Panasonic makes computer equipment that is used in a certain multi-billion dollar fast-food restaurant chain. I happened to provide computer help desk support for some of this equipment, on behalf of both Panasonic and the restaurant. One of the computers used, called an "ISD," has an integrated UPS (battery included) inside the computer case. Not only was the hardware integrated, the software used on the system was integrated with the UPS, too. If the electric power in the store went out, the ISD monitor would turn red, a message would display on the screen that the ISD would shut down in 5 minutes and the computer speaker would squeal.
(Anybody remember the IBM commercial where the guy on the park bench is jerking around like some kind of Tourette's sufferer -- until they zoom in and we see he's using a wearable to day trade? It's already getting hard to tell the crazy people from the people who are just using cell phones with headsets. How much worse is it going to get with things like this?)
Any technology that is sufficiently advanced will be indistinguishable from insanity.
They got 100K astroturf emails from the American Family Association and backed down. I think they made a big mistake, because now every Tom, Dick, and Harry that wants to influence Yahoo (e.g. the French government? who's next, China?) will just flood them with angry email.
I live in Dallas, where Yahoo! is local news. There are a few points I haven't noticed anyone else making, so I shall.
The first item is a small article in the Business section of the "Dallas Morning News," which noted that Yahoo!'s quarterly report, which happened to come out about the same time as the porn announcement, was better than expected, leading analysts to question Yahoo!'s claim that it needed to sell porn to remain competitive.
The other item is that Yahoo!, like a lot of big businesses, is the beneficiary of large tax incentives given by the local government(s) to encourage the business climate. In this case, the local government immediately began aggressive proceedings to have Yahoo!'s multi-million dollar tax incentive package revoked. It seems to me this would have hurt a lot more than some email from AFA. The evening after Yahoo! announced their abandonment of their porn plan, the official leading the revocation said that she would also desist from seeking to remove Yahoo!'s tax incentive.
I'm glad that Yahoo! is not an unchecked power. I am also glad that people who would make pornography as common in Middle America USA as it is in some "Red Light" district don't have a free hand. Some individual in a later post on this forum questions the right of, for example, Christians to impose their standards on others; I believe that debates on theory should remain in benign environments--the practical reality is, the United States does not need to be trashed by pornographers.
Now, I wonder what will happen with the other major portals that were all supposed to switch to peddling porn later this year? Supposedly, AOL and several other sites were all supposed to do as Yahoo! had done, all in the name of money (or competitiveness). BTW, I don't believe that money is evil, but I do believe that the love of money is the root of sin. The man or company who is motivated primarily by money is not trustworthy; he will do anything, no matter how immoral, for money.
You can go to www.talkorigins.org and read rather complete refutations of his work.
When I said that Behe's book was not popular in the evolutionist community, T.O. was part of that community I included. I've long maintained, however, that T.O. is absolutely biased in favor of evolutionary theories and opposed to Creationism; I've never seen them admit that there is a weakness with any evolutionary model, or what that weakness might be. Like most evolutionists, they expect everyone to embrace evolution without question. So, any conclusion they reach of Behe's work is going to be a hatchet job, supported by absurd reasoning. Neither T.O. nor any other evolutionist ever shows how the structures that Behe identifies could have formed using current evolutionary models. Instead, they blandly repeat their evolutionary dogma, as if that answers Behe's objections.
Anyway, Genetic Programming isn't evolution in the sense of biological evolution, and that is the point of this sub-thread.
the steel is denser and a better conductor of compression waves than the surrounding air
Solids, like liquids, are classified as "noncompressible." Gases are compressible. If the medium is noncompressible, how can it support compression waves? I believe it can't (in most ordinary circumstances); the railroad track supports vibrations, but not compression waves.
The speed of sound is purely a function of temperature and has no relation to density!
Could you please explain why the speed of sound in a bar of steel or a basin of water is faster than the speed of sound in air, even if they are all at the same temperature, if the speed of sound only depends on temperature? I'm not an expert on this subject by any means, but the last I heard, the speed of sound depends on the density and the elasticity of the medium.
I think you're using a *very* non-standard definition of 'evolution.'
[snip]
To evolve is to change incrementally (or possibly in big leaps) over time. That's exactly what genetic algorithms do.
Your definition of evolution isn't much better than that of which you complain. Using your definition, all computer chips are evolving--as is everything else that is subject to change (which pretty much includes the known Universe). A good definition should expose a single entity, while excluding all others; that is, it should narrow the range of applicable examples only to those that match the idea one is attempting to express.
The generally-accepted definition of biological evolution (which is the only kind of evolution that relates to Darwin, and so to our concern) is, "a change in the ratio of alleles of a population over time." We aren't really talking about chromosomes, but rather about "alleles," or units of code. However, people should keep in mind that genetic algorithms are only loosely related to biological evolution; they use a few analogous concepts that are convenient, but do not attempt to mimic biological evolution in every detail. IOW, GA is not evolution in the Darwinian or biological concept, but is, rather, more of an artistic expression or abstraction of biological evolution.
Genetic algorithms have several years of experimentation, of course. I am more familiar with implementations in software, rather than hardware. One feature of a GA system is that the "evolving" pieces are supported in an isolated environment; that is, the software that runs the simulations is not itself subject to the changes in the simulation. That way, even if all the simulations fail, the program doesn't simply crash, but is able to report its results and maybe even set up and run another simulation set, perhaps using the identical starting point. Furthermore, the "evolving" data sets are not subject to the breeding limits of biological systems; in the real world, some species cannot produce fertile offspring, but in the computer world, anything the programmer codes to happen may happen.
