Well, I was just pointing out, by means of parody, the silliness of this elitist view of "I can understand source code, I don't care about docs", which, as you pointed out, is one of the reasons why open source docs aren't better than they are today.
So where does this leave Linux ? Well Linux already does have two powerful vectors for virus havoc (shell scripting and Perl) that are already reasonably likely to be available to anything executing under the user's shell. It doesn't need a WP macro language to find itself a home.
I think you're missing a point here. Perl is a very powerful (deadly, in the wrong hands) scripting language which is installed by default on Linux systems. Why don't we see Perl being abused to create viruses? Because the Perl interpreter is not automatically invoked by something like email, unlike things like Word macros or ActiveX. At least not currently. CGI Perl scripts used to be security holes, but (hopefully) sysadmins have wisened up and tidied up their Perl scripts to be secure.
But I dread the day when somebody gets this "bright" idea that it's be "real neat" to have documents with embedded Perl scripts, that can do all these "neat l'll things", "cute animations", etc., etc., ad nauseum.
I guess my point is, the problem isn't with the existence of a scripting language (I mean, heck, a scripting language is nothing compared to a C compiler installed by default on most Linux distros to facilitate kernel recompilation!). The problem is with linking system-level scripting languages to documents. Textual content should be textual content. Mixing textual and executable content (esp. system-executable content) is a very dangerous security hazard.
WARNING - THE PRECEDING POST IS AN ATTEMPT AT HUMOR. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO FLAMEBAIT IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.
I find it rather interesting that humor often has to be labelled as such before it's taken as such. Doesn't this contradict the whole point of humor? I mean, isn't something dreadfully wrong with a joke if you've to specifically inform others that it's a joke? Or perhaps the statement that it's a joke is the punch line:-)
I've also been warned that using puns is a "no no",
Awwww... now there is no more reason for us to even read the docs any more... aren't all those insider jokes and puns what documentation is really about? I mean, who wants to read a serious, down-to-earth doc with no puns, no jokes, when we can all read the source and find out how it works anyway?
make -n is OK if you're only installing software once in a while. How many times do Linux-savvy people check the Makefile's of stuff they downloaded off the Net? I mean, a man-in-the-middle attack can easily replace say, the Makefile of an upgraded version of YourFavoriteApp.tar.gz -- I doubt people are actually paranoid enough to parse an entire Makefile (or the output of make -n) just to make sure it doesn't do something strange. Especially if you don't have loads of time to spend on this stuff and you're upgrading every other day (like me:-P).
Besides, nowadays it's quite easy to hide stuff in Makefile's that even make -n would not immediately make obvious. (Pun intended) The complexity of a deeply nested source tree with involved Perl scripts invoked by the Makefile to set up the compilation/installation, etc., simply make it impractical to check every Makefile that you come across. The famous saying goes, "There is no such thing as security through obscurity." I would add, "There is a lot of insecurity in obscurity."
Of course, I don't mean we should all be paranoid and start examining every single line of text we download from the Net, but my point is, we should not be ignorant of the possibilities. Yes, for practical reasons we cannot manually verify everything, but to hide behind the fact that "we can check if we really wanted to" is rather dangerous. We always need to be aware of the assumptions we're making and realize that there are loopholes that we should watch for. Complacency (or ignorance) is usually the cause of virus/trojan/bomb-related damages...
OK, since you asked, let me describe a calculation that is very, very biased towards the possibility of protein molecules forming by chance.
Let's take a protein consisting of a sequence of 500 amino acids. For simplicity, let's say that 20 different amino acids are used in this chain. Now, let's assume very favorably towards the chance forming of this protein molecule. So let's say there is a pool containing all the amino acids we will need to build out molecule. Assume all conditions are favorable for the forming of amino acid chains, etc.. Further, assume that a chain of 500 amino acids is formed per second by a chemical reaction (I leave it to you to decide how likely this is). The question is, what is the time needed for this pool to produce just ONE molecule of our protein?
We're talking about 500-long chains here, with one out of 20 acids at each position. So this makes 20^500 possible combinations. Since we have a 500-chain forming every second, we would need 20^500 seconds before it is likely that the exact sequence of our protein is produced. There are about 9.48672*10^8 seconds per year, which we shall round favorably up to 10^9 seconds per year, to give more time for our reactions to form different combinations. This means that we will require 20^491 years before our protein molecule is likely to be formed. The age of our universe is only in the billions... and even if it were in the trillions (10^9), it is still practically nil compared to 20^491.
OK, let's make our setup more favorable. Let's assume that every year, one planet favorable to life is formed in the universe, and each planet contains our magic, protein-producing pool. Say we mark the age of the universe at 10^12, just to be a bit on the generous side. This means 10^12 pools forming a chain of 500 acids every second. So that makes the time needed for our protein to be formed by chance around 10^479 years. (BTW, I'm generously assuming that each planet exists for the duration of the universe, with favorable conditions throughout that lifetime.) Practically, this probability is nil. Mind you, we're talking just ONE protein molecule here. We haven't even gotten into the probabilities of a self-reproducing group of molecules forming, even under these very very generous assumptions.
I don't know about you, but choosing a theory that requires such strange odds over the simple admission of the existence of a Creator seems to me to be more of a stubborn denial of God than a scientific conclusion. Science is about examining different hypotheses to explain observed phenomenon. Unfortunately, people seem to think that the existence of God is not a plausible hypothesis while a theory like evolution which involves such strange coincidences is plausible.
