So do something about it...
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Open US GPS Data?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I've reported errors to several map makers, including Google maps and the makers of the maps in our phone directory. They all have ways to report errors. If each one of grabs a map right now and reports just one error, just think how much better the maps will be next year...
These things go though BILLIONS of generations in a short time.
Now you're just blowing smoke out your ass. Even if a virus could replicate a new generation of itself every second, it would take over 30 years to go through even one billion generations. And I guarantee you that no organism can reproduce itself in such a ridiculously short time. Perhaps on the order of minutes, but not on the order of seconds. Are you so desperate to disprove evolution that you've already sunk to fabricating evidence against it?
Scientists certainly have reproduced speciation in the laboratory. Simply run the experiment for a long enough time, and you will get an arbitrarily large departure in genetic information. Until you try the experiment, you cannot say that they cannot.
And just what is the nature of this "large, unbridgeable gap" that cannot be crossed you're referring to? I think you're just making up an excuse not to believe in evolution. Or do you have some evidence to back up your claimed gap?
Then how do you know that 20 million years ago an alien battle did not create the Sierra Nevada mountains? As you say, "What might have happened millions of years ago is conjecture and cannot be tested by the scientific method." Therefore, I say my hypothesis should be added to school textbooks.
No one has ever witnessed a mountain being built. It is hypothesized that the movements of tectonic plates towards each other pushed up the continents to form mountains. The idea that they were created during a war between different alien races is also an unverified theory. What's wrong with presenting both concepts as unproven and unprovable theories, until someone invents time travel into the past?
That's not how evolution works. No organisms do not "turn into" other organisms. There is such a thing as genetic mutation. It allows the offspring of organisms to contain just slightly different genetic material from their parents, perhaps differing in just one base pair. Over millions of generations, therefore, the descendants of organisms can differ by millions of base pairs. That difference in millions of base pairs is exactly what the difference between species is. As far as I know, no one has found a "barrier" that the genetic differences cannot cross, meaning that the genetic difference between the descendants and the original organisms can be arbitrarily large. If you have an alternate theory of how different species came into being, we'd all love to hear about it...
Take Physics 101 over again, please. The force exerted between the Earth and the other object are equal. That means the ball accelerates at 10 m/s^2 towards to Earth. The Earth has a much smaller acceleration towards the other object, because F=ma.
I am curious about your claims. Can you point me to a scientific paper that backs up your claims that animals cannot evolve into other species? I'd like to review the evidence and arguments for myself.
Evolution in no way whatsoever denies a creator. It doesn't even explain how life started, much less how the universe came into being. And even the Pope says evolution is compatible with faith. You're just trying to pick a fight. Try harder next time.
Evolution does not explain the origin of life. It explains the origin of new species.
The fact that evolution cannot be reproduced does not make it any less scientific than meteorology (who can reproduce a hurricane?) or astronomy (who can reproduce a supernova?).
I agree that evolution and religion do not contradict each other. That is not the issue. Evolution and intelligent design contradict each other. One is a scientific theory that has been tested to a great degree. The other is a hand-waving argument that evolution may perhaps be wrong because the bible says something different.
The naysayers say that the non-fossil data is micro-evolution, and that we have no evidence for macro-evolution, the creation and divergence of new species. That makes as much sense as saying that you believe the continents move several inches per year, but that we don't know that the continents have really moved thousands of miles. By the magic of multiplication, we can tell that several inches per year over the course of many millions of years means that they have indeed moved thousands of miles. Similarly, the genetic mutation rate we can directly observe multiplied by the many millions of years since the divergence of species gives us the genetic difference we observe between species. Evolution is the best theory we have so far that explains the genetic and fossil evidence. Of course, that doesn't mean it's absolutely correct, just the best scientific explanation we have so far. As far as I am aware, there is no serious competing scientific theory. The intelligent design folks have yet to have a scientific paper published the last I checked.
