The vast majority of people -- and yes, creative people -- use PCs.
I hate it when that phrase is used "creative people". Its generally a term used by artist-types to make themselves feel elite, implying that other people are not creative.
The truth being is that engineers have to be more creative because our work is measured by the exacting standards of nature and of mathematics. We're creative at a level that those people cannot begin to comprehend, and they know it.
Who else thinks that this is a plot by textbook publishers so they can make all schools, students, profesors, etc. have to buy new textbooks and reference materials?
They couldn't create new planets earlier on, so they figure out taking one away will have the same result for their purposes, so they try taking one away.
1. It doesn't agree with the fossil record. Evolution talks about small changes during millions of years. But the fossil record shows species appearing suddenly, and then staying the same over millions of years until they die out or until today.
2. Evolution does not explain the existance of complex structures in animals and does not explain genetic diversity. Genetic diversity tends to be disposed by natural selection. So too, natural selection would dispose of any genes needed to form a more complex structure.
Evolution does not make sense. Believers in evolution are driven by fear that they would not have a 'scientific' explanation for something. Fear of the unknown is a bad place to start a scientific inquiry from. Its too bad this fear drives much of science today.
The US population may not have analyzed this in so much depth as I have, but they can smell the bullshit.
I completly agree with you that this is evolution as has been defined by evolutionist ideologues.
What evolution cannot do is construct higher, more complex structures from simple ones.
The idea that random changes can result in a more complex structure is silly.
Its like a sandcastle. If you make enough random changes to it what you get is a pile of sand (which is a simpler structure).
Of course, evolutionists will claim that the increase of complexity is somehow due to "natural selection". How this would lead to more complexity has never been explained. In reality it would act like the force of gravity holding the sand down into a pile.
like decoding the DNA and cloning the wolly mammoth. Unlike the neantherthal man, the wolly mammoth came with a lot of ivory, warm wool, and big bones that primitive men could use as construction material.
On the other hand, if they ever find the neantherthal DNA, if it exists. I wonder how they are going to spin it to claim that it supports evolution. That could be histericcal
Even leading evolutionists no longer claim that evolution was a slow graduate change. Because, if it was a slow gradual change than there would be lots and lots of transitionary species as predicted by Charles Darwin. Darwin knew there was a scarcity of these transitionary species, but he predicted that a lot of them would be found.
Today there are only a few, disputable, examples of transitionary species. What the fossil record appears to show is that species appears suddenly, then they stay unchanged (or with minor changes) for the rest of their existance.
This is why evolutionists have now come up with the concept of punctuated equilibrium. Punctuated equilibrium basically states that when evolution happens, it happens so fast that it can't be observed. The punctuated equilibrium theory is unscientific because it is unfalsifiable.
at how people accept the theory of evolution, without any questioning. Evolution attempts to claim that life is basically a collection of dead material that can change through random mutation and natural selection.
Yet, one the basic characteristic that differentiates living matter from dead matter are of a thermodynamic nature. These thermodynamic characteristics cannot be explained if one considers life to be the sum of its parts. But evolutionists will claim that they can explain the thermodynamics of entire ecosystems.
Another basic characteristics of life is the use of symbolic information. Symbolic information is part of the genetic code. There are no mechanisms by which symbolic information can arise through physical processes.
The origin of symbolic information is in the spirit world and it is constantly being channeled into the material realm.
This is the funniest thing in your whole post:
Proving the Theory of Evolution wrong would be one of the greatest, not notorious, scientific finds ever, on the level of Michaelson-Morley experiment that proved that there is no aether and set the stage for Einstein's Theory of Relativity
Did you know that the theoy of evolution has been proven to be wrong in a whole bunch of ways? I'll just name two. First, it predicted a lot of transitionary species. Darwin himself was aware that there was a scarcity of transitionary species and he predicted that in the future more and more of those transitionary species would be found. But today, we have even fewer examples of transitionary species than in his time because many examples of that period, such as the evolution of the horse, have been proven wrong.
That this evolutionary prediction was proven wrong did not cause the evolutionists to rethink their position, but rather to try to explain away the evidence by making up the unfalsifiable, unscientific theory of 'punctuated equilibrium.'
Second, evolution predicts that different species will have a common ancestor. This has been disproven as well. Again evolutionists did not admit that their theory is wrong, they simply try to explain it away by making phylogenetic 'bushes' instead of 'trees.'
