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That's not necessarily true. It is a relatively new field of computer science, and thus there's not all that much info out there yet. But once you understand the basic concepts of general purpose GPU programming anyone can do it.

What's most likely is that the guys at Stanford started pushing the hardware to the limit, and in ways the driver developers might not have anticipated. Probably what they ran up against was bugs in the driver, and the help came from ATI in terms of ways to work around the bugs. Evidence backs this up from Folding@Home's GPU FAQ:

[You must use] Catalyst driver version 6.5 or version 6.10, but not any other versions: 6.6 and 6.7 will work, but at a major performance hit; 6.8 and 6.9 will not work at all.

Your next question might be, if that's true then why use ATI (who are known for poor driver quality)... it might simply be a matter of that's the hardware they had to test with, so that's what they needed to use.

At any rate, it's definitely possible to get started doing GPU programming without vendor support.

There's even some API's out there to help... The Brook C API (for doing multiprocessor programming) has a GPU version out called BrookGPU: http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/brookgpu/ind ex.html

There's even a fairly large community of people using Nvidia's own Cg library for doing general purpose stuff.

There's also GPUSort (source code available to look at), which is a high performance sorting example that uses the GPU to do the sorting, and it trounces the fastest CPUs: http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/GPUSORT/results.html

And last but not least there's the GPGPU site that is a great resource for all sorts of general purpose computing the GPUs: http://www.gpgpu.org/

Anyone suing U-Tube would be taking the risk of losing the lawsuit and setting a precident.

Elsewhere on /. I pontificated that YouTube was going to get taken down. While YouTube may still get slammed, I'm starting to rethink my position, especially with regard to how things turned out for Napster.

That is, the RIAA took a fairly big risk going after Napster because the music industry truly believed Napster to threaten their bottom line. Without getting into nitty gritties, many people today believe that the RIAA overestimated the damage that illegal music downloads have on sales. In fact, some experts believe music downloads do not significantly effect music sales while contributing to societal good and others assert that filesharing actually spurs music sales.

Given that lesson, it could be that the video industry (and even an overextended and hyper-litigious music industry) is thinking to itself that stopping YouTube is not in their best interests. Not only would the lawsuit be expensive, but it would dampen the enthusiasm people are clearly expressing regarding downloadable video (and I don't mean BitTorrrent).

Now, I'm the last person to believe that the suits have actually learned from their mistakes (*cough* Jack Valenti *cough*)* but it is entirely possible that the industry might have other plans for YouTube including taking a "wait and see" attitude. Then again, they could simply be spellchecking the suit before submitting it.

* Yes, I know Valenti is no longer the head of the MPAA

Undeniably correct? Which accusation are you referring to, because I know it wasn't the part about their business being significantly damaged by file sharing. In fact, that claim is undeniably FALSE, as this study points out: http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March 2004.pdf#search=%22file%20sharing%20record%20sales %22. Notice, in the abstract: Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates. This would seem to make sense, as most of us should be familiar with the sales reports from Kazaa's high point, which showed the CD sales had more than recovered since Napster's debut -- and Kazaa had far more traffic than Napster, further weakening the claim that the RIAA would be bankrupted by file sharing.

Perhaps this theory would help: most people who use file sharing networks would not have purchased the album in question anyway, so no actual sales were lost. Think about that statement, and think about who is using file sharing networks. Before Napster came out, were college students out buying hundreds of CDs (the equivalent of the thousands of MP3s that some had downloaded and shared)? Certainly not, most cannot afford to spend upwards of $5000 on album collections. So downloading those tracks should not be counted as a lost sale, any more than sharing CDs in a dorm building should (but I wouldn't put it past the RIAA to count it that way). This is why I am always skeptical of economists who say that millions of dollars per year are lost to piracy, because I am forced to ask whether or not the people using pirated music, movies, books, or software were actually going to buy these things to begin with (especially with software, especially when it costs more than $100). The problem is that basic economics does not apply here; the fact that music is available for free does not mean that people will automatically flock to the free stuff, as we learned that they should in economics 101, and the reasons behind this are still being studied.

Um ... the whole point is that the people who are downloading music without paying for it are _not_ the RIAA's customer base - the ones who buy the records are their customer base and the RIAA is not suing people for legally buying records.

I think you'll find that downloading increases sales. People who use P2P and download music buy more albums. Therefore, the people they are suing are, in fact, their customer base.

You don't believe the researchers? Contact them about it. You cannot site a single study to support your point of view, but you are making blind assertions based on the statements of biased parties. Whether or not you believe actual research, the numbers show that P2P networks, including Napster, have not had a statistically significant impact on content sales.

You saw small CD stores close down between 2000 and 2003? Guess what? There were hard economic times! I saw many, many, many small businesses close their doors back then, CD stores among them. The fact that P2P networks were at their height at that time is pure coincidence. Plenty of other fads were occurring, and it is as ludicrous to blame P2P networks on CD stores closing as it is to blame the rise of blackberries. Unless you can find some basis for making this claim, other than "they happened at the same time," your opinions bear no relevance.

Kazaa outdid Napster's popularity, with Napster peaking at under 30 million registered users and Kazaa peaking at over 50 million. Kazaa is also a far more efficient network than Napster was and it scales better. The RIAA has been 100% ineffective at preventing P2P traffic. This cannot be explained by anything other than people who cannot afford to buy CDs going to P2P networks instead. How is this different from the pre-Napster days of burning copies of your friends' CDs?

