No no no. I'm - I guess - A Mac Fanboy. But mine fandom was earned by Apple back in the 90s when I got a job looking after a Mac network. After some initial reservations and learning curve, I fell in love with it all. The job was so much easier that an equivalent Windows (3.x) & DOS network. Things worked. Yes, it crashed a bit (grrghh System 7), but otherwise a dream.
Now cut to the post-original iMac world. I watch the "stylish", "hip" and "different" ads with some bemusement. Yes, it's possibly necessary to run these ads to attract new customers. But the thing is this - Windows dominates. If you have a better product (and I believe Mac OS X is), then that alone won't sell. You need to advertise. Once you get them into the Mac fold, they will stay - because the product itself is so great. It's the getting them to try it that Apple have to fight so hard to do.
So give them a break. They're having to fight against a whole long list of basic untruths (I hear them all the time form the ignorant masses), and do a fantastic job given the odds they face.
I write this on my trusty MacBook Pro, having not needed to run any Microsoft product on it (except inside VMware Fusion as required).
Not sure what your point is, or whether you're being sarcastic, but...
If you're saying Apple has a proprietary format to compete with Flash, then what is it? QuickTime? Or AAC/MPEG-4? Flash seems to fit a different niche that those formats. Microsoft must be supporting Flash for the same reason. WMV is similar to AAC/MPEG-4 in that it's in a different niche than Flash.
I thought I read somewhere that Apple have decided against Flash for some purely functional reasons. Apple wouldn't deliberately cut themselves out of a popular format (hold on - they might!), but I'm sure they're not trying to simply piss customers off for the sake of it. Remember that Apple TV supports browsing YouTube (and so Flash) content. They obviously believe Flash doesn't have the right fit for the iPhone (or iPod Touch).
Flash on websites is generally a pain in the arse anyway. Who needs it on a smaller screen where real estate is so much more important.
In the words of Michael Dell in reference to Apple once, Microsoft should close up shop and hand the money back to their investors.
What relevance does Microsoft truly have these days? The OS? There are better offerings from Apple and Linux (not to mention higher-end stuff from IBM and Sun). Productivity suite? OpenOffice does the job nicely, along with a bunch of others. Database? MySQL, IBM and Oracle are all you need. Programming & Web? Nothing wrong with LAMP/Java/Eclipse. Media & mobile? Sorry, my bias is with Apple here. The combination of iTunes/iPod/iPhone/AirTunes/Airport/Apple TV/QuickTime-MPEG-4 etc, is rock solid and unbeatable.
Can you imagine the innovation wave that would follow a Microsoft collapse? Such are the stuff of dreams.
Well, my first impulse is to think - hey, a dud date - there's no 18th month in a year. But then I thought, maybe they're being clever, and it's 1st June 2009 (18 months). And THEN I thought, duh, non-standard date format. Luckily the 18 gives it away - anything =12 would've been REALLY confusing.
So yes, let's stick with ISO. After all, aren't most of us geeks pushing for ODF (ISO Standard) over OOXML? Gotta support ISO dates while we're at it.
Yes but - for some of us developers who haven't developed for a few years (went into IT Management), it was a good article - and reminder. I knew peripherally that Eclipse was an IDE for Linux last year, and when I landed a Java contract a few months back, thought I'd look at using it on a Linux box. But I have a Mac for general daily use, and was pleasantly surprised to see a Mac version. Eclipse has made it easier for me to get into the code quicker, without having to worry overly about getting Tomcat and some other stuff working. Now in hindsight, I see it wouldn't have been hard to do it manually, but there you go. I got to work backwards - look at the code (and see it run), and then get the environment set up.
No, not news to the informed, but then SlashDot is also about informing us IT people (who know our stuff in our areas of expertise) about other cool stuff going on. If you are a Java programmer on Windows or Linux, then maybe you skimmed past the MacOSX mentions on the Eclipse site. Now you've been introduced by way of SlashDot article. And can also consider buying a Mac (or at least not discounting a Mac), in your next hardware purchase.
This article interested me greatly, as I have just recently secured a contract working for a project based on Java and Oracle (developed in Windows). I've taken the code, installed Eclipse for Mac (J2EE), changed the DB connection to MySQL (running on my Mac) and got it running.
