Ipods don't do 802.11, but if they did then yes I suspect people would be annoyed if it wouldn't connect to just any old open access point.
Interface wise displaying a list of detected access points and selecting one of them seems not too different from selecting a song to play. There's always the option to include PC based software to create and upload settings (my media center thing does that) - but there's no need, just supporting open access points would be fine. And yes, it's the fact that the hardware is there but they don't allow you to use it that is the annoying thing. There's effectively no cost to them to add the interface - of course there are business reasons for them not to, they want to restrict what you can do. If they didn't say "Connectivity: 802.11 b/g" in the technical specs then the expectation wouldn't be there, but they do and hence it is.
My phone manages to connect to open access point automatically, so it is hard for me to think of the difficulties. There's no need to support WEP and WPA - they can simply say we didn't need that for the zune to zune connection and hence didn't implement it.
As for integration, I have no idea or even opinion - I don't own an mp3 player (technically I think my phone can play mp3s, but I've never actually tried and I suspect even my amazingly low expectations for it would be too high regarding the sound quality it would generate).
No matter what the extradition treaties are like, I would suspect he'd be arguing for imprisonment in Japan if imprisonment in China was the alternative... But extradition would only matter in this case if the person wasn't in Japan, which would make deportation problematic.
That's right. And when marketing decides to promote their great new idea of teleporting a new Xbox down your internet connection so you don't have to wait for shipping, screw the tech losers who claim that will be hard for them to do.
Well she clearly doesn't care much about her vote then, why bother voting at all? Voting for the wrong person is giving them two votes (assuming only those two candidates have a chance) - it can't be that difficult to do it over, surely?
I've gone and got a fresh ballot before because I screwed up and wrote 46 twice (or something like that), when doing my senate preferences (in Australia). People make mistakes (as do Diebold machines it would seem).
From wikipedia: "during the course of the trial, it was also revealed that his disclaimer of the posting as sarcasm had been left out from the legal documents provided to the prosecutor by law enforcement agencies."
It's highly relevant- beliving in a random universe or an irrational God- either side- requires beliving in uncaused events.
For the umpteenth time random does not mean what you claim it does in the context of "random mutation". It does not mean uncaused mutation, or even unknown cause mutation. It means unguided mutations.
And does that construction violate the laws of physics? Of course not. So therefore it's already in the laws of physics for that construction to take place- even if you didn't see the construction doesn't mean it didn't take place. And that's all I've been saying. Miracles and Magic don't exist.
OK so you're back to being batshit insane again or just ignoring the obvious intent of the communication in order to babble some more.
That wasn't all you were saying. You were arguing that when we see the pyramids in egypt that rather than accepting the evidence that people built them because they wanted to we should search for some new physical law that made it so that they were built, probably by arrangin for a supernove billions of years ago so that later on the Earth ould form with the right composition for humans to evolve and build the things.
And of course that the word random means something other than what it actually means.
I'm trying to point out something very important- no uncaused effects. Yes, sometimes the cause and effect are backwards from our frame of reference, but there are no uncaused effects.
Not only is it not important, it's irrelevant.
Where I see no real difference between the two- mankind is a part of nature, not in addition to it, and nature is a part of God, not in addition to Him. Why should there be such a thing as an event beyond the laws of physics, instead of realizing that there might be a law we haven't discovered yet?
Because we are yet to see such a thing happen, yes if we started seeing balls sponaneously arranging themselves into chess board patterns we would have some observations on which to build a theory and tweak our knowledge of physical laws. But so far they haven't, everytime such an arrangement has been seen it was constructed.
I know of nobody who can assemble a truly random collection of books, the subconscious is always involved.
Exactly my point, it's a perfectly ordinary usage that everyone understands. It's used by the dictionary to help define what random means. Yet you don't think the word random could ever apply in that case and hence must have some different definition of random than the rest of us.
Since we know that in software all randomizations are only pseudorandom based upon some algorithim and quirk of the hardware (well the better ones are) we know that randomization in computer science is *never* truly random (sometimes less random than others).
