See posts elsewhere about multiple elevator per shaft. IF the safety issue can be addressed well enough, cable free elevators could revolutionise urban development. Today building extremely high skyscrapers isn't seen as practical or worthwhile except in extremely high density/high land cost areas.
This is due in part to the extreme overhead of elevators once buildings get tall enough, because you keep having to add more shafts to get people to the top fast enough, and end up with crappy solutions like rigidly partitioning a shaft and have several sets of elevators combined with a few express elevators that only go to certain floors.
Combine a cable less maglev system, multiple shafts possibly with the ability to transfer elevators between shafts at specific points, and an reasonably intelligent scheduling system and you'd be able to increase the capacity of each shafts many times over.
Just halving the number of elevator shafts required per 20 floors of building added would have a tremendous impact on the economic viability of skyscrapers by freeing up huge amounts of floor space.
There is no fundamental difference between lifting an object a millimeter or thousand meters - as long as the magnetic field is moved up together with the elevator.
The biggest issue if they are actually talking about cable free elevators would be failsafes, not propelling the elevator upwards. I'd rather not plunge to my death when the power goes:)
Evolution is a good theory, which helps us understand some things but it does not explain the current situation of the world because the current theory has major holes (like the human eye) which it can't explain. According to the scientific method, you should observe that the state of the world should be in accord with evolution but since its not, the theory needs to be modified.
See below regarding the human eye. As for the rest of what we say, we are partially in agreement. Evolution doesn't explain everything, but that in itself doesn't mean that it needs to change - theories aren't designed to explain everything, they are designed to cover an area. There are certainly needs for additional theories, or alternatively expansion of evolutionary theory to cover more ground.
Additionally, there will certainly be discoveries that don't fit the current revision of evolutionary theory exactly, which will require changes to the theory of evolution - that is how science advance: By gradually adapting explanations to fit the available data better and better. Only extremely rarely do one see discoveries that require a well tested theory to be completely scrapped - Newtonian physics for instance, is still relevant even after Einstein showed that it gets increasingly inaccurate (to the point of being useless) as objects in a system approach the speed of light - Einsteins theories just represented a refinement to cover areas not previously considered.
However this does not justify ID in any way. ID is not a scientific theory - it is a bunch of loose statements that doesn't explain anything in a testable way. I might as well claim that santa claus created the world, and that hypothesis (which is all ID is) would be just as valid as ID.
The problem is that without stating ID in a formal manner, laying out exactly what is claimed in a way that allow us to make predictions that will be true if ID is true and false if ID is false, that can be tested, there is no way of evaluating the reliability of ID.
Without being testable and falsifiable, any claims of ID being a scientific theory or an "alternative to evolution" are just as bogus as if I were to put forth a "theory" that gravity is the result of invisible demons pulling us down - I can make up all the reasons in the world why this is "likely" (after all we don't have a good theory explaining how gravity works, and my "theory" would explain it easily), but as long as I don't expand on it by making statements that are testable and falsifiable, it is just meaningless drivel.
If I, on the other hand, claims that these "gravity demons" should be measurable in a specific way that would be explainable with my theory but not without it, then that is a scientific theory (a bloody stupid one, but still) because I have given a concrete way for the theory to be tested that will falsify the theory if the tests can't be successfully done.
State ID in such a way, and it will be taken seriously. The reason no ID proponents ever take up that challenge is that whenever they try, their "predictions" always turns out to be wrong and they end up going back to their usual excuses.
The human eye is a text book example of Intellegent Design and Complexity Theory because of it requires several independantly developed components to function that would not develop on their own. Additionally, there are many eyes of varying degrees from light or motion sensing to human eyes: lining them up you can see how one is more advanced than the other but there is no way for one eye to develop to the next evolutionary jump.
Actually, the human eye is a text book example of flawed Intelligent Design examples.
First of all, the eye is incredibly badly designed. I was actually considering using it as an example in my post to explain evolution, exactly because it's one of the most common flawed ID arguments, however I decided against it because I'd have to look up the details.
But a limited lifespan with a 100% chance of death changes things, especially since evolution inherently demands comparatively unimaginable amounts of time to witness and presumably simulate scientifically. Hence it would seem smart to assume God exists so as to secure a positive eternity. Even if you're wrong and God is a myth, it will be impossible to even regret it in your consciousness-free oblivion anyway.
The problem is that you are assuming that the alternatives is no God or a God that would be satisfied by [insert random belief here]. However, you have no basis for 1) deciding which deity to believe in - in fact for many religions believing in the wrong religion may make you worse of than believing in "false" gods -, 2) knowing whether or not following a specific rule will put you in this Gods good graces or not, because you have no way of assessing whether the deity was truthful about its intentions (in other words, believing might even have the opposite result of your intentions - if "God" exists, he could very well have used faith as a test to reward those who choose not to believe), 3) knowing if faith is more important overall than your actions, etc.
(The wikipedia article has a much more extensive explanation of all the flaws of Pascal's wager)
In other words, whatever you believe in, you always risk dieing only to find that deity X is extremely unhappy that you believed in deity Y and think it's worth eternal damnation.
I would additionally contend that even if you "hit the right deity", you face the prospect that that deity might not appreciate it if you believe only to save your ass.
So personally I'd rather take the "risk" that behaving the way I believe is right for me will make me good enough that if I happen to be wrong and there actually is an afterlife and the deity in charge is good, that I will be rewarded for my actions and not punished for my lack of beliefs (if the deity in charge is evil there's no reason to assume that believing will be enough anyway - all bets are off).
What you are assuming is a physical problem only is a physical problem if you use the device the wrong way. This is like saying that hard drives have a physical problem that needs to be solved because turning the drive motor on and off all the time makes it wear out quickly.
I also don't think you understand how the wear levelling you referred to works.
Generally most flash file systems are variation of journalling systems where you maintain (and regenerate on startup) an in-memory map mapping the newest version of each block to a specific physical block on the device. That in itself instantly reduces wear, because rewriting a block means writing a new physical block, not rewriting the same location.
Then, if you are running low on space, an algorithm is used to pick one or more physical erase units to "garbage collect" - that is, you in a set of erase units, remove all blocks from them that have been remapped elsewhere on the device (because they have been rewritten later), erase the units and write back a compacted set of blocks, including meta data that will allow you to quickly determine which physical blocks are mapped where on device startup.
So the density will typically remain more or less the same. The only problem with this system is if the device gets very full and writes only happen to a single area. But this can also be sorted out by also occasionally remapping blocks that are not actually being rewritten by the user, slightly increasing the overall number of erases for the device as a whole, but keeping the number of erases for a single block down.
