First, there are almost 30 buttons already on the main GIMP interface. That's too many. You're saying "but one more won't hurt..." That's called "Feature Creep," and it's something to be avoided at all costs. Buttons need to be removed, not added. Also, for professional graphics users, the line tool isn't all that commonly used.
This is why adobe did spring loaded buttons which expand if held down. Personally, I really like that solution.
Well, that's why there are lower-tech paint programs out there. Don't need a difficult to learn, yet extremely efficient and feature rich graphics program? OK, use something like MS paint. Using GIMP to draw a couple of rectangles is like using an ICBM to shoot a squirrel.
This is a ridiculus argument. Sometimes, you need to draw a freaking line. It is infrequent yes, and that is all the more reason to have an easy to find method of doing this, rather than forcing users to remember a keyboard shortcut.
For what it's worth, almost every complaint made about GIMP can be made about photoshop. The GIMP people are trying to make a professional tool, they're not trying to be all things to all people.
Oh please. A professional tool is the last thing GIMP is trying to be. If it were trying to be a professional too, then it would have supported CYMK colour from the start, because that is a bare minimum needed to work with printing presses. Even paint shop pro supports CYMK now. If anything, GIMP is trying to be a glorified web graphic editing tool.
I mean really, you don't hear people complain about the interface of other non-photoshop image editors nearly as much as gimp. But that's fine, no one is forcing anyone to use GIMP.
Yes, but some things such has a line segment tool are commonly used, and people expect them. You could argue that keyboard shortcuts are faster than buttons, and therefore we shouldn't have buttons at all. But it's ok, the gimp people are notorious for their 'we are right, the rest of the world is wrong' attitude.
Despite numerous requests for such features, I would not expect the gimp developers to care. And so gimp will continue to be shuned by many, and loved by some.
Maybe, but I've always used the line tool, which may just be a shortcut to that mode. At any rate, I don't see how adding in a 'line tool' mode would hurt the gimp people, and it would make it a lot easier for people to figure it out without resorting to documentation or google.
Sure, I'd have figured it out.. but I meant I would never have figured it out without reading the documentation or using google. With a good UI, you should not need to resort to documentation. I've never read the documentation for photoshop for instance.
Umm. No. I have a Windows machine, Mac OS X machine, and at work we have many linux machines. The only machines that go down are the ones with hardware problems.
Sure, I've seen Windows kernel panic once due to bad drivers, but then I've also seen debian stable kernel panic becuase of a bizzare mount request. I've seen Windows and Linux and Mac OS X all freeze (but not panic) for unkown reasons.
The only thing I can agree with you on is the spyware bit. That does seem to be restricted to windows... for now.
A) Linux has been quite a bit behind Windows and Mac in terms of basic functionality for the desktop.
B) Applications, especially desktop applications, require faster release cycles than the core system. In debian, applications get lumped together with the base and users are forced into non-standard solutions such as backports. These solutions are often pretty half baked as far as my experience has been.
That said, when core components such as gnome and the kernel and things such as sound and plugin architectures stabalize, long upgrade cycles for the "base" components won't be as big of a deal.
Device drivers will probably always be a problem however because drivers are often tied to a specific kernel. New drivers are not always backported and modules can't be easily moved between kernel versions. I don't really have a high opinion of this.
Doesn't matter to me. I stopped buying music a while ago as a protest against all this shit. There is still enough free and legal online radio that I can do this. And even if there weren't, I'd sooner break the law than support the corruption that is the music industry.
I've been reading the thread you continued with the AC. It looks to me that you refuse to understand how science works and the principles of evolution. You are rehashing the same false arguments over and over.
Since you seem to have long ago made up your mind, regardless of understanding the principles of science and the theory of evolution, I do not see any reason to continue this discussion.
Suffice to say, people such as you are very dangerous. Not only do you promote non-scientific ideas as scientific ideas, you are also causing confusion as to the very basics of how the scientific process works.
I sincerely hope that you one day realize that science is not out to attack your religion. It is possible to hold your beliefs and still accept scientific method and the theories that arise from it. That those theories cause you to cast doubt upon your beliefs is a problem that you have to reconcile with yourself. Do realize your beliefs are completely religious and have no place in public classrooms.
This is correct, and to the degree that evolution makes predictions, I and other creationists have found little problem with it. If you are talking about evolution == genetics, then for a large part of "evolution" we are in total agreement.
Molecular evolution is the basic operation of macroscopic evolution. Macroscopic evolution make many predictions. Among them are the predictions of intermediate species. We have found fossil records of many of these. It also makes other predictions. For instance, it predicts that succesfull mutations will be kept, an unsucessfull one pruned. You can see this happen on a small scale with bacteria becoming resistant to anti-biotics. The changes in the bacteria are very physical. But I suppose this is not macroscopic enough for you.
To that I'd say your argument is unreasonable. Why not attack planet formation theory? We can't see planets for after all? It takes far too long to 'watch', just like evolution.
I'd also like to point out that creationsim does not even make the simple predictions I've mentioned above. It is completely useless in a scientific mannar. The only prediction that creationists have come up with is irriducable complexity. And that is shaky at best considering that many of the potential examples have now been shown to have intermediate states as predicted by macroscopic evolution.