And pretty mostly, while I've relearnt Java (from a lapse of 8 years) and got to grips with all the cool and new stuff (like Hibernate, JUnit, Swing, Ant, JBoss etc), I've been able to run the tutorials I've found without too much tweaking.
Now, I'm not a great coder, but getting the pieces to work (like all mentioned above, plus things like Derby) hasn't been a big drama. The cross-platform dream really works! The book I bought, "eclipse Web Tools Platform" published by Addison Wesley (which I highly recommend), isn't focussed on Eclipse Development using a Mac. The examples and diagrams are all Windows looking - BUT I can follow them on my Mac, and get the same results.
I can't compare Eclipse to anything else, but it's doing the job.
PS I'm actually more a Perl programmer - so I thought I'd search for a Perl plugin. Well, there is! EPIC. Easy install (like the other plugins for Eclipse I've grabbed), and so I can do Perl in Eclipse too.
And finally, after reading the foreword in the above mentioned book, I like the philosophy of the whole Eclipse project. It's a worthy project to support - regardless of what platform you use and favour.
Go Eclipse! And Thanks to all the people who're making it happen!
But you can burn and rip a CD from your iTunes purchase, then load onto a Zune. Where's the snub? You have to admit, the iPod/iTunes partnership is working pretty well to the average consumer. Prices are good, the catalogue is pretty good (no Metallica or Tool though:-( and the other features are very cool - music videos, movies and TV programmes (plus PodCasts). Honestly, it's bloody good.
Well blow me. My Mac has 'yes' already installed by default. I never knew I had such a fantastic app lurking in there. Jeez, I hope it isn't a security-risk. I might need to lower its privileges.
But yes, a nice Cocoa wrapper around it would be nice. Good project here. Where's my SourceForge link...
Wow. Adobe must be really pi**ed. They used to be such an Apple die-hard company all those years ago. Between them (with Macromedia and Aldus), Apple computers & printers, they had the desktop publishing and graphics market cornered.
Then Adobe started to bring out their products for Windows, allowing some graphics shops to move to Windows as well. Microsoft probably gave them a hand there, recognising an ally in their attack on Apple in a market Microsoft had no presence in. Adobe saw the writing on the wall for Apple (in the late 90s) and had jumped ship.
Now, once safely established, Adobe is facing the weight of Microsoft. Microsoft seem to feel the impulsive need to dominate every IT market there is. It's not enough to focus on operating systems and office suites, they must DOMINATE and CONTROL every standard, OS, market and methodology that arises.
I sincerely hope Adobe can ride this storm. Hopefully here is another specialised market that will prove history wrong, and through sheer good planning and weight of momentum, Adobe will remain ascendant.
Not that this is necessarily a good thing too! SVG or some other more open standard for this technology would be better still. But at least, for the moment, it isn't Microsoft:-)
Chalk and board. Plus some props to demonstrate stuff. Seriously, computers don't _really_ help students really understand stuff.
Physics? Nothing beats a good 'ol number of balls, rods, ramps, tubes etc etc in demonstrating how stuff works. Watching virtual cars colliding on the screen doesn't really make students appreciate the nature of momentum and conservation of energy. Chemistry? How does using some 3D software showing off molecules really compare to a good 'ol titration in the lab? Biology? Disecting a rat just beats reading about rat morphology any day. Mathematics? Take the students down to the beach and measure waves. Their height, period, variation in shape, speed etc.
Computers and other technology is useful for analysing and summarising the data, but get the students out of the classroom to gather the data.
I tried. I looked at the website. I spotted lots of stuff that requires.NET, MS SQL Server, SharePoint etc etc.
I can't do it. Whenever I see these words, my tummy twinges, my eyes wince. My fingers close in a fist.
I can't love Microsoft. No matter how Open Source they become. I'm a hypocrite. I admit it now. I just can't stomach their stuff.
Just seeing the words Apache, MySQL, Perl, Java, Linux soothes my nerves. There's an attitude with the people who develop true Open Source. A culture. An understanding and comradeship.
