I don't know if I would agree though, that if the election sites made a fast-pass line especially for government workers while everyone else had to be screened, if I could call a tirade by a member of the public an interference to the business of the polling place.
An annoyance, yes. But life is full of annoyances. Not worthy of police action, though.
Of course, I'd rather that an arrest hadn't been made at all. Which wouldn't have happened, if the court wasn't practicing elitism in the first place....
Which does tend to bias my view toward a conviction being more likely than common sense would predict.
Conviction or not, they still got arrested. For telling lawyer jokes. (On as public property as exists in the USA, during public busines hours).
I could agree that they were interfering with the operation of the court, if they were inside a courtroom. But they weren't, they were in line, in the lobby, protesting the court's elitism.
Although the court may choose to waive security for some classes of people - why not just waive all security?
No? Can you say elitism? I knew you could.
I used the pro-per example, specifically because such a person might have been arrested for a gun crime. When the person is both criminal defendant and legal counsel, which standard applies?
Does that apply to all lawyers with less than perfect records? Ex-convicts that earned their law degree in prison?
Looks like a slippery slope that slides to favored litigants getting preferential treatment, and schlubs being late for court because the screening line was too long. Making one side show up early, only to wait, while letting the other breeze through is unfair financially, too.
To me, it would be fair if there were no favors handed out. Lawyers (and court personnel) ought to have to stand in line like the rest of us.
And if they don't, because the court thinks that they are better than us, I think it is fair that they should overhear ridicule in the form of lawyer jokes as they pass through the members-only door into the country club, er, public courthouse.
From a different article: "Kash said he and Lanzisera were merely saying out loud that the public was being treated like peons or peasants while attorneys, who wave their security passes to court officers and don't have to stand on line, are treated like kings."
The whole incident is about elitism, and mockery thereof. And due to the arrest, it appears elitism won....
You missed a crucial point: that particular courthouse makes mere citizens stand in a long line and go through screening (metal detector, purse x-ray, etc.), but gives the lawyers ID badges to bypass screening.
The two guys would stand in line with the public, and tell lawyer jokes at the lawyers as they exercised their special privilege.
It was a form of protest: it is unfair that "some people are more special than others".
Which, frankly, I can agree with.
How would you deal this: some idiot decides to self-represent ("In propria persona"). Do you grant him an ID badge to bypass screening? Do you declare him a first-class citizen or a second-class citizen?
The lack of social security does not equal death for seniors - that is a straw-man argument. The lack of social security does mean seniors would have to be taken care of by their children, or lacking children, they would have to plan for their own retirement.
I had a relative with no children up in my family tree (sister of a great-grandmother). Around the 1910's, she had to take in borders to have enough money to live on. She did not starve to death.
And we haven't even mentioned the funds maintained by charities for widows and orphans....
The death by starvation argument is really insulting. You must think that seniors are idiots, or that society is 100% predatory.
BTW, my church's canned food drive ends this week.
Donations of staples much appreciated. It won't reduce your Social Securtiy burden, but you can deduct the cost of goods off your AGI before paying your income tax. If you know of any seniors that need food, we have a nice amount of food available. We also pay utility bills, if that is the need (local residents only, please). Donations to help out this fund are best made by cheque, to provide a record for you and the IRS.
I was going to link to my church, but that is rather snide, considering the global reach of slashdot. The real answer is "find a church, any church nearby" and you will find people who care enough to help out the needy.
In the GGP you asked for a hypothesis to test ID. I provided. Intelligent Design means that an intelligent designer built biological processes. The concept being tested is irreducible complexity. If irreducible complexity is found to be built into the biological processes, then, Intelligent Design follows.
You don't have to get offensive when an answer is presented to you - even when it supports an alternative theory. I don't believe I mocked Evolution or any of its devotees.
...that you obviously have a problem wrapping your head around.
Do you really think that you can insult someone into agreeing with you?
I agree that the show is uneven. However, I liked the augments story line, just for Brent Spiner's appearance. They gave him some clever lines with the old nudge nudge, wink, wink. Even my wife found them funny, and she isn't a Star Trek fan at all.
Compared to the other series, this particular enterprise (HAH!) seems to have a nice setting, where they can do more with the story lines. So far I've liked it more than ST:Voyager and even ST:DS9. The Andorian versus Vulcan story was interesting: space exploration with political ramifications - now there is a story.
