Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Friday, February 06, 2009
Rubrica del Lunedì special edition: da Appunti Digitali
http://www.appuntidigitali.it/3213/ma-lenergia-pulita-e-veramente-pulita/
Commenti e critiche ben graditi
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Abilene paradox
On a hot afternoon visiting in Coleman, Texas, the family is comfortably playing dominoes on a porch, until the father-in-law suggests that they take a trip to Abilene (53 miles north) for dinner. The wife says, "Sounds like a great idea." The husband, despite having reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinks that his preferences must be out-of-step with the group and says, "Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go." The mother-in-law then says, "Of course I want to go. I haven't been to Abilene in a long time."
The drive is hot, dusty, and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is as bad as the drive. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted.
One of them dishonestly says, "It was a great trip, wasn't it." The mother-in-law says that, actually, she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic. The husband says, "I wasn't delighted to be doing what we were doing. I only went to satisfy the rest of you." The wife says, "I just went along to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that." The father-in-law then says that he only suggested it because he thought the others might be bored.
The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably, but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Again on piracy...
Well, after my previous post, some things has happened, so I thought you ALL be interested in some updated opinions of mine.Mainly two things in this last week attracted my attention. One is that in U.K. three big Gaming Companies have sued a number of people for having downloaded their games illigally (Main of which, pinball!!! But who is downloading pinball anyway?!? ). So, I thought, I should be happy, as I just said that I was against copying software. Well, I'm not. The reason I am not is that this is a completely useless move, these poor people will have to pay a lot of money and all the rest of the world will keep downloading unnoticed. I think the solution is to allow downloading and to let it pay a small amount of money for it. If someone wants a physical support, such the dvd or the blue ray, he will pay more. If the guy's happy with a downloaded version, then he could pay much less. This, in my opinion would decrease very much piracy.
So, why these companies keep getting some random money sueing people instead of taking a effective act? The answer has been clearly given by David Reeves, responsable of Sony Computer Entertainment, for the exact same country, UK:
"We know about it (game piracy, ndr), we certainly know how it's done. It sometimes fuels the growth of hardware sales, but on balance we are not happy about it."
....
How to say, we will not allow it officially, but if you keep doing it, for us is ok....
Then, when asked what they are planning to do about the fact that games in the PAL region (Europe) are always coming much later then in the NTSC region (U.S. and Japan) he answers:
"We are a PAL market and we are going to do it in PAL and we are going to do it properly, you can wait for it and you can have it in good quality, you know you can get the stuff from Bittorrent if you want to and download PSP games, it's up to you."
So, now it's clear why company don't do something serious about it... and who am I to be against them?
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Philosophical and moral consideration over the freedom of internet
My dears,It is some time that I have been thinking about it (indeed, you can see some hints in a old post), and now a new event made me think about it again. Italy has patetically tried to censor the website "pirate bay", a searching engine of torrent files. The government has obliged the ISPs to forbit the access to this server by address and IP number. Of course, there are just hundreds of ways to reach the website anyway. Several of them are explained directly in the blog of the Pirate Bay. In this blog, exactly as in most of the newspapers that show this news, this fact has been described as an expression of a fascist regime. The freedom of speech and the freedom of internet in in great risk, they say. Well, to me it is a very delicate matter. I mean, I believe that it is absolutely against the human rights and the rights of speech to censor a website where people express their opinion. Like, for example, this. Every newspaper, as well as every blog or website should be able to publish thir ideas in the same way. What leave a bit in doubt is the fact that people download software and movies and so on from internet. It is a difficult matter. I cannot deny that it is very tempting to do that. Nevertheless, I think that we should find a way to make it legal, and to pay a bit for it. Because, people are working for that software. Why we are willing to pay 200€ for a cool graphic card, but we want to download a software for free? The work behind, the value of the good, is the same. Maybe even more for some piece of software. Why we think that paying 200€ for a copy of Windows Vista is not worthy? I think that software should be paid, the problem is that companies agrees in some share of piracy, as long as other big companies buy the original version.
Also for music and movies, there is quite some work behind, that somehow should be repaid. The problem is that in Italy most of the money goes to the SIAE, a system that exist ONLY in Italy and it is completely beyond any reason. This should be completely closed. And, there should be the choice of buying the products both of physical support and on internet. Of course, the price should be very different.
Here in Holland a brand new Blue Ray movie, the newest movie, il maximum 29€. It's easy to find BR discs for 20€. DVDs are maximum 20€ and often you can buy 5 movies for 5€. Then, the price of downloading should be in proportion. I cannot pay more then 10€ for a high definition movie for which I don't get a physical support. I'm a great fan of the idea of paying, say, 50 euros per month, and being able to download everything you want. This money should be then distributed to the producers. This is my solution to piracy.
