If you think you understand quantum physics you are wrong.
Steven Weinberg the Nobel prizewinner and another physics faculty member used to travel in the same physics department lift, and they would exchange pleasantries. This faculty member had a very bright graduate student. Weinberg had not seen him around for some time, so he asked his colleague what had happened to the grad student. He told Weinberg "He tried to understand quantum mechanics". Both men sighed and then exited the lift at their respective floors.
What a load of unscientific garbage. In the US there is a widwspread but not universal belief in the supernatural. For example Steven Weinberg, Murray Gell-Mann and the late great Dick Feynman all do/did not believe in the supernatural, just to mention a few Nobel prize winning physicists.
In Western Europe the belief in the supernatural is a lot less than in the US and other more primitive countries. Studies in the finding the relative belief in the supernatural both between countries and between individuals, have come up with these findings:
1. The higher the general educational level in a nation the lower the belief in the supernatural.
2. The higher the educational level of an individual the greater the probability they will not believe in the supernatural.
The US is an exception to observation 1. , but observation 2. applies there, viz. the above Nobel prizewinners.
The population of the US and Europe has a very similar genetic make up due to recent immigration over the last few centuries. Therefore the the large percentage difference in belief in the supernatural between the two populations is due to cultural, social and historical differences not genetic.
In the medievial period open disbelief in the supernatural was extremely rare, following the Enlightenment absence of belief in the supernatural become much more common, especialy amongst the increasing numbers with a scientific education. There was not a huge genetic change that occured over a couple of hundred years, no it was again social and cultural changes that lead to increasing disbelief.
So the conclusion we reach is that belief in the supernatural is culturally, socially and historically dependant not genetically dependant. So why is belief in the supernatural so widespread especially in societies with a lower general educational level and amongst the less educated. The answer it is a product of social evolution not biological evolution. In more primitive societies it probably poved useful in creating social cohesion in tribal groups and nations. In the modern post-Enlightrnment era its usefulness is more problematic and indeed may be pathological.
I trust therefore that Dell will sell me a Linux certified Laptop or desktop at a price less than the same machine with windows preinstalled.
But I know what they will do. They will make sure that the certified machines do not have the same set of hardware components as any of their windows boxes. Then they will charge you the same or more than the nearest equivalent windows box. Why because that way they will not be providing a strong direct competition for windows. Not only will Monkey boy not be throwing chairs at them, they will still get all the marketing rebates and OEM discounts that MS throws their way at present.
Not to sound like a broken record around here, but why would Dell go out of their way to find components that work on an OS that is in direct competition with the one that ships with (currently) 100% of their hardware?
Not for servers. A significant percentage of Dell servers are sold either OS less or with RHEL. A a lot of Dell server hardware is bought specifically to run Linux on. So one would expect them to find components used for server storage that are fully compatible with Linux and other open source OS's.
As I understand it Google Apps for Your Domain will become a paid service when it goes out of beta, but the Docs and Spreadsheets service for users of a standard gmail account will continue to be free.
Wrong. Here in Canada we get better outcomes at a far lower cost than the US. There are a lot of fear mongering campaigns put out here by effective paid hacks of US corporations, that would like to come up here and make big bucks. The Canadian public knows however, that we have a better and fairer system than in the US. Yes there are problems, we continually have to fight the neo-cons that have crept into our political system (sometimes under the guise of being big-L Liberals as well our Tories or Conservatives) to keep up sufficient funding and support for the health system.
The fact is we get far better outcomes overall than the US for far less per capita expenditure. The UN ranks the health care system in the US as about equivalent in terms of outcomes to that of Cuba. They are both significantly better than poor third world countries. But they are nowhere near the high level of outcomes achieved by the western European countries, Canada, Australia, Japan etc that have universal health care.
During the cold war Americans used to joke that Russia was "a third world country with rockets". Now the joke is that the US is " a first world country with third world infant mortality".
Maybe it's changed in the two years since my last install, but I doubt it.
It has - install Ubuntu run Automatix2 to install the goodies you want - done fully featured working system. Tweak it if you like at a few extra apps though add/remove or synaptic no problem.
