The only languages supported acceptably in the environment are C, C++, and Python. Maybe Perl. Maybe Scheme. I haven't checked lately, but I doubt it. With every API change they make, they break a ton of bindings, and it's tough to keep up. cl-gtk and clg are not up to date at all.
And this is precisely the reason moving Gnome to Mono is a good idea. The single biggest advantage of the CLI over the JVM is that you can compile multiple languages into it. The Ximian team can develop gnome in C# and allow complete access to the api's to any language for the cost of building a mono compiler for the language. API update changes for each language would become a thing of the past. I really think the Ximian guys are on the right track here to allow better support for outside developers.
Treat communications you make over the public internet as though they were publicly recorded statements. Why, because for all intensive purposes, that's what your communications over IM and friendster like channels really is. The only problem here is people getting the mistaken impression that such communications are completely anonymous and not traceable. Correct people's mistaken images, the technology isn't the problem.
-There are no easy engineering fixes to social problems.
The obviousness of this question makes me suspect it is a dumb one to ask but maybe someone can clarify for me. Why is it so strongly believed that some kind of environmental change wiped out dinos and not some kind of disease/virus?
Let's just hope that our own satellites don't get hacked and the weapon is used against us.
Which speaks to the larger issue the article touches on. If America is currently in the highly dominant position it is from space, starting an arms race there is not neccassarily a good idea. Everyone else has little to lose, while the US has a tonne of equipment up there already just waiting to be shot down.
M$ has had a l-o-n-g history of changing APIs to force the competition to either chase the "API du jour" or lose compatibility.
I believe that this needs to be considered in this or any case where compatibility with M$ is an issue.
This is only an issue when dealing with.NET to Mono compatability. Even if MS moves on to a newer API set, they will have to maintain backwards compatability with.NET apps written with the current API's, Mono projects inclusive.
To answer my own question, the only way MS can break Mono to.NET compatability would also break compatability with current.NET apps.
Well, to turn your question around, why should the OS community chase MS by using.NET as the basis for anything?
If the primarily goal of the OS.NET projects isn't to allow all software produced for.NET (MS or OS frameworks) to run, then why are they using.NET as a starting point.
Because inspite of being created by the devil itself, some people actually find C# and the CLI to be a productive way to develop software. Horror of horrors, MS can sometimes come out with good ideas as well as bad. If C# and the CLI can boost productivity, it makes sense to develop them on Linux to speed up future development.
Why not create a new language/framework? (One which avoids the flaws that exist in.NET because of it's inherent windows bias.)
For starters because the ECMA standards mono is implementing are already developed for windows, leaving one less platform to support. Not to mention the amount of time it would take to create an equivalent new language/framework. Lastly, I'll turn this question around, why take the time to re-create an entirely new language and framework?
Or why not enhance an existing project like perl or python or any number of other projects to achieve the ends Miguel has claimed are his goals?
Maybe because you can use the CLI to develop Mono compilers for python and perl and any other existing project. That's the whole beauty of the Mono/.NET concept. Not the Java stolen vm for cross platform idea. The idea of using the vm to cross language barriers as well. Mono can allow development of each task of a project to be done in the language that most natural suits it. If your building a text editor you can do your string parsing in python and your GUI frontend through C# and OpenGL.
But if it doesn't, then I judge the whole effort to produce non-MS.NET frameworks as a waste of the open source community's time.
Now,.NET apologists might claim that the Office.NET test is unfair.
Your missing the point. The Office.NET test is not an unfair test, it's a stupid one.
You should consider the possibility that Mono has another purpose. One which Miguel has stated numerous times. One which is only a little less obvious. Mono, all by itself, without passing the Office.NET test, is of inherent value to software development on Linux. Don't think of the value of Office.NET under Mono. Think of OpenOffice.dotGNU on both Mono and.NET. Why should the OS community chase MS tail with some arbitrarily chosen Office.NET test?
I'm seeing alot of people complaing about how mono is a waste of time because MS can pull the carpet out from under everyone with proprietary library updates that will prevent.NET apps from running on mono. That is entirely probable and it is most likely beyond the ability of the mono team to keep up with such changes. Let alone the time to ensure.NET to mono compatability. But give the mono team some credit, don't you think they too might know this? I ask this question to all the waste of time whiners: What can MS do to stop mono to.NET compatability?
That's right, open source projects written in mono will have the ability to run under both linux and windows, mono and.NET, without any rewrites, and with a consistent feel. That is the point. It would speed the cross-platform development of projects like Mozilla and OpenOffice that both windows and linux users alike are trying. What better way to transition users dependent on windows apps(not windows itself) to a linux environment, one app at a time. Forget about allowing the commercial.NET programs to run under mono, think about replacing them with equivalent Open Source mono apps.
Interoperability with.NET isn't the only benefit mono/dotgnu have to offer the open source community. The ability for libraries to interoperate between languages is very valuable to an open source development environment. It's an idea that is helpfull from a software engineering perspective for solving a great many problems more easily/quickly. I'd dare say that in and of itself is worth the effort required for mono/dotgnu development.
if we could find no explanation for why things had a weird ratio, or weird behavior.. no explanation from the current or possible past enviroment to explain how something evolved.... come to me with that, then we can talk about a creator
Looking for things with "no explanation for how they evolved" is exactly why Behe and the like are derided as unscientific. Unless you want 'evidence' along the lines of irreducible complexity you'd might as well state that you don't want to talk about a creator, period.
