Would that be the vast majority of people that study the data, funded by grants they would lose without vowing fealty to evolution, or the vast majority of people that study the data, knowing that any discovery that threatens evolution will cost them tenure?
Let's go back 150 years or so. Nobody believed in evolution. If the whole thing is driven by some giant secular humanist conspiracy, exactly how did it get started? How did the theory make inroads against conventional wisdom and revolutionize biology? Clearly there's something to it other than the massive conspiracy of the Scientific Establishment/Jews/Freemasons/Federal Reserve. To be fair, let's go back 2100 years or so. Nobody believed in Jesus Christ. If the whole thing is driven by some religious conspiracy, exactly how did it get started? How did the theory make inroads against conventional wisdom and extreme persecution to revolutionize society? Clearly there's something to it other than the massive conspiracy of the religious establishment/Jews/Baptists/Catholics.
Because when it gets down to the highly theoretical stuff like this that no one will ever truly be able to prove, its not much different than religion.
You would be right, if and only if Hawking was talking about things that couldn't ever be proven one way or another. At that point, he wouldn't be doing any sort of physics anymore, he'd be somewhere off in that grey area where it borders philosophy and religion. (I call this area "Wankersville", but that's just me.)
However, there's a difference between something that cannot ever be proved, full stop, and something that can't be proved or disproved right now, due to the limitations of our understanding and our equipment.
There was a time, as recently as a hundred years ago, when debates about whether light was a particle or a wave would have seemed like wanking. However, they were not -- because we now have an (well, at least a partial) answer to that question, it's just that the theoreticians exceeded the reach of the experimentalists for a few centuries. Debates such as those, which get answered eventually by experimental evidence, are wholly different from debates which can never be settled (and, IMO, are a pointless waste of time that humanity should just move the hell along from).
It's pretty clear that Hawking realizes that what he's postulating can't be proven or disproven right now, but he's not putting it out there as an article of faith, either; he's saying that at some point in the future, between now and the heat death of the Universe, we'll probably be able to test it experimentally. That's a lot different than religion. Ignoring all of the spurious "we'll use a micro experiment to prove a macro concept" garbage, what you're suggesting is that someday we may be able to travel back in time to the beginning of the universe and watch it pop into existence. If, at that moment, you hear a thundering voice boom "Let there be light!" exactly what will that occurrence do to the uncrossable boundary between science and religion?
Unprovable but maybe-someday-provable is not any more science than religion. Most religious types will tell you that they will have proof of God someday too.
Complete lack of bias is nearly impossible to find, and that is not entirely the point. There are a couple of differentiators between organizations like the FSF and the other organizations in question:
1. They are not being paid to have the bias they have 2. They are not claiming to be an unbiased, independent third party
The problem with fake think tanks, astroturfers, etc. is that they are pretending to be an objective source when in reality they are being compensated to have the opinion that they do.
Actually, all new cell phones in the US are required to have internal GPS receivers so they can be located when dialing 911. All of the cell phones I've seen recently have a menu option for making this data available to services other than 911 so that location data can be pushed to mapping services, etc.
Many of the phones will show you your position (Lat/Lon) if you know how to get to the engineering/test menus -- unless you are stuck with Verizon (like I am) -- they handicap all of their phones in the false hope of being able to sell me the included features as an add-on later.
Sorry, but I must disagree. The stake are way too high with many companies for such overly simplistic, idealistic measures.
You really think that paying "good people" "well" will keep them from selling company secrets if: 1. The secrets are worth enough for the seller to retire 20 years early and move to a tropical location he/she could never hope to afford / enjoy after 20 more years of a "fair wage" 2. The "good person" in question gets into some trouble and needs cash. Don't make the mistake of assuming that a good person can't change, or that a good person will never find him/herself over a barrel - medical bills, actions of a spouse, children, etc. can play significant roles here. 3. The "good person" is really just a good actor. Do you seriously think an employer's screening process is 100% accurate? If a company intends to wait until an employee can be trusted before giving access, how do you know you haven't just hired a patient con?
In many cases, these corporate "jewels" can be worth millions to someone selling them and result in many millions more of damages if these jewels fall into the wrong hands.
