What exactly is the "law of evolution"? I've never heard of it. Hasn't the fact that species change over time (microevolution) been directly observed? I can't imagine that's in serious dispute.
As for the origin of life itself, that's really a completely separate question, isn't it?
The fact of the matter is, evolution can't possibly be synonymous with Darwin's theory of natural selection, because scientists had been actively trying to figure out how evolution works long before Darwin was on the scene.
I'm not saying that every use of the term "evolution" refers to Darwin's theory of evolution. What I'm saying is that it seems the use of the term in this context does. Do you think Lamarckian Evolution is covered in this student textbook? I highly doubt it. "Darwin's theory of evolution" certainly is a synonym for "evolution".
Let's sincerely hope that the law and the theory are separate entities, because otherwise we're going to have to come up with a new word.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the law" and "the theory", but surely context needs to be used. In the context of this sticker, it's specifically saying that evolution is a theory, so it's clearly talking about the theory. Perhaps this is just using weasel words, and I don't like the sticker very much anyway, but using the term "evolution" as a synonym for "Darwin's theory of evolution" is a well accepted usage. I could bring out other dictionaries, if you'd like, or you could just look it up yourself.
When some one comes with proof that something "supernatural" pushed evolution in the "right" direction, then we will accept it.
The supernatural pretty much by definition can't be proven. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. Provably true is a subset of truth, after all.
Until then, its a wild guess with no substance.
It's hard for me to see how saying that everything happened by mere coincidence is any better. It's a safe assumption, perhaps, but that certainly doesn't make it a true fact.
By the way, can you prove that you were not dancing naked yesterday nite ? If not, you must have been dancing naked. Hows that sound ?
I never used this type of logic. I'm merely expressing a healthy bit of skepticism toward the assertion that human life arose through random accident.
I pretty much agree with you, but I'm not sure there is an easy solution. The line between education and indoctrination is a thin one, and I don't think the government should be in the business of forcing students to learn (and repeat, if they expect to get a decent grade) things which their parents insist are not true. I'm sure this sticker is a last ditch effort by a group of individuals who have already failed at trying to get religious theories taught in schools.
That's what I would want for my kids, show them all the different theories and trust them to know which ones make logical sense and which don't (and of course answer their questions while searching for the answers together). But a public school just can't do that, at least not in the US.
The fact of the matter is, evolution is a fact of nature, a law, and we are surrounded by proof that it exists (I don't look like my parents, animal breeding) just as much as we are by proof that gravity exists. The theory is the model we use for what causes it - natural selection in this case.
This was my initial belief, but I looked up the definition online and the definition as used in biology was this: "Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species." According to this definition, at least, you can't separate the theory of evolution from that of natural selection. Looking up "natural selection" seems to confirm this, "evolution" is just short for "Darwin's theory of evolution", and it seems to me that natural selection, as the sole basis for the origin of human life, is far from scientific fact.
That humans evolved from other forms of life is pretty hard to dispute. That this happened due to pure random chance, on the other hand, seems to me to be pretty much impossible to prove. Natural selection explains how it's possible, but there is no evidence, let alone proof, that there isn't some other force, either supernatural or natural (and just not yet discovered), which pushed evolution in the right direction.
I suppose one could make a mathematical/statistical argument. Find out how many changes there are in the DNA between two species, see how long it took for one to evolve from the other, and then figure out what the rate of mutation likely had to be for it to be purely random. Who knows, maybe the book even got into this.
Most of them probably did, and in fact there's nothing in the article suggesting that any of the lawyers had anything to do with the arrest.
It's also pretty obvious that they weren't arrested just for telling jokes. But the article is heavily slanted in favor of the arrested individuals, so you really can't tell what happened just from it.
I think Stallman explained it best: "When information is generally useful, redistributing it makes humanity wealthier no matter who is distributing and no matter who is receiving."
Humanity is wealthier without copyright law, so it it your right to violate it.
