Monday, October 16, 2006

Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies

Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies
by Stephen Downes

 Table of Contents

Welcome
  • False Dilemma: two choices are given when in fact there are three options
  • From Ignorance: because something is not known to be true, it is assumed to be false
  • Slippery Slope: a series of increasingly unacceptable consequences is drawn
  • Complex Question: two unrelated points are conjoined as a single proposition
Appeals to Motives in Place of Support
Changing the Subject
  • Attacking the Person:
    1. the person's character is attacked
    2. the person's circumstances are noted
    3. the person does not practise what is preached
  • Appeal to Authority:
    1. the authority is not an expert in the field
    2. experts in the field disagree
    3. the authority was joking, drunk, or in some other way not being serious
  • Anonymous Authority: the authority in question is not named
  • Style Over Substance: the manner in which an argument (or arguer) is presented is felt to affect the truth of the conclusion
Inductive Fallacies
  • Hasty Generalization: the sample is too small to support an inductive generalization about a population
  • Unrepresentative Sample: the sample is unrepresentative of the sample as a whole
  • False Analogy: the two objects or events being compared are relevantly dissimilar
  • Slothful Induction: the conclusion of a strong inductive argument is denied despite the evidence to the contrary
  • Fallacy of Exclusion: evidence which would change the outcome of an inductive argument is excluded from consideration
Fallacies Involving Statistical Syllogisms
  • Accident: a generalization is applied when circumstances suggest that there should be an exception
  • Converse Accident : an exception is applied in circumstances where a generalization should apply
Causal Fallacies
  • Post Hoc: because one thing follows another, it is held to cause the other
  • Joint effect: one thing is held to cause another when in fact they are both the joint effects of an underlying cause
  • Insignificant: one thing is held to cause another, and it does, but it is insignificant compared to other causes of the effect
  • Wrong Direction: the direction between cause and effect is reversed
  • Complex Cause: the cause identified is only a part of the entire cause of the effect
Missing the Point
  • Begging the Question: the truth of the conclusion is assumed by the premises
  • Irrelevant Conclusion: an argument in defense of one conclusion instead proves a different conclusion
  • Straw Man: the author attacks an argument different from (and weaker than) the opposition's best argument
Fallacies of Ambiguity
  • Equivocation: the same term is used with two different meanings
  • Amphiboly: the structure of a sentence allows two different interpretations
  • Accent: the emphasis on a word or phrase suggests a meaning contrary to what the sentence actually says
Category Errors
  • Composition: because the attributes of the parts of a whole have a certain property, it is argued that the whole has that property
  • Division: because the whole has a certain property, it is argued that the parts have that property
Non Sequitur
Syllogistic Errors
Fallacies of Explanation
  • Subverted Support (The phenomenon being explained doesn't exist)
  • Non-support (Evidence for the phenomenon being explained is biased)
  • Untestability (The theory which explains cannot be tested)
  • Limited Scope (The theory which explains can only explain one thing)
  • Limited Depth (The theory which explains does not appeal to underlying causes)
Fallacies of Definition
  • Too Broad (The definition includes items which should not be included)
  • Too Narrow (The definition does not include all the items which shouls be included)
  • Failure to Elucidate (The definition is more difficult to understand than the word or concept being defined)
  • Circular Definition (The definition includes the term being defined as a part of the definition)
  • Conflicting Conditions (The definition is self-contradictory)
Author
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Friday, October 13, 2006

Lifestyle or Medicine
Thoughts after reading an interesting article about the prevention of diabetes in BMJ.

Some thoughts for sharing. Two days ago, Xunpin, Xinzi and I walked around the building and fought for an answer of whether Chinese traditional medicine sucks. I gave Xunpin an example of differences between Western medicine and traditional medicine. It is about red yeast and statin.