The power lines in front of my parent's house used to be buried, but they aren't any more. The reason: these lines were buried along a length of built-up roadbed that approaches a bridge. Shifting rock and vibration from the roadbed caused the cables to fail frequently. The effort required to identify, dig up, and repair a break was significant.
The answer: dig up the cable and string it across telephone poles. The frequency of power outages has decreased, as has the time to repair an outage.
I used to think that "Any componant of any Linux distro can be replaced at will. When available, the distro will include several alternatives for the same basic functionality."
Then I tried to remove the useless scanner and fax components from my Linux box (no modem or scanner attached). It told me that I would also need to remove KDE since it depended on those two pieces.
IIRC, Gnome balks similarly when I attempt to uninstall any mail processing applications or postgres.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm a big Linux fan, but it is still far from perfect. Both KDE and Gnome have welded lots of useless bloat into their cores.
Fortunately, XFCE lets me escape some of the insanity....
If we want to bring maturity and wisdom into dress codes, then everyone should wear cheap slacks and polos. Tattoos and neckties alike are money wasted for appearance's sake -- neither serve any functional purpose.
Seriously, I thought geeks were terribly practical people that wore cheap, functional clothes. Why spend serious money on body art that can't be easily trashed when it becomes obsolete?
Come on guys, if you're going to profile Jeremy Allaire, you HAVE to mention that he became CTO of Macromedia when they bought Allaire, Inc. -- the company that gave us Cold Fusion (CFML -- not room temp H to He).
Maybe you should review the process you use for screening resumes. If its anything like the one most large companies use these days, it discards anyone that honestly protrays a solid skillset or good transferable job skills in favor of idiots that know how to pad a resume with more skillset buzzwords than they could truly learn in three lifetimes.
Of course, most of these resumes are crafted to please the ridiculous job descriptions mentioned in an earlier post. What an awful cycle...
You're assuming there was an accident, and that he was at fault. CLUE (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange) reports are reports containing CLAIMS information provided by cooperating insurance companies. These allow insurance companies to evaluate you not just on your driving record (they're available on homeowners policies as well), but your proclivity to file claims. Some people will file a claim every time their door gets dinged in a parking lot or their windshield get cracked by a rock. These things don't show up as at-fault incidents. Other people will only file a claim in the event of a major accident. Insurance companies don't like claims, regardless of who is a fault, so they use CLUE reports to preferentially rate people that are claims-averse.
So information that is not a matter of public record is indeed disclosed by CLUE reports.
1. Comparing some Adobe app to an OS is definitely apples (no pun intended) to oranges. Adobe works across many hardware configurations because the OS is doing its job.
2. You talk about 13 different Macs -- do I need to point out that all of them were designed and built by Apple? You know, the people that wrote the OS? Comparing 13 different Macs to 13 PC's with 3 or 4 different CPUs (Intel, AMD, Transmeta, etc), 2 or 3 different Graphics cards (Invidia, S3, ATI, etc), 12 or 13 different motherboards (too many to list) is definitely comparing apples to non-apples.
The mac may do it better , but not for the reasons you listed.
Actually, survival of the fittest has created more problems for evloution that it has solved. How does an intermediate form without the benefits of its fully evolved descendant qualify as fittest? For example: until an intermediate form that's not quite a bird can fly, it's a spindly-legged, slow moving, small boned, flightless animal. Flight is what makes birds survivable species. If it emerges over millions of years, there are millions of years where these animals are not going to be fittest.
This problem leaves us staring at the idea of punctuated equlibrium - birds came about suddenly as a result of a mutation. OK, so what are the chances that two mutants identical enough to produce offspring were born close enough together (both temporally and geographically) that they could mate? Now, what are the chances that this could happen once for each major group of species?
Of course, we're assuming that mutations could actually result in additional useful information being added to DNA -- sort of like a glitch in your PC's file system resulting in an extra chapter to your dissertation: a chapter that is contextually relevant, free of spelling errors, and within the guidelines provided by your committee. G
This is an excellent point. Why are evolutionsts so defensive about their theory? Is there some dark secret that they don't want us to know? Scientists (and other academics, for that matter) have come up with some seemingly ridiculous ideas in other areas and have been allowed to pursue them to the point that they became mainstream. Deconstruction was once considered ridiculous, now it's the standard in literary analysis.
