Sure. I'm afraid my old CDs with Slackware and Yggdrasil from historic times has somehow been "misplaced", but you can probably find it on the internet somewhere. As for a modern linux distribution, like ubuntu, I doubt it. You might be able to upgrade the kernel and only parts of the userland (e.g. udev, and hopefully a recent webbrowser), but if you prefer to do useful work, I suggest that you at least start with Slackware anno 1992, and upgrade only what you need, instead of building from scratch.
The Danish cartoons was deliberate trolling based on the religious taboo of depicting Mohammad. It succeeded beyond expectation.
A little more than that. As you wrote, Muslims prohibit any depiction of Mohammad.
Wrong! Some muslims prohibit any depiction of Muhammed. Many don't. Besides, even if they all did, obviously the artists and publishers of the Danish newspaper weren't muslims (or that kind of muslims), so it shouldn't apply to them. You don't see the pope and his christian minions getting all mad about muslims not accepting the holy trinity either.
Muslims were very sensitive to monotheism, and they were offending by the iconography of polytheistic religions.
And how is this different to christianity? And why is it relevant? Personally I'm offended by people having religious beliefs, because it insults my belief in human intelligence. That doesn't give me the right to go ballistic any time religion is mentioned, does it?
I'm sure we've run across people closer to happily stick a Christian cross on their $50,000 SUV, while presumably forgetting Jesus's messages. Or for an older example, people in Biblical times making gold idols to worship. The Muslims are presumably avoiding that with their taboo. The Muslims are offended not necessarily in Mohammad being shown in an unflattering light, but in his depiction at all.
Yes, we are all aware that in any religion there is a spectrum of believers, from orthodoxy to more liberal or even casual believers. You seem to claim that the religions should somehow strive towards purity, or orthodoxy. That is your value-judgement, and you can't expect everyone to agree with that. In fact, most religious people have a relaxed, liberal, casual approach to their religion, so it would seem most people who are religious disagree with you. And so does I. Even so, that is not the point I intended to say. What I intended to say was that these internal "fights" are of no interest to people outside the given religion, and should not involve them. If muslims shouldn't depict Muhammed, or christians shouldn't dance around golden calves, it doesn't mean I can't!
Just because you have the freedom to offend, does not obligate you to exercise that freedom frivolously.
Just because you aren't obligated to offend someone, doesn't mean that you therefore should refrain yourself from offending someone, if you're trying to say something of importance. Freedom of speech is what democracy is built upon, and yes, even if something offends someone, you still keep your freedom to say it. And no, even if you're offended, it does not give you the right to become violent. It's the cornerstone of civilized society. Without it, we might as well go back to the tribal world, which it seems a good majority of islamists actually want to do.
If I have to choose between freedom of speech, and political correctness, I'll choose freedom of speech every time. If you want to see how a country based upon political correctness works, see North Korea. Nobody dares offend Kim Il Sung there. And if Kim Il Sung declares something (e.g. poverty) to not be a national problem, you don't discuss it anymore.
Well, if you can't explain why radical islamists burn embassies for cartoons, but not for this book, why do you then keep saying it's predictable? If you can't predict it, it's not predictable. At least that's how I define it in my book, but maybe you have a different definition, such as "it's possible something might happen as a result of this, although on the other hand it's possible nothing happens at all too".
Assuming you use the same definition of predictable as me, then what is needed for radical islamists to react irrationally? Which element in the danish cartoons made islamists react violently when the cartoons were reprinted in a small and very-limited-circulation norwegian christian magazine that I never even heard about even though I'm norwegian, but did not make them react violently when they were printed in an egyptian newspaper half a year earlier?
Please, before you submit (or accept) an article about security to (or on) slashdot, make sure you understand rudimentary unix programming. There is no way any non-trivial unix program is going to NOT read/etc/passwd./etc/passwd needs to be read for almost any trivial thing to be accomplished, such as finding out your home-directory so that.skype can be read, or for displaying ownership of files in a file-dialog.
Now, as to why skype needs to read firefox configuration files, I have no idea. I haven't used skype, so I don't know what it does. But most likely this is done, because some users asked for a certain "integration" feature, whether it's bookmarks or plugins, or whatever...
Sure, so far we've discovered the chemical rocket, and theorized about some other unpractical forms of space flight. As I can see it, there are three possibilities
Human progress will suddenly end, and therefore space flight will end too
Space flight turns out to be a dead end, just like alchemy was. Our limited success so far is all we're ever going to get
but just look at the dinosaurs--ruled for over 100 million years before a big enough disaster (or sets of disasters) wiped them out and allowed our more nimble mammal ancestors to eventually take over the world.
