There's nothing "cheating" about the use of precedent.
It simply embodies the principle that the court system ought to be as consistent as possible. Decisions that are made once should be made the same way if the same situation arises again. To come to a different decision would create chaos, where every court case would be a chance to potentially revisit every decision that was ever made in any court and second-guess it.
The law, to the extent possible, ought to be "knowable" in advance, not made up fresh by every judge with a gavel. On the other hand, it ought to be flexible enough to deal with new situations. That is where we rely on judicial discretion, generally to extend previous precedent in a logical way.
Hey, I have a subscription to Science, and I deliberately picked that article from the peer-reviewed section.
I don't use "fame" in my judgment for who is a scientist. But I do add weight to what *major* institutions of science include in their purview. As in spending a lot of money and effort to recruit and retain the best practitioners in their various fields, and applying the strictest criteria of inclusion to their journals.
Why don't you try clarifying your definition of science that evidently excludes *all* study of evolution and natural selection, without excluding huge fields which have virtually universal acceptance as science? Can you give a single example of what meets your definition of science?
You seem to have some absolutist criterion to judge whether something is scientific. What is it? (It is still not clear *what* you think the term science applies to: I think it's pretty clear that science is a human activity, and we judge science by how people carry out that activity, including their goals and methods, and what their criteria are for "good" and "bad" work in their field.)
Just because philosophers can include "turtles on elephants" when they use the term cosmology does not mean that there is not a field of scientific inquiry of the same name.
Any meaning of 'right' that doesn't include Einstein's theory of relativity is a very curious one. To me, Einstein being 'right' means you can take Einstein's equations, make calculations, and be very certain that they come out right. That these equations apparently cannot give meaningful results at the Planck length does not diminish their 'rightness' at length scales larger than that. If to be correct and scientific we need a theory that works below the Planck length *and* has experimental or observational support, then NOBODY has done or is currently doing science that is right. That seems like a pretty extremist position to me.
'Science' is not just a "magazine." It is a peer-reviewed journal, and one of the most prestigious in the natural sciences. And when I mentioned "cosmology" I am referring to what Nobel prize-winning astrophysicists mean when they say cosmology.
If I go to major research universities and see faculty publishing articles in major peer-reviewed journals, presenting at major conferences of scientific societies, and they call themselves scientists, and other people in related fields call them scientists, its pretty clear to me that there is a very good chance they are doing science, whether they qualify or not in your oh-so-enlightened opinion.
Because they put the word 'reveal' in a title doesn't somehow banish them from the realm of science. Nor does the presence of a certain number of crackpots on the fringes demote a field: after all, the crackpots are almost always attracted to the most substantial fields. All sorts of crazy folks want to pull down Einstein and square the circle, not because he was wrong but because he was right.
Listen, you dumbfuck. I used the word "fundie" and "fundamentalism" and what I meant by those words is precisely what I tried to explain to you. You apparently misunderstood, I corrected you, and you still misunderstand.
The Pope is not a Fundamentalist in the sense in which I used it, and even the definition *you* quoted which involved being Protestant.
Now, if you want to argue that the Pope is Protestant, go right ahead. If you want to argue that the Pope beliefs in scripture alone as the source of revealed truth, go right ahead. But you would be wrong. So it would probably be better to shut the fuck up.
Listen, "Fundamentalist Christian" in U.S. English, which is what I was using, has a precise meaning, which is pretty much what you quoted. The major event in the formation of this school of belief was the publishing of a series of articles around 1910 called "The Fundamentals."
One of the basic beliefs of this school, as exemplified by Southern Baptist Convention: The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.
What separates this school particularly from Catholic doctrine is the idea that the lay person is supposed to read and understand the scriptures without the need for an authority to interpret it.
Catholic doctrine basically holds that the Church is the ultimately authoritative interpreter of scripture. Efforts to understand scripture can easily lead to various "heretical" thoughts through misunderstanding. The way to avoid such heresy is to rely on Church doctrine.
To quote the Catechism
As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, "does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence."..."The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living, teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ."47 This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.
So do you think astrophysics is a science? Do you believe string theory and cosmology to be scientific?
