I don't know if you are talking about replacing the trackpad on the PB with a three button mouse, or simply using a three button mouse. If it is the latter, OS X supports multiple button mice out of the box. I use a three button mouse with my Mac (well, three buttons plus the scroll wheel do-hicky).
I don't even know why I am replying to this bit of flamebait, but here it is:
What would you prefer I use? Americans? That is stupid. America != the United States of America. America includes Mexico, Canada, Panama, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and a whole bunch of other nations. There is a reason that most of the rest of the world considers people from this country to be ethno-centric.
When you say 'Here in the land of the free (the US)...', then continue by saying 'we', you are speaking for everyone who lives in the US. You do not speak for me, so please do not represent yourself as doing so.
I agree that it is a problem when people are willing to trade freedoms for service or security. Europe is not perfect, but neither is the United States. When was the last time you read the USA PATRIOT Act?
1) Yes, I can drink the water. Tap water in the US is some of the best in the world. I can drink it without getting parisites, large doses of heavy metals, or other nasties. Most tap water contamination in the country comes not from the municipalities, but from old lead pipes in people's houses.
2) What? Mix ups? No. Corruption, yes. I would hardly call Enron a 'mix up'.
3) Yes, taxpayers are paying for sewer. But they are paying less in property tax than they would to a private corporation (at least, this is the point of the parent).
Let me add a forth item (one with which I am intimately familier, but which you probably don't know or care much about):
Historic and cultural preservation. Before the government will give money or land to any project (i.e. mining, foresting, &c.), the leaders of that project must ensure that they are not adversly impacting the environment (or, that if they are, they mitigate the effects of their project -- i.e. mine reclaimation). Part of this is ensuring that our cultural heritage is not lost (i.e. protecting archaeological sites, old buildings, &c.).
I have worked for the government, and have seen what it costs the government to do the work. There is some overhead, but because there are many people working on many projects at any one time, the overhead devoted to historic preservation is fairly low. Furthermore, the government pays less in wages than private contractors. I have seen the contracts, and the feds can do this kind of work much more cheaply than private industry. However, government regulation requires that a certain amount of the work is contracted out. To the lowest bidder.
Whether I agree with you or not, you do not speak for me. Please do not us the pronoun 'we'. You speak for yourself, and maybe a fair number of people, but you do not speak for all USians. Please, stfu.
As to the rest of the comments, it has already been pointed out that these US vs Europe discussions are not relevant to this discussion, and counter-productive. I think that the original post was either flamebait (to which everyone has risen) or somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Relax.
I find these acronyms to be funny, in a kind of distrubing way. You cannot call a piece of legislation anything you want, so they come up with acronyms like the USA PATRIOT ACT in order to make something sound better than it is.
I use Mac. I have used Mac hardware since the mid-80s, and have run the OS most of that time (I ran Linux for a couple of years, but did not have the time to maintain it properly... this was a while ago, and things may have changed, but I like OS X).
However, most of my family uses Windows. I have had the chore of dealing with those systems, starting with ordering them / getting them built.
I am something of a Mac zealot, and would love to convince you that Mac is right for you, though I have found that it is not right for everyone, especially 'power users' that are, as you say, tied to Windows. What can I say that might improve your image of Macintoshes, and help to disabuse you of the notion that all Mac users are jerks?
It is always funny watching the short ones with 35" of steel, then comparing their behavior to that of the tall ones. The short ones know that you could put an eye. I never have to tell them to "put a mask on before you loose an eye!" more than once. The college kids, on the other hand, know it all.
To bring it back on topic (sort of): I am now teaching computers to elementary school students. Anything more than a heuristic for the youngest kids is too complicated -- "move the mouse [cursor] to the green arrow, then push the button." It is facinating to see them develop as they get older, and need fewer directions.
I must agree... Objects in Space is one of the best science fiction episodes I have ever seen and competes with some of the best drama I have ever seen.
Getting to Austarialia did and New Guinea did not require long distance sea faring capacity. At the height glacial advance, about 60,000 years ago (give or take), Australia and New Guinea were joined, and were only seperated from Asia by about 60-90 miles of water. A fair bit no doubt, but certainly crossable (look at Cubans fleeing to Florida).
Most anthropologists tend to believe that everyone came from Africa (well, at least a large portion do -- there are other theories). Modern Homo sapiens seemed to migrate out of Africa about 100,000 years ago. People hit southern Asia maybe 60-70 kBP, Europe around 40 kBP, Central Asia about 25,000 years ago, and the Americas around 15-20 kBP. The Pacific Islands were slowly populated from west to east, ending within the last 1,000 years (Easter Island was the last place to be reached, about 700 years ago).
