That should be the first thing you do. If he won't let you, you should consult a lawyer to see if your employer has any legal power to say you can't. If he has, quit your job, and find a new one (make sure to tell your boss why, he might reconsider).
If you absolutely want to do this behind your employers back, then you could release it as public domain (why won't you consider that?). Or you could assign copyright to a friend, who will keep you anonymous in return. If you don't have any friends, assign copyright to the FSF, I'm sure they would agree to try to keep you anonymous. That's about it.
Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Microsoft Office, music software and some games.
But if I didn't have a choice (I have a KVM attached to two computers, one running debian, and one running w2k), I would have used linux only. However, the convenience of the two running concurrently is great.
However, there exist some alternatives. User-mode linux allows you to sandbox a collection of linux applications in a most efficient way. Effectively, you can restrict access to anything you like. However, it's still very much a work in progress (not actually getting user-mode linux to run, that is fine, but using it as a secure sandbox is).
A more realistic alternative in the short term might be subterfugue, which allows you to intercept any system call, and make a configuration file for each program, to see which system calls they are allowed to perform. It is also a lot slower than a uml sandbox would be.
But both are at the moment probably best described as hackers tools. They are not in any way comparably in convenience to windows application firewalls, but they have functionality that extends them. I'd be interested to hear about anyone with real experience in using any of these (or other tools) for similar purposes.
And of course, you must not forget the magics of SCSI. Well, maybe not the fastest, but certainly faster than gigabit ethernet. And scores well on the support and availability scale.
Exactly right. And it is not the only place where I have seen this thought growing (college history courses, popular media, etc.).
In the case of college courses, it would be nice of you to point out the error (although, never claim to be a creationist, unless necessary). At college level, you expect the teacher to not misinform the students.
I'm not sure about what to do about popular media. If it is science-fiction like Star-Trek, we will have to live with it. If it's an actual science show, it would probably be the best if someone pointed out the error.
though some people try to read in evolutionary changes in the "progress" they see in society.
Yes, there are many people who have no idea of science, yet speak of it loudly. Maybe I've been so accustomed to them that I never listen anymore.
As someone who really believe in the bible, you will undoubtedly know the same problem there. Jesus was born in a crib, but there is no reason to believe he was born in a stable. Angels are dressed in white, but there is no reason to believe they have wings (as commonly portrayed). And the devil would popularly be portrayed as someone with goat legs, horns, dragon tail, etc... On the other hand, he is also called the tempter, and it's likely to assume he would put on a more effective look than that most of the time. These are just obvious examples that even an atheist can see, but doubtless you are aware of many more, and perhaps as guilty as I am of ignoring bad science, in ignoring bad theology.
but merely to point out potential flaws in our view of the past 10,000 - 25,000 years of human culture. Even the methods at which we have placed dates for the human development may be considerably wrong. On the same token, the commonly held belief (among creationists) in a 6500 year old earth may prove to be wrong as well.
Undoubtedly, our current knowledge or human evolution and pre-history is lacking. But the dating techniques themselves seem sane enough, being in the right timespan for C14 methods. There's more a question of understanding exactly what we have dated.
The creationist 6500 year old earth has absolutely no scientific basis at all. Creationists occasionally have some good arguments against what science is preaching (you should really study the link I gave you, it's great), but their alternative is immensely more stupid and hopeless (not to mention unscientific). If you believe the earth is 6500 years old, you should also believe that God created it with a much older history just to fool us.
While I believe the 7-day creation of the earth, there still remain many questions as to exactly how everything progressed from there.
I've always felt unsure about why creationists insists on reading exactly this part of the bible the most literally. It seems obvious to me that if you are going to interpret any passage in the bible, this would be the one to start with.
There are many question marks even within the Bible, especially in regards to giants, the Nephiim, the "Sons of God", etc., that I believe are worth looking into.
Yes, I believe that much of the mythical material in the bible is undervalued. It's much more fun to read about Sodoma and Gomorra, than about Jesus feeding 5000. Especially, much of the stuff in the old testaments have obvious paralells to other cultures and myths.
We may find that there is much knowledge to share on both sides of the camp, and the truth may very well lie between what both sides how as their absolute truths.
No, we will not. You see, science is not interested in the bible. So even if the bible actually has the truth, it would do us no good. On the other hand, because of science's strong position in modern society, christians need science (in earlier days, the pope could simply declary it wrong, and people would follow, today that is impossible). The only thing science can get from the bible is an insight into human psychology while trying to understand the reason for it's popularity.
I am not trying to make a conversion here or anything. I am merely trying to point out that there are some interesting things that might be gained from the Bible if it is not catagorically dismissed, and likewise, all of the scientific discoveries, evolutionary or otherwise, should not be thrown out either.
No, unfortunately for creationists, looking for answers in the bible is the opposite of science. It doesn't matter how correct predictions it makes, how you can "interpret" the discrepancies away, etc. Science must ignore the bible, if it is to remain science. The only thing that matters in science is whether our theories contradicts observed phenomena.
That doesn't mean that creationists aren't allowed to try to combine science and reason with religion. But they should not expect any help from the scientific community, beyond actually producing more science.
I believe there is a lot of common ground that can be researched if we keep a somewhat open mind.
Yes, the common ground is to work together, and find holes in each other thinking. This should be done through experiments, and there is no reason why experimenters can be both scientists and creationists. Most creationists are exceedingly bad at receiving such critiques, and like ufologists, would keep on repeating the same old wrong arguments infinitely. That is why I gave you an interesting link.