In fact, P2P filesharing is no more dangerous to profits than CD burners, which were lobbied against, or FM radio, which was lobbied against...the RIAA has a history of vehemently opposing any new technology that allows people to hear music when they could not have afforded to otherwise. It is a group that is led by millionaires, who can afford to buy whatever music they wish to hear, not average people who have to be scrupulous in their buying decisions.

i have to say, the typcial religious right fanatic offends my sensibilities as much as the next guy, but i have to take issue with your assertion that a literal reading of the bible and science are contrary to each other.

do you know the bible literally uses figurative language to make a point - and does so all the time? think about it. the issue is that the bible is 100% accurate in its intent. the reality is that the intent of the bible isn't always clear.

that's why i don't take a hard line on specifics incidents. not that god (think about the concept - a flood on earth is a piece of cake compared to creating systems and processes to create and manage the entirety of the physical existence) didn't rain down a flood. he well might have.

at the end of the day, though, the MESSAGE is undisputable - bad things happen to people who do bad things and god will save those who try and do good things. now, the religious right will try and say that means they are saved and everyone goes to eternal hellfire, but they are confused on many, many levels.

first, this life isn't the only time god can save people - read ezekiel 37 for the timing of the salvation of the "whole house of israel." it hasn't happened yet. second, the entire concept of hellfire is sadistic - god isn't like that. the right wingers misunderstand figurative fire for literal fire in lazarus and the rich man... think about, what person burning alive would ask for a drop of water for their tongue (dry mouth?) and be able to hold a coversation? try puuting your hand on a red hot stove and then proceed to have a normal conversation with someone. no, don't.

i believe what can be proved. for example, i believe that humans acting out selfishly will eventually lead to harm for the vast majority. history has proved this out over and over and over.

i believe in the portions of evolution that are actually proven. simple organisms showed up on earth first. check. survival of the fittest within a species. check.

that the fossil record clearly shows a series of transitional fossils. not checked. the poster child of transitionary fossils is called into reasonable question by and evolutionst here:

http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html

how can this be? b/c it hasn't been proven. it might be true. it might not. we don't know.

there are so many questions that seem to defy the basic principles of macro-evolution.

1. how did eyes develop before teeth strong enough to not decay and fall out? eating is related to survival, no? how did our teeth survive when we didn't brush them? why do they decay now?

2. where are all the fossils that led to dinosaurs?

3. how is a hybrid land / water ear (required for the transition to water or to land) advantageous while still in their primary environment?

4. what law demands that transitional entities *must* go extinct? after all, none exist today, right?

5. how are certain characteristics selected PRIOR to their being of value?

6. why is the world we live in so discrete instead of the expected evolutionary continuum?

yes, many of the self professed intellectual slashdot crowd will ad hominem their way into slamming people for believing the order and complexity of the world in which we live implies a creator.

the problem is that a guy like albert einstein viewed the world as though it implied a creator, and i don't recall him as a particularly religious person with an axe to grind. rather, his genius saw the world and couldn't comprehend the beauty and order of the world and the laws that govern it without an intelligence to bring it to be.

i'm sorry, but the ad hominem doesn't apply - and you diminish yourself when you go that route - unless you want to lay claim to superior intlligence and insight than albert einstein.

http://w

I call your bluff, and raise you a fact.

All individual gambling income is taxed at the federal level. OTB and lotteries are done at the state level, and not at the federal level. This is simply the latest addition to a long history of federal anti-gambling bills -- not really news at all:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1082.html
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1084.html
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1955.html
http://www.unc.edu/courses/law357c/cyberprojects/f all01/Internet_Gambling/Publish/page12.html

You probably want GLUI. http://www.cs.unc.edu/~rademach/glui/ It's a widget toolkit that runs on top of glut.

Actually, the list is:
Outside person, object, or event 29.4% (plus or minus 4.7%)
Adjusting radio/cassette/CD 11.4% (plus or minus 7.2%)
Other occupant 10.9% (plus or minus 3.3%)
Moving object in vehicle 4.3% (plus or minus 3.2%)
Other device/object 2.9% (plus or minus 1.6%)
Adjusting vehicle/climate controls 2.8% (plus or minus 1.1%)
Eating and/or drinking 1.7% (plus or minus 0.6%)
Using/dialing cell phone 1.5% (plus or minus 0.9%)
Smoking related 0.9% (plus or minus 0.4%)
Other distractions 25.6% (plus or minus 6.0%)
Unknown distraction 8.6% (plus or minus 5.3%)

According to UNC's HSRC. However, also note that this data is from 1995-1999 when 1. cell phones were less common, 2. cell phones were less likely to be noted in accident reports (which is where this data comes from), and where a huge percentage of the reports did not include usable data (ie 36% of accidents listed distraction status as "missing," "unknown," or "other", and 34% of those that were noted with a distraction status of positive had the cause unidentified or missing). The same group (which includes my dad) is doing a further study where they actually have cameras in cars that record what is happening right before a sudden change in velocity (ie accident or near accident).

Lots of later studies, including the one noted in the original post, have pretty conclusively shown that driving while talking on a cell phone (hands-free or not) is as dangerous as driving while legally intoxicated. Cell phone distraction is also clearly of a different class than talking to a passenger.