Please note, however, that these dates are all from the top of my head, and may be off by a bit... it has been awile since I took human evolution or biological anthropolgy. Also, these figures are in line with the 'Out of Africa' theory. There is another widespread theory that states that modern Homo sapiens evolved locally from Homo erectus. Either way, there is no evidence of people in Australia before 60 kBP, and very scant evidence before 40 kBP.
However, the sample does not seem to be that small. There are thousands of Clovis sites in North America, and hundreds of thousands of pre-historic sites. Clovis is seen as a cut off because there are many, many sites found later, and nothing found earlier. If people were leaving traces on the landscape prior to Clovis peoples, it seems very unlikely that we would not have found any of their sites by now.
Most archaeologist excavate until one of three things happen: they dig until they stop finding things (say 1 m below the last thing they find, depending on the site); they hit bedrock; or funding runs out.
Just about every archaeologist in the country would love to resolve the Clovis vs. Pre-Clovis debate one way or the other. This means keep on digging. The fact is that almost nothing has been found that indicates Pre-Clovis settlement. The things that have been found generally have problems with them: the Calico site is old, but contains geofacts that look like artifacts (not man made); Monte Verde suffers from a whole slew of methodological problems; Meadowcroft is probably contaminated with 'dead' carbon from coal deposits; et cetera.
However, the folk working on the Topper site have done a pretty good job with their work, and have published a bit in the academic journals. Their methodology looks good, and their dates look good -- the only real question is whether or not the artifacts were man made. Not having seen them myself, I cannot address that question, however it seems unlikely to me, based upon the overwhelming lack of evidence of Pre-Clovis people.
First, _Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel" is an excellent read. It contains some very interesting ideas about the rise of European dominance in the world.
However, you got one fact wrong. Yes, just about everything larger than a beached whale was settled, however most of that happened with the rise of Polynesian sea faring technology, only a few thousand years ago. It is widly understood that Hawai'i was not settled until maybe 1,000 - 1,500 years ago.
Also, there are two competing models about how the Americas were settled -- the Coastal Migration Route and the Ice Free Corridor Route. Both, however, assume that early Americans came from Asia. This has been backed up by mtDNA evidence, which, while not 100% conclusive, seems to strongly agree with and Asian origin of 'Native Americans' (Indians, Aleuts, Inuits, et cetera).
Furthermore, the 'early' population of the Pacific Rim depends upon how you define 'early'. Australia was likely not settled until 60 kBP, and the best evidence is that the Americas were not settled until 15 kBP (11.4 kBP radiocarbon years is the magic number that gets quoted a lot). Humans have been around for at least 100 k years, perhaps longer, depending on how you define humans.
The most recent DNA studies, utilizing mtDNA, show fairly conclusivly that people came to the New World from Asia. Furthermore, there is very little evidence of people in the Pacific until well after the Americas were settled (the eastern parts of the Pacific, i.e. Hawi'i and Easter Island, were not settled until maybe 1000 years ago), and there is almost no evidence that any of the 'negroid' peoples of Africa had any kind of long distance sea faring capacity until very recently.
The distinctions of 'negroid', 'mongoloid', and 'caucasion' are based primarily on skull morphology. The skulls of the earliest people in the Americas (based on a very small sample of maybe a dozen or two) are very different from anything that now exists. 'Mongoloid' skulls tend to cluster around certain traits, as do 'negroid' and 'caucasion' skulls. However, these clusters appear much less distinct when compared to 11,000 year old Americans, such as Kenniwick Man or Spirit Cave Man.
Radiocarbon dating is good to maybe 65-75 thousand years. Beyond that, the amount of C14 in a sample is generally small enought that it is very, very hard to count... remember that C14 has a half life of less than 7,000 years.
Slashdot Mirror
I fail to see what that has to do with freedom of speech.
vi? emacs? heck, I use pico. ...
stupid 20 second wait... ...
I don't know if you are talking about replacing the trackpad on the PB with a three button mouse, or simply using a three button mouse. If it is the latter, OS X supports multiple button mice out of the box. I use a three button mouse with my Mac (well, three buttons plus the scroll wheel do-hicky).
