Just like the GPL, I suspect this copyright is more about derivative works. Unlike the GPL, I suspect the copyright is to provide some leverage against a break-away church making their own modifications (forking?) and carrying on under the LDS name.
artists need to know they can earn a living worthy enough to create works. Yes, they can earn a great deal of money playing live shows, but do you honestly realize how hard it is on a person to tour? There have been professional musicians since long before the concept of copyright was dreamt of. They made money from creating music and performing it. The very best were the mega rockstars of their day. Mozart, Liszt, Paganini to name a few.
Not a lawyer here, but my reading of the article suggests there was no and will be no discovery. They're awaiting summary judgement, which means the facts of the case are not in dispute by either party. The judge will render a decision as a matter of law based on the stipulated facts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_property
The law now broadly distinguishes between real property (land and anything affixed to it) and personal property (everything else, e.g., clothing, furniture, money). The conceptual difference was between immovable property, which would transfer title along with the land, and movable property, which a person would retain title to. (The word is not derived from the notion of land having historically been "royal" property.[citation needed] The word royal -- and its Spanish cognate real -- come from the unrelated Latin word rex, meaning king.) (emphasis added)
Suprnova was mentioned above but I think it bears mentioning that the aftermath of that crackdown produced a number of high quality torrent sites. Before that, it was Suprnova and...well...not much.
Today there are enough high-ish traffic high-ish quality trackers that I can say I wouldn't miss TPB too much if it were to get shut down. I really hope it doesn't and, if it did, I would have a drink in its honour, but life would go on, you know?
Killing Suprnova produced the hydra that is virtually unkillable now. It used to have one head, now it has hundreds and there is no hope in shutting down all the trackers. It really looks like a stupendous waste of time, effort, and resources to even try. I honestly don't know how they can justify the expense.
Now, what really worries me is how they've been chiseling away at the ISPs. They've really done a great job at bringing net neutrality to its knees. Look at the situation with Comcast and AT&T. I have two broadband ISPs where I am (one cable, one DSL like almost everyone here). The cable ISP has made torrenting useless through throttling bandwidth available for seeding (good luck maintaining a ratio on an invite-only member site) down to a trickle. The DSL provider, on the other hand, chokes download bandwidth for P2P applications down to about 30KB during primetime.
My prediction for 2008: ISPs will soon offer "legit" DRM-encumbered downloads from VSPs (video service providers...I just made that up so that's copyright by me, biyatches) for a small premium while continuing to ratchet down the bandwidth available to bittorrent traffic. The "legit" traffic will travel over a separate, dedicated, high capacity, PRIVATE network built through a partnership between ISPs and VSPs (MPAA member subsidiaries), paid for in part by the premiums and the VSPs.
Is it too late to patent that and sue them if they try it?
The point is that the world does not need religion, it is evil and serves no purpose but to perpetuate its self and get in the way of rational, proper thinking. There is a flaw in the logic. The argument here is that religion is inherently evil and morally corrupt.
While that is sometimes the case, one would be hard pressed to prove it. Not because it's unprovable, but because it's not true.
Rather, I would suggest that humans perpetrate evil, moral corruption, and crimes against humanity. While religion is sometimes a convenient cloak of justification, it is not the ultimate causal factor. Humans ourselves are. Absent religion, we are quite adept coming up with other reasons to justify our behavior. While some of the most evil, destructive regimes in history have been religious, many have been and continue to be thoroughly atheistic in nature.
The culprits here are not the cable companies, it's people who believe that "unlimited bandwidth" entitles them to running BitTorrent and Joost 24/7, in clear violation of the actual TOS. I'm having a flashback to 10 years ago when I worked at a dialup ISP. We offered unlimited "personally attended" internet access, which meant that the fine print stipulated that you had to be sitting there using it. Of course this was in the early days of 56k modems and mp3s were just becoming the rage. The problem was the pricing structure didn't scale to people who would leave their rig connected 24/7 to download all those juicy new tunes.
Cue the hand wringing and blaming the cusomer for "abusing" the TOS. Bring the hammer down hard and fast...those 5% who tie up our lines 24/7 cost us money and cause busy signals for the grandmothers who make us money. Find a reason to terminate their service. Drop their connections. Do something.
What we were trying to do was squeeze the customers' needs into our business model. I think that was a big mistake. Instead of focusing on innovation and finding a way to service those customers, we let the competition do it. Cue the ads for DSL and (later) cable modem service. Connected 24/7 and fast, just like the customers wanted. Welcome to negative growth territory for the dialup business.
