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He didn't kill them, it was old age.

Tommy Sands wrote about this very thing in his song There Were Roses.

"An eye for an eye, it was all that filled their minds
And another eye for another eye till everyone is blind."

Once again with the subject of genetics on Slashdot, we have a shocking level of confident ignorance on display (aided and abetted by the equally clueless moderators).

Please, evolution is not synonymous with natural selection. If all you know about genetics is what you learned in Biology 101, perhaps supplemented by a Dawkins book, you're missing out on most of the picture.

The degeneration of the Y chromosome was made possible by the lack of recombination along most of its length (Muller's ratchet/Hill-Robertson effect), which allowed the combined effects of mutation (including deletions) and genetic drift (which is much stronger on the Y due to there being 1/4 the number of Y chromosomes in a population than a given autosome) to very slowly truncate it. There's really no need to invent post-hoc selective stories to explain this; it's all pretty basic stuff.

Of course, you are correct that this doesn't mean that males would (or could) go extinct if the Y somehow did disappear. No competent scientist would ever claim this; most likely the sex-determining genes would move to other chromosomes.

Summary of this story in Nature

The origins of genome complexity

Darwin has a posse. Just sayin'.

Inheritance tax like many other ideas has merit to it, but when implemented is not actually a good idea. I do not stand to inherit much in the scheme of things, but would be pissed if the government took it away. I do chores and general upkeep at my parents house. I save them money and keep the house valuable. They keep money in their pocket, in banks, the stock market etc, and keep the economy going. The same goes for rich people. Just because they are filthy rich, does not mean that their kids have not help maintain some of the parents goings on. How do you judge what filthy rich is and who is deserving? Rich people keep much of their money invested and keep the economy going. That is how they stay rich. That is how Americas stays strong. There is too much bloat in the American government. Reduce that spending, because taxes are high enough. I recommend that you read Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth. The gist of it is this: The rich have a moral obligation to do good while still living, but not a financial one. Hopefully you do not believe in forcing morals on someone else. Otherwise, you stand for man and woman marriage only, no drugs, prudence, etc. and are not much for tolerance.

Sounds like you are interested in an in-depth article on the physics of building a space elevator, so I took a look around and found this, which seems thorough. (PDF)

The physics of the space elevator

I think the Deep Belief Networks of Hinton et al are way ahead of Numenta.. in that they are real science with measurable results that has been reproduced by multiple implementations. The 2006 paper that started it all and Hinton's presentation on google video:

http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~ywteh/research/ebm/nc2006.pdf
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=228784531481853811

A formal analysis:

http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~ilya/pubs/2007/inf_deep_net_utml.pdf

Application to natural language processing:

http://www.cs.swarthmore.edu/~meeden/cs81/s08/DahlLaTouche.pdf
http://www.machinelearning.org/proceedings/icml2007/papers/425.pdf

Reproducing Hinton and extension to and evaluation in other domains:

http://www.machinelearning.org/proceedings/icml2007/papers/331.pdf

Use in Computer animation of facial expressions:

http://aclab.ca/users/josh/downloads/pubs/23_Susskind_Hinton_Movellan_Anderson.pdf

Most impressive:

http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~ilya/pubs/2007/aistats_multilayered.pdf

A C++ implementation (although it has much Python love):

http://plearn.berlios.de/

So yeah, there's some pretty good demonstrations of how powerful DBNs are.. Numenta is lagging behind.

People are always willing to pay more to be entertained that to be educated.

've always heard taht 100 watt/person, but have never seen real data to back that up. According to http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/es/energy/bodyheat.html A person puts out 54 watts. Or at least 1 standard professor unit does.

It's not just body heat that has to be removed, but also humidity.

I've always heard taht 100 watt/person, but have never seen real data to back that up.

According to
http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/es/energy/bodyheat.html
A person puts out 54 watts. Or at least 1 standard professor unit does.

