As I RTFA it seems to me although IANAL there is little precedent here except if you are a RIAA codefendant and your daughter has (by defaulting) in effect admitted to downloading the files without your knowledge.
The judge said the RIAA can't go after an innocent (the plaintiff) as well as the known guilty, whose name she turned over to the RIAA early on.
I doubt most of us would qualify for this precedent, but I'd like to hear what a real lawyer thinks.
According to California labor law (IANAL too) 72 hours notice is all an ordinary employee without a contract needs give an employer before leaving. The ONLY penalty for not giving even this amount of notice is one might lose accrued vacation time.
72 hours. That's all. Just enough time so you can't quit on a Friday after work and never show up again.
Check your local laws, but I'll bet it's similar anywhere in the US of A.
With respect to the Google case, there was a non-compete clause in the worker's contract, IIRC.
The answer is simple. It is because 70-95 per cent of a CEO's job involves sales, sales promotion, or just plain promotion (leadership, goal-setting, etc.) CIOs are usually not charismatic enough to do well in the top sales role.
Note: 70-95 per cent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
No. I gave up talking about the point because of the lack of good information about the subject./. readers, apparently, know little about how it all fits together, escpecially the social aspect.
What I have gained is an appreciation for how diverse genes and chromosomes are; apparently some genes are bigger than some chromosomes, and have more to do. This is news to me.
Still, I am quite unconvinced that great changes in the genetic structure will MOST CERTAINLY not prevent speciation, as claimed here. Perhaps I am wrong, which would not be the first time, but, so far, I have not been shown how repeated horse-to-mule sexual contact would produce a viable mule species, for example.
As far as the social is concerned, I stand by my assertions because the science is there. Any thoughtful person must realize that a "dog humping your leg" is not a result of the dog wanting to reproduce with you (he's just horny in general) nor an indication that that any issue will be viable and have characteristics of each.
DNA is not a metal one can alloy.
Anyway, I am tired of seeing both sides' stupidities, so this thread is dead.
Please read the last three or four lines of my original post once more.
But they are to me. I hear what you are saying and I believe you think it is true. It is, after all, what you have been taught for years. I don't doubt your sincerity.
I think you are out of your field with regard to social structure and reproduction, as I am out of mine in any subject scientific. Nonetheless, I must repeat that although I cannot buy any of ID or creationism, there is quite a lot of the popularly-accepted view of evolution that leaves me doubting that, too. I have already written more than I want to about my doubts. Let's just leave it that you and I agree that the details are fuzzy and not well thought out, although we agree that the theory is in agreement with quite a lot of observed phenomena.
Cellular biologists may claim to know how this works, but, AFAICT they do not as they cannot do what Einstein demanded of a scientist who truly understood his work: explain it to their grandmother. Or, in simple language without condescention or oversimplification.
I am not stupid, I just work in another industry than university science.
So, let's get to the heart of your (and others') argument to see if I understand. Then read what I say and make sure you understand what I am trying to say as a layman.
Let's posit I accept your outline of speciation above. You say no unique mating ritual is necessary at the start (to establish?) a new species, but allow it may be necessary to sustain it.
Genetically, this is a dodgy assumption because any species is most vulnerable when its numbers of individuals is small. No species is smaller that when it has only two members. It is counterintuitive to assume that a unique mating ritual is not necessary to establish a new species given that.
HOWEVER: we only see the species that have successfully taken root. AFAIK we have not run across a singleton of a new species to study, so we cannot know whether that individual would prefer to mate with his own over others.
Back to my side: I don't know which genes or chromosomes may have been changed in the new individual, and neither do you. Species are sometimes separated (catalogued) by criteria that do not require a large change in genes, and the offspring are not hybridized and are fertile. Most times, however this is not the case.
Most times, a horse and an ass will produce a sterile mule. Every blue moon, there are reports of mules born of female mules, granted. But this is not a strong enough line to produce a viable species. A large land mammal equine species cannot survive if only a few in a thousand offspring survive to reproduce. And that is the key.
If speciation occurs as it seems to be represented by one science, another discipline says it cannot be so. This conundrum has continued since Darwin published.
HOWEVER, the absence of the proof of the MEANS OF evolution does not disprove evolution. I am not saying that. I am saying that the holes in evolution are so big, another theory could easily fit inside them. But that theory is NOT ID.
Since your post seems to indicate you are a more thoughtful and information-based person than others who have tried to say the same thing, I will reply to you by thanking you for your detailed information. But it misses my point by apparently assuming I am a ID or creationist nut. I disbelieve in both a conscious anthropromorphic God-creator and in intelligent design.
