As are you, though less so.
We are the losers. In the current environment, poverty is a selective advantage.
If genes determined fitness, this may not be true. And it all depends on what you mean by 'selective advantage'. If you mean 'more of these in the future,' then yes. If you mean, 'will control resourecs and mate with whom they choose' then absolutely not.
Both are true when describing animal species, but it is only the second meaning that is useful. Humans are different than animals, because the most sucessful do not have the most numbers, because our genes do not determine our fitness -- our wealth and status do. And these things can be concentrated by having fewer offspring and thus having all of the wealth distributed among fewer individuals.
Additionally, from a ecological point of view, evolution is caused by outside stressors, forces that cause selection. It thus proceeds slowly in stable areas. If an individual is sucessful in his current environment, then he is adapted to it (or in our case, have adapted our environment to us) and there are no forces causing him to change and evolve. A good example of this are crocodiles and sharks, top predators that have been stable for tens of millions of years. They are not losers simply for having hit on a winning strategy early on. As long as they (and we) preserve the ability to change in the future, we have not lost.
For humans, the wealthy are stable -- they have access to medicines that cure the few selective forces left. The poor do not, as such they live and die more quickly and some genetic strategies for coping with the selectors are found (e.g. maleria and sickle hemoglobin heterogeniety). The poor are more volatile, are evoloving faster, but are not necessarily 'winners'.
Simply having more offspring does not put one at an advantage. Only if your offspring are able to mate with others does it do so. If everyone mated randomly, then their genes would be the big winners. But that doesn't happen. Mating happens most along class lines. The poor marry the poor, and most often neighboring poor due to lack of money for travel.
When I was in Munich during the summer of 2002, I was buying groceries and the guy in front of me was paying with with 500 euro note. The odd thing was that the cashier just took it in stride and gave him his change, which included a number of 100 notes.
There are currently 29 GPS satellites in orbit, 24 functional and 5 spares to be used as backups. They are in 6 12-hour orbits to ensure that there are at least 4 satellites available from every position on earth at all times.
Basically, in order to locate you in three dimensions, the GPS receiver needs to be able to see four satellites. (It's actually locating you in four dimensions: X, Y, Z, and time).
The satellites, however, not being in different times, cannot triangulate on your time, but instead assume that you are in the same time that they are in (A reasonable assumption). In fact, only three satellites are needed to triangulate on your 3-D position, but due to various atmospheric conditions that vary the amount of time for transmission, and therefore vary the distance estimates, a fourth satellite is always used for error checking. With four satellites, you have four combinations of three satellites, with each combination giving you a 3-space estimate. You can then average these four estimates to get a more correct position. The more satellites, the more pieces of information you can apply to the problem, and the more correct your estimate -- which is why seven is often the prefered number for most civilian applications. Even with seven, though, there are errors, so all data collected with GPS units should then be corrected by referencing it to a nearby base station with a known exact location on the earth's surface.
As for the other post that suggests the reason 3 can be used is because the system knows you are on the Earth's surface -- this assumption would be true if, 1) the system made such as assumption, and 2) the Earth's surface were smooth. Since the system locates the position of mountain climbers, forest rangers, cars on roads, and airplanes in the sky, neither assumption can be made.
Though I agree with the second and third paragraphs, Presidents do create and destroy jobs. About 10% of our population is employed by local, state, and federal government. Policies created at the federal level directly effect the number of jobs available in various fields at all levels of government. I am an ecologist; Bush's loosening of environmental laws have made the job market in my field tight. Due to the policies of war, my physicist friend has a range of jobs to choose from (check out 'Jobs in Demand' at http://www.usajobs.opm.gov/)
Re:Word To You, Bro
on
Word Up
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Unless the UNIX computer was his brain, the article makes no mention of his use an anagram finder...
Again, I would argue against your statement that there is nothing wrong with polygamy. Most forms of polygamy set up situations where one person in the preexisting marriage (almost certainly the woman) is pressured to go along with a situation she detests
Your argument against polygamy seems to be more of an argument against coercion and control in a relationship, not against having multiple partners. The problem is that the religions that have historically promoted polygamy as polygyny have been deeply misogynistic, Sky-Father religions in which women were regarded as property. That kind of polygamy is simply unhealthy for all partners. In a healthy polygamous relationship, all partners love, though are not necessarily sexually active with, all other partners.
