And learning them would be included in the single day it would take for anyone familiar with any distribution to learn a different distribution.
How long it takes to LEARN one package system or another is irrelevent. The real issue is that each package front end means a different package *backend*. Actually, there are more backends (repositories) than there are package managers. That means: if you want to release a binary version of your software, you have to compile and package it for each and every distribution you wish to support. This is a sign of fragmentation.
No one refers to the car market as "fragmented" just because you can buy a Ford OR a Chevy.
No slashdot discussion would be complete without a car analogy.:-)
And if you buy a Chevy you can get a sports car OR a pickup truck OR an SUV.
And you can get them in manual OR automatic.
"Choice" is not "fragmentation". Learning to drive a manual pickup truck does not prevent you from learning to drive an automatic sports car. And the learning process will take less than a day.
No, choice alone is not fragmentation. But when one car requires diesel fuel and another requires unleaded gas, that is fragmentation. Add in cars that charge from a high voltage/current line, and you have even more fragmentation. Each gas station that wants to support all these cars has to implement all the different ways of refueling. Just as any Linux software vendor who wants to support all of Linux has to build and test packages for a dozen or more different distributions. And a corporation trying to decide WHICH flavor of Linux to adopt has to be worried about which distribution will get the support of third party vendors. THAT is fragmentation.
And each of those "clones" works in almost the exact same way.
Except that they don't, from a commercial vendor's perspective at least. Or even from a system adminitrator's perspective. Each distribution has its own packaging system, it's own unique versions of libraries, a different default desktop environment, etc.
There is no "fragmentation". Any software that runs on the latest version of RHEL will also run on the latest version of Ubuntu. Or Slackware. etc.
Sure, as long as you have the source to recompile against the libraries on your particular distribution and are willing to go through the trouble. A commercial vendor is going to have to test their software on each and every distribution that they wish to "officially" support. I've run into this a few times with commercial software on Linux. They only "officially" support, say, Redhat and getting it to install and work correctly on, say, Debian can be a pain.
Also, what if you don't have the latest version? What if you have a system that is, say, 3 years behind the current release of your favorite distribution flavor? You end up having to either compile all kinds of dependencies for the application by hand because the distribution is frozen in some outdated state, or you try to find some backported packages for the application you want. Again, this can be a pain in the ass. By contrast, almost every piece of software released for Windows is supported at least as far back as Windows 2000. That's 7 years! Try installing a binary release of current software, particually commercial software, on a 7 year old Linux installation. Most likely it will not work.
And yet that does not seem to be hampering Linux's growth at all.
How would you know? For all you know Linux could be MUCH bigger than it is if only it wasn't so fragmented. I'm not saying that is necessarily t he case. I'm just syaing that we don't know.
I'd say the fragmentation is both a blessing and a curse. The fragmentation has allowed many more developers to put out software and it has provided a lot of healthy competition between projects. But this is also a weakness when it comes to wide-spread corporate adoption.
Anyone who knows Red Hat can pick up Ubuntu in less than a day. And Slackware in another day. And Gentoo over a weekend. At which point, you pretty much know every distribution out there.
You could also "pick up" FreeBSD or Solaris in about the same amount of time. But that isn't really the point.
As an example, we have radially symmetrical animals, such as jellyfish, and bilaterally symmetrical animals, such as chordates. Stephen Pinker talks about how any animal navigating an environment with gravity would benefit from a bilaterally symmetrical body plan. Thus we might reasonably conclude that any life form on a planet that can randomly evolve a bilaterally symmetrical body would have reproductive success. Once you have bilaterally symmetry
I had read that symmetry is not so much a matter of random luck... but a matter of information efficiency. That is, it is much more efficient/quicker (and therefore more likely to happen) to just repeat existing patterns than to evolve a unique structures for each "side" of the organism.
1. They are interested in us *because* we look like them.
God, I hope aliens aren't that shallow.:)
2. They are us from the future.
Possible.
3. We are a degerate form of them.
Perhaps "less evolved" woudl be more appropriate? This woudl assume #2, of course.
4. The human-like form is somewhat universal after all.
Only in sci-fi movies/shows with too low of a budget to put actors in anything but a humanoid form.:-)
I imagine there would have to be some sort of reason, such as common DNA (panspermia?), for this to be likely. The chances of converging evolution of life forms with no common environment or DNA is extremely unlikely.
I'm no geneticist, but I dont' really see where this common DNA could come in any time recently. I mean, it is pretty clear that humans are not "out of place" on this planet. We fit pretty well into the primate category genetically, morphologically, anatomically, etc. Where would the common DNA come enter the picture?
If we take this alien thing seriously, it woudl seem to me that that the only realistic possibility is that the aliens are us from the very distant future. Not that I spend much time speculating about such things... I'm just saying...
Yeah, but if they can sit on the oil long enough and wait for the REST of the world's oil to dry up (read: go way up in price) they can make a fortune off of it. Buy low (virtually free in this case), sell high!
Chromosome fusion. It happens in naturally. It happens often enough two pre-humans with fused chromosomes coudl have mated, eventually giving rise to humans which have the chromosome fused as a matter of course. You really should read some of the references that people make.