The overall result of this is that you are unlikely to ever run into the wear problem in systems that aren't SEVERELY IO bound. That is, your desktop/laptop is likely to die years before the flash drive, but you might want to avoid it for your highly loaded database server / mail server.
I am arguing that certain leaps require a higher intellegance
to cause those improvements. If there is no higher intellegance,
then there is no way to make the leap
The flaw in that argument is that you are making two assumptions without proof: 1) that a "design" happening one place means to change an entity into another requires there to always be design involved for that entity to change that much, and 2) that there are "leaps" in the development of life.
The first assumption is simply wrong. It is essentially claiming that ID is needed, and so evolution is wrong, because something happened without evolution.
I could turn that on it's head by picking ANY random process and claim it as proof that ID isn't needed, because something happened without ID.
The second assumption is just a restatement of ID. In other words you are stating that "since I don't believe in evolution, there must be a leap for something to change from one to the other, so evolution must be wrong". It is a circular argument.
Evolution is suspect when a bee suddenly starts talking, when it had
no mouth, etc.
And all this proves is that you don't understand what evolution is.
If you truly believe that evolution involves even the idea of changes as large as a bee being able to suddenly go from todays bee to one that could talk, then you have no basis for forming a reasonable idea of evolution.
I see you are assuming "leaps" again. But we already know a lot about the various intermediate stages for many organs. Eyes for instance - an eye is highly beneficial without a lens. Visibility and ability to focus will be extremely limited, but as anyone nearly blind can tell you there is a huge amount of difference from just being able to see rough shapes and being blind. Even the ability to just sense whether your path is blocked or not (i.e. just seeing light and dark) is a huge advantage over being blind.
So there would be no reason for any huge leaps from "no eye" to human type eyes to occur. Same for no mouth to speaking. Having a proper mouth and strong jaw and teeth gives an advantage in being able to take more types of food. Being able to emit sounds gives an advantage in basic communications, and the more advanced sounds the more significant that advantage becomes.
The very point of evolution is that every change is extremely limited, extremely simple and that most of them disappears again beacause they give no advantage, but the sheer number of individuals and the sheer number of generations allow positive changes to accumulate and gradually cause significant change.
Infinity is a paradox. In calculus, you can have a container
with a finite surface, that holds an infinite amount of
material. If there were an infinite number of events until
now, how did we get here? This universe is finite and has
a beginning, if we have a present time.
A paradox is something that is inconsistent with itself. Infinity by itself does not require any paradoxes whatsoever. Your own example is meaningless. Of course something with a finite surface can hold an "infinite amount" of material if the unit you choose is infinitely small. There is no paradox in that - the total amount using the same unit as the surface will still be smaller than the total volume of the object.
Claiming that the universe is finite and has a beginning if we have a present time is meaningless. Why? How does the concept of infinity affect whether or not we have a present time? "Present time" is just a "marker" - you do not need to know the endpoints of a line to be able to draw a mark on it and move that mark in one direction. It doesn't suddenly become impossible for you to do so if you suddenly find out that the line extends infinitely far in either direction.
Besides, even if the universe is finite, that does not alter what I wrote - you have no way of knowing if there was another universe befor this one (or at the same time as this one). I was merely pointing
It doesn't seem an unreasonable number. There are at least 3 "newspapers" covering the London borough I live in alone (population of about 500.000), and I know the companies publishing them have similar coverage in most London boroughs. Add in regional and national papers, magazines, websites, tv channels, radio stations etc. and 5,000 seems a quite small number. I don't know how it is in more rural parts of Britain as my experience with Britain outside of London is rather limited, but in Norway (where I'm from), most small towns of a few thousand people or more will generally have their own newspaper, though the smallest ones will generally focus exclusively on local news and only be published on a weekly basis or so.
If bees evolved into hovercraft, then that would be darwin, but if a human studies a bee and builds an hovercraft through his intellect, it shows how ID is necessary for large jumps between bees and hovercraft are accomplished.
No if a human builds a hovercraft, it shows that it is possible for an intelligent being to design something as advanced as a hovercraft. Nothing more, nothing less. It is exactly this kind of faulty logic that is the reason why ID gets ridiculed.
To show that ID is "necessary" you will need to make predictions of what we should be able to find in nature based on the idea of an intelligent designer being responsible for the natural world that does not fit the theory of evolution. Only if you can do that, and your predictions are tested and not found false, is there any reason to even consider ID as a viable theory.
If you don't understand why that is so, you need to read up on the scientific method.
There is an unmoved mover, and an uncaused cause, which is God.
So tell me then: What is the cause of God?
Your idea of a God just moves the problem of creation one step back, it doesn't solve anything.
If anything, it enlarges the problem. One of the core ID arguments is that complex working entities requires a designer. Applying that to the idea of God, we see that there would have to be an infinite chain of intelligent designers.
But if you accept the idea of an infinite chain of creation events, then ID has no advantages over evolution, because you have no way of knowing that there hasn't been an infinite number of creation events leading to universes with failed evolution previously either.
In other words, either you accept a creation at some point that did NOT involve an intelligent designer, in which case there is no reason to assume an intelligent designer at all, or you accept the idea of inifinite existence of something, that blows the ID argument about how unlikely evolution is out of the water too.
And before anyone even tries to bring up that idiotic argument, and how it seems arrogant to assume that just WE would be lucky, keep in mind that given an infinite chain of events, the chance that a POSSIBLE event, no matter how improbable, will happen at least once approaches 100%. And if the event in question is the evolution of us, then by definition we will witness only the succesfull event, not the infinite number of failed ones.
The assumption of an infinite sequence of events isn't even needed, btw., the only thing it contributes is driving the probability up. Seeing as we are here, however, the probability isn't relevant any more that the low probability that you will win the lottery before the draw is to you when it turns out after the draw that you have won.
The probability you will win a drawing is low, but once you have won the probability that you did win is 100%.
Either of those two does not say anything about HOW you won - you could have bought a ticket and taken your chances or bribed an official, or changed the ticket through magical powers, or a million other things. The fact that you have the winning ticket doesn't prove or disprove any of them. Only an investigation of the available facts might provide proofs of any theories presented about how it happened.
It would be more along the lines of "hackers figured out how some of the undocumented functions in Windows works, putting another nail in the coffin to the idea that Windows must have been created by some unknown supernatural being because it's too complex to have been produced by a company like Microsoft".
The point being that many ID proponents often point to holes in our scientific knowledge to claim that nature is somehow "too complex" to be explained by science, and so we should all forget all about common sense and invent some random explanation instead.
Of course, I can see the appeal. After all, who would like to believe that software engineers could produce an abomination like Windows without being under the influence of some evil entity...
