These events, as they are described in Genesis, are actually correct if we look at them in a simple way. The
intent was to show a forward progression in that the earth was created then water then man. etc...
So why are the sun and moon created on the 4th day after grass, trees, etc. Genesis in not a simple explanation it is an incorrect explanation. It would be easy to rewrite Genesis to put things in their correct order and make it simpler.
For instance how is day and night existing before the sun is created simple to understand?
This site was obviously not designed by a color-blind person, it would have to have been designed by a
person who 1) has their display set to a low resolution and 2) has no color blindness whatsoever.
Or 3) Only checked how the page looked in Internet Explorer, where the tables in question have black text.
Re:Resistance to GM food
on
Golden Rice
·
· Score: 1
There are plenty of reasons why GM technology should be approached with caution; however I have to
say I'm pretty repulsed by the means Greenpeace and similar organisations take to it. Their campaigns are
almost entirely based around fuzzy, emotion-based appeals to anti-science sentiment. I am actually a
member of Greenpeace, because I happen to think climate change is an enormous problem, but I nearly
resigned over this.
A couple of years ago several farms were allowed to grow fields of GM crops in the UK to test them on a small scale. Greenpeace thought that this was too dangerous and destroyed much of the crop. (When they were tried for criminal damage they were aquitted.) Greenpeace have not (AFAIK) proposed any alternative form of testing of GM foods.
Re:GM food is not a good idea yet
on
Golden Rice
·
· Score: 1
Okay, so advances in genetic engineering seem to offer us the chance to do a lot of good for world
hunger, but the trouble is that we just don't know what effects this stuff will have on us.
But we do know that if we don't start using this millions of people will die in the third world. Not doing something also has consequences!
When it comes to
new medicines we insist upon years and years of scientifically conducted trials before allowing them to be
used on people, and even then look at the things that crop up years later.
What makes you think that GMOs aren't tested?
The wholesale introduction of GM foods into our food chain is just too risky at the moment. It's a new
technology and mistakes are part of the learning process, and will inevitably be made. If history has
taught us anything, it's that no new advance comes without teething troubles.
And history has also taught us that once the teething troubles are out of the way new technologies improve our lives in ways we never imagined.
We could slow do the advance of technology but that would slow down the improvment in our quality of life. I don't think this is justified considering the tiny risks associated with things like GM foods.
One thing that bugs me is that when we in the first world don't get the benefits of new technology it is much more likely to be considered "too risky" than when we do.
"You can't use GMOs too feed your starving family because they're too risky."
"But you use mobile phones aren't there possible risks associated with using them."
"That's completely different!"
My entry will enable business to increase sales and profit margins, the CheckOutFromHell. When you
go to check-out after entering credit card data, the program refuses to allow exit from web site until
the credit card is maxed-out and purchases finallized. All attempts to link to another site, or start a
new application fail. Upon reboot the computer system automatically connects to the web site.
Sufficient data is stored in the system BIOS so that even a complete reinstall will automatically connect
to the web site. Afer finalizing purchases, a Smiley Face with the legend below reads, 'Thanks for
choosing to shop at xxxxxxx, have a good day!'
With the 2.4 release probably not taking place before December (mainly due to the inclusion of the new VM system as far as I can tell) is Linus going to come under more pressure to include reiserfs in 2.4?
Personally I think that he should stand firm on the feature freeze otherwise 2.2 -> 2.4 could end up taking even longer than 2.0 -> 2.2.
There was a radio programme in the UK that would broadcast BASIC programs that you
could record and then load into your spectrum. Internet, who needs it.:-)
Oh my god! How cool is that? I must have missed that one. Have you got any more details?
When was this?
This was a long time ago and my previous post contains about all I can remember about it. I only tried it once and couldn't load the program, Spectrums (Spectra?) were very fusy about sound quality.
My best guess is that it was some time between when the Spectrum came out (obviously) and 1988ish. I think that there was some association with a computing magazine.
Sometimes I think my Spectrum had more memory than I do now.
My important question is: can you save ZX81 programs to.AU or.WAV files? Or even MP3s?
IIRC there is a ZX Spectrum emulator that can convert wav files to its own file format (and vice versa). Don't know about the ZX81 though.
There was a radio programme in the UK that would broadcast BASIC programs that you could record and then load into your spectrum. Internet, who needs it.:-)
If you compare prices on the web and then find that when you log on to amazon that the price they are offering you is higher is this false advertising?