If you make a drawing of the relationship, then there are lines connecting every individual, there aren't only lines radiating from a central point as in traditional polygamy. However, this means that the number of connections, the number of positive relationships, has to grow geometrically with the number of people, and so this naturally tends to limit the number of people who can be a part of the same healthy polygamous relationship.
If one wanted to set up polygamy laws such that once a marriage has been formed, it cannot be ammended...
In my experiences, healthy polygamous relationships grow gradually. It is highly unlikely that a group of people will spontaneously meet each other and all fall in love. It is much more likely for two people to meet, and then both meet a third person, and then all three perhaps meet a fourth. The key here, of course, is that everyone enters the relationship willingly and thoughtfully.
To get past increasing entropy, there must be a directed process. This requires natural selection, which absolutely requires nearly-perfect (but not totally perfect) reproduction. Otherwise gains made in the mutation set of a parent are more likely to be lost than passed on, and without that, there is no natural selection, no neo-darwinian evolution.
Anyone who has written a genetic algorithm knows this isn't true. The algorithm will converge on a solution as long as a majority of the data is preserved. It will take it longer with more mutation, but the algorithm doesn't break until around the 35-45% for fairly complex problems. For simple problems, it can actually accept much more. If the problem is solvable with multiple solutions, then the amount of mutation can be even higher.
And if we follow the biological definition, all programming languages are of the same species, with sub-species for each type -- procedural, functional, OO, etc. There are then individuals within each subspecies capable of intermingling to produce new offspring. Interbreeding between subspecies is more rare, but also has the chance of producing much more interresting results when it happens.
We have a process in which to 'listen to the damn people.' It's called elections. That's different from shutting down a city or country until the government does what you want
If there are enough protesters to shut down a city or country, then the people of that place are clearly making their voices heard, and in a much more politically effective way than elections.
The problem here is simple. If you believe that the Earth is only 5000 or so years old, then any test that relies on the rocks in question being an order of magnitude or two older is invalid. Such people have no concept of 'geological time', since they cannot understand that the beginning of history does not mean the beginnig of time.
This argument is futile -- no matter how scientific creationists try to sound, their world view is so dramatically different from the agnostic scientific model that a concensus is unable to be reached. I am glad, however, that the scientists haven't began attempting to appeal to the creationists with quotes from Genesis.
that's exactly the problem; there_are_no universal definitions for "planet." the most common definition is "any celestial body that orbits a star". I think we can all see the problem with that definition; we would have to classify even the least massive meteors (probably numbering in the millions in our solar system alone) as planets.
Planet is from the greek for 'wanderer'. The stars seen from Earth appear to move as the earth rotates and also as the earth revolves around the sun, giving a different night sky for the winter than in the summer. And though moving, these stars all keep the same relationship between themselves. Planets, however, are objects seen in the sky which move in relation to the other objects in the sky. They wander about and have no fixed position. Thus, planets are objects which wander about in the night sky -- which means they are indeed objects which orbit the sun.
And what, exactly, is wrong with this definition? Why is it important to us that we have only a few large 'planets'? Are we afraid it would necessitate learning the names of each and every object orbiting the sun?
I do not have a good response to this question myself, but something does seem wrong with it -- we want relatively few planets because we view them as somehow important. When we identify what makes these objects important to us (and it may well just be their size), then we can come to a suitable scientific definition of what makes a planet, and have it be one that does not contradict our intuitive assessment of the same.
Sklyarov came to the US to give a talk on breaking Adobe e-Book encryption, which was a violation of the DMCA. As such, he was detained... for six months. The 'right to a speedy trial' apparently means under a year or two. He was allowed to go home without prosecution only in exchange for testifying against his employer, Elcomsoft. As such, there are no 5th Amendment issues here, because he's not testifying against himself. Elmcomsoft was doing business in, and has servers in the US. Therefore it's in the US's jursidiction -- they can force the company's presence out of the US. (Which would then bring us into fair trade issues with certain unnamed intranational arbiters.)
(IANAL-yet) This is not true. If one party of a contract does not uphold the contract, the entire contract is still in effect. However, the party in violation can be sued to force them to comply with the contract. For example, if my landlord does not keep the house properly heated, then I cannot simply stop paying rent because he has 'voided the contract'. Instead, I must continue to pay rent while suing him for an injunction to install additional heaters.
