Cut support for older products, or stopped providing free upgrades that give new functionality on a regular basis?

I had a Razr before my iphone. I remember getting 0 upgrades ever from the original crap interface.

Except the CEO of Viacom isn't the one who is bothered by outrageous prices and terms on content. He can afford to pay whatever the premium rate is for the medium de jour, and he can upgrade his personal digital library when HHDDVVDD BVD comes out. Similarly, he doesn't need personal backups of his content, because he can afford to repurchase it.

I don't think using their own dirty tricks against them is a way to make much progress. They can afford to play by their own rules.

I think you're probably about 10-20 years out of date with your criticism. AI these days is *all about* statistical machine learning which is *all about* data and not about formal or expert systems at all. This is what Google and others are doing. The AI you are describing is from the late 80s and early 90s.

Neural networks are part of the story, but many of the ideas from ANNs have been improved upon when more structured settings are available. There is actually a resurgence right now in deep neural network though.

I don't really see why. I'm a Canadian, so things are obviously different, but it seems likely that this works similarly. Currently, here, everybody can file their taxes early, but they *must* be in by the end of April or fees and penalties start accruing.

Many people leave it to the last minute and there is a mad rush in April to get taxes taken care of.

After you file your taxes, you get a notice of assessment. Why not put a "due date" for the following year on the assessment. If before April is too early, then spread the due dates between the end of April and the end of some later month (August, for example). This could go in a round-robin rotation, so your due date gets later by one month every year before restarting back to April. You could still submit your taxes earlier than your due date. The due date just determines when penalties and fees start accruing for unfiled or unremitted taxes. All of the "fiscal year" stuff stays the same, no additional accounting headaches.

Good call. Point taken.

Except that, as has been posted here before, people are terrible at self-assessing their skill. I know, I know, you are different: you are not overestimating yourself, you are one of the 0.025% of people who can talk on the phone without being distracted http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/uou-fdw032610.php.

I know for a fact that I cannot multitask. However, I believe myself to be particularly good at self-evaluation. I know about psychology, and I read slashdot: I can adapt my self-assessment. I'm a scientist and I don't have a large ego about my regular cognitive skills, I am the typical absent-minded professor type. However, I didn't really realize how poor I was at multitasking until my late 20s, and I am particularly bad at it. I had a couple of near accidents (nothing that would have been severe), but I understand probability and statistics. I know that if I continued to drive distracted, with overwhelming probability I would eventually cause an accident. So I stopped sampling.

This does not describe most people. Many are overconfident and unable to recognize their own deficiencies. Even more don't understand that taking a small risk enough times basically ensures that the low-probability outcome will eventually happen.

I don't want those people deciding what's safe, because you know what, they won't realize they have a problem until they get in an accident. And the first time, they will attribute it to bad luck. My mother in law rear-ended someone while changing the radio station and shrugged it off: bad luck, could happen to anyone.

There are too many people on the road for them to be learning what's safe and what's not by trial and error. No thanks.

I used to think that too. I suggest you read Allen Carr's book. It's an easy read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Carr

The book has helped myself and several others in our Ph.D program quit smoking. I think you may find that you don't enjoy smoking, but rather you enjoy relieving the physical and psychological symptoms of Nicotine withdrawal. Each cigarette returns you to neutral, and after about an hour your Nicotine levels have dropped and your addicted body makes you uncomfortable so you enjoy having another cigarette and returning back to neutral. The truth is you like having an absence of withdrawal symptoms, ie, of being a nonsmoker.

Probably. So far everyone I know that has read the book has easily quit and has come to understand this perspective. We're not exactly a low IQ bunch. But I could be wrong of course. Couldn't hurt to find out though: at least you'd have a reason to ditch the stink and health problems...

In Canada it just works. Turn it on, choose Bluetooth or USB, and if Bluetooth, do the "pairing" thing. Done.

Bayesian statistics are great because they let you specify your prior information about the quantities of interest. They don't give you prior information for free when you have none :)

Wow. What class did you take that says if you don't know something you should assume equal probability?