Might I suggest that the only real difference between "good scientists" and "good ID" people is that the former ask "How did X come about?" and the latter ask "Why did Y make X that way?" But they are actually the same question, just phrased differently, and the resolution of the answer is probably very close to the same.
Except that what you present as "good ID" is a view held by very few ID proponents. It is a deist view, and yes, many variations of deism are reconcilable with science, in that they don't even try to explain the "how", and in that they assume a deity that takes no active role in the world after creation, or alternatively only excert very limited influence. Pantheists/pandeists as well will often fall in this camp (but with the difference that the deity is an integral part of the world rather than a separate entity).
The core of the ID camp are people that specifically do not believe in evolution at all. That is, they do not say "god created the world, and made it so that everything we see happen would happen this way", but rather "god created the world and designed things because random chance could not evolve something so complex" (ID tends to ignore that natural selection is far from random, and that random elements such as mutation have minimal effect without natural selection).
The former is often "included" in he ID camp because the ideas on the surface are pretty similar: There is a Creator/Designer. He makes the world the way it is. Chance doesn't play into it.
The difference is whether or not they accept evolution as a "design tool". I.e. do they accept the idea that their "Designer" set things into motion in a way that made evolution play out. Real ID people don't, deists generally do.
In many ways I think this is a deliberate confusion. The deist view wouldn't merit an attack on evolution, nor any discussions about inclusion in science classes - it ISN'T an alternative to evolution, it is an answer to the "why" question that would clearly belong in religious studies or philosophy classes. However, it is also the most edible way to present ID.
The "hardcore" ID view, on the other hand, is nothing more than Creationism dressed up in sheep skin. It is the old tired "we're not monkeys" line of thought, and giving it any more credit than that is completely misplaced.
Ask for a clear description of the theory. Ask how it can be tested. Ask for falsifiable predictions. And when they don't come (they won't), point out exactly why that makes their theory as useless to science (and to childrens science education) as the average childrens fairytale.
Which God would that be again? The Christian one? Muslim? Jewish? (though of course, they all refer to different views of the same god, I find a surprising number of people believe they refer to different ones) one of the vast number of Hindu gods? Norse? Greek? Roman?
What I find amazing with believers is that they make statements based on nothing but faith, yet refuse to consider other beliefs when presented with arguments based on nothing but faith.
If faith is enough for you, then how do you discern WHAT to believe in?
Personally I see no value in faith. I have no problems being compassionate, or showing love for people, or to treat people nicely. I do so because I want to, and because it feels right to me, not because I live in fear of retribution from some being I have seen no more proof for than the tooth fairy; not because I am worried about securing my entry into some fairytale land when I die.
For the same reason, I consider love and compassion from someone who consider it a principle of faith to be false and of little value, just as I would an apology forced out under threats.
If there turns out to be a God, I would much rather stand before him and be able to say that I have made the choices I made because I think they are right, than stand before him subservient and admit I did what I did because I was worried about the consequences.
If there turns out to be a God, and he is good, then I have no reason to believe that having faith in the existence on him based on unverifiable stories will make a difference, and if he is not good, I have no reason to believe he would feel obliged to stick to his words.
And to me, any God that is ready to make people suffer if they aren't good little lemmings and believe and carry out silly little acts for him IS pure evil.
So I don't believe because I haven't seen anything to give me reason to, and I don't feel I have to try to believe because it makes no sense to pick a belief on the odd chance that a particular religion happens to be right and their God is an evil bastard that care only about subservience and faith and not about showing genuine love and compassion.
The problem in both cases is that there are no predictions that are accurate enough for you to test. You can't check whether or not someones horoscope is accurate, because 1) there is no well defined way of predicting it, just vague rules that even differ between different practitioners or aren't used by others, as you pointed out, and 2) the predictions are generally so vague that objectively assessing whether it came true isn't possible to a reasonable degree of error.
Both of these make astrology unfalsifiable in its general form, and thus not a scientific theory.
Which makes it a perfect analogy for intelligent design, and is exactly why it has not "met with any scientific rebuff yet" - it is not a scientific theory: It isn't testable, and no falsifiable predictions can be reasonably drawn from it because there is no agreement on any coherent hypothesis that would allow such predictions.
The right way to oppose Intelligent Design is to present convincing arguments for alternative views, not to enlist government to dominate the intellectual lives of 90% of our children in such a way that arguments for Intelligent Design are excluded, a priori, by the design of the educational system.
Personally, I believe 2 + 2 = 5, because that is the result I get using the rules of my personal mathematical system, which I have no intention of presenting any proofs for - suffice to say that the current system can not be right because, uh, it doesn't fit with this book here, that was handed to me by the Flying Spaghetti Monster itself. However, I insist that you stop making your government dominate the intellectual lives of 90% of your children in such as way that arguments for my system is excluded, a priori, by the design of the educational system.
In other words: See how silly your argument is?
Schools MUST filter what they spend time on. Most people wouldn't object to intelligent design being brought up in schools in the appropriate setting. But generally the debate about intelligent design in schools boils down to whether or not it's taught as part of science classes, when it is not in any way a scientific theory, and when it is considered bullshit by practically all scientists.
Letting students debate intelligent design as part of classes on philosophy or religious studies wouldn't be unreasonable, but spending time in science classes on a "theory" that's no more scientific than the Flying Spaghetti Monster or stories about Santa Claus is to make a mockery of the very idea of education.
What is worse is that the slant that is always attempted introduced is a presentation of intelligent design as a credible alternative to evolution, not a balanced and critical presentation of the arguments for and against intelligent design vs. evolution - the latter might very well serve as a good way of explaining the history of science and how/why evolution as a theory has won out as the prevailing view amongst those researching the relevant fields.
However the former paves the road for every special interest out there to try to get its pet fantasies included as part of science educations.
Imagine kids being made to learn about the Scientologists views as part of Science classes as well, and not given clear guidance on what to believe or not. If intelligent design is accepted into classrooms, there would be few or no good arguments to keep the Scientologists from being allowed to present their "theory", together with every cult out there.
The "problem" isn't those who sometimes call themselves intelligent design advocates that accept evolution. Those people are basically saying "ok, we accept current science, we just don't accept it happened randomly, we think some supernatural being is behind everything that happens (through the laws of nature) or set things in motion at the start".
What they are stating isn't a theory, it's a philosophical/religious worldview - it's not testable or falsifiable in any way.
This is essentially the deist or pantheist/pandeist view, and calling it "intelligent design" is deceptive and just confuses the issue. Deism/pantheism/pandeism exists in many forms, and many of them are perfectly reconcilable with science, in that they are entirely about things that are outside the realm of what is covered by science.
