And yet America has lead the world in scientific discovery and invention for decades. How can this be?
Have you ever seen the faculty and graduate students in a typical science department in an American university? Most of them are not American. Is it any wonder?
I would like to point out that there is a difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. I do not believe that anyone doubts micro-evolution. It is usually a question of lesser species evolving into newer and higher species.
I never understand this point. We know how fast mutations occur, and we observe these mutations and natural selection occurring. This is the micro-evolution you describe, that everyone believes in. If this micro-evolution and natural selection go on for millions of years instead of just a few years, it just so happens it would account exactly for the genetic differences between humans and other primates. However, many people call that an entirely kind of evolution and don't believe it occurs.
It's as if people accept that the tectonic plates are shifting by an inch per year and that the shifting plates cause earthquakes. But they refuse to believe this process has gone on for millions of years, and that the continents don't really drift. There isn't micro-tectonics and macro-tectonics, just tectonics. Likewise, there isn't any micro-evolution and macro-evolution, just evolution.
Exactly. Eric Mazur at Harvard has come to the conclusion that conventional problems reinforce bad study habits. As a result, students don't truly understand what they're being taught. They know only how to get the answers on tests that their instructors expect.
Undoubtedly, some of you may have seen the short film "A Private Universe." It begins with footage shot on graduation day on the campus of Harvard University. In these opening scenes, a number of Harvard graduates and faculty members are interviewed and asked some basic questions about science and astronomy. If you haven't seen it, you can watch it online at http://www.learner.org/resources/series28.html
The first question posed to the graduates is why seasons occur on Earth. The overwhelmingly most frequent answer? These graduates from one of the finest institutions of higher education, many with extensive course work in physics and astronomy, say that seasons happen on Earth because its orbit about the sun is profoundly elliptical. When the Earth is farther away from the sun, the Earth has winter. When it is closer, we get summer. Isolated case of misunderstanding? Twenty-one of 23 randomly selected students and faculty members interviewed on the Harvard campus that day offered almost-identical, erroneous explanations for the seasonal changes.
On another question about the phases of the moon, most graduates responded that the moon's phases observed on Earth are caused by the Earth's shadow routinely obscuring the light from the sun from reaching some portion of the moon's surface.
Even most astronomers don't understand seasons and phases of the moon. I bet even most biologists don't understand what causes evolution. Most people who say they do believe in evolution don't have a clue what they're saying they believe in.
It's a theory that matches all the data that we have in the fossil record and accounts for the genetic differences between organisms today. Is there some other competing scientific theory that explains this data that I haven't heard of? Until there is, any reasonable scientist will accept evolution as what has actually happened.
If things have gotten worse, you can go back any find when the regression happened. Then it should be easy to find the code that contains the bug by seeing what got checked in during that time.
Cyc is named for "encyclopedia" because Cyc is supposed to contain the knowledge needed to understand encyclopedia articles. In other words, Cyc is the common sense knowledge that people take for granted that would never be in Wikipedia. Cyc + Wikipedia would be a combination that would in some sense understand Wikipedia and be able to reason to some degree about the knowledge contained in it. For example, you could ask Cyc + Wikipedia what the largest country is, and it would figure out the answer for you.
Knuth's MMIX architecture uses registers, but the registers themselves are on a register stack. Perhaps this architecture provides the best of both worlds.
Partly it's because IE has such poor CSS support. That means web developers don't use the advanced features that IE doesn't support because their customers want the site to look good in IE. The lack of advanced CSS on websites means companies that develop web browsers have little incentive to support all the advanced features. Why support features that no one uses anyway? This is what the Acid2 test is about -- it actually uses some of the more advanced CSS and gives the companies an incentive to add those features to their browsers.
Your CSS should degrade fairly gracefully anyway, so just use any CSS features you want and serve the CSS to IE. Then put up a note visible only to IE users explaining why IE doesn't show the page well and a screenshot of how your site looks in a better browser. That will be even more convincing than not serving the CSS to IE, because users can actually see that IE can't handle modern CSS.
Actually, only a few percent of those four million at most are going to have any real interest in programming. And many who will decide to get into programming will instead opt for JavaScript, which is more popular and has nearly ubiquitous support in browsers.
