It's like proving something exists buy using something that doesn't exist. I admire the guys imagination though. Just seems like he wants it to exist so he's making it so. IMHO science should be about working with the facts, which isn't what's going on here.
Actually, science advances through the interplay between theory and observation (what you're calling "facts"). The general MO is that a theory (sometimes more than one) is popularized and people make lots of observations that either disprove or fail to disprove the theory. Whenever an observation contradicts a theory, then a bunch of people go scrambling for a new theory. However, there really is no requirement that a theory be confined to previously observed observation (which, to me, is more like "fitting a model to the data" rather than coming up with a new theory). In fact, the only requirement to make it scientific is that it leads to testable (i.e., contradictable) hypotheses. I admit I have no idea whether this guy's ideas will turn out to be testable, but that's all that would be required for it to be science.
To produce four barrels of synthetic crude from tar sand requires one barrel worth of energy. Oil shale is worse, though I can't remember the ratio. Part of the problem is that they require lots of processing after the sand/shale is out of the ground just to make a synthetic form of crude.
It's even worse when you consider the environmental issues. It's like the environmental fallout of the worst mining operations coupled with a somewhat inefficient way of gathering energy that also happens to result in lots of carbon being dumped into the atmosphere. I don't claim to have a better solution...but these are much, much worse than regular crude.
Whaa? You might get paid to publish a Harry Potter novel, but not a scientific article. In fact, it isn't uncommon for authors to have to pay to have their work published (e.g., there are many journals for which the authors must pay to publish if their paper exceeds a certain number of pages).
If anything, pushing toward a free publication model would only serve to help researchers who have limited funding because that would be less $ spent on accessing the research of others. (Though this expense tends to be borne not by individual researchers as much as by their institutions, and thus is more of an indirect overhead expense to them.)
I guess I should have been more clear in stating my belief: I believe a novel, non-obvious implementation of one-click purchasing should be patentable in principle. I realize that Amazon's actual patent may stand on somewhat weak ground from both non-obviousness and novelty perspectives. But whether Amazon's specific patent should be overturned really is a separate issue from whether some technological implementation of one-click might be patentable.
Some people seem to believe that nothing associated with one-click should ever be patentable, and they seem to argue it based on the obviousness of the user interface rather than on the merits of the underlying technological implementation. That's what always confuses me. It seems silly to be able to patent a particular transaction process, but the technological implementation should be fair game.
One of the things you are missing is that the one-click patent covers something that is incredibly trivial and used throughout applications for a long time, it's just the one-click was used for other things typically. We all love car analogies so here goes: The one-click patent is similar to patenting a braking system used to avoid trees on the roadway (that's one click for purchasing). Using the braking system for any other purpose is ok (that's every other possible use of a button or click that's been used in other applications). Do you think it would be ok if someone patented any of these: 1 click for "Ok" 1 click to "Cancel" a transaction 1 click for "Submit" 1 click for "Post" 1 click for "Preview" etc.
Yes, "click here" or "step on the brake pedal" are obvious and have no merits as patents. But the technological underpinnings of a vehicle's braking system should be patentable and, by analogy, it's not clear to me that a nontrivial technological implementations of a one-click ordering system should not be.
A key distinction I am making is between what the user sees/does and the technology by which that is realized. If I can describe a novel implementation of a one-click purchasing system based on duct tape and silly string, then I should be able to patent it and integrate it into my online ordering system regardless of whether Amazon has patented a different implementation of the same functionality.
Also, I do realize there are legitimate questions regarding the novelty and breadth of Amazon's patent, and I'm not trying to address those issues. I'm just saying that the debate seems to involve two positions: (a) the entire patent should be thrown out or (b) the entire patent should be upheld. But to me, there should be a middle ground. Just because it takes you one click to purchase from my website should not imply that I've violated Amazon's patent. However, if we assume for a second that Amazon has a meritorious technological implementation, then I would be infringing if I used the same implementation.
But that's exactly what I said--the process as viewed from a consumer's perspective shouldn't be patentable. However, I believe that a specific, non-obvious technological solution for implementing said process should be patentable.
In principle, different retailers could have their own implementations of the process that appear the same to the customer. Obviously, there are practical issues here: changing one small detail of an implementation should not be a way to get around a patent. However, if there are two ways to implement one-click and both are non-obvious then I think both merit patents.