I don't even know why I am replying to this bit of flamebait, but here it is:
What would you prefer I use? Americans? That is stupid. America != the United States of America. America includes Mexico, Canada, Panama, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and a whole bunch of other nations. There is a reason that most of the rest of the world considers people from this country to be ethno-centric.
When you say 'Here in the land of the free (the US)...', then continue by saying 'we', you are speaking for everyone who lives in the US. You do not speak for me, so please do not represent yourself as doing so.
I agree that it is a problem when people are willing to trade freedoms for service or security. Europe is not perfect, but neither is the United States. When was the last time you read the USA PATRIOT Act?
1) Yes, I can drink the water. Tap water in the US is some of the best in the world. I can drink it without getting parisites, large doses of heavy metals, or other nasties. Most tap water contamination in the country comes not from the municipalities, but from old lead pipes in people's houses.
2) What? Mix ups? No. Corruption, yes. I would hardly call Enron a 'mix up'.
3) Yes, taxpayers are paying for sewer. But they are paying less in property tax than they would to a private corporation (at least, this is the point of the parent).
Let me add a forth item (one with which I am intimately familier, but which you probably don't know or care much about):
Historic and cultural preservation. Before the government will give money or land to any project (i.e. mining, foresting, &c.), the leaders of that project must ensure that they are not adversly impacting the environment (or, that if they are, they mitigate the effects of their project -- i.e. mine reclaimation). Part of this is ensuring that our cultural heritage is not lost (i.e. protecting archaeological sites, old buildings, &c.).
I have worked for the government, and have seen what it costs the government to do the work. There is some overhead, but because there are many people working on many projects at any one time, the overhead devoted to historic preservation is fairly low. Furthermore, the government pays less in wages than private contractors. I have seen the contracts, and the feds can do this kind of work much more cheaply than private industry. However, government regulation requires that a certain amount of the work is contracted out. To the lowest bidder.
Whether I agree with you or not, you do not speak for me. Please do not us the pronoun 'we'. You speak for yourself, and maybe a fair number of people, but you do not speak for all USians. Please, stfu.
As to the rest of the comments, it has already been pointed out that these US vs Europe discussions are not relevant to this discussion, and counter-productive. I think that the original post was either flamebait (to which everyone has risen) or somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Relax.
I am putting you on my foes list just so you have to change your sig. At some point, I will take you off. Then on again. And so on.
I find these acronyms to be funny, in a kind of distrubing way. You cannot call a piece of legislation anything you want, so they come up with acronyms like the USA PATRIOT ACT in order to make something sound better than it is.
Okay, I am mentioning OS X. Wanna talk?
I use Mac. I have used Mac hardware since the mid-80s, and have run the OS most of that time (I ran Linux for a couple of years, but did not have the time to maintain it properly... this was a while ago, and things may have changed, but I like OS X).
However, most of my family uses Windows. I have had the chore of dealing with those systems, starting with ordering them / getting them built.
I am something of a Mac zealot, and would love to convince you that Mac is right for you, though I have found that it is not right for everyone, especially 'power users' that are, as you say, tied to Windows. What can I say that might improve your image of Macintoshes, and help to disabuse you of the notion that all Mac users are jerks?
That is your advantage. I am less than 6 foot tall, and not built like a gorilla. Most of the damn college kids are taller than me. Oh, well.
By the way, where do you fence?
It is always funny watching the short ones with 35" of steel, then comparing their behavior to that of the tall ones. The short ones know that you could put an eye. I never have to tell them to "put a mask on before you loose an eye!" more than once. The college kids, on the other hand, know it all.
To bring it back on topic (sort of): I am now teaching computers to elementary school students. Anything more than a heuristic for the youngest kids is too complicated -- "move the mouse [cursor] to the green arrow, then push the button." It is facinating to see them develop as they get older, and need fewer directions.
Orwell's War of the Worlds? I was not aware that he had written a book by that title. I have read H. G. Well's War of the World several times, though.
Yes, but sometimes it is a penis...
I must agree... Objects in Space is one of the best science fiction episodes I have ever seen and competes with some of the best drama I have ever seen.
You may kiss a nun once,
You may kiss a nun twice,
But you must not get into the habit.
^_^
Getting to Austarialia did and New Guinea did not require long distance sea faring capacity. At the height glacial advance, about 60,000 years ago (give or take), Australia and New Guinea were joined, and were only seperated from Asia by about 60-90 miles of water. A fair bit no doubt, but certainly crossable (look at Cubans fleeing to Florida).