How about psychology? Archaeology? Physical anthropology?
Do you believe that modern geneticists studying the relation between present-day species by sequencing DNA cannot say anything scientific about the origin of the DNA sequences?
So when I open this week's issue of Science, and on p. 1618, I see an article discussing "Worldwide phylogeography of Wild Boar Reveals Multiple Centers of Pig Domestication" are these people doing science, or not?
In addition to your confusing the terms "evolution" and "natural selection," you have seriously confused "religous belief" and "morality."
It is possible to be moral and ethical without believing in any particular doctrine about the immortality or even existence of the soul. Denying Pascal's dilemma does not mean endorsing immorality. Whereas if the doctrine of immortality is false, then Christianity as a system of belief is false.
As an example, historians can develop theories about "the causes of the American revolution" and then they can go about examining letters, contemporary accounts, and other historical documents to test whether their theories are correct or not.
The examination of documents is the experiment in this case.
Now, history is not a scientific endeavor, because one can't really make testable claims about what caused people to decide to do or say what they apparently did or said.
There is a huge amount of diversity in today's biosphere, which offers ample opportunity to find test cases for various theories of speciation, for instance. If I go and study the speciation of a hundred different types of existing snails or beetles, for instance, I can get a reasonably good basis to try to disprove one theory or another.
To claim that laboratory experiments are so much better than biological fieldwork is really not fair.
If you want to convince me that human intelligence wins out over ignorance, you'll have to do much better than that.
Rejecting fundamentalism as the refuge of idiots does not necessarily mean I am progressive, liberal, or even irreligious. The pope rejects fudamentalism; do you consider him irreligious?
For the thousandth time on this forum evolution is NOT simply a "theory." It is a fact. Species exist today which did not exist in the distant past. They did not spring up from a new act of creation, but by gradual changes from species which existed before. To disprove these facts would require absolutely extraordinary evidence, on a similar scale to proving that George Washington was never the President of the United States.
Now, on the other hand *Natural selection* is a scientific *theory* that attempts to explain the facts of evolution. In broad terms, virtually every biologist, paleontologist, biochemist, etc., believes that natural selection is primarily or completely responsible for the evolution of species. In specific terms, there is still a wide range of beliefs on the details of how natural selection occurs in detail, on what time scale a "typical" speciation event occurs, on how species become separated from each other during the process of evolution, etc.
I believe these things to be generally true because practicing scientists test these ideas every day in their work, and are generally honest in their work. And also because when I read Darwin's Origin of Species, he clearly had a marvelous insight.
Whereas the people who tell me that the Bible is 100% literally true are always looking for weak excuses to get around the fact that the Bible sure looks like it was the work of lots of different people, with lots of different motives and ideas and agendas, but without any particularly astounding insight, edited together, leaving a whole lot of loose ends and confusing bits. And, as far as their intellectual approach, the current Biblical-inerrancy fad is based on an explicit *rejection* of those who tried to study Biblical texts using the techniques of modern criticism.
The problem with your response to Pascal's dilemma is that if #1 is true, then you have spent your entire existence believing in some fucking fairy tale rather than something like the truth. Meaning you've turned off a part of your brain, of your own free will, for the duration of your time here on earth. Pardon me if I think self-imposed stupidity is not the most noble of aims.
This would be a justification for "creation science" except that creation scientists are not acting in good faith.
They don't use scientific techniques, they don't use scientific arguments, they don't use scientific observations, and they don't use scientific data.
Instead, they use the trappings of science to give a superficial credibility to their ideas, which actually have nothing new or improved to offer serious scientific inquiry. The only theories they "disprove" are strawmen of their own creation. They continue to trot out the same tired hobbyhorse "problems" that serious scientists have long moved beyond (such as the creation of organs such as the eye). Their only goal is to continue to hold their dogmatic beliefs about God and his manner of creation, even when these beliefs are in disagreement with scientifically established facts.
So the answers to your questions
What evidence do they have that can't be explained by the current evolutionary theory? None.
What are the gaps in the current theory they try to explain?. None. The gaps they mention are in their own understanding of modern biology.
