Science is about making new discoveries about the world around us. It is, at a philisophical level about clearly distinguishing between that which we can prove and that which we cannot and then using what we know to find out what we don't.
There are many outlooks which differ from science most noteably the "What we think is what it is" outlook. The idea is that some group has a "complete" answer for everything be it God, Atheism, or little blue people that make the stars move. Any attempt to challenge that is met with immediate attack.
"Intelligent Design" is an attempt to wrapping up the latter in the dress of the former. ID'ers like all creationists believe that some higher power must have made the universe, solar system, earth, and all its inhabitants. These people may fight tooth and nail over exactly who or what that force was (God, Gods, Aliens, Godlike Aliens...) but they are all in agreement that a) the outside being exists, b) it is anthropomorphic and c) that we are special.
ID'ers are attempting to "prove" their baseless assertions by using pseudoscience. They are seeking to pose as scientists while making patently unscientific arguments. Most of these arguments are based fall (in my experience) into two categories. The former are little illogic-games such as "irreducable complexity", or "specific complexity". The latter are "things we don't know" arguments.
Specific complexity doesn't hold up because it is based upon a tautology. Dembski defined strings that have specific complexity as those that cannot be reduced to any other form or explained by any "process" they must simply be copied as-is. This essentially was a notion of information that is specially complex versus information that is not. ID'ers (but not Dembski himself) have then argued variously that humanity, human dna, etc are all irreducably complex and ergo cannot have been reproduced by some mechanical or impersonal process, say evolution.
This falls apart because of the original tautology. Strings are irreducably complex only because they are... irreducably complex by definition. No proof of such complexity exists, and there is no way to show that humans are irreducably complex except by saying so. Therefore this doesn't "prove" anything ID'ers just like to say that by claiming we are irreducably complex they have proven that the godlike whatever made us.
The latter arguments (what the authors are getting at here) fall along the same lines as the former. ID'ers sieze upon something that is unproven or they claim unproven and assert that it cannot be understood (is irreducably complex) and therefore that we will never find it out and therefore that it must have been made by some God(s), Aliens, or Godlike Aliens. The flight of the bumblebee is one of the more classic examples of this. Two others are the lack of "intermediate" fossils between the existing fossils (there will always be this), and the flagella of the paramecium.
To think about how silly this is consider a prehistoric, or even dark ages individual presented with a car, airplane, or an Archimedes Screw. They could easily claim (and many did) that we would "never figure it out" but we have!
What really divides the two outlooks is how they respond to the unknown. Scientists are excited by the unknown and seek to dive headlong into it in order to find it out. Theey do so by admitting what they do and do not know and then attacking the unknown. The latter group fear to find out that they are wrong, and to admit that they do not know things. Therefore they seek to pretend that the unknown is not there.
Given the difference in outlook and the fact that ID'ers seek to pollute science by claiming that they practice it it makes perfect sense that the Scientists involved would love every minute of disproving them.
No. Existing patent law does not require inventors to conduct a patent search before developing a product. It does require them to do so before releasing it. It has been defined this way because noone can conduct a complete patent search without the final product in place. By the time one had reviewed all of the preexisting patents one would have to review the patents that were issued while one was conducting the initial search and so on.
Uner the present system the fact that you developed something without noticing a patent is a viable defense. The idea that you searched first however makes you liable for infringing all of the patents that you saw.
Microsoft likes this system just as much as Amazon and IBM. The alternative would be entirely unworkable for eveyone involved.
That habving been said if a released project violates a patent it will be as liable under the new system as it was under the old.
The list confirms my general feeling however. Of those only Slackware is built around the idea of minimal-structure. While they chose XP and Server 2003 you'll note in other portions of the article it was Windows CE that they were touting on small-footprint systems.
IMHO it makes sense to compare desktop w desktop and minimal w minimal. It seems that they did do the former but brought nothing new or conclusive to the table. Without a clear detal of patches, software (which office suites), etc this article is meaningless except as an ad.
In the tests run in its lab, Microsoft found that most modern commercial Linux distributions could be installed successfully on systems with a Pentium processor, with 64MB of RAM and a minimum of 2GB of hard disk space.
"Memory prevented the successful installation on a typical 1997 system, as 32MB of memory is not enough to install most Linux distributions or to run desktop applications with acceptable performance. A memory upgrade could prolong the life of such hardware, but the cost and effort of locating old memory and installing it onto all corporate clients significantly reduces the potential savings," Hilf said.
Minimum requirements for office productivity performance on a Linux system were any Pentium II (PII) system with at least 64MB of RAM, he said, adding that playback of sound and video would typically require a PII 400 or better.
The salient points are in the statment above. The claim that "most" linuix distros had limitations preventing them from accessing a 32mb system with "aceptable performance" is entirely unsurprising. I note that neither RedHat (to pick one) nor Windows XP would like such a system very much, especially for modern "desktop application performance" (read OpenOffice and MS Office). In that case it is really the apps that are the limiting factors.
They never state what distros were tested (I assume Novell and RedHat when in doubt) nor how installation was done. Rather they pull a nice switching strategy. They test some unnamed distros and then state that windows CE is better than them on legacy hardware.
That is much like saying Windows CE is better than Windows XP on legacy hardware or that MuLinux is better than RedHat on older hardware. In both cases the former was designed for such a task while the latter was not. In both cases the former have limitations that prevent them from running "Modern Desktop Apps", that is in fact the point.
This is a simple "bait and switch" comparison, and if this is all the CTO uses when comparing all distros of linux to windows for some use; fire them.