Evolution as a process is most apparent in biological systems, and that's where most of our ideas come from. However, they're applied by trying to break down the essence of evolution as a process which is implemented by biological systems, rather than as something that is wholly bound within biological concepts.
Genetic algorithms have about as much to do with biological evolution as fighter jets have to do with birds. They aren't the same kind of thing, even if they use a few of the same principles. This is an important distinction. Some people have the mistaken notion that GA is a working example of Darwinian evolution; it shows that biological evolution is workable. In fact, it is impossible for biological evolution to have produced the effects for which it is credited by evolutionists.
I believe the most important difference between genetic algorithms and biological evolution is that in GA, many small changes are used to make the final product. In the real world, this is not possible; some complex biological structures and processes cannot be constructed (much less, construct themselves) incrementally from simpler parts without the information pre-existing. The list of these structures and processes is quite long; hemoglobin, the ATP pathway, the process of vision being some that quickly spring to mind. Behe, in his book, "Darwin's Black Box," called these "irreducible structures." According to Behe, modern theories of biological evolution cannot account for structures or processes that are "irreducibly complex." If you want to translate this over to the microchip, consider that the chip can make different configurations of the same type of connections (different gate arrays), but it cannot produce structures that are more than re-arrangements of those gates (e.g., it can't evolve itself from CMOS to bipolar logic, nor turn its transistors into laser diodes). In the real world, structures are even more limited than in the chip, because the chip (if it is designed with safeties) does not rebuild all of its dynamic components.
I forgot to mention that some people confuse market success with moral authority. Just because a product or business practice is a financial success for an individual (business or person) does not mean that the product or service should be tolerated by society. If a product appeals to only 1% of the population, it could be a marketing success, resulting in millions--maybe billions--of dollars, even if it is destructive to society. A big problem that I have with the Libertarian mindset is that it too often falls into justifying anything simply on the basis of marketing success.
I agree with most of what you said. However, I strongly disagree with Libertarianism on exactly the last point you listed. I defy you to prove that the market is always right. You can't do that; it's just a statement of faith that matches your philosophy. The fact is, the market is *NOT* always right! People *don't* buy a product only because it gives them better service, and market success is no guarantee of social benefit. A big part of the reason that the market is not always right is that corporations do not offer their products solely on the merits of the products. As long as Marketing finds it effective to use superstars to hawk products, the market cannot be entirely reliable--for starters. You know very well (though you may try to dodge the issue) that a lot of marketing tactics (certainly by Microsoft) depend on issues that have nothing to do with the inherent qualities of the product. Strong-arm tactics (aka, "competive nature") say more about the executives' personalities than about the product's merits.
I've known a lot of salesmen and saleswomen. It's a no-brainer that sales personnel who possess unusual physical beauty--all else being approximately equal--have better sales than those who aren't so attractive. As one salesman said, "They think they are buying me, instead of my product." Anyone who looks at that sales report and says, "This must be a great product, because the market buys it" is clearly incorrect.
Bullying should not be tolerated in a civilized society; not in public, not in private and not in the markets.
Information is power, we are told. We are also told that each of our names are referenced by one computer or another in the United States at least a dozen times a day. Most of the personal information that MS would have is already easily available for a fee. It's that extra-invasive information that concerns me; my medical records are not currently held by any one health provider (though the US government comes closest--and, yes, it considers my medical info to be semi-public info). I doubt that it would be easy to piece together all my insurance info, either.
Think of the power that a single company would have if it possessed all this information in one place! This is how Stalin got his big break; he began as secretary to the Party, a job that most people ignored. Eventually, Stalin had political connections to all the major Soviet power-holders, besides considerable information on them. It was easy for him to step into office and become dictator from that point.
In an ideal world, it wouldn't be bad having a service like this. In fact, there is no real reason that MS (or any other company) would need to centralize my information; there is every reason in the world that *I* should be the only source of centralized information on me. MS could just as easily arrange for my home system to perform this service; it just wouldn't provide MS with as much leverage if they did.
Intacta Technologies makes a similar product. It allows any type of multimedia information to be delivered on a piece of paper. The density is high enough for a single sheet of paper to encode the text of more than 50 pages of text. Any computer with a scanner and Intacta software can read the code, which can contain text, images, music or animation.
Yes, for speeding. He loved to drive his sports car at high speeds, and he got a lot of traffic tickets. I've wondered a few times what the Seattle police think about Mr. Gates' driving habits?
I lived in the Albuquerque area longer than anywhere else (Jan 1981-June 1984; Sep 1989-Sep 1993). Originally, I lived in the South Valley of Albuquerque, then the West Mesa, then way out East to Edgewood. I graduated from high school and college in Albuquerque (I attended both UNM and TV-I).
New Mexico in general has a lot of beautiful scenary. Albuquerque is blessed with the towering Sandia Mountains, which extend a mile over the mile-high city (Sandia Crest is around 10k feet). It is amazing that one can sit on one side of town and watch the traffic 10 miles away on the other side of town (Albuqueque is built across a river valley, so you can look across the valley). Environmentally, Albuquerque is wonderful.
