Working like that for 3 months is bad, but you can endure it, by dozing off at work. It's not really stressful until the future becomes unknown.
The punishee should be forced to work for 6 months at peak performance or face castration.
The punishee should be forced to work for 9 months at peak performance or lose his home.
If he works well for all 9 months, then he has a chance at competing for another job which requires more hours per week for the remainder of the year. If he fails to be a team player, then he will be fired. It's important to fire him, so that he doesn't have any good employment references for the entire contract. If he succeeds as a team player, then we can lay him off, due to lack of work.
I worked for a company stocking shelves. It's not admirable, and I take responsibility for it. However, they were a union store. I earned minimum wages, so that means after union dues, I earned less than minimum wages. The union sure wasn't too helpful to me. The supervisor was verbally abusive too, in my opinion.
But there are those who insist that the Earth was created "with age" 6000 years ago, and that fossils, etc, are a diversionary trap for the unfaithful.
And there are those who believe that the earth was created 6K - 10K years ago, and the fossils are there due to normal events, and that people misinterpret the events and fossils; faith or no faith.
People have difficultly describing the situation even when they do understand it. If God created man out of dust in 1 minute, that was as physically mature as me, then how old is that man? Less than a year old, or 31 years old?
And while were at it, if the bible is the first book, we acknowledge that history is as old as written text, yet there are no written accounts of man walking with dinosars.
Wouldn't you have a tough time believing those documents, even if the documents were correctly dated? Isn't it easier to believe that it is a lie, halucination, or honest mistake?
And how the hell did the Kangaroos and Koalas make it to Australia after the flood? God give them jet packs?
What difference does it make? If people brought them there, would that change your mind? That doesn't prove evolution or creation, from what little I know.
Some browsers don't offer the features that really harness the power of the web. Therefore, choosing the browser that best suits your needs, can really make a difference.
Did you know about the "* html" CSS hack for IE? Only IE can understand it, so you could give IE a totally different set of styles. If this doesn't work for you, then why not?
Well, it's been very interesting comparing the browsers, and the conclusion I've reached is that Opera and Firefox are both good browsers and the choice of one over the other has mostly to do with past experience and personal taste.
That's my view as well. Maybe I said something else earlier, but that's usually because I get caught up in the moment. I suppose I should phrase it as "Opera is 'better' in general because it gives the user more options up front. However, it doesn't mean that it is better for every person.". The thing that bothers me about KDE vs. GNOME, or Mozilla vs. Opera, etc. is that there is no reason to compare to see which is best. It should be comparing for the sake of ease of use for a niche market. In other words, 1 browser should go after the power users, while another should go after casual users. If I go to an internet cafe, then it's not as if I'm going to need small screen or full screen mode. That full screen mode is only good for slide presentations so that you don't need the leading brand of software, and for when you need a larger look at a page such as a graph.
Speaking of slide presentations, so far the main legitimate use of frames that I can see is for making slide presentations viewable for older and less featureful browsers, without adding links to the main content [ie: "Prev", "Next", etc.]. 1 frame can contain a seperate page of links and the slides can stay untouched. This way, the user doesn't have to keep a seperate copy just for presenting.
Another interesting use is what I call "client-side includes". The idea is that there are large amount of pages, and a list of links will be stored on 1 page, which will be "iframe"ed into each of the pages. To make sure that each page opens up entirely in the window, you just add
<base target="_top">
into the head of the links page. It's not pretty, but for those situations when you need functionality more than beauty, and you don't have the luxury of server-side includes [ie: viewing on your own computer], then it becomes very handy.
I'd never use tables and frames for layout. It'd be strictly for ease of use or maintenance.
Getting back on topic...
I don't even try to print off of my computer anymore, because it's just too hard to get it to work, plus, I try to save paper. That being said, since I design web sites, I use print preview often with the assumption that every page will be printed by somebody. I'm just being careful, that's all. I'm not going to worry about it too much for regular users.
I really don't need 8 tool bars, and only truly use 5 on average, including the status bar and main menu. I think that 8 or more is good only for the sake of reducing clutter. Even if it didn't save space, I still like being able to keep 1 kind of stuff on 1 tool bar. So, having 8 isn't for the sake of being the biggest or having the most, but for the sake of offering as much flexibility as possible.
To be honest, if Firefox weren't available for Windows, I'd probably be using Opera.:)
Cool!
