I don't agree with the premise. Yes we hear about the conflicts more than we used to because conflicts are what people tend to talk about. Modern media devotes attention to the disagreements, even when there are lots of agreements. There are serious considered discussions taking place, but you don't hear about them because modern media ignores them.
I imagine that there are thousands of conversation every day but only 1% of them are vocal disagreements. Now fill all the blogs with that particular 1%. Many people would get the impression that its all disagreement and conflict. But that is simply not true in general.
Blogs aren't changing scientific discourse. Blogs are pulling disagreements and conflicts on scientific topics into modern media.
It is only a non level playing field if the government *loses* money in their own ISP but keeps it afloat anyway. If the government ISP company *makes* money using the same business processes that the industry would (or could or should), how can you talk about a non level playing field?
If the governemnt ISP makes a fair and honest profit, then the ISPs have no right to complain. But of course it makes business sense for them to complain anyway.
Sigh. The average does not take variability into account, so the claim is correct. That the average strength of men is probably higher than that of women does not say anything about the variability of each.
The point what your "crazy liberal lesbian instructor" was probably trying to make is that if the distributions overlap a lot then for small samples it can make hardly any difference which mean is higher.
Regarding the meaning of average, your "crazy liberal lesbian instructor" was right and you are wrong.
Have you ever met and "averege man" or an "average woman"? You can't because averages are abstractions, not real things. In a real-world test, you are not testing averages, you are testing samples. Anything you say about averages is inferred, not tested.
Even though the average strength of a man may be greater then the average strength of a woman (my guess is that it is), I am fairly certain that some womens Judo team is stronger than me and my brother. It follows that "some women are stronger than some men" is true.
I hardly think its a mystery why chimps havent evolved and we have. Chimps have remained unchanged while humans have evolved because we dont (and probably didnt) occupy the same niche. Chimps dont have the right kind of evolutionary pressure. Chimps seem to reproduce just fine from generation-on-generation without any important advantage of brain size. Humans with tiny brains dont reproduce well, hence the evolutionary pressure for (sufficient for good human reproduction) larger brain sizes.
Chimps seem to be successful in thier own niche and deviations from the existing plan dont help chimps reproduce. My guess is that early humans we unable to carve out thier own niche and we constantly pushed from thier niches by more specialized animals. We were then forced to specialize in being the animal to rapidly make use of whatever niches were available. In this context, intelligence is a definite advantage, hence the evolutionary pressure for larger brain size, cooperation, clothes, agriculture, etc, i.e. the things that make us different than chimps.
Dont forget that within the horny people group there are sub-groups who express thier hornyness in different ways. For example I dont want to reproduce with an horny-all-the-time individual because they probably wont take care of the offspring very well because of all the horny distractions. Even they did a barely acceptable job of taking care of my direct offpring, then there remains a real possibility that the following generations would be poorly taken care of because of all the horniness. So I am, as well as others like me, part of evolutionary pressure *against* expressing horniness. So it's not as simple as you make it out to be.
You cannot sensibly define chickes as the things that lay eggs since you would then have to accept that crocodiles are chickens. I hope you are not prepared to go that far.
The basic idea is that eggs must have appeared before chickens because crocodiles are born from eggs and lived before the first animal that sensibly be called a chicken.
By your reasoning its wrong to inform the populace that the machines they trusted with thier vote do not function properly only *after* the relevant government department clear that information. Can you explain how a *free* press might function if they may only publish information cleared by the government? What if the relevent government official decides never to release that information? Do you suggest keeping it a (business and state) secret that these voting machines are not trustworthy?
If you really think it was *wrong* what he did, then please explain to me how the populace should find out that their voting machines are (potentiatlly) fatally flawed? Who would willingly release this information? How would we *ever* find out?
If Diebold doesnt want bad press then they should improve thier machines to stand in the light of open public investigation. If they are unable to build such machines then they should probably not be in the business of selling voting machines.
Dont forget that the ability of a species to get bigger with good feeding, or conversely to remain small with limited feeding, is also a genetic trait that has some selection pressure. This helps species adapt to varying access to resources. Individuals who got bigger faster in rich times may be able to out-compete others when times are lean. Of course if they get too big the number of individuals that the envrionment can support declines and populations get more sensitive for inbreeding-like genetic defects.