The natural result of that is that anyone debating with creationists will immediately think he is debating with someone insisting on repeating the same old wrong arguments (which for example you have done in this debate). Therefore creationists will not be taken seriously.
However, if creationists start preaching something that is consistent with science, avoid bad arguments, and stop behaving like ufologists, then maybe we would start listening.
This is where, getting back to the article, it would be nice to actually see all of the evidence. While the current theory may be vastly flawed, the actual evidence could help develop the next, more accurate theory.
Yes, getting the final truth would be nice. Unfortunately, wishful thinking doesn't help in this case.
I find it interesting that almost invariably arguments for creationism are met with inflammatory name calling.
I can't remember having called you anything. Could you please show me an example of me being unfair to you?
My point about history is that the modern view is skewed along the same lines of evolutionary thought.
As I stated above. No, it isn't. It's you who have a misunderstanding of history, not history who have a misunderstanding of evolution. What you are essentially doing is projecting your misunderstanding on to respected scientists, instead of correcting your own views.
Because man evolved from more primitive roots, he must have had a very primitive culture because the higher intelligence had not yet developed.
As I said above, no respected scientist believes that today. I have never heard this claim from anyone but you. And if it was true, that would mean that eskimos and native americans would be less intelligent than europeans, which no study have been able to show to date.
The problem is that history shows that mankind has been very intelligent from the beginning. He did not develop into his current intellectual state.
Yes, history shows no sign of radical increases or decreases in overall human intelligence. However, there is a difference between history and natural history. For example, amoeba is less intelligent than humans.
My point in "have we improved" is a question of our current physical condition. For example, would the average Egyptian be more intelligent, less intelligent, or of the same intelligence as a person from today once their technological and educational experiences are equal.
There exist very little reason to think there would be any difference (beyond natural variation), and I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who actually think so.
History, as it is currently taught, has the underlining belief that mankind, not just the technology, has improved. This is the issue that I was discussing.
NO, it does not. Again, I must ask where you get these crazy ideas from? There is to my knowledge no historists who would even think of claiming that intelligence should somehow improve among humans in a normal society.
Furthermore, you should stop projecting your own misunderstanding on others. If you want the name-calling to stop, you'd better put forward arguements that are somewhat based on reality, and this one which you keep mentioning despite my previous post, and link, is utterly and completely wrong.
Furthermore, the issue of "evolving" agriculture is actually central to evolution if you think about it.
No, it is not. Evolution concerns itself with changes in organisms. And while the human is an organism, the beginnings of agrigulture is as relevant to the theory of evolution as the radical change of the roman empire from a multi-religious society to a christian one. In other words, not at all.
What animals use agriculture to get food?
Most likely some insects (depending on what you mean by agriculture of course). Probably others. And of course humans.
Where did this concept come from?
From someone really hungry? Your guess is as good as mine. But really, it isn't that much of a stress to imagine someone really enjoying plant X starting to grow them.
While this is not questioned for homo sapiens, it is certainly an issue when looking at pre-historic man. Much talk about pre-historic man involves the development of tools and methods due to increased intelligence.
Ok, if this was what you were trying to say all the time, I agree. Much talk about pre-historic man is bonkers, and have nothing to do with science, and everything to do with sensationalism. And of course, humans have an odd desire to want to feel superior to everything, so usually we portray or descendants as very stupid, despite any historic evidence to support it.
Unfortunately we know very little of pre-historic man, but considering the similarity of neandertals (homo sapiens neandertalitis) and modern man (homo sapiens sapiens), it would be hard to say that there could really have been much of a difference.
In fact, we don't even descend from neandertals according to modern canon. Instead, both neandertals and us descend from an earlier version of homo sapiens. As such, we could easily cross-breed. Chances are, it was more of a cultural divide, than a racial one, much like blacks and whites in USA. And if you are curious, the neandertals had larger brains than us (not that that necessarily implies better intelligence).
My point here is that we have allowed the concept that man had to have come from very primitive backgrounds distort our view of what humanity is.
Huh?
Why do we not see long periods of a more primitive written language?
Because paper rots?
Many of the eariest writings show very advanced thought and complex language structures.
News to me. Could you be more specific?
Why do we not see the most rudimentary math slowly improve over time as the intellect of the species leading up to homo sapiens improved?
I assume you mean, why arent't we better than ancient cultures in doing arithmetic in our heads? First of, we are. Things like fractions and the number zero are both pretty new inventions (and the decimal point system is even more recent). We have a much better educational system. And we have a much bigger need for it in our daily life (while ancient cultures also had a monetary system, surely "shopping" was not the main hobby of 80% of their teenagers).
Secondly, you continue to persist in your totally unfounded view that someone actually believe that intelligence must have increased throughout the history of civilization. I have said it before, and I am saying it again: Nobody believes that! I repeat: Nobody! Now, can you repeat with me: Nobody! And so on...
PS: It appears to me that you have a deep-founded misunderstanding when it comes to understanding the scale of things. History does not care about neandertals, cro-magnon, or any other beings from before they were possible to study.
History cares about those civilisations we can actually find out things about, and this requires at least archaeologic remnants of buildings and artifacts used, and preferably written texts. While it is possible (although perhaps not likely) that the neandertals excelled in solving partial differential equations, and became extinct because the females preferred education and career before family, we have no way of knowing it. The evolution of man is in pre-history, not history.