It is also a HUGE leap to go from saying that earthquakes move parts of the earth mere inches or feet at a time to saying that the continents repeatedly go around the globe and run into each other. However, if you consider the timescales involved and work out the math, you find that the small earthquakes build up over time to move the plates around. Similarly, genetic mutations build up over time to create limbs, wings, lungs, etc. Scientists measure the amount of genetic variation between species, calculate how long the mutations would have to continue for those changes to build up, and lo and behold, the results match the fossil record quite nicely. If you have a competing scientific theory that accounts for all available evidence (i.e. genetic differences measured between animals and the fossil record), I'm sure I speak for all scientists worldwide in saying that we would all love to hear your alternative theory.
We see the theory of gravity in operation, although it too is referred to as a theory. We do not see the tectonic plates move continents across the ocean, although we know it happened. Just because you cannot actually witness firsthand the process of evolution creating new species, it does not give the theory of evolution any less credibility that any other scientific idea. We can observe that evolution has occurred, and quantify the rate at which it occurs. We have models of evolution and have tested those models against the available scientific evidence (hint: it's caused by genetic mutation of DNA at a measurable rate, and the fossil evidence matches our predictions).
When did Windows drop below 90% share of the desktop market? I did a Google search for that and found nothing but articles about IE usage dropping below 90% share. Anyway, if Windows share is dropping, it's almost exclusively due to people switching back to Mac, and the Mac has never had more than 10% of the desktop market. I think Windows will continue to have 90% or more of the desktop market for the foreseeable future. Windows dropping even to near 50% in the next decade is wishful thinking.
We already know it doesn't take any intelligence to speak of. All it takes is lots of trials, continually weeding out the bad experiments and trying new variations of the successful ones. As computers get faster and have more memory, it will take less time to try more variations, and more complex variations can be tested.
Wikipedia copyright violations
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The Knol Hypothesis
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· Score: 4, Informative
The official policy of Wikipedia is that copying material from copyrighted sources is copyright infringement, and the offending material should be quickly removed. I've seen an entire article deleted outright because of such an infraction. If you see copyright infringement in Wikipedia, follow the directions about dealing with copyright violations. If you've seen copyright violations on Wikipedia, and you have not followed those instructions, it would be more appropriate to say that you have let it slide. Don't blame it on someone else, as you don't know if anyone else has noticed the violation.
In much the same way that, at the core, Java programs literally run using native code? It's technically true, but entirely irrelevant.
No it's not the same at all. 95% of Firefox source code is the core, written in C++. The only part that is JavaScript is the user interface, which is a tiny fraction of the total source code. What you say is true for XUL, but irrelevant to most of Firefox's source code. Yes, what makes Firefox different from SeaMonkey and Thunderbird is mostly XUL, but it's very little of the total source code for Firefox.
At the core, literally, Firefox is C++. You're describing the user interface, which is written in XUL. In that way, Firefox is modular, not monolithic, as the XUL interface and C++ core are obviously two different parts. Other Mozilla browsers, such as SeaMonkey, can change the user interface while using the same core. You can think of XUL almost as the browser skin.
The Mozilla developers somehow estimated that each cached page takes about 4 MB. That's because it's caching the DOM and uncompressed images, not the files themselves which are cached in the disk cache. There's also many other caches, code, loaded plugins, fragmentation, and almost certainly some memory leaks, too. The only way to tell if Firefox is using more memory than it "should" is to compare memory use with another browser, performing exactly the same steps in each browser from the moment you start it. Nearly every time I try that, Firefox uses less memory than other browsers.
No, there is no problem, as others here point out here and Mozilla developers confirm.
As for memory leaks, Mozilla developers have always acknowledged that there are memory leaks in Firefox, as there certainly are in all browsers. The thing is that it simply doesn't do any good to ask for "the memory leak to be fixed," as there is no one memory leak to fix. If you want a bug fixed, you should be prepared to demonstrate exactly which bug you are referring to (generally with a set of steps to reproduce the problem) so your request is not meaningless.
I would agree if a company has a poor security record. On the other hand, Mozilla fixes security bugs faster than the other major browser makers. They also fix bugs that were not publicly known with nearly every release. What makes you think they need the motivation of having the exploit publicly exposed immediately after the release? It looks like 0x000000 is just looking for attention, not altruistically helping to increase security. If he wanted to do that, he should have discussed the problem (even publicly) before the release, or filed a private security bug report after the release. If he reported the problem weeks ago, and a new release came out without the fix, then it might make sense to blab about the problem.
