It depends on what you mean by "bidding on ones own items will always be possible". If you mean that it will always be easy for ebay powersellers and other big product movers to systematically secretly bid on their own products without getting caught, then this is only true because ebay will allow it. This should be preventable.
It is not dishonest "much like bluffing at poker is dishonest". In poker, you are supposed to bluff. It is part of the game. Everybody else in the game expects you to try to bluff. In auctions, you are not supposed to bid on your own auctions. The typical ebay user would feel cheated if they paid their full proxy bid (say $10) rather than significantly less than that (say the next lower real bid was $5) simply because the seller bid up their own auction.
Winners Curse is interesting, but irrelevant here. Bidding with winners curse in mind, one can mitigate the effects and still expect to pay close to the value of the item---IF the seller doesn't bid on his own auction. If he does, all best are obviously off. (If you need an example; say that the seller always bids his own auctions up somewhere near $10 above their value. Then on average, you will spend more than $10 too much every time you (randomly) incorrectly estimate the value of the item.) With winners curse in mind, a bidder can bid to approach market value in purchases. With sellers bidding on their own auctions, this is no longer possible in the same sense.
Auctions are complicated, interesting things.
That bidding on own auctions should be condemned and prevented where possible is obvious and not really complicated at all; this is a basic part of the what constitutes an auction. (Go back and read about winners' curse, the whole analysis would be different without these basic assumptions about auctions.)
Man, am I sick of this sentiment. This is the classic slashdot response to anything. Headline: here is some information about issue "x". slashdot response: "Issue x isn't an issue at all, really the problems are that most people other than myself are morons." Ugh...
Anyways, let me hold your hand and walk you (and the various other posters who moronically fail to understand why bidding on your own auctions is dishonest) through the not-so-subtle concept of the auction:
When people are going to buy something, they know how much they want it, and what they can afford to pay for it. That doesn't necessarily mean they know how much they want to pay for it. The retail way of going about reconciling this problem is "shopping around", finding out how much an item typically costs (should cost), and then trying to pay not much more than that.
With an auction, the implication is that this is---to some extent---done for you: if you win the auction, you should have "automatically" paid a half-reasonable price for the item (ESPECIALLY if other identical items are selling for similar prices). Therefore, you should be able to enter your proxy bid closer to what you can AFFORD to pay, not necessarily what you think should be WILLING to pay (since you might not know, exactly), and be confident that things should probably work out.
When sellers bid on their own items, they are misleading people as to the market value of the items they sell---it's as simple as that. If they were honest, they would set a reserve price, or just start the bidding at the price they're willing to sell for. It is lying because they are misrepresenting the situation. This isn't complicated, right?
No, fear not. Like you, the people up top are much more concerned about correctly counting pennies than votes. Rest assured, your bank account is much more secure than any of your "freedoms" or "rights".
No, reread the post I responded to. This was not his point. If this was his point, I promise, I would not have missed it. To make this point, one has to realize that the original poster's criticism of corporations ("unethical") is ridiculous (read: irrelevant) from within the current framework of corporations and capitalism. Thus, if we are to expect something different, something bigger has to change (society, government, etc.) than just Microsoft. I hope just as much as you do that that change will happen. But if you hold the original posters view as I read it (Microsoft is unethical, why can't they be a "good" corporation like everyone else) you're not going to get there anytime soon.
How about a policy of let's make as much money as we can!
I mean, come on, this is a corporation, and you're complaining about ethics? Perhaps you're suggesting that they would make more money if they didn't have "unethical" policies like this... but that's not at all clear from your post. It is unclear why, in all situations, a blanket policy of honesty would be expected to maximize profits for corporations. (Let me rephrase that: this is obviously not the case.) Microsoft's goal is not to make you like them; it is to make lots of money. So far, they've been very successful at that. Probably their PR department played at least some small role in that. Don't get me wrong, I despise them too, but let's be clear that they're all doing exactly what they're "supposed" to.