Lets face it OSX is an ugly counter-intuitive toy, fine for for wannabees, faddies, trendies and deranged artistic types. GNOME is an easy to use intuitive and productive desktop that leaves OSX standing and is designed for people that just want to use a computer productively.
I don't want a computer that looks like that. This is what free software is about I can have my desktop the way I like it not the way you want it to be. I have choice, I can use GNOME, KDE, XFce, Enlightement 16 or 17, Fluxbox, Openbox, GNUstep or even RatPoison and many more desktops. So just piss off with your Apple fascism and let the rest of us get on with fighting for freedom.
I waiting for the final announcement from the Samba team for Novell to pull Samba from Suse.
No my guess is that the Samba guys will just license it under GPLv3 soon as its out. Then no more legal patches or updates for Novell.
"People say that Microsoft doesn't innovate, but those same people complain that they are being locked out of Microsoft technology if they don't use Microsoft products. Seems a funny argument."
Lets take AD as an example. AD is a collection of open protocols SMB (by IBM) Kerberos (by MIT) and LDAP (by U Mich) stitched together with proprietary extensions designed in part, according to members of the SAMBA organization, to deliberately to impede interoperability. I don't call that innovation I call it "embrace, extend, extinguish". But then a Windows zealot like "heir of the mess" is not really going to understand that. There are only two ways the ecosystem of networks and computer infrastructure can work. One is by open standards and interoperability, the other is by closed proprietary protocols and and a monopoly. MS has chosen the latter route and if you support it, you are explicitly supporting monopoly as your end goal.
I submitted the following complaint to the BBC website:
This story reads as if it were a scripted Microsoft sales promotion. Indeed it probably is. No doubt MS is providing Christian Aid, through Mr. Buckley a discount on MS software if he promotes it against Linux and Open Source software. Since the BBC does not carry advertising it is all the more important that advertising does not creep in under the net and appear as content, It appears to have done so in this case.
The only value in this story is to warn charitable givers to avoid charities like this that are being profligate with the way they waste their donations by unnecessary purchases from large corporations rather than use it wisely on better solutions that are community supported. Perhaps they like I should think of donating to less wasteful charities.
No. There was a plausible non-biological explanation. And you need a lot more than the few data points you describe before we can determine the effectiveness of the LR test.
O.K. What was it then ? I am still waiting to hear. If they can't reproduce it in the laboratory it is just speculation, unlike the results Levin got which was more than just a "few data points." Look at the data yourself the URL is given in a following post.
An additional point as a mass spectrometrist I know that their their is a limit to detection by mass spec. It is very low but not low enough to deal with the following scenario. There are very low levels of micro-organisms in a dormant spore form present in the Martian soil, similar to the situation with antarctic ice cores. When liquid water becomes available, These spores convert to their active vegatative state which can use inorganic chemical reactions for energy and carbon dioxide as a carbon source.
If biological molecules are available they can facultatively use them for growth as in the case of Levine's Labelled Release experiment. This means that there could be very low levels of organic material in the Martian soil yet living potentially active micro-organisms could be present. This would explain the negative result found by the Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry experiment.
The Viking mission did find life on Mars. There were two experiments designed to detect life on Mars. The chemistry experiment using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry headed by Prof. Klaus Biemann and the biology experiment using a Labelled Release technique headed by Dr. Gilbert Levine. The GC-MS experiment reported a failure to detect organic molecules that could be associated with life. The LR biology experiment reported the detection of life. This meant that radiolabelled carbon dioxide was detected as being released from a media containing a mixture of labelled amino acids and sugars after incubation with Martian soil: http://mars.spherix.com/.
Klaus Biemann was a famous and respected chemist and mass-spectrometrist who had done much of the original work in developing GC-MS, While Gilbert Levine was a relative unknown who had run a start company that sold environmental testing equipment based on the LR technology Levine had invented. Bieman to it as an affront to himself the chemists and mass spectrometry as a technique that a biology experiment could detect life when his chemistry experiment could not. So he took it upon himself to launch an unremitting campaign to prove that the LR results were a false positive. The claimed to have proved this to be so but this was specious as no one had proposed a chemical model that would reproduce the Martian LR results in the laboratory.
