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Let me help you with your brain :

Greek and Latin Roots

Now be grateful - I could have modded you offtopic instead. :-)

But who is going to fund that study, and pay for it to be released to the masses?

That's what university scholarships and research grants are for! Get a creative grantwriter, and you can get funding for just about anything.

Someone else here linked to this, which is an excellent read. Unless you're a conspiracy theorist, I think this conclusively demonstrates that evolution exists - at least strong microevolution and possibly speciation. Although it's true that we can't *know* that evolution was the driving force in the development of life as we know it, I think evolution is highly consistent with the history of life, and we don't need a lot more to explain everything we know. Although some other force *could* be at work, Occam's Razor suggests there isn't one.

That still leaves the origin of the first life form up in the air.

Agree. This will be a breakthrough, and if anything is a mystery -- then the question, why it hasn't already happened.

Evolving computer programs -- not simple genetic algorithms, but programs that actually "thrive" on CPU time and memory, and compete for these resources -- have been already used to experimentally investigate evolution. Note that there is a serious difference between a genetic algorithm and a truly evolving program. In the former case, the fitness function is precisely defined by the programmer. In the latter, the fitness is just what it is in living organisms -- ability to pass on the genes, or code.

Check out the web page -- http://www.msu.edu/~lenski/ -- of Richard Lenski, experimental evolutionist (bacteria in a test tube + computer), you will find a nice article on in silicio evolution on his web page. The guy has 4 Nature and 2 Science publications only on the topic of digital evolution.

January

j.

I had three different classes in game development at MSU through their Digital Media Art & Technology program, and they were definitely the most difficult classes I had in school. Many a late night was spent creating models in 3DS Max and programming Director 8. I still dabble in game development, but those guys are definitely a different breed. I'd be interested in seeing the drop-out rate of these schools.

I had three different classes in game development at MSU through their Digital Media Art & Technology program, and they were definitely the most difficult classes I had in school. Many a late night was spent creating models in 3DS Max and programming Director 8. I still dabble in game development, but those guys are definitely a different breed. I'd be interested in seeing the drop-out rate of these schools.

A: Apple does multiple benchmarks on PPC processors showing them to be "twice as fast as Intel", does that make them more accurate? That sounds a lot like "repeat it often enough and it becomes true" to me. Besides, there are have been multiple studies done on this. B: The computer models you rely upon as a proponent of Global Warming Theory rely upon error correction too. So what? Now error correction is not good enough? C: Oh, so measurably cutting CO2 concentrations would have no measurable effect in the short term? I rest my case.

A true test of a scientific theory is its ability to predict things.

No, as any ID debater here will tell ya, a true test of a scientific theory is it's ability to withstand scrutiny and be falsifiable. Here ya go, falsify away for less than the price of an Iraq war.

Global Warming was predicted based upon greenhouse gas theories and models long before we detected it. That's pretty heavy evidence that at least one cause of global warming is the amount of CO2 and other gasses that are released when we burn gasoline

Well imagine that. The graph from my space.com link says the temp anomaly first jumped up above 0 in the past 300 years around 1925. Are you saying computer models were predicting this change back in 1915? Or are you saying the industrial revolution didn't start until 1970 when the anomaly crossed back up and over the zero marker again? Let's have a look at your graph and debate that maybe... Oh, wait, you don't have a graph, or measurements, or anything but the assertion that everyone believes it and there's some magic computer model somewhere that "proves" it.

Small fingerless child my ass.

And then there are a handful of us who majored in environmental science in college who think that computer models are as susceptible to subjective modelers as computer benchmarks are to industry types trying to sell you their latest processor. Large majority eh? Got any relevant links? I'm not going to pick on you specifically MightyMartian, because there are a lot of people here racking up +5's with nothing but rhetoric. Here's why I think this global warming business is a sham.

The soil releases an order of magnitude more CO2 into the atmosphere than all the fossil fuels burned each year combined. No till farming in America could take as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as taking half of all the cars in America off the road. A full 40% of the Earth's arable land is being used for agriculture and most of it is being severely degraded by tillage. Why aren't you people up in arms about that? Hey, burn the f'in farmers right? They're greedy evil bastards.

