Nobody in their right mind would trust a license that can be terminated arbitrarily. One day you could be legal, and the next not, without your doing anything wrong. That's why none of the Open Source licenses are allowed to do that.
A lincensor who grants a gratuitous licens (not just the CC, but the GPL and other OSS licenses) can do that (at least in US law) whether or not the license terms say they won't or can't. At most, such a representation may have a bearing on whether the ability of the licensor to recover for copyright violation from a former licensee who detrimentally relied on the promise not to revoke are limited by the doctrine of estoppel.
If you want a license that really can't be revoked, you ought to get a license contract rather than relying on a gratuitous license.
The idea that you can un-creative commons something is... not right.
At least in US law, a license that is not supported by payment or other consideration (i.e., one that is not a contract) is revocable at will by the person issuing the license, whether or not the license purports to be irrevocable (you could probably make an argument that a sublicense required to be irrevocable as a condition of the original license is irrevocable by the sublicensor, but still subject to revocation by the original licensor.)
Courts may apply the doctrine of estoppel to prevent what they see as substantial injustice from such a revocation where the licensee has reasonably and detrimentally relied on the licensors representation that the license would not be revoked.
This isn't something special to the CC family of licenses, either; it applies to all gratuitous licenses, including (e.g.) the GPL family of licenses.
I personally would being with C and then jump to Java.
Personally, I think I'd start with Scheme, then C, then Smalltalk, then Java and then other things (I'd think it would be good to also include some languages that are more declarative or that bring concurrency to the fore, maybe something like Prolog for the former, Erlang for the latter, or Oz for either or both.) Scheme I think is a better vehicle for teaching design approach and programming process, and is rather amenable to a restricted-pedagogical-subset approach (as exemplified in How to Design Programs), then C gets you down to the nitty-gritty implementation details. It works as a kind of distint theses->synthesis approach (a generalization of thesis->antithesis->synthesis to more than two basic models.)
There are some good things to be said for C -> Scheme -> Smalltalk -> Java, too, but I haven't seen a first-course book or course outline that I think is as good as SICP or HtDP that is C-centered (which may well just be my limited exposure, its not like I've seen a really wide-selection of first-course books/outlines), so I lean toward doing Scheme first. It might work well to C third (Scheme -> Smalltalk -> C) and immediately before Java, as well.
I would suggest being taught a programming language such as D [digitalmars.com], at least in addition.
IMO, a pedagogical language should be a well-understood language in a particular arena. Sure, Digital Mars' D combines different aspects of C/C++/Java, but so what?
Sooner or later, languages are going to evolve, and surely it's only a matter of time before something D-like is going to be used anyway.
Languages are constantly evolving, but it doesn't seem like Digital Mars' D is in the direction that any of the major strands are evolving in. New languages focussing on functional, concurrent, and distributed programming, and incorporation of more functional features and new mechanisms for concurrency and distribution into existing popular languages seem more the current direction than remixing C/C++/Java features. C and Java have fairly secure and distinct niches. Digital Mars' D is, though not a bad language, something of a solution in search of a problem.
The problem is that it's an incredibly incestuous relationship.
Its a not uncommon for active entrepreneurs to have multiple for-profit and not-for-profit endeavors like this. I've yet to see a "problem" identified.
And the question arises as to just how much of the resources of the NON PROFIT Wikipedia are now being used for the FOR PROFIT Wikia CORPORATION.
The nonprofit is the Wikimedia Foundation, and its audited 2006 financial statement is here. See particularly Note E:
Note E - Related Party Transactions
The Organization receives donated office space from a related entity, Wikia, Inc., a for-profit company founded by the same founder as Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Two current members and one former member of the Organization's board of directors also serve as employees, officers, or directors of Wikia, Inc.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that can't have proofs or in depth reference materials, because more detail is out of scope for really no reason.
Wikipedia can (and does) have proofs (e.g., in the article on Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.) Usually, in-depth reference is out-of-scope, and appropriate for other Wikimedia projects which may be linked from Wikipedia articles, like Wikibooks (if it is contributor-developed) or Wikisource (for source texts that can be reproduced without copyright problems.)
But, they can somehow try and turn wiki into another google or a facebook.
Wikia is not the same thing as Wikipedia, even though Jimmy Wales is centrally involved in both. Wikia competing with Google or Facebook is not Wikipedia (or even Wikimedia) doing so.
Experts are rarely held to account for wrong predictions, and rarely make the kind of quantifiable, objectively observable predictions that go into futures markets.
