Pressure is a BIG issue. Chemistry changes at pressure, reactions go differently.
The reactions themselves rarely go differently; they simply change rates as a result of various factors.
Divers going below about 90 feet (30 metres) breathing air suffer nitrogen narcosis as dissolved nitrogen in the nerves cause an effect akin to drunkenness or partial anaesthesia.
The fact that divers only suffer from a few effects, such as nitrogen narcosis, indicates how little chemistry is affected by pressure, considering the huge number of complex reactions that go on in the human body.
Now this may not affect squid much, it's hard to believe that there are no pressure effects on the chemistry underpinning their biology.
It is not hard at all. Water is largely incompressible, so there aren't going to be any major changes in the volumes of body spaces or cellular organelles if the animal moves between different depths slowly enough to allow equilibration.
The main factors for deep-sea animals are temperature and light. They are probably used to living constantly as low temperatures. Providing they are kept cool and dark, many of the animals from such depths surivive OK at sea surface pressures.
But I would think that the lack of an atmosphere would prevent most of the heat damage (poor conductivity), and eliminate most of the shockwave.
For a nuclear explosion conductivity of heat by the atmosphere is irrelevant. The heat comes directly as radiation from the heat of the fission and fusion materials in the bomb. Close up, the shock wave (if in an atmosphere) would be travelling faster than the speed of sound so there would be no time for conduction of heat by the atmosphere.
In the footage I've seen of nuclear tests, it looks like most of the physical damage comes from the high-speed shockwave travelling through the air.
This is a good point, but there are other factors too: If a bomb was buried in an asteroid the entire energy of the bomb could be used to deflect the object: there could well be a jet or lump of material thrown off the side of the asteroid, which would help the process.
1) You assume that the US is a democracy... it is not. In our style of government, the populace is only partially responsible for the election of leaders.
The populace has the ability to remove incompetent leaders each election.
2) Yes, a majority of electors did vote for Pres. Bush. This is separate from the number of citizens that voted.
That was my point. The majority of citizens could have removed him. Apathy is a choice!
They innovated in the form of a new business paradigm, a market where a common operating system would run on multiple vendor's hardware.
Like Unix?
While there are other OSs that were capable of such,
Contradicting your first statement...
they were the first that broke IBM's stranglehold on the PC market, and as such, provided competition among hardware vendors. Like it or not, they really brought the PC to the home user.
This was nothing at all to do with Microsoft. It was the PC makers themselves that did this. One of the most popular IBM PC-clones in the UK was shipped with no Microsoft software it at all: The Amstrad PC had DR-DOS and GEM.
How does teaching known errors as absolute fact open minds to the principles of science?
Who says they were taught as 'absolute facts'? When I was taught things at school, we were always told 'there is more to this that you will find out later'.
Unless the principle to be learned is that scientists are deceptive?
On the contrary, it simply shows that scientists discover new things and change their minds.
Perhaps the purpose is not to open minds to the principles of science but to close the minds to any influence of religion.
No, it is to show that if you are after understanding the reality of subjects like life and evolution you have to accept than our understanding is incomplete and can change.
I wasn't aware that God was about good feelings and aweness. It's about truth.
What truth? It is about faith, not truth.
C.S. Lewis wrote about this whole combining everything idea in his book "Mere Christianity".
Why should I accept anything he says? He is not qualified to comment on science.
As for Quantum Mechanics and Chaos Theory, what decides which way the domino falls?
Nothing, as far as we can tell.
After a time passes in our linear existance, we can't go back. Time moves only one way. That is how time is designed.
There is no evidence or reason to believe that time was designed.
If believing that you are evolved stardust gives you fuzzy feelings, then more power to you. Enjoy your fuzzy feelings while they last. I come as a witness and nothing more.
Yet again you miss the point. It is not about believing anything! It is about evidence. If there were any evidence that we were not evolved from stardust, then I would have to accept that.
My view is that you are neglecting obvious facts in order to preserve your fuzzy feelings.
Enjoy your fuzzy feelings while they last.
Who said I had fuzzy feelings?
I come as a witness and nothing more.
I believe you come with an arrogance that helps you ignore facts. I pity your small world view.
I feel that theories that contradict the idea that God made humans and also made them uniquly different than all the other critters on this earth.
The problem is that no matter how much you feel or want to believe something does not make you right!
We aren't unique: we share the same biology and biochemistry as almost every other living organism.
If you hit a series of dominos in exactly the same way under the exact same condition then they should fall down exactly the same way.
Again, you are simply factually wrong. Quantum mechanics and chaos theory show irrefutably that this statement is false.
You have a problem here: You can carry on believing things like this - that we are unique and that things can't be random - but by doing so you are denying the reality of the very creation and universe you admire!