These kinds of changes have been stifled in biology, geology, etc. for decades because scientists can't pose anything that undermines evolution without being excommunicated from the field. Yes. Excommunicated. Gee, that's a religious term, isn't it?
If science is going to be this pure study of what's out there, then it needs to be sincerely open to study of many different ideas. Have you ever honestly looked at the evidence for a global flood of immense proportions? It's scary.
Can you please tell me how to rigorously apply scientific theory to evolution? Point to one person that saw it happen. Point to a solid piece of evidence demonstrating an intermediate form (one tooth or leg bone does not count). Give me some probabilities on punctuated equilibrium that actually work. Point to a dating method that is provable in the laboratory without circular arguments or gross assumptions that things have always been the way they are now.
ID does not stand up to rigorous application of science. Neither does evolution. They both require a degree of faith, and a decision to believe it because there's no other option in the individual's mind.
I think you missed the point. The friend flys the new laptop to the UK from the US. He is issued a note upon leaving the US, but neither the laptop or the note is brought back to the US, so it doesn't matter whose name was on the note.
I personally think any tool that allows uneducated users to build their own database is like selling a length of rope with noose-tying instructions.
Most of the "simple, single-user databases" I have seen have been horrid monsters in serious need of redesign. I would rest easier at night if Access died a quick and painless death before I have to deal with another 1-table database with columns labeled "Field1" through "Field34."
While many things like basic web design and word processing are well-suited for software enabling a user to eliminate the paid computer help, databases are often the life blood of an organization, and handing this task off to idiot-enabling wizardware is a very bad practice.
Of course, all of this is IMHO. In case you're wondering, I do NOT design databases for a living.
Re:SCO's noncompliance started this!
on
SCOrched Earth
·
· Score: 1
Maybe IBM should take alesson from SCO. They could print of out 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 lines of code that never made it into anything marketable (or maybe just a bunch of old COBOL) and say "you're as likely to find problems in here as anywhere. Be sure to keep all of this confidential. Some of it is trade-secret."
Have fun SCO. Rent a building. Hire some security guards. You might finish reading the first 100,000 pages by the time you run out of money.
When will the consumers learn that the reason we're being given for buying something is not always the reason it's being sold the way it is?
Microsoft has sold the last several versions of all of its products by telling us how much more we could do with them. Truthfully, they were primarily produced to pack more cash into the MS vaults.
Can't you hear the product development guys? They're not saying "let's put together this new trusted computing thing to make computers more secure." They're saying "let's put together a system to lock users into our stuff and get Pheonix et al to make hardware that locks out Linux. We'll call it 'trusted computing' and sell it by telling everyone it will make things more secure."
3 steps:
1. Make the product that helps your business
2. Tell the consumers it will help their business
3. Profit.
This one really works.
Re:Linux written to compete with SCO?
on
SCO News Roundup
·
· Score: 5, Funny
It seems to me that the only ones currently competing with SCO's business model are ambulance-chasing lawyers.
Next round of news:
1. SCO patents litigation as a business model; changes name to Tort, Inc.
2. Tort, Inc. (formerly SCO) files suit on over 4000 law firms specializing in personal injury and workers' compensation cases, claiming patent infringement.
3. Tort, Inc. sues US Senate and House of Representatives, claiming tort reform bills designed to threaten innovation and excellence in their product line.
I'm sorry I confused you. The fiasco was not so much for the users that couldn't use the system, but for the MS marketing folks that had to admit over and over again that they couldn't get their zillion dollar Windows solution to duplicate what a bunch of FREE FreeBSD stuff was doing.
First: I wonder how long it will take MS to figure out how to move Google to Windows. Remember the fiasco surrounding Hotmail's move from BSD (I think) to Windows?
Second: I can see the top 5 results from a search for "Linux" now:
1. Independent study shows Windows more secure than Linux 2. How to lower TCO by switching from Linux to Windows 3. Linux for terrorists, says expert. 4. Nazis retake Germany, install Linux 5. Linux bad for innovatoin, says expert panel.
Of course, all of these links will be to "archived" versions of "authentic" articles on a MS server somewhere.
Seriously. If we can't trust the MS marketing engine to be honest about their products, how can we trust them to keep their grubby fingers out of search results?