I doubt our mammal ancestors were more nimble than the dinosaurs. Let's face it, to become a top predator, you pretty much have to be stronger, faster, and smarter than your prey. If the mammals at the time were more nimble, they would have been able to evolve into better predators and out-conquer the dinosaurs without relying on a catastrophic accident destroying 99% of the earths life.
Microsoft is analogous to the dinosaurs--large, can't react quickly to changes in the environment... and cold-blooded of course;-)
Yes, the dinosaurs were large, and that's pretty much what killed them off, I guess. When 99% of all food disappeared, it's not exactly easy to find food when you're bigger than an elephant. Whether they were cold-blooded is still debated, but the "react quickly to changes"-remark seems pretty unfair considering that they ruled the planet for so long that I get a headache just thinking about it.
I don't know but the boat is pretty much the same vessel after several thousand years.
No, it's not. Sure, it's still a watertight hull that displaces a certain volume of water to make room for crew and cargo, but that's pretty much the definition of boat, unless you also count rafts. But the evolution in boats has been amazing. The first being the invention techniques to build your boat completely from planks, instead of e.g. a wooden frame and an animal hide. This allowed larger boats, rowing instead of paddling, and better sea-worthiness. Then sails, which has pretty much been continually refined since the stone-age until the 18th century (and still is, but not for economic reasons). Adding keels allowed sails to be used even against the wind, and also increased stability. Sails were replaced by steam-engines, and then diesel-engines. Wood for construction was replaced by steel or plastic (and the evolution in building-methods using wood before that is simply staggering). Luck (or eyesight) was replaced by compass, sextant, and accurate maps, which was again replaced by satellite- and radio-navigation. Open boats were replaced by boats having a roof, and eventually ballrooms, oil-tanks, and other specializations. The hull has evolved too, from simple displacement, to planing, hydrofoils, and hoovercrafts.
but one thing they tend to guarantee is that only the fittest designs survive.
Then explain Microsoft and Windows!
What's to explain? Microsoft was certainly the fiercest competitor in the software market. They still are. Their unique ability to set the price right both for when you need to take over a market, and when you practically have a monopoly, as well as the fact that they practically invented astroturfing, and are experts at doing anti-competitive business deals while avoiding legal punishment, certainly make them "fit" when you view the ecosystem as a marketplace. Sure, If you insist on viewing the ecosystem as some geeks fiddling with their computers, trying to decide which OS is the best, by discussing it on the Internet, Windows is not the "fittest", but that's not what matters.
Anyway, Microsoft got at least one technical issue right: backwards compatibility, which is hugely important in the market they're targetting (home and business users, not programmers and scientists)
Uh, yes there is. He has already shown himself a liar, so I would say the likelyhood he would lie again, is pretty high. But I disagree with the notion that his actions would be evil. Such a spill would probably not be of much danger to the public anyway, and given the public outcry and scare whenever something happens that involves the magic word "nuclear", maybe it was even smart of him. Let's face it, this wasn't, and could never be, another Chernobyl.
Keeping the above in mind, it's not that unlikely that I would have lied too, had I been in his shoes.
Sure. As a matter of fact, I can't prove anything about nature. And of course, even if our fossil records indicate it that A became B, it could also be the case that C became A and B, or that D became A and C, and C became B, and so on... In many cases, and especially for many microorganisms, it's even hard to determine if A became B, or if B became C, or if it was something completely different.
That doesn't mean that it is particulary wise to question the mechanism of evolution. To be totally honest, I would say that evolution is much better understood than gravity. Gravity we can only observe in action, but we can't understand the mechanism behind it. I can point to a big rock, and say it's there because gravity moves it towards earth. I've said a word; gravity; but it doesn't explain why things fall down.
On the other hand, with evolution, in addition to observation (evolution has been obseverd in real-time numeous times for bacteria, and even insects, like butterflies and fruit-flies, in the lab, and in the real world, as well as all our indirect fossil evidence), we also have a mechanism. The mechanism driving evolution is so well understood that we are able to use it for completely different tasks, such as evolution of computer programs, or optimization. With evolution, I can single out some current species, it's position in the ecosystem, and some prior known forms (and their position in their respective ecosystems), and explain why the new species evolved from the old.
This gives evolution extremely high confidence among scienctists, to the point where many scientists view it, not as theory, but as a tautology. To question this because of religious beliefs is actually way beyond the stupidity of insisting the earth is flat, even if (at the time) the pope thought so too.
Evolution is not up there with gravity. I can demonstrate gravity in that I'm not floating in space.
I can demonstrate for you this balloon I have, that floats in the air, so I can't say gravity is such a bullet-proof thing either. After all, it's just a theory.
You can not demonstrate to me photos going back millions of years of each generation of chimps becoming closer and closer to humans until one of them actually is a human. You find some fossils buried and assume because two look alike that one must have evolved from the other instead of them both being made by One Being.
