Re:Article needs a course in experimental design
on
The Data-Driven Life
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Lookie! I made a graph and it shows something! It MUST be causation, there is no other explanation.
He made a graph. That's more than most people do. And yes, its enough to move from 'anecdote' to 'supporting data'. Is it enough to make a general conclusion about the effect of coffee on society? No. Is it enough to make a limited conclusion about the effect of coffee on him? Still no.
But is it enough to suggest maybe he should continue avoiding coffee? Sure. Why not?
You don't need "beyond a reasonable doubt" for copyright infringement, just "preponderance of the evidence".
I'm aware of that, and I never said otherwise. The standard for "preponderance of evidence" is not met simply by virtue of owning an implement used in a crime.
You *certainly* use your own router. You have no proof that these other people are doing it (and it's not "likely" that large numbers of people are using your router anyway). In the most likely case, it was *you* who did the downloading. If you want to propose that it's someone else, you will need to provide evidence for that.
You certainly use your own baseball bat. You have no proof other people use it. And its not "likely" that large numbers of people are using your baseball bat. In the most likely case, it was *you* who used the bat to bludgeon that homeless person to death.
So far so good.
If you want to propose its someone else, you will need to provided evidence for that.
er no. Innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. The fact that I have evidence your baseball was used makes you a legitimate suspect, but I'll have to do better than that to tie you to the scene of the crime to get a conviction. You don't have to provide evidence someone else used it. I have to provide evidence it was you.
As a cop I'm sure you don't get that many cases like that however.
Where the "theif" phones you up and offers to *give* it back, and gets rebuffed? Where the "theif" after being finally notified that you do in fact want it back hand delivers it back to you.
"Gizmodo knowingly brought stolen goods, which is also a crime under the California penal code."
Until they opened it up, they only bought "a story". They didn't know it was a genuine apple iphone prototype vs a chinese knockoff when they bought it.
I've seen chinese knockoffs. Right down to the apple logo.
As to it being stolen, until they had it they didn't KNOW it was an apple iphone prototype. It could have been some chinese knockoff. Indeed, odds are higher than not that "some random person trying to sell an lost iphone prototype" is passing a scam.
Further they returned it.
Actually, the letter of the law prohibits the user from any use (I believe the statute says 'realizing benefits from') of the solen property as well.
All they did was purchase a phone, which might might have been lost, might have been stolen, or might have not been an iphone at all, and then reported on it, and returned the device to the owner once it had been confirmed genuine.
No the 'realizing benefits from' angle is interesting, but this case is has another wrinkle, the 'benefit' they realized is shielded by the 'freedom of the press'. Which in some respects is stronger than 'freedom of speech'. After all ALL news sites report crime, directly "realizing benefits" from everything from murder to theft to rape in terms of selling advertising around it.
I can restrict your ability and means of travel... The government can do the same in the public interest.
They certainly can. They can and regularly do restrict peoples travel options down to "back and forth in a locked cell" if they want to, in the public interest. Is not being in prison merely a privilege then? Of course not.
So where is the line between my right to be free, and my priviledge to avail myself of modern transportation options? Or is that it right there? As soon as I so much as step onto an elevator... I'm out of 'rights' and into 'priviledge' territory?
There is a big difference between driving a car and riding in one. Repeat offender drunk drivers can still be passengers in cars. Now do you understand what he was saying?
A drunk passenger is still a risk or threat...at any moment he might distract the driver, or overpower the driver.
A right is something that cannot or should not be taken away. A privilege can be taken away and must in some circumstances.
You are not differentiating right and privilege very well. What you've said about privileges is true of rights. What is a right? Is 'to go on living' a right or a privilege? Because like a privilege it can be taken away, and in some US states at least, it "must in some circumstances" be taken away.
Anything that I might call a 'right' is little more than a privilege, it would seem, by your reckoning.
That remark alone shows your ignorance. There is no "right to travel (by air)
Not to split hairs here. But there is no right to FLY a plane. Just as there is no right to DRIVE a car.