The Chinese have used red yeast for many centuries as a food preservative, food colorant (it is responsible for the red color of Peking duck), spice, an ingredient in rice wine. Red yeast rice continues to be a dietary staple in China, Japan, and Asian communities in the United States, with an estimated average consumption of 14 to 55 grams of red yeast rice per day per person (I don't know from where these numbers are).
At the same time, read yeast is a traditional medicine for treatment or improvement cardiovascular disease or system for over a thousand years. One day, persons abstracted a component from the yeast and find it can reduce the level of blood cholesterol, then synthesize it and called it as STATIN - a new drug was born.
So,
If we eat food with red yeast in it, we may say that we eat healthy food or have a good lifestyle.
If we use red yeast only for treatment or prevention purpose, we may say that we take Chinese or alternative medicine.
If we take a statin, we may say that we take medicine for treatment.
More information about Red Yeast from Mayo Clinic and Natural Standard.


More information about Red Yeast from Mayo Clinic and Natural Standard.
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My Favorite Freeware

My Favorite Freeware (updated on 03-11-2013)

Portable Freeware Package
  • PortableApps.com is a well organized package but it only takes the open-source programs. However, I don't like the launcher much; so I use PStart as a launcher and PortableFileAssociator add file associations to a specific filetype, all files, all folders, the recycle bin, or to  all drives.
  • winPenPack collects many portable Open Source apps and other free programs. 
  • PortableFreewareCollection is a place to get some quick information.
  • Camyo can turn your favorite programs into portable applications. Take them anywhere.
Productivity
  • AutoHotkey (AutoHotkey_L Portable) is a custom build of AutoHotkey maintained by Lexiko, which is flexible and automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder, then  convert any script into an EXE file. Here is the tutorial and documents. You can download different versions from the website here.
  • TinyTask (TinyTask Portable) provides quick & easy automation by recording and playing back mouse movements and keystrokes.
  • DropIt provides a floating target image on your desktop that you can drag-and-drop files to quickly process them with a predefined action.
  • freeCommander (FreeCommanderXE Portable) is an easy-to-use alternative to the standard windows file manager. Double Commander is similar to Total Commander (a shareware), but it is quite big.
  • ArsClip monitors the clipboard and keeps track of the entries. Press a configurable hotkey and select an item (or items) to quickly paste into a program.
  • ToDoList allows you to repeatedly sub-divide your tasks into more manageable pieces whilst still presenting a clean and intuitive user experience.
  • Locate32 saves names of all files in your hard drives to file database. After that you can locate files. Very fast.
  • GrepWin is a powerful search and replace tool with regular expression support.
  • Highlight is a source code to formatted text converter. It can generate a html with syntax highlight of R! code from a file or clipboard.
  • Freeplane, FreeMind, XMind for mind mapping.
  • Money Manager Ex is an easy to use, money management application. It is a personal finance manager.
  • FileBot is the ultimate tool for renaming your movies, tv shows or anime and downloading subtitles from OpenSubtitles.
  • PNotes is light-weight, flexible, skinnable manager of virtual notes on your desktop.
File sync/backup and other file utility
  • SyncFolders synchronize or backup the contents of two folders, including any subfolders. It is simple and portable, and has no spyware/adware.
  • FreeFileSync (Portable from Snapfiles) is a powerful file sync tool but an adware.
  • SyncBackFree (Portable) is a backup and synchronization program before I switched to FreeFileSync. Now it is much powerful than before. You can also download a zip file without installation (kind of portable).
    • If you want to add a date stamp to a single zipped file, you can add the date stamp using timestamp.vbs: (cscript \timestamp.vbs "%_Destination%") without parentheses.
  • DirSync Pro is a small (3.3 mb) but powerful synchronization and backup utility. It's portable, easy to use.
  • WebMon is a old but simple program for monitor website change; it still works well.
  • File Joiner allows you to easily join .001/002/003 files.
  • Orpalis PDF Reducer enables you to reduce the file size of bulky PDF files by compressing and downscaling images and discarding unused objects. FileOptimizer is another one.
  • SVGClearner can clean up SVG files from unnecessary data and dramatically reduces the size of SVG files.