This is taking textbook sillyness to a new level - alomst as if they were treating the bible as a literal text that was written directly by a major deity. Usually, you call thrm out on their sillyness by exploiting some contradictions (quickref) in the bible (as in the case of the first two chapters of Genesis).

I won't do a blow-by-blow, as there's more than enough cut-n-paste material available.

The person complaining about the film also makes one incorrect assertion - he assumes that religion is incompatible with Science when science can simply be used to indicate that God is more clever than what most people originally thought. (Or when a religion forcefully accepts certain sciences.)

BTW, the best way to counter Global Warming is a direct attack. Wikipedia has a page concerning the Global Warming Controversy that does not rely on a specific religion - and it doesn't result in sillyness of "Global warming is a theory - you should teach the opposing viewpoint, Global Warming."

More choices do not always lead to happiness.

http://www.sciammind.com/article.cfm?articleID=000 56941-1933-1196-906983414B7F0000&pageNumber=1

http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bschwar1/maximizi ng.pdf

This may not be directly applicable (since the cost of a choice in a software program is usually minimal), but I've found it interesting to consider when designing a user experience.

--kev

I am beginning to wonder if there are not to many rats in the rat cage?

Here's a few stickers you may like better.
http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbook disclaimers/

The real question in MY mind is how to verify the integrity of the election results as a whole.

It seems to me that the machine should only run open source code, compiled with an open source compiler, and a checksum (or better yet a 1-to-1 file comparison) run on the executable. The open source code would be made available for download, along with the executable, and anybody who wanted to check could compare the results of what they downloaded and home-compiled with the running executable on the voting machine.

What's more, the machine should send the election results to multiple "counter" servers (i.e. anybody/everybody who wants to "listen in", real time, would be able to do so they would simply register a listener server (open source, available for download, and with same compiler). As the election goes along, all the listener servers would receive a steady stream of voting results. In such a case, Any discrepancy would raise a red flag.

There would also have to be a means of REJECTING repeat voters, non-entity voters and hacker voters. At poll close, the votes could be COUNTED on the lan and phoned in. Comparing that number with the number of votes sent from that polling place would be a reasonable cross-check.

A good start, but perhaps more would be needed..?

PS
Sry commandmer taco but that claim you made in the summary is false. It would be very difficult to hack a diebold as a basic voter, since it uses a touch screen and has no keyboard. If you think you can hack that through the touchscreen then give it a TRY. (but dont get thrown in jail!) =P

http://scdc.sccs.swarthmore.edu/diebold/machine.jp g

How does adding that one statement, after perhaps hours, or days, or weeks of studying evolution, make it more important?

Because it invalidates the scientific method.

Let me try again. Evolution is a scientific theory, developed, discussed, and taught within the framework of the scientific method. Same for gravity, electro-magnetism, etc. Inteligent Design is not a scientific theory, and it cannot be (it doesn't satisfy the requirements of the scientific method). That is why ID should not be discussed in science class, in particular, it cannot be presented as an alternative to evolution. Even with one sentence.

If you cannot understand this, I feel truly sorry for you. I apologize if this sounds condescending, but I don't have another way to explain it.

BTW, here is something amusing regarding the "warning stickers" that some schools in Georgia, USA, had to put on their biology text books.

More choices are rarely a bad idea. I dislike bundled crapola that I'll never need or want.

It appears you have never heard of the paradox of choice.

In a nutshell, too many choices often lead to a inability to decide. It is the same reason people take so long to decide on an ice-cream flavor at Baskin-Robbins or on a dish from a chinese carry-out menu: too many choices. Most people simply don't want to think too hard when making a purchase, so it's a good idea for companies to make the range of choices as few and distinct as possible.

Here is an excerpt from the book.

There are at least few scientists who also support the ID.

Perhaps you missed the part where I wrote "99.9%".

Yes, and there are a few scientists who dispute nuclear fusion powering the sun, people who instead advocate the Electric Universe nonsense that keeps popping up here on Slashdot.

A fraction of a percent of crackpots who get their arguments reviewed and dismissed as flawed by experts does not amount to a genuine scientific controversy. If it did we'd be putting those silly anti-evolution warning stickers in every section of every science textbook.