I find it rather interesting its reached the point where you are justifying that someone should be denied the 'priviledge' of riding in one too. Do you support depriving someone the "priviledge" of being a *passenger* on a car or bus or boat (including ferries) too?
It is a privilege for those who meet certain conditions.
And those conditions are what exactly? As it stands right now, you can't be on a plane if you have brownish skin and a name vaguely similiar to a guy who the FBI thinks might have known someone who attended an event suspected of being a terrorist recruiting event... whether this other person completely unrelated to you actually even joined, assuming it was actually a terrorist recruiting event.
If they cannot meet those conditions and, perhaps, more, then they cannot get on a plane.
An e woods recently ran a red light. That's dangerous and could kill someone. As a result I think anyone named 'e woods' 'e. woods' 'ed woods' 'ed wood' should be prohibited from driving a car. Further, I think anyone by this name should also be prohibited from RIDING in a car... they might overpower the driver and kill someone.
I guess you don't meet the conditions to get in a car anymore. Never mind a plane.
Don't complain to me though, you don't have a right to be a car. Its just a privilege. One you don't meet the conditions for.
Simple solution: don't use filenames with spaces in them. They're an incredibly stupid idea. If you need something that looks like a space, use an underscore. The same practice has been done in C since the early 70s, since having spaces inside C tokens would be stupid.
Simpler solution. Don't use computers.
Seriously now. You expect all the end users out in the world to stop using spaces... just so your script works?
What, did you honestly believe your $40 router was lovingly engineered by the brightest minds in the industry ? No, it was prototyped by some kid in Japan, the board laid out by an integration shop in India, and the actual product manufactured by laymen in Malaysia. Anything other chain would drive the costs up tenfold.
You assume too much. I'm sorry to derail your rant, but my last few routers have each cost more than the airport extreme does.
So what am I supposed to take away from this? That an airport extreme was lovingly sculpted by American engineers ( no actually American designers with engineering degrees) with an HCI team computing just what the diameter of the single indicator led should be, while busy little genius coders fed only the highest quality organic American produce wrote flawless firmware... (numerous firmware updates to fix serious bugs notwithstanding).
And all that effort still resulted in a box in the same price range as a comparable linksys, dlink, or netgear.
I then file a police report that says my car was worth $6 million... would I be busted for filing a false police report?
Of course not. I mean, you -did- have a few CDs in the glove box didn't you? That's what 100+ tracks that you have just unlawfully redistributed (and you recklessly assisted in this by leaving the car running)... oh... wait, yes that would be a false police report. Your losses are closer to $200 Million.
In the second place, Apple is not competing with Flash. They're just banning it. That's a different proposition, and one that the courts would probably be convinced was something the market could figure out. "You buy phone A, it does everything. You buy phone I, it doesn't do X,Y,Z".
Except this isn't about "flash" This is about applications written in flash that were exported via a tool to Objective-C to make them honest-to-goodness native iphone apps. Apple then responded by changing the rules to: "You must originally write apps in objective-c" which is absurd.
That would be like saying: you must submit your resume in Microsoft.doc format. Oh, and you must originally write it in Word. If you write it in OO.org and then save it to doc format, you still will be rejected out of hand, even though you sent us a proper.doc file that opens perfectly fine in Word. WTF?!
, but I just couldn't relax and watch the focal point the director insisted you watch
Yep. This is why the 3D illusion is basically worthless. They hang a flower '4 feet' in front of me out of focus, while the scene focal point is some '150 feet' away. That's fine as long as I look at the focal point. But god forbid I try and look at the flower right in front of me, which throws the whole 3D illusion out the window because I can't focus on it.
I walked out of the theatre with my eyes fatigued and my outlook unenthusiastic about the future of the 3D. My wife walked out of Avatar with a migraine.