The lesson I took from that is to watch the top 5% and find a way to service them. They will show you what the masses will be demanding 5-10 years from now. If you don't find a way to service their needs, your competition will. And they will eat the rest of your lunch, because those 5% are the leaders who tell all their family and friends they should terminate and follow them over to Beulah Land where company XYZ is doing it faster, better, and cheaper, and you don't have to deal with the service Nazis threatening to terminate or charge extra.
I had a job working for Computer City in Canada back in the day when it was owned by Future Shop. Did we "peek" at what people had on their computers when it was in service? Sure.. sometimes we did, sometimes we didn't. If he had a folder on the desktop called "here's me having sex with my wife" - who wouldn't want to open it and see what's inside? I've held jobs that gave me access to thousands of ISP client mailboxes, hundreds of thousands of confidential customer billing records, corporate financial data for multi-million dollar corporations, and human resources files on thousands of employees. Anybody would be tempted but ethics should kick in at that point.
I take this very seriously. I do not understand why our profession has no required body of membership with a code of ethics and conduct that covers this. There needs to be some way of properly board-certifying people to work in this field, something akin to the Bar Associations or College of Physicians and Surgeons. Even teachers and pilots can have their licenses revoked if they are found to be violating codes of conduct and ethics, so why not technicians and technologists?
No offense, but I wish there were some way professional technicians and analysts could differentiate ourselves from, well, slimeballs who like to trawl through private data for giggles.
If the technician planted evidence on the computer, this will be clearly shown by a forensic examination of the hard drive. There is almost no chance someone would be able to successfully fake things well enough not to stand out as a frame-up.
The scary part is you and others actually believe this statement. I'm quite certain that there are several thousand people reading this, myself included, who'd be able to pull off this sort of frame job.
It's not rocket science. The bits on the drive, including filesystem metadata, are completely under the control of whoever posesses it.
God help you if you piss off a skilled grudge-holding technician with access to your hard drive.
home use rights for MSOffice are included in a lot of enterprise agreements that medium to large businesses sign with Microsoft.
For $35 (and an authorization code from the company I work for), I can sign up right now and get a copy of MSOffice Pro 2007 (license key and media) from Microsoft. You probably can too. Check with your volume license administrator.
While you're at it, as him/her what other Software Assurance Benefits you're entitled to. There are lots of other perks available too.
you clearly have done the research and are uniquely qualified to know all about me and my background and my level of education. Hopefully you apply better techniques in your scientific endeavours.
If you don't know about any of the massive suppositions I'm talking about, I suggest you spend some time considering all perspectives, availing yourself of the available data, and forming a balanced opinion yourself.
The guesses are all I really have a problem with. No, not testable hypotheses. Guesses. It's bad science. I'm shocked that I have to tell you people that.
The real question is, why do we single out Evolution? Could it be because it ruffles the feathers of some theists?
since you asked, I couldn't care less what ruffles anyone's feathers, otherwise I wouldn't be on Slashdot, poking at the the precioussss and making people get emotional. But this isn't about me or any one person in particular, it's about critically examining all evidence and questioning all interpretations. That's supposed to be a critical component of the scientific method.
The reason I pick on evolution is that it's a myth that purports to be fact. It's not (yet proven). Science is terribly important; most importantly, it should be applied strictly. What I do assert is that the grand over-arching evolutionary model of creation is on far shakier legs than the its biggest proponents care to admit, and requires massive leaps of faith to swallow whole.
I guess we're supposed to be skeptical about everything, just not Evolution.
Why should you be? Are you a scientist? Do you make it a habit of reading about scientific theories and deciding if you are convinced or not? If so, why should anyone care if a layperson, who probably knows very little of the technical details, is convinced? Unless of, course, you goal is to politicize science... which is exactly what ID proponents are trying to do. They don't care about the actual research. They just want to use the political and judicial systems to insert their religous beliefs into schools where they've already been kicked out, and rightfully so.
which of us is politicizing here? I thought we were discussing the reliability of interpretations of available data but if we're heading into ad hominem attack land, this thread's dead.
I'm afraid you don't understand the scientific process. We need theories to guide were we look for evidence. We come up with a theory, theory suggests a course of inquiry, the results either confirm or refute the theory. Rinse. Repeat. You don't just sit around debating in philosophy class about potential theories until one of them just spontaneously shows itself to be absolutely true.
I think you're confusing "dogmatic theory" with "testable hypothesis". One belongs in philosophy, the other is absolutely sound scientific method.
Foraminifera are tiny animals that live in the ocean and they grow wonderful little mineral skeletons. As they die, they rain down on to the sea floor sediment by the millions. It is easy as pie to pull up a limitless supply of Foraminifera just by pulling up a sediment core. And the sediment built up continuously over a hundred million years and more. A limitless supply of Foraminifera fossils in perfectly continuous almost day-by-day layering up and down the sediment core.