If you are going to insist that a God created things, you should take the trouble to find out what he actually created, and not impose your own wishes and beliefs on reality.
I feel your pain about putting queries into business logic, but to look at DLINQ as an ORM tool is to miss the point. In the real world lots of people embed SQL in code (because they don't have time/skills/resources to devote to ORM, or simply don't know any better, or whatever). Now these very people can use a far more robust system at very little extra cost.
This is something that has always bugged me about Microsoft since I started seriously using their products over 20 years ago. With their development tools they encourage ease-of-use at the expense of quality. It happened with VB, and now it is happening in many ways with.NET. The problem is that now many developers will be using embedded query languages in their code and thinking this is good practice. IT standards and code maintainability will suffer, in my view.
I think you misunderstood me. When I said adding 'your' own DB-specific code, the generic 'you' was a DB-vendor.
I assumed this - I was talking about vendors too (I was probably unclear).
So someone from Oracle would have to implement the pattern and add Oracle-specific code, etc. The programmer who uses DLINQ to connect to an Oracle DB wouldn't have to do anything special other than add an a/r:OracleDLINQ.dll at compile time.
I don't think this should be up to the vendor. The vendor already provides a standard connection mechanism with detailed information about the nature of their databases and the SQL support these database provide through ODBC and JDBC drivers.
With current high-performance Java systems, such as JDO (and soon, EJB 3.0), the implementor of the ORM puts the work in to provide high-performance translation from the ORM query language to the DB vendor's SQL. ORM vendors compete as to the quality of their code production. Why should DB vendors have to implement yet another spec when ODBC and JDBC are so widepread and detailed? Microsoft has all the information they need to output specific SQL for a range of vendors. However, I am pretty sure they won't.
"Embedded SQL in computer languages has been around for a very long time"
It isn't embedded SQL. It's set operations that obviously share commonalities with SQL, but are largely different.
I should have said 'embedded query languages'. My point stands... this is new.
Again, have you watched the video or read the spec?
Yes.
DLINQ, by the way, is the ORM system that makes the objectpersistence "transparent" (leaky abstraction, like all ORMs, but still).
Nowhere in the information can I find terms such as 'persistence by reachability' which are appropriate for true transparent persistence. I may be wrong, but it looks like true transparency is not supported.
I doubt it'll include support either, out of the box. Instead, like always, they've created a generalized data services layer that any provider can plug into - create a ADO.NET 3.0 data provider for MySQL, and your data service can be the target of LINQ operations.
There are plenty of alternatives for other languages that do support these database 'out of the box'.
" >if you look at transparent persistence systems like JDO and Hibernate, almost all of the data retrieval and processing can be done with no query language at all."
Only for extremely simplistic cases, eventually you _will_ need to write queries.
Only minimal ones, which is why I used the phrase 'almost all'.
However, you don't use the database's native query language, you use one provided by the ORM tool. This appears to be the same sort of thing....
Indeed, but possibly lacking major features of other mature systems, such as transparent persistence.
This isn't 'embedded SQL' in the sense of Pro*C -- the 'queries' are really a bit of (helpful) syntactic sugar over an object-oriented, typesafe set of expressions (you'll see the lambda expressions, new to C#, used heavily here):
It is still an embedded query language. This encourages a
"Also, I can't believe that MS C# is going to include support for MySQL, Postgresql etc, like Hibernate, NHibernate, JDO etc."
They don't have to. Implementing DLINQ is really as simple as implmenting a pattern (which Helsberg called the 'query expression pattern') and adding your own DB-specific code.
Adding the DB-specific code IS providing support. The point of having MySQL or PostgreSQL or Oracle etc. driver support provided by the ORM vendor (JDO or Hibernate) is that they can put the time in to generate very optimised specific SQL for those databases without you having to implement any pattern or add anything specific yourself.
Currently Oracle and DB/2 ship libs for ADO.NET, you can be quite sure they'll ship libs for DLINQ. If the MySQL and Postgres communites want DLINQ support badly enough, I'm sure someone will write it.
That is not the same as having very high quality optimised drivers for those databases that generate specific SQL.
Don't get me wrong - there are exciting things in this C# release - especially lambda expressions, but embedding query languages in business logic seems just bad practise to me - it is mixing things that should be kept separate.
LINQ, and DLINQ, are very exciting improvements in removing the disconnect between the database and the middle/front tier, and given the tremendous importance of that it will be remarkable.
On the contrary, it is big step backwards. One area of intensive research in IT for years is setting up a portable high-performance disconnect between database and other tiers. For many applications the database is just a resource, and embedding query languages within code is a bad idea. If you look at transparent persistence systems like JDO and Hibernate, almost all of the data retrieval and processing can be done with no query language at all - optimised query languages tailored for specific databases can be generated in the background, and this querying can be very optimised indeed.