And why aren't the chimps continuing to spit out a human every once in a while that we can observe when this coincidental fusion occurs?
First of all, humans didn't decent from chimps (if that is what you are referencing). We share a common ancestor. Second of all, simply fusing chromosome in a primate does not just automatically produce a human. It is just one of many genetic alterations and mutations that happened over time. The reason the fused chromosome is significant as far as being evidence for evolution is that it was predicted by the theory of evolution and common decent. If humans and the great apes are so closely related, we should have found fused chromosomes to account for the 46 in humans. And we found it. Theory tested and confirmed. Score one for evolution.
I didn't read the WHOLE thing in explicit detail because that's not how a discussion happens
- someone else here tried to get me to watch a 90 minute video.
That woudl be me, and I still think you shoudl watch it. Maybe if you had read the reference that he made in more detail, you wouldn't STILL be so confused about how mutations and common decent work.
I'm not going to send you on a scavenger hunt, either.
One explicit references does not a scavenger hunt make.
I'm sure you can explain it to me here as you would if we were sitting at a table at IHOP.
Ah yes, IHOP. Where all the most meaningful scientific debates play out.
I guess I was right in not bothering to get too technical with you. You clearly only want to rehash the same old ID talking points
You're not as good as the other guys on this thread, Matthew, so I'll let you go and continue with the others. You seem more politically oriented.
This coming from the guy who claims that all evolution advocates are atheists. Whatever you say.
Racism is and was far more rampant in the Northern states - maybe you should review your history. Even to this day. And I am trying to get this to be oriented towards evidence. And 'evolution has nothing to do with randomness?' I have no issue with randomness and see how it works in conjunction with NS.
Seriously, just forget everything I've said and don't waste any more time replying to anyone on this thread. Just watch that video. If it helps, the lecture starts of with a prayer.
Oh, i was really only commenting on the banner ads and such. I can't respect any author/blogger who knowingly presents advertising as their own genuine opinion... or worse, objective fact.
In this case, I think such dishonesty would be pretty obvious. I can't imagine reading a blog entry talking about how great Microsoft's new marketing nonsense is and taking it seriously. And at least blogs have comments so you could let the author know what a shill he/she is. So there is that.
hats just crap. landfill is only articfically expensive because of morons thinking we are so how running out of space. look around chumps, if there's one thing we have it's space.
Depends on where you live and how densely populated the area is. People generate a fuckton of trash every day. Just moving it is expensive. And if you have to move it far away from the people that generate it, it is very expensive.
The issue isn't gross amount of space available. It is finding space that is least expensive to move the trash to that won't piss off too many people. And in a densly populated area, that can be difficult.
Then again, maybe trash heaps will evolve new life forms that eat the trash before we can get to it. Remember the nylon eating bacteria that evolved in labs?
since you asked, I couldn't care less what ruffles anyone's feathers, otherwise I wouldn't be on Slashdot, poking at the the precioussss and making people get emotional. But this isn't about me or any one person in particular, it's about critically examining all evidence and questioning all interpretations. That's supposed to be a critical component of the scientific method.
Sure, but at the same time real research has to be done. That is where ID falls short. ID proponents spend all their time criticizing evolution and pointing out where they think evolution falls short, without ever actually putting their own "theory" to the test (because they know they can't). They've built their entire "theory" on the criticism of another theory. And that is just not healthy. ID is, essentially, a negative theory... an anti-theory. Unfortunately (for ID), the way real science works is that you put forth a POSITIVE hypothesis and test it.. and see if it works better than the prevailing theory.
Then again, maybe ID is good for science in the long run. If nothing else it can serve to point out supposedly "irreducibly complex" systems, giving real scientists a goal: Find out how the system could have arisen though non-magical means.
Who knows, maybe one day scientists will observe the misty hand of God lowering a brand new species down to earth... as if out of thin air... and they'll slap their heads and say "Of course! It was magic all along! What were we thinking? Trying to find a natural explanation for speciation! Duh!"
The reason I pick on evolution is that it's a myth that purports to be fact. It's not (yet proven).
News flash: nothing in science is ever proven.
Science is terribly important; most importantly, it should be applied strictly. What I do assert is that the grand over-arching evolutionary model of creation is on far shakier legs than the its biggest proponents care to admit, and requires massive leaps of faith to swallow whole.
Whatever, dude. The theory of evolution continues to drive scientific research in many, many ways. Jump up and down and wave your hands all you want, but scientists aren't listening. They don't care that you don't accept evolution. And when it comes down to it, neither do I. The only reason I'm discussing this at all is that sometimes I find it amusing to watch people wave their hands, make a lot of noise, and say nothing meaningful outside of a philosophy class. What can I say, I like philosophy too.
Neither of us. I wasn't accusing you of anything. Geez.
I thought we were discussing the reliability of interpretations of available data
We were, and I was in that last post. It is just that you decided to ignore everything I said except for the last bit which obviously hit a nerve.
but if we're heading into ad hominem attack land, this thread's dead.