  • wxPackJPG can losslessly compress JPEG image files by about 20%.
  • Video to Video is a good free portable video converter.
Editor & Office Related Tools
  • Text/Programming:
    • Notepad++ (Notepad++ Portable) is a great text/source code editor and Notepad replacement. You can download User Defined Syntax Highlight and Plugin  for other language such as SAS, Stata, and R. I used NotePad++ to view and print highlighted codes, and save highlighted codes in color for blogs. For portable version, the ''userDefineLang.xml" needs saving under "..\PortableApps\Notepad++Portable\Data\Config\" directory. Notepad++ Cheatsheet
    • WinMerge (WinMerge Portable)is a tool for visual difference display and merging, for both files and directories. 
    • CherryTree (CherryTree Portable) is a hierarchical note taking application and organizer, featuring rich text and syntax highlighting, storing data in a single xml or sqlite file. The software is on the big side but more powerful than the KeyNote NF.
    • PSPad editor was my favorite.
    • MathMagic Lite Edition works well with most word processors like MS Word.
    • Math-o-mir is a software tool designed to write and edit mathematical equations as easily as possible.
  • PDF and DjVu:
    • Sumatra PDF (SumatraPDF Portable) is a slim, fast, open-source reader for PDF, eBook (ePub, Mobi), XPS, DjVu, CHM, Comic Book (CBZ and CBR). It's small and starts up very fast but quality of view seems need improving but it can read common formats of documents like STDU Viewer.
    • DjVuLibre includes a standalone viewer, a browser plug-in (for Mozilla, Firefox, Konqueror, Netscape, Galeon, and Opera), and command line tools (decoders, encoders, utilities). Any2DjVu Server is provides users with a simple online means to convert documents such as PDF etc. into DjVu format. WinDjView is a fast, compact and powerful DjVu viewer for Windows using the free DjVuLibre library. CuneiDjVu creates the OCR layer in DjVu files.
    • Djvu-Spec Pdf2Djvu Converter can easy convert pdf to djvu.
    • PDF-XChange Viewer (PDF-XChangeViewer Portable) (Now PDF-XChange Editor)presents users with an alternative to Adobe's Acrobat Reader. It gives users more options such as typewriter than its competition, allowing for more in-depth markups.
    • Foxit Reader (FoxitReader Portable) is a PDF reader but the file size is much bigger than PDF-XChange Viewer.
    • PdfSam (X-PdfSam) is a free open source tool to split and merge pdf documents (it keeps bookmarks of original pdf files).
    • Briss is an excellent trimmer/cropper of PDF files. A simple user interface lets you define exactly the crop-region by fitting a rectangle on the visually overlaid pages.
    • Orpalis PDF Reducer enables you to reduce the file size of bulky PDF files by compressing and downscaling images and discarding unused objects.
    • PdfBooklet and Pdf shuffler creates booklet(s) from existing pdf files. It can also adjust margins, rotate, scale, merge files or extract pages.
    • jPdf Tweak a powerful tool to change/scale margin/pagesize, combine, split, rotate, reorder, watermark, encrypt, sign, and otherwise tweak PDF files.
    • JPdfBookmarks (X-JPdfBookmarks) is a handy tool allows you to create and edit bookmarks of pdf files.
    • PDF Highlight Extractor can extract PDF highlights, and export highlights to MS Excel or a regular text file.
    • PDF Shaper is a collection of free PDF tools.
    • Adobe provides the Acrobat 3D 1.0 and Acrobat Pro 7.0 for free(?).
    • PDFTK Builder and GUI for PDFTK are free graphical interfaces to the Windows version of pdftk making it much easier to use. pdftk is an electronic staple-remover, hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. Pdftk is a simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents.
    • Bookbinder is a program to create a bindable book from a PDF file.
    • PDFedit is a free open source pdf editor. There is a Windows version of PDFedit.