-Ted

"Gansus is the oldest example of the nearly modern birds that branched off of the trunk of the family tree that began with the famous proto-bird Archaeopteryx," said Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania, a co-author of the paper along with Lamanna, You and others. the problem here is that Archaeopteryx may not be their ancestor... http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html of course, any EVIDENCE that contradicts their view is shuffled off to the side and never discussed in public. sicence at its best, no?

joke all you want, but i noticed what you *DIDN'T* do... you DIDN'T post a single, undisputed within the scientific community, transitionary fossil. you have to find a C before joking about D and E, no? unlike you, i'll post information to support my view... Archaeopteryx is often trotted out as C, so clowns like you can make jokes about D and E. the problem is that it quite likely not even be a C! http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html yes, i cited a staunch macroevolutionary biologist to make MY POINT. btw, i'm not saying macroevolution is a false theory, either. what i'm saying is be true to the information that is available before jumping up and down on the ad hominem button. i guess it works, though, mr insightful. ;-)

funny, just a few weeks ago, there wasn't evena missing link. ;-)

let's get a few things straight.

1. ID will never "prove" anything beyond a reasonable doubt. it can't and it won't.

2. many people are emotionally attached to killing off god as others are two grasping for god (usually created in their own image with their exact same enemies and friends, etc... but that's a whole other topic).

3. there is some evidence that the whole enchilada (sp?) of evolution could be true...

3A. simple forms appear before more complex forms. not killer evidence, but it is definitely consistent with the idea - and consistency is what you'd expect, right?

3B. some fossils that could be intermediary. to my knowledge, not a single one has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, though.

archaeopteryx is a prime example. it is often the first intermediary brought up as evidence, but it clearly isn't a slam dunk intermediary. some pro-evolutionists (my favorite kind of sources since they have every reason to be biased against their position) claim it is silly to think this bird is intermediary and outline why...

http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html

4. there are some holes in the macroevolutionary theory (i have no issue with microevolution since it has been clearly observed and its basis is entirely logical).

4A. not a single solid transitional fossil. we talked about archaeopteryx already, it is often considere done of the most solid examples. as shown above, it might be transitionary, it might not be. if this is the best there is, there isn't much at all - and definitely not definitive indications the theory is correct.

4B. macro-evolution infers gradual continuity. the world in which we live is discrete. did you ever wonder why we can't point to a living creature TODAY that is transitionary? shouldn't transitionary entities still exist today? why is there, apparently, a law that says all transitionary anmials have to go extinct? different levels of adaptibility exist today - so why not different levels of adaptibility within the same macroevolutionary line? it is a totally unexpected result to live in a world where ALL TRACES of prior evolutionary development have been wiped out AND the fossil record is so weak (not a single transitional fossil that is, unequivicably agreed to be transitionary - even within the macroevolutionary theory community).

4C. many staunch macroevolutionists are clear that the fossil record is 1. entirely lacking of undisputable transitional elements. these guys often get quoted by those with an agenda to support a diety based world. the repsonse is - "you quoted them out of context." while this may be true in some cases, it is often just a maneuver to avoid admitting the 100% truth - the fossil record ISN'T what was predicted! "there is no definitive transitionary fossil" isn't undone in "context." sure, they may say the EXPECT to find one eventually, but that doesn't undo the truth of the qutation... but people have been using ad hominem to avoid the TRUTH for a long time.

4D. there are no land / water transitional ear fossils. in addition, there doesn't appear to be any logic behind such a change. after all, a hybrid land/water ear is deficient on both land and in water - compared to a wholly land ear and wholly water ear. according to macroevolutionary theory, such a change should lead to reduced adaptibility over the tens of thousands/millions of years required to make the change - and that leads to extinction.

4E. when viewing the macroevolutionary requirements, they often don't make sense. for example, why would an asexual reproductive system turn to the more complex sexual method? how would a centimeter stub of a limb on one creature be beneficial so as to give it time to end up as an arm with fingers? the whole idea appears quite bizarre. how does life come from death? how can an environem

True -- unless you're measuring weight for certain kinds of materials. This can be illustrated by a riddle that sounds an awful lot like a trick question:

"Which weighs more -- a pound of feathers or a pound of gold?"

The obvious answer would be "Neither!" since logically a pound of x should be exactly as heavy as a pound of y. Unfortunately, there are two different (and maddeningly incompatible) standards for measuring a pound: troy and avoirdupois.

A troy pound is defined as weighing twelve ounces and (historically) is used almost exclusively for precious metals, whereas an avoirdupois pound has sixteen ounces and is used for nearly everything else. Based on this, the pound of feathers weighs *more* than the pound of gold!

As if that weren't bad enough, the troy ounce is *slightly heavier* than the avoirdupois ounce -- therefore an ounce of feathers weighs less than an ounce of gold! Are we sufficiently confused yet??

http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/custom.html

No wonder people dumped that Old English system for metric....

I was, of course, not being serious. However, it's worth noting that several of those descriptors are in fact applicable given the right definition:

obsolete: 2. Outmoded in design, style, or construction;
primitive: 2b. Being little evolved from an early ancestral type.

Oddly the US is, technically, a metric country. Some selected quotes from this page on the history of metric measurements in the US:

"As a result, the U. S. has been "metric" since 1866, but only in the sense that Americans have been free since that time to use the metric system as much as they like."

"In 1875, the U.S. was one of the original signers of the Treaty of the Meter, which established the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM)."

