Anyone who says evolution is a scientifically proven fact doesn't know anything about science. In order for anything to be accepted by the scientific community as even a strong theory, it needs to have documented experiments showing very strong evidence, and a completely solid, reproducible experimental design. This reproducibility is where evolution falls flat on it's face. Evolution is also the only field where this procedure is conveniently not required by the scientific community.
Since the theory of evolution states that everything evolved by pure chance without any intelligent design, the mere fact that a scientist designed the experiment to try to prove evolution denies the experiment the ability to prove the theory. Then there's the fact that an experiment would have to be able to span billions of years, and be under constant observation for that length of time, to be able to prove, scientifically, that evolution is a fact.
Evolution is a scientifically proven fact, and yes, there have been experiments. Experiments do not have to span billions of years to prove genetics and heredity. They can be proven within a single generation. The evolutionary process is a simple extrapolation of the process of heredity over time, a process with which even the Bible agrees. (See for instance the story of Jacob the world-famous breeder of cattle, who understood that cattle with spots were more likely to have calves with spots even when bred to cattle without spots, and took advantage of this.)
Evolution is not some magical theory that has not been subjected to science as some claim. It is the result of observation over centuries of time and countless experiments. It is readily observable even to the layman. If any theory arose to challenge it and were repeatable through experimentation as evolution is, and it better explained how things work in the real world it would quickly supplant the evolutionary theory. That is how science works.
Evolution also does not rely on the absence of an intelligent designer. Remember that Darwin was himself a minister. The question of whether there is an intelligent designer is irrelevant to the question of how the design works. Clearly there is a design, and it is fairly intricate. Whether there is an intellignet watchmaker is something for theologians and philosophers to agrue about; it has little to do with science.
Then I could go into the statistical likelihood of various proteins coming together by chance to form even the simplest form of what could be considered 'life', and the resulting calculation shows that it would take 1*10^139,000 years for it to happen. 1 with 139,000 zeroes is a pretty huge number, and that's just for the first blob of organic goo...not even a single cell.
You could go on, but you have no basis. How can you presume to understand every variable in the universe which affects the creation of life and therefore accurately calculate its probability? Did God whisper that in your ear or something?
The title of the report claims to be addressing national security issues. The report itself only considers a single software vendor. The report is passing itself off in a false light.
The report said that reliance on a single software vendor exposes one to undue security risks. Do you have any basis whatsoever for disagreeig with that conclusion?
The report also pointed out that Microsoft encourages people to rely on their products and their products alone for their solutions, and this has increased the impact of the recent worm attacks. I don't think there was anything in the report that is not an absolute fact and actually something anyone with even cursory knowlege of IT would agree with.
Let's get it right. This is not a 'free speech' issue. It is an corporate and scientific honesty issue. In fact, it was the employer excercising their rights to fire an employee for making statements they didn't like, and it affirms, rather than denies the Bill of Rights. You may not like that, but that's the way it is. The First Amendment restricts government, not employers. Therefore, Gere's employers were within their Constitutional rights to let him go for not toeing the company line. In doing so, they discredit themselves and the rest of us can exercise OUR rights to take anything they say with a grain of salt, realizing as we do that they're in a certain corporation's pocket. You can wave the Constitution in the face of private industry all you like...but it doesn't apply, and it just gets tiresome.
Be that as it may, it highlights a significant loophole we have in the US. Granted, the government is supposed to be barred from discriminatory practices and violation of civil rights, but that is fine with them so long as society itself and corporations do the discrimination for them.
With a very few extreme exceptions (individuals who kill people of a different race, employers who openly do not hire someone because of race) corporations and individuals are allowed to violate people's civil rights. In my view the government should not allow that, and exists to protect people's rihgts, but the goverment and our society have turned this upside down.
All that aside, the most interesting thing about this case was that Greer was fired from his job for daring to suggest that companies should buy products from vendors other than, but in addition to, Microsoft. Even if you do not consider this a violation of his rights, surely you must understand what this means with respect to the integrity of the security advice of @Stake.
More than that, it is an indication of how much more powerful Microsoft has become in the face of Bush's interference in the antitrust trial which made it ineffectual. Now that they do not have to worry about anyone interfering in their business, and have gotten away with directly threatening and ripping off governments including the US Federal government, they know they can do whatever they want. And they are. They have been bolder than ever before and the effect on our nation's economy and IT industry are readily apparent.