That may or may not be true. All we know is what's there *now*. It's an assumption that layers of a core were formed uniformly over millions of years. It's a logical assumption and maybe even a reasonable one, but an assumption nonetheless. Anyway, let's assume it to be true to some extent. You still have Foraminifera all the way down. There's no question that minor variations occur within a species, even today. But there's no evidence that a Foraminifera was given rise to by a non-Foraminifera. It can't even be said for certain that the Foraminifera you have gave rise to anything at all, specifically speaking.
After a mass extinction the rate of evolution speeds up. With so many species decimated, there are vacant ecological niches and there is less inter-species competition. The rate of mutation is probably the same, but the rate of diversification increases because a poorly adapted mutant is moving into vacant fertile ecological territory, where as previously out would have been outcompeted and exterminated by some better adapted species in that direction. So the population diversifies faster spreading in different variations with no competing species to push back. And with that accelerated population diversification comes accelerated speciation into two or more child species.
You suppose that the rate of evolution must speed up. It can't be assumed that those organisms that fill the vacant niches did not exist before the mass extinction. Or maybe you do assume they existed at the time of the mass extinction, but it can't be assumed that they came from other non-substantially-similar organisms. If a similar mass-extinction event took place today within a localized area, one would expect the area to become repopulated within a fairly short period of time. That's not evidence for evolution, it's just opportunism, and it doesn't say anything about who gave rise to whom.
Believe it or not, the field is filled with guesses and assumptions like this. Once you start looking at them, you really start to wonder how far off base current Evolution theory is.
If you find yourself getting angry at people who don't accept your leaps of faith, stop to consider where your convincer is. If your reaction is anger and frustration at being challenged, there's a good chance that your convincer is emotion-based rather than good sound reasoning.
Argumentum ad Ignorantiam: Fallacy of taking a statement not provably false and implying that it is therefore true
both sides are guilty of that. The fundamental problem is not in poking holes in the other side's arguments; it is in proving one's own side to be correct. ID can't do that as the existence of God is unprovable.
However, Evolutionary theory is chock full of suppositions and conclusions that also can't be proven true because we don't have the evidence. Because we don't find any transitional fossils, we have to conclude that they must have existed but the evidence is lost to antiquity. We can't prove that life spontaneously created itself in the "primordial soup" because it took millions and millions of years so it *must* have happened that way. Although we don't find evidence of life branching from a simple life form and growing more specialized over time, it *must* have happened that way.
From what I hope has been a fairly objective analysis, I've concluded:
IDs say: God *must* have done it because, although we don't have all the objective the proof, the alternative is unthinkable!
Evolutionists say: Evolution *must* have done it because, although we don't have all the objective proof, the alternative is unthinkable!
To accept either theory, you have to make a whole lot of assumptions, educated guesses, and intuition. That makes both theories faith-based and neither more worthy than the other. What *is* important and worthy of study is the available evidence, and it surely doesn't favor one view over another when viewed objectively (my opinion from reviewed a large number of arguments from both sides). If it were a court case, I'd dismiss both sides without prejudice.
That why, to me, it makes sense that students should be socialized to all available evidence regarding how the evidence came to be. Perhaps then, and only then, should the theories be put forth. But they both belong in philosophy class, not biology.
It was my understanding that, since the Disney/Pixar deal, Jobs is the largest single shareholder in the Disney corporation. If his influence extends to the other Disney brands such as Miramax, ABC, Buena Vista, Caravan, and Touchstone, I would say he commands a lot of power.
Regardless, we should all be keeping an eye on Jobs. It's only a matter of time before he consolidates his power base into the single largest converged media empire on the planet.
Am cancelling my rogers account and going with DSL within two weeks because of this.
Tech support is denying everything and customer service us just as much in the dark.
See http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rogers for more info
I don't think carriers should be in the business of selling cell phones anyway.
What do you think the landscape would look like if you had to buy your PC from your internet provider?
Things sure would be a lot more interesting if the cell phone industry was driven by the innovation of the manufacturers, and vice versa. Imagine if the cell phone companies were under pressure by the consumers to support new whizbang features of the phone you just bought at Best Buy rather than just being forcefed whatever phones they choose to support and are available with a contract.
First, if you really want a good grasp of special relativity without doing a physics degree, get ahold of Modern Physics for Non-Scientists, a lecture series by Prof. Richard Wolfson. He does a remarkable job of relating this confusing subject in terms that anybody can follow.
The bottom line of the equation is that mass and energy are equivalent. It's a result of special relativity. Interestingly, the equation was not part of his original paper on special relativity.