"In 1893, Congress adopted the metric standards, the official meter and kilogram bars supplied by BIPM, as the standards for all measurement in the U.S. This didn't mean that metric units had to be used, but since that time the customary units have been defined officially in terms of metric standards."

"In the 1970's there was a major effort to increase the use of the metric system, and Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 to speed this process along."

"In 1988, Congress passed the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, which designates "the metric system of measurement as the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce." Among many other things, the act requires federal agencies to use metric measurements in nearly all of their activities, although there are still exceptions allowing traditional units to be used in documents intended for consumers."

So it seems the US has a long history on slowly plodding toward metric - indeed, it is defined as the standard system for the US. You just seem to have done an appallingly bad job of it.

No, it's not a good study... but it was the first that Google spit out and I was too bored to look for better resources.
I do, however, know that the result of the "study" has been the result of a number of other studies, but I can't find them, so you don't have to take my word for it. ;-)
This page http://www.unc.edu/~jkullama/inls181/final/serif.h tml has more about the topic and the bibliography contains a number of studies on the topic. Hopefully, they're better.

Considering that it has now been shown by genetic sequencing that all of the differences among species can be attributed to the kinds of genetic changes that have been shown to arise by mutation--perhaps the most dramatic example in the history of science of the discovery of evidence confirming a theory--this is also pretty foolish.

do cite the *proof* to which you refer. it isn't that i don't everyone on slashdot, rather, i like to review the source material.

for example, some slashdotters said that Archaeopteryx is clearly a transitional entity and cited it as their #1 evidence of transtional life forms.

the problem is... there are problems... and very reasonable ones at that!

http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html

note - the author of the above is pro-evolutionary.

now, if i had taken those slashdotters that their word, i would've been fooled into thinking something was assuredly true that is, frankly, reasonably 100% false.

you talk a good game... but you don't back it up with sources.

Ah, the sine qua non of the Creationist/ID crackpot: the quotes taken out of context.

does that mean that the sine qua non of the macro-evolutionist is ad hominem?

it seems to me you had a reasonable choice - address the quote and explain why it isn't relevant. you rejected the reasonable option and proceeded to attack the poster.

ad hominem usually occurs when one is trying to hide something... are you hiding something? if so, what is it?

btw, any honest and sincere scientist would put a disclaimer next to any depiction of transitional forms...

*no transitional forms have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. we think we have some, but we can't exclude other reasonable interpretations.

this will, no doubt, burn your britches, but the truth is the truth.

you can't explain why a hybrid land/water ear (not advantageous on land, not advantageous in water - no hybrid environment exists) is an advantage. you can't explain why no hybrid ear has ever been discovered beyond, "uh, not yet!" you can't explain a macro-discrete world created by a micro-continuous changes.

it is 2006 and one of the favorite transitional fossil paraded around the macro-evolutionary heathens - Archaeopteryx - might not be one at all. well, if you evaluate the evidence, anyway.

science is not, nor should it be, a spiritual endeavor. having said that, nor should it be dishonest or afraid to admit that many things just aren't clear.

so you have no obvious transitional fossils - just admit it. say the truth - you have no clue why a land ear would start to form aquatic ear characteristics. or an aquatic ear developing land ear characteristics. or why teeth still rot, but an amazing eye had time to form.

there are lots of unanswered questions and truly scientific minded people would embrace the questions in their search for truth.

Take a look at their benchmarks. The chart goes up to eight million elements. The accumulated rounding error in FFT outputs may be around n * log2(n) ULP, where n is the number of elements, and ULP (units in last place) is relative to the largest input element. (Caveats: That is the maximum; the distribution of the logs of the errors resembles a normal distribution. Input was numbers selected from a uniform distribution over [0, 1). The error varies slightly depending on whether you have fused multiply-add and other factors.)

So with eight million elements, the error may be 184 million ULP, or over 27 bits. With only 24 bits in your floating-point format, that is a problem. Whether you had 24-bit or 1-bit data to start with, it is essentially gone in some output elements. Most errors are less than the maximum, but it seems there is a lot of noise and not so much signal.

It may be that the most interesting output elements are the ones with the highest magnitude. (The FFT is used to find the dominant frequencies in a signal.) If so, those output elements may be large relative to the error, so there could be useful results. However, anybody using such a large FFT with single-precision floating-point should analyze the error in their application.

on this page here they almost compare to a program called libgpufft (which is an open source BSD version of the same library here ) I wonder how they do compared to the BSD licensed version---

They must have been using metric feet per second.

As many others have noted, hydrogen is not a source of energy, but a carrier.

And wouldn't you know it, while pursuing my MBA, I co-wrote a paper about this very problem.

Pardon me as a burn some karma for some shamless self-promotion. Feel free to poke around at The Center for Sustainable Enterprise at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School while you're at it.

As many others have noted, hydrogen is not a source of energy, but a carrier.

And wouldn't you know it, while pursuing my MBA, I co-wrote a paper about this very problem.

Pardon me as a burn some karma for some shamless self-promotion. Feel free to poke around at The Center for Sustainable Enterprise at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School while you're at it.

The biggest benefit to my writing ability is from what I have read. Reading a lot has helped me to improve my grammar and build the vocabulary necessary to write eloquently.

