Because it's the scientific theory that is supported by the available evidence.
ID fails on both counts. It is not supported by the available evidence, and as it is not falsifiable, it does not qualify as a scientific theory.
I have no problem with Creationism being taught in school...as long as it is in the appropriate venue, such as a philosophy, theology, or mythology class. But the problem with ID is that it Creationism attempting to pass itself off as science, and that's unacceptable.
ID is not science. It's not even rational thinking. If we're going to teach ID, why not Astrology and Palm Reading while we're at it? They're every bit as valid as ID.
If I had a kid in the Louisiana school system, I'd start home-schooling (assuming I hadn't already).
True, this all is quite a problem, but for every problem, there's a solution. For every surveillance method, there's some talented kid out there figuring a way to circumvent it.
One of the geekier recipients of these laptops will engineer a way around this BS...and then he'll share that info with his less-geeky friends. The government will have considerably less control than it thinks it does.
First of all, I'm not sure why this is "news for nerds", but I'll readily concede that it is "stuff that matters".
Obama may have the nomination, but someone really ought to tell Hillary. Last night, during her non-concession speech, she stated that she's "making no decisions tonight". Today I heard on NPR that she is "open to the Vice-Presidential spot", even though she may not take it...she "just wants to be considered".
Sweet Zombie Jesus...what will it take to make this woman go away???
Other behaviours could include a person nervously touching their face, or sweating excessively.
Better hope you're not susceptible to airsickness...or overly concerned about making your connecting flight...or mildly allergic to the airline peanuts...or worried that Big Brother might just single you out for having the wrong hair/skin color, or for "suspect behavior", and make an example of you, with no chance of appeal or redress...
I'm so glad my profession does not require large amounts of air travel...I would have to get another job.
Scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered the Milky Way's most recent supernova, which exploded a mere 140 years ago, a few years after the Civil War....Supernova located approximately 26,000 light years away from here.
Now, obviously, these two statements as presented above are mutually inconsistent. It the supernova went off 140 years ago at a distance of 26,000 LY, there would be no way for us to know about it.
Obviously, the intended meaning was that the supernova exploded around 26,140 years ago, and its light just got here 140 years ago. It's pretty shocking that NASA would make such a big deal of this, and then screw up the announcement in such a major way. Epic fail.
This administration has lied through their collective teeth to us about everything else...but when it comes to the events surrounding 9/11, the administration's Official Version of Events is sacrosanct.
Not all advocates of 9/11 truth are raving loons that maintain that there were no planes and that space beams destroyed the Towers...although this administration would very much like you to believe that that is the case.
I would put it to you that there is no way that the DHS can succeed in this "war" any more than the other "wars" (drugs, poverty, etc) have worked in the past.
There is no way to "win" a war against an abstract concept. But, of course, it's not the government's goal to "win" anything. Winning implies an end, and the goal is a perpetual state of war and terror.
You're joking, right? The only references on that page I saw pertaining to foiled terrorist attacks were the case of the "binary explosives" plot and the case of the Fort Dix Six. Regarding the former, it has already been debunked so many times that I'm surprised the DHS hasn't removed the reference from sheer shame. In the case of the latter, six guys who plotted to take on a military base with a couple of firearms, and were caught because they took their jihad training video to Circuit City to burn to DVD? Seriously? We're supposed to buy this?
Every single "terrorist threat" since 9/11 (which is itself suspect) has been either a ridiculous exaggeration, an entrapment scheme, or an outright hoax.
If you live in a war zone, I would keep my bulletproof vest on. Just because you did not get shot at today does not mean you are safe for tomorrow.
1) I don't live in a war zone. Neither do you. 2) You missed my point most spectacularly. Until a real bullet hits that vest, there is no proof that it can deflect bullets.
So it does not work perfectly, I believe your math.
Actually, it's Cory's math, not mine.
What should we do? Stick our heads in the sand and ignore the threat? Rationalize that you are more likely to die in a car accident, so take no action?
I'm not advocating a course of action here...I'm merely pointing out that a "terrorist test" is doomed to failure.
If the DHS is set up to fail, they appear to have not had any failures in the last few years. May not be perfect, but maybe it is working?
