There were many groups of animals and plants that vanish or change radically at the K/T boundary, not just dinosaurs. It's possible that a virus would kill off one species. The likelihood decreases, I suspect, as you add more and more loosely related groups. It seems more likely that environmental change killed all of dinos, nautiloids, lots of mammals and birds (even though most survived, some did not), plankton, etc., than that a plague did it.
Ah, you probably haven't yet had your first dose of Moderator Crack. When you do, I suggest you look for bizarre trolls to mod up as "Informative", legitimate questions to mod "Funny", and anything that contradicts the groupthink to mod as "Offtopic", "Troll", or "Flamebait". This is the Slashdot Way.
Oh, good idea. Recommend animals that MUST chew on things to prevent their teeth from growing too long. I don't know about chinchillas or hamsters (which I guess you normally keep in a cage), but rabbits chew on everything within reach of their nasty sharp pointy teeth. Might be some good advice for the cat as well here: Rabbit-proofing
Think of that less as "Ten times as accurate" and more as "One-tenth as inaccurate" meaning humans will miscategorize ten times as many messages. 99.84% accuracy = 0.16% inaccuracy, and one-tenth of that would be 99.984% accurate.
The problem is that English is not very precise, since it's just as accurate to say that 20% is ten times higher than 2%, as it is to say that 99.984% is ten times higher than 99.84%. (See also, "How to Lie with Statistics").
William Dembski, the Intelligent Design pusher, was caught using this to pan a book critical of him. See this talk.origins thread. Apparently some people saw Dembski's name attached to the comment, some just saw "A reader from Riesel, TX". This might explain why.
I read about a paper recently that argued that native Americans may have grown teosinte for the sugar in its stalk (to be turned into alcohol!) rather than for the seeds. Would it be possible to breed that property back into modern corn? If someone did, would it still grow in Iowa?
Well, corn has been used to produce ethanol for a long time, so I guess they would already have done so:-)
Wow, you must be allergic to turmeric or something, or live somewhere where the Indian food just sucks. I've never tasted Indian cuisine I didn't like.:-)
It's probably worth mentioning that of course this is a redefinition of the traditional meanings and will probably irritate the same people who object to the phrase "Native American". But as in that case the traditional usage is entirely wrong. Newstandards are slowly being adopted. Although I rarely use them myself, I think using "mebi" etc. are preferable to coopting the SI prefixes. (Knuth doesn't like them).
it's a bit of an irrelevant discussion at this point I think... but you might as well say that C is a markup language in the idiomatic "Hello World" example. The difference is that XML when used to store documents (Word XML, OOo XML, XHTML, etc.) is declarative and merely describes the text it contains. Postscript, "Hello World" and other procedural languages *operate* on the strings they contain. It's not just a semantic difference -- it's a Fundamental Paradigm Shift (tm).
Here's a program I just wrote which is similar to a common Postscript example:
/SpinText { /text exch def /y exch def /x exch def /count exch def gsave /deg 360 count div def x y translate 1 1 count { 20 0 moveto text show deg rotate } for grestore } def
/Helvetica findfont 10 scalefont setfont 10 300 400 (This is a programming language!) SpinText showpage
If that looks like markup to you, I will have to respectfully submit that you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Ever looked at the output of Illustrator's Postscript exporter?
What? Postscript isn't markup. Postscript is a programming language which is targeted at creating page layouts. The two have nearly nothing in common. For example, document-markup XML is not executable, has no control flow structures, and is intended (whether or not it always succeeds) to be easily translatable to any other format. However, you can't just extract the contained information from a Postscript document; you have to execute it and see what it paints on a buffer.
Mars Express used a *different* indirect measurement and confirmed the results of the previous measurement. Unless you think it landed on the planet, scraped up some ice, and measured the melting point? Tasted it? It's an orbiter. How could it possibly detect anything on the surface *directly*? (This is somewhat more direct I suppose since it's measuring the spectra of water itself rather than just hydrogen.) Even the Viking orbiters detected water vapor in the Martian atmosphere -- actually I think it's been done from Earth. Semantics, maybe but it's all indirect. My point was that we already know there is water on Mars.
BTW, this has nothing to do with US vs. Europe dick-measuring. You ought to relax. (And anyway we need something to make us feel better. Europe has all the cool particle accelerators.)
Evidence for water activity on Mars comes (I think) mainly from pictures of geological formations: eroded hillsides, gravel bars, river canyons, etc. This is different: evidence of water ice currently in a particular location. Then again I thought that the presence of water ice on Mars was already pretty well established, but what do I know:-)
Are video game consoles considered "embedded" devices? Seems to me they share many of the same characteristics. (Judging by a quick google search they are at least often described as embedded.) Several of those are 64-bit or more.... Jaguar, N64, PS/2, Dreamcast, etc.