My most enjoyable and rewarding writing experience was from my freshman composition professor at the University of Central Florida, who tailored his curriculum towards engineering technical writing (as our class was entirely engineering students). The class was also linked to a humanities and a calculus class, as each student was in the same set of classes. This allowed for a more in-depth approach to writing, both individually and as teams. The same engineering students were reading about Plato's Republic, learning about Mark Tilden's fascinating BEAM robotics, and at the same time, creating technical documentation for anything they chose. At one point in the composition class I remember asking the professor if I could do a story writing assignment in hypertext, and he was very supportive of the idea. We also had a self-directed group "invention" project that generated a lot of group writing work, such as describing the idea and how various aspects of it would work. A paper on the unique structure of the curricula is here.

That one arm comes in "handy" when he hits puberty

The press has "battered" President Bush this election season, according to a Project for Excellence in Journalism analysis of 817 print and broadcast stories that ran between Oct. 1 and Oct. 14.
        Mr. Bush "suffered strikingly more negative press coverage than challenger John Kerry," according to the study, which will be released today.
        "Overall, 59 percent of Bush-dominated stories were clearly negative in nature," while "just 25 percent of Kerry stories were decidedly negative," according to the study.

That so many Americans believe that the occupation of Iraq is going very badly -- far worse than is the case -- undoubtedly has something to do with consistently negative press coverage. As this essay is written, insurgent attacks have dropped by one-third to one-half in the past month, and, according to Lawrence Kaplan,3 Coalition and Iraqi forces have captured and killed "scores of insurgents in lopsided battles." For some months, Iraqi civilians have been reporting arms caches and insurgent activity to U.S. and Iraqi forces, and more recently some have even taken up arms against insurgents in their midst.

While there may be something to the concept of addictive personality or genetic predispositions, other important issues are easy access to the drug and the engineering of the drug to the individual.

Most work environments don't allow drug dealers to visit your workstation, but screening out gaming is hard. More alarmingly, it is only a matter of time before games modify the individual user experience to maximize time spent playing them.

Now, I'm not endorsing intelligent design. Personally, I believe in evolution, not out of faith, but because the evidence is in, has been in, and will continue to be in, on the fact that evolution is the truth.

please tell me where all this evidence is. i've looked an i haven't found it.

every fossil i've looked into has a reasonable explanation that is different than transitionary.

Archaeopteryx is the poster child of transitionary fossils, yet it very reasonably was no such thing.

http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html

if the poster child is riddled with holes so easily shown to be reaosnably something else... how bad are the other "examples?"

at best, this is extremely *weak* evidence when OVERWHELMING evidence is predicted. since said OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE has never shown up, they changed the theory into a big bang theory where evolution is compressed.

there's no logical reason for this to occur other than the dearth of evidence regarding gradual steps.

i have no pony in this race, other than to learn TRUTH.

however, what i see is the macro-evolutionary community spinning information in ways that would make jim baker blush.

imhop, spin isn't good for truth and science should be based on truth. all sides of truth.

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

comment on answer - not a single example to back up the science. not one. nadda, zip, zilch. if there are so many, name two or three indisputable pieces of evidence. i would. they don't. instead, they spend a sentence trying to tie evolution (w/o the necessary distinction between macro and micro, mind you) to the theory of gravitation. the difference being that gravitation has been observed countless times and you can't even count on one hand the times that macro-evolution has been knowingly observed. of course, this article's answer never mentioned this. just like they didn't mention all their proof they alledge exists.

micro-evolution is a fact. macro-evolution is the issue.

oh, and did i mention the dearth of actual evidence presented? as in... NONE? why is that? it is so *easy* to prove, right? THEN PROVE IT!!!!! articles like this should disgust a true scientist.

this is empty marketing drivel devoid of any facts or evidence to establish the alledged rebuttal to the question.

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.

natural selection is a fact. the fittest do survive. that isn't at issue, imho. the question is whether the fittest of animal A turns into different animal B.

3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

it isn't falsifiable - that's true. however, it is testable. the EVIDENCE should support its accuracy. you know, the EVIDENCE the author didn't even bother to present so nobody could discuss its merits.

the author clearly applies a logical fallacy - an appeal to authority. "science says it is proven, therefore, you believe it is proven." uh, not quite. show me the EVIDENCE.

USUALLY, Archaeopteryx is one of the first alledged proofs from the fossil records put forth.

the problem is that it is reasonably not a transitionary fossil at all.

http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html

if one of the BEST examples to indicate macro-evolution is so full of holes, what about the weaker examples?

what this author fails to mention is that every time a macro-evolution theory prediction is false (eg, slow process of changes is FALSE!), they just change definition of macro-evolution! now they think there was a "big bang" of sorts where macro-evolution sped up b/c so many animals seemed to appear in a relatively short time.

one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows.

source, please? it sounds like this guy is claiming to know about a smooth transition from the animal that eventually turned into... which is TOTAL BS. i think he looked at one of those neat drawings showing this animal gradually turning into man and then wrote about it - never getting a source to see if it is true. IT ISN'T.

IF MACRO-EVOLUTION IS SO OBVIOUS, WHY MISLEAD? people mislead to hide failings, not be an idiot make one's obvious argument contestable.

Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way.

first e needs to document that a simple life form can spontaneously generate from inanimate matter, THEN macro-evolution might just have legs. of course, he's pushing an agenda, not discussing all reasonable sides of an issue.

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.

some scientists do doubt macro-evolution. whether that number is significantly increasing is another matter.

5. The disag

There are two reasons why we have a recent uprising of ID.

three reasons.