Studies have shown that fertilizing plankton with iron sulfate could significantly reduce atmospheric CO2. (IronEx II is a notable success.) "Oh teh Noes!!11oneone1eleventyone! After 500 years it wont teh wurk anymore!?ONE" Well gee, we'll be out of fossil fuels by then. So why aren't you guys who are belly aching about global warming doing it? Afraid you'll have egg on your face if CO2 drops and mean temps continue to rise? What you say? Your models might be flawed?

Wow, the Sun IS getting hotter, and Earth's temperature correlates directly with it.

And as for plastics, we can make most of that out of corn and it's more environmentally friendly. Most of the crowd around here loves parroting each other with this global warming chicken little horseshit, but I personally am sick to death of hearing it. Produce something besides a BBC article written in layman's terms that says the sky is falling, PLEASE! I thought this was news for nerds, not drama queens.

Would anyone like to provide a little evidence to the contrary that is not entirely based on a computer model?

In the open source world, "suggestions" come in the form of "source code"

Note that there is now support for other hashes in some form (either patches or built-in) for linux, BSD and solaris. Just as $1$ means "md5", there is $2$ or $2a$ for "blowfish", and a few other less common ones.

e.g. http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/fi les/blowfish-passwords.txt ,
http://web.cps.msu.edu/cgi-bin/man2html?crypt.conf ?4?/usr/man.
(I think the linux link there is thoroughly obsolete and the functionality has started to appear "upstream", but I can't find the up-to-date reference).

For extra credit: determine the conversion factor from Belgiums to Libraries of Congress.

1. The virtual philantropist:
   • "{In 1995} the company hired an outside consultant, Craig Smith, to devise a strategic plan to direct Microsoft's corporate giving in ways that guarantee the greatest return to the company.
   • Bill Gates is not so much a philanthropist as he is a Virtual Philanthropist. Of the $73.2 million that Microsoft donated to charity in 1995, $62.1 million, or about 85 percent, was in the form of software licenses.
2. "the software tycoon's global philanthropy exercises carry a hidden agenda to persuade beneficiary governments to reverse policies promoting the use of open source software."
3. "100 m over 10 years vs 421 m over 3 years, is Linux four times worse than AIDS?"

Furthermore, the focus on AIDS/HIV is purely for the benefit of US audiences where it is a high profile issue. Heart disease, car accidents, violent crime, even smoke from cooking fires all individually cause more deaths than AIDS/HIV. Plus most of Gates' "donations" don't deal with preventative measures, but instead rely on corrective measures and squeeze matching funds from local governments and charities to buy expensive pharmaceuticals produced by the large pharmas that Gates is heavily invested in.

I don't call any of that charity. I call it conflict of interest. Besides, what about his heavy investments six and seven years ago in the "Military-Industrial Complex". Investments like that, especially some of the larger ones, don't give a good return unless protracted and/or large scale war can be instigated. Even if Gates' "donations" were real and true charity, bad karma like that doesn't just go away over night.

Time apparently is for sale in more ways than one. And the New York Magazine is playing the fool for going along with it.

if the philosophical community at large merits ID to be a system worthy of inclusion in a standard philosophical curriculum, then I will defer to their judgment instead of yours.

I don't think you have the authority to say "this doesn't deserve to be called a philosophy". Or maybe you can point me to some of your published works on the subject?

I studied philosophy at the University of Michigan (our program is #1 in the country)

He used it twice. He meant it. And it is an incredibly accurate term to use with respect to the Bush administration's manipulation of policy and perception. Under the diseased system of government of today, we who question and seek accountability are the enemy.

I hate Bush as much as any decent human being, but you really need to expand the blame to include pretty much the entire post World War 2 US foreign policy.
Ike laid it out pretty clearly

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

The problems with the weapons industry have long been clear. What you're seeing here is other industries trying to expand their membership in the club.
Socialized costs and privatized profits are a very real problem, no matter the industry.

It has come to my attention that you have made anti-bush comments and are at this very moment having anti-bush thoughts. It is extremely un-patriotic to question the judgement of the President.