Then work on solving those problems and create a more robust theory of evolution. Scientists are already working on more complete and robust understanding of evolution and of natural selection. Spending time responding to fundamentally dishonest criticism from religiously-motivated wackos is just a waste of time.
Once a theory is mature enough and has sufficient evidence, even the church can't deny it. Actually, the Catholic church no longer denies evolution by natural selection. They do use a special pleading that only humans are blessed with a soul, but they do not claim this as a scientific truth.
While the regime is certainly not progressive in any real sense, the Koranic injunction that women should dress modestly really has nothing to do with the teaching of evolution.
Don't be so confident that human stupidity is going away anytime soon. Bible-thumping fundies will just be replaced by some other group of ignorant buffoons, who would rather believe any kind of comfortable fantasy rather than an uncomfortable truth.
That's the reason Voltaire and Swift are so fresh even today.
The only thing to hope for is that the ignorance is not sufficient to wipe out human scientific knowledge.
Scientific testing of a theory does not just mean laboratory controlled experiments.
It also means careful observation of such things as the fossil record, current genetic content of various species, and field studies of current ecological systems.
The point is that it is possible to treat singular historical events scientifically. There isn't anything "borderline" about it, anymore than there is something "borderline" about scientific cosmology.
That things fall when we drop them is the observational *fact*. The claim that "gravity makes things fall when we drop them" together with a more precise definition of the terms, is the theory. Gravity cannot be "proved" in any meaningful sense. We can only continue to make observations and compare them to the predicitions of one theory or another.
In fact, the theory of gravity goes far beyond the claim that things fall toward the earth. It insists that *all* objects with mass attract one another. That obviously cannot be proved without actually experimenting with all objects, which is impossible.
Now, typical creationists are extremely weak in this kind of philosophical distinction. However, they profit greatly from the rhetorical confusion they can create by claiming that theories go through a process of proof to become laws, and furthermore, that evolution is a theory. Neither is true.
The original poster wasn't talking about blowing fuses on die; he was talking about "pins." But I suppose I should have given him the benefit of the doubt.
You obviously have little appreciation and a limited understanding of the real world; you appear to be living in some right-wing libertarian fantasy. Put down the Ayn Rand book you are reading, and think for a while.
Manufacturers appreciate greatly that this research gets done at universities with public support.
1) Their stockholders have little patience for the multi-decade investment horizons which basic research requires to develop commerically viable technology. They also don't like the risk involved in basic research, where any single idea in isolation has a very low probability of leading to commercial viability. Commercially viable technologies come about when many ideas are "in the air" waiting for the right confluence of insight and investment to make the transition.
2) Research done at these universities creates trained university graduates who know something about chip manufacturing, meaning that chip manufacturers can hire these trained and selected people instead of hiring people off the street, training them in basic engineering for many years, and hoping that they turn out to be qualified.
3) In addition, the knowledge created in this kind of research is often the foundation for new enterprise creation. Perhaps you've heard of such companies as Google, started by people who got their ideas working in such a "socialistic academic dreamworld"?
Perhaps you are against all public education. After all, if it were in corporations' interests to have workers who could read, they would pay to teach the workers their ABCs. Given that huge amount of tax dollars are at work subsidizing public education, this is obviously a socialist fantasy. Better to close all the schools and let the free market work its magic, don't you think? It works so well in paradises like Afghanistan and Liberia, where the public sector hardly exists at all!
But you don't have to move there to enjoy the benefits. Soon, under the wise guidance of our brave President, the U.S. will also be a wonderful place where the NSF budget gets reduced while unworkable and never-going-to-be-used boondoggles like ballistic missile defense get the healthy funding levels they need to preserve liberty and freedom against the homosexual agenda!
For the terminally stupid, including you, the two previous paragraphs were sarcastic.
So now you have to build in the complexity for memory chips to do automatic self-testing? This makes chips *more* likely to be defective, not less. Now the manufacturers need to verify that the self-test circuitry is 100% functional.
Plus every chipset has to be made more complicated to support this kind of behavior: has to tell the chip when it is safe to initiate testing, has to read back results and present them to the OS, and has to wait until chip testing is finished before making memory accesses to them.