But I do agree with you, the writing is uneven. Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is a stinker. With the ReplayTV, my wife and watched the transporter episode on Saturday night. One of the sub-plots looked kind of like they were setting up cast changes....
GroupWise shops have a real problem with new PHB's that are used to Outlook. They show up at the new organization, and hate the look and feel of the GroupWise client. They aren't thrilled about the idea of having to learn a new email client either.
So the question GroupWise admins are having to fend off is: "Why don't we switch to MS Exchange? It's the most popular email system on the planet. Why are we different?" And of course, there are always middle managment types vying for power. "There is no victory without conquest."
Novell hears that GroupWise shops sometimes have to defend their existance. Sometimes, Novell loses a customer. What saves most shops is that the GroupWise back-end system is stable, efficient, and secure.
Evolution connectivity to GW servers is already in beta. Porting it to Windows will give GroupWise shops an easy answer to the "Why can't we just run Outlook, instead?" crowd. Evolution will look and act close enough to satisfy the people who actively complain that they want Outlook.
Novell probably does also see the benefit of being able to show off multi-platform products. It does get the idea into the minds of people that stuff from the Linux world is viable. So in this way, it will open doors. But I expect a primary goal is to help out their GW base with an alternative to MS Outlook, keeping customers on GroupWise.
The testing comes from setting up a narrower hypothesis.
I am not a mathematics genius, but as I understand it, there are people who know how to model complexity. What little I remember of my calculus classes, there are big infinities and little infinities. One can take seemingly chaotic data and find the fundamental equations underneath - and can even deal with insanely large numbers.
To counter your example, look at this hypothesis:
Hypothesis: "Archimedes screw is so complex that it cannot have happened by chance."
Data: The chance that an Archimedes screw would have been carved by wind and rain is 1 in some insanely large number.
Conclusion: There is a chance, therefore this hypothesis fails.
Except... no one, in their right mind, would claim that the wind and rain and sun's heat and lightning and (any other non-intelligent force) could have etched away sandstone or a tree or (anything) to carve an Archimedes screw into existance.
At some point, the complexity of an Archimedes screw is a mathematically identifiable attribute. Tubes are simple geometric devices. I assume that an auger could even be called simple. But a (mostly - there are brackets) free floating auger inside a tube, that fits tight enough to not lose too much liquid, that, when rotational energy is applied, moves liquid, is not simple.
Additionally, the use of an Archimedes screw alters its environment, to some benefit.
What we have is a structure that is complex, and drives a process that is non-random*.
The hypothesis then, must be: an Archimedes screw is so complex that its structure defies simplicity (mathematically speaking**) and its operation increases order.***
Hypothesis: "Blood clotting needs to be so precise that its process defies simplicity and its operation increases order."
Hypothesis: "Protein folding is so complex that its scaffolding defies simplicity and its operation increases order."
These hypothesis are testable, if you believe simplicity can be defined.
Admittedly, simplicity is observed - you could argue that a 3,000th order equation is 'simple'. I don't think I'd want to be on the side sticking up for that assertion though. Might as well claim that an insanely large number is as small as 1, compared to a really insanely large number. At some point 'reasonble chance' changes into 'absurdly improbable chance'. Relying on large numbers means relying on a moving target.
If this foundation of Intelligent Design is questionable, then why wouldn't the foundation of Evolution be equally as questionable? Both have foundations based on an assumption: possibilities of truth, due to large numbers.
Therefore, there isn't really any reason for Intelligent Design to be less probable than Evolution.
So, to sum up, these hypothesis are testable, and require no more faith than required for Evolution, to consider them for testing. They may not pan out. But they are as valid as others based on Evolution from scientific basis.
*Archimedes screws were used to pull water out of the Nile and irrigate. However, if they had been rigged to a constant power source (always on), they would have flooded and drowned the plants being irrigated. The operation of them was non-random, and driven for specific benefit.
**The geometry of the structure cannot be described by a simple first or second order equation. A whole series of equations is required to describe the structure, which if strung together would be nineteenth or twentieth order equations. Or higher****.
***At the heart of ID is the quest to find the spark of life - unburning the candle, if you will. Except that candles are extremely simple compared to mitosis and adenosine triphosphate.