"[W]e can't love our country and hate our government."
-The President of the United States

"How dare you suggest that we in the freest nation on Earth live in tyranny... [T]here is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government."
-The President of the United States

No, there are legitimate hypothesis, which are statements that try to explain observed phenonema. Theories are tested hypothesis that have made and succeded in their predictions. For example, one could look for changes in bacteria or look for bacteria that lives on new materials to look for evolution, say for example nylon. So, a material that didn't exist until the 1940s is now being eaten by a special kind of bacteria. Isn't this a good example of natural selection?

The concern I have with teaching Intelligent Design is that it breaks down the theory of Evolution by showing a 'competing' theory. Do we do the same thing in Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy? Do we teach every competing theory for each discipline? This seems like a difficult prospect more likely to confuse students than teach them.

Reading this entire thread--made up of engineers, students, geeks--shows just how many people are confused about Evolution. So, how can we expect busy teachers and bored students to be able to understand how Evolution works and why Intelligent Design is such a ridiculous theory.

For one, Pennock himself lists it directly as a refutation of Behe's claims:

http://www.msu.edu/~pennock5/research/DICE_Pennock VsIDC.html

Of course, Avida itself has been analyzed and found wanting:

http://crevobits.blogspot.com/2005/08/genetic-algo rithms.html (see especially the links at the end of the page to more research-oriented material)

I had read an article that more specifically talks about Avida with reference to Behe, but cannot locate it at the moment.

"The full moon that occurs closest to the Autumnal Equinox (first day of fall) is known as a Harvest Moon. Due to the low angle of the ecliptic to the horizon, the moon rises only about 30 minutes later each night around a harvest moon as apposed to the normal 60 minutes later each night for the other full moons in the year."
Harvest Moon

It should also be noted that the only night a lunar eclipse can take place is on a full moon. Otherwise the earth cannot project a shadow onto the moon.

Hmm, like sterilizing disabled people?

Half century? Kennedy is widely acknowledged as the first 'television president' and the debates iwth Nixon were certainly not prohibitively expensive.

The Nixon/Kennedy debate was programming i.e. an actual show that individual viewers chose to watch. True, Kennedy's television performance received the credit for his victory but, at that time, the scale of advertising's influence was beneath the radar of most commentators - they simply prefered to believe that their fellow countrymen had made an informed decision based on debate rather than mere advertising. The advertising industry itself has historically sought to downplay it's influence: see cigarettes, childrens toys, junk food. I have no idea what the level of media spend was during that election but you can be confident that, even by 1960, the military-industrial complex was suffiently in control to sway elections, I refer you to Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 speech on the matter as he prepared to hand over power to President elect Kennedy.

It is worth noting, too, that, in the English language, the phrase "the experience of the past half century" means that one is considering that span as a whole. You will also commonly find that people use half century units in a rather general way, not meaning to suggest that a general trend popped into existence at precisely 2:11PM on the 9th of October 1955.

"The world would not have free access to the Internet, if it were not for the benevolent policies of that 'police state run by religious fanatics, a military industiral complex'."

Just to clarify, I didn't invent the term "military-industiral complex", Eisenhower did. Read his speech:

http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/i ndust.html

I can tell you that this type of computer is going to be a huge hit, especially in the urban areas. There's a huge untapped market for a product in this price range and huge potential. A lot of families have the money (at least in the cities) to afford a unit at that cost and they will purchase them for their kids - education is a huge priority and a lot of parents want to get as many modern tools in the hands of their kids as possible.

I have a lot of experience supporting equipment in places where these things are being considered, and a lot of the comments are spot on - the elements are extremely hard on any equipment (dust, humidity) as well as power surges. I'm not as concerned about dealing with curricula or proper usage - kids overseas are the same as they are here - they'll figure out creative meaningful ways to use these things and schools/families will figure out meaningful ways to teach/make them valuable learning tools. Don't assume just because folks are dirt poor they don't get it.