But, although Darwinism explains quite a lot (and ID or creationism does not) it does not explain it all. As you know, science is not a closed system, but an open one which is always changing -- including finding things it once believed true are either false or more limited in application than once thought.
Understand that Galileo was opposed by churchmen who did not see their theology must be open or die, churchmen who acted as if all of theology had been discovered and proven. At the time, not even Galileo's scientific peers agreed with him because they did not have the optics that he had developed and used to more accurately describe planetary motion.
He might have said to theologians of the time (I submit that science is the US's priesthood to make this metaphor clear) that their universe was not a good explanation of the real universe. And to scientists of the time, who believed the sun and planets revolved around Earth -- he would say the same but for different reasons. Those who opposed his views on both sides were proved wrong by developments only the future could bring to fruition.
I say today, the priests of Science are as blind as the priests of the Church of Rome in Galileo's time. The earth is not flat, and it is not the center of the universe. It is obvious because the motions of the planets support another idea.
Neither creationism (or the same in the guise of ID) nor neo-Darwinist Evolution (for want of a better term) is the metaphorical equivalent of Galileo's vision of roughly spherical planets, of which the earth is one, revolving around the Sun.
I say to ID people, the bible is not history; it is poetry. It is not to be taken literally. It is a book of faith.
But I see science acting in an arrogant way (with respect to evolution and the quantum theory) simply showering factoids around without pattern to prove... what? They don't say. Species evolve. No kidding. What I would like to know is how exactly is it done? It certainly can't be done in the way most westerners who believe in evolution seem to believe it is accomplished. The only answer science has that has the ring of truth is: "We don't know." And I would accept that humility. Because I don't know either. And the bible doesn't know and Luther Burbank didn't know and Pat Robertson certainly doesn't know. No one knows.
At no time in any post did I deny evolution was an ongoing principle in the world. At no time did I say some God intervened to do his will. All I say is -- to me -- neo-Darwin evolutionism in not enough explanation.
There is another movement called "Punctuated Equilibrium" that has recently fallen into disfavor for some of its proponents making unsubstantiable claims, or ones that have later been adequately explained by traditional means. Nevertheless, it is factually indisputable that, during the time that humans on three continents were learning the calendar and seasons, and, thus, learning agriculture, three different species of grain -- wheat, maize and millet in Mesopotamia, the Americas and Asia, respectively -- doubled, redoubled and redoubled again in seed size until they were so heavy they could no longer be scattered on the wind but needed a (human) hand to plant them.
Over the years, cellular biologists have tried to explain to me that humans selected the biggest seeds to plant and thus helped the process. Doubtless this is true. But since more than ninety per cent of all agronomists that ever lived are alive and practicing today, no further doublings have been seen, and no other species has so dramatically increased the size of their grain, which is not what one would
Yes. Humans working with chimps have occasionally reported sexual advances from chimps. In fact there is considerable speculation whether a human/chimp hybrid child could be produced from mating a chimp with a human.
Are you sure you are not confusing cause and effect, assuming there was a causal relationship at all? How, exactly, is a researcher to know what caused a chimp to make a sexual advance to a human? Are you sure it was a come-hither glance?
The researchers who worked with chimps and other apes who learned sign language do not, AFAIK, report sexual advances from their subjects. If they did, perhaps we could learn what, if any, human action prompted it. That they have not precludes this discussion being based on fact.
Obviously it is impossible. That's the point. Since it's impossible, something ELSE must be happening. The only other possibility is the sudden jump from a species with exactly one or more extra or fewer pairs of chromosomes (or, I must admit, fused chromosomes that would be fewer) and IS VIABLE (excluding non-speciatic mutatiions like Downs Syndrome.)
I am aware that speciation is not dependent on number of pairs of chromosomes only; I used that example because it seems the simplest. Perhaps it was not so simple to explain. Maybe next year or next decade I will be able to explain it better.
I don't insist so; biologists who specialize in studying animal culture do.
Read the current literature (my source is the prosaic BBC science pages on the web) and you will see science now accepts that each species of bird responds only to a particular call and, in a separate article covered on/. scientists reported humans have a genetic code that helps them remember tunes.
Science also recognizes, for example, the dance of a male pigeon or the display of a peacock is mandatory for mating to occur. A pigeon will not try to mate with a peacock, partly because his dance does not stir the response that "turns him on."
Would a woman's "come-hither-glance" work with Chimpanzees? (Rhetorical question.)
It is paramount, apparently, that species protect their genetic code from pollution from other species that might produce hybrids or sterile offspring.
Each scientific field specializes so much, apparently, it misses new and important developments in other fields.
Except for the numbers of chromosomes chimps have, I stand by my original post. I ask you read it more carefully. And remember, science does not now know what parts of what it believes now will be disproven in the future.