In other words, the Democrats, who lost by a narrow margin, did not request the recount. If there'd been any real question about the outcome, they would have done so. So that's not what's at stake.
I'm not sure about this. In this particular case, you may well be right that there was no real question about the outcome---however, I don't think that necessarily follows from the fact that Democrats didn't challenge the votes. Sure, I agree that in cases where the vote counts are very close, the losing major party will often challenge the vote, hoping that a few incidental errors will be corrected in their favor. On the other hand, I think a losing major party will rarely, if ever, launch a concerted challenge over a bigger issue in voting: for example, challenging the idea evoting (as it is now) or broader voting procedures, even if they potentially stand to gain from doing so in that particular election. Both big parties stand to benefit from the "brave new world" of e-voting and Diebold, etc., and I think they realize that. Neither is willing to launch any sort of crusade to destroy it. Only the political outsiders (greens, libs, socialists, whoever) are in the position where the voting establishment will never work for their benefit, and so they are the only ones who really want to challenge it.
seawall, your original proof was actually perfectly fine. It's true that you can't use it to find primes by simply computing p_1*p_2*...*p_n+1, but it's a proof by contradiction, so it doesn't matter: you assume what you're trying to prove is false, and use that fact to reach a contradiction. Along the way, you might prove things that are false (since you're using the incorrect assumption that the statement is false). But when you get the contradiction, it still shows that your original assumption had to be wrong, so in fact the statement WAS true. Ughhh... have I made this more confusing or less?
Anyways, it's like this: let's say you're trying to prove that there's no purple cow on your head that spits out robots which can't exist in the vicinity of purple cows. (Okay, bad example here, but I'm trying;) ) Here's a "proof" that there is no such thing on your head.
If there WAS, it would spit out the aforementioned robots. But then the robots would exist in the vicinity of the cow, contradiction. Therefore, there can be no such cow on your head.
Now apart from being silly and sort of imprecise, this kind of demonstrates the point: here too, you can't use this proof to "find" robots that can't live in the vicinity of purple cows. But the proof is still valid, such cows can't exist, because from there existence you can derive a contradiction. Similarly, a largest prime cannot exist, because from its existence you can derive a contradiction.
The definition of prime is usually: n is prime if n has exactly two positive divisors You can make n be a positive integer, or allow negative integers as well. Let's require it to be positive. Anyways, by this definition (by far the most common one) you conclude that x=p_1*...*p_n+1 is prime, if you assume that p_1,...,p_n are the only primes (since if x had any positive divisors other than 1 and itself, one of the primes would have to divide it, which it can't).
I'm not trying to get all high and mighty! On the contrary, my post was pointing out that the original poster's proof was absolutely correct, even though your response ridiculed it (subject: "NO NO NO" and first line: "NO, NO, and even more NO"). My comment about the moderation system was not a slight at you, but at the fact that the original post was modded lower than your responses.
In any case, there is no difference between assuming there is a finite list of primes and proving it can't be complete and assuming that there is a greatest prime p_n and so all the primes can be named p_1,p_2...,p_n.
The poster is not wrong, his proof is correct. It is a proof by contradiction. He ASSUMES (for the sake of trying to find a contradiction), that there are finitely many primes P(1),..., P(n). If there WERE only those finitely many primes, than the number P(1)*...*P(n)+1 WOULD be prime (because it's not divisible by any of them), which WOULD be a contradiction. Get it? Of course it's true that 2*3*5*7*11*13+1 may not be prime. But the poster didn't prove that P(1)*...*P(n)+1 is ALWAYS prime, he proved it was prime IF those are the only primes, which is enough to get a contradiction.
Anyways, talking about what Euclid did is kind of irrelevant here (except from a historical perspective, of course). What he said wouldn't hold up in most math classes these days. Rather than doing an actual general proof, he says, "assume there are only 3 primes p,q,r. Then p*q*r+1 would also be prime, contradiction!" or something like that. Proof conventions have changed somewhat since then;)
Anyways, I guess this shows us that Slashdot's moderation system is no substitute for peer review in mathematics, even for really basic problems... surprise!
