Cantor and Siegel, I believe, back in 1994 was the first USENET spam... meaning 9 years ago. or am I mistaken, and there was an even earlier example?
The earliest instance I could find (on groups.google.com) of the infamous Cantor and Siegel Green Card Lottery spam was posted 7 Feb, 1994.
Sometime in the evening of 17 Jan, 1994, a chap by the name of Clarence Thomas sent out the "Global Alert For All: Jesus Coming Soon" message.
Then of course there was the Dave Rhodes "MAKE.MONEY.FAST" post. I couldn't find the earliest instance, but I found people complaining about it in 1993.:)
Show me one genetic algorithm that happened by accident... I bet people had to "create" them...
Wow... just... wow.
I am going to explain why your idea of evolution is wrong and why your contest is bunk, and then I am going to stop posting.
Let's say you start with a bunch of generic mutt dogs and want to eventually produce chihuahuas. According to your view of evolution, what you would do is just keep breeding them, picking random offspring, breed them, pick random offspring, breed them, etc, until out popped a chihuahua.
Of course, that's ridiculous. What you would do is pick the offspring that are smaller and have shorter hair, and breed them for the next generation, and take their smaller, shorter-haired offspring and breed them for the next generation, and so on.
This is how evolution works. It's not "random". Things that work are saved (ie, the organisms survive) and are used to produce the next generation.
Here's a hypothetical example. Say there's a population of small, brown, furry creatures living in a forest somewhere. Called them, I dunno, frobbits. Now, due to tectonic movement, a mountain range slowly (over millions of years) starts rising right on their habitat. Gradually, the climate gets colder and snowier. Naturally, some of the species will migrate to the lowlands, but some will stay. Of the ones that stay, some will have slightly thicker and lighter-colored fur, and slightly thicker layers of fat. The frobbits that survive to produce the next generation are not just a random sample of all existing frobbits. The ones that survive will be the ones that withstand the cold winters and avoid the predators. The evolutionary direction, as time goes on, will be for their fur and fat get thicker (to survive the cold), and their coloring gets whiter (to hide in the snow). If you wait long enough, the mountain frobbits will not/could not breed with the lowland frobbits and at that point would be considered a separate species. Note that none of this implies a designer, except if you suppose the designer was the one which caused the tectonic motion which caused the mountain range to rise.
In order to make your contest valid, you would have to allow reuse of prior attempts. Start with a random set of characters. Keep the ones that are correct and vary the others, and repeat. Given that, your "hello, world" program could be produced in minutes, if not seconds.
There has to be one point in which a single cell became alive, of which evolution has no explanation.
Look, troll, I just told you that the origin of life is not part of the theory of evolution.
Research shows that at the lowest level this number is in the multimillions
Citation?
Therefore basic logic determines that if something is "not random" then there is a method or design or control involved,
Design? No. Control? Sort of. It's called natural selection.
Only in controlled experiments where the scientist is setting up any environment he wants, not in nature.
Incorrect. Evolution has been observed to happen in nature. You'd know that if you'd bother to read talk.origins.
Yes, it's a usenet group site with people debating, no solid facts worth noting were found in a cursory visit.
No, it's filled with articles written by people who know what they are talking about. And if you'd bother to read to the end of the articles, you'd find plenty of references to articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals where you could go for more in-depth information.
but I'm not about spend more than 15 minutes reading other peoples ideas searching and hoping for facts
And whatever other "natural forces" are required. Gee, you almost make it sound like nature is intelligent.
All you need is something which selects certain members of a species over others. A change in climate, getting eaten by predators, depletion of food/water, etc.
The theory of evolution's core of existence is based on the premis that it was accidental,
Not true at all. Mutations are "accidental", but evolution is directed by natural (or artificial) selection.
What does evolution "care" about? How does a "theory" have feelings? Starting to sound a bit insane and ridiculous yet?
No, but you are. All I meant was that how life actually got started has no bearing on theory of evolution. The origins of life fall under the category of "abiogenesis".
Now wait a second, now you are saying there is some kind of logic involved with evolution?
Logic? Not really. But it isn't 'random'.
