflections that literally distracted me.
Are glossy-haters working with huge windows directly behind them or something? Is it a matter of perhaps overall lighting and personal depth-of-field? Or concentration/focus patterns? It's puzzling how much of a love-hate thing glossy screens are.
(Now my big-screen TV is definitely glossy, as it is on a wall with windows on two other sides of the room. So you would definitely get some bad glare depending on where you sat.)
Gotta pile on the long rant about this case. You don't even have to read all of the case law examinations here, Taco. The kid accused a principal of being a sex offender. That's an extremely serious accusation, especially for someone who no doubt has to submit to background investigations in order to obtain/keep his job.
You can argue all you want that it was "obvious" that the kid was joking or being childish, but exactly how does that save the principal's skin once rumors start and googles go?
Methinks Taco has some serious authority issues. Serious.
Yeah, it's terrible when respectable professional scientists won't accept the possibility of unprovable supernatural beings as an axiom for their research papers.
Only evangelizing atheists and certain 17th-century clerics think that a scientist who believes in a supreme being will somehow have to resort to "angels pushing planets" kind of proof.
Newton, Bayes, and many other famous scientists were believers and that did not stop them from applying scientific methods. And many never-heard-of-them scientists today also believe as well, but you'll see no footnotes in their papers referencing this.
You make the basic mistake of assuming that those who stand inside of mainstream science and don't have Bible-referencing footnotes, have no faith. Not very scientific or rigorous. (Or correct.)
I've demonstrated this with The Corpse Bride DVD and Blu-ray. Show the DVD first and it looks great. The PS3 scales it up very nicely on our 42" 1080p screen.
Then pop it out, pop in the Blu-ray and point out all of the detail in the characters' skin that you can now make out. Average Joe might still say something like "looks the same to me", I guess, but for most people it's eye-opening...
It's like listening to music on a pair of professional speakers: you hear things you never heard before. You didn't miss it before, and you can live with what you've got, but it really is incredible.
Overall, I think the "news" isn't news: people who have setups that simply cannot take advantage of higher definition are not interested in higher definition. Who woulda thought?
(HDTVs will continue to get cheaper. Just as CRTs are getting pushed to the margins by various flat screen technologies, so will SDTV. And there will be more and more foot-in-the-door technologies that convince you to get HDTV: games, FIOS, media centers, AppleTV/Slingbox, etc, etc. And once you have an HDTV, you then have a reason to try Blu-ray and perhaps you will.)
I wonder if you added up all of the cheap vacuums you burned through plus the Roomba, if you could perhaps have afforded a REAL vacuum cleaner.
I love the Roomba from the geek perspective. Unfortunately, I don't believe it's HEPA, and to be honest I'm not sure how fine of particles it actually retains. I've generally found non-HEPA vacuum cleaners to be very efficient invokers of allergic responses.
You're right about the medicine example. It's odd that medicine has an incredibly rigorous statistical process before approval, yet many medicines are basically black boxes.
Look at statins (cholesterol medication), which are one of the most widely-prescribed medicines in the world -- and which I take. There's a legitimate question as to whether their main effect is to reduce cholesterol levels, or whether it's actually a specific kind of anti-inflammatory which happens to reduce cholesterol levels.
Or how about ulcers, which were chalked up to personality and stomach acid, and treated as such, until a "crank" pushed the medical community for decades and they finally realized that a bacteria was behind most of it. The medicines were (and are) effective, but no amount of modeling along those lines could find the actual, root cause of most ulcers.
(I also take medicine for stomach acid, and interestingly I am one of the 10% whose ulcer was not caused by bacteria.)
What you say is true, Hoplite3. The big issue I see is how people define "model". My guess is that quite a few unfortunately define it as "I got 3 asterisks in the significance test", whether the "model" (say, linear regression) makes sense or not.
I forget where I read it, but I've been studying linear regression, and there was a fascinating example were if they'd have used linear regression techniques on the early "drop the canonball and time it's fall" data, they would have come up with a nice, highly-significant linear regression for gravity.
