You don't even have to involve fruit flies. Just pull from something everyone has seen: Domestic dogs and cats. These have been bred from a set of common ancestors. The fact that some animals are tiny and some are very large, some have long coats and some have short, some are smart and some are affectionate, are the direct result of people guiding the evolution of those lines.
Modern dogs, cats, and horses have been bread, by humans, and that's why they've changed so much.
This is the very definition of the fact of evolution (i.e. the observation that life can and does change over time). The mechanism here, from our perspective, would seem to be different from the theory of evolution—that is, natural selection (et al)—but from the perspective of evolution, the mechanisms are really the same thing. Instead of climate change or the introduction of a new predator changing the bar for survivability and reproduction, it's people doing it. It's really just another environmental factor.
There is evidence that ancient species have changed due to natural selection into different forms of the same species (e.g. alligators, sharks), but into a completely new species? No.
There is no evidence that natural selection has occurred. You're confusing theory and fact here. That life evolves over time is a documented fact. Theories behind how that occurred abound, and some have been experimentally reproduced while others require time machines or incredibly long time scales.
[Creationism is] a scientific theory. It is based upon the same evidence as that of the theory of evolution.
It is not a scientific theory because it does not meet the requirements of a scientific theory. You seem to be regurgitating Creationism/ID propaganda without doing your own research. As far as being based on the evidence, it may be based in part on the same evidence, but there is no scientific evidence for a god or intelligent designer, so that aspect of the theory should be disregarded. When you do that, what you have left looks an awful lot like what we already have.
It's also worth mentioning that evolution (as both a fact and theory) do not conflict with creationism. Strict creationists may have a beef with some of the facts used to support the theories of evolution, but even if you disqualify the entire fossil record, you still have an enormous volume of evidence clearly documenting the evolution of life, even over short time spans. I suspect you are confusing evolution with abiogenesis (as most anti-"evolutionists" do).
It would really be nice if scientists, politicians, and people in general would get it straight and teach the right thing
It's more a matter of the proper venue. Science classes should teach the scientific method. Give students the means to understand what evidence is, what facts are, and how theories can be drawn from those facts, tested, and invalidated as appropriate. If you'd like to introduce non-scientific viewpoints (philosophy, religion, etc.), there are other classes (especially among private schools) where that's appropriate.
The observation that life evolves over time is a fact. We see this at small scales (fruit flies, bacteria, etc.) and at larger scales (bones, fossils). Between generations, a species changes subtly. There are many mechanisms (demonstrated and theoretical) for this evolution, but it is a fact that evolution occurs.
Huh? If dogs and wolves are identical, why do they look and behave differently? Are you suggesting these traits are somehow environmental? Have you ever tried to domesticate a baby wolf? Their DNA may be substantially the same, and they might even be able to interbreed, but the lines are substantially different. Breeding and natural selection are the same thing from an evolutionary perspective.
An interesting (in a philosophical sense) but completely useless viewpoint. If we decide to mistrust our observations to the point where we cannot create usable theories, test them, and apply them, then we cannot advance human knowledge. Suggesting everything is just a fuzzy "belief" and we should allow our faith to wander among any of them (scientific or not) seems counter-productive.
I don't think multi-homing on IPv6 has been fully realized.
Consider:
1. using one IP address per uplink on your devices and publish all three addresses in DNS, or 2. use a low TTL in DNS and update DNS every time a link goes down with an alternate IP address.
If you don't like that existing sessions will fail and have to be restarted (TCP-based protocols), consider moving your services to other protocols (if possible), such as UDP or SCTP.
IPv4-style multi-homing doesn't scale well in an IPv6 world, which is why they're limiting allocations like that to large ISPs.
It's my understanding (as a former big telco employee that had nothing to do with DSL) that the big carriers like that draw a somewhat arbitrary line, beyond which they simply don't want to support DSL. Customers beyond that line will, on average, cost more to support, because they're going to have more frequent connection/speed problems due to their distance. It's not that they can't do it, it's that they don't want to do it. But that was just my perception.
I think it's too easy for people to get dumped at the bottom of the rankings without a clue why.
I think that, generally speaking, if you're dumped at the bottom of the rankings one day, you probably already have a pretty good idea why. You're either doing spammy things with your site to try to elevate your rankings, or you've hired an "SEO" firm that's doing spammy things. If your hope is that Google tells you specifically which rules you're breaking, and what the thresholds are for each of those rules, you're crazy!