IMHO, I think this simply betrays the fact that people are not willing to admit that God exists, and would rather choose an alternative explanation even when that alternative has ridiculously low probability of being true. Of course, in this society, everyone is free to have his own opinions. But they will have to face the consequences of their own decisions, and IMHO, insistently denying the existence of God in the face of such odds seems to be a rather myopic decision.
Theistic appeals ultimately boil down to not trying to describe the phenomenon, but merely removing it one level and placing it in a box labelled "God" which is immune to further questioning.
No. I have nothing against questioning about how the universe works, how it came about, etc.. But making a sweeping generalization such as "evolution explains why we exist therefore we don't need God" is about just as scientific as saying "God exists therefore evolution is false". And BTW, this latter claim is NOT what I said. I am merely proposing an alternative explanation. But the way evolution is accepted today makes it more like a religion than a science. It is taught as a "proven theory" -- as if anything in science is "proven"! -- and anyone who questions it is put down as "outdated", "superstitious", "unscientific", etc., etc.. To me, this sounds more like religious zealots defending their "faith" than scientists honestly searching for an answer.
Evolution has not been proven, and there is no scientific reason for the non-existence of God. If God doesn't exist, why do people debate about Him all the time? We don't debate about whether Mickey Mouse exists in real-life, do we? Do we even care if some nut claims that Mickey Mouse exists? Of course not. The fact that people are reacting to claims of God's existence seems to show that they are merely avoiding what they innately know but cannot reconcile logically. People need to come out of their science religion and do some real science -- unbiased weighing of the alternatives based on facts and observations. Taking science as the ultimate truth is just as myopic (if not more than) as taking a religious doctrine without experiencing whether it's real.
Yes, but I don't think a random amino acid molecule is very useful at all, besides the fact that it *happens* to be used in organisms.
If you ever sat down and calculate the probability of a soup of amino acids forming a useful protein molecule by pure chance, you'll know that I mean. Try it.
It is perfectly possible for entropy to decrease locally, as long as it increases globally. Consider this example: An iron ore deposit is disordered. A steel skyscraper is highly ordered. Nevertheless, it is possible to produce one from the other. In the process, additional disorder is created in the form of wastes, it just isn't intermingled with the steel anymore.
I agree absolutely. However, creating a steel skyscraper requires an agent (in this case, the construction workers) to "shove the entropy elsewhere", so to speak. Left to itself, an iron ore will never by any weird coincidence assemble itself into a steel skyscraper. Of course, speaking in terms of possibility it is certainly possible for a steel skyscraper to be built out of iron ore. The point is, it does not do this without an external agent. For example, it is possible that all the iron on earth can be assembled into a bridge that connects to the Moon. But why isn't there such a thing today? Because so far, there hasn't been an agent that causes the local decrease of entropy needed to assemble the iron ore into the necessary order.
So, whenever there is local decrease of entropy, there is necessarily an agent that brings this about. The argument here isn't that it's impossible for order to be built from chaos; the argument is that an agent is always required. Bricks do not spontaneously assemble into a building unless construction workers cause it to be so.
Now, to your point about closed systems: we may assume that the system of bricks and construction workers, and construction waste, to form a closed system. Since there is an increase of order in the bricks, this order must have come from the workers (the waste obviously doesn't add order to the system). So, the workers are more ordered than the bricks.
Generalizing this, we see that an agent of a local entropy decrease must be more ordered than what is produced.
Therefore, it seems that life-forms must be the most ordered systems, since living beings are constantly agents that bring about order. The question then, is, what/who is the agent that produced the order present in living things?
Just because the post expresses opinions contrary to popular views isn't reason to silently ignore it! It does have a valid argument IMHO, because:
It points out that evolution necessarily creates order out of chaos, and this violates the 2nd Law of thermodynamics. Therefore, to justify why it works seems to require something that isn't subjected to the laws of thermodynamics. And the poster's point is, since we have to make this assumption anyway, why not go with the explanation of a supreme Being who is not constrained by physical laws? This is much simpler than the convoluted, periphrastic arguments that evolution needs in order to be plausible. And isn't science all about finding the most economic theory that accounts for all the facts?
Good point... AFAIK current research into AI isn't even close to the rational side of our psyche. And the irrational (ie. emotional) side of our psyche is even harder to grasp. People have been dabbling with "fuzzy logic" for a long time now, and I've yet to see anything that even remotely resembles a real "emotion". There is a certain urge, or compulsion, within the human psyche that drives people to do certain things when they feel something. Many people dismiss this as merely an accidental consequence of our chemical makeup (or some other dismissive explanation), but few have actually studied why it works the way it does and come up with plausible models for the way emotions work. I don't quite agree with the "chemical accident" explanation because it doesn't explain why our emotions are simultaneously non-logical yet not totally random. If chemistry were all, I'd expect total randomness in emotions, but this is not the case.
So I agree with the previous post -- I'd be very interested in what current research has come up with, based on current technology, and not imaginative leaps of fancy that we all like to speculate about.
Although my personal views would tend to agree with this, I wonder if it's actually possible that quantum computation can actually surpass the halting-problem barrier.
My reasoning is this: the main problem with the halting problem being unsolvable is the infinity problem -- you must check *every* possible combination (which is infinite) before you can decide whether a program halts. But remember that quantum mechanics has this "try out all possible paths" property? (For the quantum theory impaired, this is the property that the likelihood a particle X at position A ends up in position B is a sum of the probabilities of all possible paths it would take between A and B. Or something like that:-P).