One of the main points of the LA times article was not centered on choosing what companies to invest in, but in using ones' status as shareholder to influence the practices of the companies they've invested in. With such immense wealth being administered by a NGO, one might consider this (as the article did) to be a unique opportunity to affect some of the business practices discussed in the article. None of the line-towing comments like yours seem to be authored by people who actually read the LATimes article.
The MPAA still holds the copyright on the sequence of bytes it did upload... but it also gave permission to copy by the act of uploading it! (This is necessarily the case, because otherwise I could just as easily say that you were infringing my copyright by reading this post.)
You say "this is necessarily the case, because otherwise yada yada", as if the effects of copyright law can be assumed to be consistent with reason. You may be right about the law---I don't know in this case---but certainly, your argument that "the alternative is ridiculous!" is especially ill-suited to determining the how copyright law applies here. Arguments of this kind only work when the object being examined conforms in a very strong way to our intuitive notions of what makes sense. This is not the case, I would argue, with intellectual property law.
That's why all name brand PCs prominently repeat their own version of the cult-like phrase 'Dell recommends Windows XP Professional,' as if there were a choice in the matter and they thought it would be helpful to provide some guidance...
Your confused here. There is a choice; these "cult-like phrases" a recommending more expensive versions of windows (XP professional) over less expensive alternatives (XP home). I think it's interesting that this recommendation is apparently also tied up in the PC manufacturers' contracts somehow.
This hope is still affected by the same things that affect accuracy. If an article in Wikipedia is only edited and maintained by a few interested parties (or the U.S. Congress) then it will be no less necessarily representative of societies views than it will necessarily true.
In fact, Wikipedia's champions can hope for nothing more than being representative of societies views. How is wikipedia going to tease out the truth of something that we don't know the answer too/can't agree upon? It won't, no more so than Britannica will.
Why is Wikipedia a better anthropological resource than Britannica? Because it's more comprehensive? From an anthropological point of view, it seems that advantage may well be outweighed by the uncertainties in the processes underlying it's development (even though this doesn't outweigh the fact that it's comprehensive if what your looking for is a good quick first reference).
Of course, it could be very useful if what you're trying to understand is "how people collectively write encyclopedias."
"Ringach received a grant to kill 30 macaque monkeys for vision experiments. Each monkey is first paralyzed, then used for a single session that lasts up to 120 hours, and finally killed."
He's studying the visual systems of the monkeys. (Google him and you'll find his webpage with publications).
Now, I think most people (the animal rights extremists in question notwithstanding) would agree there must be certain cases when primate experimentation is justified. (For lifesaving vaccines for AIDS, for example). But probably most people would also agree that there are some limits to what people should be able to torture primates for. But now, practically, there aren't, as I understand it. So, the fact that this person was allowed to do these experiments on monkeys is no indication whatsoever that his research was worthy of the subjecting the monkeys to whatever pain, suffering, or premature death they were going to incur.
In fact, it is difficult for me to believe, given the state of neuroscience, that these experiments on monkeys were so much more valuable than would have been experiments on say, mice, or salamanders, or what-have-you. And sad will be the day when we will give one person the boundless moral leeway because he is a "scientist", and can do no wrong. Scientists have our fair share of an ugly past, and it is not inherently wrong to question scientists actions.
That said, the molotov cocktail is not the way to go, in my opinion. On the other hand, the law discussed at the end of TFA sounds downright facist, scary, and open to boundless abuse in enforcement.
I think maybe you didn't understand my post. An optical digital out is on the back of many stereos these days. (There is one coming out of my soundcard.) It can be sent to some digital receivers instead of using standard coax cables for better quality sound. However, since the optical output is digital, it can be used with a recording device to make a perfect copy of the digital original. This is existing technology. Question: what happens to this technology? Do you oulaw it? I have trouble finding a straightforward answer to this in your post. If you don't outlaw it, I defeat your DRM proposals.