That has actually come up as one of the major arguments aginst such laws. As the page I referenced noted the practice of "Civil Death" goes back (at least) to the Romans. But it isn't practiced as much in the U.S. precisely because of that argument. Other arguments marshalled against it include the notion of Cruel and Unusual punishment (for a minor felony a life punishment is too much) and the notion of Double Joepardy. If the Jail Time is the punishment then what is the virtue of extending ti forever, etc.
Ultimately it all comes down to the stigma of the crime.
According to this page Felons in Ohio are only barred from voting while in prison.
From the article:
It's not the first time local officials have investigated situations where students are misusing computers. Forchione noted a 2005 case in which four Jackson High School students were charged with misdemeanors after being caught accessing the school computer system. Some grades were changed.
So violating other peoples' privacy and altering your grades is a misdemeanor but slowing down a webserver is a felony? Now that is stupid.
There was a time when we made an important distinction between types of crimes. Misdemeanors were "minor crimes" annoyances that can be cleared up easily enough and are a) not worth making permanent and b) best forgotten once the problems is solved. A classic example is littering, or spraypainting something on a park bench. The former is solved by making the littebug pick up their garbage (and mabye some other peoples') and the latter by having the offendor repaint the bench brown. In both cases the offence can be "fixed" and the individual can learn form a simple dressing down. In most juristictions misdemeanors are not even recorded (or didn't used to be) and never ever became part of someone's permanent criminal record (especially a minor). Moreover misdemeanors aren't liable for jail time above and beyond "time served" (in the drunk tank).
Felonies are major or "permanent" crimes such as theft, maim, and murder. They connotate crimes that cannot be simply "cleaned up", crimes that cannot be undone in any meaningful sense and crimes that may signal permanent problems for the individual in question. Felonies attatch much stiffer penalties (for both juveniles and adults) as well as "permanence". In some states felons lose the right to vote permanently. This is politely known as "Civil Disenfranchisement". In Midevil times it was associated with the term "Civil Death". Felons are also forbidden from obtaining some jobs (in government), and have to tell all other employers of their status. They are also often forbidden from obtaining some scholarships and grants. While not all of these attatch automatically to juvenile felons many of them do. Increasing numbers of states are making no distinction between juvenile felonies and adult felonies. Unlike midsdemeanor crimes felons are truly marked for life.
The basic upshot of this is that this kid could be harmed for life for what is, in essence, a nothing crime. He encouraged people to visit a website and thereby caused a server to run slow, not stop, not crash, not burst into flames, just run slow. This is a temporary problem, a fixable problem, and one that doesn't even require two coats of paint.
This is a dangerous, vicious overreaction on the part of the city prosecutor, and the school officials. They are abusing their power and risk punishing a kid for life for something that should be handled by a stern talking to and no dessert.
Some ex convicts carry around a felony conviction that prevents them from re-entering society or impairs them in some way thus encouraging a return to crime. How much worse is that when the conviction is for something less-damaging than littering.
On another note, I wonder when the prosecutor's up for reelection?
As a side note, and this is nothing personal about Infinium but why is it that pre-produce launches have become so necessary. I mean I know that announcing new airplanes in advance of ground tests and so on is necessary to drum up funding, or just spit in the eyes of those who said you would never "make it" but why is it that every company has to tell the world about its products before they exist just to keep shareholders happy. First the shareholders demanded regular updates and yearly profits. Now they expect quarterly profit gains. Before you had to have a new product on the market each year. Now it seems you have to have a new pre-product announcement each quarter (just look at Apple).
I can't help but think that the focus on short-term gains and announcements bodes ill in the long run for any company.
By "stranded, unprepared, and unaided" I meant real problems not a lack of e-mail. My point being that the issue of "e-mail addiction" or "ipod addiction" is really trivial when you compare it to the real problems faced by those isolated by Katrina, and their own government.
As to the Y2k, again it wasn't about e-mail. I was referencing the fact that, in the run up to 2000 people were stocking up on canned goods, etc *as if* the bug would cause a global crisis. In reality Y2k was nothing and people, in a sense, overprepared. Katrina was real and we as a nation tragically underprepared.
I so love that phrase because it suggests weakness of some sort. As if governments didn't exist to protect and help the people and anyone who thinks otherwize deserves a rude awakening.
In the case of Katrina the very government agencies that we have formed, funded and trained to care for the sick, the elderly, the disposessed of our society, were placed in the hands of self-centered morons whose only interest was in settling the "shirtsleeves up or down" issue. People who could not leave because they were too sick and didn't own cars were being told to "take some cash and drive away". Even now no reliable plan exists to get them home and Karl Rove is directing the reconstruction efforts.
We form governments to protect us as a whole, because individual humans, however many guns they have, are weak and likely to die. To suggest that people who looked to the government that they supported to help them were "weak" or overly dependent" is in my opinion incorrect. Rather wwe should say that the government failed the people. The government failed in its most essential function. What's worse it did so because people let it fail, perhaps even made it fail not because it should not have succeeded.
If we are talking cliniacal definitions of addiction, i.e. falsely convinced that we cannot live without something and willing to orob/maim/kill/destroy our lives, to obtain it then it depends. I think ther we need to specify the technology in question.
If we are talking a general "growing too soft/dependent upon specific tech" then I would say yes, especially with the internet. I know far too many people who feel the need to have a machine up all the time.
But I think we should really go more basic than that; Electricity.
The standards that we are used to in America, and the rest of the industrialized world (stable, widely available power that rarely if ever goes down) is a) uncommon in the rest of the world, and b) an anomoly in human existence. Few of my peers know how to make a fire or even what to do when the power goes down (hint, the electric can opener will no longer work).
The level of panic surrounding the Y2k bug should have made this clear to anyone. Far too many people (some of them policymakers) panicked at the thought of "global power outages" and, as Katrina showed, far too many were left stranded, unprepared, and unaided when a real disaster struck.