Meanwhile experimental tests helped show the reliability of the LR experiments. Samples of Lunar rock from the Apollo missions tested negative, while Antarctic ice cores, which had been shown to contain micro-organisms at a very low level, gave positive results. However Biemann and other chemists, together with those that just simply refused to believe life on Mars is possible, had more or less silenced the debate.
I write this as a chemist who had just started work on GC-MS (and to me Biemann was something of a hero) at the time of the Viking landings (yes I am ancient). However I am convinced now after looking at the evidence that there is a strong case to argue that the LR experiments on the Viking landers provided strong evidence for the presence of microbial life in Martian soil.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.pardus.nl/projects/
Is far superior to Tomboy so you can get all of the functionality and not install Mono.
Steven Weinberg the Nobel prizewinner and another physics faculty member used to travel in the same physics department lift, and they would exchange pleasantries. This faculty member had a very bright graduate student. Weinberg had not seen him around for some time, so he asked his colleague what had happened to the grad student. He told Weinberg "He tried to understand quantum mechanics". Both men sighed and then exited the lift at their respective floors.
Let them eat Beryl
In Western Europe the belief in the supernatural is a lot less than in the US and other more primitive countries. Studies in the finding the relative belief in the supernatural both between countries and between individuals, have come up with these findings:
1. The higher the general educational level in a nation the lower the belief in the supernatural.
2. The higher the educational level of an individual the greater the probability they will not believe in the supernatural.
The US is an exception to observation 1. , but observation 2. applies there, viz. the above Nobel prizewinners. The population of the US and Europe has a very similar genetic make up due to recent immigration over the last few centuries. Therefore the the large percentage difference in belief in the supernatural between the two populations is due to cultural, social and historical differences not genetic.
In the medievial period open disbelief in the supernatural was extremely rare, following the Enlightenment absence of belief in the supernatural become much more common, especialy amongst the increasing numbers with a scientific education. There was not a huge genetic change that occured over a couple of hundred years, no it was again social and cultural changes that lead to increasing disbelief.
So the conclusion we reach is that belief in the supernatural is culturally, socially and historically dependant not genetically dependant. So why is belief in the supernatural so widespread especially in societies with a lower general educational level and amongst the less educated. The answer it is a product of social evolution not biological evolution. In more primitive societies it probably poved useful in creating social cohesion in tribal groups and nations. In the modern post-Enlightrnment era its usefulness is more problematic and indeed may be pathological.
But I know what they will do. They will make sure that the certified machines do not have the same set of hardware components as any of their windows boxes. Then they will charge you the same or more than the nearest equivalent windows box. Why because that way they will not be providing a strong direct competition for windows. Not only will Monkey boy not be throwing chairs at them, they will still get all the marketing rebates and OEM discounts that MS throws their way at present.
Not for servers. A significant percentage of Dell servers are sold either OS less or with RHEL. A a lot of Dell server hardware is bought specifically to run Linux on. So one would expect them to find components used for server storage that are fully compatible with Linux and other open source OS's.
Scientist Makes ......, in the case of one scientist singular or Scientists Make in the case of several or many scientists plural.
Anyone got his running on Linux using Mono yet?
What? Sony doesn't want blue movies on Blu-Ray. So why did they call it that then?
As I understand it Google Apps for Your Domain will become a paid service when it goes out of beta, but the Docs and Spreadsheets service for users of a standard gmail account will continue to be free.
The fact is we get far better outcomes overall than the US for far less per capita expenditure. The UN ranks the health care system in the US as about equivalent in terms of outcomes to that of Cuba. They are both significantly better than poor third world countries. But they are nowhere near the high level of outcomes achieved by the western European countries, Canada, Australia, Japan etc that have universal health care.
During the cold war Americans used to joke that Russia was "a third world country with rockets". Now the joke is that the US is " a first world country with third world infant mortality".
"Deomocracy is coming,... to the USA"
It has - install Ubuntu run Automatix2 to install the goodies you want - done fully featured working system. Tweak it if you like at a few extra apps though add/remove or synaptic no problem.