It didn't help matters that Avatar was the most predictable and cliched movie they could possibly have written. One could almost predict it scene for scene, cliche for cliche. Which is part of the problem I guess, because it let you give yourself eyestrain trying to look at flowers and rocks and waterfalls without having to worry about being distracted by the storyline. Anyone with half a brain was two or three steps ahead of the movie the whole way through.
"Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is pressing White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin to explain his relationship with his former employer, Google.
The congressman, who serves as ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, said McLaughlin's account on Google's new Buzz social network suggests he remains in touch with "more than two dozen individuals currently employed by Google, Inc., including a number of senior lobbyists and lawyers."
Now, I'm all for stringing this guy up if he's been double-dealing, or passing on stuff to mates as 'favours'. But having friends (or gmail accounts) isn't illegal.
I guess that's why they are simply investigating whether anything untoward is going on.
There's a reason why the crowbar [wikipedia.org] has become a truly iconic weapon... While the nail gun has been all-but forgotten.
Generic space marine for the win here. The "BFG" from doom is legendary. The crowbar? I wouldn't even have made the connection unless you had spelled it out.
You do know that the work agreement that you signed during orientation stated that Microsoft owns any software that you produce on your own time, as long as Microsoft may compete against said software at some point in the future?
Perhaps that was some of the red tape that needed to be cut. Guess what, you can run things past management, and get legal to sign off on something that amounts to an agreement between the employee and employer that a given project belongs soley to the the employee. I don't know about microsoft specifically, but lots of companies are amenable to this sort of thing.
Sometimes there are legitimate concerns that have to be resolved... often its just a matter of jumping through the required hoops.
I just don't see how this is likely to be true. I mean, do you really figure the "average person" is also thinking "Hey, I can use the internet for half as long each month because I upgraded!"??? Because that's what you just said...
No. The average users internet connection spends most of the time idle. When browsing the web on a 5mbps connection they spend 1 minute downloading pages, and 10 minutes reading them. 2 minutes downloading email and 20 minutes reading and composing replies... etc. Double the internet speed and it cuts the 33 minutes they were using the computer down to 31.5 minutes.
So yeah... they could download another couple pages in that time (big deal) or wander off to the next task an extra minute or so earlier.
Of course, this is somewhat esoteric on broadband till we get to internet radio and video and VoIP and game demos and pirating. Then, their data use may well go up as they can do more at the same time, or they can watch two shows a night as they aren't waiting overnight to get one episode or game demo or update or whatever.
True enough. But its limiting returns. Downloading 2 shows a night assumes I have time to watch 2 shows a night, and that there are 2 shows a night I want to watch. True for a fraction of the whole, but not true for everyone. And it falls off as you get ever faster. If you give them 100mbps internet what then? Are they going to download 10 shows a night? and try 20 games? Its just not going to happen.*
They might also now be able to click that HD button on Youtube - same time / consumption from most peoples view, but way more data transfer.
Again, true enough. But again its only true for a fraction of the whole. Lots of video isn't available in HD.
Look, I'm not denying that if you give people a faster connetion that they will use it more. That would be absurd. I agree completely that they will use more data on a faster connection. But I'm saying the average person doesn't think of a 2x speed connection in terms of being twice as much data. While they will use more data that's not how they think about it. And the extra amount they use will NOT be in direct proportion to how much faster it got.*
(* Outside of a p2p scenario where the software just expands to fill as much bandwdith as you throw at it without limit, but that's not really representative of a user's own usage, in fact its the 'problem'.)
Slashdot Mirror
Lookie! I made a graph and it shows something! It MUST be causation, there is no other explanation.
He made a graph. That's more than most people do. And yes, its enough to move from 'anecdote' to 'supporting data'. Is it enough to make a general conclusion about the effect of coffee on society? No. Is it enough to make a limited conclusion about the effect of coffee on him? Still no.
But is it enough to suggest maybe he should continue avoiding coffee? Sure. Why not?
You don't need "beyond a reasonable doubt" for copyright infringement, just "preponderance of the evidence".