All special relativity really says is that the laws of physics (including the speed of light) are the same for everybody no matter where they are or how fast they're going. Special relativity only deals with the point of view of people going in a straight line at a constant speed with respect to another person who's also going in a straight line at a constant speed (a.k.a. observers in reference frames in relative uniform motion).
Relativity says neither observer has the right to say they're stationary and the other is moving. They're both equally valid points of view. If you and I are both on rocket ships travelling past each other, to me it looks like I'm standing still and you're whizzing past me. To you, it looks like you're standing still and I'm whizzing past you. We're both right. If we, in our rocket ships, do experiments to measure the speed of light, we'll arrive at the same value (C).
If you follow these thoughts out, you come to the conclusion that in order to arrive at the same value of C in all reference frames (which you must because there's no reference frame that's really REALLY at rest), time and/or space must be different depending on your point of view (and there's no point of view that's right because relativity teaches us that all reference frames in uniform motion are equally good for doing physics experiments).
How this all relates to the energy-mass equivalence comes from some formulas that talk about my observations about you (whizzing past me at a speed that is a significant fraction of C) with respect to your length, mass, and how fast I observe your time to be going (remember, you do not make the same observations about yourself. We only make odd observations about each other because we're moving with respect to each other). As you whiz past me, your length looks to be contracted, your time is running slow relative to mine, and (if I could weigh you) you would be really heavy compared to the same volume of matter that isn't moving relative to me.
the fun part is you can make exactly the same observations and calculations about me. It seems like a paradox but it's not. It's too much to go into here but you'll have to trust me on that:)
It's really hard to prove without showing you any formulas or doing any math, but I hope it suffices to say that the differences that I observe about you are due to the difference in energy between our respective frames of reference. And it comes out to be what Einstein predicted. Energy and Mass are equivalent measures with the conversion factor of C thrown in.
It may be of some use to you to know that the idea of energy and mass being equivalent can be derived a number of ways, and actually was derived independent of relativity before and after Einstein.
By the way, this doesn't just talk about nuclear energy. The principle still holds true for non-nuclear energy reactions. If you burn a candle and capture all the soot, carbon dioxide, all the stuff that comes out after the chemical reaction, you will find that it weighs just a tiny bit less than the wax and wick before they were burned. A charged battery has more mass than an empty one, albeit by an extremely tiny amount.
You can also make particles of matter out of energy, and you can make energy out of particles of mass.
To me, the beauty of all of this is it all comes from the single notion that there's no one point that gets to claim that it's really _really_ REALLY at rest.:)
I used this same argument successfully a number of times to beat down my bosses when they tried to put me on-call 24/7 for free.
It goes like this:
Being on call comes with an expectation of availability, which also means I'm no longer free to do what I like with my free time. It's like insurance in that there's somebody available "in case something happens." Insurance is something companies readily pay for and it provides a tangible benefit to the company in risk mitigation. At the end of the year, however, you don't get your money back if you don't have to use it.
Now, the company has the right to tell me what I can and can't do while I'm on the company's dime. Conversely, if it's not on the company's dime, they have no right to regulate my activities.
What you're really asking for is to have me work an indefinite number of extra hours for the same pay. If I came to you and suggested I unilaterally decided I would work fewer hours, as I deemed necessary, for the same pay, you would find the concept laughably unacceptable.
While 24/7 support is not what I agreed to and isn't covered under the current terms of employment, I understand that needs change, and that's perfectly ok. So if there needs to be a change in the expectation of availability outside the 44 hour work week, we need to get those put down in writing so we all understand what the expecatation is, and the new agreement can be reviewed and signed off. Otherwise, we have no way of understanding what the next steps are if, say, a call comes in when I'm out of town (or drunk on a Saturday night) and, therefore, unavailable.
So there are two ways we can proceed. I don't mind carrying a cell phone at all, but calls will have to be answered and/or returned as my availability allows. Otherwise, we can formalize a new agreement with an on-call rotation and compensation with a clear understanding of what the expecation of availability is during those times.
I developed this after going through hell in a position where I agreed implicitly to 24/7 availability without a formal agreement and no compensation for after-hours calls (I wasn't paid for them and was still expected to put in my regular 9 hours regardless).
I think the key here is to be reasonable. I don't mind at all coming in if there's an emergency and I'm available, but I don't put up with crap if I'm not, and any extra hours are taken off at the end of the week (right now I'm on salary, but in an hourly position I submit the O/T to be paid out).
Now, I understand that extremely unreasonable employers wouldn't go for this argument, and my advice would be to look for other work immediately. However, most reasonable bosses will agree and start back-pedalling when you start asking questions like, "do I have to ask for permission to leave the area? What happens if I want to go to a party and have a few drinks? Will I be disciplined if the phone rings at 3am and I don't hear it?" If you don't get the answers you like, ask them to put it in writing. Most of the time, they won't because they know what will happen if they do. Companies are very leery of the power of documentation, also known as "discoverable evidence".