Its because their traffic is going through Akamai and Level 3 who both use Linux.
Which ws their response to the recent worm problems. Frankly, I thik all MS customers hsould take note of this. MS clearly does not feel their servers belong on the internet because of the threat of worms. They recommend using Linux for all internet-facing servers. There you go!:)
It will be interesting to see how the Indian government goes on this one.
TDIL has value in making computers more accessible to much of their population. For some, this is a money-making opportunity to charge for access to the technology that will be deployed to a billion potential customers. For others, this is an opportunity to speed up introduction of technology to the country. It could be both.
They could go with something like a GPL on TDIL that MS would detest, but would enable free software development in India, which later could be used as a platform by commercial firms in India for specific applications. But the government would not reap any immediate financial gain from this; only the long term gains from an increased tax base of a larger, faster growing economy in general.
They could go with selling out to MS entirely, which would give the government more money in the short term, but would impede internal software development because it would necessitate all the Indian software developers acquiring MS specific tools to do their jobs and to compete with MS. Deployment of IT in the country would be less because it would be limited to those who could afford it.
Possibly going with a BSD license would provide the biggest initial boost in software development in India, but the long term benefits are less clear.
Personally, I'd welcome the many intelligent Indian programmers to the world of FOSS. Their contributions would help to make for improved quality and continued low cost for free software. Indigenous businesses in India would be in a better position to take more advantage of information technology and its productivity gains if there was both free software and many local programmers available for customizing it for business needs.
While I agree that this is an insightful description of the situation at hand, I think it is funny you got a +5 insightful without reading the article.
If you do get round to doing so, you will find that "how the Indian government goes on this one" is that they have put TDIL in the public domain. IF India Times is correct on this and not making the common mistake of Free Software License == Public Domain, it means that Free software and Microsoft can both use the technology without any restrictions whatever.
Now, if that's the case, why in the hell was Bill Gates in India trying to get this? Something doesn't add up.
Consensus seems to be that Bill was trying to make sure no other OS would ever be allowed to have this support. This seems consistent with what has indeed happened.
If you're referring to zeldman.com, there's a style sheet option on the left that lets you make it black text. Make sense?
And it was so intuitive I never would have seen it if you had not pointed it out. What a wise guru, that wily zeldman... hiding controls as easter eggs.:P
So what you're saying is that Slashdot is dying? This seems to be consistent with the number of SCO posts, don't have to be a Kreskin, yadda yadda yadda..;)
I suggest that knowledgeable people attend and, in a gentle, friendly way, point out the technical shortcomings of SCO products. We've certainly heard a lot about that here on Slashdot.
Unfortunately none of it has come from people knowlegeable with SCO Products. Then again, that never stopped a slashdotter before....
"Looks like the Chinese Government is going to have to do their own compile and compare binaries..."
Yeah, we all know China doesn't have the money or the manpower to do that! Ha ha ha!
They will transmit the source to their prison slave labour force using tyco drums, then the prisoners will have to compile the lot manually using stolen british technology.:)
Bradley says the "strength of the country" is at stake because relatively few students go into science or technology. Further, he says, ordinary citizens need to understand science and technology better to make informed choices in the voting booth.
Actually, I had a very different reaction to this. Bradley says not enough students are taking computer science. Companies say there are not enough computer science workers so they have to bring in H1-B workers. But the jobs are being outsourced and visaed away, and have not come back.
Who in their right mind expects more students to take computer science when even during the boom a CS degree was mostly meaningless and now after the boom it means almost certain unemployment? Why should more people want to get into an industry that is being pissed away?
My advice to students would e exactly the opposite of Bradley's. Stay the hell away from this field for awhile. Yes, the strength of the country is at stake. Yes future innovation will probably come from Asia where all the jobs are going and the plans are being made nowadays. But unless you can get fnding and run your own company there is little we can do about it except that last bit about getting smart in the voting booth.
I wonder if Bush knows that unemployed people have plenty of time to show up to voting booths and figure out butterfly ballots?
Err Apple had the prior art. If you look at any Apple ][ of the original series you will almost always find that there has been an after market add on to cover up the reset key which was placed in a ludicrously easy to hit by mistake location.