In the end you look at their track record and see how many public and serious expoits there are, if it's a swiss cheese that keeps getting hacked it's crap, if not it's good because hackers don't hold back for PR reasons.
I see Opera users claiming that Opera is secure using this very reasoning all the time. On the other hand, Secunia says not to use its data to compare the security of browsers. Can you find even one security researcher that says this is a valid way to determine the relative security of browsers?
Slashdot Mirror
I've reported errors to several map makers, including Google maps and the makers of the maps in our phone directory. They all have ways to report errors. If each one of grabs a map right now and reports just one error, just think how much better the maps will be next year...
I think that all reality TV shows up to now have fallen about six billion short of rounding up all idiots.
Several examples of creation of new species, along with multiple citations.
Scientists certainly have reproduced speciation in the laboratory. Simply run the experiment for a long enough time, and you will get an arbitrarily large departure in genetic information. Until you try the experiment, you cannot say that they cannot.
And just what is the nature of this "large, unbridgeable gap" that cannot be crossed you're referring to? I think you're just making up an excuse not to believe in evolution. Or do you have some evidence to back up your claimed gap?
Then how do you know that 20 million years ago an alien battle did not create the Sierra Nevada mountains? As you say, "What might have happened millions of years ago is conjecture and cannot be tested by the scientific method." Therefore, I say my hypothesis should be added to school textbooks.
No one has ever witnessed a mountain being built. It is hypothesized that the movements of tectonic plates towards each other pushed up the continents to form mountains. The idea that they were created during a war between different alien races is also an unverified theory. What's wrong with presenting both concepts as unproven and unprovable theories, until someone invents time travel into the past?
That's not how evolution works. No organisms do not "turn into" other organisms. There is such a thing as genetic mutation. It allows the offspring of organisms to contain just slightly different genetic material from their parents, perhaps differing in just one base pair. Over millions of generations, therefore, the descendants of organisms can differ by millions of base pairs. That difference in millions of base pairs is exactly what the difference between species is. As far as I know, no one has found a "barrier" that the genetic differences cannot cross, meaning that the genetic difference between the descendants and the original organisms can be arbitrarily large. If you have an alternate theory of how different species came into being, we'd all love to hear about it...
Take Physics 101 over again, please. The force exerted between the Earth and the other object are equal. That means the ball accelerates at 10 m/s^2 towards to Earth. The Earth has a much smaller acceleration towards the other object, because F=ma.
I am curious about your claims. Can you point me to a scientific paper that backs up your claims that animals cannot evolve into other species? I'd like to review the evidence and arguments for myself.
Evolution in no way whatsoever denies a creator. It doesn't even explain how life started, much less how the universe came into being. And even the Pope says evolution is compatible with faith. You're just trying to pick a fight. Try harder next time.
Evolution does not explain the origin of life. It explains the origin of new species.
The fact that evolution cannot be reproduced does not make it any less scientific than meteorology (who can reproduce a hurricane?) or astronomy (who can reproduce a supernova?).
I agree that evolution and religion do not contradict each other. That is not the issue. Evolution and intelligent design contradict each other. One is a scientific theory that has been tested to a great degree. The other is a hand-waving argument that evolution may perhaps be wrong because the bible says something different.
The naysayers say that the non-fossil data is micro-evolution, and that we have no evidence for macro-evolution, the creation and divergence of new species. That makes as much sense as saying that you believe the continents move several inches per year, but that we don't know that the continents have really moved thousands of miles. By the magic of multiplication, we can tell that several inches per year over the course of many millions of years means that they have indeed moved thousands of miles. Similarly, the genetic mutation rate we can directly observe multiplied by the many millions of years since the divergence of species gives us the genetic difference we observe between species. Evolution is the best theory we have so far that explains the genetic and fossil evidence. Of course, that doesn't mean it's absolutely correct, just the best scientific explanation we have so far. As far as I am aware, there is no serious competing scientific theory. The intelligent design folks have yet to have a scientific paper published the last I checked.