Ad hominem attack?? What are you talking about? Even if I had accused you of politizing the issue, it certainly wouldn't be an ad hominem attack. You do know what an ad hom fallacy is, don't you?
Some of the others I've been discussing with seems to have a better view of the facts. I think you just make stuff up.
Am I? Watch that video and read the Dover, PA ID ruling/summary.
Darwin was an observer of the world around him. Who isn't. Biologist? Maybe on the level of a 5th grader today. The point is, the 'scientist' label is not an intimidating one.
I've read more than one biography of Darwin that described him as a biologist. MY point is that I'm not making this stuff up.
Comte du Buffon was a 'naturalist' (same as Darwin!) who estimated the age of the earth at 75k using a model showing estimates based on the earth cooling. John Phillips looked at the fossil record and strata and determined 100million. No Bible here.
And the estimates got more refined and improved over time. So what?
And it is no coincidence that they were arguably the most religious too. In science, there is no such thing as "genetic superiority." Because that is a value judgment.
- What do you mean most religious? Was the Third Reich religious in advocating genetic superiority?
I meant most religious in the US at the time.
Although now that you mention it, Hitler did claim Christianity as his moral basis. Hitler didn't mention Darwin or evolution even once in "Mein Kampf." Though he did make plenty of mention of the Almighty Creator.
Were blacks who sold each other into slavery in the first place religious? Or were both, essentially, triablists.
I don't know, but what does that have to do with genetic superiority?
Nearly all scientists who disagree with evolution do so on religious grounds first, and evidence second. They only favor ID because it sounds so much like Creationism.
- Actually, ID is the only alternative to DE because DE is so flexible. It's randomness versus intent. So if you do not buy DE's arguments, you are kind of forced into ID.
Randomness vs. intent is a religious problem. Not a scientific problem. You shouldn't be forced into ID because you don't like the idea of "randomness." If you are, you aren't being scientific.
Evolution isn't random, BTW, but that is a different discussion.
No scientists book I have read on ID (I have three) starts with a religious basis. It just starts by picking apart DE OR by making assertions about irreducible complexity. You are completely ignorant of ID.
Do you have an early revision (before 1987) of "Of Pandas and People?" Because that book made many explicit references to Creationism. What the ID crowd did around 1987 was a word substitution for "creator" to "designer" and "creationism" to "intelligent design." It was all part of the Dover, PA trial. You should read the judges ruling and summary on that one. There's another reference. Go read/watch if you dare.
You can show that *humans* intelligently design. But can you show new species coming into existence without human design? Nope. At best you can claim that humans created all the species in the world. Is that your theory? Because would certainly be interesting.
- In our lifetime, humans will be capable of that. They are already working on it now in other species. Why is it so far fetched?
So you are claiming that humans are the designers of all species on Earth? Probably not, but that is about all you could possibly muster with that little bit of "evidence."
I realize that it is possible to manipulate DNA and "design" certain apects of life and perhaps even new species. But simply showing that humans can do it has nothing to do with what happened before humans or what happens without human intervention.
I think it's the DE advocates - who are all athiests - who have a religious stake in the outcome of th
Believe it or not, the field is filled with guesses and assumptions like this. Once you start looking at them, you really start to wonder how far off base current Evolution theory is.
Whether it is far off or not, it is the best we have. For every assumption and guess, there is a verified prediction. Remember, a theory isn't just about explaining the evidence that is there. It is also about predicting what might be found in the future. I gave a couple examples of this in another post to you. ID, on the other hand, makes absolutely no predictions about what we might find going forward. Whatever we do find, no matter how strange or confusing, is simply explained by "that is just the designer decided to do it." ID can only look BACK at evidence and give an explanation for it. It cannot ever predict anything, because it predicts everything. An unknown designer using unknown mechanisms with potentially supernatural powers can do literally anything. It is a complete dead end, scientifically speaking. It is worthless as a theory.
Still not convinced, either way:)
Why should you be? Are you a scientist? Do you make it a habit of reading about scientific theories and deciding if you are convinced or not? If so, why should anyone care if a layperson, who probably knows very little of the technical details, is convinced? Unless of, course, you goal is to politicize science... which is exactly what ID proponents are trying to do. They don't care about the actual research. They just want to use the political and judicial systems to insert their religous beliefs into schools where they've already been kicked out, and rightfully so.
I think you're confusing "dogmatic theory" with "testable hypothesis". One belongs in philosophy, the other is absolutely sound scientific method.
Am I to understand you are calling evolution a dogmatic theory? First of all, the theory of evolution has changed over the years, so it clearly isn't dogmatic. We can put tha tmuch to rest. As for being testable... the theory of evolution is very much testable. But testable in the sense that you can test particular predictions of the theory. For example, the theory of evolution predicts that we should find fossils in the the geologic record in order of very primitive to more complex. That is, we shouldn't find mammals before mammals supposedly evolved. Intelligent design, on the other hand, makes no such testable prediction. As far as intelligent design is concerned, any organism could appear at any point in the geologic record regardless of its level of complexity, content of DNA, or its place in teh nested hierarchy of life. It is ID that is not testable.