Then there is the whole issue of explanation versus prediction. Something can be predictive while providing no explanation, and perhaps that's where the petabyte idea is going: who cares about explanation if prediction is accurate enough? (Not my philosophy, BTW.)
It hurts my brain. The person who (incompetently) redacted the document was probably just following guidelines. My guess is that there's a guideline that says that specific numbers and costs cannot be published in reference to secure systems used by an intelligence or law enforcement agency. Only aggregate costs, as necessary to inform the public and lawmakers.
No conspiracy. No corruption. No deeper meaning than a guideline that requires sticking your neck out and making a case if you want to violate it.
Makes sense, actually, as most intelligence gathering is probably not about sentences like, "John Doe is our super-secret mole in the office of the director", but rather "the phone system has 1100 switches for all of North America, and is taken down every 2 weeks at 1 am for maintenance."
And this leaves me wondering if those who are laughing or outraged at the attempted redaction (as opposed to the incompetence in implementing it) are also the same people who insist that they must have military-grade encryption and anonymous re-routing, using spread-spectrum wireless transmissions to public access facilities, in order to protect their private emails to grandmother. Sigh.
The interface is quirky. No doubt makes sense once you warp your mind around it, but it's certainly unlike the for-pay (i.e. not used by kids) software I've used. And it's not clear that its way of doing things provides any benefit.
The list is much longer than Newton. Many early scientists were "delving into the mysteries of creation" as it were. Heck, Bayes was a minister, right?
I think it depends on whether "ID proponents" simply means the "I'm not real good at math" type of person, or if it might include those who are in fact trained and skilled with the tools of science. I'm sure there were many ignorant proponents in Newton's (and Bayes', and...) day as well.
Actually, belief plays a much larger role in science than you want to admit... What is a hypothesis, except a belief? Yes, a hypothesis must be tested, but it starts as a belief.
And I'm beginning to notice more and more that people will use, for example, statistical methods to find something of significance, then basically propose the explanation that suits them and because what they found was (statistically) significant, their explanation is somehow more credible. But there are multiple explanations and they don't even bother to investigate others, because somehow validity leaks from the observation to the explanation.
And at what point do you accept an explanation as valid? Factor A -- significant at the 95% confidence level -- can be explained by X, Y, then Z. Yep, sounds good to me. Very clever explanation.
It might also be mentioned that Stein is not the only guy on a crusade, as it were. Look at the "evolution" of Dawkins from explainer of evolution to crusader against religion.
That's what I originally said. The PS3 is an exceptional value and has everything in a single, attractive box, which makes it very appealing to NON-GAMERS who are looking for a HD player or media center that looks good and works well with their brand-new 40" LCD on the wall. And in that case, people have bought Blu-ray not because they consider it the better alternative -- personally I was technically rooting for HD-DVD -- but because of the PS3 itself. (And not just the PS3 in isolation, of course, but in the environment of alternatives like standalone players or the XBOX.)
And as I said, I don't think I'm an abberation -- as you claimed. Certainly anyone considering Blu-ray in the first place -- perhaps only slightly leaning in that direction because of a friend, or an article they read somewhere, or whatever -- that read any reviews would find that many different sources recommend a game machine as the best Blu-ray player out there, and one at the low end of the Blu-ray player price spectrum. Huh? I'm not a console gamer... but as they investigate they are persuaded. On the other hand, someone who was perhaps leaning HD-DVD or neutral but investigating both camps would also see the PS3 mentioned and would naturally look at its perceived counterpart, the XBOX, and find a solution that isn't really comparable from a price, simplicity, or esthetics viewpoint.
Of course, someone determined to play Halo would get the XBOX, and would also consider getting the accessories to bring it up to PS3 standards. Or more likely they would have gotten the XBOX with the idea that they would SOMEDAY get the other accesories. Look at the number of HD-DVD drives bought for the XBOX: it's not a large percentage. Indicating that it was not primarily bought as a HD-DVD player with lots of extra features.