I'm aware of that, and I never said otherwise. The standard for "preponderance of evidence" is not met simply by virtue of owning an implement used in a crime.
You *certainly* use your own router. You have no proof that these other people are doing it (and it's not "likely" that large numbers of people are using your router anyway). In the most likely case, it was *you* who did the downloading. If you want to propose that it's someone else, you will need to provide evidence for that.
You certainly use your own baseball bat. You have no proof other people use it. And its not "likely" that large numbers of people are using your baseball bat. In the most likely case, it was *you* who used the bat to bludgeon that homeless person to death.
So far so good.
If you want to propose its someone else, you will need to provided evidence for that.
er no. Innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. The fact that I have evidence your baseball was used makes you a legitimate suspect, but I'll have to do better than that to tie you to the scene of the crime to get a conviction. You don't have to provide evidence someone else used it. I have to provide evidence it was you.
As a cop I'm sure you don't get that many cases like that however.
Where the "theif" phones you up and offers to *give* it back, and gets rebuffed?
Where the "theif" after being finally notified that you do in fact want it back hand delivers it back to you.
Yes, I'm sure that doesn't come up much.
Yeah, but does the thief in your story post the stolen items on a popular website too? If so, I bet the cops would be doing the same.
Does ebay count? That's where a lot of them end up. And no the cops don't do squat.
And in most stories the thieves don't clearly identify and return the items either.
"Gizmodo knowingly brought stolen goods, which is also a crime under the California penal code."
Until they opened it up, they only bought "a story". They didn't know it was a genuine apple iphone prototype vs a chinese knockoff when they bought it.
I've seen chinese knockoffs. Right down to the apple logo.
As to it being stolen, until they had it they didn't KNOW it was an apple iphone prototype. It could have been some chinese knockoff. Indeed, odds are higher than not that "some random person trying to sell an lost iphone prototype" is passing a scam.
Further they returned it.
Actually, the letter of the law prohibits the user from any use (I believe the statute says 'realizing benefits from') of the solen property as well.
All they did was purchase a phone, which might might have been lost, might have been stolen, or might have not been an iphone at all, and then reported on it, and returned the device to the owner once it had been confirmed genuine.
No the 'realizing benefits from' angle is interesting, but this case is has another wrinkle, the 'benefit' they realized is shielded by the 'freedom of the press'. Which in some respects is stronger than 'freedom of speech'. After all ALL news sites report crime, directly "realizing benefits" from everything from murder to theft to rape in terms of selling advertising around it.
I can restrict your ability and means of travel... The government can do the same in the public interest.
They certainly can. They can and regularly do restrict peoples travel options down to "back and forth in a locked cell" if they want to, in the public interest. Is not being in prison merely a privilege then? Of course not.
So where is the line between my right to be free, and my priviledge to avail myself of modern transportation options? Or is that it right there? As soon as I so much as step onto an elevator... I'm out of 'rights' and into 'priviledge' territory?
There is a big difference between driving a car and riding in one. Repeat offender drunk drivers can still be passengers in cars. Now do you understand what he was saying?
A drunk passenger is still a risk or threat...at any moment he might distract the driver, or overpower the driver.
A right is something that cannot or should not be taken away. A privilege can be taken away and must in some circumstances.
You are not differentiating right and privilege very well. What you've said about privileges is true of rights. What is a right? Is 'to go on living' a right or a privilege? Because like a privilege it can be taken away, and in some US states at least, it "must in some circumstances" be taken away.
Anything that I might call a 'right' is little more than a privilege, it would seem, by your reckoning.
From your own link "Republic of The Gambia"
"The Gambia, officially the Republic of The Gambia and which is commonly known as Gambia by its residents"
I'm not the OP, but I'd like to respond.
That remark alone shows your ignorance. There is no "right to travel (by air)
Not to split hairs here. But there is no right to FLY a plane. Just as there is no right to DRIVE a car.
I find it rather interesting its reached the point where you are justifying that someone should be denied the 'priviledge' of riding in one too. Do you support depriving someone the "priviledge" of being a *passenger* on a car or bus or boat (including ferries) too?