True, and yet that's close enough for the purposes of the report you cited to be labelled random. The argument isn't that "true randomness" is impossible as you keep trying to redefine it as. The argument is that "random mutation" and "random collection of books" are perfectly correct uses of random and that "random mutation" is one of the pillars of evolution.
It's the aim, correct, not the reason. However, I have great doubts that a truly random universe would allow such direction- after all, couldn't the "random mutation" just mutate again?
They do mutate again, otherwise we'd all be whatever the first mutation gave, something with at most one cell probably. They even mutate back to what they were, doesn't matter the selection pressure component of evolution causes the useful mutations to build up - thos beings that lose the benefits of a mutation due to a future mutation (that doesn't give some other benefit) are at a competitive disadvantage and hence less likely to out compete and replace those beings that kept the mutation. The reference you supplied was all about that - make some random changes (changes without any particular goal or requirements in mind if you hate that word so much) and discard the results which don't perform as well as the original and keep the ones that perform better. That selection drives the changes in a certain direction even though the changes themselves are random.
It's called the theory of evolution - that direction out of randomness is what made it such a giant step in science.
And since we know that cosmic rays (and other mechanisms that disrupt DNA) aren't random, then calling the mutation random is what exactly?
Calling them exactly what they are. The word random doesn't mean what you think it does. I've mentioned this a rather large number of time - so many I'm having trouble remembering who is trolling who.
Sort of. Rather it's more along the lines of: There's a specific purpose to all of this. We don't know what that purpose is. Evolution is a part of the plan. So is everything else we can see. We're not big enough to know the plan or purpose yet- but there's this process we've invented called science, and we can find the plan and the purpose if we go thataway. God left us the cluebats- science hi
Ah, but without a reason, the future states would NOT be dependant on the present state. There would be no rules at all.
Everyone else understands that the reason referred to is in addition to the physical laws. The reason someone fell down the stairs is because of a gravitional force between them and earth, the reason someone fell down the stairs is because someone else pushed them, the reason someone fell down the stairs is because someone else hated them. Everyone else manages to understand the different usages of "reason" there.
The energy of the match is the reason- striking the match is the aim- this is accomplished through intelligent action. So you lie when you claim there is no aim or reason.
If you go out of your way to distort what was written, yes. There were some words in there that were important to the intended meaning, I don't know if you just skipped them because talking past people is fun, or if you have some other definition for them yet again.
Why would it be "something beyond that forced by physics"? Wouldn't that assume a God who can't follow his own rules?
When the balls are clustered at the bottom of a hill that pattern is usually considered just part of physics. When the balls are aligned in a chess board pattern of alternating colours that pattern is usually considered beyond that forced by physics.
I refuse to accept another definition of random than what exists in the dictionary.
That Websters dictionary I was looking at uses the following as an example usage of random: "a random selection of books". Which of course is impossible given your bizarre variant of english.
There is plenty of both- and if you can discover them, you can use evolution as an engineering method. It doesn't even take a God to do it- human beings are CURRENTLY directing evolution.
The pdf you references says "the memory population M of individuals represented as bit strings is randomly initialized, followed by the fitness evaluation" maybe you could point to something that doesn't call itself random to support your "it's not random" claim.
Of course the "fitness" component isn't random, it's what makes evolution not a random process - it builds on those mutations (you know random mutations, some make things better, some make things worse, some are neutral). Directing the results of a random process doesn't make the process not random.
I'm saying radiation is not random.
Oh OK, I'm lieing because I'm not using you're bizaroo restrictions on english words. When we say "random mutation" we mean the mutation is caused by a cosmic ray, or some other mechanism that distrupts the copying process resulting in an imperfect copy. As opposed to bein directed with some goal in mind - a scientist splicing in some genes is a mutation but it's not random. The rest of us need a term to distinguish the two things - we used "random" since it's an english word that (to everyone else) conveys that meaning. It doesn't matter if radiation is a deterministic process and with enough data you could know that the cosmic ray will interrupt that particular copy and produce that particular mutation. If what your actually arguing is that "Jesus caused the mutation because he wanted two tailed monkeys" then I guess yes nothing is random...