You are saying that the _theory_ of evolution (theory meaning _unproven_ )
Yes, unproven. Like the general theory of relativity, the germ theory of disease, and every other theory.
has some kind of methodology which then implies intelligence, which then implies a being, therefore a creator...
Nope. I'm saying it's directed. For instance, if some members of a species develop a mutation to grow thicker fur, and the climate gets colder, then the ones with thicker fur will survive, and the ones with thin fur will freeze. The ones with thick fur didn't survive by accident; they were selected by the environment. You, of course, are free to suppose that God caused the climate to grow colder.
It's funny how the story of evolution has changed so much since it's "creation" when the ubsurdity of it is pointed out...
That's science, my friend. The story of gravity has changed from it being a classical force, the a curvature of spacetime, to an exchange of spin-2 particles.
Also, you misspelled "absurdity".
Evolution by it's very nature had no ability to "decide" anything,
You are wrong. See above about natural selection.
See how stupid this is? It would never happen...
It's already been observed to happen.
As far as your link goes to some general evolution site, just put in some specific links to real data, not more theory from other people...
You mean that creation has remained steady and evolution is like a wobbling tower constantly on the brink of scientific disaster? I'd say that chalks up one for creation.
No, that only proves that creationists refuse to accept evidence against their point of view, while scientists are constantly trying to find the right answer, even if it means throwing out the old ways of thinking.
Look at it this way: Gravity used to be though of as a classical Newtonian force. Then Einstein came along and showed that, no, it's a curvature of four-dimensional spacetime. Now quantum theory says that it's caused by an exchange of particles called gravitons. Quantum theory and general relativity appear to both be correct. However, they are mutually incompatible with each other. Does this mean the concept of 'gravity' is on the brink of scientific disaster?
Think of it this way: has the complexity of life become more explainable by chance since Darwin or less?
Sigh. Evolution does NOT proceed by pure chance. Stop beating dead horses.
Providing a single example of evolution (be sure to differ between evolution and natural selection)
Um. Evolution is the change in allele frequencies over time. One way that happens is random mutation followed by natural selection. In other words, you've asked for an example of evolution that is counter to the definition of evolution.
Just ask a mathmetician what the chances are of life happening by accident.
I'd rather ask a biologist. But it doesn't matter. Life didn't have to start by accident. The laws of chemistry likely had something to do with it. Either way it doesn't matter, evolution doesn't care how life got started; evolution merely takes over once it has.
and from a mathimatical standpoint (not crocery here, but true math and science) that anything past 10 to the 6th, is impossible, and will never ever happen...
Indeed? Take a deck of cards (I'll let you take out the Jokers). Shuffle it. The chances against the cards being in the order you produced is the factorial of 52, or about 8 x 10 to the 67th. I guess it didn't happen?
Take a random text generator, make one in whatever language you want. And have it spit out random text solid for an entire month. If you can get it to even make a "hello world" in ANY programming language under the sun, I will hand you 10 dollars.
Strawman. Evolution doesn't work that way. Evolution works by saving up what works for the next generation. Will you allow my text generator to save something that looks slightly like a hello world program and use that for the next round?
Why did man suddenly lose his fur and walk upright?
Well, it wasn't "sudden" for one thing.
I mean, there has been over a century of countless scientists, all very intelligent, and none of them can describe how the evolution of any creature has occured.
Flat out wrong. Stop reading Chick tracts.
Aren't even the simplest organisms far more complex than even the most complicated machines we can build?
What does "complex" mean?
If the motion of sand cannot create a watch, how can any random motion create a living organism, let alone the hosts of living organisms that inhabit and have inhabited this world?
A) Watches do not half offspring, and B) evolution is not random.
We used to believe that we were literally offspring of God. Now we are lost souls, studying science to erase those panging doubts that creep into our minds, that tell us nothing is worth anything, and all is in vain.
What doubts? Maybe you have doubts, but that's your problem. Myself, I'd rather live in the real world, rather than fill my head with fantasies.
We believe that we are nothing, never were anything, and never can become anything more than we are.
