I suppose it depends on the exact definition of theory, it can mean a well established explanation, also (2) a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation. But, you are right, in that creationists attempt to place their (weak) theory (or postulate) on the same level as evolution that is well tested; thus trying to gain credibility by association. The theories that you mention all started out as 'postulates' but were then found to be supported by the evidence, make good predictions, etc, creationism does not travel far down this road.
I don't have a problem in teaching both evolution and creationism as theories -- which they both are -- as long as the teacher then discusses the objective evidence for these theories and how the predictions that they make have been supported by observations. A score sheet contrasting them (and others, eg lamarkism) can then be drawn up and used to decuce relative probabilities of correctness for each theory.
The teacher should then ask the kids to use the same methods in the religious indoctrination (sorry, I should have said: education) classes.
I did make one mistake, my container (and computers) were inspected, and I had already set the computers to EU voltage, lost a motherboard and 2 power supplies.
Where do you live, what voltage mains supply did the customs people plug your kit into ? The standard voltage in the EU is 230V, I can't see something being badly blown by under voltage, so the voltage must have been higher -- which areas have higher than about 250V ?
Pity printers are not quite up to that yet but, when they are, I wonder what devastation it would cause to manufacturing industries ? What if you could print yourself a new toilet, kitchen appliance,... would people buy them from shops ? It depends on the costs of printing to the costs of buying a made item from the shop. Some items are never going to be printable, eg: CPUs and items requiring high strength (famous last words).
It is very rare for a good programmer to be also a good writer.
Maybe - but if the programmer does not write any description of what he has done, then someone who is a good writer has no chance at all.
So: when you write the code, write (in English/...) what it is trying to achieve, why it is doing it and how it fits in with other code/programs.
Even better: write the documentation first and then the code. There are times that I have done that, realised by trying to explain what it has to do that my spec was not quite right, fixed the spec and documentation - the code produced later was better at doing what it was supposed to as a result. Code is easier to fix at the specification stage than when it has been written.
Not everything is an application that is ''obvious'' to use. If you are writing that AJAX application you need to know how to call the JQuery (or whatever) functions that do the work; for that you need a manual. I agree with Floopsy, a lot of FLOSS is let down by poor documentation, the programmer gets the job done and often has not got the interest to write documentation. The meme ''read the code'' is not always a good one, especially if the code has few comments or just says ''how'' rather than ''why''. Also you might understand individual components but the intention of how it is to be used is not always easy to deduce. The best guy to write this sort of thing is the designer who, in many FLOSS projects, is the guy who writes the code. With stuff that I do, I often find that writing the documentation can take about the same sort of time that it takes to write the code.
Even if you are talking about an application with a GUI, you may need a manual for obscure or complex things, eg: exporting data and importing it to somewhere else.
Not content with messing up our own planet we are now talking about doing the same with space.
Blow something up down here and most of the bits fall back to the ground quite quickly. Up in space they continue whizzing round in orbit for years making it dangerous for anything else up there. Most of it is bits of space craft that have fallen off (and the occasional tool box), but not all. It was bad enough when the Chinese blew up an old comms satellite a few years ago to show how macho they were but then the USA did the same thing just to show that they were as big dicks as the Chinese.
We don't need these things up there, however: I expect that the military will get the budget to boldly pollute where no one has dropped trash before.
Does it really make it that more power hungry/expensive to enable a few more lines for RAM addressing ? Having more RAM can help to compensate for a slower CPU -- less swapping, etc. Not all usage profiles are running a few non RAM hungry programs; even something like a web browser can end up eating lots of RAM.
The only thing that I can think of is that they are positioning at cheap-low end and expect you to pay for a more expensive CPU if you need more RAM, kind of like what MS is doing with the cheapest Windows 7 -- it can only be sold on a machine with a max 1GB RAM.
So what font should you choose on your web site ? I note some research that Making things hard to read 'can boost learning'; so should I use a serif or sans-serif font for my web site ? I suppose it depends on the purpose of my web site.