Maybe in some fields. In the specific case of political futures, experts frequently make exactly the kind of quantifiable, objectively falsfiable predictions that futures markets are held out as a substitute for expert prediction in. And they are frequently mocked and ridiculed after the fact for failure (moreso recently, as the increasing access to easily-searchable information has made it easier to go back and check on predictions after the fact.)
And they do so without the ability to place a firm limit on downside risk that is provided by an anonymous investment market.
Yes, because no one's tried to run a campaign focused that way.
without transparency, how do you know? Or are you claiming just that no candidate has themselves pointed overtly do the results of such markets? The results of political futures markets have been had some influence on campaign coverage in at least the last two Presidential campaign cycles. It would be irrational to assume that, at the very least, the second of those -- and the present campaign -- have not been the focus of deliberate intervention to drive results and gain positive coverage for preferred candidates.
If and when it happens, traders will enter the market to the point where it's not longer a "drop in the bucket".
Perhaps, if and when and acknowledged reliance on such manipulation occurs that will happen; if so, the cost effectiveness of trying to manipulate political perceptions (and thus political outcomes) by gaming such markets would, of course, decline (but not necessarily be eliminated.)
OTOH, you present no reason to believe that is true: if political outcomes were, like sunspots, immune to influence from public perceptions, then clearly trying to manipulate political "futures markets" this way would be subject to drawing profit-takers in to clean up as you describe, which would limit the utility of such manipulation. But since the public perception of the probability of a candidate's success has an positive impact on the actual probability of that candidate's success, there isn't the same kind of "clean-up" draw present. Sure, the more they are reported, the more activists willing to risk resources to make the political outcomes they desire more likely will be drawn to the markets, and the more they will simply be dominated by whichever faction has the most money tied up in producing outcomes (and the most to gain by avoiding—or the most left over after fully utilizing—more transparent modes of participation, like legal campaign donations.)
For example, the monetary value (in my net worth) of my donation to the Hillary campaign does not vary based on future events
Assuming, unlike most contributors, you aren't donating based in at least some part on your perceived economic self-interest in either the short- or long-term, this is correct, this might be true of "monetary value", but there are two problems with that:
First, most contributors do contribute based, to some degree, on perceived economic self-interest.
Second, the limitation to "monetary value" is mostly meaningless; "monetary value" is meaningful only as a proxy for utility, and the utility value of your donation is clearly greatest where your preferred candidate wins, and least where they fail with little (or counterproductive) impact, and somewhere in between where they lose but have enough positive influence that the winning candidate is compelled to adopt some of their platform.
This is pretty much the same payoff condition as with a "bet" in a "futures market", except that a bet takes what is a continuous return function and makes it into a crisp binary cutoff.
Obviously, not everyone's going to be honest. The point is, having your assets depend on whether your statement is true increases the returns to honesty significantly.
So what? Notional experts' assets—that is, their reputation and ability, therefore, to make money as predictors of future outcomes—already depend on the success of their predictions. And—unlike with prediction markets—there is no easy way to limit exposure. So, as far as individuals making predictions go, because they are essentially anonymous and exposure is limited, prediction markets reduce the marginal "return to honesty" (really, the returns in either case are to accuracy, not honesty.)
Yes, people can bet heavily on a candidate without regard for real truth. However, there is more than one prediction market, and to really influence revealed odds, they have to bet in all of them, or else other traders will "Dutch book" them until they can't invest anymore.
The total amount invested in all political futures markets that interested parties might wish to invest in is a drop in the bucket in the world of political expenditures, so that's not wouldn't be a big challenge to the people who would be interested in doing so. But that's not true, in any case. Sure, other traders could "Dutch book" and derive a sure profit in the circumstances you suggest, but it won't drive the party trying to manipulate the market out of the market unless they are overexposed initially. It will, over time, likely shift perceptions of which political futures markets are seen as reliable, but then that also shifts where the traders interested in manipulating perceptions are working. Unless you've got transparency as to who is putting money into the market, this kind of manipulation is always going to be not merely possible but trivial in political futures markets, or any similar prediction market where the events being "predicted" are subject to influence by the results in the "futures market" itself, or where people with lots of money to throw at influencing perceptions have a big financial stake in the perceptions regardless of the actual results.
Clearly, there are "prediction" markets where this particular risk isn't as present as it is in political futures.
The comparison to honesty in political donations is about the worst analogy I can imagine.
