It's more than the placement of the comma - the comma doesn't change anything because the agent of the sentence isn't changed by its placement. The implication is that AOL has evidence that copyrighted sound recordings were downloaded through the account because that is the logical reading with or without the comma. You need at least a full stop and an indication of who has the evidence of copyright sound recordings to make it correct.
For example,...'letter from AOL confirming that defendant owned an internet access account, which account the RIAA allege was used to download copyrighted sound recordings.'
Do-it-yourself on anything is cheaper than hiring someone to do if for you - but it still has a cost. It may be a cost you are willing to pay because you enjoy assembling computers, but it comes at the cost of something else. For example, I could clean my house myself and it would be 'cheaper' to do it myself. But the last thing I want to do on the weekend is mop the floors. So I pay someone else to clean my house and go up to the local coffee shop and have a relaxing morning drinking coffee and enjoying the sun. Same deal with paying someone to assemble a computer for me (let alone the fact that so very few people can assemble a computer - kind of like most people having to hire an electrician to do electrical work.)
I'll gladly pay a royalty/tax on my iPod in exchange for a license allowing me to legally put Universal Music Group music on my iPod - however obtained.
If you just want more money from me without giving me anything in return then I'm sorry, I think you are SOL.
I may not be the brightest spark - but I have to take my shoes and socks off to count the number of cameras you've listed there and that means there are more than 8 them. (And even if I was Jake the Peg I still couldn't count them all... diddle, diddle, dum.)
Scientists can pretty reliably determine historical temperatures from things like tree cores.
You couldn't be further from the truth.
Trees respond to moisture, CO2, and soil nutrients to name a few factors in addition to temperature. Furthermore, their response to temperature is non-linear and hump shaped. Initially, as temperature rises, tree rings are thicker (all other things equal), but after a certain point they get thinner again because it's too hot. So, if you are trying to reconstruct temperature you have no way of determining if you are in the too hot or too cold section of the tree's temperature response.
The most heavily weighted trees (bristlecone pines) in the most heavily hyped historical temperature reconstructions (the hockey stick) have no response to local temperature and are in fact believed to be responding to CO2 levels. The National Academy of Science recently concluded that bristlecone pines should not be used in temperature reconstructions. See here for a discussion.
Thus, scientists can not reliably determine historical temperatures from things like tree cores. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.
Firstly, show me any OSX user that does not run their Mac as an admin user.
I'm an OS X user that does not run my Mac as an admin user.
But even as an admin user I still need to authorise certain actions (anything to do with the system files) because I am not the root user. Hell the root user isn't even enabled by default.
Just about any high-profile agency or scientist that questions global warming has funding that can be traced to Exxon.
Exxonsecrets is a stupid game of six-degrees of separation. I could probably link you to Exxon if I tried hard enough. Consider the game: someone says something you don't agree with, link their funding to Exxon and post it on exxonsecrets. I bet there are a large number of scientists who support AGW that have also received money from Exxon but that aren't posted on exxonsecrets because it doesn't fit with their agenda.
Exxonsecrets is also founded on a logical fallacy of ad homminem attacks or guilt by association - Associated with Exxon? Must be wrong. Work for an organisation that Exxon gives a donation to? Must be a stooge! Furthermore, the logic seems to be that Exxon has got the most efficient advertising machine aroung because it can give a few thousand dollars and buy hundreds of people off. Frankly, my price is a lot higher than that.
Exxonsecrets is on the same level as political ads that claim "Senator Smith supports baby mutilation!" and has the same credibility as conspiracy nuts the world over.
12,000 is easily enough to be statistically effective. Election polling gets acceptable results with samples of about 1,000.
Assuming that it is a binomial distribution then p=142/12000=0.0118, q=0.9882, n=12000 which means the standard error is sqrt(npq)=11.5 (approximately). Thus a 95% confidence interval is that the true number of plagiarised articles in the sample lies between 165 and 119.
And this is only plagiarism from on-line sites that are indexed by Google. Plagiarism from dead tree sources could well be significantly more.