Conversly, the BBC story makes ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION of what the "us objections" actually are.
Maybe you should read the BBC article before trying to comment on what it says.
The second paragraph follows:"The US has been against the French option because of France's opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq. "
Furthermore the majority of the BBC article is based around the "horse-trading" going on behind the scenes to determine the voting for the reactor's destination. Specifcally stating again, and I qoute: "The US, in particular, has raised objections to the French option, citing its opposition to the Iraq invasion."
The poster is not misrepresenting the article. The entire BBC piece is centered around the political circus around the decision of where the reactor will be built.
Well, the point about the UN is that, the way it exists right now, it attempts to act as a "great equalizer"...
Otherwise, with all the mishmash of countries with veto powers it becomes a meaningless political tool for nations that simply aren't as strong as countries like the U.S.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that the U.N. was formed in the aftermath of WW2 in hopes of preventing a third. Acting as a great equalizer and political tool for nations less powerfull than the world's major superpower, is it's most important purpose.
I look at our membership in the U.N. the same way. It's good to be part of a larger whole because of what you can accomplish when you all work together, but that doesn't mean you have to do things you don't want to do just to be part of that whole, and it doesn't mean you can't do the things you feel are necessary because the majority of the group doesn't agree.
I do agree with your analogy here. The problem is that the bigger the action, the bigger the effect is on the unity of the group. In particular, going to war against another member of the group puts a great amount of strain on the group. Even if most members of the group agree on who the good guys and bad guys in the war are.
Representatives from France, Germany, and Russia met to discuss how they were going to vote. There's nothing wrong with that, really, except that they met BEFORE COLLIN POWELL EVEN PRESENTED HIS DATA. I watched the presentation on TV, and it was very enlightening. More enlightening was that every country to speak afterwards HAD PREPARED STATEMENTS.
But the actions of the French, German and Russian representatives are only as enlightening as Collin Powell's data. I doubt any of the representatives were shocked or even surprised by the data presented. As for prepared statements, those are simply a part of diplomacy and unless some ground breaking new information were presented they would remain unchanged. Furthermore, the decisions made would not change then and there no matter how compelling the new data was. At the very least other nations would require time to confirm and digest the impact of what they had learned.
Countries with veto power come to the table with their political interests in mind, not the interests of the world. That's true wether or not you agree with what the U.S. did.
Again, I agree, all nations inevitablly push their own interests. And as much as people like to point out examples of America pushing it's own interests at the cost of others. As a whole I believe most people also agree that America is more often pushing good not bad interests. I also believe the war in Iraq is an example of a very suspect decision.
they were based on Iraq failing to present evidence of the destructions of WMD that we all know they had. Of course they had them, no body claimed otherwise until those last few months, but of course they had them - they used them. If what was left was destroyed, they should have presented the evidence to prove it. They didn't.
Of course we knew they had them, some of them probably still had the 'made in America' sitckers they came with.:) But more seriously, the justification was also based on the threat the possesion of those weapons posed American security. But what has made the arguement of American security so hard to swallow is not so much the absence of finding WMD's yet, it is the ease with which the war was won. Just how big a threat to American security was a nation conquered in under two months, and with so few loses? Then you might ask, was the cost of war truly worth the removal of that threat? And I don't mean the cost of fighting the war, but the cost of all the unknowns created regarding the stability of the entire Middle East.
Lastly, thank you for all of your insights, it's very refreshing to see the well thought out side in favor of the war.
Also, we gave weight to the UN's heretofore meaningless resolutions You're right, it is... but I'm afraid I'm not seeing the problem. Why would we throw weight behind resolutions we didn't approve of?
The problem is the one you based your argument on, the heretofore meaninless resolutions of the UN. An American led war, voted against by the UN security counsel, can not by it's very nature give weight to the UN. It only further undermines the UN.
The problem is how you define "reasonable". I guess some people... a lot of people, feel that a dozen years of resolutions and Iraqi defiance was enough. Frankly, I'm dissappointed we did do something before.
And the question about war with Iraq was not the redundant question of whether the Iraqi people would be better off without Saddam. It was whether or not ousting Saddam was worth the cost a war would have on stability in Iraq and the Middle East. Having proven that the coalition was willing to occupy Iraq creates an entirely new set of problems. Only time can tell if those problems will be better or worse than those solved.
So, the question becomes - what, then, would YOU do to discourage terrorism?
For starters, gaining UN approval or at least EU approval before fighting a war to force a regime change of a sovereign nation. The anti-Bush movement created locally will no doubt pale in comparison to the anti-American movement the war in Iraq has created in much of the Middle East. Yes, I know that even a UN approved war would have had a similar effect, but the lack of approval undeniably magnifies the problem. Anti-American terrorist recruiting in Syria and Iran is no doubt easier than ever these days.
Also, we gave weight to the UN's heretofore meaningless resolutions.
How can a non UN sanctioned war against a UN member nation give weight to UN resolutions? It gave weight to American approved UN resolutions, that's a VERY important distinction.
Did you notice that we have control of two borders of Iran (Afghanistan and Iraq)? Did you notice how easily the Iranians caved in on the production of weapons grade uranium? Think that is a coincidence?
But in the long term has the world as a whole been made more stable? Is shear brute force really the best way to stamp out every last evil bastion in the world? Has it become more or less attractive to have a WMD program(think North Korea)? Are nations more or less likely to defend themselves with those weapons? And that's assuming the American government has and holds to a benevelent agenda. Just because military action shows more immediate results does not mean it is the most effective means of discouraging terrorism.