A legitimate risk does not make for a legitimate warning label. Anything that falls into the "mind-numbingly obvious" category should not need a warning label.
A "legitimate" risk suggests a risk that the manufacturer knew about. If the manufacturer knew about a risk but elected not to warn people about it, you could argue that they were being negligent. A person suing the manufacturer over a "mind-numbingly obvious" risk would probably lose at trial, but the costs of defending such a suit, even successfully, are usually far more than the costs of settling, and the costs of settling are in turn usually far greater than the costs of buying a bunch of stickers with warnings on them and affixing them to your products.
It's not the merit of the lawsuit that matters, it's the cost of defending or settling those suits that you will invariably get without those warning labels. An entire industry exists where people work to exploit any ambiguity or lack of warning, because they know there's a good chance they will win a jackpot if the company decides to settle the case. The most economical way to deal with these people is to slap warning labels on everything, even for risks that most people would consider obvious.
You wouldn't have this in a loser-pays system, but there are drawbacks to that as well.
I cannot see how the Constitution allows the Federal Government any say in this whatsoever.
Because nobody ever got elected on a platform of "keeping things pretty much the same" or "deferring to the states." So long as everyone is demanding "change" and politicians are elected to "make a difference", that's what you'll get. The powers of the federal government will expand in every conceivable way, up to and frequently passing the boundaries set by the constitution. It's one of the many flaws of this form of government.
Web ads are not billed based on placement, with the "hope" that some number of eyeballs will see it. Web ads are billed based on the number of impressions or clicks. SOX is a HUGE deal for these types of arrangements. If you're suggesting that web ads move to the TV ads model, that's a fairly significant change and I'm not really sure that would work out very well. You'd need some sort of awkward payment schedule for the millions of tiny sites out there that generate just enough traffic for a few bucks a month in revenues. These add up to a lot for advertisers but would be incredibly difficult to bill.
Ask any dog owner. They see a dog running around barking on TV, they want to play.
I've owned many dogs over many years. Are you sure the dogs aren't reacting to the barking? You seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions and jumping to conclusions that have little supporting evidence. And bear in mind that I don't know what dogs see on TV, I just think it's likely that they don't recognize it, because the medium isn't intended to work for them.
Also, from the article you linked to:
Are you offering this as evidence that dogs comprehend language? The dog is just building up vocabulary. There's no comprehension. Yes, the dog seems to react appropriately, but this is simple conditioning. There's no understanding going on. Further down on the same page there's discussion of emotion and "guilt" specifically. I know it's not language-related, but maybe reading that will give you a better handle on what I'm trying to convey here. Vocabulary is one aspect to language, but there's so much more involved with processing language that dogs simply are not capable of. They may appear to understand and react properly, but there's no evidence that this is anything other than simple learned/conditioned behavior. Try mixing up word order, introduce new objects, people and verbs in combinations that they've never seen before. This only works if (a) each command is given and executed individually; or (b) they are trained with each combination individually.
If you want real democracy you have to at least have a majority requirement before you allow it to enact any laws. Otherwise the presumption should be that the people don't want any more government, and everything should be left status quo until they do.
I find it interesting that nobody would ever think of campaigning on a platform of "status quo". Nobody is elected unless they promise "change". Everyone gets elected to "do something". Nobody ever considers the possibility that many things are actually OK the way they are, at least for a while. I strongly suspect this pressure to "get stuff done" is why our federal government has gotten stronger and stronger over the years. Government seems to have a tendency to expand its role and its powers to limits allowed by the government's founding framework (and then some).
In my opinion, much of what government does could be replaced with automation. Imagine data/evidence-driven public policy!
forever in future you'd have old sites being 100% readable in new browsers, no matter how much actually existing "de facto" and "official" standards change or get deprecated/replaced over time.
This justification is incorrect. The standards aren't changing, and newer versions of standards should not cause heartache among HTML authors. HTML 4.01 is "frozen" and will never be revised "in-place". There may be newer versions of the same HTML standard, and those newer versions may deprecate things and introduce new things, but HTML 4.01 will always be HTML 4.01. Pages can declare what version of the HTML standard they're written to using a DOCTYPE. Every HTML version has its own distinct DOCTYPE, so no 3rd-party mechanism is needed to determine what HTML version a page is written to, regardless of what newer standards are created that deprecate/replace earlier versions. Browsers should always know how to render HTML 4.01, and over time, that behavior may even be refined. The DOCTYPE should tell them what to do.