Another test for evolution would be the one regarding the number of chromosomes in humans vs. the great apes. The theory of evolution predicts that humans and the great apes share a relatively recent (in a geologic sense) common ancestor. The problem is that humans have 23 chromosome pairs and the great apes have 24. Pairs don't just disappear. Just losing a chromosome pair is fatal. So the test is to find out what happened to that extra pair. WEll, it turns own that chromosome #2 has the unmistakable sign of chromosome fusion. So evolution passes the test. It predicted that humans should show signs of having 24 pairs at some point, and it is true. Test passed.
The examples of tests for evolutionary theory goes on an on. Do you think tht scientists sit around all day idle just claiming, dogmatically, that evolution is true? You don't believe they are hard at work testing and refining the theory?
It is a common fallacy among critics of evolutionary theory to suggest that in order to test a theory, you must directly observe everything that the theory proposes or else it is worthless. And that just isn't the way science works. When Einstein came up with the theory of relativity, he didn't have any way to directly test many.. or evenmost of the things that the theory proposes. And yet it was accepted... and tested as technology became available. I believe there are still some aspects of Relativity that remain untested.. and yet nobody is going around calling Relativity a dogmatic theory.
The real question is, why do we single out Evolution? Could it be because it ruffles the feathers of some theists?
Is going Aptel that big of a jump, you still using Intel Processors. It will just be a different OS.
Yeah, it kind of is. A Mac, even with the intel processor, doesn't feel like a PC at all. I used PCs for the last 20 years and finally got around to buying a Mac (Mac Book Pro) and the overall difference is significant. No more fussing with video drivers. No more butt ugly BIOS POST screens and BIOS config screens with options that almost nobody uses. I can boot off just about anything. Can put my computer in "target firewire" mode so it can act as an external hard drive to another computer. And many other things that, while sometimes possible with PCs, just work with a Mac. And the OS is integrated with the hardware features like neither Windows nor Linux could never quite manage.
It all comes at a price of fewer choices, of course. But after 20 years of PC "choices," I'm ready to settle down on something that just works elegantly and seamlessly. Macs are just SO MUCH more pleasant to work with.
However, Evolutionary theory is chock full of suppositions and conclusions that also can't be proven true because we don't have the evidence. Because we don't find any transitional fossils, we have to conclude that they must have existed but the evidence is lost to antiquity.
But we do find transitional fossils. Not a lot, but we find them. The problem is that when we find a major transitional fossil such as the one that shows a mammal that bridges the gap between land and sea (whales), we give it a species name and then suddenly we've got TWO gaps to fill... what came before that transitional and what came after. And anti-evolutionists turn this around and make it seem like we have MORE problems because there are more gaps! You jut can't win with these people. The best thing you can do is just ignore them.
The fact is that life fits pretty neatly into a nested hierarchy. No, not every branch is filled in in detail, but we find more and more every year and they all fit within the hierarchy. We find "primitive" fossils in old geologic formations and we see "advanced" fossils in newer formations (and none the other way around).... just like evolution predicts. ID would not predict this. Anything is explained by ID. If we found primitive fossils in new formations, an ID proponent woudl just say "that's the way the designer did it." There is no situation that couldn't be explained by ID. It explains anything... and in doing so it explains nothing.
That why, to me, it makes sense that students should be socialized to all available evidence regarding how the evidence came to be. Perhaps then, and only then, should the theories be put forth. But they both belong in philosophy class, not biology.
I'm afraid you don't understand the scientific process. We need theories to guide were we look for evidence. We come up with a theory, theory suggests a course of inquiry, the results either confirm or refute the theory. Rinse. Repeat. You don't just sit around debating in philosophy class about potential theories until one of them just spontaneously shows itself to be absolutely true.
Keep ID in philosphy in you want, but lets let the scientists (and students of science) work on actual theories that make predictions and suggest lines of inquiry. You can debate about how reducable something is until you're bluein the face while real scientists are learning how things came to be and how they work and why they work the way they do.
Sure he was. He was a biologist. Though the field wasn't nearly as well defined back then as it is now. But that is part of what makes Darwin famous. He made such signifigant finds even before his scientific field was well defined. He was a pioneer.
But many who not too long ago advocated that the earths age was in the 1000s or 10s of 1000s of years old were scientists.
Where do you get this little bit of info from? If they thought that, they were most likely basing it on the Bible. In other words, they just assumed... But AFAIK, just about anyone (including monks) who actually went out to study geology quickly realized that the Earth was MUCH older than thousands of years.
As were those who advocated that one race was genetically superior to another.
Irrelevent. Plenty of people thought this, scientists and non-scientists alike. Practically the whole South of the US though it. And it is no coincidence that they were arguably the most religious too. In science, there is no such thing as "genetic superiority." Because that is a value judgment.
Or that smoking is healthy. AND there are actual scientists who disagree with DE and do have a favorable view of ID.
Nearly all scientists who disagree with evolution do so on religious grounds first, and evidence second. They only favor ID because it sounds so much like Creationism.