Your idea is clever, and works OK for the guy doing a wire-wrap project who ends up with a faulty chip in his one-off project and doesn't want to throw it out. But it hardly is a compelling approach for memory manufacturers.
Rewiring chips to have different pinouts depending on test results is hardly "easy" to deal with on an industrial scale. It would have to be bonded out differently to keep the customer interface consistent, which adds complication and variation to the manufacturing process.
Also, you've made the test plan more complicated for *every* chip, because you have to precisely identify faults, instead of just recognizing a broad class of failures, and you need to increase the amount of work that needs to be done before packaging, and complicating the handling of device lots, because more different part numbers are coming out of the same production process.
Increasing test and packaging complexity is going to increase the cost for every chip; you'll need more expensive memory testers to handle the increased test load, and you will need more test & production engineering work to validate the processes.
All in order to make lower-margin lower-capacity memory chips.
The RIAA is not a "trust." The term "trust" implies interlocking ownership and control. The various record companies are not owned or controlled by a single entity. They are (admittedly large) independent companies which find it in their interest to act together on issues such as downloads.
The examples cited in the Wiki link, for instance, were companies like American Tobacco and Standard Oil. Standard Oil grew by *purchasing* smaller oil companies, and taking *control* of them, while retaining the original identities, largely to make up for a lack of an alternative legal framework for interstate companies. Before the era of trusts, few enterprises were truly national in scope.
Nowadays, the corporate structure even for multinationals is fully established, and the modern multinational conglomerate has replaced the concept of trusts as a form of enterprise organization.
This is admittedly unrelated to whether the companies that make up the RIAA are engaged in activities prohibited by the anti-trust statutes.
Slashdot Mirror
There's nothing "cheating" about the use of precedent.
It simply embodies the principle that the court system ought to be as consistent as possible. Decisions that are made once should be made the same way if the same situation arises again. To come to a different decision would create chaos, where every court case would be a chance to potentially revisit every decision that was ever made in any court and second-guess it.
The law, to the extent possible, ought to be "knowable" in advance, not made up fresh by every judge with a gavel. On the other hand, it ought to be flexible enough to deal with new situations. That is where we rely on judicial discretion, generally to extend previous precedent in a logical way.
Hey, I have a subscription to Science, and I deliberately picked that article from the peer-reviewed section.
I don't use "fame" in my judgment for who is a scientist. But I do add weight to what *major* institutions of science include in their purview. As in spending a lot of money and effort to recruit and retain the best practitioners in their various fields, and applying the strictest criteria of inclusion to their journals.
Why don't you try clarifying your definition of science that evidently excludes *all* study of evolution and natural selection, without excluding huge fields which have virtually universal acceptance as science? Can you give a single example of what meets your definition of science?
You seem to have some absolutist criterion to judge whether something is scientific. What is it? (It is still not clear *what* you think the term science applies to: I think it's pretty clear that science is a human activity, and we judge science by how people carry out that activity, including their goals and methods, and what their criteria are for "good" and "bad" work in their field.)
Just because philosophers can include "turtles on elephants" when they use the term cosmology does not mean that there is not a field of scientific inquiry of the same name.
Any meaning of 'right' that doesn't include Einstein's theory of relativity is a very curious one. To me, Einstein being 'right' means you can take Einstein's equations, make calculations, and be very certain that they come out right. That these equations apparently cannot give meaningful results at the Planck length does not diminish their 'rightness' at length scales larger than that. If to be correct and scientific we need a theory that works below the Planck length *and* has experimental or observational support, then NOBODY has done or is currently doing science that is right. That seems like a pretty extremist position to me.
It seems you might not have heard about the Free Software Song.
.au file linked to on the page is the audio equivalent of the goatse.cx guy.
Caution: the
Is this really the alternative you are looking for?
'Science' is not just a "magazine." It is a peer-reviewed journal, and one of the most prestigious in the natural sciences. And when I mentioned "cosmology" I am referring to what Nobel prize-winning astrophysicists mean when they say cosmology.