**** Each ATP molecule is over 500 atomic mass units (500 AMUs). The complex contains the number of subatomic parts equivalent to over 500 hydrogen atoms. And then, you have the macromolecules that use ATP.
You asked for the hypothesis that can be tested: that would be Intelligent Design.
Specifically, three points: 1) Build models of the chemical changes that occur inside an organism (or even just a cell). 2) Look for processes of favorable mutation that rely on interlocking / synchronized adaptation. 3) Use the mathematics of statistics to determine whether these interlocking / synchronized adaptations are likely the result of chance, or fall outside the realm of chance.
An example is blood clotting - there is a very narrow range in which clotting agents prevent bleeding to death yet do not kill by thrombosis. Another example is hormone regulation. The quantities of actual hormones are exceptionally small, yet their effects are quite large.
What you are looking for is Archimedes' screw in the prairie. Not a creek in the side of a hill which moves stuff during spring runoff. You are looking for something complex that provides an advantage to some other portion of the organism, without which the organism would suffer.
To be fair, this is still one-sided research: if you find that, indeed, a biological process has irreducible complexity, you then prove intelligent design. But if you don't find that, then all you have for it is a better understanding of biological processes.;-)
That link had nothing to do with a record of macroevolution, and everything to do with use in the english language of the word "evidences".
The fifth citation is Shakespeare. What? That Shakespeare wrote a play that says some girl is the daughter of the king is suddenley proof of macroevolution?
I cannot tell if you are trying to mock macroevolution, or are just really clumsy in trying to support it.
I still don't see any written record of "last year/decade/century, animal species xyz lacked trait abc and this year/decade/century, the trait appeared. This new trait is such an improvement, that the old species will likely not survive." Mankind has 10,000+ years of written history - surely there should be a written record somewhere....
I agree that BellSouth should get their ass kicked, for refusing to service a market. I'd just like to see the (mythical) Lafayette Broadband Utility Cooperative (a private sector business, perhaps funded by shares purchased by locals) do it, without dipping into government funds.
If the loans aren't backed by government bond or tax, then there really isn't any reason for government involvement (other than to clear rights-of-way and and permits).
Of course a hotel is not a public utility. That didn't stop the city from going into that business though. And the rest of the government services suffered.
Don't take offense, but I don't believe you when you tell me that government sponsored network utilities exist that didn't dip into the tax fund. For fifteen years, I worked for local government IT. We installed fiberoptic lines all over the county.
The initial outlay came from the general fund. That is tax money. Period.
(Although the lines are primarily for local government use, there is some public access traffic on them, and some 'partner' access.)
Even though those lines are supplied by the local cable TV franchise, the general fund is being replenished by the cable TV subscribers. Every subscriber is assessed a surcharge on their bill, paying for the government use of all that single-mode fiber.
You can claim that isn't a tax, but the cable subscriber is not given a choice of whether to opt-in or opt-out. That is a tax.
Back to the idea of a government subsidised broadband utility. If you aren't going to use the cash reserves or good credit rating (backed up by taxes) of the government, then what is the problem of doing it private sector? I don't mean to say to cave in and wait for BellSouth - screw that. I think it would be great for a bunch of local business people to gather up the money to start up their own broadband utility. I'm sure the city of Lafayette could even help expedite the permits process (just like they would for BellSouth, should the corp want the help). Just don't let the locals dip into government funds to bankroll the operation.
Because here is the problem of using the government to bankroll an operation. Government is not allowed to pick favorites. Unless you want to allow BellSouth access to the same capital and security, bankrolling a utility to compete with BellSouth is a gift of public funds. Even if it is only a loan, which gets paid back - BellSouth can properly claim unfair business practices. They weren't given access to the cash. They weren't promised government-guaranteed loans. They had to pay interest rates reflecting their private sector risk. It is completely unfair to sponsor Joe and the Friends of Joe and not give the same breaks to BellSouth.
But wait, you say - this isn't business, it is a utility. Um, no. A business exists (BellSouth) that provides this service. What you are proposing is no different than a city buying a hotel. Lots of cash out, infrastructure built, customers enticed, monthly revenue in. That is not a utility, it is a business.
The only way it qualifies as a utility is if every home and every business gets wired in. Do you know how expensive that will be? Guess what: the operation will run financially at a loss. So how are you going to sustain it?