Do not put words in my mouth. I said nothing about God.
Read the last line of my post and you will see I disagree with BOTH sides' having the only complete answer. I am a complete atheist in that I do not believe in any God who intentionally made man -- or the Universe, for that matter. Like all obedient scientifists (I am one) I believe we do not now know how living forms became as rich and diverse as they are in any complete, insightful way.
To me, Darwinism is not yet enough to explain all the questions. I hope to live long enough to find a satisfying explanation, but so far one eludes me.
Sorry if my facts with respect to numbers of chromosomes are wrong (I will check the info out -- I HATE to be wrong!) but that in no way changes the question. How did a mastodon or a proto-horse mutation recognize a new species with one more pair of chromosomes?
The mating ritual and time-and-place "coincidences" are not easily explained away, either.
If so, then please explain to me how either one of these scenarios can be true:
A species (chimpanzees, our "closest" relatives, for example) with 21 pairs of chromosomes can EVOLVE into one with 22 pairs. Do the fossil records indicate critters with 21.1, 21.2, 21.3, 21.4.... pairs of choromosomes?
If not, then explain how a (presumably) mutant new example of an "evolved" chimpanzee with 22 pairs of chromosomes can find another exactly evolved 22-paired mutant -- at the same time -- in the same place -- recognize him or her -- and develop a brand new and unique mating ritual that works. All of these steps are recognized as being necessary to begin to form a new species.
That said, to deny Darwinism is to ignore the stages and features our own embryos develop and discard: gills, tail, front legs.
So, it appears to me that both Darwinism and ID leave a lot out of their little worlds.
Perhaps that's why they argue so much and so loudly: they're both overselling their cases.
Aren't we getting close to the Theoretical Limit?
on
Intel Makes 45nm Chip
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Unless I misplaced a decimal point or misunderstand physics, isn't 45 nm only a very few generations from needing connections only one molecule thick?
I am not a newbie. Windows' problems with respect to stability (I am speaking of 9x, the only versions I have used) are endemic, and IN THE OS. I have had a new installation of W98 go south in less than an hour with NO APPLICATIONS YET INSTALLED simply by playing a video through MPlayer.
Once apps are installed and.dlls replaced, anything can (and will) happen.
I am not going to buy Windows again. Ever.
End of story.
As for you, do what you like.
NB: Do you realize you sound like a Microsoft shill?
I do -- DOSEmu. WordPerfect-5.1, dragmax, pipemax (auto racing development programs), mercury (the old Borland graphical maths solver) and grammatik-2 run perfectly on it. I have used DOS since ver 3.1.
No blue screen of death in DOS, that's true. Just don't use extended memory or you'll get instant death-crashes without the blue screen warning.
I know you were trolling...you just didn't know you were half right, did you?
It was not the GPL or being able to Use the Source that led me to Linux; it was Windows' misbehavior. I learned to love those other things later, after I found Linux to be much better behaved.
I would much, much rather spend time learning and configuring Linux to my liking -- a positive feeling of success and pride -- than put up with Windows' flaws -- a feeling of failure and helplessness.
Frankly, I didn't care whether I used BeOS (which I was considering at the time) BSD or Linux as long as it didn't crash all the time or get viruses (boot sector trojans were popular then.) As chance had it, my local computer store had a 5-linux-distro boxed set for sale for $20 USD, so Linux it was.
I have been an enthusiastic Linux user and contributer ever since.
THis is OT, of course, but I believe you might be thinking of H.L.Mencken's famous quotation, "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."
You're quite right about the education system in the US, but I am not sure we are the worst in that respect; when I was in Asia -- Japan especially -- knowledge of one's country's histories was patchy at best and dead wrong at worst. At that time, the Japanese hadn't yet broken the news to their own citizens that they started WWII in the Pacific against China and Korea and that they abused civilians in those places greatly during that war.
The stupidest thing is that our leaders are working from wrong information -- supplied by our CIA and NSA. When I was a soldier in Viet Nam, I learned the Chinese were the Viets long-time enemy in history AND legend. It was a common fear in the US at that time that had we stepped up the war enough to have had a chance to win it, the North Vietnamese (government) would have called on China for help. That was not so, for the above reason.
In fact, after we pulled out, China was the first country Ho's forces attacked. Then they cleaned out their other old enemy, the Cambods.
Dumb, dumb and dumb. To think I once was asked to work for the NSA....
The remark was clearly intended to describe how we have become, like the soviets were, a police state.
The only difference I ever saw between US Capitalism and Sovietism was in the US, the rich were powerful, and under the Soviets the powerful became rich.