I guess what it all boils down to is, don't just agree implicitly by grumbling about it and doing it anyway. Politely and reasonably negotiate.
I don't think that's a fake accent. In the "behind the scenes" specials he still speaks with a thick accent. I could still be wrong, but...
from TV.com:
Birthplace: Paisley, Scotland (Raised in Canada)
Height 5' 10" (1.78 m) The sixth of seven children, Paul's family emigrated to Canada from Paisley, Scotland when he was just 2 years old. His family spent time in Ireland before moving to Canada and returned to Paisley when Paul was 11 for 3 and a half years. Paul studied both education (major) and theatre (minor) at University, and also got involved in various sports including...
Slashdot Mirror
Just like the GPL, I suspect this copyright is more about derivative works. Unlike the GPL, I suspect the copyright is to provide some leverage against a break-away church making their own modifications (forking?) and carrying on under the LDS name.
Not a lawyer here, but my reading of the article suggests there was no and will be no discovery. They're awaiting summary judgement, which means the facts of the case are not in dispute by either party. The judge will render a decision as a matter of law based on the stipulated facts.
Suprnova was mentioned above but I think it bears mentioning that the aftermath of that crackdown produced a number of high quality torrent sites. Before that, it was Suprnova and...well...not much.
Today there are enough high-ish traffic high-ish quality trackers that I can say I wouldn't miss TPB too much if it were to get shut down. I really hope it doesn't and, if it did, I would have a drink in its honour, but life would go on, you know?
Killing Suprnova produced the hydra that is virtually unkillable now. It used to have one head, now it has hundreds and there is no hope in shutting down all the trackers. It really looks like a stupendous waste of time, effort, and resources to even try. I honestly don't know how they can justify the expense.
Now, what really worries me is how they've been chiseling away at the ISPs. They've really done a great job at bringing net neutrality to its knees. Look at the situation with Comcast and AT&T. I have two broadband ISPs where I am (one cable, one DSL like almost everyone here). The cable ISP has made torrenting useless through throttling bandwidth available for seeding (good luck maintaining a ratio on an invite-only member site) down to a trickle. The DSL provider, on the other hand, chokes download bandwidth for P2P applications down to about 30KB during primetime.
My prediction for 2008: ISPs will soon offer "legit" DRM-encumbered downloads from VSPs (video service providers...I just made that up so that's copyright by me, biyatches) for a small premium while continuing to ratchet down the bandwidth available to bittorrent traffic. The "legit" traffic will travel over a separate, dedicated, high capacity, PRIVATE network built through a partnership between ISPs and VSPs (MPAA member subsidiaries), paid for in part by the premiums and the VSPs.
Is it too late to patent that and sue them if they try it?
While that is sometimes the case, one would be hard pressed to prove it. Not because it's unprovable, but because it's not true.
Rather, I would suggest that humans perpetrate evil, moral corruption, and crimes against humanity. While religion is sometimes a convenient cloak of justification, it is not the ultimate causal factor. Humans ourselves are. Absent religion, we are quite adept coming up with other reasons to justify our behavior. While some of the most evil, destructive regimes in history have been religious, many have been and continue to be thoroughly atheistic in nature.
To sum up, correlation is not causality.
Cue the hand wringing and blaming the cusomer for "abusing" the TOS. Bring the hammer down hard and fast...those 5% who tie up our lines 24/7 cost us money and cause busy signals for the grandmothers who make us money. Find a reason to terminate their service. Drop their connections. Do something.
What we were trying to do was squeeze the customers' needs into our business model. I think that was a big mistake. Instead of focusing on innovation and finding a way to service those customers, we let the competition do it. Cue the ads for DSL and (later) cable modem service. Connected 24/7 and fast, just like the customers wanted. Welcome to negative growth territory for the dialup business.
The lesson I took from that is to watch the top 5% and find a way to service them. They will show you what the masses will be demanding 5-10 years from now. If you don't find a way to service their needs, your competition will. And they will eat the rest of your lunch, because those 5% are the leaders who tell all their family and friends they should terminate and follow them over to Beulah Land where company XYZ is doing it faster, better, and cheaper, and you don't have to deal with the service Nazis threatening to terminate or charge extra.
I take this very seriously. I do not understand why our profession has no required body of membership with a code of ethics and conduct that covers this. There needs to be some way of properly board-certifying people to work in this field, something akin to the Bar Associations or College of Physicians and Surgeons. Even teachers and pilots can have their licenses revoked if they are found to be violating codes of conduct and ethics, so why not technicians and technologists?