This has got nothing to do with faith-based science and low analytical quality. I am once again amazed at how little people seem to know or care about proper statistics and just say "I don't believe it" if something doesn't accord with their preconceived notions.
They are taxing the income of residents of Australia. Something that is perfectly within their sovereign power and perfectly logical.
It is perfectly standard for countries to tax the worldwide income of their residents. On the other hand, the US goes one step further and taxes the worldwide income of citizens regardless of their residence. Now that is obscene.
Taking 2 weeks to get an XP installation working correctly (versus 2hours for Mandriva) indicates your lack of experience setting up XP.
But that seems to be precisely the point. If only trained professionals or computer nerds with lots of experience can install XP properly what hope is there for the rest of us? It shouldn't be like that.
A PS/2 driver is no use to anyone if you can't find it. See if you can work out the relevance of this classic quote:
"I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them." "That's the Display Department." "With a torch." "The lights had probably gone." "So had the stairs." "But you found the plans, didn't you?" "Oh yes, they were 'on display' in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the leopard.'"
Others have provided useful aspects of the answer to your question but I don't think anyone has boiled it down yet.
In short - No. A single track compressed will work better in mp3 than individual tracks mixed together.
The reason is that mp3 is designed precisely to compress single multi-instrument tracks and makes use of psychoacoustics to do this. The gist of which is, the more complicated a sound is (multiple instruments/frequencies) the less of each individual instrument (frequency) you are likely to be able to perceive. Thus, with all the instruments together in the one track, the mp3 algorithm can work better to strip out the subtler elements you don't perceive. If you are just compressing a single instrument there is less of that compression that can be done because, for example, it doesn't know that the rhythm guitar is being drowned by the kick drum at that point in time. Or as a corollary, compressing a single instrument will have to remove stuff you can hear just to hit the same bitrate as the compressed single track. So, combining individual tracks will lead to a worse outcome, all other things being equal, than compressing the already mixed track.
They make use of a natural randomisation between control and treatment groups. Some areas had access to cable TV before others. Those areas had higher rates of autism. Similarly, some areas had worse weather than others (and thus higher rates of TV viewership) and had higher rates of autism. Thus, this is not a simple case of correlation means correlation. This is a so-called 'natural experiment' where the randomisation between control and treatment groups is provided by natural factors (cable TV availability or weather).
Reverse causation could still exist - but this is more than 'scientific pornography'. Have a read of 'Freakonomics' sometime to get an understanding of similar statistical analysis - just because it's controversial doesn't mean it's wrong.
Many medical trials make use of randomisation between control and treatment groups.
This study makes use of a natural randomisation. Some counties received cable television before others - the pattern of this is essentially random for the purposes of this experiment and likely to be uncorrelated with the incidence of autism. They demonstrate that those counties that had more access to cable TV had higher autism rates. Similarly, they look at the correlation between bad weather (and consequently higher TV viewership) and autism. Once again, it is unlikely that weather is related to autism and the weather is providing the randomisation.
Thus, this is not a simple case of spurious correlation where increases in autism detection and increases in TV viewing are occurring at the same time. They have a control group which did not have access to cable TV (or watched it less due to good weather) which allows for more robust inference to be drawn.
A solid background in statistics is required to launch a bombshell like this. It is likely that these authors have that background.
Furthermore, economists (which one of the authors would seem to be based on his affiliation) are well trained in methods of robustly detecting effects in non-experimental data (such as this); whereas medical researchers are typically more involved with experimental data. Experimental data is much easier to deal with than non-experimental data. Indeed, one could argue that these sorts of studies are more likely to be carried out properly by economists trained in dealing with this sort of data.
The important aspect of this is that there was a natural experiment carried out where some counties received cable television and others didn't. Provided the counties that received cable television did so for essentially random reasons, this data is the equivalent of a randomised experimental trial. As such, the standard argument that correlation does not prove causation is much weaker. There might well be a third factor at work here, but hold those knee-jerk reactions. One needs to be a good statistician to detect these correlations - medical researchers can work out the reasons later.
