The problem is that the brief news story was more focused on explaining what the Many Worlds hypothesis is to a lay audience and not really pointing out what the new breakthrough is really all about to a geek audience. Someone needs to link to science site and not a general news site.
The story only matters to a handful of Harvard students anyway, but it makes the front page at Slashdot because it is another "our rights are being trampled" story...
I have seen the point emphasized before about medical doctors not being scientists. Med school is a lot different training than a PhD program. A bachelors degree really doesn't teach you to do research, especially if you are pre-med and are busy trying to memorize everything for the standardized testing.
Someone pointed out once that much of the "scientific" studies in support of paranormal activities like ESP tends to come from MDs and not PhDs, but the general public will equate it to being "scientific" because an MD was involved.
As far as medical doctors not knowing math, I think it actually goes further than that. Many, many people just don't want to deal with math, so nobody really ever checks the math thoroughly. A researcher might have colleagues read his paper before submitting for publication, but unless they are a "math guy" their eyes will just glaze over when they reach the math sections.
I agree. I was a physics major and never took a single statistics class. They would throw in some probability and statistics in other classes, but it always seemed to be something you were just supposed to pick up on your own. You would just be taught random tools as the situation arose, but never really learned what tool to apply to what situation.
I think life science majors got a much better education in statistics than physical science majors.
I think every science major should required to take a class in probability and statistics, to be followed by a class in data analysis.
Most artists seem to jump at the chance of a record contract though, and it appears they prefer the promoter.
The promoter is generally pretty effective at what they do. Look at all the people who insist on downloading pirated versions of songs that these promoters have convinced them to like, even though there is plenty of music available for free without resorting to pirated copies.
There are probably a bunch of Britney wannabes trying to get people to listen to their music, but the promotion machine convinced everybody that Britney is what they wanted. Even with all the recent stuff, polls show a majority of people would still buy her album.
The already popular artists it would seem would have the best luck going independent once their contract expires, but how many have done it and stuck with it? Why did Trent sign with a major label? Why does Prince keep signing with major labels? I think there is some significant inertia to overcome.
I think seeing a company have a plan for making money by putting a rover on the moon will help spark people's interest too. I think it will give a sense that the "space age" will really happen instead of just the same old thing that has gone on for the last 50 years. Making money will also make people to start to think space exploration might be a good investment.
You would have to bring a man back home, which makes it much more complicated and expensive. Just getting a robot there is a big achievement for a private company. I think Bigelow is the only one that's even putting stuff in orbit.
Again, I haven't read the report, but I think that is a separate issue. The comparison seemed to be direct copyright revenue vs. fair use revenue, not copyrights vs. expired copyrights. Fair use adds value to existing copyrights, but would be meaningless once the copyright expires (all uses would be free in the public domain and there would be no need of fair use exceptions).
Google and Microsoft are standing up for fair use because it affects their ability to run search engines and collect advertising revenue. If Google and Microsoft could only index material with expired copyrights, then there would not be much revenue, even if the copyright period changed to 28 years.
Of course, it is a completely different question whether adding revenue to the economy is a good measure of the value of copyrights.
I did not read the report, but how exactly does it support their ideology? Copyrights contribute trillions to the economy. The fair use of these same copyrights contribute trillions more. It seems the interpretation would be that both are important and good for the economy. Fair use is an important part of existing copyright law; fair use does not mean that you can share all your songs on the internet to whoever wants a copy.
Last, but not least, don't burden our customers with "agreements" or "licenses." We wrote stuff, they paid for it. Done deal.
It depends on the situation, but it is always good to have something signed on paper. I had a guy sue me claiming that he owned the copyright to a software package that I had licensed to him 3 years earlier because I later did some part-time work for him. Even though it was three years later he claimed that it was written as part of my duties as an employee. He even sued my other clients claiming he was entitled to their profits. It didn't matter how weak his position was, he was willing to spend a few hundred thousand trying to bully everybody. You can only keep paying $20K in legal fees every month for so long.
Lawsuits are disasters, even if your position is strong; a judge is usually willing to give a guy his day in court. You usually end up paying off the aggressor before trial, and you have to eat your own lawyer fees. If you have a signed piece of paper, you have a much better chance of moving for summary judgment, recovering legal fees, and maybe heading off the whole situation to begin with.
Superluminal information exchange is impossible based on quantum theory. This experiment DOES NOT disprove this. Maybe someday quantum theory will be shown to be incomplete, but at the moment it rules.
Entanglement is important to quantum computing and quantum cryptography, but actual information is not transferred at superluminal speeds. It can be used it to transfer information, but it has to be used in conjunction with another signal that is limited to light speed.
>>They can't posssibly determine this conclusion faster than the speed of light between the positions where the measurements were taken.
Determining this "conclusion" is a human exercise, not a physical process. The physics already happened - the observation forced the wave to collapse at that point.
>>It just bugs me that the typical account of this effect rarely gets past the word spooky before exposition ceases, as if the very phrase "faster than light" causes some kind of cerebral blood flow trauma in any person who has devoted eight years of higher education in grappling with the consequences of E=mc^2.
