That sarcasm would be biting, except I'd specificially asked for 5,500+ rings in a *single* trunk. You answered with a *multi-trunk* ring matching, plus a side-comment about me not believing it.
To summarize: Me: I'd like an A please. You: That's easy. Here - take a B. But something tells me you won't be convinced! Me: That's right. I am not convinced. I'd asked for an A, not a B! You: Duh, didn't I say you were going to do this.
> I counter your single PhD Warwick with 200 PhD Steves! I win!
Science isn't a democracy. If there is a repeatable observation, then the theory-of-the-day had better account for it, or be subject to change.
> Seeing as creationists have been calling the botanists stupid since 1970
Hyuk! That makes for a funny picture -- do you think Dr. Batten stands in front of his mirror each morning, calling himself bad names?
To make this more clear, lets transliterate (translate word for word) directly from the Hebrew Masoretic text. Gen 1:9 reads as under (note that Hebrew sentence structure is different from English):
"And said God, Let be COLLECTED the WATERS under the heavens to ONE PLACE,
and let appear the dry LAND"
Notes: 1. The WATERS (plural) were COLLECTED (*work* was *done* to the *waters*) 2. To ONE PLACE (this work *bunched* the waters *together* in one place) 3. This made the dry LAND (singular) appear
I hope you agree that points 1,2 and 3 show the verses in question as specifying a super-continent surrouded by an ocean. Remember, *work* was done in COLLECTING the waters.
Geologists agree today that the ancient earth *was* a supercontinent surrounded by an ocean (for instance, the continents approximately fit into each other even today).
I think the verses above are also the point when dry land appears for the *first* time because of the use of the verb "appear" and also because the previous verses describe "the spirit of god moving gently upon the face of the waters" (Gen 1:2)
You may also find these Biblical verses interesting: - He who sits over the CIRCLE of the earth (Isaiah 40:22) - He hung the earth on NOTHING (Job 26:7)
> Really that easy? > Why do I get the sneaking suspicion you won't be convinced that easily.
I'm not convinced because I asked for (see emphasis):...
Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine [sonic.net], or this one: a 4844-ring pine [sonic.net] cut down (!) just a few decades ago.
But you gave me this: (see emphasis)
Dr. Charles Ferguson of the University of Arizona has, by matching up overlapping tree rings of living and dead bristlecone pines, carefully built a tree ring sequence...
I asked you for 5,500+ rings in the same trunk since there are many problems with ring-matching across different trees. From this article:
Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has revealed that up to five rings per year can be produced and extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings....
The extended tree ring chronologies are far from absolute, in spite of the popular hype. To illustrate this we only have to consider the publication and subsequent withdrawal of two European tree-ring chronologies. According to David Rohl,3 the Sweet Track chronology from Southwest England was 're-measured' when it did not agree with the published dendrochronology from Northern Ireland (Belfast). Also, the construction of a detailed sequence from southern Germany was abandoned...
The author of this article should know... he's a tree physiologist. I think multiple rings in a year for some trees and not others, would throw a spanner into ring matching, no?
So, due to the fact multiple rings *can* occur in one year (but it's rare) I asked for 5,500+ rings rather than 5,000. But hey... 5,500+ rings, even with multiple rings, in a single trunk shouldn't be a probem, eh? I mean there really isn't a "reason" for a 5,000 year limit is there? For one thing, the last ice-age supposedly ended 10,000 years ago. For another, we're already upto at 4,700 rings... no 4,800!... almost there... just 700 rings left to go.
> >...consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site. > Do you really think those crackpots have any idea what they're talking about?
Actually, they do. For the article quoted above, you could always take this up with the people who awarded the author his Ph.D.
> You can always prove number 1, because you will define "civilization" as whatever existed 5000 years ago.
Maybe it was misphrased as "civilization"... I really meant records of human events occuring in time. Cave painting are records of human civilization too... they just don't record time. For instance, a British historian may refer to a Greek philosopher as living 2,500 years ago. Said Greek philosopher may refer to yet another one, and that one to yet another one, who may have recorded some event as occuring x thousand years ago.
The same goes with Chinese dynasties, Hindu nation-states, etc. The commonly accepted point of convergence is about 5000 years ago. This is backed up by the genetic study paper mentioned in the first port which estimates the ancestors of the Danish population likely split from the Turkish population just 4500 years ago.
> Since the last ice age ended around 10,000 years ago, > no tree can be 20,000 years old because its climate > would have changed too drastically for it to survive.
OK, but the real tree-life boundary isn't 10,000 years -- its 5,000. There aren't any 5,500 year old trees. The oldest tree ages go right upto 4,800 years of age ( see the links in this post; note approx. 4,800 year old trees are/were still living.)- and then halt abruptly -- just as the Bible says they should.
> Flood stories exist in most world cultures because it rains on most world cultures. Fire, earthquakes, pestilence, famine... all cultures experience these too. But the legends don't name these as causes of a near-extinction of humanity. Anyway, legends are not a strong point since they are easily altered -- but it is worth nothing the prevalence of the flood legends worldwide.
> You confuse the principle of a theory with the application of the theory. > If a theory says that new species arise due to natural selection and evolution, > that doesn't tell us anything about the population dynamics, rate of evolution, > or why two populations may find interbreeding uninteresting. > If I can't fix your television, that doesn't mean that there is an error in Maxwell's equations.
Please consider reading my two subsequent posts in this thread 1 and 2
I don't see how presenting an alternative hypothesis with other data fitting that hypothesis counts as confusion -- after all, it is called the *theory* of evolution for good reasons.
> The oldest records of my family > The oldest living dog I know...
But we're not talking about you. Science says that, *globally*(!) speaking,: 1. The earliest reliable human memories and records of events 2. The oldest living trees
...both date to about 5000 years ago - as the Biblical record implies they should.