Now suppose we figure out a way (similar to the way prime factorization is "easily" cracked by quantum computation) using the uncertainty principle that allows a quantum computer to "check all possible paths" a given program would ever execute -- this would mean that we can solve the halting problem!!
But IMHO, even if this were possible, we still would not have reached the level of "human consciousness" yet, because, as anyone well-versed with computability theory knows, the halting problem is still recursively enumerable. There are other problems that are even "harder" than the halting problem -- problems that are not even recursively enumerable. In English, these problems are on the order of checking an infinite number of halting problems (each of which is infinite). And the fact that human beings (more specifically, mathematicians) are able to grasp such problems seem to indicate that human intelligence is way beyond computation. A computational "intelligence" can only see things at the level it's programmed for; there is no algorithm to make that "leap of intuition" which mathematicians routinely do when they engage in their work. In fact, even mathematicians cannot adequately define what their mind does when they make such generalizations, which seems to indicate that perhaps we will never find out what makes us think the way we do, and therefore we'll never be able to program this into a machine.
Hmm, interesting... reminds me of the movie The Iron Mask, which (I think) exploits this mystery storyline... It'd be interesting to know what really happened. But of course, I could just be pulling this totally out of the blue since I don't remember if it was actually this prince that the Iron Mask is based on!:-)
Yeah! The philosophy behind Open Source should not remain merely in the realm of computers. There should be all kinds of equivalents of "open source", like in music, movies, novels, you-name-it.
On the other side, people who aren't creating stuff and putting it under open-source-like licenses should at least support the people who are doing this. As far as music is concerned, people should definitely support GAMH and read the Free Music Philosophy.
The people who want to control the entertainment industry wants to make you a couch potato. If you don't want to be one, do something about it! Go create something new and put an open-source-like license on it. Or at least, go support the people who are doing this. Sitting there on your desk typing messages on Slashdot won't accomplish that much. Save some of that energy and accomplish something.
I don't know if it's actually possible to store molecules in a buckyball, unless it's one of the big ones. AFAIK there is only enough room for large atoms (or maybe small molecules like H2?)
And I don't see any connection between buckyballs and "Literally puncture-proof tires", lightweight protective vests, and glass-like structures. AFAIK, buckyballs are very stable, self-contained molecules that don't tend to bond with other buckyballs. So their stability is only good for themselves -- you can't generalize that since the molecule is stable it must be possible to build stable things out of it. Things like Kevlar or plastic are built out of unstable molecules and form themselves into large polymers that has stable bonds. Buckyballs are already stable enough they won't be easily formed into polymers, and if you break some of their bonds to make them bond to each other, their stable configuration will be lost.
Silicon buckyballs? Hmm, 'twill be interesting to have stable silicon buckyballs... however AFAIK, Si-Si bonds tend to be quite unstable -- there are things like silanes (similar to molecules in petroleum but with silicon instead of carbon) but silanes are very unstable and spontaneously combust or decompose in some way. A buckyball configuration of silicon *might* stabilize the bonds, but still... those Si-Si bonds tend to broken in favor of Si-O bonds.
Somebody please moderate the above article up. Just because the views expressed therein does not correspond with the common Slashdot view is no reason to mark it down, neither reason NOT to mark it up when it brings out valid points to discuss/argue about.
(BEGIN RANT)
Frankly, I am increasingly disgusted at the way moderation is being done in Slashdot recently. It seems that only early posts are ever read by moderators, and the only posts that ever get moderated up basically say "Yeah OpenSource Yeah boycott Evil Corporations Yeah Linux rulez Yeah this guy agrees with my view so I moderate him up Yeah". It seems that an increasingly large percentage of moderators no longer value discussion, they merely moderate up posts that strengthen what they think Slashdot should represent. Just look at most of the +4 or +5 posts in the recent stories. How "insightful" are they really (except for the rare exceptional gem), other than re-enforcing the "common" Slashdot views? And how often a post is moderated down as Flamebait just because it expresses "opposite" views? And how many more posts are quietly ignored by moderators who do not wish the opinions expressed in those posts to become prominent, even though they are equally valuable as other posts that are moderated up??
I don't know about you, but if only "non-controversial" posts or only posts that express certain "acceptable" opinions are ever moderated up, then something is wrong with Slashdot. It really annoys me when I see so many posts at +4 and +5 that are merely moderately good, when some other posts of equal value remain hidden at +1 just because they happen to not express the popular Slashdot views. Now, I'm not agreeing with the Slashdot trolls by any measure, but sometimes I think some of them have a valid point, in that all the high scored posts always express a certain view whilst others are quietly ignored just because they express an opinion that the moderator doesn't agree with.
So PLEASE, moderators, remember what the moderator guidelines say. One of the points is that you should not moderate down (and may I add, should not deliberately IGNORE) a post just because you don't agree with what it says.
I'm a musician myself, and I'd hate to have my music controlled by some record label. Perhaps some musically-inclined slashdotters should get together and write up a GPL-equivalent of music... I'd be happy to know about that.
Hmph, is this some new way of trolling slashdot? Find an interesting Linux link, relate it to the current article, reply to next to every thread in the article. As a bonus you even get lots of karma points and generate lots of hits. Wake up, moderators!!!!!!
First of all... WoW! This is a great idea! Free education given to whoever that wants it, not locked into a system where you have to somehow find money to pay for tuition before you can "rightfully" receive education. Toward the end of the article, he even predicted a kind of hesitance from established traditional education systems, but said that they will eventually realize the good of this.