The problem is those intelligent design advocates that refuse to accept the scientific process in general, and evolution in particular, and insist on discussing the matter in a way that has nothing to do with science because they either know they can't win a debate on fair premises, or because they simply don't understand what a scientific theory is or why science works the way it does.
Personally, one of my favourite argument against the intelligent design loonies is this: "We have plenty of observations that supports evolution, and if you are right, everything around us was created by God. Ignoring the scientific evidence means you are essentially claiming to know better than God what the right way for the world to work would be." (It tends to piss them off a lot, because most of them do have very specific ideas about how God would do things, and how the world should be, and have absolutely no interest in actually deferring those decisions to God... So much for humility)
That argument is close to the Jesuit approach to science, incidentally - the Jesuits have alway been very open to science based exactly on the idea that science is about exploring the world, and if you believe in God that means it is about exploring Gods creation, and doubting science would mean doubting the wisdom of Gods creation. Even as an atheist, that is an approach to religion I can respect.
I have never ever seen intelligent design stated in any way that is even close to be possible to consider a "legitimate" scientific theory. Why?
Because I have never seen it stated in a way that is:
Testable. That is, that predictions can be drawn from the theory that can be experimentally verified. If I, for example, state that red balls fall faster than blue balls of the same mass and shape, that is a testable statement - from it we can draw the prediction that if we make two balls of the same mass and shape and drop them from the same height, the red ball should hit the ground first.
Falsifiable. That is, at least some of the predictions are of such a nature that if the predictions prove to be wrong, the theory is not valid. If we drop the two balls mentioned above, and they both hit the ground at the same time, then the prediction is wrong, and as a result the theory is wrong.
Without those satisfied it is pointless to even discuss whether intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory. It isn't. It's that simple.
The point of these requirements is that we can't generally prove conclusively that there can't be specific circumstances that a theory does not satisfactorily explain.
So we generally settle for the opposite: The more predictions and the more detailed they are, the easier they are to reproduce, and the less of an extent those predictions overlap with predictions made based on other theories, the greater the chance that we can prove the theory to be wrong if it is indeed wrong, by carrying out experiments that may fail.
A theory that is not stated in a way that meets those criteria have little value - if we can't make predicitions based on it, it is generally either because it is so vague as to be meaningless, or make claims about things that have no observable effect on our existence and so add nothing to our understanding of the world.
(I could, for instance, claim the universe is full of invisible red goblins that we can't hear or feel or sense in any way. You can't prove it, but neither can you disprove it. But such a "theory" would be pointless, as if they can't interact with our existence in any way it adds nothing to our understanding of our existence and doesn't affect us in any way. Most people would immediately dismiss such a "theory", but many of those same people refuse to see that most formulations of "intelligent design" have the same "qualities"...)
At best intelligent design is a loose hypothesis supported by a semi-random collection of arguments that haven't been formalised in any manner. The problem stems from the fact that there is no coherent single description of "intelligent design". Different people have very different interpretations. Combine that with ever-changing arguments as their specific claims about science gets shot down one by one, and you're as far from a proper theory as you can get.
As soon as someone present a clearly defined theory of intelligent design that fulfill the requirements mentioned above, then people will take it seriously as a scientific theory - even if only to prove it wrong.
If intelligent design proponents were serious about intelligent design being considered a real alternative to natural evolution, then they would have tried to present a real theory of intelligent design and adjusted it to account for failed predictions. However, the problem with that is that they know very well they would not be able to "win" on fair terms, so instead the arguments stay vague and misleading and carefully avoid any claims that are testable predictions.
So here is my challenge: State a theory of intelligent design that is testable and falsifiable. Do that, and I'll take you seriously.
Until then, you're just another kook that needs to read some basic material on the history and theory of science.
They are not saying it's an argument against intelligent design, but that it counters a (meritless) argument often made by intelligent design proponents.
Of course it only means that intelligent design proponents will find some other thing that isn't yet explained by science to use. Arguing against intelligent design requires pointing out flawed reasoning much more than countering specifics, or you it will only seem like ID has some level of legitimacy as a scientific theory.
Re:My C64 floppy could do that!
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Scanjet Music
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· Score: 1
If the poster you replied to play too much music on a 1541 floppy drive, he'll have to resort to tapes too. The drive head on the 1541 gets out of alignment fairly easily, particularly when playing "music" by banging it repeatedly against the the end of the track it was on.... (only a screw to adjust, but it was a real pain to deal with)
Of course, the tape drive was much fun on the C64 as well - you could use it as a one bit sampler, for instance, though the sound quality wasn't exactly great.
Worked surprisingly well for all the high pitched "I'm a guy but I'd rather try to sound like an 8 year old girl" acts of the 80's, though....
How about doing a review from the perspective of someone who has never used a computer before - then lets see which one is easier to use (hint: the answer will be Windows XP by a massive margin).
I very much doubt a beginner would see much difference (assuming a pre-installed system, if they have to install it themselves, they'd be unlikely to even get Windows to install).
I've had even people who've used Windows for years borrow my machine to do stuff without realising it was a Linux box - they'd make comments like "how can I make my Outlook look/do that?!?" (about Evolution), or ask where Word was so they could open a document (at which point I'd show them OO Writer, and they'd go on oblivious to the differences).
Most novice computer users adapt a lot quicker than a lot more experienced users, in part because they use very small subsets of functionality that usually is very much the same across platforms, and partly because they don't really know whats going on and so will quickly give up and resort to asking co-workers or reading manuals, find a solution and move on.
It's intermediate users that's the problem - especially those that know enough to get them in trouble, not enough to get them out of trouble, and who think they are beyond asking for help or reading a manual.
no need to buy and switch SIM cards and phone numbers if I visit a place 3000KM away, plus part or all of the cost of the phone is spread over a 12 or 24 month
If you travel faster than light, yes, this would break a lot of current theories.
But they are not suggesting faster than light travel. What they are suggesting is that the speed of light is only constant within our dimension, and that it may be possible to combine two effects of extremely strong magnetic fields to 1) generate thrust and 2) shift the craft into a dimension where the speed of light is faster, allowing you to use the thrust generated to accelerate you beyond what the speed of light is in our dimension, while still remaining below the speed of light in the dimension you travel in.
Presumably once the craft shifts back to our dimension it would be restricted by our lower speed of light again (which does raise a lot of interesting questions such as what happens if you try to shift back while your speed is faster than our speed of light).
That of course by far solves all the problems, but it does remove that pesky little issue of surpassing the speed of light.
Now, in many ways this seems similar to wormholes, and wormholes do have that little issue of whether or not it would be possible to accelerate one end of it and use relativistic time dilation to turn it into a time machine. However it only appears similar in that you are able to travel seemingly faster than light by travelling outside normal space.