My point in my original post was that the argument about one-click is always all-or-nothing, but the issue seems pretty simple to me when you think in slightly more subtle terms. I always come back to patents for physical devices to draw analogies. Consider a cordless drill. To me, patenting the one-click shopping process is more like patenting the process of drilling with a cordless drill than patenting the implementation of said drill and therefore should not be patentable. However, I can patent different technological implementations of the drill (just look sometime at how many patents there are on battery-powered cordless drills) and so I should be able to patent different technological implementations of one-click (assuming they are non-obvious and the claim is not so broad as to try to patent all possible implementations, which I believe are two legitimate issues with the actual one-click patent).
The test-case in the article was completely uninteresting to most of us. It was a further comment in the ruling that is "the routine addition of modern electronics to an otherwise unpatentable invention"
So if someone attempted to patent the process of going to the store, adding items to your shopping cart, taking it to the counter, and paying the requested amount and the patent was rejected for this simple process then based on that ruling and the "routine addition of modern electronics" ruling "One Click Shopping" patent would have to be declared invalid on challenge in court?
Honestly, the one-click patent debate has me a bit confused. Admittedly, I am not terribly well-read on the subject, but I really don't see what is so complicated about it. Seems to me that a system for implementing one-click ordering should be patentable--much in the way a design for a cash register might be--but that the purchase process itself (as viewed from the user perspective) should not be patentable--that would be like patenting face-to-face cash transactions.
I do understand that the patent in question confounds this distinction, and I suppose that fuels the fire for this debate. And I also understand that some people question the technical obviousness of the patented implementation. But I really don't understand why the process vs. implementation distinction gets so lost here. There isn't one patent that covers all internal combustion engines, so why would there be one patent covering all one-click purchase systems? Am I missing some fundamental element of the debate?
I can't say on a general scale, but the exact opposite of this is true for dogs. Small dogs like terriers can live upwards of 20 years, larger ones like mastiffs are lucky to hit 10. I have a feeling there are other exceptions as well, but I'm not familiar with what they might be.
IIRC, average heart rate and/or metabolic rate is a better predictor of average life span for a species than is size. Not sure if that explains the disparity among dogs. It just happens that large size tends to correlate to slower metabolisms/heart rates when looking at many species.
Also, dogs are a bizarre case since they are so radically inbred. Very little natural selection going on there. There was a PBS special on dogs about 6-12 months ago (the Nature series, I think) in which they point out that two very different dog breeds (e.g., a mastiff and a terrier) have more DNA in common than the average human cousins.
What if first born = daughter and next born is son?
Interesting question. The study was confined strictly to men, but they didn't just study families having only sons. Their methodology was to data mine old military records (mid-60's to mid-70's) and look at the IQ scores of people based upon whether they are the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd born. So I suspect there are plenty of cases where they looked at the IQ scores for 2nd-borns who had older sisters. However, the looked only at men, so they have no data about the IQ of the sisters.
The study authors do seem to think there would be the same effect across both sexes. From TFA: "Because sex has little effect on I.Q. scores, the results almost certainly apply to females as well, said Dr. Petter Kristensen, an epidemiologist at the University of Oslo and the lead author of the Science study."
The Article cites a senator saying that China will be on the moon in 2017... Do you have any bigger "Evil" competitors in mind?
I don't think we ever can spin China as our "evil" rival. We're just too tied to them economically. If Washington starts presenting China too strongly in this way, then China just threatens to make it harder for US companies to get to its goods/consumers. As more time passes, they will wield even more such power. The USSR was essentially isolated from us and that made it easy for the US gov't to propagansize against them. Apparently, China's cultural isolationism isn't enough.
I suppose a grassroots type of "evil-China" movement could emerge. But I don't see that happening any more than it already has when our economy is so tied to theirs. Too many people will want to avoid pissing them off.
Any space race we have with China will be "friendly".
Not sure this is exactly what you're looking for, but the one thing I have heard pretty universally from successful entrepreneurs is that something will always throw off your plan. Maybe this isn't necessarily something you should put into a formal business plan, but you should have some idea about how you'll adjust when your assumptions don't pan out.
On a related note, you should ask yourself whether you're in it for just that one idea that you have or if you want to run a business and this idea is just something to get you going. If you're too tightly married to that one idea you might fail to adjust to realities in time. Agility is the new stability!
Yes, I conceed that I may have overstated the situation and implied that subjective probability interpretations have universal support. But to my knowledge it is by far the best of the widely known interpretations.