Maybe this has something to do with Burkhard Heim's theory of magnetically induced anti-gravitation. On the related articles, it was stated that only the 'Z' machine had the capabilities to achieve this.
Maybe that's why the scientists "don't know" why they did it.
The definition of the scientific method has alway been problematic.
Problematic? In what ways?
I do not see anything problematic about it. The scientific method (see my previous postings) is a straightforward way of establishing the truth.
The reason the hypothesis must be testable is that it is very easy to formulate a theory that can explain all data up until now. For example, many people have managed to formulate a theory to explain all stock market data that was available at the time, but soon they found out it couldn't predict future data.
Therefore the requirement that the hypothesis is testable is important to avoid delusion.
I note that you are attacking the scientific method with the claim that it has never been properly defined. You have also not answered my question about what your alternative is for determining what is scientific and what is not. To say that something is 'patently' science is equivalent to say that something is scientific because 'I told you so'.
That's a phoney baloney definition of the scientific method which excludes, as I said before, astronomy or any science which studies what has happened in the past.
If something can be scientific without the scientific method what criteria do you use to establish that it is scientific?
By your argument, astronomy and the rest of biology are not science either. And yet patently they are.
You seem to have forgotten the scientific method. First, you make a hypothesis, then you make experiments to test it. Once it has been teseted, it can become a theory. This is regardless of whether you are scientist investigating biology, astronomy or anything else. If you can test it you can only talk about a hypothesis.
Darwin did not therorize about the origins of life, only the origin of species. The origins of life is not normally considered part of evolutionary theory.
Interesting. To explain the origins of life you revert to creationism?
You state that it is nonscientific because we have an incomplete understanding of what happened two billion years ago?
No. I'm only saying that if theory involves one-time events, then it is not testable.
However, evolution is one of the most well-established theories that science has to offer. It is supported by evidence extremely well and is validated by hundreds of new observations every day. And if you publicly come out against it and in favor of some alternative theory for which the only evidence is a religious text, chances are pretty damn good that you are incapable of holding a logical thought in your head to begin with.
FYI science is made on testable hypothesis. One of the reasons that evolution does not make good science is that it is not testable. It is not testable is that it is based on many one-time events, for starters:
The creation of life
The absorption of mitochondria into eukaryotes
The absorption of chloroplasts into plant cells
Experiments have shown that after a few decades of natural selection some species can adapt by changing color, for example. This does nothing to elucidate how, after any number of generations, a salamander could become a rhinocerus.
Furthermore, many characteristics of living organisms, such as the shape of protein and enzymes, are not the type of problem that are suitable for solving with so-called genetic algorithms, which would be required by the evolution theory. For an problem to be solvable by a genetic algorithm, it needs to for a smooth curve, that allows approximation to occur. Many structures present within plants and animals are either completly wrong or completly right; there is no approximating.
In short, evolution is a flawed, untestable theory. Why do peole back it? Fear of religion? Fear of the unknown? Feel free to confess.
According to the article they have found that a particle that moves close to the speed of light creates an anti-gravity field in front of it.
This may solve two problems in terms of making faster than light travel possible. First, if something is traveling really fast, it will run into small particles in interstellar space which would threaten to destroy it. The antigravity field would help move those out of the way.
Second the article implies that this discovery may solve the "technological problem" of finding an engine that can propel a spacecraft to near light speed. I imagine they're thinking of using something like a cyclotron to accelerate particles to near light speed, generating the anti-gravity field that would propell the craft.
A lot of people on craigslist are looking for roommates. That is something more than just renting some random piece of property to a random person. Most people looking for roommates may have in mind somebody of an age-range, ethnicity, religion, or sex that is compatible with them. People ought to be able to select roommates on whatever criteria they feel is appropiate.
Suppose people feel intimidated and stop posting their preferences in the ads. They're still going to have their preference though they might not tell you. For example, suppose you are a girl, and the person is looking for a male roommate. Then you'll end up showing to see a property that the owner is not really prepared to rent out to you, wasting your time and wasting their time. I don't think anybody really wants that.
They always come out with some dire statistic proving that nobody reads, nobody understands math, etc. Its best to take it with a lot of salt, because these studies are probably financed by book publishers, or organizations that would benefit from higher investment in education.
I would question the benefits of education. The correlation between how much sex one and one's education is inversely proportional. Perhaps we should be celebrating how much more sex Americans are having thanks to the low-level of literacy.
