The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Microsoft Windows operating system. Bundling them together is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of Internet Explorer. [...] Microsoft stated that the merging of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer was the result of innovation and competition, that the two were now the same product and were inextricably linked together and that consumers were now getting all the benefits of IE for free.
Funnily enough, that is exactly how I remember it.
And when the others stop sitting back and stop watching their neighbors and countrymen die from actions taken by our military and our secret services and strike back, we have to kill even more of them. There is close to 1 billion people on our side in the civilized western countries countries and there is 1 billion people on the other side in the barbaric muslim countries. I think we have to find a better solution than the one that you propose.
Right. That are the only options. We can't just stop killing other people. We either have to kill them with drones or have soliders invade random countries and shoot random people in the face. These are our only options.
Hint: It doesn't involve predicting when or how large an earthquake will be, or the probability of one, which is the incorrect idea you appear to be stuck on.
Let me just quote the wp article, it's decent introduction to the topic: "Quantitative risk assessment requires calculations of two components of risk (R):, the magnitude of the potential loss (L), and the probability (p) that the loss will occur.". I'm not going to get involved in your mudslinging but I can't help but add that I'm pretty sure that only one of us has studied mathematics and actually works as a mathematician.
Perhaps you should endeavor to understand even the most basic ideas of risk assessment before you attempt debating this point again.
There is no known way to quantify the probability of an earthquake. There is no known way to predict the size of an earthquake, i. e. the amaount of damage an earthquake will cause. Hence there is no way to quantify the risk. Do you think that your insults strengthen your point?
They effectively made a prediction through their "no danger" statements, which was foolish.
The "no danger" prediction was the best scientific prediction possible. It's a tragedy that is was wrong.
Elevated radon levels can't be used to predict earthquakes in any way. A series of small earthquakes can not be used to predict a big earthquake. There were 2 comparable earthquakes in that region in the last 1000 years. The situation one day before the big quake was from a scientific point of view exactly the same as on every other day the last couple of thousand years.
A theory that 2 of their own dissented from (after the quake), about the smaller quakes being favorable as they release seismic stress
I wouldn't call that a theory; it's a hypothesis at best. There currently is no evidence to support it. I can see your argument that they might have overstepped their bounds here but it is unclear what they actually said and how they presented their hypothesis. Even if they presented their assessment poorly convicting them of manslaughter is way out of line.
They were charged and convicted for not doing something that fits directly into their scientific specialties, namely assessing and communicating the risks in the area.
It is impossible with current knowledge to quantify the probability of an earthquake happening in the next 24 hours. What you claim was their job is simply impossible to do.
So it will have a chilling effect on liars, causing them to tell the truth instead. How is that a bad thing?
Newton was a liar. His "laws of motions" turned out to be wrong in a lot of significant cases. He should never have published the principia mathematica. Einstein was a liar. His theory of special relativity turned out to be wrong in many cases. He should never have published anything. The same goes for literallly every other scientist in human history, I just picked two examples that even you might have heard of.
These "scientists" said they had solid evidence that there would be no earthquake.
No, they didn't. Newton and Einstein on the other hand did.
From your link: "According to an open letter to the president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, signed by more than 5,000 members of the scientific community, the seven Italians essentially face criminal charges for failing to predict the earthquake — even though pinpointing the time, location and strength of a future earthquake in the short term remains, by scientific consensus, technically impossible." And "The view from L'Aquila [the public prosecutor in this case], however, is quite different. Prosecutors and the families of victims alike say that the trial has nothing to do with the ability to predict earthquakes, and everything to do with the failure of government-appointed scientists serving on an advisory panel to adequately evaluate, and then communicate, the potential risk to the local population." They were charged and convicted for not doing something that would be technically impossible to do.
Even if we assume for the sake of the argument that L'Aquila is to stupid to distinguish between potential risk and expected damage and meant the latter, the charge is still ridiculously stupid.
That is not true. Maldacena duality (AdS/CFT correspondence) for examples can be tested in low energy experiments and has also not "been found out mathematically to be wrong for our universe."
Einstein published his theory of general relativity in 1915 and proposed his now famous classical tests for it (perihelion precession of Mercury's orbit, gravitational redshift, and deflection of light by stars) in 1916. There was a (short) period where gr lacked a solid empirical foundation.
There are lots of testable predictions comming out of string theory (supersymmetry, string harmonics, cosmic strings, etc.). They just can't be tested with energy levels that are accessible today. There was some hope that the LHC would provide positive proof for some of these predicitions; but no luck so far.
I don't see how you could argue that the function is not continuous.
The paper I quoted gives a concrete example of a non continuous Laffer function.
At a certain rate, it doesn't "jump". It may rise and fall many times and at different slopes, but it is still continuous.
"Continuous" is a mathematical term. Proof by "intuition" doesn't work in math. Malcomson's example that I quoted above is a good demonstration on how your intuition can fool you in spots like these. In a nutshell: The only thing that you know about a Laffer function is that it maps income tax rate to tax revenue; this doesn't suffice to make the function continuous in all possible cases. Maybe the Laffer function for the country you live in is continuous, maybe it's not. Nobody knows (i. e. can prove) what it really looks like but we do know that there are Laffer functions that are not, so your's might also not be continuous.