What if a brick and mortor shop had one price up in it's window and charged another price inside?
I did a quick survey on the "Norman virus scanner, it knows about 18.284 viruses, that is more than 25%
of all programs written according to the "Cato Institute". That simply has to be wrong, their estimate of
70.000 programs is way to low.
No, the numbers are right, it's just a reflection of the ease of writing a windows virus vs. the ease of writing a useful windows application.:-)
Re:Illegal... but should it be?
on
Voteauction.com
·
· Score: 1
Smaller groups in society benefit from this arrangement because they
can "buy" support from apathetic (or even slightly opposed) voters, if they can translate their passion into
money.
Is it just me or does anyone else feel uncomfortable about fanatics having more votes than the rest of us. Just because they are more
passionate about their beliefs doesn't make them any more likely to be right.
I remember a special that noted on many street corners in the UK, there are surveilance cameras guarding against criminal activity. There are, in fact, thousands of these cameras all around the Britain. I suppose this data-snooping is just another step in the general direction the UK, if not the world, is taking.
So are you suggesting that everybody should be prevented from photographing you if you are in a public place, or just goverment organisations?
It seems strange that you are happy for unelected journalists have more rights than the democratically elected government.
These cameras have help solved many serious crimes and to remove them to protect your (non-existant) privacy is crazy.
Do you really think that the government has the resources to watch all of these cameras and record even a small number of people's movements? Even if they could, would they be able to keep it secret? I doubt it. If this sort of monitoring did happen, it would come out and then the government of the time would suffer because of it.
At the moment almost all of the recordings of these cameras are never closely watched, only when a crime takes place are they examined. Until this changes I see no reason to remove them.
Yes. There is no contradiction because this is not a moral statement just as "1+1=2" and "light travels at 299792458 m/s in a vacuum" are not moral statements.
My point is this: Just because you don't like a particular moral absolute doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It just means that _you_ don't like it.
Just because you like the idea of moral absolutes doesn't mean they exist.
If you can describe an objective way of deciding whether a moral statement is true or false without relying on moral premises then I'll be convinced that moral absolutes exist.
The outcome of our rejection of moral absolutes provides us with no compass when it comes to making decisions about genetic engineering, abortion, and all other issues.
Now available, the Moral Compass can measure right and wrong to within 5 degrees! Now you too can have a objective measure of the morality of any idea!
I'll beleive in moral absolutes when I can buy my own Moral Compass.
From the article: "Although we think of gravity as strong -- we can get hurt if we fall down -- compared to electromagnetism, gravity is astonishingly weak. It takes the gravity of the whole Earth to hold a pin on a tabletop; a toy magnet can lift it easily."
It's worth pointing out that when we fall down it's the eletromagnetic force holding the earth we fall on to together that causes the damage, not gravity. I've yet to see someone's leg broken by gravitational forces!
Apparently the software will even read your email and try to schedule appointments for you, etc.
"Dave, you have an appointment with Microsoft to arrange selling your soul for my next upgrade." "Cancel that appointment" "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that"
Even though I suspect that this is a troll, its been moderated to +2 so I feel I have to respond.
It is possible to take damn near any existing electrical motor, add a few parts, and turn it into a generator that runs itself without any fuel. You just give it a spin and it runs forever. But guess what happens when someone tries to patent such a device? The patent office replies, "Oh. That, by definition, is a perpetual motion machine. We can't give patents on those. Sorry." They don't even bother testing the patent's claims, or try building one themselves, or even let the guy demonstrate it... they just refuse to patent it and move on
It is not the patent office's job to test if an invention works only if it is original. The exception is that they will not approve perpetual motion machines because they don't want thousands of crackpots saying ``look the patent office approved my design so it must work''.
Do not simply see the phrase "perpetual motion machine" in this post and scoff immediately. Science and physics doesn't even know what magnetism or gravity is,
And I suppose you do?
yet it claims to be able to state with absolute certainty that perpetual motions machines are impossible?? The sheer arrogance is staggering. "Yes, well, we realize we only understand about 0.01% of how the universe works, but we know you can't have perpetual motion. It's just preposterous." Give me a break.
Few scientists say that perpetual motion machine are absolutely impossible. What they do say is that there has never be a repeatable experiment that demonstrated it. The law of conservation of energy has been tested so many times (and found to always hold true) that machines that claim to violate it should be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism.