Just what I was thinking. X-Plane is produced by Laminar Research who are based in Columbia, South Carolina, USA. If they moved here (England) they would not have a language problem and could continue to develop and sell X-Plane, but probably no sales to the USA. They would then tell their political representatives why they moved and point out how this was costing the USA economy. If enough companies did this then maybe the message might get through the thick skulls of the politicians.
I doubt this will be very difficult for Linux to put into the kernel.
As long as the (full) documentation is released. OK: it could be reverse engineered, but that can sometimes be hard -- look at the problems getting good drivers for NVIDIA chips.
They could stop Linux doing something if some instructions had to be provided with cryptographically signed values in some registers, but I doubt that is the case.
I remember some 40 years ago using a PDP-7. When I got tired at about 4am I would note the accumulator and program counter and switch the machine off. Coming back later I restored these and continued the program - it having remained in the core memory that the machine had.
Just one small study with 160 people cannot be trusted. I feel it my duty to help out with the research, I think that this merits a lot of experimental evidence to ascertain the veracity of this important question. I shall be off to the pub to do repeated tests using different glasses - this evening, straight after the new Dr Who has aired.
I know that the story CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs was in the onion, but I would be surprised if the CIA did not tap into Facebook's data. Those of us who do not have a Facebook account must be a pain... how to encourage us to tell the CIA^h^h^h Facebook all that they need to know.... how about make them feel worried that they might fall under increased suspicion ? Well: it will work with a few people, so a cheap and effective way of gathering information about more people.
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I suppose it depends on the exact definition of theory, it can mean a well established explanation, also (2) a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation. But, you are right, in that creationists attempt to place their (weak) theory (or postulate) on the same level as evolution that is well tested; thus trying to gain credibility by association. The theories that you mention all started out as 'postulates' but were then found to be supported by the evidence, make good predictions, etc, creationism does not travel far down this road.
I don't have a problem in teaching both evolution and creationism as theories -- which they both are -- as long as the teacher then discusses the objective evidence for these theories and how the predictions that they make have been supported by observations. A score sheet contrasting them (and others, eg lamarkism) can then be drawn up and used to decuce relative probabilities of correctness for each theory.
The teacher should then ask the kids to use the same methods in the religious indoctrination (sorry, I should have said: education) classes.
I did make one mistake, my container (and computers) were inspected, and I had already set the computers to EU voltage, lost a motherboard and 2 power supplies.
Where do you live, what voltage mains supply did the customs people plug your kit into ? The standard voltage in the EU is 230V, I can't see something being badly blown by under voltage, so the voltage must have been higher -- which areas have higher than about 250V ?
Did he get it to print another printer ? :-)
Pity printers are not quite up to that yet but, when they are, I wonder what devastation it would cause to manufacturing industries ? What if you could print yourself a new toilet, kitchen appliance, ... would people buy them from shops ? It depends on the costs of printing to the costs of buying a made item from the shop. Some items are never going to be printable, eg: CPUs and items requiring high strength (famous last words).
It is very rare for a good programmer to be also a good writer.
Maybe - but if the programmer does not write any description of what he has done, then someone who is a good writer has no chance at all. So: when you write the code, write (in English/...) what it is trying to achieve, why it is doing it and how it fits in with other code/programs.
Even better: write the documentation first and then the code. There are times that I have done that, realised by trying to explain what it has to do that my spec was not quite right, fixed the spec and documentation - the code produced later was better at doing what it was supposed to as a result. Code is easier to fix at the specification stage than when it has been written.
Not everything is an application that is ''obvious'' to use. If you are writing that AJAX application you need to know how to call the JQuery (or whatever) functions that do the work; for that you need a manual. I agree with Floopsy, a lot of FLOSS is let down by poor documentation, the programmer gets the job done and often has not got the interest to write documentation. The meme ''read the code'' is not always a good one, especially if the code has few comments or just says ''how'' rather than ''why''. Also you might understand individual components but the intention of how it is to be used is not always easy to deduce. The best guy to write this sort of thing is the designer who, in many FLOSS projects, is the guy who writes the code. With stuff that I do, I often find that writing the documentation can take about the same sort of time that it takes to write the code.