The most important thing is that you aren't using IE. I'm not trying to bash MS, but I can't stand it when people use that browser because of it web standards bugs, etc.
I can't help but notice that you made no refernece whatsoever to the "better features," which is what I was really interested in.
[snip] What features of Opera keep you using it?
Ah, I see what you mean, now. In my list, I actually mentioned some of those features. I won't mention them again, but I want to emphasize that the level of customization is phenominal, and that Mozilla and Firefox don't allow for that.
My favourite features that don't seem to be available in either Mozilla or Firefox: * user style sheets * cutomizable tool bars * the ability to see no images, only images in cache, or all images [M & F only allow you to see all or none] * the ability to load only 1 image on a page instead of all of them * the ability to disable frames [I don't usually use it, but it makes for interesting possibilities since I can design pages with the "noframes" element and encourage users to use both options to see 2 different types of content] * open closed pages [for when you accidentally close a page and want to see it again; the page opens with the exact same history as it had before; I'm surprised at how often I use this feature] * sessions [I think this is self-explanitory, so I won't explain] * start with last page opened [like sessions, but for when the browser crashes or isn't able to shut down cleanly, or just because you always like to continue from before] * validate this page [when I'm developing and designing, it seems so much easier to browse to that page, then just type Ctrl+Alt+V, than to upload the page by typing in the file name, etc.] * print preview [M & F seem to have this as well, but they can't render the preview properly] * 8 toolbars, including the status bar and progress bar * reload every X seconds [rarely ever use it, but nice to have so I can get first post;^)] * go to similar pages [never used it, but I want to develop that habit] * view links on page [another nice to have thing that I don't use, but should probably use more] * full screen and handheld screen [don't use it often, but I do use it; Mozilla still shows toolbars in full screen mode; Opera actually removes the ad banner, so that this is *very* ideal for using HTML pages as slide presentations and then posting the content of the internet]
I wouldn't be surprised if there were more things that I liked. Also, I should mention that Konqueror [KDE file manager and browser] has many features like this as well, but not as good.
Also, I should mention that Mozilla has some features that I appreciate in Opera. I neglected to mention them specifically, to save time.
Mozilla has details or features that Opera seems to be missing, such as change profiles, and page info. Those are 2 things that I may not necessarily use at all, but I would really appreciate having the option. Maybe Opera provides the same benefits in a round-about way that I don't know of, but I doubt it.
Well, that's about it. If you have any more questions, then don't hesitate to ask.
If you compile it yourself (i.e. you like to do that) then it's still small and relies on the shared library versions of gtk2 and font stuff and therefore you get the same size stuff. If that made any sense let me know.
Well, I took a look at the compressed binaries since I ended up installing them.
eugene@ew eugene $ ls -l/usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 17783404 Oct 10 09:17/usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-1.7.2-r1.tbz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8719328 Oct 12 02:00/usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-firefox-0.9.3.tb z2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18481 Oct 8 21:03/usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-launcher-1.16.tb z2
So it looks like neither Firefox nor Mozilla are even coming close to Opera. Opera is as featureful as Mozilla, except for maybe the HTML editor, yet is *much* smaller than Firefox, yet still manages to look the same on all distributions.
I don't have any sources. I'll tell you what I did to my Opera web browser. I haven't installed Mozilla or the standalone browser for quite sometime.
I'm glad that you asked, though, because what I said about the.5 inch doesn't necessarily make sense. What I meant was that I configured the browser to display text ads only. This means that there are faster downloads of the ads, and the ads are all those Google sponsored ads. Normally, it takes up approx. 1"x6" of screen realestate. To get it into a.5"x12" shape, I disabled the main bar, and the ad bar automatically reshaped to.5"x12". Since I'll still need the buttons that were on the main bar, I added them to the status bar, which sits nicely immediately under the banner ad.
Side note: I can't remember why I have nothing along the bottom of my browser window, but there was a legitmate reason; it probably had something to do with the horizontal scroll bar being on the bottom-most pixel of the window and making it easier to use the mouse.
I don't mean to sound like a zealot, even though I am a Opera zealot, but I find that those Google ads are almost always on topic. This is true, even when they are on web pages, not just the Opera banner.
In short, the banner ad does take space, but it's only an extra.5" of screen height, with respect to the deactivated version of Opera.
