Several fallacies here:

1) These are a *set* of models. But, there is only one actual system they are modeling. When do we get to hear which one of the models is _the_ one?
2) When do we get to hear about that one model predicting a real future temperature series, without any tweaks?
3) When these models predict the past, which data set are their results being correlated with? Whence the independent verification of that data set? Where is the raw data from which that data set was derived?

If you can start to answer these questions, then you can start doing real science.

All of the Supremes seemed to agree that Bilski's "invention" was not patentable on the grounds that it was an "abstract idea", and that is clearly forbidden by judicial precedent, along with "laws of nature" and "physical phenomena". Kennedy's opinion states that there was no need for the circuit court to go further in coming up with the "machine or transformation" test as being essential. So, it seems that those that oppose software patents on principle need - for now - to pursue the notion that all of software is really just an "abstract idea", which seems a hard sell given the software community's touting of the real life benefits of computers and the software that runs them.

Congratulations on this post. If it doesn't go up to a 5 very soon, there is no hope for Slashdot. The magnitude of radiation exposure and its comparison with other radiation sources, is the absolute essence of the issue. That neither of the linked articles contained one such quantity should completely disqualify them from being posted on a site which is supposedly concerned with nerd news.

I think he's wrong equivocating the invalidity defense with the prior art defense. My understanding is a patent can be invalidated - and rendered completely ineffective - if you can show that it doesn't actually teach a practicable implementation of a way to achieve the claims.

I had experience with this. We received a cease and desist letter from a (large) company saying we were infringing a patent they had claiming synchronizing audio playback with the movement of a cursor. After carefully reading the description, we realized that they were actually describing doing this synchronization by assuming that the real-time clock signal was all that you needed to know how much of the wave file had been sent to the audio output ... and we knew that this could not actually work. It didn't account for processing delays owing to CPU/memory/bandwidth limitations. Our lawyer wrote a letter back to them saying this and we never heard from them again.

Note that the _claims_ themselves did not describe the synchronization method - they were claiming the generality of doing the synchronization. It was in the _description_ that they explained _how_ to do the synchronization and this is where we found the flaw which invalidated the entire patent. I should note also that the description included words indicating that the method they were describing was "essential" to the invention - so it was actually a badly written patent. If they had carefully qualified the description with words like "this is one possible method ... there are others known to those skilled in the arts", we might not have been able to make this defense. And, of course, this never went to court (probably because they realized how badly the description had been written). But, I've seen other such flaws in patent descriptions - you'd be surprised how often lawyers make stupid mistakes like this.

And, if you do find such a mistake, you will have helped to move toward invalidating the entire patent, as opposed to just avoiding the particular infringement suit. It is lots more work to wade through entire descriptions, and I wouldn't recommend doing it unless, as the speaker indicates, you are in the cross-hairs of an infringement suit. But, it can be a very good feeling if you succeed!

This bill is predicated on the notion that "health care" is a "right". However, except for a very few people that could administer care to themselves (and, of course, this discounts most surgery), health care must be provided by other people. Which means, this bill declares that some people must be compelled to provide a service to others, simply because those others _need_ it. So, the providers thereby lose their (actual) rights to freely contract their services with other consenting adults. As such, the fundamental notion of "health care" as a "right" is a contradiction. It implies that there can be such things as fundamental rights which conflict, which negates the notion of right altogether. What follows is tyranny (gradually). The rest of the world is already on this trajectory; it has in fact been sheltered from the most severe consequences by the remnants of freedom which remain in the American system, which are responsible for the bulk of innovation which has, in fact, improved health care over the past few decades, in spite of increasing encroachments by government.

And, it makes no difference that the interference with freedom here is indirect - that the coercion is against those that _pay_ for health care (be they productive citizens or private health insurers), and not those that deliver it. The coercion must, inevitably, extend to the providers themselves. The result will be that the best people will steer clear of medicine as a profession, and there will be nothing the bureaucrats can do about that. There will be lots of profits to be made on the black market, of course, and those in power will be first in line for those services, which should make them relatively safe to partake of - IF you have the money.