Slashdot Mirror
Not that the US has some kind of monopoly on 'optical grade polycarbonate' but I'd love them to restrict access and see where it gets them.
Hint: All fiber used for telco/datacomms infrastructure is made from glass.
The concern is not for optical fiber, but for CD / DVD / BlueRay discs, which are optical grade polycarbonate.
Let's go back 150 years or so. Nobody believed in evolution. If the whole thing is driven by some giant secular humanist conspiracy, exactly how did it get started? How did the theory make inroads against conventional wisdom and revolutionize biology? Clearly there's something to it other than the massive conspiracy of the Scientific Establishment/Jews/Freemasons/Federal Reserve. To be fair, let's go back 2100 years or so. Nobody believed in Jesus Christ. If the whole thing is driven by some religious conspiracy, exactly how did it get started? How did the theory make inroads against conventional wisdom and extreme persecution to revolutionize society? Clearly there's something to it other than the massive conspiracy of the religious establishment/Jews/Baptists/Catholics.
Isn't there?
You would be right, if and only if Hawking was talking about things that couldn't ever be proven one way or another. At that point, he wouldn't be doing any sort of physics anymore, he'd be somewhere off in that grey area where it borders philosophy and religion. (I call this area "Wankersville", but that's just me.)
However, there's a difference between something that cannot ever be proved, full stop, and something that can't be proved or disproved right now, due to the limitations of our understanding and our equipment.
There was a time, as recently as a hundred years ago, when debates about whether light was a particle or a wave would have seemed like wanking. However, they were not -- because we now have an (well, at least a partial) answer to that question, it's just that the theoreticians exceeded the reach of the experimentalists for a few centuries. Debates such as those, which get answered eventually by experimental evidence, are wholly different from debates which can never be settled (and, IMO, are a pointless waste of time that humanity should just move the hell along from).
It's pretty clear that Hawking realizes that what he's postulating can't be proven or disproven right now, but he's not putting it out there as an article of faith, either; he's saying that at some point in the future, between now and the heat death of the Universe, we'll probably be able to test it experimentally. That's a lot different than religion. Ignoring all of the spurious "we'll use a micro experiment to prove a macro concept" garbage, what you're suggesting is that someday we may be able to travel back in time to the beginning of the universe and watch it pop into existence. If, at that moment, you hear a thundering voice boom "Let there be light!" exactly what will that occurrence do to the uncrossable boundary between science and religion?
Unprovable but maybe-someday-provable is not any more science than religion. Most religious types will tell you that they will have proof of God someday too.
Complete lack of bias is nearly impossible to find, and that is not entirely the point. There are a couple of differentiators between organizations like the FSF and the other organizations in question:
1. They are not being paid to have the bias they have
2. They are not claiming to be an unbiased, independent third party
The problem with fake think tanks, astroturfers, etc. is that they are pretending to be an objective source when in reality they are being compensated to have the opinion that they do.
Actually, all new cell phones in the US are required to have internal GPS receivers so they can be located when dialing 911. All of the cell phones I've seen recently have a menu option for making this data available to services other than 911 so that location data can be pushed to mapping services, etc.
Many of the phones will show you your position (Lat/Lon) if you know how to get to the engineering/test menus -- unless you are stuck with Verizon (like I am) -- they handicap all of their phones in the false hope of being able to sell me the included features as an add-on later.
Sorry, but I must disagree. The stake are way too high with many companies for such overly simplistic, idealistic measures.
You really think that paying "good people" "well" will keep them from selling company secrets if:
1. The secrets are worth enough for the seller to retire 20 years early and move to a tropical location he/she could never hope to afford / enjoy after 20 more years of a "fair wage"
2. The "good person" in question gets into some trouble and needs cash. Don't make the mistake of assuming that a good person can't change, or that a good person will never find him/herself over a barrel - medical bills, actions of a spouse, children, etc. can play significant roles here.
3. The "good person" is really just a good actor. Do you seriously think an employer's screening process is 100% accurate? If a company intends to wait until an employee can be trusted before giving access, how do you know you haven't just hired a patient con?
In many cases, these corporate "jewels" can be worth millions to someone selling them and result in many millions more of damages if these jewels fall into the wrong hands.
