On the other hand, many other Christians accept the Bible as the inspired Word of God, without error:
...knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. -- 2 Pe 1:20-21
The entirety of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever. -- Ps. 119:160
If you accept those biblical doctrines, you must also accept the biblical account of creation (Gen. 1-2), which clearly describes God's six-day creation. And I hardly see this as a "puppet show," but rather a manifestation of God's power.
I believe I've heard the same thing. Gauss was a brilliant guy--he dabbled in a lot of things that weren't even really useful back in his time (way before computers). IIRC, Runge's work was independent, and Gauss's work on the topic had been forgotten by that time.
Please, no discussion of cardinality on/. We might catch the attention of someone from sci.math, and pretty soon the message boards would be filled with OT posts like "THER ARE NO REAL NUMBER! All is rationall!"
What's the point of requiring people to vote? You're just going to get a bunch of votes from uniformed people. At best, you'll get a random distribution of uninformed votes, which doesn't affect anything; at worst, the uninformed will all vote for the guy who had the most eye-catching commercials, even if s/he's a total idiot.
Q: How can a country be a democracy when less then half the population vote?
Because the population has chosen, via ratification of the Constitution, to have the option of not voting.
Keep in mind, the anti-ballistic missile is being designed for one purpose, defense from an air threat. This is not a weapon of attack, and therefore should not be infringed upon by any treaty.
This is somewhat short-sighted. The idea that you should always be free to defend yourself sounds good, but the reality is somewhat more complex.
Suppose country X has ten missiles, and country Y has 12 missiles, and it takes only five missiles to destroy either country. This scenario is unwinnable; an attack is suicide.
Now suppose country Y develops anti-ballistic missiles that are 80% effective. Suddenly country Y can win a war without being utterly destroyed. Effectively, the defensive missiles have become offensive weapons.
Of course, country X can compensate either by developing its own defensive missiles (thus making its own survival possible), or by building more nukes (assuring mutual destruction). The result: more spending with little change in the balance of power. Assuming X and Y are not driven solely by a desire to wipe each other off the face of the earth, they will probably consider saving themselves some money by crossing anti-ballistic missiles off the "to do" list.
I'm not a lawyer either, but I don't think this is a valid argument for the GIF algorithm being "in the public domain." Just because the exact specifications for a Proctor-Silex toaster are published on the internet doesn't mean you can build your own and sell it.
The PNG algorithm, on the other hand, has an open license. Not only is the source code available, but you are unrestricted in the use of PNG. Rather than challenge Unisys, why not switch to an open format--particularly one that is superior?
Not true. The lossless PNG format is almost always smaller than GIF. PNG also has variable compression settings and loads progressively (i.e. on a slow connection, you can make out most of the image content before all the data has been loaded). PNG is the superior format in almost every way, except that it lacks an animation mode. Someone needs to get busy on a good animation format...
Phrases like "has discovered a new mathematical curve" and "is derived from chaos theory" may sound good but don't tell me anything. Does anyone have a link to more informative articles?
I agree entirely. I have found GAs to be useful for certain problems. However, there I have two pet peeves on the topic:
1) GAs are totally unsuited to certain problems. Often a simple gradient search is vastly superior. Some people use GAs all the time just because they're "cool."
2) Almost all the GA code I have seen tries to work in the concepts of "chromosomes," "parents," "populations," etc. That may be suitable for some problems, but often it's an idiotic attempt to force a problem to behave like a biological system. People, drop the biology when it makes no sense for the problem!
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, many other Christians accept the Bible as the inspired Word of God, without error:
...knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. -- 2 Pe 1:20-21
The entirety of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever. -- Ps. 119:160
If you accept those biblical doctrines, you must also accept the biblical account of creation (Gen. 1-2), which clearly describes God's six-day creation. And I hardly see this as a "puppet show," but rather a manifestation of God's power.
I believe I've heard the same thing. Gauss was a brilliant guy--he dabbled in a lot of things that weren't even really useful back in his time (way before computers). IIRC, Runge's work was independent, and Gauss's work on the topic had been forgotten by that time.
Please, no discussion of cardinality on /. We might catch the attention of someone from sci.math, and pretty soon the message boards would be filled with OT posts like "THER ARE NO REAL NUMBER! All is rationall!"
What's the point of requiring people to vote? You're just going to get a bunch of votes from uniformed people. At best, you'll get a random distribution of uninformed votes, which doesn't affect anything; at worst, the uninformed will all vote for the guy who had the most eye-catching commercials, even if s/he's a total idiot.
Q: How can a country be a democracy when less then half the population vote?
Because the population has chosen, via ratification of the Constitution, to have the option of not voting.
Keep in mind, the anti-ballistic missile is being designed for one purpose, defense from an air threat. This is not a weapon of attack, and therefore should not be infringed upon by any treaty.
This is somewhat short-sighted. The idea that you should always be free to defend yourself sounds good, but the reality is somewhat more complex.
Suppose country X has ten missiles, and country Y has 12 missiles, and it takes only five missiles to destroy either country. This scenario is unwinnable; an attack is suicide.
Now suppose country Y develops anti-ballistic missiles that are 80% effective. Suddenly country Y can win a war without being utterly destroyed. Effectively, the defensive missiles have become offensive weapons.
Of course, country X can compensate either by developing its own defensive missiles (thus making its own survival possible), or by building more nukes (assuring mutual destruction). The result: more spending with little change in the balance of power. Assuming X and Y are not driven solely by a desire to wipe each other off the face of the earth, they will probably consider saving themselves some money by crossing anti-ballistic missiles off the "to do" list.
I'm not a lawyer either, but I don't think this is a valid argument for the GIF algorithm being "in the public domain." Just because the exact specifications for a Proctor-Silex toaster are published on the internet doesn't mean you can build your own and sell it.
The PNG algorithm, on the other hand, has an open license. Not only is the source code available, but you are unrestricted in the use of PNG. Rather than challenge Unisys, why not switch to an open format--particularly one that is superior?
GIFs are also far more compact than PNGs...
Not true. The lossless PNG format is almost always smaller than GIF. PNG also has variable compression settings and loads progressively (i.e. on a slow connection, you can make out most of the image content before all the data has been loaded). PNG is the superior format in almost every way, except that it lacks an animation mode. Someone needs to get busy on a good animation format...
Phrases like "has discovered a new mathematical curve" and "is derived from chaos theory" may sound good but don't tell me anything. Does anyone have a link to more informative articles?
I agree entirely. I have found GAs to be useful for certain problems. However, there I have two pet peeves on the topic:
1) GAs are totally unsuited to certain problems. Often a simple gradient search is vastly superior. Some people use GAs all the time just because they're "cool."
2) Almost all the GA code I have seen tries to work in the concepts of "chromosomes," "parents," "populations," etc. That may be suitable for some problems, but often it's an idiotic attempt to force a problem to behave like a biological system. People, drop the biology when it makes no sense for the problem!