For example, history is heavily biased toward the view that humankind is improving.
I understand from your context that you mean genetically? In that case it's news to me. Can you point to some real examples from serious sources (as opposed to bad popularization of science, badly written school-books, etc...)?
We often point to our technological advances as evidence, and yet, an objective view at history shows that we have either changed very little or have in fact degraded in our level of intelligence
There is absolutely no reason (from either an evolutionary or creationist standpoint) to believe our intelligence has either improved or degraded recently (in the last 10000 years). There is little historical evidence that shows that intelligent people have more and healthier offspring than unintelligent people. On the other hand, technology has improved immensely, mostly as a result of more people working to develop it.
In ancient times, it took 9 out of 10 people just to produce enough food to feed everyone. That left 1 in 10 to be the leaders, shopkeepers, merchants, and inventors. [snip] Contrast that to day where 1 in 10 people are involved in agriculture freeing 90% of the population (and a much larger population than the ancient world) to lead, run business, and develop new technology. Add onto this the fact that we are developing new technology based on a huge library of research and discoveries made by previous generations. Have we really improved all that much?
In a word, yes. Today we have computers, cellphones, cars, airplanes, satelites, refrigerators, frozen food, elictrical lighting and heating, tap-water, radio, tv, cures for most diseases, personal freedom, democracy, washing machine, cheap swedish furniture and lots of other things that have improven our life immensely and wasn't even imaginable in the past.
In fact, many belive the medicine in the ancient world was far supperior to that of today due to a deeper understanding of how the body heals naturally (modern medicine is often very invasive).
Many people believe many things, even wrong things. But you can easily judge the validity of the argument yourself. Next time you have a heart-attack, would you rather go to your local hospital, or some ancient babylonian surgeon (if he was still alive)? Or perhaps you would prefer a medieval treatment with leeches? It is certainly less intrusive than most modern medicine! Of course, we must never forget the effectiveness of a shaman with his mask and dance.
Now, back to the topic at hand, many assumptions are made about "primitive" man based on what? What evidence is actually available to make the claims that hunting/gathering predated agriculture... especially by the thousands of years proposed.
We can look at existing "primitive" civilizations like native americans, native australians, eskimos, lapps, etc.
We can also use reason. Agriculture requires more knowledge and specialization than hunter-gatherer-nomade life does.
Personally, I find it highly unlikely that it took 25,000 years (look at the number again and consider how much has happened in the last 1000) for people to figure out that agriculture might be a good idea.
There are many things I find unlikely that are still true. For example I find it unlikely that an ant can carry 50 times its own weight. In this case I do not know the numbers, or where you got them from, but typically such numbers would be based on something that is more trustworthy than your hunch, such as C14 dating techniques.
Yet, because evolution must be true, history is proposed with the same concept: start with very basic, primitive technology and as humans "evolve" to become more intelligent, their technology improves.
Again, you are completely wrong. There is no serious scientist that would even imagine to propose that humans "evolve" to learn agriculture. Agriculture is an idea that evolves in a human society, it is not an instinct that appears only in certain kinds of people (i.e: white, black, but not native americans...)
Like I said, I am biased in my own views, but I wanted to bring up these issues to show the problems with our current theories.
You may be biased, but more importantly, you are wrong. The only thing you have shown, is that you have a complete, total, misunderstanding, not just when it comes to the theory of evolution, but when it comes to history, natural history, and common sense.
I am very curious about where you got hold of this kind of misinformation. I find it hard to believe that you have been deliberatly misinformed all your life. You might not have been taught much of this, if you come from a stupid backwards creationist shithole, but if you are interested enough in it to actually pose questions, you should at least try to learn something before you critisize.
And before you insist to spread more of your misunderstandings, you should as a good creationist have a look at this page (which is written by and for creationists).
No, no, no. IQ tests doesn't measure intelligence at all. They measure your ability to perform well in IQ tests. It's just a number.
Of course, there is some correlation with intelligence. But then we'd have to define what intelligence is (which is very much open to debate).
Some people view intelligence as the ability to perform well in the society. In that case it should take into account social aspects (and health). Some think that intelligence is your ability to solve abstract problems (in which case IQ tests is more meaningful). Some think intelligence should somehow be a measure of your brains "capacity". In that case, it would make sense to view educated people as more intelligent. After all, it doesn't matter much with potentials, it's the end-result that matters. And so on...
But, before you uber-male-geeks start to gloat, it may be that a woman with half your brain size has the same language processing power as you do, seeing as how you only use half of your brain to process language, and she's using it all... Lazy boy.
Stupid women who must use all their processing power simply to process language. With our superiour intellect, we can use the rest of our brain for more important stuff while they are struggling to understand what we said...
Or more likely, when she talks, I'm concentrating on something else, and never listen...
In this case, I'd have to say I am impressed with EFF. They firmly stand up to the ideals they preach about, not caring about whether the company in question is generally supportive of them or not.
The directory hierarchy, and location of important files on Solaris can only be called one thing: confusing. So I bet they've always wanted to clean it up somewhat, but once they do it, it's better if they do it one big change, rather than piecemal, which will break things continually (instead of once).
And if you are going to clean it up, you might as well look at how other people have done it. As for going for full LSB compliance, that might be a bit overkill, and a very surprising move away from the NIH-principle Sun usually follows. But I don't think it's going to have too many negative consequences.