Embedded SQL in computer languages has been around for a very long time - take a look at SQL/J. There are more elegant ways to do things.
Also, I can't believe that MS C# is going to include support for MySQL, Postgresql etc, like Hibernate, NHibernate, JDO etc.
Try reading. You are still thinking in a limited space.
Not a convincing argument:)
My thought space may be limited, but it is the space produced by being a scientist (and keeping up with current scientific ideas in a range of area) for 25 years.
Much of the criticism of global warming theories do come from limited thinking, as understanding how it works requires a good understanding of physics (solar and atmospheric), chemistry, biochemistry and statistics. Skepticism about global warming is usually (with a few honourable exceptions, such as Stott's work) based in ignorance of one or more of these aspects.
A natural evolved behavior? You mean like homosexuality? Hmmm... I wonder where that evolved from.
It is very common and natural in a large number of animals. Anyone who things homosexuality is purely a human activity is showing nothing more than ignorance of biology. In our close relatives the bonobo chimps, same-sex activity is as common as heterosexuality.
Things like washing our hands is counter intutive to a culture that doesn't know what germs are. I noticed you didn't comment on that.
Because you didn't mention it. There is a natural tendency to avoid dirt and disease because we have evolved a dislike of the smell of such things. You will notice that most higher animals naturally clean and groon themselves.
In a way, Evolution is like the temple hookers. You now can say, "I didn't mean to hurt you, baby. It's just my instinctive evolved behavior to create as many offspring as I can. It's not my fault I cheat. I just evolved that way."
This is also a terribly old-fashioned and ignorant view of evolution. I don't understand why such views are still held, unless it is based on a lazy lack of education about biology. If you are going to debate such matters, you need to keep up to date. You are putting forward 19th-century views.
Evolution does not dicate anything but the broadest aspects of behaviour. We are not robots - we have free will. In fact, we have evolved the ability to make choices, because the ability to intelligently decide what to do is good for survival!
No-one is rejecting God. What we are rejecting is a very limited human-devised idea of God. We are rejecting a deliberate attempt to stifle understanding.
If there is a God, he/she is awesome and beyond anything we can ever imagine. It seems very sad to me when people try to limit God to a creationist who tries to tell people what to do through an ambigous old book.
I get my sense of religious awe by examining the universe at it really is, which includes the wonders of billions of years of evolution - it is a far more impressive and breathtaking idea than anything the bible has to say.
I do it because I don't want people to be tormented in Hell for all of eternity. No credit is given to me.
Even the idea of Hell torment is now considered outdated and irrelevant by most major religions.
I have some respect for what you are trying to do, but I hope you can open your mind and see the wonders of things. Science is not a threat to religion - quite the contrary - it can reveal how amazing and inspiring things really are.
Darn typo. Anyway, what I meant to say that you hit the nail on the head. Science is a religion. It is a systems of belief that requires faith.
No. I was saying the exact opposite. Opponents of science mistakenly label it as faith. On the contrary, science is about not requiring faith; about testing belief.
You also admit that science uses schools to condition minds the same way a cult would.
No I don't. Science attempts to prevent the conditioning of minds by encouraging questioning and critical thinking.
The Jews were also forbidden to inbreed.
Expressing a natural evolved behaviour.
Leviticus gives a whole list of people you can't have sex with.
And what types of cloth you should not wear. And the conditions under which members of your family can be put to death (like for planting different crops side by side).
A good guide to how to live? I think not!
The Jews had no idea what genetics were. Good thing they were told what to do.
They were 'told what to do' by evolved instinct. Most species don't inbreed, and manage to avoid it without reading old books.
"That is because the science taught at school has to be simplified hugely. The version of almost any scientific idea taught at school is largely wrong. The idea is to open minds to the principles of science."
is another religion. Also you point out that school is a place to condition minds. Very much in the same way cults do.
I did not say school was a place to 'condition' minds. I said it was a place to open them up. Teaching the principles of science along with the ability to be critical and investigative is the exact opposite of the way cults work. Good education should protect against cults.
You are either daft or you don't understand what I've written.
Nice way to back an argument:)
Solar output works in cycles, not on solar flares. Either you are pushing the bounds of ignorance in pretending that solar output doesn't increase and decrease, or you don't understand how thermonuclear reaction works and how little we understand what goes on at the heart of our solar system.
Solar cycles last typically 11 years. A variation over that time is insufficient to explain decades of warming. Although there are longer term variations in solar output, these have (obviously!) been included in climate models in order to understand what is happening.