The pricing of the stock takes into account future growth prospects. Dell might own about half the PC market, that means that they can't grow significantly in terms of units shipped. Maybe they can raise the price? No, they can't because the only reason people buy Dells is because they're cheap. So dell has no significant growth prospects.
Apple on the other hand can grow in terms of units shipped plus they can sell their products at a premium. Some of the most fantastic ideas in the industry such as the GUI and the iPod have come from them. Not only can Apple grow in the markets its already in, but they have shown that they're capable of inventing products that create new markets. Therefore, Apple being worth more than Dell is completly justified.
Bill has amassed his fortune by copying the goods of others (e.g. GUI), by aggressive marketing, by the unnatural rights granted to corporations (IP laws), and by leveraging its initial monopoly which it obtained due to luck.
But now he is being generous. Should he be given credit for that? Maybe the donations should be made in the name of the public from which he has obtained his fortune while giving nothing in return.
Part of the scientific method is proving that other scientist are wrong.
I think that the problem that the original poster was trying to point out, is that a lot of people, especially here on slashdot, take the current mainstream scientific theories as gospel, when most of the time these theories are eventually proven wrong.
There are at least twoother open source suites out there. Its too bad that they only run well on Linux, but they are being ported to Windows and OSX.
If you are going to make comments on Open Source ability to make office software, you would need to comment on those. Especially since they are both open source right from the beginning, unlike OO which has commercial origins.
In my experience all the components of Koffice work really well. Gnumeric has many advanced features and continues to be intensively developed. AbiWord still needs some polishing IMO.
And unless I'm wrong, Apple hasn't *copied* Open Source, but has in fact used it in exactly the way the authors (of the Open Source software used) wanted and explicitly stated in their licence.
Exactly. The license says that the software can be copied. So Apple it copied it into their OS. In fact the based their OS around it, even their web browser is based on an open source project.
If you're going to call Apple out on doing what
Technically and morally what Apple did was the right thing, IMO. It works great.
I"m sick and tired of hearing how gnu-linux/opensource/bsd is not innovative
What you are forgetting is that the whole internet thing became possible thorugh open source. What kind of software has made DNS and email possible?
The first web browsers like Mosaic were all open source. Apache the webserver that nearly everybody uses is open source as well.
I'm using OSX right now. What has apple copied from linux/open source? Well its copied a lot. From its scripting languages (python, perl, ruby), to its web server (apache), file system sharing (samba, nfs). Its all copied from linux/bsd.
Free Speech in Denmark??
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Slashdot Mirror
The vast majority of people -- and yes, creative people -- use PCs.
I hate it when that phrase is used "creative people". Its generally a term used by artist-types to make themselves feel elite, implying that other people are not creative.
The truth being is that engineers have to be more creative because our work is measured by the exacting standards of nature and of mathematics. We're creative at a level that those people cannot begin to comprehend, and they know it.
Who else thinks that this is a plot by textbook publishers so they can make all schools, students, profesors, etc. have to buy new textbooks and reference materials?
They couldn't create new planets earlier on, so they figure out taking one away will have the same result for their purposes, so they try taking one away.
Here's why I don't believe in evolution:
1. It doesn't agree with the fossil record. Evolution talks about small changes during millions of years. But the fossil record shows species appearing suddenly, and then staying the same over millions of years until they die out or until today.
2. Evolution does not explain the existance of complex structures in animals and does not explain genetic diversity. Genetic diversity tends to be disposed by natural selection. So too, natural selection would dispose of any genes needed to form a more complex structure.
Evolution does not make sense. Believers in evolution are driven by fear that they would not have a 'scientific' explanation for something. Fear of the unknown is a bad place to start a scientific inquiry from. Its too bad this fear drives much of science today.
The US population may not have analyzed this in so much depth as I have, but they can smell the bullshit.
I completly agree with you that this is evolution as has been defined by evolutionist ideologues.
What evolution cannot do is construct higher, more complex structures from simple ones.
The idea that random changes can result in a more complex structure is silly.
Its like a sandcastle. If you make enough random changes to it what you get is a pile of sand (which is a simpler structure).
Of course, evolutionists will claim that the increase of complexity is somehow due to "natural selection". How this would lead to more complexity has never been explained. In reality it would act like the force of gravity holding the sand down into a pile.
like decoding the DNA and cloning the wolly mammoth. Unlike the neantherthal man, the wolly mammoth came with a lot of ivory, warm wool, and big bones that primitive men could use as construction material.