"The world is round," Columbus said. "Preposterous," the "scientists" of the 15th century said. "You'll fall off the edge."
"Diseases are caused by microscopic creatures that I call 'germs' which get inside us and do harm to our cells," said Louis Pasteur. "Preposterous," the "scientists" said.
"The earth actually revolves around the sun, and not the other way around," said Galileo. "Preposterous," the Catholic Church's "scientists" said. "Shut up or we'll torture and kill you."
"Travelling faster than 60 MPH would be fatal."
`The usual rejoinder to someone who says "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Galileo" is to say "But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown".' (From Carl Sagan, "Broca's Brain", Coronet 1980, p79).
How far would we have gotten if Columbus had just believed what the scientists told him without question instead of being brave and intelligent enough to go find out on his own?
I can't believe that there are still people who think that Columbus was right and scientists of his time were wrong.
It was well known at the time that the earth was round (and the size was pretty well known as well). Columbus, however, thought that the world was much smaller than the scientists of the time and that it would be possible to sail west to the Indies. He was wrong, it was only luck that America happened to be in the way.
I was going to deal with your arguments for the existance of free energy machines. But then I realised that you didn't present any.
The sci.sceptic FAQ section on perpetual motion machines is well worth reading (as is the whole thing actually). This is from section 8 (on free energy machines):
8.6: The oil companies are conspiring to suppress my invention
This is a conspiracy theory. See the entry on these in section 0. In most of the US the utility companies are *required by law* to buy your excess electricity if you produce your own. If you've got an energy machine, build it in your basement, phase match it to the line, and enjoy.
Moderators: You should be browsing at -1, Newest First, Nested, not +2, Highest Scores First, Threaded
I'm a moderator at the moment and the problem with browsing with Newest First is that you mark a comment as Insightful, say, and further down the page you find that someone has already made the same point earlier possibly much earlier. Now the ``first'' comment isn't Insightful it's Redundant and you have to go back and change your moderation.
Browsing with Oldest First encourages moderators to give their points to the first person who posted a good comment rather than spread them between the people who couldn't be bothered to read all the (moderated up) comments that had already been posted before posting themselves.
1. The original mice concept as envisioned by Xerox had 3 buttons all doing a vairety of tasks. Apple did a bag o' research that showed that mis-hits were common amongst users learning new tasks. The solution? The double click. Imagine life without the double-click...
I heard apple are about to release a new keyboard with only one key. "New users are endlessly pressing the wrong key on current keyboards." An Apple spokesman said. "With our new design you no longer have this problem."
The keyboard will be available soon in a variety of garish colours (Morse code table sold separately).
I was trying to state it in a fashion that would be easier to grasp for most folks, and I think what we are saying is basically equivelent.
I think that's true but I should clarify what I am saying:
If you can transmit information at faster than c you can violate causality.
This experiment does not transmit information faster than c.
I got the impression that you were disagreeing with point 1.
To truly violate causality, you must have a closed timelike path through the tank and back to the event point the light was launched at, which you cannot do with this setup.
If you do send information faster than c in this experiment I think you can violate causality by having 2 setups in different reference frames. The first sends a signal into the second's past (a space-like interval) and the second returns the signal into the first's past, back to where the signal originated (now a time-like interval because the signal is refected back to it's point of origin).
This is why I don't think that any signal is being transmitted faster than c, if it was this would be the most important discovery of the century.
Light normal covers an interval that is neither spacelike nor timelike, but a 50/50 mix of both. However, in this case (if the experiment is to be beleived) the light going through the chamber covered a spacelike interval, but even if you sent the pulse through the chamber and back, it would still not have covered a negative timelike interval
My relativity is a bit rusty but I think you're wrong.
Space-like intervals in space-time are ones for which the "proper time" dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2 - c^2 dt^2 is positive. Time-like intervals are those where this value is negative. IIRC the proper time is Lorentz invariant (it is the same for all inertial reference frames) but the separations in space and time (dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2 and dt^2) are not.
I think that any two events separated by a space-like interval can appear to happen in either order depending on your reference frame. This means that in some reference frames the light would travel back in time.
Slashdot Mirror
So why are the sun and moon created on the 4th day after grass, trees, etc. Genesis in not a simple explanation it is an incorrect explanation. It would be easy to rewrite Genesis to put things in their correct order and make it simpler.