You cannot have it both ways: yes it is government funded, but no, those funds are not the result of taxes.
So again, what is the problem of doing it private sector?
Although that is a nice theory, I rather doubt it will be the reality.
The town I live in bought a hotel, which it later sold. The theory was that it was needed to support the convention center. Pay for itself, good investment, blah blah blah.
The reality is that money was taken out of the general fund to pay for it, and then the police and fire departments went begging. Literally. This last election, a sales tax increase was put through to fund the police and fire departments. Of course, no-one asked why the redevelopment department had money to buy expensive property and sell it to businesses, cheap. No-one asked why the city had money to completely replace their entire network infrastructure. Why have they broken ground on new office buildings? All you heard was 'the police don't have enough money to do their jobs.'
And I mean literally begging: During the campaign, I got a phone call from the chief of police, asking if I would support the vote. It is kind of intimidating to tell the C 'o P "no", and wonder if he would tell his officers to put me lower on the list of response queues.
In an ideal world, governments wouldn't rob Peter to pay Paul. But in the real world, they will. The pet project gets funded, the needed services languish, until you get stuck with the increase in taxation.
Note - if Lafayette did some sort of community fund raising event, where they gathered 100% of the money needed upfront, on a voluntary basis - I would be 100% in favor. Go for it.
But look at that: it is no different than people
forming their own utility company and being private sector.
In other words, if it is such a good idea, why use government? Why not form the Lafayette Broadband Corp, and get investors?
Thankfully, we were never on the receiving end of that type of complaint.
Our County Counsel department did issue guidelines on what to keep, and for how long. The times when we did have to do discovery, it was always directed at the actions of a particular person. Come to think of it, I don't think we could have done an exhaustive search of the mail system if we had tried. GroupWise was designed to be so secure even us email admins couldn't read other people's mail. That is why it required creating a whole working duplicate of the post office just to retrieve one or a few messages....
I can see where you are coming from, and it does make sense. We had a constant battle with our users, telling them that email was a communication system - not a filing cabinet. Don't want to enable the pack-rats.
I don't understand the point you are trying to make. Sorry.
When we needed to do legal discovery, we did it. No trying to weasel out of it - we just did it. FWIW, this was government; I presume you want your government to be honest when it comes to things legal?
When we don't have gobs of free hard drive space, the process goes like this:
Put the archival backup tapes in the tape robot.
Restore the particular day from tape. (Takes a couple hours to bring 30 GB back).
Make sure the workstation is configured to look in the location of the restored data.
Bring in person (lawyer / paralegal) to do the search. Once they were done, send them away.
Delete the restored data to free up the hard drive space.
And repeat, beginning at Step 1 for each set of backup tapes that exist, due to our retention policy.
It would have been easier if we did not have to do Step 5 on every cycle. It takes surprisingly long to delete 30 GB made up of 6 million files in 256 directories.... I suppose the server based auditing software had something to do with that, but turning off the auditing was not a choice.
Step 4 might be executed only once (or once per 1/2 TB).
Step 3 is the only part that gets more complicated, to point the workstation to the location of Restore Set 2004-mm-dd. But that part is trivial compared to the time wasted by the lawyer / paralegal having to go away, return, repeat, per 30 GB. Due to a nice "find" system in the email client, the actual search often took less than ten minutes.
So the upshot is, if we had more free disk space available, we could have "batched" the restores and discovery, and used everybody's time more efficiently.
Uh, servers, and the businesses that use them? GIS? CAD? records imaging?
The data will always find a way to fill available space.
Way back when, for email legal discovery, I would have restore from tape a copy of the entire post office. That was 30 GB a pop (per day searched), for not that large an environment. If we had had this drive, I wouldn't have to delete one copy of the PO just to make room for the next. (That is to say, we could have kept ten or more copies online, before we would have to delete and restore some more.)
to introduce your children to their new computer overlords....
Give a thirteen year old the idea and time, and he or she will teach themselves assembly language, just to get Microsoft Barney to sing "I love you. You love me. Please pay everything to Bill Geeeeeeeeee"
I had not made the conceptual leap that each cable segment was essentially being lifted individually, by its host kite. Of course, they are all tied together, which is where the power comes from. The weight problem isn't a problem - it is just 'overhead' so to speak.