Trees are especially interesting since tree rings provide a direct way to measure age (a sort of eyewitness account across the ages).
Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine, or this one: a 4844-ring pine cut down (!) just a few decades ago.
As mentioned here, there is no reason that trees *can't* live for longer (consider the two trees above). Yet the oldest trees mystically stop short of the 5000 mark. Unless some strange 'tree-timebomb' effect kills all trees of all tree species just before their 5000 year-mark (to believe this, one really need blind faith!), there *should* be hundreds of trees with trunks having 5000, 7000, 10,000+ rings. Yet none have been found (even after decades of searching).
> > Flood stories exist in many (most?) world cultures > Stories about demons, elves, pixies,...
Stories are just stories and should not carry as much credence as corroborated records or hard science. But, unlike the various flood legends, most legends about elves, demons, lizards, fire, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc, don't have them causing the near-extinction of the human species.
> Punctuated equilibrium accounts for problems seen with traditional natural selection Agreed - my point was that a modifiction to traditional darwinian evolution was required to account for its inability to account for the fossil record.
See also my other post. For other problems with Carbon dating and current evolutionary theory, consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.
> What if the bottlenecking is not theoretical, but real? i.e. There really *was* a single Adam and a single Eve.
Correction to the top of my post above. Instead of:
i.e. There really *was* a single Adam and a single Eve....it should have read:
i.e. What if Noah and his wife correspond to Y-Adam and m-Eve?
While I believe there was an Adam and Eve to begin with, the genetic bottleneck we're discussing fits the narrowing down of the human race to Noah and his family rather than Adam/Eve.
> They are due to a purely theoretical bottleneck looking backwards up the tree of life.
I understand you consider mEve and YAdam theoretical - but remember, in the absence of an eyewitness to this, this is a *hypothesis* put forward to fit the bottlenecking data (and perhaps, it does fit the data).
But the data fits another hypothesis too: What if the bottlenecking is not theoretical, but real? i.e. There really *was* a single Adam and a single Eve. This hypethesis fits the genetic bottlenecking data too. Also, there is also an "eyewitness" account being claimed here -- God's word in the Bible. How do we examine the trustworthiness of this account?
Consider the implications of the 3 papers from the posting:
Paper #1) Danish and Middle East population could have diverged 4,500 years ago ----> Fits with the Biblical description of human dispersion occuring after the flood (around 4,500 years ago as well).
Paper #2) 20 times faster observed mtDNA Mutation Rate ----> Genetic bottlenecking can be approximately just 150,000/20 = 7,500 years old. Fits Biblical description of "bottlenecking" down to Noah's family 5,000 years ago
Paper #3) 1 male root lineage / 3 sub-lineages / only 1 of these 3 has 7 sub-sub-lineages that populate the world outside of Middle East and Africa. ----> Remarkable fit with Biblical story of Noah, his 3 sons, and the 7 descendants of only one of the 3 sons ("Japeth") populate the rest of world. The other 2 sons and their descendants populate the Middle East and Africa.
So we have three secular, peer-reviewed, scientific papers adding credence to the God's account in the Bible.
Critics thrust back saying techniques like Radio-carbon dating give older ages. But this is assuming we know the proportion of radio-carbon in the earth to begin with. If the amount of radioactivity increased dramatically due to the flood (as described in my earlier post), fossils created before the flood would look artificially "old" since post-flood fossils would have higher amounts of radio-carbon to begin with.
Ultimately I can't *prove* God to you without a doubt. But I can say this - the God of the Bible is a living God and an honest God. Believing in his words does not mean living a lie - quite the opposite. If you do, he will help you as he has helped me find this assemblage of papers (Befroe I believed in Jesus, I used to be a 'nominal' athiest who believed in evolution.) There are many more proofs of God's word, some to do with the current world scenario, and some that will be personal to each one who believes in Him.
> So Young Earthism is bad science, **not religion**.
I disagree. Science is using observation to determine the viability of hypotheses. Here are a few reasons to believe the Biblical account:
This paper states humanity likely moved out of the Middle East very recently...
Using rare mutations to estimate population divergence times: A maximum likelihood approach Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 95, pp. 15452-15457, December 1998 http://www.rannala.org/papers/PNAS98.pdf ----- In this paper we propose a method to estimate by maximum likelihood the divergence time between two populations,...
When applied to three cystic fibrosis mutations, the estimatorRD could not exclude a very recent time of divergence among three Mediterranean populations. On the other hand, the divergence time between these populations and the Danish population was estimated to be, on the average, 4,500 or 15,000 years, assuming or not a selective advantage for cystic fibrosis carriers, respectively. ------
Evolutionary Genetics tries to estimate how 'old' our current species is by dividing the number of mutations observed in a specific DNA region with the estimated mutation rate. The generally accepted figure is around 150,000 years, but...