In my opinion "addiction" to mp3 players is just icing on the cake.
in general)I know too many others who *have no clue*
The "Young earth hypothesis" is orthagonal to Intelligent Design. Not all proponents of one support the other. Most "Young earthers" are creationists but not all of them would back the exact tenents or even pseudologic of Intelligent Design. Many of them are more hard-core creationists who would see any attempt to gussy an act of "literal word" with any support however well intentioned as worthless or downright heretical. To some people the word is the word and it needs no support. Attempting to giove it an outside validation or a patina of science is as great a crime as disagreeing with it.
Similar some Intelligent Design proponents are willing to grant a much longer age for the earth. They just refuse to believe that we humans (at least) came about in any way except by the intervention of some higher power (remember it could be an alien!) which in turn makes us "special".
This is really the handle of both the old-earth creationists and the Intelligent Design people. They are perfectly willing to accept science until science brings up something they don't like then it must be stopped. It's kind of like being open to all religions until someone professes their faith, or accepting homosexuals so long as you never meet any.
I was well aware that the trial was "selected" actually. Nor do I consider that a "scam". The teacher in question chose to violate the law thus setting up the trial in the first place. That wasn't the first (dumping tea in the harbour) or last time that laws were deliberately violated to protest their existence.
As to the reaction in dayton, that wasn't the text of my discussion. Nor did I draw in any way from "inherit the wind". Since the trial it has (for better or worse) become a symbol of the evolutuion/creation debate and, perhaps outside of Dayton, spurred both sides along.
Consider this, the 6 members of the Kansas state board of eductation, scvheduled their pro-creationism dog and pony show for the exact same days as the Scopes Monkey trial starting it on the anniversary of the trial's opening. That wasn't accidental.
Whatever the intentions, or mood, of the participants at the time, the trial is now well beyond that in the minds of both creationists, and rationalists.
I am thrilled ecstatic over this decision. This judge clearly has brains and a willingness to use them. I am going to be happy.
I am not, not going to assume that the fight is over. Keep in mind that it was a loss in the Scopes Monkey Trial that galvanized scientists to fight ever harder for strong science (read no religion) in the biology classroom, and the school as a whole.
While I as a scientist am thrilled by this I also know that the people who oppose science are right now doing 2 things: 1) pasting this decision into a circular or 2 along with the choice words "activist judge" to raise more money/attention/support for their 'cause', and 2) digging in for another, longer fight.
I will celebrate this, and keep vigilant at the same time.
The days of the Raj are long gone, but multinational corporations are riding high on the trend toward globalization by taking advantage of India's educated work force and deep poverty to turn South Asia into the world's largest clinical-testing petri dish.
God Help us if some new strain of drug-resistent virus (or some lab-made superbug) gets loose in such an environment.
Nevertheless, even before the anti-generic rules were enacted, companies performing clinical trials in India saw their share of problems. In 2004, two India-based pharmaceutical companies, Shantha Biotech in Hyderabad and Biocon in Bangalore, came under scrutiny for conducting illegal clinical trials that led to eight deaths.
No, I'm serious god help us, and god help the poor people who will be a) the first exposed b) the worst cared for and c) the first to die if the disease is mortal.
The tides are diven by both the moon and by weather, local weather conditions can increase the severity of a tide leading to flooding issues. This also becomes a problem with fishing and drinking water in that, as local temperatures change, the frequency of "red tides" will doubtless also change. Red Tides, or algal blooms are tides extra-heavy in a particular alge. This alge is toxic to humans and can infect water supplies, fish, and shellfish making a particular fishery toxic for some time.
So no, I was not suggesting that the Moon would be usurped in its role as the major driver of tidal action. Rather I was asserting that local conditions, as with the weather will create new and potentially dangerous combinations.
Even if you don't give a damn about the bears further changes such as these signal problems for us. Our civilizations depend upon stable food supplied, stable ocean levels, predictable tides, seasons, and weather, all of which may likely be thrown off drastically by global warming. Most of humankind lives within a few miles of sea level. As polar ice retreats oceal levels rise. As temperatures rise so do the frequency of powerful storms such as Katrina. Similarly rising temperatures herald more unpredictable seasons and thus crop losses. Changes in weathere patterns seem likely to doom some areas to overly warm weather (e.g. Africa) and some areas to much colder weather (e.g Europe).
It is one thing to be sanguine about the loss of polar bears to natrual selection. The loss of human populations, that's another thing.
Am I the only one who sees this as just plain pathetic? I mean really, not even the Chinese read the Little Red Book any more. Mein Kampf is in wider circulation. When faced with an enemy determined to destoroy us for religious reasons, an enemy capable of launching attacks within our borders what do we do? We waste time violating the law to track people who read COMMUNIST BOOKS.
If it wasn't so frightening it would just be sad. If it wasn't such a waste of time, money and effort when that effort cannot be wasted, it would be laughable.
As it is it is stupid, pathetic, dangerous, and utterly inexcusable. If anything could more fittingly demonstrate the unsuitability of those in charge to be in charge this policy is it. Tracking maoists does nothing to stop Al Quaeda. Spying on our citizens in this inept way only sames us in the eyes of the world and weakens us as a nation.
The author is saying a) We predicted that we should be making X sales this week, and b) we are not. Therefore Apple is to blame, as are the people who keep choosing to not buy the overpriced "music".
Can you spot the logical flaw?
Last week I predicted the following: a) I would immediately win a hundred bojillion dollars in the lottery. b) The most beautiful women in the world would gather around me to sing my praises.
None of that has happened so far, and seeing as how b is dependent upon a (lets not kid ourselves, I'd have to buy plane tickets for all of them to fly here), we should focus on a. A requires me doing things like buying lottery tickets, and the lottery having that kind of money, neither of which is the case. Therefore there is only one inescapable explanation: It's all the lottery people's fault. They're 'holding me back'. They should have set the pot that high, given me a free ticket, and then changed the rules so that only I would win.