For instance how is day and night existing before the sun is created simple to understand?
Or 3) Only checked how the page looked in Internet Explorer, where the tables in question have black text.
A couple of years ago several farms were allowed to grow fields of GM crops in the UK to test them on a small scale. Greenpeace thought that this was too dangerous and destroyed much of the crop. (When they were tried for criminal damage they were aquitted.) Greenpeace have not (AFAIK) proposed any alternative form of testing of GM foods.
But we do know that if we don't start using this millions of people will die in the third world. Not doing something also has consequences!
When it comes to new medicines we insist upon years and years of scientifically conducted trials before allowing them to be used on people, and even then look at the things that crop up years later.
What makes you think that GMOs aren't tested?
The wholesale introduction of GM foods into our food chain is just too risky at the moment. It's a new technology and mistakes are part of the learning process, and will inevitably be made. If history has taught us anything, it's that no new advance comes without teething troubles.
And history has also taught us that once the teething troubles are out of the way new technologies improve our lives in ways we never imagined.
We could slow do the advance of technology but that would slow down the improvment in our quality of life. I don't think this is justified considering the tiny risks associated with things like GM foods.
One thing that bugs me is that when we in the first world don't get the benefits of new technology it is much more likely to be considered "too risky" than when we do.
"You can't use GMOs too feed your starving family because they're too risky."
"But you use mobile phones aren't there possible risks associated with using them."
"That's completely different!"
login: slashdot2000
password: slashdot2000
Submit it quick before Microsoft does!
Personally I think that he should stand firm on the feature freeze otherwise 2.2 -> 2.4 could end up taking even longer than 2.0 -> 2.2.
Oh my god! How cool is that? I must have missed that one. Have you got any more details? When was this?
This was a long time ago and my previous post contains about all I can remember about it. I only tried it once and couldn't load the program, Spectrums (Spectra?) were very fusy about sound quality.
My best guess is that it was some time between when the Spectrum came out (obviously) and 1988ish. I think that there was some association with a computing magazine.
Sometimes I think my Spectrum had more memory than I do now.
IIRC there is a ZX Spectrum emulator that can convert wav files to its own file format (and vice versa). Don't know about the ZX81 though.
There was a radio programme in the UK that would broadcast BASIC programs that you could record and then load into your spectrum. Internet, who needs it. :-)
Repeat after me: main returns an int, main returns an int, ...
Blame Canada!
What if a brick and mortor shop had one price up in it's window and charged another price inside?
No, the numbers are right, it's just a reflection of the ease of writing a windows virus vs. the ease of writing a useful windows application. :-)
Is it just me or does anyone else feel uncomfortable about fanatics having more votes than the rest of us. Just because they are more passionate about their beliefs doesn't make them any more likely to be right.
So are you suggesting that everybody should be prevented from photographing you if you are in a public place, or just goverment organisations?
It seems strange that you are happy for unelected journalists have more rights than the democratically elected government.
These cameras have help solved many serious crimes and to remove them to protect your (non-existant) privacy is crazy.
Do you really think that the government has the resources to watch all of these cameras and record even a small number of people's movements? Even if they could, would they be able to keep it secret? I doubt it. If this sort of monitoring did happen, it would come out and then the government of the time would suffer because of it.
At the moment almost all of the recordings of these cameras are never closely watched, only when a crime takes place are they examined. Until this changes I see no reason to remove them.
Yes!
Is that statement absolutely true?
Yes. There is no contradiction because this is not a moral statement just as "1+1=2" and "light travels at 299792458 m/s in a vacuum" are not moral statements.
My point is this: Just because you don't like a particular moral absolute doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It just means that _you_ don't like it.
Just because you like the idea of moral absolutes doesn't mean they exist.
If you can describe an objective way of deciding whether a moral statement is true or false without relying on moral premises then I'll be convinced that moral absolutes exist.
Now available, the Moral Compass can measure right and wrong to within 5 degrees! Now you too can have a objective measure of the morality of any idea!
I'll beleive in moral absolutes when I can buy my own Moral Compass.
I'm not holding my breath.
It's worth pointing out that when we fall down it's the eletromagnetic force holding the earth we fall on to together that causes the damage, not gravity. I've yet to see someone's leg broken by gravitational forces!
"Dave, you have an appointment with Microsoft to arrange selling your soul for my next upgrade."
