A hypothesis isn't a guess, it's a prediction. A theory is an explanation for all of the results of those predictions.
For example, our current topic is about human genes which have changed over time. The biologists who found those changes didn't accidentally stumble over those altered genes, they predicted that if evolution was occurring, the genes would have changed (a hypothesis, in other words). Then they checked to see if their prediction was correct, which it was (hypothesis confirmed).
That knowledge is now part of the theory of evolution, along with the thousands of confirmed or rejected hypotheses over the past century and a half of biological science.
Conversely, some posters here have claimed that since stupidity is not a survival trait, creationists will die out in a few generations. That does not appear to be happening, so others will offer hypotheses why it is not happening, see if the new hypotheses match our observations, and add the results to the body of knowledge we call the evolutionary theory.
Interestingly, our explanations for the origin of life started with a creation hypothesis, but since it failed to match so much of our observations, it was added to the list of failed hypotheses more than a century ago. So intelligent design is still part of the theory of evolution, but it's a part we know doesn't work.
what is significant about the ability to drink milk during adulthood?
Most of the world's population can't digest lactose (milk sugar) after the age of about 4. The ability to digest lactose appears to have evolved along with dairy farming. Those parts of the world which did not practice dairy farming remain lactose intolerant. http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2002/june/lactose .htm
Isn't there anybody who could program an appropriate converter to be loaded into MS Word?
You're right, and this could be a fatal error in Microsoft's strategy. If there is a freely available converter which allows Word to import and export OOo files, any attempt on their part to make their own format incompatible could backfire and make OOo the default file exchange format.
I've been looking at both OOo and MS XML formats, and it doesn't look like it would be too hard to impliment converters as add-ins for Office formats.
Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same.
Actually, real scientists have used this event to prove a hypothesis. In 1999, Chandra X-Ray center suggested that the shape of the rings resulted from a cavity, caused by the explosion, in the dust and gas surrounding the star. They predicted that the supernova explosion would produce a shock wave which would hit the edges of the cavity and produce a dramatic increase in X-Rays. This is happening as predicted. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/05082 1234547.htm
You see, that's the difference between science and superstition. Science makes predictions which can be tested. That's why it sometimes changes. Superstition is not testable. That's why it stays the same.
by the way, i'm tired so i haven't RTFA, but i'm pretty sure it's done with OLED's
It might have been worth reading before posting then, because it's not OLED technology. It is an electrophoretic display which uses black-and-white micron-sized particles in a fluid-filled space. A voltage is applied to send the particles forward or back. They should still scale well though.
the only fusion mechanism we know of that produces net energy is a star.
Well, there's more of them than there are birds. Besides, hydrogen bombs produce net energy, albeit slightly faster than most of us would chose for domestic use.
It's less FUD and more self-justification. If you open an OOo.odt XML file (rename it to a.zip and open it with Winzip or Windows zipfile on Windows) you will see a directory structure which includes folders for embedded objects. The XML then references the images or charts.
Microsoft's Office XML embeds the chart/image data in the XML as binary, and it's that embedded binary data which allows Microsoft to keep Office formats proprietary and retain data lock-in, while giving the appearance of using an open format.
Where a conventional extraction of oil through drilling into the ground yeilds about a 1:80 energy ratio
Where did you get that figure from? In the 'fifties and early 'sixties, the energy ratio was around 1:50, now it's closer to 1:5. Given that TFA states;
The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production.
you'd have to say extracting from tar sands will be ballpark with existing or near future conventional supplies.
Consider the parallel situation of Darwin in Australia in 1975 after cyclone (hurricane by another name) Tracey.
I remember Tracy (it was spelled without the "e") fairly well, and you are right in saying the size of the respective cities is the major difference. There are a few other aspects which mattered though - it wasn't really the military that got the diaster response going - Alan Stretton, the Director of the National Disasters Organisation, was on site within hours of the city being flattened, set up a command organisation, and started an evacuation. Other communities on the routes out of Darwin organised themselves to provide shelter and food for the refugees. That lasted for two days, then most of the people remaining decided to stay and rebuild. They moored a cruise ship (the Patria?)in the harbour to provide services and temporary housing.
Interestingly, the response from the rest of the world was amazingly generous, just as we are seeing with Katrina. I remember hearing that Lesotho, a poor country with a population less than most cities, had donated.
I hardly see how Open Office and PDF formats "guarantee" citizens will be able to view electronic documents in the future any more so than MS Office formats.
Open Office formats are zipped XML. All you need to get at the data in them is an unzip program and a text reader. It's a good way to "guarantee" that anyone can view them in the future.
Unless there is some information that I am missing, I would say that this was a US breakthrough.
Yes, true, but the linked article was in an Australiam newspaper. That makes it an Australiam discovery, based on the little known "mention us in print and it's ours" clause of the Aus-US free trade agreement.