There are other ideas about how the Sun may be affecting climate, for example the Stott theory that variations in cosmic rays may be changing the amount of cloud cover. However, these ideas don't work in terms of explaining the level of global warming.
Actually you might want to look up microbiotic CO2 absorbtion.
There are many ways that CO2 can be absorbed - plant growth, planktonic uptake (with subsequent deposition on ocean floors). However, the nature of the uptakes is irrelevant, as the current build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere is clear evidence that absorption rates are unable to deal with our level of output.
Theory does not = an idea backed by facts.
Yes it is. That is exactly what it is.
Theory is the belief that an event may happen based upon predictions relative to current data available to the scientist, or scientific group doing the research.
No - that is called a 'hypothesis'.
I think you'd better just go back and understand science.
Well, I will point out that the various theories of Creation in the last few hundred years has been far more stable than any scientific theory put forward.
That is because ignorance is stable.
Perhaps it would be better if science types started using rhetoric like "We Think" or "We Believe" instead of "We now know..."
We 'science types' usually do. The problem is that if we start saying 'we believe' too much in public, our ideas get attacked as 'just another form of religion'.
I mean, the version of Darwinism that was taught in my school has pretty much been shot to heck, but my Biology teacher sure enough said, "This is how it happened."
That is because the science taught at school has to be simplified hugely. The version of almost any scientific idea taught at school is largely wrong. The idea is to open minds to the principles of science.
it's just that the theory of evolution itself has about as many holes as IE.
Such as?
Sure, right now it's the best idea going, but that doesn't mean it's the end of the conversation. Yet questioning it all usually does end the conversation.
I would be interested to know exactly what about evolution you would like to question? That organisms have changed over time? That such changes happen naturally? That the changes result in variety, and from that variety some organisms turn out to be better able to reproduce than others?
Evolution is a very, very simple idea. Once we realised that the Earth is old enough for small variations to have resulted in large changes over millions of years, evolution is pretty self-evident.
And yet, when fighting alternative models like "Intelligent Design", everyone pretends scientific findings were cast in stone.
Did they? When? I haven't noticed. Funny, but I assumed that the benefit of the scientific approach was that ideas are very definitely NOT cast in stone, unlike the dogma of Intelligent Design, which states that some things are just too complex to have ever evolved.
%60 of systems seem to be binary or trinary, not good for life to develope. Planets would need to be in the "goldylocks" zone where water is liquid much of the time. And there are about 5-6 other factors that would limit development of life elsewhere. There will still be a lot of good planets, but not anywhere near as many as you suggest.
These requirements are a myth. Even with the assumption that life requires liquid water, the idea liquid water only exists within a 'Goldilocks' or 'just right' zone based on distance from a Sun is clearly wrong - there is almost certainly liquid water under a layer of ice on Europa due to tidal heating. The same is likely on Callisto and it even is possible that the same conditions may arise on moons of Saturn.
As for binary or trinary star systems - providing the stars are sufficiently separated (by at least several light hours or days) there is plenty of room for stable planetary systems to form around each star.
Indeed. But that's the appeal of Ethanol as a fuel. You'll add CO2 sinks to match the CO2 production. Suddenly our cars would become working members of the eco-system instead of strip-miners.:-)
I agree. Use of any such bio-fuel is a good idea.
"But compared to the effect of (for example) transpiration by vegetation it is insignificant."
I think that's a difficult thing to predict at the moment. The CO2 production of cars was once thought to be insignificant, yet environmentalists today are chomping at the bit about it. We can't just throw out any effect as insignificant until we have hard data to back it up.
As a biologist, I think it is reasonable to assume that until there are huge clouds of steam rising above our cities we aren't going to have anything close to the impact on water vapour that rain forests have.
In any case, my point still stands. We don't get something for nothing. Energy usage will increase, and that will have effects on our environment. If we're smart, we'll reshape the environment to compensate. If we're not smart, we'll reshape it anyway after the effects devistate a few more major cities.
Er, no. Not quite. Natural CO2 sinks adapt very slowly to increases.
That is my point.
There's still room for improvement, but it has helped.
It hasn't helped enough - which is obvious given the increase in atmospheric CO2.
One of the links I gave (I think it was the PDF I just pointed to) made the point that the very presence of humans has already affected the water vapor distribution in many urban areas.
I'm sure it has. But compared to the effect of (for example) transpiration by vegetation it is insignificant.
Slashdot Mirror
The ISS itself is not a mistake, only the orbit it is in is a mistake.
:(.
Headline doesn't reflect the Michael Griffin quote in the summary
I know this is probably going to be modded Troll, but...
Welcome to Slashdot! It is amazing how many Slashdot article headlines need to be corrected by the insertion of 'not'.
Pressure is a BIG issue. Chemistry changes at pressure, reactions go differently.