So... you're in favor of outlawing music players with an optical line out? This is something which has a useful purpose (highest quality digital audio to a receiver), and is becoming universal in higher-end audi equipment. But, of course, it makes DRM largely irrelevant....
Any DRM scheme is going to involve LAWS that, to an ordinary person (I include my self), seem rediculous.
Of course, they wouldn't be the first laws for which that is true...
As people have pointed out on Slashdot before, looking to telephone polls to gauge peoples fears about privacy is ludicrous (since those most concerned may very well be those least likely to participate in the poll).
No, no... you guys are all missing the point. This was a strategic move on the part of the antivirus industry as a whole. Look for "meta-antivirus" software packages---in home, small business, and enterprise versions---on your CompUSA shelves soon. One "level" of protection just isn't (profitable) enough!
Slashdot Mirror
There's also the issue of privacy. Both methods of signing up make it difficult to set up an "anonymous" gmail account.
It depends on what you mean by "bidding on ones own items will always be possible". If you mean that it will always be easy for ebay powersellers and other big product movers to systematically secretly bid on their own products without getting caught, then this is only true because ebay will allow it. This should be preventable.
It is not dishonest "much like bluffing at poker is dishonest". In poker, you are supposed to bluff. It is part of the game. Everybody else in the game expects you to try to bluff. In auctions, you are not supposed to bid on your own auctions. The typical ebay user would feel cheated if they paid their full proxy bid (say $10) rather than significantly less than that (say the next lower real bid was $5) simply because the seller bid up their own auction.
Winners Curse is interesting, but irrelevant here. Bidding with winners curse in mind, one can mitigate the effects and still expect to pay close to the value of the item---IF the seller doesn't bid on his own auction. If he does, all best are obviously off. (If you need an example; say that the seller always bids his own auctions up somewhere near $10 above their value. Then on average, you will spend more than $10 too much every time you (randomly) incorrectly estimate the value of the item.) With winners curse in mind, a bidder can bid to approach market value in purchases. With sellers bidding on their own auctions, this is no longer possible in the same sense.
Auctions are complicated, interesting things.
That bidding on own auctions should be condemned and prevented where possible is obvious and not really complicated at all; this is a basic part of the what constitutes an auction. (Go back and read about winners' curse, the whole analysis would be different without these basic assumptions about auctions.)
Man, am I sick of this sentiment. This is the classic slashdot response to anything. Headline: here is some information about issue "x". slashdot response: "Issue x isn't an issue at all, really the problems are that most people other than myself are morons." Ugh...
Anyways, let me hold your hand and walk you (and the various other posters who moronically fail to understand why bidding on your own auctions is dishonest) through the not-so-subtle concept of the auction:
When people are going to buy something, they know how much they want it, and what they can afford to pay for it. That doesn't necessarily mean they know how much they want to pay for it. The retail way of going about reconciling this problem is "shopping around", finding out how much an item typically costs (should cost), and then trying to pay not much more than that.
With an auction, the implication is that this is---to some extent---done for you: if you win the auction, you should have "automatically" paid a half-reasonable price for the item (ESPECIALLY if other identical items are selling for similar prices). Therefore, you should be able to enter your proxy bid closer to what you can AFFORD to pay, not necessarily what you think should be WILLING to pay (since you might not know, exactly), and be confident that things should probably work out.
When sellers bid on their own items, they are misleading people as to the market value of the items they sell---it's as simple as that. If they were honest, they would set a reserve price, or just start the bidding at the price they're willing to sell for. It is lying because they are misrepresenting the situation. This isn't complicated, right?
No, fear not. Like you, the people up top are much more concerned about correctly counting pennies than votes. Rest assured, your bank account is much more secure than any of your "freedoms" or "rights".
No, reread the post I responded to. This was not his point. If this was his point, I promise, I would not have missed it. To make this point, one has to realize that the original poster's criticism of corporations ("unethical") is ridiculous (read: irrelevant) from within the current framework of corporations and capitalism. Thus, if we are to expect something different, something bigger has to change (society, government, etc.) than just Microsoft. I hope just as much as you do that that change will happen. But if you hold the original posters view as I read it (Microsoft is unethical, why can't they be a "good" corporation like everyone else) you're not going to get there anytime soon.
