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User: rogerz

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  1. Adaptation to Change - What a concept! on Climate Change Drives Fish Into New Waters, Remaking an Industry (wsj.com) · · Score: 0

    "The northward movement of fish around the world is disrupting some fishing grounds and revitalizing others -- and fishing businesses are trying to adapt their operations. "

    Sometime change costs some people money (and risk), and sometimes the exact same change reduces peoples' costs (and risks). Imagine that. The human mind is capable of reasoning about and understanding patterns that will allow us to adjust to changes in our environment. Perhaps we're not all going to die (at least all at once).

  2. The fact that this ridiculous "graph" was used to present the data, instead of a simple table, tells you all that you need to know about the mathematical/statistical knowledge of the presenter. The visual format adds literally 0 information. Other commenters cover the details of the myriad fallacies. I want my 5 minutes back.

  3. Regulatory Compliance is Also a Problem on US Startups Don't Want To Go Public Anymore (qz.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The cost of compliance with information disclosure regulations is also part of the issue, here. Sarbanes-Oxley is estimated to cost more than $500K/year. That is no small sum for companies with a few million in profit, so the bar for going public is concomitantly raised. A good rule of thumb is that you need to be at $100M+ of revenue to even consider this. Lots of very good, profitable companies do not make that threshold.

  4. Re:So, we're safe! on How Two Scientists Accurately Predicted Global Warming in 1967 (medium.com) · · Score: 1

    Duh - I was submitting the OP to its own test. If we're not at equilibrium, then how can the OP claim the "model" in the cited paper accurately predicted the temperature? The experiment isn't over yet, by that standard.

    As for the "knock-on" affects, well those are completely speculative. Some could be good, some could be bad. We have plenty of time to adapt, if we leave people alone to innovate. Oh, and being rich and having lots of reliable energy will help a great deal with innovation. For that, we have lots of supporting data.

  5. So, we're safe! on How Two Scientists Accurately Predicted Global Warming in 1967 (medium.com) · · Score: 1

    The only quantitative _predictive_ statement in the Medium article is that a doubling of CO2 concentration will cause a 2degreesC increase is temperature (at fixed relative humidity). This is a strictly log-linear prediction. Let's submit it to a real _prospective_ experiment:

    We are currently at ~400 ppm CO2. According to the IPCC, the prediction of CO2 concentration in 2100 is about 600 ppm. So, according to the cited model, we will have about another 1degreeC in global mean temperature by 2100. (This, by the way, is well below the 2-5degreesC range predicted in the last IPCC assessment report (AR5). At the very high end of the CO2 predictions above, we have 800 ppm, meaning 2degreesC warming according to the model.

    So, they're predicting 1-2degreesC increase with business as usual! I can live with that. Let's see if it's right.

  6. Good News, but ... on Thousands Of Cubans Now Have Internet Access (ap.org) · · Score: 0

    Let's see how long it takes for the government to start shutting down access to those that are accessing the "wrong" type of information. The Chinese government has a good model for how this oppression can work.

  7. Pardon me if I doubt the author's motivation ... on Bioethicist At National Institutes of Health: "Why I Hope To Die At 75" · · Score: 1

    ... in writing this piece is merely to express a personal preference.

    I support Emanuel's absolute right to purchase or refuse any medical treatment he wants at any time. Indeed, I support his right to suicide. It is his life, and he can do what he will with it. Moreover, I whole-heartedly support his first amendment right to speak and try to convince others to adopt similar values. For all that I care, he can start a movement of medical care refuseniks - as long as the care they are refusing is their own.

    Would he support my rights equally? Does he believe that I have the absolute right to purchase, at any age, with my own wealth, any medical treatments that I judge to be valuable in pursuit of my own happiness? Somehow, given his crucial contributions to the largest government encroachment on personal medical decision-making since Medicare, I doubt it.

