Evolution isn't a "theory" in that sense of the word, any more than the theory of gravity is "just a theory". Both are fact as far as the scientific community is concerned
Yes, and no. The theory/law of gravity is easy to test, since it's macroscopic and since gravity travels (probably) at the speed of light. Anyone can observe gravity acting on any object just by throwing it up in the air.
Evolution, on the other hand, happens more and more slowly the more complex the organism, and is only supported in humans by fossil evidence which, while rigorously scientifically analyzed, is far from complete. Major leaps in evolution involve major changes to the DNA, a molecule that wasn't even posited to exist a century ago. Furthermore, exactly how evolution happened on Earth is something that get revised with surprising frequency, while the only major question science has about gravity today is just how fast it travels.
Is evolution accepted scientific theory? Yes. Is it as rigorously studied, tested and accepted as gravity? Certainly not.
And what could be worse than hell? Could it be ignorance?
On the contrary, I was always told ignorance was bliss.
You're talking about a two-stage organism here, one stage does nothing but eat, the other stage does nothing but procreate
Think of the chrysalis as puberty for the caterpillar. I'm actually envious--I'm sure many of us would have just as soon lived out our teenage years laying in bed, sleeping, twenty-four hours a day until we were ready to emerge into the wonderful world of twenty-year-old, sexually mature adults instead of being pressured to explore the opposite sex while at the same time dealing with voice changes, oversized feet, and females who matured two to three years earlier than the males.
That's funny -- I've been an OS X user for several years and never, ever noticed or even thought about that. Of course, it's not something that many people would want to use, but why hide it behind a "Modifier Keys..." button when there's plenty of room in the preference pane?
The fact you can zoom in, to the highest zoom level, anywhere in the US... and the roads line up with the satellite maps.. is amazing.
This is only true where the satellite imagery is complete, and it isn't. My hometown of Peoria, IL is missing detailed imagery for about the eastern third of the city. There's nothing Google can do if they don't have the imagery, of course. I just wanted to point out that your praise isn't strictly true.
Yeah, it's 1 AM and I don't have anything better to do right now.:-)
I believe it was in last month's "Discover" magazine that a different new periodic table was discussed; this one was designed by an earth scientist and was oriented specifically toward his professional needs. There's no reason that it should replace the "standard" periodic table, but if it's better for his needs, more power to him.
The periodic table is a kind of model, and like all models, it's just one way of simplifying the real world and diagraming it for easy understanding by humans. There's no reason everyone should use one model of anything for all purposes, and if this new "galaxy" chart helps middle school kids learn and understand chemistry before moving on to the "standard" periodic table, it's a good thing.
Sure, but Apple aren't really in the content-provision business. The reason they have iTMS and iTunes is mainly to encourage people to buy iPods. Just the same as the reason they write MacOS is to sell computers.
Partially. The other part of the reason is that Apple does a better job of providing those services (iTMS and MacOS X) than most others would be, and certainly does a better job integrating them with their own hardware.
Microsoft, however, would be perfectly willing to let anyone else do the low-profit content-provision side of things, as long as they control the higher-profit software that makes it all go.
Personally, I thought it was great... am I the only one?
I liked it, especially the animation, which was top-notch for its day.
However, watching it today, I have to agree with all the other adults who've seen it recently--it was an abominable story, full of plot holes and mindless detractions. See my full review of it for a deeper dissection.
Nobody is really sure which lines they are going to transition in what order
Yes, we are. Apple's going to put them in the iMac and Mac Mini lines first, the PowerPC lines later, and the Xserve rack-mounted servers may never get them.
From their HOW TO ENTER: apparently, you can enter and qualify by using their "tell a friend" feature for any particular song and sending it to itunes500@apple.com. Just click on the countdown timer at the top of the iTMS homepage and scroll down to the rules at the bottom of the page for more specifics (and someone tell me if I'm reading this thing wrong).
IIRC, there are laws in the US that say you can't require a purchase in order to enter a sweepstakes, and while free song-of-the-week are specified as ineligible for winning, this seems to be their way of complying.
Furthermore, not every carrier has free mobile-to-mobile; my Sprint PCS account only has free calls to other Sprint phones on the same family plan. And since that second phone costs $10 per month, not counting the cost of the plan itself, it's merely cheaper, not free.
According to the designer's site, they believe that their product is not infringing on the patent, but can't afford the court case that would follow. Clearly this is a problem with the justice system.
Actually, it's a problem with the high cost of legal expertise. And that's something that's simply unavoidable, because patent law isn't something you can brush up on in a summer mail-away course.