It is also a HUGE leap to go from saying that earthquakes move parts of the earth mere inches or feet at a time to saying that the continents repeatedly go around the globe and run into each other. However, if you consider the timescales involved and work out the math, you find that the small earthquakes build up over time to move the plates around. Similarly, genetic mutations build up over time to create limbs, wings, lungs, etc. Scientists measure the amount of genetic variation between species, calculate how long the mutations would have to continue for those changes to build up, and lo and behold, the results match the fossil record quite nicely. If you have a competing scientific theory that accounts for all available evidence (i.e. genetic differences measured between animals and the fossil record), I'm sure I speak for all scientists worldwide in saying that we would all love to hear your alternative theory.
We see the theory of gravity in operation, although it too is referred to as a theory. We do not see the tectonic plates move continents across the ocean, although we know it happened. Just because you cannot actually witness firsthand the process of evolution creating new species, it does not give the theory of evolution any less credibility that any other scientific idea. We can observe that evolution has occurred, and quantify the rate at which it occurs. We have models of evolution and have tested those models against the available scientific evidence (hint: it's caused by genetic mutation of DNA at a measurable rate, and the fossil evidence matches our predictions).
When did Windows drop below 90% share of the desktop market? I did a Google search for that and found nothing but articles about IE usage dropping below 90% share. Anyway, if Windows share is dropping, it's almost exclusively due to people switching back to Mac, and the Mac has never had more than 10% of the desktop market. I think Windows will continue to have 90% or more of the desktop market for the foreseeable future. Windows dropping even to near 50% in the next decade is wishful thinking.
We already know it doesn't take any intelligence to speak of. All it takes is lots of trials, continually weeding out the bad experiments and trying new variations of the successful ones. As computers get faster and have more memory, it will take less time to try more variations, and more complex variations can be tested.
The official policy of Wikipedia is that copying material from copyrighted sources is copyright infringement, and the offending material should be quickly removed. I've seen an entire article deleted outright because of such an infraction. If you see copyright infringement in Wikipedia, follow the directions about dealing with copyright violations. If you've seen copyright violations on Wikipedia, and you have not followed those instructions, it would be more appropriate to say that you have let it slide. Don't blame it on someone else, as you don't know if anyone else has noticed the violation.
At the core, literally, Firefox is C++. You're describing the user interface, which is written in XUL. In that way, Firefox is modular, not monolithic, as the XUL interface and C++ core are obviously two different parts. Other Mozilla browsers, such as SeaMonkey, can change the user interface while using the same core. You can think of XUL almost as the browser skin.
The Mozilla developers somehow estimated that each cached page takes about 4 MB. That's because it's caching the DOM and uncompressed images, not the files themselves which are cached in the disk cache. There's also many other caches, code, loaded plugins, fragmentation, and almost certainly some memory leaks, too. The only way to tell if Firefox is using more memory than it "should" is to compare memory use with another browser, performing exactly the same steps in each browser from the moment you start it. Nearly every time I try that, Firefox uses less memory than other browsers.
No, there is no problem, as others here point out here and Mozilla developers confirm.
As for memory leaks, Mozilla developers have always acknowledged that there are memory leaks in Firefox, as there certainly are in all browsers. The thing is that it simply doesn't do any good to ask for "the memory leak to be fixed," as there is no one memory leak to fix. If you want a bug fixed, you should be prepared to demonstrate exactly which bug you are referring to (generally with a set of steps to reproduce the problem) so your request is not meaningless.
I would agree if a company has a poor security record. On the other hand, Mozilla fixes security bugs faster than the other major browser makers. They also fix bugs that were not publicly known with nearly every release. What makes you think they need the motivation of having the exploit publicly exposed immediately after the release? It looks like 0x000000 is just looking for attention, not altruistically helping to increase security. If he wanted to do that, he should have discussed the problem (even publicly) before the release, or filed a private security bug report after the release. If he reported the problem weeks ago, and a new release came out without the fix, then it might make sense to blab about the problem.