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Abiogenesis is about the origin of life. Evolution, technically, is about what happened after life arose on Earth. Life origins studies proceed under a number of hypotheses and remain very tentative during this early period of investigation. A recent summary of research is in The Spark of Life : Darwin and the Primeval Soup by Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada.

Thirdly, the issue here is that they want to teach religion in a science class to further their ideological goals. Inteligent Design should not be given 'fair weight' in a scientific context, as it has nothing but the slimmest scientific backing.

Ahem! I don't hear anything about religion in their wording. It appears as though they are careful not to introduce religion. I find it strange that people make such a huff about this. Abiogenesis is an extremely raw topic, and right now I think Intelligent Design is just about the ONLY theory that makes sense. Primordial goo doesn't make much sense to me, and the research is really incomplete on the primordial goo hypothesis. Read the book.

I expect He'd be proud.

...many are asking. It's hard to find introductory materials on the NFS, because the number of people who actually understand the algorithm is probably in the hundreds, if not less, and most are worried about research not teaching. For those interested in a high-level view, plus some low-level details, of the (special and general) NFS, you can have a look at the slides for a talk that I gave on exactly this topic at a crypto workshop a couple of months ago. I won't even try to summarize the NFS here, because anything other than a very high level, handwaving, bird's eye view of NFS would take the better part of a page to explain. However, in this thread I can answer specific questions that anyone might have about the talk above.

Now for those with the mathematical maturity to delve into the algorithm, I suggest the book Prime Numbers: A Computational Perspective by R. Crandall and C. Pomerance (link to Amazon.com lifted from Google, no referrals), which is certainly one of the best introductions to the algorithm that I have read.

By the way, if anyone wants to help perform huge factorizations in a distributed computing network, check out the NFSNET, although they mostly apply SNFS on values from the Cunningham tables, no cryptographic targets.

The most interesting part (to me) was that it completely validated the claims of various dissidents (such as Solzhenitsyn) as well as the Western governments regarding KGB coverups and lies. After hearing so much propaganda of this sort: "Soviets only steal technology, but the U.S.A. invents it", I was really curious to know what the truth was: exactly how unbalanced was the equation? Were the Soviets really that evil? To read his book and discover that the Western propaganda was almost completely factual was quite a revelation.

Yeah... Children's Hospital in Oakland, CA (my mom used to work there) also needs 30 copies of the best of the Hanson's Live!!!

Testing techniques abound - unit testing, integration testing, data flow testing, and mutation testing to name a few. Scripting tests makes them repeatable, and if we test and test again, we can have some certainty of the reliability of the software. How? Software reliability engineering. See the book by John D. Musa. (See his web site, too.) It's all about using statistics and probability to analyze the likelihood of another failure in a certain amount of time. We all know it's cheaper to fix a problem earlier, so it's best to design the system so that, given the frequency of observed failures during testing and the cost of a failure, you set an acceptable risk and build the software to match the risk.

I would recommend C.J. Date's An Introduction to Database Systems. The book will teach you the fundamentals of database design and you will learn to hate SQL in the process.

You gotta love the animated release date!

In Anne Rice's version there is both evolution and inteligent design. So if ID is taught in school's then I think Anne Rice's theory should be taught as well. To quote the book:

"I believe God worked back from a blueprint of Himself. He created a physical universe whose laws would result in the evolution of creatures who resemble Him."

In Anne Rice's version there is both evolution and inteligent design. So if ID is taught in school's then I think Anne Rice's theory should be taught as well. To quote the book:

"I believe God worked back from a blueprint of Himself. He created a physical universe whose laws would result in the evolution of creatures who resemble Him."

You know what really pisses me off is getting modd'ed down when I try to share some of my business readings and experience, hoping to explain why things happen and maybe helping one of you Open Source Entrepreneurs to make it and create jobs. You see, many of my source DO NOT HAVE FREE LINKS. Such as, www.fsb.com. Here's another source: The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship, 3rd Edition recommended BY A VENTURE CAPITALIST. I do a shit load of reading in this area because of my own business development and dealings with these people...you know what..I'm going to shut the Fuck up and go away.... Bye, Bye.