But, don't the Amish watch a lot less TV (and videos)? This is a cultural trend that is closely correlated with the rise in Autism diagnoses. The theory is that there is an interaction between the types of unnatural imagery available electronically and neural development. That boys are more susceptible might be a combination of biology and proclivity to want to watch certain kinds of imagery. A long shot, I admit, but there are some testable hypotheses here.

Well, if you decided to spend $0 dollars on saving your own life, you wouldn't need to decide its dollar value. However, somehow what I think you mean is that you think that *I* should not care about how much money I am forced to spend on saving your life.

This is correct, and it points out the shameful state of our intelligentsia that so few have made this connection. Imagine if the IDF had not been hamstrung by hypocritical rules of engagement which allowed the (Iranian-sponsored) Hamas thugs to hide behind civilians and Mosques. There might even be reduced tension, in that the moderate voices would have a chance at regaining control of Gaza.

The whole BAS enterprise is of course immoral and contradictory - they would undoubtedly move the clock back were we all to just throw up our hands and let the Islamists have what they want - complete Dhimmitude. That pacifists do not actually promote peace is evident to anyone willing to observe and think.

In all of these cases, the reasoning essentially went: since the activity can have some affect on the price of {guns,wheat,pot,etc.} in another state, you are engaged in interstate commerce.

This reasoning does imply that nothing is outside the commerce clause and therefore we have a recipe for dictatorship.

Precisely. And what's more, P&F were entirely cooperative in providing the details of their experiments to the skeptics in hopes that these could be replicated. Indeed, one can argue that P&F's only real ethical lapse was going public in the popular press prior to journal publication. Otherwise, they were operating within the constraints of the scientific method.

If the warmists had been completely open with their data and code from the beginning, and had worked actively to provide skeptics with the means to replicate their results, then none of this would have happened in the first place.

And, as more support for this we have this exchange. ... in which a researcher - encouraged by his colleague (supervisor?) - explicitly decides to reduce the stringency of a statistical test in order to satisfy a political goal. The shift from a 2-sigma to a 1-sigma test is equivalent to a 5-fold increase in the likelihood of the null hypothesis. This would of course never pass muster in a journal submission.

I repeat - the whole enterprise has been corrupted.

"So yes, the scientists who study historical climate conditions are massaging the data. They have no choice."

But, this is the essence of the problem with the AGW theory. Since there is not a good, clean, consistent, data set, the data is constantly subject to manipulation. At the very least, this should cause the manipulators to admit to significant uncertainties. And, if they were really ethical, they would try _other_ reasonable manipulations and describe the implications for their theory.

In any case, they are 100% obligated to make _all_ of their raw data available to anyone that wants it, so that competing manipulations may be subject to analysis. This is the way real science is done, whether the data is clean or noisy. In the latter case, it is even more important.

"Or they could just publish the raw data and be done with it".

And (or), dog forbid, stop taking public money to finance their research. Indeed, it is only the public funding which makes them subject to FOIA in the first place.

Your examples pertain to fixing software. And, it is true that it is not unethical to fix software. That much of AGW theory rests on software simulations is a topic for another post.
But, what _is_ unethical is to fix or conceal data, and there is plenty of evidence for this emerging from these emails (if they are legitimate). In real science, you make all of the raw data available and - if necessary - use logic to justify why some of it should be adjusted/eliminated/ignored. If you are concealing any of the raw data, then you not doing science - you are doing politics.

If you want to get the money out of government, get the government out of the economy - and that includes the "health care" economy. Note that the positions in these statements are completely agnostic as regards the socialization of health care financing in this country. The companies involved are simply engaging in what they see as business-preserving rent-seeking and attempted regulatory capture. They are playing the game whose rules were set up by congress.

No one that supports single payer can have anything principled to say against this - save for "we shouldn't have any private companies/individuals involved in health care at all." Since that's the way we're heading, they will soon have their wish.