The reactions themselves rarely go differently; they simply change rates as a result of various factors.
Divers going below about 90 feet (30 metres) breathing air suffer nitrogen narcosis as dissolved nitrogen in the nerves cause an effect akin to drunkenness or partial anaesthesia.
The fact that divers only suffer from a few effects, such as nitrogen narcosis, indicates how little chemistry is affected by pressure, considering the huge number of complex reactions that go on in the human body.
Now this may not affect squid much, it's hard to believe that there are no pressure effects on the chemistry underpinning their biology.
It is not hard at all. Water is largely incompressible, so there aren't going to be any major changes in the volumes of body spaces or cellular organelles if the animal moves between different depths slowly enough to allow equilibration.
The main factors for deep-sea animals are temperature and light. They are probably used to living constantly as low temperatures. Providing they are kept cool and dark, many of the animals from such depths surivive OK at sea surface pressures.
But I would think that the lack of an atmosphere would prevent most of the heat damage (poor conductivity), and eliminate most of the shockwave.
For a nuclear explosion conductivity of heat by the atmosphere is irrelevant. The heat comes directly as radiation from the heat of the fission and fusion materials in the bomb. Close up, the shock wave (if in an atmosphere) would be travelling faster than the speed of sound so there would be no time for conduction of heat by the atmosphere.
In the footage I've seen of nuclear tests, it looks like most of the physical damage comes from the high-speed shockwave travelling through the air.
This is a good point, but there are other factors too: If a bomb was buried in an asteroid the entire energy of the bomb could be used to deflect the object: there could well be a jet or lump of material thrown off the side of the asteroid, which would help the process.
1) You assume that the US is a democracy... it is not. In our style of government, the populace is only partially responsible for the election of leaders.
The populace has the ability to remove incompetent leaders each election.
2) Yes, a majority of electors did vote for Pres. Bush. This is separate from the number of citizens that voted.
That was my point. The majority of citizens could have removed him. Apathy is a choice!
Don't blame the populace for the actions of the government.
In a democracy, the populace is responsible for the government.
Quite a few of the people here did not vote to put these people in power.
But a majority of those who voted did.
I want to know how we've managed to elect such incompetence for so long.
Perhaps because so many people don't even bother to turn up to elect anyone.
They innovated in the form of a new business paradigm, a market where a common operating system would run on multiple vendor's hardware.
Like Unix?
While there are other OSs that were capable of such,
Contradicting your first statement...
they were the first that broke IBM's stranglehold on the PC market, and as such, provided competition among hardware vendors. Like it or not, they really brought the PC to the home user.
This was nothing at all to do with Microsoft. It was the PC makers themselves that did this. One of the most popular IBM PC-clones in the UK was shipped with no Microsoft software it at all: The Amstrad PC had DR-DOS and GEM.
How does teaching known errors as absolute fact open minds to the principles of science?
Who says they were taught as 'absolute facts'? When I was taught things at school, we were always told 'there is more to this that you will find out later'.
Unless the principle to be learned is that scientists are deceptive?
On the contrary, it simply shows that scientists discover new things and change their minds.
Perhaps the purpose is not to open minds to the principles of science but to close the minds to any influence of religion.
No, it is to show that if you are after understanding the reality of subjects like life and evolution you have to accept than our understanding is incomplete and can change.
It is called being honest.
I wasn't aware that God was about good feelings and aweness. It's about truth.
What truth? It is about faith, not truth.
C.S. Lewis wrote about this whole combining everything idea in his book "Mere Christianity".
Why should I accept anything he says? He is not qualified to comment on science.
As for Quantum Mechanics and Chaos Theory, what decides which way the domino falls?
Nothing, as far as we can tell.
After a time passes in our linear existance, we can't go back. Time moves only one way. That is how time is designed.
There is no evidence or reason to believe that time was designed.
If believing that you are evolved stardust gives you fuzzy feelings, then more power to you. Enjoy your fuzzy feelings while they last. I come as a witness and nothing more.
Yet again you miss the point. It is not about believing anything! It is about evidence. If there were any evidence that we were not evolved from stardust, then I would have to accept that.
My view is that you are neglecting obvious facts in order to preserve your fuzzy feelings.
Enjoy your fuzzy feelings while they last.
Who said I had fuzzy feelings?
I come as a witness and nothing more.
I believe you come with an arrogance that helps you ignore facts. I pity your small world view.
I feel that theories that contradict the idea that God made humans and also made them uniquly different than all the other critters on this earth.
The problem is that no matter how much you feel or want to believe something does not make you right!
We aren't unique: we share the same biology and biochemistry as almost every other living organism.