What this is about is preserving the behavior of defects and implementation decisions. If developers write their page not to a specific HTML standard, but to a certain set of assumptions about the browser platforms they use to test, as most developers do, a mechanism for them to declare this would seem to be useful.
It's really a trade-off. You can have one of:
Incremental compliance improvements and adoption at the cost of backwards compatibility. Browsers today improve from release to release. Frequently a decision has to be made to be standards compliant, or backwards compatible. Both IE and Firefox routinely decide, explicitly, not to implement certain things according to the standards, because compatibility with existing web sites would suffer. Microsoft would seem to favor backward compatibility more than Firefox, but both do it. Consequently, even though browser vendors could follow the standards, they choose not to do so. HTML authors have to be aware of each browser's quirks and know how to write new web pages that render the way they expect in the popular browser versions.
Better compliance improvements and backwards compatibility at the cost of fracturing the standards. By establishing each rendering engine as a "dialect" within a particular HTML standard, you perpetuate each dialect's quirks forever. HTML authors still have to be aware of each dialect's quirks and know how to write new web pages that render the way they expect in the popular browser versions. They may choose to do that by mastering one specific dialect, and never updating, which means they never get the benefit of new standards, or they may do that by attempting to master all dialects, as though every browser version ever made is still in widespread use. The chief benefit would seem to be that old pages can be left alone forever and be guaranteed to render the way they've always been rendered. The problem comes when someone is asked to make a change to that page. If they don't know that dialect, they're going to botch it. So rendering stability comes with higher maintenance and education costs for your HTML authors. It also has the potential to slow standards adoption. Even though standards improvements can now be absolute, and significant between browser versions, HTML authors are going to be loathe to learn them if all of their content remains in an older dialect. There's just no reason to "upgrade" and lots of reasons not to. Businesses care more about keeping their content available and costs low than "standards compliance".
I'm still waiting for traditional cable networks (or even individual programs) to offer subscriptions, streaming HD content to my set-top box over the Internet. I don't even care if it's live. So much of what I watch is on the DVR anyway. Let me cancel my (evil) cable TV subscription and just get the shows or networks that I'm interested in.
Live IPTV would be nice too, but since you can't do QoS over the untrusted, public Internet, I'm not sure how you'd get CATV-style latency and reliability without violating "network neutrality".
I'm not sure if it's your intention to disagree with me, or just tell me more ways that you think dogs are neat. I'll assume it's the former, so my apologies if that's wrong.
They understand that the dog they see isn't real, that its a reflection of themself.
I have no reason to not believe that dogs don't understand that a reflection isn't real, but this, too, is learned. The first time dogs are presented with a mirror, they usually sniff around it and try to get "behind" it to understand what's going on. It's not clear to me that they'd behave toward a mirror differently than a window through which they cannot hear.
The identification of the reflected dog as themselves is something altogether different. A sense of self is another aspect of intelligence, but I'm not aware of studies that have actually suggested that this is the case in dogs. It has been demonstrated in more intelligent animals, though.
They act differently than to a dog on TV, which they understand is "not self."
I think it is just as likely that this is due to the fact that the colors they see on TV bear no similarity to reality. Keep in mind that the process of videotaping an image loses most of the information about the colors present, opting to capture only colors that excite the red, green and blue receptors in human eyes. Televisions reproduce this using a very specific set of wavelengths that do a great job of reproducing the color in our eyes, but fail completely to produce the same colors in the eyes of other species. I doubt a dog would recognize the thing on TV as a dog at all. Most TV images should appear washed-out and monochromatic (yellow).
The things that you observe are facts. One can clearly see that life evolves over time. For long-term study, we have the fossil record. For short-term study, we have bacteria, fruit flies and other organisms that have short life-spans. We can directly observe evolution. This aspect is fact.
The theory is how evolution occurs. What causes life to evolve over time? The theories that we have are simple, direct, and have no counter-evidence.
Both sides of this "debate" commonly confuse the two issues (and many even throw in abiogenesis, which makes things worse). Evolution is, in fact, both fact and theory. If one succeeds in completely destroying the theory of evolution, it does nothing to disprove the facts that led us to that theory. Life still evolves over time.
How do you deal with this at your place of business, and does your company care? Does the company take any policing or educating measures?