Well, my take on this is that online universities will NOT replace "physical" universities. Simply because coursework does not constitute the entire university experience. In spite of the beauty of making information available to whoever wants it, there are still glaring limitations. For example, what about science courses that require lab work? Online students will be limited in their learning experience if they cannot access lab facilities to apply what they are learning. A lot of education isn't merely picking up knowledge; there is the need for the student to practically use that knowledge before he "truly knows" it. Besides, how do you grant degrees on programs like chemistry, etc., if the student has never physically performed any chemistry labwork before?
Then you have the whole social development issue. Being able to learn in isolation without being forced to learn how to deal with people may result in a rather unbalanced education. Especially if people are deluded to think that the online university is "equivalent" to a real university. And no, chatting online, etc., is not sufficient, because online "socializing" is just.... different. When you're online, there is a certain sense of anonymity (whether real or not) that isn't there in real life. And you can choose to ignore ppl online quite easily, whereas in the real world you sometimes actually get to learn how to deal with people you don't agree with.
Well, I'm not trying to slam the idea, but just want to point out that, it's too easy to jump the gun especially with terms like "online university" and think, incorrectly, that learning online is sufficient. I think the analogy with the Library of Congress is a more accurate picture of this resource. You can only do that much online: give information and publish lectures. But that only forms a part of the whole educational experience.
Why do some people always think that spending a lot of time on the Net is necessarily a bad thing, or an addiction, or however you label it? I mean, yes, there *is* such a thing as Net addiction, which is uncontrollable and not mentally healthy. But that does NOT mean that using the Net for more than X number of hours per day is Bad, and getting on less than X number of hours per day is Good.
Quite to the contrary, I find that recently the Net has become one big factor in keeping me going... I'm an extreme introvert IRL, and do not in general meet new people unless circumstances are such that I'm with them for a period of time. But on the Net, I'm much more open to talk to new people and learn new ideas. Recently, I found that by talking to people on IRC, contrary to the popular belief that "people you meet online aren't real people [sic]", I actually became more sociable and less introverted. I also found that I rediscovered my interests in many things like music, etc., just by talking to people with similar interests on the Net. IRL I would have a very hard time finding someone who could relate to me in that way.
Anyway, my whole point is, there is no single measure of goodness/badness or healthiness/unhealthiness (whatever terms you wish to use) on the Net. I mean, I could've ended up with the wrong company of people on IRC and become a compulsive maniac or something. It's all a matter of how you use the Net. The Net is but a tool -- albeit a very powerful and versatile tool -- and if you use it right, even the stereotypically "bad" or "anti-social" things online may turn out quite the opposite way. Do not judge a book by its cover. Much less by rumor.
I think a lot of it has to do with today's Instant Gratification Syndrome -- people want to a magic formula or a miracle book that teaches them how to program in 30 days, and then they want to write world-changing programs and get their pay-cheque immediately, etc., etc.. Few actually spend the time to really learn the art of programming.
And because of this "I don't have time to spend experimenting around, tell me everything!" attitude, a lot of people just don't "get" the principles of good programming. These are principles earned through hard experiences, but to people who have never actually done a lot of real programming before, they don't realize the value of these principles and usually just say, Well these are just theoretical rules which are so absurdly nit-picky, I'll just take the liberties and do it my way. But they don't realize that it's because of attitudes like this, a lot of software nowadays are very poorly designed, very poorly implemented, and very buggy. I'm not just referring to "commercial" software which the Slashdot crowd religiously hates, but a lot of open source projects headed by inexperienced people suffer from the same problem too. Although the good part about open source is, these people get a lot of experience out of the project and at least learn more good programming practices than a lot of hired programmers ever bother to.
Well, I think I'm slowly veering off-topic, so I'll stop now.:-)
I think it points out something that a lot of people miss when they debate about whether Linux should cater to the masses or stay true to its idealism (for lack of a better word). Why can't we have both?? After all, the same hardware runs both Windows and Linux --- it's silly to debate whether hardware manufacturers should make their hardware easier to use --- just change the software! Similarly, why are we debating whether Linux should be dumbed down? Just add an optional layer that provides an easy, user-friendly GUI -- you don't have to compromise the power and flexibility of Linux for it! Expert users can still bypass the "easy interface" and use the command-line if they so wish; but that doesn't mean we should develop an interface that makes the system usable by those who don't care about how things work inside.
The previous article (Borland/Inprise survey) has a ratio of 111 to 1141 as of this writing. This is ludicrous. The signal-to-noise ratio is now 0.1, or rather, the noise-to-signal ratio is now 10. Based on this alone, I think something had better be done and FAST. A forum with S/N ratio of 0.1 is effectively useless.
Yes, browsing at +1 makes things much better... but my point is, why are we wasting network bandwidth on junk like this, and why are we tolerating Slashdot being overloaded with crap???!?!? Why must we put up with Slashdot being so slow and overloaded just because some freak with way too much time on his hands decided to dedicate his life to trolling Slashdot?!?!?
No wonder people who don't know better think Slashdotters are weird, geeky, blah-blah-blah. Just think for a moment what a newbie would think if one would visit Slashdot right now, with its current default browsing settings. If frequent slashdotters are complaining already, what about someone who never read slashdot before and has no idea what's going on, and he sees hundreds of junk comments? Do you seriously think anyone with a sane mind would stay here if he had to wade through 1000 comments just to read the 100 nontroll comments? With only a handful of really worthwhile ones, and with the occasional zealot flamewar in the rest? Nobody will bother to figure out how to set the threshold thing if their first impression of Slashdot is ~1000 junk pr0n posts plus a handful of squabbling zealots. If this continues any longer, Slashdot is history. The existing, sensible readers will leave, and newbies will be turned off.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I was just pointing out, by means of parody, the silliness of this elitist view of "I can understand source code, I don't care about docs", which, as you pointed out, is one of the reasons why open source docs aren't better than they are today.