I am confident that frequentist interpretations have been bassed by. Although this view still is taught (i.e., intro to probability usually involves your counting colored marbles in an urn or somesuch), it is more for its conceptual simplicity than a deeply-held conviction that it is the best view. I guess I initially said that the frequentist view is invalid, when really it is more a matter of not being very useful. It is clear that we reason about uncertain events even when there is no empirical basis for our doing so. This is strongly suggestive that a frequentist interpretation is insufficient. In the weather prediction example, how do you proceed if you've never experienced a day in the past with the correct conditions?
Personally, I came out of undergrad knowing nothing other than the frequency interpretation and was very hesitant to accept another interpretation. However, you just can't get very far using frequentist interpretations. I admit that subjective probabilities may not be the final word, but to my knowledge it is the only interpretation that is both consistent with our understanding of probability theory (i.e., Kolmogorov's axiomization) and has reasonable evidence gathering requirements (i.e., does not require infinite data or experiements that cannot be performed). Subjective probabilities have their own problems, but on the balance they are more tenable than other interpretations.
BTW, IIRC propensity views suffer from many of the same problems as frequentist views (e.g., require infinite data or somesuch), despite being Popper's answer to problems with frequentist views.
The news piece is just plain wrong in the intro. Frequentist interpretations of probability are widely discredited and have been for quite some time (on the order of 50 years I believe). The modern interpretation of probability comes out of normative decision theory, which is based on subjective probabilities - i.e., your beliefs about the world (see here for some general background). Your beliefs should be coherent, which means consistent with observable facts, but they are not objective.
To understand this better, consider weather forcasts. My weather guy says there is a 10% chance of rain tomorrow. Unless you believe that the universe branches and follows all possible outcomes of all events (i.e., kind of the "Sliders" thing with universes in which WWII comes out differently and so forth), then a strictly frequentist view just isn't valid.
The accepted theoretical construct for defining and interpreting probabilities is in terms of betting behavior. If you construct the right kind of lottery, then the amount of money I am willing to bet on a particular outcome relates directly to my belief about that outcome (i.e., my subjective probability).
As for the research itself, I have to read the academic article to draw an informed opinion. The news writeup was too vague and possibly misleading. Just because the average guess of a bunch of people is accurate is not evidence that any of them are using Bayesian reasoning. I know damn well that humans model the world and our inferences are informed by these models. And if you give me a little more information I can draw even better inferences. But that doesn't prove anything about how I improved my guess. I trust the researchers did something more sophisticated than was reported in the news writeup.
And no, I am not a decision theorist. I just play one on TV.:)
The article implies that libel laws and laws againt computer-generated child-porn are synonymous with censorship. That's crap, of course.
Yes, the author does draw a parallel, but I don't think it quite undermines his argument. He'd not saying libel/anti-child porn laws are morally equivalent to censorship. He is just pointing out that there already are websites that are filtered from general view and that we often are not aware of it. His point here is that at least in this instance Google is trying to alert users to the fact that something is being held back.
I agree that the author's argument isn't the most compelling. I mean, who would be interested to know that child porn was omitted from their search results? Not me (especially since I can't imagine why any searches I do would return such restults!). But if something that was not in the same make-your-skin-crawl moral category as child porn was filtered from your results, you at least should know about it.
So it's basically a curiosity-killed-the-cat argument, except in this case the author thinks curiosity comes from the users and the cat is the Chineese government. Google might be hoping that if they mention something is missing, the users will eventually demand the missing content. Whether this effect actually is significant depends on several factors, including whether the average Chineese user will be sufficiently curious about those omitted results. But, I think it is a safe bet that it's more likely to promote thinking among the average user than by not noting the omission. Google's reasoning is probably something along the lines of "if we don't do it someone else will and they might make even larger compromises that this one."
Your GF probably shouldn't be trying to get by with a cheapo desktop printer, then.
Well, she wasn't exactly shopping for a $99 photo printer, but this was just to enable a small volume of freelance work (she has a FT job at a non-profit). After balancing cost (of purchase and ownership) with quality, she felt the inkjets were superior for anything within her budget. (Note, we estimated these things with data we mostly found on the web along with some reviews in various publications. Naturally, our decision was only as good as the data it was based on. But, IIRC, the decision seemed pretty clear-cut around our price point.)