I don't think you give physicists enough credit. Any account you have probably heard is by people addressing a general audience and trying to convey the more interesting points.
I believe the ansible was a device that used entanglement to provide faster than light communication without breaking the laws of physics. It was later proven (60's?) that under existing quantum theory entanglement cannot transmit information, so the ansible fell out of favor with some authors, particularly those trying stay true to science.
The balls are static and independent in your example, not really entangled.
Entanglement would be more like put a stripe on each ball and throw each into a separate clothes dryer so the balls spin around. Now send one away on a rocket ship a thousand of light years away. Whatever orientation of the stripe on the one ball, the stripe on the other ball will be related in some manner.
>>but how are the statistics phony?.07 does not indicate correlation. Stating a correlation value has lead many reading the article to believe that there is a correlation, but statistically there is not. That's pretty deceiving. It is a phony correlation.
Also, others more knowledgeable in statistics have posted in this discussion saying they have misapplied the statistics to begin with.
No, the article doesn't say that. It says "We found that more corrupted the country is *perceived to be*, the *higher the correlation* was to vote for the unreserved acceptance of the OOXML standard proposal. Of course, we failed to mention whether the correlation was statistically significant or not, and we pointed out that this does not establish causality, but we knew people were going to read it just like the above poster did, so hey, HIGH-FIVE!"
I didn't say it was the best way to do it, but I do think it is better than a population-based approach. The whole point of an international standard is to facilitate interaction/trade between different *nations*. It is voluntary, and countries can use whatever they want internally.
Anyways, a population-based approach has "circular" problems - you need a population-based voting system to successfully elect a population-based voting system. If it was population-based to begin with, most countries would not have joined, and thus it would not really be an international standard.
It seemed like a bunch of statistical mumbo-jumbo to me. They had a cause, and they found some statistics to reinforce what they were saying. Had the result not been what they were looking for, they would not have posted the story. That's not good journalism.
I think that is kind of the point - that large countries can't dominate small countries. If China and India decided everything, then everybody would drop out and it would no longer be an international standard. It would be a Chinese-Indian standard.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that the brief news story was more focused on explaining what the Many Worlds hypothesis is to a lay audience and not really pointing out what the new breakthrough is really all about to a geek audience. Someone needs to link to science site and not a general news site.
>>I suppose you're one of those "It doesn't matter until it happens to me" folks.
I'm one of the "Not every fucking story 'that matters' needs to end up on the front page of Slashdot" folks...
>>Don't see what the big deal is...
The story only matters to a handful of Harvard students anyway, but it makes the front page at Slashdot because it is another "our rights are being trampled" story...
I have seen the point emphasized before about medical doctors not being scientists. Med school is a lot different training than a PhD program. A bachelors degree really doesn't teach you to do research, especially if you are pre-med and are busy trying to memorize everything for the standardized testing.
Someone pointed out once that much of the "scientific" studies in support of paranormal activities like ESP tends to come from MDs and not PhDs, but the general public will equate it to being "scientific" because an MD was involved.
As far as medical doctors not knowing math, I think it actually goes further than that. Many, many people just don't want to deal with math, so nobody really ever checks the math thoroughly. A researcher might have colleagues read his paper before submitting for publication, but unless they are a "math guy" their eyes will just glaze over when they reach the math sections.
I agree. I was a physics major and never took a single statistics class. They would throw in some probability and statistics in other classes, but it always seemed to be something you were just supposed to pick up on your own. You would just be taught random tools as the situation arose, but never really learned what tool to apply to what situation.
I think life science majors got a much better education in statistics than physical science majors.
I think every science major should required to take a class in probability and statistics, to be followed by a class in data analysis.
I think the law was passed by the voters, but the courts shot it down.
Most artists seem to jump at the chance of a record contract though, and it appears they prefer the promoter.
The promoter is generally pretty effective at what they do. Look at all the people who insist on downloading pirated versions of songs that these promoters have convinced them to like, even though there is plenty of music available for free without resorting to pirated copies.
There are probably a bunch of Britney wannabes trying to get people to listen to their music, but the promotion machine convinced everybody that Britney is what they wanted. Even with all the recent stuff, polls show a majority of people would still buy her album.
The already popular artists it would seem would have the best luck going independent once their contract expires, but how many have done it and stuck with it? Why did Trent sign with a major label? Why does Prince keep signing with major labels? I think there is some significant inertia to overcome.
I think seeing a company have a plan for making money by putting a rover on the moon will help spark people's interest too. I think it will give a sense that the "space age" will really happen instead of just the same old thing that has gone on for the last 50 years. Making money will also make people to start to think space exploration might be a good investment.
You would have to bring a man back home, which makes it much more complicated and expensive. Just getting a robot there is a big achievement for a private company. I think Bigelow is the only one that's even putting stuff in orbit.