3. some people actually want a high standard of evidence instead of nice tasting "kool aid." the concept of saying "we study the physical and, therefore, this is the *only* way things could've happened, let's go find some evidence and spin it liek a top" just isn't fulfilling to some. picking up a pig's tooth and claiming nebraska man just doesn't do it for me. claiming the well established law of bio-gensis is was broken by claiming "primordial soup" is equally as silly. EVIDENCE.

pimping Archaeopteryx as an obvious transitional entity between dinos and birds is just DISHONEST. there is plenty to contest here, and this what a bird expert and evolutionist has to say...

http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html

1. "Nobody had ever imagined finding a modern-type bird alongside these ancient birds," Feduccia says. "And not only were birds very widespread by then, but they also occupied a variety of habitats."

2. In traditional theory, all modern bird orders appeared by 80 to 90 million years ago and "oozed" into the present. That makes no sense, Feduccia says, because the cataclysmic event that killed the dinosaurs would have extinguished most birds too.

3. Feduccia is probably best known for challenging the view that birds evolved from dinosaurs. "The more you dig into the facts," he says, "the more the goblins start to creep out."

4. For instance, he says, the dinosaurs thought to be most like birds lived 80 million years after the first-known birds. And when you get down to the details, even these dinosaurs weren't all that similar to birds. For example, dinosaurs had recurved, serrated teeth, while the early birds had peg-like teeth.

5. But flying is the biggest problem. A dinosaur, turkey-size or larger, would have had to begin flight by running and then jumping off the ground. Not possible, Feduccia says. Its short front legs would have had to re-elongate to evolve into wings. This almost never happened in evolution.

6. And sprouting feathers would have slowed down a dinosaur trying to fly, Feduccia says. "Feathers produce turbulence and drag, which is just the opposite of what you would want if you were going to evolve flight from the ground up."

7. He pulls out a photograph of the fossil. "What you find is a darkened area from the nape of the neck down to the tip of the tail," he says. "And it's almost certainly one of these lizard-like frills running down the back. It has nothing to do with feathers."

Concluding that this dinosaur had down is "ridiculous," Feduccia says. "In baby birds with down, when they become wet, they will die of hypothermia unless they get under the mother's wings immediately. So having down in a terrestrial dinosaur would be maladaptive. They would become mucked up and wet."

8. Feduccia says he's not looking for controversy; he's just looking for the facts.

"My book is the first major publication to seriously question the dinosaurian origin of birds," he says. "So I'm getting a lot of heat. But there haven't been many revolutions without shots fired."

it was within the last two or three days that someone was pimping Archaeopteryx as an obvious transitional entity and anybody who didn't "get it" was, apparently, an ignroant person. there was absolutely no discussion along the lines of Alan Feduccia b/c the poster boviously was ignorant himself or he he had so much faith that he can't even understand contrary evidence.

there is a twist, though. i'm not convinced that ID can be proven through any type of scientific means. in fact, i bet it can't and any effort there is wasted effort.

in that sense, i'm different than the behe's of the world.

i actually require rigorous evidence.

then again, i'm different than most of the macro-evolutionist choir, too.

i had one person argue that the bones in

The recent posting [slashdot.org] about a new fossil link between water creatures moving onto land is the classic example (as is archaeopteryx). Such a creature was predicted both in the evolutionary path as well as the geologic path. And the prediction was confirmed by the discovery.

the problem with this statement isn't that it can't be true. it might be.

th eproblem is that you claim it is TRUTH, when this HAS NOT BEEN ESTABLISHED.

EVEN AMONGST THE ATHEISTIC SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY. there is DISAGREEMENT.

yet, you ignore the disagreement and PALM IT OFF AS ABSOLUTE, 2+2=4, TRUTH.

it isn't.

http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html

now that you know... ignorance on your part isn't an acceptable excuse.

if you palm of controversial subjects as facts (without admitting to reasonable controversy), you are misleading people on purpose.

I honestly thought it was a typo in the summary when I read, "metric and English" units and had a bit of a chuckle to myself. "hee hee, the mix up between metric and metric units". England are on the metric system too and I don't know anyone that refers to the Imperial system as the 'English' system.

I just found this description on nasas site that has a nice summary of the state of the metric system:

Most of the world uses the metric system. The only countries not on this system are Burma, Liberia, Muscat, South Yemen, and the United States of America.

There's also a nice summary of the history of the metric system in the US here. Too bad we missed out on our chance to measure things in decades, roods and furlongs as proposed by Thomas Jefferson in his own metric system equivalent.

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog Unless, of course, you join a dog-friendly guild.

Link: The Carolina Computing Initiative.

-Will

The key word is public. I am not entirely sure about UNC but I know that the schools listed in replies to this are not public.

I did some searching on the UNC website and found this:

"Despite constitutional instructions to the contrary, no state appropriations were made, and the trustees were left to secure land and money themselves." http://www.unc.edu/about/history.html [unc.edu]

So that makes them private? I honestly don't really know.

Just a sidenote, but EULAs aren't contracts. EULAs have unclear status - if the EULA is found to be unenforcable (as they have been in multiple cases), the software is limited to the protection offered by copyright law.