Lets not forget the pointless cross linking in articles.
Taking, at random, the article for Avril Lavigne we find that it has cross references on Canadian, singer, singer-songwriter, actress, persona, French (language) in the introduction alone. These cross references are pointless - it's not meant to be a dictionary and the terms are so generic that I would be gobsmacked to find someone following the link contained in "Although her surname is of French origin, she does not speak French" out of anything other than bemusement.
It's pointless dreck that any half-decent editor would have removed.
I think I'll go and cross link all the remaining words to Wiktionary...
Standardised tests are not about good writing or good ideas - they are about testing people's ability to write gramatically. People who know the rules of grammar will write a better essay in 25 minutes than those who don't. Writing is about communication and if you can't communicate, it doesn't matter how briliant your idea is because no one will ever understand it. But don't be confused, standardised tests are not trying to discover the next George Orwell, they are trying to find some assurance that the test-taker can write gramatically. Save the brilliance for university.
With respect to rules and pedantry,
It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules. After he has learned, by their guidance, to write plain English adequate for everyday uses, let him look, for the secrets of style, to the study of the masters of literature.
This quote from "The Elements of Style" should make it clear that rules are made to be broken - but only advisedly. It is the reason Hemmingway was, and will remain, a better writer than any computer. And why it is sometimes OK to start a sentence with a conjunction. Or why it is acceptable to callously split an infinitive. (Which is not a crime in English anyway unless you think English is actually Latin - which it isn't.) But none of this matters in a standardised test because they are testing competence not brilliance.
It's not so much that you can't discriminate between the soundcards or that the signal is degraded (which it won't be because of the speakers obviously) - but that you optimise your sound for the flawed speakers. If the speakers have no bass response and the top end is tinny you will mix and EQ the sound in a very different way than if you were using better speakers which give more faithful reproduction. It will still sound better to you with a better soundcard but your output will be poor. I suppose the visual equivalent is colour calibration matters.
(An analogy - the levels you set mixing live for a concert are very different to those you set mixing for recording. At the extreme, you will mix your radio program very differently if you have speakers with a blown tweeter than if you have fully functional speakers.)
Why would you not trust Firewire for realtime transfers?
I can understand your concerns with USB - but Firewire is designed for real-time video transfer and provides rock-steady bandwidth. Why would there be a problem with realtime audio transfer over Firewire?
Regardless, it doesn't require deliberate falsification - it can be the result of errors and self-delusion - just wanting the result to be true.
If you read many of the climate reconstruction papers you will see that their level of statistical knowledge is remarkably limited and they make serious statistical errors because they don't seem to know what an I(1) process is and how to treat it statistically.
(An I(1) process is, broadly speaking, one that is trending like, say, current temperatures. With I(1) processes standard regression analysis leads to 'spurious correlation' and overstated significance with consequent erroneous conclusions.)
Call it what you will, go all existential and quote Ecclesiasties if you want. But there is a real sense in which wealth is created.
But the main thing is that economics is about the distribution and allocation of scarce resources. It is their scarcity that gives them value and you 'create' wealth by ensuring that these scarce resources are directed to the people that value them the most.
Thus, if I have 10 jars of jam and you have 10 jars of peanut butter, swapping one of my jars of jam for one of your jars of peanut butter will make both of us better off. (The assumptions underlying this example are so obvious that anyone who wants to try a 'but I don't like jam' argument can just go and jump.) Nothing has been created but the allocation has been improved - a win, win situation that creates value for both parties concerned.
You so nearly got it with your blood circulation analogy. Consider the value you would get from having a completely dysfunctional circulatory system - it would be significantly less than you have with your current well functioning circulation and distribution system. If all your blood went to one organ alone the value you experienced from that would be significantly less than if you actually had blood distributed to all the organs that actually needed it - you'd be dead (even if you did have the biggest hard on known to man).
And this response hasn't even begun to touch on technological innovation and production which also creates wealth but will be left as an exercise for the reader.