A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial DNA control region. Nat Genet. 1998 Feb;18(2):109-10. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ent rez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9090380&dopt=Abstract ----- The rate and pattern of sequence substitutions in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region (CR) is of central importance to studies of human evolution and to forensic identity testing....We compared DNA sequences... an empirical rate of 1/33 generations, or 2.5/site/Myr. This is roughly twenty-fold higher than estimates derived from phylogenetic analyses. This disparity cannot be accounted for simply by substitutions at mutational hot spots, suggesting additional factors that produce the discrepancy between very near-term and long-term apparent rates of sequence divergence. The data also indicate that extremely rapid segregation of CR sequence variants between generations is common in humans, with a very small mtDNA bottleneck. These results have implications for forensic applications and studies of human evolution. -----
This paper shows how genetics is now used to determine the human family tree: The Human Family Tree: 10 Adams and 18 Eves NY Times Article (free subscription required) http://www.nytimes.com/library/national /science/05 0200sci-genetics-evolution.html ----- The human genome is turning out to be a rich new archive for historians and prehistorians... Population geneticists believe that the ancestral human population was very small -- a mere 2,000 breeding individuals... But the family tree based on human mitochondrial DNA does not trace back to the thousand women in this ancestral population. The tree is rooted in a single individual, the mitochondrial Eve, because all the other lineages fell extinct.... The same is true of the Y chromosome tree, a consequence of the fact that in each generation some men will have no children, or only daughters, This ancestral human population lived somewhere in Africa, geneticists believe, and started to split up some time after 144,000 years ago, give or take 10,000 years, the inferred time at which both the mitochondrial and Y chromosome trees make their first branches.... The tree is rooted in a single Y chromosomal Adam, and has 10 principal branches, Dr. Cavalli-Sforza reports.... ----- Besides the curious fact of the "single-ancestor" DNA bottleneck existing at all, it applies to both male and female branches, at around the same time and the previous paper about the mtDNA mutation rate applies to the 144,000 years estimate. (i.e. divide-by-20).
Continuing on, the paper talks about how the male lineage began to descend. It refers to the Y-chromosome originator of the lineage as 'Adam'... ----- Of these sons of Adam, the first three (designated I, II and III) are found almost exclusively in Africa. Son III's lineage migrated to Asia and begat sons IV-X, who spread through the rest of the world... -----
In other words, the Y-Chromosome ancestor was:
A single male chromosomal ancestor
With three descendant male lineages
The third male lineage had seven sub-lineages
These seven sub-lineages from the third lineage populate all the world except the Middle East and Africa.
This is shown quite clearly by this chart accompanying the NY Times article.
The Bible says the same thing: [This is the only section of this post from the Bible]
We are all descended from a single male ancestor - Noah
Noah had three male descendants
One of the three sons, Japeth, had seven sons
The Japeth lineage (his seven sons and their descendants) populated all the world except the Middle East and Africa.
----- The Bible. Genesis 10: 1 Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. 2 The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.... Note: 7 sons in all 5 By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations. ----- The Bible says the world, created about 6000 years ago, was destroyed by a worldwide flood around 5000 ago. It describes how, in the aftermath of the flood, human lifespan began declining at an rapid rate - from close to 1000 years before the flood, to around 100-200 years within a few hundred years after the flood ended. This could be due to highly increased radiation during the aftermath of the flood causing DNA damage. The increased radiation could account for the 1/3/7 lineage being so distinct (due to increased mutations during the immediate aftermath).
One causative factor in radiation release could simply be the earth being torn up during the flood - the Bible describes the earth as a single continent before the flood (Genesis 1: "And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." ), multiple continents after ("islands of the Gentiles" - a common term to refer to the rest of humanity). The radiation release could not only account for shortened lifespan and the reason for the 1/3/7 lineage pattern being distinct - it could also skew techniques like radiocarbon dating.
Some other facts:
The oldest records of civilizations date back around 5000 years
The oldest living trees (determined by tree rings on the same tree - not radiocarbon dating) are around 5000 years as well. Though there is no reason trees can't live longer.
Flood stories exist in many (most?) world cultures
To account for problems with evolutionary theory, a new theory, Punctuated Equilibrium has gained prominence
I reread an old Australian computer magazine article recently - it was an interview with the head of Australia's equivalent of the RIAA. In the article, he accused Australian ISPs of being in the piracy business on the grounds that their proxies were being used to store illegally downloaded music locally. He also said that the police's current priority was the war on terror, but when they got a little more free, they would raid ISPs.
I think the interview appeared in Australian Personal Computer magazine a couple of months ago. Don't have a direct link to the article handy, sorry.
> The size of a desktop gives to the flexibility to use standard components.
But some laptop components are either bog-standard now or come in one of a few formats. Here are the ones that are standard:
Hard drives (2.5 inch disk)
CD-ROM/DVD/floppy drives (IIRC these come in either of two form factors)
Add-on RAM (SO-DIMM)
Add-on RAM (SO-DIMM).
CPUs - not in all cases.
LCD panels - they need drivers though
The components still specialized are:
the "motherboard" - This is a biggie because it has *a lot* of integrated stuff onboard (graphics/ports... sometimes even CPUs). Many "backend" manufacturers (eg: Compal) sell bare-bones laptop chassis However, trying to procure a few is like pulling teeth from a croc - the manufacturers only seem to want to sell in units of hundreds. Hey, how about a bulk Slashdot "Group Purchase" of barebone laptop kits?
the keyboard/touchpad
motherboard power interface - these keyboard/touchpad
LCD driver - LVDS output needed from motherboard
Power and battery interface - standardized in some cases.
> I would rather have smaller laptops than standardised ones. That's you - but its different strokes for different folks really. Many (most?) people would prefer an open-er laptop specification that could be customized by the system integrator or the end-user. (This is already happening with some system integrators by the way - they purchase laptop barebones kits and build laptops to order) This would also drive prices down. Of course, the apple's of the laptop world would still have a market share:) But competition would , um, *help* them improve at a faster clip too.
Hmmm... it could be the cruft in your Win98 partition - Win 9x does need frequent reinstalls+ regular defrags.:) My 433 celeron/192 MB laptop runs NT 4.0 faster than it runs RH 8/Gnome. I guess a fairer comparison would be to compare RH 8 with Win XP... but then the functionality is comparable, and I've seen Win XP run acceptably on PII/Celeron-level hardware.
It could be the RAM - IIRC if the machine has enough RAM, Linux does a good job of disk caching and this makes the UI appear to be quite fast.
I guess one thing we both agree on is that Linux is better than windows as a server (no GUI) on older hardware.