And the IIe and IIgs fixed that by making the sequence ctrl openApple reset. A very similar fix. Also the reset key was way off in the corner IIRC on those models.
Saw this on CNN the other day when they talked about the recall of the segways. Bush's segway wasn't turned on when he stepped onto it.
Typicall CNN propaganda. The movie I saw sure made it look like the segway was turned on, but that Bush had run into something because he was not paying attention.
Well "back in the day" for me was with a 14.4k modem, but I also used telnet and it's all you really need for MUDs. Maybe that changed to SSH now though, dunno... haven't mud'ed since like 1996 or so. I still like to whip out a game of Rogue or Nethack every now and then though.:) And I hope maybe one day I'll be able to play some good old fashioned table-top RPG again (hopefully using the ol' crusty D&D boxed sets from the mid-80's... those were the best, *sniff*)
Telnet is more than enough if you have a decent OS or a dumb terminal. The problem that drives people to mud clients is Microsoft Telnet. It truly, truly sucks and will send you crying for an old-school DEC terminal (which is more user-friendly and has better features) in seconds.
Now if you use Putty on windows or use plain old telnet in an xterm on Linux you will have all you really need for mudding and more.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone who says evolution is a scientifically proven fact doesn't know anything about science.
In order for anything to be accepted by the scientific community as even a strong theory, it needs to have documented experiments showing very strong evidence, and a completely solid, reproducible experimental design.
This reproducibility is where evolution falls flat on it's face. Evolution is also the only field where this procedure is conveniently not required by the scientific community.
Since the theory of evolution states that everything evolved by pure chance without any intelligent design, the mere fact that a scientist designed the experiment to try to prove evolution denies the experiment the ability to prove the theory.
Then there's the fact that an experiment would have to be able to span billions of years, and be under constant observation for that length of time, to be able to prove, scientifically, that evolution is a fact.
Evolution is a scientifically proven fact, and yes, there have been experiments. Experiments do not have to span billions of years to prove genetics and heredity. They can be proven within a single generation. The evolutionary process is a simple extrapolation of the process of heredity over time, a process with which even the Bible agrees. (See for instance the story of Jacob the world-famous breeder of cattle, who understood that cattle with spots were more likely to have calves with spots even when bred to cattle without spots, and took advantage of this.)
Evolution is not some magical theory that has not been subjected to science as some claim. It is the result of observation over centuries of time and countless experiments. It is readily observable even to the layman. If any theory arose to challenge it and were repeatable through experimentation as evolution is, and it better explained how things work in the real world it would quickly supplant the evolutionary theory. That is how science works.
Evolution also does not rely on the absence of an intelligent designer. Remember that Darwin was himself a minister. The question of whether there is an intelligent designer is irrelevant to the question of how the design works. Clearly there is a design, and it is fairly intricate. Whether there is an intellignet watchmaker is something for theologians and philosophers to agrue about; it has little to do with science.
Then I could go into the statistical likelihood of various proteins coming together by chance to form even the simplest form of what could be considered 'life', and the resulting calculation shows that it would take 1*10^139,000 years for it to happen. 1 with 139,000 zeroes is a pretty huge number, and that's just for the first blob of organic goo...not even a single cell.
You could go on, but you have no basis. How can you presume to understand every variable in the universe which affects the creation of life and therefore accurately calculate its probability? Did God whisper that in your ear or something?
The title of the report claims to be addressing national security issues. The report itself only considers a single software vendor. The report is passing itself off in a false light.
The report said that reliance on a single software vendor exposes one to undue security risks. Do you have any basis whatsoever for disagreeig with that conclusion?
The report also pointed out that Microsoft encourages people to rely on their products and their products alone for their solutions, and this has increased the impact of the recent worm attacks. I don't think there was anything in the report that is not an absolute fact and actually something anyone with even cursory knowlege of IT would agree with.
Let's get it right. This is not a 'free speech' issue. It is an corporate and scientific honesty issue. In fact, it was the employer excercising their rights to fire an employee for making statements they didn't like, and it affirms, rather than denies the Bill of Rights. You may not like that, but that's the way it is. The First Amendment restricts government, not employers. Therefore, Gere's employers were within their Constitutional rights to let him go for not toeing the company line. In doing so, they discredit themselves and the rest of us can exercise OUR rights to take anything they say with a grain of salt, realizing as we do that they're in a certain corporation's pocket. You can wave the Constitution in the face of private industry all you like...but it doesn't apply, and it just gets tiresome.