In the case of this theory there is nothing created that can be accelerated prior to the travel to achieve the relativistic effects that theoretically could allow for time travel with wormholes, and that makes things a whole lot simpler.
There's one other issue related to time travel, and that is causality. That is, if you could send a signal "back in time" you could break causality. However, if the craft shifts into another dimension while it travels faster than "our" speed of light, and no communication is possible until the craft shifts back, and it is travelling below the speed of light in the other dimension, then I don't see how you'd run into any problems with causality (the causality problems with wormholes is due to the potential of accelerating one end of the wormhole, not inherently moving between two points faster than light).
I'm not saying I believe it's possible (I'll hold of judgement until these guys have actually done some real experiments), but I don't believe what they are suggesting would cause so many problems with existing physics as some here seem to think.
First of all, given the other statements in the article, I'd be very hesitant to assume that this was meant to be any stronger than "we think we're probably right, but we need to prove it or go back and think again". But even if it was meant the way it sounds, why does it bother you?
If they're wrong, they'll be unable to find proof, and may spend lots of resources on trying and failing, but in the process odds are good they may find other interesting results. Being open minded about your results is well and good, but having a clear goal and believing in that goal is what keeps momentum up and drives work forwards.
A lot of improvements have come because some seeming crackpot have refused to accept failure and kept going and going and eventually solved a problem, even if it isn't always the problem they set out to solve, and even if what they wanted to achieve seemed to fly in the face of common sense or accepted science.
You need people who can believe just as much as you need sceptics to challenge them.
They don't need to prove how much money was made. They need only to prove that more money was made than was reported to the IRS, which is significantly simpler unless this guy never ever again spends any significant amount of money in the US or countries willing to cooperate in a money laundering investigation.
Keep in mind that ANY visible indication that this guy has been able to buy a house or a car, for instance, will be a big red flag. He may be able to get away with it, but only if nobody cares. And if he's ever even remotely suspected of being involved with spamming again, for instance, a lot of people will care and will take the time to look into whether he has any assets worth seizing.
IANAL, but a court order for restitution isn't generally dischargable in a bankruptcy. in order words this guy will likely have to leave to US or find himself unable to own anything of significant value ever again.
Slashdot Mirror
This is due in part to the extreme overhead of elevators once buildings get tall enough, because you keep having to add more shafts to get people to the top fast enough, and end up with crappy solutions like rigidly partitioning a shaft and have several sets of elevators combined with a few express elevators that only go to certain floors.
Combine a cable less maglev system, multiple shafts possibly with the ability to transfer elevators between shafts at specific points, and an reasonably intelligent scheduling system and you'd be able to increase the capacity of each shafts many times over.
Just halving the number of elevator shafts required per 20 floors of building added would have a tremendous impact on the economic viability of skyscrapers by freeing up huge amounts of floor space.
The biggest issue if they are actually talking about cable free elevators would be failsafes, not propelling the elevator upwards. I'd rather not plunge to my death when the power goes :)
I don't think any Norwegian prisons have that kind of protection.
See below regarding the human eye. As for the rest of what we say, we are partially in agreement. Evolution doesn't explain everything, but that in itself doesn't mean that it needs to change - theories aren't designed to explain everything, they are designed to cover an area. There are certainly needs for additional theories, or alternatively expansion of evolutionary theory to cover more ground.
Additionally, there will certainly be discoveries that don't fit the current revision of evolutionary theory exactly, which will require changes to the theory of evolution - that is how science advance: By gradually adapting explanations to fit the available data better and better. Only extremely rarely do one see discoveries that require a well tested theory to be completely scrapped - Newtonian physics for instance, is still relevant even after Einstein showed that it gets increasingly inaccurate (to the point of being useless) as objects in a system approach the speed of light - Einsteins theories just represented a refinement to cover areas not previously considered.
However this does not justify ID in any way. ID is not a scientific theory - it is a bunch of loose statements that doesn't explain anything in a testable way. I might as well claim that santa claus created the world, and that hypothesis (which is all ID is) would be just as valid as ID.
The problem is that without stating ID in a formal manner, laying out exactly what is claimed in a way that allow us to make predictions that will be true if ID is true and false if ID is false, that can be tested, there is no way of evaluating the reliability of ID.
Without being testable and falsifiable, any claims of ID being a scientific theory or an "alternative to evolution" are just as bogus as if I were to put forth a "theory" that gravity is the result of invisible demons pulling us down - I can make up all the reasons in the world why this is "likely" (after all we don't have a good theory explaining how gravity works, and my "theory" would explain it easily), but as long as I don't expand on it by making statements that are testable and falsifiable, it is just meaningless drivel.
If I, on the other hand, claims that these "gravity demons" should be measurable in a specific way that would be explainable with my theory but not without it, then that is a scientific theory (a bloody stupid one, but still) because I have given a concrete way for the theory to be tested that will falsify the theory if the tests can't be successfully done.
State ID in such a way, and it will be taken seriously. The reason no ID proponents ever take up that challenge is that whenever they try, their "predictions" always turns out to be wrong and they end up going back to their usual excuses.
The human eye is a text book example of Intellegent Design and Complexity Theory because of it requires several independantly developed components to function that would not develop on their own. Additionally, there are many eyes of varying degrees from light or motion sensing to human eyes: lining them up you can see how one is more advanced than the other but there is no way for one eye to develop to the next evolutionary jump.
Actually, the human eye is a text book example of flawed Intelligent Design examples.
First of all, the eye is incredibly badly designed. I was actually considering using it as an example in my post to explain evolution, exactly because it's one of the most common flawed ID arguments, however I decided against it because I'd have to look up the details.
This argument is called Pascal's wager, and is wrong.
The problem is that you are assuming that the alternatives is no God or a God that would be satisfied by [insert random belief here]. However, you have no basis for 1) deciding which deity to believe in - in fact for many religions believing in the wrong religion may make you worse of than believing in "false" gods -, 2) knowing whether or not following a specific rule will put you in this Gods good graces or not, because you have no way of assessing whether the deity was truthful about its intentions (in other words, believing might even have the opposite result of your intentions - if "God" exists, he could very well have used faith as a test to reward those who choose not to believe), 3) knowing if faith is more important overall than your actions, etc.
(The wikipedia article has a much more extensive explanation of all the flaws of Pascal's wager)
In other words, whatever you believe in, you always risk dieing only to find that deity X is extremely unhappy that you believed in deity Y and think it's worth eternal damnation.
I would additionally contend that even if you "hit the right deity", you face the prospect that that deity might not appreciate it if you believe only to save your ass.