> Oh, and by the way, ctl-alt-+ and ctl-alt-- changes your resolutions in X on-the-fly, But as the other threads note, until X 4.3 (wasn't it recently released?) you ended up the virtual screen problem.
> if you compile your quality sound driver and insert it Provided the user *knows* his hardware details, and how to compile and insert the driver... (but I think Linux has decent sound config tools currently, no?)
> xfreee86 +xinerama works great for MULTI-monitor setups, not just dual-monitor setups. I know grandparent poster said "dual monitor", but Windows has had *multi*-monitor support for quite some time - Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 had it(at least). And its simple: in Windows 2000, I just install a PCI video card, reboot and Windows automatically 'extends' my desktop to the new monitors.
The original poster does make a valid point - that Linux is only now approaching the level of usability required for use by the general population that, say, Windows possesses. And Linux would have achieved this level of usability faster if development skills were concentrated in certain areas (for example, the issues above). However, Linux is a free OS and such things can't be forced. Well, unless someone chips in with funding -- like the German government is doing with KDE development IIRC.:)
Dear Scorilo - I hope and pray your father gets better.
> This very militantism makes me take the medical establishment counterclaims > re: ozone with a grain of salt. You made some good and balanced points. I just wanted to make sure you didn't miss the posting a little below this thread -- it links to this story [sciencedaily.com] on human antibodies producing ozone to attack bacteria and fungi. Maybe the autohemotherapy you wrote about earlier could help destroy cancer cells in a similar fashion?
The Science Daily story links to the abstract of the published research [pnas.org] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It seems that publication date is 24 Feb - so you could try reading that issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in a University library, or try to contact the paper authors for more input.
But my point was that he might be able to get by for a couple more years if he uses Linux instead of Windows on those old machines.
Actually, its the opposite: if (with emphasis on the if) you run a GUI, you'll generally find Windows (most flavors, including NT 4.0) giving a better user experience (i.e. a faster, more responsive GUI) on older hardware. This is especially true if you need Office applications (OpenOffice is the only serious free-software contender here) and run a general-purpose GUI (i.e.: you run Gnome or KDE -- WindowMaker is not simple enough for most users).
...Gnome and KDE are so much in the Windows/Macintosh mold of user interfaces...... To do substantially better, we will have to jettison the current straight-jacket of separate C/C++ applications and move to entirely new software architectures. And then, the distinction between "configurability" and "programming", between "user" and "programmer" will pretty much disappear.
> where you can get these things without *any* OS. > I'm willing to bet that there is the Lindows tax in there somewhere.
Good point:) and good luck with your search! ECS computers from Taiwan have an offering called "Desknote" - it sbasically a laptop without a battery. Desknotes may have C3 CPUs but they also sell P3/P4 "desknotes".
(Here's a Czech site selling one) The lindows notebook has an internal battery though, right?
Is there a free utility in Windows to do something equivalent to xmodmap? (i.e. remap "useless" keys to more functional equivalents)?
Also, I remember reading about a utility that could "take over" the three Num Lock/Caps Lock/Scroll Lock LEDS as indicators for user-definable events. For eg: "blink all 3 LEDS in quick succession when I get new mail". Anyone has a link handy?
The websites he visits are all optimized for Windows
Just curious - won't IE on Apple's OS' suffice for him? Do the sites he uses embed ActiveX controls? Are there a lot of ActiveX controls that are available for Windows, but not on Apple's platforms?
> I think it stands that you own the particular pieces of media.
Hmm -- as far as the common-sense version of "own" goes, MS disagrees.
I recently bought a copy of MS Visual C++.NET. It's EULA has a "one time transfer" clause.
Basically, it states the product can be sold/transferred (in it's entirity) once only after you purchase it from the retailer. i.e. If I ever resell my retail copy of VC++.NET, the person buying it from me, must agree (as specified by the EULA) to never sell/ transfer it to anyone else. Of course, I'll let the buyer know about this part of the EULA if I ever sell my copy, but I didn't think MS could pull off this stunt *after* selling the product to me.
I'll specify the exact text in the license if anyone's interested.
5.2. Why do I currently have to buy a Quicknet card if I want to do PC-To-Phone calls?
All providers need the G.723.1 audio codec to be able to do PC-To-Phone calls. That codec is patented and can't be added directly into the GnomeMeeting code. However, buying a Quicknet card offers you other features that will also be useful if you are not doing PC-To-Phone calls. (Emphasis mine).
Hm, only one vendor is listed on the Gnome meeting website -- their cheapest card is US$109.
On a Windows PC, you don't need a card - the soundcard and CPU are sufficient for PC-to-Phone. I guess Microsoft pays the codec royalties -- and a copy of Windows XP Home off pricewatch.com is US$90.
*Grin* I think only hardcore Linux users will followup on this article.
I wonder if it's possible to convince the telcom company they're using as their gateway ("MicroTelco") to accepts voice calls using a free codec (the new Ogg Vorbis voice codec comes to mind).
With good DRPs being as easy as one additional, lesser powered server, or even a minor software re-configuration (ie; in a load balancer), it's just pure silliness to use it as an excuse for not being up to date as far as security is concerned. That kind of apathy is responsible for the constant ass-kicing we're seeing on the global Internet nowadays, and I find it personally appalling and quite frankly insulting. People are taking up arms against me for having the audacity to desire competency and responsibility from sysadmins.
Hey dude, don't count me as one of these...:) I'm no sysadmin, but I can see you've made good points about admin practices and DRP that a lot of people here (including me) appreciate and find insightful. ( I don't have any mod points handy though:( )
The only point I have different is that I think Redhat is pressurising support-paying customers (like my company) to change too much (the entire OS!) too quickly (once a year!) -- and that this pressure, frankly, seems to be driven by a desire to increase sales of their more expensive products.