Also keep in mind that molecular evolution developed from the same general ideas as macroscopic evolution.
"Again, what mendel thought has little relevance on current theory."
Except that he hasn't been shown to be wrong.
Regradles, that Mendel thought the same thing as you does not make your ideas any more credible. Please let your ideas stand on their own.
Here is Talk.Origins on the matter:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dinosaur/blood.h tm l
I'll let you decide what to make of it all.
That actually explains exactly what I suspected. The real story is not even remotely close to what is being claimed now. There are no 'unfossilized bones', nor even blood cells. Only what may be fossilized blood cells, maybe, but even that is unsure.
How about historical accounts? Do historical accounts simply not matter when evolution contradicts them? Or should we believe the historians? Here is what Josephus said:
The idea of a great flood actually goes all the way back to ancient Sumar. It is entirely possible that there really was a flood of a large region (not the world as there is not enough water for that), and hence created the story. There are many fancifull historical accounts. The job of historians is do separate fact from fiction. I don't suppose you believe all the 'historical' accounts of ancient gods and goddesses, atlantis, fantastic creatures like cyclopses, etc etc?
Besides, what relevance does the bible's account of a great flood have on evolution? Unless you are trying to give credit to the bible as a historical source, in which case you would have to claim that all our dating methods, and huge amounts of other research are false.
Interestingly, noone is asking for this. So, great! What people _are_ asking for is an honest look at evolution, where it fits the data, where it doesn't fit, and what the other possibilities are.
Scientists have looked honestly at evolution. There is no other possibilities. As I've said before, creationism does not make any usefull predictions. It is not another possibility. If you want to talk about honesty, you should look at some of these creationist teachings. Your own link has shown that at least one creationist 'evidence' is full of dishonest reporting.
They had simply assumed that evolution was the mechanism God used to create, until they examined the evidence for evolution and went "wait a minute..."
If they are not scientists, I would not be surprised if they are mislead by the fantastic arguments of creationists. Besides, by
Or, to word another way, "in order to get back good phylogenic trees, we have to bias the search towards it."
Sorry to tell you, but we do not base the accuracy of an alignment algorithm on phylogenetic trees. Usually we base accuracy on the fact that improvments in alignment lead to the discover of more conserved elements which we then verify experiementally. There is no cirular reasoning here.
Furthurmore, many techniques such as comparative genomics came about completely through the theory of evolutions. These techniques are real, they work, and without the theory of evolution make no sense.
Mendel's argument was that because genes are preserved and recombined in whole form, that it does not provide the gradualistic power to transform one species into another, and instead provides boundaries beyond which species cannot go. Even with mutations, this hypothesis has not been shown to be incorrect.
Again, what mendel thought has little relevance on current theory. Theories change and improve with time.
Neither is Universal Common Ancestry. It, too, is a historical stance.
Except that the theory of evolution is far more than this, and this only happens to come about as one prediction of the theory. See, again, a theory needs to be able to make predictions, otherwise it is not a scientific theory.
:
* Dinosaur bones have been found with hemoglobin products and unfossilized, which would have disintegrated if they had been around for millions of years
A quick search for this only turned up religious sites, and no scientific papers. I suspect this is a single instance of bad science, or perhaps simply just fake. If it were really scietifically examined, it would be big news to scientists. As much as you'd like to think, scientists do not cover up evidence.
Many mechanisms show evidence of irreducible complexity. While irreducible complexity is not completely proven, attempts to disprove irreducible complexity have not been successfuly. The best I've seen is showing that one or two pieces of bacterial flagellum can have other uses, not that one could line up intermediate stages between those other uses and actual flagellum.
It's wonderful to make unprovable claims. Also, for many of the things which people have claimed to be examples of irreducable complexity, such as the eye, intermediate stages have since been discovered.
Noah's Ark has been known throughout history, and only in the last thousand years has it been unfindable. 2000 years ago ther were regular pilgrimages to go and see it.
I'm glad you think that, but I still have not seen any evidice of this.
The primary progress of genetics is actually downward, as an initial good creation followed by degeneration would suggest. Downward evolution is the norm. Blind cave fish, the numerous genetic diseases in humans, and the general direction of inheritted mutations all point downward. There are instances of modifications that are beneficial, but none of them involve the creation of whole systems of proteins, which is required for evolution to work. Also, some are confused by epigenetic modifications that are heritable. These are not mutations, these are pre-coded, yet heritable, adaptations that can be triggered in organisms.
Way to twist things there. There is no 'upwards' or 'downwards' to evolution. There is selective pressure, or no selective pressure. In the cases you site, selective pressure has been removed, and hence features are free to mutate into oblivian. It sounds like you don't understand science OR evolution.
I am not attacking your beliefs. If you want to claim God made everything "just so" such that we have a working theory of evolution. That's fine, you can do that. But I do not want my children to be taught religous doctine as though it is truth or scientific in nature. It is not. Please do not blindly listen to what your creationist friends are telling you. If you want to form an opinion, read books on how evolution works, read books on the scientific process. And most of all, think about it.