The rest of Albuquerque's characteristics may or may not appeal to you. I wish I had watched, "Pirates of Silicon Valley," so I would know how they portrayed Albuquerque. I can say that the New Mexico economy (including Albuquerque's) generally is depressed. One government agency or another own most of the land in New Mexico, and what the government doesn't own, one Indian tribe or another probably does. Albuquerque has a "unique tri-culture" (to quote an old radio ad on KKOB), composed of "White," Latino, and American Indian. The State is historically slightly Left-leaning and Democrat-dominated. They elected their first Republican governor in 50 years a few years ago; ask someone who can remember what they thought of Democrat Governor Tony Anaya (aka, annoy-ya). In the last decade, Albuquerque has become slightly more conservative (especially KKOB).
Good jobs are hard to find in New Mexico. Most of the people who have significant amounts of money work for the government, though ranchers generally do OK, too. Intel built a wafer fab plant on the West side of Albuquerque (in Rio Rancho) about a decade ago. GE has a large aircraft engine manufacturing plant in the South Valley. One of the teacher assistants at T-VI lamented to me that Albuquerque tax-payers send so much money to T-VI to educate students, but then, due to the poor job market, most of the graduates immediately leave the State. (My reply to her was something like, "Yes, and I thank you.")
BTW, sales tax in Albuquerque was 8.25% the last I checked, in addition to State and other income tax. This compares to the 8.25% sales tax in Dallas, Texas, where there is no individual income tax; Dallas also has a much better job market. Dallas is vastly more sophisticated than Albuquerque.
The weather is better in Dallas than in Albuquerque. Summer temperatures in Albuquerque often top 90 F; Dallas' Summers runs about 10 F cooler. Winter temperatures in Albuquerque drop below freezing and most of the city gets a few inches of snow; Dallas hardly ever gets more than an inch of snow, and the Winter temperature is about 10 F warmer. Dallas has much more water and is at a lower altitude. My skin doesn't dry out and my lips don't crack and bleed when I am in Dallas; it does in Albuquerque.
If you are looking for a large, somewhat-sleepy, quiet city with beautiful scenary, Albuquerque is a great place to stop. If you are trying to make a living, Albuqueque is not so hot.
I have AT&T DSL service in North Dallas, Texas. I am physically located about 100 meters from a telephone substation. My usual DSL speed is 0.0 kbps. I'm often able to see streaming media at 56kbps, but anything over 100 kbps drops most of the frames. I can download a 5 meg file in a few minutes, maybe a minute or two.
I have no complaints about my transfer rate, because I hardly ever transfer very much. The problem I have is connecting to sites in the first place. I'm told that the delay in connecting is due to the server having to resolve my dynamic IP address each time I choose a different URL. Also, something prevents my playing "Alpha Centauri" over the Internet. AT&T informs me that I am being serviced from another city, a few miles away, instead of the sub-station located 100 meters from my apartment, and that there is nothing I can do about it. So, even when I request access to a site, my usual DSL speed is 0.0 kbps.
The Internet isn't a protected playground and it can never become one without becoming utterly emasculated. It is a faithful cross-section of all of humanity, without artificial barriers,
What part of humanity do you hang around? A pretty weird bunch, I'd say!
There are about 6 thousand million (6x10^9) people on Earth, living in about 120 countries and composing thousands or millions of regional cultures. There are about 300 million people living in the United States, composing hundreds of regional cultures. There are about 200 million Internet users world-wide, almost half of them in the United States. Entire cultures remain unrepresented, or barely represented, on the Internet.
The biggest problem with the point you are making, though, is that it ignores the territorial nature of humans. In the real world, people who are in general philosophical agreement with each other tend to live in communities, and outsiders are expected to adapt somewhat to the community's standards. In the Internet world, there are large clusters or associations of people who are forced together who are violently opposed to each other's way of life. You mention the "adult" parts of town; those are run-down, dangerous areas of town, hopefully segregated from people who wish to live decently. We lament the lives of those who are forced to live in those conditions, especially those who live a better life than those conditions indicate.
Why do you suppose we don't display pornography on billboards? In the United States, we hardly even display nudity, even for "gentlmen's clubs." France does. They displayed full frontal female nudity about 30 years ago. Do you suppose the United States is so different from France just because of a handful of prudes? Or, might the United States have a fundamental difference of philosophy? The Internet allows for few fine distinctions; everyone is thrown into the same environment, with only minor modifiers. The more time you spend on the Internet, the more you learn what evil lurks in the hearts of men, even if you don't want to learn it.
and that is what makes it the largest and most valuable resource on the planet. The Internet may be in fashion with youngsters wanting to be adults, but if you're a parent it's NOT the place to let your youngsters roam freely before they are old enough to make their own decisions.
When I was a child, I loved to read about science and space travel. When I was 8 years old, I had a World Book Encyclopedia, and I used to day-dream about aligning the letters on the different volumes and getting information on the subject I spelled. I looked at every science book I could find. Now, the Internet has been wonderful about providing me with some information. How horrible that some people are so barbaric that the Internet is not decent for public use!
1) Most geeks are weirdos, and proud of it. Computer science has attracted weirdos (people who tend to have an above-average intelligence, anti-social behavior and strange personal quirks, particularly regarding sexual matters, but who usually do a poor job of organizing their life or money) for the last 50 years. Most of them, if they are politically active, are Democrats, or maybe Socialists.
2) AOL pays rock-bottom, and hires in areas that don't have a lot of job options. New Mexico has traditionally had a poor job market. I also moved from a city in which AOL set up a large call center (I applied for that job; I was desperate), located out in East Texas--it had poor job options, too.
AOL has often been on my blacklist because of the constant stream of porn solicitation or other sexually-immoral material for which AOL is the gateway. I don't have to do anything to get this garbage. Simply having the account is enough.
