I like Trolltech, but it's probably already owned by someone.

The GP is probably an astroturfer rather than a troll. OTOH, there really *are* idiots who believe that kind of garbage, even after being shafted by MS a couple of times.

So it is your contention that Techtronix sells ransomeware. I will agree that ransomware sounds like a reasonable description of this Techtronix featue. Ransomeware is usually implemented in a different manner, but this feature makes Ransomware seem as if it is and intentional Techtronix feature.

I wouldn't want to blatantly claim that "Techtronix is Ransomware" without a clearer understanding. But I also wouldn't want to deny that Techtronix is Ransomware.

Irony or sarcasm, perhaps. I don't see contradiction.

When I was just leaning chess, I thought it the right thing to do to never resign, and fight to the end. Later I realized that this just proved I didn't understand my position...but that was only after working through a lot of endgames.

When you see clearly that an action will be disasterous, then to go ahead and do it anyway shows stupidity, not courage. A better point would be that Hack-a-day showed that they identified with a smaller proportion of internet users than you would like, or some such. In such a case, when you identify with a wide variety of users you can justifiably engage in personally disasterous actions with the goal of destroying your opposition. In chess this is analogous to a sacrifice play, where a piece is intentionally sacrificed in order to lead the opponent into a disasterous reply. (Think of how it would look if each of the pieces were intelligent, and identified with itself rather than with its side.)

OTOH, do note that sacrifice plays are inherently tricky, and one usually can't depend on them working as well as one would hope. It's rare than one can really understand the full consequences ahead of time.

Not tinfoil per se, be it think metalic fibres might be needed. Copper or aluminum should probably suffice, but perhaps it needs to be ferromagnetic. The question is, does it need to be grounded? It seems to me, though, that a knitted antenna would broadcast so many signals out of phase with each other that it couldn't be decoded.

No. The rational man theory does NOT work on the stock market. It doesn't even work well for those sections that are computer driven, because the models are always based on incorrect presumptions.

OTOH, I will agree that it OFTEN works on the stock market. This is a far different statement. But much of the stock market is driven by gambling fever, often played with "other people's money". (And in that since, since the player doesn't risk much, I suppose you could call it rational from his point of view. Even then I doubt it, though.)

Unfortunately, it's not a strawman. Not exactly. The researchers themselves may not do that extrapolation, but those they convince of their finding do. The GP post, however, is historically inaccurate. The "rational market theory" originated some time before 1950, and was dominant during the 1950 and later. It has recently been challenged by people doing actual reasearch that proved it an invalid model.

IIRC it originated by an economic school that was ideologicaly comitted to the Free Market, despite the obvious fact that never throughout the course of history has there ever BEEN a free market. Some are freer than others, e.g. the market in illegal drugs, where even killing your opponents is considered a valid business move. Those markets, however, fail the normal definition because the purchaser doesn't really know what he's buying.

I'd agree with you if you made a few changes, thus:
Yet, can have much more positive impact on society and individuals.
to:
Yet, can in principle have much more positive impact on society and individuals.
and:
That's bad reporting, not necessarily bad experiments.
to:
That's bad reporting. It's nomal in reports on experiments.
and
Lastly, a negative outcome is also valuable.
to:
Lastly, a negative outcome is as valuable as the original result. It's just not seen as as newsworthy.

Additionally, with respect to the first point, whle in principle the results from psychology could be beneficial to society, in practice they appear to be mainly used for the powerful to control the less powerful. This generally results in negative impact on individuals. Perhaps society benefits, for certain meanings of society. But there's more than one reason that Behaviorism was so well funded for so long.

There are valid definitions of "experiment" for which those are experiments.

E.g., theories are often only checkable by conditions around a supernova. This means you have a theory and a prediction. You won't be able to prove everything about the theory by observing a single supernova, but you may be able to disprove it. And in science you can never prove a theory correct, you can only fail to disprove it.

FWIW, the Higgs boson has been a terrific disappointment because it didn't prove any theories wrong. There's still hope, but it's getting smaller. This is an especial disappointment because we know our current theories are wrong, or at least incomplete, but we don't know where to look for how to change things. Everything we try seems to come out as the theories predict. Perhaps the Higgs will show SOME unexpected behavior. Perhaps we'll have to depend on gravity waves. (Ugh. If you think the Higgs was hard to measure...) Maybe the answer will lie in terms of "cosmic connections" (which is sort of like entanglement, but with posterior measurement rather than prior sharing of a state).

