The "K" as in "Kb" was never supposed to mean "kilo" (1000 units) but really "1024 units".
I have a lot of electonic textbooks from over the last 30 years that say otherwise. The same with my college and trade school work through the '80s and early '90s. I never saw any sign that "k" in digital electronics meant anything other than "1024" until the late '90s, when hard drive manufacturers started chirping about "1 gigabyte = 1,000 megabytes." It was never an issue prior to the introduction of "gigabyte" hard drives. What is more, the computer science classes that I am taking now still refer to the SI prefixes as powers of 2.
I've noticed that before I make certain mistakes, or completely forget what I was doing, I will experience a spike in confusion. Sometimes, the ramp up the spike is slow, taking most of an hour; other times, it comes on me suddenly, taking only a minute. I feel confused and doing simple tasks are difficult. Then, it passes. Often, I will have completely forgotten what it was I was attempting to do, until much later when something reminds me.
I don't know what the costs are, but you only mention personnel. I'm sure that's expensive, maybe even a very large fraction of the total $20 million / year that it takes to run the program, but I can include a few other expensive items on their budget. The cost of radio communication probably adds considerable expense, especially for several hours each day. Computer time on a mainframe--if they use one--would be expensive. They also run simulations on duplicate equipment on Earth, so that equipment is maintained.
Who said anything about taking the weapon on a plane? But, never mind the logistics of how to apply said weapon to the code-abuser of choice, the point of the post appears to have been lost on you. Namely, punks with computers are able to have virtually unlimited free reign to violate the freedoms and rights of computer users who mind their own business, because governments aren't effective at stopping them. That makes me angry.
"Actually it is easy to argue with the results. This is not justice, but a crime. We must be wary about attitudes which condone vigilante justice. When justice escapes from the hands of the state, and becomes a matter of criminal organizations or private individuals to administer, to the cheers of the mob, society will become dangerous not only for those who find themselves target of this sort of justice, but also those who cheer."
That's true. That is why government must be effective at protecting the public. Otherwise, as the Founders of the U.S. noted, it is the right of the people to change their government.
Vigilantism is a horrible, frightening thing, and you have to ask yourself if you want to live in that kind of world. But, there comes a point, when someone has been abused enough, that vigilantism is the lesser of the evils.
We must have a way to tell people to stop that will make them stop.
"So it's the death penalty for sending out unwanted e-mail now? I thought Larry Niven's idea of society accepting capital punishment for minor crimes was laughable, but maybe he wasn't so far off the mark."
If someone were to bump into me as I walked along the sidewalk, it would be annoying, but ignorable. If he did it every day, I would become irritated, maybe even complain about him to authorities for assault and battery. But, if he did it several times a day, and the governments of the world failed to stop him from doing it, there would come a time when I would probably try to kill him.
Believe me, the thought of buying an international plane ticket and a weapon has crossed my mind many times.
Craig Venter is expected to announce that his team has created an artificial copy of a bacterium chomosome. The arficial chromosome, if all goes well, will be installed in a cell, and will take over its machinery, and effectivelly begin living.
Men's Health carried an article earlier this afternoon (but I don't see it now on Google News, where I first found it) that states:
Despite the reports, a spokeswoman for the offices where Venter works states that the Guardian Unlimited "jumped the gun" in reporting the event.
"The Guardian is ahead of themselves on this. We have not achieved what some have speculated we have in synthetic life. When we do so there will be a scientific publication and we are likely months away from that," said Heather Kowalski, the office's spokeswoman.
The article says he built the DNA "from laboratory chemicals" which I assume means it was synthesized
Yeah, the few articles that were on Google News when I read about this earlier this afternoon were a bit vague on exactly what role those laboratory chemicals played. The statements do not exclude the possibility that the chemicals were used merely to snip off the undesired code, reducing it to the few hundred bases that will eventually be transferred to a bacterial cell.
Neodawinism suggest vestigal organs may exist in an organism.
I'm old enough to remember when evolutionists had no doubt that evolutionary theory predicts the existence of vestigial organs. It is the natural consequence of biological change. That was also back when the definition of a vestigial organ was "an organ that has atrophied due to disuse." This was the definition that Darwin used (as he believed that use or disuse of an organ was hereditable... another historical fact about Darwin that is sometimes denied by modern evolutionists). The appendix was cited as evidence for our biological evolution.
It doesn't suggest if we don't know the function of an organ, it's vestigal.