The bigger wonder is just why (besides trolling for hits) are Dvorak & Orlowski so against CC licensing?
They are both content producers who have a substantial vested interest in restricting entry to the market. CC licencing makes it simpler for talented amateurs or other new starters to dabble in the fields Dvorak & Orlowski make their income from. Once they are producing competing works through competition, reduce their ability to demand high fees for their works.
There's no real difference in motivation between Dvorak & Orlowski trying to scuttle CC licensing and Microsoft's attacks on the GPL and Linux.
your forgetting one missed produce. Food and veg that is weighed and priced. Like to see RFID do that
I'm not sure about the US, but over here, many supermarkets already weigh, wrap and barcode produce at a separate counter. It gets scanned with the rest of your purchases at checkout time
the average white male in the US is 5'10" (1.77m), and 80kg * 2.2lbs/kg = 176lbs is between the 50th and 75 percentile. 176 lbs is barely overweight for that height
Ok, you got me there. I'm a 166cm, 86kg Aussie male who's just switched to a desk job, put on a few kilos and feels sensitive about it.
Stop looking at me like that. I'M NOT AN ANIMAL...
I sort of wonder when we'd use stuff like RFID to make it so when you get to the checkout counter you'd pile your stuff on the conveyer belt
More likely it'll be built into the trolley so all you do is stop at the counter, the trolley tells the register how much you should pay, and the chashier makes sure you swipe your card.
The cashier time it saves by not having them scan individual items will be how it pays for itelf.
Slashdot Mirror
The leading causes of death in the US between the ages of 14-40 (when you'd expect most reproductive opportunities) are;
m l
1 Unintentional Injury
37,874
2 Suicide
13,032
3 Malignant Neoplasms
12,487
4 Homicide
11,839
5 Heart Disease
10,082
6 HIV
5,240
7 Diabetes Mellitus
1,842
8 Cerebro-vascular
1,802
9 Liver Disease
1,670
10 Congenital Anomalies
1,333
Source http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10.ht
so those are your selection pressures at work. Let's see if someone can draw a hypothesis out of that. Maybe predict the shape of future Americans...
A hypothesis is any idiots guess.
A hypothesis isn't a guess, it's a prediction. A theory is an explanation for all of the results of those predictions.
For example, our current topic is about human genes which have changed over time. The biologists who found those changes didn't accidentally stumble over those altered genes, they predicted that if evolution was occurring, the genes would have changed (a hypothesis, in other words). Then they checked to see if their prediction was correct, which it was (hypothesis confirmed). That knowledge is now part of the theory of evolution, along with the thousands of confirmed or rejected hypotheses over the past century and a half of biological science.
Conversely, some posters here have claimed that since stupidity is not a survival trait, creationists will die out in a few generations. That does not appear to be happening, so others will offer hypotheses why it is not happening, see if the new hypotheses match our observations, and add the results to the body of knowledge we call the evolutionary theory.
Interestingly, our explanations for the origin of life started with a creation hypothesis, but since it failed to match so much of our observations, it was added to the list of failed hypotheses more than a century ago. So intelligent design is still part of the theory of evolution, but it's a part we know doesn't work.
what is significant about the ability to drink milk during adulthood?
e .htm
Most of the world's population can't digest lactose (milk sugar) after the age of about 4. The ability to digest lactose appears to have evolved along with dairy farming. Those parts of the world which did not practice dairy farming remain lactose intolerant.
http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2002/june/lactos
Sorry. I am both
Which one are you apologising for?
there are no legal channels through which to purchase video content which respects the author's rights.
Garbage. You can download thousands of free videos at http://www.archive.org/ alone.
Sorry, but sugar is (relatively) pure carbon.
Well, this lump I have here seems to have 12 carbon atoms, 22 hydrogen atoms and 11 oxygen atoms. Maybe you've microwaved yours a little too long
I'll believe in AI when a robot can tie shoelaces.
The most convincing AIs I've seen are the bots in FPS games. And they're already programmed to hunt down and kill humans...
Isn't there anybody who could program an appropriate converter to be loaded into MS Word?
You're right, and this could be a fatal error in Microsoft's strategy. If there is a freely available converter which allows Word to import and export OOo files, any attempt on their part to make their own format incompatible could backfire and make OOo the default file exchange format.
I've been looking at both OOo and MS XML formats, and it doesn't look like it would be too hard to impliment converters as add-ins for Office formats.
Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same.