Most anthropologists tend to believe that everyone came from Africa (well, at least a large portion do -- there are other theories). Modern Homo sapiens seemed to migrate out of Africa about 100,000 years ago. People hit southern Asia maybe 60-70 kBP, Europe around 40 kBP, Central Asia about 25,000 years ago, and the Americas around 15-20 kBP. The Pacific Islands were slowly populated from west to east, ending within the last 1,000 years (Easter Island was the last place to be reached, about 700 years ago).
Please note, however, that these dates are all from the top of my head, and may be off by a bit... it has been awile since I took human evolution or biological anthropolgy. Also, these figures are in line with the 'Out of Africa' theory. There is another widespread theory that states that modern Homo sapiens evolved locally from Homo erectus. Either way, there is no evidence of people in Australia before 60 kBP, and very scant evidence before 40 kBP.
Check out Bonobos -- they should give you a run for your money. ^_^
However, the sample does not seem to be that small. There are thousands of Clovis sites in North America, and hundreds of thousands of pre-historic sites. Clovis is seen as a cut off because there are many, many sites found later, and nothing found earlier. If people were leaving traces on the landscape prior to Clovis peoples, it seems very unlikely that we would not have found any of their sites by now.
Sorry, but wrong.
Most archaeologist excavate until one of three things happen: they dig until they stop finding things (say 1 m below the last thing they find, depending on the site); they hit bedrock; or funding runs out.
Just about every archaeologist in the country would love to resolve the Clovis vs. Pre-Clovis debate one way or the other. This means keep on digging. The fact is that almost nothing has been found that indicates Pre-Clovis settlement. The things that have been found generally have problems with them: the Calico site is old, but contains geofacts that look like artifacts (not man made); Monte Verde suffers from a whole slew of methodological problems; Meadowcroft is probably contaminated with 'dead' carbon from coal deposits; et cetera.
However, the folk working on the Topper site have done a pretty good job with their work, and have published a bit in the academic journals. Their methodology looks good, and their dates look good -- the only real question is whether or not the artifacts were man made. Not having seen them myself, I cannot address that question, however it seems unlikely to me, based upon the overwhelming lack of evidence of Pre-Clovis people.
A classic email!? This one has been around since long before email was around.
First, _Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel" is an excellent read. It contains some very interesting ideas about the rise of European dominance in the world. However, you got one fact wrong. Yes, just about everything larger than a beached whale was settled, however most of that happened with the rise of Polynesian sea faring technology, only a few thousand years ago. It is widly understood that Hawai'i was not settled until maybe 1,000 - 1,500 years ago. Also, there are two competing models about how the Americas were settled -- the Coastal Migration Route and the Ice Free Corridor Route. Both, however, assume that early Americans came from Asia. This has been backed up by mtDNA evidence, which, while not 100% conclusive, seems to strongly agree with and Asian origin of 'Native Americans' (Indians, Aleuts, Inuits, et cetera). Furthermore, the 'early' population of the Pacific Rim depends upon how you define 'early'. Australia was likely not settled until 60 kBP, and the best evidence is that the Americas were not settled until 15 kBP (11.4 kBP radiocarbon years is the magic number that gets quoted a lot). Humans have been around for at least 100 k years, perhaps longer, depending on how you define humans.
The most recent DNA studies, utilizing mtDNA, show fairly conclusivly that people came to the New World from Asia. Furthermore, there is very little evidence of people in the Pacific until well after the Americas were settled (the eastern parts of the Pacific, i.e. Hawi'i and Easter Island, were not settled until maybe 1000 years ago), and there is almost no evidence that any of the 'negroid' peoples of Africa had any kind of long distance sea faring capacity until very recently. The distinctions of 'negroid', 'mongoloid', and 'caucasion' are based primarily on skull morphology. The skulls of the earliest people in the Americas (based on a very small sample of maybe a dozen or two) are very different from anything that now exists. 'Mongoloid' skulls tend to cluster around certain traits, as do 'negroid' and 'caucasion' skulls. However, these clusters appear much less distinct when compared to 11,000 year old Americans, such as Kenniwick Man or Spirit Cave Man.
Radiocarbon dating is good to maybe 65-75 thousand years. Beyond that, the amount of C14 in a sample is generally small enought that it is very, very hard to count... remember that C14 has a half life of less than 7,000 years.
you just used the word "hella". Fear my wrath! ^_^ That being said, I am forced to agree with the thrust of your argument: Go Kerry!
but I noticed this article at the same moment that it was mentioned on NPR. Odd.