But I find it hard to believe that at 100% tax, that one could argue that there would be revenue.
I tend to believe that a system with a 100% tax rate would instantly collapse, I don't believe that a purely "slave-driven society" would be stable enough to collect any taxes.
Oh... and the the initial "Bullshit" was probably way harsher than I intended. Sorry about that.
Let me quote myself: For well-behaved functional forms it may not be continuous and may not have an interior maximum. If you do not understand what the bolded part means you should check out the Weierstrass extreme value theorem.
The Laffer Curve is real. The debate is about where we are on that curve. All the Laffer Curve theory states is that with 0% tax there is no revenue. At 100% tax, there is also no revenue (since no one will work). Therefore, there must be a maximum revenue tax rate.
Bullshit: It is shown that, in a general equilibrium model with one private good, one public good, labour and an income tax, certain widely-assumed properties of the Laffer curve do not necessarily hold. For well-behaved functional forms it may not be continuous and may not have an interior maximum. Its slope depends on technology as well as on the tax elasticity of labour supply. For certain technologies, a more negative elasticity may imply a more positive slope. Moreover, the relevant tax elasticity is a general equilibrium one which may differ in sign from the widely- quoted partial equilibrium one.
Don't get me wrong. But if you think that is would be an "amazingly sophisticated" plan you really are stupid. As far as plans go it doesn't get much simpler than this.
2. Bit coins? Really? here is a guy who is publicly saying he committed a crime. FBI goes to the Bit Coin Servers with a warrant sends the million and tracks every Bit to see who finally receives it. Oh it goes to a PO Box... That is OK, you get an FBI agent waiting right next to that PO Box to arrest anyone who opens it.
Offtopic, but that's not how bitcoins work. The truth about bitcoins is that there are no bitcoins, just the global transaction log, which is replicated between all bitcoin clients. No warrant is required to read the log, just use http://blockexplorer.com/. If Romney pays the log will contain an entry stating that the hash number the blackmailer provided owns bitcoins worth 1 milllion dollars.
Slashdot Mirror
It's trivial to fake fingerprints and fool fingerprint sensors.
If model and reality disagree then reality must be wrong.
For Android there is Hacker's Keyboard which gives you arrow keys, CTRL, TAB, etc. I assume there are similar apps for iOS.
The wiki article says:
The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Microsoft Windows operating system. Bundling them together is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of Internet Explorer. [...] Microsoft stated that the merging of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer was the result of innovation and competition, that the two were now the same product and were inextricably linked together and that consumers were now getting all the benefits of IE for free.
Funnily enough, that is exactly how I remember it.
It was quite successfull till Microsoft bought Anders Hejlsberg from Borland to develop .Net. Delphi never recovered from that loss.
And when the others stop sitting back and stop watching their neighbors and countrymen die from actions taken by our military and our secret services and strike back, we have to kill even more of them. There is close to 1 billion people on our side in the civilized western countries countries and there is 1 billion people on the other side in the barbaric muslim countries. I think we have to find a better solution than the one that you propose.
Right. That are the only options. We can't just stop killing other people. We either have to kill them with drones or have soliders invade random countries and shoot random people in the face. These are our only options.
Hint: It doesn't involve predicting when or how large an earthquake will be, or the probability of one, which is the incorrect idea you appear to be stuck on.
Let me just quote the wp article, it's decent introduction to the topic: "Quantitative risk assessment requires calculations of two components of risk (R):, the magnitude of the potential loss (L), and the probability (p) that the loss will occur.". I'm not going to get involved in your mudslinging but I can't help but add that I'm pretty sure that only one of us has studied mathematics and actually works as a mathematician.
Have a nice day, sir!
Perhaps you should endeavor to understand even the most basic ideas of risk assessment before you attempt debating this point again.
There is no known way to quantify the probability of an earthquake. There is no known way to predict the size of an earthquake, i. e. the amaount of damage an earthquake will cause. Hence there is no way to quantify the risk. Do you think that your insults strengthen your point?
They effectively made a prediction through their "no danger" statements, which was foolish.
The "no danger" prediction was the best scientific prediction possible. It's a tragedy that is was wrong.
Elevated radon levels can't be used to predict earthquakes in any way. A series of small earthquakes can not be used to predict a big earthquake. There were 2 comparable earthquakes in that region in the last 1000 years. The situation one day before the big quake was from a scientific point of view exactly the same as on every other day the last couple of thousand years.
A theory that 2 of their own dissented from (after the quake), about the smaller quakes being favorable as they release seismic stress
I wouldn't call that a theory; it's a hypothesis at best. There currently is no evidence to support it. I can see your argument that they might have overstepped their bounds here but it is unclear what they actually said and how they presented their hypothesis. Even if they presented their assessment poorly convicting them of manslaughter is way out of line.
They were charged and convicted for not doing something that fits directly into their scientific specialties, namely assessing and communicating the risks in the area.
It is impossible with current knowledge to quantify the probability of an earthquake happening in the next 24 hours. What you claim was their job is simply impossible to do.