The messages are not tangible property. Furthermore, the only law they are protected by is copyright law, so no one "owns the messages themselves". There's really no such concept of legal ownership of messages. Control over the messages is vested in Yahoo, so if anyone could be said to own the messages it is Yahoo.
Yahoo! and he agreed to a contract.
And that contract terminated upon his death.
I store files on my university web account. Does the university now own my files?
As I said, there's no legal concept of ownership of something such as this. If I had to stretch my understanding of ownership to include this concept I'd say that yes, the university does own your files, in that the primary control over those files vests with the university. But files are not tangible property, and talking about "ownership" of intangible property is really not very useful.
I'm sure you have personal information on a bank's servers. Do they now own that information since its on their hard drives?
Shouldn't the right to privacy be explictit, rather then reqested?
Dead people don't have rights. This isn't about whether or not Yahoo is allowed to release the emails, it's about whether or not they can be forced to. IOW, it's really an issue of reputation.
The US system already accomplishes most of what you've explained. The specs aren't XML, but they could easily be converted into XML. Just sprinkle in a few < and > (not that I think this will simplify things, but some people are dead set against anything other than XML). Seriously, if XML was the magic bullet, it'd be done by now. I could convert the specs into XML in a matter of days.
The problem is, if all you implement is the raw spec, you're left with hundreds of forms and thousands of fields. It wouldn't be very useful to anyone not intimately familiar with what information goes where.
The even have a PDF where they label the PDF with the field numbers used on it. Now that's pretty useful, but you've still gotta worry about all the "fill in the blank" options. As one example of many, "prisoner earned income" isn't listed on the standard 1040 form, because there aren't all that many people who have it. On standard tax forms you write it in (I think it goes under other income, but really I don't remember).
It's tedious little things like that which make writing the software so difficult. An automatic script could do a lot of the work, but the 1040 alone has 275 fields in it.
It's out there, and the only open source software I know of that tried to do it is the software I've written, and I gave up. I think eventually there will be free software to do it, and I'm surprised there isn't already, but AFAIK there's not any work currently being done on it.
The specs are easy enough to follow. The hard part is figuring out where to put the numbers. Once you've got all the numbers, the calculations are straightforward (for a computer).
Then you have the source, and can fix it. You think there aren't bugs in professional tax preparation software? As a tax preparer, I can tell you with certainty there are. In fact, what originally sent me to creating this software was the fact that there were so many bugs in the original e-file software my father and I used that he went back to filing the stuff by hand for his clients (pencil, paper, and calculator).
The initial target market would have to be the tax professional, anyway.
If even a minor fraction of your end users are, because of a mistake you made, systematically undercalculating their tax the IRS is likely to be upset at the potential loss of revenue and/or the extra work required to find and correct these returns.
Systematic errors will easily be caught. In fact, the IRS makes you run a bunch of test cases before they'll even let you submit, and surely the most common errors would show up then. Furthermore, all the calculations are checked by the computer after you submit, and you find out within 3 days if your return was accepted or reject. Yes, it's going to piss the hell out of your customers when your submission fails and their refund gets delayed, especially since those filing electronically are those who care most about getting a fast refund, but this is exactly what happened the first time around with a high priced e-filing software that we bought. A rather large number of customers were permanently lost as a result before my dad went back to pencil and paper and I resorted to printing out the returns that year. We got a refund for the software, but most of those customers involved never came back.
I wouldn't want to be in that position.
Well, then don't be an ERO, software developer, or transmitter. These people make money because they're willing to do this. It should be noted that the transmission is completely separate from the creation of the electronic return. At first it would be smartest to only focus on the creation of the electronic return, and then submit it to a transmitter who would check the data and resubmit.
It's unlikely e-filing will ever be completely free of cost because of this. You can't transmit directly to the IRS. You send the return to a licensed transmitter who then transmits to the IRS in a batch job. You're going to probably have to pay at least a dollar or two to the transmitter.
Only if you can wade through the tonne (US:ton) of exemptions under the Act and persuade the Information Commissioner that there's a case for releasing them.