But this isn't ideal for everyone (although I grant you it's probably an adequate solution for many people). My GF is a graphics designer who specializes in print media. We compared many printers about a year or so ago and the inkjets blew away color lasers w.r.t. color accuracy. My mother won't notice if the laser printer makes the sky in her picture a few Pantone shades off from ideal, but stuff like that does matter to someone proofing a brochure before sending it off to the print shop.
Basically, I find anyone who is serious about their color tends to prefer inkjets despite the obvious fact that they have turned into a marketing scam.
There are hundreds if not thousands of examples where businesses (and entire industries) of all sizes willfully (and gleefully) ignore the public interest, safety, and so on.
They only do this when they believe it to be in their (financial) interest. For the nascent commercial space industry, financial intrests are aligned with safety. Sure, some people will go up regardless the risks. But most people will wait it out until they feel more secure.
I do conceed that they really only require the perception of safety. Thus, this organization could be just one big scam. Although this is possible, I believe that the initial pioneers in any field really are as interested in the long-term success of the field as they are of their own financial success (perhaps even more so). It's the second- and third- generation of commercial space companies that we want to look out for.
This isn't to say that NASA involvement would be a bad idea...
Weatherbug wound up on my PC at home. I think it is from when my GF put AIM on the computer. If found some instructions on removing it, though I haven't had a chance to try them yet. It includes info on registry updates that Weatherbug makes and even mentions an alternative product for those who what weather updates.
-R
A robot requires a power source. If it runs on electricity it may not "excrete" directly but the power plant that generates the electricity "excretes" quite a bit.
IIRC, large power plants will produce less polution than lots of smaller generators that together generate the same power output. So maybe the question is not whether, but where the excretion occurs?
Other power sources may be better (or no worse) if distributed. Perhaps someone can design a home robot that runs on domestic refuse (table scraps, spoiled food, etc.).
And if it really does excrete, I don't think our kitten would mind sharing the litter box.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, science advances through the interplay between theory and observation (what you're calling "facts"). The general MO is that a theory (sometimes more than one) is popularized and people make lots of observations that either disprove or fail to disprove the theory. Whenever an observation contradicts a theory, then a bunch of people go scrambling for a new theory. However, there really is no requirement that a theory be confined to previously observed observation (which, to me, is more like "fitting a model to the data" rather than coming up with a new theory). In fact, the only requirement to make it scientific is that it leads to testable (i.e., contradictable) hypotheses. I admit I have no idea whether this guy's ideas will turn out to be testable, but that's all that would be required for it to be science.
To produce four barrels of synthetic crude from tar sand requires one barrel worth of energy. Oil shale is worse, though I can't remember the ratio. Part of the problem is that they require lots of processing after the sand/shale is out of the ground just to make a synthetic form of crude.
It's even worse when you consider the environmental issues. It's like the environmental fallout of the worst mining operations coupled with a somewhat inefficient way of gathering energy that also happens to result in lots of carbon being dumped into the atmosphere. I don't claim to have a better solution...but these are much, much worse than regular crude.
When did exercise balls become the univerally known cultural unit of measurement?
At least they didn't say that it was 0.01097 football fields in diameter!
Here's a link to an article by Taubes that originally ran in 2002, and sounds like it was the seed for this book.
"What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E2D61F3EF934A35754C0A9649C8B63
It's long for a NYTimes article, but it's an interesting read. I'm sure the book updates much of the data.
Whaa? You might get paid to publish a Harry Potter novel, but not a scientific article. In fact, it isn't uncommon for authors to have to pay to have their work published (e.g., there are many journals for which the authors must pay to publish if their paper exceeds a certain number of pages).
If anything, pushing toward a free publication model would only serve to help researchers who have limited funding because that would be less $ spent on accessing the research of others. (Though this expense tends to be borne not by individual researchers as much as by their institutions, and thus is more of an indirect overhead expense to them.)
One click ordering should NOT be patentable.
I guess I should have been more clear in stating my belief: I believe a novel, non-obvious implementation of one-click purchasing should be patentable in principle. I realize that Amazon's actual patent may stand on somewhat weak ground from both non-obviousness and novelty perspectives. But whether Amazon's specific patent should be overturned really is a separate issue from whether some technological implementation of one-click might be patentable.
Some people seem to believe that nothing associated with one-click should ever be patentable, and they seem to argue it based on the obviousness of the user interface rather than on the merits of the underlying technological implementation. That's what always confuses me. It seems silly to be able to patent a particular transaction process, but the technological implementation should be fair game.
