Europe's best employment rate over the past decade has never been as good as the United States' worst.
And how do things like average percentage covered by health care, average number of people above the poverty line, average income, etc, compare? After all, having a low unemployment rate is great, until you discover that most people aren't earning subsistence-level wages...
but the author has his mind set on criticizing Spetner for his Jewish beliefs
Oh please. If that isn't a mischaracterization, I don't know what is. Try to read a little more carefully. He doesn't criticize Spetner's beliefs. He criticizes Spetner's motivations for his book, making the claim that his attempts to debunk evolution come, not from a desire to further science, but from a desire to resolve the conflict between the theory and his religious beliefs. This is a valid point, as it raises question regarding of the motivations of the researcher.
Sure, if you assume evolution is based *purely* on random mutation, Spetner's analysis seems logical. The problem is, evolution *isn't* just about random mutation. It's about random mutation coupled with the non-random element of natural selection based on fitness. Moreover, the idea that you can measure the amount of "information" in an organism is more than a little silly... how do you define "information"? If I had six arms, I'd be less fit for survival (I'd require more energy, be less agile, etc), but my DNA would arguably contain more "information".
You can read a longish countering of Spetner's book here.
Sounds like XUL, XAML, the Glade XML format, or Renaissance (an OpenStep GUI builder) to me... you express the GUI in some logical fashion, and ask the underlying OS toolkit (whatever that is... Gtk, KDE, etc) to render it.
Just because the carbon didn't come from drilling, doesn't mean it hurts the atmosphere less.
Umm, actually it means exactly that. And since you're evidently unable to think for yourself, I will illustrate:
Digging up oil and burning it releases carbon that was previously sequestered underground. Result: significant net positive release of carbon.
Recycling Turkey offal by turning it into oil and burning the result releases carbon that was originally absorbed by plants which were fed to the Turkeys. Result: zero net gain in atmospheric carbon.
In fact, there's likely a net *loss* of carbon, due to the oil manufacturing process, as it produces black carbon as one of it's byproducts.
Dude, these are complimentary technologies. BioDiesel and AgroWaste-based hydrocarbons both provide the same benefit: a closed carbon cycle. The only technical difference is BioDiesel is a glorified way of harnessing solar energy, while AgroWaste-oil provides a way to reclaim energy that's tied up in materials that would otherwise go to the landfill.
Moreover, I believe AgroWaste-oil can be used in polymer production, something not true of BioDiesel.
Seriously... what's with the black-and-white world view?
Re:To put this in perspective for non-go players..
on
Computer Cracks 5x5 Go
·
· Score: 1
Beside keeping your brain active
Actually, this by itself is a great reason to play Go. After starting to play, I've found my visualization skills have improved significantly. Moreover, it's a great way to improve your overall focus and mental stamina. Plus, it's just damn fun.:)
Homosexuality is a choice. People can say "I was born this way" all they want, but that doesn't change the fact that they choose to indulge their desires.
Good grief... okay, thought experiment: the world is full of homosexuals, and the bible says heterosexuality is wrong. Ask yourself: could you spend the rest of your life loveless or part of a homosexual relationship? And answer that question honestly... really reflect on it.
Then ask yourself: is your god really cruel enough to create people who are not *allowed* to be with the people they love. If the answer is yes, I pity you and your choice of religion.
Using this hypothesis, I'd also bet that autistic savants don't have very good awareness of thier 3d environment
Maybe some, but that's definitely not a useful generalizatin. The article itself describes Stephen Wiltshire, who was taken on a single helicopter trip over London, after which he was able to draw an accurate picture of the city skyline. I'd say that qualifies as "awareness of [his] 3d environment".
I am anti-Kyoto, because it does nothing. Germany gets a free pass because it gets to include the dirty East German emissions in it's baseline. Russia gets a free pass because it's economy is in the dumper and it's 1990 baseline is much higher than it's current emissions. Russia also gets to count forest growth as carbon sinks.
So, the guys who haven't increased their emissions, or in fact decreased them, are off the hook... that's a shocker...
It creates carbon tax on productive nations.
You mean the ones that have increased their CO2 emissions?
I fail to see, exactly, how you've proved that "Kyoto does nothing". It seems to me it does exactly what it's supposed to do... forces countries to reduce carbon emission. Unsurprisingly, it most affects those nations which are emitting the most carbon. Even less surprising, it's the successful nations which are emitting the most carbon, thus they are the ones most affected.