I would say most of that is "in theory". Private companies are good at maximizing profits but that does not mean that they actually do so by simply "doing things cheaper", especially not through any less burucracy. Nor is that necessarily a good thing. When California chose to privatize their power they suddenly found themselves being given the choise of paying more, or having none. No cost saving appeared and the way that Enron and others maximized profits was actually to delay use of new technology and force the state into a blackmail situation. By having older technology they put themselves into a place where the state was forced to shill for upgrades and lose power in the process. In some cases they caused deliberate shutdowns so as to make power more 'scarce' and thus increase the price.
With respect to "watchdogs" In the free-market view such watchdogs don't exist. Are you calling for government price regulation, or are you invoking Adam Smith's fictitous hand? In the case of the former I agree with such regulation, the problem is that people with money (those in favor of privatization) tend to purchase politicians who can weaken such regulations. Just look at the end runs that have been done around the FDA with Aspertame, or the FCC with Clear Channel.
With respect to the "invisible hand" that only works in an ideal marketplace where everyone has the same access to everything and, no less-than-savory methods of biasing the market exist. In such markets, even the ideal ones, monopolies tend to form thus eliminating any "watchdog" position the market might take.
With respect to cost-cutting there is a difference between finding a "better" way to do something in the idealistic sense (some magical improvement exists that has yet to be tried) and finding a "cheaper" way to do it. The former is hard and typically requires truly inovative people and, just as often, long-term investment. Neither one tends to be supported or sustained in the marketplace economy.
The latter is what ends to be favored "cutting corners" or using cheaper products, processes etc which can maximize profit for the company but lead to a worse product/service for the end user. To go back to utilities consider the case of California, or other areas around the world where utilities have been privatized. The goal of a company is to make money doing the minimum amount. The goal of the end user of the infrastructure is to have it available, period. Cheaper power plants that break down more often or less-reliable water supplied cause other costs that make everyone worse off.
Politics will always be there, in fact, if there is money to be made I believe that it will be more prevalent not less. When there is money to be made then people will fight over it, and when there are decisions to be made that affect people (upgrade the wiring in the poor neighborhood? Cut costs by offshoring many of the support staff? Ban publuic wireless networks because they threaten private carriers?) then politics will always, always be there. Just look at Enron, they got where they were because of politics and played politics significantly (backing both bush and Arnold) to keep it.
In my opinion, there are cases where you don't want the profit motive to be involved at all because it places the end goal at risk. In such cases extra cost is preferable to failure or other problems.
There's an old Army joke that gets retold constantly: "Always remember, your rifle was made by the lowert bidder."
Despite what people claim "privatizing" something does not necessarily entail a cost-savings. I'm not saying that it won't here but people (on/. and elsewhere) have a tendency to assume that private companies are necessarily cheaper/faster/better than a public function. This is the mantra of both Republicans and Libertarians (as well as many Democrats).
Consider the costs of privatized schools, privatized prisons, privatized utility companies (California anyone?) etc. In many cases of privatization the promised cost savings never appear but people still press ahead as if it will necessarily come.
NASA already contracts out much of their work. In a sense contracting for the whole shuttle rather than each part is not an illogical step. I just hope (for the sake of NASA and my tax dollars) that they privatize the flights if and only if real savings emerge not the expectation of savings.
I would argue that he did spend his time making political waves, in some of the most direct ways. His rejection of this world was itself a political statement. People participate in governments, struggles, movements, taxes, based upon the extent to which it "matters". If they sieze the idea that it doesn't matter then they won't bother and people who depend upon people caring (e.g. the rich) will be quite bothered by that, and they were.
This is one of the reasons that most governments offer something "beyond death". Open theocracies tie participation in the state to rewards in heaven, or punishment in hell. Quasi theocracies (countries where you're okay so long as you are some kind of christian/jew/muslim/athiest, etc). Simply select for "acceptable" religions, i.e. the ones that don't oppose their views.
In Jesus day it wasn't just the romans it was also the Scribes and the Pharasees who were two warring political factions within the Jewish heirarchy. Both were seeking power (the Scribes had it at the time) and both were arguing that they were better bets to fight/appease Rome. Other groups were also on the playing field such as the Sadduces(sp?) and others.
At times in Jewish history their battles moved from words to violence cheifly over the question of who was best at fighting the Romans. Other related groups such asthe Zealots, and the Sycarii turned more openly to violence, the Sycarii were so good at assasinating people they opposed that Sycarius is latin for assasin.
Jesus at one point (near his death) makes his opposition to these groups plain saying that the Scribes seek only to increase the size of their prayer boxes (a box tied to the head with prayers in it, the bigger the box, the more obviously pious you are). He has some similar comment for the Pharasees.
The whole "Give to Ceaser what is Ceaser's and Give to God what is God's" story was a setup on their part to trap Jesus into declaring for one side or the other. Jesus's answer was a third option that pissed off everyone.
Jesus pissed off both groups who had very real worldly ambitions with his, 'let's all be peaceful' approach. This is why they participated in handing him over to the Romans.
There's actually a huge field of "Christian Apologetics" (No I'm not kidding) which deals in exactly that. Thomas Aquainas was the first Christian Philosopher to attempt a reconciliation between the views of Jesus and the feudal philosophies of his day basically; "When would God/Jesus approve of you fighting someone and when will you be taking the fast train to hell?"