I created an AOL account for my mother's business. She has never seen or used it, but a few years ago, it served as her business e-mail address (I forwarded all her business e-mails to her home office). I've been logging onto it about ever 6 months or so, ever since she changed to a different e-mail provider. Even though the account has been dormant for about 3 years, it gets constant porn spam (among other spam). As best I can figure, the fact that I created a user profile that identifies her as a travel agent is sufficient reason for people to flood her mailbox with porn ads.
Sometimes, I log into AOL in the early morning hours. I often get an IM (or maybe a half-dozen IMs) around 5 in the morning, from "SexyJessica" (or whomever); in the past, when I clicked to accept the message, it contained only a link to a porn site--"SexyJessica" disconnected as soon as she sent me the IM.
The most galling aspect is that a lot of these porn ads come from people who have AOL business accounts. AOL refuses to release to me any contact information regarding the people who keep spamming me (they claim they are protecting their customers). So, their customers whom they are protecting keep sending me porn spam, and there is very little I can do about it. I don't worry as much about it, now, though; I switched to a different ISP (I only keep the minimal service, for my e-mail, Buddy list and Web page). My use of AOL has dropped from about 8 hours a night to about 5 hours a week.
It almost took an act of Congress just to keep AOL from advertising their homosexual forums on my computer. I complained several times to Steve Case's office, but he only said that their ads were in the late evening, so children shouldn't be exposed. AOL only stopped putting those ads on my computer after one of their members who frequented their homosexual chat rooms sodomized and murdered a little boy.
I think you're missing the original point -- when your parents let you go out in the woods alone (I assume) they didn't ask the U.S. government to send a swat team in first to kill anything that might harm you and burn out all the poison ivy just for good measure.
*YOU* are the one missing the point! When he was a child, there weren't people raising and releasing into those woods things that might harm or kill him. Today, that is *exactly* what people are doing! The dangers on the Internet aren't native to the wires and computers; they were put there by people! People are responsible for the content that is online; porn and spam didn't just evolve out of white noise. Not only that, but people have created a raging torrent of the material. Thus, it is completely understandable and even imperative that the government police the material.
I'm afraid you don't understand addiction. Addiction occurs when something you desire is then taken away from you, and you crave for it once again. It's the same thing drug pushers do; they give a little of the product away for free, and then they start charging for it afterwards.
You obviously don't know what you are talking about. No one has to take away the substance to which you are addicted; your body constantly craves more. The addicted keeps increasing the time he is drugged and the amount he is drugged.
As far as I am concerned, I've seem far more problems with the lack of porn than those who've view it. Represses sexuality is far worse than unrepressed.
NONSENSE!! Anyone who reads enough police reports knows better. Most sexual assualts are committed by people of unrepressed or nearly-unrepressed sexuality, not those who are "celebate." It's you bunch of perverts who are responsible for the spread of sexually-transmitted disease. It's you bunch of perverts who are responsible for rape. It's you bunch of perverts who are responsible for white slavery.
There is a huge market for "white slavery." That's the practice of trapping someone--often after kidnapping them--and forcing them to serve as prostitutes. There was a particularly gruesome case in New Mexico, in which a gang of Mexican men kidnapped a woman from her own driveway, as she was returning from the grocery store. After using her to make several porn videos, they murdered her (this is a well-known case from the '80s that has been in the local newspapers several times over the years). Then, there is Lisa Calico, who was riding her bike in Valencia, New Mexico, when two men kidnapped her; she has never been heard nor found since then. I even knew a woman whose coffee at a restaurant was drugged; she felt strange, started walking towards the bathroom, and passed out in the aisle. When she fainted, a nearby table full of men got up and left. There were other cases of kidnapping from that restaurant.
Most of these cases are unknown to the general public, just as most cases of illegal immigration are unknown to the public. There is no question that thousands of otherwise-uninvolved people a year are victimized to feed the porn habits of people who crave this material.
this is a complete load. most porn consumers aren't addicts any more than someone who drinks beer, wine, or even vodka regularly is an alcoholic.
Alcohol-related accidents kill 25,000 people a year in the United States. Alcohol-related accidents are the leading cause of death for people age 18 to 24. I find little comfort in your choice of comparison.
at worst the individual may view the material more often, and maybe they'll purchase more of it, but there is nothing to support the notion that someone who grew up on Penthouse or Hustler is suddenly going to be grabbing little girls and boys off the playground to star in the home movie version of "Snuff" or "Silence of the Lambs". there is just no slippery slope here.
There is a huge market for "white slavery." That's the practice of trapping someone--often after kidnapping them--and forcing them to serve as prostitutes. There was a particularly gruesome case in New Mexico, in which a gang of Mexican men kidnapped a woman from her own driveway, as she was returning from the grocery store. After using her to make several porn videos, they murdered her (this is a well-known case from the '80s that has been in the local newspapers several times over the years). Then, there is Lisa Calico, who was riding her bike in Valencia, New Mexico, when two men kidnapped her; she has never been heard nor found since then. I even knew a woman whose coffee at a restaurant was drugged; she felt strange, started walking towards the bathroom, and passed out in the aisle. When she fainted, a nearby table full of men got up and left. There were other cases of kidnapping from that restaurant.
Most of these cases are unknown to the general public, just as most cases of illegal immigration are unknown to the public. There is no question that thousands of otherwise-uninvolved people a year are victimized to feed the porn habits of people who crave this material.