So let me get this straight. You would be more happy with photos (that can be easily manipulated in photoshop, etc) than with actual fossils that can be studied, compared, carbon-dated, etc? Sure, I could forge some "evidence" for you, but that would be dishonest, which is the main thing that separates creationists from scientists. Creationists lie, in order to fit their "science" into their religious agenda.
It's actually a humongous leap to assume some human like fossil must have belonged to a being that eventually had a descendant that is a human. I personally reject that leap.
So does most scientists. If it is a fossil of a predecessor to man that is found, then what is assumed is that the fossil was of the same species as some being (the two may or may not be the same), that eventually had one or more of the first humans as descendants. Not every fossil found will have a great-great----great-grandchild that is human, after all, evolution works fastest in small isolated populations.
Very well, let's accept your definition (for now). So what? Are you seriously suggesting that you believe in one but not the other? Why? Even Darwin was able to see (with his eyes) how existing species evolved from earlier fossilized species. Today, modern DNA analysis have confirmed this an uncountable number of times. Which means that in the eyes of the modern scientists, the two (natural selection and evolution) are exactly the same.
The only reason to actively maintain a distinction between the two, is if you already have decided that evolution doesn't occur, something which only occurs among creationists. So no, I'm not going to help your religious agenda further by insisting on this distinction in the future.
Nature. You conduct an experiment to see whether something your theory predicts, actually happen in nature. Depending on the result, your theory is now either strengthened, or falsified (or neither).
Each side claims to have the evidence.
Sure, there are places where scientific conduct is still inconclusive. Evolution is not one of them. It is up there with gravity when it comes to things we are pretty sure exists.
If creationists were scientists, they would have stopped by now. But instead of giving up their theory when it's proven wrong, they modify it a little bit, and keep shouting even louder.
Each side discounts the evidence of the other.
Yes, evolutionists reject the bible as "evidence" (although it's perfectly possible to be both christian and an evolutionist, it's not that the bible actually claims anything of interest, it's the people interpreting the bible, and as such, creationists are actually a minority of christians worldwide). And creationists reject science. I guess there's not much to do about that.
Actually, something 0.001% close to it has been produced in a lab. That doesn't mean that the remaining 99.999% will necessarily soon (or ever) follow, but totally ignoring the possibility of life arriving spontaneously is, in my book, scientifically dishonest.
Besides, evolution exists no matter how life originally occured. Whether God created the first living cell, it came on a meteor rock, the aliens did it, or it simply occured by chance is irrelevant to the discussion surrounding evolution.
Finally, the bible doesn't talk much of either cause or process. The bible is a literary work. I don't go looking for scientific facts in Agatha Christie novels, and I certainly don't do it in the bible either.
In science, you either are right or wrong, and the answer does not come by appealing to consensus, it comes by doing experiments. Newton didn't need to "debate" gravity with anyone. People who disagreed where free to do so, but also had to face that if they didn't use his theories they didn't have his ability to accurately predict the speed and position of e.g. balls moving on an incline.
I believe you are confusing science with politics. In politics, we debate, because often there is no alternative that is more "right" than the others. Working societies exist both with and without e.g. high levels of government spending. The important thing is not so much to determine truth, as it is to establish a solution that the majority can agree upon.
and when you say this one isn't then you're no longer a scientist.
No, it means you are not someone who seeks truth-by-consensus. Which, in my book, is a badge of honor.
The ggp didn't have to. There currently doesn't exist a scientific theory that opposes (or replaces) Darwinian evolution as *the* major driving factor for why biological diversity exists. The people who are against evolution are religious nutjobs who get their "scientific facts" from the bible (or from other religious nutjobs who claim to have read it in the bible).
It doesn't matter whether you call it "anti-evolution", "creationism", "intelligent design", or whatever you can come up with. A spade is still a spade, and within the scientific community, Darwinian evolution is where it's at. Anything else is simply playing with words.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. People who have religious beliefs, act according to them. They can't simply turn religious beliefs off, because they are in politics. By the way, what is a "religious" belief? Either you believe that Jesus is the Son of God (and lots of other similar crap), or you don't. You can't turn off that belief simply because you happen to take decisions involving others.
Luckily, most religious delusions, are irrelevant. Whether politicians outlaw murder because of their religious beliefs, their non-religious moral imperative, or simply socio-economic considerations is not important. What is more interesting is when religious belief collides with common sense, such as the abortion debate, or whether we should live in an Islamic state. The debate surrounding evolution is of this nature. Politicians with religious delusions are able to do real and lasting damage to education and scientific research, just as they are able to make life a lot harder for female rape-victims in the case of abortion.
Uh, Star Trek is probably worse than even Star Wars when it comes to physics. Sure, they spend a lot of time throwing treknobabble around, with things like subspace and warp-drives and antimatter and "reverse the polarity of the tachyon-field". But that isn't science, it's treknobabble.