The legal system works just fine. The world simply favors those who can buy things over those who can't, and to find blame for THAT, you have to go all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
I tried adding notes to my pics in iphoto but after a while it gets tiresome.
Notes aren't meant for organization. Get Keyword Assistant and use it to make adding as many keywords as you like to each and every one of your photos.
I don't know why Apple doesn't make keywords this easy itself, but I'm glad this plugin is freeware. (I loved it so much, in fact, I sent the developer $10 just for being cool about it.)
Apple's computers have always been about ease-of-use. It doesn't matter that they're the only ones making PPC hardware now, because OS X will only run on "good" Apple hardware anyway.
The same will happen with OS X on Intel. Inevitably, someone will find a way to build their own Intel box that can run OS X. I predict Apple's response will be: (1) You can't publish how to do this on the Internet, or if they are legally unable to stop them: (2) Refuse to support that hardware.
And that will be enough. Some OS X user will call Apple, somewhere along the line, and say that they're running OS X on non-Apple hardware, at which point Apple will decline to help them on the grounds that they don't support BYO hardware.
Sure, people out there will be building their own OS X boxen, but Apple won't help them do it. And if anyone tries to make a business out of selling boxen that are explicitly marked as "OS X compatible", Apple will bring their lawyers in, force them to remove whatever's making them compatible, and that will be the end of that.
Sounds like they're just restating something we already knew about. They acquired Connectix over two years ago with this goal more or less explicitly in mind.
If I had to guess, I'd say they're just restating this in light of Apple's announcement in order to head off people who might be thinking about running OS X and Windows on the same box (which doesn't make sense to me, since those who'd want to run multiple MS OSes are not the same people who'd want an OS X desktop, but then, I don't speak Marketing).
Dvorak seems to think Linux will be killed not by lack of users, but by lack of developers. That is to say, all those developers who wanted to sell *nix apps but (a) didn't want to deal with Linux's GPL and (b) didn't want to deal with BSD on PPC now get the best of both worlds. They can sell *nix apps for OS X on Intel without dealing with the GPL at all.
I'm not sure how his logic actually works, but that seems to be his thinking. IANAD (I Am Not A Developer), but I don't think commercial developers have been avoiding Linux because of the GPL; I think they've been avoiding it because it's got a small user share compared to Windows and because those users are used to getting their software for free.
The unofficial position now is (1) you will probably be able to install Windows on an Intel-based Mac, and (2) you will not be able to install OS X on an Intel-based non-Mac.
I'm not sure how Apple will be able to prevent (2) from happening, but I'm sure they've already thought it through and solved the problem before making this decision. The question I have, though, is this: What can Apple do to keep non-Apple hardware from running OS X, and can it be circumvented if you build it yourself?
re Kimba/Lion King: I recently saw a DVD of "Kimba the White Lion" at a local Walgreens, sold in a cardboard sheath the same way Disney's animated DVDs are, with a new logo clearly derived from "The Lion King"'s marketing.
Turnabout is fair play, I suppose. (Although to be equally fair, I can't find the same package for sale online anywhere, so it may well be a pirate version.)
Granted it is mildly racist by today's standards but I'd rather see the original and understand the norms of the time than to be treated like a mindless child who needs to be shielded.
Agreed. I've enjoyed watching my copy of "Mickey Mouse in Color (Vol. 1)" from Disney's Treasures collection, which includes a number of what I shall charitably call pre-enlightenment cartoon shorts, which today would be considered quite racist toward blacks, Asians and Native Americans.
Each one of these shorts includes a video statement from the producer of the DVD explaining why this was done at the time, and why it would never be done today. Those statements get kind of annoying by the fourth or fifth time, but since the shorts could be watched out of order it's worth doing anyway. The shorts themselves are presented in their original format and audio, unedited. The DVDs are furthermore priced and packaged in such a way that it's clear they're being sold for collectors, not children.
On the other hand, Disney still refuses to re-release "Song of the South" on VHS, let alone DVD, because of its potentially racist characterizations. Nobody's perfect, especially corporations.
Slashdot Mirror
Evolution isn't a "theory" in that sense of the word, any more than the theory of gravity is "just a theory". Both are fact as far as the scientific community is concerned
Yes, and no. The theory/law of gravity is easy to test, since it's macroscopic and since gravity travels (probably) at the speed of light. Anyone can observe gravity acting on any object just by throwing it up in the air.