Before we get to the speed improvements, I want to say, that I'm not going to beat people over the head when they don't use Opera. It's just that it really upset me when I found myself waiting a long time for the Mozilla browsers to load up a page, and then discovered Opera. All I ever heard is "Mozilla vs. IE" and "GPL yadda yadda yadda". In all fairness, I'll go and try to install it again. I may as well, since I'm doing more web development these days.
Regarding the speed improvements, here are the things that I do to improve speed. Each list item is a completely seperate setting. When I played with even just a few settings in a wrong way, it made my system/browser almost freeze up. When I set them correctly, it's almost as if the system were as fast as a high end computer. I admit that I'm being very subjective and using big exageration. Bear in mind that I have a broadband connection. Anyways, here's the list. * memory cache: 4MB * disk cache: 50MB * cache documents * cache images * cache other * [disabled] empty on exit * check documents: every 24 hours * [disabled] always check redirect [for documents, I assume] * check images: never * [disabled] always check redirect [for images, I assume] * check other: never * [disabled] look for local network machine [server name completion] * [disabled] try server name completion using prefixes [insert your preferred prefix] * [disabled] try server name completion using suffix [insert your preferred suffix] * max connections to server: 1 * max total connections: 16 * [disabled] synchronous dns * showed cached images only * [disabled] gif animation * [disabled] smooth zooming of images * [disabled] draw images instantly [this took getting used to, but it was worth it because it allowed me to scroll graphic intensive pages as if they were a text page; very useful when graphics aren't important] * [disabled] enable sounds in web pages * [disabled] enable pluggins * enable javascript * [disabled] enable java * Courier New [a monospaced font for wherever I can tollerate it; I do use other fonts mostly] * redraw page instantly [allows you to start reading while the rest of the page is being rendered] * [disabled] smooth scrolling * [disabled] show window size
If you try these settings, then please let me know your results, even if they are subjective results.
Actually, that made a lot of sense. I still don't understand why it takes up more space on Linux than it does on Windows. Don't get wrong, I'll take your word for it, since it makes a lot of sense.
True, but we weren't talking about such freedoms. We were talking about file sizes and features. If we wanted to talk about choice, then yes, Mozilla and friends would be better. I'm sure that if Opera disabled the code, then we could argue that Opera is smaller, according to my presuppositions. I'm probably going to have to change my presuppositions, though, based on what another person said about static binaries.
Bear in mind that as far as user friendliness goes, Opera easily lets you choose another email client. Therefore nobody is forced to do anything. It just as easy to configure Opera as it is to install a new email client.
In short, I'm comparing features per kilobyte of disk space. That's not a great measure, but that's what I meant.
Because some browsers don't offer features, even though they are standards compliant. Also, each organization will prioritize which standards are supposed to be met. No browser is perfect, and because of that, the user must choose.
In other news, vim is smaller and faster than KDE. Just kidding; no insult intended.
Seriously, Firefox has no email, if I understand correctly, which makes it kind of hard to use as a full featured system. On top of that, Firefox for Linux is much bigger than Firefox for Windows, at least when I last checked.
From what I understand Opera is smaller and faster than Firefox, and has more features, even if you recompile Firefox.
Smaller and faster? Not in my experience. More feature-packed? You haven't actually listed any features it has that its competitors do not.
The connections settings and the browser cache make a big difference. Also, how it is configured to render images make a difference. I can't underscore the speed difference enough. When I go back to IE, I'm surprised @ how a newer computer with IE can go slower than my Pentium Classic with KDE fully loaded. When I say, "newer", I mean newer than a Pentium Classic, not newer than most models out there.
A feature that I like is user style sheets that you can select in a menu. It's not user friendly to install them, but once you do install them, then you can do all sorts of neat things, like removing columns and rows on the fly. I even use user style sheets to customize my browsing of slashdot, which makes it all much more speedier.
As for those ads, you should switch to text ads. They don't flash. There are no animations.
I've already paid for Opera. I still have the ads enabled. I'll pay for it again if I have to.
First of all, I'd like to say thanks for the clearest explanation of your point of view. I think that most people tend to avoid mentioning the photosythesis.
That being said, I still disagree, because...
This can, in principle, be used to support the theory of evolution.
...I don't see how this can improve things to a degree that a living organism would come to be.