This is an *unavoidable* problem. If you want to reduce global carbon emission levels, you attack the source. The sources, shockingly enough, are the developed nations, which have spent the last 100 years mortgaging our futures in order to reach their respective levels of prosperity.
Plus, the grandparent has apparently never heard of economies of scale. Power production benefits *greatly* from scale, resulting in greater efficiency and less pollution. AND, if that weren't enough, centralized generation allows one to take advantage of a myriad of power generation technologies like: solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, nuclear...
Centralized power generation really makes a *lot* more sense than the millions of tiny little gas engines we have today... unfortunately, there's still a ways to go before we have a power storage technology that has the same energy density as gasoline or diesel.
You should be aware that Noam Chomsky is far, far, far from an objective source on the material presented in the book.
And your point is what, exactly? I couldn't care less what his political leanings are, and you shouldn't either, so long as his arguments are well thought out and proven with *evidence*. Of course, he has probably stacked the deck in his favour (as does any documentarian), but that just puts the onus on you to further research the topic and find additional evidence which proves or disproves him.
Yeesh... the real problem is people use a person's politics as an excuse to disregard their arguments and evidence, no matter how compelling, and then proceed to attack the messenger rather than the message itself. Not that this is new... I'm sure Micheal Moore has much to say on the topic. But, it's a lot easier to appeal to someone's emotions rather than their intellect (which is, incidentally, a good summary of the difference between Limbaugh and Chomsky).
One was an individual who would sometimes provide medical services to homeless people for little or no money; his competitors took him to court for "not charging the going rate" and "depriving competitors of a chance to earn a living" (yes, the suit was worded something like that -- I saw the actual legal documents), and the upshot was that his license was suspended by the court.
Interesting. I wonder how long it'll take before a company attempts to level a similar charge at, say, IBM, for helping develop and promote free (gratis) software.
Didn't Loki operate it's own tracker? Because, if this is the case, then it would likely be found liable the same way Napster did (ie, contributory infringement).
However, for sites which simply provide links to torrents, I think things are a little more muddy (despite what other posters may claim), since, if such an action was illegal, then Google and other directory servies could also be found liable, and I think we can agree that that's a pretty ridiculous idea.
which is to show us things we *haven't* seen or thought about before.
Funny... I look at Sci-Fi as a way to look at old problems in a new setting, which then gives the writers more freedom to explore those issues. Take Asimov. Caves of Steel dealt with *nothing* new. Racism, poverty, and of course the issue of humans being replaced by technology, all issues that were at the forefront of people's minds at the time... and yet this is considered top-notch Sci-Fi. BSG is no different, only it deals with war, genocide, terrorism, etc, etc.
S-expressions. There's a 1-to-1 mapping, and the S-expression is less verbose. Just as easy to parse. Only "technical" distinction is that the end-tag doesn't re-state the start-tag, so some errors won't be as obvious.
Wait, so it's just as hard to parse, has the same expressive power, and certain classes of errors are *harder* to track down. And it's only advantage is that it's less verbose, in a day when memory, processing power, and bandwidth continue to increase. Okay...
SGML is another format. No, XML is not quite SGML. SGML does not depend on angle brackets; you can use a different concrete syntax. However, SGML is far more complex than XML.
So this is *worse* than XML...
I think you maybe missed the point of the grandparent's request...
Actually it's illegal without a production company.
Is there any conceivable reason why that might be true? It seems pretty ridiculous to me... "sorry, you can't make a TV show if you don't have a production company behind you. Yes, I realize you have the money resources, and people, but, sorry, it's against the law." It really doesn't make any sense.
Now, I can definitely see issues with copyright and existing legal agreements (e.g., the production company not giving up the rights), but that's a far cry from it actually being "illegal without a production company".
If a Star Trek show is in such a bad state that it needs to rely on fan charity to survive... it isn't worth keeping.
Funny, I was thinking the exact opposite. Clearly, if fans are willing to toss large sums of money at Paramount to have the show continued, I think it clearly demonstrates that people think it's worth keeping, to the tune of 80 million bucks.
Put another way, do you *really* trust the television industry to understand what is and isn't worth keeping? Why is Paramount to be trusted to make the right decision, but the fans aren't?
'scuse me. But getting signals from a silicone chip, implanted on the eye, and not part of a persons natural makeup qualifies as Foreign object to me.