Excellent point. On a related noted, I have a rock that repels tigers...perhaps you would be interested in purchasing it.
Seriously, can you point out any successes? After all, if I put on a bulletproof vest, and spend the next few hours without someone shooting at me, that cannot be taken as proof that the vest can successfully stop bullets.
except, what cory doesn't get is that you've now limited your set from 1 mil to 10,000. What may not be efficient to test on 1mil, may be efficient to test on 10,000.
While that may be true enough for the hypothetical case you referenced, real life gets a bit more difficult.
Instead of a hypothetical population of one million, try the population of NYC (20 million).
Instead of a hypothetical "nearly perfect" terrorist test with 100% sensitivity and 99% specificity (1% false positives, 0% false negatives), try a more realistic estimate of 40-60% specificity, with an indeterminate level of sensitivity (40-60% false positives, indeterminate number of false negatives).
In short, this more realistic assessment will trim your initial set of 20 million to 8-12 million, with who knows how many real terrorists slipping through the cracks. Not terribly helpful, is it?
I suspect the above poster, and the person he's quoting are not doctors.
Um...I have never claimed to be...and to the best of my knowledge, neither has Cory Doctorow.
Neither am I, for that matter...
So...what was your point, then?
but my wife went through several classes on statistics...
You're kidding, right?
their approach to statistics is not so simple as "accuracy" only. They have several different terms, all more or less seeming similar to the layman. I don't recall the words, but they more or less correlated to concepts such as:
False positive rate. False negative rate. Overall rate of accurate test.
Your objection does not invalidate the argument in my OP, it only strengthens it. The other concepts you listed do not mitigate the problem of false positives - on the contrary, they only exacerbate it.
The argument in the OP assumed (for argument's sake) that while the false positive rate was 1%, the false negative rate was 0%. If you want to make the false negative rate a non-zero number, go ahead, but you'll quickly find that it makes the overall results even worse, not better.
Using the correct, field-specific term may eliminate some of your objection.
Actually, the terms are quite correct, and your argument only succeeds in raising additional objections.
I'd like to take the opportunity to plug Cory Doctorow's latest novel, Little Brother.
A must-read for anyone concerned about the direction our nation is heading.
Here's an excerpt that's very relevant to the topic in question:
If you ever decide to do something as stupid as build an automatic terrorism detector, here's a math lesson you need to learn first. It's called "the paradox of the false positive," and it's a doozy.
Say you have a new disease, called Super-AIDS. Only one in a million people gets Super-AIDS. You develop a test for Super-AIDS that's 99 percent accurate. I mean, 99 percent of the time, it gives the correct result -- true if the subject is infected, and false if the subject is healthy. You give the test to a million people.
One in a million people have Super-AIDS. One in a hundred people that you test will generate a "false positive" -- the test will say he has Super-AIDS even though he doesn't. That's what "99 percent accurate" means: one percent wrong.
What's one percent of one million?
1,000,000/100 = 10,000
One in a million people has Super-AIDS. If you test a million random people, you'll probably only find one case of real Super-AIDS. But your test won't identify one person as having Super-AIDS. It will identify 10,000 people as having it.
Your 99 percent accurate test will perform with 99.99 percent inaccuracy.
That's the paradox of the false positive. When you try to find something really rare, your test's accuracy has to match the rarity of the thing you're looking for. If you're trying to point at a single pixel on your screen, a sharp pencil is a good pointer: the pencil-tip is a lot smaller (more accurate) than the pixels. But a pencil-tip is no good at pointing at a single atom in your screen. For that, you need a pointer -- a test -- that's one atom wide or less at the tip.
This is the paradox of the false positive, and here's how it applies to terrorism:
Terrorists are really rare. In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists. Maybe ten of them at the outside. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent. One twenty-thousandth of a percent.
That's pretty rare all right. Now, say you've got some software that can sift through all the bank-records, or toll-pass records, or public transit records, or phone-call records in the city and catch terrorists 99 percent of the time.
In a pool of twenty million people, a 99 percent accurate test will identify two hundred thousand people as being terrorists. But only ten of them are terrorists. To catch ten bad guys, you have to haul in and investigate two hundred thousand innocent people.