I don't know if there is an invisible elephant in my kitchen, so I guess I should assign equal probability to both outcomes. I also don't really know how Baccarat works, I guess my odds are 50/50.

Without knowing something about he or his coworkers, you by definition cannot make any statistical statements. To make any statements, you would first need to make some observations. This is how statistics is different from logic. Statistics is grounded in data.

I don't agree with Zed, but you may have just proved his point.

I don't understand what is to fall for. I guess it depends on if you are doing multiple comparisons or a single test.

If you independently identified a suspect and could put together a case against them, and *then* got a DNA match, slam dunk. In that case you're right, the jury should not fall for that argument.

However, what about the situation where DNA is found at a crime scene, and then a database search yields a match? Perhaps that person has no alibi or way to explain how what is apparently their DNA got into this rape victim. Then the defense should surely ask "How many people would have to be in the database before a DNA sample from the crime scene will match somebody?" If those odds are not infinitesimal and the case is built around DNA evidence, there is a big problem.

I'm not aware when the plan to change things is, but you can still buy Windows XP from my local PC component shop. I saw a guy buy one on Sunday.

It was really funny actually, he bought the OEM version, which is $179 CAD. The clerk guy told him due to licensing restrictions, he could only sell the OEM version with a piece of internal hardware. The clerk suggested a SATA cable ($5). Deal done.

I think your probability calculation might be a bit off. The math doesn't go through.

I should say ahead of time, I don't know much about these 4-9s vs 5-9s. I interpret them as probability of not failing. IE, 4-9, means 99.99%, which means the probability of failure is .0001. If that's wrong, the rest of this doesn't work out.

Lets try different numbers. Choice A has a probability of 25% of failing, Choice B has a probability of 1% of failing.

How many A do we need such that the probability of them all failing is less than 1%?

If I have 2xA, what is the probability that they both fail (assuming they are independent)?
P(A1) and P(A2) = .25 * .25 = .0625 (6%)
What if we add a third:
.25 * .25 * .25 = .015625 (1.2%)
And a fourth
.0039 (.39%)

So, 4 of these 25% data centers is better than a single 1% data center.

The case is even stronger for the 4-9s vs 5-9s example.

4-9s (if I understand) means 99.99%. Or, .01% of failure (P=.0001). 5--9s means 99.999%, or .001% of failure (P=.00001).

2 x 4-9s is .0001 * .0001 = 0.00000001 , which is 0.000001%, which is 99.9999 (6-9s).

To me, it makes perfect sense to do the "google" thing. This is exactly the reason that they fill their data centers with low-cost commodity hardware instead of high cost servers.

It's not necessarily as hard as it sounds to evaluate people online. I took a course in computer networks from an online university in Canada. I had some programming projects and assignments to do, but they were not worth much (like a typical CS class). Those, yes, I could have faked easily with the help of others if I needed.

However, the final exam was worth about 75% of my final grade, and I had to take that exam under supervision at my university. I'm sure there are other testing facilities that could also be used. A proctor (an assistant professor in my case) supervised the 3 hour exam. Seems pretty secure to me.

Some related advice: just take the damn class at your university even if everyone complains how much it sucks. I took networks through correspondence because of a terrible prof that I was avoiding. My final exam was made up of randomly selected questions from 2 entire textbooks and was much harder than the networks course offered through my department.

Of course I didn't read TFA, but the summary is talking about basic research, not commercialization or product-specific R&D. Basic research is not about profit or solving existing business or strategic military problems. In my experience, the most capable basic research scientists detest IP protection, patents, etc. They dislike those mechanisms that stifle progress and restrict the flow of new ideas.

Some of the most important breakthroughs come from these scientists, that do this sort of blue skies research. These folks are often very motivated and they work tirelessly simply for their own curiosity on topics that may end up being worthless. They are not seeking riches, just a comfortable-enough salary that they can focus their time on their research without worrying where their next paycheque will come from.

We can argue whether it is appropriate to spend government and private money on supporting these scientists, but please don't parade out intellectual property protection and copyright violations in their name. They want others to know about and use their ideas: because they are driven by genuine interest in their topics, not by the whiff of profits from short term exploitation of their work.