    • NAPS2  (Not Another PDF Scanner 2) scans documents from WIA- and TWAIN-compatible scanners, organize the pages as you like, and save them as PDF, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, and other file formats.
    • K2pdfopt optimizes PDF/DJVU files for mobile e-readers (e.g. the Kindle) and smartphones. It works well on multi-column PDF/DJVU files and can re-flow text even on scanned PDF files.
  • Ebook Readers: 
    • SumatraPDF is a PDF, EPUB, MOBI, CHM, XPS, DjVu, CBZ and CBR reader for Windows. 
    • STDU Viewer (Portable) is a free viewer for multiple file formats including TIFF, PDF, DjVu, XPS, JBIG2, MOBI/AZW, FB2, ePub, and WWF format. You can use STDV Viewer to print the files of these formats.
    • Calibre (Portable) is excellent and powerful but quite big; I use Calibre to manage and convert the ebooks between the different formats.
  • Scribus (Scribus Portable) is a powerful Open Source desktop publication (DTP) system with a combination of press-ready output and new approaches to page design. There are a great video tutorial created by Dai.
  • Zotero is a free reference management system to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.
  • Daniel's XL Toolbox is a free, open-source add-in for Excel® that helps you to analyze and present data; it can produce graphic files with Excel that meet the requirements of the majority of journals. It really works very well. I highly recommend it.
  • FreeOCR is a free Optical Character Recognition Software for Windows and supports scanning from most Twain scanners and can also open most scanned PDF's and multi page Tiff images as well as popular image file formats. FreeOCR outputs plain text and can export directly to Microsoft Word format. You can also use Google Docs to do OCR. When you upload an image or PDF file (size limited to 2 mb), Enable the “Convert text from PDF and image files to Google documents” check box. 
  • Google Books Downloader a tool that allows you to save Google books in PDF, JPEG or PNG format.
  • How to Easily Merge and Split Ebooks (EpubMerge/Split Calibre Plugins)
Image & Photo Related Tools & Media Player
  • GIMP (GIMP Portable) is a open-source image manuipulation software.
    • plug-ins: G'mic is an open and full-featured framework for image processing, providing several different user interfaces to convert/manipulate/filter/visualize generic image datasets, from 1d scalar signals to 3d+t sequences of multi-spectral volumetric images.
      • Installation for GIMP Portable: download the zip files unzip and put them under  "..\GIMPPortable\Data\.gimp\plug-ins\".
    • GIMP Extensions is a Windows installer with a collection of extensions for GIMP that provides the ability to choose which Plug-ins, Scripts, Brushes, etc, that you want to install.
  • Inkscape (Inkscape Portable) is my favorite open source vector graphics editor using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Inkscape Wiki.
  • SVGClearner can clean up SVG files from unnecessary data and dramatically reduces the size of SVG files.
  • RawTherapee (Portable) is a raw image processing tool for free, which is similar to the Adobe Lightroom. I'm using the Lightroom 5, but I don't like the cloud and I am considering to use RawTherapee instead.
  • ShareX (Portable ShareX)is a amazing open source program that lets you take screenshots of any selected area, save them in your clipboard, hard disk or instantly upload them to over 25 different file hosting services. If you create a .bat file with 'ShareX.exe -p', it will start as a portable app. Greenshot is a small but sufficient screenshot tool. PicPick is a good one but it's only free for personal use.
  • Meazure is a tool for easily measuring and capturing portions of the screen. It can add a resizable grid on desktop screen. 
  • IrfanView (IrfanView Portable) is my favorite image viewer; it supports plug-ins. FastStone Viewer and XinView are good as well.
  • Paint.net is lightweight but powerful free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. Pinta a free, open source drawing/editing program modeled after Paint.NET.
  • PhotoFiltre 7 (PhotoFiltre Portable) is developed with the core PhotoFiltre Studio;  it is a handy program but supports layers and to improve the filters including function of color selection and popping.
  • Krita (Portable Krita) is a program for sketching and painting, offering an end-to-end solution for creating digital painting files from scratch by masters.
