The author of that article did something fundamentally wrong (equated Unicode with UCS-2) and then proceeded with perfect logic to product garbage output. As others have pointed out, UCS-2 is just an _ENCODING_ of Unicode, and not even the most general one. UTF-32 can handle 4 BILLION code points. Even the more common UTF-8 can handle over a million. Now if the author of that article could see beyond his anti-western bias, he would have learned that people who work routinely with Unicode addressed his underinformed problem years ago.
If you think even every human language when put together needs more than 4 billion code points, you live in a different universe than I do.
Ah. The old mis-represent the data trick. Hawaiian lava dated as ancient is pure urban legend by the creationists, snails (all aquatic animals actually) don't get the carbon in their bodies directly from the atmosphere (and so can't be carbon dated), and as for trees, I'll need details before we can debunk you on them (I'm reasonably confident since you have already had two strikes, you will round it out with a third).
The article states that the issue is that C-14 levels were higher than expected for various ranges of dates. This implies that if you were to carbon date things from those date ranges, they would appear younger (have more C-14 than expected) than their true age. And it scarcely casts doubt on C-14 dating. What it actually does is calibrate it better by telling you its range of validity.
You make so many mistakes in so little space that it just isn't worth the effort to reply to each of them. You don't understand thermodynamics, you don't understand physics, you don't understand philosophy. You also don't understand probability, biology, or chemistry.
Given all that, there just isn't any point in trying to respond here. It would take a book to simply tell you why you are wrong.
Since the current best theory seems to be based on premises of incredible simplicity - your question is utterly meaningless. It is (precisely!) as if you observed the radioactive decay of a neutron - and then pointed to it saying "God did it!". All you have done is 'multiplied entities unnecessarily'. Rather than apply the known laws of physics (which, surprisingly, can explain a 'a singularity that exploded for no apparent reason and existed for no apparent reason' - and in fact *demands* the existence of such entities) and note 'oh - physics can do that' - you say 'physics can do that, but I want to believe physics + X did it'. NOW you have the problem of explaining X! Why does X exist? How long? How does it work? What created 'X'? You have not solved the original problem, you have just moved it back a 'meta-level'. If the initial singularity can't "just exist" - why can 'X'?
To the contrary, the odds are not very good at all that there is anyone close enough to talk to right now. The Earth is roughly 4600000000 years old. Humans as a technological species capable of generating/recieving interstellar message are only 50 years old. Assume the same percentages apply to the rest of the universe, factor in the speed of light, and you would be somewhat lucky to have ONE other species close enough to talk to in our galaxy even if every sun-like star in our galaxy has at least one planet with life.
Why? Because they are well known today? I have to agree with the position that most of the books ever written to date were written this century. Just because a few western authors one to three centuries ago are well known does not necessarily mean they were the best books ever written.
In fact, Shakespeare didn't write books. I have always been offended by Literature's attempt to claim stage plays as 'literature'. If they are literature, so is the screen play 'Star Wars'.
Slashdot Mirror
The author of that article did something fundamentally wrong (equated Unicode with UCS-2) and then proceeded with perfect logic to product garbage output. As others have pointed out, UCS-2 is just an _ENCODING_ of Unicode, and not even the most general one. UTF-32 can handle 4 BILLION code points. Even the more common UTF-8 can handle over a million. Now if the author of that article could see beyond his anti-western bias, he would have learned that people who work routinely with Unicode addressed his underinformed problem years ago.
If you think even every human language when put together needs more than 4 billion code points, you live in a different universe than I do.
Ah. The old mis-represent the data trick. Hawaiian lava dated as ancient is pure urban legend by the creationists, snails (all aquatic animals actually) don't get the carbon in their bodies directly from the atmosphere (and so can't be carbon dated), and as for trees, I'll need details before we can debunk you on them (I'm reasonably confident since you have already had two strikes, you will round it out with a third).
The article states that the issue is that C-14 levels were higher than expected for various ranges of dates. This implies that if you were to carbon date things from those date ranges, they would appear younger (have more C-14 than expected) than their true age. And it scarcely casts doubt on C-14 dating. What it actually does is calibrate it better by telling you its range of validity.
You make so many mistakes in so little space that it just isn't worth the effort to reply to each of them. You don't understand thermodynamics, you don't understand physics, you don't understand philosophy. You also don't understand probability, biology, or chemistry.
Given all that, there just isn't any point in trying to respond here. It would take a book to simply tell you why you are wrong.
But you can start here: The Talk Origins Archive.
Since the current best theory seems to be based on premises of incredible simplicity - your question is utterly meaningless. It is (precisely!) as if you observed the radioactive decay of a neutron - and then pointed to it saying "God did it!". All you have done is 'multiplied entities unnecessarily'. Rather than apply the known laws of physics (which, surprisingly, can explain a 'a singularity that exploded for no apparent reason and existed for no apparent reason' - and in fact *demands* the existence of such entities) and note 'oh - physics can do that' - you say 'physics can do that, but I want to believe physics + X did it'. NOW you have the problem of explaining X! Why does X exist? How long? How does it work? What created 'X'? You have not solved the original problem, you have just moved it back a 'meta-level'. If the initial singularity can't "just exist" - why can 'X'?
To the contrary, the odds are not very good at all that there is anyone close enough to talk to right now. The Earth is roughly 4600000000 years old. Humans as a technological species capable of generating/recieving interstellar message are only 50 years old. Assume the same percentages apply to the rest of the universe, factor in the speed of light, and you would be somewhat lucky to have ONE other species close enough to talk to in our galaxy even if every sun-like star in our galaxy has at least one planet with life.
Why? Because they are well known today? I have to agree with the position that most of the books ever written to date were written this century. Just because a few western authors one to three centuries ago are well known does not necessarily mean they were the best books ever written.
In fact, Shakespeare didn't write books. I have always been offended by Literature's attempt to claim stage plays as 'literature'. If they are literature, so is the screen play 'Star Wars'.