Intelligent life is not "something to believe in." It is a mathematical and statistical near-certainty, given what is known about the size and composition of the universe.
We know virtually nothing about how life started, so in all honesty we haven't a clue how probable life outside our solar system should or shouldn't be. All that we do know is that the universe is really, really big. But given that we have no idea what kind of conditions and probabilities surround the emergence of life, we really can't say how likely life out there is, let alone intelligence.
Honestly, anti-creationists arguments probably deserve every bit of vitriol that comes their way.
But that's the problem, the post being flamed never made a single mention of creationism or religion, period. What does creationism have to do with questioning the veracity of our current views on the Big Bang and evolution? The only mention of creationism has been from the rabid anti-creationists bent on the idea that questioning evolution = creationism. At least save the anti-creationist flaming for creationist posts.
In any case, you lost any credibility when you lumped "evolution" in with the "Big Bang" as being things that might be found in the future to be myths. Evolution is fact. The ONLY aspect about evolution that falls into "theory" territory is the HOW of evolution, not whether or not it occurs. There is zero, none, nunca question at all in the scientific community about whether evolution occurs. There is no scientific debate on this fact. Evolution simply occurs. There IS legitimate debate and study on HOW it occurs.
It looks like the poster is reffering to common descent, not just evolutionary change. Lumping common descent in with the Big Bang isn't really much of a stretch. In particular, both theories are impossible to fully test as they are historical in nature. With out time travel we can only prove the mechanisms the proposed theories worked upon, and search for tell tale traces said mechanisms might leave behind. And as you noted, the mechanisms behind common descent are still being heavily debated. To suggest that a few hundred years from now we may have come up with new theories that fit the same evidences better and look radically different isn't that crazy and doesn't deserve the rabid anti-creationist assaults too many replies here seem to be stuck on.
"As any fool can see, the sun goes around the Earth..." made no effort to offer a similar level of corroborating evidence, relying instead on religious dogma. And the fact that the sun appears to rise in the morning and set in the evening. You have to admit that at the time and with out more indepth study the mere path of the sun each day was a pretty strong basis to believe it was rotating the earth. IE. it was more than mere religous dogma.
While you have made no mention of religion, I find your (unsubstantiaed) criticism of the theory of Evolution to be rather telling.
Contrast this with, e.g., the Catholic Church: only in the past decade have they agreed that Galileo's heliocentric theory is correct, and that their dogma of an Earth-centred universe has been incorrect (and in disagreement with observations) for around four centuries.
Speaking of unsubstantiated claims about stuff we have no idea about... The Catholic Church only recognized that the Earth revolves around the sun since 1993? Now I'll admit I don't know which date they officially recognized it, but I think it was much before 1963, let alone 93. I think your statements are more telling than the original poster.
But seeing how they have numerous times had their asses saved by the USA, at the cost of blood and hard work, it adds insult to injury, when the USA is trying to fight down the opressors of this world.
Are you referring to WWII by any chance? The war were America maintained a strict policy of neutrality in the war, even after France joined it to defend their Polish allies? Actually, I believe they maintained that position right up until Pearl Harbor. Or are you thinking even further back when you helped the French defeat a British invasion. When was that again? Sometime around Independence day if I remember correctly?
The only insult I see is disrespecting the right of a sovereign nation to disagree with American foreign policy.
nd I wont go into the technicalities of the Iraq thing, such as the major weapon sales of France to Iraq. Look it up yourself.
Here's a fun historical exercise for you to look up yourself. Study Saddam's history and who his allies have been in the past(here's a quick hint, start studying the CIA's history). Then you can move on to the Iran-Iraq conflict. You remember, the one where American funded chemical weapons were used by BOTH sides, just as the cold war CIA suppliers intended.
Feel free to bash the French when/if they are wrong, but you should be a lot more discerning when accusing them of things the American gov't has been FAR more guilty of.
Never attribute to maliciousness that which can adequately be explained by ignorance.
From the first verse of Bereshit (Genesis) in fact, where the word used for "God" (Elohim) is a plural form. What the Creationists say is usually what one verse taken out of context of the Bible says.
Many theological writers have also pointed out that the christian belief in the Trinity is simply evidenced as early as Genesis through the use of the plural form. Your claim is simply mangling theology as badly as many creationists mangle science.
To avoid misunderstandings, I'm an agnostic who thinks that the difference between Creationists and the Taliban is largely about what the law allows and geographical location
This sort of comparison makes me sick. Another difference between Creationist's and the Taliban is respect for human life. This is as low as calling evolutionists nazis because evolution promotes eugenics. Both this statement and your own have no point beyond stirring up hate against a group. You might not have a problem with doing that towards creationists, but I for one am sickened by it. Shame on those who moderated this up so high.
This implies that ~10% of the Korean economy is in semiconductor sales alone. Recall that recently South Korea is warming up to North Korea, and if we add that Pres. Bush has already put North Korea on notice regarding their weapon exports, we should not be surpised that the government would penalize the friend of your enemy.
As has been pointed out a few times already, South Korea can't really be blamed for being 'soft' towards North Korea. The fact that the North could virtually annihilate Seoul in a 24 hour time frame might be incentive to at least show some respect. Additionally, any assault by America against the North would most likely be based from... South Korea. In summary South Korea is NOT an enemy of the US. In fact, last I knew they were one of America's key allies in diplomatic efforts to prevent the North's escalation of it's nuclear program.