I'm sure these artists are all under contracts signed in blood, something like "Sony is Thy god to whom I will only speak highly" but artists like Van Zant, etc are going to lose TONS over royalties here! Just look at Amazon's product page (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00 092ZM02/qid=1131393629/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-042 6397-0537404?v=glance&s=music&n=507846/), comment after comment about the rootkit. If I was an artist, I would be PISSED!

Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot is an excellent example. It's a nice book that's easy to read. I keep a copy near the throne. It can be a bit preachy and I don't always agree with the author's stance, but it's still a good read.

The Exceptional C++ books are also easy reading.

It really just depends on what you want. Way back when I was first moving from C to C++, I bought the book Simple C++. While it was a good book that was easy to read, it took far too long for me to gleam the information from it. It's easy-to-read and simplistic approach was a notch or two down from what I was looking for information-wise. Likewise, I imagine most of the CS books sitting out there are for reference purposes. That's not the arena for books that are fun to read.

Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot is an excellent example. It's a nice book that's easy to read. I keep a copy near the throne. It can be a bit preachy and I don't always agree with the author's stance, but it's still a good read.

The Exceptional C++ books are also easy reading.

It really just depends on what you want. Way back when I was first moving from C to C++, I bought the book Simple C++. While it was a good book that was easy to read, it took far too long for me to gleam the information from it. It's easy-to-read and simplistic approach was a notch or two down from what I was looking for information-wise. Likewise, I imagine most of the CS books sitting out there are for reference purposes. That's not the arena for books that are fun to read.

Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot is an excellent example. It's a nice book that's easy to read. I keep a copy near the throne. It can be a bit preachy and I don't always agree with the author's stance, but it's still a good read.

The Exceptional C++ books are also easy reading.

It really just depends on what you want. Way back when I was first moving from C to C++, I bought the book Simple C++. While it was a good book that was easy to read, it took far too long for me to gleam the information from it. It's easy-to-read and simplistic approach was a notch or two down from what I was looking for information-wise. Likewise, I imagine most of the CS books sitting out there are for reference purposes. That's not the arena for books that are fun to read.

So close....

The 4 writers are not just because of the 4 names of God, but also the massive discrepancies in style and content of various parts of the bible. How else do you square the Babylonian creation myths of Genesis with the temple accounts of Leviticus and then the need to recount everything all over again in Deuteronomy. Highly recommend Richard Elliot Friedman's "Who Wrote the Bible" to anyone really interested in this. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0139 585133/103-1081140-1817412?v=glance
Spoiler: not written by Rabbi's but by High Priest in Josiah's reign to cement the legitimacy of the new monarchy with the old priestly sects and monarchy bloodline (Rabbi's being a relatively late addition to Judaism, the priestly Cohen sect was more important for spiritual leadership back then)

The Dead Sea scrolls don't play such an important part here, although they are very interesting especially to understand the socio-political developments of Roman period Judea. And in fact there's another myth that there were not different versions of the Pentateuch. Apparently the Karaite bible has at least 13 differences and you can assume they are just as accurate with protecting their textual tradition (and if you're into lamb barbecue's Mt. Gerizim outside Nablus is the place to be around Passover time).

Anyway, your evidence is very patchy. If you're looking for Orthodox Rabbi's to claim creation is allegorical you can start hunting around Maimonides (Rambam), IIRC you'll find plenty there.

And yes, it's trite, but I believe (with a complete belief ;-)) that my karma does run over your dogma...

I have found that most groups respond well to thoughtful leadership. One good resource on this topic is Leading Geeks It's not perfect, because people are individuals, not stereotypes, but it offers some good suggestions.

One idea I liked was the author's explanation of "Why do geeks hate meetings?" His concept is that, in general, geeks come to situations with a 'problem-solution' mind set. When they encounter a problem, they look for 'the solution.' Since status meetings are designed (in theory) to have everyone come up to speed on current status, there's no actual problem, and thus no solution is needed. As a result, most geeks see these meetings as a complete waste of time because there's no problem!

Many other good ideas are present, too. Y[MG]MV (Mileage or Geeks)

Enjoy!