At least with ID I can show that it has happened and continues to happen. Can you do that with DE?
You can show that *humans* intelligently design. But can you show new species coming into existence without human design? Nope. At best you can claim that humans created all the species in the world. Is that your theory? Because woudl certainly be interesting.
BTW - I'm not an 'accredited' scientist, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to assert my understanding or continue to investigate. Your mindset is similar to what you attribute to hard core Biblical types: instead of 'God is too complex for you to understand and need not explain itself' your like is 'Science is too complex to understand and need not explain itself.'
What in the world are you talking about? The science is right there for you to understand. All the books and papers are out there. Most major universities teach it. Go ahead. Learn science if you like. Maybe once you do learn some science you'll learn why ID is not part it.
Wow, you can "postulate a response" without ever reading up on the topic first. Amazing. Does it ever bother you that your claims have so very little to do with reality?
It's possible that the designer fused the DNA themselves.
It may be "possible" but the question is, would ID predict it ahead of time? Is there any reason why an ID "researcher" would see 48 chromosomes in the great apes and 46 in humans and later expect to find a fused pair in humans? Nope. Because ID makes no predictions whatsoever. However things are, that is how the designer made themthem. End of story. ID explains anything and nothing. It is absolutely useless as a scientific theory.
Speciation in mammals is a much harder sell than it is in bacteria due to the complexity of the organism. mutated humans are typically unable to reproduce - much less find a whole colony who suddenly have a mutation at the same time and then reproduce with each other over a thousand years.
You know, I don't really care if you find it hard to buy, the evidence is there. I don't expect to convince you here either. I'm just pointing out that ID is not a scientific theory and that evolution is.
I don't see any fossil record of that just like you don't see a 'God' in the sky.
Interesting. What led you to believe that I don't believe in God?
There's 'a guy named Ken Miller who goes ever everything we've been talking about. He is also religious. He even goes into more detail on the chromosome thing. If you have an hour or more to spare, please give this a watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg I know it is long. but it is well worth it. Ken is a very good, balanced speaker. He says everything I'm trying to say here, but so much better.
That's the thing about Evolution. There are so many predictions you can make about it (things you would expect to find) that you do not,
Oh? Like what?
yet the theory is 'adjusted',
Yup, that is how science works. Make a prediction test, adjust. It is a constant process. Can ID claim to be going through this process?
but it is never disregarded. Even in your example, IF there was no fused chomosome, you didn't say the theory was busted, you just said the theory 'had problems.'
Sure, when you have a theory with as much evidence going for it like evolution, you don't just completely scrap it completely. Though in this particular case it would be a rather big problem. So far, all evidences points to humans and great apes having a common ancestor.
Conversely, the theories that are most easily disprovable are most likely to turn to be false
Awesome. So guess my theory that there are unicorns somewhere in this galaxy is probably true because it isn't very disprovable.
I recognize I am using 'disprovable' in a more literal sense than you mean. However, even more broadly, ID is disprovable if you can prove that another theory (like DE) actually occured.
So ID is true until proven false but any other theory is false until proven true? Is that how this works? ID proponents can just sit back and claim ID is true with every one else has to do the actual scientific legwork?
I wish I had you for a science teacher. I could make up any theory and it would be true by default... as long as it wasn't disprovable! And I wouldn't have to do any actual research. I'd just tell the rest of the students to prove THEIR theories to be true. And if they couldn't do so to my satisfaction, I'd get an A!
Slashdot Mirror
How long it takes to LEARN one package system or another is irrelevent. The real issue is that each package front end means a different package *backend*. Actually, there are more backends (repositories) than there are package managers. That means: if you want to release a binary version of your software, you have to compile and package it for each and every distribution you wish to support. This is a sign of fragmentation.
No slashdot discussion would be complete without a car analogy.
No, choice alone is not fragmentation. But when one car requires diesel fuel and another requires unleaded gas, that is fragmentation. Add in cars that charge from a high voltage/current line, and you have even more fragmentation. Each gas station that wants to support all these cars has to implement all the different ways of refueling. Just as any Linux software vendor who wants to support all of Linux has to build and test packages for a dozen or more different distributions. And a corporation trying to decide WHICH flavor of Linux to adopt has to be worried about which distribution will get the support of third party vendors. THAT is fragmentation.
-matthew
Except that they don't, from a commercial vendor's perspective at least. Or even from a system adminitrator's perspective. Each distribution has its own packaging system, it's own unique versions of libraries, a different default desktop environment, etc.
Sure, as long as you have the source to recompile against the libraries on your particular distribution and are willing to go through the trouble. A commercial vendor is going to have to test their software on each and every distribution that they wish to "officially" support. I've run into this a few times with commercial software on Linux. They only "officially" support, say, Redhat and getting it to install and work correctly on, say, Debian can be a pain.
Also, what if you don't have the latest version? What if you have a system that is, say, 3 years behind the current release of your favorite distribution flavor? You end up having to either compile all kinds of dependencies for the application by hand because the distribution is frozen in some outdated state, or you try to find some backported packages for the application you want. Again, this can be a pain in the ass. By contrast, almost every piece of software released for Windows is supported at least as far back as Windows 2000. That's 7 years! Try installing a binary release of current software, particually commercial software, on a 7 year old Linux installation. Most likely it will not work.