Learning and exercising proper e-mail etiquette is expensive and ultimately futile because companies are always getting new people that haven't learned the rules yet. In addition, quite a lot of corporate policies are enforced only because people tend to get off on putting the smack down on people that don't know or refuse to obey The Rules, regardless of whether or not the rules exist for a good reason or whether it's the most cost-effective approach. So I'm automatically suspicious of many "e-mail etiquette" rules. In my experience, people aren't annoyed at the 500 lines of quoting, they're "annoyed" that someone dared break the institution's posted rules, and enjoy punishing them.
My advice? Shut up and deal with it. E-mail tools like Gmail automatically hide quoted text, so all of those one-line replies appear as one-line replies, regardless of what got quoted. Compare "wasted" storage costs against the personnel costs of (a) learning these company-specific rules; (b) complying with those rules; and (c) having lots of meetings and e-mail reminders and Slashdot submissions seeking better ways of doing (a) and (b).
If someone's actually wasting everyone's time, and doesn't realize it, tell them. If they keep doing it, compare the costs they're incurring versus the benefit they're providing and fire them if it's appropriate. Otherwise everyone has better things to do with their time.
I don't think you understand what "language" is. Yes, a rudimentary form of communication is taking place. Language includes rules (grammar), and symbols (abstract concepts), neither of which are within the capabilities of a dog or a cat. They are simply responding to a learned auditory association. There's no context for them to understand, since they're incapable of understanding the individual symbols. It's just a long bark and they've figured out the important parts of that bark ("take" vs. "give the dog").
Don't get me wrong: the ability to make associations like this is a kind of intelligence, and animals that learn those associations quickly are certainly smarter. But they're incapable of reasoning, of understanding abstract concepts, and the rules of grammar. This means they do not understand language, though they can build up a vocabulary of associations.
A dog learning that "B-A-T-H" means "bath" has simply learned a new word, just like they learned the original "bath". To a dog, it's just a different kind of bark and they've figured out that it means they're about to get a bath. There's a difference between learning and comprehending a language, and associating a certain sound with an activity that usually follows it.
The cat isn't lying. It's just learned to perform for attention. When you reward behavior, animals figure that out and repeat the behavior.
Dogs can be trained to respond to stimulus (such as spoken words). They do not understand language. Words like "sit", "fetch" and "shake hands" are just different kinds of barks to them. There's no meaning, just a learned association.
The other issue is that this is probably a lot less appealing to people in the states due to the adverts every 10 mins. Who wants to have a permanent copy of your favourite film that has so many interruptions. Over here in Europe (well in Britain anyway) we have TV channels with no advert brakes.
This is true for broadcast programming and only some cable programming. Most cable channels that would carry movies are premium channels that have no advertising, and many cable channels have no advertising or only promotional advertising for other programs on that channel. The bulk are full of ads, however, as you note.
1. Get the US thrown out of Iraq. When the new Iraqi government is perceived as being unfriendly toward the US, it should reduce the desire by some to destroy it. 2. Start a blog. Respond to comments. 3. Eliminate or make opt-in (by state) most/all federal social programs and subsidies, giving enough time/support to the states that want to start their own. (And, by extension, reduce taxes by the amount that these programs cost.) 4. Halt the practice of legislating-by-withholding-funding. Taxes should not be levied against the states with the intent of sending those funds back to the states they were taken from, with unrelated strings attached. No more "must be 21 to buy alcohol, or your state gets less highway funds." 5. Encourage (force?) alternative voting methods, such as ranked voting. (But then, how did I get voted into office in the first place?) 6. Push for a constitutional amendment restricting the nature of the commerce clause to cover things that have a clear and compelling need to be dealt with at the national scale. 7. Go data-driven. Establish an independent scientific advisory panel, perhaps elected from professional organizations, to report (to the public) on the rational basis for new legislation (likely expenses, likely benefits, with error bars, validity of assumptions, etc.) 8. Apply a data-driven philosophy to existing legislation, such as "war on drugs", etc. Abolish as appropriate.
You appear to have misread my post. My suggestion was that you have the ability to override, and I was asking if my suggestion offered enough "choice".
The choice is there, in the hands of the people. If you would prefer rolling blackouts to something that automatically raises your thermostat temperature by a couple of degrees, that's a perfectly legitimate position and one that you and your community should be able to push for. But until we have the switching equipment necessary to allow apartment dwellers to make that decision individually, it needs to be made at a community level.
