Even the ones that don't explicitly mention mean, median, and mode say that an average typically typifies a list of numbers. It can also be mean, of course, and that's the common definition, but I'm amazed that a statistician does not know this. What school did you go to?
No, he's wrong. I know the definition of mean, so feel free to forgo any further mathematical definitions in your postings. For your own education, see here.
Mean is an average. But average includes mean, median and mode. It is correct to use it in this way, and people like you are often misled by people who use the term properly but know that most people assume average and mean are synonymous. They aren't. Such distinctions are often taught in university level philosophy and critical thinking courses.
I disagree in this particular case. Typically, the people who get ripped off are a very small percentage of the people who receive the scam email due to the wonders of spam. Therefore, reporting should not be hindered. However, actual calculation of losses might become a problem.
Apparently, you cared enough to reply. Please point out where I lied and what about. At this point, you're simply doing personal attacks and avoiding the main problem of economics, it seems, as you know you've lost the argument. Also, please notice the "If you think I'm a democrat" which doesn't actually mean I said you think I am. All it means it that if you don't think I'm a democrat, maybe you're only exactly as dumb as you look instead of dumber.:-)
Oh, and just to make it really clear in case there's some poor sod who actually bought into something in your post, here's the Wikipedia link about Keynes and deficit spending which I talked about. Specifically, "Following John Maynard Keynes, many economists recommend deficit spending in order to moderate or end a recession". In other words, back when we weren't in a recession, we should not have been running a deficit.
So again, please let me know when you find an economist who actually supports your armchair economic theories.
Encouraging growth is a bad thing in a lot of cases. That's what causes boom/bust. You don't encourage the growth of healthy markets. If the oil industry is doing just fine without the tax cuts (and the tax cuts affected the rich and big companies more than the small and poor, so the oil companies were the beneficiaries), then why cut their taxes?
Hilarious. I should save this somewhere. If you missed it, I explained what was wrong with your idea about Keynes supporting what you say. As in most things in the world, it's nuanced. Deficit spending is not unconditionally good and Keynes did not support it in all cases. I get that you don't get that. I find it quite amusing. But thank you for telling me you won't respond anymore, as humorous as your responses have been.
P.S. if you think I'm a democrat, you're dumber than you look.
English public schools are now washing the young boys at school while shoving the girls into closets so they can't sneak out and chop down firewood and get covered in bugs. Also, apparently, there's something about terrorism and blight, so I think that means that we should raise the terrorism threat alert level to red.
So, for twenty years then? The whole of political history...
The most recent part of it, certainly, which is the most important part to me.
Second, Democrats support social programs (or do you disagree?). They cost money. Republicans support defense spending (it is by far their major budget item). It costs money. Comparing the two is, well to borrow your word "dumb". They are not the same, do not accomplish the same goals, do not have the same benefits and drawbacks, and so saying "Democrats spend more" or vice versa is naive bullshit.
It's well known that the deficit has decreased under democrats. You can debate why that is, but it certainly is true. Besides, I'd rather support social programs than invasions any day of the week.
They BOTH spend. A TON. Social Security and Medicare on one side, Defense on the other. Mostly. So why, when it's blatantly obvious that there is a lot of money being spent on bullshit, do so many people engage in partisan dick waving contests?
Because social programs are what the US needs, not more war. However, I agree that many of the social program implementations so far have been pretty misguided. But that is no reason to assume that they are all bad, as you seem to be doing here.
You're going to get fleeced regardless. Instead of debating tax reform, money policy, or something important, we get
Fine, let's all give up and let the country go to hell. I was responding to a specific poster about a specific topic. Sorry if I didn't get to your favorites.
Which is just, well, wrong. It's totally wrong. I see this, and it makes me want to scream. It makes me wonder if people genuinely expect the President to know everything about everything, and then it makes me wonder if people are so thick, so arrogant, as to assume that a difference in political opinion is equivalent to ignorance.
Hey, I'm just quoting the man. He said himself he doesn't understand it as well as he should.