A policy of honesty?
How about a policy of let's make as much money as we can!
I mean, come on, this is a corporation, and you're complaining about ethics? Perhaps you're suggesting that they would make more money if they didn't have "unethical" policies like this... but that's not at all clear from your post. It is unclear why, in all situations, a blanket policy of honesty would be expected to maximize profits for corporations. (Let me rephrase that: this is obviously not the case.) Microsoft's goal is not to make you like them; it is to make lots of money. So far, they've been very successful at that. Probably their PR department played at least some small role in that. Don't get me wrong, I despise them too, but let's be clear that they're all doing exactly what they're "supposed" to.
seawall, your original proof was actually perfectly fine. It's true that you can't use it to find primes by simply computing p_1*p_2*...*p_n+1, but it's a proof by contradiction, so it doesn't matter: you assume what you're trying to prove is false, and use that fact to reach a contradiction. Along the way, you might prove things that are false (since you're using the incorrect assumption that the statement is false). But when you get the contradiction, it still shows that your original assumption had to be wrong, so in fact the statement WAS true. Ughhh... have I made this more confusing or less? Anyways, it's like this: let's say you're trying to prove that there's no purple cow on your head that spits out robots which can't exist in the vicinity of purple cows. (Okay, bad example here, but I'm trying ;) ) Here's a "proof" that there is no such thing on your head.
If there WAS, it would spit out the aforementioned robots. But then the robots would exist in the vicinity of the cow, contradiction. Therefore, there can be no such cow on your head.
Now apart from being silly and sort of imprecise, this kind of demonstrates the point: here too, you can't use this proof to "find" robots that can't live in the vicinity of purple cows. But the proof is still valid, such cows can't exist, because from there existence you can derive a contradiction. Similarly, a largest prime cannot exist, because from its existence you can derive a contradiction.
The definition of prime is usually: n is prime if n has exactly two positive divisors You can make n be a positive integer, or allow negative integers as well. Let's require it to be positive. Anyways, by this definition (by far the most common one) you conclude that x=p_1*...*p_n+1 is prime, if you assume that p_1,...,p_n are the only primes (since if x had any positive divisors other than 1 and itself, one of the primes would have to divide it, which it can't).
I'm not trying to get all high and mighty! On the contrary, my post was pointing out that the original poster's proof was absolutely correct, even though your response ridiculed it (subject: "NO NO NO" and first line: "NO, NO, and even more NO"). My comment about the moderation system was not a slight at you, but at the fact that the original post was modded lower than your responses.
In any case, there is no difference between assuming there is a finite list of primes and proving it can't be complete and assuming that there is a greatest prime p_n and so all the primes can be named p_1,p_2...,p_n.
I don't know about you, but I'll be making sure my computer votes to give my credit ;)
The poster is not wrong, his proof is correct. It is a proof by contradiction. He ASSUMES (for the sake of trying to find a contradiction), that there are finitely many primes P(1), ..., P(n). If there WERE only those finitely many primes, than the number P(1)*...*P(n)+1 WOULD be prime (because it's not divisible by any of them), which WOULD be a contradiction. Get it? Of course it's true that 2*3*5*7*11*13+1 may not be prime. But the poster didn't prove that P(1)*...*P(n)+1 is ALWAYS prime, he proved it was prime IF those are the only primes, which is enough to get a contradiction.
;)
Anyways, talking about what Euclid did is kind of irrelevant here (except from a historical perspective, of course). What he said wouldn't hold up in most math classes these days. Rather than doing an actual general proof, he says, "assume there are only 3 primes p,q,r. Then p*q*r+1 would also be prime, contradiction!" or something like that. Proof conventions have changed somewhat since then
Anyways, I guess this shows us that Slashdot's moderation system is no substitute for peer review in mathematics, even for really basic problems... surprise!