The power lines in front of my parent's house used to be buried, but they aren't any more. The reason: these lines were buried along a length of built-up roadbed that approaches a bridge. Shifting rock and vibration from the roadbed caused the cables to fail frequently. The effort required to identify, dig up, and repair a break was significant.
The answer: dig up the cable and string it across telephone poles. The frequency of power outages has decreased, as has the time to repair an outage.
I used to think that "Any componant of any Linux distro can be replaced at will. When available, the distro will include several alternatives for the same basic functionality."
Then I tried to remove the useless scanner and fax components from my Linux box (no modem or scanner attached). It told me that I would also need to remove KDE since it depended on those two pieces.
IIRC, Gnome balks similarly when I attempt to uninstall any mail processing applications or postgres.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm a big Linux fan, but it is still far from perfect. Both KDE and Gnome have welded lots of useless bloat into their cores.
Fortunately, XFCE lets me escape some of the insanity....
If we want to bring maturity and wisdom into dress codes, then everyone should wear cheap slacks and polos. Tattoos and neckties alike are money wasted for appearance's sake -- neither serve any functional purpose.
Seriously, I thought geeks were terribly practical people that wore cheap, functional clothes. Why spend serious money on body art that can't be easily trashed when it becomes obsolete?
Come on guys, if you're going to profile Jeremy Allaire, you HAVE to mention that he became CTO of Macromedia when they bought Allaire, Inc. -- the company that gave us Cold Fusion (CFML -- not room temp H to He).
Maybe you don't have to, but you should.
Maybe you should review the process you use for screening resumes. If its anything like the one most large companies use these days, it discards anyone that honestly protrays a solid skillset or good transferable job skills in favor of idiots that know how to pad a resume with more skillset buzzwords than they could truly learn in three lifetimes.
Of course, most of these resumes are crafted to please the ridiculous job descriptions mentioned in an earlier post. What an awful cycle...
You're assuming there was an accident, and that he was at fault. CLUE (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange) reports are reports containing CLAIMS information provided by cooperating insurance companies. These allow insurance companies to evaluate you not just on your driving record (they're available on homeowners policies as well), but your proclivity to file claims. Some people will file a claim every time their door gets dinged in a parking lot or their windshield get cracked by a rock. These things don't show up as at-fault incidents. Other people will only file a claim in the event of a major accident. Insurance companies don't like claims, regardless of who is a fault, so they use CLUE reports to preferentially rate people that are claims-averse.
So information that is not a matter of public record is indeed disclosed by CLUE reports.
1. Install web server
2. Post link to it on Slashdot
I have a couple of problems with your "logic."
1. Comparing some Adobe app to an OS is definitely apples (no pun intended) to oranges. Adobe works across many hardware configurations because the OS is doing its job.
2. You talk about 13 different Macs -- do I need to point out that all of them were designed and built by Apple? You know, the people that wrote the OS? Comparing 13 different Macs to 13 PC's with 3 or 4 different CPUs (Intel, AMD, Transmeta, etc), 2 or 3 different Graphics cards (Invidia, S3, ATI, etc), 12 or 13 different motherboards (too many to list) is definitely comparing apples to non-apples.
The mac may do it better , but not for the reasons you listed.
Actually, survival of the fittest has created more problems for evloution that it has solved. How does an intermediate form without the benefits of its fully evolved descendant qualify as fittest? For example: until an intermediate form that's not quite a bird can fly, it's a spindly-legged, slow moving, small boned, flightless animal. Flight is what makes birds survivable species. If it emerges over millions of years, there are millions of years where these animals are not going to be fittest.
This problem leaves us staring at the idea of punctuated equlibrium - birds came about suddenly as a result of a mutation. OK, so what are the chances that two mutants identical enough to produce offspring were born close enough together (both temporally and geographically) that they could mate? Now, what are the chances that this could happen once for each major group of species?
Of course, we're assuming that mutations could actually result in additional useful information being added to DNA -- sort of like a glitch in your PC's file system resulting in an extra chapter to your dissertation: a chapter that is contextually relevant, free of spelling errors, and within the guidelines provided by your committee. G
This is an excellent point. Why are evolutionsts so defensive about their theory? Is there some dark secret that they don't want us to know? Scientists (and other academics, for that matter) have come up with some seemingly ridiculous ideas in other areas and have been allowed to pursue them to the point that they became mainstream. Deconstruction was once considered ridiculous, now it's the standard in literary analysis.