I think you're missing a point here. Perl is a very powerful (deadly, in the wrong hands) scripting language which is installed by default on Linux systems. Why don't we see Perl being abused to create viruses? Because the Perl interpreter is not automatically invoked by something like email, unlike things like Word macros or ActiveX. At least not currently. CGI Perl scripts used to be security holes, but (hopefully) sysadmins have wisened up and tidied up their Perl scripts to be secure.
But I dread the day when somebody gets this "bright" idea that it's be "real neat" to have documents with embedded Perl scripts, that can do all these "neat l'll things", "cute animations", etc., etc., ad nauseum.
I guess my point is, the problem isn't with the existence of a scripting language (I mean, heck, a scripting language is nothing compared to a C compiler installed by default on most Linux distros to facilitate kernel recompilation!). The problem is with linking system-level scripting languages to documents. Textual content should be textual content. Mixing textual and executable content (esp. system-executable content) is a very dangerous security hazard.
Previous poster writes:
I find it rather interesting that humor often has to be labelled as such before it's taken as such. Doesn't this contradict the whole point of humor? I mean, isn't something dreadfully wrong with a joke if you've to specifically inform others that it's a joke? Or perhaps the statement that it's a joke is the punch line :-)
Notice: the above is meant to be a joke. ;-)
Awwww... now there is no more reason for us to even read the docs any more... aren't all those insider jokes and puns what documentation is really about? I mean, who wants to read a serious, down-to-earth doc with no puns, no jokes, when we can all read the source and find out how it works anyway?
:-)
make -n is OK if you're only installing software once in a while. How many times do Linux-savvy people check the Makefile's of stuff they downloaded off the Net? I mean, a man-in-the-middle attack can easily replace say, the Makefile of an upgraded version of YourFavoriteApp.tar.gz -- I doubt people are actually paranoid enough to parse an entire Makefile (or the output of make -n) just to make sure it doesn't do something strange. Especially if you don't have loads of time to spend on this stuff and you're upgrading every other day (like me :-P).
Besides, nowadays it's quite easy to hide stuff in Makefile's that even make -n would not immediately make obvious. (Pun intended) The complexity of a deeply nested source tree with involved Perl scripts invoked by the Makefile to set up the compilation/installation, etc., simply make it impractical to check every Makefile that you come across. The famous saying goes, "There is no such thing as security through obscurity." I would add, "There is a lot of insecurity in obscurity."
Of course, I don't mean we should all be paranoid and start examining every single line of text we download from the Net, but my point is, we should not be ignorant of the possibilities. Yes, for practical reasons we cannot manually verify everything, but to hide behind the fact that "we can check if we really wanted to" is rather dangerous. We always need to be aware of the assumptions we're making and realize that there are loopholes that we should watch for. Complacency (or ignorance) is usually the cause of virus/trojan/bomb-related damages...
OK, since you asked, let me describe a calculation that is very, very biased towards the possibility of protein molecules forming by chance.
Let's take a protein consisting of a sequence of 500 amino acids. For simplicity, let's say that 20 different amino acids are used in this chain. Now, let's assume very favorably towards the chance forming of this protein molecule. So let's say there is a pool containing all the amino acids we will need to build out molecule. Assume all conditions are favorable for the forming of amino acid chains, etc.. Further, assume that a chain of 500 amino acids is formed per second by a chemical reaction (I leave it to you to decide how likely this is). The question is, what is the time needed for this pool to produce just ONE molecule of our protein?
We're talking about 500-long chains here, with one out of 20 acids at each position. So this makes 20^500 possible combinations. Since we have a 500-chain forming every second, we would need 20^500 seconds before it is likely that the exact sequence of our protein is produced. There are about 9.48672*10^8 seconds per year, which we shall round favorably up to 10^9 seconds per year, to give more time for our reactions to form different combinations. This means that we will require 20^491 years before our protein molecule is likely to be formed. The age of our universe is only in the billions... and even if it were in the trillions (10^9), it is still practically nil compared to 20^491.
OK, let's make our setup more favorable. Let's assume that every year, one planet favorable to life is formed in the universe, and each planet contains our magic, protein-producing pool. Say we mark the age of the universe at 10^12, just to be a bit on the generous side. This means 10^12 pools forming a chain of 500 acids every second. So that makes the time needed for our protein to be formed by chance around 10^479 years. (BTW, I'm generously assuming that each planet exists for the duration of the universe, with favorable conditions throughout that lifetime.) Practically, this probability is nil. Mind you, we're talking just ONE protein molecule here. We haven't even gotten into the probabilities of a self-reproducing group of molecules forming, even under these very very generous assumptions.
I don't know about you, but choosing a theory that requires such strange odds over the simple admission of the existence of a Creator seems to me to be more of a stubborn denial of God than a scientific conclusion. Science is about examining different hypotheses to explain observed phenomenon. Unfortunately, people seem to think that the existence of God is not a plausible hypothesis while a theory like evolution which involves such strange coincidences is plausible.