If I go to major research universities and see faculty publishing articles in major peer-reviewed journals, presenting at major conferences of scientific societies, and they call themselves scientists, and other people in related fields call them scientists, its pretty clear to me that there is a very good chance they are doing science, whether they qualify or not in your oh-so-enlightened opinion.
Because they put the word 'reveal' in a title doesn't somehow banish them from the realm of science. Nor does the presence of a certain number of crackpots on the fringes demote a field: after all, the crackpots are almost always attracted to the most substantial fields. All sorts of crazy folks want to pull down Einstein and square the circle, not because he was wrong but because he was right.
Listen, you dumbfuck. I used the word "fundie" and "fundamentalism" and what I meant by those words is precisely what I tried to explain to you. You apparently misunderstood, I corrected you, and you still misunderstand.
The Pope is not a Fundamentalist in the sense in which I used it, and even the definition *you* quoted which involved being Protestant.
Now, if you want to argue that the Pope is Protestant, go right ahead. If you want to argue that the Pope beliefs in scripture alone as the source of revealed truth, go right ahead. But you would be wrong. So it would probably be better to shut the fuck up.
Listen, "Fundamentalist Christian" in U.S. English, which is what I was using, has a precise meaning, which is pretty much what you quoted. The major event in the formation of this school of belief was the publishing of a series of articles around 1910 called "The Fundamentals."
One of the basic beliefs of this school, as exemplified by Southern Baptist Convention: The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.
What separates this school particularly from Catholic doctrine is the idea that the lay person is supposed to read and understand the scriptures without the need for an authority to interpret it.
Catholic doctrine basically holds that the Church is the ultimately authoritative interpreter of scripture. Efforts to understand scripture can easily lead to various "heretical" thoughts through misunderstanding. The way to avoid such heresy is to rely on Church doctrine.
To quote the Catechism
As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, "does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence."..."The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living, teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ."47 This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.
So do you think astrophysics is a science? Do you believe string theory and cosmology to be scientific?
How about psychology? Archaeology? Physical anthropology?
Do you believe that modern geneticists studying the relation between present-day species by sequencing DNA cannot say anything scientific about the origin of the DNA sequences?
So when I open this week's issue of Science, and on p. 1618, I see an article discussing "Worldwide phylogeography of Wild Boar Reveals Multiple Centers of Pig Domestication" are these people doing science, or not?
Uh, because the Pope isn't Protestant? Or maybe I'm not clear on that whole Reformation business.
In addition to your confusing the terms "evolution" and "natural selection," you have seriously confused "religous belief" and "morality."
It is possible to be moral and ethical without believing in any particular doctrine about the immortality or even existence of the soul. Denying Pascal's dilemma does not mean endorsing immorality. Whereas if the doctrine of immortality is false, then Christianity as a system of belief is false.
Events aren't falsifiable, *theories* are.
As an example, historians can develop theories about "the causes of the American revolution" and then they can go about examining letters, contemporary accounts, and other historical documents to test whether their theories are correct or not.
The examination of documents is the experiment in this case.
Now, history is not a scientific endeavor, because one can't really make testable claims about what caused people to decide to do or say what they apparently did or said.
There is a huge amount of diversity in today's biosphere, which offers ample opportunity to find test cases for various theories of speciation, for instance. If I go and study the speciation of a hundred different types of existing snails or beetles, for instance, I can get a reasonably good basis to try to disprove one theory or another.
To claim that laboratory experiments are so much better than biological fieldwork is really not fair.
If you want to convince me that human intelligence wins out over ignorance, you'll have to do much better than that.
Rejecting fundamentalism as the refuge of idiots does not necessarily mean I am progressive, liberal, or even irreligious. The pope rejects fudamentalism; do you consider him irreligious?
Sheesh.
For the thousandth time on this forum evolution is NOT simply a "theory." It is a fact. Species exist today which did not exist in the distant past. They did not spring up from a new act of creation, but by gradual changes from species which existed before. To disprove these facts would require absolutely extraordinary evidence, on a similar scale to proving that George Washington was never the President of the United States.