We NEED a big bad evil adversary. It makes us leaner, faster, more responsive, BETTER. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
I know I know - some advocate that we should work with Microsoft, we shouldn't think of them as evil. But where's the challenge then? They're easy to dislike. Just read the History of Microsoft, and the trail of good but smaller competitors they mugged and left for dead, bleeding in IT Alley.
Oh well, there's enough work out there to keep me Microsoft-free in my environment.
"Why on earth in OS X is the menu bar for any given application not attached to the application itself? Why is it fixed to the top of the screen, detached from the very thing it controls? "
Why on Earth does MS insist on putting a blimmin menu bar on every window/application on the screen? Surely you can't use them all at the same time?
Next time you're on Windows, try this: Open up a spreadsheet and a text-based document and maybe even an image in an image app. Try to get them all to show as much of themselves as possible on the screen, next to each other with no overlap. Now try the same on a Mac at the same resolution. Which do you think gives more viewable area for all windows? If you're working in one particular window but want to see the contents of another, do you really want to see the controls for the other window/app right in the middle of the screen? Shouldn't they be "tucked up in the top", out of the way?
Nothing wrong with Tetris, Chess, or any of those Ambrosia games.
Hey, what about getting the kids to play Turtle Logo? They might even learn something. Or even better, Lego Mindstorms.
Sad and boring I know, but I grew up with Space Invaders, Donkey Kong and such. They were absolutely thrilling! Why the need to have realistic shoot the bad (or even good) guy games? We're forcing (through marketing/fad pressue) these kids to experience violence in a way that desensitises them. Sure they claimed that would be the case for our generation (including D&D), but these realistic ones take it just too far.
There's no imagination in it. We had to imagine Kong holding the woman prisoner, and needing rescue. It wasn't spoon-fed with blood and guts and screaming all over the place.
Well, I guess we have to go from first principles. There are two scenarios here:
1/ One of the eggs that a Queen lays contains a mutation that provides some benefit. The egg hatches, and the resultant worker - or soldier or whatever, scurries away being more efficient or capable at doing something. It would need to be highly beneficial because it needs to have the direct affect of keeping the Queen alive. However, a single individual (in a hive) has little overall effect on an entire hive. Unless it did something like produce a digested bit of food that, when fed to the Queen, made her lay more eggs per volume of food intake, or something. Eventually, this worker dies, and the hive is back to where it was.
2/ The mutation occurs in an egg that is destined to be a Queen. Now here is the trick. The mutation gives cause for the new Queen to on-lay eggs of her own, and these eggs develop into a new type of individual. It's a subtle thing you see. The mutation may be such that every 3rd egg develops into a soldier (rather than all eggs developing into workers). A soldier may simply be a worker with a bigger set of mandibles. This then leads the hive to be successful - and perhaps more successful than neighbouring hives without the mutation.
The Queen then lays an egg that develops into a new Queen, and so the mutation will be passed onto subsequent hives.
In summary, the mutation (in such a situation), has to occur in an egg that develops into a Queen. The Queen's offspring are the ones that will determine the success of the mutation. The Queen is therefore simply a delivery device.
Of course, there may be mutations that give the Queen added benefits, such as egg laying ability, or whatever.
I'm no biologist but... doesn't stop us thinking...
After some thought, I can only put hive-like devlopments down to something similar to the way multicellular bodies evolve. A mutation for an improved organ is also present in cells for other organs. This mutation must take care not to disrupt or lower the overall improvement to the individual's fitness to survive and breed. i.e. It almost kind of needs to have no detrimental affect on the other organs (or any other part of the whole).
Of course, it's possible I guess, that it could have a detrimental affect on another part of the whole, as long as the overall affect of the mutation is beneficial to the individual. The case of malaria and sicklecell anaemia comes to mind there.
Similarly, I also wonder (like you) about how evolution can explain the marvelous development of individuals from the initial conception through to adult form. And also those species that undergo metamorphosis. These are like your hive member variations, but spread over time. What combination of genes makes it good to be a screaming baby (and so getting attention for food etc), and then a demure, considerate and well liked adult (likely to get a mate and have kiddies)?