Given the choice, in an emergency situation where I'd have to choose between rolling blackouts and a modest increase in the temperature of my apartment, I would choose the temperature increase.
Maybe it needs to be approached like this: The utility offers, free of charge, "upgrades" to thermostats and other switches, that allows the utility to send out these "pages" to start rationing. You're free to override that or not install these devices in the first place. If the rationing is insufficient, rolling blackouts start. Communities that elect to push strongly for adoption and use of these devices would benefit by having fewer (or no) rolling blackouts, while others that dig their heels into the dirt will have more. Is that enough "choice"?
Slashdot Mirror
You don't even have to involve fruit flies. Just pull from something everyone has seen: Domestic dogs and cats. These have been bred from a set of common ancestors. The fact that some animals are tiny and some are very large, some have long coats and some have short, some are smart and some are affectionate, are the direct result of people guiding the evolution of those lines.
This is the very definition of the fact of evolution (i.e. the observation that life can and does change over time). The mechanism here, from our perspective, would seem to be different from the theory of evolution—that is, natural selection (et al)—but from the perspective of evolution, the mechanisms are really the same thing. Instead of climate change or the introduction of a new predator changing the bar for survivability and reproduction, it's people doing it. It's really just another environmental factor.
There is no evidence that natural selection has occurred. You're confusing theory and fact here. That life evolves over time is a documented fact. Theories behind how that occurred abound, and some have been experimentally reproduced while others require time machines or incredibly long time scales.
It is not a scientific theory because it does not meet the requirements of a scientific theory. You seem to be regurgitating Creationism/ID propaganda without doing your own research. As far as being based on the evidence, it may be based in part on the same evidence, but there is no scientific evidence for a god or intelligent designer, so that aspect of the theory should be disregarded. When you do that, what you have left looks an awful lot like what we already have.
It's also worth mentioning that evolution (as both a fact and theory) do not conflict with creationism. Strict creationists may have a beef with some of the facts used to support the theories of evolution, but even if you disqualify the entire fossil record, you still have an enormous volume of evidence clearly documenting the evolution of life, even over short time spans. I suspect you are confusing evolution with abiogenesis (as most anti-"evolutionists" do).
It's more a matter of the proper venue. Science classes should teach the scientific method. Give students the means to understand what evidence is, what facts are, and how theories can be drawn from those facts, tested, and invalidated as appropriate. If you'd like to introduce non-scientific viewpoints (philosophy, religion, etc.), there are other classes (especially among private schools) where that's appropriate.
Also, I find this Wikipedia article a bit enlightening on the difference between fact and theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact
The observation that life evolves over time is a fact. We see this at small scales (fruit flies, bacteria, etc.) and at larger scales (bones, fossils). Between generations, a species changes subtly. There are many mechanisms (demonstrated and theoretical) for this evolution, but it is a fact that evolution occurs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact
Huh? If dogs and wolves are identical, why do they look and behave differently? Are you suggesting these traits are somehow environmental? Have you ever tried to domesticate a baby wolf? Their DNA may be substantially the same, and they might even be able to interbreed, but the lines are substantially different. Breeding and natural selection are the same thing from an evolutionary perspective.
An interesting (in a philosophical sense) but completely useless viewpoint. If we decide to mistrust our observations to the point where we cannot create usable theories, test them, and apply them, then we cannot advance human knowledge. Suggesting everything is just a fuzzy "belief" and we should allow our faith to wander among any of them (scientific or not) seems counter-productive.
I don't think multi-homing on IPv6 has been fully realized.
Consider:
1. using one IP address per uplink on your devices and publish all three addresses in DNS, or
2. use a low TTL in DNS and update DNS every time a link goes down with an alternate IP address.
If you don't like that existing sessions will fail and have to be restarted (TCP-based protocols), consider moving your services to other protocols (if possible), such as UDP or SCTP.
IPv4-style multi-homing doesn't scale well in an IPv6 world, which is why they're limiting allocations like that to large ISPs.
It's my understanding (as a former big telco employee that had nothing to do with DSL) that the big carriers like that draw a somewhat arbitrary line, beyond which they simply don't want to support DSL. Customers beyond that line will, on average, cost more to support, because they're going to have more frequent connection/speed problems due to their distance. It's not that they can't do it, it's that they don't want to do it. But that was just my perception.