No offense, but I wish there were some way professional technicians and analysts could differentiate ourselves from, well, slimeballs who like to trawl through private data for giggles.
If the technician planted evidence on the computer, this will be clearly shown by a forensic examination of the hard drive. There is almost no chance someone would be able to successfully fake things well enough not to stand out as a frame-up.
The scary part is you and others actually believe this statement. I'm quite certain that there are several thousand people reading this, myself included, who'd be able to pull off this sort of frame job.
It's not rocket science. The bits on the drive, including filesystem metadata, are completely under the control of whoever posesses it.
God help you if you piss off a skilled grudge-holding technician with access to your hard drive.
...or pose a significant risk of becoming violent. In the reasonable opinion of the government, that is.
to call it a concession is a mischaracterization.
home use rights for MSOffice are included in a lot of enterprise agreements that medium to large businesses sign with Microsoft.
For $35 (and an authorization code from the company I work for), I can sign up right now and get a copy of MSOffice Pro 2007 (license key and media) from Microsoft. You probably can too. Check with your volume license administrator.
While you're at it, as him/her what other Software Assurance Benefits you're entitled to. There are lots of other perks available too.
lol... it's been an honour, sir.
you clearly have done the research and are uniquely qualified to know all about me and my background and my level of education. Hopefully you apply better techniques in your scientific endeavours.
If you don't know about any of the massive suppositions I'm talking about, I suggest you spend some time considering all perspectives, availing yourself of the available data, and forming a balanced opinion yourself.
The guesses are all I really have a problem with. No, not testable hypotheses. Guesses. It's bad science. I'm shocked that I have to tell you people that.
The real question is, why do we single out Evolution? Could it be because it ruffles the feathers of some theists?
since you asked, I couldn't care less what ruffles anyone's feathers, otherwise I wouldn't be on Slashdot, poking at the the precioussss and making people get emotional. But this isn't about me or any one person in particular, it's about critically examining all evidence and questioning all interpretations. That's supposed to be a critical component of the scientific method.
The reason I pick on evolution is that it's a myth that purports to be fact. It's not (yet proven). Science is terribly important; most importantly, it should be applied strictly. What I do assert is that the grand over-arching evolutionary model of creation is on far shakier legs than the its biggest proponents care to admit, and requires massive leaps of faith to swallow whole.
I guess we're supposed to be skeptical about everything, just not Evolution.
Why should you be? Are you a scientist? Do you make it a habit of reading about scientific theories and deciding if you are convinced or not? If so, why should anyone care if a layperson, who probably knows very little of the technical details, is convinced? Unless of, course, you goal is to politicize science... which is exactly what ID proponents are trying to do. They don't care about the actual research. They just want to use the political and judicial systems to insert their religous beliefs into schools where they've already been kicked out, and rightfully so.
which of us is politicizing here? I thought we were discussing the reliability of interpretations of available data but if we're heading into ad hominem attack land, this thread's dead.
I'm out...Peace!
I'm afraid you don't understand the scientific process. We need theories to guide were we look for evidence. We come up with a theory, theory suggests a course of inquiry, the results either confirm or refute the theory. Rinse. Repeat. You don't just sit around debating in philosophy class about potential theories until one of them just spontaneously shows itself to be absolutely true.
I think you're confusing "dogmatic theory" with "testable hypothesis". One belongs in philosophy, the other is absolutely sound scientific method.
Patersmith
Foraminifera are tiny animals that live in the ocean and they grow wonderful little mineral skeletons. As they die, they rain down on to the sea floor sediment by the millions. It is easy as pie to pull up a limitless supply of Foraminifera just by pulling up a sediment core. And the sediment built up continuously over a hundred million years and more. A limitless supply of Foraminifera fossils in perfectly continuous almost day-by-day layering up and down the sediment core.
:)
That may or may not be true. All we know is what's there *now*. It's an assumption that layers of a core were formed uniformly over millions of years. It's a logical assumption and maybe even a reasonable one, but an assumption nonetheless. Anyway, let's assume it to be true to some extent. You still have Foraminifera all the way down. There's no question that minor variations occur within a species, even today. But there's no evidence that a Foraminifera was given rise to by a non-Foraminifera. It can't even be said for certain that the Foraminifera you have gave rise to anything at all, specifically speaking.
After a mass extinction the rate of evolution speeds up. With so many species decimated, there are vacant ecological niches and there is less inter-species competition. The rate of mutation is probably the same, but the rate of diversification increases because a poorly adapted mutant is moving into vacant fertile ecological territory, where as previously out would have been outcompeted and exterminated by some better adapted species in that direction. So the population diversifies faster spreading in different variations with no competing species to push back. And with that accelerated population diversification comes accelerated speciation into two or more child species.