Now, on the other hand *Natural selection* is a scientific *theory* that attempts to explain the facts of evolution. In broad terms, virtually every biologist, paleontologist, biochemist, etc., believes that natural selection is primarily or completely responsible for the evolution of species. In specific terms, there is still a wide range of beliefs on the details of how natural selection occurs in detail, on what time scale a "typical" speciation event occurs, on how species become separated from each other during the process of evolution, etc.
I believe these things to be generally true because practicing scientists test these ideas every day in their work, and are generally honest in their work. And also because when I read Darwin's Origin of Species, he clearly had a marvelous insight.
Whereas the people who tell me that the Bible is 100% literally true are always looking for weak excuses to get around the fact that the Bible sure looks like it was the work of lots of different people, with lots of different motives and ideas and agendas, but without any particularly astounding insight, edited together, leaving a whole lot of loose ends and confusing bits. And, as far as their intellectual approach, the current Biblical-inerrancy fad is based on an explicit *rejection* of those who tried to study Biblical texts using the techniques of modern criticism.
The problem with your response to Pascal's dilemma is that if #1 is true, then you have spent your entire existence believing in some fucking fairy tale rather than something like the truth. Meaning you've turned off a part of your brain, of your own free will, for the duration of your time here on earth. Pardon me if I think self-imposed stupidity is not the most noble of aims.
This would be a justification for "creation science" except that creation scientists are not acting in good faith.
They don't use scientific techniques, they don't use scientific arguments, they don't use scientific observations, and they don't use scientific data.
Instead, they use the trappings of science to give a superficial credibility to their ideas, which actually have nothing new or improved to offer serious scientific inquiry. The only theories they "disprove" are strawmen of their own creation. They continue to trot out the same tired hobbyhorse "problems" that serious scientists have long moved beyond (such as the creation of organs such as the eye). Their only goal is to continue to hold their dogmatic beliefs about God and his manner of creation, even when these beliefs are in disagreement with scientifically established facts.
So the answers to your questions
What evidence do they have that can't be explained by the current evolutionary theory? None.
What are the gaps in the current theory they try to explain?. None. The gaps they mention are in their own understanding of modern biology.
Then work on solving those problems and create a more robust theory of evolution. Scientists are already working on more complete and robust understanding of evolution and of natural selection. Spending time responding to fundamentally dishonest criticism from religiously-motivated wackos is just a waste of time.
Once a theory is mature enough and has sufficient evidence, even the church can't deny it. Actually, the Catholic church no longer denies evolution by natural selection. They do use a special pleading that only humans are blessed with a soul, but they do not claim this as a scientific truth.
While the regime is certainly not progressive in any real sense, the Koranic injunction that women should dress modestly really has nothing to do with the teaching of evolution.
Do you not think that general relativity qualifies as a scientific theory of gravity?
Don't be so confident that human stupidity is going away anytime soon. Bible-thumping fundies will just be replaced by some other group of ignorant buffoons, who would rather believe any kind of comfortable fantasy rather than an uncomfortable truth.
That's the reason Voltaire and Swift are so fresh even today.
The only thing to hope for is that the ignorance is not sufficient to wipe out human scientific knowledge.
Scientific testing of a theory does not just mean laboratory controlled experiments.
It also means careful observation of such things as the fossil record, current genetic content of various species, and field studies of current ecological systems.
The point is that it is possible to treat singular historical events scientifically. There isn't anything "borderline" about it, anymore than there is something "borderline" about scientific cosmology.
That things fall when we drop them is the observational *fact*. The claim that "gravity makes things fall when we drop them" together with a more precise definition of the terms, is the theory. Gravity cannot be "proved" in any meaningful sense. We can only continue to make observations and compare them to the predicitions of one theory or another.
In fact, the theory of gravity goes far beyond the claim that things fall toward the earth. It insists that *all* objects with mass attract one another. That obviously cannot be proved without actually experimenting with all objects, which is impossible.
Now, typical creationists are extremely weak in this kind of philosophical distinction. However, they profit greatly from the rhetorical confusion they can create by claiming that theories go through a process of proof to become laws, and furthermore, that evolution is a theory. Neither is true.
The original poster wasn't talking about blowing fuses on die; he was talking about "pins." But I suppose I should have given him the benefit of the doubt.