Guess what? Terrorism tests aren't anywhere close to 99 percent accurate. More like 60 percent accurate. Even 40 percent accurate, sometimes.
What this all meant was that the Department of Homeland Security had set itself up to fail badly. They were trying to spot incredibly rare events -- a person is a terrorist -- with inaccurate systems.
Is it any wonder we were able to make such a mess?
I agree...after all, that's exactly what happened to me with San Andreas...I got so good at running over drug dealers and stealing their loot I thought I could handle it in real life...
The LinkStation Mini uses a pair of 5,400RPM 2.5 inch notebook drives to perform its magic, making it the only Buffalo storage unit not to run on SATA drives. You can configure the device in RAID 0 or RAID 1.
Sorry, but while this sounds neat for the SOHO or hobbyist user, this isn't a corporate solution. Until you set up one of these little boxes with at least 5 drives in a RAID 5 array, it will remain nothing more than a curiosity.
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations, you've just described something called 'alcohol'.
Alcohol burns without generating heat?
I had better sell my Bunsen burner stock ASAP.
A fossil rabbit in the Precambrian era sediment would do nicely...
Because it's the scientific theory that is supported by the available evidence.
ID fails on both counts. It is not supported by the available evidence, and as it is not falsifiable, it does not qualify as a scientific theory.
I have no problem with Creationism being taught in school...as long as it is in the appropriate venue, such as a philosophy, theology, or mythology class. But the problem with ID is that it Creationism attempting to pass itself off as science, and that's unacceptable.
ID is not science. It's not even rational thinking. If we're going to teach ID, why not Astrology and Palm Reading while we're at it? They're every bit as valid as ID.
If I had a kid in the Louisiana school system, I'd start home-schooling (assuming I hadn't already).
True, this all is quite a problem, but for every problem, there's a solution. For every surveillance method, there's some talented kid out there figuring a way to circumvent it.
One of the geekier recipients of these laptops will engineer a way around this BS...and then he'll share that info with his less-geeky friends. The government will have considerably less control than it thinks it does.
Only if you roll the R, ring announcer style.
First of all, I'm not sure why this is "news for nerds", but I'll readily concede that it is "stuff that matters".
Obama may have the nomination, but someone really ought to tell Hillary. Last night, during her non-concession speech, she stated that she's "making no decisions tonight". Today I heard on NPR that she is "open to the Vice-Presidential spot", even though she may not take it...she "just wants to be considered".
Sweet Zombie Jesus...what will it take to make this woman go away???
I, for one, would be very interested in watching The Leeroy Jenkins Chronicles. ^_^
The complete article, accessible without NewScientist subscription, may be found here.
Better hope you're not susceptible to airsickness...or overly concerned about making your connecting flight...or mildly allergic to the airline peanuts...or worried that Big Brother might just single you out for having the wrong hair/skin color, or for "suspect behavior", and make an example of you, with no chance of appeal or redress...
I'm so glad my profession does not require large amounts of air travel...I would have to get another job.
http://www.puppylinux.org/
Runs great on older systems. Just the thing to breathe new life into those old lappies.
Now, obviously, these two statements as presented above are mutually inconsistent. It the supernova went off 140 years ago at a distance of 26,000 LY, there would be no way for us to know about it.
Obviously, the intended meaning was that the supernova exploded around 26,140 years ago, and its light just got here 140 years ago. It's pretty shocking that NASA would make such a big deal of this, and then screw up the announcement in such a major way. Epic fail.
Oh, I see.
This administration has lied through their collective teeth to us about everything else...but when it comes to the events surrounding 9/11, the administration's Official Version of Events is sacrosanct.
Not all advocates of 9/11 truth are raving loons that maintain that there were no planes and that space beams destroyed the Towers...although this administration would very much like you to believe that that is the case.
I would put it to you that there is no way that the DHS can succeed in this "war" any more than the other "wars" (drugs, poverty, etc) have worked in the past.
There is no way to "win" a war against an abstract concept. But, of course, it's not the government's goal to "win" anything. Winning implies an end, and the goal is a perpetual state of war and terror.