I guess the answer will have to come down to the idea of genes surviving in a pool of other genes. And the separation of genotype vs phenotype. A set of genes that just happens to express themselves into a number of individual types (workers, soldiers, queen etc), and that creates a species well suited to surviving in their environment.
There are probably very few genetic 'switches' that need to be pulled in order to flip a worker into a soldier. It's even possible these switches are by-products, mistakes, that just happen to make the species better at surviving (i.e. soldiers to defend the hive). Nature takes such mistakes in stride, as long as they conver benefit - and can be reached through, gradual, incremental steps (ref Climbing Mount Improbable - Richard Dawkins).
I haven't read anything on this. Surely there's something out there already written. I'll have to search now (reaches for the Google-bottle). Thanks, you've given me a new book to look for.
You're describing Lamarck's theory. Animals don't adapt to their environment. That's like saying giraffes stretch their necks (and so make them physically longer) to reach higher leaves. This extra stretch is then passed onto their offspring.
Darwin says the opposite. Those giraffes that just happen to have a longer neck - to begin with, and through a random mutational change affecting their phenotype - are better able to take advantage of leaves higher up in a tree. They are more successful in staying alive & breed, and so are better able to pass these traits to offspring. Off course, there are evolutionary pressures to keep the neck short too. Shorter necks are better for running with - away from predators for example. So (simplistically), a compromise is reached between long and short necks.
With all respect to the Arabic speakers out there - but isn't Arabic already supported in DNS? For example I can type in this Arabic address already: http://17.112.152.32/
Works perfectly fine.
But seriously, if the world can adopt Arabic numerals as a standard for counting things, perhaps it should consider the humble English language for DNS domains. Even the Asian countries use Arabic numerals.
But I *do* wish everyone would use good British/International English, not that poorly spelt American cuckoo.:-) (e.g. colour, neighbour, favour etc).
Slashdot Mirror
No no no. I'm - I guess - A Mac Fanboy. But mine fandom was earned by Apple back in the 90s when I got a job looking after a Mac network. After some initial reservations and learning curve, I fell in love with it all. The job was so much easier that an equivalent Windows (3.x) & DOS network. Things worked. Yes, it crashed a bit (grrghh System 7), but otherwise a dream.
Now cut to the post-original iMac world. I watch the "stylish", "hip" and "different" ads with some bemusement. Yes, it's possibly necessary to run these ads to attract new customers. But the thing is this - Windows dominates. If you have a better product (and I believe Mac OS X is), then that alone won't sell. You need to advertise. Once you get them into the Mac fold, they will stay - because the product itself is so great. It's the getting them to try it that Apple have to fight so hard to do.
So give them a break. They're having to fight against a whole long list of basic untruths (I hear them all the time form the ignorant masses), and do a fantastic job given the odds they face.
I write this on my trusty MacBook Pro, having not needed to run any Microsoft product on it (except inside VMware Fusion as required).
Not sure what your point is, or whether you're being sarcastic, but ...
If you're saying Apple has a proprietary format to compete with Flash, then what is it? QuickTime? Or AAC/MPEG-4? Flash seems to fit a different niche that those formats. Microsoft must be supporting Flash for the same reason. WMV is similar to AAC/MPEG-4 in that it's in a different niche than Flash.
I thought I read somewhere that Apple have decided against Flash for some purely functional reasons. Apple wouldn't deliberately cut themselves out of a popular format (hold on - they might!), but I'm sure they're not trying to simply piss customers off for the sake of it. Remember that Apple TV supports browsing YouTube (and so Flash) content. They obviously believe Flash doesn't have the right fit for the iPhone (or iPod Touch).
Flash on websites is generally a pain in the arse anyway. Who needs it on a smaller screen where real estate is so much more important.
In the words of Michael Dell in reference to Apple once, Microsoft should close up shop and hand the money back to their investors.
What relevance does Microsoft truly have these days? The OS? There are better offerings from Apple and Linux (not to mention higher-end stuff from IBM and Sun). Productivity suite? OpenOffice does the job nicely, along with a bunch of others. Database? MySQL, IBM and Oracle are all you need. Programming & Web? Nothing wrong with LAMP/Java/Eclipse. Media & mobile? Sorry, my bias is with Apple here. The combination of iTunes/iPod/iPhone/AirTunes/Airport/Apple TV/QuickTime-MPEG-4 etc, is rock solid and unbeatable.
