Mutant321 - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Say it with me... (Score 1) 656

by Mutant321 on Friday December 19, 2008 @08:57AM (#26171547) Attached to: Study Says Cosmic Rays Do Not Explain Global Warming

Exactly. The concept of "correlation is not causation" is actually a bit more subtle than a lot of people realise. Some people almost seem to think it means "if two things are correlated, then one CANNOT be the cause of the other", which is, of course, absurd.

The phrase should really be something like: "correlation is not absolute proof of causation, in and of itself" (if we side-step the issue of what "absolute proof" even means).

If two things are correlated, one *may* cause the other. It may not. You really need to do some investigation and see if there's a plausible mechanism linking the two. But if you've got some reasonable statistics to back up the correlation, it's probably worth at least looking in to it.

Windows Drops Below 90% Market Share 595

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 02, 2008 @03:09PM from the easing-the-stranglehold dept.

ozmanjusri writes "Online market share of the dominant Windows operating system has taken its biggest monthly fall in years to drop below 90%, according to Net Applications Inc. Computerworld reports that Microsoft's flagship product has been steadily losing ground to Mac OS X and Linux, and is at its lowest ebb in the market since 1995. 'Mac OS X... [ended] the month at 8.9%. November was the third month running that Apple's operating system remained above 8%.' The stats show that while some customers are 'upgrading' from XP to Vista, many are jumping ship to Apple, while Linux is also steadily gaining ground. A Net Applications executive suggests the slide may be caused by many of the same factors that caused the fall in Internet Explorer use. 'The more home users who are online, using Macs and Firefox and Safari, the more those shares go up,' he said. November has more weekend days, as well Thanksgiving in the US, a result that emphasizes the importance of corporate sales to Microsoft."

Submission + - How Should Small-Time Artists Protect Their Work? (wellingtongrey.net)

Submitted by

Wellington Grey

on Sunday June 24, 2007 @04:24PM

Wellington Grey writes: "I'm a small webcomic author and have recently discovered that some people have taken my illustrations and are selling them in various forms (on CafePress, for example). I don't have large sums of money nor a lot a free time after my day job to try and follow up on issues like this. I thought that by making my work available under a creative commons license would give good karma and allow people to copy, but not commercially. What steps could be taken in a situation like this to protect my work?"

Submission + - Top 10 tech capitals of the world (theage.com.au)

Submitted by

javipas

on Monday June 18, 2007 @07:20AM

javipas writes: "Being able to surf the Internet on the subway thanks to a wireless 3 Mbps connection is possible in Seoul, where 2 million users watch TV on their mobile phones. This is one of the reasons that have made this city the first of a top ten technological cities in the world published by The Age. Among other parameters that have been taken into account for this ranking are the broadband speed, cost and availability, technology adoption and government support for technology."

Submission + - Terrorists must register before entering U.S. (usatoday.com)

Submitted by Soft on Sunday June 10, 2007 @07:44AM

Soft writes: Citing Islamist terrorists traveling with European passports as a threat to America, the Secretary of the DHS announces that visitors to the U.S. under the Visa Waiver program will have to register online 48 hours in advance, and fill out a questionnaire. According to other articles, this would include personal data such as previous travel destinations and credit card number; this in addition to data already requested directly from airlines, from name and address to luggage ticket number and frequent flier miles collected. Presumably the questions will also include whether the traveler intends to blow himself up in the coming 90 days, or has ever done so in the past? The questions on the back of Form I-94 also come to mind.

Submission + - Software Patents in the New York Times (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Timothy B. Lee

on Saturday June 09, 2007 @06:57AM

Timothy B. Lee writes: "I've got an article in the New York Times in which I make the case against software patents. Expanding on a point I first made on my blog, I point out that Microsoft has had a change of heart on the patent issue. In 1991, Bill Gates worried that "some large company will patent some obvious thing" and use it to blackmail smaller companies. Now that Microsoft is a large company with a patent war-chest of their own, they don't seem so concerned about abuse of the patent system. I then point out that Verizon's efforts to shut down Vonage are a perfect illustration of Gates's fears."

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