Can you (or any other slashdotters) advise on some well chosen arguments that I could use in an email to try and persuade the management (and I guess the central organisation techies) to modify the system so I can use firefox instead?
The most convincing argument I could think of is to access the site using only a non-Windows computer, and say that you can't access the expenses system unless they support some other browser. It would be even more convincing if it were true, but I'll leave that up to your scruples.
Sigh...perhaps he/she was going for the intentionally humourous effect of making an error while making fun of the poster who pointed out the first error.
Sigh... perhaps I was going for the intentionally humourous effect of pointing out that the poster made an error in semantics, where that was the only word in his post.
But IE has so many more vulnerabilities, and more serious vulnerabilities, than other browsers that it acts like a honeypot for malware authors. But, as you say, we will see...
Slashdot Mirror
Amen. Let's just say they have a long way to go to catch up with Firefox, Safari, and Opera and leave it at that.
I never understand this point. We know how fast mutations occur, and we observe these mutations and natural selection occurring. This is the micro-evolution you describe, that everyone believes in. If this micro-evolution and natural selection go on for millions of years instead of just a few years, it just so happens it would account exactly for the genetic differences between humans and other primates. However, many people call that an entirely kind of evolution and don't believe it occurs.
It's as if people accept that the tectonic plates are shifting by an inch per year and that the shifting plates cause earthquakes. But they refuse to believe this process has gone on for millions of years, and that the continents don't really drift. There isn't micro-tectonics and macro-tectonics, just tectonics. Likewise, there isn't any micro-evolution and macro-evolution, just evolution.
However, scientists are finding that when people do use excellent hygiene, they get asthma and allergies and have weak immune systems. We need exposure to germs to develop resistance to disease.
Exactly. Eric Mazur at Harvard has come to the conclusion that conventional problems reinforce bad study habits. As a result, students don't truly understand what they're being taught. They know only how to get the answers on tests that their instructors expect.
It's a theory that matches all the data that we have in the fossil record and accounts for the genetic differences between organisms today. Is there some other competing scientific theory that explains this data that I haven't heard of? Until there is, any reasonable scientist will accept evolution as what has actually happened.
If things have gotten worse, you can go back any find when the regression happened. Then it should be easy to find the code that contains the bug by seeing what got checked in during that time.
Cyc is named for "encyclopedia" because Cyc is supposed to contain the knowledge needed to understand encyclopedia articles. In other words, Cyc is the common sense knowledge that people take for granted that would never be in Wikipedia. Cyc + Wikipedia would be a combination that would in some sense understand Wikipedia and be able to reason to some degree about the knowledge contained in it. For example, you could ask Cyc + Wikipedia what the largest country is, and it would figure out the answer for you.
Knuth's MMIX architecture uses registers, but the registers themselves are on a register stack. Perhaps this architecture provides the best of both worlds.
At least since this tutorial about using sound in SVG was written.
..which is spelled SVG.
Partly it's because IE has such poor CSS support. That means web developers don't use the advanced features that IE doesn't support because their customers want the site to look good in IE. The lack of advanced CSS on websites means companies that develop web browsers have little incentive to support all the advanced features. Why support features that no one uses anyway? This is what the Acid2 test is about -- it actually uses some of the more advanced CSS and gives the companies an incentive to add those features to their browsers.
Your CSS should degrade fairly gracefully anyway, so just use any CSS features you want and serve the CSS to IE. Then put up a note visible only to IE users explaining why IE doesn't show the page well and a screenshot of how your site looks in a better browser. That will be even more convincing than not serving the CSS to IE, because users can actually see that IE can't handle modern CSS.
I've been using IE 7 for a while now and I think it's great.
Hint: before replying or modding, click on the link!
If there are no working prototypes, how did Kofi Annan present one at the World Summit on Information Society?
Actually, only a few percent of those four million at most are going to have any real interest in programming. And many who will decide to get into programming will instead opt for JavaScript, which is more popular and has nearly ubiquitous support in browsers.
Slashdot should use Google search to find duplicate articles.
Dell does ship Firefox with new computers. I bet it reduces the number of support calls for removing malware, and possibly reduces Dell's costs.
But IE has so many more vulnerabilities, and more serious vulnerabilities, than other browsers that it acts like a honeypot for malware authors. But, as you say, we will see...
It's syntax, not semantics.