  8. Nope, unless ... on Ask Slashdot: Effective, Reasonably Priced Conferencing Speech-to-Text? · · Score: 2

    Are you able to do all of the following at your dinner conversation?:

    1) Provide everyone with a decent close-talking directional microphone.
    2) Require each person to take turns speaking, so there is very little overlap.
    3) Have no pre-adolescents speaking.
    4) Eliminate noticeable background noises.
    5) Have no one with a strong non-native dialect speaking.
    6) Require everyone to speak in full, grammatical sentences.

    To the extent you say no to any of the above, you will get increasingly poor output. They are listed approximately in order of importance (1 being the most important). If you can say yes to all of those, you can probably get in the vicinity of 90% accuracy. This might be usable, depending on your ultimate purpose. If you were to additionally train acoustic and language models for all of the speakers, and then tell the software which user was speaking (i.e. switch the user on the fly during the conversation), you could probably get 95% accuracy and that would be quite usable.

    So, in other words ... nope.

  9. Percentages, please on Germany Produces Record-Breaking 5.1 Terawatt Hours of Solar Energy In One Month · · Score: 4, Informative

    Perhaps I should RTFA, but looking at the Wikipedia page on Energy_in_Germany, that looks to be about 10% of monthly electricity consumption, (generously, given that it's summer), and less than 2% of total energy consumption.

  10. Re:first ti file? on Amazon Patents the Milkman · · Score: 1

    That's a helpful response, but begs the question: If the later filer had already manufactured the invention, doesn't that make it "existing practice" and therefore prior art? Even if they hadn't manufactured it, but only designed it, if they produce the design in court with a provable date prior to the earlier filing, doesn't that at least make it "obvious" if not "prior art"?

    What am I missing here?

  11. I blame .... on Bushfire Threatens Major Telescope · · Score: 1

    George W. Bush.

  12. The argument against regulation ... on FAA Device Rules Illustrate the Folly of a Regulated Internet · · Score: 1

    ... is NOT that "because some government regulations are unfounded, all of their regulations will be so.". The argument against regulations in general is that they punish innocent people (by restricting their liberty) without proof that the regulated activity will harm anyone. This is distinguished from objectively-defined law, where:

    a) the restricted activity (in the case of good law) is a violation of someone's rights.
    b) the violation must be proved in court (including civil court).

    So, to choose an example I know will piss off many slashdotters, regulation of "air pollutants" is not a valid exercise of government power, since this punishes people that might emit a certain quantity of some substance, without proof that such emissions will actually harm someone. We already have laws against polluting other people's property - if someone can be proved to be doing so, they should be punished. And, if someone believes that they are going to be harmed by emissions that have yet to occur, they can even go to civil court and present merely a preponderance of evidence that this harm will ensue in order to receive relief, including injunctive relieve to prevent the activity, That is the valid operation of coercive government power - to prevent objectively definable rights violations, not to pander to people's imagined fears.

    In the case of the FAA device regulations, the issue is even more clear cut - the FAA should have nothing to say at all about what devices a private airline allows to be used on its planes. That should be the decision of the airline, and they can base this decision on what they consider to be the appropriate tradeoff between safety and passenger convenience. Then, passengers could decide how they feel about a given airline's policy, and this could be factored into their patronage decision. True, this requires that passengers would need to exercise some adult judgment in their choice of airlines. Oh, the horror. Such is part of the price of liberty.

  13. Re:Not that surprising on Israeli Infrastructure Proves Too Strong For Anonymous · · Score: 1

    I've been through Ben-Gurion ~10 times, and have not had similar experiences. Indeed, from what I know of the Israeli security techniques, the goal is not really to make you sweat, but simply to observe your behavior in reacting to mundane, but rapid fire, questions. In effect, it's a lie detector test, where the detectors are well trained (and intelligent) humans. The US could have a similar system - with similar success - if we reallocated resources away from security theater and toward hiring and training good people to do this kind of pattern recognition. Unfortunately, since the TSA is viewed as a job-creation program, and since it *is* security theater (not actual security) that is the goal of the program, we are unlikely to get there.