You're right that EULA's have an unclear status, but that unclear status means some judges have ruled that they ARE indeed contracts. There are some interesting tidbits about EULAs and contract law here and here. I think the general consensus is that barring various types of contract fraud (changing contract provisions after the agreement, not allowing the purchaser to decline, etc.), EULAs are indeed contracts, and will be treated as such in a court of law. I think the biggest issue with EULA law right now is the "open software" problem, where the EULA is printed on material inside the box, and stores will not let you return open software. Thus, the purchaser does not have an ability to decline the offer based on the terms of the contract and receive a full refund. Companies that did this would likely have the contract invalidated if it were to be challenged in court.

Back to the point about EULAs, though: the most a company can due for breach of contract is to withdraw any services being offered. They could probably try to file a civil suit, but in the case of someone modding OS X to run on your own non-Apple hardware, I'm not sure how much in damages they could claim. Perhaps if you started "how-to-mod-osx-to-run-on-a-dell.com", they could claim lost hardware sales. I'm not sure about that, so any lawyers are welcome to chime in here.

Not the case at all. OS X for Intel has substantial and increasing hardware-lockouts, ensuring that you can only run the software on Apple-approved hardware. How does that not take control away from the user?

I was not aware. I always just thought that Apple designed their software to run on Apple hardware, without aiding or hindering anyone trying to get it to work on other hardware. Since Apple hardware used to be very specific, rewriting OS X to run on other hardware would have been a daunting task indeed. It does not surprise me that they are taking precautions, but it does disappoint me a little.

Not the case either. Apple has clearly stated that they do care what you do with their products, and they have threatened legal action against a number of parties who have attempted to circumvent their hardware locks.

This gets tricky, as far as their basis for filing suit. Can a hardware + software combination be copyrighted, and thus covered under the DMCA? The software can certainly be copyrighted, and locked down with encryption, but bypassing that encryption would be for purposes of interoperability with hardware, not access to copyrighted information. I'm not sure how a court would rule on that. Again, it would be nice to hear from a lawyer on this.

But I think the larger issue here is not the fact that companies who lock consumers into or out of hardware (Apple, or the more on-topic Members of the MPAA) are violating consumer's rights, because they clearly are not. It is very legal to offer a product for sale on your own terms, and the consumer has the option of buying the product, and thereby accepting the terms of the sale, or not buying the product, and effectively declining the terms. There is no option for "the seller is required to change the terms to suit the buyer." It's a yes-or-no proposition on the buyer's part. The larger issue is that offering one-sided terms such as the MPAA member companies are doing, which takes control of the product away from the consumer, is just poor customer service. Telling your customers what they CAN'T do with your product is the best way to boost your competition's sales. In the coming decades, consumers will start to turn away from the larger companie

'ethical behavior in regards to the use of information technology,'

This would be the part where they teach kids that using technology to build a copyright mechanism that takes over your customer's computer, and creates security holes, such as the recent Sony-BMG scandal, is unethical. Or perhaps this would be teaching kids about the ethics of setting up a cartel wherein labels make a lot of money off record sales, and artists don't.

'the concept, purpose, and significance of a copyright,'

From this page:
"By granting the copyright holder exclusive rights over a work for a limited period of time, the system fosters the long-term dissemination of new intellectual works for society as a whole." (emphasis added). This would encourage children to discuss why the current copyright system in the United States, where the period of copyrighted works is continually extended, is fundamentally broken.

'the implications of illegal peer-to-peer network file sharing.'

And finally, children would learn that the big record labels took about 5 years too long to get into the online music distribution buisness, so that by the time they did, there were illegal free alternatives which produce superior (read: not DRMed, and therefore superior from the consumer viewpoint) products. We could teach kids that file sharing networks allow people to hear artists they wouldn't otherwise hear on pop-dominated radio stations and TV, and promote more diverse and creative music. And, we could teach them that illegal file sharing doesn't seem to have an impact on record sales.

Somehow I don't think this is what Chavez had in mind.

Given your words in this post: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=176688 &cid=14682636

I'm surprised you've not heard of Ehrman. If you are such a scholar, I would imagine you would be aware of other published scholars.

If you weren't lazy, you could have just Googled him. I caught him on Fresh Air and enjoyed it. You can find it on the web if you're interested in his thoughts on "what hangs together". Also, you can get a more nuanced point of view from his papers/lectures. I'd say, head on back to your seminary, I bet they can get them for you (if you are actually interested in skeptical textualism and what not).

I may have misjudged your comments, but it sounds to me like you already know what you want to know ("onus is on the skeptic"!?!).

Google is the highest-profile player in the game of free access vs. government control, but the larger battle has been going on for years. Unfortunately, governments are winning. What's fascinating to me is just how much the law of unintended consequences comes into play here. The first shot in this war was French government's battle with Yahoo! over Nazi-related materials. Seems like a good idea to keep those nasty Nazis from using the Net to spread their vile beliefs. Unfortunately, once you put down a few barriers, before too long you wind up with the Great Firewall of China.

Yesterday in one of my law classes we had a discussion (related to the discovery process) about the DOJ's subpoena of Google. More than one of my fellow students stated that expecting any sort of privacy on the Internet was absurd. They simply didn't feel that it should be expected, given that they'd grown up with an Internet full of privacy warnings, cookies, GeoIP monitoring, and so on. I mentioned the infamous "On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog" cartoon and they just looked at me blankly, as if I were a 90 year old man whistfully recalling the days when ice cream sodas cost a nickel.