If you hit a series of dominos in exactly the same way under the exact same condition then they should fall down exactly the same way.
Again, you are simply factually wrong. Quantum mechanics and chaos theory show irrefutably that
this statement is false.
You have a problem here: You can carry on believing things like this - that we are unique and that things can't be random - but by doing so you are denying the reality of the very creation and universe you admire!
If you are going to insist that a God created things, you should take the trouble to find out what he actually created, and not impose your own wishes and beliefs on reality.
I feel your pain about putting queries into business logic, but to look at DLINQ as an ORM tool is to miss the point. In the real world lots of people embed SQL in code (because they don't have time/skills/resources to devote to ORM, or simply don't know any better, or whatever). Now these very people can use a far more robust system at very little extra cost.
.NET. The problem is that now many developers will be using embedded query languages in their code and thinking this is good practice. IT standards and code maintainability will suffer, in my view.
/r:OracleDLINQ.dll at compile time.
This is something that has always bugged me about Microsoft since I started seriously using their products over 20 years ago. With their development tools they encourage ease-of-use at the expense of quality. It happened with VB, and now it is happening in many ways with
I think you misunderstood me. When I said adding 'your' own DB-specific code, the generic 'you' was a DB-vendor.
I assumed this - I was talking about vendors too (I was probably unclear).
So someone from Oracle would have to implement the pattern and add Oracle-specific code, etc. The programmer who uses DLINQ to connect to an Oracle DB wouldn't have to do anything special other than add an a
I don't think this should be up to the vendor. The vendor already provides a standard connection mechanism with detailed information about the nature of their databases and the SQL support these database provide through ODBC and JDBC drivers.
With current high-performance Java systems, such as JDO (and soon, EJB 3.0), the implementor of the ORM puts the work in to provide high-performance translation from the ORM query language to the DB vendor's SQL. ORM vendors compete as to the quality of their code production. Why should DB vendors have to implement yet another spec when ODBC and JDBC are so widepread and detailed? Microsoft has all the information they need to output specific SQL for a range of vendors. However, I am pretty sure they won't.
"Embedded SQL in computer languages has been around for a very long time"
It isn't embedded SQL. It's set operations that obviously share commonalities with SQL, but are largely different.
I should have said 'embedded query languages'. My point stands... this is new.
Again, have you watched the video or read the spec?
Yes.
DLINQ, by the way, is the ORM system that makes the objectpersistence "transparent" (leaky abstraction, like all ORMs, but still).
Nowhere in the information can I find terms such as 'persistence by reachability' which are appropriate for true transparent persistence. I may be wrong, but it looks like true transparency is not supported.
I doubt it'll include support either, out of the box. Instead, like always, they've created a generalized data services layer that any provider can plug into - create a ADO.NET 3.0 data provider for MySQL, and your data service can be the target of LINQ operations.
There are plenty of alternatives for other languages that do support these database 'out of the box'.
" >if you look at transparent persistence systems like JDO and Hibernate, almost all of the data retrieval and processing can be done with no query language at all."
Only for extremely simplistic cases, eventually you _will_ need to write queries.
Only minimal ones, which is why I used the phrase 'almost all'.
However, you don't use the database's native query language, you use one provided by the ORM tool. This appears to be the same sort of thing....
Indeed, but possibly lacking major features of other mature systems, such as transparent persistence.
Er, it might help if you actually read the spec.
I did.
This isn't 'embedded SQL' in the sense of Pro*C -- the 'queries' are really a bit of (helpful) syntactic sugar over an object-oriented, typesafe set of expressions (you'll see the lambda expressions, new to C#, used heavily here):
It is still an embedded query language. This encourages a
"Also, I can't believe that MS C# is going to include support for MySQL, Postgresql etc, like Hibernate, NHibernate, JDO etc."
They don't have to. Implementing DLINQ is really as simple as implmenting a pattern (which Helsberg called the 'query expression pattern') and adding your own DB-specific code.
Adding the DB-specific code IS providing support. The point of having MySQL or PostgreSQL or Oracle etc. driver support provided by the ORM vendor (JDO or Hibernate) is that they can put the time in to generate very optimised specific SQL for those databases without you having to implement any pattern or add anything specific yourself.
Currently Oracle and DB/2 ship libs for ADO.NET, you can be quite sure they'll ship libs for DLINQ. If the MySQL and Postgres communites want DLINQ support badly enough, I'm sure someone will write it.
That is not the same as having very high quality optimised drivers for those databases that generate specific SQL.
Don't get me wrong - there are exciting things in this C# release - especially lambda expressions, but embedding query languages in business logic seems just bad practise to me - it is mixing things that should be kept separate.
LINQ, and DLINQ, are very exciting improvements in removing the disconnect between the database and the middle/front tier, and given the tremendous importance of that it will be remarkable.