He formulated the notion of a "Just Conflict" which meets certain tests chief among them, if I remember correctly, being pure motives (e.g saving the lives of innocents, liberating captives from the Nazi's before they were gassed, etc.). Aquinas argued that such conflicts exist and that it is possible, perhaps necessary for christians to beat ploughshares into swords for them. Keep in mind that his philospohy grew out of a time when a) europe was a feudal system, and b) christians were in power.
So smiting is, according to that school of thought, sometimes okay. Enslaving is more wishy-washy. There were slaves in Jesus' day. He didn't own any, nor did he liberate any except in the spiritual sense. This fact has been used to argue (most recently by Southern Baptists) in the U.S. for the legitimacy of slavery. And, when it comes down to it, a literal reading of the bible (so far as I can remember) presents nothing much to oppose it
Slashdot Mirror
Science is about making new discoveries about the world around us. It is, at a philisophical level about clearly distinguishing between that which we can prove and that which we cannot and then using what we know to find out what we don't.
There are many outlooks which differ from science most noteably the "What we think is what it is" outlook. The idea is that some group has a "complete" answer for everything be it God, Atheism, or little blue people that make the stars move. Any attempt to challenge that is met with immediate attack.
"Intelligent Design" is an attempt to wrapping up the latter in the dress of the former. ID'ers like all creationists believe that some higher power must have made the universe, solar system, earth, and all its inhabitants. These people may fight tooth and nail over exactly who or what that force was (God, Gods, Aliens, Godlike Aliens...) but they are all in agreement that a) the outside being exists, b) it is anthropomorphic and c) that we are special.
ID'ers are attempting to "prove" their baseless assertions by using pseudoscience. They are seeking to pose as scientists while making patently unscientific arguments. Most of these arguments are based fall (in my experience) into two categories. The former are little illogic-games such as "irreducable complexity", or "specific complexity". The latter are "things we don't know" arguments.
Specific complexity doesn't hold up because it is based upon a tautology. Dembski defined strings that have specific complexity as those that cannot be reduced to any other form or explained by any "process" they must simply be copied as-is. This essentially was a notion of information that is specially complex versus information that is not. ID'ers (but not Dembski himself) have then argued variously that humanity, human dna, etc are all irreducably complex and ergo cannot have been reproduced by some mechanical or impersonal process, say evolution.
This falls apart because of the original tautology. Strings are irreducably complex only because they are... irreducably complex by definition. No proof of such complexity exists, and there is no way to show that humans are irreducably complex except by saying so. Therefore this doesn't "prove" anything ID'ers just like to say that by claiming we are irreducably complex they have proven that the godlike whatever made us.
The latter arguments (what the authors are getting at here) fall along the same lines as the former. ID'ers sieze upon something that is unproven or they claim unproven and assert that it cannot be understood (is irreducably complex) and therefore that we will never find it out and therefore that it must have been made by some God(s), Aliens, or Godlike Aliens. The flight of the bumblebee is one of the more classic examples of this. Two others are the lack of "intermediate" fossils between the existing fossils (there will always be this), and the flagella of the paramecium.
To think about how silly this is consider a prehistoric, or even dark ages individual presented with a car, airplane, or an Archimedes Screw. They could easily claim (and many did) that we would "never figure it out" but we have!
What really divides the two outlooks is how they respond to the unknown. Scientists are excited by the unknown and seek to dive headlong into it in order to find it out. Theey do so by admitting what they do and do not know and then attacking the unknown. The latter group fear to find out that they are wrong, and to admit that they do not know things. Therefore they seek to pretend that the unknown is not there.
Given the difference in outlook and the fact that ID'ers seek to pollute science by claiming that they practice it it makes perfect sense that the Scientists involved would love every minute of disproving them.
No. Existing patent law does not require inventors to conduct a patent search before developing a product. It does require them to do so before releasing it. It has been defined this way because noone can conduct a complete patent search without the final product in place. By the time one had reviewed all of the preexisting patents one would have to review the patents that were issued while one was conducting the initial search and so on.
Uner the present system the fact that you developed something without noticing a patent is a viable defense. The idea that you searched first however makes you liable for infringing all of the patents that you saw.
Microsoft likes this system just as much as Amazon and IBM. The alternative would be entirely unworkable for eveyone involved.
That habving been said if a released project violates a patent it will be as liable under the new system as it was under the old.
Touche, you're right I didn't see that.
The list confirms my general feeling however. Of those only Slackware is built around the idea of minimal-structure. While they chose XP and Server 2003 you'll note in other portions of the article it was Windows CE that they were touting on small-footprint systems.
IMHO it makes sense to compare desktop w desktop and minimal w minimal. It seems that they did do the former but brought nothing new or conclusive to the table. Without a clear detal of patches, software (which office suites), etc this article is meaningless except as an ad.
The salient points are in the statment above. The claim that "most" linuix distros had limitations preventing them from accessing a 32mb system with "aceptable performance" is entirely unsurprising. I note that neither RedHat (to pick one) nor Windows XP would like such a system very much, especially for modern "desktop application performance" (read OpenOffice and MS Office). In that case it is really the apps that are the limiting factors.
They never state what distros were tested (I assume Novell and RedHat when in doubt) nor how installation was done. Rather they pull a nice switching strategy. They test some unnamed distros and then state that windows CE is better than them on legacy hardware.
That is much like saying Windows CE is better than Windows XP on legacy hardware or that MuLinux is better than RedHat on older hardware. In both cases the former was designed for such a task while the latter was not. In both cases the former have limitations that prevent them from running "Modern Desktop Apps", that is in fact the point.
This is a simple "bait and switch" comparison, and if this is all the CTO uses when comparing all distros of linux to windows for some use; fire them.
That has actually come up as one of the major arguments aginst such laws. As the page I referenced noted the practice of "Civil Death" goes back (at least) to the Romans. But it isn't practiced as much in the U.S. precisely because of that argument. Other arguments marshalled against it include the notion of Cruel and Unusual punishment (for a minor felony a life punishment is too much) and the notion of Double Joepardy. If the Jail Time is the punishment then what is the virtue of extending ti forever, etc.