So personally I'd rather take the "risk" that behaving the way I believe is right for me will make me good enough that if I happen to be wrong and there actually is an afterlife and the deity in charge is good, that I will be rewarded for my actions and not punished for my lack of beliefs (if the deity in charge is evil there's no reason to assume that believing will be enough anyway - all bets are off).
I also don't think you understand how the wear levelling you referred to works.
Generally most flash file systems are variation of journalling systems where you maintain (and regenerate on startup) an in-memory map mapping the newest version of each block to a specific physical block on the device. That in itself instantly reduces wear, because rewriting a block means writing a new physical block, not rewriting the same location.
Then, if you are running low on space, an algorithm is used to pick one or more physical erase units to "garbage collect" - that is, you in a set of erase units, remove all blocks from them that have been remapped elsewhere on the device (because they have been rewritten later), erase the units and write back a compacted set of blocks, including meta data that will allow you to quickly determine which physical blocks are mapped where on device startup.
So the density will typically remain more or less the same. The only problem with this system is if the device gets very full and writes only happen to a single area. But this can also be sorted out by also occasionally remapping blocks that are not actually being rewritten by the user, slightly increasing the overall number of erases for the device as a whole, but keeping the number of erases for a single block down.
The overall result of this is that you are unlikely to ever run into the wear problem in systems that aren't SEVERELY IO bound. That is, your desktop/laptop is likely to die years before the flash drive, but you might want to avoid it for your highly loaded database server / mail server.
The flaw in that argument is that you are making two assumptions without proof: 1) that a "design" happening one place means to change an entity into another requires there to always be design involved for that entity to change that much, and 2) that there are "leaps" in the development of life.
The first assumption is simply wrong. It is essentially claiming that ID is needed, and so evolution is wrong, because something happened without evolution.
I could turn that on it's head by picking ANY random process and claim it as proof that ID isn't needed, because something happened without ID.
The second assumption is just a restatement of ID. In other words you are stating that "since I don't believe in evolution, there must be a leap for something to change from one to the other, so evolution must be wrong". It is a circular argument.
Evolution is suspect when a bee suddenly starts talking, when it had no mouth, etc.
And all this proves is that you don't understand what evolution is.
If you truly believe that evolution involves even the idea of changes as large as a bee being able to suddenly go from todays bee to one that could talk, then you have no basis for forming a reasonable idea of evolution.
I see you are assuming "leaps" again. But we already know a lot about the various intermediate stages for many organs. Eyes for instance - an eye is highly beneficial without a lens. Visibility and ability to focus will be extremely limited, but as anyone nearly blind can tell you there is a huge amount of difference from just being able to see rough shapes and being blind. Even the ability to just sense whether your path is blocked or not (i.e. just seeing light and dark) is a huge advantage over being blind.
So there would be no reason for any huge leaps from "no eye" to human type eyes to occur. Same for no mouth to speaking. Having a proper mouth and strong jaw and teeth gives an advantage in being able to take more types of food. Being able to emit sounds gives an advantage in basic communications, and the more advanced sounds the more significant that advantage becomes.
The very point of evolution is that every change is extremely limited, extremely simple and that most of them disappears again beacause they give no advantage, but the sheer number of individuals and the sheer number of generations allow positive changes to accumulate and gradually cause significant change.
Infinity is a paradox. In calculus, you can have a container with a finite surface, that holds an infinite amount of material. If there were an infinite number of events until now, how did we get here? This universe is finite and has a beginning, if we have a present time.
A paradox is something that is inconsistent with itself. Infinity by itself does not require any paradoxes whatsoever. Your own example is meaningless. Of course something with a finite surface can hold an "infinite amount" of material if the unit you choose is infinitely small. There is no paradox in that - the total amount using the same unit as the surface will still be smaller than the total volume of the object.
Claiming that the universe is finite and has a beginning if we have a present time is meaningless. Why? How does the concept of infinity affect whether or not we have a present time? "Present time" is just a "marker" - you do not need to know the endpoints of a line to be able to draw a mark on it and move that mark in one direction. It doesn't suddenly become impossible for you to do so if you suddenly find out that the line extends infinitely far in either direction.
Besides, even if the universe is finite, that does not alter what I wrote - you have no way of knowing if there was another universe befor this one (or at the same time as this one). I was merely pointing
It doesn't seem an unreasonable number. There are at least 3 "newspapers" covering the London borough I live in alone (population of about 500.000), and I know the companies publishing them have similar coverage in most London boroughs. Add in regional and national papers, magazines, websites, tv channels, radio stations etc. and 5,000 seems a quite small number. I don't know how it is in more rural parts of Britain as my experience with Britain outside of London is rather limited, but in Norway (where I'm from), most small towns of a few thousand people or more will generally have their own newspaper, though the smallest ones will generally focus exclusively on local news and only be published on a weekly basis or so.
No if a human builds a hovercraft, it shows that it is possible for an intelligent being to design something as advanced as a hovercraft. Nothing more, nothing less. It is exactly this kind of faulty logic that is the reason why ID gets ridiculed.
To show that ID is "necessary" you will need to make predictions of what we should be able to find in nature based on the idea of an intelligent designer being responsible for the natural world that does not fit the theory of evolution. Only if you can do that, and your predictions are tested and not found false, is there any reason to even consider ID as a viable theory.
If you don't understand why that is so, you need to read up on the scientific method.
There is an unmoved mover, and an uncaused cause, which is God.
So tell me then: What is the cause of God?
Your idea of a God just moves the problem of creation one step back, it doesn't solve anything.
If anything, it enlarges the problem. One of the core ID arguments is that complex working entities requires a designer. Applying that to the idea of God, we see that there would have to be an infinite chain of intelligent designers.
But if you accept the idea of an infinite chain of creation events, then ID has no advantages over evolution, because you have no way of knowing that there hasn't been an infinite number of creation events leading to universes with failed evolution previously either.
In other words, either you accept a creation at some point that did NOT involve an intelligent designer, in which case there is no reason to assume an intelligent designer at all, or you accept the idea of inifinite existence of something, that blows the ID argument about how unlikely evolution is out of the water too.
And before anyone even tries to bring up that idiotic argument, and how it seems arrogant to assume that just WE would be lucky, keep in mind that given an infinite chain of events, the chance that a POSSIBLE event, no matter how improbable, will happen at least once approaches 100%. And if the event in question is the evolution of us, then by definition we will witness only the succesfull event, not the infinite number of failed ones.
The assumption of an infinite sequence of events isn't even needed, btw., the only thing it contributes is driving the probability up. Seeing as we are here, however, the probability isn't relevant any more that the low probability that you will win the lottery before the draw is to you when it turns out after the draw that you have won.