Again, that sounds like your problem. What *I* believe is that we are finally, gradually coming to understand that we have our detiny in our own hands; that no magic being in the sky is going to save us; and that we're better off trying to fix our problems than praying for help.
Which doctor would you rather have?
I'd rather have one who would use the best possibly scientifically-determined treatment to help me, rather than one who's stuck in the 18th century with a head full of notions that have long since been disproved. YMMV.
SPEED is not everything. Freedom, security, and reliability of service also count.
Yeah, and there's also being able to get the service at all. Speakeasy's website said I was (finally) eligible for ADSL, rather than the super-expensive SDSL they had previously said was the only option. So I signed up. Eagerly watching the install progress on the website, I was dismayed when it got stalled at step 4 with a message saying, "Order on hold pending investigation". After a week or so I got an email saying that because Verizon had wired the CO with fiber, they couldn't hook me up.
Fast forward a couple months. I decide to sign up for Cox High Speed Internet. Filled out the form on the web page, went to CompUSA and bought the modem, went to the local Cox office and picked up my self-install kit, and was using the service the same day.
I consistently get 1.4Mb/s down and about 190kb/s up. Reliability has been nearly perfect with 1 minor problem; cycling power on the modem fixed it. Sure the bandwidth is capped to 2GB per day / 30GB per month, but I don't need that much pr0n anyway.
The cable, on the other hand, drops about once or twice a week now; though it's better than the 3 or 4 times a day that it was dropping during the conversion from RoadRunner to Cox.
I signed up for Cox cable Internet here (Northern VA) a couple months ago and have had only 1 blip, which was solved by cycling power to the modem.
Cox was the only option for broadband, since, thanks to Verizon rewiring the CO with fiber, I can't get DSL.
Not true. Imagine if the cover was a square 2 feet on a side, and the lip was 1 inch. The diagonal dimension of the hole is therefore 2.6 feet. All you need to do is flip the cover on edge, turn it so it's diagonal to the hole, and drop it in.
However, in times of war the rules need to be bent a little bit to accommodate.
Baloney. IMO, it's in time of war (what war? Congress never declared war) that we need to adhere most strongly to the rules, because that's when they're most likely to be subverted.
First off, it's "loses" and "satellite". Secondly, you're wrong.:) You're problem is that you are thinking of the satellite just revolving around the planet, while the planet sits there immobile. That's not what happends. The planet and the satellite both orbit around a common center of mass. Consider a stable system of two objects of equal mass. They will each orbit a common center of mass located halfway between them with some velocity. Now slowly remove mass from one of the objects. The rest is left as an exercise.:)
Even worse, there is another effect: the Sun is constantly blowing a solar wind. This wind is only a very tiny fraction of the Sun's mass, but that mass is lost forever from the Sun. It's the Sun's mass that controls how much gravity we feel from it, and since the Sun is losing mass, its gravity gets weaker too. That also moves the Earth very slowly away from the Sun. So if you think the years are flying by faster, it's an illusion! They're getting longer.
Of course, this is the star losing mass, not the planet, but it works both ways; the effect is just much less significant when the planet loses mass.
According to your logic, blowing the dust off a dirty tabletop would mean the table starts to float away from the ground. Apples and oranges. The dust and the table aren't orbiting each other.
Slashdot Mirror
#define NOTHING ;
...
...
if ((flag & VAL1) || (flag & VAL2)
NOTHING;
else
Parse error before 'else'
Thanks, but I'd rather have a hamburger.
And I like my steaks well done. So there!
Cantor and Siegel, I believe, back in 1994 was the first USENET spam... meaning 9 years ago. or am I mistaken, and there was an even earlier example?
:)
The earliest instance I could find (on groups.google.com) of the infamous Cantor and Siegel Green Card Lottery spam was posted 7 Feb, 1994.
Sometime in the evening of 17 Jan, 1994, a chap by the name of Clarence Thomas sent out the "Global Alert For All: Jesus Coming Soon" message.
Then of course there was the Dave Rhodes "MAKE.MONEY.FAST" post. I couldn't find the earliest instance, but I found people complaining about it in 1993.
Show me one genetic algorithm that happened by accident... I bet people had to "create" them...