I am affected since I am an "application admin" in my company (not a sysadmin). Now, I know its not enough for me to test and stress test new versions of the app., (knowing that the underlying OS is stable) -- I now have to co-ordinate and test RH's OS changes. More variables -> more complexity. "Grr!" - I say to Redhat.
I've decided to make this my last post on the topic. Sad. You have to do that on./ sometimes - flames may get too personal.
Anyway man, as I said - you have made many good points. Have a good night. I hope we part as friends.
Slashdot Mirror
> Duh, didn't I say you were going to do this.
That sarcasm would be biting, except I'd specificially asked for 5,500+ rings in a *single* trunk. You answered with a *multi-trunk* ring matching, plus a side-comment about me not believing it.
To summarize:
Me: I'd like an A please.
You: That's easy. Here - take a B. But something tells me you won't be convinced!
Me: That's right. I am not convinced. I'd asked for an A, not a B!
You: Duh, didn't I say you were going to do this.
> I counter your single PhD Warwick with 200 PhD Steves! I win!
Science isn't a democracy. If there is a repeatable observation, then the theory-of-the-day had better account for it, or be subject to change.
> Seeing as creationists have been calling the botanists stupid since 1970
Hyuk! That makes for a funny picture -- do you think Dr. Batten stands in front of his mirror each morning, calling himself bad names?
If you're interested, I just responded to another thread from my first post.
To make this more clear, lets transliterate (translate word for word) directly from the Hebrew Masoretic text. Gen 1:9 reads as under (note that Hebrew sentence structure is different from English):
"And said God, Let be COLLECTED the WATERS under the heavens to ONE PLACE,
and let appear the dry LAND"
Notes:
1. The WATERS (plural) were COLLECTED (*work* was *done* to the *waters*)
2. To ONE PLACE (this work *bunched* the waters *together* in one place)
3. This made the dry LAND (singular) appear
I hope you agree that points 1,2 and 3 show the verses in question as specifying a super-continent surrouded by an ocean. Remember, *work* was done in COLLECTING the waters.
Geologists agree today that the ancient earth *was* a supercontinent surrounded by an ocean (for instance, the continents approximately fit into each other even today).
I think the verses above are also the point when dry land appears for the *first* time because of the use of the verb "appear" and also because the previous verses describe "the spirit of god moving gently upon the face of the waters" (Gen 1:2)
You may also find these Biblical verses interesting:
- He who sits over the CIRCLE of the earth (Isaiah 40:22)
- He hung the earth on NOTHING (Job 26:7)
> Really that easy?
...
...
...
... no 4,800! ... almost there... just 700 rings left to go.
...consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.
> Why do I get the sneaking suspicion you won't be convinced that easily.
I'm not convinced because I asked for (see emphasis):...
Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine [sonic.net], or this one: a 4844-ring pine [sonic.net] cut down (!) just a few decades ago.
But you gave me this: (see emphasis)
Dr. Charles Ferguson of the University of Arizona has, by matching up overlapping tree rings of living and dead bristlecone pines, carefully built a tree ring sequence
I asked you for 5,500+ rings in the same trunk since there are many problems with ring-matching across different trees. From this article:
Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has revealed that up to five rings per year can be produced and extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings.
The extended tree ring chronologies are far from absolute, in spite of the popular hype. To illustrate this we only have to consider the publication and subsequent withdrawal of two European tree-ring chronologies. According to David Rohl,3 the Sweet Track chronology from Southwest England was 're-measured' when it did not agree with the published dendrochronology from Northern Ireland (Belfast). Also, the construction of a detailed sequence from southern Germany was abandoned
The author of this article should know... he's a tree physiologist. I think multiple rings in a year for some trees and not others, would throw a spanner into ring matching, no?
So, due to the fact multiple rings *can* occur in one year (but it's rare) I asked for 5,500+ rings rather than 5,000. But hey... 5,500+ rings, even with multiple rings, in a single trunk shouldn't be a probem, eh? I mean there really isn't a "reason" for a 5,000 year limit is there? For one thing, the last ice-age supposedly ended 10,000 years ago. For another, we're already upto at 4,700 rings
> >
> Do you really think those crackpots have any idea what they're talking about?
Actually, they do. For the article quoted above, you could always take this up with the people who awarded the author his Ph.D.
> You can always prove number 1, because you will define "civilization" as whatever existed 5000 years ago.
Maybe it was misphrased as "civilization"... I really meant records of human events occuring in time. Cave painting are records of human civilization too... they just don't record time. For instance, a British historian may refer to a Greek philosopher as living 2,500 years ago. Said Greek philosopher may refer to yet another one, and that one to yet another one, who may have recorded some event as occuring x thousand years ago.
The same goes with Chinese dynasties, Hindu nation-states, etc. The commonly accepted point of convergence is about 5000 years ago. This is backed up by the genetic study paper mentioned in the first port which estimates the ancestors of the Danish population likely split from the Turkish population just 4500 years ago.
> Since the last ice age ended around 10,000 years ago,
> no tree can be 20,000 years old because its climate
> would have changed too drastically for it to survive.
OK, but the real tree-life boundary isn't 10,000 years -- its 5,000. There aren't any 5,500 year old trees. The oldest tree ages go right upto 4,800 years of age ( see the links in this post; note approx. 4,800 year old trees are/were still living.)- and then halt abruptly -- just as the Bible says they should.
> Flood stories exist in most world cultures because it rains on most world cultures.
Fire, earthquakes, pestilence, famine... all cultures experience these too. But the legends don't name these as causes of a near-extinction of humanity. Anyway, legends are not a strong point since they are easily altered -- but it is worth nothing the prevalence of the flood legends worldwide.
> You confuse the principle of a theory with the application of the theory.