Your point about feeding is important though as it draws attention to the incredibly bad science in the article. They imply that evolution could 'make' king-kong like aminals. There has to be at least several hundered for sufficient genetic variation to avoid inbreeding. These hundered king-kongs need to eat a lot, but what is available is such large quantities?
Even if for some unthinkable reason a king-kong popped into existence it would be dead from starvation in two weeks and no one would ever see it.
I very much doubt the music industry had any idea what would happen to online music once they defeated Napster. Nobody else knew what was going to happen either. Of course the lawyers making money from procecuting Napster told them that shutting Napster down would solve the piracy problem. This is obvious self-interest.
Any process with a positive growth coefficient grows exponentially until something starts to limit its growth. Consider the process of procecuting P2P. What does it cost? Who makes money from it? Of COURSE lawyers are going to scream about procecuting P2P. Its they way they make money! Whether or not its (P2P or prosecution) good for the music industry is an entirely different question.
Lifting weights is very compatible with coding, as it doesn't have to take very much time at all. Look into 'hardgainer' routines which some people, including myself, have had success with. Even advanced hardgainer routine only require about 45 minutes at most twice a week, some even less. Even with this limited time investment you can get quite strong (compared to previous untrained self) if you do it right.
I think the core issue with peoples dislike of the DMCA is that it 'paints with the same brush' people who copy data for backup as people who copy data for resale. People who backup thier precious and expensive data resent being lumped in with Warez sellers.
As far as peer-to-peer networks go, they are just people sharing files. I was taught as a child that sharing was a good in itself. It's almost a reflex for me and a sign of a compassionate person.
I see two ways that the DMCA and the attacks on P2P networks can change society.
People might lose their reflex for sharing becasue of fears of doing something 'illegal'. This would lead to a cold, uncompassionate society where it's even more dog-eat-dog that it is now. Or people will slowly begin to see a rift between legal behavior and compassionate behavior and lose the respect of law.
I dont like either one of these scenarios and therefore I don't like the DMCA as it now stands.
This being said, I dont think people have any difficulty with copyright as long as the copyright holder must prove that they have been reasonably harmed by some persons use of their material. This entitles them to 'punish' the person by the seeking of damages. Right now they dont have to prove harm, since mere possesion of an anti-circumvention device is illegal, and that illegality 'punishes' me.
I *need* to backup my data and harm noone in doing so. Making illegal the possesion of tools to do so makes it impossible for me to be both efficient and legal. One of those things is going to get broken...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't agree with the premise. Yes we hear about the conflicts more than we used to because conflicts are what people tend to talk about. Modern media devotes attention to the disagreements, even when there are lots of agreements. There are serious considered discussions taking place, but you don't hear about them because modern media ignores them. I imagine that there are thousands of conversation every day but only 1% of them are vocal disagreements. Now fill all the blogs with that particular 1%. Many people would get the impression that its all disagreement and conflict. But that is simply not true in general. Blogs aren't changing scientific discourse. Blogs are pulling disagreements and conflicts on scientific topics into modern media.
It is only a non level playing field if the government *loses* money in their own ISP but keeps it afloat anyway. If the government ISP company *makes* money using the same business processes that the industry would (or could or should), how can you talk about a non level playing field?
If the governemnt ISP makes a fair and honest profit, then the ISPs have no right to complain. But of course it makes business sense for them to complain anyway.
This is exactly why I wont play games with you.
Sigh. The average does not take variability into account, so the claim is correct. That the average strength of men is probably higher than that of women does not say anything about the variability of each.
The point what your "crazy liberal lesbian instructor" was probably trying to make is that if the distributions overlap a lot then for small samples it can make hardly any difference which mean is higher.
Regarding the meaning of average, your "crazy liberal lesbian instructor" was right and you are wrong.
Have you ever met and "averege man" or an "average woman"? You can't because averages are abstractions, not real things. In a real-world test, you are not testing averages, you are testing samples. Anything you say about averages is inferred, not tested.
Even though the average strength of a man may be greater then the average strength of a woman (my guess is that it is), I am fairly certain that some womens Judo team is stronger than me and my brother. It follows that "some women are stronger than some men" is true.