IMHO, I think this simply betrays the fact that people are not willing to admit that God exists, and would rather choose an alternative explanation even when that alternative has ridiculously low probability of being true. Of course, in this society, everyone is free to have his own opinions. But they will have to face the consequences of their own decisions, and IMHO, insistently denying the existence of God in the face of such odds seems to be a rather myopic decision.
No. I have nothing against questioning about how the universe works, how it came about, etc.. But making a sweeping generalization such as "evolution explains why we exist therefore we don't need God" is about just as scientific as saying "God exists therefore evolution is false". And BTW, this latter claim is NOT what I said. I am merely proposing an alternative explanation. But the way evolution is accepted today makes it more like a religion than a science. It is taught as a "proven theory" -- as if anything in science is "proven"! -- and anyone who questions it is put down as "outdated", "superstitious", "unscientific", etc., etc.. To me, this sounds more like religious zealots defending their "faith" than scientists honestly searching for an answer.
Evolution has not been proven, and there is no scientific reason for the non-existence of God. If God doesn't exist, why do people debate about Him all the time? We don't debate about whether Mickey Mouse exists in real-life, do we? Do we even care if some nut claims that Mickey Mouse exists? Of course not. The fact that people are reacting to claims of God's existence seems to show that they are merely avoiding what they innately know but cannot reconcile logically. People need to come out of their science religion and do some real science -- unbiased weighing of the alternatives based on facts and observations. Taking science as the ultimate truth is just as myopic (if not more than) as taking a religious doctrine without experiencing whether it's real.
Yes, but I don't think a random amino acid molecule is very useful at all, besides the fact that it *happens* to be used in organisms.
If you ever sat down and calculate the probability of a soup of amino acids forming a useful protein molecule by pure chance, you'll know that I mean. Try it.
I agree absolutely. However, creating a steel skyscraper requires an agent (in this case, the construction workers) to "shove the entropy elsewhere", so to speak. Left to itself, an iron ore will never by any weird coincidence assemble itself into a steel skyscraper. Of course, speaking in terms of possibility it is certainly possible for a steel skyscraper to be built out of iron ore. The point is, it does not do this without an external agent. For example, it is possible that all the iron on earth can be assembled into a bridge that connects to the Moon. But why isn't there such a thing today? Because so far, there hasn't been an agent that causes the local decrease of entropy needed to assemble the iron ore into the necessary order.
So, whenever there is local decrease of entropy, there is necessarily an agent that brings this about. The argument here isn't that it's impossible for order to be built from chaos; the argument is that an agent is always required. Bricks do not spontaneously assemble into a building unless construction workers cause it to be so.
Now, to your point about closed systems: we may assume that the system of bricks and construction workers, and construction waste, to form a closed system. Since there is an increase of order in the bricks, this order must have come from the workers (the waste obviously doesn't add order to the system). So, the workers are more ordered than the bricks.
Generalizing this, we see that an agent of a local entropy decrease must be more ordered than what is produced.
Therefore, it seems that life-forms must be the most ordered systems, since living beings are constantly agents that bring about order. The question then, is, what/who is the agent that produced the order present in living things?
Just because the post expresses opinions contrary to popular views isn't reason to silently ignore it! It does have a valid argument IMHO, because:
It points out that evolution necessarily creates order out of chaos, and this violates the 2nd Law of thermodynamics. Therefore, to justify why it works seems to require something that isn't subjected to the laws of thermodynamics. And the poster's point is, since we have to make this assumption anyway, why not go with the explanation of a supreme Being who is not constrained by physical laws? This is much simpler than the convoluted, periphrastic arguments that evolution needs in order to be plausible. And isn't science all about finding the most economic theory that accounts for all the facts?
Good point... AFAIK current research into AI isn't even close to the rational side of our psyche. And the irrational (ie. emotional) side of our psyche is even harder to grasp. People have been dabbling with "fuzzy logic" for a long time now, and I've yet to see anything that even remotely resembles a real "emotion". There is a certain urge, or compulsion, within the human psyche that drives people to do certain things when they feel something. Many people dismiss this as merely an accidental consequence of our chemical makeup (or some other dismissive explanation), but few have actually studied why it works the way it does and come up with plausible models for the way emotions work. I don't quite agree with the "chemical accident" explanation because it doesn't explain why our emotions are simultaneously non-logical yet not totally random. If chemistry were all, I'd expect total randomness in emotions, but this is not the case.
So I agree with the previous post -- I'd be very interested in what current research has come up with, based on current technology, and not imaginative leaps of fancy that we all like to speculate about.
Hmm, very good point! :-)
Although my personal views would tend to agree with this, I wonder if it's actually possible that quantum computation can actually surpass the halting-problem barrier.
My reasoning is this: the main problem with the halting problem being unsolvable is the infinity problem -- you must check *every* possible combination (which is infinite) before you can decide whether a program halts. But remember that quantum mechanics has this "try out all possible paths" property? (For the quantum theory impaired, this is the property that the likelihood a particle X at position A ends up in position B is a sum of the probabilities of all possible paths it would take between A and B. Or something like that :-P).
Now suppose we figure out a way (similar to the way prime factorization is "easily" cracked by quantum computation) using the uncertainty principle that allows a quantum computer to "check all possible paths" a given program would ever execute -- this would mean that we can solve the halting problem!!