Warning: This textbook suggests that the earth is spherical. The shape of teh earth is a controversial topic, and not all people accept the theory. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

Stickers, stickers, and more stickers.

Richard Sternberg, a scientist with two Ph.D.s in evolutionary biology and former editor of a journal published out of the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History.

That paper failed to meet the journal's established standards for for publication, so apparently Sternberg personally abused his position to get an

He sent out for peer review

Yes, prior to publication it was peer reviewed by three scientists. (I could be mistaken, but I beleive these three reviewers may have been selected by Sternberg himself?) But you convienetly left out the fact that NONE of the reviewers scientists endorsed the paper as valid. NONE of them. And after publication numerous expert immediately found it riddled with serious flaws. The professinal biologist community considered what the paper had to say and found it flawed and without value.

Sternberg abused his position to push an unqualified paper that was inappropriate for that journal and with with no peer review support and filled with errors, and he did so to serve his personal agenda and contrary to any standard of credible science.

ID got a paper published and it was reviewed by the scientific community and it failed to earn any acceptance. It is and was simply lousy science.

-

I can't let this slip past. Episode I instroduced Queen Amidala. That character moved me in ways no other female role has since I can remember. I'm not talking about when she is a normal looking girl. I'm talking about the costumes, the makeup, and the feminine atmosphere created by her attendents. So exotic, so alien. A few obvious bits from China and Japan, but still undeniably exotic. Yet so strong. Fourteen, still free of the influence of men, already a great leader, who makes adults appear corrupt, polluted, and just plain stupid. I wish she would run for President. This is a woman I would marry. In a heartbeat.

Kansas students will need these in the future, I guess.

What a fuck-up.

Evolution is nothing but a theory.

And again....

I hate crap like that. Scientific America had a great article a while back that explains this just as well as I ever could. Here, I found a copy of the article (Scientific America wants you to reg to read the original on their site):

"1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth."

PDF version: http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbook disclaimers/wackononsense.pdf

Original: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FE C-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF&sc=I100322

"I find it very ironic to be flamed by anyone who thinks I'm an idiot for not believing in a theory that's never been proven by scientific process."


I hate crap like that. Scientific America had a great article a while back that explains this just as well as I ever could. Here, I found a copy of the article (Scientific America wants you to reg to read the original on their site):

"1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth."

PDF version: http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbook disclaimers/wackononsense.pdf

Original: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FE C-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF

Enjoy! (flame on)

Is the first of these stickers the one you have in mind?

I would think the problem with them is that they use the readers' ignorance of the meanings of the words "fact" and "theory" to give them reason to doubt the validity of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Read the other stickers.

Here's an article overviewing this bullsh!t (pdf) from Scientific American. Clearly there are limits to the scientific method... but that doesn't make non-science science.

It'd be great if NASA (or someone higher up on the food chain) had the cojones to put an orion drive on a probe.

You mean like Deep Space 1 [nasa.gov]? It sounds like you have a good proposal for a mission. Personally, I think particle and fields science is pretty dull.

No, no, NO! He meains Orion Drive, not Ion Drive. The Orion Drive was thought up in the 50s, when other great ideas, like the Flying Crowbar were being developed. Compare detonating nuclear bomblets as a propulsive force (Orion Drive) with accelerating a harmless, inert gas through an electric field (Ion Drive). Which would you prefer malfunctioning catastrophically?

...they've been ordered to cover them with these!

p

(Alternate) Textbook disclaimers.

If I had a kid in school in that area, I would so stick some of those in his books...

A source to back up my assertion
Another Source
A source from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (PDF)

Why are /.ers so anti-Diebold and 'paperless' voting.
If companies brought back paper, then they won't need data and storage on computers.
I just find this bastion of Ludditism surprising here.

Here comes my obligatory Diebold link.

It's not because it runs Windows. The reason is they are a business first. They depend on monetary transactions for their business and they seem to, how do you say... 'screw that up'? How can I begin to trust them in light of their apparent failures and technical problems?