  14. Re:Best Missile Defense Shield on Israel's Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield Actually Works · · Score: 1

    Even with the danger posed by the current hostilities, Israel continues to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Name another country, when faced with rocket attacks on its civilian population, as Israel has for the past 5+ years, which would do anything similar.

    Oh yes - Egypt has an ongoing land blockade of Gaza as well.

  15. Re:both sides on Israel's Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield Actually Works · · Score: 1

    Please. Israel could wreak any level of destruction on Gaza they want. Indeed, I'd wager you have complained elsewhere about how "asymmetric" is Israel's war-making capacity and how that, ipso facto, makes their use of the military "offensive", independent of the reality of waves upon waves of rockets being deliberately launched at their civilian population. It is crystal clear that Israel is being as precise as possible in their targeting.

    War is hell. Innocents die. The best way to save innocent lives is to end the war as quickly as possible, which means using the absolute minimum force necessary to ensure that the aggressor side is completely defeated, with no capability of resuming its aggression.

    As to who is the aggressor - I propose the following thought experiment: if there were no active hostilities in the region, and if Israel could therefore remove its naval blockade of Gaza, and if Gaza were allowed, say 10 years to develop its political, economic and social, cultural institutions, where would you prefer to live: Israel or Gazastan? An honest answer to that question (especially if you are gay or female) would tell you all you need to know about the "who is the aggressor" question.

  16. What impact will it have on STEM education? on US House Science Committee Member: Evolution Is a Lie From Hell · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, if the federal government didn't control education policy and funding, then it would have no impact whatsoever. If you advocate the involvement of government in education, you can have very little to say in opposition to elected officials' pedagogical opinions being leashed on the classroom.

  17. Re:As far as hobbies go on Ale To the Chief: White House Releases Beer Recipe · · Score: 1

    Exactly, I was totally disappointed to see that these super-duper chefs were brewing beer! Why can't the President do it himself? I'm a total idiot in the kitchen, but I brew and bottle my own. I guess this is just another case of "you didn't build that".

  18. Re:No it doesn't on Twitter Jokes: Free Speech On Trial · · Score: 1

    This is ridiculous.

    The only government action taken against OWS had to do with time, place, and manner restrictions on their _behavior_ (i.e. "occupying" public spaces). There have been zero restrictions on the content of anyone in that movement's speech (and I dare you to provide a cite that proves otherwise).

    And, what is more, these time/place/manner restrictions on OWS "gatherings" were imposed with extreme laxness, as compared to such prohibitions implemented against virtually any other protest movement in US history. The Z-park encampment was allowed for at least two months; Philadelphia, 2.5 months; Boston at least 3 months; the list goes on. This is while health, safety and traffic regulations were routinely flouted (not to mention the rampant felony activity, including rape, assault, and theft).

    The worst infringements of free speech rights in the U.S. remain as part of "campaign finance" law. The overturning of McCain-Feingold was a step in the right direction there, but there are still many unconscionable restrictions that are supported by both the D's and R's, since they amount to incumbency protection.

  19. Re:In Other News... on Iran Universities To Ban Women From 77 Fields of Study · · Score: 1

    Despite the fact that your post contains nothing but facts and logic, it will never achieve a rating higher than 1. What were you thinking?

  20. Re:Radiation in Denver is unavoidable on The Panic Over Fukushima · · Score: 1

    The jury is still out on radiation hormesis. Look it up.

  21. Re:Radiation in Denver is unavoidable on The Panic Over Fukushima · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but the quantity of stuff that needs to be mined to produce the same amount of energy is quite a bit different and impacts the likelihood of mining accidents:

    Coal - ~6,150 kilowatt-hours (kWh)/ton
    Uranium – 2,000,000,000 kWh/ton
    Uranium, Fast Breeder reactors (up to 100x more) - 200,000,000,000 kWh/ton

  22. Re:Easy win for Apple on Taiwan University Sues Apple Over Siri Patents · · Score: 1

    [Do over with my real user name - I hate being anonymous]

    You are correct. And, not only is the '496 patent about an ASIC implementation of ASR, but it also uses the same ancient dynamic time warping approach to matching as does the '032. What is more, there is no chance at all that the plaintiff could have the slightest reason to believe that Apple (really, Nuance/Dragon) is using this approach. This case should be tossed out immediately.