You can't imagin the pain that you fucking prudes cause in the world.
It's perverts like you who cause most of the pain. It's perverts like you who laugh the sick jokes and casual sex. It's perverts like you who kept AOL's homosexual chat forum open, which has at least two confirmed victims reported in the news (the first victim was raped by someone he met in the chat room; he then raped and murdered a boy who happened to be selling cookies door-to-door). It's perverts like you who harass the girls in high school, hurting their perceptions about themselves, making them harlots and unwed mothers. It's perverts like you who support the murder of unborn children, because fornicators would rather murder the child than act responsibly. It's perverts like you who make the Internet into an open-air septic tank.
I have hardly scratched the surface of the pain and evil your kind has inflicted on this world, and continues to inflict on this world. You are a creep. Your kind has always hid under a rock because the light of day would melt you. Now, you have the Internet, and you slime your way around the world.
I don't know, all of this "it was bad, but not as bad as Clinton" stuff is starting to sound like that dreaded "moral relativism" to me.
If you really dread it, then just keep in mind a simple principle: It may or may not be forgivable to cross the legal line while defending the Constitution, but it isn't forgivable to cross the legal line while attacking the Constitution. Arming anti-Communist rebels in the Americas is in line with protecting the US Constitution; using the powers of the Presidency for personal enrichment, the obstruction of justice in a criminal investigation or furthering the military interests of hostile nations is out of line and should be severely punished.
You'd think the president, of all people, would at least encrypt anything he'd like to keep private.
If it is subpoenaed, he has to turn it over to the court. It doesn't matter if it is encrypted or not; if it exists, it can be subpoenaed. From that point, he either complies, or does a Clinton by pretending it was lost or stolen or never existed, or else doctors it before release. The bottom line is, encryption wouldn't prevent the problem that is keeping Bush from using Internet communications.
Oh, great; The Battle of the Clueless Anarchist Geeks vs the Overbearing Sci-Fi Con Artists.
Based on the explanation given so far in this article, the Church of Scientology isn't trying to prevent people on Slashdot from expressing themselves; it is trying to maintain control of its own copryrighted material. I understand that's a fine point that is indistinguishable to many a dizzy Net Narchist, but among the sane and informed (and law-abiding--especially law-abiding), it is an important difference. If it helps you understand it, consider it to be similar to someone posting pictures of the inside of your house. If you wanted to post those pictures, that's your right, but for someone else to do it without your permission, it is overstepping the boundaries of the information you possess.
Slashdot Mirror
Any technology that is sufficiently advanced will be indistinguishable from insanity.
I live in Dallas, where Yahoo! is local news. There are a few points I haven't noticed anyone else making, so I shall.
The first item is a small article in the Business section of the "Dallas Morning News," which noted that Yahoo!'s quarterly report, which happened to come out about the same time as the porn announcement, was better than expected, leading analysts to question Yahoo!'s claim that it needed to sell porn to remain competitive.
The other item is that Yahoo!, like a lot of big businesses, is the beneficiary of large tax incentives given by the local government(s) to encourage the business climate. In this case, the local government immediately began aggressive proceedings to have Yahoo!'s multi-million dollar tax incentive package revoked. It seems to me this would have hurt a lot more than some email from AFA. The evening after Yahoo! announced their abandonment of their porn plan, the official leading the revocation said that she would also desist from seeking to remove Yahoo!'s tax incentive.
I'm glad that Yahoo! is not an unchecked power. I am also glad that people who would make pornography as common in Middle America USA as it is in some "Red Light" district don't have a free hand. Some individual in a later post on this forum questions the right of, for example, Christians to impose their standards on others; I believe that debates on theory should remain in benign environments--the practical reality is, the United States does not need to be trashed by pornographers.
Now, I wonder what will happen with the other major portals that were all supposed to switch to peddling porn later this year? Supposedly, AOL and several other sites were all supposed to do as Yahoo! had done, all in the name of money (or competitiveness). BTW, I don't believe that money is evil, but I do believe that the love of money is the root of sin. The man or company who is motivated primarily by money is not trustworthy; he will do anything, no matter how immoral, for money.
When I said that Behe's book was not popular in the evolutionist community, T.O. was part of that community I included. I've long maintained, however, that T.O. is absolutely biased in favor of evolutionary theories and opposed to Creationism; I've never seen them admit that there is a weakness with any evolutionary model, or what that weakness might be. Like most evolutionists, they expect everyone to embrace evolution without question. So, any conclusion they reach of Behe's work is going to be a hatchet job, supported by absurd reasoning. Neither T.O. nor any other evolutionist ever shows how the structures that Behe identifies could have formed using current evolutionary models. Instead, they blandly repeat their evolutionary dogma, as if that answers Behe's objections.
Anyway, Genetic Programming isn't evolution in the sense of biological evolution, and that is the point of this sub-thread.
Solids, like liquids, are classified as "noncompressible." Gases are compressible. If the medium is noncompressible, how can it support compression waves? I believe it can't (in most ordinary circumstances); the railroad track supports vibrations, but not compression waves.
Could you please explain why the speed of sound in a bar of steel or a basin of water is faster than the speed of sound in air, even if they are all at the same temperature, if the speed of sound only depends on temperature? I'm not an expert on this subject by any means, but the last I heard, the speed of sound depends on the density and the elasticity of the medium.
[snip]
To evolve is to change incrementally (or possibly in big leaps) over time. That's exactly what genetic algorithms do.