On the other hand, if they ever find the neantherthal DNA, if it exists. I wonder how they are going to spin it to claim that it supports evolution. That could be histericcal
Even leading evolutionists no longer claim that evolution was a slow graduate change. Because, if it was a slow gradual change than there would be lots and lots of transitionary species as predicted by Charles Darwin. Darwin knew there was a scarcity of these transitionary species, but he predicted that a lot of them would be found.
Today there are only a few, disputable, examples of transitionary species. What the fossil record appears to show is that species appears suddenly, then they stay unchanged (or with minor changes) for the rest of their existance.
This is why evolutionists have now come up with the concept of punctuated equilibrium. Punctuated equilibrium basically states that when evolution happens, it happens so fast that it can't be observed. The punctuated equilibrium theory is unscientific because it is unfalsifiable.
Yet, one the basic characteristic that differentiates living matter from dead matter are of a thermodynamic nature. These thermodynamic characteristics cannot be explained if one considers life to be the sum of its parts. But evolutionists will claim that they can explain the thermodynamics of entire ecosystems.
Another basic characteristics of life is the use of symbolic information. Symbolic information is part of the genetic code. There are no mechanisms by which symbolic information can arise through physical processes.
The origin of symbolic information is in the spirit world and it is constantly being channeled into the material realm.
This is the funniest thing in your whole post:
Did you know that the theoy of evolution has been proven to be wrong in a whole bunch of ways? I'll just name two. First, it predicted a lot of transitionary species. Darwin himself was aware that there was a scarcity of transitionary species and he predicted that in the future more and more of those transitionary species would be found. But today, we have even fewer examples of transitionary species than in his time because many examples of that period, such as the evolution of the horse, have been proven wrong.
That this evolutionary prediction was proven wrong did not cause the evolutionists to rethink their position, but rather to try to explain away the evidence by making up the unfalsifiable, unscientific theory of 'punctuated equilibrium.'
Second, evolution predicts that different species will have a common ancestor. This has been disproven as well. Again evolutionists did not admit that their theory is wrong, they simply try to explain it away by making phylogenetic 'bushes' instead of 'trees.'
Maybe this has something to do with Burkhard Heim's theory of magnetically induced anti-gravitation. On the related articles, it was stated that only the 'Z' machine had the capabilities to achieve this.
Maybe that's why the scientists "don't know" why they did it.
Is a quantum computer kit that I can use to do this stuff.
Here are the instructions for the entrepreneurial inclined:
1. Make quantum computer kit
2. Sell it
3. Profit!
Are you saying that your criteria to determine whether something is scientific or not is word usage?
The definition of the scientific method has alway been problematic.
Problematic? In what ways?
I do not see anything problematic about it. The scientific method (see my previous postings) is a straightforward way of establishing the truth.
The reason the hypothesis must be testable is that it is very easy to formulate a theory that can explain all data up until now. For example, many people have managed to formulate a theory to explain all stock market data that was available at the time, but soon they found out it couldn't predict future data.
Therefore the requirement that the hypothesis is testable is important to avoid delusion.
I note that you are attacking the scientific method with the claim that it has never been properly defined. You have also not answered my question about what your alternative is for determining what is scientific and what is not. To say that something is 'patently' science is equivalent to say that something is scientific because 'I told you so'.
That's a phoney baloney definition of the scientific method which excludes, as I said before, astronomy or any science which studies what has happened in the past.
If something can be scientific without the scientific method what criteria do you use to establish that it is scientific?
By your argument, astronomy and the rest of biology are not science either. And yet patently they are.
You seem to have forgotten the scientific method. First, you make a hypothesis, then you make experiments to test it. Once it has been teseted, it can become a theory. This is regardless of whether you are scientist investigating biology, astronomy or anything else. If you can test it you can only talk about a hypothesis.
Darwin did not therorize about the origins of life, only the origin of species. The origins of life is not normally considered part of evolutionary theory.
Interesting. To explain the origins of life you revert to creationism?
You state that it is nonscientific because we have an incomplete understanding of what happened two billion years ago?
No. I'm only saying that if theory involves one-time events, then it is not testable.
However, evolution is one of the most well-established theories that science has to offer. It is supported by evidence extremely well and is validated by hundreds of new observations every day. And if you publicly come out against it and in favor of some alternative theory for which the only evidence is a religious text, chances are pretty damn good that you are incapable of holding a logical thought in your head to begin with.