MI>Ummm.... no it doesn't. There are the same homology problems in DNA as there are in morphology. Depending on which genes you use to sequence, you will get a different phylogenic tree.
This is not a problem with the theory, but rather with our current techniques. We sometimes don't have enough data, and other times our algorithms and/or computation power are not up to the task. Finally, evolutionary changes are not necesarily reversable, and in some cases even with all the current information, we may not be able to accurate reconstruct a tree.
Then there are the genes that appear from nowhere on multiple branches. Somehow, these long chains of DNA formed multiple times leaving no intermediaries in the millions of years required for this to happen.
First, there may be intermediaries that have been lost. Perhaps if enough species are sequences, we can reconstruct some of these cases. Second, there are other things involved in evolution such as horizontal gene transfers. A simple tree is not really enough to describe evolutionary history. Recent work involves evolutionary networks which can account for some of these things.
Again, these are not examples of the theory failing, but rather limitations in current techniques and data avaliability.
Evolution isn't useful to the study of DNA, either. The study of DNA is neither enhanced or retracted by belief in universal common ancestry. Also, remember, that Mendel was a creationist, and believed genetics proved that natural modification of species had limits, which still proves true today.
The fact that mendel was a creationast has nothing to do with current thought. Also, evolution is *&essential* to the study of DNA. If you want to see a direct example of the theory being used to analyse DNA, look up papers on comparative methods. In fact, all our alignment algorithms are based on the theory of evolution, and it's been shown that including ideas such as evoltionary trees in alignment algorithms drastically improves alignments. Do some reading on how genetic research is done and you will see that it is based completely on the idea of evolution. And the better we model the thoery, the better the algorithms work.
Incorrect, it is a historical postulate. That X happened is a historical, not a philosophical argument.
Whatever you want to call it, it is not a scientific theory and has no place in a science classroom. Given that there is no evidence for it other than a myth, it also does not belong in a history classroom. We don't teach people historical guesses. So the only place I can see it being taught is in a religion or philosophy class.
Actually, what the data from single-celled life shows is that there is no way the multiple forms of single cells could have been generated from simpler life forms. In fact, most hypotheses these days focus on some sort of "uber-cell" that degenerated into the known forms we have today, not the other way around.
I don't know what you've been reading, but you've no doubt misinterpreted someone/s research. If it was an 'uber-cell' then by the theory of evolution it would be very prevelent, inded perhaps beating out all other forms of cells. At any rate, I have heard of no such idea. All the reasarch I've seen has been attempting to recreate extremely primitive cells which are by no means 'uber-cells'.
Really? It's too bad that there are NOT man page for all those files. It's too bad that the configuration files are NOT all name-value pairs. It's too bad that often one application has multiple config files associated with it.
And if they are really all the same, then you could upgrade a program without worrying about the config files changing. Too bad that's not the case.
The AC who responded did a pretty good job, and I won't repeat what he/she said.
I will, however, point out that we can literally watch evolution occur in things like viruses. You seem to be thinking about evolution in the very simple way that used to be taught in high schools. Common features indicate common ancestors.
The details of the theory have progressed far beyond that by now. Often evolution is thought of in terms the evolution of DNA. This is the driving force behind macroscopic changes, and the various genome projects have provided huge amounts of data which fits beutifully with the theory of evolution.
Evolution is no different than any other scientific theory. Scientists work with it because it works, and because there is no alternative theory. Creationism does not make predictions, it is not usefull the study of DNA, it is not usefull in understanding diversity of life. It is not a theory in any sense of the word. It is a philisophical idea that has no place in a science classroom.
You prove math theorems, science theories only have evidence. There is always a chance they are wrong, this is how science progresses.
How do you know that the heliocentric view is 'right'? Ya, we send probes around the solar system. But maybe god just takes our probes and makes it *look* like our probes are flying around a solar system.
If you took the time to look at the evidence for evolution you'd realize that the above insane sounding argument is pretty much exactly the one being used against evolution.
Each small file, even if it contains no data, takes up a standard chunk of disk space.
This is not an issue at all.
This statement shows your extreme lack of knowledge in this area. Explaining disk blocks and how the file system reads and writes would be a waste of time.
Filesystems are designed to store things on disk, they are not meant to efficiently store and retrieve (key, value) pairs.
That's pretty funny. How do you think it finds files then?
It find files in a way that is based on the structure of disks. As a small example, when you read from a disk, it always reads a given chunk of data, regardless of the fact that you only need a small portion of that chunk. The layout of data on the disk has huge performance implications. Filesystems only take into account locality of data for files, not collections of files.
Uhm, right, that's why you don't need an extra layer above the filesystem when you have less than, say, 10,000 items to store under each subkey. Do you store a site's web pages in a database for instance?
Subkey? So tell me, where does a subkey come in, in a system that stores things by key/value pairs? 10,000 items under a key? Wait, what happened to the key/value pair idea? Oh, that's right, that would be terribly inefficient because of the whole data locality issue, hence needing to store many items in a single file (key). Maybe you should get your thoughts straight.