My personal beliefs are that that tariffs are bad on both imports and exports, but after reading the report on how much Korea taxes US exports, I don't pity them.
So a small nation tries to protect it's internal economy, and so it's only fair play for the world's biggest economic power to levy ~10% of that nations exports? Look at America's levies against Canadian imports to get an idea how much free trade with allies and 'fair' trade differ in American foreign policy.
Interestingly enough, "In spring 2000, Korea was elevated to the Special 301 "priority watch list" as a result of continuing concerns regarding inadequate IPR enforcement, lack of protection for clinical drug test data, lack of full retroactive protection for pre-existing copyrighted works and pharmaceutical patents, problematic amendments to Koreaâ(TM)s Copyright Act and Computer Program Protection Act, lack of coordination between Korean health and IPR authorities on drug product approvals for marketing, and continued counterfeiting of consumer products."
A boon for the freedoms of Korean citizens, or promotion of piracy? Do you really want to use American policy as a barometer for that line?
If we wish to test a hypothesis and expect X, and set up dozens of different experiments with different points of view based on different underlying assumptions and experimental methods, when all but one produces X, does that allow some group to proclaim Y?
And this is not the situation that occurred, it is only your misunderstanding of the lead-up to parsons paper. There were NO experiments done to observe the behaviour of the D-Loop prior to Parsons paper. The dozens of experiments you speak of were ALL conducted as follows: Human and Chimp mtDNA D-Loops are differ by X, and chimps and humans diverge Y years ago, thus the mutation rate of the D-Loop is X/Y. The FIRST experiment to measure the D-Loop's actual rate gave a rate 20 times higher than X/Y. Based on this, scientists proposed that in spite of the fact the D-Loop appears neutral by every known test, we must assume neither X nor Y can be adjusted to fit the experimentally observed rate.
If we expanded the last common human-chimp ancestor to a 1-10 million year range the study would have still produced discrepancies between the D-loop and the rest of the mtDNA
First off, the human-chimp divergence would need to have occurred 250,000 years ago to fit the data, so no self respecting scientist is going to propose anything like that. Secondly, considering that about 90% of the remainder of mtDNA consists of genes, your dead right there are discrepancies between how the D-Loop and the rest of the mtDNA behave. The nearly the entirety of the rest of the sequence appears to be under strong selective pressure. The D-Loop does not, and we knew this before any of Parsons tests were done. In fact, the discrepancies in behaviour are the very reason studying the D-Loop was chosen over the entirety of the sequence, it was less influenced by selection and thus a better clock. Your only deceiving yourself to believe that the unacceptably high mutation rate is not the primary reason for the rejection of the D-Loop as a reliable molecular clock.
In canada the stealing part is not necassary. As a result of our levy on all blank cd-r's purchased, we also have the legal right to record an audio recording onto a blank medium for our own personal use. The legislation even specifically allows the burning of cd for yourself of a copy borrowed from a friend. The levy may be a little unfair to people who have no plans to burn cd's, but it is awfully convenient for schemes like your own.
Is it? I think the actions of main-stream science and "scientific" creationism bear witness to the vast difference between the two.
Main stream creationism is made up of about 90% yahoos who claim to be 'scientists' but would at best be described as journalists/evangelists. I didn't mean to compare main stream science to main stream creationism. The idea of creationism though isn't invalidated simply because many uncredible people defend it. My point was merely that when common descent is a starting assumption it will affect the conclusions. My previous post pointed out examples of such, and you again re-iterate those claims as follows:
We used this dating technique for a while, and then it was discovered that the mutation rate of the D-loop that we were using was ~20 fold higher than what we expected. What happened? snip the part about creationist tomfoolery, I agree their sudden about face was unfounded. Main-stream scientists scratched their heads and wondered why this one bit of evidence was now so far out of line with their expectations based on information from multiple of lines of inquiry.
The multiple lines of inquiry you refer to are ALL based on the assumption of chimp/human common ancestry. From a creationist stance, rejecting the predictions on that assumption in favor of the observed data is not unreasonable. The fact that the method main stream science had accepted as valid suddenly matches the bible nicely is interesting to creationists. Scientifically, they aught to do some work to confirm the validity of the method before making any claims about a method they had formerly rejected. But aside from that, on the surface this seems to be better evidence for creationism than common descent. And the data was all obtained by main stream science, using accepted main stream methods.
As a result of the information learned, our methods may have to be slightly modified; mainly it looks like a study using the D-loop must be relegated to recent events, whole mtDNA for old events.
And again, this change of method is based on... you guessed it, the assumption of chimp/human common descent. Chimp and human mtDNA have different rates of random mutation in the D-loop region(the 2000 study you refer to), and this is the main evidence that mtDNA is an invalid clock for old events. You may not like my putting this spin on things, but from a creationist stance here is what you see. Main stream science predicted the rate of mtDNA mutation based on chimp/human divergence assumptions. When main stream science actually measured the real rates they found those rates were 20X higher than expected. Main stream science made theories and changed assumptions about mtDNA behaviour to explain this. They then confirmed these theories by data taken from chimp and human lineages, which was of course based on the assumption of chimp/human common descent. Now, if your a creationist, that whole turn around was basically side stepping observed evidence that did not fit the common descent assumption, and confirming the invalidity of the observed evidence based on data dependent on the assumption of common descent. As a creationist, that kind of situation doesn't invalidate the initial results from where I sit.