It is a privilege for those who meet certain conditions.
And those conditions are what exactly? As it stands right now, you can't be on a plane if you have brownish skin and a name vaguely similiar to a guy who the FBI thinks might have known someone who attended an event suspected of being a terrorist recruiting event... whether this other person completely unrelated to you actually even joined, assuming it was actually a terrorist recruiting event.
If they cannot meet those conditions and, perhaps, more, then they cannot get on a plane.
An e woods recently ran a red light. That's dangerous and could kill someone. As a result I think anyone named 'e woods' 'e. woods' 'ed woods' 'ed wood' should be prohibited from driving a car. Further, I think anyone by this name should also be prohibited from RIDING in a car... they might overpower the driver and kill someone.
I guess you don't meet the conditions to get in a car anymore. Never mind a plane.
Don't complain to me though, you don't have a right to be a car. Its just a privilege. One you don't meet the conditions for.
Sucks to be you.
"411/3 = 412/3 so 138 is more than enough"
lol... slashdot does funny things when you use angle brackets (ie lssthan gtrthan signs)
try that again
411/3 is less than 412/3 so 137 is not enough
414/3 is more than 412/3 so 138 is more than enough
significant digits aren't really the issue at all.
2/3*206 = 412/3
137 = 411/3
138 = 414/3
411/3 = 412/3 so 138 is more than enough
You expect all the end users out in the world to stop using GOTO
How many end users use GOTO?
just because your favorite language (PYTHON) lacks this wonderful, absolutely necessary, versatile command?
I'm not actually a fan of Python. I think using whitespace for semantics (e.g. block delineation) is demented.
Simple solution: don't use filenames with spaces in them. They're an incredibly stupid idea. If you need something that looks like a space, use an underscore. The same practice has been done in C since the early 70s, since having spaces inside C tokens would be stupid.
Simpler solution. Don't use computers.
Seriously now. You expect all the end users out in the world to stop using spaces... just so your script works?
What, did you honestly believe your $40 router was lovingly engineered by the brightest minds in the industry ? No, it was prototyped by some kid in Japan, the board laid out by an integration shop in India, and the actual product manufactured by laymen in Malaysia. Anything other chain would drive the costs up tenfold.
You assume too much. I'm sorry to derail your rant, but my last few routers have each cost more than the airport extreme does.
So what am I supposed to take away from this? That an airport extreme was lovingly sculpted by American engineers ( no actually American designers with engineering degrees) with an HCI team computing just what the diameter of the single indicator led should be, while busy little genius coders fed only the highest quality organic American produce wrote flawless firmware... (numerous firmware updates to fix serious bugs notwithstanding).
And all that effort still resulted in a box in the same price range as a comparable linksys, dlink, or netgear.
I then file a police report that says my car was worth $6 million... would I be busted for filing a false police report?
Of course not. I mean, you -did- have a few CDs in the glove box didn't you? That's what 100+ tracks that you have just unlawfully redistributed (and you recklessly assisted in this by leaving the car running)... oh ... wait, yes that would be a false police report. Your losses are closer to $200 Million.
In the second place, Apple is not competing with Flash. They're just banning it. That's a different proposition, and one that the courts would probably be convinced was something the market could figure out. "You buy phone A, it does everything. You buy phone I, it doesn't do X,Y,Z".
Except this isn't about "flash" This is about applications written in flash that were exported via a tool to Objective-C to make them honest-to-goodness native iphone apps. Apple then responded by changing the rules to: "You must originally write apps in objective-c" which is absurd.
That would be like saying: you must submit your resume in Microsoft .doc format. Oh, and you must originally write it in Word. If you write it in OO.org and then save it to doc format, you still will be rejected out of hand, even though you sent us a proper .doc file that opens perfectly fine in Word. WTF?!