There is no such thing as a random event- only retards and idiots use that word.
OK then all half a billion uses of the world random that google found were written by retards and idiots
And you are the only non-retarded, non-idiot person on earth. Everyone except you is stupid. The rest of us would call you batshit insane of course, but that's OK what else would idiots who don't know what simple six letter words mean think of your genius?
And what I'm saying is that nothing in the universe happens without aim, reason, or pattern. It ALL is governed by a set of physical laws, of which we don't currently have a complete picture, but such a definite set exists. That set may not even be finite, but it is reasonable- that is, discoverable through the powers of reason.
So you're insane then. If the universe is deterministic, that doesn't mean there's an aim and a reason - it just means future states are purely dependant on the present state. There is no aim or reason as to which particular atom of oxygen bonds with which particular atoms of hydrogen when a match is applied to a baloon filled with hydrogen and oxygen - they bumped into each other due to what the rest of the world calls random chance. Even though we do actually know it's completely deterministic and given the data we could do the math and determine which atoms would bond based upon their current states (assuming quantum physics is bunk).
A governing set of laws does not make aim or reason. They make a pattern but that's not the pattern being referenced - which would be something beyond that forced by physics
In fact, if he's human, he picked up a carefully, but unconsciously, chosen rock based on his strength, the weight of the rock, and distance from his starting point. To claim that to be random is at best incorrect, and at worst, a lie.
No it's simply a way of ignoring the things that don't matter. Yes he won't pick up a rock he can't lift, he won't walk 20 miles to pick one up. He probably will be attracted to rocks that glint in the sun and so on - everyone else in the world managed to know those things and know they are irrelevant. So replace picking a rock with reaching into a bag of identical sized marbles which feel identically smooth and spherical to the level that the person can feel with his fingers, with identical mass (again to the level the person can distinguish by hand) but with different colours and taking one out with his eyes shut. The rest of humanity calls that a random selection, even though given enough data you could determine which he will pick.
But in evolution and ID, mutation happens with reason and pattern, and survival of the fitest yeilds aim.
According to evolution mutation happens randomly - not you're definition of random, the one the rest of us use. There is no reason or pattern. Something causes a copy of the DNA to not be exactly the same as the original. Survival of the fittest isn't the aim, the mutation doesn't give a stuff about survival of the species it's just a copy error.
In that case, you say a lie. An untruth you KNOW to be incorrect, and you teach it as truth. Do you understand why anybody who cares about TRUTH rather than SCIENCE would call you a liar for claiming this?
I don't in fact. Are you saying that radiation can not cause mutation? Or that it doesn't do so via interaction with an atom/bond/whatever? Or that the result isn't DNA encoding something different? Or that such a difference couldn't affect the organisms survivability in the presence of some chemical? Or that we can't know all the data required to know what's going to happen?
So tell me what the lie was? I was guessing with respect to mechanisms of mutation, but I didn't claim to be an expert and used the magical word "whataver" which I hoped covered any mistakes...
And gasp, my definition of random, dealing with finite predictability, is the #1 meaning when I look it up in a dictionary. I don't find any definition of random that fits your slapdash and incorrect usage, and certainly none that supports lying to schoolchildren.
Websters: random adjective 1 a : lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern b : made, done, or chosen at random 2 a : relating to, having, or being elements or events with definite pro
The rest of (the English speaking subset of) humanity uses the word random as an English word not as a mathematical definition. It means happening without aim, reason, or pattern. "He picked up a random rock" means he picked up a rock without selecting it according to a goal - he just picked up one of the available rocks. Sure if you managed to analyse the complete state of small section of the universe he was in and the actual rules of physics you could determine which he would choose - but that's irrelevant to the word random.
Random mutation similarly means mutation happening with no aim, reason, or pattern. Mutations just happen, some of them result in the death of the being, some of them nothing and ride along on the rest of the fitness of the being, and some are benficial and give the being an advantage over the competition. Sure if you knoew the compete state of a small section of the universe and the rules of physics you could determine that some particular particle is going to interact with that particular atom/bond/whatever and cause a particular change that will result in a particular being's DNA encoding something that is better able to not die when exposed to some particular chemical that you know will appear in the environment next year. We still call that a random mutation.