Can you imagine the innovation wave that would follow a Microsoft collapse? Such are the stuff of dreams.
Well, my first impulse is to think - hey, a dud date - there's no 18th month in a year. But then I thought, maybe they're being clever, and it's 1st June 2009 (18 months). And THEN I thought, duh, non-standard date format. Luckily the 18 gives it away - anything =12 would've been REALLY confusing.
So yes, let's stick with ISO. After all, aren't most of us geeks pushing for ODF (ISO Standard) over OOXML? Gotta support ISO dates while we're at it.
Yes but - for some of us developers who haven't developed for a few years (went into IT Management), it was a good article - and reminder. I knew peripherally that Eclipse was an IDE for Linux last year, and when I landed a Java contract a few months back, thought I'd look at using it on a Linux box. But I have a Mac for general daily use, and was pleasantly surprised to see a Mac version. Eclipse has made it easier for me to get into the code quicker, without having to worry overly about getting Tomcat and some other stuff working. Now in hindsight, I see it wouldn't have been hard to do it manually, but there you go. I got to work backwards - look at the code (and see it run), and then get the environment set up.
No, not news to the informed, but then SlashDot is also about informing us IT people (who know our stuff in our areas of expertise) about other cool stuff going on. If you are a Java programmer on Windows or Linux, then maybe you skimmed past the MacOSX mentions on the Eclipse site. Now you've been introduced by way of SlashDot article. And can also consider buying a Mac (or at least not discounting a Mac), in your next hardware purchase.
This article interested me greatly, as I have just recently secured a contract working for a project based on Java and Oracle (developed in Windows). I've taken the code, installed Eclipse for Mac (J2EE), changed the DB connection to MySQL (running on my Mac) and got it running.
And pretty mostly, while I've relearnt Java (from a lapse of 8 years) and got to grips with all the cool and new stuff (like Hibernate, JUnit, Swing, Ant, JBoss etc), I've been able to run the tutorials I've found without too much tweaking.
Now, I'm not a great coder, but getting the pieces to work (like all mentioned above, plus things like Derby) hasn't been a big drama. The cross-platform dream really works! The book I bought, "eclipse Web Tools Platform" published by Addison Wesley (which I highly recommend), isn't focussed on Eclipse Development using a Mac. The examples and diagrams are all Windows looking - BUT I can follow them on my Mac, and get the same results.
I can't compare Eclipse to anything else, but it's doing the job.
PS I'm actually more a Perl programmer - so I thought I'd search for a Perl plugin. Well, there is! EPIC. Easy install (like the other plugins for Eclipse I've grabbed), and so I can do Perl in Eclipse too.
And finally, after reading the foreword in the above mentioned book, I like the philosophy of the whole Eclipse project. It's a worthy project to support - regardless of what platform you use and favour.
Go Eclipse! And Thanks to all the people who're making it happen!
But you can burn and rip a CD from your iTunes purchase, then load onto a Zune. Where's the snub? You have to admit, the iPod/iTunes partnership is working pretty well to the average consumer. Prices are good, the catalogue is pretty good (no Metallica or Tool though :-( and the other features are very cool - music videos, movies and TV programmes (plus PodCasts). Honestly, it's bloody good.
Well blow me. My Mac has 'yes' already installed by default. I never knew I had such a fantastic app lurking in there. Jeez, I hope it isn't a security-risk. I might need to lower its privileges.
But yes, a nice Cocoa wrapper around it would be nice. Good project here. Where's my SourceForge link...
Wow. Adobe must be really pi**ed. They used to be such an Apple die-hard company all those years ago. Between them (with Macromedia and Aldus), Apple computers & printers, they had the desktop publishing and graphics market cornered.
:-)
Then Adobe started to bring out their products for Windows, allowing some graphics shops to move to Windows as well. Microsoft probably gave them a hand there, recognising an ally in their attack on Apple in a market Microsoft had no presence in. Adobe saw the writing on the wall for Apple (in the late 90s) and had jumped ship.