You suppose that the rate of evolution must speed up. It can't be assumed that those organisms that fill the vacant niches did not exist before the mass extinction. Or maybe you do assume they existed at the time of the mass extinction, but it can't be assumed that they came from other non-substantially-similar organisms. If a similar mass-extinction event took place today within a localized area, one would expect the area to become repopulated within a fairly short period of time. That's not evidence for evolution, it's just opportunism, and it doesn't say anything about who gave rise to whom.
Believe it or not, the field is filled with guesses and assumptions like this. Once you start looking at them, you really start to wonder how far off base current Evolution theory is.
If you find yourself getting angry at people who don't accept your leaps of faith, stop to consider where your convincer is. If your reaction is anger and frustration at being challenged, there's a good chance that your convincer is emotion-based rather than good sound reasoning.
Still not convinced, either way
Patersmith
Argumentum ad Ignorantiam:
Fallacy of taking a statement not provably false and implying that it is therefore true
both sides are guilty of that. The fundamental problem is not in poking holes in the other side's arguments; it is in proving one's own side to be correct. ID can't do that as the existence of God is unprovable.
However, Evolutionary theory is chock full of suppositions and conclusions that also can't be proven true because we don't have the evidence. Because we don't find any transitional fossils, we have to conclude that they must have existed but the evidence is lost to antiquity. We can't prove that life spontaneously created itself in the "primordial soup" because it took millions and millions of years so it *must* have happened that way. Although we don't find evidence of life branching from a simple life form and growing more specialized over time, it *must* have happened that way.
From what I hope has been a fairly objective analysis, I've concluded:
IDs say: God *must* have done it because, although we don't have all the objective the proof, the alternative is unthinkable!
Evolutionists say: Evolution *must* have done it because, although we don't have all the objective proof, the alternative is unthinkable!
To accept either theory, you have to make a whole lot of assumptions, educated guesses, and intuition. That makes both theories faith-based and neither more worthy than the other. What *is* important and worthy of study is the available evidence, and it surely doesn't favor one view over another when viewed objectively (my opinion from reviewed a large number of arguments from both sides). If it were a court case, I'd dismiss both sides without prejudice.
That why, to me, it makes sense that students should be socialized to all available evidence regarding how the evidence came to be. Perhaps then, and only then, should the theories be put forth. But they both belong in philosophy class, not biology.
Patersmith
It was my understanding that, since the Disney/Pixar deal, Jobs is the largest single shareholder in the Disney corporation. If his influence extends to the other Disney brands such as Miramax, ABC, Buena Vista, Caravan, and Touchstone, I would say he commands a lot of power.
Regardless, we should all be keeping an eye on Jobs. It's only a matter of time before he consolidates his power base into the single largest converged media empire on the planet.
JMHO
Matt
Am cancelling my rogers account and going with DSL within two weeks because of this. Tech support is denying everything and customer service us just as much in the dark. See http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rogers for more info
I don't think carriers should be in the business of selling cell phones anyway.
What do you think the landscape would look like if you had to buy your PC from your internet provider?
Things sure would be a lot more interesting if the cell phone industry was driven by the innovation of the manufacturers, and vice versa. Imagine if the cell phone companies were under pressure by the consumers to support new whizbang features of the phone you just bought at Best Buy rather than just being forcefed whatever phones they choose to support and are available with a contract.
First, if you really want a good grasp of special relativity without doing a physics degree, get ahold of Modern Physics for Non-Scientists, a lecture series by Prof. Richard Wolfson. He does a remarkable job of relating this confusing subject in terms that anybody can follow.
:)
:)
The bottom line of the equation is that mass and energy are equivalent. It's a result of special relativity. Interestingly, the equation was not part of his original paper on special relativity.
All special relativity really says is that the laws of physics (including the speed of light) are the same for everybody no matter where they are or how fast they're going. Special relativity only deals with the point of view of people going in a straight line at a constant speed with respect to another person who's also going in a straight line at a constant speed (a.k.a. observers in reference frames in relative uniform motion).
Relativity says neither observer has the right to say they're stationary and the other is moving. They're both equally valid points of view. If you and I are both on rocket ships travelling past each other, to me it looks like I'm standing still and you're whizzing past me. To you, it looks like you're standing still and I'm whizzing past you. We're both right. If we, in our rocket ships, do experiments to measure the speed of light, we'll arrive at the same value (C).
If you follow these thoughts out, you come to the conclusion that in order to arrive at the same value of C in all reference frames (which you must because there's no reference frame that's really REALLY at rest), time and/or space must be different depending on your point of view (and there's no point of view that's right because relativity teaches us that all reference frames in uniform motion are equally good for doing physics experiments).