Thank you too for the link. The cable will be made from Dyneema, the world's strongest fiber. It is apparently a superstrong polyethylene fibre, which I assume means it won't conduct electrical strikes.
TFA said the cable would let the kites fly five miles high - not that the cable was five miles long.
This means the cable is actually ten-plus miles long. I don't remember my differential equations from twenty years ago, but I do know that as the cable gets longer (goes higher), the amount of weight supported increases. So half the loop is a five mile strand going up, and the other half is five miles of cable coming down. It sure seems like the weight on the top kites would be extraordinary. Do we have carbon-fiber cable yet?
And what happens when lighting hits it? Didn't Tesla manage some stunning current with a structure less tall than this?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if I would agree though, that if the election sites made a fast-pass line especially for government workers while everyone else had to be screened, if I could call a tirade by a member of the public an interference to the business of the polling place.
An annoyance, yes. But life is full of annoyances. Not worthy of police action, though.
That is my take on it.
Of course, I'd rather that an arrest hadn't been made at all. Which wouldn't have happened, if the court wasn't practicing elitism in the first place....
Which does tend to bias my view toward a conviction being more likely than common sense would predict.
Conviction or not, they still got arrested. For telling lawyer jokes. (On as public property as exists in the USA, during public busines hours).
I could agree that they were interfering with the operation of the court, if they were inside a courtroom. But they weren't, they were in line, in the lobby, protesting the court's elitism.
No? Can you say elitism? I knew you could.
I used the pro-per example, specifically because such a person might have been arrested for a gun crime. When the person is both criminal defendant and legal counsel, which standard applies?
Does that apply to all lawyers with less than perfect records? Ex-convicts that earned their law degree in prison?
Looks like a slippery slope that slides to favored litigants getting preferential treatment, and schlubs being late for court because the screening line was too long. Making one side show up early, only to wait, while letting the other breeze through is unfair financially, too.
To me, it would be fair if there were no favors handed out. Lawyers (and court personnel) ought to have to stand in line like the rest of us.
And if they don't, because the court thinks that they are better than us, I think it is fair that they should overhear ridicule in the form of lawyer jokes as they pass through the members-only door into the country club, er, public courthouse.
From a different article: "Kash said he and Lanzisera were merely saying out loud that the public was being treated like peons or peasants while attorneys, who wave their security passes to court officers and don't have to stand on line, are treated like kings."
The whole incident is about elitism, and mockery thereof. And due to the arrest, it appears elitism won....
The two guys would stand in line with the public, and tell lawyer jokes at the lawyers as they exercised their special privilege.
It was a form of protest: it is unfair that "some people are more special than others".
Which, frankly, I can agree with.
How would you deal this: some idiot decides to self-represent ("In propria persona"). Do you grant him an ID badge to bypass screening? Do you declare him a first-class citizen or a second-class citizen?
I had a relative with no children up in my family tree (sister of a great-grandmother). Around the 1910's, she had to take in borders to have enough money to live on. She did not starve to death.
And we haven't even mentioned the funds maintained by charities for widows and orphans....
The death by starvation argument is really insulting. You must think that seniors are idiots, or that society is 100% predatory.
BTW, my church's canned food drive ends this week. Donations of staples much appreciated. It won't reduce your Social Securtiy burden, but you can deduct the cost of goods off your AGI before paying your income tax. If you know of any seniors that need food, we have a nice amount of food available. We also pay utility bills, if that is the need (local residents only, please). Donations to help out this fund are best made by cheque, to provide a record for you and the IRS.
I was going to link to my church, but that is rather snide, considering the global reach of slashdot. The real answer is "find a church, any church nearby" and you will find people who care enough to help out the needy.
The personal income tax in its present form was first levied by the federal government in 1913, at 1%.
Not having ready access to gobs of cash kept congress focused on the important things they could afford with their limited funds.
You don't have to get offensive when an answer is presented to you - even when it supports an alternative theory. I don't believe I mocked Evolution or any of its devotees.
Do you really think that you can insult someone into agreeing with you?Compared to the other series, this particular enterprise (HAH!) seems to have a nice setting, where they can do more with the story lines. So far I've liked it more than ST:Voyager and even ST:DS9. The Andorian versus Vulcan story was interesting: space exploration with political ramifications - now there is a story.