Now, once safely established, Adobe is facing the weight of Microsoft. Microsoft seem to feel the impulsive need to dominate every IT market there is. It's not enough to focus on operating systems and office suites, they must DOMINATE and CONTROL every standard, OS, market and methodology that arises.
I sincerely hope Adobe can ride this storm. Hopefully here is another specialised market that will prove history wrong, and through sheer good planning and weight of momentum, Adobe will remain ascendant.
Not that this is necessarily a good thing too! SVG or some other more open standard for this technology would be better still. But at least, for the moment, it isn't Microsoft
Chalk and board. Plus some props to demonstrate stuff. Seriously, computers don't _really_ help students really understand stuff.
Physics? Nothing beats a good 'ol number of balls, rods, ramps, tubes etc etc in demonstrating how stuff works. Watching virtual cars colliding on the screen doesn't really make students appreciate the nature of momentum and conservation of energy.
Chemistry? How does using some 3D software showing off molecules really compare to a good 'ol titration in the lab?
Biology? Disecting a rat just beats reading about rat morphology any day.
Mathematics? Take the students down to the beach and measure waves. Their height, period, variation in shape, speed etc.
Computers and other technology is useful for analysing and summarising the data, but get the students out of the classroom to gather the data.
I tried. I looked at the website. I spotted lots of stuff that requires .NET, MS SQL Server, SharePoint etc etc.
I can't do it. Whenever I see these words, my tummy twinges, my eyes wince. My fingers close in a fist.
I can't love Microsoft. No matter how Open Source they become. I'm a hypocrite. I admit it now. I just can't stomach their stuff.
Just seeing the words Apache, MySQL, Perl, Java, Linux soothes my nerves. There's an attitude with the people who develop true Open Source. A culture. An understanding and comradeship.
We NEED a big bad evil adversary. It makes us leaner, faster, more responsive, BETTER. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
I know I know - some advocate that we should work with Microsoft, we shouldn't think of them as evil. But where's the challenge then? They're easy to dislike. Just read the History of Microsoft, and the trail of good but smaller competitors they mugged and left for dead, bleeding in IT Alley.
Oh well, there's enough work out there to keep me Microsoft-free in my environment.
"Why on earth in OS X is the menu bar for any given application not attached to the application itself? Why is it fixed to the top of the screen, detached from the very thing it controls? "
Why on Earth does MS insist on putting a blimmin menu bar on every window/application on the screen? Surely you can't use them all at the same time?
Next time you're on Windows, try this: Open up a spreadsheet and a text-based document and maybe even an image in an image app. Try to get them all to show as much of themselves as possible on the screen, next to each other with no overlap. Now try the same on a Mac at the same resolution. Which do you think gives more viewable area for all windows? If you're working in one particular window but want to see the contents of another, do you really want to see the controls for the other window/app right in the middle of the screen? Shouldn't they be "tucked up in the top", out of the way?
Oh well, whatever you want to put up with...
Nothing wrong with Tetris, Chess, or any of those Ambrosia games.
Hey, what about getting the kids to play Turtle Logo? They might even learn something. Or even better, Lego Mindstorms.
Sad and boring I know, but I grew up with Space Invaders, Donkey Kong and such. They were absolutely thrilling! Why the need to have realistic shoot the bad (or even good) guy games? We're forcing (through marketing/fad pressue) these kids to experience violence in a way that desensitises them. Sure they claimed that would be the case for our generation (including D&D), but these realistic ones take it just too far.
There's no imagination in it. We had to imagine Kong holding the woman prisoner, and needing rescue. It wasn't spoon-fed with blood and guts and screaming all over the place.
My 2cents worth.
Well, I guess we have to go from first principles. There are two scenarios here:
1/ One of the eggs that a Queen lays contains a mutation that provides some benefit. The egg hatches, and the resultant worker - or soldier or whatever, scurries away being more efficient or capable at doing something. It would need to be highly beneficial because it needs to have the direct affect of keeping the Queen alive. However, a single individual (in a hive) has little overall effect on an entire hive. Unless it did something like produce a digested bit of food that, when fed to the Queen, made her lay more eggs per volume of food intake, or something. Eventually, this worker dies, and the hive is back to where it was.