One of the things you are missing is that the one-click patent covers something that is incredibly trivial and used throughout applications for a long time, it's just the one-click was used for other things typically. We all love car analogies so here goes: The one-click patent is similar to patenting a braking system used to avoid trees on the roadway (that's one click for purchasing). Using the braking system for any other purpose is ok (that's every other possible use of a button or click that's been used in other applications). Do you think it would be ok if someone patented any of these: 1 click for "Ok" 1 click to "Cancel" a transaction 1 click for "Submit" 1 click for "Post" 1 click for "Preview" etc.
Yes, "click here" or "step on the brake pedal" are obvious and have no merits as patents. But the technological underpinnings of a vehicle's braking system should be patentable and, by analogy, it's not clear to me that a nontrivial technological implementations of a one-click ordering system should not be.
A key distinction I am making is between what the user sees/does and the technology by which that is realized. If I can describe a novel implementation of a one-click purchasing system based on duct tape and silly string, then I should be able to patent it and integrate it into my online ordering system regardless of whether Amazon has patented a different implementation of the same functionality.
Also, I do realize there are legitimate questions regarding the novelty and breadth of Amazon's patent, and I'm not trying to address those issues. I'm just saying that the debate seems to involve two positions: (a) the entire patent should be thrown out or (b) the entire patent should be upheld. But to me, there should be a middle ground. Just because it takes you one click to purchase from my website should not imply that I've violated Amazon's patent. However, if we assume for a second that Amazon has a meritorious technological implementation, then I would be infringing if I used the same implementation.
But that's exactly what I said--the process as viewed from a consumer's perspective shouldn't be patentable. However, I believe that a specific, non-obvious technological solution for implementing said process should be patentable.
In principle, different retailers could have their own implementations of the process that appear the same to the customer. Obviously, there are practical issues here: changing one small detail of an implementation should not be a way to get around a patent. However, if there are two ways to implement one-click and both are non-obvious then I think both merit patents.
My point in my original post was that the argument about one-click is always all-or-nothing, but the issue seems pretty simple to me when you think in slightly more subtle terms. I always come back to patents for physical devices to draw analogies. Consider a cordless drill. To me, patenting the one-click shopping process is more like patenting the process of drilling with a cordless drill than patenting the implementation of said drill and therefore should not be patentable. However, I can patent different technological implementations of the drill (just look sometime at how many patents there are on battery-powered cordless drills) and so I should be able to patent different technological implementations of one-click (assuming they are non-obvious and the claim is not so broad as to try to patent all possible implementations, which I believe are two legitimate issues with the actual one-click patent).
So if someone attempted to patent the process of going to the store, adding items to your shopping cart, taking it to the counter, and paying the requested amount and the patent was rejected for this simple process then based on that ruling and the "routine addition of modern electronics" ruling "One Click Shopping" patent would have to be declared invalid on challenge in court?
Honestly, the one-click patent debate has me a bit confused. Admittedly, I am not terribly well-read on the subject, but I really don't see what is so complicated about it. Seems to me that a system for implementing one-click ordering should be patentable--much in the way a design for a cash register might be--but that the purchase process itself (as viewed from the user perspective) should not be patentable--that would be like patenting face-to-face cash transactions.
I do understand that the patent in question confounds this distinction, and I suppose that fuels the fire for this debate. And I also understand that some people question the technical obviousness of the patented implementation. But I really don't understand why the process vs. implementation distinction gets so lost here. There isn't one patent that covers all internal combustion engines, so why would there be one patent covering all one-click purchase systems? Am I missing some fundamental element of the debate?
I can't say on a general scale, but the exact opposite of this is true for dogs. Small dogs like terriers can live upwards of 20 years, larger ones like mastiffs are lucky to hit 10. I have a feeling there are other exceptions as well, but I'm not familiar with what they might be.
IIRC, average heart rate and/or metabolic rate is a better predictor of average life span for a species than is size. Not sure if that explains the disparity among dogs. It just happens that large size tends to correlate to slower metabolisms/heart rates when looking at many species.
Also, dogs are a bizarre case since they are so radically inbred. Very little natural selection going on there. There was a PBS special on dogs about 6-12 months ago (the Nature series, I think) in which they point out that two very different dog breeds (e.g., a mastiff and a terrier) have more DNA in common than the average human cousins.
wish there was a "sad" mod. "interesting" is true, but doesn't quite cover it. ;)
What if first born = daughter and next born is son?