It isn't an "analogy" at all. "Investments" in political futures markets designed to drive perceptions are a form of political advertisement (without the kind of transparency requirements imposed on many actual political advertisements), not something analogous to political advertisements.
Prediction markets force people to be honest -- there's real money at stake, and a cost to your arrogance.
They don't "force people to be honest". Prediction markets — if they are positioned to influence the events they are used to "predict", like political futures markets are — are simply a form of advertising (or, viewed another way, campaign donations). Sure, they cost real money, so does buying TV ads. But, (1) they aren't regulated, the way political advertising and donations are, and (2) they are also negative cost if they succeed, unlike regular ads or campaign donations.
People expend real money on campaign donations and political advertising all the time without any concern for "honesty". To think that political futures markets would somehow, by using "real money", force people to be honest is absurd. Any system where action can influence the perception of political reality will be gamed by those interested in influencing that perception—especially since the perception influences the reality here—and if you make it so that the limiting factor on the degree of influence is the ability to spend money then, like most aspects of the political system, the results will be skewed by the interests of those most able to burn money to acheive their political ends.
I'm curious how that view is applied to ID christianity by normal (as in, non stupid, non-lying) christians - should it be their responsbility to speak out against ID as well?
A sizable fraction of the people speaking out against ID are those kinds of Christians; OTOH, the media likes to play it as "Christians v. Atheistic science", and isn't interested in letting facts get in the way of a compelling narrative.
The ID vs. "evolution" debate is a result of groupthink among scientists.
Only to the extent that acceptance of the scientific method as a useful way of investigating the universe and the definition of what should be considered "science" is considered "groupthink".
Evolution was banned because it opposed religion:
No, it wasn't, though it is amusing to imagine attempts to impose and enforce such a ban.
The teaching of evolution may have been banned in some places, but that's not the same thing as evolution being banned.
therefore, evolution must be right,
Wrong. To the extent that current evolutionary theory is taken as "right" by scientists (laypeople may be different) it is so taken on the basis of the fact that it makes predictions of results that are confirmed in testing, and is not refuted by testing.
and any argument that opposes it and is in alignment with religion must be wrong.
Plenty of "arguments" (hypotheses, actually) which have contradicted the status quo of evolutionary theory have been accepted and displaced the existing models because they were testable scientific hypothesis that explained observations that the pre-existing theory did not and survived rigorous testing.
The only fundamental difference between the two -- that life was created by random chance, instead of via supernatural intervention -- is a philosophical point, not a scientific one.
This is not only not the only fundamental difference between ID and evolution, its not even a difference between ID and evolution since the initial origin of life (while tangentially related to evolutionary theory and sometimes interesting to the same scientists) isn't even part of evolutionary theory. Its a distinct question. One can accept every last bit of evolutionary theory and believe that the universe itself and even the first life were initially created by direct supernatural intervention. (Of course, neither of those beliefs are testable scientific hypotheses, so scientists tend not to embrace them as science whether they believe them personally or not. But they aren't conflicts between evolution and ID.)
The conflict between evolution and ID is that ID simply asserts that some things are too complex to have evolved "by chance" (though evolution is mostly a chaotic, not random, process, though some inputs may be random -- whether they actually are is more a question for physics than for evolutionary theory.) The main argument for this is the so-called "irreducible complexity" argument, which is refuted by facts showing intermediate forms (with different utilities) in some things that IDers insist are irreducibly complex, and by various mathematical models showing how "irreducibly complex" forms can, in fact, evolve by chance given the right environmental tolerances.
If the scientific reply were simply "life evolves", instead of "ALL LIFE CAME FROM SOUP!", it wouldn't be an argument.
No, it wouldn't, because IDers will still argue that direct intervention in specific species produces the traits observed, and evolutionists would still correctly point out that (1) this is a speculation with no testable consequences and therefore not scientific, and (2) evolution explains the diversity of features found, including the ones ID suggests are "irreducibly complex". The original origin of life is not the sole point of disagreement between ID and science, and is not a point of disagreement between ID and evolution, since it is outside thes cope of evolution.
I say that the specific positions of the DI are necessarily synonymous with Christianity because the entire reason for their proclamations are to push their Christianity.
This does not follow. It is either a misunderstanding of what the word "synonymous" means (perhaps taking it to mean something weaker like "compatible"), or its an example of the fallacy of composition; the specific positions of the Discovery Institute may be synonymous with a particular kind of Christianity (to wit, that kind embraced by the Discovery Institute), but even if that is so, that does not make it synonymous with Christianity.