2 1234547.htm
Actually, real scientists have used this event to prove a hypothesis. In 1999, Chandra X-Ray center suggested that the shape of the rings resulted from a cavity, caused by the explosion, in the dust and gas surrounding the star. They predicted that the supernova explosion would produce a shock wave which would hit the edges of the cavity and produce a dramatic increase in X-Rays. This is happening as predicted. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/0508
You see, that's the difference between science and superstition. Science makes predictions which can be tested. That's why it sometimes changes. Superstition is not testable. That's why it stays the same.
by the way, i'm tired so i haven't RTFA, but i'm pretty sure it's done with OLED's
It might have been worth reading before posting then, because it's not OLED technology. It is an electrophoretic display which uses black-and-white micron-sized particles in a fluid-filled space. A voltage is applied to send the particles forward or back. They should still scale well though.
I want complete and instantaneous energy release.
Is that how you got to be Chrispy?
the only fusion mechanism we know of that produces net energy is a star.
Well, there's more of them than there are birds. Besides, hydrogen bombs produce net energy, albeit slightly faster than most of us would chose for domestic use.
I really don't see how they can justify such FUD
.odt XML file (rename it to a .zip and open it with Winzip or Windows zipfile on Windows) you will see a directory structure which includes folders for embedded objects. The XML then references the images or charts.
It's less FUD and more self-justification. If you open an OOo
Microsoft's Office XML embeds the chart/image data in the XML as binary, and it's that embedded binary data which allows Microsoft to keep Office formats proprietary and retain data lock-in, while giving the appearance of using an open format.
Where did you get that figure from? In the 'fifties and early 'sixties, the energy ratio was around 1:50, now it's closer to 1:5. Given that TFA states;
you'd have to say extracting from tar sands will be ballpark with existing or near future conventional supplies.
Consider the parallel situation of Darwin in Australia in 1975 after cyclone (hurricane by another name) Tracey.
I remember Tracy (it was spelled without the "e") fairly well, and you are right in saying the size of the respective cities is the major difference. There are a few other aspects which mattered though - it wasn't really the military that got the diaster response going - Alan Stretton, the Director of the National Disasters Organisation, was on site within hours of the city being flattened, set up a command organisation, and started an evacuation. Other communities on the routes out of Darwin organised themselves to provide shelter and food for the refugees. That lasted for two days, then most of the people remaining decided to stay and rebuild. They moored a cruise ship (the Patria?)in the harbour to provide services and temporary housing.
Interestingly, the response from the rest of the world was amazingly generous, just as we are seeing with Katrina. I remember hearing that Lesotho, a poor country with a population less than most cities, had donated.
WindowsUx WinsUx
Nah, Bill will want to personalise it a bit.
It'll be called Bux.
Sir, the rebel server is in range
Excellent... Commence firing ignition!
So you're saying Slashdot fired first?
Don't worry, we'll fix it in the dupe.
Do they wear dreads?
Those of us who have been touched by his noodly appendage generally prefer Angel Hair to dreads.
I hardly see how Open Office and PDF formats "guarantee" citizens will be able to view electronic documents in the future any more so than MS Office formats.
Open Office formats are zipped XML. All you need to get at the data in them is an unzip program and a text reader. It's a good way to "guarantee" that anyone can view them in the future.
Unless there is some information that I am missing, I would say that this was a US breakthrough.
Yes, true, but the linked article was in an Australiam newspaper. That makes it an Australiam discovery, based on the little known "mention us in print and it's ours" clause of the Aus-US free trade agreement.
Evolve me a human being
Not until you show me God.
The bigger wonder is just why (besides trolling for hits) are Dvorak & Orlowski so against CC licensing?
They are both content producers who have a substantial vested interest in restricting entry to the market. CC licencing makes it simpler for talented amateurs or other new starters to dabble in the fields Dvorak & Orlowski make their income from. Once they are producing competing works through competition, reduce their ability to demand high fees for their works.
There's no real difference in motivation between Dvorak & Orlowski trying to scuttle CC licensing and Microsoft's attacks on the GPL and Linux.
your forgetting one missed produce. Food and veg that is weighed and priced. Like to see RFID do that
I'm not sure about the US, but over here, many supermarkets already weigh, wrap and barcode produce at a separate counter. It gets scanned with the rest of your purchases at checkout time
the average white male in the US is 5'10" (1.77m), and 80kg * 2.2lbs/kg = 176lbs is between the 50th and 75 percentile. 176 lbs is barely overweight for that height
Ok, you got me there. I'm a 166cm, 86kg Aussie male who's just switched to a desk job, put on a few kilos and feels sensitive about it.
Stop looking at me like that. I'M NOT AN ANIMAL...
I sort of wonder when we'd use stuff like RFID to make it so when you get to the checkout counter you'd pile your stuff on the conveyer belt
More likely it'll be built into the trolley so all you do is stop at the counter, the trolley tells the register how much you should pay, and the chashier makes sure you swipe your card.
The cashier time it saves by not having them scan individual items will be how it pays for itelf.