But I do agree with you, the writing is uneven. Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is a stinker. With the ReplayTV, my wife and watched the transporter episode on Saturday night. One of the sub-plots looked kind of like they were setting up cast changes....
GroupWise shops have a real problem with new PHB's that are used to Outlook. They show up at the new organization, and hate the look and feel of the GroupWise client. They aren't thrilled about the idea of having to learn a new email client either.
So the question GroupWise admins are having to fend off is: "Why don't we switch to MS Exchange? It's the most popular email system on the planet. Why are we different?" And of course, there are always middle managment types vying for power. "There is no victory without conquest."
Novell hears that GroupWise shops sometimes have to defend their existance. Sometimes, Novell loses a customer. What saves most shops is that the GroupWise back-end system is stable, efficient, and secure.
Evolution connectivity to GW servers is already in beta. Porting it to Windows will give GroupWise shops an easy answer to the "Why can't we just run Outlook, instead?" crowd. Evolution will look and act close enough to satisfy the people who actively complain that they want Outlook.
Novell probably does also see the benefit of being able to show off multi-platform products. It does get the idea into the minds of people that stuff from the Linux world is viable. So in this way, it will open doors. But I expect a primary goal is to help out their GW base with an alternative to MS Outlook, keeping customers on GroupWise.
Lately, the only ads I see are for Vonage - and boy do I see a lot of them.
But they are nice. I'm sure I would use Vonage, if I had the need for it.
I am not a mathematics genius, but as I understand it, there are people who know how to model complexity. What little I remember of my calculus classes, there are big infinities and little infinities. One can take seemingly chaotic data and find the fundamental equations underneath - and can even deal with insanely large numbers.
To counter your example, look at this hypothesis:
Hypothesis: "Archimedes screw is so complex that it cannot have happened by chance."
Data: The chance that an Archimedes screw would have been carved by wind and rain is 1 in some insanely large number.
Conclusion: There is a chance, therefore this hypothesis fails.
Except... no one, in their right mind, would claim that the wind and rain and sun's heat and lightning and (any other non-intelligent force) could have etched away sandstone or a tree or (anything) to carve an Archimedes screw into existance.
At some point, the complexity of an Archimedes screw is a mathematically identifiable attribute. Tubes are simple geometric devices. I assume that an auger could even be called simple. But a (mostly - there are brackets) free floating auger inside a tube, that fits tight enough to not lose too much liquid, that, when rotational energy is applied, moves liquid, is not simple.
Additionally, the use of an Archimedes screw alters its environment, to some benefit.
What we have is a structure that is complex, and drives a process that is non-random*.
The hypothesis then, must be: an Archimedes screw is so complex that its structure defies simplicity (mathematically speaking**) and its operation increases order.***
Hypothesis: "Blood clotting needs to be so precise that its process defies simplicity and its operation increases order."
Hypothesis: "Protein folding is so complex that its scaffolding defies simplicity and its operation increases order."
These hypothesis are testable, if you believe simplicity can be defined.
Admittedly, simplicity is observed - you could argue that a 3,000th order equation is 'simple'. I don't think I'd want to be on the side sticking up for that assertion though. Might as well claim that an insanely large number is as small as 1, compared to a really insanely large number. At some point 'reasonble chance' changes into 'absurdly improbable chance'. Relying on large numbers means relying on a moving target.
If this foundation of Intelligent Design is questionable, then why wouldn't the foundation of Evolution be equally as questionable? Both have foundations based on an assumption: possibilities of truth, due to large numbers.
Therefore, there isn't really any reason for Intelligent Design to be less probable than Evolution.
So, to sum up, these hypothesis are testable, and require no more faith than required for Evolution, to consider them for testing. They may not pan out. But they are as valid as others based on Evolution from scientific basis.
*Archimedes screws were used to pull water out of the Nile and irrigate. However, if they had been rigged to a constant power source (always on), they would have flooded and drowned the plants being irrigated. The operation of them was non-random, and driven for specific benefit.
**The geometry of the structure cannot be described by a simple first or second order equation. A whole series of equations is required to describe the structure, which if strung together would be nineteenth or twentieth order equations. Or higher****.