On the contrary, it is big step backwards. One area of intensive research in IT for years is setting up a portable high-performance disconnect between database and other tiers. For many applications the database is just a resource, and embedding query languages within code is a bad idea. If you look at transparent persistence systems like JDO and Hibernate, almost all of the data retrieval and processing can be done with no query language at all - optimised query languages tailored for specific databases can be generated in the background, and this querying can be very optimised indeed.
Embedded SQL in computer languages has been around for a very long time - take a look at SQL/J. There are more elegant ways to do things.
Also, I can't believe that MS C# is going to include support for MySQL, Postgresql etc, like Hibernate, NHibernate, JDO etc.
Try reading. You are still thinking in a limited space.
:)
Not a convincing argument
My thought space may be limited, but it is the space produced by being a scientist (and keeping up with current scientific ideas in a range of area) for 25 years.
Much of the criticism of global warming theories do come from limited thinking, as understanding how it works requires a good understanding of physics (solar and atmospheric), chemistry, biochemistry and statistics. Skepticism about global warming is usually (with a few honourable exceptions, such as Stott's work) based in ignorance of one or more of these aspects.
A natural evolved behavior? You mean like homosexuality? Hmmm... I wonder where that evolved from.
It is very common and natural in a large number of animals. Anyone who things homosexuality is purely a human activity is showing nothing more than ignorance of biology. In our close relatives the bonobo chimps, same-sex activity is as common as heterosexuality.
Things like washing our hands is counter intutive to a culture that doesn't know what germs are. I noticed you didn't comment on that.
Because you didn't mention it. There is a natural tendency to avoid dirt and disease because we have evolved a dislike of the smell of such things. You will notice that most higher animals naturally clean and groon themselves.
In a way, Evolution is like the temple hookers. You now can say, "I didn't mean to hurt you, baby. It's just my instinctive evolved behavior to create as many offspring as I can. It's not my fault I cheat. I just evolved that way."
This is also a terribly old-fashioned and ignorant view of evolution. I don't understand why such views are still held, unless it is based on a lazy lack of education about biology. If you are going to debate such matters, you need to keep up to date. You are putting forward 19th-century views.
Evolution does not dicate anything but the broadest aspects of behaviour. We are not robots - we have free will. In fact, we have evolved the ability to make choices, because the ability to intelligently decide what to do is good for survival!
No-one is rejecting God. What we are rejecting is a very limited human-devised idea of God. We are rejecting a deliberate attempt to stifle understanding.
If there is a God, he/she is awesome and beyond anything we can ever imagine. It seems very sad to me when people try to limit God to a creationist who tries to tell people what to do through an ambigous old book.
I get my sense of religious awe by examining the universe at it really is, which includes the wonders of billions of years of evolution - it is a far more impressive and breathtaking idea than anything the bible has to say.
I do it because I don't want people to be tormented in Hell for all of eternity. No credit is given to me.
Even the idea of Hell torment is now considered outdated and irrelevant by most major religions.
I have some respect for what you are trying to do, but I hope you can open your mind and see the wonders of things. Science is not a threat to religion - quite the contrary - it can reveal how amazing and inspiring things really are.
Darn typo. Anyway, what I meant to say that you hit the nail on the head. Science is a religion. It is a systems of belief that requires faith.
No. I was saying the exact opposite. Opponents of science mistakenly label it as faith. On the contrary, science is about not requiring faith; about testing belief.
You also admit that science uses schools to condition minds the same way a cult would.
No I don't. Science attempts to prevent the conditioning of minds by encouraging questioning and critical thinking.
The Jews were also forbidden to inbreed.
Expressing a natural evolved behaviour.
Leviticus gives a whole list of people you can't have sex with.
And what types of cloth you should not wear. And the conditions under which members of your family can be put to death (like for planting different crops side by side).
A good guide to how to live? I think not!
The Jews had no idea what genetics were. Good thing they were told what to do.
They were 'told what to do' by evolved instinct. Most species don't inbreed, and manage to avoid it without reading old books.
"That is because the science taught at school has to be simplified hugely. The version of almost any scientific idea taught at school is largely wrong. The idea is to open minds to the principles of science."
is another religion. Also you point out that school is a place to condition minds. Very much in the same way cults do.
I did not say school was a place to 'condition' minds. I said it was a place to open them up. Teaching the principles of science along with the ability to be critical and investigative is the exact opposite of the way cults work. Good education should protect against cults.
You are either daft or you don't understand what I've written.
:)
:)
Nice way to back an argument
Solar output works in cycles, not on solar flares. Either you are pushing the bounds of ignorance in pretending that solar output doesn't increase and decrease, or you don't understand how thermonuclear reaction works and how little we understand what goes on at the heart of our solar system.