I think that what I'm trying to say is that the sun can only bring about so much order and improvement into the physical environment, whether it is an open system or not. For example, the sun will never help a sky scraper to be passively errected. It won't cause a nuclear reactor that is useful and safe to be formed.
I realize that you deliberately didn't "directly [address] where the genetic information and enzymes, etc. in the acorn came from", and I respect that. It's important to keep on topic, but I think that the other fellow would acknowledge that "thermodynamics" may help things to "improve", but he was probably trying to say that the capacity to improve has to be there ahead of time. He probably wants to discuss how the capacity came to be, because without the capacity for improvement, evolution becomes impossible.
Another example is that even in a closed system, the faces on Mount Rushmore bear the finger print of human intervention. I'd like to think that I can use other reliable methods other than historical studies and scientific studies to come to the correct conclusion. There is nothing wrong with historical and scientific methods, but I'd like to be skilled in as many reliable methods as possible.
I hope that that clarifies my view.:^/
Please note that I'm not well versed in the sciences, and thus I hesitate to use certain words. I'm trying to put it all in my own language to give you a better idea of whether or not I understand.
Slashdot Mirror
Working like that for 3 months is bad, but you can endure it, by dozing off at work. It's not really stressful until the future becomes unknown.
The punishee should be forced to work for 6 months at peak performance or face castration.
The punishee should be forced to work for 9 months at peak performance or lose his home.
If he works well for all 9 months, then he has a chance at competing for another job which requires more hours per week for the remainder of the year. If he fails to be a team player, then he will be fired. It's important to fire him, so that he doesn't have any good employment references for the entire contract. If he succeeds as a team player, then we can lay him off, due to lack of work.
Then he'll know.
He's talking about making change in society, not the severity of the adversity.
I worked for a company stocking shelves. It's not admirable, and I take responsibility for it. However, they were a union store. I earned minimum wages, so that means after union dues, I earned less than minimum wages. The union sure wasn't too helpful to me. The supervisor was verbally abusive too, in my opinion.
I hate unions a lot.
Some of those ideas are probably almost here. They have paint on latex, for example.
People have difficultly describing the situation even when they do understand it. If God created man out of dust in 1 minute, that was as physically mature as me, then how old is that man? Less than a year old, or 31 years old?
As a web designer, I feel that Konqueror 3.3.1 is miles ahead of 3.2.* and Mozilla. I'm constantly surprised at how well it renders CSS.
Some browsers don't offer the features that really harness the power of the web. Therefore, choosing the browser that best suits your needs, can really make a difference.
I agree. For once in a long time, I feel that this is a "My Rights" issue.
Did you know about the "* html" CSS hack for IE? Only IE can understand it, so you could give IE a totally different set of styles. If this doesn't work for you, then why not?
Does your company use customized software or is it packaged? Something else?
I ask because, if it's all packaged, then at least there's a snowball's chance in hell that Linux software developers can compete.
Speaking of slide presentations, so far the main legitimate use of frames that I can see is for making slide presentations viewable for older and less featureful browsers, without adding links to the main content [ie: "Prev", "Next", etc.]. 1 frame can contain a seperate page of links and the slides can stay untouched. This way, the user doesn't have to keep a seperate copy just for presenting.
Another interesting use is what I call "client-side includes". The idea is that there are large amount of pages, and a list of links will be stored on 1 page, which will be "iframe"ed into each of the pages. To make sure that each page opens up entirely in the window, you just add into the head of the links page. It's not pretty, but for those situations when you need functionality more than beauty, and you don't have the luxury of server-side includes [ie: viewing on your own computer], then it becomes very handy.
I'd never use tables and frames for layout. It'd be strictly for ease of use or maintenance.
Getting back on topic...
I don't even try to print off of my computer anymore, because it's just too hard to get it to work, plus, I try to save paper. That being said, since I design web sites, I use print preview often with the assumption that every page will be printed by somebody. I'm just being careful, that's all. I'm not going to worry about it too much for regular users.
I really don't need 8 tool bars, and only truly use 5 on average, including the status bar and main menu. I think that 8 or more is good only for the sake of reducing clutter. Even if it didn't save space, I still like being able to keep 1 kind of stuff on 1 tool bar. So, having 8 isn't for the sake of being the biggest or having the most, but for the sake of offering as much flexibility as possible.Cool!
The most important thing is that you aren't using IE. I'm not trying to bash MS, but I can't stand it when people use that browser because of it web standards bugs, etc.