Why do you think the Islamists would treat hardcore pornographic spam any different from explicit religious or political dissent? I think porn is actually *more* damaging to the fundamentalist government than some essay saying "Freedom is great." Outlaw porn spam *is* freedom (in much the same way as urban graffiti) and it explicitly pictures people freely doing extremely forbidden things. That's gotta be the most subversive message possible.
That's not to say I want to get more of it though. Geeks in the West, the oppressed people of Saudi Arabia NEED YOUR SPAM! Donate some today. Spammers, do your evil work only within.sa domains! It's your duty to humanity!
Yes, but assuming they cared about how long the email was loaded on his machine, they could have configured the server to send a Refresh header with the image instructing the client to reload it every second. Then they just check the logs. I'm not sure if Outlook supports that, but don't most Windows email clients use MSIE to render the HTML? It would probably work. There are probably other ways as well -- maybe Outlook supports the "onunload" trigger in the HTML body. (God, I hope not.)
Hmm, I think you could see both moons, assuming they're reflective enough. (I have no idea about that, or from what latitudes you could see them.) Earth's Moon is an average 380000 km away; Phobos averages only 5988 km from the surface of Mars. The Moon is much larger though, a diameter of 3476 km vs Phobos's max of 16 km. So, Phobos would appear (5988 / 380000) / (16 / 3476) = about half the size of the moon. Deimos comes in about 1/13 the size of the moon, due to being smaller and further away than Phobos.
Even in society as a whole, you're quite right
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
...on number 3, at least, and I'm not sure about #2. But, societally speaking, there's certainly no taboo against saying God exists, except perhaps in certain restricted circles, like slashdot. Something like 90-95 percent of Americans agree with you, and it's practically a requirement for politicians to claim to be Christians in order to get elected to any high office. There's more of a taboo against saying God doesn't exist, although it isn't very strong.
Creationism though is definitely considered a heresy and I think it shouldn't be. It's time it was moved into the "harmless lunatics" category. Educated people take creationists way too seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
There were many groups of animals and plants that vanish or change radically at the K/T boundary, not just dinosaurs. It's possible that a virus would kill off one species. The likelihood decreases, I suspect, as you add more and more loosely related groups. It seems more likely that environmental change killed all of dinos, nautiloids, lots of mammals and birds (even though most survived, some did not), plankton, etc., than that a plague did it.
Ah, you probably haven't yet had your first dose of Moderator Crack. When you do, I suggest you look for bizarre trolls to mod up as "Informative", legitimate questions to mod "Funny", and anything that contradicts the groupthink to mod as "Offtopic", "Troll", or "Flamebait". This is the Slashdot Way.
People who read slashdot know what a desktop pager is. If not, they can learn. It's the standard name.
Oh, good idea. Recommend animals that MUST chew on things to prevent their teeth from growing too long. I don't know about chinchillas or hamsters (which I guess you normally keep in a cage), but rabbits chew on everything within reach of their nasty sharp pointy teeth. Might be some good advice for the cat as well here: Rabbit-proofing
I don't think there was ever really any doubt about that :-)
Think of that less as "Ten times as accurate" and more as "One-tenth as inaccurate" meaning humans will miscategorize ten times as many messages. 99.84% accuracy = 0.16% inaccuracy, and one-tenth of that would be 99.984% accurate.
The problem is that English is not very precise, since it's just as accurate to say that 20% is ten times higher than 2%, as it is to say that 99.984% is ten times higher than 99.84%. (See also, "How to Lie with Statistics").
Slashdot is WAY overdue for some fire and brimstone.
William Dembski, the Intelligent Design pusher, was caught using this to pan a book critical of him. See this talk.origins thread. Apparently some people saw Dembski's name attached to the comment, some just saw "A reader from Riesel, TX". This might explain why.
I read about a paper recently that argued that native Americans may have grown teosinte for the sugar in its stalk (to be turned into alcohol!) rather than for the seeds. Would it be possible to breed that property back into modern corn? If someone did, would it still grow in Iowa?
:-)
Well, corn has been used to produce ethanol for a long time, so I guess they would already have done so
Wow, you must be allergic to turmeric or something, or live somewhere where the Indian food just sucks. I've never tasted Indian cuisine I didn't like. :-)
mmm... saag paneer...