Ultimately it all comes down to the stigma of the crime.
From the article:
So violating other peoples' privacy and altering your grades is a misdemeanor but slowing down a webserver is a felony? Now that is stupid.
There was a time when we made an important distinction between types of crimes. Misdemeanors were "minor crimes" annoyances that can be cleared up easily enough and are a) not worth making permanent and b) best forgotten once the problems is solved. A classic example is littering, or spraypainting something on a park bench. The former is solved by making the littebug pick up their garbage (and mabye some other peoples') and the latter by having the offendor repaint the bench brown. In both cases the offence can be "fixed" and the individual can learn form a simple dressing down. In most juristictions misdemeanors are not even recorded (or didn't used to be) and never ever became part of someone's permanent criminal record (especially a minor). Moreover misdemeanors aren't liable for jail time above and beyond "time served" (in the drunk tank).
Felonies are major or "permanent" crimes such as theft, maim, and murder. They connotate crimes that cannot be simply "cleaned up", crimes that cannot be undone in any meaningful sense and crimes that may signal permanent problems for the individual in question. Felonies attatch much stiffer penalties (for both juveniles and adults) as well as "permanence". In some states felons lose the right to vote permanently. This is politely known as "Civil Disenfranchisement". In Midevil times it was associated with the term "Civil Death". Felons are also forbidden from obtaining some jobs (in government), and have to tell all other employers of their status. They are also often forbidden from obtaining some scholarships and grants. While not all of these attatch automatically to juvenile felons many of them do. Increasing numbers of states are making no distinction between juvenile felonies and adult felonies. Unlike midsdemeanor crimes felons are truly marked for life.
The basic upshot of this is that this kid could be harmed for life for what is, in essence, a nothing crime. He encouraged people to visit a website and thereby caused a server to run slow, not stop, not crash, not burst into flames, just run slow. This is a temporary problem, a fixable problem, and one that doesn't even require two coats of paint.
This is a dangerous, vicious overreaction on the part of the city prosecutor, and the school officials. They are abusing their power and risk punishing a kid for life for something that should be handled by a stern talking to and no dessert.
Some ex convicts carry around a felony conviction that prevents them from re-entering society or impairs them in some way thus encouraging a return to crime. How much worse is that when the conviction is for something less-damaging than littering.
On another note, I wonder when the prosecutor's up for reelection?
Rounding to the nearest square?
I'll Beleieve it when I see it on the shelves.
As a side note, and this is nothing personal about Infinium but why is it that pre-produce launches have become so necessary. I mean I know that announcing new airplanes in advance of ground tests and so on is necessary to drum up funding, or just spit in the eyes of those who said you would never "make it" but why is it that every company has to tell the world about its products before they exist just to keep shareholders happy. First the shareholders demanded regular updates and yearly profits. Now they expect quarterly profit gains. Before you had to have a new product on the market each year. Now it seems you have to have a new pre-product announcement each quarter (just look at Apple).
I can't help but think that the focus on short-term gains and announcements bodes ill in the long run for any company.
By "stranded, unprepared, and unaided" I meant real problems not a lack of e-mail. My point being that the issue of "e-mail addiction" or "ipod addiction" is really trivial when you compare it to the real problems faced by those isolated by Katrina, and their own government.
As to the Y2k, again it wasn't about e-mail. I was referencing the fact that, in the run up to 2000 people were stocking up on canned goods, etc *as if* the bug would cause a global crisis. In reality Y2k was nothing and people, in a sense, overprepared. Katrina was real and we as a nation tragically underprepared.
I so love that phrase because it suggests weakness of some sort. As if governments didn't exist to protect and help the people and anyone who thinks otherwize deserves a rude awakening.
In the case of Katrina the very government agencies that we have formed, funded and trained to care for the sick, the elderly, the disposessed of our society, were placed in the hands of self-centered morons whose only interest was in settling the "shirtsleeves up or down" issue. People who could not leave because they were too sick and didn't own cars were being told to "take some cash and drive away". Even now no reliable plan exists to get them home and Karl Rove is directing the reconstruction efforts.
We form governments to protect us as a whole, because individual humans, however many guns they have, are weak and likely to die. To suggest that people who looked to the government that they supported to help them were "weak" or overly dependent" is in my opinion incorrect. Rather wwe should say that the government failed the people. The government failed in its most essential function. What's worse it did so because people let it fail, perhaps even made it fail not because it should not have succeeded.
If we are talking cliniacal definitions of addiction, i.e. falsely convinced that we cannot live without something and willing to orob/maim/kill/destroy our lives, to obtain it then it depends. I think ther we need to specify the technology in question.
If we are talking a general "growing too soft/dependent upon specific tech" then I would say yes, especially with the internet. I know far too many people who feel the need to have a machine up all the time.
But I think we should really go more basic than that; Electricity.
The standards that we are used to in America, and the rest of the industrialized world (stable, widely available power that rarely if ever goes down) is a) uncommon in the rest of the world, and b) an anomoly in human existence. Few of my peers know how to make a fire or even what to do when the power goes down (hint, the electric can opener will no longer work).
The level of panic surrounding the Y2k bug should have made this clear to anyone. Far too many people (some of them policymakers) panicked at the thought of "global power outages" and, as Katrina showed, far too many were left stranded, unprepared, and unaided when a real disaster struck.