Is that you, Trent Lott?
You obviously have little appreciation and a limited understanding of the real world; you appear to be living in some right-wing libertarian fantasy. Put down the Ayn Rand book you are reading, and think for a while.
Manufacturers appreciate greatly that this research gets done at universities with public support.
1) Their stockholders have little patience for the multi-decade investment horizons which basic research requires to develop commerically viable technology. They also don't like the risk involved in basic research, where any single idea in isolation has a very low probability of leading to commercial viability. Commercially viable technologies come about when many ideas are "in the air" waiting for the right confluence of insight and investment to make the transition.
2) Research done at these universities creates trained university graduates who know something about chip manufacturing, meaning that chip manufacturers can hire these trained and selected people instead of hiring people off the street, training them in basic engineering for many years, and hoping that they turn out to be qualified.
3) In addition, the knowledge created in this kind of research is often the foundation for new enterprise creation. Perhaps you've heard of such companies as Google, started by people who got their ideas working in such a "socialistic academic dreamworld"?
Perhaps you are against all public education. After all, if it were in corporations' interests to have workers who could read, they would pay to teach the workers their ABCs. Given that huge amount of tax dollars are at work subsidizing public education, this is obviously a socialist fantasy. Better to close all the schools and let the free market work its magic, don't you think? It works so well in paradises like Afghanistan and Liberia, where the public sector hardly exists at all!
But you don't have to move there to enjoy the benefits. Soon, under the wise guidance of our brave President, the U.S. will also be a wonderful place where the NSF budget gets reduced while unworkable and never-going-to-be-used boondoggles like ballistic missile defense get the healthy funding levels they need to preserve liberty and freedom against the homosexual agenda!
For the terminally stupid, including you, the two previous paragraphs were sarcastic.
So now you have to build in the complexity for memory chips to do automatic self-testing? This makes chips *more* likely to be defective, not less. Now the manufacturers need to verify that the self-test circuitry is 100% functional.
Plus every chipset has to be made more complicated to support this kind of behavior: has to tell the chip when it is safe to initiate testing, has to read back results and present them to the OS, and has to wait until chip testing is finished before making memory accesses to them.
Your idea is clever, and works OK for the guy doing a wire-wrap project who ends up with a faulty chip in his one-off project and doesn't want to throw it out. But it hardly is a compelling approach for memory manufacturers.
Rewiring chips to have different pinouts depending on test results is hardly "easy" to deal with on an industrial scale. It would have to be bonded out differently to keep the customer interface consistent, which adds complication and variation to the manufacturing process.
Also, you've made the test plan more complicated for *every* chip, because you have to precisely identify faults, instead of just recognizing a broad class of failures, and you need to increase the amount of work that needs to be done before packaging, and complicating the handling of device lots, because more different part numbers are coming out of the same production process.
Increasing test and packaging complexity is going to increase the cost for every chip; you'll need more expensive memory testers to handle the increased test load, and you will need more test & production engineering work to validate the processes.
All in order to make lower-margin lower-capacity memory chips.
Tell me again why this is a good idea?
The RIAA is not a "trust." The term "trust" implies interlocking ownership and control. The various record companies are not owned or controlled by a single entity. They are (admittedly large) independent companies which find it in their interest to act together on issues such as downloads.
The examples cited in the Wiki link, for instance, were companies like American Tobacco and Standard Oil. Standard Oil grew by *purchasing* smaller oil companies, and taking *control* of them, while retaining the original identities, largely to make up for a lack of an alternative legal framework for interstate companies. Before the era of trusts, few enterprises were truly national in scope.
Nowadays, the corporate structure even for multinationals is fully established, and the modern multinational conglomerate has replaced the concept of trusts as a form of enterprise organization.
This is admittedly unrelated to whether the companies that make up the RIAA are engaged in activities prohibited by the anti-trust statutes.
No, no, no, something like
"Apple backing away from unbiased iPod tune selection!"
Even the classic all-in-one macs had power switches right on the back where the power cord came into the power supply.
Your apparent lack of ability to find the power switch does not impress me.