If you pay attention, you would have noticed by now that when Captain Kirk/Picard/Whatever engages in battle with another vessel (alien or not), they usually come to a "full stop". A "full stop" is meaningless even in newtonian physics, and surely even more meaningless in one that involves more modern concepts such as quantum-mechanical and relativistic effects. Star Trek is actually played out in a universe where speeds are absolute, instead of only being relevant when compared to another object. In other words, it's not based on anything resembling science, but rather a rudimentary understanding of old naval battles.
Everything in Star Trek is just about equally lame when it comes to science. The transporter, the warp-drive, the "shields", the "tractor beam", and all the weird stuff that only occurs in a single episode, and are only explained through even more treknobabble. Sure, it's possible to "explain" some of it to make it sound like science to people not paying attention, but that is no different from Scooby-Doo, which also does the same thing in some episodes.
Further complications come when you consider the "moneyless society" which the humans not involved in Star Trek lives in. What kind of life is that? Is it a communist state? Are they all on welfare? What gives people motivation to do anything besides having fun at StarFleet? Star Trek seems to have botched not only physics, but sociology as well.
Most people I've met seem to be aware of the fact that they should somehow have backed up their data. It's just that they haven't come around to it yet (which, by the way, includes me). They don't need instructions on how to do it, or why to do it. If they had bothered, the CD or DVD-burner they already have will do just fine.
Their problem isn't managing weekly or daily backups with full system restore. Their problem is that in the last 5 years, they haven't really bothered to actually take the time to transfer even a small bit of their valuable (or not) data, onto a removable medium, that can be stored safely in e.g. a safe deposit box, or at a friends place.
Also, most people (at least those of us who live in a rich country, such as in US or western Europe) have more money than time, and if the choice is between learning to use a computer, or simply pay for a new one, when the old one is "broken", they buy a new one. I'm guilty of this myself. Not with computers (because I know computers, and I'm not happy with what I can buy), but with lots of other things. This year, I actually bought a new bike, because the old one needed a new chain, new front brake pads, and some oil on the gear- and break-wires. It's not that I couldn't fix that in an evening, if I had to. But I didn't have to, and besides, it was more fun to just buy a new bike. The old one I gave away, because a friend wanted it, and if I hadn't met him on the way to the landfill, it would have ended up there. I am not proud of this, but unfortunately (or fortunately for me) cheap manufacturing in third-world countries combined with high salaries here, have made me a consumer that can't even be bothered to oil his bike.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
While I have a hard time understanding the level of stupidity involved, I have an even harder time trying to understand what kind of lobbyists would profit from such a law, it's just plain instane, so I'll vote for stupidity.
And get eaten. Sharks bite at stuff, it's what sharks do, they are pretty much giant eating machines living in the ocean. While I've heard similar advice before (e.g. swim directly at shark and punch it in it's nose, etc...), I've also seen pictures of small boats being ripped to pieces by sharks mistaking them for something edible. And from that, I can conclude that I do not want to be anywhere close to those jaws.
Anyway, from what I understand sharks aren't very intelligent and don't have great vision anyway
On the other hand, they have great instincts, and an awesome sense of smell, and when they bite you, you either die, or get an express amputation. Sure, if we were debating moral philosophy, or taking tests to determine color-blindness, I would win over the shark. But in most cases involving swimmers and sharks, that is not the case.
So unless this thing come with attached chum you're probably no better or worse off.
We already can get ALL the energy we need from renewable sources
That might be so, but it certainly isn't economical, otherwise we would already have all our energy from renewable sources. Furthermore, very few renewable sources of energy shows any sign of promise in the short term, although solar certainly seems interesting once someone comes up with a "breakthrough". Oh, and we could build more dams, they can certainly be profitable, but often takes a huge toll on mother nature.
a bunch of overblown assholes who aren't remotely interested in finding a CHEAP energy source - they want a CENTRALISED energy source that a government can completely control.
Actually, centralized makes a lot of economic sense. There is only one way of generating power that is at least potentially profitable at a small scale, and that is solar cells. But even here, you get economic benefits by simply aggregating them in a small area, which simplifies maintenance and infrastructure. Nuclear just doesn't scale down at all, and everything else, is simply more efficient at a larger scale, whether it's wind-turbines, dams, wave-turbines, geothermal, waste energy from industry, burning of garbage or methane from a landfill, or even gas, diesel, or coal. If you don't believe me, try putting up a small propeller in your backyard, and compare the $/watt of this to a typical 100 meter wind turbine, or to a huge turbine farm with 100 meter turbines. Or compare the $/watt of a small waterwheel to the Hoover Dam. Or compare the efficiency of a diesel-generator you can afford, to one that you can only afford to rent, or to one that is able to power a whole city. These things might scale down, but certainly not in an economical way.