All police states use the same techniques; I could have used the Nazis, instead, who used the same cry of "insanity" against those who spoke out against them, but I doubt the word "eugenics" would mean anything to a young person today.
Yes, the US has begun its intevitable trudge toward police-statism. I say inevitable because all empires when decline begins, use the same methods to try to keep control. Look to the British 100 years ago or to the Romans 1800 years ago if you want to see where we are headed.
I suspect you have a political agenda -- otherwise why try to refute my post? In that case, try these facts on for size:
Every elected president since the end of WWII except Carter has, in his first year, on the bad advice of the NSA and the intelligence community, has begun an adventurous and eventually disastrous war. Eisenhower invaded Guatemala; Kennedy had the Bay of Pigs; Johnson whipped the Dominican Republic into shape; Nixon found Cambodia inviting (and caused, indirectly, the genocide of the Kmer Rouge -- but that's another story); Ford was not elected; Carter was the sole exception, as I said; Reagan invaded Nicaragua; Bush One had Iraq; Clinton took a chance on Jugoslavia (Bechtel's VP of European operations died beside Trade Czar Ron Brown in the 199x crash approaching Sarajevo Airport), and Bush the Younger had Iraq, too.
So, if it is as it appears to be, how can you NOT call the US a police state? What other term so accurately describes unbridled federal executive power coupled with misuse of invesitigative (police) agencies?
The Soviets were infamous for declaring dissidents insane and imprisoning them in "hospitals" for "treatment." Think this is not so? Then read Gulag Archepelago.
Every police state tries this approach.
Tice is not paranoid; he (and we) have real enemies, and, more and more often, those enemies are in our own government.
1. I have noticed that when I visit a friend for some one-on-one gaming using a CRT instead of my LCD at home my eyes burn and tear after twenty minutes or so of playing, while my LCD allows hours of use without noticeable strain. N.B. I feel I DO play closer attention to the screen when gaming than I do when surfing....
2. 5-hours sleep a night is way, way, too little. Sleep deprivation is a serious and underreported health problem.
3. After fifty years of myopia without astigmatism, my latest eye checkup indicated a small amout on assymetry (astigmatism), too, like you. Perhaps computer use is contributing to our probs, but I cannot see how. Astigmatism is a physical anamoly, and I can't grok how monitor viewing (or even lack of sleep) can affect this; it is genetic AFAIK.
I used KDE-1.0 on Caldera OpenLinux-1.3, installed from a Linux For Dummies CD-ROM included with the book, for a couple of years -- until libc6 got stable, around RH-6.2, which shipped with KDE-1.1, IIRC. I upgraded its KDE to 1.2, then to 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 before it broke, but nevermind, by then I had stopped using it in favor of Blackbox.
Recently, needing glibc=>2.3 for some app, I installed SuSE-9 with KDE over RH. Then, unsatisfied, I tried a hd-install of Knoppix, but found myself using fluxbox (blackbox clone) instead of KDE-3.4.x.
I don't hate KDE, but, as I have old hardware, it is slow. And it still clobbers the keyboard rate on the console, too, changing the delay on repeat to.5 seconds instead of my own quicker preference.
I believe you're right. IIRC, MS missed the xmas season with one release (I forget which) and the computer marketers were delivering certificates for a free upgrade during the shopping rush.
I don't remember how the upgrade program worked in practice, but it seems likely to have been complicated and expensive for them.
MS usually doesn't make the same marketing mistake repeatedly (unless you consider shipping MS-DOS 4.0 and WindowsME marketing mistakes. I don't: they were just BAD products marketed in the usual way.)
Not exactly. Diesel engines cause ignition through compression; this is why diesel engines don't use spark plugs. Because they use compression to fire the charge (air mixed with fine particles of fuel oil) and the compression only rises to its peak for a short period, at high rpms some of the fuel particles are left unburnt because there isn't enough time to burn it completely before the exhaust valve opens and compression is lost.
And since horsepower is torque (twisting power) expressed through time (work), greater horsepower requires more rpm, all other things equal. Which makes the above situation worse.
This works because compressing a gas (the air in the mixture) causes the temp to rise (First law of thermodynamics) but only near the top of the stroke. Adding hydrogen causes the mixture, apparently, to fire quicker (at a lower temperature) so it can burn more completely, producing more power (efficiency) and less polluting compounds and unburnt fuel.
So it is not exactly a catalyst in that it has no part to play in the *chemical* reaction process. But it helps manage a diesel's combustion, appartenly, in a way that otherwise could not be accomplished.
I'd like to see an organization like Anandtech do a piece about this....
Slashdot Mirror
As I RTFA it seems to me although IANAL there is little precedent here except if you are a RIAA codefendant and your daughter has (by defaulting) in effect admitted to downloading the files without your knowledge.