Respectfully,
Anomaly

You can get the book here as well: Java Puzzlers. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

You can get the book here as well: Java Puzzlers. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

If I recall corectly, the Pentateuch was writen by Moses as dictated to him by God. This includes Genesis.

That depends on who you ask. Researchers believe the pentateuch was more likely written by at least 4 scholars/rabbis during the exile in Babylon.
See:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbible1.html
or this book.

ratzinger already has written a book about creation: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0802 841066/ref=cm_aya_asin.title/104-9529939-5735911?_ encoding=UTF8&v=glance granted this was before he gained infallibility. guess this guy, http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1PZPX 2D5PA6XJ/ref=cm_pdp_about_see_review/104-9529939-5 735911 , will still disagree tough :)

ratzinger already has written a book about creation: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0802 841066/ref=cm_aya_asin.title/104-9529939-5735911?_ encoding=UTF8&v=glance granted this was before he gained infallibility. guess this guy, http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1PZPX 2D5PA6XJ/ref=cm_pdp_about_see_review/104-9529939-5 735911 , will still disagree tough :)

Availability: This title will be released on December 31, 1969. You may order it now and we will ship it to you when it arrives

It's only ~9% off the individual prices. You would think that you would get a better price for buying so much at the same time...

The Complete Collection $2499.99

It's only ~9% off the individual prices. You would think that you would get a better price for buying so much at the same time...

The Complete Collection $2499.99

It's only ~9% off the individual prices. You would think that you would get a better price for buying so much at the same time...

The Complete Collection $2499.99

It's only ~9% off the individual prices. You would think that you would get a better price for buying so much at the same time...

The Complete Collection $2499.99

It's only ~9% off the individual prices. You would think that you would get a better price for buying so much at the same time...

The Complete Collection $2499.99

It's only ~9% off the individual prices. You would think that you would get a better price for buying so much at the same time...

The Complete Collection $2499.99

It's only ~9% off the individual prices. You would think that you would get a better price for buying so much at the same time...

The Complete Collection $2499.99

... the animated series???

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6301 320360/qid=1131375350/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-6067 115-1916850?v=glance&s=video&n=507846

This really needs to be converted to DVD!!!

Reference: Peter R. Saulson, Fundamentals of interferometric gravitational wave detectors, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., 1994

Amazon has it

And looking at your username, you also bought seven sets of Firefly ;-)

How can this be complete without a copy of Trekkies ?

It was the same thing with the X-Files. I don't know if it's changed, but it was about $100 when it came out. Totally crazy.

Actually, they are now selling them in mythology sets: Abduction Black Oil, Colonization, and Super Soldiers. I'm considering buying them this way. It might actually cost more per episode. I haven't figured that out but these sets are affordable and you only get the ones you want. Now if only they come out with the Lone Gunmen set. Not the Lone Gunmen series. I already have that. I want the X-Files episodes that feature them.

It was the same thing with the X-Files. I don't know if it's changed, but it was about $100 when it came out. Totally crazy.

Actually, they are now selling them in mythology sets: Abduction Black Oil, Colonization, and Super Soldiers. I'm considering buying them this way. It might actually cost more per episode. I haven't figured that out but these sets are affordable and you only get the ones you want. Now if only they come out with the Lone Gunmen set. Not the Lone Gunmen series. I already have that. I want the X-Files episodes that feature them.

It was the same thing with the X-Files. I don't know if it's changed, but it was about $100 when it came out. Totally crazy.

Actually, they are now selling them in mythology sets: Abduction Black Oil, Colonization, and Super Soldiers. I'm considering buying them this way. It might actually cost more per episode. I haven't figured that out but these sets are affordable and you only get the ones you want. Now if only they come out with the Lone Gunmen set. Not the Lone Gunmen series. I already have that. I want the X-Files episodes that feature them.

It was the same thing with the X-Files. I don't know if it's changed, but it was about $100 when it came out. Totally crazy.

Actually, they are now selling them in mythology sets: Abduction Black Oil, Colonization, and Super Soldiers. I'm considering buying them this way. It might actually cost more per episode. I haven't figured that out but these sets are affordable and you only get the ones you want. Now if only they come out with the Lone Gunmen set. Not the Lone Gunmen series. I already have that. I want the X-Files episodes that feature them.