These kinds of changes have been stifled in biology, geology, etc. for decades because scientists can't pose anything that undermines evolution without being excommunicated from the field. Yes. Excommunicated. Gee, that's a religious term, isn't it?
If science is going to be this pure study of what's out there, then it needs to be sincerely open to study of many different ideas. Have you ever honestly looked at the evidence for a global flood of immense proportions? It's scary.
No, it actually hasn't.
So there.
Can you please tell me how to rigorously apply scientific theory to evolution? Point to one person that saw it happen. Point to a solid piece of evidence demonstrating an intermediate form (one tooth or leg bone does not count). Give me some probabilities on punctuated equilibrium that actually work. Point to a dating method that is provable in the laboratory without circular arguments or gross assumptions that things have always been the way they are now.
ID does not stand up to rigorous application of science. Neither does evolution. They both require a degree of faith, and a decision to believe it because there's no other option in the individual's mind.
I think you missed the point. The friend flys the new laptop to the UK from the US. He is issued a note upon leaving the US, but neither the laptop or the note is brought back to the US, so it doesn't matter whose name was on the note.
I personally think any tool that allows uneducated users to build their own database is like selling a length of rope with noose-tying instructions.
Most of the "simple, single-user databases" I have seen have been horrid monsters in serious need of redesign. I would rest easier at night if Access died a quick and painless death before I have to deal with another 1-table database with columns labeled "Field1" through "Field34."
While many things like basic web design and word processing are well-suited for software enabling a user to eliminate the paid computer help, databases are often the life blood of an organization, and handing this task off to idiot-enabling wizardware is a very bad practice.
Of course, all of this is IMHO. In case you're wondering, I do NOT design databases for a living.
Maybe IBM should take alesson from SCO. They could print of out 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 lines of code that never made it into anything marketable (or maybe just a bunch of old COBOL) and say "you're as likely to find problems in here as anywhere. Be sure to keep all of this confidential. Some of it is trade-secret."
Have fun SCO. Rent a building. Hire some security guards. You might finish reading the first 100,000 pages by the time you run out of money.
When will the consumers learn that the reason we're being given for buying something is not always the reason it's being sold the way it is?
Microsoft has sold the last several versions of all of its products by telling us how much more we could do with them. Truthfully, they were primarily produced to pack more cash into the MS vaults.
Can't you hear the product development guys? They're not saying "let's put together this new trusted computing thing to make computers more secure." They're saying "let's put together a system to lock users into our stuff and get Pheonix et al to make hardware that locks out Linux. We'll call it 'trusted computing' and sell it by telling everyone it will make things more secure."
3 steps:
1. Make the product that helps your business
2. Tell the consumers it will help their business
3. Profit.
This one really works.
It seems to me that the only ones currently competing with SCO's business model are ambulance-chasing lawyers.
Next round of news:
1. SCO patents litigation as a business model; changes name to Tort, Inc.
2. Tort, Inc. (formerly SCO) files suit on over 4000 law firms specializing in personal injury and workers' compensation cases, claiming patent infringement.
3. Tort, Inc. sues US Senate and House of Representatives, claiming tort reform bills designed to threaten innovation and excellence in their product line.
I'm sorry I confused you. The fiasco was not so much for the users that couldn't use the system, but for the MS marketing folks that had to admit over and over again that they couldn't get their zillion dollar Windows solution to duplicate what a bunch of FREE FreeBSD stuff was doing.
First: I wonder how long it will take MS to figure out how to move Google to Windows. Remember the fiasco surrounding Hotmail's move from BSD (I think) to Windows?
Second: I can see the top 5 results from a search for "Linux" now:
1. Independent study shows Windows more secure than Linux
2. How to lower TCO by switching from Linux to Windows
3. Linux for terrorists, says expert.
4. Nazis retake Germany, install Linux
5. Linux bad for innovatoin, says expert panel.
Of course, all of these links will be to "archived" versions of "authentic" articles on a MS server somewhere.
Seriously. If we can't trust the MS marketing engine to be honest about their products, how can we trust them to keep their grubby fingers out of search results?
At least we'll still have alltheweb.com.