***At the heart of ID is the quest to find the spark of life - unburning the candle, if you will. Except that candles are extremely simple compared to mitosis and adenosine triphosphate.
**** Each ATP molecule is over 500 atomic mass units (500 AMUs). The complex contains the number of subatomic parts equivalent to over 500 hydrogen atoms. And then, you have the macromolecules that use ATP.
Specifically, three points: 1) Build models of the chemical changes that occur inside an organism (or even just a cell). 2) Look for processes of favorable mutation that rely on interlocking / synchronized adaptation. 3) Use the mathematics of statistics to determine whether these interlocking / synchronized adaptations are likely the result of chance, or fall outside the realm of chance.
An example is blood clotting - there is a very narrow range in which clotting agents prevent bleeding to death yet do not kill by thrombosis. Another example is hormone regulation. The quantities of actual hormones are exceptionally small, yet their effects are quite large.
What you are looking for is Archimedes' screw in the prairie. Not a creek in the side of a hill which moves stuff during spring runoff. You are looking for something complex that provides an advantage to some other portion of the organism, without which the organism would suffer.
To be fair, this is still one-sided research: if you find that, indeed, a biological process has irreducible complexity, you then prove intelligent design. But if you don't find that, then all you have for it is a better understanding of biological processes. ;-)
The fifth citation is Shakespeare. What? That Shakespeare wrote a play that says some girl is the daughter of the king is suddenley proof of macroevolution?
I cannot tell if you are trying to mock macroevolution, or are just really clumsy in trying to support it.
I still don't see any written record of "last year/decade/century, animal species xyz lacked trait abc and this year/decade/century, the trait appeared. This new trait is such an improvement, that the old species will likely not survive." Mankind has 10,000+ years of written history - surely there should be a written record somewhere....
If the loans aren't backed by government bond or tax, then there really isn't any reason for government involvement (other than to clear rights-of-way and and permits).
Don't take offense, but I don't believe you when you tell me that government sponsored network utilities exist that didn't dip into the tax fund. For fifteen years, I worked for local government IT. We installed fiberoptic lines all over the county.
The initial outlay came from the general fund. That is tax money. Period.
(Although the lines are primarily for local government use, there is some public access traffic on them, and some 'partner' access.)
Even though those lines are supplied by the local cable TV franchise, the general fund is being replenished by the cable TV subscribers. Every subscriber is assessed a surcharge on their bill, paying for the government use of all that single-mode fiber.
You can claim that isn't a tax, but the cable subscriber is not given a choice of whether to opt-in or opt-out. That is a tax.
Back to the idea of a government subsidised broadband utility. If you aren't going to use the cash reserves or good credit rating (backed up by taxes) of the government, then what is the problem of doing it private sector? I don't mean to say to cave in and wait for BellSouth - screw that. I think it would be great for a bunch of local business people to gather up the money to start up their own broadband utility. I'm sure the city of Lafayette could even help expedite the permits process (just like they would for BellSouth, should the corp want the help). Just don't let the locals dip into government funds to bankroll the operation.
Because here is the problem of using the government to bankroll an operation. Government is not allowed to pick favorites. Unless you want to allow BellSouth access to the same capital and security, bankrolling a utility to compete with BellSouth is a gift of public funds. Even if it is only a loan, which gets paid back - BellSouth can properly claim unfair business practices. They weren't given access to the cash. They weren't promised government-guaranteed loans. They had to pay interest rates reflecting their private sector risk. It is completely unfair to sponsor Joe and the Friends of Joe and not give the same breaks to BellSouth.
But wait, you say - this isn't business, it is a utility. Um, no. A business exists (BellSouth) that provides this service. What you are proposing is no different than a city buying a hotel. Lots of cash out, infrastructure built, customers enticed, monthly revenue in. That is not a utility, it is a business.
The only way it qualifies as a utility is if every home and every business gets wired in. Do you know how expensive that will be? Guess what: the operation will run financially at a loss. So how are you going to sustain it?
You cannot have it both ways: yes it is government funded, but no, those funds are not the result of taxes.
So again, what is the problem of doing it private sector?
The town I live in bought a hotel, which it later sold. The theory was that it was needed to support the convention center. Pay for itself, good investment, blah blah blah.