For instance "Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon" is synonymous with "Ubuntu 7.10", which is a kind of "Linux distribution". But if someone advertises a PC with "Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon" pre-installed, and delivers it with some other Linux distribution (say, "Slackware 1.0") with the argument "Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon" is synonymous with "Linux distribution", well, that won't fly.
This is different from the ID crowd, who apparently feel that 'God did it' means you actively refuse to even think about the rules.
Don't be stupid, plenty of scientists believe in God, me being one of them - though of course I'm primarily a Computer Scientist, but I find physics highly interesting. My uncle has a PhD in fluid dynamics and he's a Christian, and I know plenty of other Christians who defy your personal stereotype.
The above poster made no "stereotype" of "Christians". He made a specific criticism of the "ID crowd", which is not the same thing as "Christians". Try reading before knee-jerking.
Further, if the universe was a simulation there would be no random numbers, only pseudo-random numbers.
Assuming the simulation is running in a universe where sources of real physical randomness (e.g., something like what quantum mechanics suggest goes on in our universe) is available, then all the computer running the simulation needs to do is have an input device fed by such a physical source of randomness that produces random bits frequently enough to supply the need for randomness in the simulated universe, and, voila, the simulated universe can incorporated real "physical" randomness, not just pseudo-randomness.
In most science, the evidence comes FIRST. Then you try to explain it, then make predictions based on that explanation.
No, it doesn't.
Want comes first are observations which demand an explanation. Then you try to explain it (with a hypothesis), than you develope tests that would falsify the hypothesis, than you try those tests, and if they fail to falsify the hypothesis, the results of the tests are the evidence for the utility of (what is now) the theory.
The observations which suggest the hypothesis are emphatically not evidence for the hypothesis, in scientific terms. Evidence for the utility of a hypothesis comes from its demonstrated predictive power, not from the observations it was fitted to initially.
The problem with this is that computers, computability, Turing, and the entire field of theoretical computer science are fabrications made possible by the rules of the simulation we are running inside of.
No, computability and most results in theoretical computer science have nothing to do with physical laws and are the same in any universe.
How they apply to practical computation might vary under different physical laws (for instance, in a universe with readily available physical entities that serve the function of "oracles" in, e.g., some of the purely-theoretical works of Turing, practical computation could be vastly different, but the underlying abstract theory wouldn't, just what parts of that theory were practically useful.)
Chris Howard has an interesting commentary at Apple Matters on recent trends in OS market share that says that while OS X has seen continual growth, from 4.21% in Jan 2006 to 7.31% in December 2007 at the same time, Linux's percentage has risen from only 0.29% to 0.63%. The reasons? 'Apple has Microsoft Office, Linux doesn't; Apple has Adobe Creative Suite, Linux doesn't; Apple has easily accessed and easy to use service and support, Linux doesn't; Apple is driven by someone who has some understanding of end-user needs, Linux is not,' says Howard.
So all those advantages explain why, in the same two years, Apple's share of the market increased by about three quarters while Linux's more than doubled?
I believe it is testable. All computers ultimately reduce to the Turing Machine. This includes neural networks and at least some classes of quantum computer. (Heresy, I know. Terrible. Now go find a medium-rare steak to burn me on.) However, not all problems reduce to computable problems. If there is a non-computable system that exists in the real world, then it cannot be the product of a simulation, no matter how advanced the computer is.
How do you distinguish a deterministic system governed by a non-computable function without first finding a practical technique for solving non-computable problems?
OTOH, if any system for solving non-computable problems can exist within our universe/simulation, we can incorporate that system into any simulation we design, and thus such a simulation can feature systems which are "non-computable" in the Turing sense; and if a simulation in our universe can do so if our universe is not a simulation, a simulation that governs our universe could do so, as well.
Do such problems exist? Well, chaos theory is full of them. You cannot have a system that is truly chaotic and computable at the same time - the two are mutually exclusive.
No, they aren't. Chaos and Turing computability are not exclusive. Though, of course, a large chaotic system will be hard to compute in terms of practicality. But Turing computability isn't about pragmatics.
No, that's the whole point. No computer can simulate itself completely (it would have to be able to simulate itself, and simulate inself simulating itself, etc.)
IIRC, its pretty fundamental to quantum computing that any quantum computer can simulate any other quantum computer (or process) of equal or lesser complexity, including itself.