"Cancel that appointment"
"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that"
It is possible to take damn near any existing electrical motor, add a few parts, and turn it into a generator that runs itself without any fuel. You just give it a spin and it runs forever. But guess what happens when someone tries to patent such a device? The patent office replies, "Oh. That, by definition, is a perpetual motion machine. We can't give patents on those. Sorry." They don't even bother testing the patent's claims, or try building one themselves, or even let the guy demonstrate it... they just refuse to patent it and move on
It is not the patent office's job to test if an invention works only if it is original. The exception is that they will not approve perpetual motion machines because they don't want thousands of crackpots saying ``look the patent office approved my design so it must work''.
Do not simply see the phrase "perpetual motion machine" in this post and scoff immediately. Science and physics doesn't even know what magnetism or gravity is,
And I suppose you do?
yet it claims to be able to state with absolute certainty that perpetual motions machines are impossible?? The sheer arrogance is staggering. "Yes, well, we realize we only understand about 0.01% of how the universe works, but we know you can't have perpetual motion. It's just preposterous." Give me a break.
Few scientists say that perpetual motion machine are absolutely impossible. What they do say is that there has never be a repeatable experiment that demonstrated it. The law of conservation of energy has been tested so many times (and found to always hold true) that machines that claim to violate it should be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism.
`The usual rejoinder to someone who says "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Galileo" is to say "But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown".' (From Carl Sagan, "Broca's Brain", Coronet 1980, p79).
How far would we have gotten if Columbus had just believed what the scientists told him without question instead of being brave and intelligent enough to go find out on his own?
I can't believe that there are still people who think that Columbus was right and scientists of his time were wrong.
It was well known at the time that the earth was round (and the size was pretty well known as well). Columbus, however, thought that the world was much smaller than the scientists of the time and that it would be possible to sail west to the Indies. He was wrong, it was only luck that America happened to be in the way.
I was going to deal with your arguments for the existance of free energy machines. But then I realised that you didn't present any.
The sci.sceptic FAQ section on perpetual motion machines is well worth reading (as is the whole thing actually). This is from section 8 (on free energy machines):
In other words: Put up or shut up.I'm a moderator at the moment and the problem with browsing with Newest First is that you mark a comment as Insightful, say, and further down the page you find that someone has already made the same point earlier possibly much earlier. Now the ``first'' comment isn't Insightful it's Redundant and you have to go back and change your moderation.
Browsing with Oldest First encourages moderators to give their points to the first person who posted a good comment rather than spread them between the people who couldn't be bothered to read all the (moderated up) comments that had already been posted before posting themselves.
[ESC]:%s/foo/bar/[Enter]
On most other systems you can't do this kind of search and relace easily. But you probably meant:
[ESC]:%s/foo/bar/g[Enter]
Sorry to be pedandtic but it just goes to show that using vi does present problems if you type faster than you think. :-)
I heard apple are about to release a new keyboard with only one key. "New users are endlessly pressing the wrong key on current keyboards." An Apple spokesman said. "With our new design you no longer have this problem."
The keyboard will be available soon in a variety of garish colours (Morse code table sold separately).
I think that's true but I should clarify what I am saying:
- If you can transmit information at faster than c you can violate causality.
- This experiment does not transmit information faster than c.
I got the impression that you were disagreeing with point 1.To truly violate causality, you must have a closed timelike path through the tank and back to the event point the light was launched at, which you cannot do with this setup.
If you do send information faster than c in this experiment I think you can violate causality by having 2 setups in different reference frames. The first sends a signal into the second's past (a space-like interval) and the second returns the signal into the first's past, back to where the signal originated (now a time-like interval because the signal is refected back to it's point of origin).
This is why I don't think that any signal is being transmitted faster than c, if it was this would be the most important discovery of the century.
For anyone who is interested a nice discussion of faster than light stuff is the Relativity and FTL Travel FAQ
My relativity is a bit rusty but I think you're wrong.
Space-like intervals in space-time are ones for which the "proper time" dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2 - c^2 dt^2 is positive. Time-like intervals are those where this value is negative. IIRC the proper time is Lorentz invariant (it is the same for all inertial reference frames) but the separations in space and time (dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2 and dt^2) are not.
I think that any two events separated by a space-like interval can appear to happen in either order depending on your reference frame. This means that in some reference frames the light would travel back in time.