The probability you will win a drawing is low, but once you have won the probability that you did win is 100%.
Either of those two does not say anything about HOW you won - you could have bought a ticket and taken your chances or bribed an official, or changed the ticket through magical powers, or a million other things. The fact that you have the winning ticket doesn't prove or disprove any of them. Only an investigation of the available facts might provide proofs of any theories presented about how it happened.
The point being that many ID proponents often point to holes in our scientific knowledge to claim that nature is somehow "too complex" to be explained by science, and so we should all forget all about common sense and invent some random explanation instead.
Of course, I can see the appeal. After all, who would like to believe that software engineers could produce an abomination like Windows without being under the influence of some evil entity...
Except that what you present as "good ID" is a view held by very few ID proponents. It is a deist view, and yes, many variations of deism are reconcilable with science, in that they don't even try to explain the "how", and in that they assume a deity that takes no active role in the world after creation, or alternatively only excert very limited influence. Pantheists/pandeists as well will often fall in this camp (but with the difference that the deity is an integral part of the world rather than a separate entity).
The core of the ID camp are people that specifically do not believe in evolution at all. That is, they do not say "god created the world, and made it so that everything we see happen would happen this way", but rather "god created the world and designed things because random chance could not evolve something so complex" (ID tends to ignore that natural selection is far from random, and that random elements such as mutation have minimal effect without natural selection).
The former is often "included" in he ID camp because the ideas on the surface are pretty similar: There is a Creator/Designer. He makes the world the way it is. Chance doesn't play into it.
The difference is whether or not they accept evolution as a "design tool". I.e. do they accept the idea that their "Designer" set things into motion in a way that made evolution play out. Real ID people don't, deists generally do.
In many ways I think this is a deliberate confusion. The deist view wouldn't merit an attack on evolution, nor any discussions about inclusion in science classes - it ISN'T an alternative to evolution, it is an answer to the "why" question that would clearly belong in religious studies or philosophy classes. However, it is also the most edible way to present ID.
The "hardcore" ID view, on the other hand, is nothing more than Creationism dressed up in sheep skin. It is the old tired "we're not monkeys" line of thought, and giving it any more credit than that is completely misplaced.
Ask for a clear description of the theory. Ask how it can be tested. Ask for falsifiable predictions. And when they don't come (they won't), point out exactly why that makes their theory as useless to science (and to childrens science education) as the average childrens fairytale.
What I find amazing with believers is that they make statements based on nothing but faith, yet refuse to consider other beliefs when presented with arguments based on nothing but faith.
If faith is enough for you, then how do you discern WHAT to believe in?
Personally I see no value in faith. I have no problems being compassionate, or showing love for people, or to treat people nicely. I do so because I want to, and because it feels right to me, not because I live in fear of retribution from some being I have seen no more proof for than the tooth fairy; not because I am worried about securing my entry into some fairytale land when I die.
For the same reason, I consider love and compassion from someone who consider it a principle of faith to be false and of little value, just as I would an apology forced out under threats.
If there turns out to be a God, I would much rather stand before him and be able to say that I have made the choices I made because I think they are right, than stand before him subservient and admit I did what I did because I was worried about the consequences.
If there turns out to be a God, and he is good, then I have no reason to believe that having faith in the existence on him based on unverifiable stories will make a difference, and if he is not good, I have no reason to believe he would feel obliged to stick to his words.
And to me, any God that is ready to make people suffer if they aren't good little lemmings and believe and carry out silly little acts for him IS pure evil.
So I don't believe because I haven't seen anything to give me reason to, and I don't feel I have to try to believe because it makes no sense to pick a belief on the odd chance that a particular religion happens to be right and their God is an evil bastard that care only about subservience and faith and not about showing genuine love and compassion.
Both of these make astrology unfalsifiable in its general form, and thus not a scientific theory.
Which makes it a perfect analogy for intelligent design, and is exactly why it has not "met with any scientific rebuff yet" - it is not a scientific theory: It isn't testable, and no falsifiable predictions can be reasonably drawn from it because there is no agreement on any coherent hypothesis that would allow such predictions.
Personally, I believe 2 + 2 = 5, because that is the result I get using the rules of my personal mathematical system, which I have no intention of presenting any proofs for - suffice to say that the current system can not be right because, uh, it doesn't fit with this book here, that was handed to me by the Flying Spaghetti Monster itself. However, I insist that you stop making your government dominate the intellectual lives of 90% of your children in such as way that arguments for my system is excluded, a priori, by the design of the educational system.
In other words: See how silly your argument is?
Schools MUST filter what they spend time on. Most people wouldn't object to intelligent design being brought up in schools in the appropriate setting. But generally the debate about intelligent design in schools boils down to whether or not it's taught as part of science classes, when it is not in any way a scientific theory, and when it is considered bullshit by practically all scientists.
Letting students debate intelligent design as part of classes on philosophy or religious studies wouldn't be unreasonable, but spending time in science classes on a "theory" that's no more scientific than the Flying Spaghetti Monster or stories about Santa Claus is to make a mockery of the very idea of education.
What is worse is that the slant that is always attempted introduced is a presentation of intelligent design as a credible alternative to evolution, not a balanced and critical presentation of the arguments for and against intelligent design vs. evolution - the latter might very well serve as a good way of explaining the history of science and how/why evolution as a theory has won out as the prevailing view amongst those researching the relevant fields.
However the former paves the road for every special interest out there to try to get its pet fantasies included as part of science educations.
Imagine kids being made to learn about the Scientologists views as part of Science classes as well, and not given clear guidance on what to believe or not. If intelligent design is accepted into classrooms, there would be few or no good arguments to keep the Scientologists from being allowed to present their "theory", together with every cult out there.
What they are stating isn't a theory, it's a philosophical/religious worldview - it's not testable or falsifiable in any way.
This is essentially the deist or pantheist/pandeist view, and calling it "intelligent design" is deceptive and just confuses the issue. Deism/pantheism/pandeism exists in many forms, and many of them are perfectly reconcilable with science, in that they are entirely about things that are outside the realm of what is covered by science.
The problem is those intelligent design advocates that refuse to accept the scientific process in general, and evolution in particular, and insist on discussing the matter in a way that has nothing to do with science because they either know they can't win a debate on fair premises, or because they simply don't understand what a scientific theory is or why science works the way it does.