> If a theory says that new species arise due to natural selection and evolution,
> that doesn't tell us anything about the population dynamics, rate of evolution,
> or why two populations may find interbreeding uninteresting.
> If I can't fix your television, that doesn't mean that there is an error in Maxwell's equations.
Please consider reading my two subsequent posts in this thread 1 and 2
I don't see how presenting an alternative hypothesis with other data fitting that hypothesis counts as confusion -- after all, it is called the *theory* of evolution for good reasons.
> The oldest records of my family
:
...both date to about 5000 years ago - as the Biblical record implies they should.
> The oldest living dog I know...
But we're not talking about you. Science says that, *globally*(!) speaking,
1. The earliest reliable human memories and records of events
2. The oldest living trees
Trees are especially interesting since tree rings provide a direct way to measure age (a sort of eyewitness account across the ages).
Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine, or this one: a 4844-ring pine cut down (!) just a few decades ago.
As mentioned here, there is no reason that trees *can't* live for longer (consider the two trees above). Yet the oldest trees mystically stop short of the 5000 mark. Unless some strange 'tree-timebomb' effect kills all trees of all tree species just before their 5000 year-mark (to believe this, one really need blind faith!), there *should* be hundreds of trees with trunks having 5000, 7000, 10,000+ rings. Yet none have been found (even after decades of searching).
> > Flood stories exist in many (most?) world cultures
> Stories about demons, elves, pixies,...
Stories are just stories and should not carry as much credence as corroborated records or hard science. But, unlike the various flood legends, most legends about elves, demons, lizards, fire, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc, don't have them causing the near-extinction of the human species.
> Punctuated equilibrium accounts for problems seen with traditional natural selection
Agreed - my point was that a modifiction to traditional darwinian evolution was required to account for its inability to account for the fossil record.
See also my other post.
For other problems with Carbon dating and current evolutionary theory, consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.
> What if the bottlenecking is not theoretical, but real? i.e. There really *was* a single Adam and a single Eve.
...it should have read:
Correction to the top of my post above. Instead of:
i.e. There really *was* a single Adam and a single Eve.
i.e. What if Noah and his wife correspond to Y-Adam and m-Eve?
While I believe there was an Adam and Eve to begin with, the genetic bottleneck we're discussing fits the narrowing down of the human race to Noah and his family rather than Adam/Eve.
Hello -
> They are due to a purely theoretical bottleneck looking backwards up the tree of life.
I understand you consider mEve and YAdam theoretical - but remember, in the absence of an eyewitness to this, this is a *hypothesis* put forward to fit the bottlenecking data (and perhaps, it does fit the data).
But the data fits another hypothesis too: What if the bottlenecking is not theoretical, but real? i.e. There really *was* a single Adam and a single Eve. This hypethesis fits the genetic bottlenecking data too. Also, there is also an "eyewitness" account being claimed here -- God's word in the Bible. How do we examine the trustworthiness of this account?
Consider the implications of the 3 papers from the posting:
Paper #1) Danish and Middle East population could have diverged 4,500 years ago
----> Fits with the Biblical description of human dispersion occuring after the flood (around 4,500 years ago as well).
Paper #2) 20 times faster observed mtDNA Mutation Rate
----> Genetic bottlenecking can be approximately just 150,000/20 = 7,500 years old. Fits Biblical description of "bottlenecking" down to Noah's family 5,000 years ago
Paper #3) 1 male root lineage / 3 sub-lineages / only 1 of these 3 has 7 sub-sub-lineages that populate the world outside of Middle East and Africa.
----> Remarkable fit with Biblical story of Noah, his 3 sons, and the 7 descendants of only one of the 3 sons ("Japeth") populate the rest of world. The other 2 sons and their descendants populate the Middle East and Africa.
So we have three secular, peer-reviewed, scientific papers adding credence to the God's account in the Bible.
Critics thrust back saying techniques like Radio-carbon dating give older ages. But this is assuming we know the proportion of radio-carbon in the earth to begin with. If the amount of radioactivity increased dramatically due to the flood (as described in my earlier post), fossils created before the flood would look artificially "old" since post-flood fossils would have higher amounts of radio-carbon to begin with.
Ultimately I can't *prove* God to you without a doubt. But I can say this - the God of the Bible is a living God and an honest God. Believing in his words does not mean living a lie - quite the opposite. If you do, he will help you as he has helped me find this assemblage of papers (Befroe I believed in Jesus, I used to be a 'nominal' athiest who believed in evolution.) There are many more proofs of God's word, some to do with the current world scenario, and some that will be personal to each one who believes in Him.
I disagree. Science is using observation to determine the viability of hypotheses. Here are a few reasons to believe the Biblical account:
This paper states humanity likely moved out of the Middle East very recently...
Using rare mutations to estimate population divergence times: A maximum likelihood approach
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 95, pp. 15452-15457, December 1998
http://www.rannala.org/papers/PNAS98.pdf
-----
In this paper we propose a method to estimate
by maximum likelihood the divergence time between two populations,...
When applied to three cystic fibrosis mutations, the estimatorRD
could not exclude a very recent time of divergence among three
Mediterranean populations. On the other hand, the divergence
time between these populations and the Danish population was
estimated to be, on the average, 4,500 or 15,000 years, assuming
or not a selective advantage for cystic fibrosis carriers, respectively.
------
Evolutionary Genetics tries to estimate how 'old' our current species is by dividing the number of mutations observed in a specific DNA region with the estimated mutation rate. The generally accepted figure is around 150,000 years, but...
A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial DNA control region.
Nat Genet. 1998 Feb;18(2):109-10.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/en
-----
The rate and pattern of sequence substitutions in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region (CR) is of central importance to studies of human evolution and to forensic identity testing.