Slashdot Mirror
The only languages supported acceptably in the environment are C, C++, and Python. Maybe Perl. Maybe Scheme. I haven't checked lately, but I doubt it. With every API change they make, they break a ton of bindings, and it's tough to keep up. cl-gtk and clg are not up to date at all.
And this is precisely the reason moving Gnome to Mono is a good idea. The single biggest advantage of the CLI over the JVM is that you can compile multiple languages into it. The Ximian team can develop gnome in C# and allow complete access to the api's to any language for the cost of building a mono compiler for the language. API update changes for each language would become a thing of the past. I really think the Ximian guys are on the right track here to allow better support for outside developers.
No offense taken, thanks for the insight. Just call me Ralph :).
Me fail English? That's unpossible!
Treat communications you make over the public internet as though they were publicly recorded statements. Why, because for all intensive purposes, that's what your communications over IM and friendster like channels really is. The only problem here is people getting the mistaken impression that such communications are completely anonymous and not traceable. Correct people's mistaken images, the technology isn't the problem.
-There are no easy engineering fixes to social problems.
The obviousness of this question makes me suspect it is a dumb one to ask but maybe someone can clarify for me. Why is it so strongly believed that some kind of environmental change wiped out dinos and not some kind of disease/virus?
Let's just hope that our own satellites don't get hacked and the weapon is used against us.
Which speaks to the larger issue the article touches on. If America is currently in the highly dominant position it is from space, starting an arms race there is not neccassarily a good idea. Everyone else has little to lose, while the US has a tonne of equipment up there already just waiting to be shot down.
M$ has had a l-o-n-g history of changing APIs to force the competition to either chase the "API du jour" or lose compatibility.
.NET to Mono compatability. Even if MS moves on to a newer API set, they will have to maintain backwards compatability with .NET apps written with the current API's, Mono projects inclusive.
.NET compatability would also break compatability with current .NET apps.
I believe that this needs to be considered in this or any case where compatibility with M$ is an issue.
This is only an issue when dealing with
To answer my own question, the only way MS can break Mono to
Well, to turn your question around, why should the OS community chase MS by using .NET as the basis for anything?
.NET projects isn't to allow all software produced for .NET (MS or OS frameworks) to run, then why are they using .NET as a starting point.
.NET because of it's inherent windows bias.)
If the primarily goal of the OS
Because inspite of being created by the devil itself, some people actually find C# and the CLI to be a productive way to develop software. Horror of horrors, MS can sometimes come out with good ideas as well as bad. If C# and the CLI can boost productivity, it makes sense to develop them on Linux to speed up future development.
Why not create a new language/framework? (One which avoids the flaws that exist in
For starters because the ECMA standards mono is implementing are already developed for windows, leaving one less platform to support. Not to mention the amount of time it would take to create an equivalent new language/framework. Lastly, I'll turn this question around, why take the time to re-create an entirely new language and framework?
Or why not enhance an existing project like perl or python or any number of other projects to achieve the ends Miguel has claimed are his goals?
Maybe because you can use the CLI to develop Mono compilers for python and perl and any other existing project. That's the whole beauty of the Mono/.NET concept. Not the Java stolen vm for cross platform idea. The idea of using the vm to cross language barriers as well. Mono can allow development of each task of a project to be done in the language that most natural suits it. If your building a text editor you can do your string parsing in python and your GUI frontend through C# and OpenGL.
But if it doesn't, then I judge the whole effort to produce non-MS .NET frameworks as a waste of the open source community's time.
.NET apologists might claim that the Office.NET test is unfair.
.NET. Why should the OS community chase MS tail with some arbitrarily chosen Office.NET test?
Now,
Your missing the point. The Office.NET test is not an unfair test, it's a stupid one.
You should consider the possibility that Mono has another purpose. One which Miguel has stated numerous times. One which is only a little less obvious. Mono, all by itself, without passing the Office.NET test, is of inherent value to software development on Linux. Don't think of the value of Office.NET under Mono. Think of OpenOffice.dotGNU on both Mono and
I'm seeing alot of people complaing about how mono is a waste of time because MS can pull the carpet out from under everyone with proprietary library updates that will prevent .NET apps from running on mono. That is entirely probable and it is most likely beyond the ability of the mono team to keep up with such changes. Let alone the time to ensure .NET to mono compatability. But give the mono team some credit, don't you think they too might know this? I ask this question to all the waste of time whiners: What can MS do to stop mono to .NET compatability?
.NET, without any rewrites, and with a consistent feel. That is the point. It would speed the cross-platform development of projects like Mozilla and OpenOffice that both windows and linux users alike are trying. What better way to transition users dependent on windows apps(not windows itself) to a linux environment, one app at a time. Forget about allowing the commercial .NET programs to run under mono, think about replacing them with equivalent Open Source mono apps.
That's right, open source projects written in mono will have the ability to run under both linux and windows, mono and
Interoperability with .NET isn't the only benefit mono/dotgnu have to offer the open source community. The ability for libraries to interoperate between languages is very valuable to an open source development environment. It's an idea that is helpfull from a software engineering perspective for solving a great many problems more easily/quickly. I'd dare say that in and of itself is worth the effort required for mono/dotgnu development.
if we could find no explanation for why things had a weird ratio, or weird behavior.. no explanation from the current or possible past enviroment to explain how something evolved.... come to me with that, then we can talk about a creator
Looking for things with "no explanation for how they evolved" is exactly why Behe and the like are derided as unscientific. Unless you want 'evidence' along the lines of irreducible complexity you'd might as well state that you don't want to talk about a creator, period.