Personally, one of my favourite argument against the intelligent design loonies is this: "We have plenty of observations that supports evolution, and if you are right, everything around us was created by God. Ignoring the scientific evidence means you are essentially claiming to know better than God what the right way for the world to work would be." (It tends to piss them off a lot, because most of them do have very specific ideas about how God would do things, and how the world should be, and have absolutely no interest in actually deferring those decisions to God... So much for humility)
That argument is close to the Jesuit approach to science, incidentally - the Jesuits have alway been very open to science based exactly on the idea that science is about exploring the world, and if you believe in God that means it is about exploring Gods creation, and doubting science would mean doubting the wisdom of Gods creation. Even as an atheist, that is an approach to religion I can respect.
Because I have never seen it stated in a way that is:
Without those satisfied it is pointless to even discuss whether intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory. It isn't. It's that simple.
The point of these requirements is that we can't generally prove conclusively that there can't be specific circumstances that a theory does not satisfactorily explain.
So we generally settle for the opposite: The more predictions and the more detailed they are, the easier they are to reproduce, and the less of an extent those predictions overlap with predictions made based on other theories, the greater the chance that we can prove the theory to be wrong if it is indeed wrong, by carrying out experiments that may fail.
A theory that is not stated in a way that meets those criteria have little value - if we can't make predicitions based on it, it is generally either because it is so vague as to be meaningless, or make claims about things that have no observable effect on our existence and so add nothing to our understanding of the world.
(I could, for instance, claim the universe is full of invisible red goblins that we can't hear or feel or sense in any way. You can't prove it, but neither can you disprove it. But such a "theory" would be pointless, as if they can't interact with our existence in any way it adds nothing to our understanding of our existence and doesn't affect us in any way. Most people would immediately dismiss such a "theory", but many of those same people refuse to see that most formulations of "intelligent design" have the same "qualities"...)
At best intelligent design is a loose hypothesis supported by a semi-random collection of arguments that haven't been formalised in any manner. The problem stems from the fact that there is no coherent single description of "intelligent design". Different people have very different interpretations. Combine that with ever-changing arguments as their specific claims about science gets shot down one by one, and you're as far from a proper theory as you can get.
As soon as someone present a clearly defined theory of intelligent design that fulfill the requirements mentioned above, then people will take it seriously as a scientific theory - even if only to prove it wrong.
If intelligent design proponents were serious about intelligent design being considered a real alternative to natural evolution, then they would have tried to present a real theory of intelligent design and adjusted it to account for failed predictions. However, the problem with that is that they know very well they would not be able to "win" on fair terms, so instead the arguments stay vague and misleading and carefully avoid any claims that are testable predictions.
So here is my challenge: State a theory of intelligent design that is testable and falsifiable. Do that, and I'll take you seriously.
Until then, you're just another kook that needs to read some basic material on the history and theory of science.
Of course it only means that intelligent design proponents will find some other thing that isn't yet explained by science to use. Arguing against intelligent design requires pointing out flawed reasoning much more than countering specifics, or you it will only seem like ID has some level of legitimacy as a scientific theory.
Of course, the tape drive was much fun on the C64 as well - you could use it as a one bit sampler, for instance, though the sound quality wasn't exactly great.
Worked surprisingly well for all the high pitched "I'm a guy but I'd rather try to sound like an 8 year old girl" acts of the 80's, though ....
I very much doubt a beginner would see much difference (assuming a pre-installed system, if they have to install it themselves, they'd be unlikely to even get Windows to install).
I've had even people who've used Windows for years borrow my machine to do stuff without realising it was a Linux box - they'd make comments like "how can I make my Outlook look/do that?!?" (about Evolution), or ask where Word was so they could open a document (at which point I'd show them OO Writer, and they'd go on oblivious to the differences).
Most novice computer users adapt a lot quicker than a lot more experienced users, in part because they use very small subsets of functionality that usually is very much the same across platforms, and partly because they don't really know whats going on and so will quickly give up and resort to asking co-workers or reading manuals, find a solution and move on.
It's intermediate users that's the problem - especially those that know enough to get them in trouble, not enough to get them out of trouble, and who think they are beyond asking for help or reading a manual.
Which is exactly how it is in Europe too.
But they are not suggesting faster than light travel. What they are suggesting is that the speed of light is only constant within our dimension, and that it may be possible to combine two effects of extremely strong magnetic fields to 1) generate thrust and 2) shift the craft into a dimension where the speed of light is faster, allowing you to use the thrust generated to accelerate you beyond what the speed of light is in our dimension, while still remaining below the speed of light in the dimension you travel in.
Presumably once the craft shifts back to our dimension it would be restricted by our lower speed of light again (which does raise a lot of interesting questions such as what happens if you try to shift back while your speed is faster than our speed of light).
That of course by far solves all the problems, but it does remove that pesky little issue of surpassing the speed of light.
Now, in many ways this seems similar to wormholes, and wormholes do have that little issue of whether or not it would be possible to accelerate one end of it and use relativistic time dilation to turn it into a time machine. However it only appears similar in that you are able to travel seemingly faster than light by travelling outside normal space.
In the case of this theory there is nothing created that can be accelerated prior to the travel to achieve the relativistic effects that theoretically could allow for time travel with wormholes, and that makes things a whole lot simpler.
There's one other issue related to time travel, and that is causality. That is, if you could send a signal "back in time" you could break causality. However, if the craft shifts into another dimension while it travels faster than "our" speed of light, and no communication is possible until the craft shifts back, and it is travelling below the speed of light in the other dimension, then I don't see how you'd run into any problems with causality (the causality problems with wormholes is due to the potential of accelerating one end of the wormhole, not inherently moving between two points faster than light).
I'm not saying I believe it's possible (I'll hold of judgement until these guys have actually done some real experiments), but I don't believe what they are suggesting would cause so many problems with existing physics as some here seem to think.
If they're wrong, they'll be unable to find proof, and may spend lots of resources on trying and failing, but in the process odds are good they may find other interesting results. Being open minded about your results is well and good, but having a clear goal and believing in that goal is what keeps momentum up and drives work forwards.
A lot of improvements have come because some seeming crackpot have refused to accept failure and kept going and going and eventually solved a problem, even if it isn't always the problem they set out to solve, and even if what they wanted to achieve seemed to fly in the face of common sense or accepted science.
You need people who can believe just as much as you need sceptics to challenge them.
Keep in mind that ANY visible indication that this guy has been able to buy a house or a car, for instance, will be a big red flag. He may be able to get away with it, but only if nobody cares. And if he's ever even remotely suspected of being involved with spamming again, for instance, a lot of people will care and will take the time to look into whether he has any assets worth seizing.
Which means tax evasion, which means they risk significant jail sentences next.
IANAL, but a court order for restitution isn't generally dischargable in a bankruptcy. in order words this guy will likely have to leave to US or find himself unable to own anything of significant value ever again.