The reality is that money was taken out of the general fund to pay for it, and then the police and fire departments went begging. Literally. This last election, a sales tax increase was put through to fund the police and fire departments. Of course, no-one asked why the redevelopment department had money to buy expensive property and sell it to businesses, cheap. No-one asked why the city had money to completely replace their entire network infrastructure. Why have they broken ground on new office buildings? All you heard was 'the police don't have enough money to do their jobs.'
And I mean literally begging: During the campaign, I got a phone call from the chief of police, asking if I would support the vote. It is kind of intimidating to tell the C 'o P "no", and wonder if he would tell his officers to put me lower on the list of response queues.
In an ideal world, governments wouldn't rob Peter to pay Paul. But in the real world, they will. The pet project gets funded, the needed services languish, until you get stuck with the increase in taxation.
Note - if Lafayette did some sort of community fund raising event, where they gathered 100% of the money needed upfront, on a voluntary basis - I would be 100% in favor. Go for it.
But look at that: it is no different than people forming their own utility company and being private sector.
In other words, if it is such a good idea, why use government? Why not form the Lafayette Broadband Corp, and get investors?
Thankfully, we were never on the receiving end of that type of complaint.
Our County Counsel department did issue guidelines on what to keep, and for how long. The times when we did have to do discovery, it was always directed at the actions of a particular person. Come to think of it, I don't think we could have done an exhaustive search of the mail system if we had tried. GroupWise was designed to be so secure even us email admins couldn't read other people's mail. That is why it required creating a whole working duplicate of the post office just to retrieve one or a few messages....
I can see where you are coming from, and it does make sense. We had a constant battle with our users, telling them that email was a communication system - not a filing cabinet. Don't want to enable the pack-rats.
When we needed to do legal discovery, we did it. No trying to weasel out of it - we just did it. FWIW, this was government; I presume you want your government to be honest when it comes to things legal?
When we don't have gobs of free hard drive space, the process goes like this:
- Put the archival backup tapes in the tape robot.
- Restore the particular day from tape. (Takes a couple hours to bring 30 GB back).
- Make sure the workstation is configured to look in the location of the restored data.
- Bring in person (lawyer / paralegal) to do the search. Once they were done, send them away.
- Delete the restored data to free up the hard drive space.
And repeat, beginning at Step 1 for each set of backup tapes that exist, due to our retention policy.It would have been easier if we did not have to do Step 5 on every cycle. It takes surprisingly long to delete 30 GB made up of 6 million files in 256 directories.... I suppose the server based auditing software had something to do with that, but turning off the auditing was not a choice.
Step 4 might be executed only once (or once per 1/2 TB).
Step 3 is the only part that gets more complicated, to point the workstation to the location of Restore Set 2004-mm-dd. But that part is trivial compared to the time wasted by the lawyer / paralegal having to go away, return, repeat, per 30 GB. Due to a nice "find" system in the email client, the actual search often took less than ten minutes.
So the upshot is, if we had more free disk space available, we could have "batched" the restores and discovery, and used everybody's time more efficiently.
The data will always find a way to fill available space.
Way back when, for email legal discovery, I would have restore from tape a copy of the entire post office. That was 30 GB a pop (per day searched), for not that large an environment. If we had had this drive, I wouldn't have to delete one copy of the PO just to make room for the next. (That is to say, we could have kept ten or more copies online, before we would have to delete and restore some more.)
That game was fun to watch. Painfully slow, but really fun to watch.
Give a thirteen year old the idea and time, and he or she will teach themselves assembly language, just to get Microsoft Barney to sing "I love you. You love me. Please pay everything to Bill Geeeeeeeeee"
But thanks for the link, I love that kind of stuff. If only they needed a network administrator, I'd move in a second! :D
Thank you too for the link. The cable will be made from Dyneema, the world's strongest fiber. It is apparently a superstrong polyethylene fibre, which I assume means it won't conduct electrical strikes.
This means the cable is actually ten-plus miles long. I don't remember my differential equations from twenty years ago, but I do know that as the cable gets longer (goes higher), the amount of weight supported increases. So half the loop is a five mile strand going up, and the other half is five miles of cable coming down. It sure seems like the weight on the top kites would be extraordinary. Do we have carbon-fiber cable yet?
And what happens when lighting hits it? Didn't Tesla manage some stunning current with a structure less tall than this?