So, I repeat: the PS3 has been, IMO, a powerful draw for people who are not hardcore in one camp or the other, and particularly people who are not console gamers and who look at other things like the esthetics and one-stop-shopping of the PS3. In my case, as a geek I preferred HD-DVD on technical merit, but I also felt that Blu-ray was winning the war, so I was somewhat neutral. Even if I had waited until now to purchase, so I could clearly see that Blu-ray won, I would not have bought a non-PS3 Blu-ray player. From what I've read, standalone Blu-ray players basically suck in terms of reliability (in terms of being able to play any Blu-ray disc), future-proofing (1.1, 2.0 profile), and performance (20-seconds or more to start playing a disc?) The PS3 made the difference for me, and I don't think I'm the exception.
I believe a relatively small number of HD-DVD drives were sold for the XBOX. It'd be interesting to know how many DVD-player-style controllers were sold for the PS3 (a pretty sure indicator that it was being used as a Blu-ray player, and by people who didn't want to use a game-style controller).
Your analysis is flawed as it assumes that either you're an uninformed customer and therefore choose at random or don't even consider a game machine for playback (though it is a good value and has exceptional quality), or you're deeply in one or the other camp and superbly informed.
Go to Amazon. The second PS3 choice in the list is the $400 PS3 40GB (bundled with Blu-ray Spiderman). Note that it emphasizes Blu-ray playback and mentions things like 802.11g connectivity. Notice that everything is included in one box.
Now look at the XBOX machines. See any mention of HDDVD? How about 802.11 connectivity? Prices? Hmm, looks like for the $400 I spent on my PS3 I get no HD-DVD and no 802.11 connectivity. Certainly it's not clear.
Oh yeah, if I look on the second page, I find an external HD-DVD player and an external 802.11 adapter, which raises the package's price well out of the "equivalent" range. Not to mention this is an entertainment center going into my living room so two boxes and a dongle off the back is most definitely not attractive. The PS3 has everything bundled into a sleek package and yes, that DOES matter for someone who is not deep into one camp or the other. In fact, it's probably a large consideration for someone who is not a gamer-first and not a raving HD-DVD or Blu-ray fanatic.
And it's not just Amazon. Go to Microsoft's XBOX page. See any mention in their model table about HD-DVD? Wireless connectivity? Nope. Perhaps it was yanked yesterday or last week or... But the bottom line is the prices are NOT competitive with the PS3 once you factor in the extras you have to buy.
No, I'm not the exception. I'm a smart consumer who got a GREAT deal for the same amount of money that would have gotten me a slow Blu-ray player, or (on the XBOX side) a game machine with a cable running into the back.
I chose the PS3 because it is the fastest, most future-proof Bluray player on the market. It's reasonably priced and includes wireless internet connectivity (and a browser), media center (video, audio, photo files) capabilities, and oh yeah it also plays games if I decide I like one, and it's all in a sleek, quiet package costing $400.
I don't think I'm alone on that. The HD-DVD camp didn't really have an equivalent, unless you got the XBOX plus accessories which didn't come in the box. I'd be willing to bet that many more people bought the PS3 as a media machine than XBOX's.
First, if you've got to carry several spare batteries because you will be using your laptop for extended periods in areas that don't have power, it won't kill you to carry a few extra pounds in the form of a MacBook or MacBook Pro.
Second, exactly where will you be that power is inaccessible? Coffee shop? Plane? Train? Boat? Car? Airport? This is the 2000's and power is accessible in almost all of these places.
Third, this is a continuation of the complaints of years past where people lamented the disappearance of 5.25" floppies, then 3.5" floppies, etc. It's a wireless world now (and Apple has introduced other products to make this even more-so), and it's a world with power accessible in many places you would have never had it before. In fact, I can think of very few places that I've taken my laptop in the last couple of years where I had to run off of battery power by necessity. (Convenience, yes. I like the view here and there's no plug near, but necessity, no. There's a plug 30 feet away.)
Fourth, I return to my first point. If you want great gas mileage, don't buy a Porsche. If you maximal cargo space, don't buy a Cooper. If you want acceleration, don't buy a Prius and then complain that you can't add Nitrous Oxide and a Supercharger. The proper tool for the proper task, so if you want to work with your data with a highly portable machine with a large (for its class) screen and total wireless capability, get an Air.