Except, of course, that you suggested that "their brain was able to REORGANIZE itself", which is patently false. The electronics that were installed mimic the stimulus from the retina. Thus, the brain works just as it did before. The impressive part is that they were able to mimic the retina in the first place, and as a result the brain is able to correctly interpret those signals.
Put more succinctly, this article demonstrates *nothing* about how adaptable our brains are, because it's the electronics adapting to the brain, not the brain adapting to the electronics.
Too bad an XPI can't be installed without direct use intervention, eh? Kinda defeats the purpose of spyware. Of course, that doesn't guard against social engineering, but it significantly reduces the problem...
hink about it, they were deprived of sight, and then their brain was able to REORGANIZE itself to understand totally FOREIGN signals and use them as input.
Umm, if I'm reading the article right, this technology is being used to treat people with degenerative disorders. IOW, these are diseases which progress *after* birth, and as such, the patients had vision, then lost it. So, these signals are far from "foreign", in that their visual cortex is trained to respond to simulae from the retina. Although, it is impressive that they were able to stimulate the optic nerve correctly to simulate a coarse retina.
Your point would be far more interesting had these patients never had vision, in which case the brain would really be receiving signals that were completely foreign to it. And, in fact, I thought there were studies in this area (ie, people with congenital vision defects that were corrected), where the brain of the individual was, in fact, unable to correctly interpret the signals from their eyes. Unfortunately, I can't find references, so don't quote me.:)
Yeah, except those ground-based scopes can only see in IR, and only reach peak performance for targets near bright guide-stars (artificial stars can't compensate for jitter). Sorry, but ground-based scopes simply can't replaced instruments in space. Ignoring the atmospheric distortion, the observable frequency range is limited down here on the ground.
Actually, I believe it's the other way around. i.e., the FOSS acronym existed first, and someone thought "But that's not, like, a word, and not *nearly* redundant enough. It needs something... another letter, I think. Hey, what is this 'french' dictionary, I see here? Don't they make fries or something? Ahh well, let's check that it out. Hey, here we go: 'libre'! Walla... FLOSS!" And so another stupid acronym was born...
The GNOME guys have got alot of impressive code. Now to use that code to form a cohesive and easy to use interface that doesn't change drastically with every point release.
Ironic you should say this, given the number of people bitching in the comments about how, based on the screenshots, there doesn't seem to be any appreciable change in the new release.
Slashdot Mirror
Europe's best employment rate over the past decade has never been as good as the United States' worst.
And how do things like average percentage covered by health care, average number of people above the poverty line, average income, etc, compare? After all, having a low unemployment rate is great, until you discover that most people aren't earning subsistence-level wages...
but the author has his mind set on criticizing Spetner for his Jewish beliefs
Oh please. If that isn't a mischaracterization, I don't know what is. Try to read a little more carefully. He doesn't criticize Spetner's beliefs. He criticizes Spetner's motivations for his book, making the claim that his attempts to debunk evolution come, not from a desire to further science, but from a desire to resolve the conflict between the theory and his religious beliefs. This is a valid point, as it raises question regarding of the motivations of the researcher.
Sure, if you assume evolution is based *purely* on random mutation, Spetner's analysis seems logical. The problem is, evolution *isn't* just about random mutation. It's about random mutation coupled with the non-random element of natural selection based on fitness. Moreover, the idea that you can measure the amount of "information" in an organism is more than a little silly... how do you define "information"? If I had six arms, I'd be less fit for survival (I'd require more energy, be less agile, etc), but my DNA would arguably contain more "information".
You can read a longish countering of Spetner's book here.
Sounds like XUL, XAML, the Glade XML format, or Renaissance (an OpenStep GUI builder) to me... you express the GUI in some logical fashion, and ask the underlying OS toolkit (whatever that is... Gtk, KDE, etc) to render it.
Just because the carbon didn't come from drilling, doesn't mean it hurts the atmosphere less.
Umm, actually it means exactly that. And since you're evidently unable to think for yourself, I will illustrate:
Digging up oil and burning it releases carbon that was previously sequestered underground. Result: significant net positive release of carbon.
Recycling Turkey offal by turning it into oil and burning the result releases carbon that was originally absorbed by plants which were fed to the Turkeys. Result: zero net gain in atmospheric carbon.
In fact, there's likely a net *loss* of carbon, due to the oil manufacturing process, as it produces black carbon as one of it's byproducts.
Three words: Closed Carbon Cycle.