I think this is good news for our ability to distinguish reality from simulation: it should be possible to make simulation crash itself! (but would we want to, is the real question)
Since we would not be able to reliably discern the fact that the simulation had or had not crashed itself (we can't recognize anything if it crashes and is not restored, and if it crashes, the governing software debugged, and the simulation restored, we can't distinguish that from failing to crash.)
A policeman might be part of the big govermental boogeyman, but they're also an individual, with an individual's rights.
Yes, and if the tape is used against them personally, rather than against the government when it attempts to prosecute another person, most people who favor unlimited surveillance by the public targetting the government would be happy to see the police officer have the protections available to any member of the public.
Provided the jury can tell nothing is being taken out of context, why can evidence like that be so easily dismissed?
Um, the "Provided..." part is impossible to meet, to start with: you never can tell from the tape itself what is excluded that might change the context (especially if it is an audio tape.) And the reason the evidence can be dismissed is the same reason illegally obtained evidence used by the government is dismissed in criminal trials: the rule exists because without that sanction, there will be a strong incentive to engage in behavior which has been deemed undesirable (the surreptitious recording of private conversations, in this case.)
That's not to state that I unconditionally agree that the behavior is undesirable or that excluding the evidence is always the right way to discourage the behavior, at least when its not an overstep by the government.
His take is that there is too much push for Rails, without understanding Ruby, and that seems reckless.
Its reckless, but its also the way of the world. There is always a big push for whatever the new fad technology, and always a big part of that is people who don't have the inclination to learn much about the technological underpinnings, for one reason or another.
Eventually, it shakes out, either the technology fails or it matures and those who sufficiently understand the underpinnings are most able to productively use it, and the market largely sorts things out. I don't think the basic trend is ever going to change, though.
Prior to this, lighttpd and fastcgi had been favored. With that guy's attitude, I suspect that Mongrel is quickly going to fall out of favor. Hell, with that outburst, I think people should be rightly concerned about using and updating Mongrel as a matter of due diligence.
Mongrel works, apparently, quite well, and is rather popular, and is open source. If Zed stops maintaining it or is viewed as unreliable, presumably (assuming that the source isn't impenetrable and unmaintainable by a third-party) someone else will take it over/fork it, and it will continue to be used.
Isn't that a major point of OSS? That if the original vendor/maintainer drops off the face of the earth or abandons the project, all the existing users aren't SOL for maintenance?
Slashdot Mirror
A lincensor who grants a gratuitous licens (not just the CC, but the GPL and other OSS licenses) can do that (at least in US law) whether or not the license terms say they won't or can't. At most, such a representation may have a bearing on whether the ability of the licensor to recover for copyright violation from a former licensee who detrimentally relied on the promise not to revoke are limited by the doctrine of estoppel.
If you want a license that really can't be revoked, you ought to get a license contract rather than relying on a gratuitous license.
At least in US law, a license that is not supported by payment or other consideration (i.e., one that is not a contract) is revocable at will by the person issuing the license, whether or not the license purports to be irrevocable (you could probably make an argument that a sublicense required to be irrevocable as a condition of the original license is irrevocable by the sublicensor, but still subject to revocation by the original licensor.)
Courts may apply the doctrine of estoppel to prevent what they see as substantial injustice from such a revocation where the licensee has reasonably and detrimentally relied on the licensors representation that the license would not be revoked.
This isn't something special to the CC family of licenses, either; it applies to all gratuitous licenses, including (e.g.) the GPL family of licenses.
Personally, I think I'd start with Scheme, then C, then Smalltalk, then Java and then other things (I'd think it would be good to also include some languages that are more declarative or that bring concurrency to the fore, maybe something like Prolog for the former, Erlang for the latter, or Oz for either or both.) Scheme I think is a better vehicle for teaching design approach and programming process, and is rather amenable to a restricted-pedagogical-subset approach (as exemplified in How to Design Programs), then C gets you down to the nitty-gritty implementation details. It works as a kind of distint theses->synthesis approach (a generalization of thesis->antithesis->synthesis to more than two basic models.)
There are some good things to be said for C -> Scheme -> Smalltalk -> Java, too, but I haven't seen a first-course book or course outline that I think is as good as SICP or HtDP that is C-centered (which may well just be my limited exposure, its not like I've seen a really wide-selection of first-course books/outlines), so I lean toward doing Scheme first. It might work well to C third (Scheme -> Smalltalk -> C) and immediately before Java, as well.