Conversly, the BBC story makes ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION of what the "us objections" actually are.
Maybe you should read the BBC article before trying to comment on what it says.
The second paragraph follows:"The US has been against the French option because of France's opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq. "
Furthermore the majority of the BBC article is based around the "horse-trading" going on behind the scenes to determine the voting for the reactor's destination. Specifcally stating again, and I qoute: "The US, in particular, has raised objections to the French option, citing its opposition to the Iraq invasion."
The poster is not misrepresenting the article. The entire BBC piece is centered around the political circus around the decision of where the reactor will be built.
Well, the point about the UN is that, the way it exists right now, it attempts to act as a "great equalizer"...
:) But more seriously, the justification was also based on the threat the possesion of those weapons posed American security. But what has made the arguement of American security so hard to swallow is not so much the absence of finding WMD's yet, it is the ease with which the war was won. Just how big a threat to American security was a nation conquered in under two months, and with so few loses? Then you might ask, was the cost of war truly worth the removal of that threat? And I don't mean the cost of fighting the war, but the cost of all the unknowns created regarding the stability of the entire Middle East.
Otherwise, with all the mishmash of countries with veto powers it becomes a meaningless political tool for nations that simply aren't as strong as countries like the U.S.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that the U.N. was formed in the aftermath of WW2 in hopes of preventing a third. Acting as a great equalizer and political tool for nations less powerfull than the world's major superpower, is it's most important purpose.
I look at our membership in the U.N. the same way. It's good to be part of a larger whole because of what you can accomplish when you all work together, but that doesn't mean you have to do things you don't want to do just to be part of that whole, and it doesn't mean you can't do the things you feel are necessary because the majority of the group doesn't agree.
I do agree with your analogy here. The problem is that the bigger the action, the bigger the effect is on the unity of the group. In particular, going to war against another member of the group puts a great amount of strain on the group. Even if most members of the group agree on who the good guys and bad guys in the war are.
Representatives from France, Germany, and Russia met to discuss how they were going to vote. There's nothing wrong with that, really, except that they met BEFORE COLLIN POWELL EVEN PRESENTED HIS DATA. I watched the presentation on TV, and it was very enlightening. More enlightening was that every country to speak afterwards HAD PREPARED STATEMENTS.
But the actions of the French, German and Russian representatives are only as enlightening as Collin Powell's data. I doubt any of the representatives were shocked or even surprised by the data presented. As for prepared statements, those are simply a part of diplomacy and unless some ground breaking new information were presented they would remain unchanged. Furthermore, the decisions made would not change then and there no matter how compelling the new data was. At the very least other nations would require time to confirm and digest the impact of what they had learned.
Countries with veto power come to the table with their political interests in mind, not the interests of the world. That's true wether or not you agree with what the U.S. did.
Again, I agree, all nations inevitablly push their own interests. And as much as people like to point out examples of America pushing it's own interests at the cost of others. As a whole I believe most people also agree that America is more often pushing good not bad interests. I also believe the war in Iraq is an example of a very suspect decision.
they were based on Iraq failing to present evidence of the destructions of WMD that we all know they had. Of course they had them, no body claimed otherwise until those last few months, but of course they had them - they used them. If what was left was destroyed, they should have presented the evidence to prove it. They didn't.
Of course we knew they had them, some of them probably still had the 'made in America' sitckers they came with.
Lastly, thank you for all of your insights, it's very refreshing to see the well thought out side in favor of the war.
Also, we gave weight to the UN's heretofore meaningless resolutions
You're right, it is... but I'm afraid I'm not seeing the problem. Why would we throw weight behind resolutions we didn't approve of?
The problem is the one you based your argument on, the heretofore meaninless resolutions of the UN. An American led war, voted against by the UN security counsel, can not by it's very nature give weight to the UN. It only further undermines the UN.
The problem is how you define "reasonable". I guess some people... a lot of people, feel that a dozen years of resolutions and Iraqi defiance was enough. Frankly, I'm dissappointed we did do something before.
And the question about war with Iraq was not the redundant question of whether the Iraqi people would be better off without Saddam. It was whether or not ousting Saddam was worth the cost a war would have on stability in Iraq and the Middle East. Having proven that the coalition was willing to occupy Iraq creates an entirely new set of problems. Only time can tell if those problems will be better or worse than those solved.
So, the question becomes - what, then, would YOU do to discourage terrorism?
For starters, gaining UN approval or at least EU approval before fighting a war to force a regime change of a sovereign nation. The anti-Bush movement created locally will no doubt pale in comparison to the anti-American movement the war in Iraq has created in much of the Middle East. Yes, I know that even a UN approved war would have had a similar effect, but the lack of approval undeniably magnifies the problem. Anti-American terrorist recruiting in Syria and Iran is no doubt easier than ever these days.
Also, we gave weight to the UN's heretofore meaningless resolutions.
How can a non UN sanctioned war against a UN member nation give weight to UN resolutions? It gave weight to American approved UN resolutions, that's a VERY important distinction.
Did you notice that we have control of two borders of Iran (Afghanistan and Iraq)? Did you notice how easily the Iranians caved in on the production of weapons grade uranium? Think that is a coincidence?
But in the long term has the world as a whole been made more stable? Is shear brute force really the best way to stamp out every last evil bastion in the world? Has it become more or less attractive to have a WMD program(think North Korea)? Are nations more or less likely to defend themselves with those weapons? And that's assuming the American government has and holds to a benevelent agenda. Just because military action shows more immediate results does not mean it is the most effective means of discouraging terrorism.