I remember taking my Powerbook overseas all the time into the bush in Africa, out to Mongolia, or in the South Pacific - it took a beating but always worked. We also considered (and I traveled a bit with) the eMates (http://www.msu.edu/~luckie/gallery/emate300.htm) - which are sort of the same thing - I loved that thing and it was really rugged. To me the bigger hurdle is not so much hardware, but connectivity - a 100 dollar laptop that can't get to the internet cheaply isn't as valuable. If this can be combined with cheap broadband access, then you won't be able to make them fast enough.

Remember when PDAs first came out? We were paying $300+ for something with 8MB RAM and a black-and-white LCD.

Actually, I do remember when PDAs first came out. I even bought a second-generation Palm Pilot Personal (back when they were still "U.S. Robotics"). US$200...

The first Newton MessagePad was $800.

Also, the first Palm device, the Pilot, was shipped by a company called Palm Computing, Inc., whose CEO was Jeff Hawkins. The company started in 1992 developing software for the GRiDPad, then later for the Newton and also for the Zoomer. Only rather later did they decide to go it on their own, after Apple kept going for more advanced machines rather than smaller, simpler, cheaper ones. At that point they got a $44 million stock infusion from US Robotics to put out the Pilot.

The Pilot cost $300.

take a read here: http://www.msu.edu/~luckie/newtgal.htm.

read especially about the handwriting recognition (yes there were problems in the earlier revisions), especially in the later models. the 2100 was damned impressive and there aren't any other recognition systems that worked quite like it since.

"No one will ever need more than 640k of memory" (Bill Gates, 1985)

If you were famous we'd add you to this list of infamous quotes, but you're not.

http://www.msu.edu/~devossda/110/

So do I

Despite what some far-left loons think, America is not in the absolute grip of some overarching corporate conspiracy.

I guess that makes me a far-left loon then. Indeed I doubt there's a corporate conspiracy, but the country is definitely run by corporations, or more precisely, by rich corporate shareholders.

Corporations control the press through ownership of TV and radio stations and newspapers. The press is therefore partial, and what the public sees of what happens in the nation and abroad is roughly what the corporate owners don't mind them seeing.

Corporations also control the government, or at least, keep them in check, through lobbying and obvious conflicts of interest (think Halliburton/Cheney/Bush).

People, whose view of the world is slanted, vote for representative whose fingers dip in the corporate world. Their vote can therefore never bring a fair and impartial government to power. That's as simple as that. And that simple truth goes beyond minor differences between democrats or republicans or any other party. That's just the way the USA was designed, the problem only got amplified after WW2, when the military-industrial complex got too powerful. Even Ike warned us about it, I'm not inventing anything.

But I guess everybody is entitled to his opinion...

Two words: Janet Jackson (see statue in the back) Ashcroft sure is a badboy ;)

Yeah, like that's the whole story.

Whatever.

Notice how it's called "climate change" and not "global warming" any more? PBS did a great show about the advertising biz. Apparantly the Bush regime worked really hard to remove the meme "global warming" and insert "climate change" so the likes of you will be less scared of it. Seems to have worked well on everyone, especially the 'mainstream media'.

I'm not that afraid of nuclear power plants, but if Bush is involved, then "nukulur power plant" is probaly a euphimism for Domestic Terrorst Watch Tower. Read this. I got that link from metafilter.

it was the 'Military-Industrial Complex' that Ike warned about.

the asteroid is already a thermos, being surrounded by vacuum

Cool case mod: use waste heat for power.

Paper will decompose under the proper conditions. A landfill is pretty much completely oxygen free with no source of water (landfills are capped to prevent water from leaching toxic chemicals out) meaning that they biological processes which break paper down no longer function. Newspapers discarded over 40 years before have been out of landfills which were still readable. more info. Considering that after compaction paper historically took up about half of the space in a landfill, this is actually a big deal.

If anything, though, I'd see this act reducing the amount of paper going into landfills. It would mean that people think twice before throwing a piece of paper in the regular garbage. Recycling would be a more sure bet of actually destroying the paper in such a way that it is rendered un-reassemblable than throwing in a landfill.