    The problem with our patent system is not the idea of "intellectual property" per se, but that the legal profession (including most of the well-meaning examiners at the USPTO) as currently trained is ignorant of the most basic technical concepts, and thus we waste time and money on ridiculous prosecutions such as this.

  23. Re:I was working for an L&H competitor at the on How the Inventors of Dragon Speech Recognition Technology Lost Everything · · Score: 2

    It is painfully evident to anyone who has used Dragon software that they are not technologists.

    I was referring to Lernout and Hauspie - the founders of that company - as not being technologists.

    Dragon technology is the state-of-the-art in large vocabulary speaker-independent ASR. Jim Baker's basic mathematical framework is still the basis for all commercial ASR systems. This included the L&H ASR technology at the time of the deal. Each company's ASR engine has its own bells and whistles to distinguish it, but the main differentiator these days is the access to domain-specific data for training the statistical models - in combination with the many heuristic tricks used in building those models.

    It is hard to know the source of your bad anecdotal experience with Dragon Naturally Speaking. The technology has its limitations, and just "doesn't work" in probably 20% of the situations (broadly defined) in which it is deployed. The field needs another 2 or 3 fundamental research breakthroughs before any random use case could be guaranteed to be effective. But, many people have found Dragon dictate quite useful, particularly in restricted language domains, such as legal, medical, and business emails.

    Oh, and the ASR engine behind Siri _is_ a version of Dragon, so your post is somewhat non-sensical.

  24. I was working for an L&H competitor at the tim on How the Inventors of Dragon Speech Recognition Technology Lost Everything · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... and everyone in the industry knew that they were full of shit with their finances. The two founders - Lernout and Hauspie - were accountants, not technologists. The company had significant investment from the Belgian government, and L&H were politically well-connected enough to keep milking that funding source as they rode the tech frenzy of the 90's. In every instance where we competed against them, they always bid at ridiculously low prices that couldn't possibly be economically sensible. They had some decent technology, but their business practices were always suspect. It was very likely the taxpayer financing which kept their bubble from bursting before it did.

    To be fair, Dragon was primarily involved in desktop ASR, whereas L&H (and my company - Voice Control Systems), were focusing on telephony applications. So, the Bakers may not have been fully acquainted with L&H's reputation. But, really, they should have been extremely suspicious of this deal, especially when the offer was changed to 100% stock. TFA didn't say what the value of some of the competing offers were, but I'm guessing they were substantially less than $580M. If it sounds too good to be true ....

    None of this is to excuse Goldman, which apparently was hired to do something that they did not do. And clearly, the Bakers were done an injustice. But, something tells me that they were willfully blind to the possibility that this offer was unjustified. And for that, they should blame themselves.

  25. The bigotry on this thread is awe inspiring. on 2013 H-1B Visa Supply Nearly Exhausted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There is nothing to distinguish the primary sentiments expressed here from the hatred of European Jews, Italians, Irish, West-Africans, etc. that have been voiced by the most backward and unthinking bigots throughout American history. Each of the individuals seeking work here has - in our founders' terms - an inalienable right to pursue their happiness in any peaceful manner they choose.

    When they ask for a job at a given wage, they are infringing no one else's rights - noone has a "right" to a job at a higher wage than the employer is willing to pay. It is only by dropping this context that someone can complain about the so-called "unfair" competition imposed by other individual job seekers, no matter where they come from. There is no un-bigoted reason to prefer that someone born in America gets a given job over someone born elsewhere.

    Yes, the H-1B visa program should be abolished - in favor of absolutely free immigration and job-seeking by any non-criminal from any place in the world. This is America's promise, as expressed eloquently on the Statue of Liberty. Where has that spirit gone?