Slashdot Mirror
It's more than the placement of the comma - the comma doesn't change anything because the agent of the sentence isn't changed by its placement. The implication is that AOL has evidence that copyrighted sound recordings were downloaded through the account because that is the logical reading with or without the comma. You need at least a full stop and an indication of who has the evidence of copyright sound recordings to make it correct.
...'letter from AOL confirming that defendant owned an internet access account, which account the RIAA allege was used to download copyrighted sound recordings.'
For example,
How much is your time worth?
Do-it-yourself on anything is cheaper than hiring someone to do if for you - but it still has a cost. It may be a cost you are willing to pay because you enjoy assembling computers, but it comes at the cost of something else. For example, I could clean my house myself and it would be 'cheaper' to do it myself. But the last thing I want to do on the weekend is mop the floors. So I pay someone else to clean my house and go up to the local coffee shop and have a relaxing morning drinking coffee and enjoying the sun. Same deal with paying someone to assemble a computer for me (let alone the fact that so very few people can assemble a computer - kind of like most people having to hire an electrician to do electrical work.)
I'll gladly pay a royalty/tax on my iPod in exchange for a license allowing me to legally put Universal Music Group music on my iPod - however obtained.
If you just want more money from me without giving me anything in return then I'm sorry, I think you are SOL.
Have a nice life.
I may not be the brightest spark - but I have to take my shoes and socks off to count the number of cameras you've listed there and that means there are more than 8 them. (And even if I was Jake the Peg I still couldn't count them all... diddle, diddle, dum.)
Since when did 8 = 28?
Scientists can pretty reliably determine historical temperatures from things like tree cores.
You couldn't be further from the truth.
Trees respond to moisture, CO2, and soil nutrients to name a few factors in addition to temperature. Furthermore, their response to temperature is non-linear and hump shaped. Initially, as temperature rises, tree rings are thicker (all other things equal), but after a certain point they get thinner again because it's too hot. So, if you are trying to reconstruct temperature you have no way of determining if you are in the too hot or too cold section of the tree's temperature response.
The most heavily weighted trees (bristlecone pines) in the most heavily hyped historical temperature reconstructions (the hockey stick) have no response to local temperature and are in fact believed to be responding to CO2 levels. The National Academy of Science recently concluded that bristlecone pines should not be used in temperature reconstructions. See here for a discussion.
Thus, scientists can not reliably determine historical temperatures from things like tree cores. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.
Why do I find it difficult to believe you?
I don't know - that's your problem not his (or her as the case may be). You calling him a liar? You calling me a liar? You calling SythDot a liar?
Firstly, show me any OSX user that does not run their Mac as an admin user.
I'm an OS X user that does not run my Mac as an admin user.
But even as an admin user I still need to authorise certain actions (anything to do with the system files) because I am not the root user. Hell the root user isn't even enabled by default.
Just about any high-profile agency or scientist that questions global warming has funding that can be traced to Exxon.
Exxonsecrets is a stupid game of six-degrees of separation. I could probably link you to Exxon if I tried hard enough. Consider the game: someone says something you don't agree with, link their funding to Exxon and post it on exxonsecrets. I bet there are a large number of scientists who support AGW that have also received money from Exxon but that aren't posted on exxonsecrets because it doesn't fit with their agenda.
Exxonsecrets is also founded on a logical fallacy of ad homminem attacks or guilt by association - Associated with Exxon? Must be wrong. Work for an organisation that Exxon gives a donation to? Must be a stooge! Furthermore, the logic seems to be that Exxon has got the most efficient advertising machine aroung because it can give a few thousand dollars and buy hundreds of people off. Frankly, my price is a lot higher than that.
Exxonsecrets is on the same level as political ads that claim "Senator Smith supports baby mutilation!" and has the same credibility as conspiracy nuts the world over.
12,000 is easily enough to be statistically effective. Election polling gets acceptable results with samples of about 1,000.
Assuming that it is a binomial distribution then p=142/12000=0.0118, q=0.9882, n=12000 which means the standard error is sqrt(npq)=11.5 (approximately). Thus a 95% confidence interval is that the true number of plagiarised articles in the sample lies between 165 and 119.