One of the main points of the LA times article was not centered on choosing what companies to invest in, but in using ones' status as shareholder to influence the practices of the companies they've invested in. With such immense wealth being administered by a NGO, one might consider this (as the article did) to be a unique opportunity to affect some of the business practices discussed in the article. None of the line-towing comments like yours seem to be authored by people who actually read the LATimes article.
What about hashcash support?
O'Reilly's not a republican... he's an independent. Just ask him!
This hope is still affected by the same things that affect accuracy. If an article in Wikipedia is only edited and maintained by a few interested parties (or the U.S. Congress) then it will be no less necessarily representative of societies views than it will necessarily true.
In fact, Wikipedia's champions can hope for nothing more than being representative of societies views. How is wikipedia going to tease out the truth of something that we don't know the answer too/can't agree upon? It won't, no more so than Britannica will.
Why is Wikipedia a better anthropological resource than Britannica? Because it's more comprehensive? From an anthropological point of view, it seems that advantage may well be outweighed by the uncertainties in the processes underlying it's development (even though this doesn't outweigh the fact that it's comprehensive if what your looking for is a good quick first reference).
Of course, it could be very useful if what you're trying to understand is "how people collectively write encyclopedias."
According to the "Primate Freedom Project":
"Ringach received a grant to kill 30 macaque monkeys for vision experiments. Each monkey is first paralyzed, then used for a single session that lasts up to 120 hours, and finally killed."
He's studying the visual systems of the monkeys. (Google him and you'll find his webpage with publications).
Now, I think most people (the animal rights extremists in question notwithstanding) would agree there must be certain cases when primate experimentation is justified. (For lifesaving vaccines for AIDS, for example). But probably most people would also agree that there are some limits to what people should be able to torture primates for. But now, practically, there aren't, as I understand it. So, the fact that this person was allowed to do these experiments on monkeys is no indication whatsoever that his research was worthy of the subjecting the monkeys to whatever pain, suffering, or premature death they were going to incur.
In fact, it is difficult for me to believe, given the state of neuroscience, that these experiments on monkeys were so much more valuable than would have been experiments on say, mice, or salamanders, or what-have-you. And sad will be the day when we will give one person the boundless moral leeway because he is a "scientist", and can do no wrong. Scientists have our fair share of an ugly past, and it is not inherently wrong to question scientists actions.
That said, the molotov cocktail is not the way to go, in my opinion. On the other hand, the law discussed at the end of TFA sounds downright facist, scary, and open to boundless abuse in enforcement.
Does Score: 2, Troll mean she's good at trolling or bad at trolling?
I think maybe you didn't understand my post. An optical digital out is on the back of many stereos these days. (There is one coming out of my soundcard.) It can be sent to some digital receivers instead of using standard coax cables for better quality sound. However, since the optical output is digital, it can be used with a recording device to make a perfect copy of the digital original. This is existing technology. Question: what happens to this technology? Do you oulaw it? I have trouble finding a straightforward answer to this in your post. If you don't outlaw it, I defeat your DRM proposals.
So...
you're in favor of outlawing music players with an optical line out? This is something which has a useful purpose (highest quality digital audio to a receiver), and is becoming universal in higher-end audi equipment. But, of course, it makes DRM largely irrelevant....
Any DRM scheme is going to involve LAWS that, to an ordinary person (I include my self), seem rediculous.
Of course, they wouldn't be the first laws for which that is true...
As people have pointed out on Slashdot before, looking to telephone polls to gauge peoples fears about privacy is ludicrous (since those most concerned may very well be those least likely to participate in the poll).
No, no... you guys are all missing the point. This was a strategic move on the part of the antivirus industry as a whole. Look for "meta-antivirus" software packages---in home, small business, and enterprise versions---on your CompUSA shelves soon. One "level" of protection just isn't (profitable) enough!
This is why we should all use Tor. The more people that use it (and setup their node as a server) the faster it gets.
ahh!!! should have read: businesses with 1-49 employees account for just 35% of employment.