We know what materials are available to us, but so what?
First, because knowing WHAT and knowing WHERE (and thus HOW MUCH) are two entirely different things. As supplies get short, prices go up, and new reserves may be found.
Second, there are other resources out there that are not currently being used because of expense or some other perception on our part... consider nuclear power. We snubbed our noses at it because of the dangers that were perceived 30 years ago, but now see that global warming is a much larger issue. If we would reverse course and build nuclear reactors, we would have quite a lot of energy available to us that does not make greenhouse gases. But we won't use nuclear power until our backs are against the wall.
Other technologies work similarly. And as the article says, extracting Helium from the atmosphere is "too expensive", but the specifics are that it's too expensive when it can be pulled out of the earth for free as a byproduct. A shortage will change what is expensive and what is not. Same thing with oil: we're now extracting it with techniques and drilling for it in places that were prohibitively expensive 20 years ago... but not now.
Third, technology of course makes a difference. We could have deforested North America or tried to get whale oil by killing every whale in the world 100 years ago. But oil came along and the technology to use it. Uranium was useful for perhaps primitive X-rays before the technology for nuclear (fusion) power. Wind power used to be able to perhaps pump some water or grind some grain. Solar power was having a bunch of windows on the south side of a house.
Before airplanes, flight was obviously impossible because people had tried strapping wings on themselves and it totally failed. Before modern rocketry, getting to the moon was impossible, since even a plane with an oxygen supply for its engines couldn't propel itself through the vacuum of space... etc, etc, etc.
You do have a point that technology cannot solve anything we can imagine. Technology requires knowledge plus resources to work. But the "we're about to run out of resources and collapse to the stone age" has been sounded for centuries and somehow ingenuity and the marketplace finds a way around it. Sort of like the Jurassic Park comment that life would somehow find a way and those raptors that were engineered not to reproduce would find a way.
And to add to your point, the solution may not result in a continuous trajectory... Nuclear power avoids greenhouse gases and could provide a lot of energy. But then we do have to seriously face some very dangerous waste that cannot be treated like any other industrial waste. It's a dangerous and unpleasant task that oil usage does not have. A tradeoff. But it can be managed. (Of course, it may be managed badly or corruptly in which case there can be MAJOR problems. Technology does not grant morality or competence.)
You're mistaken in two ways. First, we knew for a long time that it'd be tied to a single carrier. Second, it is the first phone where the phone manufacturer dictated design and features, not the carrier. And THAT is what will throw off our shackles as the balance of power shifts from the carriers.
I believe the 10.5.1 update fixes this. It includes a plist file that specifically lists Skype (and WoW) as exceptions.
First, I haven't seen a good description of the exact tests they did. The task at hand makes a HUGE difference in terms of how well corrective algorithms can do (terrible on phone numbers, URLS, and other arbitrary data, good on real text).
Second, the sample size was too small.
Third, so what if you make mistakes? Even more mistakes. Anyone who would type a message that matters and just hit "Send" as soon as they were done is an idiot. You go back, read, and correct an important message. And for my money, a click-to-correct algorithm is better than a cursor-to-correct one. So if you actually measured SENT message errors, perhaps the iPhone would score much better.
Fourth, your "experienced" users are how experienced? Do they slow down and take advantage of the visual keyboard feedback on arbitrary text? (Plus the fact that a keystroke registers on key release, not press?) And are they experienced at sending SMS, but you asked them to send a two-paragraph email? Or perhaps vice-versa?
Bah, probably shills for a competing phone technology.
The news is that measuring a device's "goodness" based on feature checklists only works as long as actual design sucks. When someone comes along and DESIGNS things to be elegant, it's a better product, even if it doesn't have all the boxes checked. And that's exactly how the iPod has kicked the butts of the iPod-killer-of-the-month for years now.
The meta-news is that Apple's competitors still do not understand this. Which is good for my stock investment.