Be that as it may, it highlights a significant loophole we have in the US. Granted, the government is supposed to be barred from discriminatory practices and violation of civil rights, but that is fine with them so long as society itself and corporations do the discrimination for them.
With a very few extreme exceptions (individuals who kill people of a different race, employers who openly do not hire someone because of race) corporations and individuals are allowed to violate people's civil rights. In my view the government should not allow that, and exists to protect people's rihgts, but the goverment and our society have turned this upside down.
All that aside, the most interesting thing about this case was that Greer was fired from his job for daring to suggest that companies should buy products from vendors other than, but in addition to, Microsoft. Even if you do not consider this a violation of his rights, surely you must understand what this means with respect to the integrity of the security advice of @Stake.
More than that, it is an indication of how much more powerful Microsoft has become in the face of Bush's interference in the antitrust trial which made it ineffectual. Now that they do not have to worry about anyone interfering in their business, and have gotten away with directly threatening and ripping off governments including the US Federal government, they know they can do whatever they want. And they are. They have been bolder than ever before and the effect on our nation's economy and IT industry are readily apparent.
Its because their traffic is going through Akamai and Level 3 who both use Linux.
Which ws their response to the recent worm problems. Frankly, I thik all MS customers hsould take note of this. MS clearly does not feel their servers belong on the internet because of the threat of worms. They recommend using Linux for all internet-facing servers. There you go! :)
It will be interesting to see how the Indian government goes on this one.
TDIL has value in making computers more accessible to much of their population. For some, this is a money-making opportunity to charge for access to the technology that will be deployed to a billion potential customers. For others, this is an opportunity to speed up introduction of technology to the country. It could be both.
They could go with something like a GPL on TDIL that MS would detest, but would enable free software development in India, which later could be used as a platform by commercial firms in India for specific applications. But the government would not reap any immediate financial gain from this; only the long term gains from an increased tax base of a larger, faster growing economy in general.
They could go with selling out to MS entirely, which would give the government more money in the short term, but would impede internal software development because it would necessitate all the Indian software developers acquiring MS specific tools to do their jobs and to compete with MS. Deployment of IT in the country would be less because it would be limited to those who could afford it.
Possibly going with a BSD license would provide the biggest initial boost in software development in India, but the long term benefits are less clear.
Personally, I'd welcome the many intelligent Indian programmers to the world of FOSS. Their contributions would help to make for improved quality and continued low cost for free software. Indigenous businesses in India would be in a better position to take more advantage of information technology and its productivity gains if there was both free software and many local programmers available for customizing it for business needs.
While I agree that this is an insightful description of the situation at hand, I think it is funny you got a +5 insightful without reading the article.
If you do get round to doing so, you will find that "how the Indian government goes on this one" is that they have put TDIL in the public domain. IF India Times is correct on this and not making the common mistake of Free Software License == Public Domain, it means that Free software and Microsoft can both use the technology without any restrictions whatever.
But this is even worse, since the classic argument is that even with access to the source of the compiler, you can still be trojaned.
In this case, you won't even have source for the compiler, which makes it trivial to trojan.
Considering how large the compiler in question is, and the fact we are talking about Microsoft here, it is almost certainly trojaned in some way. :P
Now, if that's the case, why in the hell was Bill Gates in India trying to get this? Something doesn't add up.
Consensus seems to be that Bill was trying to make sure no other OS would ever be allowed to have this support. This seems consistent with what has indeed happened.
If you're referring to zeldman.com, there's a style sheet option on the left that lets you make it black text. Make sense?
And it was so intuitive I never would have seen it if you had not pointed it out. What a wise guru, that wily zeldman... hiding controls as easter eggs. :P
"First, never talk in absolutes about theory."
I believe you just did.
Damn you, micromoog! Don't you know that all generalizations are false?! :P
I haven't done my research on Dean or anyone else, but maybe this is a good opportunity?
I found the cnn writeup on the candidates helpful for a start. They have nice shiny graphs! Oooh nice shiny graaaaphs.....