Intelligent life is not "something to believe in." It is a mathematical and statistical near-certainty, given what is known about the size and composition of the universe.
We know virtually nothing about how life started, so in all honesty we haven't a clue how probable life outside our solar system should or shouldn't be. All that we do know is that the universe is really, really big. But given that we have no idea what kind of conditions and probabilities surround the emergence of life, we really can't say how likely life out there is, let alone intelligence.
Honestly, anti-creationists arguments probably deserve every bit of vitriol that comes their way.
But that's the problem, the post being flamed never made a single mention of creationism or religion, period. What does creationism have to do with questioning the veracity of our current views on the Big Bang and evolution? The only mention of creationism has been from the rabid anti-creationists bent on the idea that questioning evolution = creationism. At least save the anti-creationist flaming for creationist posts.
In any case, you lost any credibility when you lumped "evolution" in with the "Big Bang" as being things that might be found in the future to be myths. Evolution is fact. The ONLY aspect about evolution that falls into "theory" territory is the HOW of evolution, not whether or not it occurs. There is zero, none, nunca question at all in the scientific community about whether evolution occurs. There is no scientific debate on this fact. Evolution simply occurs. There IS legitimate debate and study on HOW it occurs.
It looks like the poster is reffering to common descent, not just evolutionary change. Lumping common descent in with the Big Bang isn't really much of a stretch. In particular, both theories are impossible to fully test as they are historical in nature. With out time travel we can only prove the mechanisms the proposed theories worked upon, and search for tell tale traces said mechanisms might leave behind. And as you noted, the mechanisms behind common descent are still being heavily debated. To suggest that a few hundred years from now we may have come up with new theories that fit the same evidences better and look radically different isn't that crazy and doesn't deserve the rabid anti-creationist assaults too many replies here seem to be stuck on.
"As any fool can see, the sun goes around the Earth..." made no effort to offer a similar level of corroborating evidence, relying instead on religious dogma.
And the fact that the sun appears to rise in the morning and set in the evening. You have to admit that at the time and with out more indepth study the mere path of the sun each day was a pretty strong basis to believe it was rotating the earth. IE. it was more than mere religous dogma.
While you have made no mention of religion, I find your (unsubstantiaed) criticism of the theory of Evolution to be rather telling.
Contrast this with, e.g., the Catholic Church: only in the past decade have they agreed that Galileo's heliocentric theory is correct, and that their dogma of an Earth-centred universe has been incorrect (and in disagreement with observations) for around four centuries.
Speaking of unsubstantiated claims about stuff we have no idea about...
The Catholic Church only recognized that the Earth revolves around the sun since 1993? Now I'll admit I don't know which date they officially recognized it, but I think it was much before 1963, let alone 93. I think your statements are more telling than the original poster.
But seeing how they have numerous times had their asses saved by the USA, at the cost of blood and hard work, it adds insult to injury, when the USA is trying to fight down the opressors of this world.
Are you referring to WWII by any chance? The war were America maintained a strict policy of neutrality in the war, even after France joined it to defend their Polish allies? Actually, I believe they maintained that position right up until Pearl Harbor. Or are you thinking even further back when you helped the French defeat a British invasion. When was that again? Sometime around Independence day if I remember correctly?
The only insult I see is disrespecting the right of a sovereign nation to disagree with American foreign policy.
nd I wont go into the technicalities of the Iraq thing, such as the major weapon sales of France to Iraq. Look it up yourself.
Here's a fun historical exercise for you to look up yourself. Study Saddam's history and who his allies have been in the past(here's a quick hint, start studying the CIA's history). Then you can move on to the Iran-Iraq conflict. You remember, the one where American funded chemical weapons were used by BOTH sides, just as the cold war CIA suppliers intended.
Feel free to bash the French when/if they are wrong, but you should be a lot more discerning when accusing them of things the American gov't has been FAR more guilty of.
Never attribute to maliciousness that which can adequately be explained by ignorance.
From the first verse of Bereshit (Genesis) in fact, where the word used for "God" (Elohim) is a plural form. What the Creationists say is usually what one verse taken out of context of the Bible says.
Many theological writers have also pointed out that the christian belief in the Trinity is simply evidenced as early as Genesis through the use of the plural form. Your claim is simply mangling theology as badly as many creationists mangle science.
To avoid misunderstandings, I'm an agnostic who thinks that the difference between Creationists and the Taliban is largely about what the law allows and geographical location
This sort of comparison makes me sick. Another difference between Creationist's and the Taliban is respect for human life. This is as low as calling evolutionists nazis because evolution promotes eugenics. Both this statement and your own have no point beyond stirring up hate against a group. You might not have a problem with doing that towards creationists, but I for one am sickened by it. Shame on those who moderated this up so high.
This implies that ~10% of the Korean economy is in semiconductor sales alone. Recall that recently South Korea is warming up to North Korea, and if we add that Pres. Bush has already put North Korea on notice regarding their weapon exports, we should not be surpised that the government would penalize the friend of your enemy.
As has been pointed out a few times already, South Korea can't really be blamed for being 'soft' towards North Korea. The fact that the North could virtually annihilate Seoul in a 24 hour time frame might be incentive to at least show some respect. Additionally, any assault by America against the North would most likely be based from... South Korea. In summary South Korea is NOT an enemy of the US. In fact, last I knew they were one of America's key allies in diplomatic efforts to prevent the North's escalation of it's nuclear program.
