It's an interesting story, but I don't think it constitutes language. How many other sounds did he make that you ignored while you were in the other room? If he by chance combined the doorbell and phone sounds, and you appeared, he associated that sound with you showing up. Since it had a favorable effect, he tried it again, and the feedback loop was strengthened. Most linguists would not consider that a form of language.
I see from your comments that you've never met a linguist. Sure, animals communicate, but they do not have abstract thought in any form that we've ever been able to observe. For a nice long paper about this, see http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/Cheney 98.pdf Here are her basic points:
Animals lack a "theory of mind"
Animals lack the ability to create new words
Animals lack syntax in their communications
The paper goes into great detail about these, but we can obviously see that even the youngest children have these three things, and they manifest themselves through their communications. The "great racist theory" you're mentioning may have existed at one point (although even in the 1600's, at the birth of linguistics, people were documenting Native American languages and African languages and learning how they worked, so I'm not sure if the theory you're talking about ever was taken seriously), but it sure does not exist now.
FYI, Here's a shorter article by a woman who lived with one of the "talking apes" for four years: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~lpetitto/ape.html. Here's an academic paper about what she observed: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~lpetitto/Science1979.pdf.
Being able to read more than the table of contents. Maybe I'm too dumb, but how do you get to any of the actual text? Clicking the little arrows eventually stops on all those examples, and it's always before any of the real text of the work appears.
I see a parallel to what happens when a company's credit card database is compromised. If the company's name is released, then they look bad and lose business, so they stop reporting losses to the credit card companies. If the company is kept anonymous, then reporting the loss doesn't hurt them, and they are more likely to actually do it.
It might not be a perfect comparison, but it seems similar.
Simply adding another pair of octets to the address would be the same as adding 16 more bits to the address. If you're going to do that (which would make you have to rewrite all your software anyway), why not fix the rest of the problems with IPv4 while you're at it?
Assuming that you're actually asking a question here and not just being a troll, I think the answer to the first part would be "yeah, in a sense". It says specifically in the Bible that we are "working out our faith", i.e., working towards a more perfect understanding of what our faith means and how to use it day to day. Would you expect a kid in kindergarten to be able to do the job of an engineer just because you gave them a textbook on differential equations? I doubt it. The kid would have to work to understand what's being taught, learn how to apply it, and gain some experience using it in the real world before he finally gets it right.
To continue the analogy, engineers still make mistakes, even after they've been on the job for 30 years. Christians are still humans. They make mistakes, too. And as far as unrepentant Christians go, I don't think you can actually call them Christians, in the real sense of the word. One of the cornerstones of Christian doctrine is repentance. Someone who rejects the concept of repentance is by definition, not a Christian.
A little cynicism goes a long way. Sometimes, a little too far, if you ask me.
If you think about it, there are only two things that will stop a laser: your head or something opaque between your head and the laser. You lose some power to dispersion through the atmosphere, but even at a couple kilometers, you apparently still have enough power to blind. With shrapnel, it's a simple matter of kinematics - the odds of shrapnel carrying enough energy to hurt you drop off with distance orders of magnitude faster.
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war?
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A New Kind of War
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An interesting factoid: No outsider has conquered Afghanistan since Alexander the Great.
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It's an interesting story, but I don't think it constitutes language. How many other sounds did he make that you ignored while you were in the other room? If he by chance combined the doorbell and phone sounds, and you appeared, he associated that sound with you showing up. Since it had a favorable effect, he tried it again, and the feedback loop was strengthened. Most linguists would not consider that a form of language.
- Animals lack a "theory of mind"
- Animals lack the ability to create new words
- Animals lack syntax in their communications
The paper goes into great detail about these, but we can obviously see that even the youngest children have these three things, and they manifest themselves through their communications. The "great racist theory" you're mentioning may have existed at one point (although even in the 1600's, at the birth of linguistics, people were documenting Native American languages and African languages and learning how they worked, so I'm not sure if the theory you're talking about ever was taken seriously), but it sure does not exist now. FYI, Here's a shorter article by a woman who lived with one of the "talking apes" for four years: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~lpetitto/ape.html. Here's an academic paper about what she observed: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~lpetitto/Science1979.pdEspecially in Massachusetts -- the teachers union there is very influential.
Being able to read more than the table of contents. Maybe I'm too dumb, but how do you get to any of the actual text? Clicking the little arrows eventually stops on all those examples, and it's always before any of the real text of the work appears.
I see a parallel to what happens when a company's credit card database is compromised. If the company's name is released, then they look bad and lose business, so they stop reporting losses to the credit card companies. If the company is kept anonymous, then reporting the loss doesn't hurt them, and they are more likely to actually do it.
It might not be a perfect comparison, but it seems similar.
Simply adding another pair of octets to the address would be the same as adding 16 more bits to the address. If you're going to do that (which would make you have to rewrite all your software anyway), why not fix the rest of the problems with IPv4 while you're at it?
Assuming that you're actually asking a question here and not just being a troll, I think the answer to the first part would be "yeah, in a sense". It says specifically in the Bible that we are "working out our faith", i.e., working towards a more perfect understanding of what our faith means and how to use it day to day. Would you expect a kid in kindergarten to be able to do the job of an engineer just because you gave them a textbook on differential equations? I doubt it. The kid would have to work to understand what's being taught, learn how to apply it, and gain some experience using it in the real world before he finally gets it right.
To continue the analogy, engineers still make mistakes, even after they've been on the job for 30 years. Christians are still humans. They make mistakes, too. And as far as unrepentant Christians go, I don't think you can actually call them Christians, in the real sense of the word. One of the cornerstones of Christian doctrine is repentance. Someone who rejects the concept of repentance is by definition, not a Christian.
A little cynicism goes a long way. Sometimes, a little too far, if you ask me.
The point is the definition of "large."
If you think about it, there are only two things that will stop a laser: your head or something opaque between your head and the laser. You lose some power to dispersion through the atmosphere, but even at a couple kilometers, you apparently still have enough power to blind. With shrapnel, it's a simple matter of kinematics - the odds of shrapnel carrying enough energy to hurt you drop off with distance orders of magnitude faster.
An interesting factoid: No outsider has conquered Afghanistan since Alexander the Great.
Just a thought.
The videos on the site have some pretty cool shots of the robot standing on one leg and walking down stairs. It's uncanny...