They don't take care of their cash, how can I trust an election? Even the candidates know the value of money...

As one of the Swarthmore students who was a plaintiff in the lawsuit, I'd like to invite you to browse/download the memos from our website. This in fact is the website that Diebold scared Swarthmore into shutting down, which was the basis for our lawsuit. We were able to re-post the memos after we filed our counternotification

Also, if you are a student, or you know students who are interested in copyfighting/freedom of speech, please head on over to FreeCulture.org, an international student movement for free culture :-)

Please mod parent up. It is a common enough belief that it shouldn't be modded as troll, especially in light of the Diebold memos.

Women by a lot of SUVs:

This is just about the first link off a google search.

So, penis extension isn't quite the right phrase.

Unless, of course, the hunt itself makes you happy. I'm a frugal person myself (and recommend Usenet's misc.consumers.frugal-living). But I've had a couple of friends who took frugality too far - to the point where they were valuing their personal time at an epsilon above zero.

• Downhill Battle
• Stop RIAA Lawsuits Coalition
• Boycott-RIAA
• Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons
• Pirates Or Heroes

"thats funny because you CANT simulate such an explosion since the fusion in a thermonuclear bomb uses plutonium for its destructive force"

Uhhh...no actually a thermonuclear bomb uses a fission device to fill what's called a hohlraum with intense x-rays that compress a source of hydrogen fuel to very high densities and temperatures. This is simulated very closely with a miniature equivalent hohlraum used with high power lasers.

"so...in short...shut up you stupid uneducated "I hate everything that has the word nuclear in it" person"

Inever said anything of the sort, nor would I ever say something so stupid. I was merely pointing out that it's unfortunate that something great like the NIF has to have its justification for being built be nuclear weapons design instead of fundamental physics.

You know where to get the Diebold memos... from the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons! Also, you may be interested in reading about how our court case against Diebold is going (nothing much is happening, we're waiting for the judge to rule, he said it might take a few months) Finally, we're working on launching FreeCulture.org, the future home of the international student movement for Free Culture, we hope to have it running soon!

The person who squarely deserves credit for the rediculous and pathetic starting "vision" of SWG is none other than Raph Koster.

You can thank him for taking such an amazing franchise and turning it into a huge mess.

Oh, and he got promoted by the way. You can certainly blaim SOE (and the ashes of Verant) for that.

Sooner or later somebody will decide that I'm a troll, but until then... Read the Diebold e-mail archives and decide the merits of the case for yourself! There is a reason that we did not post the e-mails piecemeal or "paraphrasing". That is because we had no way of knowing what would prove to be important. For instance, Diebold ran into trouble in California because the memos seem to show that they were using uncertified software in elections. The Californians were tipped off to this by some incorrect version numbers in the Diebold memos: version numbers newer than anything that had been approved by the gov't. We would never have imagined that these seemingly mundane e-mails which happened to mention versions would prove to be so vital.

Just a reminder to check out the Diebold memos for yourself. Find some more juicy stuff and get it in the news!

Hey folks, I know I've posted this in previous stories, but the more people read the memos, the safer our democracy is :-) Browse & Download the memos

You can get the memos at the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons website... this is the campus group that was started by the two students who are suing Diebold.

You can get the memos at the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons website... this is the campus group that was started by the two students who are suing Diebold.

On that note. I just finished reading the Best. SWG. Postmortem. Evah.

The game is bugged because the design process and the implementation process are also bugged. Programmers can fix bugs in code. They can't fix fundamental design flaws or fucked-up development processes.

That's the polite way of saying it. The honest truth? Raph Koster, you are a poor game designer, because you fail to understand what "fun" means, and you doggedly implement your "vision" no matter how "un-fun" it happens to be to your customers.

And SOE, you are a poor gaming company, because you fail to understand what "buggy" means, and you forced a poor designer to release a poor game too early, compounding the problem.

And for both of these reasons, that, is why SWG failed.