My personal beliefs are that that tariffs are bad on both imports and exports, but after reading the report on how much Korea taxes US exports, I don't pity them.
So a small nation tries to protect it's internal economy, and so it's only fair play for the world's biggest economic power to levy ~10% of that nations exports? Look at America's levies against Canadian imports to get an idea how much free trade with allies and 'fair' trade differ in American foreign policy.
Interestingly enough, "In spring 2000, Korea was elevated to the Special 301 "priority watch list" as a result of continuing concerns regarding inadequate IPR enforcement, lack of protection for clinical drug test data, lack of full retroactive protection for pre-existing copyrighted works and pharmaceutical patents, problematic amendments to Koreaâ(TM)s Copyright Act and Computer Program Protection Act, lack of coordination between Korean health and IPR authorities on drug product approvals for marketing, and continued counterfeiting of consumer products."
A boon for the freedoms of Korean citizens, or promotion of piracy? Do you really want to use American policy as a barometer for that line?
If we wish to test a hypothesis and expect X, and set up dozens of different experiments with different points of view based on different underlying assumptions and experimental methods, when all but one produces X, does that allow some group to proclaim Y?
And this is not the situation that occurred, it is only your misunderstanding of the lead-up to parsons paper. There were NO experiments done to observe the behaviour of the D-Loop prior to Parsons paper. The dozens of experiments you speak of were ALL conducted as follows: Human and Chimp mtDNA D-Loops are differ by X, and chimps and humans diverge Y years ago, thus the mutation rate of the D-Loop is X/Y. The FIRST experiment to measure the D-Loop's actual rate gave a rate 20 times higher than X/Y. Based on this, scientists proposed that in spite of the fact the D-Loop appears neutral by every known test, we must assume neither X nor Y can be adjusted to fit the experimentally observed rate.
If we expanded the last common human-chimp ancestor to a 1-10 million year range the study would have still produced discrepancies between the D-loop and the rest of the mtDNA
First off, the human-chimp divergence would need to have occurred 250,000 years ago to fit the data, so no self respecting scientist is going to propose anything like that. Secondly, considering that about 90% of the remainder of mtDNA consists of genes, your dead right there are discrepancies between how the D-Loop and the rest of the mtDNA behave. The nearly the entirety of the rest of the sequence appears to be under strong selective pressure. The D-Loop does not, and we knew this before any of Parsons tests were done. In fact, the discrepancies in behaviour are the very reason studying the D-Loop was chosen over the entirety of the sequence, it was less influenced by selection and thus a better clock. Your only deceiving yourself to believe that the unacceptably high mutation rate is not the primary reason for the rejection of the D-Loop as a reliable molecular clock.
In canada the stealing part is not necassary. As a result of our levy on all blank cd-r's purchased, we also have the legal right to record an audio recording onto a blank medium for our own personal use. The legislation even specifically allows the burning of cd for yourself of a copy borrowed from a friend. The levy may be a little unfair to people who have no plans to burn cd's, but it is awfully convenient for schemes like your own.
Is it? I think the actions of main-stream science and "scientific" creationism bear witness to the vast difference between the two.
Main stream creationism is made up of about 90% yahoos who claim to be 'scientists' but would at best be described as journalists/evangelists. I didn't mean to compare main stream science to main stream creationism. The idea of creationism though isn't invalidated simply because many uncredible people defend it. My point was merely that when common descent is a starting assumption it will affect the conclusions. My previous post pointed out examples of such, and you again re-iterate those claims as follows:
We used this dating technique for a while, and then it was discovered that the mutation rate of the D-loop that we were using was ~20 fold higher than what we expected. What happened?
snip the part about creationist tomfoolery, I agree their sudden about face was unfounded.
Main-stream scientists scratched their heads and wondered why this one bit of evidence was now so far out of line with their expectations based on information from multiple of lines of inquiry.
The multiple lines of inquiry you refer to are ALL based on the assumption of chimp/human common ancestry. From a creationist stance, rejecting the predictions on that assumption in favor of the observed data is not unreasonable. The fact that the method main stream science had accepted as valid suddenly matches the bible nicely is interesting to creationists. Scientifically, they aught to do some work to confirm the validity of the method before making any claims about a method they had formerly rejected. But aside from that, on the surface this seems to be better evidence for creationism than common descent. And the data was all obtained by main stream science, using accepted main stream methods.
As a result of the information learned, our methods may have to be slightly modified; mainly it looks like a study using the D-loop must be relegated to recent events, whole mtDNA for old events.
And again, this change of method is based on... you guessed it, the assumption of chimp/human common descent. Chimp and human mtDNA have different rates of random mutation in the D-loop region(the 2000 study you refer to), and this is the main evidence that mtDNA is an invalid clock for old events. You may not like my putting this spin on things, but from a creationist stance here is what you see. Main stream science predicted the rate of mtDNA mutation based on chimp/human divergence assumptions. When main stream science actually measured the real rates they found those rates were 20X higher than expected. Main stream science made theories and changed assumptions about mtDNA behaviour to explain this. They then confirmed these theories by data taken from chimp and human lineages, which was of course based on the assumption of chimp/human common descent. Now, if your a creationist, that whole turn around was basically side stepping observed evidence that did not fit the common descent assumption, and confirming the invalidity of the observed evidence based on data dependent on the assumption of common descent. As a creationist, that kind of situation doesn't invalidate the initial results from where I sit.