Historically, if evolutionists have not immediately recognized a use for an organ (or anything else, for that matter), they have placed it in the "vestigial" category (or "useless"). In Darwin's day, evolutionists identified, IIRC, 183 "vestigial" organs, based on the definition that these organs no longer had a function and were just hanging around until they dropped off. That number shrank considerably until the modern era, until the term "vestigial" was redefined to mean "an organ whose current function is reduced, compared to its use in our (presumed) evolutionary ancestors." Meaning, that if an evolutionist were to believe that we evolved from hawks, our eyes would be considered vestigial, because we don't see as well as a hawk; or, if the evolutionist believes we evolved from some creature with lesser vision than ours, then our eyes are not vestigial. Suddenly, whether an organ is vestigial or not depends not strictly on the organ, but on the evolutionary model.
Plus, this study in fact says this organ played a role before, and in modern society it has no function.
And it is incorrect. Creation Scientists demonstrated in studies and experiments a decade ago that the appendix aids in immunity and radiation resistance. Furthermore, populations without an appendix have higher rates of cancer than those who retain their appendix.
Some people are born *without* appendix and live to pass this onto their kids, since appendix is no longer needed organ.
Some people are born *without* arms and live to have children, so arms obviously are no longer needed, either.
Silly evolutionist! Just because people can live to produce offspring with the same trait does not mean that the organ is useless, unhelpful or vestigial!
That's evolution right before your eyes.
Bunkum. Evolutionary theory only succeeds through the use of semantics, not from facts of nature. The definition of "vestigial" is just one example.
OK, I'll admit that dating methods are based on chemistry and physics, and dating methods are important to figuring out the age of rocks, from which we get the age of fossils, from which we derive our evolutionary lineages in paleontology (though the results sometimes disagree with the results from genetic analysis). In that sense, chemistry and physics are used in evolutionary theory. Even so, none of that has anything to do with computer science.
(all that chemistry and physics that supports evolution would be wrong).
Biological evolution is not based on chemistry and physics. At all. It is based on zoology, paleontology, comparative anatomy, comparative genetics and other aspects of biology, and, to some degree, on geology. But, chemistry and physics have nothing to do with evolutionary theory (unless you want to include abiogenesis, but evolutionists insist that abiogenesis is not evolution--it just isn't!).
I think the editor could be liable if he fails to exercise reasonable judgement in what he prints. Simply because comments come from a 3rd party does not excuse the paper from its responsibilities in what it publishes.
Oh, so you are saying that evolutionary theory is a fundamental part computer science? If not, then what difference does it make if someone is a Creationist?
FYI, many Creationists have graduate degrees. I personally know several scientists who are Creationists.
Those "throwbacks" have the right of representation, too. This is still public tax money. And, science really doesn't know everything. One published paper shows that about half of all published research is factually incorrect. So, the push to force political support for evolution is more about propaganda than about any love for science. If you love evolution so much, fund it yourself!
Besides, evolutionary theory provides practically no benefit to society when compared to the benefit from physics and chemistry. And, yes, I've heard the mumbo-jumbo from evolutionists claiming that evolutionary theory is so critical to studying disease or immunity, never mind that evolutionary theory is not able to show which compounds are effective and really doesn't say anything useful for medicine.
No, you are not the only one who finds this story fanciful. This just screams exaggeration. And, I would point out, this is not the first time that faith in the power of evolution has made monkeys of the True Believing Evolutionists.
Instead of making the extraordinary jump without evidence that monkeys suddenly have the ability to communicate linguistic attacks on humans, you ought to consider the far more likely possibility that the villagers have let their imaginations get the better of them. Even the possibility that someone actually trained the monkeys to do this is more likely than the monkeys evolving the sense to do it on their own.
I can understand monkeys swarming farms for food. I accept monkeys harassing people. But when someone claims that monkeys point to their (own) breasts and private areas in an attempt to communicate, I see someone's over-active imagination getting the better of him. No way, guys; not unless someone spent a lot of time and effort training the monkeys to do this.
Frankly, this sounds like another fanciful story from villagers with over-active imaginations. Far from making statements like, "This is the first time we have reports of interspecies communications" (that is, sexual harassment as communication), the authors ought to be far more skeptical, because, this is NOT the first time we have heard these kind of claims. This is just another "King Kong" story, with monkeys.
I am wondering why, if you believe that evolution is a scientific subject, you would ask a political candidate to give a technical defense? But, this is a common tactic amongst evolutionists; attack laypeople with minutia, then claim they are dishonest for not being able to argue at the Ph.D. level. This isn't science or debate; it is virulent propaganda and mental harassment. Funny how it comes from people who often admit that science does not teach absolutes.
NIX is still online: NIX Home I can only speculate about the difference between NIX and AIA, but I suspect that NIX only has images that have been cataloged up to now, not necessarily every Apollo image on film. AIA is supposed to scan all the stills, eventually. Maybe AIA will share the results with NIX?
Slashdot Mirror
Here is a link to the Magnetized Target Fusion Experiments at LANL webpage.