The WinXP EULA states:
You agree to be bound by the terms of this EULA by installing, copying, or otherwise using the product. If you do not agree, do not install or use the product; you may return it to your place of purchase for a full refund.
So, you can get your money back from the retailer. Presumably this is also part of the contract between MS and the retailer for them to become OEM.
Adittionally, in the US you can resell software under Softman v. Adobe.
-Joe
Slashdot Mirror
As are you, though less so. We are the losers. In the current environment, poverty is a selective advantage. If genes determined fitness, this may not be true. And it all depends on what you mean by 'selective advantage'. If you mean 'more of these in the future,' then yes. If you mean, 'will control resourecs and mate with whom they choose' then absolutely not. Both are true when describing animal species, but it is only the second meaning that is useful. Humans are different than animals, because the most sucessful do not have the most numbers, because our genes do not determine our fitness -- our wealth and status do. And these things can be concentrated by having fewer offspring and thus having all of the wealth distributed among fewer individuals. Additionally, from a ecological point of view, evolution is caused by outside stressors, forces that cause selection. It thus proceeds slowly in stable areas. If an individual is sucessful in his current environment, then he is adapted to it (or in our case, have adapted our environment to us) and there are no forces causing him to change and evolve. A good example of this are crocodiles and sharks, top predators that have been stable for tens of millions of years. They are not losers simply for having hit on a winning strategy early on. As long as they (and we) preserve the ability to change in the future, we have not lost. For humans, the wealthy are stable -- they have access to medicines that cure the few selective forces left. The poor do not, as such they live and die more quickly and some genetic strategies for coping with the selectors are found (e.g. maleria and sickle hemoglobin heterogeniety). The poor are more volatile, are evoloving faster, but are not necessarily 'winners'. Simply having more offspring does not put one at an advantage. Only if your offspring are able to mate with others does it do so. If everyone mated randomly, then their genes would be the big winners. But that doesn't happen. Mating happens most along class lines. The poor marry the poor, and most often neighboring poor due to lack of money for travel.
You are apparently unfamiliar with British English, where maths is the preferred truncation of mathematics.
When I was in Munich during the summer of 2002, I was buying groceries and the guy in front of me was paying with with 500 euro note. The odd thing was that the cashier just took it in stride and gave him his change, which included a number of 100 notes.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
"I am human and think, therefore I hated the comman rabble and pleasure."
progranum vulgus could also be translated as 'wicked masses'.
Regardless, it doesn't seem to make a great deal of sense.
There are currently 29 GPS satellites in orbit, 24 functional and 5 spares to be used as backups. They are in 6 12-hour orbits to ensure that there are at least 4 satellites available from every position on earth at all times.
Basically, in order to locate you in three dimensions, the GPS receiver needs to be able to see four satellites. (It's actually locating you in four dimensions: X, Y, Z, and time).The satellites, however, not being in different times, cannot triangulate on your time, but instead assume that you are in the same time that they are in (A reasonable assumption). In fact, only three satellites are needed to triangulate on your 3-D position, but due to various atmospheric conditions that vary the amount of time for transmission, and therefore vary the distance estimates, a fourth satellite is always used for error checking. With four satellites, you have four combinations of three satellites, with each combination giving you a 3-space estimate. You can then average these four estimates to get a more correct position. The more satellites, the more pieces of information you can apply to the problem, and the more correct your estimate -- which is why seven is often the prefered number for most civilian applications. Even with seven, though, there are errors, so all data collected with GPS units should then be corrected by referencing it to a nearby base station with a known exact location on the earth's surface.
As for the other post that suggests the reason 3 can be used is because the system knows you are on the Earth's surface -- this assumption would be true if, 1) the system made such as assumption, and 2) the Earth's surface were smooth. Since the system locates the position of mountain climbers, forest rangers, cars on roads, and airplanes in the sky, neither assumption can be made.
Though I agree with the second and third paragraphs, Presidents do create and destroy jobs. About 10% of our population is employed by local, state, and federal government. Policies created at the federal level directly effect the number of jobs available in various fields at all levels of government. I am an ecologist; Bush's loosening of environmental laws have made the job market in my field tight. Due to the policies of war, my physicist friend has a range of jobs to choose from (check out 'Jobs in Demand' at http://www.usajobs.opm.gov/)
At the top of the article is a small menu with days of the week. Click on 'Mon' or http://slate.com/id/2105210/entry/2105211/. Took me a bit to find it too.