How would you know? For all you know Linux could be MUCH bigger than it is if only it wasn't so fragmented. I'm not saying that is necessarily t he case. I'm just syaing that we don't know.
I'd say the fragmentation is both a blessing and a curse. The fragmentation has allowed many more developers to put out software and it has provided a lot of healthy competition between projects. But this is also a weakness when it comes to wide-spread corporate adoption.
You could also "pick up" FreeBSD or Solaris in about the same amount of time. But that isn't really the point.
-matthew
I had read that symmetry is not so much a matter of random luck... but a matter of information efficiency. That is, it is much more efficient/quicker (and therefore more likely to happen) to just repeat existing patterns than to evolve a unique structures for each "side" of the organism.
-matthew
No, what they NEED is a little bit of that global warming goodness. Quality of land, not quantity.
-matthew
Yeah, but if they can sit on the oil long enough and wait for the REST of the world's oil to dry up (read: go way up in price) they can make a fortune off of it. Buy low (virtually free in this case), sell high!
-matthew
Chromosome fusion. It happens in naturally. It happens often enough two pre-humans with fused chromosomes coudl have mated, eventually giving rise to humans which have the chromosome fused as a matter of course. You really should read some of the references that people make.
First of all, humans didn't decent from chimps (if that is what you are referencing). We share a common ancestor. Second of all, simply fusing chromosome in a primate does not just automatically produce a human. It is just one of many genetic alterations and mutations that happened over time. The reason the fused chromosome is significant as far as being evidence for evolution is that it was predicted by the theory of evolution and common decent. If humans and the great apes are so closely related, we should have found fused chromosomes to account for the 46 in humans. And we found it. Theory tested and confirmed. Score one for evolution.
- someone else here tried to get me to watch a 90 minute video.
That woudl be me, and I still think you shoudl watch it. Maybe if you had read the reference that he made in more detail, you wouldn't STILL be so confused about how mutations and common decent work.
One explicit references does not a scavenger hunt make.
Ah yes, IHOP. Where all the most meaningful scientific debates play out.
I guess I was right in not bothering to get too technical with you. You clearly only want to rehash the same old ID talking points
-matthew
This coming from the guy who claims that all evolution advocates are atheists. Whatever you say.
Why don't you just watch that video I linked to!? Here it is again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg
Seriously, just forget everything I've said and don't waste any more time replying to anyone on this thread. Just watch that video. If it helps, the lecture starts of with a prayer.
-matthew
Oh, i was really only commenting on the banner ads and such. I can't respect any author/blogger who knowingly presents advertising as their own genuine opinion... or worse, objective fact.
In this case, I think such dishonesty would be pretty obvious. I can't imagine reading a blog entry talking about how great Microsoft's new marketing nonsense is and taking it seriously. And at least blogs have comments so you could let the author know what a shill he/she is. So there is that.
Nothing, as long as Adblock catches the ads before I have to see them.
Depends on where you live and how densely populated the area is. People generate a fuckton of trash every day. Just moving it is expensive. And if you have to move it far away from the people that generate it, it is very expensive.
The issue isn't gross amount of space available. It is finding space that is least expensive to move the trash to that won't piss off too many people. And in a densly populated area, that can be difficult.
-matthew
Then again, maybe trash heaps will evolve new life forms that eat the trash before we can get to it. Remember the nylon eating bacteria that evolved in labs?
Sure, but at the same time real research has to be done. That is where ID falls short. ID proponents spend all their time criticizing evolution and pointing out where they think evolution falls short, without ever actually putting their own "theory" to the test (because they know they can't). They've built their entire "theory" on the criticism of another theory. And that is just not healthy. ID is, essentially, a negative theory... an anti-theory. Unfortunately (for ID), the way real science works is that you put forth a POSITIVE hypothesis and test it.. and see if it works better than the prevailing theory.
Then again, maybe ID is good for science in the long run. If nothing else it can serve to point out supposedly "irreducibly complex" systems, giving real scientists a goal: Find out how the system could have arisen though non-magical means.
Who knows, maybe one day scientists will observe the misty hand of God lowering a brand new species down to earth... as if out of thin air... and they'll slap their heads and say "Of course! It was magic all along! What were we thinking? Trying to find a natural explanation for speciation! Duh!"
News flash: nothing in science is ever proven.
Whatever, dude. The theory of evolution continues to drive scientific research in many, many ways. Jump up and down and wave your hands all you want, but scientists aren't listening. They don't care that you don't accept evolution. And when it comes down to it, neither do I. The only reason I'm discussing this at all is that sometimes I find it amusing to watch people wave their hands, make a lot of noise, and say nothing meaningful outside of a philosophy class. What can I say, I like philosophy too.
-matthew
Neither of us. I wasn't accusing you of anything. Geez.
We were, and I was in that last post. It is just that you decided to ignore everything I said except for the last bit which obviously hit a nerve.