Evolution, on the other hand, happens more and more slowly the more complex the organism, and is only supported in humans by fossil evidence which, while rigorously scientifically analyzed, is far from complete. Major leaps in evolution involve major changes to the DNA, a molecule that wasn't even posited to exist a century ago. Furthermore, exactly how evolution happened on Earth is something that get revised with surprising frequency, while the only major question science has about gravity today is just how fast it travels.
Is evolution accepted scientific theory? Yes. Is it as rigorously studied, tested and accepted as gravity? Certainly not.
And what could be worse than hell? Could it be ignorance?
On the contrary, I was always told ignorance was bliss.
You're talking about a two-stage organism here, one stage does nothing but eat, the other stage does nothing but procreate
Think of the chrysalis as puberty for the caterpillar. I'm actually envious--I'm sure many of us would have just as soon lived out our teenage years laying in bed, sleeping, twenty-four hours a day until we were ready to emerge into the wonderful world of twenty-year-old, sexually mature adults instead of being pressured to explore the opposite sex while at the same time dealing with voice changes, oversized feet, and females who matured two to three years earlier than the males.
That's funny -- I've been an OS X user for several years and never, ever noticed or even thought about that. Of course, it's not something that many people would want to use, but why hide it behind a "Modifier Keys..." button when there's plenty of room in the preference pane?
The fact you can zoom in, to the highest zoom level, anywhere in the US... and the roads line up with the satellite maps.. is amazing.
:-)
This is only true where the satellite imagery is complete, and it isn't. My hometown of Peoria, IL is missing detailed imagery for about the eastern third of the city. There's nothing Google can do if they don't have the imagery, of course. I just wanted to point out that your praise isn't strictly true.
Yeah, it's 1 AM and I don't have anything better to do right now.
Does nobody remember the video googles?
Don't you mean "Video Google"?
I believe it was in last month's "Discover" magazine that a different new periodic table was discussed; this one was designed by an earth scientist and was oriented specifically toward his professional needs. There's no reason that it should replace the "standard" periodic table, but if it's better for his needs, more power to him.
The periodic table is a kind of model, and like all models, it's just one way of simplifying the real world and diagraming it for easy understanding by humans. There's no reason everyone should use one model of anything for all purposes, and if this new "galaxy" chart helps middle school kids learn and understand chemistry before moving on to the "standard" periodic table, it's a good thing.
Sure, but Apple aren't really in the content-provision business. The reason they have iTMS and iTunes is mainly to encourage people to buy iPods. Just the same as the reason they write MacOS is to sell computers.
Partially. The other part of the reason is that Apple does a better job of providing those services (iTMS and MacOS X) than most others would be, and certainly does a better job integrating them with their own hardware.
Microsoft, however, would be perfectly willing to let anyone else do the low-profit content-provision side of things, as long as they control the higher-profit software that makes it all go.
Personally, I thought it was great... am I the only one?
I liked it, especially the animation, which was top-notch for its day.
However, watching it today, I have to agree with all the other adults who've seen it recently--it was an abominable story, full of plot holes and mindless detractions. See my full review of it for a deeper dissection.
Nobody is really sure which lines they are going to transition in what order
Yes, we are. Apple's going to put them in the iMac and Mac Mini lines first, the PowerPC lines later, and the Xserve rack-mounted servers may never get them.
From their HOW TO ENTER: apparently, you can enter and qualify by using their "tell a friend" feature for any particular song and sending it to itunes500@apple.com. Just click on the countdown timer at the top of the iTMS homepage and scroll down to the rules at the bottom of the page for more specifics (and someone tell me if I'm reading this thing wrong).
IIRC, there are laws in the US that say you can't require a purchase in order to enter a sweepstakes, and while free song-of-the-week are specified as ineligible for winning, this seems to be their way of complying.
Furthermore, not every carrier has free mobile-to-mobile; my Sprint PCS account only has free calls to other Sprint phones on the same family plan. And since that second phone costs $10 per month, not counting the cost of the plan itself, it's merely cheaper, not free.
According to the designer's site, they believe that their product is not infringing on the patent, but can't afford the court case that would follow. Clearly this is a problem with the justice system.
Actually, it's a problem with the high cost of legal expertise. And that's something that's simply unavoidable, because patent law isn't something you can brush up on in a summer mail-away course.
The legal system works just fine. The world simply favors those who can buy things over those who can't, and to find blame for THAT, you have to go all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
This all begs the question of why viewing anything should ever be illegal.
No, it raises the question. Begging the question is another thing entirely.
I tried adding notes to my pics in iphoto but after a while it gets tiresome.
Notes aren't meant for organization. Get Keyword Assistant and use it to make adding as many keywords as you like to each and every one of your photos.