Even if you do itemize it's a miscellaneous deduction subject to a 2% floor. So just your miscellaneous deductions have to exceed 2% of your AGI (adjusted gross income, basically your income). Here's a list of other miscellaneous deductions.
In order to take most "deductions" (including a deduction for tax preparation expenses, or charitable donations), the total of all such deductions must exceed the standard deduction. This only rarely happens.
It's not really that rare to itemize. If you've got a mortgage, most of the time you can itemize (mortgage interest and property taxes are generally big itemized deductions). And this year you can take sales taxes, which is a big boon for people in states like Florida with no income taxes (and for tax preparers in Florida like me who make more money when people itemize).
If you understand the tax code thoroughly, you're going to easily know exactly which forms to fill out in a specific year. And you would be an accountant, not a programmer.
I know the tax codes thoroughly, and I'm a professional tax preparer and programmer.
Coincidentally, I don't mean this post to be deragotary towards Open Source people, but am I wrong that no one is going to start a project for code that he himself isn't going to use?
I started one a few years ago, when I had a lot more time on my hands (of course my intention was to be able to use it, but as it turns out I just buy my e-file software for now, it's cheaper than writing the software myself). I abandoned it, largely because I suck at writing GUIs (it was basically my first attempt at using GTK). If a few people want to help me try again, I'm sure we could get something done in time for 2005s taxes (even if it's just the 1040-EZ, it'll generate enough interest to move forward). Thespecsare out there, but the work is tedious. If you're in, contact me at taxman@inbox.org.
They pay ahem... "subscription charges" for the documentation and specifications, the tax accounting software companies get to call their software "fully IR/IRS compliant".
Wrong. You can download all the specs for free, and then if you submit your fingerprints and pass their tests, you yourself can become an official e-services provider. I even signed up as a software provider and got approved for testing, but I never finished the product. You want a free/open source tax program? Write one.
So "they" work things out, but where does that leave the poor fellow who just wants to listen to the distant FM station that he's paid good money to put up an antenna to pick up?
I'm sure enough frequencies could be found to accomodate him as well. If not, like I said, then you can get the government involved, and open up some new frequencies to meet the new demand.
There are some things that are fine if only a few people do them, but start to cause problems when it becomes common.
And these things don't need to be regulated until they start causing problems. Saying "tough shit, you can't do it because if all your neighbors who don't care to do it all did it too it would cause problems." That's just dumb.
Of course, and we do all the time, from cells and batteries.
Cells and batteries utilize electromagnetic fields. In fact, pretty much everything we observe on earth (except gravity) uses electromagnetic forces. Which force would you suggest is predominant in a battery? Weak nuclear?
Yes, you can, and we do all the time.
Intelligent discussion, unfortunately you are wrong.
Speaking of the speed of a current is meaningful, speaking of the speed of the electrons is not. You can measure the current speed and divide that by the charge transferred and arrive at a number for the 'speed of an electron', but it's not a very meaningful number.
Actually, what about conservation of momentum, conservation of energy, etc? It's just not physically possible for electrons to be sent at such tremendous speeds. The only plausible scientific explanation is that photons are what is carrying the electricity, not electrons.
"Electromagnetic radiation consists of alternating electric and
"magnetic fields.
and electricity doesn't?
No, it doesn't.
So you can have electricity without alternating electromagnetic fields?
So, you can use electricity to produce electromagnetic radiation,
You can't have electricity without producing electromagnetic radiation.
but electricity isn't itself electromagnetic radiation.
Fine. "Electricity is a property of certain subatomic particles (e.g. electrons/ protons) which couples to electromagnetic fields and causes attractive and repulsive forces between them."
Well sure, of course, if you want to look at it another way, light only travels in the vacuum in between atoms, and then only at "c", it just slowed down by the constant absorption and re-emission.
Slashdot Mirror
What exactly is the "law of evolution"? I've never heard of it. Hasn't the fact that species change over time (microevolution) been directly observed? I can't imagine that's in serious dispute.
As for the origin of life itself, that's really a completely separate question, isn't it?