IMO, a pedagogical language should be a well-understood language in a particular arena. Sure, Digital Mars' D combines different aspects of C/C++/Java, but so what?
Languages are constantly evolving, but it doesn't seem like Digital Mars' D is in the direction that any of the major strands are evolving in. New languages focussing on functional, concurrent, and distributed programming, and incorporation of more functional features and new mechanisms for concurrency and distribution into existing popular languages seem more the current direction than remixing C/C++/Java features. C and Java have fairly secure and distinct niches. Digital Mars' D is, though not a bad language, something of a solution in search of a problem.
In fact, Wikia donates resources to the Wikimedia Foundation, as is revealed in the latters audited financial statements.
Its a not uncommon for active entrepreneurs to have multiple for-profit and not-for-profit endeavors like this. I've yet to see a "problem" identified.
The nonprofit is the Wikimedia Foundation, and its audited 2006 financial statement is here. See particularly Note E:
You don't.
Wikipedia can (and does) have proofs (e.g., in the article on Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.) Usually, in-depth reference is out-of-scope, and appropriate for other Wikimedia projects which may be linked from Wikipedia articles, like Wikibooks (if it is contributor-developed) or Wikisource (for source texts that can be reproduced without copyright problems.)
Wikia is not the same thing as Wikipedia, even though Jimmy Wales is centrally involved in both. Wikia competing with Google or Facebook is not Wikipedia (or even Wikimedia) doing so.
Maybe in some fields. In the specific case of political futures, experts frequently make exactly the kind of quantifiable, objectively falsfiable predictions that futures markets are held out as a substitute for expert prediction in. And they are frequently mocked and ridiculed after the fact for failure (moreso recently, as the increasing access to easily-searchable information has made it easier to go back and check on predictions after the fact.)
And they do so without the ability to place a firm limit on downside risk that is provided by an anonymous investment market.
without transparency, how do you know? Or are you claiming just that no candidate has themselves pointed overtly do the results of such markets? The results of political futures markets have been had some influence on campaign coverage in at least the last two Presidential campaign cycles. It would be irrational to assume that, at the very least, the second of those -- and the present campaign -- have not been the focus of deliberate intervention to drive results and gain positive coverage for preferred candidates.
Perhaps, if and when and acknowledged reliance on such manipulation occurs that will happen; if so, the cost effectiveness of trying to manipulate political perceptions (and thus political outcomes) by gaming such markets would, of course, decline (but not necessarily be eliminated.)
OTOH, you present no reason to believe that is true: if political outcomes were, like sunspots, immune to influence from public perceptions, then clearly trying to manipulate political "futures markets" this way would be subject to drawing profit-takers in to clean up as you describe, which would limit the utility of such manipulation. But since the public perception of the probability of a candidate's success has an positive impact on the actual probability of that candidate's success, there isn't the same kind of "clean-up" draw present. Sure, the more they are reported, the more activists willing to risk resources to make the political outcomes they desire more likely will be drawn to the markets, and the more they will simply be dominated by whichever faction has the most money tied up in producing outcomes (and the most to gain by avoiding—or the most left over after fully utilizing—more transparent modes of participation, like legal campaign donations.)
Assuming, unlike most contributors, you aren't donating based in at least some part on your perceived economic self-interest in either the short- or long-term, this is correct, this might be true of "monetary value", but there are two problems with that:
First, most contributors do contribute based, to some degree, on perceived economic self-interest.
Second, the limitation to "monetary value" is mostly meaningless; "monetary value" is meaningful only as a proxy for utility, and the utility value of your donation is clearly greatest where your preferred candidate wins, and least where they fail with little (or counterproductive) impact, and somewhere in between where they lose but have enough positive influence that the winning candidate is compelled to adopt some of their platform.
This is pretty much the same payoff condition as with a "bet" in a "futures market", except that a bet takes what is a continuous return function and makes it into a crisp binary cutoff.
So what? Notional experts' assets—that is, their reputation and ability, therefore, to make money as predictors of future outcomes—already depend on the success of their predictions. And—unlike with prediction markets—there is no easy way to limit exposure. So, as far as individuals making predictions go, because they are essentially anonymous and exposure is limited, prediction markets reduce the marginal "return to honesty" (really, the returns in either case are to accuracy, not honesty.)