Regarding the event happened in Italy, to me looks more patethic then fascist. There is a bit of abuse of the words fascist and comunist and so on... we should pay maybe more respect to people who really fighted against these dictatures, and realise we are mainly trying to fight againt stupidity. This is anyway a very difficult fight, as, like Einstein said, the most commond elements in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity, but there are still doubts about the first one. People wants security, wants to get the fingerprints of the romenian kids, but wants to be free to surf on internet, maybe also on porn websites or pedophiles websites. People wants the law to be strict, but wants to be "more equal then the others". Internet is a great mean of comunication, is a great invention and has a great potential. I'm totally against censorship but like everything, must be used with intelligence. Also nuclear power is a great invention, also dynamite, but can have terrible aspects. For sure, downloading music is not as terrible as that, but pedophily it may definitively be, and must be controlled. Also internet, as everything else, should be free when used with coscience. It is very hard to judge, or expecially to find a judge, for what is allowd and what is not, that is why it is so important that in every government there is an equilibrium of different forces, and that the power is not concentrated in only few hands. Here the problem of Italy must be solved.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Klein bottles of Heineken
What does it happen when you give a lot of money (with respect to an average Italian PhD salary) to a high and very specific educated youngster that uses to spend his/her life thinking about nonsense?
He/Her will start spending all this money (and a bit more) in buying the stupidest and most useless thing traceable on internet.
Last thing I bought from California is in fact an original Klein Bottle made of glass (actually it's a 3D immersion of a real 4D Klein Bottle)!! Cool, isn't it?
I didn't find a use for it yet, but - come on! - I had to buy a zero volume bottle!
(And I am not even high educated yet!)
But now let's be serious. There is a drama going on.
The Chinese authorities have banned the import of traditional Dutch deep fried rissoles known as bitterballen during the Olympics (the Telegraaf reported yesterday)!!!
The bitterballen were destined for the Heineken House ("a Dutch-style cafe for fans and athletes") but it come out they contain Brazilian meat, which is banned in China.
But don't despair!
Producer Van Dobben is now considering to set up a temporary production line just for China. So stay tuned: if we're lucky the world will be safe!
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Homeopathy can kill
Yesterday, in Italy, Florence, one 16 years old girl has died because of homeopathy.
She has been diagnosed diabetes, so to have a normal life she had to take insulin regularly.
Her parents were sad, ofcourse, about her illness, and they hoped to be able to cure her completely. This is of course not yet possible, although there have been many steps toward the cure. The parents have then been disappointed to hear from the doctors that their child couldn't be cured and, as so many people does, they blamed the Medicine of their misfortune. This is a very common behavior that leads people to seek for new cures, more effective cures, outside science. This is what these partents did. They went to a homeopathic "doctor" who claimed that insuline will never be helpful for diabetes, and she should have rather taken some vitamines. The parents, may because of their ignorance, hopefully, or maybe just because of the resentment for the traditional medicine, they decided to follow this advice, and take out the insuline to the girl. Of course, after few days the girl went into a bad coma, and after few hours died.
Now the italian newspapers are protecting these parents, saying that they have been deceived by this doctor, who wasn't a real doctor (obviously, no?) and who was not even subscribed to the homeopathy register.
First, I didn't even know there was a homeopathy register. So I checked. Well, it's not a real register, is more a list of people who followed a school (in Italy at least) detached from the University and the faculty of Medicine, but that is recognised from the FNOMCeO (the Italian Federation of Physician and Surgeons). So, this doctor didn't followed the school of Homeopathy, where they teach you properly how much water to put in a substance. And, I guess, they also teach you when the time for jokes is over, and you have to send the person to the real hospital. Well, this guy didn't recognised the moment. But of course, the mistake is easily understood, as the Italian Association of Doctors recognise the homeopathy, so why we shouldn't trust it?
Well, some reasons not to trust it exist. For example, the fact that claims for efficacy of homeopathic treatment beyond the placebo effect are unsupported by scientific and clinical studies.Homeopathy is scientifically implausible and claims for pharmacological effect at many common homeopathic dilutions violate fundamental principles of mainstream science: for instance, above about 12C or 24X potencies, the level of dilution is greater than the number of molecules present in the original tincture. Claims that these could still have a pharmacological effect greater than placebo violate, among other things, the Law of Mass Action, a fundamental principle of chemistry. This is globally accepted. Most of the homeopaths claim that their methods go beyond science. Of course, apart from few exceptions, homeopathy is harmless, as it's mainly restricted to drink water. Nevertheless, cases like this, of lack of cure, can be very dangerous. I think that the society shouldn't react accusing a single homeopath for what has happen, but should point out to the community the danger of refusing a scientific cure. Then, if people wants to die, I believe it's their choice. But if our society is fighting so hard for the euthanasia, and the will of interrupt therapeutic persistence, they should also be considering this problem.
I have the impression that most of the people believe that our body doesn't follow the normal scientific rules, but behaves more "on the feeling". Well, we should have learn by now that this is not true. I strongly believe that the duty of our society, in particular the Association of Doctors, should start a very strong informational campaign to tell the people what is science, what is not, why some things work and why some things don't. After this, people is free to do whatever they want (not on a minor, anyway, only on themselves) but at least the doctors should take a clear position over it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
ShareThis
Posts