I promise you, McCain has a bevy of advisers who are smarter than you, who have helped him shape his policy, and you make the assumption that because they have different priorities, they are fools, or ignorant.
Yes, he has advisers like the former CEO of eBay who bought Skype and has regretted it ever since. And he's gone through a lot of people who have said really dumb things in public. Excuse me if I've lost faith.
I promise you, McCain has a bevy of advisers who are smarter than you, who have helped him shape his policy, and you make the assumption that because they have different priorities, they are fools, or ignorant.
I doubt it. I'm arrogant enough to doubt just about anyone is smarter than me, but regardless, his policies are bad for America. You can link to Keynes or Adam Smith or whoever you like. You can't just throw out a term like "deficit spending" and expect me to cave in to what you say. Let me throw a term back at you. Structural deficits are bad. That's what the US has. In Keynesian economics, Governments are expected to run a deficit during economic downturns so as to stimulate the economy, but the deficit is supposed to turn into a surplus when the economy is growing again, thus checking the growth through taxes to prevent unsustainable growth. And I didn't even click your damned link. I bet if you click it, it will explain all of that.
Anyway, let me know when you've read that or when you've found an economist who actually does agree with republican spending habits. I bet you're going to have a hard time with that.
OK, seems I was wrong about that. My apologies. Regardless, Bush did cut their taxes and I'm not sure I see any good reason for him to have done that. Tax cuts are usually made to encourage growth and I don't see any growth problems in the oil industry. As far as I'm concerned, the oil companies need to justify keeping the tax cuts.
Secondly, I'd like to take issue with your statement that saving our oil reserves for later is a good idea.
I don't think I ever said that. Personally, I'd prefer if our oil reserves were never mined unless it's being mined for something other than burning in an automobile.
What you want, after all, is Greenspan as Mr. President.
Now, now.:-)
I don't believe an economist would necessarily be a good president (though the Canadian Prime Minister is an economist and he seems to be doing alright). I think economic rules can be bent or broken from time to time in the name of some greater good. I just wish presidents were expected to have some basic understanding of economics before they were put in control of the world's largest economy. That is all.
The most productive workers can't even get in due to immigration problems. And I admit that McCain is more likely to fix that than Obama. However, the demand is still there, so we obviously aren't at that point yet. But we aren't talking about raising taxes more here. We're talking about cutting taxes. And it makes sense to give more tax breaks to the poor than to the rich. Of course, maybe I'm just being too much of a humanitarian there.
Good arguments. Like I said, Obama's not perfect. However, as it stands, after all the Bush tax cuts, the oil companies are undertaxed. I agree that a windfall tax is probably the wrong thing (but maybe not as bad as it sounds; it's a complicated issue), but at least Obama wants to let the other tax cuts of the Bush administration expire.
Preventing offshore drilling is actually a good thing in my book. As analysts have said, it'll take years to benefit from it and it won't last long, either. Everyone agrees it's a short-term solution, only, and yet the oil won't even be available in the short term.
I should point out that oil companies not drilling where they have rights is a problem. If government regulations are stopping them, why can't someone like Obama (or McCain) simply change the rules?
Finally, I'd like to note that all the sources I see say that Obama has called for the US to eliminate its oil dependence in 10 years, but he hasn't promised it will be so. I read it like JFK's call to get to the moon before 1970. It's a goal for the nation, and maybe we'll make it, but it seems unlikely (like the moon landing did, not that I think we'll actually make it this time around).
I didn't say they were no better. I said they were worse. The rest of your post is typical right-wing spew that I see so often. Why are Republicans such hateful people?
Regardless, it's been shown that Obama's tax cut plans would help the lower income brackets more than McCain's, and tax the rich more. This is obviously what a tax system is supposed to do. As someone who makes a high income, I'd be better off, in the short term, with McCain, so I'm not arguing for my own personal gain here.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I see a lot of this around. I don't understand how people can be so dumb as to think that Democrats are the heavy spenders. The Republicans have, ever since Reagan, been trying to outdo each other by lowering tax but raising spending. See here for a discussion. It is the Republicans, not the Democrats, who are the big spenders. And if you believe that you can run a deficit for decades without harming anything, then you're a fool. And McCain has admitted that the economy isn't his cup of tea, as evidenced by his proposed cuts to the fuel tax. At least Obama knew enough economics to oppose that.