2/ The mutation occurs in an egg that is destined to be a Queen. Now here is the trick. The mutation gives cause for the new Queen to on-lay eggs of her own, and these eggs develop into a new type of individual. It's a subtle thing you see. The mutation may be such that every 3rd egg develops into a soldier (rather than all eggs developing into workers). A soldier may simply be a worker with a bigger set of mandibles. This then leads the hive to be successful - and perhaps more successful than neighbouring hives without the mutation.
The Queen then lays an egg that develops into a new Queen, and so the mutation will be passed onto subsequent hives.
In summary, the mutation (in such a situation), has to occur in an egg that develops into a Queen. The Queen's offspring are the ones that will determine the success of the mutation. The Queen is therefore simply a delivery device.
Of course, there may be mutations that give the Queen added benefits, such as egg laying ability, or whatever.
I'm no biologist but... doesn't stop us thinking...
After some thought, I can only put hive-like devlopments down to something similar to the way multicellular bodies evolve. A mutation for an improved organ is also present in cells for other organs. This mutation must take care not to disrupt or lower the overall improvement to the individual's fitness to survive and breed. i.e. It almost kind of needs to have no detrimental affect on the other organs (or any other part of the whole).
Of course, it's possible I guess, that it could have a detrimental affect on another part of the whole, as long as the overall affect of the mutation is beneficial to the individual. The case of malaria and sicklecell anaemia comes to mind there.
Similarly, I also wonder (like you) about how evolution can explain the marvelous development of individuals from the initial conception through to adult form. And also those species that undergo metamorphosis. These are like your hive member variations, but spread over time. What combination of genes makes it good to be a screaming baby (and so getting attention for food etc), and then a demure, considerate and well liked adult (likely to get a mate and have kiddies)?
I guess the answer will have to come down to the idea of genes surviving in a pool of other genes. And the separation of genotype vs phenotype. A set of genes that just happens to express themselves into a number of individual types (workers, soldiers, queen etc), and that creates a species well suited to surviving in their environment.
There are probably very few genetic 'switches' that need to be pulled in order to flip a worker into a soldier. It's even possible these switches are by-products, mistakes, that just happen to make the species better at surviving (i.e. soldiers to defend the hive). Nature takes such mistakes in stride, as long as they conver benefit - and can be reached through, gradual, incremental steps (ref Climbing Mount Improbable - Richard Dawkins).
I haven't read anything on this. Surely there's something out there already written. I'll have to search now (reaches for the Google-bottle). Thanks, you've given me a new book to look for.
No no no gentle friend.
You're describing Lamarck's theory. Animals don't adapt to their environment. That's like saying giraffes stretch their necks (and so make them physically longer) to reach higher leaves. This extra stretch is then passed onto their offspring.
Darwin says the opposite. Those giraffes that just happen to have a longer neck - to begin with, and through a random mutational change affecting their phenotype - are better able to take advantage of leaves higher up in a tree. They are more successful in staying alive & breed, and so are better able to pass these traits to offspring. Off course, there are evolutionary pressures to keep the neck short too. Shorter necks are better for running with - away from predators for example. So (simplistically), a compromise is reached between long and short necks.
Cheers
Yes it is. It means the temperature outside is close to your body temperature - which everyone knows is approximately 37.5 degrees celcius.
With all respect to the Arabic speakers out there - but isn't Arabic already supported in DNS? For example I can type in this Arabic address already: http://17.112.152.32/
:-) (e.g. colour, neighbour, favour etc).
Works perfectly fine.
But seriously, if the world can adopt Arabic numerals as a standard for counting things, perhaps it should consider the humble English language for DNS domains. Even the Asian countries use Arabic numerals.
But I *do* wish everyone would use good British/International English, not that poorly spelt American cuckoo.
Isn't it obvious?
First Apple did it, then Novell, and now Microsoft. Microsoft is ditching its own kernel and putting its GUI/Win32 API set on top of a Linux kernel.
And it'll be called Microsoft Lista - available early 2008...
Finally!