In my opinion "addiction" to mp3 players is just icing on the cake.
in general)I know too many others who *have no clue*
The "Young earth hypothesis" is orthagonal to Intelligent Design. Not all proponents of one support the other. Most "Young earthers" are creationists but not all of them would back the exact tenents or even pseudologic of Intelligent Design. Many of them are more hard-core creationists who would see any attempt to gussy an act of "literal word" with any support however well intentioned as worthless or downright heretical. To some people the word is the word and it needs no support. Attempting to giove it an outside validation or a patina of science is as great a crime as disagreeing with it.
Similar some Intelligent Design proponents are willing to grant a much longer age for the earth. They just refuse to believe that we humans (at least) came about in any way except by the intervention of some higher power (remember it could be an alien!) which in turn makes us "special".
This is really the handle of both the old-earth creationists and the Intelligent Design people. They are perfectly willing to accept science until science brings up something they don't like then it must be stopped. It's kind of like being open to all religions until someone professes their faith, or accepting homosexuals so long as you never meet any.
I was well aware that the trial was "selected" actually. Nor do I consider that a "scam". The teacher in question chose to violate the law thus setting up the trial in the first place. That wasn't the first (dumping tea in the harbour) or last time that laws were deliberately violated to protest their existence.
As to the reaction in dayton, that wasn't the text of my discussion. Nor did I draw in any way from "inherit the wind". Since the trial it has (for better or worse) become a symbol of the evolutuion/creation debate and, perhaps outside of Dayton, spurred both sides along.
Consider this, the 6 members of the Kansas state board of eductation, scvheduled their pro-creationism dog and pony show for the exact same days as the Scopes Monkey trial starting it on the anniversary of the trial's opening. That wasn't accidental.
Whatever the intentions, or mood, of the participants at the time, the trial is now well beyond that in the minds of both creationists, and rationalists.
I am thrilled ecstatic over this decision. This judge clearly has brains and a willingness to use them. I am going to be happy.
I am not, not going to assume that the fight is over. Keep in mind that it was a loss in the Scopes Monkey Trial that galvanized scientists to fight ever harder for strong science (read no religion) in the biology classroom, and the school as a whole.
While I as a scientist am thrilled by this I also know that the people who oppose science are right now doing 2 things: 1) pasting this decision into a circular or 2 along with the choice words "activist judge" to raise more money/attention/support for their 'cause', and 2) digging in for another, longer fight.
I will celebrate this, and keep vigilant at the same time.
God Help us if some new strain of drug-resistent virus (or some lab-made superbug) gets loose in such an environment.
No, I'm serious god help us, and god help the poor people who will be a) the first exposed b) the worst cared for and c) the first to die if the disease is mortal.
The tides are diven by both the moon and by weather, local weather conditions can increase the severity of a tide leading to flooding issues. This also becomes a problem with fishing and drinking water in that, as local temperatures change, the frequency of "red tides" will doubtless also change. Red Tides, or algal blooms are tides extra-heavy in a particular alge. This alge is toxic to humans and can infect water supplies, fish, and shellfish making a particular fishery toxic for some time.
So no, I was not suggesting that the Moon would be usurped in its role as the major driver of tidal action. Rather I was asserting that local conditions, as with the weather will create new and potentially dangerous combinations.
Even if you don't give a damn about the bears further changes such as these signal problems for us. Our civilizations depend upon stable food supplied, stable ocean levels, predictable tides, seasons, and weather, all of which may likely be thrown off drastically by global warming. Most of humankind lives within a few miles of sea level. As polar ice retreats oceal levels rise. As temperatures rise so do the frequency of powerful storms such as Katrina. Similarly rising temperatures herald more unpredictable seasons and thus crop losses. Changes in weathere patterns seem likely to doom some areas to overly warm weather (e.g. Africa) and some areas to much colder weather (e.g Europe).
It is one thing to be sanguine about the loss of polar bears to natrual selection. The loss of human populations, that's another thing.
Am I the only one who sees this as just plain pathetic? I mean really, not even the Chinese read the Little Red Book any more. Mein Kampf is in wider circulation. When faced with an enemy determined to destoroy us for religious reasons, an enemy capable of launching attacks within our borders what do we do? We waste time violating the law to track people who read COMMUNIST BOOKS.
If it wasn't so frightening it would just be sad. If it wasn't such a waste of time, money and effort when that effort cannot be wasted, it would be laughable.
As it is it is stupid, pathetic, dangerous, and utterly inexcusable. If anything could more fittingly demonstrate the unsuitability of those in charge to be in charge this policy is it. Tracking maoists does nothing to stop Al Quaeda. Spying on our citizens in this inept way only sames us in the eyes of the world and weakens us as a nation.
Nah, I could pay for singing lessons.
MMM, my very own chorus!
The author is saying a) We predicted that we should be making X sales this week, and b) we are not. Therefore Apple is to blame, as are the people who keep choosing to not buy the overpriced "music".
Can you spot the logical flaw?
Last week I predicted the following:
a) I would immediately win a hundred bojillion dollars in the lottery.
b) The most beautiful women in the world would gather around me to sing my praises.
None of that has happened so far, and seeing as how b is dependent upon a (lets not kid ourselves, I'd have to buy plane tickets for all of them to fly here), we should focus on a. A requires me doing things like buying lottery tickets, and the lottery having that kind of money, neither of which is the case. Therefore there is only one inescapable explanation: It's all the lottery people's fault. They're 'holding me back'. They should have set the pot that high, given me a free ticket, and then changed the rules so that only I would win.
I love this game!
I would say most of that is "in theory". Private companies are good at maximizing profits but that does not mean that they actually do so by simply "doing things cheaper", especially not through any less burucracy. Nor is that necessarily a good thing. When California chose to privatize their power they suddenly found themselves being given the choise of paying more, or having none. No cost saving appeared and the way that Enron and others maximized profits was actually to delay use of new technology and force the state into a blackmail situation. By having older technology they put themselves into a place where the state was forced to shill for upgrades and lose power in the process. In some cases they caused deliberate shutdowns so as to make power more 'scarce' and thus increase the price.