But IMHO, even if this were possible, we still would not have reached the level of "human consciousness" yet, because, as anyone well-versed with computability theory knows, the halting problem is still recursively enumerable. There are other problems that are even "harder" than the halting problem -- problems that are not even recursively enumerable. In English, these problems are on the order of checking an infinite number of halting problems (each of which is infinite). And the fact that human beings (more specifically, mathematicians) are able to grasp such problems seem to indicate that human intelligence is way beyond computation. A computational "intelligence" can only see things at the level it's programmed for; there is no algorithm to make that "leap of intuition" which mathematicians routinely do when they engage in their work. In fact, even mathematicians cannot adequately define what their mind does when they make such generalizations, which seems to indicate that perhaps we will never find out what makes us think the way we do, and therefore we'll never be able to program this into a machine.
Hmm, interesting... reminds me of the movie The Iron Mask, which (I think) exploits this mystery storyline... It'd be interesting to know what really happened. But of course, I could just be pulling this totally out of the blue since I don't remember if it was actually this prince that the Iron Mask is based on! :-)
Yeah! The philosophy behind Open Source should not remain merely in the realm of computers. There should be all kinds of equivalents of "open source", like in music, movies, novels, you-name-it.
On the other side, people who aren't creating stuff and putting it under open-source-like licenses should at least support the people who are doing this. As far as music is concerned, people should definitely support GAMH and read the Free Music Philosophy.
Also check out the CZR Public License
The people who want to control the entertainment industry wants to make you a couch potato. If you don't want to be one, do something about it! Go create something new and put an open-source-like license on it. Or at least, go support the people who are doing this. Sitting there on your desk typing messages on Slashdot won't accomplish that much. Save some of that energy and accomplish something.
I don't know if it's actually possible to store molecules in a buckyball, unless it's one of the big ones. AFAIK there is only enough room for large atoms (or maybe small molecules like H2?)
And I don't see any connection between buckyballs and "Literally puncture-proof tires", lightweight protective vests, and glass-like structures. AFAIK, buckyballs are very stable, self-contained molecules that don't tend to bond with other buckyballs. So their stability is only good for themselves -- you can't generalize that since the molecule is stable it must be possible to build stable things out of it. Things like Kevlar or plastic are built out of unstable molecules and form themselves into large polymers that has stable bonds. Buckyballs are already stable enough they won't be easily formed into polymers, and if you break some of their bonds to make them bond to each other, their stable configuration will be lost.
Silicon buckyballs? Hmm, 'twill be interesting to have stable silicon buckyballs... however AFAIK, Si-Si bonds tend to be quite unstable -- there are things like silanes (similar to molecules in petroleum but with silicon instead of carbon) but silanes are very unstable and spontaneously combust or decompose in some way. A buckyball configuration of silicon *might* stabilize the bonds, but still... those Si-Si bonds tend to broken in favor of Si-O bonds.
Somebody please moderate the above article up. Just because the views expressed therein does not correspond with the common Slashdot view is no reason to mark it down, neither reason NOT to mark it up when it brings out valid points to discuss/argue about.
(BEGIN RANT)
Frankly, I am increasingly disgusted at the way moderation is being done in Slashdot recently. It seems that only early posts are ever read by moderators, and the only posts that ever get moderated up basically say "Yeah OpenSource Yeah boycott Evil Corporations Yeah Linux rulez Yeah this guy agrees with my view so I moderate him up Yeah". It seems that an increasingly large percentage of moderators no longer value discussion, they merely moderate up posts that strengthen what they think Slashdot should represent. Just look at most of the +4 or +5 posts in the recent stories. How "insightful" are they really (except for the rare exceptional gem), other than re-enforcing the "common" Slashdot views? And how often a post is moderated down as Flamebait just because it expresses "opposite" views? And how many more posts are quietly ignored by moderators who do not wish the opinions expressed in those posts to become prominent, even though they are equally valuable as other posts that are moderated up??
I don't know about you, but if only "non-controversial" posts or only posts that express certain "acceptable" opinions are ever moderated up, then something is wrong with Slashdot. It really annoys me when I see so many posts at +4 and +5 that are merely moderately good, when some other posts of equal value remain hidden at +1 just because they happen to not express the popular Slashdot views. Now, I'm not agreeing with the Slashdot trolls by any measure, but sometimes I think some of them have a valid point, in that all the high scored posts always express a certain view whilst others are quietly ignored just because they express an opinion that the moderator doesn't agree with.
So PLEASE, moderators, remember what the moderator guidelines say. One of the points is that you should not moderate down (and may I add, should not deliberately IGNORE) a post just because you don't agree with what it says.
(END RANT)
Talking about free music licenses, check out:
The Free Music Philosophy
I'm a musician myself, and I'd hate to have my music controlled by some record label. Perhaps some musically-inclined slashdotters should get together and write up a GPL-equivalent of music... I'd be happy to know about that.
Hmph, is this some new way of trolling slashdot? Find an interesting Linux link, relate it to the current article, reply to next to every thread in the article. As a bonus you even get lots of karma points and generate lots of hits. Wake up, moderators!!!!!!
First of all... WoW! This is a great idea! Free education given to whoever that wants it, not locked into a system where you have to somehow find money to pay for tuition before you can "rightfully" receive education. Toward the end of the article, he even predicted a kind of hesitance from established traditional education systems, but said that they will eventually realize the good of this.
Well, my take on this is that online universities will NOT replace "physical" universities. Simply because coursework does not constitute the entire university experience. In spite of the beauty of making information available to whoever wants it, there are still glaring limitations. For example, what about science courses that require lab work? Online students will be limited in their learning experience if they cannot access lab facilities to apply what they are learning. A lot of education isn't merely picking up knowledge; there is the need for the student to practically use that knowledge before he "truly knows" it. Besides, how do you grant degrees on programs like chemistry, etc., if the student has never physically performed any chemistry labwork before?