It's always "It'll be ready in 50 years' time". i.e. in 50 years' time, they'll STILL be saying "It'll be ready in 50 years' time".
This is certainly a valid criticism for fusion power research. But I hope you don't seriously believe that just because you can't have it today, we should stop researching it. The benefits of such a technology would be incredible, and the money we spend on it is not that much. Still, one can debate whether pouring money into tokamak research is justified given its track record so far, This, however, is not a tokamak, and as such is a potential theoretical breakthrough, even if it might be an unlikely one (I'm not qualified to judge that).
Alternatively, you could view them as incredibly elegant, having been able to survive through several generations of highly differing processor design, but still being able to conform to the same highly baroque interface specification, and still being able to boot CP/M.
And it's still a selling point that 64-bit processors are able to run 32-bit windows. Making them able to run CP/M might not be a big selling point, but then again, it costs next to nothing in silicon.
There have been no other processor that has survived for as long as x86. And while there have been some hefty competitors at times, the only one still surviving seems to be the one written about in the article, although it's not exactly a strong competitor when it comes to marketshare. Oh, and maybe the Cell.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure. I'm afraid my old CDs with Slackware and Yggdrasil from historic times has somehow been "misplaced", but you can probably find it on the internet somewhere. As for a modern linux distribution, like ubuntu, I doubt it. You might be able to upgrade the kernel and only parts of the userland (e.g. udev, and hopefully a recent webbrowser), but if you prefer to do useful work, I suggest that you at least start with Slackware anno 1992, and upgrade only what you need, instead of building from scratch.
Wrong! Some muslims prohibit any depiction of Muhammed. Many don't. Besides, even if they all did, obviously the artists and publishers of the Danish newspaper weren't muslims (or that kind of muslims), so it shouldn't apply to them. You don't see the pope and his christian minions getting all mad about muslims not accepting the holy trinity either.
And how is this different to christianity? And why is it relevant? Personally I'm offended by people having religious beliefs, because it insults my belief in human intelligence. That doesn't give me the right to go ballistic any time religion is mentioned, does it?
Yes, we are all aware that in any religion there is a spectrum of believers, from orthodoxy to more liberal or even casual believers. You seem to claim that the religions should somehow strive towards purity, or orthodoxy. That is your value-judgement, and you can't expect everyone to agree with that. In fact, most religious people have a relaxed, liberal, casual approach to their religion, so it would seem most people who are religious disagree with you. And so does I. Even so, that is not the point I intended to say. What I intended to say was that these internal "fights" are of no interest to people outside the given religion, and should not involve them. If muslims shouldn't depict Muhammed, or christians shouldn't dance around golden calves, it doesn't mean I can't!
Just because you aren't obligated to offend someone, doesn't mean that you therefore should refrain yourself from offending someone, if you're trying to say something of importance. Freedom of speech is what democracy is built upon, and yes, even if something offends someone, you still keep your freedom to say it. And no, even if you're offended, it does not give you the right to become violent. It's the cornerstone of civilized society. Without it, we might as well go back to the tribal world, which it seems a good majority of islamists actually want to do.
If I have to choose between freedom of speech, and political correctness, I'll choose freedom of speech every time. If you want to see how a country based upon political correctness works, see North Korea. Nobody dares offend Kim Il Sung there. And if Kim Il Sung declares something (e.g. poverty) to not be a national problem, you don't discuss it anymore.
Assuming you use the same definition of predictable as me, then what is needed for radical islamists to react irrationally? Which element in the danish cartoons made islamists react violently when the cartoons were reprinted in a small and very-limited-circulation norwegian christian magazine that I never even heard about even though I'm norwegian, but did not make them react violently when they were printed in an egyptian newspaper half a year earlier?
Please, before you submit (or accept) an article about security to (or on) slashdot, make sure you understand rudimentary unix programming. There is no way any non-trivial unix program is going to NOT read /etc/passwd. /etc/passwd needs to be read for almost any trivial thing to be accomplished, such as finding out your home-directory so that .skype can be read, or for displaying ownership of files in a file-dialog.
Now, as to why skype needs to read firefox configuration files, I have no idea. I haven't used skype, so I don't know what it does. But most likely this is done, because some users asked for a certain "integration" feature, whether it's bookmarks or plugins, or whatever...
- Human progress will suddenly end, and therefore space flight will end too
- Space flight turns out to be a dead end, just like alchemy was. Our limited success so far is all we're ever going to get
- We'll eventually come up with something better
I know where I'll put my money.I doubt our mammal ancestors were more nimble than the dinosaurs. Let's face it, to become a top predator, you pretty much have to be stronger, faster, and smarter than your prey. If the mammals at the time were more nimble, they would have been able to evolve into better predators and out-conquer the dinosaurs without relying on a catastrophic accident destroying 99% of the earths life.