The judge said the RIAA can't go after an innocent (the plaintiff) as well as the known guilty, whose name she turned over to the RIAA early on.
I doubt most of us would qualify for this precedent, but I'd like to hear what a real lawyer thinks.
According to California labor law (IANAL too) 72 hours notice is all an ordinary employee without a contract needs give an employer before leaving. The ONLY penalty for not giving even this amount of notice is one might lose accrued vacation time.
72 hours. That's all. Just enough time so you can't quit on a Friday after work and never show up again.
Check your local laws, but I'll bet it's similar anywhere in the US of A.
With respect to the Google case, there was a non-compete clause in the worker's contract, IIRC.
The answer is simple. It is because 70-95 per cent of a CEO's job involves sales, sales promotion, or just plain promotion (leadership, goal-setting, etc.) CIOs are usually not charismatic enough to do well in the top sales role.
Note: 70-95 per cent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
No. I gave up talking about the point because of the lack of good information about the subject. /. readers, apparently, know little about how it all fits together, escpecially the social aspect.
What I have gained is an appreciation for how diverse genes and chromosomes are; apparently some genes are bigger than some chromosomes, and have more to do. This is news to me.
Still, I am quite unconvinced that great changes in the genetic structure will MOST CERTAINLY not prevent speciation, as claimed here. Perhaps I am wrong, which would not be the first time, but, so far, I have not been shown how repeated horse-to-mule sexual contact would produce a viable mule species, for example.
As far as the social is concerned, I stand by my assertions because the science is there. Any thoughtful person must realize that a "dog humping your leg" is not a result of the dog wanting to reproduce with you (he's just horny in general) nor an indication that that any issue will be viable and have characteristics of each.
DNA is not a metal one can alloy.
Anyway, I am tired of seeing both sides' stupidities, so this thread is dead.
Please read the last three or four lines of my original post once more.
But they are to me. I hear what you are saying and I believe you think it is true. It is, after all, what you have been taught for years. I don't doubt your sincerity.
I think you are out of your field with regard to social structure and reproduction, as I am out of mine in any subject scientific. Nonetheless, I must repeat that although I cannot buy any of ID or creationism, there is quite a lot of the popularly-accepted view of evolution that leaves me doubting that, too. I have already written more than I want to about my doubts. Let's just leave it that you and I agree that the details are fuzzy and not well thought out, although we agree that the theory is in agreement with quite a lot of observed phenomena.
Cellular biologists may claim to know how this works, but, AFAICT they do not as they cannot do what Einstein demanded of a scientist who truly understood his work: explain it to their grandmother. Or, in simple language without condescention or oversimplification.
I am not stupid, I just work in another industry than university science.
So, let's get to the heart of your (and others') argument to see if I understand. Then read what I say and make sure you understand what I am trying to say as a layman.
Let's posit I accept your outline of speciation above. You say no unique mating ritual is necessary at the start (to establish?) a new species, but allow it may be necessary to sustain it.
Genetically, this is a dodgy assumption because any species is most vulnerable when its numbers of individuals is small. No species is smaller that when it has only two members. It is counterintuitive to assume that a unique mating ritual is not necessary to establish a new species given that.
HOWEVER: we only see the species that have successfully taken root. AFAIK we have not run across a singleton of a new species to study, so we cannot know whether that individual would prefer to mate with his own over others.
Back to my side: I don't know which genes or chromosomes may have been changed in the new individual, and neither do you. Species are sometimes separated (catalogued) by criteria that do not require a large change in genes, and the offspring are not hybridized and are fertile. Most times, however this is not the case.
Most times, a horse and an ass will produce a sterile mule. Every blue moon, there are reports of mules born of female mules, granted. But this is not a strong enough line to produce a viable species. A large land mammal equine species cannot survive if only a few in a thousand offspring survive to reproduce. And that is the key.
If speciation occurs as it seems to be represented by one science, another discipline says it cannot be so. This conundrum has continued since Darwin published.
HOWEVER, the absence of the proof of the MEANS OF evolution does not disprove evolution. I am not saying that. I am saying that the holes in evolution are so big, another theory could easily fit inside them. But that theory is NOT ID.
Is that clear?
I believe you are correct.
In the 1770s we had Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Franklin, Hamilton.
Now we have G.W.Bush, Cheney, Rove, DeLay and Abramoff.
Devolution is proved.
Since your post seems to indicate you are a more thoughtful and information-based person than others who have tried to say the same thing, I will reply to you by thanking you for your detailed information. But it misses my point by apparently assuming I am a ID or creationist nut. I disbelieve in both a conscious anthropromorphic God-creator and in intelligent design.