The ad specifically said it was supposed to be safe in a hurricane. And why not? A jet plane is supposed to fly at those speeds anyway. All you would have to do is rotate your house in the right direction (which could easily be automated, or it could simply rotate by itself when the wind blows on it. Sure, it would take a pretty strong socket, but it's not like that is in any way beyond human engineering capacity, all it takes is a lot of concrete and steel.
As for the neighbours, I would have to agree. You'd have to be pretty rich and eccentric already to not become the hated neighbour by this (i.e. you already are...)
the thread is about physical science in which experiments must be performable.
Yes, and there are hardly anything that's more testable in science than Newton's laws.
Logics just a tool.
Yet, you are the one who bring an argument that could be taken right out of Erasmus Montanus mouth to the table.
Study Goedel.
While surely a worthwile study, it also has little to do with the issue at hand, which is about the definition and interpretation of falsifiability. Despite your claims to the contrary, you seem to have a fundamental lack of understanding of even the most simple logical concepts.
Are you so dense that you don't understand the difference between the possible existence of a counter-example, and the actual process of finding one? And yet you claim to have a honors degree in formal logic?
Let me state this in terms even you can understand. Let P be a statement in first order logic (it may involve free variables). Falsifiable(P) means the same as Satisfiable(not P). Now, assume P is Newtons third law. In other words, we want to show that not P is satisfiable. For this we have to imigine a universe in which there exist an action without an equal and opposite reaction. And as has been stated numerous times, that is not especially hard to imagine even under more formal systems...
some versions of FORTRAN couldn't do recursive calls to a function
Yes, that's why. But I really think it's still true, and not just true for some ancient pre-fortran.
I guess you could put a self-modifying trampoline on the stack containing the return address, but... why not just store the address then?
I hope you are the only one who did pose that question. The rest of us would happily just store the return address:-)
Re:What exactly is a "pattern"? Need good def
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It appears that you are suggesting that expecting clean taxonomies of such is probably fruitless. Is this accurate?
No, I am saying that algorithms are already clearly defined in the literature.
Formulas can't be, since you always need a context (unless you insist on one true formal system, something the world never will...).
And since the pattern community seems to be calling just about anything a pattern (design patterns, anti-patterns, management patterns, language-idioms, joke-patterns, etc...), we can keep that definition for anything we find it useful to call a pattern (and that may include algorithms, and other useful things).
One of the main ideas in the pattern movement was to not define patterns too much, because that would keep you from writing down useful patterns (if they didn't fit author X's definition).
Actually, now that I think about it, that's what Outlook was trying to accomplish. From Outlook, you can get to all of your office files, your contacts, you schedule, etc. It's all integrated in Outlook so theoretically, you could just about live in Outlook (for work).
Ahh, I guess that's why I've always hated Outlook. Not only does it try to do everything, but it also tries to do everything in a "better" way, meaning that all your acquired computer knowledge will fail right there.
What curious comparisons this can get to after a while... database-filesystems, 3d-browsers, Outlook, Emacs, Mozilla,...
The question is: "What does your insurance company say?" Because in the end, people will find a way to steal your car if they want to.
Secondly, I doubt anything new could be much more unsafe than a mechanical key system. It takes me about 5 minutes to get into an older car, and a professional burglar will probably be driving it away faster than it takes you to find the right key.
If you have an alarm, again it will take me approximately 5 minutes to disable (about 7 seconds to disable the horn), and the professional burglar will probably do it a lot faster (since he has done it so many times before, and also because he doesn't worry too much about electrical insulation, etc...)
If you are really worried about people using a programmable IR remote to steal your car, you should shift the area of worry. I'll be happy to line up 20 people in less than half-an-hour who could easily steal your car without such advanced equipment.
Here's what you really should be worried about: Is my keyless system expensive enough for someone to steal it? Will someone steal my alarm? Is my car-stereo visible outside, and expensive enough to be worth the trouble? Do I usually keep my wallet in the front seat? Is my car much more expensive than my neighbours or workmates? Etc...
In the end, it turns out insurance companies have done most of this thinking already, so you could just ask them.
Well, obviously a "word" will be different from processor to processor, since different processors have different wordsizes. An 16-bit processor will have a word as 16 bits, a 32-bit processor will have a word as 32 bits, and a 64-bit-processor will have a word as 64 bits.
Pentium is a 32-bit processor, but for historical reasons, Intel still calls 16-bits a word, and 32-bits a dword. This is only to confuse you, pay no attention to the marketing behind it...
In a side note, it could be said that when C was designed, an "int" really was intended to be a "word". For compatibility reasons, most 64-bit processors now have their words (64-bits) as either "long" or "long long", since everyone for the last decades have assumed that an int is 32 bits.
Of course, that was for processor words, which are most interesting for the programmer. But in this article, it was the memory bus that was discussed, and it is of course allowed to define what it thinks is a word (how many bits will be transferred at once, when you read or write a memory address).
Having the memory bus being 64 bits wide on a 32 bit processor is perfectly sane and acceptable, as is having the memory bus 16 bits wide on a 32 bit processor (I believe the 386 did this).
In the end, because of marketing, and other reasons, it's best to not use "word" at all. Personally, I see "word" as something that when put together results in speach or text.