I think that, generally speaking, if you're dumped at the bottom of the rankings one day, you probably already have a pretty good idea why. You're either doing spammy things with your site to try to elevate your rankings, or you've hired an "SEO" firm that's doing spammy things. If your hope is that Google tells you specifically which rules you're breaking, and what the thresholds are for each of those rules, you're crazy!
A "legitimate" risk suggests a risk that the manufacturer knew about. If the manufacturer knew about a risk but elected not to warn people about it, you could argue that they were being negligent. A person suing the manufacturer over a "mind-numbingly obvious" risk would probably lose at trial, but the costs of defending such a suit, even successfully, are usually far more than the costs of settling, and the costs of settling are in turn usually far greater than the costs of buying a bunch of stickers with warnings on them and affixing them to your products.
It's not the merit of the lawsuit that matters, it's the cost of defending or settling those suits that you will invariably get without those warning labels. An entire industry exists where people work to exploit any ambiguity or lack of warning, because they know there's a good chance they will win a jackpot if the company decides to settle the case. The most economical way to deal with these people is to slap warning labels on everything, even for risks that most people would consider obvious.
You wouldn't have this in a loser-pays system, but there are drawbacks to that as well.
Because nobody ever got elected on a platform of "keeping things pretty much the same" or "deferring to the states." So long as everyone is demanding "change" and politicians are elected to "make a difference", that's what you'll get. The powers of the federal government will expand in every conceivable way, up to and frequently passing the boundaries set by the constitution. It's one of the many flaws of this form of government.
Web ads are not billed based on placement, with the "hope" that some number of eyeballs will see it. Web ads are billed based on the number of impressions or clicks. SOX is a HUGE deal for these types of arrangements. If you're suggesting that web ads move to the TV ads model, that's a fairly significant change and I'm not really sure that would work out very well. You'd need some sort of awkward payment schedule for the millions of tiny sites out there that generate just enough traffic for a few bucks a month in revenues. These add up to a lot for advertisers but would be incredibly difficult to bill.
I've owned many dogs over many years. Are you sure the dogs aren't reacting to the barking? You seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions and jumping to conclusions that have little supporting evidence. And bear in mind that I don't know what dogs see on TV, I just think it's likely that they don't recognize it, because the medium isn't intended to work for them.
Are you offering this as evidence that dogs comprehend language? The dog is just building up vocabulary. There's no comprehension. Yes, the dog seems to react appropriately, but this is simple conditioning. There's no understanding going on. Further down on the same page there's discussion of emotion and "guilt" specifically. I know it's not language-related, but maybe reading that will give you a better handle on what I'm trying to convey here. Vocabulary is one aspect to language, but there's so much more involved with processing language that dogs simply are not capable of. They may appear to understand and react properly, but there's no evidence that this is anything other than simple learned/conditioned behavior. Try mixing up word order, introduce new objects, people and verbs in combinations that they've never seen before. This only works if (a) each command is given and executed individually; or (b) they are trained with each combination individually.
I find it interesting that nobody would ever think of campaigning on a platform of "status quo". Nobody is elected unless they promise "change". Everyone gets elected to "do something". Nobody ever considers the possibility that many things are actually OK the way they are, at least for a while. I strongly suspect this pressure to "get stuff done" is why our federal government has gotten stronger and stronger over the years. Government seems to have a tendency to expand its role and its powers to limits allowed by the government's founding framework (and then some).
In my opinion, much of what government does could be replaced with automation. Imagine data/evidence-driven public policy!
This justification is incorrect. The standards aren't changing, and newer versions of standards should not cause heartache among HTML authors. HTML 4.01 is "frozen" and will never be revised "in-place". There may be newer versions of the same HTML standard, and those newer versions may deprecate things and introduce new things, but HTML 4.01 will always be HTML 4.01. Pages can declare what version of the HTML standard they're written to using a DOCTYPE. Every HTML version has its own distinct DOCTYPE, so no 3rd-party mechanism is needed to determine what HTML version a page is written to, regardless of what newer standards are created that deprecate/replace earlier versions. Browsers should always know how to render HTML 4.01, and over time, that behavior may even be refined. The DOCTYPE should tell them what to do.
What this is about is preserving the behavior of defects and implementation decisions. If developers write their page not to a specific HTML standard, but to a certain set of assumptions about the browser platforms they use to test, as most developers do, a mechanism for them to declare this would seem to be useful.