I'm a student at Swarthmore, and, in fact, the one who disabled access to the Diebold documents SCDC was hosting at scdc.sccs.swarthmore.edu . It was very unfortunate that we had to; I wish the college hadn't forced us to. That said--

What's not clear from all of the news coverage, is that while the college is indeed having to shut down hosts on campus for the documents, ITS here and the college itself is supportive of the students involved who are talking with EFF. The Deans are being helpful in suggesting legal routes for SCDC, but the College itself does *not* have the resources to get involved in a legal battle. Swarthmore is a very small school(1400) students, and just doesn't have the resources that larger institutions would to put towards legal expenses.

PLEASE go easy on Bob Gross's email; the administration at Swarthmore is very responsive to student needs, but there are limits as to what can be done. They're not bad people; they're doing what's best for the school.

Is Diebold getting off easy from Swarthmore? That has yet to be seen.

Just want to note that the write up about Swarthmore Dean Bob Gross above is a bit harsh. As I understand (I was unable to go to the large meeting that where this was discussed), he decided that while what the students were doing was a bold and important step, the college just did not have the financial resources to fight what could be a protracted legal battle with a large company like Diebold, especially when organiziations like the EFF are already involved in the issue. And I can understand this.

But while the college is not formally supporting the students on this cause, they are not cutting off student's access or anything like that. Why-War? is hosted off-campus and is continuing to spread the memos around. Several people are getting in contact with other schools in an effort to spread them in a more underground, but still visible, way.

Check out more on it on Swarthmore's Daily Gazette. The Phoenix should have something up on this soon, too.

Just want to note that the write up about Swarthmore Dean Bob Gross above is a bit harsh. As I understand (I was unable to go to the large meeting that where this was discussed), he decided that while what the students were doing was a bold and important step, the college just did not have the financial resources to fight what could be a protracted legal battle with a large company like Diebold, especially when organiziations like the EFF are already involved in the issue. And I can understand this.

But while the college is not formally supporting the students on this cause, they are not cutting off student's access or anything like that. Why-War? is hosted off-campus and is continuing to spread the memos around. Several people are getting in contact with other schools in an effort to spread them in a more underground, but still visible, way.

Check out more on it on Swarthmore's Daily Gazette. The Phoenix should have something up on this soon, too.

Courtesy of the Seattle Indymedia site.
http://d176.whartonab.swarthmore.edu/
http://d176.whartonab.swarthmore.edu/diebold_inter nalmemos.pdf
http://noisebox.cypherpunks.to/~visible/vote/vote. html
http://www.scifience.net/
http://emdx.org/r.php?U=BBV
http://opium.mine.nu/bbv/
http://centipede.provocation.net/diebold/
http://localh.kicks-ass.org/bbv/
http://d125.wortha.swarthmore.edu/
Source thread on Indymedia if you are interested.

Courtesy of the Seattle Indymedia site.
http://d176.whartonab.swarthmore.edu/
http://d176.whartonab.swarthmore.edu/diebold_inter nalmemos.pdf
http://noisebox.cypherpunks.to/~visible/vote/vote. html
http://www.scifience.net/
http://emdx.org/r.php?U=BBV
http://opium.mine.nu/bbv/
http://centipede.provocation.net/diebold/
http://localh.kicks-ass.org/bbv/
http://d125.wortha.swarthmore.edu/
Source thread on Indymedia if you are interested.

Courtesy of the Seattle Indymedia site.
http://d176.whartonab.swarthmore.edu/
http://d176.whartonab.swarthmore.edu/diebold_inter nalmemos.pdf
http://noisebox.cypherpunks.to/~visible/vote/vote. html
http://www.scifience.net/
http://emdx.org/r.php?U=BBV
http://opium.mine.nu/bbv/
http://centipede.provocation.net/diebold/
http://localh.kicks-ass.org/bbv/
http://d125.wortha.swarthmore.edu/
Source thread on Indymedia if you are interested.

The Good students at have decided this will not stand.