Again, I haven't read the report, but I think that is a separate issue. The comparison seemed to be direct copyright revenue vs. fair use revenue, not copyrights vs. expired copyrights. Fair use adds value to existing copyrights, but would be meaningless once the copyright expires (all uses would be free in the public domain and there would be no need of fair use exceptions).
Google and Microsoft are standing up for fair use because it affects their ability to run search engines and collect advertising revenue. If Google and Microsoft could only index material with expired copyrights, then there would not be much revenue, even if the copyright period changed to 28 years.
Of course, it is a completely different question whether adding revenue to the economy is a good measure of the value of copyrights.
I did not read the report, but how exactly does it support their ideology? Copyrights contribute trillions to the economy. The fair use of these same copyrights contribute trillions more. It seems the interpretation would be that both are important and good for the economy. Fair use is an important part of existing copyright law; fair use does not mean that you can share all your songs on the internet to whoever wants a copy.
I had a guy who did sue ... (though that sentence probably needs more work than just this)
It depends on the situation, but it is always good to have something signed on paper. I had a guy sue me claiming that he owned the copyright to a software package that I had licensed to him 3 years earlier because I later did some part-time work for him. Even though it was three years later he claimed that it was written as part of my duties as an employee. He even sued my other clients claiming he was entitled to their profits. It didn't matter how weak his position was, he was willing to spend a few hundred thousand trying to bully everybody. You can only keep paying $20K in legal fees every month for so long.
Lawsuits are disasters, even if your position is strong; a judge is usually willing to give a guy his day in court. You usually end up paying off the aggressor before trial, and you have to eat your own lawyer fees. If you have a signed piece of paper, you have a much better chance of moving for summary judgment, recovering legal fees, and maybe heading off the whole situation to begin with.
Superluminal information exchange is impossible based on quantum theory. This experiment DOES NOT disprove this. Maybe someday quantum theory will be shown to be incomplete, but at the moment it rules.
Entanglement is important to quantum computing and quantum cryptography, but actual information is not transferred at superluminal speeds. It can be used it to transfer information, but it has to be used in conjunction with another signal that is limited to light speed.
>>They can't posssibly determine this conclusion faster than the speed of light between the positions where the measurements were taken.
Determining this "conclusion" is a human exercise, not a physical process. The physics already happened - the observation forced the wave to collapse at that point.
>>It just bugs me that the typical account of this effect rarely gets past the word spooky before exposition ceases, as if the very phrase "faster than light" causes some kind of cerebral blood flow trauma in any person who has devoted eight years of higher education in grappling with the consequences of E=mc^2.
I don't think you give physicists enough credit. Any account you have probably heard is by people addressing a general audience and trying to convey the more interesting points.
I believe the ansible was a device that used entanglement to provide faster than light communication without breaking the laws of physics. It was later proven (60's?) that under existing quantum theory entanglement cannot transmit information, so the ansible fell out of favor with some authors, particularly those trying stay true to science.
The balls are static and independent in your example, not really entangled.
Entanglement would be more like put a stripe on each ball and throw each into a separate clothes dryer so the balls spin around. Now send one away on a rocket ship a thousand of light years away. Whatever orientation of the stripe on the one ball, the stripe on the other ball will be related in some manner.
I think even at the quantum level your atoms would have to kiss first.
>>but how are the statistics phony? .07 does not indicate correlation. Stating a correlation value has lead many reading the article to believe that there is a correlation, but statistically there is not. That's pretty deceiving. It is a phony correlation.
Also, others more knowledgeable in statistics have posted in this discussion saying they have misapplied the statistics to begin with.
No, the article doesn't say that. It says "We found that more corrupted the country is *perceived to be*, the *higher the correlation* was to vote for the unreserved acceptance of the OOXML standard proposal. Of course, we failed to mention whether the correlation was statistically significant or not, and we pointed out that this does not establish causality, but we knew people were going to read it just like the above poster did, so hey, HIGH-FIVE!"
I didn't say it was the best way to do it, but I do think it is better than a population-based approach. The whole point of an international standard is to facilitate interaction/trade between different *nations*. It is voluntary, and countries can use whatever they want internally.
Anyways, a population-based approach has "circular" problems - you need a population-based voting system to successfully elect a population-based voting system. If it was population-based to begin with, most countries would not have joined, and thus it would not really be an international standard.
>>so the causal relationship is not really at issue.
He was talking about the article, the misapplication of statistics in particular, not whether there were irregularities or not.
Sweden has a low corruption index, but there is evidence of irregularities there. See, I just used evidence to trump the statistics in the article...
It seemed like a bunch of statistical mumbo-jumbo to me. They had a cause, and they found some statistics to reinforce what they were saying. Had the result not been what they were looking for, they would not have posted the story. That's not good journalism.
I think that is kind of the point - that large countries can't dominate small countries. If China and India decided everything, then everybody would drop out and it would no longer be an international standard. It would be a Chinese-Indian standard.
>>Guess what I'll be doing in there.
Making life miserable for whoever mops the floors...