It's probably worth mentioning that of course this is a redefinition of the traditional meanings and will probably irritate the same people who object to the phrase "Native American". But as in that case the traditional usage is entirely wrong. New standards are slowly being adopted. Although I rarely use them myself, I think using "mebi" etc. are preferable to coopting the SI prefixes. (Knuth doesn't like them).
it's a bit of an irrelevant discussion at this point I think... but you might as well say that C is a markup language in the idiomatic "Hello World" example. The difference is that XML when used to store documents (Word XML, OOo XML, XHTML, etc.) is declarative and merely describes the text it contains. Postscript, "Hello World" and other procedural languages *operate* on the strings they contain. It's not just a semantic difference -- it's a Fundamental Paradigm Shift (tm).
You can't, for example, do this in Word XML.
Here's a program I just wrote which is similar to a common Postscript example:
If that looks like markup to you, I will have to respectfully submit that you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Ever looked at the output of Illustrator's Postscript exporter?
What? Postscript isn't markup. Postscript is a programming language which is targeted at creating page layouts. The two have nearly nothing in common. For example, document-markup XML is not executable, has no control flow structures, and is intended (whether or not it always succeeds) to be easily translatable to any other format. However, you can't just extract the contained information from a Postscript document; you have to execute it and see what it paints on a buffer.
Mars Express used a *different* indirect measurement and confirmed the results of the previous measurement. Unless you think it landed on the planet, scraped up some ice, and measured the melting point? Tasted it? It's an orbiter. How could it possibly detect anything on the surface *directly*? (This is somewhat more direct I suppose since it's measuring the spectra of water itself rather than just hydrogen.) Even the Viking orbiters detected water vapor in the Martian atmosphere -- actually I think it's been done from Earth. Semantics, maybe but it's all indirect. My point was that we already know there is water on Mars.
BTW, this has nothing to do with US vs. Europe dick-measuring. You ought to relax. (And anyway we need something to make us feel better. Europe has all the cool particle accelerators.)
Evidence for water activity on Mars comes (I think) mainly from pictures of geological formations: eroded hillsides, gravel bars, river canyons, etc. This is different: evidence of water ice currently in a particular location. Then again I thought that the presence of water ice on Mars was already pretty well established, but what do I know :-)
Are video game consoles considered "embedded" devices? Seems to me they share many of the same characteristics. (Judging by a quick google search they are at least often described as embedded.) Several of those are 64-bit or more.... Jaguar, N64, PS/2, Dreamcast, etc.
Fetch.... THE COMFY CHAIR!!!!!
Nobody expects the Saudi Inquisition!
Why do you think the Islamists would treat hardcore pornographic spam any different from explicit religious or political dissent? I think porn is actually *more* damaging to the fundamentalist government than some essay saying "Freedom is great." Outlaw porn spam *is* freedom (in much the same way as urban graffiti) and it explicitly pictures people freely doing extremely forbidden things. That's gotta be the most subversive message possible.
.sa domains! It's your duty to humanity!
That's not to say I want to get more of it though. Geeks in the West, the oppressed people of Saudi Arabia NEED YOUR SPAM! Donate some today. Spammers, do your evil work only within
It's time web developers upped their standards.
No kidding. To quote Pat Paulsen "We've upped our standards. So up yours."
and the first related category is even better:
Business > Management > Ethics
Yes, but assuming they cared about how long the email was loaded on his machine, they could have configured the server to send a Refresh header with the image instructing the client to reload it every second. Then they just check the logs. I'm not sure if Outlook supports that, but don't most Windows email clients use MSIE to render the HTML? It would probably work. There are probably other ways as well -- maybe Outlook supports the "onunload" trigger in the HTML body. (God, I hope not.)
Er, Phobos's max diameter is 26 km, not 16.
Hmm, I think you could see both moons, assuming they're reflective enough. (I have no idea about that, or from what latitudes you could see them.) Earth's Moon is an average 380000 km away; Phobos averages only 5988 km from the surface of Mars. The Moon is much larger though, a diameter of 3476 km vs Phobos's max of 16 km. So, Phobos would appear (5988 / 380000) / (16 / 3476) = about half the size of the moon. Deimos comes in about 1/13 the size of the moon, due to being smaller and further away than Phobos.
...on number 3, at least, and I'm not sure about #2. But, societally speaking, there's certainly no taboo against saying God exists, except perhaps in certain restricted circles, like slashdot. Something like 90-95 percent of Americans agree with you, and it's practically a requirement for politicians to claim to be Christians in order to get elected to any high office. There's more of a taboo against saying God doesn't exist, although it isn't very strong.
Creationism though is definitely considered a heresy and I think it shouldn't be. It's time it was moved into the "harmless lunatics" category. Educated people take creationists way too seriously.
Well, if you're right, he will also be something like 80,000 years old, so he'd have an excuse for being late anyway. :-)