I don't know why Apple doesn't make keywords this easy itself, but I'm glad this plugin is freeware. (I loved it so much, in fact, I sent the developer $10 just for being cool about it.)
Apple's computers have always been about ease-of-use. It doesn't matter that they're the only ones making PPC hardware now, because OS X will only run on "good" Apple hardware anyway.
The same will happen with OS X on Intel. Inevitably, someone will find a way to build their own Intel box that can run OS X. I predict Apple's response will be: (1) You can't publish how to do this on the Internet, or if they are legally unable to stop them: (2) Refuse to support that hardware.
And that will be enough. Some OS X user will call Apple, somewhere along the line, and say that they're running OS X on non-Apple hardware, at which point Apple will decline to help them on the grounds that they don't support BYO hardware.
Sure, people out there will be building their own OS X boxen, but Apple won't help them do it. And if anyone tries to make a business out of selling boxen that are explicitly marked as "OS X compatible", Apple will bring their lawyers in, force them to remove whatever's making them compatible, and that will be the end of that.
As for how they got to Yavin, it was conveniently the next planet out in the same solar system.
:-)
Sucks that they were tricked into flying all the way to Dantooine for nothing, then, just to fly right back for Yavin.
Sounds like they're just restating something we already knew about. They acquired Connectix over two years ago with this goal more or less explicitly in mind.
If I had to guess, I'd say they're just restating this in light of Apple's announcement in order to head off people who might be thinking about running OS X and Windows on the same box (which doesn't make sense to me, since those who'd want to run multiple MS OSes are not the same people who'd want an OS X desktop, but then, I don't speak Marketing).
Dvorak seems to think Linux will be killed not by lack of users, but by lack of developers. That is to say, all those developers who wanted to sell *nix apps but (a) didn't want to deal with Linux's GPL and (b) didn't want to deal with BSD on PPC now get the best of both worlds. They can sell *nix apps for OS X on Intel without dealing with the GPL at all.
I'm not sure how his logic actually works, but that seems to be his thinking. IANAD (I Am Not A Developer), but I don't think commercial developers have been avoiding Linux because of the GPL; I think they've been avoiding it because it's got a small user share compared to Windows and because those users are used to getting their software for free.
The funny thing is that AMD is planning on releasing Quad Core chips in Q1 2006.
Well, I've got a processor here that goes all the way to eleven cores!
http://news.com.com/Apple+throws+the+switch,+align s+with+Intel/2100-7341_3-5733756.html
The unofficial position now is (1) you will probably be able to install Windows on an Intel-based Mac, and (2) you will not be able to install OS X on an Intel-based non-Mac.
I'm not sure how Apple will be able to prevent (2) from happening, but I'm sure they've already thought it through and solved the problem before making this decision. The question I have, though, is this: What can Apple do to keep non-Apple hardware from running OS X, and can it be circumvented if you build it yourself?
Some even speculate that one of those two kinds of brain might need even less than 22.8 Teraflops to simulate.
Yeah, you'd just need to program it to say "What?" and "Where am I?" and "Where's my tea?" No one would even notice the difference.
re Kimba/Lion King: I recently saw a DVD of "Kimba the White Lion" at a local Walgreens, sold in a cardboard sheath the same way Disney's animated DVDs are, with a new logo clearly derived from "The Lion King"'s marketing.
Turnabout is fair play, I suppose. (Although to be equally fair, I can't find the same package for sale online anywhere, so it may well be a pirate version.)
Granted it is mildly racist by today's standards but I'd rather see the original and understand the norms of the time than to be treated like a mindless child who needs to be shielded.
Agreed. I've enjoyed watching my copy of "Mickey Mouse in Color (Vol. 1)" from Disney's Treasures collection, which includes a number of what I shall charitably call pre-enlightenment cartoon shorts, which today would be considered quite racist toward blacks, Asians and Native Americans.
Each one of these shorts includes a video statement from the producer of the DVD explaining why this was done at the time, and why it would never be done today. Those statements get kind of annoying by the fourth or fifth time, but since the shorts could be watched out of order it's worth doing anyway. The shorts themselves are presented in their original format and audio, unedited. The DVDs are furthermore priced and packaged in such a way that it's clear they're being sold for collectors, not children.
On the other hand, Disney still refuses to re-release "Song of the South" on VHS, let alone DVD, because of its potentially racist characterizations. Nobody's perfect, especially corporations.
The path to transhumanism won't require much money anyway.
Just a little combat damage, a galactic Republic-cum-Empire, and the unlimited resources of same to transform you into a Jedi cyborg from heck.
No iTMS support. Less space than an iPod. Lame.