Wow... just... wow.
I am going to explain why your idea of evolution is wrong and why your contest is bunk, and then I am going to stop posting.
Let's say you start with a bunch of generic mutt dogs and want to eventually produce chihuahuas. According to your view of evolution, what you would do is just keep breeding them, picking random offspring, breed them, pick random offspring, breed them, etc, until out popped a chihuahua.
Of course, that's ridiculous. What you would do is pick the offspring that are smaller and have shorter hair, and breed them for the next generation, and take their smaller, shorter-haired offspring and breed them for the next generation, and so on.
This is how evolution works. It's not "random". Things that work are saved (ie, the organisms survive) and are used to produce the next generation.
Here's a hypothetical example. Say there's a population of small, brown, furry creatures living in a forest somewhere. Called them, I dunno, frobbits. Now, due to tectonic movement, a mountain range slowly (over millions of years) starts rising right on their habitat. Gradually, the climate gets colder and snowier. Naturally, some of the species will migrate to the lowlands, but some will stay. Of the ones that stay, some will have slightly thicker and lighter-colored fur, and slightly thicker layers of fat. The frobbits that survive to produce the next generation are not just a random sample of all existing frobbits. The ones that survive will be the ones that withstand the cold winters and avoid the predators. The evolutionary direction, as time goes on, will be for their fur and fat get thicker (to survive the cold), and their coloring gets whiter (to hide in the snow). If you wait long enough, the mountain frobbits will not/could not breed with the lowland frobbits and at that point would be considered a separate species. Note that none of this implies a designer, except if you suppose the designer was the one which caused the tectonic motion which caused the mountain range to rise.
In order to make your contest valid, you would have to allow reuse of prior attempts. Start with a random set of characters. Keep the ones that are correct and vary the others, and repeat. Given that, your "hello, world" program could be produced in minutes, if not seconds.
There has to be one point in which a single cell became alive, of which evolution has no explanation.
Look, troll, I just told you that the origin of life is not part of the theory of evolution.
Research shows that at the lowest level this number is in the multimillions
Citation?
Therefore basic logic determines that if something is "not random" then there is a method or design or control involved,
Design? No. Control? Sort of. It's called natural selection.
Only in controlled experiments where the scientist is setting up any environment he wants, not in nature.
Incorrect. Evolution has been observed to happen in nature. You'd know that if you'd bother to read talk.origins.
Yes, it's a usenet group site with people debating, no solid facts worth noting were found in a cursory visit.
No, it's filled with articles written by people who know what they are talking about. And if you'd bother to read to the end of the articles, you'd find plenty of references to articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals where you could go for more in-depth information.
but I'm not about spend more than 15 minutes reading other peoples ideas searching and hoping for facts
In other words, you want to be spoon-fed.
As I am sure you wouldn't do this either.
You'd be wrong. Again.
Make a random text generator that only spits out the words above.
I already explained to you that evolution doesn't work that way, so your 'test' is invalid. Also, I guess you've never heard of genetic algorithms?
I'll accept any evidence against my point of view.
OK, have you read all of this yet?
And whatever other "natural forces" are required. Gee, you almost make it sound like nature is intelligent.
All you need is something which selects certain members of a species over others. A change in climate, getting eaten by predators, depletion of food/water, etc.
The theory of evolution's core of existence is based on the premis that it was accidental,
Not true at all. Mutations are "accidental", but evolution is directed by natural (or artificial) selection.
What does evolution "care" about? How does a "theory" have feelings? Starting to sound a bit insane and ridiculous yet?
No, but you are. All I meant was that how life actually got started has no bearing on theory of evolution. The origins of life fall under the category of "abiogenesis".
Now wait a second, now you are saying there is some kind of logic involved with evolution?
Logic? Not really. But it isn't 'random'.
You are saying that the _theory_ of evolution (theory meaning _unproven_ )
Yes, unproven. Like the general theory of relativity, the germ theory of disease, and every other theory.
has some kind of methodology which then implies intelligence, which then implies a being, therefore a creator...