Given the current crisis, I'd vote for Obama on that alone. What economic knowledge he's demonstrated makes him far more qualified a candidate than McCain or Clinton, despite some of his other failings.
Oh, do tell. What does government regulation do to make things so terribly bad? Please cite your sources. And do tell us how much better things are now that the cable and telephone companies are less regulated than they used to be.
Um... Iraq is in Asia. It's called the middle-east because it's the bit of Asia right next to Europe, not the far east, like China and India. Egypt is in Africa. Jordan borders Egypt, but Jordan is in Asia. Iraq doesn't even touch Africa.
I suspect you're right. Reading the article, it sounds like they have a way of using browser plugins as a way to get around the address space randomization features in Vista. That's a big deal, and it really might be as hard to patch as they claim. But address space randomization was never a silver bullet and even without it, all they've done is put is back to a Windows XP world.
What would be interesting is if they can extend the attack to Linux, which also does a certain amount of randomization. If they can do that, then they've got a reusable, general purpose attack. But, as it stands, it certainly doesn't sound like anything too new. People have been attacking Flash, ActiveX, Java applets, and other plugins for years.
As a Canadian, I feel this is just us imitating the American way of doing things. However, it's unfortunate that we can't take full credit since he's a new immigrant and likely wasn't a citizen yet.
In other news, it strikes me as odd that you find the fact that children saw it the most disturbing bit about this. The children will be fine. The victim won't be.
Countless numbers of songs and software are released in this way by their own copyright owners.
Really? Please provide proof. Typically, most copyrighted software comes from dishonest OEMs (at least the stuff that's released early). Movies get there through demo tapes. I find it hard to believe that most artists are savvy enough even to think of this, and I can't see it doing much for any big-name artist. And the smaller artists don't have the ability to go after people in the courts. Plus, anyone who thinks the RIAA is making money off the lawsuits is smoking some strong stuff.
And yet, only a tiny fraction of those copyright owners are caught doing it (or will admit to doing it).
That's probably because most of them don't do it.
By releasing their materials in this way, they're effectively putting their "intellectual property" in legal limbo.
No, they haven't. You don't lose copyright by refusing to enforce it, and you can stop distributing it at any time, so your argument is bunk.
They probably won't enforce their rights to this one particular track they just released (but I can assure you they'll release every other track they own, if they haven't done so already, they won't get caught in those other instances, and then they'll be sure to play both sides of the law).
Caught? It sounds like they're doing something illegal. If a copyright holder distributes their own copyrighted work on a P2P network, that's their right. If they sue someone else for distributing it, that's also their right. That other guy isn't allowed to do it.
Microsoft has done this. Macromedia has done this. It pays to release your stuff through the back door, and then yell bloody murder afterward, especially because the civil damages are not awarded based on actual real damages.
Pretty much all the legal cases where they made a buck were from suing big pirates who stamp their CDs and sell them en masse. You don't make money suing individuals. The proceeds just don't offset the legal costs. The RIAA sues people as a scare tactic to discourage people from using P2P. They don't actually make any money directly from the suits.
The assumption that the mobo manufacturer wrote the DSDT tables is a poor one. They licence a BIOS from someone else, and it comes with sample DSDT tables that probably won't work on the hardware. They then update the Windows tables to work with their board, and ignore the rest.
So how is that a poor assumption? If they did that, they simply didn't think about Linux and didn't test it. I'm sure the tables didn't work for BSD, Plan 9, and various other OSes that they didn't care about.
This was clearly not malicious. Anyone who thinks it was should get back in their bunkers before the government mind readers find them again. Bugs happen. A lot. Deal with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't care what you do for a living, as long as you don't work for us. :-)
http://www.rucharacter.org/page/ea_glossary/
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=average
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/average
http://www.bartleby.com/61/53/A0545300.html
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average
Even the ones that don't explicitly mention mean, median, and mode say that an average typically typifies a list of numbers. It can also be mean, of course, and that's the common definition, but I'm amazed that a statistician does not know this. What school did you go to?