And this is only plagiarism from on-line sites that are indexed by Google. Plagiarism from dead tree sources could well be significantly more.
This has got nothing to do with faith-based science and low analytical quality. I am once again amazed at how little people seem to know or care about proper statistics and just say "I don't believe it" if something doesn't accord with their preconceived notions.
Nope.
They are taxing the income of residents of Australia. Something that is perfectly within their sovereign power and perfectly logical.
It is perfectly standard for countries to tax the worldwide income of their residents. On the other hand, the US goes one step further and taxes the worldwide income of citizens regardless of their residence. Now that is obscene.
Perhaps that is one reason for the higher price for Vista?
Taking 2 weeks to get an XP installation working correctly (versus 2hours for Mandriva) indicates your lack of experience setting up XP.
But that seems to be precisely the point. If only trained professionals or computer nerds with lots of experience can install XP properly what hope is there for the rest of us? It shouldn't be like that.
A PS/2 driver is no use to anyone if you can't find it. See if you can work out the relevance of this classic quote:
"I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the Display Department."
"With a torch."
"The lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But you found the plans, didn't you?"
"Oh yes, they were 'on display' in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the leopard.'"
Others have provided useful aspects of the answer to your question but I don't think anyone has boiled it down yet.
In short - No. A single track compressed will work better in mp3 than individual tracks mixed together.
The reason is that mp3 is designed precisely to compress single multi-instrument tracks and makes use of psychoacoustics to do this. The gist of which is, the more complicated a sound is (multiple instruments/frequencies) the less of each individual instrument (frequency) you are likely to be able to perceive. Thus, with all the instruments together in the one track, the mp3 algorithm can work better to strip out the subtler elements you don't perceive. If you are just compressing a single instrument there is less of that compression that can be done because, for example, it doesn't know that the rhythm guitar is being drowned by the kick drum at that point in time. Or as a corollary, compressing a single instrument will have to remove stuff you can hear just to hit the same bitrate as the compressed single track. So, combining individual tracks will lead to a worse outcome, all other things being equal, than compressing the already mixed track.
Hardly a whitewash.
And I say hold that knee-jerk.
They make use of a natural randomisation between control and treatment groups. Some areas had access to cable TV before others. Those areas had higher rates of autism. Similarly, some areas had worse weather than others (and thus higher rates of TV viewership) and had higher rates of autism. Thus, this is not a simple case of correlation means correlation. This is a so-called 'natural experiment' where the randomisation between control and treatment groups is provided by natural factors (cable TV availability or weather).
Reverse causation could still exist - but this is more than 'scientific pornography'. Have a read of 'Freakonomics' sometime to get an understanding of similar statistical analysis - just because it's controversial doesn't mean it's wrong.
Many medical trials make use of randomisation between control and treatment groups.
This study makes use of a natural randomisation. Some counties received cable television before others - the pattern of this is essentially random for the purposes of this experiment and likely to be uncorrelated with the incidence of autism. They demonstrate that those counties that had more access to cable TV had higher autism rates. Similarly, they look at the correlation between bad weather (and consequently higher TV viewership) and autism. Once again, it is unlikely that weather is related to autism and the weather is providing the randomisation.
Thus, this is not a simple case of spurious correlation where increases in autism detection and increases in TV viewing are occurring at the same time. They have a control group which did not have access to cable TV (or watched it less due to good weather) which allows for more robust inference to be drawn.
NO!
A solid background in statistics is required to launch a bombshell like this. It is likely that these authors have that background.
Furthermore, economists (which one of the authors would seem to be based on his affiliation) are well trained in methods of robustly detecting effects in non-experimental data (such as this); whereas medical researchers are typically more involved with experimental data. Experimental data is much easier to deal with than non-experimental data. Indeed, one could argue that these sorts of studies are more likely to be carried out properly by economists trained in dealing with this sort of data.