Dude, these are complimentary technologies. BioDiesel and AgroWaste-based hydrocarbons both provide the same benefit: a closed carbon cycle. The only technical difference is BioDiesel is a glorified way of harnessing solar energy, while AgroWaste-oil provides a way to reclaim energy that's tied up in materials that would otherwise go to the landfill.
Moreover, I believe AgroWaste-oil can be used in polymer production, something not true of BioDiesel.
Seriously... what's with the black-and-white world view?
Beside keeping your brain active
:)
Actually, this by itself is a great reason to play Go. After starting to play, I've found my visualization skills have improved significantly. Moreover, it's a great way to improve your overall focus and mental stamina. Plus, it's just damn fun.
Homosexuality is a choice. People can say "I was born this way" all they want, but that doesn't change the fact that they choose to indulge their desires.
Good grief... okay, thought experiment: the world is full of homosexuals, and the bible says heterosexuality is wrong. Ask yourself: could you spend the rest of your life loveless or part of a homosexual relationship? And answer that question honestly... really reflect on it.
Then ask yourself: is your god really cruel enough to create people who are not *allowed* to be with the people they love. If the answer is yes, I pity you and your choice of religion.
Using this hypothesis, I'd also bet that autistic savants don't have very good awareness of thier 3d environment
Maybe some, but that's definitely not a useful generalizatin. The article itself describes Stephen Wiltshire, who was taken on a single helicopter trip over London, after which he was able to draw an accurate picture of the city skyline. I'd say that qualifies as "awareness of [his] 3d environment".
I am anti-Kyoto, because it does nothing. Germany gets a free pass because it gets to include the dirty East German emissions in it's baseline. Russia gets a free pass because it's economy is in the dumper and it's 1990 baseline is much higher than it's current emissions. Russia also gets to count forest growth as carbon sinks.
So, the guys who haven't increased their emissions, or in fact decreased them, are off the hook... that's a shocker...
It creates carbon tax on productive nations.
You mean the ones that have increased their CO2 emissions?
I fail to see, exactly, how you've proved that "Kyoto does nothing". It seems to me it does exactly what it's supposed to do... forces countries to reduce carbon emission. Unsurprisingly, it most affects those nations which are emitting the most carbon. Even less surprising, it's the successful nations which are emitting the most carbon, thus they are the ones most affected.
This is an *unavoidable* problem. If you want to reduce global carbon emission levels, you attack the source. The sources, shockingly enough, are the developed nations, which have spent the last 100 years mortgaging our futures in order to reach their respective levels of prosperity.
Plus, the grandparent has apparently never heard of economies of scale. Power production benefits *greatly* from scale, resulting in greater efficiency and less pollution. AND, if that weren't enough, centralized generation allows one to take advantage of a myriad of power generation technologies like: solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, nuclear...
Centralized power generation really makes a *lot* more sense than the millions of tiny little gas engines we have today... unfortunately, there's still a ways to go before we have a power storage technology that has the same energy density as gasoline or diesel.
You should be aware that Noam Chomsky is far, far, far from an objective source on the material presented in the book.
And your point is what, exactly? I couldn't care less what his political leanings are, and you shouldn't either, so long as his arguments are well thought out and proven with *evidence*. Of course, he has probably stacked the deck in his favour (as does any documentarian), but that just puts the onus on you to further research the topic and find additional evidence which proves or disproves him.
Yeesh... the real problem is people use a person's politics as an excuse to disregard their arguments and evidence, no matter how compelling, and then proceed to attack the messenger rather than the message itself. Not that this is new... I'm sure Micheal Moore has much to say on the topic. But, it's a lot easier to appeal to someone's emotions rather than their intellect (which is, incidentally, a good summary of the difference between Limbaugh and Chomsky).
One was an individual who would sometimes provide medical services to homeless people for little or no money; his competitors took him to court for "not charging the going rate" and "depriving competitors of a chance to earn a living" (yes, the suit was worded something like that -- I saw the actual legal documents), and the upshot was that his license was suspended by the court.
Interesting. I wonder how long it'll take before a company attempts to level a similar charge at, say, IBM, for helping develop and promote free (gratis) software.
Didn't Loki operate it's own tracker? Because, if this is the case, then it would likely be found liable the same way Napster did (ie, contributory infringement).
However, for sites which simply provide links to torrents, I think things are a little more muddy (despite what other posters may claim), since, if such an action was illegal, then Google and other directory servies could also be found liable, and I think we can agree that that's a pretty ridiculous idea.
which is to show us things we *haven't* seen or thought about before.