How this all relates to the energy-mass equivalence comes from some formulas that talk about my observations about you (whizzing past me at a speed that is a significant fraction of C) with respect to your length, mass, and how fast I observe your time to be going (remember, you do not make the same observations about yourself. We only make odd observations about each other because we're moving with respect to each other). As you whiz past me, your length looks to be contracted, your time is running slow relative to mine, and (if I could weigh you) you would be really heavy compared to the same volume of matter that isn't moving relative to me.
the fun part is you can make exactly the same observations and calculations about me. It seems like a paradox but it's not. It's too much to go into here but you'll have to trust me on that
It's really hard to prove without showing you any formulas or doing any math, but I hope it suffices to say that the differences that I observe about you are due to the difference in energy between our respective frames of reference. And it comes out to be what Einstein predicted. Energy and Mass are equivalent measures with the conversion factor of C thrown in.
It may be of some use to you to know that the idea of energy and mass being equivalent can be derived a number of ways, and actually was derived independent of relativity before and after Einstein.
By the way, this doesn't just talk about nuclear energy. The principle still holds true for non-nuclear energy reactions. If you burn a candle and capture all the soot, carbon dioxide, all the stuff that comes out after the chemical reaction, you will find that it weighs just a tiny bit less than the wax and wick before they were burned. A charged battery has more mass than an empty one, albeit by an extremely tiny amount.
You can also make particles of matter out of energy, and you can make energy out of particles of mass.
To me, the beauty of all of this is it all comes from the single notion that there's no one point that gets to claim that it's really _really_ REALLY at rest.
Matt
I used this same argument successfully a number of times to beat down my bosses when they tried to put me on-call 24/7 for free.
It goes like this:
Being on call comes with an expectation of availability, which also means I'm no longer free to do what I like with my free time. It's like insurance in that there's somebody available "in case something happens." Insurance is something companies readily pay for and it provides a tangible benefit to the company in risk mitigation. At the end of the year, however, you don't get your money back if you don't have to use it.
Now, the company has the right to tell me what I can and can't do while I'm on the company's dime. Conversely, if it's not on the company's dime, they have no right to regulate my activities.
What you're really asking for is to have me work an indefinite number of extra hours for the same pay. If I came to you and suggested I unilaterally decided I would work fewer hours, as I deemed necessary, for the same pay, you would find the concept laughably unacceptable.
While 24/7 support is not what I agreed to and isn't covered under the current terms of employment, I understand that needs change, and that's perfectly ok. So if there needs to be a change in the expectation of availability outside the 44 hour work week, we need to get those put down in writing so we all understand what the expecatation is, and the new agreement can be reviewed and signed off. Otherwise, we have no way of understanding what the next steps are if, say, a call comes in when I'm out of town (or drunk on a Saturday night) and, therefore, unavailable.
So there are two ways we can proceed. I don't mind carrying a cell phone at all, but calls will have to be answered and/or returned as my availability allows. Otherwise, we can formalize a new agreement with an on-call rotation and compensation with a clear understanding of what the expecation of availability is during those times.
I developed this after going through hell in a position where I agreed implicitly to 24/7 availability without a formal agreement and no compensation for after-hours calls (I wasn't paid for them and was still expected to put in my regular 9 hours regardless).
I think the key here is to be reasonable. I don't mind at all coming in if there's an emergency and I'm available, but I don't put up with crap if I'm not, and any extra hours are taken off at the end of the week (right now I'm on salary, but in an hourly position I submit the O/T to be paid out).
Now, I understand that extremely unreasonable employers wouldn't go for this argument, and my advice would be to look for other work immediately. However, most reasonable bosses will agree and start back-pedalling when you start asking questions like, "do I have to ask for permission to leave the area? What happens if I want to go to a party and have a few drinks? Will I be disciplined if the phone rings at 3am and I don't hear it?" If you don't get the answers you like, ask them to put it in writing. Most of the time, they won't because they know what will happen if they do. Companies are very leery of the power of documentation, also known as "discoverable evidence".
I guess what it all boils down to is, don't just agree implicitly by grumbling about it and doing it anyway. Politely and reasonably negotiate.
I don't think that's a fake accent. In the "behind the scenes" specials he still speaks with a thick accent. I could still be wrong, but...
from TV.com:
Birthplace: Paisley, Scotland (Raised in Canada)
Height 5' 10" (1.78 m) The sixth of seven children, Paul's family emigrated to Canada from Paisley, Scotland when he was just 2 years old. His family spent time in Ireland before moving to Canada and returned to Paisley when Paul was 11 for 3 and a half years. Paul studied both education (major) and theatre (minor) at University, and also got involved in various sports including...