FYI science is made on testable hypothesis. One of the reasons that evolution does not make good science is that it is not testable. It is not testable is that it is based on many one-time events, for starters:
Experiments have shown that after a few decades of natural selection some species can adapt by changing color, for example. This does nothing to elucidate how, after any number of generations, a salamander could become a rhinocerus.
Furthermore, many characteristics of living organisms, such as the shape of protein and enzymes, are not the type of problem that are suitable for solving with so-called genetic algorithms, which would be required by the evolution theory. For an problem to be solvable by a genetic algorithm, it needs to for a smooth curve, that allows approximation to occur. Many structures present within plants and animals are either completly wrong or completly right; there is no approximating.
In short, evolution is a flawed, untestable theory. Why do peole back it? Fear of religion? Fear of the unknown? Feel free to confess.
According to the article they have found that a particle that moves close to the speed of light creates an anti-gravity field in front of it.
This may solve two problems in terms of making faster than light travel possible. First, if something is traveling really fast, it will run into small particles in interstellar space which would threaten to destroy it. The antigravity field would help move those out of the way.
Second the article implies that this discovery may solve the "technological problem" of finding an engine that can propel a spacecraft to near light speed. I imagine they're thinking of using something like a cyclotron to accelerate particles to near light speed, generating the anti-gravity field that would propell the craft.
A lot of people on craigslist are looking for roommates. That is something more than just renting some random piece of property to a random person. Most people looking for roommates may have in mind somebody of an age-range, ethnicity, religion, or sex that is compatible with them. People ought to be able to select roommates on whatever criteria they feel is appropiate.
Suppose people feel intimidated and stop posting their preferences in the ads. They're still going to have their preference though they might not tell you. For example, suppose you are a girl, and the person is looking for a male roommate. Then you'll end up showing to see a property that the owner is not really prepared to rent out to you, wasting your time and wasting their time. I don't think anybody really wants that.
They always come out with some dire statistic proving that nobody reads, nobody understands math, etc. Its best to take it with a lot of salt, because these studies are probably financed by book publishers, or organizations that would benefit from higher investment in education.
I would question the benefits of education. The correlation between how much sex one and one's education is inversely proportional. Perhaps we should be celebrating how much more sex Americans are having thanks to the low-level of literacy.
If there is a reason to buy a Dell other than the price, it will probably be something like 'fear of change'.
No it is not.
The pricing of the stock takes into account future growth prospects. Dell might own about half the PC market, that means that they can't grow significantly in terms of units shipped. Maybe they can raise the price? No, they can't because the only reason people buy Dells is because they're cheap. So dell has no significant growth prospects.
Apple on the other hand can grow in terms of units shipped plus they can sell their products at a premium. Some of the most fantastic ideas in the industry such as the GUI and the iPod have come from them. Not only can Apple grow in the markets its already in, but they have shown that they're capable of inventing products that create new markets. Therefore, Apple being worth more than Dell is completly justified.
Bill has amassed his fortune by copying the goods of others (e.g. GUI), by aggressive marketing, by the unnatural rights granted to corporations (IP laws), and by leveraging its initial monopoly which it obtained due to luck.
But now he is being generous. Should he be given credit for that? Maybe the donations should be made in the name of the public from which he has obtained his fortune while giving nothing in return.
Part of the scientific method is proving that other scientist are wrong.
I think that the problem that the original poster was trying to point out, is that a lot of people, especially here on slashdot, take the current mainstream scientific theories as gospel, when most of the time these theories are eventually proven wrong.
There are at least two other open source suites out there. Its too bad that they only run well on Linux, but they are being ported to Windows and OSX.
If you are going to make comments on Open Source ability to make office software, you would need to comment on those. Especially since they are both open source right from the beginning, unlike OO which has commercial origins.
In my experience all the components of Koffice work really well. Gnumeric has many advanced features and continues to be intensively developed. AbiWord still needs some polishing IMO.
I"m sick and tired of hearing how gnu-linux/opensource/bsd is not innovative
What you are forgetting is that the whole internet thing became possible thorugh open source. What kind of software has made DNS and email possible?
The first web browsers like Mosaic were all open source. Apache the webserver that nearly everybody uses is open source as well.
I'm using OSX right now. What has apple copied from linux/open source? Well its copied a lot. From its scripting languages (python, perl, ruby), to its web server (apache), file system sharing (samba, nfs). Its all copied from linux/bsd.
That's the country on the top of the list.
The truth is its worse than in the U.S.
In Denmark you can be jailed
for making a comment online if a judge determines that it is racist.
Makes you wonder what the motivation behind this study is.