There sure are some weird peoples on this planet of ours. Are the Asu anything like these people?

http://www.msu.edu/~luckie/egg.gif

Perhaps this is the advisory you seek

Someone should do a documentary on how Microsoft stole Apple's source code for Quicktime and incorporated it into their own "Video for Windows" and then bullied Apple into accepting a very one sided deal to drop the lawsuit.

The common Sebacean/Terran origin was covered by the nice peacemaker aliens noting they found an obscure species from far off with no connection to local conflicts suitable muscle after some modifications. So far as I know, Skaarans don't share a common origin; IIR, they only interbreed with Sebaceans with genetic engineering assistance, and the common flower may be a terran export dating to the peacemaker visit to that area.

or what Earth ended up doing with the advanced technology Crichton left them,

Um... what technology? They got to peek at some of the toys for a while, and maybe a few thousand doses of translator microbes left behind. The technological impact won't be even as big as the Grays' toys from Roswell. =)

The main tech package he left for them was a tape recorder with detailed instructions... at Tranquility Base . Assuming a history that (evidently) closely parallels ours, it will take a minimum of five years and probably closer to ten before they can get back to the moon. The main impact for at least the next decade or so would be cultural... but I doubt they will reunite the two qiblah prior to lunar or Legrangian colonization... and probably not until they reach Mars.

What about the powerful Military Industrial Complex. Later on this document speaks of living to much for today and the need to use resources carefully. I think that Bush has forgotten this message altogether. I think I am going to have some MBTE for a late-night snack.

We all know Apple invented the ... Media Center PC, PocketPC, XBox, ...

Yeah, they're called Mac TV, Newton, and Pippin.

The linked article doesn't seem to say room temperature.

It's true it does say:
quantum wires could perform at least as well as existing superconductors--without the need for expensive cooling equipment.

But that is subject to multiple interpretations, and an earlier post said that his report in 1999 featured data collected at 20 Kelvin. Nitrogen liguifies at about 70K, and Oxygen at about 90K. So that probably means liquid Helium, but not extremely cold Helium. Unless this is based on something else, his idea of "expensive cooling equipment" would appear to be a lot different from mine.

There is http://www.pa.msu.edu/cmp/csc/eprint/DT153.pdf which talks about room temperature ferromagnetism (PHYSICAL REVIEW B 67, 125421 2003), but it doesn't seem to define the term, and that's not superconductivity.

http://www.kisa.ca/asl.html

http://www.masterstech-home.com/ASLDict.html

http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.ht m

http://wings.avkids.com/Book/Signing/

Other estoteric ASL signs are:
http://deafmissions.com/dic/ADRSindex.html (religious)

The problems were set up so that you really couldn't get the right answer without understanding the material; online, you had to enter 3 or 4 significant figures and the right units to get credit.

I'm not sure how a computer would make a student "show work" in Calculus, but there are a lot of symbolic mathematical languages out there. In fact, thereom-verifiers have been around for a long time; if the student just has to mention axioms, simple table-lookup is all that's needed. Of course, at some point a mathematician needs to start writing simple, symmetric, beautiful proofs, but 90% of the kids in a freshman calc class won't ever really do serious math...

how do I visualise this? Data in jelly blubber with a read/write needle swimming through it? Data gets read out where two laserbeams cross?

Actually, what you describe exists. There's a team that was making, a decade ago, transparent gelatinous cubes containing bacteriorhodopsin, a light-sensitive protein similar to the light sensor in your own optical rods in your retina.

By indexing the cube with two different lasers simultaneously, you could cause the bacteriorhodopsin in an indexable 3D location to switch between two different conformations (foldings), or read fluorescence which indicated its' current configuration. Thus storing a rewritable bit in a small region of a 3D transparent cube of "jelly blubber". Data did in fact get read out "where two laserbeams cross".

I think the rapid growth of HD sizes, coupled with the fact that you have to keep the cube moist, is why they've not managed to make a marketable product yet. (Incidentally, allowing the cube to dehydrate would make the data unreadable. But, it didn't destroy it. If you rehydrated the cube, you could get the data back... which is kinda cool...)

Here's a link to
an early description of the technique from 1996.