I have a lot of electonic textbooks from over the last 30 years that say otherwise. The same with my college and trade school work through the '80s and early '90s. I never saw any sign that "k" in digital electronics meant anything other than "1024" until the late '90s, when hard drive manufacturers started chirping about "1 gigabyte = 1,000 megabytes." It was never an issue prior to the introduction of "gigabyte" hard drives. What is more, the computer science classes that I am taking now still refer to the SI prefixes as powers of 2.
I've noticed that before I make certain mistakes, or completely forget what I was doing, I will experience a spike in confusion. Sometimes, the ramp up the spike is slow, taking most of an hour; other times, it comes on me suddenly, taking only a minute. I feel confused and doing simple tasks are difficult. Then, it passes. Often, I will have completely forgotten what it was I was attempting to do, until much later when something reminds me.
I don't know what the costs are, but you only mention personnel. I'm sure that's expensive, maybe even a very large fraction of the total $20 million / year that it takes to run the program, but I can include a few other expensive items on their budget. The cost of radio communication probably adds considerable expense, especially for several hours each day. Computer time on a mainframe--if they use one--would be expensive. They also run simulations on duplicate equipment on Earth, so that equipment is maintained.
YouTube: The Loudness War
They save a bundle in HVAC costs, but now they face the prospect of black lung disease...
Who said anything about taking the weapon on a plane? But, never mind the logistics of how to apply said weapon to the code-abuser of choice, the point of the post appears to have been lost on you. Namely, punks with computers are able to have virtually unlimited free reign to violate the freedoms and rights of computer users who mind their own business, because governments aren't effective at stopping them. That makes me angry.
He might, indeed. That is how tyrants take over nations.
"Actually it is easy to argue with the results. This is not justice, but a crime. We must be wary about attitudes which condone vigilante justice. When justice escapes from the hands of the state, and becomes a matter of criminal organizations or private individuals to administer, to the cheers of the mob, society will become dangerous not only for those who find themselves target of this sort of justice, but also those who cheer."
That's true. That is why government must be effective at protecting the public. Otherwise, as the Founders of the U.S. noted, it is the right of the people to change their government.
Vigilantism is a horrible, frightening thing, and you have to ask yourself if you want to live in that kind of world. But, there comes a point, when someone has been abused enough, that vigilantism is the lesser of the evils.
We must have a way to tell people to stop that will make them stop.
"So it's the death penalty for sending out unwanted e-mail now? I thought Larry Niven's idea of society accepting capital punishment for minor crimes was laughable, but maybe he wasn't so far off the mark."
If someone were to bump into me as I walked along the sidewalk, it would be annoying, but ignorable. If he did it every day, I would become irritated, maybe even complain about him to authorities for assault and battery. But, if he did it several times a day, and the governments of the world failed to stop him from doing it, there would come a time when I would probably try to kill him.
Believe me, the thought of buying an international plane ticket and a weapon has crossed my mind many times.
So the summary should read ...
Craig Venter is expected to announce that his team has created an artificial copy of a bacterium chomosome. The arficial chromosome, if all goes well, will be installed in a cell, and will take over its machinery, and effectivelly begin living.
Men's Health carried an article earlier this afternoon (but I don't see it now on Google News, where I first found it) that states:
Despite the reports, a spokeswoman for the offices where Venter works states that the Guardian Unlimited "jumped the gun" in reporting the event.
"The Guardian is ahead of themselves on this. We have not achieved what some have speculated we have in synthetic life. When we do so there will be a scientific publication and we are likely months away from that," said Heather Kowalski, the office's spokeswoman.
US scientist says he created first 'artificial life form'
The article says he built the DNA "from laboratory chemicals" which I assume means it was synthesized
Yeah, the few articles that were on Google News when I read about this earlier this afternoon were a bit vague on exactly what role those laboratory chemicals played. The statements do not exclude the possibility that the chemicals were used merely to snip off the undesired code, reducing it to the few hundred bases that will eventually be transferred to a bacterial cell.
Neodawinism suggest vestigal organs may exist in an organism.
I'm old enough to remember when evolutionists had no doubt that evolutionary theory predicts the existence of vestigial organs. It is the natural consequence of biological change. That was also back when the definition of a vestigial organ was "an organ that has atrophied due to disuse." This was the definition that Darwin used (as he believed that use or disuse of an organ was hereditable... another historical fact about Darwin that is sometimes denied by modern evolutionists). The appendix was cited as evidence for our biological evolution.
It doesn't suggest if we don't know the function of an organ, it's vestigal.