... what? They don't say. Species evolve. No kidding. What I would like to know is how exactly is it done? It certainly can't be done in the way most westerners who believe in evolution seem to believe it is accomplished. The only answer science has that has the ring of truth is: "We don't know." And I would accept that humility. Because I don't know either. And the bible doesn't know and Luther Burbank didn't know and Pat Robertson certainly doesn't know. No one knows.
But, although Darwinism explains quite a lot (and ID or creationism does not) it does not explain it all. As you know, science is not a closed system, but an open one which is always changing -- including finding things it once believed true are either false or more limited in application than once thought.
Understand that Galileo was opposed by churchmen who did not see their theology must be open or die, churchmen who acted as if all of theology had been discovered and proven. At the time, not even Galileo's scientific peers agreed with him because they did not have the optics that he had developed and used to more accurately describe planetary motion.
He might have said to theologians of the time (I submit that science is the US's priesthood to make this metaphor clear) that their universe was not a good explanation of the real universe. And to scientists of the time, who believed the sun and planets revolved around Earth -- he would say the same but for different reasons. Those who opposed his views on both sides were proved wrong by developments only the future could bring to fruition.
I say today, the priests of Science are as blind as the priests of the Church of Rome in Galileo's time. The earth is not flat, and it is not the center of the universe. It is obvious because the motions of the planets support another idea.
Neither creationism (or the same in the guise of ID) nor neo-Darwinist Evolution (for want of a better term) is the metaphorical equivalent of Galileo's vision of roughly spherical planets, of which the earth is one, revolving around the Sun.
I say to ID people, the bible is not history; it is poetry. It is not to be taken literally. It is a book of faith.
But I see science acting in an arrogant way (with respect to evolution and the quantum theory) simply showering factoids around without pattern to prove
At no time in any post did I deny evolution was an ongoing principle in the world. At no time did I say some God intervened to do his will. All I say is -- to me -- neo-Darwin evolutionism in not enough explanation.
There is another movement called "Punctuated Equilibrium" that has recently fallen into disfavor for some of its proponents making unsubstantiable claims, or ones that have later been adequately explained by traditional means. Nevertheless, it is factually indisputable that, during the time that humans on three continents were learning the calendar and seasons, and, thus, learning agriculture, three different species of grain -- wheat, maize and millet in Mesopotamia, the Americas and Asia, respectively -- doubled, redoubled and redoubled again in seed size until they were so heavy they could no longer be scattered on the wind but needed a (human) hand to plant them.
Over the years, cellular biologists have tried to explain to me that humans selected the biggest seeds to plant and thus helped the process. Doubtless this is true. But since more than ninety per cent of all agronomists that ever lived are alive and practicing today, no further doublings have been seen, and no other species has so dramatically increased the size of their grain, which is not what one would
Are you sure you are not confusing cause and effect, assuming there was a causal relationship at all? How, exactly, is a researcher to know what caused a chimp to make a sexual advance to a human? Are you sure it was a come-hither glance?
The researchers who worked with chimps and other apes who learned sign language do not, AFAIK, report sexual advances from their subjects. If they did, perhaps we could learn what, if any, human action prompted it. That they have not precludes this discussion being based on fact.
Obviously it is impossible. That's the point. Since it's impossible, something ELSE must be happening. The only other possibility is the sudden jump from a species with exactly one or more extra or fewer pairs of chromosomes (or, I must admit, fused chromosomes that would be fewer) and IS VIABLE (excluding non-speciatic mutatiions like Downs Syndrome.)
I am aware that speciation is not dependent on number of pairs of chromosomes only; I used that example because it seems the simplest. Perhaps it was not so simple to explain. Maybe next year or next decade I will be able to explain it better.
I don't insist so; biologists who specialize in studying animal culture do.
/. scientists reported humans have a genetic code that helps them remember tunes.
Read the current literature (my source is the prosaic BBC science pages on the web) and you will see science now accepts that each species of bird responds only to a particular call and, in a separate article covered on
Science also recognizes, for example, the dance of a male pigeon or the display of a peacock is mandatory for mating to occur. A pigeon will not try to mate with a peacock, partly because his dance does not stir the response that "turns him on."
Would a woman's "come-hither-glance" work with Chimpanzees? (Rhetorical question.)
It is paramount, apparently, that species protect their genetic code from pollution from other species that might produce hybrids or sterile offspring.
Each scientific field specializes so much, apparently, it misses new and important developments in other fields.
Except for the numbers of chromosomes chimps have, I stand by my original post. I ask you read it more carefully. And remember, science does not now know what parts of what it believes now will be disproven in the future.