The total amount invested in all political futures markets that interested parties might wish to invest in is a drop in the bucket in the world of political expenditures, so that's not wouldn't be a big challenge to the people who would be interested in doing so. But that's not true, in any case. Sure, other traders could "Dutch book" and derive a sure profit in the circumstances you suggest, but it won't drive the party trying to manipulate the market out of the market unless they are overexposed initially. It will, over time, likely shift perceptions of which political futures markets are seen as reliable, but then that also shifts where the traders interested in manipulating perceptions are working. Unless you've got transparency as to who is putting money into the market, this kind of manipulation is always going to be not merely possible but trivial in political futures markets, or any similar prediction market where the events being "predicted" are subject to influence by the results in the "futures market" itself, or where people with lots of money to throw at influencing perceptions have a big financial stake in the perceptions regardless of the actual results.
Clearly, there are "prediction" markets where this particular risk isn't as present as it is in political futures.
It isn't an "analogy" at all. "Investments" in political futures markets designed to drive perceptions are a form of political advertisement (without the kind of transparency requirements imposed on many actual political advertisements), not something analogous to political advertisements.
They don't "force people to be honest". Prediction markets — if they are positioned to influence the events they are used to "predict", like political futures markets are — are simply a form of advertising (or, viewed another way, campaign donations). Sure, they cost real money, so does buying TV ads. But, (1) they aren't regulated, the way political advertising and donations are, and (2) they are also negative cost if they succeed, unlike regular ads or campaign donations.
People expend real money on campaign donations and political advertising all the time without any concern for "honesty". To think that political futures markets would somehow, by using "real money", force people to be honest is absurd. Any system where action can influence the perception of political reality will be gamed by those interested in influencing that perception—especially since the perception influences the reality here—and if you make it so that the limiting factor on the degree of influence is the ability to spend money then, like most aspects of the political system, the results will be skewed by the interests of those most able to burn money to acheive their political ends.
A sizable fraction of the people speaking out against ID are those kinds of Christians; OTOH, the media likes to play it as "Christians v. Atheistic science", and isn't interested in letting facts get in the way of a compelling narrative.
Only to the extent that acceptance of the scientific method as a useful way of investigating the universe and the definition of what should be considered "science" is considered "groupthink".
No, it wasn't, though it is amusing to imagine attempts to impose and enforce such a ban.
The teaching of evolution may have been banned in some places, but that's not the same thing as evolution being banned.
Wrong. To the extent that current evolutionary theory is taken as "right" by scientists (laypeople may be different) it is so taken on the basis of the fact that it makes predictions of results that are confirmed in testing, and is not refuted by testing.
Plenty of "arguments" (hypotheses, actually) which have contradicted the status quo of evolutionary theory have been accepted and displaced the existing models because they were testable scientific hypothesis that explained observations that the pre-existing theory did not and survived rigorous testing.
This is not only not the only fundamental difference between ID and evolution, its not even a difference between ID and evolution since the initial origin of life (while tangentially related to evolutionary theory and sometimes interesting to the same scientists) isn't even part of evolutionary theory. Its a distinct question. One can accept every last bit of evolutionary theory and believe that the universe itself and even the first life were initially created by direct supernatural intervention. (Of course, neither of those beliefs are testable scientific hypotheses, so scientists tend not to embrace them as science whether they believe them personally or not. But they aren't conflicts between evolution and ID.)
The conflict between evolution and ID is that ID simply asserts that some things are too complex to have evolved "by chance" (though evolution is mostly a chaotic, not random, process, though some inputs may be random -- whether they actually are is more a question for physics than for evolutionary theory.) The main argument for this is the so-called "irreducible complexity" argument, which is refuted by facts showing intermediate forms (with different utilities) in some things that IDers insist are irreducibly complex, and by various mathematical models showing how "irreducibly complex" forms can, in fact, evolve by chance given the right environmental tolerances.
No, it wouldn't, because IDers will still argue that direct intervention in specific species produces the traits observed, and evolutionists would still correctly point out that (1) this is a speculation with no testable consequences and therefore not scientific, and (2) evolution explains the diversity of features found, including the ones ID suggests are "irreducibly complex". The original origin of life is not the sole point of disagreement between ID and science, and is not a point of disagreement between ID and evolution, since it is outside thes cope of evolution.
This does not follow. It is either a misunderstanding of what the word "synonymous" means (perhaps taking it to mean something weaker like "compatible"), or its an example of the fallacy of composition; the specific positions of the Discovery Institute may be synonymous with a particular kind of Christianity (to wit, that kind embraced by the Discovery Institute), but even if that is so, that does not make it synonymous with Christianity.