It's really a trade-off. You can have one of:
Incremental compliance improvements and adoption at the cost of backwards compatibility. Browsers today improve from release to release. Frequently a decision has to be made to be standards compliant, or backwards compatible. Both IE and Firefox routinely decide, explicitly, not to implement certain things according to the standards, because compatibility with existing web sites would suffer. Microsoft would seem to favor backward compatibility more than Firefox, but both do it. Consequently, even though browser vendors could follow the standards, they choose not to do so. HTML authors have to be aware of each browser's quirks and know how to write new web pages that render the way they expect in the popular browser versions.
Better compliance improvements and backwards compatibility at the cost of fracturing the standards. By establishing each rendering engine as a "dialect" within a particular HTML standard, you perpetuate each dialect's quirks forever. HTML authors still have to be aware of each dialect's quirks and know how to write new web pages that render the way they expect in the popular browser versions. They may choose to do that by mastering one specific dialect, and never updating, which means they never get the benefit of new standards, or they may do that by attempting to master all dialects, as though every browser version ever made is still in widespread use. The chief benefit would seem to be that old pages can be left alone forever and be guaranteed to render the way they've always been rendered. The problem comes when someone is asked to make a change to that page. If they don't know that dialect, they're going to botch it. So rendering stability comes with higher maintenance and education costs for your HTML authors. It also has the potential to slow standards adoption. Even though standards improvements can now be absolute, and significant between browser versions, HTML authors are going to be loathe to learn them if all of their content remains in an older dialect. There's just no reason to "upgrade" and lots of reasons not to. Businesses care more about keeping their content available and costs low than "standards compliance".
I'm still waiting for traditional cable networks (or even individual programs) to offer subscriptions, streaming HD content to my set-top box over the Internet. I don't even care if it's live. So much of what I watch is on the DVR anyway. Let me cancel my (evil) cable TV subscription and just get the shows or networks that I'm interested in.
Live IPTV would be nice too, but since you can't do QoS over the untrusted, public Internet, I'm not sure how you'd get CATV-style latency and reliability without violating "network neutrality".
I'm not sure if it's your intention to disagree with me, or just tell me more ways that you think dogs are neat. I'll assume it's the former, so my apologies if that's wrong.
I have no reason to not believe that dogs don't understand that a reflection isn't real, but this, too, is learned. The first time dogs are presented with a mirror, they usually sniff around it and try to get "behind" it to understand what's going on. It's not clear to me that they'd behave toward a mirror differently than a window through which they cannot hear.
The identification of the reflected dog as themselves is something altogether different. A sense of self is another aspect of intelligence, but I'm not aware of studies that have actually suggested that this is the case in dogs. It has been demonstrated in more intelligent animals, though.
I think it is just as likely that this is due to the fact that the colors they see on TV bear no similarity to reality. Keep in mind that the process of videotaping an image loses most of the information about the colors present, opting to capture only colors that excite the red, green and blue receptors in human eyes. Televisions reproduce this using a very specific set of wavelengths that do a great job of reproducing the color in our eyes, but fail completely to produce the same colors in the eyes of other species. I doubt a dog would recognize the thing on TV as a dog at all. Most TV images should appear washed-out and monochromatic (yellow).
In any event, I would encourage you to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_intelligence and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_cognition#Consciousness. Both are kind of interesting. I suspect our disagreement has more to do with disagreement on the terms we're using (intelligence, self-awareness, language) than any disagreement about how smart dogs really act.
The things that you observe are facts. One can clearly see that life evolves over time. For long-term study, we have the fossil record. For short-term study, we have bacteria, fruit flies and other organisms that have short life-spans. We can directly observe evolution. This aspect is fact.
The theory is how evolution occurs. What causes life to evolve over time? The theories that we have are simple, direct, and have no counter-evidence.
Both sides of this "debate" commonly confuse the two issues (and many even throw in abiogenesis, which makes things worse). Evolution is, in fact, both fact and theory. If one succeeds in completely destroying the theory of evolution, it does nothing to disprove the facts that led us to that theory. Life still evolves over time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact
Learning and exercising proper e-mail etiquette is expensive and ultimately futile because companies are always getting new people that haven't learned the rules yet. In addition, quite a lot of corporate policies are enforced only because people tend to get off on putting the smack down on people that don't know or refuse to obey The Rules, regardless of whether or not the rules exist for a good reason or whether it's the most cost-effective approach. So I'm automatically suspicious of many "e-mail etiquette" rules. In my experience, people aren't annoyed at the 500 lines of quoting, they're "annoyed" that someone dared break the institution's posted rules, and enjoy punishing them.