-----
This paper shows how genetics is now used to determine the human family tree:
The Human Family Tree: 10 Adams and 18 Eves
NY Times Article (free subscription required)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/nationa
-----
The human genome is turning out to be a rich new archive for historians and prehistorians
Population geneticists believe that the ancestral human population was very small -- a mere 2,000 breeding individuals
But the family tree based on human mitochondrial DNA does not trace back to the thousand women in this ancestral population. The tree is rooted in a single individual, the mitochondrial Eve, because all the other lineages fell extinct.
The same is true of the Y chromosome tree, a consequence of the fact that in each generation some men will have no children, or only daughters,
This ancestral human population lived somewhere in Africa, geneticists believe, and started to split up some time after 144,000 years ago, give or take 10,000 years, the inferred time at which both the mitochondrial and Y chromosome trees make their first branches.
The tree is rooted in a single Y chromosomal Adam, and has 10 principal branches, Dr. Cavalli-Sforza reports.
-----
Besides the curious fact of the "single-ancestor" DNA bottleneck existing at all, it applies to both male and female branches, at around the same time and the previous paper about the mtDNA mutation rate applies to the 144,000 years estimate. (i.e. divide-by-20).
Continuing on, the paper talks about how the male lineage began to descend. It refers to the Y-chromosome originator of the lineage as 'Adam'...
-----
Of these sons of Adam, the first three (designated I, II and III) are found almost exclusively in Africa. Son III's lineage migrated to Asia and begat sons IV-X, who spread through the rest of the world
-----
In other words, the Y-Chromosome ancestor was:
This is shown quite clearly by this chart accompanying the NY Times article.
The Bible says the same thing: [This is the only section of this post from the Bible]
-----
The Bible. Genesis 10:
1 Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.
2 The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras....
Note: 7 sons in all
5 By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.
-----
The Bible says the world, created about 6000 years ago, was destroyed by a worldwide flood around 5000 ago. It describes how, in the aftermath of the flood, human lifespan began declining at an rapid rate - from close to 1000 years before the flood, to around 100-200 years within a few hundred years after the flood ended. This could be due to highly increased radiation during the aftermath of the flood causing DNA damage. The increased radiation could account for the 1/3/7 lineage being so distinct (due to increased mutations during the immediate aftermath).
One causative factor in radiation release could simply be the earth being torn up during the flood - the Bible describes the earth as a single continent before the flood (Genesis 1: "And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." ), multiple continents after ("islands of the Gentiles" - a common term to refer to the rest of humanity). The radiation release could not only account for shortened lifespan and the reason for the 1/3/7 lineage pattern being distinct - it could also skew techniques like radiocarbon dating.
Some other facts:
Two last things: You can't *prove* God -- the Bible says God is pleased by faith. Similarly, you can't prove atheism either. But with evidence like the three papers above, science is consistent with belief in the words of Jesus Christ. And his words are those that are recorded in the Bible - and a lot has been done in his name - the crusades, inquisitions, racism - that is against his words.
I reread an old Australian computer magazine article recently - it was an interview with the head of Australia's equivalent of the RIAA. In the article, he accused Australian ISPs of being in the piracy business on the grounds that their proxies were being used to store illegally downloaded music locally. He also said that the police's current priority was the war on terror, but when they got a little more free, they would raid ISPs.
I think the interview appeared in Australian Personal Computer magazine a couple of months ago. Don't have a direct link to the article handy, sorry.
But some laptop components are either bog-standard now or come in one of a few formats. Here are the ones that are standard:
The components still specialized are:
> I would rather have smaller laptops than standardised ones.
That's you - but its different strokes for different folks really. Many (most?) people would prefer an open-er laptop specification that could be customized by the system integrator or the end-user. (This is already happening with some system integrators by the way - they purchase laptop barebones kits and build laptops to order)
This would also drive prices down. Of course, the apple's of the laptop world would still have a market share
Hmmm... it could be the cruft in your Win98 partition - Win 9x does need frequent reinstalls+ regular defrags. :) My 433 celeron/192 MB laptop runs NT 4.0 faster than it runs RH 8/Gnome. I guess a fairer comparison would be to compare RH 8 with Win XP ... but then the functionality is comparable, and I've seen Win XP run acceptably on PII/Celeron-level hardware.
It could be the RAM - IIRC if the machine has enough RAM, Linux does a good job of disk caching and this makes the UI appear to be quite fast.
I guess one thing we both agree on is that Linux is better than windows as a server (no GUI) on older hardware.
Add new drive: /dev/sda1 /fire vfat \ rw,users,auto,showexec,umask=000,quiet 0 0 >> /etc/fstab
;-)
echo
time: 2 seconds
time to learn above-mentioned commands and how to apply them: 2 weeks to 2 years (variable)
sit and wait for gui
time: 2-5 minutes
time to "learn" above-mentioned operation: 2 minutes
time spent on "real job": priceless
> Oh, and by the way, ctl-alt-+ and ctl-alt-- changes your resolutions in X on-the-fly,
:)
But as the other threads note, until X 4.3 (wasn't it recently released?) you ended up the virtual screen problem.
> if you compile your quality sound driver and insert it
Provided the user *knows* his hardware details, and how to compile and insert the driver... (but I think Linux has decent sound config tools currently, no?)
> xfreee86 +xinerama works great for MULTI-monitor setups, not just dual-monitor setups.
I know grandparent poster said "dual monitor", but Windows has had *multi*-monitor support for quite some time - Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 had it(at least). And its simple: in Windows 2000, I just install a PCI video card, reboot and Windows automatically 'extends' my desktop to the new monitors.