So it will have a chilling effect on liars, causing them to tell the truth instead. How is that a bad thing?
Newton was a liar. His "laws of motions" turned out to be wrong in a lot of significant cases. He should never have published the principia mathematica. Einstein was a liar. His theory of special relativity turned out to be wrong in many cases. He should never have published anything. The same goes for literallly every other scientist in human history, I just picked two examples that even you might have heard of.
These "scientists" said they had solid evidence that there would be no earthquake.
No, they didn't. Newton and Einstein on the other hand did.
From your link: "According to an open letter to the president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, signed by more than 5,000 members of the scientific community, the seven Italians essentially face criminal charges for failing to predict the earthquake — even though pinpointing the time, location and strength of a future earthquake in the short term remains, by scientific consensus, technically impossible." And "The view from L'Aquila [the public prosecutor in this case], however, is quite different. Prosecutors and the families of victims alike say that the trial has nothing to do with the ability to predict earthquakes, and everything to do with the failure of government-appointed scientists serving on an advisory panel to adequately evaluate, and then communicate, the potential risk to the local population." They were charged and convicted for not doing something that would be technically impossible to do.
Even if we assume for the sake of the argument that L'Aquila is to stupid to distinguish between potential risk and expected damage and meant the latter, the charge is still ridiculously stupid.
So? This only means that the amount of energy is constant. Why is it finite?
the amount of energy in the universe is definitely finite
Why?
That is not true. Maldacena duality (AdS/CFT correspondence) for examples can be tested in low energy experiments and has also not "been found out mathematically to be wrong for our universe."
Einstein published his theory of general relativity in 1915 and proposed his now famous classical tests for it (perihelion precession of Mercury's orbit, gravitational redshift, and deflection of light by stars) in 1916. There was a (short) period where gr lacked a solid empirical foundation.
There are lots of testable predictions comming out of string theory (supersymmetry, string harmonics, cosmic strings, etc.). They just can't be tested with energy levels that are accessible today. There was some hope that the LHC would provide positive proof for some of these predicitions; but no luck so far.
I don't see how you could argue that the function is not continuous.
The paper I quoted gives a concrete example of a non continuous Laffer function.
At a certain rate, it doesn't "jump". It may rise and fall many times and at different slopes, but it is still continuous.
"Continuous" is a mathematical term. Proof by "intuition" doesn't work in math. Malcomson's example that I quoted above is a good demonstration on how your intuition can fool you in spots like these. In a nutshell: The only thing that you know about a Laffer function is that it maps income tax rate to tax revenue; this doesn't suffice to make the function continuous in all possible cases. Maybe the Laffer function for the country you live in is continuous, maybe it's not. Nobody knows (i. e. can prove) what it really looks like but we do know that there are Laffer functions that are not, so your's might also not be continuous.
But I find it hard to believe that at 100% tax, that one could argue that there would be revenue.
I tend to believe that a system with a 100% tax rate would instantly collapse, I don't believe that a purely "slave-driven society" would be stable enough to collect any taxes.
Oh ... and the the initial "Bullshit" was probably way harsher than I intended. Sorry about that.
Let me quote myself: For well-behaved functional forms it may not be continuous and may not have an interior maximum. If you do not understand what the bolded part means you should check out the Weierstrass extreme value theorem.
The Laffer Curve is real. The debate is about where we are on that curve. All the Laffer Curve theory states is that with 0% tax there is no revenue. At 100% tax, there is also no revenue (since no one will work). Therefore, there must be a maximum revenue tax rate.
Bullshit: It is shown that, in a general equilibrium model with one private good, one public good, labour and an income tax, certain widely-assumed properties of the Laffer curve do not necessarily hold. For well-behaved functional forms it may not be continuous and may not have an interior maximum. Its slope depends on technology as well as on the tax elasticity of labour supply. For certain technologies, a more negative elasticity may imply a more positive slope. Moreover, the relevant tax elasticity is a general equilibrium one which may differ in sign from the widely- quoted partial equilibrium one.
Feeding the world is a theoretical concern, not a practical one.
For the over 6 million children that starve every year (one every five seconds!) it is practical problem.
Which current government protection for cooperations reduces the effectiveness of a boycott?
No, hashes are made up on the spot. It's not the result of hashing some actual data but just a simple UUID.
Don't get me wrong. But if you think that is would be an "amazingly sophisticated" plan you really are stupid. As far as plans go it doesn't get much simpler than this.
2. Bit coins? Really? here is a guy who is publicly saying he committed a crime. FBI goes to the Bit Coin Servers with a warrant sends the million and tracks every Bit to see who finally receives it. Oh it goes to a PO Box... That is OK, you get an FBI agent waiting right next to that PO Box to arrest anyone who opens it.
Offtopic, but that's not how bitcoins work. The truth about bitcoins is that there are no bitcoins, just the global transaction log, which is replicated between all bitcoin clients. No warrant is required to read the log, just use http://blockexplorer.com/. If Romney pays the log will contain an entry stating that the hash number the blackmailer provided owns bitcoins worth 1 milllion dollars.
It's called a public-key infrastructure. The Wiki article on PKI is not very good, but still gives some kind of introduction to the topic.