Nope. I'm saying it's directed. For instance, if some members of a species develop a mutation to grow thicker fur, and the climate gets colder, then the ones with thicker fur will survive, and the ones with thin fur will freeze. The ones with thick fur didn't survive by accident; they were selected by the environment. You, of course, are free to suppose that God caused the climate to grow colder.
It's funny how the story of evolution has changed so much since it's "creation" when the ubsurdity of it is pointed out...
That's science, my friend. The story of gravity has changed from it being a classical force, the a curvature of spacetime, to an exchange of spin-2 particles.
Also, you misspelled "absurdity".
Evolution by it's very nature had no ability to "decide" anything,
You are wrong. See above about natural selection.
See how stupid this is? It would never happen...
It's already been observed to happen.
As far as your link goes to some general evolution site, just put in some specific links to real data, not more theory from other people...
Did you even read the site? Didn't think so. Bye.
So quit asking "How? Why?" and start asking "How may I serve?"
Yeah, close your mind. Stop trying to learn. Knowledge is bad. Freedom is slavery. Great.
Or don't. Stay miserable. Your call.
I don't believe in a god, and I'm not miserable. Is your life so hollow that you can't be happy without a god? That's rather sad.
You mean that creation has remained steady and evolution is like a wobbling tower constantly on the brink of scientific disaster? I'd say that chalks up one for creation.
No, that only proves that creationists refuse to accept evidence against their point of view, while scientists are constantly trying to find the right answer, even if it means throwing out the old ways of thinking.
Look at it this way: Gravity used to be though of as a classical Newtonian force. Then Einstein came along and showed that, no, it's a curvature of four-dimensional spacetime. Now quantum theory says that it's caused by an exchange of particles called gravitons. Quantum theory and general relativity appear to both be correct. However, they are mutually incompatible with each other. Does this mean the concept of 'gravity' is on the brink of scientific disaster?
Think of it this way: has the complexity of life become more explainable by chance since Darwin or less?
Sigh. Evolution does NOT proceed by pure chance. Stop beating dead horses.
Proving that the earth is indeed old enough to allow for evolution.
Already done.
Proving that time can create new genetic information.
Already done.
Providing a single example of evolution (be sure to differ between evolution and natural selection)
Um. Evolution is the change in allele frequencies over time. One way that happens is random mutation followed by natural selection. In other words, you've asked for an example of evolution that is counter to the definition of evolution.
Every evidence (every one) supporting evolution has been debunked time and time again.
Incorrect. Start here.
Just ask a mathmetician what the chances are of life happening by accident.
I'd rather ask a biologist. But it doesn't matter. Life didn't have to start by accident. The laws of chemistry likely had something to do with it. Either way it doesn't matter, evolution doesn't care how life got started; evolution merely takes over once it has.
and from a mathimatical standpoint (not crocery here, but true math and science) that anything past 10 to the 6th, is impossible, and will never ever happen...
Indeed? Take a deck of cards (I'll let you take out the Jokers). Shuffle it. The chances against the cards being in the order you produced is the factorial of 52, or about 8 x 10 to the 67th. I guess it didn't happen?
Take a random text generator, make one in whatever language you want. And have it spit out random text solid for an entire month. If you can get it to even make a "hello world" in ANY programming language under the sun, I will hand you 10 dollars.
Strawman. Evolution doesn't work that way. Evolution works by saving up what works for the next generation. Will you allow my text generator to save something that looks slightly like a hello world program and use that for the next round?
I don't believe that one species can evolve into another. It has not yet been demonstrated, nor will it ever.
Oh. Really?
Why did man suddenly lose his fur and walk upright?
Well, it wasn't "sudden" for one thing.
I mean, there has been over a century of countless scientists, all very intelligent, and none of them can describe how the evolution of any creature has occured.
Flat out wrong. Stop reading Chick tracts.
Aren't even the simplest organisms far more complex than even the most complicated machines we can build?
What does "complex" mean?
If the motion of sand cannot create a watch, how can any random motion create a living organism, let alone the hosts of living organisms that inhabit and have inhabited this world?
A) Watches do not half offspring, and B) evolution is not random.