And websites store wepages in memory cache if they are accessed a lot. This is because disk access is slow, and the website knows more about what needs to be in memory cache than the filesystem.
There is no reason why I should have to learn 100 different acronoms and file formats to administer a system.
I try not to have 100 different critical packages installed. Maybe your site needs an extra admin?
Clearly the idea of exaggeration is beyond you. Let's see, on a linux system you can have PAM, CUPS, various files for host name, networking, name resolution, firewall, routing, account defaults, processes accounting, log rotating, job scheduling, maybe dhcp, samba, nfs, a web server, a database, configuration files for various apache modules (php,webdav,database plugins), maybe you have kerberos, maybe you have an LDAP server, perhaps you have security software such as tripwire... SMTP server, perhaps a pop server, an imap server, and there multiple software solutions for many of these components, all with different confiuration files.
Highering more admins to make up for a defiecient system is not a good solution.
pgrading should deal with configuration files in an intelligent way, otherwise known as configuration migration.
Describe this "intelligent way", and how is it *fundamentally* different than regular version control? Why would something other than flat line-oriented files make it *easier* to implement?
Very simple. Minor revisions should not change configuration formats. For major revisions, the software developers know what has changed in the configuration and should be able to migrate old settings so that they work in the new software. If there are new features, this should pointed out upon migration so that the admin knows exactly what needs to be looked at. Also, once a set of changes are made, they should be able to be supplied to the upgrade program so that you can upgrade a set of machines in a completely automated fasion.
And wait? You use cvs to manage your/etc data? But I thought that/etc was just fine the way it was and that there was no *problem*? Using cvs in this fashion is an attempt to fix some deficiencies in the/etc system. There are also more complicated packages to do this which have extra features specific to configuration managment.
Here is something else to think about. Each small file, even if it contains no data, takes up a standard chunk of disk space.
Filesystems are designed to store things on disk, they are not meant to efficiently store and retrieve (key, value) pairs. That is what a database is for. Databases also have to deal with disk storage, and they do that through the filesystem in an intelligent way. However, their functionality is WAY more complicated than simply makinga file for each key/value pair.
Finally, as a busy admin that has to deal with crap, I find the current system severely lacking. Especially upgrading, and yes I've seen the gentoo way, and no it's no better than other ways. Debain and FreeBSD both have very similar solutions./etc is mess. There is no reason why I should have to learn 100 different acronoms and file formats to administer a system. Upgrading should deal with configuration files in an intelligent way, otherwise known as configuration migration.
Besides, the fact that you use gentoo should exempt you from this discussion. Compiling your whole operating system and every update is a ludacris idea. No wonder you like the current messy system.
And this illustrates a problem with open source. People only want to 'scratch their own itches' and so users who can't program but want specific features are left in the dust.
And before someone pipes up "well the users can PAY someone to implement those features", no they can't. First, it is unreasonble to expect an average user to be able to find an appropriate programmer, most have troulbe even USING the software. Even if they could find an appropriate developer, it is unreasonable to expect one user to incur the entire cost of feature development for a feature or program that many people want.
There is currently no easy way for end users to organize developer pools, and figuring out the logistics of such a thing is highly non-trivial.
Save your sarcasm for the case that the bill passes. Also, note that they were not wrong. Even now, Canadians enjoy far more liberal fair use raights than Americans. Just because that 'might' change in the future, does not negate the fact that we enjoy better rights now and have for at least two years previous.
And american upset that their country is not the best at everything? *gasp* what a shocker!
I agree. But often, after hearing a good group on a stream, I'd download a couple of the songs via p2p to find out what the 'other' songs on the cd are like. The previews at places like Amazon are good, but often they are simply too short, or are non-existant (in the case of new/rare groups).
If I liked the group, I'd go buy the CD. I bought more CDs during that time than I did my whole life. Of course, after the RIAA decided to kill streams in the US with licensing fees, and then started suing customers for checking out music with p2p, I stopped buying CDs in protest. So far my silent protest has not had any impact, other than to give them more ammo against p2p because 'oh, their profits are down... must be because of p2p'.
Also, with the copy protection schemes becoming more prevalent, it looks like I will never be buying new music.
The only exception I make is for groups not tied to the RIAA. There are very few of these unfortunately.:(
Except that nothing 'happened' in Canada. This is all just speculation. Just because some people in government want something, doesn't mean it will happen.
Hopefully the rest of the gov. will shoot this stuff down hard.
Although ironically, if you compare the price of a BMW to a car of 'equivalent performance and features', it's not over price at all. In fact, they're generally cheaper than cars such as, say, Mercedes.
If all you want is leather seats, you could just buy a Lada and put leather seats in it. Hell, maybe Ladas even have leather as an option these days.
It's all about what level of quality you want to settle for. If you want to criticise apple for not using shitty parts... uh... well... ok. I suppose they are guilty.
ok, I stand corrected. I still don't think the resemblence is that big though, especially if there is nothing else about the game that is similar to zelda.
Slashdot Mirror
First, there are almost 30 buttons already on the main GIMP interface. That's too many. You're saying "but one more won't hurt..." That's called "Feature Creep," and it's something to be avoided at all costs. Buttons need to be removed, not added. Also, for professional graphics users, the line tool isn't all that commonly used.