Nope. Most modern processors have separate data and code caches. So when you write self-modifying code, the data-cache must be flushed to memory, and the code-cache reloaded. In the meantime, the pipeline will be stalled, and the instruction decoded (important for x86) must start all over again. Pentium Pro handles this automagically, other processors may need special tricks.
So self-modifying code is rarely important (and of course very hard to write/maintain). Code with dynamic compilation (e.g. jvm) is possible to write in a sane way, and can give potentially large speedups. Of course, this goes for C as well. Sometimes for an inner loop, it's better to write a C-program at runtime, compile it, and load it as a dynamic library instead of having lots of parameters to the function. Of course, that is much more heavyweight than what the JVM does. It would be nice to have a portable alternative. But actually modifying that code afterwards is really hard (and inherently non-portable).
Of course, there are some uses for self-modifying code that can be made quite safe, and simple to understand. E.g. Knuth's MMX uses self-modifying code to store the return address in procedure calls. (I believe that was quite a common thing to do when making FORTRAN compilers back then...).
On the x86, such tricks are relatively easy, because the x86 tends to almost always have instructions available where you can store a full 32-bit pointer/integer in the opcode (whereas most RISC architectures will not). But you will not get a speed benefit by using it, as explained above in the first paragraph.
Slashdot Mirror
If you absolutely want to do this behind your employers back, then you could release it as public domain (why won't you consider that?). Or you could assign copyright to a friend, who will keep you anonymous in return. If you don't have any friends, assign copyright to the FSF, I'm sure they would agree to try to keep you anonymous. That's about it.
But if I didn't have a choice (I have a KVM attached to two computers, one running debian, and one running w2k), I would have used linux only. However, the convenience of the two running concurrently is great.
A more realistic alternative in the short term might be subterfugue, which allows you to intercept any system call, and make a configuration file for each program, to see which system calls they are allowed to perform. It is also a lot slower than a uml sandbox would be.
But both are at the moment probably best described as hackers tools. They are not in any way comparably in convenience to windows application firewalls, but they have functionality that extends them. I'd be interested to hear about anyone with real experience in using any of these (or other tools) for similar purposes.
Why are you even asking about this? You know it doesn't exist! Run DOS and WP and be happy!
And of course, you must not forget the magics of SCSI. Well, maybe not the fastest, but certainly faster than gigabit ethernet. And scores well on the support and availability scale.
In the case of college courses, it would be nice of you to point out the error (although, never claim to be a creationist, unless necessary). At college level, you expect the teacher to not misinform the students.
I'm not sure about what to do about popular media. If it is science-fiction like Star-Trek, we will have to live with it. If it's an actual science show, it would probably be the best if someone pointed out the error.
though some people try to read in evolutionary changes in the "progress" they see in society.
Yes, there are many people who have no idea of science, yet speak of it loudly. Maybe I've been so accustomed to them that I never listen anymore.
As someone who really believe in the bible, you will undoubtedly know the same problem there. Jesus was born in a crib, but there is no reason to believe he was born in a stable. Angels are dressed in white, but there is no reason to believe they have wings (as commonly portrayed). And the devil would popularly be portrayed as someone with goat legs, horns, dragon tail, etc... On the other hand, he is also called the tempter, and it's likely to assume he would put on a more effective look than that most of the time. These are just obvious examples that even an atheist can see, but doubtless you are aware of many more, and perhaps as guilty as I am of ignoring bad science, in ignoring bad theology.
but merely to point out potential flaws in our view of the past 10,000 - 25,000 years of human culture. Even the methods at which we have placed dates for the human development may be considerably wrong. On the same token, the commonly held belief (among creationists) in a 6500 year old earth may prove to be wrong as well.
Undoubtedly, our current knowledge or human evolution and pre-history is lacking. But the dating techniques themselves seem sane enough, being in the right timespan for C14 methods. There's more a question of understanding exactly what we have dated.
The creationist 6500 year old earth has absolutely no scientific basis at all. Creationists occasionally have some good arguments against what science is preaching (you should really study the link I gave you, it's great), but their alternative is immensely more stupid and hopeless (not to mention unscientific). If you believe the earth is 6500 years old, you should also believe that God created it with a much older history just to fool us.
While I believe the 7-day creation of the earth, there still remain many questions as to exactly how everything progressed from there.
I've always felt unsure about why creationists insists on reading exactly this part of the bible the most literally. It seems obvious to me that if you are going to interpret any passage in the bible, this would be the one to start with.
There are many question marks even within the Bible, especially in regards to giants, the Nephiim, the "Sons of God", etc., that I believe are worth looking into.
Yes, I believe that much of the mythical material in the bible is undervalued. It's much more fun to read about Sodoma and Gomorra, than about Jesus feeding 5000. Especially, much of the stuff in the old testaments have obvious paralells to other cultures and myths.
We may find that there is much knowledge to share on both sides of the camp, and the truth may very well lie between what both sides how as their absolute truths.
No, we will not. You see, science is not interested in the bible. So even if the bible actually has the truth, it would do us no good. On the other hand, because of science's strong position in modern society, christians need science (in earlier days, the pope could simply declary it wrong, and people would follow, today that is impossible). The only thing science can get from the bible is an insight into human psychology while trying to understand the reason for it's popularity.
I am not trying to make a conversion here or anything. I am merely trying to point out that there are some interesting things that might be gained from the Bible if it is not catagorically dismissed, and likewise, all of the scientific discoveries, evolutionary or otherwise, should not be thrown out either.