The fact of the matter is, evolution can't possibly be synonymous with Darwin's theory of natural selection, because scientists had been actively trying to figure out how evolution works long before Darwin was on the scene.
I'm not saying that every use of the term "evolution" refers to Darwin's theory of evolution. What I'm saying is that it seems the use of the term in this context does. Do you think Lamarckian Evolution is covered in this student textbook? I highly doubt it. "Darwin's theory of evolution" certainly is a synonym for "evolution".
Let's sincerely hope that the law and the theory are separate entities, because otherwise we're going to have to come up with a new word.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the law" and "the theory", but surely context needs to be used. In the context of this sticker, it's specifically saying that evolution is a theory, so it's clearly talking about the theory. Perhaps this is just using weasel words, and I don't like the sticker very much anyway, but using the term "evolution" as a synonym for "Darwin's theory of evolution" is a well accepted usage. I could bring out other dictionaries, if you'd like, or you could just look it up yourself.
When some one comes with proof that something "supernatural" pushed evolution in the "right" direction, then we will accept it.
The supernatural pretty much by definition can't be proven. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. Provably true is a subset of truth, after all.
Until then, its a wild guess with no substance.
It's hard for me to see how saying that everything happened by mere coincidence is any better. It's a safe assumption, perhaps, but that certainly doesn't make it a true fact.
By the way, can you prove that you were not dancing naked yesterday nite ? If not, you must have been dancing naked. Hows that sound ?
I never used this type of logic. I'm merely expressing a healthy bit of skepticism toward the assertion that human life arose through random accident.
I pretty much agree with you, but I'm not sure there is an easy solution. The line between education and indoctrination is a thin one, and I don't think the government should be in the business of forcing students to learn (and repeat, if they expect to get a decent grade) things which their parents insist are not true. I'm sure this sticker is a last ditch effort by a group of individuals who have already failed at trying to get religious theories taught in schools.
That's what I would want for my kids, show them all the different theories and trust them to know which ones make logical sense and which don't (and of course answer their questions while searching for the answers together). But a public school just can't do that, at least not in the US.
The fact of the matter is, evolution is a fact of nature, a law, and we are surrounded by proof that it exists (I don't look like my parents, animal breeding) just as much as we are by proof that gravity exists. The theory is the model we use for what causes it - natural selection in this case.
This was my initial belief, but I looked up the definition online and the definition as used in biology was this: "Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species." According to this definition, at least, you can't separate the theory of evolution from that of natural selection. Looking up "natural selection" seems to confirm this, "evolution" is just short for "Darwin's theory of evolution", and it seems to me that natural selection, as the sole basis for the origin of human life, is far from scientific fact.
That humans evolved from other forms of life is pretty hard to dispute. That this happened due to pure random chance, on the other hand, seems to me to be pretty much impossible to prove. Natural selection explains how it's possible, but there is no evidence, let alone proof, that there isn't some other force, either supernatural or natural (and just not yet discovered), which pushed evolution in the right direction.
I suppose one could make a mathematical/statistical argument. Find out how many changes there are in the DNA between two species, see how long it took for one to evolve from the other, and then figure out what the rate of mutation likely had to be for it to be purely random. Who knows, maybe the book even got into this.
Why could[n't] the lawyer simply ignore the men?
Most of them probably did, and in fact there's nothing in the article suggesting that any of the lawyers had anything to do with the arrest.
It's also pretty obvious that they weren't arrested just for telling jokes. But the article is heavily slanted in favor of the arrested individuals, so you really can't tell what happened just from it.
I think Stallman explained it best: "When information is generally useful, redistributing it makes humanity wealthier no matter who is distributing and no matter who is receiving."
Humanity is wealthier without copyright law, so it it your right to violate it.
The messages are not tangible property. Furthermore, the only law they are protected by is copyright law, so no one "owns the messages themselves". There's really no such concept of legal ownership of messages. Control over the messages is vested in Yahoo, so if anyone could be said to own the messages it is Yahoo.
Yahoo! and he agreed to a contract.
And that contract terminated upon his death.
I store files on my university web account. Does the university now own my files?