This is why adobe did spring loaded buttons which expand if held down. Personally, I really like that solution.
Well, that's why there are lower-tech paint programs out there. Don't need a difficult to learn, yet extremely efficient and feature rich graphics program? OK, use something like MS paint. Using GIMP to draw a couple of rectangles is like using an ICBM to shoot a squirrel.
This is a ridiculus argument. Sometimes, you need to draw a freaking line. It is infrequent yes, and that is all the more reason to have an easy to find method of doing this, rather than forcing users to remember a keyboard shortcut.
For what it's worth, almost every complaint made about GIMP can be made about photoshop. The GIMP people are trying to make a professional tool, they're not trying to be all things to all people.
Oh please. A professional tool is the last thing GIMP is trying to be. If it were trying to be a professional too, then it would have supported CYMK colour from the start, because that is a bare minimum needed to work with printing presses. Even paint shop pro supports CYMK now. If anything, GIMP is trying to be a glorified web graphic editing tool.
I mean really, you don't hear people complain about the interface of other non-photoshop image editors nearly as much as gimp. But that's fine, no one is forcing anyone to use GIMP.
Yes, but some things such has a line segment tool are commonly used, and people expect them. You could argue that keyboard shortcuts are faster than buttons, and therefore we shouldn't have buttons at all. But it's ok, the gimp people are notorious for their 'we are right, the rest of the world is wrong' attitude.
Despite numerous requests for such features, I would not expect the gimp developers to care. And so gimp will continue to be shuned by many, and loved by some.
Maybe, but I've always used the line tool, which may just be a shortcut to that mode. At any rate, I don't see how adding in a 'line tool' mode would hurt the gimp people, and it would make it a lot easier for people to figure it out without resorting to documentation or google.
Sure, I'd have figured it out.. but I meant I would never have figured it out without reading the documentation or using google. With a good UI, you should not need to resort to documentation. I've never read the documentation for photoshop for instance.
What? Shift? With the pencil tool? Holy shit. I would NEVER have figured that out. Good job proving his point.
Umm. No. I have a Windows machine, Mac OS X machine, and at work we have many linux machines. The only machines that go down are the ones with hardware problems.
Sure, I've seen Windows kernel panic once due to bad drivers, but then I've also seen debian stable kernel panic becuase of a bizzare mount request. I've seen Windows and Linux and Mac OS X all freeze (but not panic) for unkown reasons.
The only thing I can agree with you on is the spyware bit. That does seem to be restricted to windows... for now.
Because of two things:
A) Linux has been quite a bit behind Windows and Mac in terms of basic functionality for the desktop.
B) Applications, especially desktop applications, require faster release cycles than the core system. In debian, applications get lumped together with the base and users are forced into non-standard solutions such as backports. These solutions are often pretty half baked as far as my experience has been.
That said, when core components such as gnome and the kernel and things such as sound and plugin architectures stabalize, long upgrade cycles for the "base" components won't be as big of a deal.
Device drivers will probably always be a problem however because drivers are often tied to a specific kernel. New drivers are not always backported and modules can't be easily moved between kernel versions. I don't really have a high opinion of this.
Doesn't matter to me. I stopped buying music a while ago as a protest against all this shit. There is still enough free and legal online radio that I can do this. And even if there weren't, I'd sooner break the law than support the corruption that is the music industry.
I've been reading the thread you continued with the AC. It looks to me that you refuse to understand how science works and the principles of evolution. You are rehashing the same false arguments over and over.
Since you seem to have long ago made up your mind, regardless of understanding the principles of science and the theory of evolution, I do not see any reason to continue this discussion.
Suffice to say, people such as you are very dangerous. Not only do you promote non-scientific ideas as scientific ideas, you are also causing confusion as to the very basics of how the scientific process works.
I sincerely hope that you one day realize that science is not out to attack your religion. It is possible to hold your beliefs and still accept scientific method and the theories that arise from it. That those theories cause you to cast doubt upon your beliefs is a problem that you have to reconcile with yourself. Do realize your beliefs are completely religious and have no place in public classrooms.
This is correct, and to the degree that evolution makes predictions, I and other creationists have found little problem with it. If you are talking about evolution == genetics, then for a large part of "evolution" we are in total agreement.
Molecular evolution is the basic operation of macroscopic evolution. Macroscopic evolution make many predictions. Among them are the predictions of intermediate species. We have found fossil records of many of these. It also makes other predictions. For instance, it predicts that succesfull mutations will be kept, an unsucessfull one pruned. You can see this happen on a small scale with bacteria becoming resistant to anti-biotics. The changes in the bacteria are very physical. But I suppose this is not macroscopic enough for you.
To that I'd say your argument is unreasonable. Why not attack planet formation theory? We can't see planets for after all? It takes far too long to 'watch', just like evolution.
I'd also like to point out that creationsim does not even make the simple predictions I've mentioned above. It is completely useless in a scientific mannar. The only prediction that creationists have come up with is irriducable complexity. And that is shaky at best considering that many of the potential examples have now been shown to have intermediate states as predicted by macroscopic evolution.