Paramount has priced themselves OUT of the market with these. I woudl have GLADLY forked over 40-50 PER season. 100 bucks?? 110?? GO TO HELL RICK BERMAN!

Now what I ahve found was a GOOD deal was all of the movies for 110....that is:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek Generations
Star Trek First Contact
Star Trek Insurrection
Star Trek Nemesis

ALL the Special Editions. I already have some of the Special Editions, but I would gladly pick this up as I do not have any of the Next Gen special editions and am missing a couple of the original crew Special Editions and the singles are getting hard to find. At 19.99 per movie, the price I saw at Best Buy (110) is a steal.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000A6T262/102-07 55024-9559339?v=glance&n=130&_encoding=UTF8&v=glan ce

So...it's a very, very boring night at work...
Here's the tally, this doesn't include any special features, commentaries, or otherwise useless filler:

ST TOS:
47 mins, 79 eps, 22 discs, 3,713min = 2days 13hrs 53mins
ST TNG:
45 mins, 178 eps, 48 discs, 8,010min = 5days 13hrs 30mins
ST DS9:
45 mins, 176 eps, 48 discs, 7,920min = 5days 12hrs
ST Voyager:
45 mins, 172 eps, 47 discs, 7,740min = 5days 9hrs
ST Enterprise:
42 mins, 98 eps, 27 discs, 4,116min = 2days 20hrs 36mins

The Motion Picture (Directors Cut): 136mins 2 discs
The Wrath of Kahn (Directors Cut): 116mins 2 discs
III: The search for spock: 105mins 2 discs
IV: The Voyage Home: 119mins 2 discs
V: The Final Frontier: 107mins 2 discs
VI: The Undiscovered Contry: 113mins 2 discs
Generations: 118mins 2 discs
First Contact: 106mins 2 discs
Insurrection: 103mins 2 discs
Nemesis: 116mins 2 discs

Grand Total (Minus Commentaries, deleted scenes, additional features) :
212 Discs
32,638 minutes
3wks 1day 15hrs 58mins

References:
Amazon.com product info
IMDB Star Trek search

According to Amazon, the Animated Star Trek Series will be released on Dec 31st, 1969.

Star Trek - The Animated Series (1973)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005JN6D/002-75 16313-1096059?v=glance&n=130

So find yourself a gateway into the past (and try to avoid saving any sexy pacifists by accident).

The sad thing is, it *is* at least 30% off...

List Price: $3,908.99
Price: $2,499.99
You Save: $1,409.00 (36%)

funnier... "You may also be interested in these items..."
Above All Co. L74995CN Forearm Forklift Lifting Straps

is it really that heavy???

I bought a volcano vaporizer a year ago and I have never looked back. The price is steep but just think of how much you spend on papers and cigarettes in a year and you will come up with a similar number even if you are moderate user and smoker. I would like my lungs to last as long as the rest of my organs and I could not see that happening smoking marijuana and tobacco for the rest of my life.

pfft, as if that could ever happen. I mean, come on, who's ever heard of a scientist becoming a smug bastard because he was rushed through highschool and allowed to enter college early. Seriously, it's not like you can just be a jerk and still be treated with respect. You're certainly not gunna found any multimillion dollar companies and publish your own book because everyone with half a brain thinks you've lost it -- whilst the other half of the scienfic community think you might be onto something if only they could figure out what.

Ignore the negative reviews in Amazon, by the way. It was one of my undergraduate degree texts and had no problems with it. And of course, considering that the negative reviews seem to be pissed at it because (a) it covers the theory properly; (b) it's written by a bunch of Scots, so it's "British" and that's apparently bad - I don't know how we survive over on this side of the pond with all those terrible American books ;-); (c) it isn't like a Dietel & Dietel book, and that's somehow a bad thing; (d) they were looking for Databases and SQL for Dummies and discovered that this wasn't it. The only relevant criticism made is that it's a little wordy. Ah well.

Magnetic deceleration does not exist.

Magnetic fields do no work. Period. They cannot, do not, never have, never will. Read any textbook about electrodynamics if you are curious. One I would recommend is that written by David J. Griffiths of Reed College.