Interesting question. The study was confined strictly to men, but they didn't just study families having only sons. Their methodology was to data mine old military records (mid-60's to mid-70's) and look at the IQ scores of people based upon whether they are the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd born. So I suspect there are plenty of cases where they looked at the IQ scores for 2nd-borns who had older sisters. However, the looked only at men, so they have no data about the IQ of the sisters.
The study authors do seem to think there would be the same effect across both sexes. From TFA: "Because sex has little effect on I.Q. scores, the results almost certainly apply to females as well, said Dr. Petter Kristensen, an epidemiologist at the University of Oslo and the lead author of the Science study."
Seems like this would be easy to verify. There should be the remnants of the tunnels still in place. HAs he found any?
From TFA: "Houdin said he plans to verify his theories through non-invasive tests on site."
I'd be surprised if he has no info at all about what is inside the pyramid, but sounds like he's short of being able to convince a skeptic.
So, anyone else thinking that the AC poster of the parent just might be one of the authors of the linked-to book? ;)
The Article cites a senator saying that China will be on the moon in 2017... Do you have any bigger "Evil" competitors in mind?
I don't think we ever can spin China as our "evil" rival. We're just too tied to them economically. If Washington starts presenting China too strongly in this way, then China just threatens to make it harder for US companies to get to its goods/consumers. As more time passes, they will wield even more such power. The USSR was essentially isolated from us and that made it easy for the US gov't to propagansize against them. Apparently, China's cultural isolationism isn't enough.
I suppose a grassroots type of "evil-China" movement could emerge. But I don't see that happening any more than it already has when our economy is so tied to theirs. Too many people will want to avoid pissing them off.
Any space race we have with China will be "friendly".
Not sure this is exactly what you're looking for, but the one thing I have heard pretty universally from successful entrepreneurs is that something will always throw off your plan. Maybe this isn't necessarily something you should put into a formal business plan, but you should have some idea about how you'll adjust when your assumptions don't pan out.
On a related note, you should ask yourself whether you're in it for just that one idea that you have or if you want to run a business and this idea is just something to get you going. If you're too tightly married to that one idea you might fail to adjust to realities in time. Agility is the new stability!
Yes, I conceed that I may have overstated the situation and implied that subjective probability interpretations have universal support. But to my knowledge it is by far the best of the widely known interpretations.
I am confident that frequentist interpretations have been bassed by. Although this view still is taught (i.e., intro to probability usually involves your counting colored marbles in an urn or somesuch), it is more for its conceptual simplicity than a deeply-held conviction that it is the best view. I guess I initially said that the frequentist view is invalid, when really it is more a matter of not being very useful. It is clear that we reason about uncertain events even when there is no empirical basis for our doing so. This is strongly suggestive that a frequentist interpretation is insufficient. In the weather prediction example, how do you proceed if you've never experienced a day in the past with the correct conditions?
Personally, I came out of undergrad knowing nothing other than the frequency interpretation and was very hesitant to accept another interpretation. However, you just can't get very far using frequentist interpretations. I admit that subjective probabilities may not be the final word, but to my knowledge it is the only interpretation that is both consistent with our understanding of probability theory (i.e., Kolmogorov's axiomization) and has reasonable evidence gathering requirements (i.e., does not require infinite data or experiements that cannot be performed). Subjective probabilities have their own problems, but on the balance they are more tenable than other interpretations.
BTW, IIRC propensity views suffer from many of the same problems as frequentist views (e.g., require infinite data or somesuch), despite being Popper's answer to problems with frequentist views.
The news piece is just plain wrong in the intro. Frequentist interpretations of probability are widely discredited and have been for quite some time (on the order of 50 years I believe). The modern interpretation of probability comes out of normative decision theory, which is based on subjective probabilities - i.e., your beliefs about the world (see here for some general background). Your beliefs should be coherent, which means consistent with observable facts, but they are not objective.
To understand this better, consider weather forcasts. My weather guy says there is a 10% chance of rain tomorrow. Unless you believe that the universe branches and follows all possible outcomes of all events (i.e., kind of the "Sliders" thing with universes in which WWII comes out differently and so forth), then a strictly frequentist view just isn't valid.
The accepted theoretical construct for defining and interpreting probabilities is in terms of betting behavior. If you construct the right kind of lottery, then the amount of money I am willing to bet on a particular outcome relates directly to my belief about that outcome (i.e., my subjective probability).