Ad hominem attack?? What are you talking about? Even if I had accused you of politizing the issue, it certainly wouldn't be an ad hominem attack. You do know what an ad hom fallacy is, don't you?
-matthew
Just stop feeding them insane amounts of saccharin. There. 100% solved.
-matthew
Ballmer is autistic too? I thought it was just Mr. Gates.
-matthew
Am I? Watch that video and read the Dover, PA ID ruling/summary.
I've read more than one biography of Darwin that described him as a biologist. MY point is that I'm not making this stuff up.
And the estimates got more refined and improved over time. So what?
I meant most religious in the US at the time.
Although now that you mention it, Hitler did claim Christianity as his moral basis. Hitler didn't mention Darwin or evolution even once in "Mein Kampf." Though he did make plenty of mention of the Almighty Creator.
I don't know, but what does that have to do with genetic superiority?
Randomness vs. intent is a religious problem. Not a scientific problem. You shouldn't be forced into ID because you don't like the idea of "randomness." If you are, you aren't being scientific.
Evolution isn't random, BTW, but that is a different discussion.
Do you have an early revision (before 1987) of "Of Pandas and People?" Because that book made many explicit references to Creationism. What the ID crowd did around 1987 was a word substitution for "creator" to "designer" and "creationism" to "intelligent design." It was all part of the Dover, PA trial. You should read the judges ruling and summary on that one. There's another reference. Go read/watch if you dare.
So you are claiming that humans are the designers of all species on Earth? Probably not, but that is about all you could possibly muster with that little bit of "evidence."
I realize that it is possible to manipulate DNA and "design" certain apects of life and perhaps even new species. But simply showing that humans can do it has nothing to do with what happened before humans or what happens without human intervention.
Whether it is far off or not, it is the best we have. For every assumption and guess, there is a verified prediction. Remember, a theory isn't just about explaining the evidence that is there. It is also about predicting what might be found in the future. I gave a couple examples of this in another post to you. ID, on the other hand, makes absolutely no predictions about what we might find going forward. Whatever we do find, no matter how strange or confusing, is simply explained by "that is just the designer decided to do it." ID can only look BACK at evidence and give an explanation for it. It cannot ever predict anything, because it predicts everything. An unknown designer using unknown mechanisms with potentially supernatural powers can do literally anything. It is a complete dead end, scientifically speaking. It is worthless as a theory.
Why should you be? Are you a scientist? Do you make it a habit of reading about scientific theories and deciding if you are convinced or not? If so, why should anyone care if a layperson, who probably knows very little of the technical details, is convinced? Unless of, course, you goal is to politicize science... which is exactly what ID proponents are trying to do. They don't care about the actual research. They just want to use the political and judicial systems to insert their religous beliefs into schools where they've already been kicked out, and rightfully so.
-matthew
Am I to understand you are calling evolution a dogmatic theory? First of all, the theory of evolution has changed over the years, so it clearly isn't dogmatic. We can put tha tmuch to rest. As for being testable... the theory of evolution is very much testable. But testable in the sense that you can test particular predictions of the theory. For example, the theory of evolution predicts that we should find fossils in the the geologic record in order of very primitive to more complex. That is, we shouldn't find mammals before mammals supposedly evolved. Intelligent design, on the other hand, makes no such testable prediction. As far as intelligent design is concerned, any organism could appear at any point in the geologic record regardless of its level of complexity, content of DNA, or its place in teh nested hierarchy of life. It is ID that is not testable.
Another test for evolution would be the one regarding the number of chromosomes in humans vs. the great apes. The theory of evolution predicts that humans and the great apes share a relatively recent (in a geologic sense) common ancestor. The problem is that humans have 23 chromosome pairs and the great apes have 24. Pairs don't just disappear. Just losing a chromosome pair is fatal. So the test is to find out what happened to that extra pair. WEll, it turns own that chromosome #2 has the unmistakable sign of chromosome fusion. So evolution passes the test. It predicted that humans should show signs of having 24 pairs at some point, and it is true. Test passed.
The examples of tests for evolutionary theory goes on an on. Do you think tht scientists sit around all day idle just claiming, dogmatically, that evolution is true? You don't believe they are hard at work testing and refining the theory?
It is a common fallacy among critics of evolutionary theory to suggest that in order to test a theory, you must directly observe everything that the theory proposes or else it is worthless. And that just isn't the way science works. When Einstein came up with the theory of relativity, he didn't have any way to directly test many.. or evenmost of the things that the theory proposes. And yet it was accepted... and tested as technology became available. I believe there are still some aspects of Relativity that remain untested.. and yet nobody is going around calling Relativity a dogmatic theory.
The real question is, why do we single out Evolution? Could it be because it ruffles the feathers of some theists?
-matthew
Yeah, it kind of is. A Mac, even with the intel processor, doesn't feel like a PC at all. I used PCs for the last 20 years and finally got around to buying a Mac (Mac Book Pro) and the overall difference is significant. No more fussing with video drivers. No more butt ugly BIOS POST screens and BIOS config screens with options that almost nobody uses. I can boot off just about anything. Can put my computer in "target firewire" mode so it can act as an external hard drive to another computer. And many other things that, while sometimes possible with PCs, just work with a Mac. And the OS is integrated with the hardware features like neither Windows nor Linux could never quite manage.