But seriously, they do link to the candidates' websites as well. Get informed! As Chris Rock said, "Get your learn on!"
Well I'm glad he's useful for a joke on Slashdot, because thats about all he's good for.
He used to be good for a joke on late night TV. Oh how the mighty have fallen....
I am an aerospace engineer
And the other guy is an insensitive clod! :)
Meanwhile, it appears that Dean wisely changed from windows 2000 to freebsd whereas Clark is using Linux. Which will win? :)
And of course the Evil One is running Windows. Surprise surprise!
Let's hope the best free software candidate wins!
So what you're saying is that Slashdot is dying? This seems to be consistent with the number of SCO posts, don't have to be a Kreskin, yadda yadda yadda.. ;)
I suggest that knowledgeable people attend and, in a gentle, friendly way, point out the technical shortcomings of SCO products. We've certainly heard a lot about that here on Slashdot.
Unfortunately none of it has come from people knowlegeable with SCO Products. Then again, that never stopped a slashdotter before....
Looks like the typical slashdotter to me. :)
i gotta build myself a hand powered webserver for redunduncy purposes!
A pr0n server that can be powered with one hand? Excellent! :)
"Looks like the Chinese Government is going to have to do their own compile and compare binaries ..."
Yeah, we all know China doesn't have the money or the manpower to do that! Ha ha ha!
They will transmit the source to their prison slave labour force using tyco drums, then the prisoners will have to compile the lot manually using stolen british technology. :)
Bradley says the "strength of the country" is at stake because relatively few students go into science or technology. Further, he says, ordinary citizens need to understand science and technology better to make informed choices in the voting booth.
Actually, I had a very different reaction to this. Bradley says not enough students are taking computer science. Companies say there are not enough computer science workers so they have to bring in H1-B workers. But the jobs are being outsourced and visaed away, and have not come back.
Who in their right mind expects more students to take computer science when even during the boom a CS degree was mostly meaningless and now after the boom it means almost certain unemployment? Why should more people want to get into an industry that is being pissed away?
My advice to students would e exactly the opposite of Bradley's. Stay the hell away from this field for awhile. Yes, the strength of the country is at stake. Yes future innovation will probably come from Asia where all the jobs are going and the plans are being made nowadays. But unless you can get fnding and run your own company there is little we can do about it except that last bit about getting smart in the voting booth.
I wonder if Bush knows that unemployed people have plenty of time to show up to voting booths and figure out butterfly ballots?
Err Apple had the prior art. If you look at any Apple ][ of the original series you will almost always find that there has been an after market add on to cover up the reset key which was placed in a ludicrously easy to hit by mistake location.
And the IIe and IIgs fixed that by making the sequence ctrl openApple reset. A very similar fix. Also the reset key was way off in the corner IIRC on those models.
Saw this on CNN the other day when they talked about the recall of the segways. Bush's segway wasn't turned on when he stepped onto it.
Typicall CNN propaganda. The movie I saw sure made it look like the segway was turned on, but that Bush had run into something because he was not paying attention.
I don't see why a tech site like slashdot is so against him, when he has done so much in promoting technology to the masses.
Simple. You cannot download his work for free, and it is not even Open Source! The cruel bastard! :)
Well "back in the day" for me was with a 14.4k modem, but I also used telnet and it's all you really need for MUDs. Maybe that changed to SSH now though, dunno... haven't mud'ed since like 1996 or so. I still like to whip out a game of Rogue or Nethack every now and then though. :) And I hope maybe one day I'll be able to play some good old fashioned table-top RPG again (hopefully using the ol' crusty D&D boxed sets from the mid-80's... those were the best, *sniff*)
Telnet is more than enough if you have a decent OS or a dumb terminal. The problem that drives people to mud clients is Microsoft Telnet. It truly, truly sucks and will send you crying for an old-school DEC terminal (which is more user-friendly and has better features) in seconds.
Now if you use Putty on windows or use plain old telnet in an xterm on Linux you will have all you really need for mudding and more.
vi should come before Emacs because it's a superior editor.
And both are far more fully-featured (and easier to use) than notepad.
Theo de Raadt & Linus Torvalds have both left their pet projects to start coding for Plan 9, another great operating system that never was.
Maybe the OS never was, but they had one hell of a mascot! :)