Also keep in mind that molecular evolution developed from the same general ideas as macroscopic evolution.
"Again, what mendel thought has little relevance on current theory."
Except that he hasn't been shown to be wrong.
Regradles, that Mendel thought the same thing as you does not make your ideas any more credible. Please let your ideas stand on their own.
Here is Talk.Origins on the matter:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dinosaur/blood.h tm l
I'll let you decide what to make of it all.
That actually explains exactly what I suspected. The real story is not even remotely close to what is being claimed now. There are no 'unfossilized bones', nor even blood cells. Only what may be fossilized blood cells, maybe, but even that is unsure.
How about historical accounts? Do historical accounts simply not matter when evolution contradicts them? Or should we believe the historians? Here is what Josephus said:
The idea of a great flood actually goes all the way back to ancient Sumar. It is entirely possible that there really was a flood of a large region (not the world as there is not enough water for that), and hence created the story. There are many fancifull historical accounts. The job of historians is do separate fact from fiction. I don't suppose you believe all the 'historical' accounts of ancient gods and goddesses, atlantis, fantastic creatures like cyclopses, etc etc?
Besides, what relevance does the bible's account of a great flood have on evolution? Unless you are trying to give credit to the bible as a historical source, in which case you would have to claim that all our dating methods, and huge amounts of other research are false.
Interestingly, noone is asking for this. So, great! What people _are_ asking for is an honest look at evolution, where it fits the data, where it doesn't fit, and what the other possibilities are.
Scientists have looked honestly at evolution. There is no other possibilities. As I've said before, creationism does not make any usefull predictions. It is not another possibility. If you want to talk about honesty, you should look at some of these creationist teachings. Your own link has shown that at least one creationist 'evidence' is full of dishonest reporting.
They had simply assumed that evolution was the mechanism God used to create, until they examined the evidence for evolution and went "wait a minute..."
If they are not scientists, I would not be surprised if they are mislead by the fantastic arguments of creationists. Besides, by
Or, to word another way, "in order to get back good phylogenic trees, we have to bias the search towards it."
:
Sorry to tell you, but we do not base the accuracy of an alignment algorithm on phylogenetic trees. Usually we base accuracy on the fact that improvments in alignment lead to the discover of more conserved elements which we then verify experiementally. There is no cirular reasoning here.
Furthurmore, many techniques such as comparative genomics came about completely through the theory of evolutions. These techniques are real, they work, and without the theory of evolution make no sense.
Mendel's argument was that because genes are preserved and recombined in whole form, that it does not provide the gradualistic power to transform one species into another, and instead provides boundaries beyond which species cannot go. Even with mutations, this hypothesis has not been shown to be incorrect.
Again, what mendel thought has little relevance on current theory. Theories change and improve with time.
Neither is Universal Common Ancestry. It, too, is a historical stance.
Except that the theory of evolution is far more than this, and this only happens to come about as one prediction of the theory. See, again, a theory needs to be able to make predictions, otherwise it is not a scientific theory.
* Dinosaur bones have been found with hemoglobin products and unfossilized, which would have disintegrated if they had been around for millions of years
A quick search for this only turned up religious sites, and no scientific papers. I suspect this is a single instance of bad science, or perhaps simply just fake. If it were really scietifically examined, it would be big news to scientists. As much as you'd like to think, scientists do not cover up evidence.
Many mechanisms show evidence of irreducible complexity. While irreducible complexity is not completely proven, attempts to disprove irreducible complexity have not been successfuly. The best I've seen is showing that one or two pieces of bacterial flagellum can have other uses, not that one could line up intermediate stages between those other uses and actual flagellum.
It's wonderful to make unprovable claims. Also, for many of the things which people have claimed to be examples of irreducable complexity, such as the eye, intermediate stages have since been discovered.
Noah's Ark has been known throughout history, and only in the last thousand years has it been unfindable. 2000 years ago ther were regular pilgrimages to go and see it.
I'm glad you think that, but I still have not seen any evidice of this.
The primary progress of genetics is actually downward, as an initial good creation followed by degeneration would suggest. Downward evolution is the norm. Blind cave fish, the numerous genetic diseases in humans, and the general direction of inheritted mutations all point downward. There are instances of modifications that are beneficial, but none of them involve the creation of whole systems of proteins, which is required for evolution to work. Also, some are confused by epigenetic modifications that are heritable. These are not mutations, these are pre-coded, yet heritable, adaptations that can be triggered in organisms.
Way to twist things there. There is no 'upwards' or 'downwards' to evolution. There is selective pressure, or no selective pressure. In the cases you site, selective pressure has been removed, and hence features are free to mutate into oblivian. It sounds like you don't understand science OR evolution.
I am not attacking your beliefs. If you want to claim God made everything "just so" such that we have a working theory of evolution. That's fine, you can do that. But I do not want my children to be taught religous doctine as though it is truth or scientific in nature. It is not. Please do not blindly listen to what your creationist friends are telling you. If you want to form an opinion, read books on how evolution works, read books on the scientific process. And most of all, think about it.