Yes, the dinosaurs were large, and that's pretty much what killed them off, I guess. When 99% of all food disappeared, it's not exactly easy to find food when you're bigger than an elephant. Whether they were cold-blooded is still debated, but the "react quickly to changes"-remark seems pretty unfair considering that they ruled the planet for so long that I get a headache just thinking about it.
No, it's not. Sure, it's still a watertight hull that displaces a certain volume of water to make room for crew and cargo, but that's pretty much the definition of boat, unless you also count rafts. But the evolution in boats has been amazing. The first being the invention techniques to build your boat completely from planks, instead of e.g. a wooden frame and an animal hide. This allowed larger boats, rowing instead of paddling, and better sea-worthiness. Then sails, which has pretty much been continually refined since the stone-age until the 18th century (and still is, but not for economic reasons). Adding keels allowed sails to be used even against the wind, and also increased stability. Sails were replaced by steam-engines, and then diesel-engines. Wood for construction was replaced by steel or plastic (and the evolution in building-methods using wood before that is simply staggering). Luck (or eyesight) was replaced by compass, sextant, and accurate maps, which was again replaced by satellite- and radio-navigation. Open boats were replaced by boats having a roof, and eventually ballrooms, oil-tanks, and other specializations. The hull has evolved too, from simple displacement, to planing, hydrofoils, and hoovercrafts.
What's to explain? Microsoft was certainly the fiercest competitor in the software market. They still are. Their unique ability to set the price right both for when you need to take over a market, and when you practically have a monopoly, as well as the fact that they practically invented astroturfing, and are experts at doing anti-competitive business deals while avoiding legal punishment, certainly make them "fit" when you view the ecosystem as a marketplace. Sure, If you insist on viewing the ecosystem as some geeks fiddling with their computers, trying to decide which OS is the best, by discussing it on the Internet, Windows is not the "fittest", but that's not what matters.
Anyway, Microsoft got at least one technical issue right: backwards compatibility, which is hugely important in the market they're targetting (home and business users, not programmers and scientists)
Uh, yes there is. He has already shown himself a liar, so I would say the likelyhood he would lie again, is pretty high. But I disagree with the notion that his actions would be evil. Such a spill would probably not be of much danger to the public anyway, and given the public outcry and scare whenever something happens that involves the magic word "nuclear", maybe it was even smart of him. Let's face it, this wasn't, and could never be, another Chernobyl.
Keeping the above in mind, it's not that unlikely that I would have lied too, had I been in his shoes.
Sure. As a matter of fact, I can't prove anything about nature. And of course, even if our fossil records indicate it that A became B, it could also be the case that C became A and B, or that D became A and C, and C became B, and so on... In many cases, and especially for many microorganisms, it's even hard to determine if A became B, or if B became C, or if it was something completely different.
That doesn't mean that it is particulary wise to question the mechanism of evolution. To be totally honest, I would say that evolution is much better understood than gravity. Gravity we can only observe in action, but we can't understand the mechanism behind it. I can point to a big rock, and say it's there because gravity moves it towards earth. I've said a word; gravity; but it doesn't explain why things fall down.
On the other hand, with evolution, in addition to observation (evolution has been obseverd in real-time numeous times for bacteria, and even insects, like butterflies and fruit-flies, in the lab, and in the real world, as well as all our indirect fossil evidence), we also have a mechanism. The mechanism driving evolution is so well understood that we are able to use it for completely different tasks, such as evolution of computer programs, or optimization. With evolution, I can single out some current species, it's position in the ecosystem, and some prior known forms (and their position in their respective ecosystems), and explain why the new species evolved from the old.
This gives evolution extremely high confidence among scienctists, to the point where many scientists view it, not as theory, but as a tautology. To question this because of religious beliefs is actually way beyond the stupidity of insisting the earth is flat, even if (at the time) the pope thought so too.
I can demonstrate for you this balloon I have, that floats in the air, so I can't say gravity is such a bullet-proof thing either. After all, it's just a theory.
So let me get this straight. You would be more happy with photos (that can be easily manipulated in photoshop, etc) than with actual fossils that can be studied, compared, carbon-dated, etc? Sure, I could forge some "evidence" for you, but that would be dishonest, which is the main thing that separates creationists from scientists. Creationists lie, in order to fit their "science" into their religious agenda.
So does most scientists. If it is a fossil of a predecessor to man that is found, then what is assumed is that the fossil was of the same species as some being (the two may or may not be the same), that eventually had one or more of the first humans as descendants. Not every fossil found will have a great-great----great-grandchild that is human, after all, evolution works fastest in small isolated populations.