The rest of use dictionaries to see what words probably mean.
Embryonic stem cells are much easiler to grow in culture, where "much easier" means we actually can do it now and get large numbers of cells. That's essential for therapeutic use and makes research simpler too.
OK, so you use the word random to mean something completely different than the rest of humanity. Makes communication hard, but to each his own and all.
But the weird tangents the submitter goes off on (the islamic textbook bit is relevant how?) are what I object to.
It's an example of why censoring content is bad for society - it removes one way people can actually learn a viewpoint different from their parent's/school's.
At least I think that's what it was trying to be - it seems a pretty stupid example but there you go...
I'd appreciate it if the editors did more than simply blindly pass the press release along.
So you choose an article that isn't just a press release and was specifically written to be put on slashdot to complain about that?
My problem is belief in random mutation. Specifically with the word RANDOM. I don't believe in a random universe- that's as silly as the random God of Islam to me.
So which particular atom will next decay in a pile of uranium isn't random?
How about telling me when a particular atom will decay?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes increase the average power level, what could possibly go wrong...
macroing your MMORPG character...
I don't believe you.
Ipods don't do 802.11, but if they did then yes I suspect people would be annoyed if it wouldn't connect to just any old open access point.
Interface wise displaying a list of detected access points and selecting one of them seems not too different from selecting a song to play. There's always the option to include PC based software to create and upload settings (my media center thing does that) - but there's no need, just supporting open access points would be fine. And yes, it's the fact that the hardware is there but they don't allow you to use it that is the annoying thing. There's effectively no cost to them to add the interface - of course there are business reasons for them not to, they want to restrict what you can do. If they didn't say "Connectivity: 802.11 b/g" in the technical specs then the expectation wouldn't be there, but they do and hence it is.
My phone manages to connect to open access point automatically, so it is hard for me to think of the difficulties. There's no need to support WEP and WPA - they can simply say we didn't need that for the zune to zune connection and hence didn't implement it.
As for integration, I have no idea or even opinion - I don't own an mp3 player (technically I think my phone can play mp3s, but I've never actually tried and I suspect even my amazingly low expectations for it would be too high regarding the sound quality it would generate).
No matter what the extradition treaties are like, I would suspect he'd be arguing for imprisonment in Japan if imprisonment in China was the alternative... But extradition would only matter in this case if the person wasn't in Japan, which would make deportation problematic.
Maybe my network storage device which streams mp3s and video over the wireless network. The media center thing-a-ma-jing manages to.
Maybe the computer which could can also provide network shares containing, oh say mp3 files.
Maybe the gateway router which can provide connections to various audio/video on the internet.
That's right. And when marketing decides to promote their great new idea of teleporting a new Xbox down your internet connection so you don't have to wait for shipping, screw the tech losers who claim that will be hard for them to do.
They can work a weekend to write the code...
It's the "Gore effect". Wherever he goes to talk about global warming sees historic cold weather for the duration of his stay.
Gaia hates him for some reason.
Since he mentioned greenhouse gases, I'd say yes he has heard of global warming.
If the law is out of date it's still the law, right?
It's not the like RIAA can't buy an update to it.
Well she clearly doesn't care much about her vote then, why bother voting at all? Voting for the wrong person is giving them two votes (assuming only those two candidates have a chance) - it can't be that difficult to do it over, surely?
I've gone and got a fresh ballot before because I screwed up and wrote 46 twice (or something like that), when doing my senate preferences (in Australia). People make mistakes (as do Diebold machines it would seem).
From wikipedia: "during the course of the trial, it was also revealed that his disclaimer of the posting as sarcasm had been left out from the legal documents provided to the prosecutor by law enforcement agencies."
You would hope that would be a crime in itself.
You're missing that they were designed in the 70s - a little before debian existed: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shut ref/orbiter/avionics/dps/gpc.html
So he flip flopped?