Historically, if evolutionists have not immediately recognized a use for an organ (or anything else, for that matter), they have placed it in the "vestigial" category (or "useless"). In Darwin's day, evolutionists identified, IIRC, 183 "vestigial" organs, based on the definition that these organs no longer had a function and were just hanging around until they dropped off. That number shrank considerably until the modern era, until the term "vestigial" was redefined to mean "an organ whose current function is reduced, compared to its use in our (presumed) evolutionary ancestors." Meaning, that if an evolutionist were to believe that we evolved from hawks, our eyes would be considered vestigial, because we don't see as well as a hawk; or, if the evolutionist believes we evolved from some creature with lesser vision than ours, then our eyes are not vestigial. Suddenly, whether an organ is vestigial or not depends not strictly on the organ, but on the evolutionary model.
Plus, this study in fact says this organ played a role before, and in modern society it has no function.
And it is incorrect. Creation Scientists demonstrated in studies and experiments a decade ago that the appendix aids in immunity and radiation resistance. Furthermore, populations without an appendix have higher rates of cancer than those who retain their appendix.
Some people are born *without* appendix and live to pass this onto their kids, since appendix is no longer needed organ.
Some people are born *without* arms and live to have children, so arms obviously are no longer needed, either.
Silly evolutionist! Just because people can live to produce offspring with the same trait does not mean that the organ is useless, unhelpful or vestigial!
That's evolution right before your eyes.
Bunkum. Evolutionary theory only succeeds through the use of semantics, not from facts of nature. The definition of "vestigial" is just one example.
OK, I'll admit that dating methods are based on chemistry and physics, and dating methods are important to figuring out the age of rocks, from which we get the age of fossils, from which we derive our evolutionary lineages in paleontology (though the results sometimes disagree with the results from genetic analysis). In that sense, chemistry and physics are used in evolutionary theory. Even so, none of that has anything to do with computer science.
(all that chemistry and physics that supports evolution would be wrong).
Biological evolution is not based on chemistry and physics. At all. It is based on zoology, paleontology, comparative anatomy, comparative genetics and other aspects of biology, and, to some degree, on geology. But, chemistry and physics have nothing to do with evolutionary theory (unless you want to include abiogenesis, but evolutionists insist that abiogenesis is not evolution--it just isn't!).
(all that chemistry and physics that supports evolution would be wrong).
What chemistry and physics would that be?
I think the editor could be liable if he fails to exercise reasonable judgement in what he prints. Simply because comments come from a 3rd party does not excuse the paper from its responsibilities in what it publishes.
Oh, so you are saying that evolutionary theory is a fundamental part computer science? If not, then what difference does it make if someone is a Creationist?
FYI, many Creationists have graduate degrees. I personally know several scientists who are Creationists.
Those "throwbacks" have the right of representation, too. This is still public tax money. And, science really doesn't know everything. One published paper shows that about half of all published research is factually incorrect. So, the push to force political support for evolution is more about propaganda than about any love for science. If you love evolution so much, fund it yourself!
Besides, evolutionary theory provides practically no benefit to society when compared to the benefit from physics and chemistry. And, yes, I've heard the mumbo-jumbo from evolutionists claiming that evolutionary theory is so critical to studying disease or immunity, never mind that evolutionary theory is not able to show which compounds are effective and really doesn't say anything useful for medicine.
No, you are not the only one who finds this story fanciful. This just screams exaggeration. And, I would point out, this is not the first time that faith in the power of evolution has made monkeys of the True Believing Evolutionists.
Instead of making the extraordinary jump without evidence that monkeys suddenly have the ability to communicate linguistic attacks on humans, you ought to consider the far more likely possibility that the villagers have let their imaginations get the better of them. Even the possibility that someone actually trained the monkeys to do this is more likely than the monkeys evolving the sense to do it on their own.
I can understand monkeys swarming farms for food. I accept monkeys harassing people. But when someone claims that monkeys point to their (own) breasts and private areas in an attempt to communicate, I see someone's over-active imagination getting the better of him. No way, guys; not unless someone spent a lot of time and effort training the monkeys to do this.
Frankly, this sounds like another fanciful story from villagers with over-active imaginations. Far from making statements like, "This is the first time we have reports of interspecies communications" (that is, sexual harassment as communication), the authors ought to be far more skeptical, because, this is NOT the first time we have heard these kind of claims. This is just another "King Kong" story, with monkeys.
I am wondering why, if you believe that evolution is a scientific subject, you would ask a political candidate to give a technical defense? But, this is a common tactic amongst evolutionists; attack laypeople with minutia, then claim they are dishonest for not being able to argue at the Ph.D. level. This isn't science or debate; it is virulent propaganda and mental harassment. Funny how it comes from people who often admit that science does not teach absolutes.
NIX is still online: NIX Home I can only speculate about the difference between NIX and AIA, but I suspect that NIX only has images that have been cataloged up to now, not necessarily every Apollo image on film. AIA is supposed to scan all the stills, eventually. Maybe AIA will share the results with NIX?