My favourite features that don't seem to be available in either Mozilla or Firefox:
* user style sheets
* cutomizable tool bars
* the ability to see no images, only images in cache, or all images [M & F only allow you to see all or none]
* the ability to load only 1 image on a page instead of all of them
* the ability to disable frames [I don't usually use it, but it makes for interesting possibilities since I can design pages with the "noframes" element and encourage users to use both options to see 2 different types of content]
* open closed pages [for when you accidentally close a page and want to see it again; the page opens with the exact same history as it had before; I'm surprised at how often I use this feature]
* sessions [I think this is self-explanitory, so I won't explain]
* start with last page opened [like sessions, but for when the browser crashes or isn't able to shut down cleanly, or just because you always like to continue from before]
* validate this page [when I'm developing and designing, it seems so much easier to browse to that page, then just type Ctrl+Alt+V, than to upload the page by typing in the file name, etc.]
* print preview [M & F seem to have this as well, but they can't render the preview properly]
* 8 toolbars, including the status bar and progress bar
* reload every X seconds [rarely ever use it, but nice to have so I can get first post
* go to similar pages [never used it, but I want to develop that habit]
* view links on page [another nice to have thing that I don't use, but should probably use more]
* full screen and handheld screen [don't use it often, but I do use it; Mozilla still shows toolbars in full screen mode; Opera actually removes the ad banner, so that this is *very* ideal for using HTML pages as slide presentations and then posting the content of the internet]
I wouldn't be surprised if there were more things that I liked. Also, I should mention that Konqueror [KDE file manager and browser] has many features like this as well, but not as good.
Also, I should mention that Mozilla has some features that I appreciate in Opera. I neglected to mention them specifically, to save time.
Mozilla has details or features that Opera seems to be missing, such as change profiles, and page info. Those are 2 things that I may not necessarily use at all, but I would really appreciate having the option. Maybe Opera provides the same benefits in a round-about way that I don't know of, but I doubt it.
Well, that's about it. If you have any more questions, then don't hesitate to ask.
- -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 17783404 Oct 10 09:17
/usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-1.7.2-r1.tbz2 - -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8719328 Oct 12 02:00
/usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-firefox-0.9.3.tb z2 - -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18481 Oct 8 21:03
/usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-launcher-1.16.tb z2
So it looks like neither Firefox nor Mozilla are even coming close to Opera. Opera is as featureful as Mozilla, except for maybe the HTML editor, yet is *much* smaller than Firefox, yet still manages to look the same on all distributions.There really is no comparison.
I don't have any sources. I'll tell you what I did to my Opera web browser. I haven't installed Mozilla or the standalone browser for quite sometime.
.5 inch doesn't necessarily make sense. What I meant was that I configured the browser to display text ads only. This means that there are faster downloads of the ads, and the ads are all those Google sponsored ads. Normally, it takes up approx. 1"x6" of screen realestate. To get it into a .5"x12" shape, I disabled the main bar, and the ad bar automatically reshaped to .5"x12". Since I'll still need the buttons that were on the main bar, I added them to the status bar, which sits nicely immediately under the banner ad.
.5" of screen height, with respect to the deactivated version of Opera.
I'm glad that you asked, though, because what I said about the
Side note: I can't remember why I have nothing along the bottom of my browser window, but there was a legitmate reason; it probably had something to do with the horizontal scroll bar being on the bottom-most pixel of the window and making it easier to use the mouse.
I don't mean to sound like a zealot, even though I am a Opera zealot, but I find that those Google ads are almost always on topic. This is true, even when they are on web pages, not just the Opera banner.
In short, the banner ad does take space, but it's only an extra
Before we get to the speed improvements, I want to say, that I'm not going to beat people over the head when they don't use Opera. It's just that it really upset me when I found myself waiting a long time for the Mozilla browsers to load up a page, and then discovered Opera. All I ever heard is "Mozilla vs. IE" and "GPL yadda yadda yadda". In all fairness, I'll go and try to install it again. I may as well, since I'm doing more web development these days.
Regarding the speed improvements, here are the things that I do to improve speed. Each list item is a completely seperate setting. When I played with even just a few settings in a wrong way, it made my system/browser almost freeze up. When I set them correctly, it's almost as if the system were as fast as a high end computer. I admit that I'm being very subjective and using big exageration. Bear in mind that I have a broadband connection. Anyways, here's the list.