Except of course outside of America people don't care about such things when it comes to politicians.
One of these things involve technology/computers and one does not.
Guess which would probably make it on slashdot.
For the umpteenth time random does not mean what you claim it does in the context of "random mutation". It does not mean uncaused mutation, or even unknown cause mutation. It means unguided mutations.
OK so you're back to being batshit insane again or just ignoring the obvious intent of the communication in order to babble some more.
That wasn't all you were saying. You were arguing that when we see the pyramids in egypt that rather than accepting the evidence that people built them because they wanted to we should search for some new physical law that made it so that they were built, probably by arrangin for a supernove billions of years ago so that later on the Earth ould form with the right composition for humans to evolve and build the things.
And of course that the word random means something other than what it actually means.
Not only is it not important, it's irrelevant.
Because we are yet to see such a thing happen, yes if we started seeing balls sponaneously arranging themselves into chess board patterns we would have some observations on which to build a theory and tweak our knowledge of physical laws. But so far they haven't, everytime such an arrangement has been seen it was constructed.
Exactly my point, it's a perfectly ordinary usage that everyone understands. It's used by the dictionary to help define what random means. Yet you don't think the word random could ever apply in that case and hence must have some different definition of random than the rest of us.
True, and yet that's close enough for the purposes of the report you cited to be labelled random. The argument isn't that "true randomness" is impossible as you keep trying to redefine it as. The argument is that "random mutation" and "random collection of books" are perfectly correct uses of random and that "random mutation" is one of the pillars of evolution.
They do mutate again, otherwise we'd all be whatever the first mutation gave, something with at most one cell probably. They even mutate back to what they were, doesn't matter the selection pressure component of evolution causes the useful mutations to build up - thos beings that lose the benefits of a mutation due to a future mutation (that doesn't give some other benefit) are at a competitive disadvantage and hence less likely to out compete and replace those beings that kept the mutation. The reference you supplied was all about that - make some random changes (changes without any particular goal or requirements in mind if you hate that word so much) and discard the results which don't perform as well as the original and keep the ones that perform better. That selection drives the changes in a certain direction even though the changes themselves are random.
It's called the theory of evolution - that direction out of randomness is what made it such a giant step in science.
Calling them exactly what they are. The word random doesn't mean what you think it does. I've mentioned this a rather large number of time - so many I'm having trouble remembering who is trolling who.
Everyone else understands that the reason referred to is in addition to the physical laws. The reason someone fell down the stairs is because of a gravitional force between them and earth, the reason someone fell down the stairs is because someone else pushed them, the reason someone fell down the stairs is because someone else hated them. Everyone else manages to understand the different usages of "reason" there.
If you go out of your way to distort what was written, yes. There were some words in there that were important to the intended meaning, I don't know if you just skipped them because talking past people is fun, or if you have some other definition for them yet again.
When the balls are clustered at the bottom of a hill that pattern is usually considered just part of physics. When the balls are aligned in a chess board pattern of alternating colours that pattern is usually considered beyond that forced by physics.
That Websters dictionary I was looking at uses the following as an example usage of random: "a random selection of books". Which of course is impossible given your bizarre variant of english.
The pdf you references says "the memory population M of individuals represented as bit strings is randomly initialized, followed by the fitness evaluation" maybe you could point to something that doesn't call itself random to support your "it's not random" claim.
Of course the "fitness" component isn't random, it's what makes evolution not a random process - it builds on those mutations (you know random mutations, some make things better, some make things worse, some are neutral). Directing the results of a random process doesn't make the process not random.
Oh OK, I'm lieing because I'm not using you're bizaroo restrictions on english words. When we say "random mutation" we mean the mutation is caused by a cosmic ray, or some other mechanism that distrupts the copying process resulting in an imperfect copy. As opposed to bein directed with some goal in mind - a scientist splicing in some genes is a mutation but it's not random. The rest of us need a term to distinguish the two things - we used "random" since it's an english word that (to everyone else) conveys that meaning. It doesn't matter if radiation is a deterministic process and with enough data you could know that the cosmic ray will interrupt that particular copy and produce that particular mutation. If what your actually arguing is that "Jesus caused the mutation because he wanted two tailed monkeys" then I guess yes nothing is random...