It all comes at a price of fewer choices, of course. But after 20 years of PC "choices," I'm ready to settle down on something that just works elegantly and seamlessly. Macs are just SO MUCH more pleasant to work with.
-matthew
But we do find transitional fossils. Not a lot, but we find them. The problem is that when we find a major transitional fossil such as the one that shows a mammal that bridges the gap between land and sea (whales), we give it a species name and then suddenly we've got TWO gaps to fill... what came before that transitional and what came after. And anti-evolutionists turn this around and make it seem like we have MORE problems because there are more gaps! You jut can't win with these people. The best thing you can do is just ignore them.
The fact is that life fits pretty neatly into a nested hierarchy. No, not every branch is filled in in detail, but we find more and more every year and they all fit within the hierarchy. We find "primitive" fossils in old geologic formations and we see "advanced" fossils in newer formations (and none the other way around).... just like evolution predicts. ID would not predict this. Anything is explained by ID. If we found primitive fossils in new formations, an ID proponent woudl just say "that's the way the designer did it." There is no situation that couldn't be explained by ID. It explains anything... and in doing so it explains nothing.
I'm afraid you don't understand the scientific process. We need theories to guide were we look for evidence. We come up with a theory, theory suggests a course of inquiry, the results either confirm or refute the theory. Rinse. Repeat. You don't just sit around debating in philosophy class about potential theories until one of them just spontaneously shows itself to be absolutely true.
Keep ID in philosphy in you want, but lets let the scientists (and students of science) work on actual theories that make predictions and suggest lines of inquiry. You can debate about how reducable something is until you're bluein the face while real scientists are learning how things came to be and how they work and why they work the way they do.
-matthew
Sure he was. He was a biologist. Though the field wasn't nearly as well defined back then as it is now. But that is part of what makes Darwin famous. He made such signifigant finds even before his scientific field was well defined. He was a pioneer.
Where do you get this little bit of info from? If they thought that, they were most likely basing it on the Bible. In other words, they just assumed... But AFAIK, just about anyone (including monks) who actually went out to study geology quickly realized that the Earth was MUCH older than thousands of years.
Irrelevent. Plenty of people thought this, scientists and non-scientists alike. Practically the whole South of the US though it. And it is no coincidence that they were arguably the most religious too. In science, there is no such thing as "genetic superiority." Because that is a value judgment.
Nearly all scientists who disagree with evolution do so on religious grounds first, and evidence second. They only favor ID because it sounds so much like Creationism.
You can show that *humans* intelligently design. But can you show new species coming into existence without human design? Nope. At best you can claim that humans created all the species in the world. Is that your theory? Because woudl certainly be interesting.
What in the world are you talking about? The science is right there for you to understand. All the books and papers are out there. Most major universities teach it. Go ahead. Learn science if you like. Maybe once you do learn some science you'll learn why ID is not part it.
Watch that video I linked to!
-matthew
Wow, you can "postulate a response" without ever reading up on the topic first. Amazing. Does it ever bother you that your claims have so very little to do with reality?
It may be "possible" but the question is, would ID predict it ahead of time? Is there any reason why an ID "researcher" would see 48 chromosomes in the great apes and 46 in humans and later expect to find a fused pair in humans? Nope. Because ID makes no predictions whatsoever. However things are, that is how the designer made themthem. End of story. ID explains anything and nothing. It is absolutely useless as a scientific theory.
You know, I don't really care if you find it hard to buy, the evidence is there. I don't expect to convince you here either. I'm just pointing out that ID is not a scientific theory and that evolution is.
Interesting. What led you to believe that I don't believe in God?
There's 'a guy named Ken Miller who goes ever everything we've been talking about. He is also religious. He even goes into more detail on the chromosome thing. If you have an hour or more to spare, please give this a watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg I know it is long. but it is well worth it. Ken is a very good, balanced speaker. He says everything I'm trying to say here, but so much better.
-matthew
Oh? Like what?
Yup, that is how science works. Make a prediction test, adjust. It is a constant process. Can ID claim to be going through this process?
Sure, when you have a theory with as much evidence going for it like evolution, you don't just completely scrap it completely. Though in this particular case it would be a rather big problem. So far, all evidences points to humans and great apes having a common ancestor.
-matthew
Awesome. So guess my theory that there are unicorns somewhere in this galaxy is probably true because it isn't very disprovable.
So ID is true until proven false but any other theory is false until proven true? Is that how this works? ID proponents can just sit back and claim ID is true with every one else has to do the actual scientific legwork?
I wish I had you for a science teacher. I could make up any theory and it would be true by default... as long as it wasn't disprovable! And I wouldn't have to do any actual research. I'd just tell the rest of the students to prove THEIR theories to be true. And if they couldn't do so to my satisfaction, I'd get an A!
-matthew