Reason: Magnetic forces are always directed perpendicularly to the direction of motion. Work = F . d , where . means a dot product. Dot products (or inner products) are zero if the two vectors concerned (F and d) are perpendicular. d is the displacement vector, or the integral over time of the velocity vector (ie, it points in the direction of motion.) F is the force, and, if we are talking about a magnetic force, is perendicular to the direction of motion, therefore perpendicular to the displacement vector. Thus, the work done by a magnetic force is zero.

If no work is done, the energy does not change. If the energy does not change, and no other forces act on the particle, then its speed (that is, magnitude of velocity) does not change. If other forces do act on the particle, and it decelerates, then the cause of the deceleration is those other forces, rather than the magnetic force. So, if the speed does not change due to any magnetic force, ever, then magnetic deceleration does not exist.

It is true that in some situations it might seem as if a magnetic field is doing work. However, it is in fact the case, in every one of those situations, that what is in fact doing the work is an induced electric field (from a changing magnetic field), rather than a magnetic field directly. Once again, read a textbook for clarification. Once again, I highly recommend Griffiths.

For many books on Amazon, you can already do this using the "Search Inside this Book" function. You can only look at a few pages before and after where your search term was found, but of course this isn't too hard to get around (go to the last visiable page, search for something on that page, and continue).

A few weeks ago I went away to write a paper on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. Unfortunately I left my copy of the book at home. Enter Amazon.com: I was able to retreive all the quotes I needed based on my notes via the search function.

Orson Welles collection. I have it. It's worth listening to, as an educational experience at the least.

Print-on-demand was my way of publishing a textbook of Open-Source Artificial Intelligence.

Google Scholar makes the AI4U textbbok available through the Google Print Publisher Program -- so far, so good.

Amazon lets people write vicious reviews full of ignorance and lies -- not good.

Rebuttals of Amazon reviews are called for but nobody seems to care -- why not?

Association for Computing Machinery publishes the truth, but Amazon won't.

Top-notch AI researchers come to the rescue.

Hah! It can make you overconfident and reluctant to preview, however. Better formatted version below:

The human mind is ridiculously good at remembering relationships, people, stories. The key is to find a translation between this sort of memory and raw numbers. Therefore you create or acquire a system of representing numbers as people or items and then remember the sequence as a story or relationship between them. For example, the digit '0' could be a saw, the digit '3' could be yourself and the digit '9' could be a beach, five a policeman, 2 Noah of Noah's ark fame. Thus the sequence 30952 becomes a brief tale of you using a saw to build a beach hut when the police arrive to arrest you for building without a permit, but you're rescued by Noah in a speed boat (Eddie Izzard references get you bonus points). Once you're familiar with the standard items that occur in a story, you can rapidly turn it back into number as you write/type/recite.

That's a basic illustration of how you do it, but systems can be much more sophisticated and easy to use. For example, the system that I use ties the first thousand digits to vision and the three hundreds relate to 'Moonlight.' 52 relates to a lane. Therefore I only need to remember walking down a moonlit lane and that's five digits already. It's not as complicated as it sounds, because there is a logical sequence for associating numbers with items - e.g. '1' is a t / d sound. So the sequence 10, 11, 12, 13 is Daze, Dad, Dan, Dam. Note that the second syllable is tying back to the same sequence so '0' our (z)saw makes 10 Daz. '2' our Noah makes 12 Dan. Similar logic underlies scaling it to hundreds and thousands so it's actually easy once you've memorised about 20 associations and you can certainly manage that. ;)

Like anything, it takes a little practice to do it quickly, but a few days or a week of using the system and you're not bothering to write down phone numbers anymore. When I started it, I was worried about my brain getting overloaded with numbers. I now realize how stupid that was - I've been memorising things everyday of my life - attaching a translation key so that some of it can be turned back into numbers makes no difference.

There are several different systems. I personally used Tony Buzan's book here to get started. It pads out the book with a lot of stuff you don't really need and I don't think some of the extended stuff works. But you're getting it for the key system for memorising numbers and it works fine for that. There are probably others out there.

Your system for song lyrics is fine, but if you talked about your method or another password using the same system was compromised, then it would be trivial to test all other passwords for the same principle.

Hope this helps,
-H.