OK then all half a billion uses of the world random that google found were written by retards and idiots
And you are the only non-retarded, non-idiot person on earth. Everyone except you is stupid. The rest of us would call you batshit insane of course, but that's OK what else would idiots who don't know what simple six letter words mean think of your genius?
So you're insane then. If the universe is deterministic, that doesn't mean there's an aim and a reason - it just means future states are purely dependant on the present state. There is no aim or reason as to which particular atom of oxygen bonds with which particular atoms of hydrogen when a match is applied to a baloon filled with hydrogen and oxygen - they bumped into each other due to what the rest of the world calls random chance. Even though we do actually know it's completely deterministic and given the data we could do the math and determine which atoms would bond based upon their current states (assuming quantum physics is bunk).
A governing set of laws does not make aim or reason. They make a pattern but that's not the pattern being referenced - which would be something beyond that forced by physics
No it's simply a way of ignoring the things that don't matter. Yes he won't pick up a rock he can't lift, he won't walk 20 miles to pick one up. He probably will be attracted to rocks that glint in the sun and so on - everyone else in the world managed to know those things and know they are irrelevant. So replace picking a rock with reaching into a bag of identical sized marbles which feel identically smooth and spherical to the level that the person can feel with his fingers, with identical mass (again to the level the person can distinguish by hand) but with different colours and taking one out with his eyes shut. The rest of humanity calls that a random selection, even though given enough data you could determine which he will pick.
According to evolution mutation happens randomly - not you're definition of random, the one the rest of us use. There is no reason or pattern. Something causes a copy of the DNA to not be exactly the same as the original. Survival of the fittest isn't the aim, the mutation doesn't give a stuff about survival of the species it's just a copy error.
I don't in fact. Are you saying that radiation can not cause mutation? Or that it doesn't do so via interaction with an atom/bond/whatever? Or that the result isn't DNA encoding something different? Or that such a difference couldn't affect the organisms survivability in the presence of some chemical? Or that we can't know all the data required to know what's going to happen?
So tell me what the lie was? I was guessing with respect to mechanisms of mutation, but I didn't claim to be an expert and used the magical word "whataver" which I hoped covered any mistakes...
Websters:
random
adjective
1 a : lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern b : made, done, or chosen at random
2 a : relating to, having, or being elements or events with definite pro
The rest of (the English speaking subset of) humanity uses the word random as an English word not as a mathematical definition. It means happening without aim, reason, or pattern. "He picked up a random rock" means he picked up a rock without selecting it according to a goal - he just picked up one of the available rocks. Sure if you managed to analyse the complete state of small section of the universe he was in and the actual rules of physics you could determine which he would choose - but that's irrelevant to the word random.
Random mutation similarly means mutation happening with no aim, reason, or pattern. Mutations just happen, some of them result in the death of the being, some of them nothing and ride along on the rest of the fitness of the being, and some are benficial and give the being an advantage over the competition. Sure if you knoew the compete state of a small section of the universe and the rules of physics you could determine that some particular particle is going to interact with that particular atom/bond/whatever and cause a particular change that will result in a particular being's DNA encoding something that is better able to not die when exposed to some particular chemical that you know will appear in the environment next year. We still call that a random mutation.
The rest of use dictionaries to see what words probably mean.
Embryonic stem cells are much easiler to grow in culture, where "much easier" means we actually can do it now and get large numbers of cells. That's essential for therapeutic use and makes research simpler too.
OK, so you use the word random to mean something completely different than the rest of humanity. Makes communication hard, but to each his own and all.
It's an example of why censoring content is bad for society - it removes one way people can actually learn a viewpoint different from their parent's/school's.
At least I think that's what it was trying to be - it seems a pretty stupid example but there you go...
So you choose an article that isn't just a press release and was specifically written to be put on slashdot to complain about that?
So which particular atom will next decay in a pile of uranium isn't random?
How about telling me when a particular atom will decay?