No, unfortunately for creationists, looking for answers in the bible is the opposite of science. It doesn't matter how correct predictions it makes, how you can "interpret" the discrepancies away, etc. Science must ignore the bible, if it is to remain science. The only thing that matters in science is whether our theories contradicts observed phenomena.
That doesn't mean that creationists aren't allowed to try to combine science and reason with religion. But they should not expect any help from the scientific community, beyond actually producing more science.
I believe there is a lot of common ground that can be researched if we keep a somewhat open mind.
Yes, the common ground is to work together, and find holes in each other thinking. This should be done through experiments, and there is no reason why experimenters can be both scientists and creationists. Most creationists are exceedingly bad at receiving such critiques, and like ufologists, would keep on repeating the same old wrong arguments infinitely. That is why I gave you an interesting link.
The natural result of that is that anyone debating with creationists will immediately think he is debating with someone insisting on repeating the same old wrong arguments (which for example you have done in this debate). Therefore creationists will not be taken seriously.
However, if creationists start preaching something that is consistent with science, avoid bad arguments, and stop behaving like ufologists, then maybe we would start listening.
This is where, getting back to the article, it would be nice to actually see all of the evidence. While the current theory may be vastly flawed, the actual evidence could help develop the next, more accurate theory.
Yes, getting the final truth would be nice. Unfortunately, wishful thinking doesn't help in this case.
Ahh, the genesis device... Probably the episode in the original series that managed to put in the most bad science per minute.
And the endless arguments between Picard and Q about the humans having "evolved" past violence and aggressive behaviour.
I'm sure there are newer examples as well...
I can't remember having called you anything. Could you please show me an example of me being unfair to you?
My point about history is that the modern view is skewed along the same lines of evolutionary thought.
As I stated above. No, it isn't. It's you who have a misunderstanding of history, not history who have a misunderstanding of evolution. What you are essentially doing is projecting your misunderstanding on to respected scientists, instead of correcting your own views.
Because man evolved from more primitive roots, he must have had a very primitive culture because the higher intelligence had not yet developed.
As I said above, no respected scientist believes that today. I have never heard this claim from anyone but you. And if it was true, that would mean that eskimos and native americans would be less intelligent than europeans, which no study have been able to show to date.
The problem is that history shows that mankind has been very intelligent from the beginning. He did not develop into his current intellectual state.
Yes, history shows no sign of radical increases or decreases in overall human intelligence. However, there is a difference between history and natural history. For example, amoeba is less intelligent than humans.
My point in "have we improved" is a question of our current physical condition. For example, would the average Egyptian be more intelligent, less intelligent, or of the same intelligence as a person from today once their technological and educational experiences are equal.
There exist very little reason to think there would be any difference (beyond natural variation), and I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who actually think so.
History, as it is currently taught, has the underlining belief that mankind, not just the technology, has improved. This is the issue that I was discussing.
NO, it does not. Again, I must ask where you get these crazy ideas from? There is to my knowledge no historists who would even think of claiming that intelligence should somehow improve among humans in a normal society.
Furthermore, you should stop projecting your own misunderstanding on others. If you want the name-calling to stop, you'd better put forward arguements that are somewhat based on reality, and this one which you keep mentioning despite my previous post, and link, is utterly and completely wrong.
Furthermore, the issue of "evolving" agriculture is actually central to evolution if you think about it.
No, it is not. Evolution concerns itself with changes in organisms. And while the human is an organism, the beginnings of agrigulture is as relevant to the theory of evolution as the radical change of the roman empire from a multi-religious society to a christian one. In other words, not at all.
What animals use agriculture to get food?
Most likely some insects (depending on what you mean by agriculture of course). Probably others. And of course humans.
Where did this concept come from?
From someone really hungry? Your guess is as good as mine. But really, it isn't that much of a stress to imagine someone really enjoying plant X starting to grow them.
While this is not questioned for homo sapiens, it is certainly an issue when looking at pre-historic man. Much talk about pre-historic man involves the development of tools and methods due to increased intelligence.
Ok, if this was what you were trying to say all the time, I agree. Much talk about pre-historic man is bonkers, and have nothing to do with science, and everything to do with sensationalism. And of course, humans have an odd desire to want to feel superior to everything, so usually we portray or descendants as very stupid, despite any historic evidence to support it.
Unfortunately we know very little of pre-historic man, but considering the similarity of neandertals (homo sapiens neandertalitis) and modern man (homo sapiens sapiens), it would be hard to say that there could really have been much of a difference.
In fact, we don't even descend from neandertals according to modern canon. Instead, both neandertals and us descend from an earlier version of homo sapiens. As such, we could easily cross-breed. Chances are, it was more of a cultural divide, than a racial one, much like blacks and whites in USA. And if you are curious, the neandertals had larger brains than us (not that that necessarily implies better intelligence).
My point here is that we have allowed the concept that man had to have come from very primitive backgrounds distort our view of what humanity is.
Huh?
Why do we not see long periods of a more primitive written language?
Because paper rots?
Many of the eariest writings show very advanced thought and complex language structures.
News to me. Could you be more specific?
Why do we not see the most rudimentary math slowly improve over time as the intellect of the species leading up to homo sapiens improved?