Even if you are talking about an application with a GUI, you may need a manual for obscure or complex things, eg: exporting data and importing it to somewhere else.
Not content with messing up our own planet we are now talking about doing the same with space.
Blow something up down here and most of the bits fall back to the ground quite quickly. Up in space they continue whizzing round in orbit for years making it dangerous for anything else up there. Most of it is bits of space craft that have fallen off (and the occasional tool box), but not all. It was bad enough when the Chinese blew up an old comms satellite a few years ago to show how macho they were but then the USA did the same thing just to show that they were as big dicks as the Chinese.
We don't need these things up there, however: I expect that the military will get the budget to boldly pollute where no one has dropped trash before.
Does it really make it that more power hungry/expensive to enable a few more lines for RAM addressing ? Having more RAM can help to compensate for a slower CPU -- less swapping, etc. Not all usage profiles are running a few non RAM hungry programs; even something like a web browser can end up eating lots of RAM.
The only thing that I can think of is that they are positioning at cheap-low end and expect you to pay for a more expensive CPU if you need more RAM, kind of like what MS is doing with the cheapest Windows 7 -- it can only be sold on a machine with a max 1GB RAM.
I hope that the tax man has the decency to leave this alone - not remove some percentage of it.
So what font should you choose on your web site ? I note some research that Making things hard to read 'can boost learning'; so should I use a serif or sans-serif font for my web site ? I suppose it depends on the purpose of my web site.
I wonder if engineers at companies like Microsoft have informal competitions to see who can get the most wacky patent accepted.
Just what I was thinking. X-Plane is produced by Laminar Research who are based in Columbia, South Carolina, USA. If they moved here (England) they would not have a language problem and could continue to develop and sell X-Plane, but probably no sales to the USA. They would then tell their political representatives why they moved and point out how this was costing the USA economy. If enough companies did this then maybe the message might get through the thick skulls of the politicians.
I doubt this will be very difficult for Linux to put into the kernel.
As long as the (full) documentation is released. OK: it could be reverse engineered, but that can sometimes be hard -- look at the problems getting good drivers for NVIDIA chips.
They could stop Linux doing something if some instructions had to be provided with cryptographically signed values in some registers, but I doubt that is the case.
He knew that: ''The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind''
but also many other large 'projects' that people give names to, eg:
* Chips - Intel has fun names
* Police operations
* Military operations
* Cars have names
We just seem to like naming things rather than giving them numbers - that is why one degrading act of imprisonment is to refer to the inmate by number
Coincidentally today's dilbert
I remember some 40 years ago using a PDP-7. When I got tired at about 4am I would note the accumulator and program counter and switch the machine off. Coming back later I restored these and continued the program - it having remained in the core memory that the machine had.
Just one small study with 160 people cannot be trusted. I feel it my duty to help out with the research, I think that this merits a lot of experimental evidence to ascertain the veracity of this important question. I shall be off to the pub to do repeated tests using different glasses - this evening, straight after the new Dr Who has aired.
Will they honour their GPL obligations and make the source code available ?
Sorry officer but there is a big muddy puddle just outside of my house.
Better to try and fail than to never try at all. They can always have another go.
I know that the story CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs was in the onion, but I would be surprised if the CIA did not tap into Facebook's data. Those of us who do not have a Facebook account must be a pain ... how to encourage us to tell the CIA^h^h^h Facebook all that they need to know .... how about make them feel worried that they might fall under increased suspicion ? Well: it will work with a few people, so a cheap and effective way of gathering information about more people.
I note that recently the Court of Justice of the European Union rejected an attempt by Oracle to stop the sale of secondhand licences on software downloaded over the internet. It seems to me that reselling of games software should also be allowed under the same ruling.
Whoops ... I got this story mixed up with the one about Gamestop! I'll repost.
I note that recently the Court of Justice of the European Union rejected an attempt by Oracle to stop the sale of secondhand licences on software downloaded over the internet. It seems to me that reselling of games software should also be allowed under the same ruling.