No, he's wrong. I know the definition of mean, so feel free to forgo any further mathematical definitions in your postings. For your own education, see here.
Mean is an average. But average includes mean, median and mode. It is correct to use it in this way, and people like you are often misled by people who use the term properly but know that most people assume average and mean are synonymous. They aren't. Such distinctions are often taught in university level philosophy and critical thinking courses.
The median is an average. You're thinking of mean.
I disagree in this particular case. Typically, the people who get ripped off are a very small percentage of the people who receive the scam email due to the wonders of spam. Therefore, reporting should not be hindered. However, actual calculation of losses might become a problem.
Apparently, you cared enough to reply. Please point out where I lied and what about. At this point, you're simply doing personal attacks and avoiding the main problem of economics, it seems, as you know you've lost the argument. Also, please notice the "If you think I'm a democrat" which doesn't actually mean I said you think I am. All it means it that if you don't think I'm a democrat, maybe you're only exactly as dumb as you look instead of dumber. :-)
Oh, and just to make it really clear in case there's some poor sod who actually bought into something in your post, here's the Wikipedia link about Keynes and deficit spending which I talked about. Specifically, "Following John Maynard Keynes, many economists recommend deficit spending in order to moderate or end a recession". In other words, back when we weren't in a recession, we should not have been running a deficit.
So again, please let me know when you find an economist who actually supports your armchair economic theories.
Encouraging growth is a bad thing in a lot of cases. That's what causes boom/bust. You don't encourage the growth of healthy markets. If the oil industry is doing just fine without the tax cuts (and the tax cuts affected the rich and big companies more than the small and poor, so the oil companies were the beneficiaries), then why cut their taxes?
Hilarious. I should save this somewhere. If you missed it, I explained what was wrong with your idea about Keynes supporting what you say. As in most things in the world, it's nuanced. Deficit spending is not unconditionally good and Keynes did not support it in all cases. I get that you don't get that. I find it quite amusing. But thank you for telling me you won't respond anymore, as humorous as your responses have been.
P.S. if you think I'm a democrat, you're dumber than you look.
English public schools are now washing the young boys at school while shoving the girls into closets so they can't sneak out and chop down firewood and get covered in bugs. Also, apparently, there's something about terrorism and blight, so I think that means that we should raise the terrorism threat alert level to red.
So, for twenty years then? The whole of political history...
The most recent part of it, certainly, which is the most important part to me.
Second, Democrats support social programs (or do you disagree?). They cost money. Republicans support defense spending (it is by far their major budget item). It costs money. Comparing the two is, well to borrow your word "dumb". They are not the same, do not accomplish the same goals, do not have the same benefits and drawbacks, and so saying "Democrats spend more" or vice versa is naive bullshit.
It's well known that the deficit has decreased under democrats. You can debate why that is, but it certainly is true. Besides, I'd rather support social programs than invasions any day of the week.
They BOTH spend. A TON. Social Security and Medicare on one side, Defense on the other. Mostly. So why, when it's blatantly obvious that there is a lot of money being spent on bullshit, do so many people engage in partisan dick waving contests?
Because social programs are what the US needs, not more war. However, I agree that many of the social program implementations so far have been pretty misguided. But that is no reason to assume that they are all bad, as you seem to be doing here.
You're going to get fleeced regardless. Instead of debating tax reform, money policy, or something important, we get
Fine, let's all give up and let the country go to hell. I was responding to a specific poster about a specific topic. Sorry if I didn't get to your favorites.
Which is just, well, wrong. It's totally wrong. I see this, and it makes me want to scream. It makes me wonder if people genuinely expect the President to know everything about everything, and then it makes me wonder if people are so thick, so arrogant, as to assume that a difference in political opinion is equivalent to ignorance.
Hey, I'm just quoting the man. He said himself he doesn't understand it as well as he should.