Your definition of evolution isn't much better than that of which you complain. Using your definition, all computer chips are evolving--as is everything else that is subject to change (which pretty much includes the known Universe). A good definition should expose a single entity, while excluding all others; that is, it should narrow the range of applicable examples only to those that match the idea one is attempting to express.
The generally-accepted definition of biological evolution (which is the only kind of evolution that relates to Darwin, and so to our concern) is, "a change in the ratio of alleles of a population over time." We aren't really talking about chromosomes, but rather about "alleles," or units of code. However, people should keep in mind that genetic algorithms are only loosely related to biological evolution; they use a few analogous concepts that are convenient, but do not attempt to mimic biological evolution in every detail. IOW, GA is not evolution in the Darwinian or biological concept, but is, rather, more of an artistic expression or abstraction of biological evolution.
Genetic algorithms have several years of experimentation, of course. I am more familiar with implementations in software, rather than hardware. One feature of a GA system is that the "evolving" pieces are supported in an isolated environment; that is, the software that runs the simulations is not itself subject to the changes in the simulation. That way, even if all the simulations fail, the program doesn't simply crash, but is able to report its results and maybe even set up and run another simulation set, perhaps using the identical starting point. Furthermore, the "evolving" data sets are not subject to the breeding limits of biological systems; in the real world, some species cannot produce fertile offspring, but in the computer world, anything the programmer codes to happen may happen.
Evolution as a process is most apparent in biological systems, and that's where most of our ideas come from. However, they're applied by trying to break down the essence of evolution as a process which is implemented by biological systems, rather than as something that is wholly bound within biological concepts.
Genetic algorithms have about as much to do with biological evolution as fighter jets have to do with birds. They aren't the same kind of thing, even if they use a few of the same principles. This is an important distinction. Some people have the mistaken notion that GA is a working example of Darwinian evolution; it shows that biological evolution is workable. In fact, it is impossible for biological evolution to have produced the effects for which it is credited by evolutionists.
I believe the most important difference between genetic algorithms and biological evolution is that in GA, many small changes are used to make the final product. In the real world, this is not possible; some complex biological structures and processes cannot be constructed (much less, construct themselves) incrementally from simpler parts without the information pre-existing. The list of these structures and processes is quite long; hemoglobin, the ATP pathway, the process of vision being some that quickly spring to mind. Behe, in his book, "Darwin's Black Box," called these "irreducible structures." According to Behe, modern theories of biological evolution cannot account for structures or processes that are "irreducibly complex." If you want to translate this over to the microchip, consider that the chip can make different configurations of the same type of connections (different gate arrays), but it cannot produce structures that are more than re-arrangements of those gates (e.g., it can't evolve itself from CMOS to bipolar logic, nor turn its transistors into laser diodes). In the real world, structures are even more limited than in the chip, because the chip (if it is designed with safeties) does not rebuild all of its dynamic components.
I couldn't let that aspect pass without comment.
I've known a lot of salesmen and saleswomen. It's a no-brainer that sales personnel who possess unusual physical beauty--all else being approximately equal--have better sales than those who aren't so attractive. As one salesman said, "They think they are buying me, instead of my product." Anyone who looks at that sales report and says, "This must be a great product, because the market buys it" is clearly incorrect.
Bullying should not be tolerated in a civilized society; not in public, not in private and not in the markets.
Think of the power that a single company would have if it possessed all this information in one place! This is how Stalin got his big break; he began as secretary to the Party, a job that most people ignored. Eventually, Stalin had political connections to all the major Soviet power-holders, besides considerable information on them. It was easy for him to step into office and become dictator from that point.
In an ideal world, it wouldn't be bad having a service like this. In fact, there is no real reason that MS (or any other company) would need to centralize my information; there is every reason in the world that *I* should be the only source of centralized information on me. MS could just as easily arrange for my home system to perform this service; it just wouldn't provide MS with as much leverage if they did.
http://www.intacta.com/html/inta6000.htm
http://www.intacta.com/html/inta6000.htm
New Mexico in general has a lot of beautiful scenary. Albuquerque is blessed with the towering Sandia Mountains, which extend a mile over the mile-high city (Sandia Crest is around 10k feet). It is amazing that one can sit on one side of town and watch the traffic 10 miles away on the other side of town (Albuqueque is built across a river valley, so you can look across the valley). Environmentally, Albuquerque is wonderful.
The rest of Albuquerque's characteristics may or may not appeal to you. I wish I had watched, "Pirates of Silicon Valley," so I would know how they portrayed Albuquerque. I can say that the New Mexico economy (including Albuquerque's) generally is depressed. One government agency or another own most of the land in New Mexico, and what the government doesn't own, one Indian tribe or another probably does. Albuquerque has a "unique tri-culture" (to quote an old radio ad on KKOB), composed of "White," Latino, and American Indian. The State is historically slightly Left-leaning and Democrat-dominated. They elected their first Republican governor in 50 years a few years ago; ask someone who can remember what they thought of Democrat Governor Tony Anaya (aka, annoy-ya). In the last decade, Albuquerque has become slightly more conservative (especially KKOB).
Good jobs are hard to find in New Mexico. Most of the people who have significant amounts of money work for the government, though ranchers generally do OK, too. Intel built a wafer fab plant on the West side of Albuquerque (in Rio Rancho) about a decade ago. GE has a large aircraft engine manufacturing plant in the South Valley. One of the teacher assistants at T-VI lamented to me that Albuquerque tax-payers send so much money to T-VI to educate students, but then, due to the poor job market, most of the graduates immediately leave the State. (My reply to her was something like, "Yes, and I thank you.")