Funny... I look at Sci-Fi as a way to look at old problems in a new setting, which then gives the writers more freedom to explore those issues. Take Asimov. Caves of Steel dealt with *nothing* new. Racism, poverty, and of course the issue of humans being replaced by technology, all issues that were at the forefront of people's minds at the time... and yet this is considered top-notch Sci-Fi. BSG is no different, only it deals with war, genocide, terrorism, etc, etc.
S-expressions. There's a 1-to-1 mapping, and the S-expression is less verbose. Just as easy to parse. Only "technical" distinction is that the end-tag doesn't re-state the start-tag, so some errors won't be as obvious.
Wait, so it's just as hard to parse, has the same expressive power, and certain classes of errors are *harder* to track down. And it's only advantage is that it's less verbose, in a day when memory, processing power, and bandwidth continue to increase. Okay...
SGML is another format. No, XML is not quite SGML. SGML does not depend on angle brackets; you can use a different concrete syntax. However, SGML is far more complex than XML.
So this is *worse* than XML...
I think you maybe missed the point of the grandparent's request...
Actually it's illegal without a production company.
Is there any conceivable reason why that might be true? It seems pretty ridiculous to me... "sorry, you can't make a TV show if you don't have a production company behind you. Yes, I realize you have the money resources, and people, but, sorry, it's against the law." It really doesn't make any sense.
Now, I can definitely see issues with copyright and existing legal agreements (e.g., the production company not giving up the rights), but that's a far cry from it actually being "illegal without a production company".
If a Star Trek show is in such a bad state that it needs to rely on fan charity to survive... it isn't worth keeping.
Funny, I was thinking the exact opposite. Clearly, if fans are willing to toss large sums of money at Paramount to have the show continued, I think it clearly demonstrates that people think it's worth keeping, to the tune of 80 million bucks.
Put another way, do you *really* trust the television industry to understand what is and isn't worth keeping? Why is Paramount to be trusted to make the right decision, but the fans aren't?
'scuse me. But getting signals from a silicone chip, implanted on the eye, and not part of a persons natural makeup qualifies as Foreign object to me.
Except, of course, that you suggested that "their brain was able to REORGANIZE itself", which is patently false. The electronics that were installed mimic the stimulus from the retina. Thus, the brain works just as it did before. The impressive part is that they were able to mimic the retina in the first place, and as a result the brain is able to correctly interpret those signals.
Put more succinctly, this article demonstrates *nothing* about how adaptable our brains are, because it's the electronics adapting to the brain, not the brain adapting to the electronics.
Too bad an XPI can't be installed without direct use intervention, eh? Kinda defeats the purpose of spyware. Of course, that doesn't guard against social engineering, but it significantly reduces the problem...
hink about it, they were deprived of sight, and then their brain was able to REORGANIZE itself to understand totally FOREIGN signals and use them as input.
:)
Umm, if I'm reading the article right, this technology is being used to treat people with degenerative disorders. IOW, these are diseases which progress *after* birth, and as such, the patients had vision, then lost it. So, these signals are far from "foreign", in that their visual cortex is trained to respond to simulae from the retina. Although, it is impressive that they were able to stimulate the optic nerve correctly to simulate a coarse retina.
Your point would be far more interesting had these patients never had vision, in which case the brain would really be receiving signals that were completely foreign to it. And, in fact, I thought there were studies in this area (ie, people with congenital vision defects that were corrected), where the brain of the individual was, in fact, unable to correctly interpret the signals from their eyes. Unfortunately, I can't find references, so don't quote me.
Yeah, except those ground-based scopes can only see in IR, and only reach peak performance for targets near bright guide-stars (artificial stars can't compensate for jitter). Sorry, but ground-based scopes simply can't replaced instruments in space. Ignoring the atmospheric distortion, the observable frequency range is limited down here on the ground.
Actually, I believe it's the other way around. i.e., the FOSS acronym existed first, and someone thought "But that's not, like, a word, and not *nearly* redundant enough. It needs something... another letter, I think. Hey, what is this 'french' dictionary, I see here? Don't they make fries or something? Ahh well, let's check that it out. Hey, here we go: 'libre'! Walla... FLOSS!" And so another stupid acronym was born...
The GNOME guys have got alot of impressive code. Now to use that code to form a cohesive and easy to use interface that doesn't change drastically with every point release.
Ironic you should say this, given the number of people bitching in the comments about how, based on the screenshots, there doesn't seem to be any appreciable change in the new release.