My advice? Shut up and deal with it. E-mail tools like Gmail automatically hide quoted text, so all of those one-line replies appear as one-line replies, regardless of what got quoted. Compare "wasted" storage costs against the personnel costs of (a) learning these company-specific rules; (b) complying with those rules; and (c) having lots of meetings and e-mail reminders and Slashdot submissions seeking better ways of doing (a) and (b).
If someone's actually wasting everyone's time, and doesn't realize it, tell them. If they keep doing it, compare the costs they're incurring versus the benefit they're providing and fire them if it's appropriate. Otherwise everyone has better things to do with their time.
I don't think you understand what "language" is. Yes, a rudimentary form of communication is taking place. Language includes rules (grammar), and symbols (abstract concepts), neither of which are within the capabilities of a dog or a cat. They are simply responding to a learned auditory association. There's no context for them to understand, since they're incapable of understanding the individual symbols. It's just a long bark and they've figured out the important parts of that bark ("take" vs. "give the dog").
Don't get me wrong: the ability to make associations like this is a kind of intelligence, and animals that learn those associations quickly are certainly smarter. But they're incapable of reasoning, of understanding abstract concepts, and the rules of grammar. This means they do not understand language, though they can build up a vocabulary of associations.
A dog learning that "B-A-T-H" means "bath" has simply learned a new word, just like they learned the original "bath". To a dog, it's just a different kind of bark and they've figured out that it means they're about to get a bath. There's a difference between learning and comprehending a language, and associating a certain sound with an activity that usually follows it.
The cat isn't lying. It's just learned to perform for attention. When you reward behavior, animals figure that out and repeat the behavior.
Dogs can be trained to respond to stimulus (such as spoken words). They do not understand language. Words like "sit", "fetch" and "shake hands" are just different kinds of barks to them. There's no meaning, just a learned association.
This is true for broadcast programming and only some cable programming. Most cable channels that would carry movies are premium channels that have no advertising, and many cable channels have no advertising or only promotional advertising for other programs on that channel. The bulk are full of ads, however, as you note.
1. Get the US thrown out of Iraq. When the new Iraqi government is perceived as being unfriendly toward the US, it should reduce the desire by some to destroy it.
2. Start a blog. Respond to comments.
3. Eliminate or make opt-in (by state) most/all federal social programs and subsidies, giving enough time/support to the states that want to start their own. (And, by extension, reduce taxes by the amount that these programs cost.)
4. Halt the practice of legislating-by-withholding-funding. Taxes should not be levied against the states with the intent of sending those funds back to the states they were taken from, with unrelated strings attached. No more "must be 21 to buy alcohol, or your state gets less highway funds."
5. Encourage (force?) alternative voting methods, such as ranked voting. (But then, how did I get voted into office in the first place?)
6. Push for a constitutional amendment restricting the nature of the commerce clause to cover things that have a clear and compelling need to be dealt with at the national scale.
7. Go data-driven. Establish an independent scientific advisory panel, perhaps elected from professional organizations, to report (to the public) on the rational basis for new legislation (likely expenses, likely benefits, with error bars, validity of assumptions, etc.)
8. Apply a data-driven philosophy to existing legislation, such as "war on drugs", etc. Abolish as appropriate.
You appear to have misread my post. My suggestion was that you have the ability to override, and I was asking if my suggestion offered enough "choice".
The choice is there, in the hands of the people. If you would prefer rolling blackouts to something that automatically raises your thermostat temperature by a couple of degrees, that's a perfectly legitimate position and one that you and your community should be able to push for. But until we have the switching equipment necessary to allow apartment dwellers to make that decision individually, it needs to be made at a community level.
Given the choice, in an emergency situation where I'd have to choose between rolling blackouts and a modest increase in the temperature of my apartment, I would choose the temperature increase.
Maybe it needs to be approached like this: The utility offers, free of charge, "upgrades" to thermostats and other switches, that allows the utility to send out these "pages" to start rationing. You're free to override that or not install these devices in the first place. If the rationing is insufficient, rolling blackouts start. Communities that elect to push strongly for adoption and use of these devices would benefit by having fewer (or no) rolling blackouts, while others that dig their heels into the dirt will have more. Is that enough "choice"?