Do not put words in my mouth. I said nothing about God.
Read the last line of my post and you will see I disagree with BOTH sides' having the only complete answer. I am a complete atheist in that I do not believe in any God who intentionally made man -- or the Universe, for that matter. Like all obedient scientifists (I am one) I believe we do not now know how living forms became as rich and diverse as they are in any complete, insightful way.
To me, Darwinism is not yet enough to explain all the questions. I hope to live long enough to find a satisfying explanation, but so far one eludes me.
Sorry if my facts with respect to numbers of chromosomes are wrong (I will check the info out -- I HATE to be wrong!) but that in no way changes the question. How did a mastodon or a proto-horse mutation recognize a new species with one more pair of chromosomes?
The mating ritual and time-and-place "coincidences" are not easily explained away, either.
Both theories, IMO, are quite imcomplete.
If so, then please explain to me how either one of these scenarios can be true:
A species (chimpanzees, our "closest" relatives, for example) with 21 pairs of chromosomes can EVOLVE into one with 22 pairs. Do the fossil records indicate critters with 21.1, 21.2, 21.3, 21.4.... pairs of choromosomes?
If not, then explain how a (presumably) mutant new example of an "evolved" chimpanzee with 22 pairs of chromosomes can find another exactly evolved 22-paired mutant -- at the same time -- in the same place -- recognize him or her -- and develop a brand new and unique mating ritual that works. All of these steps are recognized as being necessary to begin to form a new species.
That said, to deny Darwinism is to ignore the stages and features our own embryos develop and discard: gills, tail, front legs.
So, it appears to me that both Darwinism and ID leave a lot out of their little worlds.
Perhaps that's why they argue so much and so loudly: they're both overselling their cases.
Unless I misplaced a decimal point or misunderstand physics, isn't 45 nm only a very few generations from needing connections only one molecule thick?
I am not a newbie. Windows' problems with respect to stability (I am speaking of 9x, the only versions I have used) are endemic, and IN THE OS. I have had a new installation of W98 go south in less than an hour with NO APPLICATIONS YET INSTALLED simply by playing a video through MPlayer.
.dlls replaced, anything can (and will) happen.
Once apps are installed and
I am not going to buy Windows again. Ever.
End of story.
As for you, do what you like.
NB: Do you realize you sound like a Microsoft shill?
I do -- DOSEmu. WordPerfect-5.1, dragmax, pipemax (auto racing development programs), mercury (the old Borland graphical maths solver) and grammatik-2 run perfectly on it. I have used DOS since ver 3.1.
No blue screen of death in DOS, that's true. Just don't use extended memory or you'll get instant death-crashes without the blue screen warning.
I know you were trolling...you just didn't know you were half right, did you?
to see the obvious.
It was not the GPL or being able to Use the Source that led me to Linux; it was Windows' misbehavior. I learned to love those other things later, after I found Linux to be much better behaved.
I would much, much rather spend time learning and configuring Linux to my liking -- a positive feeling of success and pride -- than put up with Windows' flaws -- a feeling of failure and helplessness.
Frankly, I didn't care whether I used BeOS (which I was considering at the time) BSD or Linux as long as it didn't crash all the time or get viruses (boot sector trojans were popular then.) As chance had it, my local computer store had a 5-linux-distro boxed set for sale for $20 USD, so Linux it was.
I have been an enthusiastic Linux user and contributer ever since.
THis is OT, of course, but I believe you might be thinking of H.L.Mencken's famous quotation, "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."
You're quite right about the education system in the US, but I am not sure we are the worst in that respect; when I was in Asia -- Japan especially -- knowledge of one's country's histories was patchy at best and dead wrong at worst. At that time, the Japanese hadn't yet broken the news to their own citizens that they started WWII in the Pacific against China and Korea and that they abused civilians in those places greatly during that war.
The stupidest thing is that our leaders are working from wrong information -- supplied by our CIA and NSA. When I was a soldier in Viet Nam, I learned the Chinese were the Viets long-time enemy in history AND legend. It was a common fear in the US at that time that had we stepped up the war enough to have had a chance to win it, the North Vietnamese (government) would have called on China for help. That was not so, for the above reason.
In fact, after we pulled out, China was the first country Ho's forces attacked. Then they cleaned out their other old enemy, the Cambods.
Dumb, dumb and dumb. To think I once was asked to work for the NSA....
Oh, Jeez.
The remark was clearly intended to describe how we have become, like the soviets were, a police state.
The only difference I ever saw between US Capitalism and Sovietism was in the US, the rich were powerful, and under the Soviets the powerful became rich.