MI>Ummm.... no it doesn't. There are the same homology problems in DNA as there are in morphology. Depending on which genes you use to sequence, you will get a different phylogenic tree.
This is not a problem with the theory, but rather with our current techniques. We sometimes don't have enough data, and other times our algorithms and/or computation power are not up to the task. Finally, evolutionary changes are not necesarily reversable, and in some cases even with all the current information, we may not be able to accurate reconstruct a tree.
Then there are the genes that appear from nowhere on multiple branches. Somehow, these long chains of DNA formed multiple times leaving no intermediaries in the millions of years required for this to happen.
First, there may be intermediaries that have been lost. Perhaps if enough species are sequences, we can reconstruct some of these cases. Second, there are other things involved in evolution such as horizontal gene transfers. A simple tree is not really enough to describe evolutionary history. Recent work involves evolutionary networks which can account for some of these things.
Again, these are not examples of the theory failing, but rather limitations in current techniques and data avaliability.
Evolution isn't useful to the study of DNA, either. The study of DNA is neither enhanced or retracted by belief in universal common ancestry. Also, remember, that Mendel was a creationist, and believed genetics proved that natural modification of species had limits, which still proves true today.
The fact that mendel was a creationast has nothing to do with current thought. Also, evolution is *&essential* to the study of DNA. If you want to see a direct example of the theory being used to analyse DNA, look up papers on comparative methods. In fact, all our alignment algorithms are based on the theory of evolution, and it's been shown that including ideas such as evoltionary trees in alignment algorithms drastically improves alignments. Do some reading on how genetic research is done and you will see that it is based completely on the idea of evolution. And the better we model the thoery, the better the algorithms work.
Incorrect, it is a historical postulate. That X happened is a historical, not a philosophical argument.
Whatever you want to call it, it is not a scientific theory and has no place in a science classroom. Given that there is no evidence for it other than a myth, it also does not belong in a history classroom. We don't teach people historical guesses. So the only place I can see it being taught is in a religion or philosophy class.
Actually, what the data from single-celled life shows is that there is no way the multiple forms of single cells could have been generated from simpler life forms. In fact, most hypotheses these days focus on some sort of "uber-cell" that degenerated into the known forms we have today, not the other way around.
I don't know what you've been reading, but you've no doubt misinterpreted someone/s research. If it was an 'uber-cell' then by the theory of evolution it would be very prevelent, inded perhaps beating out all other forms of cells. At any rate, I have heard of no such idea. All the reasarch I've seen has been attempting to recreate extremely primitive cells which are by no means 'uber-cells'.
Really? It's too bad that there are NOT man page for all those files. It's too bad that the configuration files are NOT all name-value pairs. It's too bad that often one application has multiple config files associated with it.
And if they are really all the same, then you could upgrade a program without worrying about the config files changing. Too bad that's not the case.
The AC who responded did a pretty good job, and I won't repeat what he/she said.
I will, however, point out that we can literally watch evolution occur in things like viruses. You seem to be thinking about evolution in the very simple way that used to be taught in high schools. Common features indicate common ancestors.
The details of the theory have progressed far beyond that by now. Often evolution is thought of in terms the evolution of DNA. This is the driving force behind macroscopic changes, and the various genome projects have provided huge amounts of data which fits beutifully with the theory of evolution.
Evolution is no different than any other scientific theory. Scientists work with it because it works, and because there is no alternative theory. Creationism does not make predictions, it is not usefull the study of DNA, it is not usefull in understanding diversity of life. It is not a theory in any sense of the word. It is a philisophical idea that has no place in a science classroom.
You prove math theorems, science theories only have evidence. There is always a chance they are wrong, this is how science progresses.
How do you know that the heliocentric view is 'right'? Ya, we send probes around the solar system. But maybe god just takes our probes and makes it *look* like our probes are flying around a solar system.
If you took the time to look at the evidence for evolution you'd realize that the above insane sounding argument is pretty much exactly the one being used against evolution.
Each small file, even if it contains no data, takes up a standard chunk of disk space.
/etc data? But I thought that /etc was just fine the way it was and that there was no *problem*? Using cvs in this fashion is an attempt to fix some deficiencies in the /etc system. There are also more complicated packages to do this which have extra features specific to configuration managment.
This is not an issue at all.
This statement shows your extreme lack of knowledge in this area. Explaining disk blocks and how the file system reads and writes would be a waste of time.
Filesystems are designed to store things on disk, they are not meant to efficiently store and retrieve (key, value) pairs.
That's pretty funny. How do you think it finds files then?
It find files in a way that is based on the structure of disks. As a small example, when you read from a disk, it always reads a given chunk of data, regardless of the fact that you only need a small portion of that chunk. The layout of data on the disk has huge performance implications. Filesystems only take into account locality of data for files, not collections of files.
Uhm, right, that's why you don't need an extra layer above the filesystem when you have less than, say, 10,000 items to store under each subkey. Do you store a site's web pages in a database for instance?
Subkey? So tell me, where does a subkey come in, in a system that stores things by key/value pairs? 10,000 items under a key? Wait, what happened to the key/value pair idea? Oh, that's right, that would be terribly inefficient because of the whole data locality issue, hence needing to store many items in a single file (key). Maybe you should get your thoughts straight.