Here's another really nice geo-centric model: http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/2004spring/ISP205/se c-3/images/geocentric_paths.GIF it did a great job of explaining everything we saw from the earth. but we know it's false, today, but one of the earliest indicators that it wrong idea based on the complications of explaining all the movements of comets, stars, astroids, and new planets that were discovered. complicated models, i believe, reflect on their weakeness.

You might also want to read the following papers:

A Comparison Analysis of the Greater Carbohydrate and Increased Photosynthetic Element Count of Budweiser Versus the Similar Enzyme Content of Bud Light

Next to medicine and biowarfare, brewing and fermentation technology is a major funding source for microbiology.

Some research suggests that drinking beer may stop your hair from turning grey

And possibly the most expensive PDF's in the world

Notice Regarding Possible Exposure of Personal Information

Links? It's really strange, all of the official web sites that I had that showed this stuff seem to have up and vanished.

Here are some second-source things:
Apple's letters to VfW devopers:
http://www.pa.msu.edu/~hamlin/facts/1stltr.html
http://www.pa.msu.edu/~hamlin/facts/2ndltr.html

A tiny snippet that tells how the case actually came out, courtesy of the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/19970206203623/http://w ww.macworld.com/pages/may.95/News.705.html (Scroll down some)

The only reference I can find to the rumor about this issue forcing the investment in Apple and the patent swap and the agreement to keep developing Mac software is from here:
http://www.mackido.com/History/History_VfW.html
However, I saw quite a few references to that rumor in the circles I was traveling in at time, and I know for a fact that there was still a lawsuit that was settled and disappeared without a trace right around that time, so...

Another one where Apple won one:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,16141, 00.html

As for why QuickTime works so badly now, I can only surmise that one of the following is true:
- Apple has stopped really trying.
- Microsoft succeeded in making it impossible to do within QT's budget.
- Microsoft has gotten a lot better at what they do, and thus make the QT group look worse.

Given how often MS has been convicted of sabotaging rivals, I'd have to say that the second sounds like the most likely. Real has mentioned in a lot of interviews that if they didn't rely on undocumented Windows calls that they reverse-engineered, they wouldn't be able to get their product working acceptably.

Ah, Microsoft... to know you is to know just how much I'm being known by you.

In the biblical sense, of course.

-fred

Links? It's really strange, all of the official web sites that I had that showed this stuff seem to have up and vanished.

Here are some second-source things:
Apple's letters to VfW devopers:
http://www.pa.msu.edu/~hamlin/facts/1stltr.html
http://www.pa.msu.edu/~hamlin/facts/2ndltr.html

A tiny snippet that tells how the case actually came out, courtesy of the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/19970206203623/http://w ww.macworld.com/pages/may.95/News.705.html (Scroll down some)

The only reference I can find to the rumor about this issue forcing the investment in Apple and the patent swap and the agreement to keep developing Mac software is from here:
http://www.mackido.com/History/History_VfW.html
However, I saw quite a few references to that rumor in the circles I was traveling in at time, and I know for a fact that there was still a lawsuit that was settled and disappeared without a trace right around that time, so...

Another one where Apple won one:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,16141, 00.html

As for why QuickTime works so badly now, I can only surmise that one of the following is true:
- Apple has stopped really trying.
- Microsoft succeeded in making it impossible to do within QT's budget.
- Microsoft has gotten a lot better at what they do, and thus make the QT group look worse.

Given how often MS has been convicted of sabotaging rivals, I'd have to say that the second sounds like the most likely. Real has mentioned in a lot of interviews that if they didn't rely on undocumented Windows calls that they reverse-engineered, they wouldn't be able to get their product working acceptably.

Ah, Microsoft... to know you is to know just how much I'm being known by you.

In the biblical sense, of course.

-fred

Why not name the guilty? It was Lockheed Martin, although JPL should have caught it.

Religious adherence to evolution? Are you trying to be Ironic?

Don't look now but.... http://devolab.cse.msu.edu/software/avida/

The evolutionaries are one step ahead of you!

This has been discussed for a great deal of time. I originally saw this paper years ago. Bell Labs on the speed of Dark