With respect to "watchdogs" In the free-market view such watchdogs don't exist. Are you calling for government price regulation, or are you invoking Adam Smith's fictitous hand? In the case of the former I agree with such regulation, the problem is that people with money (those in favor of privatization) tend to purchase politicians who can weaken such regulations. Just look at the end runs that have been done around the FDA with Aspertame, or the FCC with Clear Channel.
With respect to the "invisible hand" that only works in an ideal marketplace where everyone has the same access to everything and, no less-than-savory methods of biasing the market exist. In such markets, even the ideal ones, monopolies tend to form thus eliminating any "watchdog" position the market might take.
With respect to cost-cutting there is a difference between finding a "better" way to do something in the idealistic sense (some magical improvement exists that has yet to be tried) and finding a "cheaper" way to do it. The former is hard and typically requires truly inovative people and, just as often, long-term investment. Neither one tends to be supported or sustained in the marketplace economy.
The latter is what ends to be favored "cutting corners" or using cheaper products, processes etc which can maximize profit for the company but lead to a worse product/service for the end user. To go back to utilities consider the case of California, or other areas around the world where utilities have been privatized. The goal of a company is to make money doing the minimum amount. The goal of the end user of the infrastructure is to have it available, period. Cheaper power plants that break down more often or less-reliable water supplied cause other costs that make everyone worse off.
Politics will always be there, in fact, if there is money to be made I believe that it will be more prevalent not less. When there is money to be made then people will fight over it, and when there are decisions to be made that affect people (upgrade the wiring in the poor neighborhood? Cut costs by offshoring many of the support staff? Ban publuic wireless networks because they threaten private carriers?) then politics will always, always be there. Just look at Enron, they got where they were because of politics and played politics significantly (backing both bush and Arnold) to keep it.
In my opinion, there are cases where you don't want the profit motive to be involved at all because it places the end goal at risk. In such cases extra cost is preferable to failure or other problems.
There's an old Army joke that gets retold constantly: "Always remember, your rifle was made by the lowert bidder."
Despite what people claim "privatizing" something does not necessarily entail a cost-savings. I'm not saying that it won't here but people (on /. and elsewhere) have a tendency to assume that private companies are necessarily cheaper/faster/better than a public function. This is the mantra of both Republicans and Libertarians (as well as many Democrats).
Consider the costs of privatized schools, privatized prisons, privatized utility companies (California anyone?) etc. In many cases of privatization the promised cost savings never appear but people still press ahead as if it will necessarily come.
NASA already contracts out much of their work. In a sense contracting for the whole shuttle rather than each part is not an illogical step. I just hope (for the sake of NASA and my tax dollars) that they privatize the flights if and only if real savings emerge not the expectation of savings.
I would argue that he did spend his time making political waves, in some of the most direct ways. His rejection of this world was itself a political statement. People participate in governments, struggles, movements, taxes, based upon the extent to which it "matters". If they sieze the idea that it doesn't matter then they won't bother and people who depend upon people caring (e.g. the rich) will be quite bothered by that, and they were.
This is one of the reasons that most governments offer something "beyond death". Open theocracies tie participation in the state to rewards in heaven, or punishment in hell. Quasi theocracies (countries where you're okay so long as you are some kind of christian/jew/muslim/athiest, etc). Simply select for "acceptable" religions, i.e. the ones that don't oppose their views.
In Jesus day it wasn't just the romans it was also the Scribes and the Pharasees who were two warring political factions within the Jewish heirarchy. Both were seeking power (the Scribes had it at the time) and both were arguing that they were better bets to fight/appease Rome. Other groups were also on the playing field such as the Sadduces(sp?) and others.
At times in Jewish history their battles moved from words to violence cheifly over the question of who was best at fighting the Romans. Other related groups such asthe Zealots, and the Sycarii turned more openly to violence, the Sycarii were so good at assasinating people they opposed that Sycarius is latin for assasin.
Jesus at one point (near his death) makes his opposition to these groups plain saying that the Scribes seek only to increase the size of their prayer boxes (a box tied to the head with prayers in it, the bigger the box, the more obviously pious you are). He has some similar comment for the Pharasees.
The whole "Give to Ceaser what is Ceaser's and Give to God what is God's" story was a setup on their part to trap Jesus into declaring for one side or the other. Jesus's answer was a third option that pissed off everyone.
Jesus pissed off both groups who had very real worldly ambitions with his, 'let's all be peaceful' approach. This is why they participated in handing him over to the Romans.
There's actually a huge field of "Christian Apologetics" (No I'm not kidding) which deals in exactly that. Thomas Aquainas was the first Christian Philosopher to attempt a reconciliation between the views of Jesus and the feudal philosophies of his day basically; "When would God/Jesus approve of you fighting someone and when will you be taking the fast train to hell?"
He formulated the notion of a "Just Conflict" which meets certain tests chief among them, if I remember correctly, being pure motives (e.g saving the lives of innocents, liberating captives from the Nazi's before they were gassed, etc.). Aquinas argued that such conflicts exist and that it is possible, perhaps necessary for christians to beat ploughshares into swords for them. Keep in mind that his philospohy grew out of a time when a) europe was a feudal system, and b) christians were in power.
So smiting is, according to that school of thought, sometimes okay. Enslaving is more wishy-washy. There were slaves in Jesus' day. He didn't own any, nor did he liberate any except in the spiritual sense. This fact has been used to argue (most recently by Southern Baptists) in the U.S. for the legitimacy of slavery. And, when it comes down to it, a literal reading of the bible (so far as I can remember) presents nothing much to oppose it