Your argument against polygamy seems to be more of an argument against coercion and control in a relationship, not against having multiple partners. The problem is that the religions that have historically promoted polygamy as polygyny have been deeply misogynistic, Sky-Father religions in which women were regarded as property. That kind of polygamy is simply unhealthy for all partners. In a healthy polygamous relationship, all partners love, though are not necessarily sexually active with, all other partners.
If you make a drawing of the relationship, then there are lines connecting every individual, there aren't only lines radiating from a central point as in traditional polygamy. However, this means that the number of connections, the number of positive relationships, has to grow geometrically with the number of people, and so this naturally tends to limit the number of people who can be a part of the same healthy polygamous relationship.
In my experiences, healthy polygamous relationships grow gradually. It is highly unlikely that a group of people will spontaneously meet each other and all fall in love. It is much more likely for two people to meet, and then both meet a third person, and then all three perhaps meet a fourth. The key here, of course, is that everyone enters the relationship willingly and thoughtfully.
Anyone who has written a genetic algorithm knows this isn't true. The algorithm will converge on a solution as long as a majority of the data is preserved. It will take it longer with more mutation, but the algorithm doesn't break until around the 35-45% for fairly complex problems. For simple problems, it can actually accept much more. If the problem is solvable with multiple solutions, then the amount of mutation can be even higher.
A bit deep for an Erisian... FNORD!
And if we follow the biological definition, all programming languages are of the same species, with sub-species for each type -- procedural, functional, OO, etc. There are then individuals within each subspecies capable of intermingling to produce new offspring. Interbreeding between subspecies is more rare, but also has the chance of producing much more interresting results when it happens.
We have a process in which to 'listen to the damn people.' It's called elections. That's different from shutting down a city or country until the government does what you want
If there are enough protesters to shut down a city or country, then the people of that place are clearly making their voices heard, and in a much more politically effective way than elections.
The problem here is simple. If you believe that the Earth is only 5000 or so years old, then any test that relies on the rocks in question being an order of magnitude or two older is invalid. Such people have no concept of 'geological time', since they cannot understand that the beginning of history does not mean the beginnig of time.
This argument is futile -- no matter how scientific creationists try to sound, their world view is so dramatically different from the agnostic scientific model that a concensus is unable to be reached. I am glad, however, that the scientists haven't began attempting to appeal to the creationists with quotes from Genesis.
Planet is from the greek for 'wanderer'. The stars seen from Earth appear to move as the earth rotates and also as the earth revolves around the sun, giving a different night sky for the winter than in the summer. And though moving, these stars all keep the same relationship between themselves. Planets, however, are objects seen in the sky which move in relation to the other objects in the sky. They wander about and have no fixed position. Thus, planets are objects which wander about in the night sky -- which means they are indeed objects which orbit the sun.
And what, exactly, is wrong with this definition? Why is it important to us that we have only a few large 'planets'? Are we afraid it would necessitate learning the names of each and every object orbiting the sun?
I do not have a good response to this question myself, but something does seem wrong with it -- we want relatively few planets because we view them as somehow important. When we identify what makes these objects important to us (and it may well just be their size), then we can come to a suitable scientific definition of what makes a planet, and have it be one that does not contradict our intuitive assessment of the same.
And Wizards of the Coast, and TSR along with it, is of course owned by Hasbro now.
And servicemembers purchase food, housing and clothing for themselves and their families for far less than fastfood workers.
Sklyarov came to the US to give a talk on breaking Adobe e-Book encryption, which was a violation of the DMCA. As such, he was detained... for six months. The 'right to a speedy trial' apparently means under a year or two. He was allowed to go home without prosecution only in exchange for testifying against his employer, Elcomsoft. As such, there are no 5th Amendment issues here, because he's not testifying against himself. Elmcomsoft was doing business in, and has servers in the US. Therefore it's in the US's jursidiction -- they can force the company's presence out of the US. (Which would then bring us into fair trade issues with certain unnamed intranational arbiters.)
You should add GigsVT's user# (#208848) just for added irony.