Chimps seem to be successful in thier own niche and deviations from the existing plan dont help chimps reproduce. My guess is that early humans we unable to carve out thier own niche and we constantly pushed from thier niches by more specialized animals. We were then forced to specialize in being the animal to rapidly make use of whatever niches were available. In this context, intelligence is a definite advantage, hence the evolutionary pressure for larger brain size, cooperation, clothes, agriculture, etc, i.e. the things that make us different than chimps.
Dont forget that within the horny people group there are sub-groups who express thier hornyness in different ways. For example I dont want to reproduce with an horny-all-the-time individual because they probably wont take care of the offspring very well because of all the horny distractions. Even they did a barely acceptable job of taking care of my direct offpring, then there remains a real possibility that the following generations would be poorly taken care of because of all the horniness. So I am, as well as others like me, part of evolutionary pressure *against* expressing horniness. So it's not as simple as you make it out to be.
You cannot sensibly define chickes as the things that lay eggs since you would then have to accept that crocodiles are chickens. I hope you are not prepared to go that far.
The basic idea is that eggs must have appeared before chickens because crocodiles are born from eggs and lived before the first animal that sensibly be called a chicken.
You were in a cafe in Mogadishu?
And dont forget that every biological argument against homosexual marrage also applies to hetero married couples who are intentionally childless.
If you really think it was *wrong* what he did, then please explain to me how the populace should find out that their voting machines are (potentiatlly) fatally flawed? Who would willingly release this information? How would we *ever* find out?
If Diebold doesnt want bad press then they should improve thier machines to stand in the light of open public investigation. If they are unable to build such machines then they should probably not be in the business of selling voting machines.
Your point about feeding is important though as it draws attention to the incredibly bad science in the article. They imply that evolution could 'make' king-kong like aminals. There has to be at least several hundered for sufficient genetic variation to avoid inbreeding. These hundered king-kongs need to eat a lot, but what is available is such large quantities?
Even if for some unthinkable reason a king-kong popped into existence it would be dead from starvation in two weeks and no one would ever see it.
Any process with a positive growth coefficient grows exponentially until something starts to limit its growth. Consider the process of procecuting P2P. What does it cost? Who makes money from it? Of COURSE lawyers are going to scream about procecuting P2P. Its they way they make money! Whether or not its (P2P or prosecution) good for the music industry is an entirely different question.
Lifting weights is very compatible with coding, as it doesn't have to take very much time at all. Look into 'hardgainer' routines which some people, including myself, have had success with. Even advanced hardgainer routine only require about 45 minutes at most twice a week, some even less. Even with this limited time investment you can get quite strong (compared to previous untrained self) if you do it right.
Doug Eleveld
I think the core issue with peoples dislike of the DMCA is that it 'paints with the same brush' people who copy data for backup as people who copy data for resale. People who backup thier precious and expensive data resent being lumped in with Warez sellers.
As far as peer-to-peer networks go, they are just people sharing files. I was taught as a child that sharing was a good in itself. It's almost a reflex for me and a sign of a compassionate person.
I see two ways that the DMCA and the attacks on P2P networks can change society.
People might lose their reflex for sharing becasue of fears of doing something 'illegal'. This would lead to a cold, uncompassionate society where it's even more dog-eat-dog that it is now. Or people will slowly begin to see a rift between legal behavior and compassionate behavior and lose the respect of law.
I dont like either one of these scenarios and therefore I don't like the DMCA as it now stands.
This being said, I dont think people have any difficulty with copyright as long as the copyright holder must prove that they have been reasonably harmed by some persons use of their material. This entitles them to 'punish' the person by the seeking of damages. Right now they dont have to prove harm, since mere possesion of an anti-circumvention device is illegal, and that illegality 'punishes' me.
I *need* to backup my data and harm noone in doing so. Making illegal the possesion of tools to do so makes it impossible for me to be both efficient and legal. One of those things is going to get broken...
Doug Eleveld
Have you considered that the small comes from the case? Freshly machined aluminum has a 'metallic' smell that you described.
I suspect that the smell will go away as the aluminum oxide forms and seals off the metal from the air.
Doug Eleveld