BTW, sales tax in Albuquerque was 8.25% the last I checked, in addition to State and other income tax. This compares to the 8.25% sales tax in Dallas, Texas, where there is no individual income tax; Dallas also has a much better job market. Dallas is vastly more sophisticated than Albuquerque.
The weather is better in Dallas than in Albuquerque. Summer temperatures in Albuquerque often top 90 F; Dallas' Summers runs about 10 F cooler. Winter temperatures in Albuquerque drop below freezing and most of the city gets a few inches of snow; Dallas hardly ever gets more than an inch of snow, and the Winter temperature is about 10 F warmer. Dallas has much more water and is at a lower altitude. My skin doesn't dry out and my lips don't crack and bleed when I am in Dallas; it does in Albuquerque.
If you are looking for a large, somewhat-sleepy, quiet city with beautiful scenary, Albuquerque is a great place to stop. If you are trying to make a living, Albuqueque is not so hot.
I have no complaints about my transfer rate, because I hardly ever transfer very much. The problem I have is connecting to sites in the first place. I'm told that the delay in connecting is due to the server having to resolve my dynamic IP address each time I choose a different URL. Also, something prevents my playing "Alpha Centauri" over the Internet. AT&T informs me that I am being serviced from another city, a few miles away, instead of the sub-station located 100 meters from my apartment, and that there is nothing I can do about it. So, even when I request access to a site, my usual DSL speed is 0.0 kbps.
What part of humanity do you hang around? A pretty weird bunch, I'd say!
There are about 6 thousand million (6x10^9) people on Earth, living in about 120 countries and composing thousands or millions of regional cultures. There are about 300 million people living in the United States, composing hundreds of regional cultures. There are about 200 million Internet users world-wide, almost half of them in the United States. Entire cultures remain unrepresented, or barely represented, on the Internet.
The biggest problem with the point you are making, though, is that it ignores the territorial nature of humans. In the real world, people who are in general philosophical agreement with each other tend to live in communities, and outsiders are expected to adapt somewhat to the community's standards. In the Internet world, there are large clusters or associations of people who are forced together who are violently opposed to each other's way of life. You mention the "adult" parts of town; those are run-down, dangerous areas of town, hopefully segregated from people who wish to live decently. We lament the lives of those who are forced to live in those conditions, especially those who live a better life than those conditions indicate.
Why do you suppose we don't display pornography on billboards? In the United States, we hardly even display nudity, even for "gentlmen's clubs." France does. They displayed full frontal female nudity about 30 years ago. Do you suppose the United States is so different from France just because of a handful of prudes? Or, might the United States have a fundamental difference of philosophy? The Internet allows for few fine distinctions; everyone is thrown into the same environment, with only minor modifiers. The more time you spend on the Internet, the more you learn what evil lurks in the hearts of men, even if you don't want to learn it.
and that is what makes it the largest and most valuable resource on the planet. The Internet may be in fashion with youngsters wanting to be adults, but if you're a parent it's NOT the place to let your youngsters roam freely before they are old enough to make their own decisions.
When I was a child, I loved to read about science and space travel. When I was 8 years old, I had a World Book Encyclopedia, and I used to day-dream about aligning the letters on the different volumes and getting information on the subject I spelled. I looked at every science book I could find. Now, the Internet has been wonderful about providing me with some information. How horrible that some people are so barbaric that the Internet is not decent for public use!
1) Most geeks are weirdos, and proud of it. Computer science has attracted weirdos (people who tend to have an above-average intelligence, anti-social behavior and strange personal quirks, particularly regarding sexual matters, but who usually do a poor job of organizing their life or money) for the last 50 years. Most of them, if they are politically active, are Democrats, or maybe Socialists.
2) AOL pays rock-bottom, and hires in areas that don't have a lot of job options. New Mexico has traditionally had a poor job market. I also moved from a city in which AOL set up a large call center (I applied for that job; I was desperate), located out in East Texas--it had poor job options, too.
I created an AOL account for my mother's business. She has never seen or used it, but a few years ago, it served as her business e-mail address (I forwarded all her business e-mails to her home office). I've been logging onto it about ever 6 months or so, ever since she changed to a different e-mail provider. Even though the account has been dormant for about 3 years, it gets constant porn spam (among other spam). As best I can figure, the fact that I created a user profile that identifies her as a travel agent is sufficient reason for people to flood her mailbox with porn ads.
Sometimes, I log into AOL in the early morning hours. I often get an IM (or maybe a half-dozen IMs) around 5 in the morning, from "SexyJessica" (or whomever); in the past, when I clicked to accept the message, it contained only a link to a porn site--"SexyJessica" disconnected as soon as she sent me the IM.
The most galling aspect is that a lot of these porn ads come from people who have AOL business accounts. AOL refuses to release to me any contact information regarding the people who keep spamming me (they claim they are protecting their customers). So, their customers whom they are protecting keep sending me porn spam, and there is very little I can do about it. I don't worry as much about it, now, though; I switched to a different ISP (I only keep the minimal service, for my e-mail, Buddy list and Web page). My use of AOL has dropped from about 8 hours a night to about 5 hours a week.
It almost took an act of Congress just to keep AOL from advertising their homosexual forums on my computer. I complained several times to Steve Case's office, but he only said that their ads were in the late evening, so children shouldn't be exposed. AOL only stopped putting those ads on my computer after one of their members who frequented their homosexual chat rooms sodomized and murdered a little boy.