And websites store wepages in memory cache if they are accessed a lot. This is because disk access is slow, and the website knows more about what needs to be in memory cache than the filesystem.
There is no reason why I should have to learn 100 different acronoms and file formats to administer a system.
I try not to have 100 different critical packages installed. Maybe your site needs an extra admin?
Clearly the idea of exaggeration is beyond you. Let's see, on a linux system you can have PAM, CUPS, various files for host name, networking, name resolution, firewall, routing, account defaults, processes accounting, log rotating, job scheduling, maybe dhcp, samba, nfs, a web server, a database, configuration files for various apache modules (php,webdav,database plugins), maybe you have kerberos, maybe you have an LDAP server, perhaps you have security software such as tripwire... SMTP server, perhaps a pop server, an imap server, and there multiple software solutions for many of these components, all with different confiuration files.
Highering more admins to make up for a defiecient system is not a good solution.
pgrading should deal with configuration files in an intelligent way, otherwise known as configuration migration.
Describe this "intelligent way", and how is it *fundamentally* different than regular version control? Why would something other than flat line-oriented files make it *easier* to implement?
Very simple. Minor revisions should not change configuration formats. For major revisions, the software developers know what has changed in the configuration and should be able to migrate old settings so that they work in the new software. If there are new features, this should pointed out upon migration so that the admin knows exactly what needs to be looked at. Also, once a set of changes are made, they should be able to be supplied to the upgrade program so that you can upgrade a set of machines in a completely automated fasion.
And wait? You use cvs to manage your
Here is something else to think about. Each small file, even if it contains no data, takes up a standard chunk of disk space.
/etc is mess. There is no reason why I should have to learn 100 different acronoms and file formats to administer a system. Upgrading should deal with configuration files in an intelligent way, otherwise known as configuration migration.
Filesystems are designed to store things on disk, they are not meant to efficiently store and retrieve (key, value) pairs. That is what a database is for. Databases also have to deal with disk storage, and they do that through the filesystem in an intelligent way. However, their functionality is WAY more complicated than simply makinga file for each key/value pair.
Finally, as a busy admin that has to deal with crap, I find the current system severely lacking. Especially upgrading, and yes I've seen the gentoo way, and no it's no better than other ways. Debain and FreeBSD both have very similar solutions.
Besides, the fact that you use gentoo should exempt you from this discussion. Compiling your whole operating system and every update is a ludacris idea. No wonder you like the current messy system.
Um. I have a mac, and this hasn't yet happened once. What on earth are you doing having to modify etc by hand ALL THE TIME??
I agree with all that, and perhaps having corporations involved is a good model for the future. I didn't think of this, thanks for the comment.
And this illustrates a problem with open source. People only want to 'scratch their own itches' and so users who can't program but want specific features are left in the dust.
And before someone pipes up "well the users can PAY someone to implement those features", no they can't. First, it is unreasonble to expect an average user to be able to find an appropriate programmer, most have troulbe even USING the software. Even if they could find an appropriate developer, it is unreasonable to expect one user to incur the entire cost of feature development for a feature or program that many people want.
There is currently no easy way for end users to organize developer pools, and figuring out the logistics of such a thing is highly non-trivial.
Save your sarcasm for the case that the bill passes. Also, note that they were not wrong. Even now, Canadians enjoy far more liberal fair use raights than Americans. Just because that 'might' change in the future, does not negate the fact that we enjoy better rights now and have for at least two years previous.
And american upset that their country is not the best at everything? *gasp* what a shocker!
I agree. But often, after hearing a good group on a stream, I'd download a couple of the songs via p2p to find out what the 'other' songs on the cd are like. The previews at places like Amazon are good, but often they are simply too short, or are non-existant (in the case of new/rare groups).
:(
If I liked the group, I'd go buy the CD. I bought more CDs during that time than I did my whole life. Of course, after the RIAA decided to kill streams in the US with licensing fees, and then started suing customers for checking out music with p2p, I stopped buying CDs in protest. So far my silent protest has not had any impact, other than to give them more ammo against p2p because 'oh, their profits are down... must be because of p2p'.
Also, with the copy protection schemes becoming more prevalent, it looks like I will never be buying new music.
The only exception I make is for groups not tied to the RIAA. There are very few of these unfortunately.
Except that nothing 'happened' in Canada. This is all just speculation. Just because some people in government want something, doesn't mean it will happen.
Hopefully the rest of the gov. will shoot this stuff down hard.
Although ironically, if you compare the price of a BMW to a car of 'equivalent performance and features', it's not over price at all. In fact, they're generally cheaper than cars such as, say, Mercedes.
If all you want is leather seats, you could just buy a Lada and put leather seats in it. Hell, maybe Ladas even have leather as an option these days.
It's all about what level of quality you want to settle for. If you want to criticise apple for not using shitty parts... uh... well... ok. I suppose they are guilty.
ok, I stand corrected. I still don't think the resemblence is that big though, especially if there is nothing else about the game that is similar to zelda.