As I said, there's no legal concept of ownership of something such as this. If I had to stretch my understanding of ownership to include this concept I'd say that yes, the university does own your files, in that the primary control over those files vests with the university. But files are not tangible property, and talking about "ownership" of intangible property is really not very useful.
I'm sure you have personal information on a bank's servers. Do they now own that information since its on their hard drives?
Of course not. No one owns information.
It might be too late. Once the story went public, Yahoo probably disabled the account.
The messages themselves? You mean the hard drives? Because clearly the hard drives are the property of Yahoo.
Shouldn't the right to privacy be explictit, rather then reqested?
Dead people don't have rights. This isn't about whether or not Yahoo is allowed to release the emails, it's about whether or not they can be forced to. IOW, it's really an issue of reputation.
Heh. Sorry.
The US system already accomplishes most of what you've explained. The specs aren't XML, but they could easily be converted into XML. Just sprinkle in a few < and > (not that I think this will simplify things, but some people are dead set against anything other than XML). Seriously, if XML was the magic bullet, it'd be done by now. I could convert the specs into XML in a matter of days.
The problem is, if all you implement is the raw spec, you're left with hundreds of forms and thousands of fields. It wouldn't be very useful to anyone not intimately familiar with what information goes where.
The even have a PDF where they label the PDF with the field numbers used on it. Now that's pretty useful, but you've still gotta worry about all the "fill in the blank" options. As one example of many, "prisoner earned income" isn't listed on the standard 1040 form, because there aren't all that many people who have it. On standard tax forms you write it in (I think it goes under other income, but really I don't remember).
It's tedious little things like that which make writing the software so difficult. An automatic script could do a lot of the work, but the 1040 alone has 275 fields in it.
It's out there, and the only open source software I know of that tried to do it is the software I've written, and I gave up. I think eventually there will be free software to do it, and I'm surprised there isn't already, but AFAIK there's not any work currently being done on it.
See http://www.irs.gov/taxpros/providers/article/0,,id =97982,00.html for the specs.
The specs are easy enough to follow. The hard part is figuring out where to put the numbers. Once you've got all the numbers, the calculations are straightforward (for a computer).
The Freedom of Information Act doesn't apply to the UK.
What if there's a bug?
Then you have the source, and can fix it. You think there aren't bugs in professional tax preparation software? As a tax preparer, I can tell you with certainty there are. In fact, what originally sent me to creating this software was the fact that there were so many bugs in the original e-file software my father and I used that he went back to filing the stuff by hand for his clients (pencil, paper, and calculator).
The initial target market would have to be the tax professional, anyway.
If even a minor fraction of your end users are, because of a mistake you made, systematically undercalculating their tax the IRS is likely to be upset at the potential loss of revenue and/or the extra work required to find and correct these returns.
Systematic errors will easily be caught. In fact, the IRS makes you run a bunch of test cases before they'll even let you submit, and surely the most common errors would show up then. Furthermore, all the calculations are checked by the computer after you submit, and you find out within 3 days if your return was accepted or reject. Yes, it's going to piss the hell out of your customers when your submission fails and their refund gets delayed, especially since those filing electronically are those who care most about getting a fast refund, but this is exactly what happened the first time around with a high priced e-filing software that we bought. A rather large number of customers were permanently lost as a result before my dad went back to pencil and paper and I resorted to printing out the returns that year. We got a refund for the software, but most of those customers involved never came back.
I wouldn't want to be in that position.
Well, then don't be an ERO, software developer, or transmitter. These people make money because they're willing to do this. It should be noted that the transmission is completely separate from the creation of the electronic return. At first it would be smartest to only focus on the creation of the electronic return, and then submit it to a transmitter who would check the data and resubmit.
It's unlikely e-filing will ever be completely free of cost because of this. You can't transmit directly to the IRS. You send the return to a licensed transmitter who then transmits to the IRS in a batch job. You're going to probably have to pay at least a dollar or two to the transmitter.
Only if you can wade through the tonne (US:ton) of exemptions under the Act and persuade the Information Commissioner that there's a case for releasing them.