As for the research itself, I have to read the academic article to draw an informed opinion. The news writeup was too vague and possibly misleading. Just because the average guess of a bunch of people is accurate is not evidence that any of them are using Bayesian reasoning. I know damn well that humans model the world and our inferences are informed by these models. And if you give me a little more information I can draw even better inferences. But that doesn't prove anything about how I improved my guess. I trust the researchers did something more sophisticated than was reported in the news writeup.
And no, I am not a decision theorist. I just play one on TV. :)
The article implies that libel laws and laws againt computer-generated child-porn are synonymous with censorship. That's crap, of course.
Yes, the author does draw a parallel, but I don't think it quite undermines his argument. He'd not saying libel/anti-child porn laws are morally equivalent to censorship. He is just pointing out that there already are websites that are filtered from general view and that we often are not aware of it. His point here is that at least in this instance Google is trying to alert users to the fact that something is being held back.
I agree that the author's argument isn't the most compelling. I mean, who would be interested to know that child porn was omitted from their search results? Not me (especially since I can't imagine why any searches I do would return such restults!). But if something that was not in the same make-your-skin-crawl moral category as child porn was filtered from your results, you at least should know about it.
So it's basically a curiosity-killed-the-cat argument, except in this case the author thinks curiosity comes from the users and the cat is the Chineese government. Google might be hoping that if they mention something is missing, the users will eventually demand the missing content. Whether this effect actually is significant depends on several factors, including whether the average Chineese user will be sufficiently curious about those omitted results. But, I think it is a safe bet that it's more likely to promote thinking among the average user than by not noting the omission. Google's reasoning is probably something along the lines of "if we don't do it someone else will and they might make even larger compromises that this one."
Your GF probably shouldn't be trying to get by with a cheapo desktop printer, then.
Well, she wasn't exactly shopping for a $99 photo printer, but this was just to enable a small volume of freelance work (she has a FT job at a non-profit). After balancing cost (of purchase and ownership) with quality, she felt the inkjets were superior for anything within her budget. (Note, we estimated these things with data we mostly found on the web along with some reviews in various publications. Naturally, our decision was only as good as the data it was based on. But, IIRC, the decision seemed pretty clear-cut around our price point.)
Buy a color laser printer.
But this isn't ideal for everyone (although I grant you it's probably an adequate solution for many people). My GF is a graphics designer who specializes in print media. We compared many printers about a year or so ago and the inkjets blew away color lasers w.r.t. color accuracy. My mother won't notice if the laser printer makes the sky in her picture a few Pantone shades off from ideal, but stuff like that does matter to someone proofing a brochure before sending it off to the print shop.
Basically, I find anyone who is serious about their color tends to prefer inkjets despite the obvious fact that they have turned into a marketing scam.
There are hundreds if not thousands of examples where businesses (and entire industries) of all sizes willfully (and gleefully) ignore the public interest, safety, and so on.
They only do this when they believe it to be in their (financial) interest. For the nascent commercial space industry, financial intrests are aligned with safety. Sure, some people will go up regardless the risks. But most people will wait it out until they feel more secure.
I do conceed that they really only require the perception of safety. Thus, this organization could be just one big scam. Although this is possible, I believe that the initial pioneers in any field really are as interested in the long-term success of the field as they are of their own financial success (perhaps even more so). It's the second- and third- generation of commercial space companies that we want to look out for.
This isn't to say that NASA involvement would be a bad idea...
The NYTimes has been running this story on their main page for the past day. Story is here.
Apparently, he made these remarks in an effort to provoke discussion more than to express his beliefs. Or at least that's the spin on it.
Weatherbug wound up on my PC at home. I think it is from when my GF put AIM on the computer. If found some instructions on removing it, though I haven't had a chance to try them yet. It includes info on registry updates that Weatherbug makes and even mentions an alternative product for those who what weather updates. -R
A robot requires a power source. If it runs on electricity it may not "excrete" directly but the power plant that generates the electricity "excretes" quite a bit.
IIRC, large power plants will produce less polution than lots of smaller generators that together generate the same power output. So maybe the question is not whether, but where the excretion occurs?
Other power sources may be better (or no worse) if distributed. Perhaps someone can design a home robot that runs on domestic refuse (table scraps, spoiled food, etc.).
And if it really does excrete, I don't think our kitten would mind sharing the litter box. ;)