But guess what....Every Higgs particle measurement is a separate non-repeatable experiment. We can't control the environment well enough to make them repeatable. Worse, so far they've all had to be done on the same (not replicable) equipment. This is clearly not optimal, but you deal with what you've got.

??? Did you notice that the guy first mentioning "thought experiment" claimed to be a physicist? Moral high ground? Please tell me what "moral high ground" was involved in Einstein's famous "elevator" thought experiment.

I will grant that there are those who misuse the term, but give him the credit for properly using it.

OTOH, "thought experiments" in the area of psychology are, in my experience, so poorly done that they neither demonstrate nor validly support any argument. Some of them do point in interesting directions, but what people believe they will do in a situation is often very different from what they would actually do, and that renders them of at best questionable value, even when well designed.

As you said, "limited experience". That is one (or a few related) schools of psychology. Others, are much more directional.

OTOH, nobody goes around "laying out a few home truths", because that is counter-productive. (Some psychologists don't seem to do better than random, but they all avoid known bad choices...like "laying out a few home truths".)

As the originator of the term, he had the right to define it. But the definition that he created was based not only on his words, but also on his actions.

Under the control of Mussolini the government tried to use minimal force to get its way (i.e., to satisfy the business interests), but if minimal force wouldn't work, he was quite willing to use more.

N.B.: He also created the term "egghead" to describe intellectuals, because his thugs found it so easy to break their heads.

Sorry, but you are confusing existing systems which are called Socialist with Socialism. It's not an unreasonable argument, but Socialism isn't necessarily a government. Local laws permitting individual factories can be Socialist. And there is no guarantee that such a facotry would provide those benefits.

OTOH, both countries and factories can fail whether they are Socialist or Capitalist. There's no inherent guarantee that one is more likely to fail than the other. The fact that there are few successful Socialist factories reflects their low rate of formation, and their high infant mortality (because they often come into existence only when the original, run on a Capitalist basis, is going bankrupt...so it is sold to the workers).

I don't find much validity in the GP's argument, but neither do I in yours. Public health measures are not an inherently socialist feature, even though they are more common and extensive in governments called Socialist. They should sensibly be considered as "investment to maintain the health of the social body upon which the government subsists". That they are considered socialist is due largely to the work of the American Medical Association, which had a vested interest in not having the government control their wages and prices. Now that those things are instead controlled by the insurance industry that vested interest has evaporated, but the prejudices instilled have not...and the insurance companies are quite happy to keep those prejudices going.

You clearly don't understand the meaning of EITHER socialism or communism. Communism predates Karl Marx. And Stalinism isn't even Marx-Lenninism. (Note the hyphenated designation, as that which Lenin preached and practiced wasn't what Marx preached.) Also neither is Maoism, which also is only one variety of communism. (Stalinism isn't ANY kind of communism. It's just standard totalitarian dictatorship with an unusually brutal and despotic dictator. Only Idi Amin could claim to practice the same kind of government, though Pot Pol had certain similarities.)

Calling yourself something doesn't mean that the label rightfully applies to you. The North Korean government calls itself a "People's Republic", but it doesn't match the conventional meaning of Republic. (Do note, however, that Republics are normally controlled by an Oligarchy of some sort. It's not the "feel good" term that USians are generally taught it is. Not if you really understand what it means and how it operates. And the constitution guarantees that the states will have a Republican [Things of the Public] form of government, not a Demmocratic [i.e., power derives from the people] kind of government. And in both these cases I grossly simplified the meanings of the terms. In fact I'd need to research a bit to determine precisely what each meant, though basically in a Republic power derives from ownership of things, and in a Democracy power derives from being a "person", for some meaning of person. [E.g., slaves were originally considered to be only 2/3 of a person in the US.] Please note that this doesn't mean that the power belongs to the people, but rather that the government allocates power on the basis of people.)

This is a good example of why when there are no consequences, civil behavior deteriorates.