That or do a google search.
Even if you do itemize it's a miscellaneous deduction subject to a 2% floor. So just your miscellaneous deductions have to exceed 2% of your AGI (adjusted gross income, basically your income). Here's a list of other miscellaneous deductions.
In order to take most "deductions" (including a deduction for tax preparation expenses, or charitable donations), the total of all such deductions must exceed the standard deduction. This only rarely happens.
It's not really that rare to itemize. If you've got a mortgage, most of the time you can itemize (mortgage interest and property taxes are generally big itemized deductions). And this year you can take sales taxes, which is a big boon for people in states like Florida with no income taxes (and for tax preparers in Florida like me who make more money when people itemize).
If you understand the tax code thoroughly, you're going to easily know exactly which forms to fill out in a specific year. And you would be an accountant, not a programmer.
I know the tax codes thoroughly, and I'm a professional tax preparer and programmer.
Coincidentally, I don't mean this post to be deragotary towards Open Source people, but am I wrong that no one is going to start a project for code that he himself isn't going to use?
I started one a few years ago, when I had a lot more time on my hands (of course my intention was to be able to use it, but as it turns out I just buy my e-file software for now, it's cheaper than writing the software myself). I abandoned it, largely because I suck at writing GUIs (it was basically my first attempt at using GTK). If a few people want to help me try again, I'm sure we could get something done in time for 2005s taxes (even if it's just the 1040-EZ, it'll generate enough interest to move forward). The specs are out there, but the work is tedious. If you're in, contact me at taxman@inbox.org.
They pay ahem ... "subscription charges" for the documentation and specifications, the tax accounting software companies get to call their software "fully IR/IRS compliant".
Wrong. You can download all the specs for free, and then if you submit your fingerprints and pass their tests, you yourself can become an official e-services provider. I even signed up as a software provider and got approved for testing, but I never finished the product. You want a free/open source tax program? Write one.
The IRS has a target of 80% of all taxpayers using e-file in the near future. Does anyone know where the 'free and open' solution is?
Right here. It's not done and probably never will be.
So "they" work things out, but where does that leave the poor fellow who just wants to listen to the distant FM station that he's paid good money to put up an antenna to pick up?
I'm sure enough frequencies could be found to accomodate him as well. If not, like I said, then you can get the government involved, and open up some new frequencies to meet the new demand.
There are some things that are fine if only a few people do them, but start to cause problems when it becomes common.
And these things don't need to be regulated until they start causing problems. Saying "tough shit, you can't do it because if all your neighbors who don't care to do it all did it too it would cause problems." That's just dumb.
Of course, and we do all the time, from cells and batteries.
Cells and batteries utilize electromagnetic fields. In fact, pretty much everything we observe on earth (except gravity) uses electromagnetic forces. Which force would you suggest is predominant in a battery? Weak nuclear?
Yes, you can, and we do all the time.
Intelligent discussion, unfortunately you are wrong.
Speaking of the speed of a current is meaningful, speaking of the speed of the electrons is not. You can measure the current speed and divide that by the charge transferred and arrive at a number for the 'speed of an electron', but it's not a very meaningful number.
Actually, what about conservation of momentum, conservation of energy, etc? It's just not physically possible for electrons to be sent at such tremendous speeds. The only plausible scientific explanation is that photons are what is carrying the electricity, not electrons.
"Electromagnetic radiation consists of alternating electric and "magnetic fields.
and electricity doesn't?
No, it doesn't.
So you can have electricity without alternating electromagnetic fields?
So, you can use electricity to produce electromagnetic radiation,
You can't have electricity without producing electromagnetic radiation.
but electricity isn't itself electromagnetic radiation.
Fine. "Electricity is a property of certain subatomic particles (e.g. electrons/ protons) which couples to electromagnetic fields and causes attractive and repulsive forces between them."
Well sure, of course, if you want to look at it another way, light only travels in the vacuum in between atoms, and then only at "c", it just slowed down by the constant absorption and re-emission.