All police states use the same techniques; I could have used the Nazis, instead, who used the same cry of "insanity" against those who spoke out against them, but I doubt the word "eugenics" would mean anything to a young person today.
Yes, the US has begun its intevitable trudge toward police-statism. I say inevitable because all empires when decline begins, use the same methods to try to keep control. Look to the British 100 years ago or to the Romans 1800 years ago if you want to see where we are headed.
I suspect you have a political agenda -- otherwise why try to refute my post? In that case, try these facts on for size:
Every elected president since the end of WWII except Carter has, in his first year, on the bad advice of the NSA and the intelligence community, has begun an adventurous and eventually disastrous war. Eisenhower invaded Guatemala; Kennedy had the Bay of Pigs; Johnson whipped the Dominican Republic into shape; Nixon found Cambodia inviting (and caused, indirectly, the genocide of the Kmer Rouge -- but that's another story); Ford was not elected; Carter was the sole exception, as I said; Reagan invaded Nicaragua; Bush One had Iraq; Clinton took a chance on Jugoslavia (Bechtel's VP of European operations died beside Trade Czar Ron Brown in the 199x crash approaching Sarajevo Airport), and Bush the Younger had Iraq, too.
So, if it is as it appears to be, how can you NOT call the US a police state? What other term so accurately describes unbridled federal executive power coupled with misuse of invesitigative (police) agencies?
The Soviets were infamous for declaring dissidents insane and imprisoning them in "hospitals" for "treatment." Think this is not so? Then read Gulag Archepelago.
Every police state tries this approach.
Tice is not paranoid; he (and we) have real enemies, and, more and more often, those enemies are in our own government.
1. I have noticed that when I visit a friend for some one-on-one gaming using a CRT instead of my LCD at home my eyes burn and tear after twenty minutes or so of playing, while my LCD allows hours of use without noticeable strain. N.B. I feel I DO play closer attention to the screen when gaming than I do when surfing....
2. 5-hours sleep a night is way, way, too little. Sleep deprivation is a serious and underreported health problem.
3. After fifty years of myopia without astigmatism, my latest eye checkup indicated a small amout on assymetry (astigmatism), too, like you. Perhaps computer use is contributing to our probs, but I cannot see how. Astigmatism is a physical anamoly, and I can't grok how monitor viewing (or even lack of sleep) can affect this; it is genetic AFAIK.
Oh.
The name thing.
Sound it out.
Then call me a woman.
--AnnaMerikin.
I used KDE-1.0 on Caldera OpenLinux-1.3, installed from a Linux For Dummies CD-ROM included with the book, for a couple of years -- until libc6 got stable, around RH-6.2, which shipped with KDE-1.1, IIRC. I upgraded its KDE to 1.2, then to 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 before it broke, but nevermind, by then I had stopped using it in favor of Blackbox.
Recently, needing glibc=>2.3 for some app, I installed SuSE-9 with KDE over RH. Then, unsatisfied, I tried a hd-install of Knoppix, but found myself using fluxbox (blackbox clone) instead of KDE-3.4.x.
I don't hate KDE, but, as I have old hardware, it is slow. And it still clobbers the keyboard rate on the console, too, changing the delay on repeat to .5 seconds instead of my own quicker preference.
Perhaps 4.0 will be more to my liking.
I believe you're right. IIRC, MS missed the xmas season with one release (I forget which) and the computer marketers were delivering certificates for a free upgrade during the shopping rush.
I don't remember how the upgrade program worked in practice, but it seems likely to have been complicated and expensive for them.
MS usually doesn't make the same marketing mistake repeatedly (unless you consider shipping MS-DOS 4.0 and WindowsME marketing mistakes. I don't: they were just BAD products marketed in the usual way.)
Not exactly. Diesel engines cause ignition through compression; this is why diesel engines don't use spark plugs. Because they use compression to fire the charge (air mixed with fine particles of fuel oil) and the compression only rises to its peak for a short period, at high rpms some of the fuel particles are left unburnt because there isn't enough time to burn it completely before the exhaust valve opens and compression is lost.
And since horsepower is torque (twisting power) expressed through time (work), greater horsepower requires more rpm, all other things equal. Which makes the above situation worse.
This works because compressing a gas (the air in the mixture) causes the temp to rise (First law of thermodynamics) but only near the top of the stroke. Adding hydrogen causes the mixture, apparently, to fire quicker (at a lower temperature) so it can burn more completely, producing more power (efficiency) and less polluting compounds and unburnt fuel.
So it is not exactly a catalyst in that it has no part to play in the *chemical* reaction process. But it helps manage a diesel's combustion, appartenly, in a way that otherwise could not be accomplished.
I'd like to see an organization like Anandtech do a piece about this....