[dhs.gov]
You're joking, right? The only references on that page I saw pertaining to foiled terrorist attacks were the case of the "binary explosives" plot and the case of the Fort Dix Six. Regarding the former, it has already been debunked so many times that I'm surprised the DHS hasn't removed the reference from sheer shame. In the case of the latter, six guys who plotted to take on a military base with a couple of firearms, and were caught because they took their jihad training video to Circuit City to burn to DVD? Seriously? We're supposed to buy this?
Every single "terrorist threat" since 9/11 (which is itself suspect) has been either a ridiculous exaggeration, an entrapment scheme, or an outright hoax.
If you live in a war zone, I would keep my bulletproof vest on. Just because you did not get shot at today does not mean you are safe for tomorrow.
1) I don't live in a war zone. Neither do you.
2) You missed my point most spectacularly. Until a real bullet hits that vest, there is no proof that it can deflect bullets.
Actually, an hour and 40 minutes, for the whole bunch.
So it does not work perfectly, I believe your math.
Actually, it's Cory's math, not mine.
What should we do? Stick our heads in the sand and ignore the threat? Rationalize that you are more likely to die in a car accident, so take no action?
I'm not advocating a course of action here...I'm merely pointing out that a "terrorist test" is doomed to failure.
If the DHS is set up to fail, they appear to have not had any failures in the last few years. May not be perfect, but maybe it is working?
Excellent point. On a related noted, I have a rock that repels tigers...perhaps you would be interested in purchasing it.
Seriously, can you point out any successes? After all, if I put on a bulletproof vest, and spend the next few hours without someone shooting at me, that cannot be taken as proof that the vest can successfully stop bullets.
See spotter's post.
See my response to spotter's post.
except, what cory doesn't get is that you've now limited your set from 1 mil to 10,000. What may not be efficient to test on 1mil, may be efficient to test on 10,000.
While that may be true enough for the hypothetical case you referenced, real life gets a bit more difficult.
Instead of a hypothetical population of one million, try the population of NYC (20 million).
Instead of a hypothetical "nearly perfect" terrorist test with 100% sensitivity and 99% specificity (1% false positives, 0% false negatives), try a more realistic estimate of 40-60% specificity, with an indeterminate level of sensitivity (40-60% false positives, indeterminate number of false negatives).
In short, this more realistic assessment will trim your initial set of 20 million to 8-12 million, with who knows how many real terrorists slipping through the cracks. Not terribly helpful, is it?
I suspect the above poster, and the person he's quoting are not doctors.
Um...I have never claimed to be...and to the best of my knowledge, neither has Cory Doctorow.
Neither am I, for that matter...
So...what was your point, then?
but my wife went through several classes on statistics...
You're kidding, right?
their approach to statistics is not so simple as "accuracy" only. They have several different terms, all more or less seeming similar to the layman. I don't recall the words, but they more or less correlated to concepts such as:
False positive rate.
False negative rate.
Overall rate of accurate test.
Your objection does not invalidate the argument in my OP, it only strengthens it. The other concepts you listed do not mitigate the problem of false positives - on the contrary, they only exacerbate it.
The argument in the OP assumed (for argument's sake) that while the false positive rate was 1%, the false negative rate was 0%. If you want to make the false negative rate a non-zero number, go ahead, but you'll quickly find that it makes the overall results even worse, not better.
Using the correct, field-specific term may eliminate some of your objection.
Actually, the terms are quite correct, and your argument only succeeds in raising additional objections.
A must-read for anyone concerned about the direction our nation is heading.
Here's an excerpt that's very relevant to the topic in question:
I agree...after all, that's exactly what happened to me with San Andreas...I got so good at running over drug dealers and stealing their loot I thought I could handle it in real life...
</snark>
Sorry, but while this sounds neat for the SOHO or hobbyist user, this isn't a corporate solution. Until you set up one of these little boxes with at least 5 drives in a RAID 5 array, it will remain nothing more than a curiosity.
How many web pages had embedded video as a matter of course in 2003?
It seems to me that embedded video alone could account for at least half of this increase.
I'm continually amazed by how robust and dependable the Soyuz modules are.
They're the Volvos of the space program.