For instance "Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon" is synonymous with "Ubuntu 7.10", which is a kind of "Linux distribution". But if someone advertises a PC with "Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon" pre-installed, and delivers it with some other Linux distribution (say, "Slackware 1.0") with the argument "Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon" is synonymous with "Linux distribution", well, that won't fly.
The above poster made no "stereotype" of "Christians". He made a specific criticism of the "ID crowd", which is not the same thing as "Christians". Try reading before knee-jerking.
Assuming the simulation is running in a universe where sources of real physical randomness (e.g., something like what quantum mechanics suggest goes on in our universe) is available, then all the computer running the simulation needs to do is have an input device fed by such a physical source of randomness that produces random bits frequently enough to supply the need for randomness in the simulated universe, and, voila, the simulated universe can incorporated real "physical" randomness, not just pseudo-randomness.
No, it doesn't.
Want comes first are observations which demand an explanation. Then you try to explain it (with a hypothesis), than you develope tests that would falsify the hypothesis, than you try those tests, and if they fail to falsify the hypothesis, the results of the tests are the evidence for the utility of (what is now) the theory.
The observations which suggest the hypothesis are emphatically not evidence for the hypothesis, in scientific terms. Evidence for the utility of a hypothesis comes from its demonstrated predictive power, not from the observations it was fitted to initially.
No, computability and most results in theoretical computer science have nothing to do with physical laws and are the same in any universe.
How they apply to practical computation might vary under different physical laws (for instance, in a universe with readily available physical entities that serve the function of "oracles" in, e.g., some of the purely-theoretical works of Turing, practical computation could be vastly different, but the underlying abstract theory wouldn't, just what parts of that theory were practically useful.)
So all those advantages explain why, in the same two years, Apple's share of the market increased by about three quarters while Linux's more than doubled?
How do you distinguish a deterministic system governed by a non-computable function without first finding a practical technique for solving non-computable problems?
OTOH, if any system for solving non-computable problems can exist within our universe/simulation, we can incorporate that system into any simulation we design, and thus such a simulation can feature systems which are "non-computable" in the Turing sense; and if a simulation in our universe can do so if our universe is not a simulation, a simulation that governs our universe could do so, as well.
No, they aren't. Chaos and Turing computability are not exclusive. Though, of course, a large chaotic system will be hard to compute in terms of practicality. But Turing computability isn't about pragmatics.
IIRC, its pretty fundamental to quantum computing that any quantum computer can simulate any other quantum computer (or process) of equal or lesser complexity, including itself.
Since we would not be able to reliably discern the fact that the simulation had or had not crashed itself (we can't recognize anything if it crashes and is not restored, and if it crashes, the governing software debugged, and the simulation restored, we can't distinguish that from failing to crash.)
Yes, and if the tape is used against them personally, rather than against the government when it attempts to prosecute another person, most people who favor unlimited surveillance by the public targetting the government would be happy to see the police officer have the protections available to any member of the public.
Um, the "Provided..." part is impossible to meet, to start with: you never can tell from the tape itself what is excluded that might change the context (especially if it is an audio tape.) And the reason the evidence can be dismissed is the same reason illegally obtained evidence used by the government is dismissed in criminal trials: the rule exists because without that sanction, there will be a strong incentive to engage in behavior which has been deemed undesirable (the surreptitious recording of private conversations, in this case.)
That's not to state that I unconditionally agree that the behavior is undesirable or that excluding the evidence is always the right way to discourage the behavior, at least when its not an overstep by the government.
I think its more like "failure to conform to cultural behavioral norms often reduces the contribution a person can make".
Its reckless, but its also the way of the world. There is always a big push for whatever the new fad technology, and always a big part of that is people who don't have the inclination to learn much about the technological underpinnings, for one reason or another.
Eventually, it shakes out, either the technology fails or it matures and those who sufficiently understand the underpinnings are most able to productively use it, and the market largely sorts things out. I don't think the basic trend is ever going to change, though.
Mongrel works, apparently, quite well, and is rather popular, and is open source. If Zed stops maintaining it or is viewed as unreliable, presumably (assuming that the source isn't impenetrable and unmaintainable by a third-party) someone else will take it over/fork it, and it will continue to be used.
Isn't that a major point of OSS? That if the original vendor/maintainer drops off the face of the earth or abandons the project, all the existing users aren't SOL for maintenance?