The important aspect of this is that there was a natural experiment carried out where some counties received cable television and others didn't. Provided the counties that received cable television did so for essentially random reasons, this data is the equivalent of a randomised experimental trial. As such, the standard argument that correlation does not prove causation is much weaker. There might well be a third factor at work here, but hold those knee-jerk reactions. One needs to be a good statistician to detect these correlations - medical researchers can work out the reasons later.
Don't you cricket folks have something like that?
Nope.
For a start, there are only two batters on the field at any one time, so a double play is the most you could ever get.
And second, once you get one person out the ball is dead and you can't go for a second out.
Lets not forget the pointless cross linking in articles.
Taking, at random, the article for Avril Lavigne we find that it has cross references on Canadian, singer, singer-songwriter, actress, persona, French (language) in the introduction alone. These cross references are pointless - it's not meant to be a dictionary and the terms are so generic that I would be gobsmacked to find someone following the link contained in "Although her surname is of French origin, she does not speak French" out of anything other than bemusement.
It's pointless dreck that any half-decent editor would have removed.
I think I'll go and cross link all the remaining words to Wiktionary...
With respect to rules and pedantry,
This quote from "The Elements of Style" should make it clear that rules are made to be broken - but only advisedly. It is the reason Hemmingway was, and will remain, a better writer than any computer. And why it is sometimes OK to start a sentence with a conjunction. Or why it is acceptable to callously split an infinitive. (Which is not a crime in English anyway unless you think English is actually Latin - which it isn't.) But none of this matters in a standardised test because they are testing competence not brilliance.
It's not so much that you can't discriminate between the soundcards or that the signal is degraded (which it won't be because of the speakers obviously) - but that you optimise your sound for the flawed speakers. If the speakers have no bass response and the top end is tinny you will mix and EQ the sound in a very different way than if you were using better speakers which give more faithful reproduction. It will still sound better to you with a better soundcard but your output will be poor. I suppose the visual equivalent is colour calibration matters.
(An analogy - the levels you set mixing live for a concert are very different to those you set mixing for recording. At the extreme, you will mix your radio program very differently if you have speakers with a blown tweeter than if you have fully functional speakers.)
Why would you not trust Firewire for realtime transfers?
I can understand your concerns with USB - but Firewire is designed for real-time video transfer and provides rock-steady bandwidth. Why would there be a problem with realtime audio transfer over Firewire?
The one that is marginally better than your speakers/headphones. What kind of speakers will you be using to preview the sound?
There is no point getting an über sound card if you have unter speakers.
And yet scientists still lie and falsify results.
Regardless, it doesn't require deliberate falsification - it can be the result of errors and self-delusion - just wanting the result to be true.
If you read many of the climate reconstruction papers you will see that their level of statistical knowledge is remarkably limited and they make serious statistical errors because they don't seem to know what an I(1) process is and how to treat it statistically.
(An I(1) process is, broadly speaking, one that is trending like, say, current temperatures. With I(1) processes standard regression analysis leads to 'spurious correlation' and overstated significance with consequent erroneous conclusions.)
Call it what you will, go all existential and quote Ecclesiasties if you want. But there is a real sense in which wealth is created.
But the main thing is that economics is about the distribution and allocation of scarce resources. It is their scarcity that gives them value and you 'create' wealth by ensuring that these scarce resources are directed to the people that value them the most.
Thus, if I have 10 jars of jam and you have 10 jars of peanut butter, swapping one of my jars of jam for one of your jars of peanut butter will make both of us better off. (The assumptions underlying this example are so obvious that anyone who wants to try a 'but I don't like jam' argument can just go and jump.) Nothing has been created but the allocation has been improved - a win, win situation that creates value for both parties concerned.
You so nearly got it with your blood circulation analogy. Consider the value you would get from having a completely dysfunctional circulatory system - it would be significantly less than you have with your current well functioning circulation and distribution system. If all your blood went to one organ alone the value you experienced from that would be significantly less than if you actually had blood distributed to all the organs that actually needed it - you'd be dead (even if you did have the biggest hard on known to man).
And this response hasn't even begun to touch on technological innovation and production which also creates wealth but will be left as an exercise for the reader.