Let's see...whenever we've done tests with memory, the brain seems to be involved. The simplest example is that you can't remember anything if you've had your brain removed. More complex examples would be fMRI scans which show that different regions of the brain are active when you're doing different mental tasks, including the formation and recall of memories. You could say, "But that's just because the brain is interacting with the mystical unknown in ways which look like it's actually doing something!", but I'll Occam that argument: We have no evidence for non-physical things interacting with the physical realm, so when we see activity in the brain corresponding to activity in the "mind," we should assume that the brain is the location of the mind, not that the brain is some sort of mysterious conduit that we can't understand. If you've got some sort of experiment which would differentiate between these two views, I would be interested in hearing about it.

Also, your memory of the flavor of Pepsi is stored in the way that the neurons in your brain are connected to one another. I'll agree that we don't know exactly how memories work, but that doesn't mean that we know nothing of how memories work, and we should work with what knowledge we have rather than decide that understanding is an all-or-nothing process.

...any of these bootloaders? True, they're not so modern, but there's a good chance the Windows virus checkers will have been updated between then and now. Well, one would hope, anyway!

1. that I borrowed
2. from my friend
3. last week

1. in a sunny spot
2. on the floor

1. of the contruction crew
2. working on a new house
3. across the street.

Why does it have to be that large of a 3D space. Why not something where there are multiple layers that you can interact with. OS X and Linux already have transparent windows. Instead of actually switching to a different window, why can't you interact with the window below the current one through a modifier key or some sort.
There has already been software that will let you video chat in a full screen that is transparent while you work on other things (http://rockfish.cs.unc.edu/pubs/TR05-010.pdf) This allows you to perform multiple things at a time with the same screen real estate.

Don't get me wrong, I really like Spotlight and the idea of a computerized assistant that I can talk to, but I think there is a lot more to a 3D computer desktop than just a 20,000 sq foot room. Think more like several layers that you can interact with simultaneously.

Have you looked at GLUI?

It is not only religious people don't buy the story about dinosaurs being ancestors of birds, some scientists do it too... The generally accepted theory that dinosaurs are the ancestors of modern birds is being challenged. New research published Monday in the Journal of Morphology suggests that what was thought to be "protofeathers" are more likely to be skin-related tissues, according to Dr. Alan Feduccia of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While these scientists agree that dinosaurs and modern birds share a common reptile ancestor, the theory that dinosaurs are the ancestors of the modern birds is flawed or "..full of holes.." http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html http://www.atsnn.com/story/176639.html http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf087/sf087b06.ht m

Mod Parent Up

Naturally the "industry" blames the naptster effect, but Harvard business school suggests otherwise.
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March 2004.pdf
or google harvard privacy study for the HTML version.

No? Check out these links.

(Just recently posted these on my blog)

I never managed to get much faster than two minutes, since I could only easily think a few moves ahead; most of the people I know that are much faster than me pretty much have the whole series of moves figured out in their head right away.

Still, I had to prove to my coworkers a few weeks ago that I could solve the Cube. 3 minutes, so I'm not that rusty.

Then again, in college my roommate and I had an entire shelf of weird puzzles and brain teasers, and we'd practice for speed, so I got pretty good at this sort of thing. My favorite was the Square-1, which looks a lot more intimdating than the Rubik's cube, but is actually a lot simpler, especially if you are good at getting the thing back into it's cube shape

You'd think that would be the rules they follow. However, a number of schools (public and private) have honor codes where they can punish you for things you do outside of school. For example, students at my university (UNC Chapel Hill) are regularly punished by the university when convincted of DUI, even if it's nowhere near campus.

Personally, I don't think it's any of the university's business what crimes you commit off campus, but that's the way things are.

i disagree.

before going further, i'll mention that i have no issue with macro-evolution being true. none.

in fact, if it were true, it would be pretty cool.

as an intellually honest and demanding person, though, i expect evidence to line up and lead us to a conclusion...

the evidence proving macro-evolution occurred doesn't exist. it doesn't.

there may not just be "gaps" in the fossil record, there may reasonably be an entire "black hole."

there are very few fossils that are alledged to be transitional... and even the strongest of these arguments are pretty easily shot down... for example...

http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html

and this from a staunch evolutionary proponent!

but an honest and critical thinking one - not the political type that pushes an agenda instead of the detailed scientific process - wherever it may lead.

yes, many christian fundies are out of touch. yes, they have an agenda that is often not good for america. yes, some may not even care about the truth, but their goodness or badness don't change the scientific facts in this matter....

when viewed scientifically, the fossil record can reasonably lead one to conclude macro-evolution never took place.

this can be due to several factors...

1. the bad luck fossils.
2. it didn't happen.
3. it happened in a way that we don't understand (and surely can't prove right now).

unlike those who desire the answer so much they don't need hardcore evidence... i will sit on the sidelines and let the evidence lead where it may...

it barks "inconclusive" to those who will listen.

Not that I am for the heavy use of flash in websites but they have improved accessibility in its latest versions... "Flash content created with versions 5 and earlier is not accessible. However, Macromedia has integrated support for Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) into Flash MX, released in early 2002. MSAA serves as a bridge between Macromedia Flash Player and assistive technologies such as screen readers. To help designers and developers create accessible Macromedia Flash content, a new Accessibility panel has been added to the Macromedia Flash MX application. This new panel allows text equivalents to be specified for elements of Macromedia Flash movies and provides control over how the screen reader handles these objects." http://www.unc.edu/webaccess/flash.html While flash is abused it can sometimes be the best solution.