I assume you mean, why arent't we better than ancient cultures in doing arithmetic in our heads? First of, we are. Things like fractions and the number zero are both pretty new inventions (and the decimal point system is even more recent). We have a much better educational system. And we have a much bigger need for it in our daily life (while ancient cultures also had a monetary system, surely "shopping" was not the main hobby of 80% of their teenagers).
Secondly, you continue to persist in your totally unfounded view that someone actually believe that intelligence must have increased throughout the history of civilization. I have said it before, and I am saying it again: Nobody believes that! I repeat: Nobody! Now, can you repeat with me: Nobody! And so on...
PS: It appears to me that you have a deep-founded misunderstanding when it comes to understanding the scale of things. History does not care about neandertals, cro-magnon, or any other beings from before they were possible to study.
History cares about those civilisations we can actually find out things about, and this requires at least archaeologic remnants of buildings and artifacts used, and preferably written texts. While it is possible (although perhaps not likely) that the neandertals excelled in solving partial differential equations, and became extinct because the females preferred education and career before family, we have no way of knowing it. The evolution of man is in pre-history, not history.
I understand from your context that you mean genetically? In that case it's news to me. Can you point to some real examples from serious sources (as opposed to bad popularization of science, badly written school-books, etc...)?
We often point to our technological advances as evidence, and yet, an objective view at history shows that we have either changed very little or have in fact degraded in our level of intelligence
There is absolutely no reason (from either an evolutionary or creationist standpoint) to believe our intelligence has either improved or degraded recently (in the last 10000 years). There is little historical evidence that shows that intelligent people have more and healthier offspring than unintelligent people. On the other hand, technology has improved immensely, mostly as a result of more people working to develop it.
In ancient times, it took 9 out of 10 people just to produce enough food to feed everyone. That left 1 in 10 to be the leaders, shopkeepers, merchants, and inventors. [snip] Contrast that to day where 1 in 10 people are involved in agriculture freeing 90% of the population (and a much larger population than the ancient world) to lead, run business, and develop new technology. Add onto this the fact that we are developing new technology based on a huge library of research and discoveries made by previous generations. Have we really improved all that much?
In a word, yes. Today we have computers, cellphones, cars, airplanes, satelites, refrigerators, frozen food, elictrical lighting and heating, tap-water, radio, tv, cures for most diseases, personal freedom, democracy, washing machine, cheap swedish furniture and lots of other things that have improven our life immensely and wasn't even imaginable in the past.
In fact, many belive the medicine in the ancient world was far supperior to that of today due to a deeper understanding of how the body heals naturally (modern medicine is often very invasive).
Many people believe many things, even wrong things. But you can easily judge the validity of the argument yourself. Next time you have a heart-attack, would you rather go to your local hospital, or some ancient babylonian surgeon (if he was still alive)? Or perhaps you would prefer a medieval treatment with leeches? It is certainly less intrusive than most modern medicine! Of course, we must never forget the effectiveness of a shaman with his mask and dance.
Now, back to the topic at hand, many assumptions are made about "primitive" man based on what? What evidence is actually available to make the claims that hunting/gathering predated agriculture... especially by the thousands of years proposed.
We can look at existing "primitive" civilizations like native americans, native australians, eskimos, lapps, etc.
We can also use reason. Agriculture requires more knowledge and specialization than hunter-gatherer-nomade life does.
Personally, I find it highly unlikely that it took 25,000 years (look at the number again and consider how much has happened in the last 1000) for people to figure out that agriculture might be a good idea.
There are many things I find unlikely that are still true. For example I find it unlikely that an ant can carry 50 times its own weight. In this case I do not know the numbers, or where you got them from, but typically such numbers would be based on something that is more trustworthy than your hunch, such as C14 dating techniques.
Yet, because evolution must be true, history is proposed with the same concept: start with very basic, primitive technology and as humans "evolve" to become more intelligent, their technology improves.
Again, you are completely wrong. There is no serious scientist that would even imagine to propose that humans "evolve" to learn agriculture. Agriculture is an idea that evolves in a human society, it is not an instinct that appears only in certain kinds of people (i.e: white, black, but not native americans...)
Like I said, I am biased in my own views, but I wanted to bring up these issues to show the problems with our current theories.
You may be biased, but more importantly, you are wrong. The only thing you have shown, is that you have a complete, total, misunderstanding, not just when it comes to the theory of evolution, but when it comes to history, natural history, and common sense.
I am very curious about where you got hold of this kind of misinformation. I find it hard to believe that you have been deliberatly misinformed all your life. You might not have been taught much of this, if you come from a stupid backwards creationist shithole, but if you are interested enough in it to actually pose questions, you should at least try to learn something before you critisize.
And before you insist to spread more of your misunderstandings, you should as a good creationist have a look at this page (which is written by and for creationists).
Of course, there is some correlation with intelligence. But then we'd have to define what intelligence is (which is very much open to debate).
Some people view intelligence as the ability to perform well in the society. In that case it should take into account social aspects (and health). Some think that intelligence is your ability to solve abstract problems (in which case IQ tests is more meaningful). Some think intelligence should somehow be a measure of your brains "capacity". In that case, it would make sense to view educated people as more intelligent. After all, it doesn't matter much with potentials, it's the end-result that matters. And so on...
Stupid women who must use all their processing power simply to process language. With our superiour intellect, we can use the rest of our brain for more important stuff while they are struggling to understand what we said...
Or more likely, when she talks, I'm concentrating on something else, and never listen...