Solar cycles last typically 11 years. A variation over that time is insufficient to explain decades of warming. Although there are longer term variations in solar output, these have (obviously!) been included in climate models in order to understand what is happening.
There are other ideas about how the Sun may be affecting climate, for example the Stott theory that variations in cosmic rays may be changing the amount of cloud cover. However, these ideas don't work in terms of explaining the level of global warming.
Actually you might want to look up microbiotic CO2 absorbtion.
There are many ways that CO2 can be absorbed - plant growth, planktonic uptake (with subsequent deposition on ocean floors). However, the nature of the uptakes is irrelevant, as the current build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere is clear evidence that absorption rates are unable to deal with our level of output.
Theory does not = an idea backed by facts.
Yes it is. That is exactly what it is.
Theory is the belief that an event may happen based upon predictions relative to current data available to the scientist, or scientific group doing the research.
No - that is called a 'hypothesis'.
I think you'd better just go back and understand science.
See my first statement
Well, I will point out that the various theories of Creation in the last few hundred years has been far more stable than any scientific theory put forward.
That is because ignorance is stable.
Perhaps it would be better if science types started using rhetoric like "We Think" or "We Believe" instead of "We now know..."
We 'science types' usually do. The problem is that if we start saying 'we believe' too much in public, our ideas get attacked as 'just another form of religion'.
I mean, the version of Darwinism that was taught in my school has pretty much been shot to heck, but my Biology teacher sure enough said, "This is how it happened."
That is because the science taught at school has to be simplified hugely. The version of almost any scientific idea taught at school is largely wrong. The idea is to open minds to the principles of science.
it's just that the theory of evolution itself has about as many holes as IE.
Such as?
Sure, right now it's the best idea going, but that doesn't mean it's the end of the conversation. Yet questioning it all usually does end the conversation.
I would be interested to know exactly what about evolution you would like to question? That organisms have changed over time? That such changes happen naturally? That the changes result in variety, and from that variety some organisms turn out to be better able to reproduce than others?
Evolution is a very, very simple idea. Once we realised that the Earth is old enough for small variations to have resulted in large changes over millions of years, evolution is pretty self-evident.
And yet, when fighting alternative models like "Intelligent Design", everyone pretends scientific findings were cast in stone.
Did they? When? I haven't noticed. Funny, but I assumed that the benefit of the scientific approach was that ideas are very definitely NOT cast in stone, unlike the dogma of Intelligent Design, which states that some things are just too complex to have ever evolved.
%60 of systems seem to be binary or trinary, not good for life to develope. Planets would need to be in the "goldylocks" zone where water is liquid much of the time. And there are about 5-6 other factors that would limit development of life elsewhere. There will still be a lot of good planets, but not anywhere near as many as you suggest.
These requirements are a myth. Even with the assumption that life requires liquid water, the idea liquid water only exists within a 'Goldilocks' or 'just right' zone based on distance from a Sun is clearly wrong - there is almost certainly liquid water under a layer of ice on Europa due to tidal heating. The same is likely on Callisto and it even is possible that the same conditions may arise on moons of Saturn.
As for binary or trinary star systems - providing the stars are sufficiently separated (by at least several light hours or days) there is plenty of room for stable planetary systems to form around each star.
Indeed. But that's the appeal of Ethanol as a fuel. You'll add CO2 sinks to match the CO2 production. Suddenly our cars would become working members of the eco-system instead of strip-miners. :-)
I agree. Use of any such bio-fuel is a good idea.
"But compared to the effect of (for example) transpiration by vegetation it is insignificant."
I think that's a difficult thing to predict at the moment. The CO2 production of cars was once thought to be insignificant, yet environmentalists today are chomping at the bit about it. We can't just throw out any effect as insignificant until we have hard data to back it up.
As a biologist, I think it is reasonable to assume that until there are huge clouds of steam rising above our cities we aren't going to have anything close to the impact on water vapour that rain forests have.
In any case, my point still stands. We don't get something for nothing. Energy usage will increase, and that will have effects on our environment. If we're smart, we'll reshape the environment to compensate. If we're not smart, we'll reshape it anyway after the effects devistate a few more major cities.
Well said! I agree.
Er, no. Not quite. Natural CO2 sinks adapt very slowly to increases.
That is my point.
There's still room for improvement, but it has helped.
It hasn't helped enough - which is obvious given the increase in atmospheric CO2.
One of the links I gave (I think it was the PDF I just pointed to) made the point that the very presence of humans has already affected the water vapor distribution in many urban areas.
I'm sure it has. But compared to the effect of (for example) transpiration by vegetation it is insignificant.