We used to believe that we were literally offspring of God. Now we are lost souls, studying science to erase those panging doubts that creep into our minds, that tell us nothing is worth anything, and all is in vain.
What doubts? Maybe you have doubts, but that's your problem. Myself, I'd rather live in the real world, rather than fill my head with fantasies.
We believe that we are nothing, never were anything, and never can become anything more than we are.
Again, that sounds like your problem. What *I* believe is that we are finally, gradually coming to understand that we have our detiny in our own hands; that no magic being in the sky is going to save us; and that we're better off trying to fix our problems than praying for help.
Which doctor would you rather have?
I'd rather have one who would use the best possibly scientifically-determined treatment to help me, rather than one who's stuck in the 18th century with a head full of notions that have long since been disproved. YMMV.
That's a perfectly valid hypothesis. In the absence of any other facts, there's nothing wrong with that hypothesis.
That's true. However, in the absence of any evidence, it's garbage as a theory.
SPEED is not everything. Freedom, security, and reliability of service also count.
Yeah, and there's also being able to get the service at all. Speakeasy's website said I was (finally) eligible for ADSL, rather than the super-expensive SDSL they had previously said was the only option. So I signed up. Eagerly watching the install progress on the website, I was dismayed when it got stalled at step 4 with a message saying, "Order on hold pending investigation". After a week or so I got an email saying that because Verizon had wired the CO with fiber, they couldn't hook me up.
Fast forward a couple months. I decide to sign up for Cox High Speed Internet. Filled out the form on the web page, went to CompUSA and bought the modem, went to the local Cox office and picked up my self-install kit, and was using the service the same day.
I consistently get 1.4Mb/s down and about 190kb/s up. Reliability has been nearly perfect with 1 minor problem; cycling power on the modem fixed it. Sure the bandwidth is capped to 2GB per day / 30GB per month, but I don't need that much pr0n anyway.
In short, DSL is not an option, but cable rocks.
The cable, on the other hand, drops about once or twice a week now; though it's better than the 3 or 4 times a day that it was dropping during the conversion from RoadRunner to Cox.
I signed up for Cox cable Internet here (Northern VA) a couple months ago and have had only 1 blip, which was solved by cycling power to the modem.
Cox was the only option for broadband, since, thanks to Verizon rewiring the CO with fiber, I can't get DSL.
Not true. Imagine if the cover was a square 2 feet on a side, and the lip was 1 inch. The diagonal dimension of the hole is therefore 2.6 feet. All you need to do is flip the cover on edge, turn it so it's diagonal to the hole, and drop it in.
No, they don't. C doesn't require an explicit cast to convert any pointer to a void *, and vice versa. C++ does.
No, C doesn't require an explicit cast to convert from a void *, and C++ does. You can convert to a void * freely in either language.
I hope Mozilla developpers impliment the middle-click scrolling soon,
In the meantime, there's this
However, in times of war the rules need to be bent a little bit to accommodate.
Baloney. IMO, it's in time of war (what war? Congress never declared war) that we need to adhere most strongly to the rules, because that's when they're most likely to be subverted.
They KNOW the shuttle was damaged before re-entry.
No, they didn't.
They declined to have it properly inspected before re-entry.
They didn't have the *ability* to inspect it.
I'm no NASA expert
In that case, stop acting like one.
Additionally, Windows does not have "automatically reboot" enabled by default.
:-b
Incorrect. Windows XP Pro has auto-reboot turned on by default on a clean install. At least, mine did.
Yes, but not if the satelite looses mass.
:) You're problem is that you are thinking of the satellite just revolving around the planet, while the planet sits there immobile. That's not what happends. The planet and the satellite both orbit around a common center of mass. Consider a stable system of two objects of equal mass. They will each orbit a common center of mass located halfway between them with some velocity. Now slowly remove mass from one of the objects. The rest is left as an exercise. :)
First off, it's "loses" and "satellite". Secondly, you're wrong.
Of course, this is the star losing mass, not the planet, but it works both ways; the effect is just much less significant when the planet loses mass.
According to your logic, blowing the dust off a dirty tabletop would mean the table starts to float away from the ground.
Apples and oranges. The dust and the table aren't orbiting each other.