  • Color Cop is a simple and small color picker and can automatically copy color codes into clipboard which is just what I need. Colormania (Portable) is an advanced color picker utility, especially created for web-designers, graphic artists and application developers. Color Selector is a open-source program.
  • Panorama: Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE) is an advanced high resolution panoramic image stitcher. It's very easy to be used and very impressive. Hugin is an amazing and powerful panorama photo stitcher but has a learning curve.
  • HDR: Luminance HDR provides free tools for create high dynamic range photos. Picturenaut is a option.
  • Adobe provides the Photoshop CS2 and other old version software including Photoshop, Photoshop elements, Creative Suite, Acrobat 3D, Acrobat Pro, Illustrator, Indesgin, Adobe Premiere Pro for free(?). They are not so new but still good enough for my regular need. Since it's not for 64-bit Windows 7, the installation may be tricky (See comments on Downloadcrew.com: Adobe Acrobat Pro, Adobe Creative Suite). Thanks a lot to Adobe.
    • Tip: Make sure you running the application as administrator by right-clicking the installer icon and selecting “run as administrator”.
    • Tip: May need set to Windows XP SP3 in compatibility settings on the Installer.
    • Tip: Change "c:\Program Files (86x)" to the simplified form of the same destination (c:\progra~2\). Don't set to "C:/Program File/Adobe"; that's for 64-bit software.
    • How to disable the registration screen
  • Google Nik Collection is a set of six powerful plugins for Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture (they can also be used standalone or with other Photoshop plugin-supporting apps), formerly priced at $149 but now available for free.
  • NeatImage is a noise reduction program for digital cameras and scanners. It's not freeware but you can use it with some limitation forever.
  • tintii,  a small size photo filter program, makes color popping or selective coloring much easy. Here is the last version (2.4.0) as freeware.
  • Shrink Pic allows you to send dozens of shrunk photos as email attachments.
  • There are several powerful graphic tools provided by RealWorld Graphics.
  • SmartDeblur (Portable) is a tool for restoration of defocused and blurred images.
  • A Sharper Scaling is a high quality image scaling technology mainly developed for upscaling.
  • Tip: How to Print Large Posters with a Regular Printer
  • Tip:  How to create a passport picture
  • VideoLAN (VLC Portable)is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various. KMPlayer is a versatile media player with too much unwanted staff.
  • PHOTOCOPA from ColourLovers is an advanced color palette tool that helps you create the perfect color palette.
  • Pictaculous is a simple color palette generator and give you HTML hex codes.
  • Kuler by Adobe is a web-hosted application for generating color themes.
  • Color hunter creates and finds color palettes made from images
  • Color Palette Generator can generate a color palette based on an online image.
  • Color Scheme Designer allows you to create various color schemes and export them.
  • You can also use GIMP (Filters/Blur/Pixelize..., or to open the Palettes dialog, go to Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Palettes, then right-click anywhere in the Palettes, select import, the palette file (*.gpl) can be find under a palette folder.) to create one.
  • DigiCamControl controls your camera settings remotely from your Windows PC via USB.
Dictionary
  • WordWeb (Portable) is a one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows that can look up words in almost any program. I may buy one someday.
  • TheSages English Dictionary and Thesaurus has wildcard and anagram Search. The interface is complicated.
  • Lingoes (Portable) is an easy and intuitive dictionary and text translation software, It offers lookup many dictionaries and pronunciation of words in over 80 languages. [How to remove the popup-window of ads: 1. go to: "\PortableApps\Lingoes\app_data\update\". 2. delete contents of tip.xml. 3. change the properties of *.xml in that directory as read only. 4. delete lingoes_update32.exe. 5. run Lingoes, in "Configuration...", check "Don't show tip window".]
Information and password manager
Security
  • Microsoft Security Essentials is my favorite package to help guard against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. It provides real-time protection for your home or small business PCs.
  • Microsoft Safety Scanner is a free downloadable security tool that provides on-demand scanning and helps remove viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.