, but I just couldn't relax and watch the focal point the director insisted you watch
Yep. This is why the 3D illusion is basically worthless. They hang a flower '4 feet' in front of me out of focus, while the scene focal point is some '150 feet' away. That's fine as long as I look at the focal point. But god forbid I try and look at the flower right in front of me, which throws the whole 3D illusion out the window because I can't focus on it.
I walked out of the theatre with my eyes fatigued and my outlook unenthusiastic about the future of the 3D. My wife walked out of Avatar with a migraine.
It didn't help matters that Avatar was the most predictable and cliched movie they could possibly have written. One could almost predict it scene for scene, cliche for cliche. Which is part of the problem I guess, because it let you give yourself eyestrain trying to look at flowers and rocks and waterfalls without having to worry about being distracted by the storyline. Anyone with half a brain was two or three steps ahead of the movie the whole way through.
From the full artical:
"Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is pressing White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin to explain his relationship with his former employer, Google.
The congressman, who serves as ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, said McLaughlin's account on Google's new Buzz social network suggests he remains in touch with "more than two dozen individuals currently employed by Google, Inc., including a number of senior lobbyists and lawyers."
That isn't "stringing him up".
Now, I'm all for stringing this guy up if he's been double-dealing, or passing on stuff to mates as 'favours'. But having friends (or gmail accounts) isn't illegal.
I guess that's why they are simply investigating whether anything untoward is going on.
There's a reason why the crowbar [wikipedia.org] has become a truly iconic weapon... While the nail gun has been all-but forgotten.
Generic space marine for the win here. The "BFG" from doom is legendary.
The crowbar? I wouldn't even have made the connection unless you had spelled it out.
You do know that the work agreement that you signed during orientation stated that Microsoft owns any software that you produce on your own time, as long as Microsoft may compete against said software at some point in the future?
Perhaps that was some of the red tape that needed to be cut. Guess what, you can run things past management, and get legal to sign off on something that amounts to an agreement between the employee and employer that a given project belongs soley to the the employee. I don't know about microsoft specifically, but lots of companies are amenable to this sort of thing.
Sometimes there are legitimate concerns that have to be resolved... often its just a matter of jumping through the required hoops.
I just don't see how this is likely to be true. I mean, do you really figure the "average person" is also thinking "Hey, I can use the internet for half as long each month because I upgraded!"??? Because that's what you just said...
No. The average users internet connection spends most of the time idle. When browsing the web on a 5mbps connection they spend 1 minute downloading pages, and 10 minutes reading them. 2 minutes downloading email and 20 minutes reading and composing replies... etc. Double the internet speed and it cuts the 33 minutes they were using the computer down to 31.5 minutes.
So yeah... they could download another couple pages in that time (big deal) or wander off to the next task an extra minute or so earlier.
Of course, this is somewhat esoteric on broadband till we get to internet radio and video and VoIP and game demos and pirating. Then, their data use may well go up as they can do more at the same time, or they can watch two shows a night as they aren't waiting overnight to get one episode or game demo or update or whatever.
True enough. But its limiting returns. Downloading 2 shows a night assumes I have time to watch 2 shows a night, and that there are 2 shows a night I want to watch. True for a fraction of the whole, but not true for everyone. And it falls off as you get ever faster. If you give them 100mbps internet what then? Are they going to download 10 shows a night? and try 20 games? Its just not going to happen.*
They might also now be able to click that HD button on Youtube - same time / consumption from most peoples view, but way more data transfer.
Again, true enough. But again its only true for a fraction of the whole. Lots of video isn't available in HD.
Look, I'm not denying that if you give people a faster connetion that they will use it more. That would be absurd. I agree completely that they will use more data on a faster connection. But I'm saying the average person doesn't think of a 2x speed connection in terms of being twice as much data. While they will use more data that's not how they think about it. And the extra amount they use will NOT be in direct proportion to how much faster it got.*
(* Outside of a p2p scenario where the software just expands to fill as much bandwdith as you throw at it without limit, but that's not really representative of a user's own usage, in fact its the 'problem'.)