This isn't the world I'm going to live in.
*YOU* are the one missing the point! When he was a child, there weren't people raising and releasing into those woods things that might harm or kill him. Today, that is *exactly* what people are doing! The dangers on the Internet aren't native to the wires and computers; they were put there by people! People are responsible for the content that is online; porn and spam didn't just evolve out of white noise. Not only that, but people have created a raging torrent of the material. Thus, it is completely understandable and even imperative that the government police the material.
You obviously don't know what you are talking about. No one has to take away the substance to which you are addicted; your body constantly craves more. The addicted keeps increasing the time he is drugged and the amount he is drugged.
As far as I am concerned, I've seem far more problems with the lack of porn than those who've view it. Represses sexuality is far worse than unrepressed.
NONSENSE!! Anyone who reads enough police reports knows better. Most sexual assualts are committed by people of unrepressed or nearly-unrepressed sexuality, not those who are "celebate." It's you bunch of perverts who are responsible for the spread of sexually-transmitted disease. It's you bunch of perverts who are responsible for rape. It's you bunch of perverts who are responsible for white slavery.
There is a huge market for "white slavery." That's the practice of trapping someone--often after kidnapping them--and forcing them to serve as prostitutes. There was a particularly gruesome case in New Mexico, in which a gang of Mexican men kidnapped a woman from her own driveway, as she was returning from the grocery store. After using her to make several porn videos, they murdered her (this is a well-known case from the '80s that has been in the local newspapers several times over the years). Then, there is Lisa Calico, who was riding her bike in Valencia, New Mexico, when two men kidnapped her; she has never been heard nor found since then. I even knew a woman whose coffee at a restaurant was drugged; she felt strange, started walking towards the bathroom, and passed out in the aisle. When she fainted, a nearby table full of men got up and left. There were other cases of kidnapping from that restaurant.
Most of these cases are unknown to the general public, just as most cases of illegal immigration are unknown to the public. There is no question that thousands of otherwise-uninvolved people a year are victimized to feed the porn habits of people who crave this material.
Alcohol-related accidents kill 25,000 people a year in the United States. Alcohol-related accidents are the leading cause of death for people age 18 to 24. I find little comfort in your choice of comparison.
at worst the individual may view the material more often, and maybe they'll purchase more of it, but there is nothing to support the notion that someone who grew up on Penthouse or Hustler is suddenly going to be grabbing little girls and boys off the playground to star in the home movie version of "Snuff" or "Silence of the Lambs". there is just no slippery slope here.
There is a huge market for "white slavery." That's the practice of trapping someone--often after kidnapping them--and forcing them to serve as prostitutes. There was a particularly gruesome case in New Mexico, in which a gang of Mexican men kidnapped a woman from her own driveway, as she was returning from the grocery store. After using her to make several porn videos, they murdered her (this is a well-known case from the '80s that has been in the local newspapers several times over the years). Then, there is Lisa Calico, who was riding her bike in Valencia, New Mexico, when two men kidnapped her; she has never been heard nor found since then. I even knew a woman whose coffee at a restaurant was drugged; she felt strange, started walking towards the bathroom, and passed out in the aisle. When she fainted, a nearby table full of men got up and left. There were other cases of kidnapping from that restaurant.
Most of these cases are unknown to the general public, just as most cases of illegal immigration are unknown to the public. There is no question that thousands of otherwise-uninvolved people a year are victimized to feed the porn habits of people who crave this material.
It's perverts like you who cause most of the pain. It's perverts like you who laugh the sick jokes and casual sex. It's perverts like you who kept AOL's homosexual chat forum open, which has at least two confirmed victims reported in the news (the first victim was raped by someone he met in the chat room; he then raped and murdered a boy who happened to be selling cookies door-to-door). It's perverts like you who harass the girls in high school, hurting their perceptions about themselves, making them harlots and unwed mothers. It's perverts like you who support the murder of unborn children, because fornicators would rather murder the child than act responsibly. It's perverts like you who make the Internet into an open-air septic tank.
I have hardly scratched the surface of the pain and evil your kind has inflicted on this world, and continues to inflict on this world. You are a creep. Your kind has always hid under a rock because the light of day would melt you. Now, you have the Internet, and you slime your way around the world.
If you really dread it, then just keep in mind a simple principle: It may or may not be forgivable to cross the legal line while defending the Constitution, but it isn't forgivable to cross the legal line while attacking the Constitution. Arming anti-Communist rebels in the Americas is in line with protecting the US Constitution; using the powers of the Presidency for personal enrichment, the obstruction of justice in a criminal investigation or furthering the military interests of hostile nations is out of line and should be severely punished.
If it is subpoenaed, he has to turn it over to the court. It doesn't matter if it is encrypted or not; if it exists, it can be subpoenaed. From that point, he either complies, or does a Clinton by pretending it was lost or stolen or never existed, or else doctors it before release. The bottom line is, encryption wouldn't prevent the problem that is keeping Bush from using Internet communications.
Based on the explanation given so far in this article, the Church of Scientology isn't trying to prevent people on Slashdot from expressing themselves; it is trying to maintain control of its own copryrighted material. I understand that's a fine point that is indistinguishable to many a dizzy Net Narchist, but among the sane and informed (and law-abiding--especially law-abiding), it is an important difference. If it helps you understand it, consider it to be similar to someone posting pictures of the inside of your house. If you wanted to post those pictures, that's your right, but for someone else to do it without your permission, it is overstepping the boundaries of the information you possess.