* memory cache: 4MB
* disk cache: 50MB
* cache documents
* cache images
* cache other
* [disabled] empty on exit
* check documents: every 24 hours
* [disabled] always check redirect [for documents, I assume]
* check images: never
* [disabled] always check redirect [for images, I assume]
* check other: never
* [disabled] look for local network machine [server name completion]
* [disabled] try server name completion using prefixes [insert your preferred prefix]
* [disabled] try server name completion using suffix [insert your preferred suffix]
* max connections to server: 1
* max total connections: 16
* [disabled] synchronous dns
* showed cached images only
* [disabled] gif animation
* [disabled] smooth zooming of images
* [disabled] draw images instantly [this took getting used to, but it was worth it because it allowed me to scroll graphic intensive pages as if they were a text page; very useful when graphics aren't important]
* [disabled] enable sounds in web pages
* [disabled] enable pluggins
* enable javascript
* [disabled] enable java
* Courier New [a monospaced font for wherever I can tollerate it; I do use other fonts mostly]
* redraw page instantly [allows you to start reading while the rest of the page is being rendered]
* [disabled] smooth scrolling
* [disabled] show window size
If you try these settings, then please let me know your results, even if they are subjective results.
Actually, that made a lot of sense. I still don't understand why it takes up more space on Linux than it does on Windows. Don't get wrong, I'll take your word for it, since it makes a lot of sense.
True, but we weren't talking about such freedoms. We were talking about file sizes and features. If we wanted to talk about choice, then yes, Mozilla and friends would be better. I'm sure that if Opera disabled the code, then we could argue that Opera is smaller, according to my presuppositions. I'm probably going to have to change my presuppositions, though, based on what another person said about static binaries.
Bear in mind that as far as user friendliness goes, Opera easily lets you choose another email client. Therefore nobody is forced to do anything. It just as easy to configure Opera as it is to install a new email client.
In short, I'm comparing features per kilobyte of disk space. That's not a great measure, but that's what I meant.
What about an AOL browser heavily based on Netscape 4 without any style sheet support?
Because some browsers don't offer features, even though they are standards compliant. Also, each organization will prioritize which standards are supposed to be met. No browser is perfect, and because of that, the user must choose.
In other news, vim is smaller and faster than KDE. Just kidding; no insult intended.
Seriously, Firefox has no email, if I understand correctly, which makes it kind of hard to use as a full featured system. On top of that, Firefox for Linux is much bigger than Firefox for Windows, at least when I last checked.
From what I understand Opera is smaller and faster than Firefox, and has more features, even if you recompile Firefox.
A feature that I like is user style sheets that you can select in a menu. It's not user friendly to install them, but once you do install them, then you can do all sorts of neat things, like removing columns and rows on the fly. I even use user style sheets to customize my browsing of slashdot, which makes it all much more speedier.
As for those ads, you should switch to text ads. They don't flash. There are no animations.
I've already paid for Opera. I still have the ads enabled. I'll pay for it again if I have to.
Because it's faster than Mozilla, and has better features than Mozilla, even though it'll only take up an extra .5 inch when configured properly.
That being said, I still disagree, because......I don't see how this can improve things to a degree that a living organism would come to be.
I think that what I'm trying to say is that the sun can only bring about so much order and improvement into the physical environment, whether it is an open system or not. For example, the sun will never help a sky scraper to be passively errected. It won't cause a nuclear reactor that is useful and safe to be formed.
I realize that you deliberately didn't "directly [address] where the genetic information and enzymes, etc. in the acorn came from", and I respect that. It's important to keep on topic, but I think that the other fellow would acknowledge that "thermodynamics" may help things to "improve", but he was probably trying to say that the capacity to improve has to be there ahead of time. He probably wants to discuss how the capacity came to be, because without the capacity for improvement, evolution becomes impossible.
Another example is that even in a closed system, the faces on Mount Rushmore bear the finger print of human intervention. I'd like to think that I can use other reliable methods other than historical studies and scientific studies to come to the correct conclusion. There is nothing wrong with historical and scientific methods, but I'd like to be skilled in as many reliable methods as possible.
I hope that that clarifies my view.
Please note that I'm not well versed in the sciences, and thus I hesitate to use certain words. I'm trying to put it all in my own language to give you a better idea of whether or not I understand.