I promise you, McCain has a bevy of advisers who are smarter than you, who have helped him shape his policy, and you make the assumption that because they have different priorities, they are fools, or ignorant.
Yes, he has advisers like the former CEO of eBay who bought Skype and has regretted it ever since. And he's gone through a lot of people who have said really dumb things in public. Excuse me if I've lost faith.
I promise you, McCain has a bevy of advisers who are smarter than you, who have helped him shape his policy, and you make the assumption that because they have different priorities, they are fools, or ignorant.
I doubt it. I'm arrogant enough to doubt just about anyone is smarter than me, but regardless, his policies are bad for America. You can link to Keynes or Adam Smith or whoever you like. You can't just throw out a term like "deficit spending" and expect me to cave in to what you say. Let me throw a term back at you. Structural deficits are bad. That's what the US has. In Keynesian economics, Governments are expected to run a deficit during economic downturns so as to stimulate the economy, but the deficit is supposed to turn into a surplus when the economy is growing again, thus checking the growth through taxes to prevent unsustainable growth. And I didn't even click your damned link. I bet if you click it, it will explain all of that.
Anyway, let me know when you've read that or when you've found an economist who actually does agree with republican spending habits. I bet you're going to have a hard time with that.
OK, seems I was wrong about that. My apologies. Regardless, Bush did cut their taxes and I'm not sure I see any good reason for him to have done that. Tax cuts are usually made to encourage growth and I don't see any growth problems in the oil industry. As far as I'm concerned, the oil companies need to justify keeping the tax cuts.
Secondly, I'd like to take issue with your statement that saving our oil reserves for later is a good idea.
I don't think I ever said that. Personally, I'd prefer if our oil reserves were never mined unless it's being mined for something other than burning in an automobile.
What you want, after all, is Greenspan as Mr. President.
Now, now. :-)
I don't believe an economist would necessarily be a good president (though the Canadian Prime Minister is an economist and he seems to be doing alright). I think economic rules can be bent or broken from time to time in the name of some greater good. I just wish presidents were expected to have some basic understanding of economics before they were put in control of the world's largest economy. That is all.
The most productive workers can't even get in due to immigration problems. And I admit that McCain is more likely to fix that than Obama. However, the demand is still there, so we obviously aren't at that point yet. But we aren't talking about raising taxes more here. We're talking about cutting taxes. And it makes sense to give more tax breaks to the poor than to the rich. Of course, maybe I'm just being too much of a humanitarian there.
Good arguments. Like I said, Obama's not perfect. However, as it stands, after all the Bush tax cuts, the oil companies are undertaxed. I agree that a windfall tax is probably the wrong thing (but maybe not as bad as it sounds; it's a complicated issue), but at least Obama wants to let the other tax cuts of the Bush administration expire.
Preventing offshore drilling is actually a good thing in my book. As analysts have said, it'll take years to benefit from it and it won't last long, either. Everyone agrees it's a short-term solution, only, and yet the oil won't even be available in the short term.
I should point out that oil companies not drilling where they have rights is a problem. If government regulations are stopping them, why can't someone like Obama (or McCain) simply change the rules?
Finally, I'd like to note that all the sources I see say that Obama has called for the US to eliminate its oil dependence in 10 years, but he hasn't promised it will be so. I read it like JFK's call to get to the moon before 1970. It's a goal for the nation, and maybe we'll make it, but it seems unlikely (like the moon landing did, not that I think we'll actually make it this time around).
I didn't say they were no better. I said they were worse. The rest of your post is typical right-wing spew that I see so often. Why are Republicans such hateful people?
Regardless, it's been shown that Obama's tax cut plans would help the lower income brackets more than McCain's, and tax the rich more. This is obviously what a tax system is supposed to do. As someone who makes a high income, I'd be better off, in the short term, with McCain, so I'm not arguing for my own personal gain here.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I see a lot of this around. I don't understand how people can be so dumb as to think that Democrats are the heavy spenders. The Republicans have, ever since Reagan, been trying to outdo each other by lowering tax but raising spending. See here for a discussion. It is the Republicans, not the Democrats, who are the big spenders. And if you believe that you can run a deficit for decades without harming anything, then you're a fool. And McCain has admitted that the economy isn't his cup of tea, as evidenced by his proposed cuts to the fuel tax. At least Obama knew enough economics to oppose that.