In this case, I'd have to say I am impressed with EFF. They firmly stand up to the ideals they preach about, not caring about whether the company in question is generally supportive of them or not.
And if you are going to clean it up, you might as well look at how other people have done it. As for going for full LSB compliance, that might be a bit overkill, and a very surprising move away from the NIH-principle Sun usually follows. But I don't think it's going to have too many negative consequences.
As for the neighbours, I would have to agree. You'd have to be pretty rich and eccentric already to not become the hated neighbour by this (i.e. you already are...)
Yes, and there are hardly anything that's more testable in science than Newton's laws.
Logics just a tool.
Yet, you are the one who bring an argument that could be taken right out of Erasmus Montanus mouth to the table.
Study Goedel.
While surely a worthwile study, it also has little to do with the issue at hand, which is about the definition and interpretation of falsifiability. Despite your claims to the contrary, you seem to have a fundamental lack of understanding of even the most simple logical concepts.
Let me state this in terms even you can understand. Let P be a statement in first order logic (it may involve free variables). Falsifiable(P) means the same as Satisfiable(not P). Now, assume P is Newtons third law. In other words, we want to show that not P is satisfiable. For this we have to imigine a universe in which there exist an action without an equal and opposite reaction. And as has been stated numerous times, that is not especially hard to imagine even under more formal systems...
Yup, sorry, it was a typo.
Yes, that's why. But I really think it's still true, and not just true for some ancient pre-fortran.
I guess you could put a self-modifying trampoline on the stack containing the return address, but ... why not just store the address then?
I hope you are the only one who did pose that question. The rest of us would happily just store the return address :-)
No, I am saying that algorithms are already clearly defined in the literature.
Formulas can't be, since you always need a context (unless you insist on one true formal system, something the world never will...).
And since the pattern community seems to be calling just about anything a pattern (design patterns, anti-patterns, management patterns, language-idioms, joke-patterns, etc...), we can keep that definition for anything we find it useful to call a pattern (and that may include algorithms, and other useful things).
One of the main ideas in the pattern movement was to not define patterns too much, because that would keep you from writing down useful patterns (if they didn't fit author X's definition).
Ahh, I guess that's why I've always hated Outlook. Not only does it try to do everything, but it also tries to do everything in a "better" way, meaning that all your acquired computer knowledge will fail right there.
What curious comparisons this can get to after a while... database-filesystems, 3d-browsers, Outlook, Emacs, Mozilla, ...
Nope, that would be DOS. I have no problems calling Windows NT and above an OS.
Secondly, I doubt anything new could be much more unsafe than a mechanical key system. It takes me about 5 minutes to get into an older car, and a professional burglar will probably be driving it away faster than it takes you to find the right key.
If you have an alarm, again it will take me approximately 5 minutes to disable (about 7 seconds to disable the horn), and the professional burglar will probably do it a lot faster (since he has done it so many times before, and also because he doesn't worry too much about electrical insulation, etc...)
If you are really worried about people using a programmable IR remote to steal your car, you should shift the area of worry. I'll be happy to line up 20 people in less than half-an-hour who could easily steal your car without such advanced equipment.
Here's what you really should be worried about: Is my keyless system expensive enough for someone to steal it? Will someone steal my alarm? Is my car-stereo visible outside, and expensive enough to be worth the trouble? Do I usually keep my wallet in the front seat? Is my car much more expensive than my neighbours or workmates? Etc...
In the end, it turns out insurance companies have done most of this thinking already, so you could just ask them.
Pentium is a 32-bit processor, but for historical reasons, Intel still calls 16-bits a word, and 32-bits a dword. This is only to confuse you, pay no attention to the marketing behind it...
In a side note, it could be said that when C was designed, an "int" really was intended to be a "word". For compatibility reasons, most 64-bit processors now have their words (64-bits) as either "long" or "long long", since everyone for the last decades have assumed that an int is 32 bits.
Of course, that was for processor words, which are most interesting for the programmer. But in this article, it was the memory bus that was discussed, and it is of course allowed to define what it thinks is a word (how many bits will be transferred at once, when you read or write a memory address).
Having the memory bus being 64 bits wide on a 32 bit processor is perfectly sane and acceptable, as is having the memory bus 16 bits wide on a 32 bit processor (I believe the 386 did this).
In the end, because of marketing, and other reasons, it's best to not use "word" at all. Personally, I see "word" as something that when put together results in speach or text.
I thought skynet appeared when they started to combine self-modifying code with persistence...
So self-modifying code is rarely important (and of course very hard to write/maintain). Code with dynamic compilation (e.g. jvm) is possible to write in a sane way, and can give potentially large speedups. Of course, this goes for C as well. Sometimes for an inner loop, it's better to write a C-program at runtime, compile it, and load it as a dynamic library instead of having lots of parameters to the function. Of course, that is much more heavyweight than what the JVM does. It would be nice to have a portable alternative. But actually modifying that code afterwards is really hard (and inherently non-portable).
Of course, there are some uses for self-modifying code that can be made quite safe, and simple to understand. E.g. Knuth's MMX uses self-modifying code to store the return address in procedure calls. (I believe that was quite a common thing to do when making FORTRAN compilers back then...).
On the x86, such tricks are relatively easy, because the x86 tends to almost always have instructions available where you can store a full 32-bit pointer/integer in the opcode (whereas most RISC architectures will not). But you will not get a speed benefit by using it, as explained above in the first paragraph.