Very well, let's accept your definition (for now). So what? Are you seriously suggesting that you believe in one but not the other? Why? Even Darwin was able to see (with his eyes) how existing species evolved from earlier fossilized species. Today, modern DNA analysis have confirmed this an uncountable number of times. Which means that in the eyes of the modern scientists, the two (natural selection and evolution) are exactly the same.
The only reason to actively maintain a distinction between the two, is if you already have decided that evolution doesn't occur, something which only occurs among creationists. So no, I'm not going to help your religious agenda further by insisting on this distinction in the future.
Nature. You conduct an experiment to see whether something your theory predicts, actually happen in nature. Depending on the result, your theory is now either strengthened, or falsified (or neither).
Sure, there are places where scientific conduct is still inconclusive. Evolution is not one of them. It is up there with gravity when it comes to things we are pretty sure exists.
If creationists were scientists, they would have stopped by now. But instead of giving up their theory when it's proven wrong, they modify it a little bit, and keep shouting even louder.
Yes, evolutionists reject the bible as "evidence" (although it's perfectly possible to be both christian and an evolutionist, it's not that the bible actually claims anything of interest, it's the people interpreting the bible, and as such, creationists are actually a minority of christians worldwide). And creationists reject science. I guess there's not much to do about that.
Actually, something 0.001% close to it has been produced in a lab. That doesn't mean that the remaining 99.999% will necessarily soon (or ever) follow, but totally ignoring the possibility of life arriving spontaneously is, in my book, scientifically dishonest.
Besides, evolution exists no matter how life originally occured. Whether God created the first living cell, it came on a meteor rock, the aliens did it, or it simply occured by chance is irrelevant to the discussion surrounding evolution.
Finally, the bible doesn't talk much of either cause or process. The bible is a literary work. I don't go looking for scientific facts in Agatha Christie novels, and I certainly don't do it in the bible either.
In science, you either are right or wrong, and the answer does not come by appealing to consensus, it comes by doing experiments. Newton didn't need to "debate" gravity with anyone. People who disagreed where free to do so, but also had to face that if they didn't use his theories they didn't have his ability to accurately predict the speed and position of e.g. balls moving on an incline.
I believe you are confusing science with politics. In politics, we debate, because often there is no alternative that is more "right" than the others. Working societies exist both with and without e.g. high levels of government spending. The important thing is not so much to determine truth, as it is to establish a solution that the majority can agree upon.
No, it means you are not someone who seeks truth-by-consensus. Which, in my book, is a badge of honor.
The ggp didn't have to. There currently doesn't exist a scientific theory that opposes (or replaces) Darwinian evolution as *the* major driving factor for why biological diversity exists. The people who are against evolution are religious nutjobs who get their "scientific facts" from the bible (or from other religious nutjobs who claim to have read it in the bible).
It doesn't matter whether you call it "anti-evolution", "creationism", "intelligent design", or whatever you can come up with. A spade is still a spade, and within the scientific community, Darwinian evolution is where it's at. Anything else is simply playing with words.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. People who have religious beliefs, act according to them. They can't simply turn religious beliefs off, because they are in politics. By the way, what is a "religious" belief? Either you believe that Jesus is the Son of God (and lots of other similar crap), or you don't. You can't turn off that belief simply because you happen to take decisions involving others.
Luckily, most religious delusions, are irrelevant. Whether politicians outlaw murder because of their religious beliefs, their non-religious moral imperative, or simply socio-economic considerations is not important. What is more interesting is when religious belief collides with common sense, such as the abortion debate, or whether we should live in an Islamic state. The debate surrounding evolution is of this nature. Politicians with religious delusions are able to do real and lasting damage to education and scientific research, just as they are able to make life a lot harder for female rape-victims in the case of abortion.
Uh, Star Trek is probably worse than even Star Wars when it comes to physics. Sure, they spend a lot of time throwing treknobabble around, with things like subspace and warp-drives and antimatter and "reverse the polarity of the tachyon-field". But that isn't science, it's treknobabble.
If you pay attention, you would have noticed by now that when Captain Kirk/Picard/Whatever engages in battle with another vessel (alien or not), they usually come to a "full stop". A "full stop" is meaningless even in newtonian physics, and surely even more meaningless in one that involves more modern concepts such as quantum-mechanical and relativistic effects. Star Trek is actually played out in a universe where speeds are absolute, instead of only being relevant when compared to another object. In other words, it's not based on anything resembling science, but rather a rudimentary understanding of old naval battles.
Everything in Star Trek is just about equally lame when it comes to science. The transporter, the warp-drive, the "shields", the "tractor beam", and all the weird stuff that only occurs in a single episode, and are only explained through even more treknobabble. Sure, it's possible to "explain" some of it to make it sound like science to people not paying attention, but that is no different from Scooby-Doo, which also does the same thing in some episodes.