The original poster does make a valid point - that Linux is only now approaching the level of usability required for use by the general population that, say, Windows possesses. And Linux would have achieved this level of usability faster if development skills were concentrated in certain areas (for example, the issues above). However, Linux is a free OS and such things can't be forced. Well, unless someone chips in with funding -- like the German government is doing with KDE development IIRC.
[ Reposting to get past AC 0 rating ]
Dear Scorilo - I hope and pray your father gets better.
> This very militantism makes me take the medical establishment counterclaims
> re: ozone with a grain of salt.
You made some good and balanced points. I just wanted to make sure you didn't miss the posting a little below this thread -- it links to this story [sciencedaily.com] on human antibodies producing ozone to attack bacteria and fungi. Maybe the autohemotherapy you wrote about earlier could help destroy cancer cells in a similar fashion?
The Science Daily story links to the abstract of the published research [pnas.org] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It seems that publication date is 24 Feb - so you could try reading that issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in a University library, or try to contact the paper authors for more input.
Best wishes to your father and your family.
But my point was that he might be able to get by for a couple more years if he uses Linux instead of Windows on those old machines.
Actually, its the opposite: if (with emphasis on the if) you run a GUI, you'll generally find Windows (most flavors, including NT 4.0) giving a better user experience (i.e. a faster, more responsive GUI) on older hardware. This is especially true if you need Office applications (OpenOffice is the only serious free-software contender here) and run a general-purpose GUI (i.e.: you run Gnome or KDE -- WindowMaker is not simple enough for most users).
...Gnome and KDE are so much in the Windows/Macintosh mold of user interfaces ... ...
To do substantially better, we will have to jettison the current straight-jacket of separate C/C++ applications and move to entirely new software architectures. And then, the distinction between "configurability" and "programming", between "user" and "programmer" will pretty much disappear.
Interesting. Do you mind elaborating on this?
> where you can get these things without *any* OS.
:) and good luck with your search! ECS computers from Taiwan have an offering called "Desknote" - it sbasically a laptop without a battery. Desknotes may have C3 CPUs but they also sell P3/P4 "desknotes".
> I'm willing to bet that there is the Lindows tax in there somewhere.
Good point
(Here's a Czech site selling one) The lindows notebook has an internal battery though, right?
Is there a free utility in Windows to do something equivalent to xmodmap? (i.e. remap "useless" keys to more functional equivalents)?
Also, I remember reading about a utility that could "take over" the three Num Lock/Caps Lock/Scroll Lock LEDS as indicators for user-definable events. For eg: "blink all 3 LEDS in quick succession when I get new mail". Anyone has a link handy?
...I didn't know that.
The websites he visits are all optimized for Windows
Just curious - won't IE on Apple's OS' suffice for him? Do the sites he uses embed ActiveX controls? Are there a lot of ActiveX controls that are available for Windows, but not on Apple's platforms?
Count me in too ! :) I incessantly highlight text I'm reading on the webpage.
Better still... EULAs get exposed to the light of day - hopefully, this will force EULAs to become shorter and saner.
> I think it stands that you own the particular pieces of media.
Hmm -- as far as the common-sense version of "own" goes, MS disagrees.
I recently bought a copy of MS Visual C++.NET. It's EULA has a "one time transfer" clause.
Basically, it states the product can be sold/transferred (in it's entirity) once only after you purchase it from the retailer. i.e. If I ever resell my retail copy of VC++.NET, the person buying it from me, must agree (as specified by the EULA) to never sell/ transfer it to anyone else. Of course, I'll let the buyer know about this part of the EULA if I ever sell my copy, but I didn't think MS could pull off this stunt *after* selling the product to me.
I'll specify the exact text in the license if anyone's interested.
From the article:
5.2. Why do I currently have to buy a Quicknet card if I want to do PC-To-Phone calls?
All providers need the G.723.1 audio codec to be able to do PC-To-Phone calls. That codec is patented and can't be added directly into the GnomeMeeting code. However, buying a Quicknet card offers you other features that will also be useful if you are not doing PC-To-Phone calls.
(Emphasis mine).
Hm, only one vendor is listed on the Gnome meeting website -- their cheapest card is US$109.
On a Windows PC, you don't need a card - the soundcard and CPU are sufficient for PC-to-Phone.
I guess Microsoft pays the codec royalties -- and a copy of Windows XP Home off pricewatch.com is US$90.
*Grin* I think only hardcore Linux users will followup on this article.
I wonder if it's possible to convince the telcom company they're using as their gateway ("MicroTelco") to accepts voice calls using a free codec (the new Ogg Vorbis voice codec comes to mind).
With good DRPs being as easy as one additional, lesser powered server, or even a minor software re-configuration (ie; in a load balancer), it's just pure silliness to use it as an excuse for not being up to date as far as security is concerned. That kind of apathy is responsible for the constant ass-kicing we're seeing on the global Internet nowadays, and I find it personally appalling and quite frankly insulting. People are taking up arms against me for having the audacity to desire competency and responsibility from sysadmins.
:) I'm no sysadmin, but I can see you've made good points about admin practices and DRP that a lot of people here (including me) appreciate and find insightful. ( I don't have any mod points handy though :( )
./ sometimes - flames may get too personal.
Hey dude, don't count me as one of these...
The only point I have different is that I think Redhat is pressurising support-paying customers (like my company) to change too much (the entire OS!) too quickly (once a year!) -- and that this pressure, frankly, seems to be driven by a desire to increase sales of their more expensive products.
I am affected since I am an "application admin" in my company (not a sysadmin). Now, I know its not enough for me to test and stress test new versions of the app., (knowing that the underlying OS is stable) -- I now have to co-ordinate and test RH's OS changes. More variables -> more complexity. "Grr!" - I say to Redhat.
I've decided to make this my last post on the topic.
Sad. You have to do that on
Anyway man, as I said - you have made many good points. Have a good night. I hope we part as friends.