  • SUPERAntiSpyware Portable will detect and remove over 1,000,000 spyware/malware infections. I used it with MalwareBytes Anti-Malware.
  • Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free utilizes Malwarebytes powerful technology to detect and remove all traces of malware including worms, trojans, rootkits, rogues, dialers, spyware and more.
  • Spybot Search & Destroy (Portable) will spot all sorts of tracking cookies and let you remove the offenders individually.
  • AdwCleaner is a browser toolbar/Adware/PUP/Hijacker remover.
  • 360 Total Security Essential of Qihoo is a full-featured antivirus program.
  • Comodo Internet Security can satisfy all your needs. Comodo Internet Security Premium includes the company's free firewall and antivirus program, which together do a good job of keeping your PC safe from even the very latest in malware threats.
  • Block and Filter:
    • PeerBlock is a small and advanced IP blocking gadget; it lets you control how your computer talk with other computers over the Internet, letting you block servers and sites known to be troublesome or dangerous. It can block adware and spyware, etc.
    • Ghostery sees the "invisible" web, detecting trackers, web bugs, pixels, and beacons placed on web pages by Facebook, Google, and thousands of other companies interested in your activity.
    • AdBlock is a popular Chrome extension blocks ads all over the web.
    • NxFilter is a DNS filtering server that is capable of filtering Internet traffic based on domain names and content categories. In addition, it can use DNS packet inspection to protect your network from malware and botnet activity.
    • FreeFixer is a general purpose removal tool which will help you to delete potentially unwanted software, such as adware, spyware, trojans, viruses and worms (Notes: not for newbies).
    • Read more: http://fileforum.betanews.com/#ixzz3Dga8Af5S
    • Blocklist:
  • Smart DNS Changer is a versatile network tool which can change your DNS server, MAC address and PC proxy settings.
  • McAfee Avert Stinger is a stand-alone portable antivirus tool which can detect and remove some malware.
  • CCleaner (Portable) is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. 
  • Eraser, Freeraser  and UltraShredder can destroy secret files with free data shredder.
  • Recuva (Portable) is used for file recovery.
  • Puran File Recovery is an excellent file recovery program. It seems faster than Recuva. Highly recommended. It's a part of Puran Utilities.
  • PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files; it will still work even if your media's file system has been severely damaged or reformatted. PhotoRec is a companion program to TestDisk, which recovers lost partitions on a wide variety of file systems and making non-bootable disks bootable again.
System Utilities
  • SIV (System Information Viewer) can run without admin right. It displays a lots of useful system information.
  • NirLauncher is a suite of more than 100 of NirSoft's excellent portable freeware Windows utilities.
  • Sysinternals Suite collects all the Windows Sysinternals troubleshooting tools into a single file.
  • GeekUninstaller performs deep and fast scanning afterwards and removes all leftovers. Keep your PC clean! Use Force Removal for stubborn and broken programs. Another options is Revo Uninstaller (Reo Unistaller Portable)
  • Glary Utilities (Glary Utilities Portable) is a freeware with registry and disk cleaning, privacy protection, performance accelerator and amazing multifunctional tools.
  • GNOME Partition Editor (GParted) for creating, reorganizing, and deleting disk partitions.
  • CrystalDiskInfo is my favorite hard drive monitoring program, which remind you when the temperature or the health of a drive is deteriorating.
iPhone and iPad apps
  • Waze is the world's fastest-growing community-based traffic and navigation app.
  • 1Password is an account manage app for iPhone.
  • GoogleMap no need explanation, do you? 
  • iTriage is founded in 2008 by two emergency medicine physicians, which offers a proprietary Symptom-to-Provider™ pathway that empowers consumers to make better health care decisions.
  • MapMyDogWalk - brought to you by Subaru. Dog walking, running, jogging, diet, calorie, GPS, and pedometer. I compared it with several others and keep this one. It shares the same account on the website with MapMyFitness.com.
Others
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