Then you have the whole social development issue. Being able to learn in isolation without being forced to learn how to deal with people may result in a rather unbalanced education. Especially if people are deluded to think that the online university is "equivalent" to a real university. And no, chatting online, etc., is not sufficient, because online "socializing" is just .... different. When you're online, there is a certain sense of anonymity (whether real or not) that isn't there in real life. And you can choose to ignore ppl online quite easily, whereas in the real world you sometimes actually get to learn how to deal with people you don't agree with.
Well, I'm not trying to slam the idea, but just want to point out that, it's too easy to jump the gun especially with terms like "online university" and think, incorrectly, that learning online is sufficient. I think the analogy with the Library of Congress is a more accurate picture of this resource. You can only do that much online: give information and publish lectures. But that only forms a part of the whole educational experience.
So why is USA, the reputedly leading edge in technology, insistent on using the imperial system in preference to the metric system? :-)
Why do some people always think that spending a lot of time on the Net is necessarily a bad thing, or an addiction, or however you label it? I mean, yes, there *is* such a thing as Net addiction, which is uncontrollable and not mentally healthy. But that does NOT mean that using the Net for more than X number of hours per day is Bad, and getting on less than X number of hours per day is Good.
Quite to the contrary, I find that recently the Net has become one big factor in keeping me going... I'm an extreme introvert IRL, and do not in general meet new people unless circumstances are such that I'm with them for a period of time. But on the Net, I'm much more open to talk to new people and learn new ideas. Recently, I found that by talking to people on IRC, contrary to the popular belief that "people you meet online aren't real people [sic]", I actually became more sociable and less introverted. I also found that I rediscovered my interests in many things like music, etc., just by talking to people with similar interests on the Net. IRL I would have a very hard time finding someone who could relate to me in that way.
Anyway, my whole point is, there is no single measure of goodness/badness or healthiness/unhealthiness (whatever terms you wish to use) on the Net. I mean, I could've ended up with the wrong company of people on IRC and become a compulsive maniac or something. It's all a matter of how you use the Net. The Net is but a tool -- albeit a very powerful and versatile tool -- and if you use it right, even the stereotypically "bad" or "anti-social" things online may turn out quite the opposite way. Do not judge a book by its cover. Much less by rumor.
Gotta agree with you there.
I think a lot of it has to do with today's Instant Gratification Syndrome -- people want to a magic formula or a miracle book that teaches them how to program in 30 days, and then they want to write world-changing programs and get their pay-cheque immediately, etc., etc.. Few actually spend the time to really learn the art of programming.
And because of this "I don't have time to spend experimenting around, tell me everything!" attitude, a lot of people just don't "get" the principles of good programming. These are principles earned through hard experiences, but to people who have never actually done a lot of real programming before, they don't realize the value of these principles and usually just say, Well these are just theoretical rules which are so absurdly nit-picky, I'll just take the liberties and do it my way. But they don't realize that it's because of attitudes like this, a lot of software nowadays are very poorly designed, very poorly implemented, and very buggy. I'm not just referring to "commercial" software which the Slashdot crowd religiously hates, but a lot of open source projects headed by inexperienced people suffer from the same problem too. Although the good part about open source is, these people get a lot of experience out of the project and at least learn more good programming practices than a lot of hired programmers ever bother to.
Well, I think I'm slowly veering off-topic, so I'll stop now. :-)
Somone moderate the above article up!!
I think it points out something that a lot of people miss when they debate about whether Linux should cater to the masses or stay true to its idealism (for lack of a better word). Why can't we have both?? After all, the same hardware runs both Windows and Linux --- it's silly to debate whether hardware manufacturers should make their hardware easier to use --- just change the software! Similarly, why are we debating whether Linux should be dumbed down? Just add an optional layer that provides an easy, user-friendly GUI -- you don't have to compromise the power and flexibility of Linux for it! Expert users can still bypass the "easy interface" and use the command-line if they so wish; but that doesn't mean we should develop an interface that makes the system usable by those who don't care about how things work inside.
The previous article (Borland/Inprise survey) has a ratio of 111 to 1141 as of this writing. This is ludicrous. The signal-to-noise ratio is now 0.1, or rather, the noise-to-signal ratio is now 10. Based on this alone, I think something had better be done and FAST. A forum with S/N ratio of 0.1 is effectively useless.
Yes, browsing at +1 makes things much better... but my point is, why are we wasting network bandwidth on junk like this, and why are we tolerating Slashdot being overloaded with crap???!?!? Why must we put up with Slashdot being so slow and overloaded just because some freak with way too much time on his hands decided to dedicate his life to trolling Slashdot?!?!?
No wonder people who don't know better think Slashdotters are weird, geeky, blah-blah-blah. Just think for a moment what a newbie would think if one would visit Slashdot right now, with its current default browsing settings. If frequent slashdotters are complaining already, what about someone who never read slashdot before and has no idea what's going on, and he sees hundreds of junk comments? Do you seriously think anyone with a sane mind would stay here if he had to wade through 1000 comments just to read the 100 nontroll comments? With only a handful of really worthwhile ones, and with the occasional zealot flamewar in the rest? Nobody will bother to figure out how to set the threshold thing if their first impression of Slashdot is ~1000 junk pr0n posts plus a handful of squabbling zealots. If this continues any longer, Slashdot is history. The existing, sensible readers will leave, and newbies will be turned off.