Given the current crisis, I'd vote for Obama on that alone. What economic knowledge he's demonstrated makes him far more qualified a candidate than McCain or Clinton, despite some of his other failings.
How would you describe cloud computing in two words without using a 'worthless buzzword'?
Distributed Computing
Oh, do tell. What does government regulation do to make things so terribly bad? Please cite your sources. And do tell us how much better things are now that the cable and telephone companies are less regulated than they used to be.
Um... Iraq is in Asia. It's called the middle-east because it's the bit of Asia right next to Europe, not the far east, like China and India. Egypt is in Africa. Jordan borders Egypt, but Jordan is in Asia. Iraq doesn't even touch Africa.
Wow. Just, wow.
I suspect you're right. Reading the article, it sounds like they have a way of using browser plugins as a way to get around the address space randomization features in Vista. That's a big deal, and it really might be as hard to patch as they claim. But address space randomization was never a silver bullet and even without it, all they've done is put is back to a Windows XP world.
What would be interesting is if they can extend the attack to Linux, which also does a certain amount of randomization. If they can do that, then they've got a reusable, general purpose attack. But, as it stands, it certainly doesn't sound like anything too new. People have been attacking Flash, ActiveX, Java applets, and other plugins for years.
Those are, like, needed to remove the hard drive, right?
As a Canadian, I feel this is just us imitating the American way of doing things. However, it's unfortunate that we can't take full credit since he's a new immigrant and likely wasn't a citizen yet.
In other news, it strikes me as odd that you find the fact that children saw it the most disturbing bit about this. The children will be fine. The victim won't be.
Countless numbers of songs and software are released in this way by their own copyright owners.
Really? Please provide proof. Typically, most copyrighted software comes from dishonest OEMs (at least the stuff that's released early). Movies get there through demo tapes. I find it hard to believe that most artists are savvy enough even to think of this, and I can't see it doing much for any big-name artist. And the smaller artists don't have the ability to go after people in the courts. Plus, anyone who thinks the RIAA is making money off the lawsuits is smoking some strong stuff.
And yet, only a tiny fraction of those copyright owners are caught doing it (or will admit to doing it).
That's probably because most of them don't do it.
By releasing their materials in this way, they're effectively putting their "intellectual property" in legal limbo.
No, they haven't. You don't lose copyright by refusing to enforce it, and you can stop distributing it at any time, so your argument is bunk.
They probably won't enforce their rights to this one particular track they just released (but I can assure you they'll release every other track they own, if they haven't done so already, they won't get caught in those other instances, and then they'll be sure to play both sides of the law).
Caught? It sounds like they're doing something illegal. If a copyright holder distributes their own copyrighted work on a P2P network, that's their right. If they sue someone else for distributing it, that's also their right. That other guy isn't allowed to do it.
Microsoft has done this. Macromedia has done this. It pays to release your stuff through the back door, and then yell bloody murder afterward, especially because the civil damages are not awarded based on actual real damages.
Pretty much all the legal cases where they made a buck were from suing big pirates who stamp their CDs and sell them en masse. You don't make money suing individuals. The proceeds just don't offset the legal costs. The RIAA sues people as a scare tactic to discourage people from using P2P. They don't actually make any money directly from the suits.
The assumption that the mobo manufacturer wrote the DSDT tables is a poor one. They licence a BIOS from someone else, and it comes with sample DSDT tables that probably won't work on the hardware. They then update the Windows tables to work with their board, and ignore the rest.
So how is that a poor assumption? If they did that, they simply didn't think about Linux and didn't test it. I'm sure the tables didn't work for BSD, Plan 9, and various other OSes that they didn't care about.
This was clearly not malicious. Anyone who thinks it was should get back in their bunkers before the government mind readers find them again. Bugs happen. A lot. Deal with it.