Lets face it OSX is an ugly counter-intuitive toy, fine for for wannabees, faddies, trendies and deranged artistic types. GNOME is an easy to use intuitive and productive desktop that leaves OSX standing and is designed for people that just want to use a computer productively. I don't want a computer that looks like that. This is what free software is about I can have my desktop the way I like it not the way you want it to be. I have choice, I can use GNOME, KDE, XFce, Enlightement 16 or 17, Fluxbox, Openbox, GNUstep or even RatPoison and many more desktops. So just piss off with your Apple fascism and let the rest of us get on with fighting for freedom.
Ubuntu is a better desktop than OSX no question case closed don't bother to reply
It is ironic here that one of the greatest evolutionary biologists of the 20th Century, Theodosius Dobzhansky, was a devout Russian Orthodox believer.
When you come to power by a military coup you don't need to win elections.
I waiting for the final announcement from the Samba team for Novell to pull Samba from Suse. No my guess is that the Samba guys will just license it under GPLv3 soon as its out. Then no more legal patches or updates for Novell.
Lets take AD as an example. AD is a collection of open protocols SMB (by IBM) Kerberos (by MIT) and LDAP (by U Mich) stitched together with proprietary extensions designed in part, according to members of the SAMBA organization, to deliberately to impede interoperability. I don't call that innovation I call it "embrace, extend, extinguish". But then a Windows zealot like "heir of the mess" is not really going to understand that. There are only two ways the ecosystem of networks and computer infrastructure can work. One is by open standards and interoperability, the other is by closed proprietary protocols and and a monopoly. MS has chosen the latter route and if you support it, you are explicitly supporting monopoly as your end goal.
He lists his religion as Unitarian.
So now we know who paid for the recent military coup in Thailand, eh Bill?
I submitted the following complaint to the BBC website:
This story reads as if it were a scripted Microsoft sales promotion. Indeed it probably is. No doubt MS is providing Christian Aid, through Mr. Buckley a discount on MS software if he promotes it against Linux and Open Source software. Since the BBC does not carry advertising it is all the more important that advertising does not creep in under the net and appear as content, It appears to have done so in this case.
The only value in this story is to warn charitable givers to avoid charities like this that are being profligate with the way they waste their donations by unnecessary purchases from large corporations rather than use it wisely on better solutions that are community supported. Perhaps they like I should think of donating to less wasteful charities.
O.K. What was it then ? I am still waiting to hear. If they can't reproduce it in the laboratory it is just speculation, unlike the results Levin got which was more than just a "few data points." Look at the data yourself the URL is given in a following post.
If biological molecules are available they can facultatively use them for growth as in the case of Levine's Labelled Release experiment. This means that there could be very low levels of organic material in the Martian soil yet living potentially active micro-organisms could be present. This would explain the negative result found by the Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry experiment.
Klaus Biemann was a famous and respected chemist and mass-spectrometrist who had done much of the original work in developing GC-MS, While Gilbert Levine was a relative unknown who had run a start company that sold environmental testing equipment based on the LR technology Levine had invented. Bieman to it as an affront to himself the chemists and mass spectrometry as a technique that a biology experiment could detect life when his chemistry experiment could not. So he took it upon himself to launch an unremitting campaign to prove that the LR results were a false positive. The claimed to have proved this to be so but this was specious as no one had proposed a chemical model that would reproduce the Martian LR results in the laboratory.
Meanwhile experimental tests helped show the reliability of the LR experiments. Samples of Lunar rock from the Apollo missions tested negative, while Antarctic ice cores, which had been shown to contain micro-organisms at a very low level, gave positive results. However Biemann and other chemists, together with those that just simply refused to believe life on Mars is possible, had more or less silenced the debate.
I write this as a chemist who had just started work on GC-MS (and to me Biemann was something of a hero) at the time of the Viking landings (yes I am ancient). However I am convinced now after looking at the evidence that there is a strong case to argue that the LR experiments on the Viking landers provided strong evidence for the presence of microbial life in Martian soil.