Further complications come when you consider the "moneyless society" which the humans not involved in Star Trek lives in. What kind of life is that? Is it a communist state? Are they all on welfare? What gives people motivation to do anything besides having fun at StarFleet? Star Trek seems to have botched not only physics, but sociology as well.
Most people I've met seem to be aware of the fact that they should somehow have backed up their data. It's just that they haven't come around to it yet (which, by the way, includes me). They don't need instructions on how to do it, or why to do it. If they had bothered, the CD or DVD-burner they already have will do just fine.
Their problem isn't managing weekly or daily backups with full system restore. Their problem is that in the last 5 years, they haven't really bothered to actually take the time to transfer even a small bit of their valuable (or not) data, onto a removable medium, that can be stored safely in e.g. a safe deposit box, or at a friends place.
Also, most people (at least those of us who live in a rich country, such as in US or western Europe) have more money than time, and if the choice is between learning to use a computer, or simply pay for a new one, when the old one is "broken", they buy a new one. I'm guilty of this myself. Not with computers (because I know computers, and I'm not happy with what I can buy), but with lots of other things. This year, I actually bought a new bike, because the old one needed a new chain, new front brake pads, and some oil on the gear- and break-wires. It's not that I couldn't fix that in an evening, if I had to. But I didn't have to, and besides, it was more fun to just buy a new bike. The old one I gave away, because a friend wanted it, and if I hadn't met him on the way to the landfill, it would have ended up there. I am not proud of this, but unfortunately (or fortunately for me) cheap manufacturing in third-world countries combined with high salaries here, have made me a consumer that can't even be bothered to oil his bike.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
While I have a hard time understanding the level of stupidity involved, I have an even harder time trying to understand what kind of lobbyists would profit from such a law, it's just plain instane, so I'll vote for stupidity.
Thank You, Captain Obvious!
And get eaten. Sharks bite at stuff, it's what sharks do, they are pretty much giant eating machines living in the ocean. While I've heard similar advice before (e.g. swim directly at shark and punch it in it's nose, etc...), I've also seen pictures of small boats being ripped to pieces by sharks mistaking them for something edible. And from that, I can conclude that I do not want to be anywhere close to those jaws.
On the other hand, they have great instincts, and an awesome sense of smell, and when they bite you, you either die, or get an express amputation. Sure, if we were debating moral philosophy, or taking tests to determine color-blindness, I would win over the shark. But in most cases involving swimmers and sharks, that is not the case.
I guess we can agree on that one.
That might be so, but it certainly isn't economical, otherwise we would already have all our energy from renewable sources. Furthermore, very few renewable sources of energy shows any sign of promise in the short term, although solar certainly seems interesting once someone comes up with a "breakthrough". Oh, and we could build more dams, they can certainly be profitable, but often takes a huge toll on mother nature.
Actually, centralized makes a lot of economic sense. There is only one way of generating power that is at least potentially profitable at a small scale, and that is solar cells. But even here, you get economic benefits by simply aggregating them in a small area, which simplifies maintenance and infrastructure. Nuclear just doesn't scale down at all, and everything else, is simply more efficient at a larger scale, whether it's wind-turbines, dams, wave-turbines, geothermal, waste energy from industry, burning of garbage or methane from a landfill, or even gas, diesel, or coal. If you don't believe me, try putting up a small propeller in your backyard, and compare the $/watt of this to a typical 100 meter wind turbine, or to a huge turbine farm with 100 meter turbines. Or compare the $/watt of a small waterwheel to the Hoover Dam. Or compare the efficiency of a diesel-generator you can afford, to one that you can only afford to rent, or to one that is able to power a whole city. These things might scale down, but certainly not in an economical way.
This is certainly a valid criticism for fusion power research. But I hope you don't seriously believe that just because you can't have it today, we should stop researching it. The benefits of such a technology would be incredible, and the money we spend on it is not that much. Still, one can debate whether pouring money into tokamak research is justified given its track record so far, This, however, is not a tokamak, and as such is a potential theoretical breakthrough, even if it might be an unlikely one (I'm not qualified to judge that).
Alternatively, you could view them as incredibly elegant, having been able to survive through several generations of highly differing processor design, but still being able to conform to the same highly baroque interface specification, and still being able to boot CP/M.
And it's still a selling point that 64-bit processors are able to run 32-bit windows. Making them able to run CP/M might not be a big selling point, but then again, it costs next to nothing in silicon.
There have been no other processor that has survived for as long as x86. And while there have been some hefty competitors at times, the only one still surviving seems to be the one written about in the article, although it's not exactly a strong competitor when it comes to marketshare. Oh, and maybe the Cell.